The Protector's War (69 page)

Nigel Loring's mouth quirked a little; he wasn't used to being beamed at in quite that open a way. Then his smile grew, almost involuntarily.

“It's a tempting offer,” he said.

Signe Havel tapped her fork on her plate. “Unless you're still thinking of sailing away,” she added.

Nigel Loring's smile died. “No, indeed,” he said. “I'd have done my best to get him out if they hadn't gone off on their own, but I'm afraid Captain Nobbes isn't in a position to offer asylum to anyone. Not anymore.”

 

Castle Morgul, near Portland, Willamette Valley

May 14th, 2007—Change Year Nine

 

Nobbes's scream was high and shrill; Norman Arminger would have called it inhuman, if the past decade hadn't taught him the remarkable range of the human voice. The Tasmanian captain was on the vertical rack, limbs stretched out in an X in padded clamps that allowed the maximum tension to be applied without tearing off a wrist or ankle too soon.

The Lord Protector lounged back in the padded chair, his boots up—it was a leather-covered recliner, salvaged from an expensive home in the western suburbs of Portland where some information-company executive had used it to enjoy the movies on his brand-new DVD player.

I wonder if they really would have replaced videotape?
Arminger thought.

The recliner did look a little out of place in the dungeon, but then the dungeon itself was a bit of a compromise between his mental image of the Platonic ideal of underground prisons and what was practical, which had its limits even in the Changed world.

A castle required strong foundations, even one made from cast ferroconcrete, and that meant cellars and underground storage were easy to arrange. Small tables on either side of the chair held a bottle of white wine, a glass, and a selection of small pastries made with honey and nuts. He had considered lighting with torches, but they were just too flickery and smoky; the standard alcohol lanterns hanging from the groined archwork of the ceiling cast a suitably low blue glow. The walls were plain gray concrete, but held plenty of racks for tools and instruments; the floor led to a grating-covered drain. There were air ducts at the corners, carefully made just too small for a human being to crawl through. The concrete was slightly damp with condensation, but several glowing charcoal braziers kept it comfortably warm; bits of pine resin covered the scents of sweat and fear and old blood. Filthy straw infested with bugs and rats was lacking even in the corridors of cells about, but then experience had proven typhus was no respecter of persons. Nakedness on cold wet stone was an adequate substitute for keeping his prisoners in the right state of mind.

The attendants were thoroughly traditional, though, besides the two men-at-arms by the door: stocky men bare to the waist, wearing black leather hoods with eyeholes, and pants of the same material. Sandra wasn't here today; she knew his mood was dangerously taut right now with worry.

The scream died away to a mumbling whimper, and then silence.

“Give him another quarter-turn,” Arminger said, sipping at the wine.

“He's fainted, my lord,” one of the technicians said.

“Well, revive him, then!” Arminger snapped.

The technicians slacked the tension slightly, and followed that up with several buckets of cold water. Nobbes came awake enough to try and catch some of that in his mouth, licking up the drops and then screaming again when he sucked a little into his lungs and had to cough and racked himself. Arminger waited until something approaching consciousness returned to the haunted eyes.

“I swear I don't know anything about anyone kidnapping your daughter, oh, God, I don't
know!
Water, please, water.”

Arminger nodded reluctantly. “All right, let's move on to my nerve gas. You didn't have time to destroy it, so you must have hidden it somewhere. I'll find it eventually, but I want it
now,
and not just that lousy little bottle I tested. So tell me.”

After a moment's silence, the lord of Portland went on: “Look at the wall.”

Nobbes did, when one of the technicians knotted his fingers in the Tasmanian sailor's hair and wrenched his head around.

“There are a number of interesting little tools there. Some are sharp. Some are heavy. Some can be made red-hot. And some can be heavy and hot
and
sharp. So…” He turned his eyes to the technician. “A dose of the hook, I think. Not the barbed one, and just the inner thigh, this time.”

When the screams had died down to sobbing, he went on: “Now, tell me where my nerve gas is.”

“Buh…buh…”

Arminger made a gesture with one finger, and a sponge soaked in water and vinegar was held to the prisoner's lips. When he was coherent again he raised his head.

“But if I tell you, you'll just kill me, you bastard!”

Arminger smiled and nodded. “Yes, I will, after checking to be sure you're not fibbing. And when you realize that's the
upside
of the bargain for you, you'll talk. Another quarter turn there.”

Several hours later Arminger walked out of the interrogation room and down a corridor with a long row of cells on either side—he'd found that keeping the prisoners within hearing distance of the interrogations was useful for softening-up, and besides, there was a certain aesthetic balance to it. Hands gripped the bars and eyes glared, but he was safely beyond reach, and a brace of guards followed. Captain Nobbes had gone before, on a gurney with a doctor and nurses in attendance. It wouldn't do for him to die prematurely, after all.

“What about us, you bastard?” one of the crewmen of the
Pride of St. Helens
called.

“Shut up, fuckface!” the guard snarled, lashing at his fingers.

“No, no, that's a legitimate question,” Arminger said, as the prisoner staggered back from the bars, clutching at his injured hand. “I think…yes, I think that when my daughter returns, I'll hold a tournament. We'll have jousts, and a melee, and bear-baiting, and then something new. You're all going to volunteer to fight a pair of tigers, with knives. Knives for you, not the tigers, that is. I think twenty-to-one is fair odds. If any of you survive, I'll even let you live. The salvage and construction gangs can always use new hands. Simple food, an outdoor life, and healthy manual labor.”

More curses followed; the prisoners probably thought they had nothing to lose. They were wrong about that, and the ones who wept, or lay curled up and hugging themselves were wiser. What he'd probably do to them all if his daughter
didn't
return soon would make fighting a four-hundred-pound Bengal starved and tortured into madness seem quite desirable.

The one who'd asked first was a brave man. “What if we refuse?” he said.

One of Arminger's brows rose. “Refuse to fight?” he said.

“Of course! Why should we give you a free show, you manky pervo?”

“Well, if you don't fight, the audience will be disappointed.” He smiled slowly. “But I don't think the tigers will mind at all.”

 

The local baron had vacated the great hall—he spent most of his time at a nearby pre-Change mansion anyway—and Sandra Arminger waited, pacing nervously back and forth in front of the hearth. Guardsmen stood like iron statues down the wall, their spears glinting dully in the gloom.

“Well?” she said sharply, after waving her attendants out of earshot.

“Nothing about Mathilda,” he said. “I didn't expect there'd been any conspiracy there, anyway. It looks like serendipity; she and Molalla's son just happened to be where the Mackenzies were raiding—they'd decided to come home that day on the spur of the moment, no way to anticipate it. And the Mackenzies won't hurt her, you know that.”

“They won't hurt her body. I want her
back,
Norman!”

He made a soothing gesture. “So do I, my love. So do I; very badly indeed. But we'll have to be extremely careful. A botched attempt
could
result in her being hurt. At the least, we'll have to wait for them to drop their guard and relax a bit.”

She bit her lip, eyes troubled, then nodded sharply; less in agreement than recognition there was nothing immediate they could do. That knowledge made him swallow a bubble of acid-tasting anger, but there
wasn't
. Not yet.

But when the time comes…
he thought, and saw her perfect agreement.

“What about the VX?” she said, forcing herself to attend to business.

Arminger smiled sourly: “We'll still have to confirm the location he gave us, but I finally managed to persuade him.”

She raised an eyebrow and he went on: “You might say I made him an offer he couldn't survive.”

Larsdalen, Willamette Valley, Oregon

May 16th, 2007 AD—Change Year Nine

“
Y
ou haven't built much in the way of forts over in Britain?” Mike Havel said politely, as they rode under the Larsdalen gate.

“More a matter of refurbishing old ones,” Nigel Loring said, running a shrewd eye over the stonework. “Mass concrete, really, isn't it?”

“Built like Hoover Dam, but around a framework of I-beams,” Havel agreed. “I don't suppose you did need to start from scratch, much, over there.”

“If there is one thing England
isn't
short of, it's castles—or Ireland or the Continent either,” Loring agreed. “Most of them in nice strategic locations, as well.”

Havel shook his head. “Strange to think Britain did so well.”

Loring's mouth quirked and he ran his forefinger over his mustache. “More a matter of Britain doing very badly and everyone else in the vicinity doing even worse, actually. Once we restored order, there wasn't much actual fighting. Not in mainland Britain, because there wasn't anyone left to fight. We've had to do a bit of sword work on the Continent, and against the Moors. And in Ireland—a bad business, that, and I can't see any end to it.”

Havel surprised him by laughing aloud. “Christ Jesus, you Brits are getting back to your roots,” he said. “What's next, fighting the Spanish Armada?”

“Well…in point of fact, old boy, we're colonizing Spain ourselves. From Gibraltar, you see. It was empty, and it was that or let the Moors have it…”

Havel's laugh grew. “Another empire ‘acquired in a fit of absence of mind'?” he asked, surprising the Englishman.

“To be absolutely honest, that phrase always struck me as a bit silly-clever, if you know what I mean.
Presence
of mind, rather; profit and preaching, philanthropy and plunder, pinching a bit of land for those not welcome at home, and incidentally keeping the bloody Frogs out. Doubtless it'll be the same this time, although now the French aren't a problem, eh? Now,
they
had bad luck…I'm a bit surprised you came up with the quotation.”

“Got it from my father-in-law; I think you'll like him. Anyway, it hasn't been so straightforward here. Things are less…compact. Not as easy for someone to come out on top quickly.”

Havel answered the salute of the gate detachment, and then waved to the crowd beyond; it was several hundred strong, and in everything from farm-hand's overalls to A-lister armor. Loring cocked an eye at the reaction; not as loud as the cheers Arminger had received, but he judged it to be a good deal more authentic. Havel rose in the stirrups to address the crowd.

“Well, Crusher Bailey isn't going to be troubling the northern marches anymore,” he said. “Last time I saw him, he was dancing on air with some crows waiting for lunch after the performance.” That raised another cheer, louder and with a savage edge to it. “We had a brush with the Protector's men too, and they came away sorry and sore.”

The cheer turned into a snarl; evidently the Protector was unpopular here. The snarl turned into a chant, with fists and swords brandished above it:

“Lord Bear! Lord Bear! Lord Bear! Hakkaa paalle!”

“All right, cut it out! No biggie! Everyone get back to what you were doing, for Christ's sake!”

And he doesn't need to wallow in it, the way Arminger did, either,
Loring thought.

With the
Pride of St. Helens
thoroughly lost, it seemed Oregon was where he would stay—and his son, and John Hordle—unless they felt like an overland trek. Once the adrenaline rush of escape was over, that had been depressingly certain. Finding that some of the Lord Protector's enemies were better company was reassuring.
And, of course…
His mouth quirked.

“Que?”
Havel asked.

“Oh.”
Didn't think my musing was that obvious.
“I was just thinking that if I had to land in the middle of a war at my advanced age, at least it's one I could feel enthusiastic about.”

Havel smiled, a crooked expression. “I'm glad you ended up in it too, Sir Nigel. There aren't many people whose judgment on a man I'll take at more or less face value, but Sam Aylward is one of them, and he says you're very capable and…‘fly' is the way he puts it.”

The newcomers dismounted, and grooms led the horses away; Bearkillers and Mackenzies mingled, talking with friends and relations, or being led away to the bunkhouses for visitors. Two girls came running, their blond braids bouncing as they leapt at Mike Havel; he staggered slightly under their combined nine-year-old weights and then turned with one under each arm, the skirts of his hauberk flying. Nigel blinked for a moment; they were identical, and if one hadn't had a scratch on the cheek he couldn't have told which was which from one second to the next as the Bearkiller lord whirled about.

“Mom! Dad!” they squealed; Signe Havel stood with her hands on her hips and laughed.

“Mary, Ritva, if you can leave off trying to murder your old man, there are guests to meet,” Mike said.

Loring hid a smile as he gravely shook hands with both; so did Alleyne, and had the effect he usually did on females.

I can't quite understand it,
the elder Loring thought, watching them blink and beam at his son.
Granted, he's taller than I was at his age, and a good deal more handsome…perhaps it's the smile? He must have gotten it from Maude.

Then he watched their eyes go wide as they looked up and up and up at John Hordle. The big young man laughed like boulders rumbling as his huge paw engulfed their small hands, then knelt.

“Want a ride, young misses?” he grinned; they hopped on his shoulders, sitting easily with their arms around his sallet helm, and he and Alleyne followed the rest of the party up to the great brick house.

Mike Havel started to follow, when a voice checked him:

“Lord Bear!”

The crowd had dispersed, except for a few. One was a determined-looking young woman of about twenty with a man only a little older standing off to one side, obviously trying to look as if he wasn't
with
her. The occasional angry glares they exchanged argued for a close relationship.

“Lord Bear, I've got a petition.”

Havel paused. “It can't wait until tomorrow? Dinner's ready…oh, all right. You're Yvonne Hawkins, aren't you?” he said to the girl. “Work in the dairy?”

She had an open-air prettiness, work-worn hands, dark hair in braids down past her shoulders, and she wore a sweater and denim skirt and broguelike shoes.

“Yes, Lord Bear,” she said, ducking her head. “Milking, and on the separator. My folks farm on Lord and Lady Hutton's land. I've got a complaint.”

The Bearkiller chieftain suppressed an impatient snort—Loring thought it unlikely the girl would notice—and set himself, with the air of a man who does something necessary but unpleasant.

“Why didn't you take it to Angelica, or Will?”

“Well…it's a complaint against an A-lister, and he's not serving in their household, Lord Bear. And…” She twisted in embarrassment.

“And people like to go to the top,” Havel said.

True,
Loring thought.
More to it than that, I think. At a guess, she thinks you'd be less eager to judge her about something.

“OK, you're a member of the Outfit, you've got a right to appeal to me, so spit it out,” Havel went on. He'd banished his air of impatience, and waited with all his attention on her face.

She flushed and looked around, then steeled herself. “
He
”—she pointed—“promised to marry me. Now I'm pregnant and he won't. I wouldn't have…well, you know, my lord. Not unless I thought we were getting married.”

Havel turned on one heel towards the man, stripping off his mail-backed gauntlets. “OK, Morrison, now you. Did you make a promise to Ms. Hawkins here? And you're the father?” The young man hesitated, then nodded twice.

Havel went on, with a chilly glare: “That was smart. Lying to Ms. Hawkins would be bad. Lying to
me
would be
stupid
.”

He didn't add
fatally stupid.
From the way young Morrison's tanned face went pale as he nodded again it wasn't necessary, but he kept his eyes level. He was a big blond youngster in his early twenties, with the enlarged wrists and corded forearms of a swordsman, and a small dark scar between his brows.

“OK, there's no law here against being a fink,” Havel began, and the girl's face fell. “But there
is
a
regulation
against dishonorable behavior among A-listers, in case you hadn't noticed; we've got more privileges than other people, and more obligations, too. Breaking promises is right up there with things we're
not
supposed to do; and that does
not
mean just promises to other A-listers and their families, in case the regs aren't clear…and they are. Any explanation, Morrison?”

“Mylord, I…I just didn't want to get married
yet,
” the younger man said helplessly. “It's not—I don't have a holding of my own yet, I'm still doing household service with my brother Karl, and—”

“Well, you should have thought of that, shouldn't you?” Havel said. “Christ Jesus, son, do I have to tell you where babies come from? Or what to do about it if you're not angling to reproduce yet?”

The girl flushed more deeply; Morrison shuffled his feet. “We did,” he said. “I mean, we were careful but…it just didn't work, and then Yvonne wouldn't listen to me at all when I said how difficult things were.”

Loring stroked his mustache, smiling to himself. Barrier contraceptives still worked, but they were a good deal more cumbersome than the vanished Pill, and a bit less reliable.

“He wanted to get rid of the baby!” she snapped. At Havel's raised brow: “I won't. It's not right. I'm Catholic.”

As are the Huttons, I understand,
Loring thought.

Havel pointed at Morrison again. “You?” Then: “Speak up, I can't hear you, Morrison!”

“The Old Religion, sir.”

There seem to be a good many of them about, here,
Loring thought.

He wasn't altogether surprised; accidents of survival in the period right after the Change had left odder imbalances in the lands he'd seen—most of the few people left in Spain spoke Basque, for example. It all depended on who lived; a single charismatic leader or small group could be very influential. Witness His Majesty in England—or for that matter, Colonel Sir Nigel Loring.

Havel's grin was less pleasant to see this time. “And what exactly do you think Juney—I mean, the Mackenzie, would say about the way you've been acting? Something about a threefold rule?”

Morrison winced again, and this time there seemed to be more in the way of genuine fear in his expression. Loring's eyebrows rose. The Mackenzie leader had seemed a mild sort to him, without any of the hard-man menace you could sense under Michael Havel's rough good humor. And her authority here in Bearkiller territory would be religious, not secular, from what he understood.

A lady with unsuspected depths,
he thought.
Hmmm. For a woman to emerge as a leader in times like these…A lady with
very considerable
depths, I should think. Besides her obvious charm, of course.

“OK, it's your kid, and you promised to help look after it, so you owe the young lady big-time, one way or another,” Havel said briskly. “That's my judgment. You can appeal to the A-list assembled, Brother Morrison, if you think I'm overtreading your rights. I wouldn't advise it, seeing as Brother Hutton would be speaking for Ms. Hawkins, and if I know Will, he and Angelica would be somewhere between furious and ripshit. With you, not her.”

Morrison shook his head this time, emphatically. “I'll accept your judgment, Lord Bear.”

“Ms. Hawkins, do you still want to marry this man? He's not a bad sort, just young and using his head for a helmet rack and not much else.”

She hesitated a moment. “Yes, my lord Bear. He's…I'm angry with him, but I still love him.”

He grinned again, in more friendly wise than before. “Smart girl. Not everyone can keep the difference between being angry with someone and not liking them straight in their heads. What about you, Brother Morrison?”

“Yes, my lord. Definitely.”

Havel's expression softened. He thumped a hand down on the young man's shoulder. “Good.” Then he leaned closer, and spoke softly; Loring could make it out, but he didn't think that the girl could. “And just between me and thee, Brother, I was going to assign her a third of your income for the next eighteen years if you said no. Glad you got smart.”