S. Stirling - Dies The Fire

Havel twisted to let the big blade go by; you could get hurt by a thrown knife, but generally only by accident. Then he put a booted foot on the windowsill to follow; he didn't look forward to chasing the stick-thin killer in the dark, but he wasn't going to have him hanging around, either.

Astrid walked to where her bow and quiver hung by the door, put a shaft to the cord, drew, and loosed through the window. Her movements had the smooth inevitability of a sleepwalker's.

The arrow made Havel jerk aside in surprise; it went by close enough that he could feel the wind of its passage, and hear the whhhptt of cloven air.

"He wanted to rape me but he couldn't," she said with a calm like ice on a river just before the spring surge cracked it, ignoring the savage lash of the bowstring on her forearm.

"So he took me into Mom's room and he killed her; he said he'd be able to do me after that."

Havel completed the vault and dropped down onto the broken glass that littered the veranda; it crunched and crackled under his boots.

Twenty yards away, Jailhouse Bob lay in the pathway, pulling himself along on his hands. His legs were limp, and an arrow stood in his lower back. It jerked and quivered as he tried to drag himself along, looking over his shoulder with a snarl. Havel shook himself, as if he were coming out of deep cold water.

Eric Larsson was on his knees at the edge of the veranda, puking with a violence that threatened a pulled muscle in his back, and obviously wasn't going to be much use for the immediate future. He walked over to the middle-aged black man instead, and went down on one knee to cut the rope lashings that held him.

"My family?" Will Hutton asked, working his arms and rubbing at his wrists.

"Hiding out in a thicket by the road with most of your gear," Havel said. "Should be fine."

"Lord, but that's good to hear," Hutton said, slumping in relief. He began to offer a hand, then realized Havel still had the knife in his. "Many thanks: "

"Mike Havel," he replied, and waved the blade slightly. "Consider this my contribution to public hygiene."

Hutton had a heavy rural-Southern accent, but sharper and more nasal than Gulf State gumbo; Havel thought it was probably Texas originally. The Corps was lousy with Texans of all varieties, and he'd heard that slurred rhythmic twang a lot in some sandy and unpleasant places.

"I'm Will Hutton," the black man replied, standing cautiously and stretching. "Nothing broke, I don't think."

He looked out into the darkness. "You going to finish off that skinny peckerwood? He's a mean one, the worst of the lot. Best be careful, like you would with a broken-back rattler."

"No hurry," Havel said. "I thought I'd let him ripen a bit; he isn't going to crawl out of reach with an arrow through his spine."

He looked at his right hand and his knife. It was dripping, and in the faint light the whole of his hand and forearm looked as if they were coated with something slick and oily and darkly gleaming.

Some distant part of his mind realized that the sight would probably come back to him for years-when he was trying to sleep or eat or make love-but right now it wasn't particularly interesting.

He could just cut Bob's throat, but Havel didn't want to get that close without a good reason; Hutton was right- the man's legs were out of commission, but his arms were still working and his teeth too for that matter. Instead he carefully wiped the blade of the puukko on the clothes of the dead bandit pinned to the wall by the spear, and then sheathed it before he went back into the cabin.

Astrid was still standing with her bow, staring at nothing; Signe was huddled into a ball on the floor, staring at the corpse of the bandit leader. Havel went past in silence- there was nothing he could do to help at that moment- and checked the bedrooms.

Mary Larsson lay spread-eagled on her bed; the mattress was saturated, and it dripped thick strings of blood onto the floor. Havel took one quick look and then carefully avoided letting his eyes stray that way while he found a blanket and covered her.

I hope she died fast, he thought, breathing through his mouth against the smell.

Unfortunately that didn't seem very likely.

Her husband was trussed to a chair in the corner of the room; alive, not too badly beaten up, but staring with the look of a man whose mind had shut down from overload, and there were vomit stains down the front of his shirt and tear-streaks through the white-gray stubble on his cheeks. Havel freed him with a few jerks of his knife, and pulled him erect.

"There's nothing you can do here," he said. "Come on, Ken." The older man's lips moved, almost silently.

Havel went on: "Astrid and Signe are fine." Or at least alive. Technically speaking, they weren't even raped, I think. "They need you, Ken. They need you now. "

That seemed to get through to him; he stumbled along under his own power. Havel left him with his daughters in the living room as he hefted the dead body of the bandit chief and half carried it out to pitch over the railing of the veranda; Will Hutton watched with somber satisfaction.

Then Havel pulled the spear out of the wall. The young bandit's body came with it; the point pulled free of the wood and the heavy corpse flopped down into the pool of blood and fluids, but the square shoulders of the knife caught on something inside. Havel put a foot on the body and worked it free, careful not to loosen the bindings; then he hefted the pole into an overhand grip like a fish gig before walking out towards Jailhouse Bob.

He hadn't gotten far.

They buried Mary Larsson in the morning, and were ready to leave around noon. Her husband had come out of his shock a little by then, and none of the younger Larssons wanted to stay at the ranger cabin any longer than they had to; Hutton was anxious to get back to his wife and daughter, of course.

Astrid hadn't slept much. From the way she started screaming the moment she slipped out of consciousness that was probably just as well.

I'll give her some of the tranquilizers tonight, Havel thought, turning to look at her as she sat against the base of a tree, face on her knees and arms wrapped around her head. And being away from this place will help. I hope.

Will Hutton came up and looked in the same direction, nodding.

"Best get the horses back to the road too as fast as we can," he said, finishing his bowl of elk stew. "They need rest, but they need food a lot more, and they can't eat pine needles. I'll go take another look at the loads."

Havel waited until the Larssons had made their last farewells at the rough grave-most of it was an oblong pile of rocks. It was a bright cold day, with tatters of high cloud blowing in from the west; the long wind roared in the pines around them, carrying away most of the stink of violent death. He and Hutton and Eric had dragged the dead bandits out of sight, but nobody had been in a mood to clean up the cabin.

They had stripped it of everything that might be useful, from bedding and kitchenware to shovel, ax and pickax, and Hutton had improvised carrying packs for some of the horses. It was a pleasure to see him work with the animals; it always was, watching a real expert at work. He'd been a help rehafting the naginata and spear onto good smooth poles they'd found in the toolshed behind the cabin, too.

Signe came up to him with a brace of books in her hands. "Mike, take a look. I think these might be useful. They were on the mantelpiece, and I was reading them before: you know."

He did, flipping through the text and frequent illustrations. Frontier Living, by Edwin Tunis, plus Colonial Living and Colonial Craftsmen by the same author.

"You know, I think you're right," he said. "Pack 'em with the rest."

Astrid came out and gave him a cup of coffee; he took it, and cleared his throat as she turned silently away, slight and graceful in her stained leather outfit.