S. Stirling - The Protectors war

There was still a hulking brutal strength to the stonework; when she looked at it the ancient ballads she'd sung for so many years came flooding back, with a grim-ness added to their words by hard personal experience since the Change. You could hear the roaring shouts and the screams, the wickering flight of arrows and the ugly cleaver sound of steel in flesh, smell the burning.

"My, and haven't we come a long way in nine short years," she murmured, as they rode out into the bright sunshine and the rolling vineyards beyond the earthwork, their hooves beating hollow on the planks of the drawbridge.

It's a good thing that there's no more copyright, Mike Havel thought. Astrid would be going to the big house for all the places she ripped off the details for this, not on a visit to her friends'.

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 Mallory 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.