S. Stirling - The Protectors war

"Eventually this could be useful, a heat sink can-oh, all right, Mike. I get your point. It does have some practical implications, though. It means we can get enough concentrated heat to run a foundry, say: but a lot of other industrial processes, most high-pressure chemistry for starters, are just: forbidden."

"Thanks. That'll save us time and effort." Havel slapped a hand on the older man's shoulder. "We couldn't have done it without you, Ken."

Kenneth Larsson unscrewed the multitool from the hardened-leather cup strapped over the stump of his wrist. As he fastened on the hook-grasper he used for everyday work he shook his head.

"No, Mike, we couldn't have done it without you." He held the hook up like an open palm. "Yeah, I've done a lot of useful work for us, and I'm damned proud of it- prouder of it than of anything I did as CEO of Northwest. So have my kids, and so have Will Hutton and Josh Sanders and Pamela. But you're the guy who found us all-"

A knock at the door interrupted them. The apprentice opened it. "My lords, it's A-lister Naysmith. He says you told him to look you up, Lord Bear."

Ken got up and left, giving his son-in-law a slap on the shoulder. He waved his hand at the man entering, who ignored it-but that was probably from the terror that left his face like a mask carved out of lard. With the crowd at

Larsdalen for the holiday, this was about as private a place as could be found without ostentatiously riding out somewhere beyond the defenses. For a moment Larsson paused at the bottom of the veranda steps. Somewhere a rooster crowed; behind the workshop was a broad stretch of pasture where horses grazed, slanting up southwestward to a fringe of forest. The foundations of a citadel showed there at the highest point of the Larsdalen plateau-raw earth and sacks of cement, rebar and quarried rock. Beyond, the steep scarp of this outlier dropped to the flatlands around Rickreall; beyond that was the low green line of the Coast Range.

And behind him he could hear Mike Havel's voice. The workshop's walls were thin.

"-there's a reason you got the big farm and the help to work it and the rents and the Justice of the Peace appointment, Naysmith. And it wasn't so you could sit on your ass and drink beer and chase girls who didn't want to get caught. You're supposed to keep yourself and your people ready to fight, and administer justice. Christ Jesus, you do know what the word means, don't you?"

An inarticulate murmur, and then Havel 's voice rising to a roar:"-will not abide trash behavior, Naysmith! This is your last warning; next inspection, I expect your holding's A-listers and the militia to perform by the numbers and on the bounce. And the next complaint about you bullying your people or taking more than the compact allows will be the last; if there's a petition against you I will have that hauberk off your back and I will strike you off the Brotherhood's rolls. And your assessment is doubled for this harvest-it'll come out of your share too, not the farmers. If you want to work for a squeezing bandit, you can take your sorry ass over the border and try your luck with the Protector."

The apprentice stood stiffly at the foot of the stairs, eyes front, left hand on her sword hilt, right hand carrying her targe-small round shield-tucked across her chest. She was a little pale around the mouth; listening to a chewing-out from Mike was alarming at the best of times.

Another mumble, and Havel's voice was kinder: "Look, Mark, you've been with me since Idaho. We fought Iron Rod together. I know you can do better than this. So what's the problem? Tell me, for God's sake, and I'll help you."

Larsson grinned, taking a deep breath of the cool air. Think I'll go visit my newborn, or my grandchildren, he thought, and ambled off. He'd had his bellyful of being CEO back before the Change and had never liked it one little bit. It was good to have someone else to handle that stuff.

I'm a pretty good engineer, and I was passable as a businessman, but I really don't think God gave me what it takes to be a warrior king.

Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, England

August 13th, 2006 AD-Change Year Eight

The M1 motorway that ran north from London was still passable beyond the edge of cultivation in the comman-dery of Whipsnade, in the sense that you didn't need to hack your way along it with a machete or ax; the six lanes and thick deep foundation under the pavement were putting up more resistance to the encroaching armies of revengeful Nature than most of man's works.

Nigel Loring still found it eerie to ride down it with walls of vegetation taller than the tip of his lance on either side, the more so as evening fell and his borrowed remount's hooves dragged beneath him. The sun was a red ball on the horizon, filtered through canes and branches. Runners and growth from the median strip and the verges were most of the way across the pavement; many of the autos and trucks were mere mounds of foliage. A fox sat on the roof of a pantechnicon and watched him until he was close enough to see the sun gilding its rufous fur and its tongue lolling through its sharp white teeth, then dropped to the ground and disappeared into the tangle of tree and shrub and bramble west of the roadway. There was a brief whiff of the dog-fox's musky scent as they passed, rankly feral beneath the warm green sweetness.

"Four men riding by and it's scarcely bothered," Alleyne Loring said. "You can tell there's not many riding to hounds in this county just of late. I hope those anti-fox-hunting fanatics were pleased, in the short interval before their hideous deaths."

The joke was sour, but Nigel Loring smiled; his son had been brooding alarmingly, and most of the remaining youth had left his handsome features, though he was still two years short of thirty.

"Watch out, Reynard," John Hordle called after the departing animal, as they rode under two overpasses. "You'll get scragged for sure if you 'ead that way-it's Milton sodding Keynes."

Nigel Loring chuckled. Odd. I'd have thought his cheerfulness would be irritating, under the circumstances, but it isn't. Maude always liked him, of course. She'd have given one of those gurgling laughs of hers if she were here now. I remember that was the first thing I noticed at that do of the vicar's-she was talking to him across the garden and I heard her laugh. She was wearing one of those absurd floppy hats: it was seventy-three: enough!

"I think we cleaned it out fairly thoroughly, back in CY3," he said. "There weren't many of the poor devils left by then, anyway."

"It's like cockroaches," Archie MacDonald said. "Ye'll no get the last of 'em, not with a whole kettle o' boiling water to the floorboards."

The farmworker was sweating a little, and he kept his bow across the saddle despite its awkward length for a mounted man. He started when three red deer rose up from the shade of an Aston Martin that must have cost three hundred thousand pounds once; the big russet animals poised for a moment, then turned and trotted swiftly away with their muzzles up and their horns laid on their backs, bounding over a three-car pileup of wrecks and running northward until they vanished from sight. Hordle looked at them and thoughtfully twanged the string of his bow.

"Not worth the trouble," Sir Nigel said. "We've got enough food to reach the Wash. "

"Wasn't thinking of that, sir-though that yearling hind looked fair tasty. I was thinking they looked like they'd been hunted before. You do much deer hunting around here, Jock?"

MacDonald squinted after the vanished animals. "We've no seen any, near the farm-not Bob's, nor the ones Gun-nar and I have filed for, we've done a bit of work on both, keeping the access roads clear and the buildings tight, ye ken. Hunting around here's mostly birds, rabbits, wild pig, fallow deer, and those little muntjacs-the ones that bark like dogs-they do love a bramble thicket. And you see some gey strange beasties from the Safari Park-there's rhino about yet-but no the red deer."