The Protectors war

"Let's go, then," the Bearkiller lord said, putting his foot in the stirrup.

They broke back into the sunshine, instinctively spreading out in the bright sunlight; past an abandoned sheet-metal building that bore the faded logo of a fruit-packing company, past derelict farmhouses and collapsing barns, through meadows blue with camas flowers and iris, red columbine and pale pink twinflower growing more common as they headed southeast; bird and butterfly started up as the horses breasted the tall grass and weeds. The fleeing outlaws were not in sight, but their path was obvious enough. Then Lua

"Horse! And man too, I think."

The horse was standing with its head down and hidden in the rank growth nearly as tall as it was. The head came up as the Bearkillers and their guests approached, and it whi

The others reined in; the man was lying half-stu

Havel smiled grimly and swung out of the saddle, drawing his sword. The outlaw howled as the Bearkiller's boot caught him on the wound; he could do no more than paw feebly as he was disarmed. The cries of pain and panic died away to a frantic gurgle as he felt the prick of a sword point under his jaw. The fallen man bared yellow snaggled teeth in a dogliice grin of submission, their look fruit of malnutrition and neglect since the Change; Havel judged he'd been about twelve back then.

"Look at me, you worthless sack of shit," Havel said, pushing the helmet back so that his face was clear, he'd discarded the irritating contacts some time ago. "Who am I?"

The sweating face went even paler beneath its fuzz of mouse-colored beard. "Oh, Christ, Lord Bear."

"Bingo first time, asshole; the guy you just tried to rob and kill. You listening?" A fractional nod and a wince as it moved against the shaving-sharp point of the sword. "So you know my word's good. Here's the deal. Lead us in to your hideout-we know pretty much where it is, so don't get any bright ideas about stranding us in the swamp-plus telling us everything we want to know, and you get to live. Yes or no?"

"Shit-Crusher, he'll-"

Havel put a little pressure on the sword point, and a bead of blood appeared; the outlaw jerked fractionally, turning it into a trickle. The Bear Lord transferred the point of the long blade to the tip of the bandit's nose; it followed his movements with mechanical precision, and he stared at it with cross-eyed fascination.

"What exactly is Crusher Bailey going to do to you that I can't?" Havel asked reasonably. "And I'm right here. He isn't."

The bandit's eyes shifted to the ring of figures around him, then desperately to the bright world beyond. It would be hard to die on a spring day:

"OK, you promise?"

"Yeah, I promise."

You get to live, Havel thought. The only convincing argument I've ever heard against capital punishment is that being dead doesn't hurt much. You'll haul rock and break rebar out of concrete twelve hours a day seven days a week, but you won't be dead. If you're real unlucky, you'll still be alive and doing it twenty years from now.

The prisoner swallowed at Havel 's expression and stuttered: "OK, man, OK!"

"Signe, patch him," he said, stepping back, sword still poised.

"Do I have to?" Signe asked.

"Unfortunately, yes. Hard to get information out of his corpse. Lua

The Lady of the Bearkillers ripped open the outlaw's dirty shirt and even filthier denim jacket and applied the field-dressing without any u

"No, ma'am, it wasn't me I swear: " He gabbled, then took another look at her and became more panic-stricken than before, if that were possible. "You ain't, you can't be-"

Signe shook her brown locks: "Hair by Ms. Clairol, asshole. And I didn't make any promise to let you live. Did you notice that, lover boy? Did you?"

"OK, I'll shut up!"

Havel gri

"Where's Crusher's camp in there?" he asked, flicking the sword through the air from the wrist. It made an unpleasant vwweepf sound.

"Ah: look, we, uh, they, camp a couple of different places. Mostly near the old gravel pits, you know, on the west bank downstream from Woods Landing about maybe half a mile, a bit more? There's a jetty on the east bank, Crusher keeps boats hidden both sides, sorta flat-bottomed things, so he can get stuff back and forth, you know?"

Havel nodded. That explained a good deal about how Bailey's gang had ranged so far, and been so hard to find or track, but he wondered where Crusher Bailey had gotten the boats. He didn't think they were the types who'd run them up themselves. And if they simply ran for their boats and took them all with them, there wasn't much he could do but go home and try again another day. Bailey could go look for a new hangout, in another of the burgeoning swamps along the Willamette, or in the ruins of Salem, or even farther south in Eugene, or in the mountains near one of the roads that crossed the Cascades.

"Put him on his horse. Tie his hands together and then to the reins, and lash his feet to the stirrups."

The outlaw gave a moo of panic at that-it meant almost certain battering death if the horse fell or bolted-but went quiet again after a look at the faces around him. They put him at the head of the little column, and the Bearkillers all pulled out their recurves and set a shaft to the string. So did John Hordle; Havel looked over at him curiously. It wasn't impossible to use a longbow from horseback, just immensely awkward and difficult; he'd seen Sam Aylward and Eilir Mackenzie do it, and read about samurai using seven-foot bamboo bows from the saddle.

"Can you shoot that thing mounted?"

"No, sor, I can't, not to speak of," Hordle said cheerfully. "But I can get off a horse right quick, I can."

Havel nodded; the big Englishman's feet were near the ground anyway, on an ordinary-sized mount. Then he cocked an eye at the sun-it was behind them, about three hours past noon-and waved them forward, his eyes busy. They crossed an old railway embankment, a line of weeds and saplings now, with the two streaks of rusted iron mostly hidden, then down into another neglected orchard, the sweet-sour smell of years of fallen fruit strong and the spindly saplings crushed by the passage of the fugitives they were chasing.

"Halt," he called softly in the insect-buzzing gloom. "There's a steep slope ahead of us, wooded, and then open country that was swampy even before the Change. It runs into a loop of the Willamette, the Lambert Bend, and the bar upstream broke in the floods three years ago. Easy to bog down. Eric, you did the scout, you ride right after our guide here. First time it even looks like he's leading us into a swale, put one through his gut. Asshole, your only chance of getting out of this alive is for us to win, understand? Rest of you, we go in fast and hard, get stuck into them and kill 'em all-I'd have preferred to take Crusher alive to hang, but there aren't enough of us. Any questions? Then go!"