S. M. Stirling - Dies the Fire 02 - The Protector's War

The Protector's War

Dies the Fire Book 02

by S. M. Stirling

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Wayne Throop, a valiant laborer in the handwavium mines and the

unobtanium smelter, for help with technical explanations; to Harry Turtledove

for a Monty Pythonesque remark which gave me a flash of inspiration (or at

least that's what I call it) and some excellent advice on how to integrate a

subplot; to John Whitbourn (author of the excellent Downslord series and much

else) and Steve Brady, for help with dialects; to Steve Brady again for going

all around Robin Hood's barn, or at least Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire,

helping with research; to Kier Salmon, for once again helping with the

beautiful complexities of the Old Religion; to Don Ware for information on

Brownsville, which appears-somewhat fictionalized-in the book; to Melinda

Snodgrass, Daniel Abraham, Emily Mah, Terry England, George R.R. Martin, and

Walter Jon Williams of Critical Mass, for help and advice. And thanks to

Dominic Duncan, of the Santa Fe Best Buy, for rescuing this book from a total

hard-disk failure!

Special thanks to Heather Alexander, bard and balladeer, for permission to use

the lyrics from her beautiful songs, which can be-and should be!-ordered at

www.heatherlands.com. Run, do not walk, to do so.

Thanks to Arthur Conan Doyle, Leslie Anne Barringer, Rafael Sabatini and a

long and honorable list of tellers of tales, of knights and banners and

derringdo.

I try my poor best to follow in the hoofprints of their destriers.

All mistakes, infelicities and errors are of course my own.

CHAPTER ONE

Woburn Abbey/Aspley Wood/Rasta Bob's Farm Bedfordshire/Buckinghamshire,

England

August 12th, 2006 AD-Change Year Eight

I've been here before, John Hordle suddenly realized, his thumb moving over

the leather that covered the grip of his bow.

The moon was up, and it glittered on the ruffled surface of the water to his

left, where swans and ducks slept or swam lazily. But there was still little

light under the three tall yews and the big oak; the night around him was

still save for night birds, the whoo-whit of tawny owls and the screech of the

barn type. Seven armed men lay grimly silent behind brush and waist-high

grass, watching the great country house a quarter mile to the northeast.

Candles and lantern lights flickered and blinked out behind the windows as the

servants and garrison sought their beds. The pale limestone of it still glowed

in the light of moon and stars.

When was that? Before the Change, of course, but when? In summer, I think.

Woburn Abbey was old; it began as a great Cistercian monastery, in the year

when the first Plantagenet was crowned King of England. Henry VIII hung the

last abbot from an oak tree on the monastery grounds when he broke with Rome

and declared himself head of the Church, and granted the estate to a favorite

of his named John Russell. The fortunes of the Russell family waxed and waned

with those of the English aristocracy and England herself. In the palmy years

of the eighteenth century the fifth duke rebuilt the country house in

Palladian magnificence and surrounded it with a pleasance-deer park and

gardens covering five square miles-very convenient with London only thirty

miles to the south. In 1953 the eleventh duke had opened it to the paying

public, complete with golf course, pub, guided tours and antique shop-and

avoided the forced sales which so many of his peers suffered after the Second

World War.

Came on a day-trip, I did, drove up the Mi. After I enlisted, but before I did

the SAS selection ... August of 1996, ten years ago to the month. Me first

leave ... who was the girl? Blond all over, she was, I remember that for

certain. And she giggled.

In England the Change had struck in the early hours of the morning on March

18, 1998: the owner's family and Woburn's staff had only begun to realize what

the failure of electricity and motors and explosives meant when the first

spray of refugees from Milton Keynes and Luton arrived in the area two days

later.

The last duke's heir set up emergency quarters in the buildings and in tents

in the great park, doing his best to organize supplies and sanitation. That

ended when the last of the deer were eaten or escaped; by then most of the

animals in the attached Safari Park had been released, before the keepers

realized that even lion and timber wolves, tiger and rhino were edible when

the other choice was death.

Shortly thereafter the hordes fleeing north from London met those from the

midland cities moving south, and the great dying was well under way. A

cannibal gang from the south side of Milton Keynes used the buildings as a

headquarters for a time, roasting the meat of their catches in the fireplaces

over blazes fed by the Regency furniture, rutting in the beds where Victoria

and Albert had slept, and sitting beneath the Canalettos and Rembrandts to

crack thighbones for the marrow with Venetian-glass paperweights. They turned

on each other when prey grew scarce, and the last died of typhus on Christmas

Day of 1998, shivering and comatose and alone.

Mary Sowley, that was her name. Bugger me blind if it wasn't ten years ago to

the day. We drove through Safari Park and looked at the bloody lions and

didn't that get her motor going ... She married that commuter in Essex, the

one with fuzzy dice hanging from his rearview mirror. God alone knows where

the poor bitch left her bones. Hope it was quick.

Bicycle-borne scouts from the Isle of Wight scoured Bedfordshire in the spring

of 1999; the smaller island off the south coast of the greater had kept two

hundred thousand alive in the wreckage of a world, but resettling the British

mainland was urgent. Their primary concern was to see where a useful crop of

volunteer wheat could be reaped from fields unharvested the previous year and

find the tools to do it, but on instructions from new-crowned King Charles Iii

they made a stop at Woburn and a cursory attempt to board up windows and close

doors as well, to protect the pictures and porcelain within. By the summer of

Change Year Eight the estate was on the northeasternmost fringe of the

recolonized zone, a royal garrison post in the commandery of Whipsnade.

There's some who'd say its stupid to think about girls just before the hitting

starts. Sam Aylward had, for example; but then Samkin was the sort who

polished bullet casings in his spare time to cut down on the chance of a jam.

I wonder where old Sam ended up? He was abroad somewhere on the day of the

Change.

It was now nearly a decade later, and even past midnight John Hordle was

sweating beneath his chain-mail shirt and underpadding. Insects buzzed and

burrowed and bit amid the mysterious rustles and clicks of any forest at

nightthough these days that could include the movements of large carnivores

with intent to harm.

Men are more dangerous, he thought whimsically. They'll go for your throat

when they aren't hungry.

He could smell the intense yeasty smell of the dirt scuffed up beneath him as

he crawled into position where grass and thistles stood tall. Training could

let you move soundlessly; it didn't make you any lighter, and John Hordle Lad

reached seven inches over six feet when he turned twenty in the year of the

Change. He'd never been fat, but the only time he'd been under two hundred

fifty pounds was that winter and spring, when the rations on the Isle of Wight

had gotten just short of starvation amid hard labor and wet chill.

A soundless alert went among the men of his squad as boots tramped through the

night, tense expectancy as a pair of sentries made their rounds between the

raiding party and its target, tramping along the low ridge between the water

and the house.

Vicious SIDs, he thought, motionless but acutely conscious of the speeding of

the blood beating in his ears. Or Varangians, as Sir Nigel prefers. More

dignified, I suppose.

The armor of the big men who paced by was enameled a dull matte green; they

wore steel breast- and backplates, mail sleeves and leggings, and rounded

sallet helmets with flares to protect the neck. That color didn't reflect

much, but moonlight still glinted on steel-the honed edges of broad ax blades.

Those were long-hafted weapons meant to be swung two-handed; the trademark of

their unit.

"Hun er sviska!" one said, murmuring and shaping the air with his free hand.

Which meant, roughly: What a stunner!

Special Icelandic Detachment, right enough, Hordle thought.

He'd picked up a little of the language-mostly in bed and from girls-since the

islander refugee immigrants poured in during the second and third Change

Years.

Same as King Charles, when he threw over Camilla and took up with Hallgerda.

Mind, I don't blame him. Those legs!

The other guard chuckled and nodded: "Hun heldur afram og of ram." That

translated as: She goes on and on!

His left hand closed slowly on the grip of his longbow; there was an arrow on

the string and four more were laid out in front of him, points and fletchings

blackened with soot. One of the SIDs flipped his ax down from his shoulder and

began a casual practice routine with it, spinning it in his hands and

switching from right-hand leading to left on the fly-far from easy, and risky

with an unshielded edge. It made an unpleasant fweeept sound as it cut the air

in blurring arcs and circles.

Go on, Njal, Hordle thought, willing them to notice nothing. Back to your nice

cozy room and take a nap ...

The Woburn Abbey garrison was a thirty-man platoon of the Special Icelandic

Detachment-SID-First Heavy Infantry Battalion, according to report. King

Charles didn't want regulars guarding a prisoner who'd been as popular with

the troops as Sir Nigel Loring. That was why they'd moved him here, as well,

rather than keeping the baronet under house arrest on his own commandery of

Tilford Manor in Hampshire; too many of the folk there had been men of his

own, or refugees he'd seen through the Dying Time on the Isle of Wight and led

to settle their new lands. But Bedfordshire had only been colonized the last

four years, and that, lightly; most of the dwellers were relocates from the

Scottish islands and from Iceland and the Faeroes. They'd spent years working

for others before they could accumulate tools and seed and stock to set up on

their own, and they'd come this far north because the good land farther south

was already claimed. And they were still much more likely to be unquestioning

in their support of the royalist government than the native English.

Gratitude's a wonderful thing, Hordle thought sourly, as his chest moved in a

slow, regular rhythm and his eyes flicked back and forth in a face darkened

with burnt cork. Too bad Charlie didn't stay grateful to Sir Nigel for getting

him out of Sandringham and down to Wight.

He'd been with the SAS-Special Air Service-detachment Nigel Loring took to

rescue the heir to the crown from the Norfolk estate a week after the Change;

the Household Cavalry had taken the queen out of London directly, in full Tin

Bellies fig and using their sabers more than once on the mobs.

Perhaps if she'd lived Charles wouldn't have gotten so strange ... Or if any

of the politicians had made it ... The last messenger out of London had said

Blair was on his way, but he'd never arrived.

If ifs and buts were candied nuts, everyone would have lived through the

Change, Hordle thought.

A clank sounded from behind him. Ice rippled through the sweat on his skin;

the sound had been faint, very faint, but it was worse than a snapped

twig-nothing else on earth sounded quite like metal on metal. The two SIDs

stopped.

"Who goes there?" one of them called, his English accented but fluent. He

reached for the horn slung at his belt. "Show yourself! This is a prohibited

zone!

"Oh, you conscientious keen-eared shite," Hordle sighed.

He drew the hundred-fifty-pound longbow's string to the ear with a slight

grunt of effort as he rose to one knee; the SID he aimed for had just enough

time to put his lips to the horn's mouthpiece before the arrow slashed through

the intervening twenty feet. A sharp metallic tunk! sounded as the punch

shaped arrowhead struck the center of the guardsman's breastplate and sank

nearly to the feathers, with the head and a red-dripping foot of shaft

sticking out of his back.

The horn gave a strangled blat that sprayed a mist of blood into the air,

looking black in the moonlight and turning his yellow beard dark. He toppled

backward with a clank. Two more bows snapped in the same instant: one shaft

went wide, but the other slammed into the second Icelander's nose. IT had been

shot uphill, from a kneeling position, and it angled upward through his brain

and cracked out the rear of his skull, knocking the helmet off, spinning. The

body shook in a moment's spastic reflex on the ground, rattling and rustling

the armor as bootheels drummed on the turf.

Hordle was on his feet and moving before the helmet came to rest on the

sheep-cropped grass. He ran crouching into the open, grabbed both bodies by

their throats and dragged the two men and their gear back to the shelter of

the brush at a quick, wary walk. There was blood on his left hand as he

dropped them and sank down again beside his bow. He washed palm and fingers

clean with water from his canteen, and reached under the hem of his mail shirt

to wipe it off on the gambeson. It wouldn't do to have his hands sticky or

slippery.

They waited silently, watching and listening. No sound of alarm came from the

great Palladian manor ahead, a glimmer of pale limestone in the moonlit night.

He nodded as Alleyne Loring came up beside him, going down on one knee. The

young officer was twenty-eight, Hordle's age almost to a day. The pub that

Hordle's father ran, the Pied Merlin, was less than half a mile from ford

Manor, and they'd grown up as neighbors and playmates before the Change and

served together since.

Alleyne wore an officer's harness armored in plate cap-a-pie, from steel shoes

to bevoir and visored sallet. He slid the visor up along the curved surface of

the helm as he used his binoculars to scan the overgrown parkland between them

and the entrance. It had been scattered trees and deer-grazed grassland before

the Change, but even after the abbey was reoccupied there had been no labor to

spare for ornamental work-the garrison here lived from its own fields and

herds, with a little help from nearby farmers. There hadn't been enough stock

to keep the vegetation down either, until the last year or two. Bushes gleamed

with beads of dew, and the grass was better than waist-high in places.

"All right," the younger Loring said softly. "That gives us fifteen minutes

until they notice. Go!"

He drew the long double-edged sword at his waist and led the way at a run,

moving with practiced agility despite the sixty pounds of alloy-steel

protection, an extra sword and a heater-type shield slung over his back. The

six archers who followed were more lightly armored: open-faced helms,

chain-mail tunics, sword and buckler. Hordle kept an arrow on the string and

grinned in a rictus of tension, they'd be visible now from the upper stories

of the building-to anyone unblinded by artificial light who knew what to look

for.

"Who dares, wins," he muttered to himself. "Or gets royally banged about if

things go south."

Nigel Loring woke in darkness. He lay for a moment letting his eyes adjust,

ears straining for the sound he'd heard. Had it been his imagination? A

fragment of a dream-a dream of combat, before the Change or after it? God knew

his life had provided plenty of material for nightmares, starting with Oman

back in the seventies.

No. That was something. Perhaps an animal on the grounds, or a guard stumbling

in the darkness, but something. Something real.

Maude Loring stirred beside him in the big four-poster bed. "What is it,

dear?" she asked.

"Shhh," he said, straining to hear again.

Nothing, but there was a tension in the air. He put out a hand in the darkness

and touched her shoulder. Then he swung his feet to the floor and padded over

to the window. They were in the Covent Garden suite-bedroom, dressing room and

bathroom, the latter restored to limited functioning. The same engineers who'd

set up the wind-pump system to give the house running water had put a grid of

steel bars over the window, mortising the ends into the stone. That was a

rather soft local limestone; Sir Nigel had determined in the first days of his

captivity here that he could get the frame out, with a few hours' unobserved

work and some tools. He'd filched a knife and could have improvised a chisel

from it, but the guards were quite alert-two below the window all night, and a

pair at the doors-all stolid types who pretended they couldn't speak English

or follow his halting Icelandic.

The bars were thick and close placed, allowing a hand to go through but not an

elbow, but they didn't totally destroy the view, and the windows themselves

were half-open on this warm summer's night. His eyes weren't the best-he'd

needed corrective contacts since an RPG drove grit into them in a wadi in

Dhofar-but seeing was as much a matter of knowing how to pay attention as

sheer input. He looked down the long stretch of grassland across the park to

the west, and saw moonlight glinting on the Basin Pond and the dark bulk of

the Abbot Oak-where Abbot Hobbes had been hung in 1538. His hands tightened on

the steel as he saw movement south of there, dark figures flitting towards the

building. Not the roving patrol the Varangians kept up here, either. There

were far too many of them; he estimated at least four or possibly half a

dozen, but they moved so quickly and skillfully it was hard to be certain.

"Maude," he said softly, turning to see her sitting up and alert, her white

face framed in dark hair. "Something's happening. We'd best take precautions."

She nodded briskly, swung out of bed and began to dress. They had had

twenty-two years together before the Change and eight since, and neither

needed many words to know the other's mind. He quickly slipped into his

colonel's undress uniform-that was the post-Change version, designed to be

worn under armor or as fatigues, tough and practical and with grommets of

chain mail under the armpits, to cover the weak spots in a suit of plate. This

set was clean, but there were stains from blood and sweat and the rust that

wore off even the best-kept armor. His wife looked a question at him as he

felt behind the frame of an eighteenth-century painting of a London scene and

took out the dinner knife. He'd palmed it when the Varangians had arrested

them at table with the king at Highgrove and brought them here. It had been

filed down to a point and given a respectable edge over the last two weeks,

and she'd carefully braided and tied unraveled fabric from the bottom of an

Oriental rug onto the grip so that it wouldn't slip in his hand.

He slipped the blade up the right sleeve of his jacket. She dressed then

herself, in riding breeches and tweed jacket-they were allowed exercise,

though always separately and under heavy guard. King Charles had made their

confinement comfortable enough, probably the result of guilt and reluctance.

Queen Hallgerda hadn't managed to talk him into throwing the pair into a

dungeon or sending them to the headsman's ax-not quite yet.

But she will do it, given enough time to convince him it's for the good of the

realm. Damn the woman!

"What do you suppose is happening?" Maude said calmly.

"Not quite sure, old girl, but I think it's a rescue attempt," he said, his

voice equally serene.

Although I feel more nervous than I have in thirty years, he thought. It's a

trifle different when the wife's along too.

"I don't suppose ..." Maude said.

Sir Nigel shook his head. "If His Majesty was going to give us the chop for

asking about Parliament and elections and lifting the Emergency Powers Act

once too often, the Varangians would handle it without needing to sneak about

through the shrubbery. Light the candle, please. If it's friends come to call,

we should make sure they know we're in. Then give me a spot of help with the

furniture."

She nodded calmly; he felt a stab of pride as she picked up a lighter and

flicked it alive, then went around the room touching the flame to candlewicks

and the rapeseed-oil lanterns, as calmly as if they were back home at Telford.

Mellow golden light filled the room, touching the chinoiserie of the

wallpaper, the pictures and mirrors in their ornate frames, and the pale

plaster scrollwork medallions on the ceiling. It was a melancholy sight, in

its way; the detritus of a thrice-lost world, the elegant symmetries of the

Age of Reason filtered through the Age of Steam and his own twentieth century.

The current situation was more suited to an older, darker period-the Wars of

the Roses, perhaps, or even the stony roads of Merlin's time.

A few seconds sufficed to force a mixture of wood splinters and candle wax

into the keyhole; then he shoved wedges made from shims worked out of the

interiors of tables and settees under the doors. Together they dragged a

massive desk over and tipped it up against the frame, lodging the edge against

the pediment above and bracing smaller items in the remaining space. It had

all been planned in advance, of course, against the chance they would need it.

"That should hold them for a little while," he said, as a shout from the other

side asked what they were doing.

Maude nodded, she was a strong-featured woman of fifty, two years younger than

he, and three inches taller than his own five foot five. It went unspoken

between them that the Varangian commander almost certainly had orders to see

that they didn't survive any rescue attempt.

"If you could detach this table leg for me, darling?" she asked politely.

He nodded, braced a foot against the frame and wrenched the mahogany loose,

working it back and forth so that the pegs wouldn't squeal when they broke.

Sir Nigel was a small man, but nobody who'd seen him exert himself thought he

was weak. Maude smiled and hefted the curved hardwood.

"Makes me nostalgic, rather." At his glance and raised eyebrow, she explained:

"About the size and weight of the hockey stick I used back at Cheltenham as a

girl."

She took a good grip on it and waited; Sir Nigel took the opportunity to use

the splendid bathroom one last time. He'd rather have had his armor with him,

but unlike a suit of plate, the cloth uniform did have a button-up fly, and a

functioning loo wasn't all that common these days. He might as well have one

last chance at decent English plumbing.

As he returned a horn sounded, dunting and snarling in the night-not the brass

instrument the regular forces used, but the oxhorn trumpet the Special

Icelandic Detachment affected. The clash of steel sounded, rapidly coming

closer, and men's voices shouting-and then a few screaming in pain.

Nigel Loring smiled slightly. "And they wouldn't tell us where Alleyne was,"

he said dryly, feeling another glow of pride-for his son, this time.

"I rather think we know, now," she said.

"Right on schedule," Alleyne Loring said. "Good old Major Buttesthorn." They

approached the great Georgian country house from the west. The long stretch of

grass was being used to graze the garrison's horses and working oxen since the

Basin Pond provided a natural watering point, and large dark shapes shied and

moved aside as they trotted forward. A sudden clash of steel sounded faintly

from over Woburn Abbey's high roof, and then the snarl of a signal horn.

Hordle grinned more widely. The SIDS' families were quartered in one of the

two big outbuildings behind the main house, the South Court, and the cover

there was much better for a clandestine approach. The diversionary attack was

going in right as planned-with maximum noise and plenty of fire arrows. That

ought to keep the day watch at home; with luck, some of the ones on night duty

would hurry back.

But not all of them-and if the rescue party wanted Sir Nigel and Lady Maude

out alive, they had to move quickly. For that matter, the garrison commander

would probably send a detachment out here as soon as he collected his wits.

Hit them fast when they weren't looking, and put the boot in hard while they

were still wondering about the first time....

"That's the window," Alleyne said, pointing. "Just like the drawings, sir,"

Hordle said.

The abbey was built like a giant uneven H, with the short arms and the

Corinthian facade in the middle of the connecting arm facing west, and the

longer east-facing ones enclosing a court open in that direction. The rooms

faced west, and the candlelit window was sixty feet up and a hundred distant

from where the storming party halted.

Hordle took a blunt-headed arrow from his quiver; it had a small slip of paper

fastened to it with a bit of elastic. He drew carefully, well under full

extension, and shot. The arrow hissed away, and an instant later he was

rewarded with a tinkle of breaking glass.

The arrow smashed the windowpane and flicked across the room to dent the

plaster. Nigel Loring winced slightly at how narrowly it had missed a painting

by Nebot; his wife was already unfastening the message.

"'Stand clear and pick up the string from the next,' " she read. "But dear, we

can't climb down even if they do have a rope attached. The bars ..

Whhhptt. The first shot hit the bars and bounced back. The second landed in

the room trailing a thin cord, and Maude Loring began to haul it in hand over

hand, pile of it growing at her feet.

"Sir Nigel!" a voice called from the hall outside their suite. "Please to open

the door, immediately!"

He didn't bother to reply. Seconds later the first ax hit the outside door of

their suite.

"Keep going!" he barked to his wife, and went to stand beside the doorway.

Through the piled furniture he could see the panels begin to splinter; a

twohanded war ax made short work of anything not built to military

specifications. The dry splintery scent of old wood filled the air, followed

by the glug-glugglug sound of Icelandic-in this case panting curses between

grunts of effort. Lor ing flipped the knife down into his hand and into a

thumb-on-pommel gripgood for a short-range stab-then risked a glance over his

shoulder.

The heavy rope had come up at the end of Maude's cord-two of them, in fact,

both woven-wire cable. One was the top of a Jacob's ladder, and she was a

little red-faced with effort before she clipped that to the bar nearest the

left side of the window. The other had a ring clip swagged onto the end. She

fastened it to the center bar, made sure that the thin cord that prevented it

from falling back was still tied to a chair, and stepped back.

"Encourage them to hurry, my dear," he called, and turned back to his own

task-making sure the Varangians didn't break through too soon.

"You chaps! Do hurry-we're in a spot of bother here!"

He heard her voice crying out into the darkness, and then the first axhead

came all the way through the panels of the door. It withdrew, and took a

yardwide chunk of the battered wood with it. A gauntleted hand groped through

to feel for the knob and lock. Sir Nigel had anticipated that, and left a

pathway he could use; he slid forward and stabbed backhanded, his arm moving

with the flicking precision of a praying mantis. Stainless steel stabbed

through buff leather and flesh and bone, and he barely managed to withdraw it

in time as the guardsman wrenched his arm back with a scream.

One, he thought. Out of this fight, if not crippled.

There was no great army of men here; less than thirty. The entire Special

Icelandic Detachment numbered only three hundred, and it was a quarter of the

ration strength of the British army as of Change Year Eight-and the troops all

spent the majority of their time laboring on public works or doing police

duties or working to feed themselves. More wasn't necessary when the whole of

mainland Britain held only six hundred thousand dwellers.

Immigrants included, he thought, poised, as the axes thundered again. Well,

they're just doing their duty as they see it.

"Right," John Hordle said. "Let's clear the way!"

They tallied on to the main cable, Hordle and Alleyne at the front-the younger

Loring was only six feet and built like a leopard rather than a tiger, but

strong as whipcord with it.

"Remember, stop pulling the moment it comes free!" Alleyne said sharply. "If

we pull the precursor cord loose, we'll have to run another up."

Hordle took a deep breath and called: "Heave!"

Seven strong men surged backward against the cable with hissing grunts of

effort, driving against their heels as if this were a tug-of-war game at a

village fair. Steel squealed against rock; he could feel the bar bending as

the cable went rigid, and then there was a sudden release of tension as it

broke free. They all threw themselves forward at once, and Hordle blew out his

cheeks in a gasp of relief as he saw Maude Loring's hand come through the

remaining bars, hauling up the cable and setting it on the next of the steel

cylinders.

The first fell, bent into a shallow U, clattering and clanging as it dropped

on the pavement below the window.

"Ready ... heave!"

This one came more easily; they knew the strain needed, and knew they could

deliver it. A man could get through already; one more and it would be easy.

Lady Maude looked over her shoulder as she refastened the loop.

Then she called, urgently: "They're in the room!"

"I'm coming, Mother!" Alleyne shouted, dashing for the ladder.

"Christ!" Hordle shouted; they'd need another bar out before he could get

through, for certain! And the Lorings couldn't climb out, either, not with

SIDs in the same room. They had to get some blades in there, to throw the SIDs

back on their heels and give the Lorings time to break contact. So ...

"Heave, you bastards!"

Maude shouted out the window: "They're in the room!" and snatched up her table

leg.

Some corner of Nigel Loring's mind wished desperately for a sword. Three

Varangians were crowded into the entrance, hampering each other-but not enough

that a man with a converted table knife had much of a chance against three

armored killers. Two of them set their shoulders against the desk and the

other furniture that blocked their way and started rocking it back by sheer

brute strength; the third punched the top of his ax at Loring's face like a

pool cue, an effective stroke when you didn't have room for a chop-five pounds

of steel would crush your facial bones in with unpleasant finality. The

Varangian expected Sir Nigel to leap back; they knew he was agile enough. That

would give the axman space to push his way into the drawing room, drive Nigel

into a corner and demolish him.

Instead he jerked his head just enough aside to let the pell of the ax go by;

blood started from his cheek as the grazing steel kissed him, a burning

coldness.

Then he slid forward again with that dancer's grace, his left hand gripping

the ax and pulling it to one side, the knife in his other whipping across in a

backhand slash at the other man's eyes. The guardsman bellowed in alarm and

snatched his head aside in turn, saving his eyes at the price of taking a

nasty cut that opened his face to the bone along one cheek, and relaxing his

hold on the ax as he did.

Sir Nigel's hand clamped down on it at once and pulled sharply; he stabbed

backhand with the knife once more, and the ax came free as his opponent

twisted once more to avoid the point. It hit the shoulder joint of the back

and breast and snapped with a musical tunnnggg sound; then the Varangian did

something sensible: smashed one gauntleted fist at Nigel's face, and used the

other to draw the short sword hung at his waist. Sir Nigel skipped backward

away from the gutting stroke of the man's upward stab.

The mass of furniture overturned with a roar, scattering itself across the

room in a bouncing, crackling tide. The two Varangians who'd pushed the

barricade out of the way stumbled forward, puffing and off-balance for an

instant. Nigel saw that, but there was nothing he could do about it. His own

panting reminded him forcefully that he was fifty-two this coming September-in

superb condition for a man his age, but still a good three decades older than

his immediate opponent-and air burned like thin fire in his lungs. He could

smell the acrid odor of his own sweat as it ran down his cheeks and shone

through the thinning gray-blond hair on his scalp.

The Varangian was enraged by the slash that had nearly taken his eyes. It

streamed blood into his red beard across a face contorted in fury, he stood

eight inches taller than the Englishman, and seemed to have arms longer than

an ape's as they wove with sword and dagger advanced. Sir Nigel hefted the ax;

it was heavier and longer than he liked in a weapon but he gripped it expertly

with his left hand at the outer end of the helve and his right, feet spread

and at right angles-which might have been a mistake. The guardsman's blue eyes

went a little wider as he recognized hold and stance, and he made no move to

attack. He didn't have to. In a few seconds his comrades would be on Loring,

and it would end in a flurry of ax strokes impossible to counter.

"St. George for England!" Loring shouted, and attacked.

His first move was a feint, a lizard-quick punch with the head of the ax. That

brought the Varangian blades up to block. Stepping in, he delivered the real

blow-an overhead loop that turned into a cut at the neck, hands sliding

together down to the end of the haft. The other man began a sidestep and block

to deflect it, but at that instant Maude Loring's chair leg cracked into his

elbow. The chain mail there probably saved the bone from breaking, but the two

handed blow on the sacral nerve still made his hand fly open by reflex, and

the dagger in it went flying. His wild stab with the short sword left him

open, and the ax in Sir Nigel's hands fell on his shoulder with a sound like a

blacksmith's hammer.

The Varangian toppled backward with a sound that was half curse and half

scream of shock and pain; the broad curved cutting edge of the ax had gone

through the metal of his breastplate, just deeply enough to sever his

collarbone. Torn steel gripped the blade tightly enough to pull Nigel forward;

he released the haft of the ax perforce. Movement caught the corner of his

eye, to the rightA figure in dark green armor squeezed through the window. It

was a complete suit of plate-officer's or lancer's gear-and there was the face

so much like his, below the raised visor. Alleyne Loring was grinning as he

reached over his shoulder to flip a longsword through the air, then dropped a

shield to the ground and skidded it over with a push of one foot.

Sir Nigel raised his hand as the weapon spun towards him; the leatherwrapped

hilt smacked into it with a comforting solidity, and he had a yard of

double-edged, cut-and-thrust blade in his fist. It was his own, intimately

familiar from eight years of practice and battle. He snatched up the

heater-shaped shield as well; it had the five Loring roses on its face, and a

S. M. Stirling - Dies the Fire 02 - The Protector's War

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