Free A Meeting at Corvallis by S. M. Stirling

with basket hilts; the shields were dark brown, with the stylized outline of a bear’s head in crimson. His own helmet had the tanned, snarling head of a bear mounted on it; he’d killed the beast himself, shortly after the Change, with an improvised spear. From that, a great deal had followed.
    A great deal including the Outfit’s name, though that was Astrid’s idea, as usual. Aloud: “All right, Bearkillers. What would have been different if this was for real?”
    â€œWe’d have crossbows on our flanks, Lord Bear,” one of the infantry said, a stocky, freckled young man with shoulders like a blacksmith—which was what he was—leaning on a glaive. “When the charge stalled in front of the pikes, we’d have shot the shit out of them, killed a bucketful and made the others easy meat. Armor’s not much help at close range like that.”
    Havel nodded. A hard-driven arrow or crossbow bolt was just too damned dangerous to use in a practice match, even with a padded, blunt head, and having people standing around shouting Twang! Twang! as they pretended to shoot was sort of silly. Instead the referees had tapped on a certain percentage of the mounted troops with their batons, often starting furious arguments, while the missile troops were off shooting at targets.
    â€œHey,” one of the A-listers said. “If this were for real, we’d have been using our bows and that line of pikes would have been a lot more ragged before we hit it.”
    Havel nodded again, but added: “Yeah, Astrid, that’s true. But we’re practicing to fight the Portland Protective Association, and the Protector’s men-at-arms don’t use saddle bows. Sword and lance only, and they rely on their own infantry for missile weapons. OK, we’ll say that cancels out.”
    He didn’t add: And there aren’t many who can use a horse-bow like you, either. It was true—everyone on the A-list was a good, competent shot, but Astrid was a wonder. Your ego doesn’t need any stroking, however.
    Astrid Larsson pouted a little as she leaned her hands on the horn of her saddle. “I suppose so.”
    She was twenty-three to her sister Signe’s twenty-eight, with white-blond hair and huge blue eyes rimmed and veined with silver. They gave her face an odd, nearly inhuman quality despite its fine-boned good looks. She was intensely capable when it came to anything involving horses or bows, a fine swordswoman and in Michael Havel’s view just one hair short of utter-raving-loon status. Unlike many, she’d been that way at fourteen, before the Change and its aftermath.
    â€œLord Bear,” she added, confirming his thought.
    And she stuck me with that moniker and this damned taxidermist’s nightmare on my helmet, he thought. Plus that shield…
    Hers wasn’t the standard outline of a snarling bear’s head that was the blazon of the Outfit. It had a silver tree instead, and seven stars above it, around a crown. Her helmet was even stranger-looking, with a raven of black-lacquered aluminum on the steel, wings extending down the cheek-pieces and ruby-eyed head looking out over the nasal bar.
    It’s all those books she reads, those giant doorstopper things with dragons and quests and Magical Identity Bracelets of the Apocalypse.
    She’d been obsessed with them when he first met her, and the ensuing decade had made her worse, if anything. He wished, very much, that she’d only been weird about archery and horses, but no such luck.
    Not to mention she’s become so popular and influential among the younger and loopier element. I can’t really clamp down on it because that Ranger outfit she and Eilir put together are too fucking useful, dammit! OK, so she can be the Elf-Queen of the goddamned woods if that’s the way she wants to play it.
    Aloud he went on to the audience: “Here’s the important thing. As long as that