Dies the Fire

They have, Havel suddenly realized with a chill. If cars and radios and guns don't work, they've just inherited as much of the earth as they can take. No laws.

Eric bent, as if he were scratching at his leg; out of the corner of his eye Havel couldn't be sure, but he thought the younger man palmed a rock.

Good for you, Havel thought, and went on: "You mean everything stopping working?"

The man nodded. "Didn't we say it was coming?" he crowed. "And now we white original sovereigns are coming into our own."

"What about these folks here?" Havel said mildly, drifting a little closer.

"We got us a good husky slave here," the thin man said, gri

"Couple of nice fuck-toys too," the youth with the bow said. "I like the look of the young one."

"In your dreams, Jimmie," the thickset man said; apparently he was the leader. "But you can have her momma tonight while I break her in."

The tattooed man scowled. "They're mud people, Dan," he said, probably a long-ru

"Now, Bob, we'll find us some good pure white women for bearing children," the leader said. "When we're settled in our stronghold waiting for the dying time to pass. Meantime, a man has his needs."

The black man was sitting slumped in the saddle, resting his cuffed hands on the horn and a good deal of his weight on those. His head was down as well, but his eyes peered up at Havel, flickered to Eric. There wasn't much hope in them, but there was thought, and he was probably noticing Havel's slow, inch-by-inch drift towards the riders. He looked to be about forty, with an outdoor worker's weathered skin and squint lines beside his eyes, sinewy and strong.

He reminds me of someone. Glover, the actor who plays next to Gibson in that Lethal Weapon series, ran through Havel's mind at some level entirely aside from the swift calculation that filled the active part of it.

"Dying time?" he said, edging a little closer still to Dan. "Could you tell me what you mean by that?"

"Well, it figures that with all the technology gone, most everyone's going to die, except in the real backward places, bush-niggers in Africa and such. Even country folk, without their tractors and pumps, and anyway those close to the cities will get eaten out. Without guns, they can't even defend their farms from the hordes. But up here in the National Redoubt where people are thin on the ground, we can survive and expand later. Lot of cattle and a lot of grain in Idaho. Not to mention game in the forests. I figure best thing is to hide out for maybe six months, then go looking for a place to live long-term."

Not necessarily a complete idiot because he's a total shit, Havel thought.

The man's eyes had glazed over with lust as he spoke; partly, Havel supposed, at contemplating the death of more of humanity than a nuclear war could have managed; partly at the prospect of being a big man among the survivors, after a lifetime of total failure; and partly a more human elation that at last he'd gotten something right, even if it was only improving his chances of surviving by moving to Idaho. From his accent, he'd started out in some East Coast city, although he was trying hard to westernize it.

You know, generally the people I've killed have just been a cost of doing business, Havel thought. Because they were wearing the wrong uniforms. But this bunch would be a real personal pleasure. Why is it that guys who think they're the Master Race always look like walking advertisements for retroactive abortion?

Just a minute more to get them relaxed…

"You two boys look like good original-sovereign stock," the leader of the riders said. "Why don't you-"

"Help us!" the woman walking by the packhorse cried. "For God's sake, mister, please, help us! They're crazy!"

Eric wound up like a pitcher on the mound and threw his rock; he was too close to do a really good job, but his stream-smoothed lump of granite thumped into the shoulder of the bowman.

The archer loosed, the shaft flying inches wide of the back of the neck of the thin man with the jailhouse tattoos; that one did what Havel expected-clapped his heels to his horse's sides, heading straight for Eric. He had some notion of what to do in a fight.

The younger Larsson threw himself back with a yell, landing and rolling in the roadway and then dodging around a stopped car that stood with its doors open; he came right back through it, diving over the backseat faster than the inexperienced horseman could get his mount around it.

The knife flicked into Havel's hand and the rabbit stick into the other. The thickset man's horse thundered down on him; he'd never been charged by a man on horseback before, and his stroke with the stick at the rider's knee went wide-fortunately, so did the heavy man's potentially bone-shattering kick with one cup-stirrup-bearing foot. That nearly unseated him, and he clutched at the horn of his saddle.

Havel leapt forward again, trying for a hamstringing blow, and the puukko's edge parted the leather of the leading rein instead. That set the packhorses loose; they went into bucking circles, their hooves a menace to everyone.

The heavy youth with the bow tried to grab the young girl by the chain of her handcuffs with his right hand and drag her up across the saddle in front of him while slinging the bow over his shoulder at the same time; she seized the hand in both of hers and sank her teeth into his wrist.

That made him shriek in pain and start trying to shake her off instead as his horse skittered sideways; and her mother added a series of ear-splitting screams to the confusion as she came up on the other side and began beating her clenched fists on his leg.

Who says the Three Stooges are dead? Havel thought. Christ Jesus, what a cluster-fuck!

Mr. Jailhouse Bob was coming back into the fight; he had a machete out now, from a sheath strapped to his saddle. He also came straight for Havel, ignoring the rest of the milling chaos.

This one has a hard man's instincts, Havel thought, poising lightly on the balls of his feet, weapons ready. OK, he's target number one.

Fortunately Bob's time in stir hadn't included training in the equestrian arts, and he misjudged the speed of his mount. His roundhouse swing passed a foot in front of Havel's face-close enough for him to feel the ugly wind of its passage-and nearly took an ear off his own horse. Havel's return stroke with the rabbit stick cracked into his arm. The blow was glancing, but it was enough to make him drop the machete. Then he clapped his heels into his horse's flanks and circled out of the fight again, shaking the limb and cursing but looking quickly back and forth to get a sense of the action.

Damn, he really, does think tactically, Havel thought- that was a gift, and not limited to good guys.

The black man made his own contribution; even without reins, he managed to get his horse moving west, probably hoping to draw the rest off from his family. He succeeded; Dan and young Jimmie turned the heads of their horses around and went after him, but Jailhouse Bob was in their path. Instead of trying to pass him the black man turned his horse up the Cente

"Get the nigger!" Dan cried as he spurred after him.

Jimmie followed, turning in the saddle to loose an arrow that wobbled up at a mortar-shell angle and came down with a shhhrink into the roof of a car. Then he disappeared up the trail, leaving his tattooed elder to face four-to-one odds.