The Protector's War Read online

  This ceremony was much more private than the testing of the gunpowder, although it also involved a circle of watchers standing with swords drawn. It was on the rear patio behind the big house, with all the registered A-list members not on inescapable duty standing in serried, armored ranks on either side of the broad pathway that led to the old swimming pool. Otherwise only the apprentice candidates were present. There were seven this time—inductions were held every few months—all sternly controlling their excitement, all between eighteen and twenty-one, and showing the effects of a night spent sleepless and fasting. They were in the full kit of the Bearkiller elite, except for the helmet and blade.

  Havel stood beside the brazier where the iron heated, near a trestle that bore seven swords; the light crinkle of sound from the charcoal could be heard clearly; the only other sounds were the sough of the wind and an occasional chinking rustle from two hundred ninety-one chain hauberks.

  Not that I've got any objection to ceremonies. Any force needs them, like uniforms and flags and medals and songs. The Corps had some great ones… well, people have already died for the Bearkillers. All it takes is time to add majesty, I suppose. To these kids it's the biggest deal there is. Let's make it perfect for them.

  The military apprentices approached. Will Hutton stepped out to bar their path, resting the point of his backsword against the breast of the first; he was a wiry man well into his forties, with blunt features and skin the color of old oiled walnut wood and tight-curled graying hair, the drawling Texan rasp still strong in his voice.

  "Who comes?" the second-in-command of the Bear-killers asked. "And why?"

  "Military apprentice Patrick Mallory, sir," the young man answered clearly. "I come to claim membership in the Outfit's A-list."

  "Have you passed all the tests of arms and skill and character?"

  "Sir, I have."

  Hutton raised his voice: "Is there any Brother or Sister of the A-list who knows why Patrick Mallory, military apprentice, should not seek enrollment? Speak now, or hold your peace ever after."

  Silence stretched. Hutton lowered his blade and stepped aside. "Pass, then."

  The A-lister-to-be strode on past into the circle, his boots clacking on the flagstones, and came to a halt at arm's length in front of Havel and saluted; he was a broad-shouldered young man of medium height, eyes and hair an unremarkable brown, skin pale with the long gray skies of winter.

  Havel answered the gesture and reached aside to pick up the sword resting across the trestle, standing with the steel across the leather palms of his gauntlets.

  "This is a sword," he said. "An ax can chop wood; with a bow or a lance you can hunt; knives were the first of all tools. The sword is a thing men make solely for the killing of their own kind; and those who don't carry them can still die on their blades. Only an honorable man can be trusted with it. What is honor, Apprentice Mallory?"

  "Honor is the debt we owe to ourselves, Lord Bear. Honor is duty fulfilled."

  "If you take the sword you take death: in the end, your own death, as well as your enemy's. What is duty, next to death?"

  The reply came proudly: "Duty is heavier than a mountain. Death is lighter than a feather."

  "You take this sword as token of the support and respect our community gives its defenders. The price is your oath to do justice, to uphold our laws, to put your own flesh between your land and people and war's desolation. Are you ready to take that oath?"

  "I am, and to fulfill the oath with my life's blood."

  "Do you swear to stand by every Brother and Sister of the oath, holding them dearer than a parent, dearer than children?"

  "I do, unto death."

  Havel reached forward and slid the sword into the empty scabbard at the other's waist, and went on: "Kneel."

  The apprentice went down on one knee and held out his hands with the palms pressed together. Havel took them between his own and looked down into the fearless young lion eyes as he listened to the apprentice's words: "Until the sea floods the earth and the sky falls, or the Change is undone, or death releases me, I will keep faith and life and truth with the Bearkillers' lord; in peace or war, following all orders under the law we have made."

  "And I will keep faith with you likewise," Havel said. "Let neither of us fail, at our peril. Now accept the mark that seals you to the Brotherhood."

  He released the boy's hands and reached for the wooden handle of the thin iron resting in the white-hot charcoal. Mallory's face was unflinching as he touched the brand between his eyebrows; there was a sharp hiss and scent of burning. Signe stepped forward with a quick dab of an herbal ointment for the burn. Despite the pain, there was an enormous grin breaking through the solemnity as Mal-lory stood.

  Havel struck forearms with him, outside and inside, then pulled him into a quick embrace and turned, one arm around the young man's shoulders.

  "Brothers and Sisters, I give you Brother Patrick Mal-lory, enrolled on the A-list of the Bearkillers! So witness earth—so witness sky!"

  "By Earth, by Sky—Brother Mallory!"

  Metal-backed gauntlets punched into the afternoon air as near three hundred voices roared the name.

  "Take your place in the ranks, Brother Mallory. We have the work of the Outfit to do." Mallory walked to the rear with a growing jauntiness.

  Will Hutton's voice sounded again: "Who comes? And why?"

  "Military apprentice Susanna Clarke!"

  Kenneth Larsson had always kept a workshop here at Larsdalen, ever since he was twelve and reading Tom Swift and His Atomic Earth Blaster and Citizen of the Galaxy, back in 1960. There was more room at the family's summer estate than at the house in Portland, and making things on holiday had been just as much fun as woods-rambling and reading. He'd kept it up even in his hippy-dippy student rebel phase—bell-bottoms and blond Fu Manchu and all—when it had been the only thing he and his father agreed on. Then when he inherited Northwest Holdings, puttering around with a little hands-on engineering kept him sane when the managerial side of the family business threatened to drive him bughouse.-

  The oscilloscopes and electric furnace and other fancy toys were useless now, and there wasn't any room in Larsdalen proper; the big house his grandfather had built back in 1906 was crowded to the gills with four growing families and the staff. But rank still had its privileges. He might not be the bossman anymore, but he was the bossman's father-in-law and close advisor—closest, in anything to do with technology. In his fifty-second year—the first Change

  Year—his childhood hobby had become his life's work. The big technical library still helped, too.

  He'd had this building run up at the west end of the back meadow as soon as they had any hands to spare, or sooner; a long frame rectangle with a brick floor and running water, plenty of skylights and windows, forges and machine tools, desks and worktables and drawing boards, storage closets, and kerosene lamps hanging from the rooftree. It all had a smell of solvents and woodsmoke and scorched metal; designs were pinned to corkboards along the walls—for reapers and mowers and threshing machines, for pumps and windmills and Pelton wheel water turbines. And for war engines, trebuchets and catapults and a flywheel-powered machine gun he knew he could get working eventually.

  My very own Menlo Park, he thought wryly.

  "You can go now, Vicki," he said.

  His young assistant ducked her head, shed her many-pocketed leather equipment apron and left; she didn't say anything, but then, she rarely did. Whatever she'd gone through while prisoner of that band of Eaters—cannibals—in central Idaho hadn't left her mute, but she was wary of human contact beyond all reason even after the newly formed Bearkiller outfit rescued her.

  Larsson smiled grimly. That was back when he'd still thought his family had been unlucky to be in a Piper Chieftain over the Selway-Bitterroot National Wilderness when the Change hit. And Ken had the good luck to get Mike Havel as their pilot when he hired a puddle jumper to run them up to the ranch in Montana.

  Speak
of the devil, he thought.

  A teenaged military apprentice from one of the A-lister families knocked and then swung the door in the middle of the workshop's long west wall open, letting in a flood of afternoon light and cool damp spring air.

  "The Bear Lord is here, Lord Kenneth," she said formally, her face and voice serious; she would have been about ten at the time of the Change.

  Mike Havel stood in the doorway, still in the war harness that doubled as formal dress for ceremonies. He was eating ice cream out of a cup with a little wooden spoon, which was a rare treat these days—sugar was an expensive luxury again. A glance at the apprentice, and he handed her the bowl. Larsson hid a smile of his own, as she fought to conceal her delight.

  "You might as well finish this," Havel said. "And don't let anyone but the names on the list in."

  "Yes, Lord Bear!" the apprentice said. When the door swung closed Larsson could see her through the panes, eyes watchful on the open ground as she spooned up the fruit-studded confection.

  Havel shrugged at Larsson's look. "Lost my taste for the stuff, anyway," he said a little defensively. "Too sweet."

  He was a big man, but without quite the height or burly thickness of his father-in-law—a finger under six feet, broad shoulders and narrow hips showing under mail and gambeson, long in leg and arm. He moved lightly, hugely strong without being bulky, and graceful as a hunting cat, his boots scarcely raising a creak from the boards of the stairs even with the weight of metal and leather he wore. When Larsson first met him he'd been twenty-eight and already had a weathered outdoors-man's tan, with the sort of high-cheeked, strong-boned face that didn't alter much from the late teens into middle age. Apart from new scars and deep lines beside his pale, slanted gray eyes, what had changed was something indefinable… Perhaps it goes with being a king, Larsson thought, and grinned.

  The grin looked more piratical than it had before the Change; the older man had lost his left eye and hand to a bandit's sword in Change Year One, and the patch and hook added something too.

  "Hi, Lord Ken," Havel went on, smiling a crooked smile, stripping off the metal-backed leather gauntlets. "Got the initiations over with, at least."

  In the distance a roaring chorus of voices rose in song, or something close to it, as booted feet clashed in unison to the beat of drums and the squeal of fifes:

  "Axes flash, broadswords swing Shining armor's piercing ring Horses run with a polished shield Fight those bastards till they yield! Midnight mare and bloodred roan, Fight to keep this land your own—Sound the horn and call the cry: How many of them can we make die!"

  "I like that song," Havel said, grinning. "It's becoming sort of traditional—another favor Juney Mackenzie did us. What's better, everyone else on the A-list likes it, too." He winced slightly as Ken Larsson raised a brow, and continued: "That is, everyone likes it except Signe. I ducked out when she started glaring at me again—everything associated with our red-haired friend puts her on edge now. Christ Jesus, I don't need this. Can't you talk to her? She's your daughter…"

  Ken Larsson laughed until he wheezed. "Oh, no, son-in-law, I got out of that job at the altar. Besides… can you blame her?"

  "Yeah, as a matter of fact, I can! Yes, Rudi's my kid—but Signe and I weren't married then. She was still back in Idaho when I came west on that scouting mission and ran into Juney. Hell, Signe and I weren't even involved then, not really, and she'd made it pretty plain no hanky-panky was in prospect. OK, she said no, I folded up my tent and rode away."

  "She'd had a rough time," Larsson said, looking aside. It had been even rougher on him, the night his first wife died.

  "And I haven't touched another woman since we did get involved," Havel said bitterly. "Christ Jesus, I'm getting the punishment for adultery without having the fun!"

  Larsson cleared his throat. "Anyway, Mike, expecting a woman to be reasonable about something like that is about as futile as trying to fly to the moon by putting your head between your knees and spitting hard. Have you actually confessed yet?"

  "No," the younger man said shortly.

  "Well, you should. Grovel and apologize and beat your breast and promise never to do anything wrong again. Keep on doing it while she yells and throws things, and then while she sulks and gives you the cold shoulder beat yourself up some more."

  "Shit, I didn't do anything wrong!"

  "And that is relevant… how?" Larsson snorted. "Listen to the voice of experience, son. Besides, there's young Mike. She's probably worried about him."

  Havel's lips curled into a smile at the mention of his son's name; then he frowned in puzzlement.

  "Worried?"

  "About who inherits all this," Larsson said, waving his good hand.

  Havel blinked, obviously surprised. "Well… well, shit, Ken! Who said the position's hereditary, for Christ Jesus' sake? Even Arminger hasn't gone that far."

  "He will," Larsson predicted. "Bit awkward for him that his only child's a girl, but if you read the reports, he's setting things up for Queen Mathilda the First."

  Havel shrugged. "Yeah, but I'm not Arminger, by Christ Jesus. Last I heard, the assembled Outfit chooses the boss-man when the old one dies, retires or is impeached; and I should know, seeing as how I wrote the damned law code. I've gone along with a lot of Astrid's pseudomedieval horse manure, but enough's enough! No golden crowns for this country boy."

  Larsson sighed. "Mike, you might have made the distinction between political and military authority and private property a little more distinct… or distinct at all… when you were setting things up. Or maybe I should have reminded you, even busy as we were. But done's done; if the Outfit were to select somebody else after you were gone, who owns the house? And the lands—the stuff we manage directly from here? The heirs of Mike Havel, guy with a growing family, or the successor to Lord Bear, ruler of all he can see? And if it's the latter, what do your kids get? Parents are supposed to be anxious for their children's futures, you know; you can't blame Signe for living up to the job."

  "Hmmm," Havel said. "Point. Distinct point."

  "Besides which… let me ask you a question: How many of those apprentices you just enrolled were relatives of people already on the A-list?"

  Havel frowned, thinking. "Four out of seven. Why? Anyone can take the tests."

  Larsson sighed again. "Mike, you're a smart guy, but you're kind of… focused. This is a low-productivity economy we've got—not as bad as the Dark Ages, more nineteenth-century in a lot of ways, except it's also a pre-money setup most of the time and our population's too small for much specialization. And we've made schooling compulsory, which I approve of. But what do a tenant farmer's kids do in their munificent free time, school holidays being scheduled to coincide with the growing and harvest season?"

  "Work their asses off helping their family get the crop in," Havel said promptly. "Same as I did back in the Upper Peninsula, before I graduated high school and joined the Corps. Only a lot more so. We ran that farm part-time; mostly the family lived on what my old man made in the Iron Range mines."

  Larsson raised his metal prosthesis and made a checkmark in the air. "Bingo. Now, what does an A-lister's kid do? You know, the people with the big land grants and tenants and full-time household workers."

  "Pitches in on the home farm a bit, usually… but I see your point."

  "You betcha. You insisted on high standards even for getting into the apprentice program, and it's hard learning to shoot a bow from the saddle of a galloping horse, or handle a lance. The A-lister's kids have the gear and the space and the trained horses and the leisure to practice, not to mention expert coaching from their parents and siblings. Plus one hell of an incentive—the land goes with the A-lister rank, and without money, how do you build up alternate investments? Plus the family has to be willing to let the kid go when they're sixteen to be a military apprentice, just when they're getting really useful on the farm or in the workshop and starting to pay off the parental investment. A-listers don't need
their children's labor so badly."

  "It's not all family members," Havel said defensively.

  "Not yet. The original A-listers are too young to have many adolescent children; it's mostly their younger siblings so far. But when their offspring are old enough, you're going to find they're a lot more than half the apprentice uptake. And watch who marries whom, too, which'll push the process along even faster—the more so since it's a coed setup. I watched the same thing happen in the business world back before the Change in the seventies, eighties. When lawyers and executives were all men, they sometimes married secretaries. When women professionals arrived in numbers, they married other lawyers and executives."

  "I hadn't… Ouch."

  "So it's pretty likely the A-listers will vote in one of your kids as successor. Because by then it'll be unnatural to do anything else. So Signe's worrying, maybe unconsciously, if it'll be her kid, not just yours. Pam tells me that there were a lot of systems like that in the old days—where the throne was elective within a certain family, broadly defined. Like in the sagas—read about what the dozen sons of Harald Fairhair did to Norway sometime. If you acknowledge that Rudi Mackenzie is your son, everyone will believe it who's got eyes. He's older than young Mike, too. Old enough to start getting hints of what sort of a man he's going to be; he's smart, and he could charm a snake out of its skin, for starters."

  "Well, shit," Havel said, pushing back his helmet by the nasal and rubbing his jaw. "But even if the position goes to one of my kids, I'd want to pick the best when they're old enough—for that matter it could be Mary or Ritva, as easily as Mike Jr. or Rudi."

  "That was probably Alexander the Great's plan, watching his kids grow and picking his own successor from the best of them. Unanticipated events sort of took a hand, and nobody's immortal. You ought to be thinking about this now, Mike. We don't have a tradition on how to handle succession yet. Note that I have an interest here too—if it's going to be hereditary, I want one of my grandkids to get it."