Eric Larsson commanded the Bearkiller escort; he had a crest of scarlet-dyed horsehair nodding from front to rear of his round bowl helm, gold on the rivets that held the nasal bar at the front of it and the mail aventail at the rear and the hinged cheek-pieces, and more on his belt buckle and the hilt of his backsword. The metalwork of his war-saddle was polished bright, and the animal he rode was eighteen hands at the shoulder and groomed to glossy black perfection, an agile giant of Hanoverian warmblood descent. The man made a hand signal to the rider beside him; Luanne took up the trumpet slung on a bandolier across her chest and blew a complex measure. The column of lancers reined their mounts about as one to face westward, turning their formation into a double line; then they brought their lances down in salute until the points almost touched the patched asphalt of the roadway, and back up again in a flutter of long, narrow pennants.
A small party came down from the fort, four mounted figures, the metal of their armor colored an inconspicuous greenish-brown that barely showed against the thick woods of the hills behind; the McDonald Forest had been University property even before the Change, and well cared for. Havel recognized the one who led them, a medium-tall man with brown hair and brown eyes behind the three-bar visor of his helmet and a pair of sports glasses.
"Major Jones," he said.
"Lord Bear," the other man replied; he was in his early thirties, of medium height but deep-chested and broad-armed; he'd been a Society fighter and teaching assistant in the Faculty of Agriculture before the Change.
He saluted; Havel returned the gesture, turning in the saddle to make it towards the banner one of the Corvallans carried, its pole resting in a ring on his right stirrup. The flag was orange, with the brown-and-black head of a beaver on it, attempting a ferocious rodentine scowl; privately Havel thought it was dorky beyond words, but it had been the University's symbol for a long time and they were devoted to it.
"Welcome, Lord Bear, in the name of the people and the Faculty Senate of Corvallis," Jones said formally.
Then he stripped off his metal-backed gauntlet and shook hands, a dry, firm grip: "Good to see you again, Mike. And you, Signe, Eric, Luanne."
Eric had been looking at the weapons his escort carried. "Finally got that quick-loading crossbow working, Pete?" he said.
"Yeah," the officer said. "Gear, ratchet and bicycle chain in the butt and fore-stock, crank inset underneath. Turn it six times, and the weapon's cocked and ready to go as soon as you pull the trigger. Double the rate of fire of the old type and you can do it lying down, or in the saddle."
Havel's crooked smile quirked. "Easy to build and repair?" he said.
"Welclass="underline" we're still working on some problems with production and maintenance," Jones said reluctantly. "How's that car-jack thing your father-in-law is working on?"
"Classified," Havel said.
Jones smirked, which meant he thought classified translated as haven't got it working yet. Usually that was true, but in this case it was precisely the opposite. He wanted to spring it on the city-state as a done deal in a month or two when they reequipped everyone, to take their pretensions of technological superiority down a peg. Nobody denied they'd come through the Change unusually well, but the way they acted as if they were the last island of civilization in a world of bare-assed savages got a bit old after a while.
The Corvallan looked at their party. "Astrid and Eilir aren't along?"
"They're coming separately," Signe said. "They've got: a bit of a present to show around, you might say."
"And the Rangers are independents themselves, these days," Havel said.
"Since we all agreed to give them that stretch of woods. Sort of prickly about it, too."
Damned if I'm going to call them the Dunedain Rangers, he added to himself. Bad enough I have to do the Mad Max on Horseback thing myself.
One thing he did like about Corvallis was that it was a bit less given to weird names than the rest of the present-day Valley.
"Ken's not coming?" the Corvallan officer went on, looking surprised as Havel shook his head. "Your father-in-law usually doesn't pass up an opportunity to haunt our bookstores and the Library."
"Tell me," Havel said, thinking of the bills the Outfit had paid in grain and wool, tuns of wine and barrels of salt pork; they'd had words on the matter.
I'd have gotten even madder ij the stuff he dug up weren't so helpful sometimes.
Books were expensive these days, unless you were talking salvaged paperback copies of Tom Clancy or the like, and even those were getting rare and fragile in this damp climate. Real books on something useful were pricey, either because they were irreplaceable-books made good kindling and a lot of libraries had burned after the Change-or because they'd been new-printed with hand-operated presses on dwindling stores of pre-Change paper. Or on the even more expensive rag-pulp type Corvallis had started making recently. The city-state had a biweekly newsletter, all of four pages, and copies cost more than a day's wages for a laboring man.
Luanne chuckled. "We unloaded the grandkids on Ken-Mike's youngest, and both of ours. And since he and honorable step-mom-in-law Pam had the bad taste to produce two more at their decrepit ages, he's up to his distinguished wizardly white beard in rugrats. Labor-intensive work."
Jones nodded. "Tell me," he said, and touched the rein to the neck of his horse to fall in beside them. "Between the kids and the farm and the weaving, I don't know how the hell Nancy stays sane when I'm out on patrol, even with Mom and the hired help."
"We do have our doc along," Signe said. "He needs some supplies."
Jones nodded proudly; Corvallis was the best place in Oregon to buy such. Havel shot a glance at his brother-in-law, and Eric's hand chopped forward. The column rumbled into motion southward.
"OSU our hats are off to you,
Beavers, Beavers, fighters through and through
We'll cheer thru-out the land,
We'll root for every stand,
That's made for old OSU!
Watch our pikes go tearing down the field;
Those of iron, their strength will never yield
Hail! Hail! Hail! Hail! Hail to old OSU!"
Christ Jesus, what an abortion of a national anthem! Mike Havel thought, behind a gravely respectful face. Just as well we don't have one. Though we use "March of Cambreadth" a lot, at least the lyrics aren't outright stupid and it's got a great tune.
Then again, at least the city-state wasn't pretending to be something it wasn't. There were half a dozen governments in this general part of the continent that claimed to be the United States, from single small towns to one that covered most of southwestern Idaho. All of them were rather nasty dictatorships. They used "The Star-Spangled Banner," which was not only presumptuous of them but to Mike Havel's way of thinking in extremely bad taste.
The Corvallans weren't just singing. Pompom-wielding cheerleaders led the crowd through the fight song, their short-skirted orange-and-black costumes swinging as they kicked and leapt. That was fairly ludicrous too, but then, he'd thought cheerleading was dumb even back in the eighties when he'd been on the bench and the local maidens were egging on the audience for the Hancock High Wolverines. As a teenager he'd considered football the chosen sport of idiots; track and field had been what he liked, and cross-country skiing, and by choice he'd hunt or ride his Harley or tinker with its engine or even work chores at home instead of doing head-butts with behemoths. The little Upper Peninsula high school hadn't had talent to waste, though, and he'd been effectively conscripted as the fastest running back they'd had for years.