The Protector's War Read online

  "Get out! The horses are here and the SIDs are coming round!" the man shouted.

  Seconds later the last two Varangians were out of the room, dragging a third between them by the arms. They'd left two dead behind them, and chances were they'd be back soon enough. Or they'd simply hold the corridor and then come around to cut off the rescue party outside the window.

  "Time to depart indeed," Sir Nigel said. "Maude, if you'll go first—"

  He looked around, then made a small choked sound. The sword fell from his hand, clattering on the floor. Maude Loring was lying there herself, clutching at her side. Nigel and Alleyne went to their knees on either side of her, looking incredulously at the wound in her side. From the broad slit that her fingers tried to hold closed, Nigel guessed that the point of the short sword had gone in under her floating rib. Judging from the amount of blood that flowed through those fingers and spread a stain on the carpet, skill or chance had wrenched the knife-edged weapon around in the wound, cutting into her kidney or several of the great veins.

  Father and son shared a single appalled look. Both knew from experience precisely what that particular injury meant: death, not long delayed. A pre-Change trauma unit might have been able to keep her alive, if she were in it now. All the surgeons in the Changed world couldn't save her, with a miracle thrown in.

  "Maude…" he croaked, unbelieving.

  Her face had been clenched against the scream that would distract him from the life-and-death focus of combat. Now it relaxed, and the hand against her side did too. He clamped the wound with his own, but the blood tide was ebbing even as he did. Her eyes moved from his face to Alleyne's; she tried to say something, then shuddered and went still.

  "Maude…"

  Time ceased to move. Words went by, without meaning until a voice shouted in his ear: "Sir! Colonel, there's no time. We have to move now."

  That seemed to start his mind working again, after a fashion. Men have died to free you. Your son's here—Maude's son. You have to move now. He reached out and shook the younger man across from him by the side of his helmet until the armor rattled on him.

  "Alleyne!" he snapped. "Pull yourself together, man!"

  His son obeyed with an effort that made him shudder, but his eyes slid down towards Maude's harsh features again, now relaxed and somehow younger.

  "Put her here," Sir Nigel said gently, standing beside a couch.

  The body had the boneless flaccidity of the newly dead. Nigel closed her eyes and held them for a second, then stood and scrubbed his left hand across his face, forcing a deep breath into his lungs. Hordle and Badding were throwing the wrecked furniture into the doorway again; then the big NCO smashed a lamp on it. Flame splashed up from it as the glass oil reservoir shattered. It roared higher as several others joined it.

  "Sir," Badding said. "Out."

  "You first—"

  "Sir, don't play silly buggers with us now. Your lady's dead and beyond help. You're what we came here for!"

  The man's dark-bearded pug features were twisted with concern; Badding, Nigel remembered, had a wife and three children and a farm near Tilford, and a young sister he'd brought through the Change. He nodded, picked up the shield and sword, went to the window and swung himself out. The impulse simply to let fall was strong. Instead he made himself put hands and feet to the ladder. Too many were depending on him.

  "I am so sorry, Nigel," Major Buttesthorn said. "So very sorry."

  "Fortunes of war, Oliver," Sir Nigel said, in a voice that forbade condolences, even from an old friend.

  They were stopped in a deep hollow in the Aspley Woods, northwest of Woburn Manor, surrounded by feral rhododendron and waist-high bracken. Those hills were densely forested with oak and beech and ash, ancients two centuries old and towering a hundred feet above them in a canopy that allowed only a rare glimpse of starlight above, the moon having set. The small, almost flameless fire was enough to make tea—or rather the herbal substitute that went by that name these days. He could smell the slightly acrid scent of it over the scent of damp leafmoldas he checked automatically for red-ant nests before sitting.

  One of the soldiers thrust a thick mug into his hands; he sipped automatically at the hot brew, heavy with beet sugar to hide the taste. In the distance a wolf howled over the nighted hills—some distant part of Loring's mind told him it was one of the packs descended from the escapees released by the keepers of Woburn Safari Park and Whips-nade, the country extension of London Zoo near here. The rest of him felt at one with the cold, lonely sobbing that echoed through the night, fierce and solitary.

  Get a grip, Nigel, he scolded himself. And wolves are very social.

  "And thank you, Oliver," he said aloud. Raising his voice slightly: "Thank you all. I know you've taken a very great risk."

  There was a murmur, but not much talk; they were too close to possible pursuit, even if their back scouting had shown the remaining Varangians preoccupied with putting out fires and sending off messengers rather than actively following the raiding party. And beyond that, traditional English reserve seemed to be making a comeback in the Changed world—something he rather approved of, along with a good many other things.

  Everyone crouched and reached for weapons when a rustling went through the woods like heavy careless feet in the dried leaves, then relaxed when John Hordle chuckled.

  "Badger," he said. "Does sound like a man bludging about, eh?"

  Buttesthorn sat near Nigel. "Do you want us to take care of the Varangians Who're left?" he said, his voice soft and careful, as if the other man were fragile or explosive or both. "We'll be going back that way… might actually be safer with no witnesses, don't you know…"

  Nigel shook his head. His son was standing guard out in the darkness; out where there was nobody to see his face. Nigel envied him. It was as if his own mind were a compass needle; every few seconds it seemed to slip out of his grasp and turn back towards the sentence Maude is dead. Each impact hit him with the same force.

  "No," Nigel said, surprised at the calmness of his own voice. "It's no use, Oliver. In a fight like that, you strike out at anyone who's going for you. The man probably didn't even know who he was stabbing, just that someone had hit him on the elbow and he was about to be struck with a very large ax. This isn't about personal vengeance. And you wouldn't have the advantage of surprise, anyway. Say what you will of them, the Varangians are stout fighters and in a stand-up battle there aren't enough with you to overrun them."

  Oliver Buttesthorn bowed his head. Loring went on: "Besides, you're going to be needed here, Oliver. I can't stay, not unless I'm prepared to start a civil war. Which I am not—and besides, we would lose."

  "It may come to that," the other officer said.

  "And it may not. And in a few years, if it does come to that, perhaps you won't lose. But I would, if I tried it now. You can't harvest a field before it's ripe."

  His smile was slight and painful as he sat with his back against a fallen log, but Buttesthorn's brows went up. The other man was about Loring's age and only a few inches taller; he would have been fat save for the ruthless standards of their regiment before the Change and hard living and harder travel and fighting afterward. Instead he was built like a balding, red-faced fireplug.

  "Just thinking," Loring said. It helped a little, to keep his mind on impersonal things. "It's a great pity Charles has become so… eccentric."

  One of the enlisted men in the background muttered something that sounded like Gone bloody barking mad, you mean?

  "He was splendid, those first few years; well, he did know all that organic farming bit, which was frightfully useful. The Emergency Powers decrees were essential, at first. And then the other things… I was quite enthused when he abolished that metric nonsense and brought back the old weights and measures."

  "And pounds, shillings and pence! If only it had stopped there," Buttesthorn said. "I blame Queen Hallgerda for encouraging him."

  Loring shrugged. "That's how she and
her relatives have elbowed themselves into power," he said. "By backing up his, ah, whims. And one can see why they were resentful; far too many people expected all the Icelanders to stay farmhands forever, just because they arrived hungry and destitute. Still, her faction's alienating more and more people of all backgrounds. The king may be… strange, but his sons are both very likely young men."

  "Unless Hallgerda Long-Legs has them done away with in favor of her own brood," Oliver said grimly. "His Majesty may be mad, but by God it's certain he's not impotent or infertile. Three already!"

  "Well, old chap, that's why you need to keep a careful eye out and make preparations," Nigel Loring said, finishing the so-called tea. "And keep up the pressure finally to call a real Parliament. Now you must get going, old friend, and so must I."

  "That's the farm, sir," John Hordle said not long after dawn.

  A chorus of pink… pink… pink… came from blackbirds their passage had disturbed; the twittering of robins and the long liquid trilling of song thrushes wove through it. With some part of himself that wasn't numb, Nigel Loring reminded himself that he should listen carefully; he'd left England many times before, but this was likely to be the last parting. Riding east from Aspley Woods, down the escarpment and then back northwestward across sandy heath with the cool smell of dew-wet heather crushed beneath a horse's hooves… there wouldn't be much more of that, if they made good their escape.

  He nodded and halted his horse with an imperceptible shift of balance and the slightest touch on the reins; that wasn't an easy trick to learn* in the heavy war saddle and a full suit of plate. Compared to the way he'd learned to ride—in the slight English saddle, and then foxhunting—it had felt like being strapped into an upright coffin. But he'd picked up the knack rather thoroughly.

  Even an old dog can learn the odd new trick, he thought, shading his eyes with his hand and peering northeastward against the dawn, the visored sallet helm slung to his saddlebow.

  The farmer had probably taken up the land here because there was a tax-and-rent reduction for those willing to be first in such places, isolated and dangerous, and the ten-foot-high fence of angle iron and barbed wire that surrounded the houses was supporting evidence. This was the very northernmost edge of cultivation; in fact, there wasn't another active farm for half a mile, and the old A5130 had been hacked back into barely passable state to reach the narrow lane that led to the homestead. North of here the road was simply a linear mound of thornbush twenty feet high.

  The largest building in the little cluster of habitation was a long, low-slung, whitewashed cottage with a thatched roof and small square-paned windows; several centuries old from the look of it and the size of the oaks and beeches in the garden—which included a lawn ornament in the shape of a four-foot black rooster half hidden in tall shaggy grass. Four other cottages stood nearby in a rough row along an old laneway, ranging from a tiny half-timbered affair to a modern two-story probably built in the 1960s. They'd all been reroofed with thatch—probably because if you grew long-stemmed wheat it was easier to use the straw than find fresh slate or tile. Besides which, it was officially encouraged.

  Early as it was, the farm's folk seemed hard at work. He uncased his binoculars and looked; smoke rose in slow drifting columns from the tall brick chimneys that pierced the roofs, and he saw a woman in overalls and Wellingtons leading a horse towards a cluster of barns and a pond a hundred yards south. The space around the barns held a comfortable litter of tools—a two-furrow riding plow, a set of disk harrows and a tipping hay rake. Two more women hoed in an acre-sized stretch of vegetable garden, and an indeterminate teenager walking back towards the farmstead from the barns had a yoke over the shoulders and buckets of milk on either end. A brown-skinned girl child of eight or so in a shapeless wool frock fed chickens that clustered and gobbled about her feet with grain held in her apron. Another who might have been her sister save that she was pink and blond guarded a clutch of toddlers with the aid of a nondescript collie. Everyone was breeding enthusiastically these days, but from the numbers there must be at least three married couples here. The smell was of turned earth wet with the morning, smoke and manure and baking bread.

  He could hear the rising-falling moan of a wool spinning wheel from the small cottage, joined by the rhythmic thump… thump… of a loom. A post-Change metal wind pump whirled merrily to fill a tank set in an earthen mound. Forty or fifty acres of cultivation surrounded the steading, in fields edged by hedges new or newly trimmed back; sheep and cattle grazed on pastures whose origin as a golf course was barely visible. Stooked sheaves of wheat and barley stood in neat tripods and children with slings sent a flock of thieving black rooks up from them. Other fields held harvested flax in windrows, potatoes, turnips, beets and a young orchard that was just coming into bearing, with apples glowing red among the leaves.

  The cleared land was an island, though. Beyond it was wilderness. The hedge around the field further north where the men labored at clearance was typical—it had sprouted twenty feet high or better, a wall of hawthorn and bramble, and the hawthorn had spread further horizontally both ways, covering the old farm lane and sloping out into the field from all four sides as well. The faster-growing bramble intertwined with it and went on ahead, reaching out nearly to the center of the field, each cane starting a new plant where it dipped and touched the ground. It hadn't reached the center of what had been an open space yet; that was merely chest high with dock and nettle. Most of the land was a tangle taller than a man, with bramble canes ranging from pencil-thick to thumb-thick coiling between each other in a mass of thorns and tough wood and dense green leaves hiding it all. It was thick with birds as well, their voices louder than he'd ever heard on an August day before the Change, and with insects and small game. Rabbits burst out and fled in hysterical bounds as the dense scrub was chopped down.

  His skin itched just looking at it; bramble thorns broke off beneath your skin, and often the result was infection and septicemia. Most of lowland Britain was like this now—big patches even in the south and a continuous mass of it from the frontier of settlement here to East Lothian in Scotland—save for pre-Change forest and moor. Plenty of saplings were already sprouting through the ground cover—oak and beech, ash and alder—but it would be gen-erations before the king trees grew tall enough to close the canopy and shade out the scrub.

  "You're certain of them?" Nigel asked, tilting his head towards the men in the field.

  Both Hordle and his son nodded.

  "Hordle introduced us," Alleyne said. "Brief acquaintance, but I agree with him. That means taking the farmer's men on his word, but they haven't turned us in yet, eh? And he did give us some very useful pointers on Newport Pagnell. He's hunted that far north a few times."

  Hordle continued: "You didn't have much to do with Bob, sir; he mustered out to take up the farm about the time we got back from that mission in France, four years ago. But I've known him a good long while now, since before the Change. I, mmm, warned him to volunteer for escort duty back when we took the queen out of London, and recommended him, like. Warned him to get the missus and his boy in the convoy as well. He vouches for his folk; one of them's an Icelander, but he's got no use for the queen's party. And we need fresh horses and supplies."

  Nigel nodded agreement. He and Alleyne couldn't ride their war mounts in full harness for long—that wore the beasts out, and they might need trained reflexes and best speed before they reached the coast. The same held for his son, and Hordle's weight was a trial for anything he rode in any event. Eight years wasn't long to breed up a horse herd, and they were still scarce despite imports from friendly Ulster.

  He took a firmer grip on his lance, his hand on the shaft and the butt resting in the ring welded to his right stirrup. The shield slung over his back clattered as he rode along the cleared lane until the farmhouse was hidden from view, then down towards the men working in the field ahead.

  A broad strip had already been chopped free of brush near the dir
t roadway, and the gate had been hacked out of a mountain of vegetation covering it. The cleared land looked as if giant moles had been at work, holes pocking the deep brown boulder-clay soil where the roots of the bramble bushes and blackthorns had been ripped out.

  Every so often in the cleared space there was a great heap of brushwood twice man-height, and a few smoking circles of ash showed what would be done once the cuttings had dried enough to burn. A little farther out the farmer and two helpers were chopping at the heavy tangle with billhook and ax and machete, piling it in mounds then tearing out roots and an arm-thick stump with a wheeled machine whose steel tines were pulled by four oxen.

  Hard work, that, Loring thought. More difficult every year.

  The three men turned at the sound of hooves, quickly snatching up weapons—two longbows, which the law now said every adult had to keep and practice with, and a billhook that would slash through men as easily as tough thornwood. The area to the north of here wasn't quite clear of human life; a few thousand feral outlaws still haunted it, even after plague spots like Milton Keynes were burned out. The Brushwood Men probably weren't technically cannibals these days, but they weren't really human anymore, either, and it would be little consolation to their victims that the raid was for food stores and tools rather than long pig.

  The men at work relaxed when they saw the horses and harness, and eased further when they were close enough to see faces. All three wore tough cord trousers, boots and knee-length linen smocks, the classic smock frock of the English rustic. The last men to wear them as daily routine outside plays and pageants had been dying of old age about the time Nigel Loring's great-grandfather used his head to stop a 7mm bullet from a Boer Mauser at Spion Kop.Two years ago an order had gone out from Highgrove to "encourage" the making and wearing of the archaic garments in every Commandery.