Dies the Fire

He went over to another corner of the basement and dragged out a heavy metal footlocker. "I was keeping this stuff for John, he had it left over from what he sold at the last RenFaire and Westercon, and it was less trouble than taking it back home or all the way out east."

"East?" she said.

She'd met John Martin now and then and liked him, although De

"Yeah, John's in Nantucket, of all places. He's got a girlfriend there, and there are a lot of the summer home crowd who can afford his ironwork and replicas. I hope to God everything's all right in Santa Fe East. John's a gentle sort."

He unfastened the locker and threw back the lid. Reaching inside, he took out a belt wrapped around a pair of scabbards and tossed it to her.

"Put it on," he said. "Jesus, I wish John were here. He's a good man to have around, under all that hippy-dippy crap."

What she was holding was a palm-wide leather belt with brass studs and a heavy buckle in the form of an eagle. It carried a long Scottish dirk with a hilt of black bone carved in swirling Celtic knotwork and a broad-bladed short-sword about two feet long. She put her hand on the rawhide-wrapped hilt and drew it; the damascene patterns in the steel rippled like frozen waves in the lamplight. It was a gladius, the weapon the soldiers of Rome had carried from Scotland to Persia; the twenty-inch blade was leaf-shaped, tapering to a long vicious stabbing point.

Juniper took an awkward swing; the sword was knife sharp, not as heavy as she'd expected, and beautifully balanced. It was beautiful in itself, for the same reason a cat was-perfectly designed to do exactly one thing.

Except that a cat makes little cats, as well as killing, she thought. And went on aloud: "I can't wear this!"

"Why not?" De

He reached into the locker and drew out an ax-nothing like the firefighting tool he'd used in the brief street fight. It was a replica of a Viking-era Danish bearded war-ax, and made with the same care that the sword had been; the haft was four feet of polished hickory.

"Why not?" he repeated. "'Cause it'll look silly? I'm going to be carrying this, you bet. Same reason I'd have taken the shotgun, if it worked. Lot of desperate people out there right now, more tomorrow-and a lot of plain bad ones, too. We already got some confirmation of that, didn't we?"

She swallowed and unwrapped the belt, settling the broad weight of it around her waist and cinching it tight- they had to cut an extra hole through the leather for that, but De

"I don't have the faintest idea how to use swords," she complained as the three of them spent a grunting ten minutes moving a heavy metal-topped counter-table over the trapdoor to the basement.

"I just sing about them. And I don't know if I could actually hit someone with this."

De

Her mother felt only a heavy dread.

"It'll still look intimidating as hell, if we get into any more… trouble. God forbid! Anyway, I used to do some of this stuff," De

"Chuck Barstow," Juniper said. "You met him last Samhain, remember? His wife Judy's the Maiden of my coven."

De

"Amen," Juniper said.

She winced for a second; if this whatever-it-was had happened all over the world, there would be tens of thousands in the air, or down in submarines, or… Her mind shied away from the thought; it was simply too big.

"Focus on the moment," she muttered to herself as they went out into the front room of the tavern, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "Ground and center, ground and center."

Then: "De

The heavyset man had opened the till, scooping the bills into the pockets of his quilted jacket; then he ducked into the manager's office and returned with the cash box. He gri

"Yeah, Juney-it won't be worth anything soon. I want to look up an old friend on our way out of town."

"Friend?"

"More of a business acquaintance. He runs a sporting-goods store, and sells grass on the side. Actually, he sells pretty much anything that comes his way and isn't too risky, which is why I'm betting he'll open up special when I wave some bills at him. If he were really a friend, I'd feel guilty about this, but as it is… "

Chuck Barstow stopped his bicycle by the side of the road and touched his face lightly as he panted. The glass cuts weren't too bad, and the bleeding seemed to have stopped-he'd been able to dive behind the desk when the 727 plowed into the runway about a thousand yards away. Despite the chilly March night he was sweating, and it stung when it hit the cuts.

He looked over his shoulder. Highway 99 ran arrow-straight southeast from Eugene Airport. It was nearly eight o'clock, and the fires behind him had gotten worse, if anything. The streetlights were all out, but the giant pyres where the jets had dropped towered into the sky, and were dwarfed in turn where one had plowed into the tank farm where the fuel was stored. He could see the thin pencil of the control tower silhouetted against the fire, and then it seemed to waver and fall.

I was there. Right there in that tower. Twenty minutes ago, he thought, coughing at the heavy stink of burnt kerosene.

The highway was full of cars and trucks, both ways. Many of them had crashed, still moving at speed when engines and lights and power steering died together, and a few were burning. There were bodies laid out on the pavement, and people trying to give first aid to the hurt. More were trudging towards Eugene, but there was nothing except fire-lit darkness towards the city, either.

He could hear curses, screams, there two men slugging at each other, here two more helping an injured third along with his arms over their shoulders. A state trooper with blood ru

"Chuck," Andy Trethar said from behind him. "Chuck, we've got to keep going. They'll all be waiting for us at the store."

Before he could reply, a stranger spoke: a tall dark heavyset man in an expensive business suit, looking to be two decades older than Chuck's twenty-seven.

"How much for the bicycle?" he said, looking between them. "I have to get to the airport immediately."

"Mister, it's not for sale," Chuck said shortly. "I need it to get back to my wife and daughter. And the airport's a giant barbeque, anyway."

"I'm prepared to give you a check for a thousand, right now," the man said.

"I said, not for sale," Chuck said, preparing to get going again. "Not at any price."