Dies the Fire

"You're an old-fashioned guy in some ways, Mike."

"Backwoods upbringing," he said, buckling on his sword and jamming the hat on his head. "This had better be important."

"Wait a minute," Signe said, fingers plucking. "Grass in your beard… there, got it."

"Your hair is full of the stuff… hey, kid! The message!"

She was ru

"Mr. Hutton says to tell you there's a bad discipline problem with Waters, and you're needed pronto," the boy said, still facing away.

"Tell him I'll be right there," Havel said.

And in no very good mood. Billy boy, you have the worst timing of any man I've ever met.

The crowd parted at the sound of hooves; Havel reined in, hearing murmurs of "the bossman" and "Lord Bear." He slid from the saddle and someone took the reins; possibly Signe, but he wasn't looking around right now.

Several of the lanterns that hung before the family tents were lit; that and the fires gave plenty of light, but the people crowding around were flickers at the edge of sight, their faces uneasy.

Billy Waters stood, looking sullen and flushed, two men holding him by the arms-both his neighbors. Jane Waters sat by the front flap of their tent in a boneless slump, her face covered with the red flush of incipient bruises, tears leaking down her face; her two younger children huddled near her, torn between fear and need for their mother's closeness.

Reuben Waters was not far away, lying on his back while Pamela Arnstein worked on him. Her hawk-featured face was incandescent with fury; Havel felt it through his own anger as he knelt beside Waters's twelve-year-old son.

"He was just woozy," she said. "I gave him something to make him sleep."

She touched the boy's face gently, turning it towards the brightest firelight. Relaxation made the narrow foxy hillbilly-Scots-Irish face look younger than its twelve years.

"See here? He's going to have a shiner, and this tooth is loose. Punched twice, I'd say. Those are a grown man's knuckle marks. All he needs now is cold compresses and rest. And a different father!"

Havel nodded, walked over to Jane Waters, and crouched on his heels so that their eyes were level. He touched her chin with a finger, turning her left cheek to the light and studied the swelling marks of a man's hand.

"Jane," he said. "Why don't you help Pam get your son to the infirmary tent?" She looked at him with dumb fear. "Jane, whatever happens, you've still got a place here-and your kids. Understand?"

He helped her rise, and composed his face when he realized it was frightening some of the onlookers. The stretcher-bearers took Reuben off, with his mother walking beside him.

"Angelica," he went on. "You've got some of those cookies left, don't you?" At her nod, he went on: "I think it would be a good idea if you and A

Their destination was assuming mythic proportions; he hoped the reality didn't disappoint too much.

She nodded: "I'll get Sam to check Rueben over just in case and help with the kids."

Rounding up the children wasn't hard; they all thought cookies and a tale by the camp's best storytellers was far more interesting than a frightening confrontation among the grownups.

"Get all the adults here, except the sentries," Havel went on.

That took a few minutes. He ducked into the Waterses' tent-normally something never done without invitation- and rummaged. The bottle he'd expected was still three-quarters full. It was Maker's Mark, first-class Kentucky bourbon, expensive as hell even before the. Change. There was another just like it, empty.

"All right," he went on, when he brought the bottles out and held them up for the company to see. "Everyone here? Good. Now you, Fred Naysmith, you give me the details."

The man holding Waters's left arm gulped, and stuttered. The Bearkillers' judicial proceedings were refreshingly simple, so far; a trial by a quorum of the adults, presided over by Lord Bear. Punishments were simple too. With fines and imprisonment impractical, they went quickly from "extra duties" through a mass kicking around that Pam called "the gauntlet" to "expulsion," which was equivalent to a death sentence.

Naysmith licked his lips and spoke out: "I heard the Wa-terses arguing-sounded like Billy was yelling at Nancy." That was the bowyer's eight-year-old. "Then she started crying and screaming at him to stop, and… well, we hadn't been listening too hard before, you know, Boss?"

He nodded understanding. There wasn't much privacy in camp; the tents were set far enough apart that ordinary conversation didn't carry, but shouts certainly did. A convention had grown up of pretending you didn't hear family arguments-one of the little forbearances that made the tight-knit group's life tolerable.

"But it got sort of scary. And I could hear Jane screaming at him to stop, too. Then he started hitting her-hitting Jane, that is-and then Reuben tried to make him leave her alone, and he started hitting the kid, real hard, yelling bad stuff, really bad. So Jake and I went over and dragged him out. He tried to slug us too, and he smelled and acted drunk, and we sent someone for you, Lord Bear."

Havel looked around the circle of firelit faces; most of the men had close-cropped beards like his, and most of the women braids. Underlit from the flames, they all had a hard feral look, new since the Change. He held up the whiskey bottles again. There were resentful murmurs; pre-Change liquor was already extremely valuable as trade goods, like tobacco.

"This isn't from our stores. I think we can all guess how Billy got it from the townies over there."

He uncorked it and took a slug, baring his teeth and exhaling as the smooth fire burned its way down his gullet.

"That's the real goods, and no mistake. The man who took Bearkiller equipment for this didn't cheat Billy the way Billy did the rest of us."

More formally: "Anyone want to speak for this man? Anyone have a different version of what came down here tonight? Anyone know another way he could have gotten this liquor?"

There was an echoing silence; Waters didn't have many friends, and since he was obviously guilty as sin the few he did have weren't going to court unpopularity by swimming upstream. Being severely unpopular in a small community like this was unpleasant to the point of being dangerous, when you had to rely on your fellows for your life in a world turned hostile and strange.

Havel tossed the empty aside and handed the full bottle to someone, and it passed from hand to hand, with a little pawing and cursing and elbowing if anyone kept it tilted up too long-there was just enough for a sip for everyone who wanted one.

"One last time, does anyone want to speak for Billy Waters? It's any member's right to speak freely at a trial."

More silence, and Havel nodded. "Hands up for not guilty. Hands up for guilty. anyone want to propose a punishment? Or shall I handle it?"

There was a rumble of you're the boss and let Lord Bear decide.

He sighed. "Let him go," he said. The two men stepped aside, and Havel moved forward.

"Waters, you sad and sorry sack of shit," he said in a conversational tone, and then his open hand moved with blurring speed.

Crack!

Waters went down as if he'd been hit across the face with the flat side of an oak board, but nothing was broken; Havel had calculated the blow with precision.

Waters cringed and tried to scramble back as the Bear-killers' leader stepped forward, moving with the delicate ease of a great cat.