Dies the Fire

"You the bossman of the Bearkiller outfit?" he asked.

Havel gri

"I'm Josh Sanders; my wife A

"Cornhusker?" Havel said.

Sanders had the rasping accent; he also had a grip like a vise. He wasn't trying it on, just damned strong.

"Daddy had a farm down to Booneville," Josh Sanders said.

Havel recognized the name; it was a small town in southwestern Indiana, which confirmed his guess.

"Just a little place, though; he worked construction, too. I lumberjacked some in the woods there, and then up here, up in the Panhandle, and A

Better and better, Havel thought.

The lumberjack's yellow-haired wife looked healthy and competent, and scared silly but hiding it well. He caught a glimpse of a tattoo under the man's sleeve, part of an anchor.

"Squid?" he said.

Josh smiled: "Guess it still shows. One hitch out of high school-Seabee. Did a fair bit of construction." The Seabees were the Navy's combat engineers. "You'd be a Jarhead, is my guess."

"Semper Fi," Havel nodded.

"Mind my asking, how did you get the-" His finger traced the place of Havel's stitched wound on his own forehead.

"Got into a close-and-personal argument with a bear, about five days ago."

"What happened?"

"Bear tastes a lot like pork, but a bit gamier. Better in a stew, or marinated in vinegar."

Josh whistled, then nodded as Havel explained the terms: strict discipline, working together, and a possible ultimate share-out in Oregon.

"All right," Havel said. "One last thing."

Southern Indiana was white-sheet country not so long ago, settled from Kentucky and Virginia originally. Let's check.

He pointed. "Will Hutton here is the number two man in this outfit. Got any problems taking his orders?"

"My daddy might have, but the Navy knocked out any of that horseshit left in me," Josh said. "Taking orders doesn't bother me. As long as they aren't damned stupid orders, all the time."

The last candidate was a fortysomething man with receding dirty-blond hair, long and stringy. Havel's nose wrinkled slightly at his stale sour smell; the river was right there, and the town wasn't short of soap yet, and there was plenty of firewood to heat water. He had a beaten-down-looking wife who looked older than he did and wasn't; she'd been massive before the Change, and sagged like a deflated balloon now. Their children were twelve and ten and eight, and looked as if they hadn't eaten in quite a while; u

Loser, Havel thought, noting the yellow nicotine stain on his fingers-he must be going through withdrawal now, a six-pack-a-day man with no tobacco at all. His hands trembled, too, and there was a tracery of broken veins in his nose and cheeks. Alky.

Will Hutton stood behind the man, and silently mouthed the word trash over his shoulder.

And I agree with you, Havel thought. OK, but there's no reason to be brutal about it.

"I'm sorry, Mr. – "

"Billy Waters, sir, and please-my children-"

"This isn't a charity, Mr. Waters. We may be able to spare a bowl for them."

And I'd watch them eat it, to make sure you didn't.

Well behind Havel, Eric and Signe and Lua

"Look, sir, I worked for Red Wolf Bows in Missouri," he said desperately. "A few years back, till they laid me off. I can make you more bows, if you get me some tools! Arrows too, and do fletching."

Havel halted with his mouth open to speak the words of dismissal. Hutton's eyebrows went up.

"Get Astrid, would you, Will?" Havel said. "She'll be able to check what this gentleman says."

Bill Waters looked as if he'd like to be indignant when a girl in her early teens showed up to grill him, but his eyes went a little wide when he saw the bow she carried.

"Red Wolf?" Astrid said to Havel. "Yes, they make bows-modern-traditional, mostly, custom orders for hunting bows. Recurves. Good quality, but pricey."

Her sniff told what she thought of Mr. Waters. He sensed it, and went on: "I was on the floor two years, miss, did every step or helped with it," he said earnestly. "It's a small shop, four men, and I helped 'em all. Hunted some myself with a bow."

Havel's eyebrows went up; for a wonder, the man wasn't pretending he'd been head craftsman, rather than dogsbody and assistant. That was probably a measure of his desperation.

"You don't look like you've had much luck hunting here," he pointed out.

"Ain't got no bow here, sir."

And couldn't get anyone to lend you one, Havel thought. Well, I wouldn't have lent you fifty cents, and I'd bet anything that when the Change hit you got drunk and stayed that way until you ran out of booze.

Havel had the traditional disdain for hand-to-mouth drifters to be expected in someone who came of four generations of hard-rock miners-unionized workingmen intensely proud of their dangerous, highly skilled labor. It had been amplified in the Corps, where there was no excuse for failure. He was surprised this specimen had ever learned any sort of trade, but perhaps he'd been on the wagon more when he was younger.

Astrid asked a question, her voice sharp. Waters answered, and an incomprehensible conversation followed involving tillering and laminations, hotboxes and clamps, hand-shock and finger pinch.

"Will," Havel said, after a few sentences. "Take Astrid and Mr. Waters off, and discuss bowmaking, would you? And check him out on the target."

He waited, thinking and trying not to listen to the occasional whimpering of Waters's children, or to notice the expression of hopeless pessimism on his wife's face, born of far too many broken promises and failed hopes.

Instead he paged through a book of Will's, an illustrated History of Cavalry, by two Polacks named Grbasic and Vuksic-or Grabass and Youpuke, as he mentally christened them. They certainly seemed to know their field, though according to them a Pole on horseback was the next thing to an Archangel with a flaming sword.

I wish I'd read more of this sort of thing before the Change, he thought wistfully. It's interesting, and now all I have time to do is mine it for the useful parts.

He was looking at the equipment of a Polish pancerny horseman of the seventeenth century when the three returned; as Hutton had said, it looked simple and practical, enough so that they had some prospect of making an equivalent set of kit.

"Excuse us for a moment, please," Havel said.

Waters stood back by his wife and children as the three spoke; both the adults stared in mute desperation at the conversation they couldn't hear, and flinched when eyes went their way.

"He can shoot, Mike," Astrid said. "Better if his hands weren't shaking, but he's quite good-not as good as me, but better than Signe, on moving targets. And he really does know how to make bows. Traditional bows, not compounds-traditional forms with modern materials, that is."