Dies the Fire (35 page)

Havel nodded. “Notice something about Running Horse's bunch?”

“The costumes? I'm not surprised at that. Will's right—it's the sort of thing you'd expect, psychologically speaking. Though I suspect they had to read anthropology texts to get the details!”

“Nah, I agree about that. What I noticed was that more than half of them didn't look even
part
Indian, including some of the ones all gussied up like Chief Joseph on steroids. Give you odds in a couple of generations, there'll be a group here who
call
themselves Nez Perce—or Tsoop-Nit-Pa-Lu—but look a lot more like me, or even Eric.”

Ken gave him a considering look. “You know, you're probably right about that. Wouldn't be surprised if the same thing didn't happen in a lot of other places, too. For that matter, long-term, we're going to see a lot of ethnogenesis going on in the next generation or so.”

At Havel's look of bafflement, he went on: “Tribes, ethnic groups, call 'em what you will. Little groups forming around a community or a leader and starting to think of themselves as a people. Mayor Reines's bunch too, for that matter. Anyone who can do the job—and the first little group will sort of set the tone for those who join up. Like a saturated solution forming around a seed-crystal. It's just starting now, of course, but give it a few years, or generations.”

“Yeah, I suppose a lot of these guys like Reines or like Running Horse will go down in the history books,” he said aloud. “The ones who pulled things together in their own neighborhood.”

Ken shook his head. “I doubt there will be any history books for a long time,” he said. “I wouldn't give mass literacy more than another generation, most places—less in some—and a lot of the world's going to lose the concept of writing altogether. Too many lost skills to reinvent.”

“We've found a fair number of people who know how to do things the old-fashioned way,” Havel pointed out. “Hell, we've already got a blacksmith, and people who can make a saddle starting with cows or run up a house starting with trees.”

Ken laughed, a little harshly. “Yup. And that's a bit of a joke, when you think about it. Pre-Change America was rich enough that people could practice blacksmithing or weaving or whatnot
as hobbies,
or make a living turning out high-priced handmade goods for collectors with a lot of disposable income. Handicrafts are rarer in backward areas, apart from a few of the
most
backward. You don't go on making hand-thrown pots when you can buy cheap plastic and aluminum, not when you're living on the edge. You can't spare time or effort for aesthetics. So in the long run we may be
better
off that way than, say, Columbia or Kenya. In the short run, mass die-off, of course.”

“Irony still functions post-Change,” Mike said with a chuckle. There were times when gallows humor was the only type available. The problem was that those were the times you most needed a laugh.

Ken nodded, getting a faraway look. Havel recognized it; the older Larsson looked that way when he was doing the big-picture thing.

Which is useful, within limits,
Havel thought.
Gotta make strategy drive tactics, not the other way 'round, as Captain Stoddard used to say.

Ken went on: “When we get settled, we should look into how to make rag paper. The acid-based pulp in most modern books doesn't last more than a generation even with careful storage; anything that isn't recopied will be lost by the time your kids are my age. Books will get
almighty
expensive in the places that hang on to the notion at all. When you're talking a small-scale society that doesn't really
need
literacy to function, it just won't pay to put in the effort, not when there's cloth to weave and turnips to hoe.”

“Hard to keep the history straight, then,” Havel said. “That's a pity. I . . . the things we're all doing, what's going on . . . that should be preserved.”

“Oh, it will be, but not as
history.
We've fallen out of history, history with a capital H.”

Havel raised a brow. “How can you be outside history? Sure, maybe nobody will
record
it, but it'll still be there.”

“Ever read the
Iliad
or the
Odyssey
?”

“Yeah, bits here and there. I always preferred
Ulysses;
Achilles was an undisciplined glory hound, the sort who's a nightmare to his squad leader. A good soldier needs to be ready to die, but a suicidal one just leaves you with another damned empty slot in the TOE you have to train a replacement for.” He paused, then added judiciously: “Unless you need someone to play Polish Mine Detector real bad. Then a glory hound can come in
very
useful.”

“Right,” Ken chuckled. “But the point is that nobody
wrote
those poems. They were composed to be recited aloud and memorized, and they're full of bits from a lot earlier—half a millennium earlier, from the fall of Troy, with some chunks that may have been a thousand years old or more when Homer was singing for his supper. That's how people in that type of culture remember things—just like the sagas, only those got written down sooner. It's not history. It's folk-memory, the time of legends and heroes and myths, and anything that happens gets crammed into that framework. A sense of historical time needs a high civilization, and a particular type of one at that. Barbarians and tribes live in mythic time, legend time, not an ordered progression of centuries going from somewhere to somewhere. It might be better to say they're timeless.”

“Like the
Kalevala
?”

“Yup. Or the
Nibelungenleid,
where you get Siegfried and the dragon and the cursed Rhinegold all mixed up with real figures centuries apart like Attila the Hun and Theodoric the Ostrogoth.”

“And then some looney squarehead makes a
real
boring experience out of 'em,” Havel said. He'd suffered through a video of the complete
Ring
cycle once, with a girl who was crazy for the stuff.

Ken went on: “Most of the Old Testament is the same sort of thing, filtered through literate scribes much later.”

“So someone may make a saga out of our friend Howie someday? Or a chapter of Genesis?”

“More like Exodus. Out of a distorted what-Grandpa-told-me memory of him, yeah.” Ken got up, pushing off his knees. “Or maybe a memory of
you,
Mike. You're the one who killed the bear and led his people to the promised land . . . if we make it. See you tomorrow.”

Hmmm,
Havel mused.
Ken is an interesting guy to have around.

He poked a stick into the fire, watching the sparks fly up towards the bright frosting of stars; it was a little chilly now, with the sun well down.

Orange flames crawled over the low coals of the fire; in them he seemed to see vague pictures, visions of glory amid the fire—

“Surprise!”

He rose, pivoting smoothly and very fast, the sword coming free of the scabbard with a rasping hiss of steel on greased leather and wood. At the same time he stepped sideways so he wasn't silhouetted against the fire and cursed how it had killed his night sight for crucial seconds. He hadn't been expecting anything—

He straightened up, blinking. People stood before him, a crowd of most of the adults in the outfit—with Signe, Luanne, Astrid, and Angelica Hutton in the forefront. Signe and Luanne had his new and all-of-a-sudden-finished hauberk slung between them on a pole run through one sleeve and out the other. Angelica had the gambeson bundled up in her arms. And Astrid . . .

Astrid was holding out a helmet.

The actual metal was the standard model they'd settled on, a round steel bowl with a leather-and-foam liner, a flat bar riveted on the front to protect the nose, and a leather skirt at the rear—the aventail—covered in chain mail to guard the neck.

This one had some additions. The tanned head of a bear was mounted on it, the top half at least, with the snarling muzzle at brow-level and enough of the fur left attached behind it to hide the helmet's neck flap. Glass eyes stared at him, and the teeth were bared in an artistic, and quite realistic, snarl. He remembered the expression vividly, from the time the beast had been about to eat him.

“Well . . .” he said, feeling suddenly inadequate. “Well, I guess that's where the bearskin went.”

“Angelica and Will showed us how to do the tanning,” Astrid said proudly. “Actually it was sort of gross, you use
brains.
But it looks great now. We wanted to be sure we'd got it right, so we waited and it didn't smell at all. Put it on, put it on!”

Her face was shining.

He did spare a glower for the adults, who should have known better than to let her gussy up fighting gear with nonessentials.

The padded coat was easy, closing up the front with an overlapping flap and laces. Luanne and Signe held the mail coat over his head as he ducked, then helped him wiggle into it with a clash and clinking rustle; you
could
put it on yourself, but it was a pain.

The shifting weight dragged at his shoulders, and he quickly cinched his broadsword belt tight around his waist to stabilize it and transfer some of the burden to his hips. Will had made forearm protectors—vambraces—out of sheet steel, hammered to fit around wooden forms; he slipped on his, then buckled on shin guards, leather covered in thin steel splints, and pulled on leather gauntlets whose backs were covered in more chain mail.

Not bad,
he thought critically, doing a few twists and deep knee bends, flexing his hands and swinging his arms, his enthusiasm growing.

“The helmet, the helmet!” Astrid said, and a bunch of the youngsters took it up.

He took it from her and settled it on his head, fastening the chinstrap. The nasal bar bisected his view, and he found himself unconsciously shifting his head slightly back and forth to keep his peripheral vision up.

The bear head mounted on top didn't seem to make any difference, or add any real weight. It wouldn't matter in a fight, although the thing was going to look pretty tattered if a couple of edged weapons went through on their way to the metal beneath. He could always switch back to the one he already had after a couple of days.

“And we made the rest of the hide up into a cloak, for colder weather,” Astrid said proudly.

At her urging he swung the heavy length of cinnamon-touched black fur around his shoulders, fastening the paws across his chest with a hammered-gold clasp—gold was easy to come by these days and a lot less valuable than food or tools. The curing was professionally done—exactly what he'd have expected of any project the Huttons oversaw—and it had only the musky-sweet new-upholstery smell of well-tanned hide. The claws clicked on his chain mail as he threw the left side back a little to free his sword hilt.

Shit, I must look like a carnivorous Carmen Miranda,
he thought.
It's a good thing I can't see myself—

Eric and Josh walked up with a full-length mirror from one of the houses. With a flourish they set it down beside the fire, and then he
could
see himself. For a long minute he gaped, hearing a murmur from all around him as the Bearkillers took it in, with some townies who'd been hanging around as well.

I look like something off the cover of one of Astrid's goddamned books!
he thought. The words “no fucking way” trembled on his lips.

Astrid's face was shining. Suddenly she threw her fists in the air and cried: “All hail to Lord Bear!”

His own shout of revulsion was buried in the chorus as everyone else took it up—except for Eric, who'd actually fallen flat laughing and who lay helplessly hugging himself as he rolled on the ground.

That left Havel grinding his teeth in fury. After a moment, he realized what bothered him more: better than half the spectators weren't laughing at all. In fact, they were taking it just as seriously as Astrid.

Christ Jesus,
he thought, stomach sinking.
The kid's making a hero-shaped hole and the entire bunch of them are shoving me into it.

 

 

 

“So, does this count as a date?” Signe said. “Here we are, alone at last.”

Startled, Havel looked over at her. They were side-by-side on the seat of the wagon, and he was suddenly conscious of the slight summery smell of her, clean sweat and woman.

And she's definitely a woman,
he thought, with a wry smile.
There's
never
a bad time to stop and discuss your feelings.

“Ummm . . . I hadn't actually thought of it that way,” he said cautiously. “For one thing, your brother and Pam are under the tarp right behind us, so we're not really alone.”