The Protectors war

"Maybe he's decided to just defend what he has?" the elder Larsson said hopefully. "After all, he's got most of western Washington, and the Columbia Valley nearly to the Dalles. Going on for a couple of hundred thousand people, too. That's the biggest, well, country anyone's put together on the whole west coast between Acapulco and Alaska, as far as we know. Biggest single political unit this side of New Deseret, probably."

Havel shook his head; everyone else except the elder Larsson echoed him.

"Nah, Ken. Wishing don't make it so. That string of castles are meant as a base for attack-they're a lot more than he needs for defense, or even holding down the countryside, and like Eric said, it's costing him a lot. It's the shield to his sword, it lets him use small garrisons for cover and put the maximum numbers into a field army. He's got more full-time troopers than anyone else but he doesn't have a big militia he can call out when the balloon goes up."

Signe nodded. "Plus he's just not the type to stop; and besides, the Willamette 's the best farmland around and he hasn't got more than a third of it. Plus we're the only real opposition this side of Pendleton and the Yakima; the rest, it's just odds and ends, little villages and a few towns that made it through, and the ranchers over in the Bend country. If it weren't for us at his back, he could snap it all up as far as Idaho and south to California -that's empty, but a lot of it would be worth resettling eventually. He's gobbled up everything he can without taking us on directly, so now he's going to do that."

"And he's bigger but we're growing faster these last few years, which is likely to make him sort of impatient," Ken acknowledged. "Not least because we keep getting escap-ers from his territories."

"I'd want to run away too, the way he squeezes his people." Eric scowled. "I saw more of that than I like to remember, up McMi

"Which is how he can do all that building," Havel said. "You can build big without machinery; that's how the pyramids got made. But it costs." He contemplated the map in his mind's eye for a moment longer and went on: "Not to mention keeping all those soldiers drilling year-round. Hmm: There's still a gap in that chain of forts. Just east of the river-the French Prairie."

"Foundations," Ken said. "The subsoil there's like jelly, and getting worse. I wouldn't want to put in anything with a forty-foot curtain wall and towers. Chancy."

In a fake-British accent he went on: "But the fourth time, it stood!"

Pamela snickered, but the younger Bearkillers gave him blank looks.

He threw up his hands: "Christ, didn't any of you people watch Monty: oh, never mind. Anyway, that area was half swamp in the old days and it's going back that way."

"Damn it, if he put as much effort into keeping up the levees and drains as he does into soldiers and forts, he wouldn't need to try and take away our land!" Eric Larsson snapped.

"To be fair, I don't think there are enough people left in the Valley to keep the old drainage system up with no power tools, and even without it there's more land than we can cultivate anyway," Signe said. "Not that I want to be fair to Arminger. I doubt any of the people on our side do."

Havel growled with exasperation. "That's the problem. We don't have a 'side.' Arminger has a side. What we've got is an alliance of four major and twelve smaller: university-run city-states, theocracies, clans, village republics, whatever-we-ares: trying to fight a single dictatorship. A damned loose alliance, at that. The only way we can do anything collectively is for all sixteen of us to sit and argue until it's unanimous. You know the definition of a committee? The only life-form with more than four legs and no brain."

"Makes you miss the good old US of A," Ke

"I always did," Havel replied seriously.

"How come you never pushed to start it up again, then?" Eric Larsson said curiously. "I mean, you never let us use the Stars and Stripes or anything when anyone suggested it."

"Because that country's dead," Havel said, an edge in his voice. "It died the night of the Change. I met a guy in Europe once who said the basic thing about Americans was that we'd never had a Dark Ages, just the Enlightenment. I've got news for you: the Dark Ages arrived, in spades, March seventeenth, nine years ago. Flying Old Glory would be: disrespectful. Like someone digging up their mother and using the old girl's skin for shoe leather. I may have lost my country but I'm not going to desecrate its grave."

Eric winced. His mother, Mary, had been injured when their Piper Chieftain crashed in Idaho the day of the Change, and then was killed by bandits in a rather gruesome fashion not long after. The other Larssons glared at Havel.

"Sorry. Tact not my strong suit." He sighed and rose. "OK, we'll get the reports circulated and have a staff council meeting day after tomorrow. Christ Jesus, but I hate a

Ken Larsson relaxed and chuckled. He'd been a businessman, and the son and grandson of wealthy magnates, while the Havels had all been miners since they arrived from Finland in the 1890s-and got their unpronounceable Myllyharju changed to something the Czech pay clerk found easier to write. When they weren't feeding the steel mills they enlisted in the marines, or went logging, or worked a hardscrabble farm they'd bought around 1900. All very worthy and salt-of-the-earth, but:

"Welcome to the executive suite, my proletarian son-in-law," he said. "Ain't it grand?"

Havel snorted. "C'mon, Signe. I need a bath."

And now I need a shower, he thought several hours later, lazing with his hands behind his head and feeling the same vague longing for a cigarette he'd had at times like this since he quit in 1992.

The master bedroom of Larsdalen still showed the influence of poor Mary Larsson, Ken's Boston-Brahmin first wife; the pale wood of the window frames and the furniture, the light graceful lines and perhaps a lingering odor of patchouli. They'd made changes: Signe's collection of stuffed animals and horse prints, a few of her own paintings, bookshelves, and the stands holding their armor and weapons. He didn't like sleeping with the hilt more than arm's-reach away.

He watched as Signe went through into the nursery to check on Mike Jr., who was napping, then watched appreciatively as she walked back in, honey-pale curves dappled by the evening light through the west-facing windows, sleek as a leopardess. The big house was comfortable enough for walking around in the buff; Ken Larsson had rerigged the central heating system to work on wood fuel.

"So, how's the big fellah?" he asked.

"Sleeping like a baby, which is sort of appropriate."

Havel chuckled. She went on: "Got to get his rest, if he's going to be Lord Bear Two. Or even just help one of his sisters be Lady Bear : that sort of sounds fu

It wasn't anything he said in the silence that followed:

"One of them is going to be Lord Bear Two, right, Mike?"

He stretched. "A little early to be thinking about that, isn't it, alskling?" he said casually. "I'm not pla

"And what about your bastard?" she suddenly hissed.

I would really have preferred this subject not come up when I was naked, Havel thought. It's sort of a psychological disadvantage.

With the thought, he swung out of the rumpled bed, belted on a bathrobe and went over to the sideboard-another i

"OK, Signe, you want the lowdown on it, yeah, he is my kid. At least, it's possible-I can't swear who Juney was seeing about then, but his looks do make it highly probable, you bet. I'm not denying it. I was willing to let it pass, but I'm not denying it. Not here in private, not to you. I won't make it public unless you insist."