The Protectors war

Go on, Njal, Hordle thought, willing them to notice nothing. Back to your nice cozy room and take a nap:

The Woburn Abbey garrison was a thirty-man platoon of the Special Icelandic Detachment-SID-First Heavy Infantry Battalion, according to report. King Charles didn't want regulars guarding a prisoner who'd been as popular with the troops as Sir Nigel Loring. That was why they'd moved him here, as well, rather than keeping the baronet under house arrest on his own commandery of Tilford Manor in Hampshire; too many of the folk there had been men of his own, or refugees he'd seen through the Dying Time on the Isle of Wight and led to settle their new lands. But Bedfordshire had only been colonized the last four years, and that, lightly; most of the dwellers were relocates from the Scottish islands and from Iceland and the Faeroes. They'd spent years working for others before they could accumulate tools and seed and stock to set up on their own, and they'd come this far north because the good land farther south was already claimed. And they were still much more likely to be unquestioning in their support of the royalist government than the native English.

Gratitude's a wonderful thing, Hordle thought sourly, as his chest moved in a slow, regular rhythm and his eyes flicked back and forth in a face darkened with burnt cork. Too bad Charlie didn't stay grateful to Sir Nigel for getting him out of Sandringham and down to Wight.

He'd been with the SAS-Special Air Service-detachment Nigel Loring took to rescue the heir to the crown from the Norfolk estate a week after the Change; the Household Cavalry had taken the queen out of London directly, in full Tin Bellies fig and using their sabers more than once on the mobs.

Perhaps if she'd lived Charles wouldn't have gotten so strange: Or if any of the politicians had made it: The last messenger out of London had said Blair was on his way, but he'd never arrived.

If ifs and buts were candied nuts, everyone would have lived through the Change, Hordle thought.

A clank sounded from behind him. Ice rippled through the sweat on his skin; the sound had been faint, very faint, but it was worse than a snapped twig-nothing else on earth sounded quite like metal on metal. The two SIDs stopped.

"Who goes there?" one of them called, his English accented but fluent. He reached for the horn slung at his belt. "Show yourself! This is a prohibited zone!"

"Oh, you conscientious keen-eared shite," Hordle sighed.

He drew the hundred-fifty-pound longbow's string to the ear with a slight grunt of effort as he rose to one knee; the SID he aimed for had just enough time to put his lips to the horn's mouthpiece before the arrow slashed through the intervening twenty feet. A sharp metallic tunk! sounded as the punch-shaped arrowhead struck the center of the guardsman's breastplate and sank nearly to the feathers, with the head and a red-dripping foot of shaft sticking out of his back.

The horn gave a strangled blat that sprayed a mist of blood into the air, looking black in the moonlight and turning his yellow beard dark. He toppled backward with a clank. Two more bows snapped in the same instant: one shaft went wide, but the other slammed into the second Icelander's nose. It had been shot uphill, from a kneeling position, and it angled upward through his brain and cracked out the rear of his skull, knocking the helmet off, spi

Hordle was on his feet and moving before the helmet came to rest on the sheep-cropped grass. He ran crouching into the open, grabbed both bodies by their throats and dragged the two men and their gear back to the shelter of the brush at a quick, wary walk. There was blood on his left hand as he dropped them and sank down again beside his bow. He washed palm and fingers clean with water from his canteen, and reached under the hem of his mail shirt to wipe it off on the gambeson. It wouldn't do to have his hands sticky or slippery.

They waited silently, watching and listening. No sound of alarm came from the great Palladian manor ahead, a glimmer of pale limestone in the moonlit night. He nodded as Alleyne Loring came up beside him, going down on one knee. The young officer was twenty-eight, Hordle's age almost to a day. The pub that Hordle's father ran, the Pied Merlin, was less than half a mile from Tilford Manor, and they'd grown up as neighbors and playmates before the Change and served together since.

Alleyne wore an officer's harness armored in plate cap-a-pie, from steel shoes to bevoir and visored sallet. He slid the visor up along the curved surface of the helm as he used his binoculars to scan the overgrown parkland between them and the entrance. It had been scattered trees and deer-grazed grassland before the Change, but even after the abbey was reoccupied there had been no labor to spare for ornamental work-the garrison here lived from its own fields and herds, with a little help from nearby farmers. There hadn't been enough stock to keep the vegetation down either, until the last year or two. Bushes gleamed with beads of dew, and the grass was better than waist-high in places.

"All right," the younger Loring said softly. "That gives us fifteen minutes until they notice. Go!"

He drew the long double-edged sword at his waist and led the way at a run, moving with practiced agility despite the sixty pounds of alloy-steel protection, an extra sword and a heater-type shield slung over his back. The six archers who followed were more lightly armored: open-faced helms, chain-mail tunics, sword and buckler. Hordle kept an arrow on the string and gri

"Who dares, wins," he muttered to himself. "Or gets royally banged about if things go south."

Nigel Loring woke in darkness. He lay for a moment letting his eyes adjust, ears straining for the sound he'd heard. Had it been his imagination? A fragment of a dream-a dream of combat, before the Change or after it? God knew his life had provided plenty of material for nightmares, starting with Oman back in the seventies.

No. That was something. Perhaps an animal on the grounds, or a guard stumbling in the darkness, but something. Something real.

Maude Loring stirred beside him in the big four-poster bed. "What is it, dear?" she asked.

"Shhh," he said, straining to hear again.

Nothing, but there was a tension in the air. He put out a hand in the darkness and touched her shoulder. Then he swung his feet to the floor and padded over to the window. They were in the Covent Garden suite-bedroom, dressing room and bathroom, the latter restored to limited functioning. The same engineers who'd set up the wind-pump system to give the house ru

The bars were thick and close placed, allowing a hand to go through but not an elbow, but they didn't totally destroy the view, and the windows themselves were half-open on this warm summer's night. His eyes weren't the best-he'd needed corrective contacts since an RPG drove grit into them in a wadi in Dhofar-but seeing was as much a matter of knowing how to pay attention as sheer input. He looked down the long stretch of grassland across the park to the west, and saw moonlight glinting on the Basin Pond and the dark bulk of the Abbot Oak- where Abbot Hobbes had been hung in 1538. His hands tightened on the steel as he saw movement south of there, dark figures flitting towards the building. Not the roving patrol the Varangians kept up here, either. There were far too many of them; he estimated at least four or possibly half a dozen, but they moved so quickly and skillfully it was hard to be certain.