Tales of Downfall and Rebirth (72 page)

“I'll need it after the blackout.”

Chrissie looked sidelong at him again. “That won't ever happen. And I think deep down, you know that.”

Her tone was odd enough to make him look over at her.

“I know you think I'm crazy,” she went on, “but I did have a visitation before this started, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you haven't even offered one prayer for answers. This change is for good. This is our life now.”

Marc shook his head. He couldn't accept that.

“Okay, fine,” she said. “How about you let me carry your laptop? Your knees are about to buckle and that's seven pounds I can take off you.”

“No,” he said.

While she wasn't scrawny, she was slim. She didn't have a whole lot of muscle mass, and the rationed food they were eating made everyone's faces more gaunt and eyes more prominent. He shook his head.

“I couldn't.”

A root caught his foot and he went down, spraying alkaline soil in an arc, his hands smarting as the skin peeled from his palms. The rest of the group paused, but no one stopped to help him up.

No one but Chrissie.

Marc made sure to get up on his own.

*   *   *

The next morning, when the load was divvied up, the largest bag plopped in front of Marc. He stared at it despairingly, knowing he couldn't ask anyone for help. Chrissie stood by, her hand out, offering to take the laptop.

With tears pricking at his eyes, he pulled it out of his bag and laid it on the ground. “Let's go,” he said.

Chrissie didn't argue, but she did stare.

“I just need a minute,” he told the group.

They all stood politely as he knelt and bowed his head.
Lord,
he thought,
I guess I should be thankful I've lasted this long. Thou must have a million prayers from people asking Thee to fix all this. Add my voice to that crowd and . . . otherwise just help me along here.

He opened his eyes and saw that no one tapped their foot or glared at him.

Marc drew himself up as straight as his aching spine would allow. He tucked his journal, with his letter in progress for Angela, into his pack. No one smiled or snickered, but the pity was as tangible as the ground beneath his feet. He ignored it, shouldered his bag, and the group moved on out.

The laptop grew smaller and smaller until it was nothing but a dark dot in the distance. Chrissie walked next to Rick, who hung on her every word. Marc brought up the rear with an aching back and a limp. He wanted to look back one last time, but he knew that if he didn't keep up, he was a goner.

by
Diana Paxson

I have written a lot of short stories and novels on legendary themes, from Siegfried and Brunahild (the Wodan's Children trilogy) to the Avalon series that I took over from Marion Zimmer Bradley, and some nonfiction books, including
The Way of the Oracle
. I hosted the first tournament of what became the Society for Creative Anachronism in my backyard. My first publications were the chronicles of Westria, set in a world several centuries after a somewhat different Change. When I read
Dies the Fire
I was fascinated to find that Steve had come to many of the same conclusions I had regarding who would survive, which made more sense when I found out that he liked Westria! I've been following the series eagerly ever since and I'm delighted to have this opportunity to play in the world of the Change.

For more about what I'm doing, see diana-paxson.com.

T
he ocean was a tumult of white and gray, misting into bars of cloud through which the setting sun sent a glimmer of gold. Deor squinted as another roller crashed against the point, glimpsing for a moment an iridescent form shaped from sea wrack and spray, mutating as he watched into a hint of bright eyes and laughter. Was that what he was waiting for?

“Sae-aelfen haill!”
he whispered. He hunkered back into the dubious shelter of the pine, automatically shifting the sheathed seax to one side, and shook back his hair. Dry, it was curly enough to stay off his face, but wet it lengthened, and the wind was whipping the dark strands into his eyes.

“That passed, so shall this.”

For most of his life he had hated that quote, but at moments like this he could appreciate its grim philosophy. He had been born twelve years after the cataclysm that rendered the old world more distant than Old England, and his parents had named him Deor for the long-ago poet who wrote that line. It was the Saxons, or so his father said, whose ways had saved them when nothing from the old world worked anymore. Their arms, their crafts, and their poetry were equally appropriate to a grim life in what had become a grim land. Deor dreamed sometimes of building a ship that could venture beyond the cove and see what else had survived the cataclysm, but even a Saxon ship would have trouble in such a storm.

Why, he wondered, had he wanted to come to Albion Cove? It was the season for harvesting crabs, and he wanted to escape the confines of Hraefnbeorg one last time before winter closed in, but the season was changing early this year.

From the bluff on the northern side he could see across the cove. Waves were rolling all the way in to froth around the tangled iron stubs of the bridge where the Albion River joined the sea. The leather scales of his jack were slick with moisture, his cloak was growing heavy, and the damp would not be doing his bow any good either. On this trip, flotsam was the only harvest they were likely to gather from the sea.

Branches thrashed above him as the wind rose. There were fell voices on that blast. Not evil, but heedless of humankind. His father and older brother were always telling him to pay attention to the dangers he could see. They honored the spirits of the land, but sometimes he wondered if they understood that they were real.

“Deor! Are you froze, man, or just crazed!”

A hard hand closed on his arm. He started to swing, recognized the touch, and pulled the punch as Alfwin leaned away, brown hair tossing. His friend laughed.

“Guess you're not frozen, then—but stay here an' ye will be. Th' others are already headin' back t' the village—” He motioned toward the flat beyond the bridge, where a few houses and a boat-barn still stood, despite the river's habit of flooding every year or two.

The bit of sky that showed between the bands of cloud was deepening to flame. Deor pulled himself upright, scanning the horizon through slitted eyes. And stilled, blinking, as beyond the rocks at the northern headland something moved. He took a step down the path.

“Man, what're ye doing? I'm not gonna freeze my butt—”

“Alf, can't you see?” Deor found his voice. “Look there, at the point—by Thunor's beard, 'tis a sail!”

“Crazed—” Alfwin draped an arm across Deor's shoulders and stood beside him, leaning into the wind. They had sometimes seen ships slipping along at the edge of sight offshore, long, low vessels like the ones the Pomo tribesmen up at Kah-la-deh-mun said had burned half the town the year before. But this one was closer. Too close, for one who did not know the channel, and in such a sea.

“Not to worry—” said Alfwin grimly. “Rocks'll get 'em if they go on that way . . .”

Deor squinted into the sunset. “No . . .” he breathed. “This one's different. Like the picture in
Treasure Island
!” Alfwin was not much of a reader, but Deor had taken to it, and when they could escape the endless chores he read to his friends from the lore books at Hraefnbeorg.

Alfwin peered at the angled black wedge that leaped against the sky. “Maybe . . .”

A host of wordless intuitions coalesced into certainty. “She's in trouble!” Deor pulled off his cloak and began to sweep twigs and fallen branches into it. “I'll light a beacon. Run back t' the village! Get boats out—pick up survivors if she goes down!”

The wind had torn a long branch from the pine. He tossed it down to the spit of land at the foot of the bluff, then pulled the hatchet from his belt and began to hack at the brush. By the time he had bundled it all into his cloak and scrambled down the slope the ship had passed the point. He stopped short as the sun, sinking below the clouds, painted the vessel a sudden vivid gold.

Need propelled him into action once more, piling the wood, using his belt knife to shave tinder down to the dry pith and fumbling with the flint and steel. He had been doing this since he was old enough to hold the striker, but never when lives might depend on that flame.

“Neid, Ken!”
Deor sketched the rune above the wood. “Loge damn you, burn!” He struck again, saw the spark catch, and spread his cloak to shield the infant flame. In moments, the resinous wood was flaring, fanned by the wind. Smoke billowed upward. Surely they would see. He flapped at the flames with his cloak until they roared.

When he dared look again, the ship was turning! Now he could see battered timbers and a white, desperate face at the rail. Even if mortal, the ship was amazing, maybe fifty feet in length with two masts, though one had snapped and the other bore only a tattered trysail. She leaped like a horse with a burr beneath the saddle, but she still swam.

He snatched a brand and loosed it in an arc to land in the slack water just beyond the guano-covered rock. “Here!” he shouted. “Anchor here!” The cove had seen no ship of any size since the Cataclysm, but the fisherfolk said that long ago, big ships had anchored there to load the great logs men cut in the hills.

Someone shouted from the deck. Deor snatched up another brand and waved it around to the left, willing them to turn. The boat heeled over, foam frothing at her prow. With a crack the sail split, but the wind at her stern was pushing her now. He gazed hungrily as she neared. Everything—her size, her elegant lines, even the bright paint on her battered sides, proclaimed, “Not from here . . .”

Until this moment he had not believed, not really, that beyond this small corner of what had once been California there were other communities of men in the world who still deserved to be called human.

The ship shot into the lee of the white rock and slowed. Men heaved at the anchor and with a splash it shot downward. The ship jerked as it caught, then came to a halt a short stone's throw away.

Deor let out his pent breath in a long sigh. Alfwin waved from the shore below the bridge, Willa and Manfred behind him, as two rowboats from the fishing village nosed between the pillars and headed into the cove.

“Ahoy!” came a call from the deck.

The man's graying dark hair was cropped shorter than he'd ever seen a free man wear, but it was clear that this was no thrall. Beside him a youth leaned over the rail. He looked to be a little less than Deor's age, but what wonders must he have already seen?

The captain's dark eyes met his own. “What place is this?”

Deor's pulse quickened. “Albion Cove!” he called in reply. “Barony of Mist Hills! I hight Deor Godulfson.
Wes haill!
Be welcome here!”

“Captain-owner Daniel Feldman,” the man replied. “Of the
Ark
; what's left of her,” he added ruefully.

Four machines crouched on either side—catapults, he realized, but they hadn't been enough. The sides and deck were peppered with holes as if someone had been using the boat for a target, even through the thin metal that covered much of the hull. In fact, in several places below the waterline something that looked very much like the sort of arrow an etin might shoot was still wedged in the planking, broken off and caulked with pitch to plug the hole. The rowboats had reached the vessel now and were taking off the first load of crew. To Deor's surprise there were women among them. At home both lads and lasses trained in the basic skills, but only the men of Albion Cove went to sea.

It's me
—Deor hugged himself, controlling the impulse to laugh from sheer joy.
Not my father, who dreamed of this day, or my brother, who never believed it would come. I'm the one who will welcome these folk and get first news of the weird of the world.

Still grinning, he kicked the remains of the fire into the sea and scrambled back up the hill.

*   *   *

By the time Deor had made his way back along the bluffs and down to the village, most of the ship's crew had been ferried ashore. A cauldron of chowder was already steaming over the fire. In their sodden shirts and breeches the strangers looked human enough. Alfwin's leather bota of brandy was being passed around, but they were clearly waiting for him, as the baron's son, to make the first move. As he came forward, the captain nodded and gestured toward the sea.

“Thanks for the signal fire.”

“I could see your trouble. From the look of your ship, ye've had a hard time.”

“Without ending in a whale's belly like Jonah, it would be hard to have worse,” the captain agreed. “There are tiger teeth on this coast of yours. We were on our way back from a run to Hawaii when we got jumped by pirates out of Mindanao; Suluk corsairs, I think. Chased us all the way across the sea and cut us off before we could reach home.”

Deor took a deep breath, still not certain in his soul that questioning these strangers would not cause them to vanish away. “And where might that be?”

“Newport,” said the captain. “The Faculty of Economics, Entrepreneurial Studies.”

“No—” Deor spoke more sharply than he had intended. “What land?”

The man's fine-boned face brightened suddenly. “Ah—” He looked around him at the broken bridge and the ruined buildings on the cliff above. “Of course, you wouldn't know . . . We're from the High Kingdom of Montival. The heart of it is the Willamette Valley, north of here, though come to think of it, in theory California is a part of the High King's realm.”

A king
 . . . breathed Deor.

Alfwin grinned. “Wonder what Duke Morgruen will think o' that?” For the children of men who had played at knights in the Society for Creative Anachronism before the old world fell, the word “king” had power.

“You're ruled by a duke here?” asked a sturdy young woman who was trying to dry a short coat made of closely woven brown wool at the fire. One of the others had called her Thora. She had a snub nose and a rather determined expression, and a mop of red hair stiff with salt spray. For a moment Deor stared. The thought came to him.
She's going to be important to me.

“He thinks so—” murmured Willa. Her father had lost a leg in one of Morgruen's cattle raids.

Deor turned back to the captain. “My father's the Baron of Mist Hills. Our burg lies a day's walk or so inland.” He gestured toward the slopes that rose behind them. Clad thickly in pine and fir, their tops stood out in stark silhouette against the dimming sky. “Morgruen has a fortress down on the Rushing River near where Healdsburg used to be. He farms the valley with cannibals he's captured and masterless men.”

“We like t' say he guards our southern borders from the cannibal band.” Alfwin grinned. “We can't take him, an' he says these hills aren't worth his while, but I think he don't dare try us on our own ground.”

That balance might change,
thought Deor,
if the barony can establish contact with Montival
. The crew of the
Ark
were good-looking men, agile and strong. As their clothing dried he could see that the fabric was near as finely woven as the stuff from the old times, but strong and new. And the rest of their gear—the metal fittings on belts and boots, and the steel cuirass that one man wore—was better than anything they could make at Hraefnbeorg. Any man could claim a grand title. But the newcomers' gear and that ship could only have come from a prosperous community.

“You'll be safe with us,” he said quickly. “You can shelter here tonight. Tomorrow we'll take ye to the burg.”

“We'll need to repair our ship—” said Captain Feldman, clearly uncertain what resources the Hraefnbeorg folk might have.

Deor nodded.

“You have a smith?”

“And supplies—whatever you need. We've seasoned wood, and it's been a good year—we can replace your stores. My father will want to talk to you about trade,” he finished in a burst, flushing a little at the captain's understanding smile.

He must know we'd do almost anything to get them to come back again.

“Then I think we can do business,” Captain Feldman replied. “I'd like to leave half my crew to start the work and bring the rest to the burg.”

“How many might that be?”

The captain sighed. “We've twenty-eight remaining—no, twenty-seven, and of them, six are too hurt to be much use. So it would be about a dozen.”

“Here in the cove your ship should be secure.” Deor paused, thinking. “Willa”—he turned to the girl—“you ride lightest. Can you leave at dawn? Bag up the fish we traded for and take the pack pony. Get back to Hraefnbeorg fast as you can and tell 'em we're coming. If my mother fails in hospitality because I brought strangers with no warning she'll have my hide.”

“I'd hate to cause her any trouble—” the captain began, but his eyes were smiling.