S. Stirling - Dies The Fire

"No problem, but we'd better get under way," Havel said. Everyone's gotten a bit rougher-edged since the Change.

"Well, we've got the roadway through the fort cleared and the bridge is ready," Brown said. "Pretty hot and smoky, though."

Havel shrugged. "Well over half of them got out of the castle. We need to make sure of them before they get west to their other fort."

Josh Sanders came up, leading Havel's horse. Havel swung into the saddle with a clink and rustle of chainmail; the horse was a strawberry roan mare, not quite as well-trained as Gustav. He quieted it and stroked a gloved hand down its neck.

"No sign of a rear guard?"

The Hoosier grinned. "Boss, once they bugged out of the castle, that bunch straggled so bad I'm surprised they managed to get anyone together. But they're closed up into one group now, more or less, and less the wounded they've been leaving behind. Stopped about two hours ago, but not for long is my guess. They remembered to take their bicycles, at least."

"Good work, Josh," he said. "Aylward's people are in position?"

"Got into place about the time the fight was over here. That Brit's pretty damn good in the woods."

Will Hutton was ready at the head of the Bearkiller column, a hundred armored riders with Sanders's scouts in a clump before, and their supply echelon on wagons and packhorses behind. Havel trotted down the column of fours and into position at the front beside Luanne Larsson, where she rode with the outfit's flag drooping from her lance in the still, cold air.

A sudden gust snapped it out, brown and red in the soot-laden breeze; humans coughed, and horses stamped and snorted, tossing their heads in a jingle of bridles.

Ahead was the column of smoke from the castle, bending towards them like a reaching hand. On either side the mountains reared steep and rugged; to the north the dawn sun gilded the snowpeaks, leaving the blue slopes below in shadow.

"This part ought to work fairly well," he said.

Will Hutton nodded and spat thoughtfully aside. "Whole strategy feels sort of: odd, Mike."

"Lady Juniper is odd." Havel grinned. "And it's her idea. Yeah, it's not my own first impulse-I was always the kill-'em-all-let-God-sort-'em-out type by natural inclination, and God knows life is cheap these days-but I can see her point, long-term. And she put this whole deal together."

He raised his arm and chopped it westward. With the sun at their backs, the long shapes of horse and rider lay before them, and the hooves trod the shadows down as the Bear-killers advanced. The honed edges of the lanceheads above caught the dawn light with a rippling sparkle like stars on the sea.

"Here," Sam Aylward said.

West of Santiam Pass, Route 20 wound between forested hills that crowded close to the roadway. Eventually it swung north and east for a while before turning west and then south again, like a long U around an outthrust ridge of the mountains that reared-ever higher to Three Fingered Jack on the north and Mount Washington to the south.

Creeks brawled down from the steep slopes on either hand; they were west of the Cascade crest here, and the extra moisture showed-more Douglas fir and western hemlock, less lodgepole pine. The forest was dense, dark green, seeming to wait eagerly for the heavy snows to come, breathing a cold clear scent of pine and moist earth.

Speaking of moisture: hope Lady Juniper's magic actually works. A blizzard would bugger things for fair.

The Englishman cocked an eye at the sky; about noon, not quite time for the party to begin, but getting there, and he didn't like the look of the clouds. It was chilly enough to make him think that might mean snow, too-they were four thousand feet up here, with wet air sliding in from the Pacific, and it was December, albeit only just.

Just enough to make me doubt me sanity, wearing this Jock skirt, he thought wryly.

In fact, the kilt wasn't all that uncomfortable-the Jocks had worn them in all seasons in the Scottish Highlands, after all, with a climate that made western Oregon look like Barbados. The colors were good camouflage, and the boost to morale was more than worth it. Few of these people had been fighters before the Change, any more than they'd been farmers; wearing strange clothing helped them adjust to doing things strange to them.

There was a clatter and rustle as the Mackenzies moved into position; a lot of them were puffing from the night march in full gear, but nobody had fallen out. He grinned slightly to himself at the thought; after the past eight months, most of them were stronger and fitter than they'd ever been in their lives-Yanks had tended to lard before the Change, but he hadn't seen a fat one for months now.

Now if only they were better shots, he thought.

About a dozen out of fifty were what he'd call passable archers, and as for the rest:

Well, they can hit a massed target at close range. Most of the time. And we've got plenty of shafts along.

He looked up and down the stretch of road. There were four abandoned vehicles in sight, all shoved off the road- courtesy of the Protector's men when they moved in on Route 20-but one was impossible, a heavy truck. The other three included two ordinary four-doors and a Ford Windstar van, and should do nicely.

"That one, that one, that one, and put them there. Move your arses, Mackenzies!"

A platoon's-worth flung themselves on the vehicles. They weren't easy to move, with months for the transmission fluid to solidify, and resting on the rims of the flat wheels, but enough musclepower served. Once the cars were in place, more hands rocked them until they went over on their sides, spanning the whole width of the road and its verges, presenting their undersides to the enemy. Those would stop a crossbow bolt well enough, and they were too high to easily climb over. Of course, that meant they were also too high for defenders to shoot or stab over the top.

"Right, get rocks and dirt and logs; get a fighting platform in behind them," Aylward went on. "Move it!"

The section leaders gathered around him, shaggy in their war cloaks, leaves and twigs pushed into the netting of the hoods drawn up over their bowl helmets.

"Look up there," Aylward said, pointing northwest up the road. "We're a good five hundred yards down from that curve. I want two sections"-eighteen archers-"behind the barricade. The rest of you, get your people up on the slopes either side-no more than fifty yards total, but I want each and every one to have a good tree to hide behind and a clear field of fire. Go do it!"

Everyone did. Aylward watched, which made him itch; circumstances and the growth of the Mackenzies had pushed him into an officer's boots, much against his will.

He comforted himself by walking back up the road and looking to either side. You couldn 't see far; the verges at the edge of the road's cleared swath were thick with Pacific rhododendron, vine maple and bear grass. His eye could trace the Mackenzies settling in, but once they were motionless, only knowing where they were let him see them.

"Good enough," he muttered to himself. "In a couple of years, they'll be bloody good, if I do say so myself."

A check behind the barricade showed that everyone there had a good step, high enough to shoot over the metal, but convenient for ducking down. They also all had a spear to hand, if things got close and personal; he'd picked two sections with people who'd fought the Protector's men back before Lughnassadh:

"Christ, they've got me doing it," he muttered to himself again, as he climbed up into the woods. "It didn't even occur to me to think August. "

There was a little more work for him here. The archers were spaced about three paces apart, with a tree or bush to conceal each-and with the hoods of their cloaks pulled up over their helmets and shadowing their faces, they were hard to see. A few had picked spots that would block their fields of fire, though. He patiently corrected those, with a quick explanation why and how to check-he wanted them to do better next time-and made sure that each had two bundles of extra arrows from the packhorses, which made a hundred and twenty arrows altogether, counting those in the quivers. Most of the archers had a dozen or so pushed point-down into the dirt or a convenient fallen log, which was a good trick-faster than reaching back over your shoulder.