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."
He shook his head as the youngsters walked away; as they did, the two figures grew closer. "Christ Jesus, I didn't expect this sort of thing would be part of the job."
"Stranger things have happened," Loring said reminis-cently. "There are times an officer has to be a father to his men. And at Tilford-well, you wouldn't be interested in an old man's maunderings."
"You can learn by listening, or by getting whacked between the eyes with a two-by-four. I always found listening easier. Right now, let's go get dinner." He grinned. "You haven't met Mike Jr. yet; he's still in a high chair. But feeding him, thank God, is something I can still unload on Signe and the nanny."
He shrugged again, this time the sort of gesture a man made before settling down to a heavy task. "And tomorrow, it's back to work."
The map room of Larsdalen had been a sun porch before the Change, with half its roof of glass, and tall windows on two sides. The leaders of the Bearkillers and their allies sat at a long table with the glass behind them and the maps before; the military apprentices had set out spirit lamps with pots of herbal tea and platters of oatmeal cookies studded with raisins, then left before the serious talking began. The evening sun gave excellent natural light; the maps looked as if they'd been drawn by hand post-Change, but by experts, and they showed the Pacific Northwest in considerable detail at half a dozen different scales. Nigel Loring appreciated the skill that had gone into them, and their value. Knowing what was where, which roads were passable:
"Everyone who hasn't met him, this is Sir Nigel Loring; he's given the Protector's nose a good hard yank; details are sort of classified. Sam Aylward knew him before the Change, and vouches for him. He was an SAS colonel then, and apparently ran the whole British army afterward, until he had a falling-out with the government there. Sir Nigel, this is Major Jones of the Corvallis University Militia," Havel said.
The soldier was a slender, strong man in his thirties, in a green uniform that looked as if it was designed to be worn under armor, and glasses held on with a rubber strap. The map indicated that Corvallis lay south of the Bearkiller territories, and that it ruled a broad swath between the Williamette River and the Pacific.
"And Councilor Edward Finney of the agriculture faculty there."
The councilor was a square-built man of about. Loring's age; his hand was square as well, callused and strong. "I'm actually just a farmer," he said. "Air force before the Change-logistics specialist; my dad owned a farm near town, and I got out, got back there. Pete, here, was a teaching assistant in the history department, and in the SCA. The university, or part of it, ended up running things in our area: long story."
"Ed's an old friend, too," Juniper said. "I knew his father well before the Change and we worked together afterward."
"I wish we could say we represent Corvallis," Finney said, nodding. "But we're only quasi-official here."
"We represent some of Corvallis," the younger man in green said sourly. "The part that takes the Protector seriously."
Havel snorted softly. Loring looked over to Sam Ayl-ward; the stocky noncom nodded slightly. Right, Loring thought. A city-state run by committees: which means there'll be plenty who won't acknowledge a problem until it comes and bites them on the arse. Still, they can't be totally shambolic, or they wouldn't be alive now.
"Sir Nigel's brought us a good deal of information about the Protector's capacities and intentions," Havel said. A grin: "Partly because the Protector didn't intend that he'd ever get loose to tell anyone about it, and indulged his taste for monologuing about the details of his own greatness. Sir Nigel, over to you."
Nigel rose, cleared his throat, and began to recite: numbers, estimates, appraisals of men and weapons that he'd seen. He didn't need to look at the notes he'd made, but Signe Havel occasionally glanced down at her copies. When he finished, the faces of the Corvallans were longer than they'd been.
"Told you, Pete, Eddie," Havel said.
"Yes, you did," the soldier said glumly. "And we believed you all along. The problem is, our homegrown idiots are just going to say that means they're right to bend over backward-or forward-to avoid making the Protector angry." He held up a hand. "Yeah, I know, Mike, that means they hope he'll break his teeth on you guys-or at least eat them last. And that's truly, deeply stupid. But it's so."
Havel grunted sourly and looked at Loring. "So, you'd estimate he can put about ten thousand men into the field?"
"Allowing for minimal garrisons in the rest of his territories, yes," Loring said. "If you don't mind me asking, what can you call up to fight him?"
Havel looked at his wife. "The Outfit's got about twenty-three hundred militia," she said. "Infantry-pikes, crossbows, archers. And we've got some field catapults and a siege train."
"Plus the A-listers," Havel said. "Three hundred of them. Lancers and horse archers-you've seen them in operation."
Sam Aylward spoke: "We Mackenzies've got about twenty-two 'undred; that's everyone who can pull a useful bow. No cavalry, but we can get some help from over the Cascades-the Central Oregon Ranchers' Association."
Havel snorted again, louder this time. "CORA couldn't organize a fuckup in a whorehouse, pardon my French-every rancher over there thinks he's a king. They make Corvallis look like a miracle of discipline. Sorry, Pete, Ed."
Juniper Mackenzie made a gesture. "Still, we can count on some help from that direction. The ranchers who've fought with us against the Protector before will turn out, and some others who want to stay on our good side, and if the CORA isn't good at deciding things itself, at least it won't stop them. Say five to eight hundred, depending on the season and what he's doing up along the Mount Hood country, and what they have to guard against on their frontier with Pendleton-that war's a blight on the whole neighborhood.