And behind him he could hear Mike Havel's voice. The workshop's walls were thin.
"-there's a reason you got the big farm and the help to work it and the rents and the Justice of the Peace appointment, Naysmith. And it wasn't so you could sit on your ass and drink beer and chase girls who didn't want to get caught. You're supposed to keep yourself and your people ready to fight, and administer justice. Christ Jesus, you do know what the word means, don't you?"
An inarticulate murmur, and then Havel 's voice rising to a roar:"-will not abide trash behavior, Naysmith! This is your last warning; next inspection, I expect your holding's A-listers and the militia to perform by the numbers and on the bounce. And the next complaint about you bullying your people or taking more than the compact allows will be the last; if there's a petition against you I will have that hauberk off your back and I will strike you off the Brotherhood's rolls. And your assessment is doubled for this harvest-it'll come out of your share too, not the farmers. If you want to work for a squeezing bandit, you can take your sorry ass over the border and try your luck with the Protector."
The apprentice stood stiffly at the foot of the stairs, eyes front, left hand on her sword hilt, right hand carrying her targe-small round shield-tucked across her chest. She was a little pale around the mouth; listening to a chewing-out from Mike was alarming at the best of times.
Another mumble, and Havel's voice was kinder: "Look, Mark, you've been with me since Idaho. We fought Iron Rod together. I know you can do better than this. So what's the problem? Tell me, for God's sake, and I'll help you."
Larsson grinned, taking a deep breath of the cool air. Think I'll go visit my newborn, or my grandchildren, he thought, and ambled off. He'd had his bellyful of being CEO back before the Change and had never liked it one little bit. It was good to have someone else to handle that stuff.
I'm a pretty good engineer, and I was passable as a businessman, but I really don't think God gave me what it takes to be a warrior king.
Chapter Three
Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, England
August 13th, 2006 AD-Change Year Eight
The M1 motorway that ran north from London was still passable beyond the edge of cultivation in the comman-dery of Whipsnade, in the sense that you didn't need to hack your way along it with a machete or ax; the six lanes and thick deep foundation under the pavement were putting up more resistance to the encroaching armies of revengeful Nature than most of man's works.
Nigel Loring still found it eerie to ride down it with walls of vegetation taller than the tip of his lance on either side, the more so as evening fell and his borrowed remount's hooves dragged beneath him. The sun was a red ball on the horizon, filtered through canes and branches. Runners and growth from the median strip and the verges were most of the way across the pavement; many of the autos and trucks were mere mounds of foliage. A fox sat on the roof of a pantechnicon and watched him until he was close enough to see the sun gilding its rufous fur and its tongue lolling through its sharp white teeth, then dropped to the ground and disappeared into the tangle of tree and shrub and bramble west of the roadway. There was a brief whiff of the dog-fox's musky scent as they passed, rankly feral beneath the warm green sweetness.
"Four men riding by and it's scarcely bothered," Alleyne Loring said. "You can tell there's not many riding to hounds in this county just of late. I hope those anti-fox-hunting fanatics were pleased, in the short interval before their hideous deaths."
The joke was sour, but Nigel Loring smiled; his son had been brooding alarmingly, and most of the remaining youth had left his handsome features, though he was still two years short of thirty.
"Watch out, Reynard," John Hordle called after the departing animal, as they rode under two overpasses. "You'll get scragged for sure if you 'ead that way-it's Milton sodding Keynes."
Nigel Loring chuckled. Odd. I'd have thought his cheerfulness would be irritating, under the circumstances, but it isn't. Maude always liked him, of course. She'd have given one of those gurgling laughs of hers if she were here now. I remember that was the first thing I noticed at that do of the vicar's-she was talking to him across the garden and I heard her laugh. She was wearing one of those absurd floppy hats: it was seventy-three: enough!
"I think we cleaned it out fairly thoroughly, back in CY3," he said. "There weren't many of the poor devils left by then, anyway."
"It's like cockroaches," Archie MacDonald said. "Ye'll no get the last of 'em, not with a whole kettle o' boiling water to the floorboards."
The farmworker was sweating a little, and he kept his bow across the saddle despite its awkward length for a mounted man. He started when three red deer rose up from the shade of an Aston Martin that must have cost three hundred thousand pounds once; the big russet animals poised for a moment, then turned and trotted swiftly away with their muzzles up and their horns laid on their backs, bounding over a three-car pileup of wrecks and running northward until they vanished from sight. Hordle looked at them and thoughtfully twanged the string of his bow.
"Not worth the trouble," Sir Nigel said. "We've got enough food to reach the Wash. "
"Wasn't thinking of that, sir-though that yearling hind looked fair tasty. I was thinking they looked like they'd been hunted before. You do much deer hunting around here, Jock?"
MacDonald squinted after the vanished animals. "We've no seen any, near the farm-not Bob's, nor the ones Gun-nar and I have filed for, we've done a bit of work on both, keeping the access roads clear and the buildings tight, ye ken. Hunting around here's mostly birds, rabbits, wild pig, fallow deer, and those little muntjacs-the ones that bark like dogs-they do love a bramble thicket. And you see some gey strange beasties from the Safari Park-there's rhino about yet-but no the red deer."
"The nearest herds of red deer were in Cornwall," Al-leyne said thoughtfully. "Fairly remote areas, mostly. The Lake District."
"Aye, an' Scotland, the Highlands. And they'll no ha' gotten a lift south on the Cutty Sark, the way we crofters did from Skye."
"I would expect them to spread south, though," Alleyne said. "Or it could be red deer from the Woburn herd, if any made it through. They'd be likely to move north for the grazing, and to get away from the settlers, this last little while."
He rubbed his chin, fingers rustling on soft blond stubble; there hadn't been much time for shaving. Like his father he was riding one of the farmer's horses, an undistinguished cob of about fourteen hands, and like the elder Loring he'd removed all his armor save for breast-and backplates and the helmet dangling at his saddlebow. Their own mounts followed behind, carrying the gear in sacks slung over the war saddles.
"But if they haven't spread to the edge of the farming country, why should they be wary of men?" he went on. "That bally fox wasn't. Ergo, they have been hunted."
Hordle and Nigel exchanged glances. That was a good point:
"We should be getting near the turn," Nigel said aloud, consulting the map in his head.
It was disconcertingly easy to lose your sense of place and distance, when the landscape looked so different from the way memory painted it. He'd driven through here countless times:
"Isn't there a Welcome Break sign about here? Has a flying goose or something of that sort painted on it."
"Nae, ye've gone too far if ye see that," Archie said. "It's three miles north o' here. Junction Fourteen-yes, that's it."
He pointed to a sign that rose thirty feet in the air with the upper part of its rusted, pitted surface above the vegetation; it was blue with a white band ending in a pointed tip at the top, and another line pointing leftward. A mile went by, steady riding at a fast walk-the stalled vehicles made it difficult to go faster. They were on the right side of the motorway, the southbound lane before the Change; Junction Fourteen was on their own right, curving up from the main thoroughfare. Another sign loomed.