S. Stirling - The Protectors war

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?"