Joel Rosenberg - Hidden Ways 2

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PROLOGUE
War, and Rumors of War
The dusk is fully ended,
And remnants of twilight have fled.
Horses have been settled in their stables,
And children put to bed.
But before the day ends,
And before the day dies,
The Hour of Long Candles comes,
The Hour of Long Candles arrives,
The Hour of Long Candles appears,
The Hour of Long Candles arrives.
—traditional Vandestish chant, used to announce the end of the day
Harbard swung the double-bladed axe with a slow, even rhythm, relishing the feel of the smooth handle against his right hand, the
shock of the sharp, bright head biting into the wood, the spray of chips and the turpentine smell as he brought the axehead back,
spun the axe half around, and then swung again, and again.
He could have called upon a fraction of his old strength and hacked through the trees as easily as he had more than once hacked
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through a battlefield full of enemies, but he had long since lost his taste for such things.
Amazing, really, for one who had waded through rivers of blood to now eschew even an easy slaughter of a tree.
He had started with the undercut, properly low, facing in the direction he wanted the tree to fall, and men walked around the base
of the tree and started in on the other side. The old pine was stronger than he had expected: the final cut almost met the undercut
before, with loud cracks of protest, the tree started to lean, and then to fall.
The butt-end of the tree kicked back against his shoulder, sending his axe flying end over end one way, kicking Harbard back
easily his own length, knocking him flat.
With a swallowed curse—he had long ago learned to curse only deliberately—he rose, dusting himself off, working his shoulder,
trying to pretend it didn't hurt. Had he been braced for it, he could have resisted, but he had been lazy and sloppy in his old age,
and he hadn't expected it.
Old one, he thought to himself, it's as well you've long ago put yourself out to pasture. Even just a century ago, he wouldn't have
stood in the way of a tree he was chopping.
Oh, well. He picked up the axe and walked to the base of the fallen pine, stripping off wrist-thick branches with quick strokes of
the axe, only stopping when the trunk thinned out a few bodylengths from the top. He quickly severed the top of the tree, then set
his axe down and stripped off the bark with his fingers, shoving them through the rough bark, peeling the tree like a banana. There
was something pleasurable about chopping the tree the way an ephemeral would, but stripping the bark with the axe while
avoiding cutting into the wood would be a tedious task, and Harbard drew a careful distinction between regularity and tedium.
In minutes, what had been a tree was a naked log and a scattering of bark and branches that would have to be dealt with later, as
when they dried they would become violently flammable tinder.
He found the center of the log and moved back a careful step toward the base to allow for its greater thickness, then stooped to
pick it up by its balance, hefting it to his shoulder with a grunt. It was heavy. The trees seemed to get heavier each decade.
His bare feet sank ankle-deep into the packed dirt of the path that led downhill, past his cottage, toward the ferry landing. More
than two dozen logs lay in a single row, crosswise across two short lengths of stone fence, aging and drying in the sun; Harbard
set this one down on the newer end of the pile, using a series of small wooden wedges to separate it from the next one over, then
set his hands on his hips.
Enough? It was hard to say. Maintaining his ferry barge was a matter of constantly replacing rotting logs, and while it was a
certainty that the ones that now made up the floor of the barge would need replacement, it was not at all a certainty when.
Harbard allowed himself a grin. That was true for so much else.
High above in the blue, cloud-spattered sky, a raven slowly circled down, riding wind currents with its huge wings, never so much
as flapping.
"Greetings, Hugin," Harbard said, in a language that was older than the sagging hills that rose behind the cottage. "What word
have you?"
"War," the raven cawed. "War, and rumors of war."
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Harbard sighed. There had been a time when such would have excited him, when the thought of the clash of axes and the clatter of
spears would have aroused a fervor within him. Brave men facing other brave men, all competing for the honor of being noticed
by Harbard and his friends, in life or in death...
But that time was long past, and Harbard preferred things quieter these days.
"Tell me," he said.
Part One
HARDWOOD, NORTH DAKOTA
CHAPTER 0NE
Homecoming
“You want to try and land it, Ian?" the redheaded pilot shouted over the roar of the Lance's single engine.
Even after more than two hours in the air, Ian was still surprised by how loud it was.
Ian Silverstein shook his head. "Thanks, but no thanks." His chuckle was tight in his chest, and his hands clenched the steering
yoke. It had probably been a mistake to ask if he could fly it a little. Ian had been joking, but Greg Cotton had said yes, then
flicked off the autopilot when Ian put his hands on the steering yoke, well before Ian had put his feet on the rudder pedals.
Ian was surprised to find that flying really wasn't all that hard, but it was nervous-making. And it was one thing to try to hold the
small plane steady and level—he kept having to push the nose down, or the plane would climb—but it would be another thing to
try to line it up with the landing strip that was what Karin Thorsen had laughingly referred to as Hardwood International, and yet
another thing to try to put the plane down.
Besides, Greg was kidding. At least, he thought Greg was kidding.
"Okay," Greg said. "I've got it."
"Eh?"
"I said, 'I've got it.' That means I'm flying now. You can let go. Honest."
The breath came out of him with a rush, and Ian let himself sag back in the right-hand seat as he wiped the palms of his hands on
his pants.
Two thousand feet above Hardwood, North Dakota, the sky was clear and the air was smooth, with no trace of the turbulence that
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had marked the Lance's descent through the wispy layer of clouds now more than a mile overhead.
Greg put the plane into what he claimed was a shallow, one-minute turn, and while the turn indicator seemed to say he was telling
the truth, Ian's stomach was sure he was lying through his teeth. It felt like he was laying the plane over on its side.
Still, through the bug-spattered windshield, it gave Ian a good view of Hardwood. What there was of it. A granary and a dozen or
so stores lining Main Street on the western side of town; the municipal swimming pool—which probably got used all of two,
maybe three, weeks of the year, given the weather—and the football field and school on the other, and between them perhaps a
few hundred houses on the elm-lined streets.
"What's the population?" Greg asked. "About fifty?"
Ian chuckled. "Not quite that small. A couple of thousand." That was, maybe, a little misleading. Hardwood served the
surrounding farms and tinier towns, as well, enough people that it had its own, albeit small, high school. The new clinic next to
Doc Sherve's house had the only emergency room between Thompson and Grand Forks, staffed by overpaid doctors from a
commercial service on weekends and during Doc's increasingly frequent vacations.
But the airport, such as it was, was little more than a pair of hangars, and an asphalt landing strip about a thousand yards long,
broken in spots where weeds had pushed through.
It looked a lot shorter from the air than it had from the ground.
"How long is that?" Ian asked.
Greg glanced down at the Jeppson chart in his lap. "Twenty-three hundred feet. No problem."
"You can put it down there?" It looked awfully short.
"Down?" Greg sniffed. "Down is not a problem. I could look up in the manual what the specs are for landing this thing if you
don't have to clear a fifty-foot obstacle, but it's not going to be more man a thousand feet. Landing's not a problem. Now, taking
off's a different story... Might be a bit tight taking off on a hot day with a full load, no wind, and a full tank, but hey, it's cool out,
it'll be just me in here, there's only about forty, forty-five gallons in the tanks, and I've got about five, ten knots of headwind.
Easy."
He offered Ian an Altoid—Ian declined with a quick headshake; they were too strong for his tastes— then popped a couple of the
pill-like mints in his own mouth before closing the tin and dropping it to his lap.
"Two kinds of pilots," Greg said, as he reached forward and flipped the switch for the landing gear, nervously tapping against the
three green lights until they came on. "The kind that's made a gear-up landing, and..."
"The kind that hasn't?"
"Nah. The kind that will," he said, easing back on the throttle and reflexively pointing toward first one dial, then another. "Which
is why they charge more for the insurance on these retractable-gear jobs. Okay; looks good." He pushed the nose down, then up as
he eased back on the throttle. "And we're... down." The plane bounced once, then settled down to a bumpy roll across the asphalt.
Greg let it almost come to a stop, then turned it around and eased it off the runway before cutting the power.
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After the racket of the engine, the silence in the small cabin was deafening.
"Looks like we made it," Greg said with a grin.
Ian was already out of his seatbelt and opening the door. It was lighter than it should have been. That was the funny thing about
these small planes—the metal skin was only about the thickness of an old-style beer can. It seemed too light, too flimsy to serve
its purpose.
Then again, Ian thought, maybe that's true for me, too. He grinned.
He crawled out onto the wing and lowered himself to the tarmac. Greg followed, dropping to the ground with a practiced step-and-
bounce off the mounting Peg. Ian took a deep breath as he walked around to the other side and the door to the passenger
compartment, letting Greg open it. It didn't feel solid, like a car door; Ian was half afraid he was going to tear the door off if he
handled it.
Greg reached in and handed out Ian's blocky black leather travel bags, a matched set, designed to fit underneath a commercial
airplane seat or in an overhead luggage rack, and the cheap canvas golf bag Ian used for his fencing gear.
And for Giantkiller. Which you could call fencing gear, if you wanted to.
"You want me to watch the stuff while you walk into town and see about borrowing a car?" Greg asked. "You've got a fair walk if
nobody shows up to meet you."
Ian shook his head. "Nah. I'll just stash the bags over in the shade of the hangar and walk into town." Amazing how quickly he
was taking to small-town ways. Six months ago, he would no more have considered leaving his bags than he would have
considered leaving his wallet. "There's no need to wait— unless you're going to change your mind and stay for dinner. Karin
Thorsen's fried chicken and biscuits are pretty special." Ian's mouth watered at the thought of biting through that crunchy skin and
into the moist meat beneath. Maybe it was that the chickens were grain-fed, and from the Hansen farm, or maybe it was the
seasonings Karin used, or maybe it was just magic.
Bullshit. Her cooking was good, but the chicken could have been overcooked to tasteless rubberiness, and he still would be
looking forward to dinner.
What it was, was that he was coming home.
"Wish I could, but I've got to get the plane back." Greg sealed the rear door closed, then gave it a friendly pat. "Next time, okay?"
"Fair enough." Ian reached for his wallet. "How much do I owe you for the gas?"
"Well..." Greg frowned. "We used about thirty-two, thirty-three gallons flying up. Figuring that the wind holds, it’ll be about a
hour and a half—maybe twenty-five gallons—back. I can use my company card and get it for about two bucks a gallon."
"Good deal. And thanks. You might as well top the tank off for Jake as long as you're filling up." Ian pulled eight twenties out of
his wallet and handed them over. "Thank him for me, and I owe you dinner, next time I'm back."
"Sounds like a plan." Greg tucked the bills in his jeans and climbed back up into the plane, locking the door behind him.
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'Take care," he said through the window. He belted himself in and shouted "Clear!" before closing the pilot's draft window and
starting the engines.
Ian already had his bags in the shade of the main hangar; he dropped them and waved.
The little plane rolled toward the far end of the runway, slowly turned around, then accelerated down the runway and lifted off
into the air before it was even two-thirds of the way along it, climbing leisurely into the blue sky before it banked away, heading
back southeast, toward Minneapolis.
And then it was quiet.
The wind whispered through the grasses, and far off in the west, past the windbreak of trees that must have been a half mile away
itself, some distant farm machine was growling, but Ian couldn't have told what it was even if he was closer. What there wasn't
was somebody noticing a landing at the airport and driving out to investigate.
No problem, though. Ian was back earlier than he had been expected. That was the plan, actually. There was no point in
complaining when things turned out the way you wanted. Karin had asked if it was convenient for him to come home earlier than
he had planned, and while she wouldn't talk about why on the phone, that was fine with Ian. Lying on the beach was getting
boring anyways, and while he had been surprised to find a fencing club in Basseterre, none of the locals was much competition,
except for one saber player who was particularly good at those silly flicking touches that were fine for scoring points, but nothing
more.
Ian had to chuckle. It wasn't too long ago that he thought the purpose of a sword was to score points.
It was time to come home, and if that meant asking a friend to borrow a plane so he could arrive sooner, that was fine, and if it
meant walking a couple of miles, that was no big deal, either. He had walked further than that in his time, and likely would again,
although not soon.
Spring, maybe. Spend the winter studying swordsmanship with Thorian del Thorian the Elder, bowmanship with Hosea, and hand-
to-hand with the deceptively fast Ivar del Hival, and come spring he'd be ready.
Preparing for it all was, well, it was fun. Getting ready is half the fun, Benjamin Silverstein used to say. Ian's father was an
abusive asshole, but even a stopped clock was right twice a day.
He reached into his golf bag and pulled out the package that contained an épée, a foil, a saber, and Giantkiller's scabbard. It was a
canvas sheet, tied at both ends with a length of soft cotton rope that also served as a sling. He slung it over his shoulder like a
quiver. One thing to leave most of what he owned in this world out at the landing field, but another thing entirely to leave his
sword there.
He started walking along the left side of the road, long arms and legs swinging to eat up distance quickly.
Hardwood International Airport—so read the hand-painted sign at the turnoff onto the dirt road; it wasn't just Karin's joke—was
just over a mile outside of town, but the Thorsen house and Ian's own room at Arnie Selmo's were over on the far side of town,
maybe half an hour away by foot.
The county road was slightly convex, with a broad shoulder leading to a steep drop-off down to the black soil of the fields below.
It was hard to tell what had been growing here—at least it was hard for Ian, who was still basically a city boy. Not corn—there
still would be cornstalks. Maybe potatoes?
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A red-winged blackbird sitting on a post of the wire fence at the edge of the field eyed Ian skeptically as he walked by.
Somebody walking down the road wasn't a common sight hereabouts, he supposed.
"Well," he said, "I haven't seen a lot of red-winged blackbirds, either."
The bird didn't answer. He didn't really expect it to.
A car whizzed by, pulling along dust and sand in its wake; Ian turned his head away and closed his eyes to protect them from the
grit. It was doing at least seventy, fairly typical for this part of the world, what with roads straight as an arrow, running sometimes
tens of miles without so much as a tiny bend.
It was out of sight before he heard another car approaching from the rear, and again turned away, but instead of it rushing by, he
heard this one slow and pull over to the shoulder, sand crunching beneath its tires as it ground to a stop.
He turned to see a tan Ford LTD, the rack of flashers on its roof the only markings. That was enough.
"Hey, neighbor," a familiar voice said, as a broad face peered out the open window. "You need a ride?" Under a bristly mustache,
Jeff Bjerke smiled broadly as he pulled off his sunglasses for just a moment, polishing them with a blue bandanna before replacing
them on his face.
"Thanks, Jeff." Ian opened the rear door and slid his package onto the rear seat, then climbed in front with Jeff Bjerke, accepting a
firm handshake in the process. Jeff was a head shorter than Ian's six feet, and even more so in the legs; Ian's legs were scrunched
up uncomfortably.
Jeff was only four, maybe five, years older than Ian, but the air of authority that his pistol belt and khaki cop shirt gave him made
him seem older, despite the incongruity of the jeans and sneakers. Ian wasn't used to policemen in jeans and sneakers, and there
was something strange about the gun in Jeff's holster. It seemed smaller than a cop's gun should.
He didn't ask. He just knew that Jeff would say something about size not being important, but what you did with it, and Ian didn't
really need to hear that. He was all too often the straight man around here.
"Where to? And what are you doing out walking?" Jeff frowned. "Car break down? I've been on this road since Thompson, and I
haven't seen any stopped cars."
"Nah." Ian shook his head. "It's not that; I didn't come by car. I got dropped off at Har—at the airstrip. Left my bags there; figured
I'd walk into town and borrow a car from Torrie or Arnie."
"You actually left your bags without anybody standing over them, did you?" Jeff grinned broadly.
"Hey, Arnie and the Thorsens are turning you into a regular small-town guy, eh?" He threw the car into a quick three-point turn
and headed back toward the turnoff, and the airstrip.
"Well, yeah," Ian said.
"Well, good," Jeff said. "Let's grab your stuff, and then we'll have you at Arnie's quicker'n grain through a goose."
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"Can't beat that." Ian returned his smile. "How quickly does grain go through a goose, anyways?"
"Wouldn't know." Jeff shrugged. "I keep the peace, not the geese."
Ian dropped his bags on the porch of the small bungalow and waved goodbye to Jeff, who drove off slowly, the way people drove
around town. It was one thing to speed down the country road, Arnie had explained to him, but in town you never knew when a
ball was going to roll out onto a street with a pack of kids in hot pursuit.
Besides, so what if it took four minutes instead of two to get clear across town?
It was a quiet afternoon. Kids were still in school, although undoubtedly several packs of less-than-school-age children were
prowling the streets and backyards of Hardwood, looking for some sort of minor trouble to get into, supervised only occasionally
by the same sort of face that was right now peering out the front window across the street at Ian.
Ian waved a hello to Ingrid Orjasaeter, who returned his wave with a smile before vanishing into the relative darkness of her living
room.
Ian knocked on the door twice, then twice again before turning the knob and letting himself in. No key was necessary, which was
just as well; Arnie didn't have the slightest idea where the keys were, and that mean that Ian didn't, either.
"Hello, the house," he called out as he rubbed his feet on the welcome mat and dropped his bags to the floor. He let the screen
door shut behind him, but left the front door open as he walked into the living room.
A vague musty smell hung in the still air, although the living room was neat and clean, no trace of dust allowed on the shelves of
little knickknacks that Arnie's late wife had collected over the years. On one shelf, little porcelain cows and silver bells and little
cut glass figurines surrounded an ordinary shot glass that Ian had meant to ask Arnie about, but never quite had remembered.
The overstuffed chairs and couch had probably been new fifty years before, and restuffed and slipcovered a half dozen times since
then. They were comfortable, though, and that was nice. They were Ephie's, and that was important to Arnie.
"Yo? Arnie? Anybody home?"
He shrugged and walked into the small, tidy kitchen and pulled on the swing-out handle of the ancient Kelvinator refrigerator. It
was three-quarters empty: a covered pot of something or other—probably soup or stew, almost certainly quite edible; Arnie was a
not-bad cook—half a loaf of Master English Muffin Toasting Bread, half a bottle of dubiously dark Heinz ketchup, and half a six-
pack of Cokes. Glass bottles, not cans. Arnie didn't like cans.
Ian twisted open a Coke, pitched the bottlecap into the garbage while he took a long swallow, then brought it with him, down the
hall and past Arnie's bedroom on the left, to what had been Ephie's sewing room, and was now Ian's bedroom, on the right.
He opened the door and turned on the light.
The poster advertising the new Andrew Vachss book had fallen, again. The bed was stripped down to its striped mattress. Clothes
lay scattered on the floor, a large heap of clean clothes near the foot of the bed, a smaller heap of dirty laundry over by the
bookcase. An irregular heap of books covered the floor near the head of the bed, testimony to Ian's need to read himself to sleep.
It looked pretty awful, but it was just the way he had left it.
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He forced himself to smile. Starting when he was four or five, every time he dared to leave his room messy, his father counted
how many items were out of place, and hit him once for each item. Of course, at four or five, a kid doesn't have the idea of order,
not yet; Ian could never get it right, and could never avoid his father's hard hand.
What would this add up to, Dad? A hundred things out of place? Two hundred? A goddamn million?
"Fuck you, Dad," he said, quietly.
Ian rehung the poster, pushing hard against the beads of gunk at the top, then gave a quick thumbs-up to Andrew Vachss's
ungrinning face.
"Later, Andy," he said, slinging his canvas bag across his shoulders.
He drained the Coke and tossed it into the garbage can just outside the back door.
The street—it undoubtedly had a name on some map somewhere, but nobody ever used street names or numbers in Hardwood—
ended in a T, rimmed by woods on all sides.
A short path through the woods broke on the yard of the Thorsen house. Two-storied, plus an attic that seemed to sprout dormers
like a potato sprouted eyes, topped by a sharply peaked roof, the front cupped by a screened, U-shaped porch that stretched across
the whole front and part of two sides; behind it, a red bam; in front of it, three cars parked on the grass next to Karin Thorsen's red
Volvo, plus the shiny black Studebaker on blocks that it appeared Hosea had made some progress on restoring to service.
It still needed wheels, but Ian didn't figure Hosea would have finished the body until he had brought the engine back to life; the
old guy believed in first things first.
Ian hadn't been in Hardwood long enough to recognize everybody by their cars the way the locals could—hell, Arnie claimed he
could tell whether Karin or Thorian Thorsen had been driving their big blue Bronco from the way it was parked. Still, there was
no mistaking the big maroon Chevy Suburban that Doc Sherve used as his traveling office—and, rarely, a makeshift ambulance—
as well as his personal car.
Why would Doc be here? He could be just visiting—visiting seemed to be the major recreational activity in Hardwood—but
during the workday?
Karin had asked him to come home early, and hadn't explained why.
Ian quickened his pace to a trot.
CHAPTER TWO
The Best—Laid Plans
Arnie Selmo was just warming to the argument when the kid rounded the building. These days, these quiet days, these too many
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摘要：

HiddenWays2.htmV1.1Spellcheckdone,stillneedsproofreadV1.0ScannedbyFaile,stillneedsacompleteproofreadPROLOGUEWar,andRumorsofWarTheduskisfullyended,Andremnantsoftwilighthavefled.Horseshavebeensettledintheirstables,Andchildrenputtobed.Butbeforethedayends,Andbeforethedaydies,TheHourofLongCandlescomes,Th...

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