"Dies the Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M.)

BOOM!

The deep throbbing note of the drum echoed out across the empty fields, seeming to quiver in the hot still air, fading into distance. The noise from the road dropped away; the crossbowmen halted their mechanical rhythm of aiming and firing, looking over their shoulders. So did the heavy infantry preparing to charge.

It was the sound of a four-foot Lamberg drum, beaten two-handed with split canes; the instrument her Scots ancestors had employed to shatter the spirit of their enemies. She had only one here, rather than massed ranks, but the sound rippled up her spine and seemed to jolt in her skull.

"And now for the second great instrument of Celtic psychological warfare," she muttered.

Her voice sounded distant and muffled in her own ears, as if the part of her mind that dealt with rational thought and speech was withdrawing from the waking world.

Dorothy's bagpipes started then. It wasn't the mannered, cultured version you could hear on most CDs before the Change, or at a festival in Edinburgh. This was a raw eerie wailing; the same music the old Gaels had used to lash themselves into frenzy, until they ran heedless into battle, stark naked and shrieking and sheerly mad.

That too played along her skin; yet the anger that followed was not hot, but cold: as if a wind blew through her from a place of ice and bones, sweeping away all that was human and leaving only incarnate Purpose.

Six months ago, what had these men before her been? Criminals? Perhaps; or perhaps auto mechanics and computer salesmen and clerks.

But now they come to kill, to rape and steal and destroy, to starve our children and take the works of our hands and the Goddess' blessings and drive us out on the road to die or turn cannibal.

Her voice was a whisper; cold and small in her own ears:

"In the name of the babe beneath my heart, I curse you. And Your curse upon them: you Dread Lord, wild huntsman; you Dark Goddess, raven-winged and strong! Come to me, in power and in wrath! May Anwyn take them, and ill may be the house to which You lead them!"

The rage was enormous, beyond all bearing; her hand scrabbled at the catch of her cloak as if it choked her. She cast it off and rose, ignoring Sam Aylward's cry-this wasn't in the plan. She ignored his second cry, as well, of stark terror when he saw her face: turned bone-white, white as the rim all about her staring eyes. The pupils expanded to swallow all else, depthless pools of night. Teeth showed bright beneath lips drawn back in a she-wolf's killing grin.

When she shouted the sound was huge, loud enough to strain even her trained singer's throat, loud enough to shock the drummer and piper into silence for a moment:

"Scathach!"

Even her coveners recoiled in horror, as she invoked the Dark Goddess in Her most terrible form.

Scathach, the Devouring Shadow.

She Who Brings Fear.

Shrieking it, standing with feet planted wide apart, her red hair bristling like the crest of a fox at bay, bow in one hand and arrow in the other as her spread arms reached skyward and completed the double V.

"Scathach!"

Eyes turned in her direction from all across the battlefield-in-the-making.

"Scathach! As they have wrought, so it shall be returned to them, threefold!"

She put the arrow through the ledge of her bow's riser and drew, drew until the stave creaked and the kiss-ring on the string touched her lips. When she released it was into the air without aiming, but she knew where the shaft would fall.

It came whistling down out of the sun, and the banner-bearer of the enemy had barely time to look up before the chisel-headed bodkin point sank into his face and he fell, the black flag toppling to cover him as he struck the pavement.

"SCATHACH! They are Yours!"

Her hand stripped another arrow from her quiver; and all along the woodland edge the Mackenzies shed their war cloaks and stood, longbows in their hands.

Few of them were really masters of their weapons as yet, but the target was massed and stationary and nowhere more than fifty yards away. They had all shot at marks further than that for an hour or more most days since the Change, under Sam Aylward's merciless tuition, and everyone here could draw a bow of fifty pounds weight or better.

Now the strings began to snap against the bracers, and the gray-feathered arrows flickered across the weed-grown field. Cloven air whistled under a hail of steel points and cedarwood. Juniper's was among the lightest bowstaves, but it seemed she could not miss and that two more shafts were in the air before her first had struck.

Then she reached over her right shoulder and her hand grasped at emptiness. There had been forty-five arrows in the leather cylinder on her back, and as many in every other quiver. Near two thousand shafts had flown, in the brief minutes while the Protector's soldiers wavered between the Sutterdown men before them and the clan's warriors to their left. Those who tried to charge the line of archers along the woods simply made better targets of themselves, attracting the eye as they came running into the teeth of the Mackenzie arrow-storm.

Many of those shafts had missed, and stood upright in earth or broken on asphalt; many were turned by shields or armor. Still horror wailed and crawled and writhed across the ground, and death lay still with the arrows still quivering.

"At them!" Juniper screamed, dropping her bow and ripping out her short-sword. "At them, Mackenzies!"

She snatched up her buckler and ran forward, keening a wordless saw-edged ululation. The armor seemed no more than a cotton shirt on her back, and the rough ground merely gave strength to her feet as she bounded forward like a deer.

Dennis ran beside her on the right, bellowing and flourishing his great ax; Chuck was to her left, snarling and intent behind the point of his spear; Aylward came behind, with an extra quiver slung over his shoulder and a shaft nocked to his terrible hundred-pound bow.

Chaos greeted her, as the Sutterdown men came out from their barricade in a roaring wave. Most of the invaders threw away their weapons and ran. It did them little good. The armor which had guarded them also slowed them, and vengeful spears and axes ran behind in the hands of those whose homes they'd seized.

Some remained to fight, but they seemed to be moving as if encased in amber honey. An armored man swung a jointed iron flail from a pre-Change martial-arts store at her; she ducked beneath it and smashed the edge of her buckler across his instep. Then she came erect like a jack-in-the-box as he doubled over in pain, driving the point of her shortsword up under his chin. Chuck's spear drove into a belly, hard enough to snap scales loose from their leather backing; wet ruin spun away from the edge of Dennis's bearded ax.

A man came at her with a spear, but she didn't bother to guard; a flash drawn across her vision was Aylward's arrow, and it went through his throat in a red splash and spray, hardly slowing…

It seemed only seconds later when the only living enemy were a handful who fled, wailing as they ran across the reaped wheat towards the tree-lined creek beyond. Juniper laid her sword in front of Aylward's bow.

"No," she said, conscious of the same cold wind still blowing through her.

Others were shooting, but they missed. Aylward wouldn't.

"We want a few to spread the word that this is no place for reivers to come."

Quiet had fallen, save for a broken whimpering and the wheezing breath of the enemy commander's horse, dying slowly with three shafts through his ribs. Sutterdown men and Mackenzies alike hesitated for an instant of ringing silence, their eyes on her.

Of themselves, Juniper's arms reached up again, holding her buckler and dripping blade this time, spread over the field of battle. Wings beat at the corners of her consciousness, vast and black-feathered.

"O you of humankind!" she cried. "Make peace with your mortality. For when you call on Me in such wise, then this too is God!"

Then she staggered, knees buckling and eyes turning back up into her head for an instant. The world turned gray and light shrank to a point. Hands grabbed her under the arms, supporting her as she wheezed and fought for breath.

"Anyone got any candy left?" she croaked.

Someone did, giving it up without question; she stuffed it into her mouth despite the salt blood on her hands, washed it down with water and felt the dizziness recede, and the grayness fade from the edges of her sight.

"I'm all right," she husked. "I'm all right."

The men supporting her stepped back. One of them was Dennis; his ax was bloody, and more was splashed across his face and body, but the fear in his eyes was directed at her.

She shook herself. "I feel… I feel like a flute that Someone was playing on."

"Jesu- I mean, God and Goddess, Juney, that was the scariest fucking thing I've ever seen!"

He shook his head, leaning on his ax and panting like a great wheezing bellows for a second.

"What happened? First it was like you were screaming right in my ear-or inside my head-and then you were like the original whirling Dervish, you were a blur. I didn't even think about anything else except following you and hacking these guys up."

She felt her everyday self return, and with it a sharp twist of nausea at the sights and smells about her, and held up a hand palm out while she struggled back to self-command.

Before the Change, this would have sent me catatonic, she thought. Now it just sickens me. Goddess, let me never see such things without sorrow. Let me never see such things again, please.

Dennis was still staring at her. She answered his question: "Well, there's a rational explanation for what happened, Dennie."

"Shit, I hope so, Juney."

She nodded: "Hysterical strength, amok, berserkergang; it's all a well-known phenomenon, right there in the textbooks. There weren't any miracles, were there? I didn't glow red, or levitate, or cast thunderbolts, after all. Although. this is the sort of thing that gets legends and myths started."

"Ah," he said, looking relieved. His face relaxed. "You think that's what happened? Your subconscious took over?"

"Oh, no, Dennie, you don't get off that easy-and neither do I," she said, looking into his eyes.

He retreated a little as she went on: "What I think- know-is that I called on the Dark Goddess… and She came to me. It isn't all light and love and laughter, my friend. There's blood and fear and death and wickedness in the world, and the Mighty Ones act through us."

She reached out and touched the pentagram-and-circle amulet he'd taken to wearing. "And if this is more than a piece of jewelry, you've picked which explanation you want to believe, haven't you?"

"Yeah," he said soberly. "I suppose I have."

Chuck came up to her. "One dead of ours," he said, his eyes avoiding hers a little. "John Carson. A couple of wounded, but… mostly it was over by the time we reached the road. Judy and Dr. Gianelli are getting to work. They think the clan won't lose anyone else."

"Blessed be," she said sadly. "But it could have been worse." She looked around, letting her eyes fall out of focus a little to miss detail. "Was worse, for them."

Aylward paused in recovering arrows and spoke with a surgeon's calmness: "It's like that, with surprise. Especially if the side surprised just gets the wind up and sods off regardless. They can't run and fight, but you can chase and kill at the same time."

She nodded. "Find out how the Sutterdown people did, Chuck," she said. "Get me Sheriff Laughton, if he's alive and fit to move."

When he showed up a few minutes later Laughton had a bandage covering half his face, but he seemed to be coherent enough; a dozen of his townsmen came with him, some of them bandaged or limping.

"Lady Juniper," he said. This time there was no awkwardness to the title. "Thank you. Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts. We'll get our homes back, now."

"You will," Juniper said. "And you'll be able to feed your children through the winter."

Which are the only reasons good enough for this vileness, she thought.

"We had thirty wounded and… nine dead," Laughton went on. He swallowed. "Including Reverend Dixon."

Her brows went up. "Dixon?" she said. "How?"

"He just. died. He just dropped down and died," Laughton said.

Well, he was a coronary waiting to happen, Juniper thought. Plenty of stress today to set it off.

"He'll be missed," she said soberly, and fought not to think: But not by many.

Then she saw the eyes of his men on her, all wide and fearful and a few of them full of the beginnings of adoration. The echo of a cold wind seemed to blow up her back, despite the hot sun and the sweat-dripping weight of mail and padding.

This is how legends and myths start, she reminded herself, and shivered ever so slightly. Goddess gentle and strong, powerful God, what is it that You want of me?

"Well, we'll have to see to the wounded," she said, dragging herself back to practicalities.

Her voice gained strength. "And to getting your families back to your homes, and we Mackenzies will pitch in to help get the rest of your crops in safe-we don't have anything to waste. And then we'll talk about making sure we're not caught by surprise like this again, and with all the other communities around here about defense. The man who set this on us, the one who calls himself Protector… "

"Yes, Lady," Laughton said.

Ray and Cynthia were kneeling by their father's body when she found them. A crossbow bolt had struck him just left of the breastbone, sinking in through the armor until only the fletching showed. There was a spray of blood beside his mouth, but the wide eyes looked surprised, as if it had been very quick. The flies were already coming, but they had plenty to feed on today.

Cynthia started to rise. Juniper sank down on her knees on the hot pavement between them, pressing a hand gently on the girl's shoulder and on her brother's. He looked stunned, unbelieving, his face much younger than the body beneath his warrior's gear, blinking his eyes at his father as the bloody work of cleanup went on around them. A seeping bandage marked where the little finger of his left hand had been, but he ignored that too.

"S-sorry, Lady Juniper," Cynthia said. "We should help-"

"You should both stay here and mourn your father," Juniper said quietly. "There's hands enough to do what needs doing."

The girl's face crumpled, turning red. "He… he shouldn't have died like this!" she cried.

"No," Juniper agreed. "He shouldn't. He was a good man, who only wanted to tend his fields and do right by his family and neighbors. There were years yet of work and joy ahead for him. He should have died old and tired and ready for the Summerlands, with you and your brother and your children around him to bid him farewell. He gave all that up, for us."

"I'm sorry," Cynthia said, putting the heels of her hands to her forehead. "Can… can we have a rite for him?"

"Certainly we can among ourselves, honey," Juniper said gently. "But he respected your choice; you have to respect his. We'll get the ritual he'd have wanted for his burial. Just let it go, for now. Mourn him, girl, and you too, Ray. Cry. Scream if it helps. There's no way around the pain, you have to go through it to the end and beyond. Blessed be."

She left them sobbing in each other's arms; Eilir was coming, riding a horse and leading another for her mother, her eyes wide with horror as she looked about.

When Juniper Mackenzie stood it was as if the weight of the world pressed down on her shoulders.

Twenty-seven

Problems, Mike Havel thought.

I didn't have enough of my own, so I took on a hundred other people's. Then we all decide to make a living solving problems for strangers…

Mother Superior Gertrude was a horse-faced woman in her early sixties. She wasn't quite what Havel had expected in a nun; she did wear a headdress, but the rest of her clothing was overalls and a checked shirt and heavy shoes of the sort once called sensible.

Now she finished making corrections on the graph paper that Ken Larsson had pinned to a corkboard supported by a tripod. They were in Sheriff Woburn's house, a painfully ordinary suburban living room-except for the lamphold-ers screwed into the walls, and the smoke marks above them; the whole house smelled not-so-faintly of woodsmoke from the kitchen, ashes from fireplace, and burnt gasoline from the lanterns.

There were improvised stables out back, too, and you could smell the horses as well, and their by-products. Flies buzzed about, despite the screens on windows and doors. There was too much manure around, and it made an ideal breeding ground; so did the broad-and heavily fertilized-truck gardens the residents of Craigswood had put in.

Well, hello, Good Old Days, Havel thought absently. Eau de Horseshit and all. At least wandering about we can escape from our own crap.

Woburn caught the drift of Havel's thoughts as he glanced about. "Not lookin' forward to an Idaho winter with only the fireplace and the woodstove," he said.

"Damnit, we should be laying in wood now, but we don't have time."

Havel nodded. It would be even worse in a tent, he thought.

Eric and a couple of others had suggested that they take up the wandering life full-time, herding cattle and sheep and horses for a living and trading for what else they needed. Then Ken Larsson had given a brief but colorful description of a north-plains winter in a teepee or equivalent, which had been enough to put paid to that. Plus the bit about their grandchildren being-literally-louse-eating nomads.

Susan Woburn came out with two big plates of bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwiches in her hands; Havel took one eagerly, with a word of thanks. They didn't eat bacon very often-pigs really weren't very practical to drive along for long distances-and they got fresh greens less often than that. There was even mayonnaise, and just eating light risen bread was a treat-on the move it kept falling and rising again, and ended up… chewy was the most charitable way to describe it.

Woburn nodded to his wife. "Thanks, honey… At least we haven't been short of food, praise God," he said. "And we shouldn't be next year, even with all the damage the Devil Dogs have done. If we can get things in order soon."

Ken Larsson leaned back from his sketch. "This is best we can do. Combination of the original plans and the latest intelligence."

Havel brought his sandwich over. "Damn, that does look like a fort," he said. "All right, what about doorknockers?"

Ken fanned out a selection of diagrams. "This is what I think we can make, given the materials available."

Havel nodded, impressed. He noted that Woburn looked a lot less happy.

"The problem is… well, to tell the truth, the problem is that… "

"You can't get enough men together to surround the place," Havel said. "Not after getting whipped last time. Lots of people finding excuses for not showing up."

Woburn nodded, mouth drawn in a bitter line. "What I need is a big win," he said. "Beating the crap out of a bunch of them. I could get the support I need after that."

His hand-the one not holding a sandwich-clenched into a fist and came down on his knee. "And then there'd be some changes around here! We're not doing half the things we should. Too much talk, not enough action."

I detect a certain amount of bitterness, Havel thought.

It occurred to him that if Woburn did come out on top, things might get quite uncomfortable for temporizers and those who'd tried to play both sides against the middle.

Hereditary Sheriff Woburn the First? Not my business how things turn out here, he thought. I'm just passing through… and they could do worse. Duke Iron Rod is a chancre that needs cauterizing. Not unlike his big-city patron.

"What we need," he said aloud, "is to cut up a couple of their raiding parties. For that we need recon. How big a gang do they send out?"

"Two dozen on a serious raid, give or take," Woburn said. "Enough to swarm any resistance on a single farm and get away fast. Usually they set out around dawn. They probably won't try again for a while after the most recent lot. But I don't see how you can intercept them any better than we can. It's not as if we could sneak someone up onto Cotton wood Butte with a radio!"

"What we need," Havel went on, "is aerial recon."

Woburn snorted. "That's not funny. Why not wish for a couple of working tanks?"

Havel grinned, and saw a frown of puzzlement growing on Woburn's face.

He went on: "You're forgetting something, Sheriff; truth is, I hadn't thought of it until my last trip down the Columbia Gorge. Electricity doesn't work anymore, and guns neither. But hot air still rises. Got much propane left around here?"

Billy Waters sat on the curb and watched men and a few women going in and out of the tavern. It had been one before the Change, one of three in Craigswood; it was the only one left now. A sort of sour half-spoiled smell came from the buildings to its rear, and he recognized the scent-mash getting ready for the still, with an undertone of beer fermenting. The thought made him smile a bit, and he hummed a few bars of "Copperhead Road"; then the pain in his lips brought reality crashing back.

The day was bright and warm, but he shivered. Memories tormented him; the smooth heat of the whiskey going down his throat, and the sweet hiss of the cap coming off the beer bottle, the first cool draught chasing the fire all the way to his belly…

Just one, he thought. Havel wouldn't mind if it was just one. He never told anyone not to take one drink. Hellfire, he likes his beer, and a whiskey now and-then.

A horse-drawn wagon made from a cut-down truck went past while he was thinking, and nursing the bruises. He touched his face gingerly, trying to summon up enough anger to get him across the street and into the tavern.

The problem was that he couldn't; all he could feel was fear.

He could feel anger at Jane, for making him hit her, and at that deceitful little bitch Nancy, and at Reuben for trying to hit his own father, but when he thought about Havel it was as if a white light filled his head, like it had the day of the Change.

All he could feel was the pain and the fear.

I can stand up to him! he thought. I can-

"Excuse me," someone said.

Waters looked up. The man standing over him on the sidewalk looked nondescript; not young, not middle-aged, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, cowboy boots and Budweiser billed cap.

"Yeah?" he said.

"You're the guy who can make bows, aren't you? Name of Billy Waters?"

"Yeah," Waters said.

"I heard how you got beat up just because you spanked your kid. That doesn't sound right."

Waters levered himself stiffly to his feet, squinting at the unremarkable man. That also wasn't how he'd heard that people in Craigswood had gotten the story, either. Most of them who'd heard anything at all had been treating him like something nasty they scraped off their shoes on a hot day. And Craigswood was small, about a thousand people before the Change, half that now. He knew how news spread in a setting like that, having spent most of his life in one small town or another; the largest place he'd ever lived was Little Rock, and that only for a few months.

"Smith," the man said, offering his hand. "Jeb Smith. Thought I might like to talk to you about bows, and other things. Care for a beer?"

Waters's eyes flicked to the tavern, with its neon sign that probably hadn't worked before the Change and certainly didn't now. He shook the man's hand, but the white explosion of light seemed.to fill his head again. Someone would talk…

"Ah… " he began.

Jeb laughed. "Not that horse piss. It's overpriced anyway, you have to trade half an hour's work for a glass, or something pretty fancy in the way of hard goods. No, I've got some home brew that isn't doing anything but filling up a crock."

He released Waters's hand, but steered him along for a moment by the elbow. "Seems to me a man who knows how to make bows should have a better position," he said. "And be able to sit down and have a beer when he feels like it."

"Damned right," Waters said. "Damned right. It's like being in the fucking Marines!"

They entered a nondescript ranch-style bungalow; the two on either side were abandoned; all the lawns had been plowed up for vegetables.

Jeb waved a hand at the houses on either side: "Stupid bastards are out somewhere shoveling cowshit for a rancher," he said. "There are easier ways of making a liv-ing, even these days."

"Yeah," Billy Waters said again.

"Me, I swap things and, ummm, sort of arrange deals," Smith said as they seated themselves in the dim coolness of the living room. "You need something, like say an old hand pump, or parts for a windmill, and you come to Jeb. Jeb can find it, or put you in touch with someone who has it or can make it. All for a very reasonable commission."

A woman came out with a pitcher of beer; it wasn't refrigerated, but drops of condensation slid down the sides of the glass, and Billy licked his lips. He had time to notice how good-looking she was before she handed him the tumbler.

"Ahhh," he said as the first glorious swallow slid down.

It wasn't like anything he'd tasted before the Change, but it was undoubtedly beer. For a wonder, he didn't feel like gulping it and going right for another, either. Maybe it was because, for the first time in months, he wasn't bored.

"Your daughter, Jeb?"

"Naw, girlfriend," the other man said, giving her a casual slap on the butt as she went past. "Sort of. A man with connections has got more, oh, call it bargaining power, these days."

Waters looked around. The house was well furnished; it had an iron heating-stove in one corner of the living room, with its sheet-metal chimney already installed, and he could see through an archway that the kitchen had a wood cooking range. That was wealth, these days. Waters grinned; it reminded him of the one his mother had had, and she'd grown up no-doubt-about-it poor.

There was also a good hunting crossbow racked beside the door, and a belt with a bowie and hatchet scabbarded on it, with a steel helmet-an old pre-Kevlar Army model-and a plywood shield faced in sheet metal.

"So, you one of the sheriffs posse?" he asked.

"Nope. Not interested in getting myself killed for Woburn's benefit," Smith said. "Any more than busting my ass playing farmer."

He smiled and leaned forward. "Let's talk."

And I thought that things would get easier after the harvest, Juniper thought bitterly. And surely after we beat the Protector's men back from Sutterdown.

Aloud she spoke to Laughton with patient gentleness: "Sheriff, I really can't turn the McFarlanes down if they want to join us. Even though it's inconvenient for all concerned."

He was looking mulish again. Juniper fought an impulse to bury her face in her hands, and an even stronger one to grab her fiddle and head out into the woods with Cuchulain and lean against a tree and play until her nerves un-knotted and she floated away on a tide of music.

Instead she took another sip of chilled herbal tea and looked out the north-facing window of her loft-bedroom-office for an instant and sighed. August was hot this year and there was a little smoke haze in the air over the mountains from the big burn further northeast, towards the Three Sisters; she worried about it spreading, too.

At least I'm not huge yet. Showing, but not huge. That will be later, when it's cool and there's nothing much to do.

She turned back to Laughton, looking over his shoulder through the west-facing dormer. She could see a squared timber swinging up on its rope, running from the two-horse team through the big block-and-tackle on the ground to the log tripod at the top of the half-completed gatehouse tower. Dennis's voice rang out, calling to Sally at the horses' heads; she halted the team and then backed them step by careful step, and hands on the scaffolding around the gatehouse guided the timber down.

"I know it makes things awkward, Sheriff," she said.

The gatehouse and nearly finished palisade were reassuring. So was Sally, with her tummy starting to bulge out over her chinos. Life went on; children got born, crops got planted, things got built. They'd get through somehow, Lady and Lord helping.

"You think it doesn't make it awkward for us, too?" she asked, tapping the map on the table between them.

That was of the Artemis Creek area, from the high hills north and east of Dun Juniper, down through the spreading V-shaped swale that held the old Fairfax place and out into the flats around Sutterdown, with the Butte beyond.

"Even out of Dun Carson"-the old Carson homestead, now well on its way to being a fortified steading-"getting our people up to work this farm will be a nightmare of time wasted traveling back and forth. What we'rhight talk about is a swap for something closer, if any of your folk are interested."

"Hey, wait!" Rodger McFarlane said.

"Well, if you don't want to join and put the land at the clan's disposal… "

Maisie McFarlane stamped on her husband's foot under the table; at least that was what Juniper assumed, from the way her shoulders moved slightly and her tight smile and the way he smothered a yelp. She'd probably heard the sudden hope Juniper tried to conceal.

The farmer went on: "We certainly do want to join, Lady Juniper. It's not that everyone in Sutterdown doesn't do their best, but we're scared spitless out on the edge the way we are, never getting a good night's sleep. And we want school for our kids and stuff-we're just too far out and on our own we can't spare them from work. It's just. it's good land, two hundred and eighty acres."

"I thought we'd be moving in here," Maisie McFarlane said.

I would really like to find that tree and my fiddle, Juniper thought. Instead she made her voice kind and went on: "The palisade around Dun Carson is going up very quickly, and it'll be as safe as this."

Or nearly. Maybe I am turning into a politician, she thought, and made a sign of aversion under the table.

And the McFarlanes had brought in a good harvest-the fighting hadn't touched them much, though it had scared them green when the Protector's men marched past.

I must not just see them as a nuisance, or an opportunity, she told herself sternly. They're people and terrified. For their children and kin and the people they've taken in, as well as themselves. And they're right to be terrified. Mother-of-All, help me be wise!

"There's still a problem," Laughton said. "Look, we're all grateful for the help you gave us, in the fight and afterward. But the fact is the people who've joined you since- the Hunters, the Dowlingtons, the Johnsons, now the McFarlanes-they're not only putting islands of your territory in ours, they're the ones with the biggest grain reserves- and everyone in town pitched in to help get that grain harvested. We've got a system for sharing things around, but it's… Lady Juniper, it's all just falling apart without Reverend Dixon. Reverend Jennings. it's just not the same."

"I can't say that I liked Dixon," Juniper conceded. "But he was a strong man and he could get people to do the needful."

She sighed. "Sheriff, you can tell your townspeople that nobody's going to starve this coming winter because someone else has joined us. We'll see about the… swapping."

Laughton smiled as he rose and shook her hand, but he had that odd look in his eyes again-the one she'd seen on the day of the battle.

"Lady Juniper, you may find that there's a simple solution to that problem; everyone in Sutterdown joining up. Barring the Reverend Jennings and a few dozen others."

Urk! She hoped she didn't look as sandbagged as she felt.

When Laughton and the McFarlanes were gone, Juniper did drop her head into her hands and groan. Chuck let her alone as a few others filtered in: his wife, Judy, Dennis and Sally, Andy and Diana, and Sam Aylward.

Eilir went out and came back with lunch-bread and butter, cheese and fruit; the Sunrise apples on the old Fairfax place were ripe, and the dairy's output was going up fast.

Eat, Mom, she signed.

One of the advantages of using Sign was that you could talk with your mouth full. She had a crisp red-yellow Sunrise held in her mouth while she spoke.

I'm not hungry, Juniper replied.

You'll be hungry once you start eating. Then all you reverend elders can yell at each other and wave your arms in the air. I'm going off with the book scavenging detail.

And I envy you that, Juniper signed. It's that mall place today, right?

Right. A lot of useful handicraft stuff there, and I'm hoping for a copy of Arrows of the Queen or Somewhere to Be Flying.

Be careful.

Always. Bye, everyone!

Juniper watched her bounce out of the room with boundless fourteen-year-old energy, and lifted a slice of the bread without enthusiasm. Her stomach was knotted with tension, but the smell of the fresh bread and the half-melted butter on it made the organ in question rumble instead and she bit in. After that, the digestive system quit complaining and started to do its job.

Would that everyone else did the same!

"There are just too many people here now."

Judy shrugged. "What we've been doing is working. Everyone loves a-what's that saying?"

"An te ata thuas oltar deoch air; an te ata thios buailter. He who succeeds is toasted, who fails gets kicked. I feel toasted, all right-over an open fire!"

"You've done a wonderful job," Chuck said soothingly. "We're alive, aren't we? Everyone's got enough to eat, don't they? That's why we're flooded with people. After what's happened, they're desperate for something that looks secure."

Juniper sighed. "When we started, it was like a big family and everyone agreed on most things, but you can't do that when there are… "

Someone handed her a list.

"… Goddess gentle and strong, a hundred and fifty not counting kids!"

She waved the paper over her head. "I can't keep people straight without a list, for sweet Brigid's sake; I'm turning into a bureaucrat. Even when I was sleeping in my car, I didn't sink that low! And we're spending more and more time talking. What are we going to do about it? I want everyone to have their say, but it takes forever!"

Chuck rubbed at his sun-faded sandy beard. "Well, let's stick with the model we picked-it's worked so far. Scottish clans got a lot bigger than this," he said. "How did they manage it?"

"By bashing heads, a good deal," Juniper said. "If the songs are to be trusted. And the Chief, the head of the Name and Ilk, what he said went, unless he got so crazy they arranged for him to accidentally get shot in the back while out hunting. Of course, he didn't have everyone living at his Hall, either, though he kept open house and any clansfolk could come sit at his table."

"Lucky him," Diana said, looking as frazzled as Juniper felt. "Do you have any idea how cumbersome it's getting to be, cooking three meals a day for a hundred and fifty people at three locations? I mean, when Andy and me ran MoonDance back before the Change at least people had a choice. Now everyone eats the same thing-I'd be complaining about it myself, if I didn't know I couldn't do anything about it. But whenever anyone else bitches about the food, I feel like throwing a cleaver at them! At least there's enough now."

"Crime," Dennis said. They all looked at him, and he went on: "Eventually, someone's going to commit a crime-I don't expect it ever to be a big deal, but eventually we're going to have to have some equivalent of judges and courts."

Juniper groaned again and buried her hands in her hair, suppressing another urge-this time, it was pulling out handfuls.

"I kept wishing we weren't in a desperate scramble to grow enough food to get us through the winter," she said. "Ah, how fine things will be, I thought, when the grain's in and we have a few months before the fall plowing when we only have to work hard, and not fall into bed like a cut tree every evening. And now, I'm almost nostalgic for the fear of starving. At least it kept people focused!"

A sigh. "And Laughton was hinting that everyone in Sut-terdown wants to join us-Judy, you do it for me!"

"Gevalt!" she said.

Everyone else made sympathetic noises. It was the songs that gave her the idea eventually; she ran through a half-dozen ballads in her head, searching the lyrics for clues.

"Look, as I remember it, the way the old Gaels did it, the Chief of the Name handled the big things-perpetual feuding, large-scale cattle theft, and how to keep others from stealing their cattle, and which doomed rebellion to support and get everyone killed in-and the… hmmm, I think they were called septs-sub-clans, I'm not sure whether it was an Irish word or Scottish-did the local work. Under a tacksman-usually a relative of the Chief. Probably it wasn't as neat as that, and the Victorians tidied it all up the way they did the tartans, but that's the bones of it."

Chuck rubbed his beard again. "You know, splitting up the land we've got-and are getting-into a bunch more separate farms would save a lot of time and effort. My time and effort, to start with. We've got enough farmers, and they've all had experience in the new methods-well, old methods-by now. There's no real need for me to go around saying 'hoe this row' anymore. We could draw up a general plan and let each… well, call it each sept… manage the day-to-day stuff on their own. We could still get together for big jobs."

Aylward nodded. "No reason our militia couldn't work that way too," he said. "Easy enough for someone like me"-he grinned a sergeant's grin-"to go around checking that nobody's slacking off or playing silly buggers. Say ten to twenty families in each settlement, and a palisade like we're putting in at the Carson place. That would be enough to stand off a gang of bandits or Eaters long enough for help to gather."

Sally had been quiet. Now she spoke up: "We could have the library and high school here, and an all-grades primary at each dun."

"Hey, and we could call the septs after a totem animal," Andy Trethar said; he'd always liked shamanistic stuff like that. "You know, wolf, raven-"

Juniper sat back with relief and let them go at it. Of course, I'll have to persuade people in general, and get their ideas, and…

At least we're not fighting a war anymore.

Twenty-eight

"Confirm… enemy… position," Havel read, binoculars to his eyes.

The Bearkiller column and Woburn's posse were down at the bottom of a swale. That cut visibility to a thousand yards in any direction, but it meant nobody could see them either, except from a height.

A height like that of the hot-air balloon floating over the Bearkiller camp in Craigswood, for example; the three Bearkillers in the basket hanging two thousand feet above ground level had an excellent view. He could make out the semaphore signal quite clearly through the field glasses, and they'd be able to pick up his mirror-flash of light even more easily.

"Damn, I wish I'd thought of that," Woburn muttered awkwardly. "We might not be in this mess, if we'd had a balloon."

"Everyone tends to think engines when they think aircraft," Havel said. "I certainly did; but the Protector over in Portland didn't."

Woburn rubbed his lantern jaw. "Sort of hard to think of Portland having much to do with our problems. These days, it seems a long ways off."

"Believe it," Havel said grimly. "I doubt Iron Rod would have been more than a major nuisance without someone giving him help and ideas. Hell, the Protector gave me ideas, unintentionally."

He looked at the balloon again. It had taken a bit of finding. but there were a surprising number of hot-air balloon enthusiasts in Idaho-had been, before the Change.

It was still an hour before noon, and the sun wouldn't be getting into anyone's eyes for a couple of hours, no matter which way the fight turned.

God, I hope this isn't too expensive when the butcher's bill is totaled up, he thought.

Partly that was the simple desire to keep his people from harm; he'd selected every one, and a lot of them were friends by now, and all of them were his. Partly it was a desire to conserve the Bearkillers' capital assets.

Condottieri, he thought. The word simply meant "contractor" in Renaissance Italian. That's what we've ended up as.

It turned out that Pam and Rothman and Ken all knew a lot of stories about Renaissance Italy, and they were a lot less dull that what he remembered of high school history classes; if Woburn had heard some of them, he might have been more cautious about hiring his fighting done.

Particularly the ones about condottieri leaders deciding they'd rather be Duke of Milan or something of that order. Havel intended to keep scrupulously to the terms, but how could the sheriff know that?

On the other hand, Florence got taken over by a family of bankers, of all things, he thought with a taut grin. Now, there's a real gang of mercenary pirates for you.

At least he had the consolation that he was fighting people who needed killing, on the whole.

He leaned forward and slapped his big bay gelding affectionately on the neck; it tossed its head and snorted, shifting its weight from foot to foot, making its harness jingle and his armor rustle and clank.

"Work to do, Gustav," he said. Then, louder, he turned in the saddle and called to his Bearkillers: "Time to do good, and earn our pay!"

That brought a cheer; Signe grinned at him and tossed her helmeted head. She had an old-style cavalry trumpet slung from her saddlebow, a relic of the last Indian wars a century and more ago, salvaged from a museum up in the Nez Perce reservation.

Damn, but I wish she weren 't here, he thought. Nothing to be done about that, though, except win this fight as quick as we can.

His eyes made one last check of equipment, although he would have been astonished had anything been less than perfect. Also present, through unavoidable political necessity, were twenty of Woburn's posse members, which made him a little less than happy. They were equipped with anything that came to hand, and about half of them were pushing into middle age.

Sixty-odd horsemen took up a lot of room. The strong musky-grassy smell of the horses and their sweat filled the hollow, and the scents of human sweat soaked into leather and cloth, of steel rings wiped down with canola oil, of fear and excitement, and of earth torn open by ironshod hooves.

"Will, you get going on your part of it," Havel said.

The horsemaster nodded and reined his mount around; rather more than half the Bearkillers followed him, and all Woburn's men except the sheriff himself.

"Let's go, Gustav," Havel added to his mount, and gave the big gelding a leg signal; the horse broke into an obedient canter. A file of twenty followed him, and Woburn- but he didn't expect the sheriff to do much fighting. He pulled his bow from the case that slanted back from his left knee under the saddle flap and reached over his shoulder for an arrow, conscious of everyone doing likewise behind him… except Woburn, of course.

"I'm really starting to think we can run this raiding party off," the local man said.

"No!" Havel answered sharply, without looking around. "We are not going to chase them away. We're going to kill every last one of the filth, for starters."

The horses crested the top of the hill without pausing; the land to the south was flatter, rolling so gently it would have seemed level without the wind ruffling waves through the knee-high wheat that covered it and showing the long low swellings. The hooves were a drumroll under the soughing breeze.

"There!" Signe called, pointing southwest.

There was a dark clot against the green, one that swiftly turned into a group of armed men on horseback. Twenty or so of them, all in scale-mail tunics and steel helmets; one of them even had bulls' horns on his, bad-movie-Viking style. With them were half a dozen captives, four women and two men, with their feet lashed into the stirrups of their horses and their hands tied behind their backs, and a biggish herd of cattle and horses being driven along. Many of the horses had bags of plunder thrown over their backs to make rough packsaddles.

He could hear the outlaws' yells and whoops as they caught sight of the Bearkillers; one or two stayed to guard prisoners and plunder, but the rest hammered their heels into their mounts and thundered forward. Havel's eyes narrowed as the distance closed; the Devil Dogs were in no particular order, but they didn't appear to be shy of a fight. Their bellowing cries were full of blood-lust; and worse, of confidence.

Not very good riders, he thought; none better than he'd been at the Change, most worse. Big men mostly, with beards spilling down their chests. Well-armed.

They all had decent body armor, and they all had a crossbow slung like a rifle at their saddlbows. For the rest they carried swords-double-edged swords with long hilts, what they'd called a bastard sword in Europe in the old days-or axes ground down so they were light enough to be used single-handed. And they all carried shields slung over their backs, kite-shaped models bigger than the Bear-killer targe, and heavier too from the looks.

"Let's give them their first surprise!" he shouted over his shoulder. "Signe, Shooting circle and At the gallop."

She put the trumpet to her lips and sounded the calls, the bugle high and sweet in the warm still air. Havel dropped the knotted reins on his saddle horn and leaned forward, signaling his horse up to a gallop. Distance closed with shocking speed; he could see the leader of the Devil Dogs shouting and gesturing frantically to his men.

Havel's lips skinned back from his teeth in a carnivore grin as the Devil Dogs began to pull up and dismount; they weren't going to fight on horseback, and he'd confirmed with Woburn that nobody else around here had tried it more than once or twice.

Not that we're very good at it yet, he thought. But we have trained for it. And they're expecting us to get down to fight too.

He waited until the distance closed further; one pre-Change military skill that still had value was being able to do a quick accurate assessment of how far away something was. The Devil Dogs had all gotten off their horses, and they were bending to span their crossbows-the weapons shot hard and straight at close range. They were expecting to catch his people dismounting and shoot them up before they could reply.

"Yo!" he shouted, and turned his horse with balance and knees-skills Will and Luanne had taught them all.

Gustav pivoted neatly, like a rodeo mount in a barrel race. The dozen riders behind him did likewise, at well-timed intervals; suddenly they were galloping from left to right across the line of the Devil Dogs' formation. Black soil flew up in divots; the horses' heads pounded up and down like pistons, and he felt a sensation of rushing speed no machine could quite match as the great muscles flexed and bunched between his legs.

Havel clamped his thighs to his mount and raised his bow, drawing to the angle of his jaw with the chisel point slanting up at a thirty-five-degree angle. Horn and wood and sinew creaked as the string pulled the recurved stave into a smooth half-circle; he breathed out in a controlled hooosh as he pushed and pulled and twisted his torso to put the muscles of gut and back and shoulders into the effort.

It wasn't just a matter of raw arm strength. You had to know how to apply it.

He waited for the high point of the gallop and let the string fall off the balls of his fingers. Crack-whipppt! as the string lashed his steel-clad forearm and the arrow flicked out, blurring with speed. The bow surged against his left arm with the recoil; his right hand was already reaching back, plucking another shaft out of his quiver: knock, draw, loose-

He had two in the air before the first one struck-struck and stood in the ground ten yards in front of the nearest Devil Dog.

Congratulations, Genghis! he thought acidly.

The next one banged off the curved surface of a helmet, making the bandit spin and then stagger; he felt a little better after that.

And I'm not aiming at one man. I'm aiming at twenty, and their horses, all nicely bunched up.

Behind him the other Bearkillers were shooting as well. He leaned to the right, and Gustav pivoted, turning. The others followed, and the line became a loose oval like a racetrack. The arrows had come as a complete surprise to the enemy; the problem was that not many of them had hit.

A horse ran plunging across the wheatfields, with an arrow buried half its length in the beast's rump. A bandit was down on the ground, screaming shrill bubbling shrieks as he rolled about and clutched at a shaft that had slanted down through one cheek and out the side of his jaw, slicing his tongue and shattering half a dozen teeth as it went.

Most of the Devil Dogs had dropped their crossbows and swung their shields around, holding them up against the sleet of steel-tipped wood.

He saw two arrows strike one shield, and the man take a step backward as the points punched crack-crack through the sheet-metal covering and buried themselves in the plywood beneath. Then he was curving around again himself, his left side towards the enemy once more. Some of them were shooting; a crossbow belt went by a few feet ahead of Gustav's nose, with an unpleasant vwup! of cloven air. Another struck a horse, and it went down with a scream to lie thrashing; two more riders halted for an instant and bore the rider off to the remount string before they returned to the shooting circle.

None of the bolts had struck a Bearkiller yet, which wasn't surprising, with moving targets that shot back.

Havel smiled an unpleasant smile as he shot again, and again, and again, and then wheeled his horse around once more. The Devil Dog leader was trying to get more of his men out from behind their shields to return fire at the elusive riders, without much success.

He was discovering some very nasty facts about being a stationary target; the ones that had let horse-archers grind infantry armies into dust from China to Poland before gunpowder came along.

More useful hints from Will's books on cavalry.

An arrow struck a Devil Dog, and the shaft sank halfway to its flight-feathers after it knocked a steel scale away spinning and twinkling in the sunlight. The man went down and writhed, clawing at the trampled wheat, trying to shriek as he coughed out bits of lung and gouts of blood.

The fourth time he finished the circuit Havel found his quiver empty. He cased his bow and took the reins in his left hand again, cantering away to where Astrid waited, with Reuben Waters helping. Each was leading packhorses, and a saddled remount string to replace losses.

The youngest Larsson turned and grabbed a bundle of arrows from the racks on the back of a packhorse.

"Thirty-inchers, and when are you going to let me into the line, Lord Bear? I'm a better shot than you are!"

"Thirty-inchers," Havel confirmed, bending so that she could untie the bundle and slide them loose into his quiver.

He reined around: "And you can ride in the line when you can pull a fifty-pound bow twelve times a minute and do the assault course in a full-weight hauberk."

My opposite number must be getting pretty desperate, Havel thought, as he trotted back towards the action.

Once he realizes we can keep this up all day, whittle them down one by one no matter that we're lousy shots. If they scatter, we can bunch up and ride each one down separately. And any time now he's going to look west and see-

A screaming shout went up from the Devil Dogs. A lot of them were pointing west. Several thousand yards in that direction were Will Hutton and the rest of the Bearkillers, with Woburn's men behind them. Neatly blocking the direct route to St. Hilda's and the Devil Dog base; as an added bonus the distance made it impossible to tell who was who, so they'd probably think that all the mounted men there were armored Bearkiller horse-archers.

"Shouldn't get your attention so set on one thing that you forget to look around you," Havel called out to the enemy, grinning like a wolf. Then, louder: "Fall in here, out of crossbow range! Everyone make sure your quivers are full and your mounts sound!"

The Bearkillers did, one of them swearing white-faced at a crossbow bolt standing buried deep in the cantle of his saddle, sunk through layers of leather and wood. Three inches closer, and it would have nailed his thigh to the saddle, or buried itself in his groin.

Havel ignored that, after checking that it hadn't injured the horse. Instead he uncased his binoculars. The Devil Dogs were doing the only thing possible; the man in the pseudo-Viking helmet seemed to be in charge, and he was getting them mounted again, abandoning the prisoners and cattle and heading south of west, to loop around the blocking force and get back to their base. Havel stood in the stirrups and waved to Hutton; the second-in-command waved back, and began to trot his band towards the commander's.

"What's horns-on-head trying to do, Mike?" Signe asked, jerking her head after the departing enemy.

Havel cased the binoculars again and took a sip from his canteen-not too much, since taking a leak while wearing the armor required contortions.

"The one with a crap-brown beard? He's trying to disengage," he said. "He's still not thinking in terms of mounted combat. If he only had Woburn's men to worry about he'd be home free. All they could do was follow him until he got back to St. Hilda's. Mounted infantry can't force each other to fight, because the other side can just trot off. But we can make him fight, because we don't have to stop and get off our horses to shoot."

"Not just a rat, but a stupid rat," Signe said. Her expression was grimmer than his, if anything. "I hope those farmers, the Clarkes, can watch from wherever they are."

"What goes around, comes around," Havel replied, nodding. "Sound: pursuit at the canter. Let's go!"

The Devil Dogs were galloping off, but they couldn't keep that up for long-not without more remounts than they had along. Carrying a heavy man in armor was hard work for a horse, the more so if he rode badly. Havel set a loping pace, letting the enemy draw ahead. Any chase was going to be from behind, here; the land was open and the Devil Dogs had been cutting fences all over the place precisely so they could move without running up against one.

Don't want to catch up to them too soon anyway, he thought. Not until Will rejoins. Let brown-beard-horns-on-head relax in his illusions for a while.

Then the Devil Dogs stopped, milled around, turned further south; they had to, if they wanted to keep from being caught between the two Bearkiller forces. Havel gave Will a high thumbs-up sign, and got a wave in return.

So far, so good. We've cut them off from home. Now for the hard part.

The muffled thunder of hooves seemed to drum inside his head and chest, beating like his heart. Even forty or fifty horsemen gave you a surprising sense of power, of irresistible momentum, as if so many hooves and so many tons of muscle and bone could ride down anything.

This is why so many brave idiots were in the cavalry, he thought.

He looked around carefully-the helmet and neck guard cut down on your peripheral vision-and waved a hand in summons. Woburn turned his horse until he was cantering knee-to-knee with the Bearkiller leader.

"Slick!" he said, grinning. "I dropped off a couple of men to look after the prisoners we got back-and all that stock."

"Thanks," Havel replied-by the terms of the contract, most of it went to his folk.

To himself. Slick? We shot three hundred-odd arrows at them and knocked out three men and one horse!

He went on aloud: "What I'd like you to do, Sheriff, is push them, since most of your people are riding lighter than mine."

Havel waved ahead towards the fleeing enemy. "Don't try to engage them, just get their horses lathered and blown, and stay on their right hands so they've got to keep heading south instead of right for St. Hilda's."

Woburn settled the Bearkiller-style helmet he'd bought. "That we can do," he said.

Whooping, he rode over to his men and shouted to them. They spurred their horses, pulling ahead of the double column of armored fighters, closing rapidly. The Devil Dogs flailed at their own mounts with their heels and the loose ends of their reins, pulling ahead again.

The whole clot of horses and men disappeared over one of the long low swellings; there wasn't much dust, but the rumble sounded loud through the warm air. A canter made enough wind to dry some of the sweat that runneled down his body, but not enough to get through most of the quilted padding under the armor.

Time crept by at a walk-trot-canter rhythm; he started to wonder whether he should step up the pace himself.

No. Remember the horses. They're not Humvees and ours are carrying a lot of weight.

Over the next rise, and a black clump showed in the distance. Down another shallow dip in the prairie, through fields of clover that smelled candy-sweet when crushed underhoof-that required a little discipline, because the horses saw no pressing reason not to stop and eat-and through a shallow creek fringed by pines, and then up another swale. The tracks of the Bearkillers and Woburn's men showed clearly, black against the poplin-green of wheat and the crimson-starred clover. This time they could see both parties; the Devil Dogs had slowed to a jog-trot.

Closer still, and he could see the streaks of foam on the necks and flanks of their horses, hear the wheezing bellows panting. They were tiring quickly; not in as good condition as the Bearkiller mounts to begin with, and badly ridden. Havel slowed, dropping down the column.

"Be careful when we catch up," he repeated over and over. "Remember, we don't want to let them close in too soon. Listen for the signals and keep alert."

"Yes, Mother," Eric muttered.

Havel rang the knuckles of his armored glove off the younger man's helmet.

"Hey!"

"Shut up!" Havel said. The white noise of the hooves would cover the words. "People are going to start dying right about now."

That won't work, he thought. This kid's still eighteen. He's seen people die since the Change but he still doesn't really believe it could be him, not down in the gut.

Inspiration struck: "Luanne there could die."

That got through; he saw Eric flush and then go pale.

"So let's all keep fucking focused, shall we?" he concluded grimly.

Havel tightened his thighs and shifted his balance, bringing Gustav up to a hand gallop. Woburn came alongside when he came back to the head of the line.

"What now?" he asked.

Havel cocked an eye at the sheriffs horse, and those of his posse. Not bad. About as worn down as ours, much less than the bad guys' nags. Woburn's men weren't wearing much armor, and they were a lot easier on their horses than the Devil Dogs.

"Hang back," he said. "You can't help with the next part. Stay in range-get ready to pile in if you have to, or chase 'em for real if they scatter."

"They're going to scatter?" Woburn asked.

"Well, if they don't there won't be any problem," Havel said. "Because then they'll all be dead. It'll take a while, though."

The sheriff peeled off to the loose array of his posse. Havel reached over his shoulder for a shaft and slid it through the arrow-shelf in his bow's riser, thinking hard.

The Devil Dogs weren't riding in any particular order; more like a loose mass that anything resembling his staggered column of twos. Havel waved his right arm and chopped it forward, brought the Bearkillers up level with their opponents and to their right, no more than forty yards away.

A few of the Devil Dogs had loaded their crossbows, and tried to shoot them one-handed like huge pistols; mostly they ended up sinking shafts into the ground at their horses' feet, or in wild arcs up into the air.

That bought a few derisive shouts from the Bearkillers, and elevated-finger salutes. Then they drew their bows. The sound that went up from the Devil Dogs as the first slashing volley of forty arrows arched out towards them was as much frustration as fear, but there was a lot of terror in it too. Two men went down when their horses were struck; the range was much closer this time, and more of the horse-archers were in the firing line.

Havel looked behind. One of the enemy fighters was down under his thrashing horse; the other was crawling on hands and knees, stunned, as Woburn's posse trotted towards him.

Hope he remembers we could use some prisoners, Havel thought. Then he shouted aloud: "Aim at the horses! Dismounting one is as good as killing him!"

Though that had the disadvantage that the horses didn't deserve it and their masters most certainly did-but the world wasn't fair. The Change certainly proved that, if there was any doubt.

The Devil Dog leader in the horned helmet screamed out an order and turned his horse, waving his long sword overhead as he charged. Havel didn't bother to give Signe a verbal command, just jerked a hand in the opposite direction; she put the trumpet to her lips and sounded: Parthian retreat and Form line abreast on the commander.

They all turned their horses right, a unified surge of motion at ninety degrees to their previous course; that gave him a fierce satisfaction. A lot of hard work was paying off. The Devil Dogs rode in a dense clump as they pursued the neatly spaced Bearkiller line; they were roaring again, gaining on their tormentors…

and then the Bearkillers turned in the saddle and began to shoot again, back over the horses' rumps.

Forty bows snapped. This time the range was close. Close enough to see men shout, close enough to see blood fly in sun-bright drops when an arrow punched into flesh. Close enough to hear the high shrill screams of wounded horses, unbearably loud.

Half a dozen Devil Dog mounts went down as if they had run into an invisible wall, throwing riders or rolling over them. Even then, Havel winced inwardly. He hated having to hurt the horses, but there really wasn't any alternative.

And then the enemy broke; one moment attacking, the next spurring off in every direction, like spatters of butter dropping on a hot skillet. For once, panic was making people do the less-bad thing-stop being a big clumped-up target at point-blank range.

"Sound Pursuit by squads, and Rally in one hour," Havel said, and Signe gave the call.

Woburn's men led, whooping with bloodthirsty glee; Havel's followed more sedately. He drew rein himself, turning his head to make sure all the Bearkillers were sticking to their four-fighter squads rather than hairing off individually. Unconsciously he made a slight shrug with his shoulders and a hunff sound as he looked back over the battlefield.

They were the same gestures his father had used back on the Havel homeplace when he shifted a big rock from a field drain, or got a tree down just the way he wanted. Hard dangerous work, done right.

Eric was part of the headquarters squad, along with Lu-anne and Signe.

"Well, that was easier than I expected," he said, flexing his right hand with a creak of leather and rustle of chain mail; pulling a bow to full draw over and over again was hard work.

"It's not over yet," Havel replied. "But yeah, so far. We surprised them badly. That always makes things a lot easier. Get inside someone's decision loop, and he's always reacting to what you do-usually badly-instead of doing something himself and making you react."

Luanne spoke: "Was there anything they could do?"

"Couple of things," Havel said. "Scatter right away; a fair number of them would have escaped. Fort up on a rise until dark-maybe kill their horses for barricades. Once the sun went down, we couldn't find most of them, and it's only about six hours' walk to their base. Or… well, they didn't have the leisure to think about it, and they got spooked when we showed 'em we could hit them without their being able to hit back. Plus I suspect their honcho just wasn't very bright. Anyone stupid enough to put horns on their helmet, where they'd catch a blade… "

"Ooopsie, speak of the devil," Signe said, pointing. "I think that's their command group, and they've stopped."

"No rest for the wicked," Havel said, turning Gustav forward.

They spread out into a loose line abreast. The wind was from Havel's right hand, hot and full of grassy smells.

That also made it possible for Signe to speak to him without the others hearing:

"Are we the wicked, Mike?" she said; he could hear a shiver in her voice below the steady beat of the hooves. "I'm… I couldn't have imagined doing… this… before the Change."

He looked at her with a crooked smile. "Nah, askling, we're not the wicked. We're the people who keep guys like Duke Iron Rod-who really is wicked-away from people like… oh, Jane Waters and her kids."

His smile grew to a grin: "Like Aragorn son of Arathorn, in those books of Astrid's. Or those two guys in the Iliad."

"You read the Iliad?" she said, surprised.

"Some of it, a long while ago. And your dad and I were talking about it, just the other day. There's this bit, where two guys-soldiers-are talking, and one of them says something like… "

He paused to think: "Why is it, my friend, that our people give us the best they have, the vineyard and the good land down by the river, and honor us next to the immortal Gods? Because we put our bodies between our homeland and the war's desolation."

"Speaking of which," he said in his ordinary voice.

Five of the enemy had halted-one because his horse had keeled over, with arrow-feathers showing against its side behind the girth; as they looked it gave a final kick, voided and died.

A horse took a surprising amount of time to bleed out, if you didn't hit something immediately vital.

The rider looked to have come off unexpectedly and hard. Two others were trying to get him up, and nearly succeeding. Another two were riding double, seemingly arguing with each other.

All of them were too busy to keep lookout. When they saw what was approaching, the man on the double-ridden horse struck backward with his head, throwing his partner half-off, then pushing and shoving and beating at him with one fist as the horse swung in circles, rolling its eyes and getting ready to buck.

It did buck once as the second man came loose, and then starfished and crow-hopped sideways across the knee-high wheat; that spooked the mounts of the two trying to lift their fallen commander. They let him drop for a second to snatch for their reins, while the Devil Dog who'd shed his friend hammered at his mount with his heels until it lumbered back into a weary gallop.

Havel snorted. "Hope to God I never have to depend on a buddy like that," he said. "Eric, Luanne, take him. Be careful."

"You said it," Eric said grimly. "Haakkaa paalle! Let's go!"

He drew his backsword; Luanne reached behind and lifted the lance from its tubular scabbard at the right rear of her saddle, hefting it with a toss to grab it by the rawhide-wound grip section. Their horses rocked into a lope after the diminishing dot of the fleeing outlaw.

Havel squinted against the sun, shading his eyes with one hand and considering the three Devil Dogs grouped around the enemy commander. He was on his feet again, if a little shaky, and he'd kept one of the big kite-shaped shields his gang favored, decorated with the winged skull and twin runic thunderbolts. The other two had only their swords; one had lost his helmet.

"How are you doing for arrows?" Havel asked.

"Twelve left," Signe said, reaching over her shoulder to check with her fingers; you couldn't see them, of course.

"I've got eight," Havel said.

He looked around; nobody close-in fact, nobody in sight, except for the balloon. A cavalry battle in open country was a lot like one at sea; distances could open out fast.

"Ummmm… Mike, shouldn't we offer them a chance to surrender?" Signe said, nodding towards the three men a hundred yards away.

"I wish they would surrender," Havel said. "We could get some useful intelligence. But they won't."

"Why not?"

"Woburn, for starters. Remember that gallows he's building, in front of the county courthouse?"

"Yeah," she said, wincing slightly. "You know, before the Change, I was big against capital punishment."

"Well, we've all had to give up luxuries," he chuckled. "And considering these guys' records in the armed robbery, murder, arson and rape department… "

"Yeah," she said, her face hardening. "There is that."

They were two hundred yards away now. Worth a try, Havel thought. It really would be useful to get one for interrogation before we try conclusions with Duke Iron Rod. Is he really going to sit still while we trundle the doorknockers up to his front porch?

"Give up!" he shouted. "Give up, or your ass is grass!"

The reply came back thin across the distance: "Fuck you!" and the three men waved their swords and shook fists.

"You guys called it," Havel said with a shrug, pulling out an arrow. "Geeup, Gustav."

The horse was tired, but not worn out. He could feel it gathering itself as he leg-signaled it; it was getting so he was as comfortable riding with the reins knotted on the saddlebow as with them in his hands. And the Devil Dogs hadn't tried to skewer him with a crossbow bolt, which meant they probably didn't have an intact weapon between the three of them.

The horse went trot-canter-gallop. He went close this time, watching carefully and picking his target. The two shieldless men tried to duck under the cover of the dead horse…

"I don't fucking believe it," Ken Larsson said, staring at the steam engine.

Randy Sacket darted a triumphant glance at his father, who was about Ken's age; the younger man was in his twenties, with dark hair slicked back into a ponytail and tattoos on his forearms. His hands were big and battered as he traced the water and steam lines on the miniature traction engine-it stood about four feet high at the top of its boiler, with a disproportionately large seat.

"You're sure it's not some sort of mechanical failure?" Pete Sacket said.

The older Sacket ran a garage-cum-machine-shop on the edge of Craigswood, or had before the Change-it wasn't far from the spot the Bearkillers had picked to camp. Now he and his son and daughter-in-law cultivated a big truck garden and helped improvise plows and cultivators that could be drawn by horses or newly broken oxen. The steam engine stood in the dirt parking lot behind the sheet-metal buildings, along with a good deal of other abandoned equipment… much of it valuable for the heavy springs it contained.

You could throw things with springs and gears; he'd fired up the steam engine for curiosity's sake, and to keep his mind off the fact that his children were out fighting, and him not there.

Its boiler was hissing merrily, and wisps of steam escaped as more and more fuel oil was fed to the boilers-the machine was meant for tourists, and shoveling in coal would have been more authenticity than most at the county fair wanted.

What's happening is that the goddamned pressure isn't going up like it should, Larsson thought, wiping his hands on an oily rag.

He looked up at the setting sun, feeling a little guilty; there was a working day gone.

"No, it's in perfect working order," he said. "It's just that no matter how much fuel you put through, the pressure doesn't get high enough to do more than-"

He pointed to the flywheel, which spun-very, very slowly-in its mount on the top right of the boiler. Suddenly he threw the rag down and stamped on it, startling both of them; he wasn't a demonstrative man, and they'd both picked up on that even on short acquaintance.

"I told you, Dad," Randy said. "It's something to do with the Change!"

All three of them glared at the big toy. "How the hell could anything make steam engines stop?" the older mechanic said.

"How the hell could anything make radios and gasoline engines stop? All we can do is guess," Larsson said bitterly. "We're like King Arthur trying to make sense of a cell phone. This tears it, though-I'm morally certain it's some intelligent action. Alien Space Bats are stealing our toys. Someone or some-thing's sucking energy out of anything that meets certain parameters. And they're doing it selectively-just on the surface of the earth."

He shook a fist at the sky. "If we ever get a chance at payback, you sick sadistic bastards, you'll regret this!"

"I regret it already," Randy Sacket said mournfully. He pulled a package of cigarettes from the pocket of his denim vest. "These are my last smokes. And man, I miss my Harley real bad."

All three men sighed. Peter Sacket snapped off the feed to the little engine's firebox, and the hissing died. The flywheel took another few turns and stopped, and the pressure gauge dropped down from its pathetic figure towards zero.

"You know," Ken said thoughtfully, "you could build a steam engine to operate at the pressures we got here."

"You could?" both the mechanics said.

"Yeah. Sort of like the first ones ever built, we studied them in our history of engineering courses. The problem is that they'd weigh about half a ton per horsepower with cylinders ten feet long and they'd gobble fuel so fast you could only use them where it was pretty well free-that's why the first ones were used to pump out coal mines. For doing any useful work, and particularly for pushing a locomotive or a boat or a road vehicle. forget it. You'd be better off with an exercise wheel full of gerbils."

He nearly asked for one of the younger man's cigarettes, but restrained himself. Getting readdicted to a drug about to disappear for good from this part of the world would be extremely stupid.

"So much for the Chinese being better off than the rest of us," he said.

"Why should the Chinese be better off?"

"They still use a lot of coal-fired steam locomotives… or did, before the Change. Apparently whoever did this to the human race was quite thorough."

He sighed and turned back to the weapons he and the mechanics had been working on; gas cutting and welding sets still worked, and would as long as the acetylene held out. They'd already done the frames, wheels and parts to his specifications.

"This is the catapult," he said, pointing to the first. One of the Sackets lit a gasoline lantern and hung it on a pole. "It'll shoot great big steel spears. This is going to be the tre-buchet."

"Tree bucket?" Peter Sacket asked.

"Tray-boo-shet. It's just a big lever with a weight on the short end and a throwing sling on the long one," Larsson said. "It'll throw rocks; rocks weighing hundreds of pounds, and throw them half a mile, hard. Then this thing is going to be a covered ram, with a sloping steel roof and a big I-beam for the ram. Last but not least, this'll be a pump with a long nozzle controlled by the gantry I showed you the drawings for."

"Might be useful for firefighting," Sacket said.

Behind him, his son rolled his eyes.

Larsson grinned. "No, what'll be pumping is a mixture of chopped up tires dissolved in gasoline, then thickened further with detergent-soap flakes."

"Napalm!" the older Sacket cried in delight. "Christ, I was an armorer's mate in 'Nam and we loaded that stuff all the time. Those sorry-ass bikers will get out of town fast when that comes calling!"

"Yup," Larsson said. Guess I'd better not mention being an antiwar protester back then. "Then there are these metal shields on wheels, to push up to the wall-"

He stopped. Neither of the other men were listening to him anymore. Both were staring over his shoulder. He wheeled himself…

"That's torn it," Havel said grimly.

"What?" Luanne Hutton looked up; she'd been scrubbing blood from the foot-long steel head of her lance with a handful of grass.

Everyone else was doing the chores; piling up enemy weapons and armor, getting the wounded onto their horse-drawn ambulance and headed back to camp with Astrid and her teenagers; the battle had looped around quite close to Craigswood in the course of pursuit and maneuver; And making sure the enemy dead really were. Piling up the bodies and taking tally, too-the Bearkillers were being paid a per-confirmed-kill bonus.

They had taken a couple of prisoners, both wounded, and Pam was patching those up too. The sun was low in the west now, making Cottonwood Butte a black outline across the rolling prairie.

"Signe!" Havel called, cursing himself behind an impassive face. "Signe!"

The girl was a few yards away, helping with the captured horses and not looking at the gruesome clean-up work.

"Sound Fall in!"

She gave him a startled glance and then scrabbled for the bugle slung across her shoulder. The first try was a startled blat; then it rang out hard and clear. Everyone was tired, but they moved fast; horses were resaddled and everyone ready to go within a few minutes.

"Look yonder," he said grimly, as Signe fell in by his side.

The balloon had been winched down. Now it was rising again, rising high and paying out southward as fast as the cable could come off the windlass. The propane flame lit the white-and-red envelope from within, turning it into a Chinese lantern of improbable beauty with each flare as it rose against the darkening horizon to the east.

Havel rose in the stirrups and raised his voice: "Possibly I'm being too nervous, but I'm going to assume that means an attack on our camp. We're going home-as fast as the horses can carry us. Now."

He pulled Gustav's head around and clapped the spurs home.

"Buttercup," Billy Waters said. The teenager standing guard at the Bearkillers' notional perimeter nodded and replied: "Bluebonnet-advance and be recognized."

There was a sneer in the words as he gave the countersign, and Waters felt his teeth grind at it.

You'll be laughing out of the other side soon, you little fuck, he thought.

The twilight was deepening, but the youth's eyes widened at the sight of the men coming up behind the bowyer. A dozen big hairy shaggy men, carrying wrapped bundles in their hands.

"Hey, you guys aren't locals!" the teenager said. He raised his bow. "You stop right there!"

He raised his voice, a warbling yell with a break right in the middle of it: "Camp boss! We got a problem here!"

One of the Devil Dogs shoved Waters aside with a curse; that saved his life, that and Jeb Smith's hand on his ankle pulling him to the ground.

The Devil Dog swept his war-hammer free of the concealing rags and charged roaring, flourishing the massive weapon overhead. The boy on guard fired by instinct, with the same reflex he would have used if he'd suddenly found a scorpion in his bedroll.

The bowstring went snap against his leather bracer, and the Devil Dog's roar turned into a scream of pain as the arrow sank to its feathers in his thigh; the sweep of the war-hammer buried itself in the hillside turf.

Smith went tsk between his teeth and leveled his crossbow from where he lay. The short weapon gave a tung! and the heavy bolt hammered into the boy's body just below the breastbone, and he dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. Waters stared at the figure that jerked and then lay still…

"Thought you wanted 'em all dead," Smith observed, kneeling to drop the spanning claw over his crossbow's string and hook the crank to the butt.

"Uh. yeah," Waters said, licking his lips. Too late to back out now. Christ, what have I gotten myself into?

"Too late to back out now," Smith said, and Waters started at the words. "Well, get his bow, man. We've got work to do, and you wanted to see to your family, didn't you?"

Waters nodded dumbly and took the weapon and quiver; he already had a sword and knife at his waist, but he'd never pretended to be a blade man. The bow he could use; it had a lighter pull than his regular one, but just as heavy as the models he'd used to hunt deer. Together they ran on through the growing chaos of the camp; he could see fires and hear screams from the darkened town beyond as well.

I'm gonna be a big man here, he told himself. The Duke knows he needs me.

The dark was getting deeper, but only a few of the lanterns had been lit; what light there was came mostly from the hearths and cooking fires, red and glimmering. Figures ran past him amid a rising brabble of voices and the sudden scrap-metal clamor of edged metal striking its kin. Suddenly Smith was cursing beside him; he grabbed the lighter man by the sleeve and yanked him around.

"Jesus!" Smith said. "They're going to see that and Lord fucking Bear's only a couple of miles away. Come on!"

Waters's head jerked around. The balloon was rising again, with a booming roar of propane and a flare of light. He ran in Smith's wake, fumbling out an arrow for the bow.

"We're killing the horses!" Luanne cried.

"We can replace them," Havel snarled over the thunder of hooves.

"Shut up and ride, girl," her father gasped.

The Bearkillers came over the last crest. Craigswood lay below them, T-shaped-one main street, a crossbar and some laneways beyond. There were a couple of houses burning already, and more fires in the Bearkiller camp beyond.

No time to blame yourself, he thought. Just do what you can.

"Will!" he said, dropping back beside him. "We'll punch through Craigswood, and then clear the camp out. When we've finished there, we'll punch back and do the same in town."

"Yeah," the other man said. "How'd you know something was happening when you saw the balloon?"

"It occurred to me that if Duke Iron Rod was smart and had spies in Craigswood, he'd know that sitting and waiting for a siege where we had Ken's doorknockers was a bad idea. Looks like he threw double or nothing. Infiltrated most of his men in small parties, hid them out in ravines or something, and then launched that raid in broad daylight to draw us out."

"I'll take the rear," Hutton said, nodding. "Chance to finish him off, too."

He dropped back along the column of twos, pausing to brief the fighters. Everyone was grimly anxious-they could see their families and moving home under attack in front of them-but nobody broke ranks. Riding fast in the dark was risky enough as it was…

They passed the first house, dark and shuttered; then there were a line of men across the road, barring their way. Light gleamed red on the blades of their swords and axes.

Havel drew his sword, leaning forward with the point advanced and feet planted firmly in the stirrups.

"Haakkaa paalle!" he shouted.

"Haakkaa paalle!" the Bearkillers roared behind him, louder than the thunder of hooves on asphalt.

Waters raised the bow uncertainly.

In and around the balloon wagon were a knot of Bear-killers; a couple of armored fighters, and a tangle of women and children. Not his children, except for Reuben… and then he saw the faces of the others peering over the edge of the balloon's basket; them and half a dozen others and a twelve-year-old to keep them in order, and the weight must be why the rise was so slow. But there were Devil Dogs about, too, and he saw a brief bright glitter from the head of a crossbow bolt as it arched up towards the gondola.

"No!" he shouted.

"Oh, we are so fucked," Smith said conversationally. "I think a move's in order. Portland, maybe."

The other man's head swiveled back and forth; then he shrugged, sheathed his weapons and faded into the darkness. Waters felt an overwhelming urge to follow him… but walked forward instead.

His wife, Jane, was beside Reuben and Angelica Hutton, clutching a spear in an uncertain grip and prodding gingerly at dark figures that dodged about. Astrid Larsson sprang up from behind the massive winch that controlled the balloon and shot, the arrow a flickering streak in the semidarkness; someone shouted in pain amid the scrimmage beyond.

A huge bass voice bellowed: "Out of my way, you pussies!"

Iron Rod's great sword spun in the firelight, a pinwheel of light. The ash-wood of the spear shaft cracked, and the head flew off into the night. Iron Rod bellowed and strode forward, an iron-clad giant, swung again. Jane Waters flew sprawling; the merciful darkness hid what fell. The long sword rose again, over Reuben and Angelica where she stood by the wagon wheel, knife and hatchet in hand, spitting defiance.

Waters shot. The arrow punched into Iron Rod's heavy shield and stood quivering, humming a malignant note under the shrieks and clatter. He dragged his own sword free and ran forward, trying to remember the detested lessons, threw himself forward in a lunge. The point struck something hard and slipped, and he dropped the hilt and pinwheeled his arms as he staggered on the wet ground trying to regain his balance.

Something hit him, and he was lying on the ground. Thunder drummed in the earth beneath his ear, and then faded into a warm darkness. A sharp pain came with it, and then seeped away in weariness.

"Haakkaa paalle! Haakkaa paalle!"

Signe was screeching it as they thundered down the laneways between the tents, sheerly mad.

"Oh, shit!" Mike Havel shouted; he couldn't keep Gus-tav abreast of her-the gelding had been carrying more weight all day.

A huge figure in armor turned, throwing aside his broken shield. Ken Larsson toppled away as he turned; his face was a mask of blood, but he was clutching at his left wrist with his good hand as his sledgehammer dropped.

Havel could see the Devil Dog-surely Iron Rod himself- grin tautly as he poised ready, the bastard sword in a two-handed grip with the point up and back. The big man moved with astonishing grace as the horse thundered down on him, pivoting, the sword lashing out in the same motion. It cut the left foreleg in two just above the cannon bone, with a sound like a giant ax striking home in hardwood.

The horse's scream was enormous even among the clamor of battle. Iron Rod spun with the impact, laughing in his dense mat of beard, and Signe flew from the saddle to land with a bruising impact. Even then she managed to get her shield up, but the targe splintered under the stroke that glanced off it and into the nasal bar of her helmet.

He could hear her scream through the snap of breaking metal.

"Haakkaa paalle!" Havel shouted, as he slugged Gustav back on his haunches.

The big gelding reared, his hooves steelshod clubs flailing in the darkness. Iron Rod skipped backward, but that gave Havel the time to kick his feet free of the stirrups and slide cat-agile to the ground. The horse ran free, wild-eyed; Signe rolled in the dirt, both hands clutched to her face, screaming through her fingers.

Iron Rod roared and charged, his great blade whirling and scattering red drops. Havel landed with his knees bent and shield and blade forward, poised and ready.

The bastard sword swung down from left to right, a blow that would have lopped through a four-inch sapling. Havel moved into the stroke, hilt up and blade angled down behind him.

Iron Rod's sword struck his; there was a long skr-rinnnngg as the steel slanted away, redirected by the angle of impact. Even then, the weight of it nearly tore the hilt from his hand.

"My turn," Havel snarled.

The stepping lunge had taken him past Iron Rod, and the Devil Dog was twisted to his own right, locked for a moment by the momentum of his two-handed blow; not even a man that strong could stop a heavy sword instantly after putting everything he had into a strike.

Havel cut, backhand, the saber whistling with the speed of it. Then there was a heavy wet thunk as it struck behind Iron Rod's right knee below the skirt of his scale hauberk- the hamstring parting like a tense cable as Havel twisted and pivoted.

Iron Rod tried to pivot as well, and the leg buckled under him. He struck the earth with a bellow that was more rage than pain. The Bearkiller leader pounced again, smashing one heel down onto the hand that still gripped the heavy sword. Bones crunched, and Iron Rod shrieked;

Havel lashed out with one foot and the metal-shod tip of his boot struck his foeman's skull.

Iron Rod went limp. Havel sheathed his sword and took three paces before he knelt, holding Signe by the shoulders.

"He cut off my nose!" she cried in a thin shriek.

"No!" Havel said sharply.

She quieted; he forced her hands down and washed away some of the blood with his canteen.

"No, it's just a cut. It'll heal-not even much of a scar. The shield and the nasal bar broke the force." He pulled a bandage from the first-aid pouch at his belt. "Hold this to it."

Then he rose, looking around him; Pam had a tourniquet whipped around Ken Larsson's left forearm, he had his good hand pressed to one eye socket… and there was still fighting in the dark. Most of the attackers wouldn't know their leader was down. They'd have to do it the hard way, hunt them down through the night like the huge cunning sewer rats they were.

"Rally to me, Bearkillers!" he shouted.

To himself: "Let's get this cluster-fuck under control."

Sheriff Woburn nodded. "Let's give him his last wish!" he called up to his men. "He wanted to be hung here, and here he'll swing. Prod the bastard out!"

Michael Havel leaned on the pommel of his saddle as the Duke of the Devil Dogs stepped from the window of St. Hilda's tower; there were spearheads behind him, but he moved before they touched him.

Plus I think Sheriff Woburn has decided that his HQ should be here too. Smart man.

The heavy body fell four feet and jerked to a halt as the noose went tight; Iron Rod kicked for a moment and then hung still, his eyes looking out over the fair land of his duchy.

Twenty-nine

"Didn't know you played country!" Sheriff Laughton called, as he whirled by in the line of dancers.

The late September night was cool, but his face glittered a little with sweat in the red light of the great bonfires. Every now and then someone stumbled on the sheep-cropped grass, but enthusiasm made up for want of grace and a smooth floor.

Juniper grinned as she fiddled; the tune was actually "The Green Fields of Rossbeigh," and Celtic as all get-out even if it did start out with banjo and spoons. At least you could play country or traditional styles all-acoustic. People devoted to rap or metal were just shit out of luck.

The expression on the Laughton's face changed a little as Judy and Diana came in on the flute and the bohdran drum, standing behind her beneath the great oak. Suspended from a branch was the twelve-foot shape of the Green Man, a human form made from wicker and laced with leafy vines and twigs.

But "Rossbeigh" made an excellent toe-tapping hoe-down tune, and her free foot-she was sitting on the green mound with one leg tucked under-started tapping on its own. Her developing stomach wasn't getting in the way, quite, but she couldn't see the tapping toe, either. Luckily, a kilt and plaid made good maternity clothes. She'd hated the Mother Hubbards that were all she could wear when she was bearing Eilir.

The fiddle sang on. American country music started with the Scots-Irish, anyway, she thought. This is where it all came from.

The big trestle tables with the food were off to the side, including heaps of honey-sweetened pastries and fruit-and-nut scones to honor the occasion and-strictly rationed- some homemade ice cream with bits of dried cherries and filberts in it; sugar was the bottleneck there, since they'd used just about every scrap for putting up jams and jellies. Fruit-flavored yogurts were plentiful as all get-out.

People moved from dance to the food tables and back… or sometimes out into the darkness, hand-in-hand; it was an eat-dance-and-eat occasion.

Not to mention a drink-and-dance occasion, she thought. Well, Wine Harvest is another name for Mabon, after all.

There were also a couple of barrels of Dennis's beer and mead, besides what they'd salvaged from a winery. He thought that would be better in a year or two, but it was certainly drinkable now; he wanted to put in a winepress of their own next year.

She finished the tune with a flourish, and everyone came to a halt as the bohdran gave a long final rattle; someone put a mug of the home-brewed in her hand. She drank it down with another flourish to whoops and cheers, and wiped the foam from her lips; nicely hopped, with a nutty undertaste.

"Brigid linn is deoch is ni raibh tu riamh bocht!" she cried to the assembly. "Brigid with us, and a drink, and may you never lack!"

Judy held up an index finger: one only.

A little did no harm, but she nodded no seconds-and besides that, beer went through you even faster when you were pregnant. A buzz of voices rose above the cheerful crackle of the bonfires, sparks flying up into the dark star-rich sky.

The dance was in the open meadow below the gatehouse; the palisade and the tower reared black and jagged northward, the hills forest-shaggy beyond. The bright paint and carving on the great posts to either side of the gate stbod out more clearly for that: the God as Lugh of the Sun on the right, the Goddess on the left as Brigid, carrying the sheaf and surrounded by the flames of wisdom.

Dennis has gone berserk, and it's catching, she thought ruefully. All that seasoned wood just waiting to be carved…

The fires gave off a clean hot scent, mingling with the sappy-tarry odor of the big logs in the structures above and the farm smells that had become the background of her life, and the cool aliveness that poured down from the forests. Children ran around outside the line of dancers; only the infants and toddlers were off sleeping yet. Juniper made an inconspicuous signal.

Best to gather them up now, before they get overtired and cranky, she thought. Besides, there's grown-up business to attend to.

She shivered at the thought, then managed to push it away for the moment. Chuck and Judy caught the eye of Daniel and Sanjay and Mary; they herded the preteens together and brought them over to the little hillock where the musicians had sat.

None of the children were shy around her anymore; certainly not Chuck and Judy's Mary, who had brass enough for three and a real feeling for music.

"Can we sing the hymn now?" she said eagerly. "Dad said we could."

She's calling Chuck Dad so natural now, Juniper thought behind her smile. Now, is that a sad thing, or happy, or both at once? At that, she and Daniel didn't have much of a father or mother before the Change, as far as I can tell. Why bother to have children at all if you don't want to spend time with them?

"That you can," she said aloud. "But first, since Mabon's the Wine Harvest, you should all have a wee glass-it's a special occasion, to be sure."

The children were eager; chances were they wouldn't actually like it much-dry red Pinot Noir was an acquired taste-but it was a chance to play grown-up. Small cups clutched in small hands, they filed past the big wickerwork, vine-woven figure behind her dressed in their Mabon best with ribbons of red, orange, russet, maroon and gold, each pouring a libation for the Green Man and the tree before drinking down the rest themselves.

Which will make them sleepier, she thought. And it's a cunning High Priestess you are, Juniper Mackenzie.

Mary cleared her throat impatiently and Juniper gave them the note, the fiddle singing long and pure. Judy tapped her bohdran. They'd all practiced hard, and everyone came in on the beat, although there were a few wobbles to be corrected with desperate speed:

"Autumn colors of red and gold

As I close my eyes tonight

Such a wonder to behold

I feel the Goddess hold me tight

Watch leaves turning one by one

Though it grows dark, I shall not fear

Captured bits of Autumn Sun

For Divine Love protects all here

Soon they'll fall and blow away

Through the night, until the morn

The golden treasures of today

When the shining Sun's reborn

When the trees are bare

Time to sleep, time to dream

And the ground grows cold

Till warm gold rays upon me stream

These warm memories

I'll still hold… "

The adults behind broke into a chorus of claps and cheers as they finished; dogs ran about; it was another twenty minutes before the children were all through the gatehouse and abed, or led off to the tents that housed the visitors and the clansfolk from the outlying duns. While that was going on Juniper headed for the tables and loaded a plate, resisting temptation and making herself take some potato salad despite how sick she'd gotten of the spud in general.

"Which isn't surprising, considering how often we all meet Mr. Spud when it isn't a festival day," she muttered to herself. "Mashed, boiled, roasted… "

At least there was plenty in the way of fresh greens and tomatoes, which her mouth still craved, and Diana had managed to make plenty of wine vinegar. Most of it had gone into pickling and preserving, but there was enough for dressing, another taste everyone had sorely missed. Everyone with inclinations to cooking had contributed something; Dennis had produced a lovely baked-bean dish too, smokey and rich with bits of bacon and onion.

The bread was excellent, though less of a novelty now that a two-pound loaf was the basis of everyone's daily diet; but for today there was cheese-bread as well, and some with caramelized onions in the crust, and varieties done with honey and nuts…

A good old-fashioned Wiccan potluck… but blessed be, no tofu!

It would have been a valuable source of protein, but fortunately the soybean didn't grow around here. She'd always loathed the bland custard-like dish, no matter what people claimed they could do with seasoning. Eating seasoned tofu was like licking a rubber snail dipped into garlic butter and calling it escargot.

And hard it was to escape tofu, at our gatherings before the Change;you'd think it was sacred.

Full of virtue, she added a single slice of ham and one of roast venison. Another month and they'd be slaughtering more-getting the necessary salt for laying down salt pork was proving difficult-but for now pig meat was short, and they always had to be careful with the deer for fear of hunting out the vicinity. Being cautious with the gifts of the Goddess was more than a principle now, it was necessary.

The second set of fiddlers came on with "Bully of the Bayou"; they were from Sweet Home, refugeed out a month ago when that town broke up in internal fighting. When she got back to the oak tree and the table beside it, she found Sheriff Laughton waiting, along with several of the other guests-ranchers from across the Cascades. They'd come over the mountains in a body, with armed guards from their… Well, I suppose you could call it their retainers, she thought. Anyway, their cowboys and all those people from the towns they've taken in.

All the bigger ranches on the eastern slopes were like hamlets themselves now, she'd heard, or at least the ones that didn't absolutely need power-driven pumps to survive.

And the ranchers like little lords on their properties, getting used to having their own way, she thought. It'll be a good long while before we know all the things the Change has brought on us.

They were influential men, most in their thirties and forties-the half-year since the Change had not been kind to the elderly anywhere, even in favored areas like theirs.

Mostly lean-looking as if they'd always been lean-and weathered; and not a few were looking distinctly nervous at the tall bushy figure of the Green Man beneath the tree, and the Horns of Plenty and ribbons hung from the branches.

They were all impressed by the feast, though, and by the tall log walls of Dun Juniper, and by the exhibition of massed archery the clan had put on earlier that afternoon.

Everyone can shoot in the general direction of the enemy, and then we have a few like Aylward and Chuck who do marksmanship, and they think all of us can shoot like that. Would that it were so!

"Ah, Lady Juniper, I didn't want to intrude on your, well:-" Laughton began.

Being polite, she thought. Actually, he's frightened.

"Don't worry," she said soothingly; Laughton was still a little uncertain about what being a member of the clan meant. "This isn't a religious ceremony, not really. We've already had that."

Searching for a comparison: "It's just like, oh, having a turkey dinner and giving presents and singing carols at Christmas. Not something secret or barred to outsiders."

Dennis winked at her. She knew what he was thinking: And it's good for the mystique of the Witch Queen. Her lips quirked. Scoffer, she thought with affectionate exasperation. Though technically, I am a Witch Queen.

Any High Priestess was automatically, if your coven split off more than a couple of daughters, which hers had- several times over. That didn't mean all that much, besides prestige and people asking for your advice; the Craft didn't have popes or ayatollahs or anything resembling them. And of course, you got to put some doodads on your garter…

Or at least it didn't mean much before the Change, she thought uneasily.

Dennis left and came back with a keg of his beer over one thick shoulder; there were appreciative murmurs from the ranchers, since there hadn't been much worthy of the name east of the mountains in some time. Eilir bustled about with mugs and glasses, and set up a little spirit-lamp with a big pot of chamomile tea near Juniper's place.

There were also a number of visitors from little clusters of coveners who'd survived in the mountainous backwoods south of Eugene and some other out-of-the-way spots. They were respectful to a degree that made her blink; granted, the Mackenzies had been able to spare some much needed help there, the difference between life and death in some cases. And her clan were much better off than any of theirs, and for that matter the Singing Moon had had a good reputation for years, still…

Luther Finney grinned at her as he detached himself from the dancing and came over to the table. "Nice spread, Juney. Haven't had a good barn dance like this in ages, neither."

"Good to see you can still cut a rug, Luther." She nodded at him, and his younger companion, before turning to the other guests: "Luther Finney, a member of the University Committee, and Captain Peter Jones, of their militia."

Handshakes went around; Juniper made small talk- mostly about crops and weather-until the food was finished. Some of the people on kitchen duty came and took away the empties; and at last Sam Aylward gave her a thumbs-up signal from the edge of sight…

"I think the other guests have arrived," she said, leaning forward to turn up the knob of the table lamp.

Heads came around at a uniform tramp of feet and clash of metal. There were a few gasps when five Bearkillers marched into sight, looking like giants in their long mail hauberks, vambraces, shin guards and armored gauntlets; they had their shields on their arms, and their bowcases and quivers slung over their backs. The sixth was in civil garb, dark cargo-pocket pants and duster and broad-brimmed hat, but he had the red snarling-bear outline embroidered on the left shoulder of his jacket. He also had one of the long straight-bladed, basket-hilted swords at his waist.

"Ma'am," he said, taking off his hat. "Will Hutton, at your service. Ladies, gentlemen."

You know, it's been weeks since I saw a black person, she thought suddenly.

That brought a momentary pang for the thronging many-threaded tapestry of life before the Change; even his accent was nostalgic, a twanging drawl from off the southern plains, Oklahoma or Texas.

"Mr. Hutton," she said, rising and extending a hand. "Mike Havel told me a great deal about you."

"Likewise, Lady Juniper," he said.

His grip had the careful gentleness of a very strong man. And his hand was callused in a way that spoke of hard work long before the Change, battered and a little gnarled-the hands of someone who labored outside in all weathers. Otherwise he was unremarkable, middle-aged and wiry save for broad shoulders… and a steady shrewdness about the eyes.

One of the ranchers blurted: "You're this Lord Bear we've heard about?"

"No, sir, I am not," Hutton said with dignified politeness, unbuckling his sword belt and handing it to one of the troopers before he sat. "I'm ramrod and second-in-command of our outfit, and I have full authority to negotiate for the Bearkillers."

"Wait a minute," another rancher said. "Hutton… didn't you used to ride roughstock? Saw you at the Pendleton Round-Up back in 'seventy-five, 'seventy-six-that was one mean bull."

Hutton smiled whitely; it made his rather stern, weathered brown face charming.

"Long time ago," he said. "Been wranglin' horses since 1977, until the Change."

"I've talked to men who bought horses from you."

That seemed to break the ice. Hutton made a motion with his hand, and one of the armored men took off his helmet. It was the blond young man she'd met with Havel that spring; looking older and tougher now, his beard a little less fuzzy and a recently healed scar on his chin.

"This here is my aide-de-camp"-Hutton pronounced the words as if he'd learned them from a French speaker-"Eric Larsson; our bossman's going to be married to his elder sister, Signe. We're headed for the old Larsson place west of the Willamette. He's engaged to my daughter Luanne."

The ranchers nodded; they understood blood ties, and that Hutton had made good his claim to be high in the Bearkiller hierarchy. Now that the elaborate panoply of bureaucracy and cities and civilization was gone, such things were beginning to take on their old importance.

Juniper sighed to herself. Oddly sweet, those few days. But not lasting… she set a hand on her stomach… except for the consequences!

"And this is his younger sister, Astrid, who's here 'cause she sketches good; she's got drawings that'll interest you gentlemen."

A coltish teenager; you could see Eric's chiseled Nordic looks in her face, but finer-boned, almost ethereal; and the eyes were remarkable, huge and pale, blue rimmed and streaked with an almost silver color. Her outfit looked a little like something you'd have seen at a RenFaire before the Change, or a Society meeting-Robin Hood gear, but in good-quality leather, and showing signs of hard use. Juniper's dirk stood at her waist, and a beautifully crafted bow and quiver over her shoulder.

Eric was standing near Juniper. She could hear his sotto voce murmur:

"And with luck, she won't have put in any unicorns or trolls."

The girl glared at him, but silently. Her fingers moved in patterns Juniper recognized.

So did Eilir, and she leaned forward from her position behind her mother's chair and replied: You know the Sign for abortion and bad odor and completely unnecessary person?

Astrid's white-blond mane tossed as she nodded: I've been studying Sign all summer.

From a book, I bet, Eilir replied. You need to know some stuff they don't print-the Sign for creep and jerk and moron. How come you were studying, though?

Ever since I got this utterly rad dagger from your mom and heard about you guys. Are you really Witches? This is so interesting!

Juniper ignored the byplay-one of the convenient things about a Sign conversation was that you didn't have to overhear it-and spoke aloud:

"I don't think your people need to stand there being uncomfortable, Mr. Hutton. There's plenty to eat and the dancing will go on for hours."

He nodded to her, and then to Eric. The younger man spoke: "Stand easy-friendly country protocol."

Hutton relaxed and turned for a moment to put his mug under the spigot: she noticed that he hadn't eaten or drunk before his men could. The menacing iron statues turned human as they came out from behind the nasal-bars of their helmets, grinning and nudging each other as they moved off to shed their armor; then they headed for the food tables, and any interesting conversations they could strike up-being figures of strangeness and glamour, that ought not to be very difficult.

Eric disarmed too, but came back quickly.

"Sorry we're a bit late," Hutton said easily, then took a draught. "My oh my, I've missed a good beer! Yeah, we had a little bandit trouble gettin' over the pass."

"Serious?" Sam Aylward asked.

"Not for us," Hutton said with a grim smile.

Chuckles ran around most of the men at the table. Juniper winced inwardly, then spoke herself: "Now, you've all heard of the Bearkillers?"

The ranchers nodded; so did Luther Finney and Jones, though their information all came through her. One of the ranchers spoke: "Yeah, we're in touch with Pendleton, and they've done some good work there-honest crowd, from what we hear. Helped keep trouble off their necks while they got the harvest in, was what we heard."

Another nodded: "And I know Hank Woburn up Grangeville way, in Idaho. Couple of messages passed through with travelin' folk."

He looked around. "Remember, I told everyone about it? That thing with the guy who called himself Iron Rod. These Bearkillers, they cleared that up."

Hutton nodded. "We didn't plan it that way, not at first, but it turned out that about all we've done since the Change is fight, train to fight, and work on our gear. Now we've got near two hundred first-rate cavalry, about the only ones around… and war-engines, too; also about the only ones around, outside, Portland. Quite a few folks have tried to tangle with us, and a few of 'em have regretted it ever since."

"Only some? What about the others?"

"Dead, mostly."

That got a real chuckle. "But one thing we've noticed, comin' west. After the Change, the worst problems people had were the work of this Protector fella, over to Portland.

Iron Rod, he was gettin' help from there direct, and he wasn't the only one. Things've been bad enough, with someone stirring the stewpot."

Juniper nodded. "We had a fight with a group of his men too, back around Lughnassadh, late July. They tried to move in and build a fort and start demanding taxes and labor from everyone around here. They have moved into a lot of the northern and eastern side of the Willamette- and the Columbia Gorge, you'll have heard about that."

She turned to the ranchers. "We've been able to help each other a good deal, but you know what a handicap it's been not to be able to use Highway 20 regularly."

The man who seemed to be the ranchers' main spokesman nodded thoughtfully, reaching into the breast pocket of his shirt for tobacco and papers. When she nodded he rolled himself a cigarette and spoke through the smoke:

"Eaters and rustlers and plain old-fashioned bandits. Figured winter'd take care of them, though. Next year we could clear the road of what's left."

Ouch, Juniper thought. He means people starving, freezing, dying of typhus, and eating each other.

"Well, you won't have to worry about them anymore," Juniper said grimly. "About three weeks ago, nearly a thousand of the Protector's men came down I-5, turned east and destroyed Lebanon. Destroyed most of it, took over what was left. You can hear firsthand accounts of what they did then."

"A thousand?"

"Yes. All armored, all well-armed, and with abundant supplies. And-"

She gave a few details of what had happened in Lebanon, and even the tough cattlemen winced.

Hutton nodded: "That's the type he hires on. We've all done some killin' since the Change when we had to-"

Everyone nodded, matter-of-factly or regretfully.

"- but the Protector, this Arminger, he likes to kill for fun. Figures the Change means he can act like a weasel in a henhouse, and we have to swallow it."

Several men swore; the one with the cigarette just narrowed his eyes.

Juniper went on: "We and our neighbors got a fair number of refugees from there. The reason you didn't hear about it was that the Protector's men sent a big gang east on bicycles, up Route 20, what you might call a bicycle blitzkrieg. They went right through Sweet Home-not much left of it, anyway, between the fighting and the fires-and up the highway across the pass. They pushed as far as east as Echo Creek, not a day's travel from Springs."

A rancher stirred. "We heard about that, but not the details. Couldn't make head nor tail of what we did hear. Figured we'd look into it when things were less busy."

Juniper nodded to Hutton, and he gestured Astrid forward; he had to add a sharp word before she noticed.

"Now, we've been sending scouts through the Cascades since spring, talked with Ms. Juniper's folks here now and then. She asked us to see what we could see. Here's what the Protector's boys have put up at Echo Creek."

Astrid came forward with an artist's portfolio book, unzipping it and taking out a thick sheaf of drawings, done with pencil and charcoal. There were more amazed oaths.

"What is that?" the rancher asked.

Aylward and Chuck Barstow looked at each other, and Chuck made a gesture; the Englishman answered:

"It's a castle. Early type, Norman motte-and-bailey; there's one near where I was born, or at least the mound's still there if you look. You dig a moat, use the dirt for an earth wall, put a palisade on top of that, and you've a bailey. Then do the same thing inside the bailey-only a smaller, much higher mound, with a great tall timber tower on top as well as a palisade; that's the motte. You can do it fast, with a couple of hundred men working; the Normans used them to tie down territory they'd taken. Each one's more than a fort-it's a base for raiding parties, or for collecting tribute and taxes and tolls."

He pointed to two of the drawings. "The buggers got clever there with the location. See, the eastern one is at the western end of a bridge-so it commands the bridge, and they've got this section here that they can take up, like a drawbridge. Same thing mirror image over on the western end of the pass. And they've got some refinements added-metal cladding on the tower."

Hutton nodded: "We could get by easy enough, sneaky-like, but you couldn't take wagons or big parties that way.

Most of the old-fashioned bandits in between, they got chopped or ran, 'part from a few we met."

Juniper let them pass the drawings around and talk out their first fright and indignation.

"We Mackenzies have sources inside Portland-our coreligionists who got trapped there."

She nodded to another guest, a square-faced blond woman with a teenage daughter; they'd both been quiet, and concentrated on eating.

"This is the Protector's opening move for what he has planned next year; he wants to cut off the Willamette from the eastern part of the state."

Luther Finney spoke for the first time: "Arminger took over a lot of food in Portland; it's a major shipping port, even off-season. He drove out most of the people to die; but he's got enough to feed what's left for a year-feed an army. After that he's going to need farmers; only he's calling them serfs, and guess who he's got in mind? And I hope none of you Bend folks think he'll stop this side of the mountains."

"What can we do?" one of the ranchers asked, alarmed. "We'll have to get the CORA"-the Central Oregon Ranchers' Association, the nearest thing the eastern slope had to a government nowadays-"to hold a plenary meeting… "

Hutton snorted. "What we've got to do, is work fast. It's going to get mighty cold up there and soon."

Juniper sighed, and the fiddles in the background swung into "Jolie Blon." The dancers' feet skipped over the close-cropped turf…

And how many of them will lie stark and sightless soon, with the ravens quarreling over their eyes?

The "Twa Corbies" had always been one of her favorite tunes. She didn't know if she could ever play or sing it in quite the same way again.

When the talking was done for the night and she took the guests up to the Hall, Hutton fell into step beside her.

"By the way, Mike wants to ask you a favor."

Juniper's eyebrows went up. "Yes?"

"He'd like Astrid to stay here until this problem with the highway's solved."

Juniper looked behind her. The other Bearkillers were leading their horses up; Astrid had two, lovely dapple-gray mares with wedge-shaped heads and dark intelligent eyes, their tails arched and manes dressed with ribbons, with silver-chased charro-style saddles and tack. As she watched, the girl handed the reins of one to Eilir. Her daughter went blank for a moment, then gave Astrid a spontaneous hug, and another to the horse. The animal nuzzled at her, and accepted an apple with regal politeness.

"You'll be looking after it yourself, remember!" Juniper signed, smiling at her daughter's delight.

"That's Astrid for you," Hutton said dryly.

"Generous?"

"Sort of, if you don't mind it goin' off 'round corners. That there horse and saddle was supposed to be a diplomatic gift from the outfit for you."

Juniper laughed. "In that case, I'd have to put it in the common pool. But Eilir will enjoy it more; she's entranced with horses. Myself, I like them well enough, but… "

"But you ain't a teenager," Hutton said dryly.

"I don't think having Astrid around for a month or so will be any great hardship," Juniper said. "But why exactly does Lord Bear want it so? Doesn't he like the girl?"

"He likes her fine-says he always wanted a sister," Hutton said. "And I do too, like she was my own. But… well, the girl's a handful, and we've got somethin' coming up where she might. let's say she had a hobby befo' the Change that would sort of expose her to danger."

Aha, a mystery! Juniper thought; she recognized a don't-ask-me-now as well as the next person. And an opportunity. it would be well in years to come to have a good friend of the Mackenzies among the Bearkillers, I think.

"I'd be delighted to put her up," she said aloud. "We can say she's an envoy; she'll like that… at least, Eilir would if the positions were reversed. Didn't Mike say Astrid's prone to whimsy and romantical gestures?"

"Lady, you got no idea." He hesitated. "Thing my Angel wanted to ask?"

"You have a personal angel?" Juniper replied, interested. "That talks to you?"

Hutton grinned wearily; he'd had a very long ride, cold and wet and dangerous.

"Don't we all, ma'am? Sorry; I forgot we'd just met, y'all were so friendly-like. I mean Angelica, my wife. When she heard you folk were Witches, she wanted to know if you're a hexer or a healer-she comes from down around San Antonio way."

Juniper nodded. "Ah, you mean whether I'm a bruja or a curandera, then, in her terms. Definitely a healer, Mr. Hut-ton. Definitely."

But sometimes a healer has to cut.

Mike Havel whistled softly as he looked through the binoculars up the route of Highway 20, where it wound upward into the eastern slopes of the Cascades.

"Oh, my, they do like digging, don't they?"

A cluster of Bearkiller fighters kept watch, but he rode among the commanders of the allied force; the Bearkillers, the Mackenzies, and the CORA.

Sam Aylward grunted and passed his glasses to John Brown, the CORA delegate. The road was at three thousand feet just east of Echo Creek, and November was getting definitely chilly. Now Havel was glad of the warmth of his padded gambeson, and of the horse between his thighs; he'd added good wool hiking pants. When it started raining- or snowing-they were all going to be very, very miserable in tents. A while after that, people would start getting sick.

While the Protector's men sit fat and happy in nice warm barracks. We can't even really besiege the place because we can't get around it. Christ Jesus, did these ranchers have to go take a poll of all their cows before they could do what was fucking obviously the one possible thing to do? The only result being that we lost a month of passable weather to do it in.

"We aren't going to get into that by walking up and pissing on the gate, that's for sure," Brown said.

The fort-castle, Havel told himself-was mostly reddish brown dirt, and then light-brown log palisade above that, stout ponderosa logs with their bases set deep amid rock and poured concrete; the whole of the earthwork was covered in a dense net of barbed wire secured by angle-iron posts driven deep into the soil. The mound that bore the tower was just behind the wall, northward from the east gate; starting high, the thick-walled timber structure had a hundred feet of vantage over the bridge that spanned Echo Creek.

About twenty feet of the bridge's pavement had been removed from the western edge, leaving the steel stringers exposed. A notch in the earth wall held the fort's gate, a massive steel-sheathed timber structure with a blockhouse over it; a drawbridge winched up by woven-wire cables covered the gap in the bridge when it was down, and reinforced the gate when it wasn't.

Right now it wasn't, and he could see the tiny figures of men walking on the parapet above, behind the heavy timbers. The morning light glinted on edged metal as they moved.

The wind down from the heights had a tang of iron and ice in it, along with the cold scent of pine and damp earth. He looked from the steep heights of Echo Summit to the north, across the little valley's flatlands to Browder ridge five thousand feet above to the south; both were timbered, but not densely-stands of Ponderosa and lodgepole pine for the most part, interspersed with scrub and open meadow. The creek tumbled down from the north, crossed the prairie-making a little U-shape with the bridge at its apex-and then joined another, larger stream that flowed at the foot of the southern hills; both had water now, though they were dry most of the summer. The U gave the castle what amounted to a natural moat over nearly half its circumference to supplement the one its builders had dug themselves.

The valley floor was sere autumn grassland; it had been called Lost Prairie once.

Aylward snapped his fingers. "Bugger! The location looked wrong, but of course that's why they put it there!" he said, evidently continuing an internal argument. "No mortars! I've ruddy well got to get my reflexes adjusted to the way things are now!"

Brown looked puzzled. Ken Larsson spoke without looking up from where he balanced a map board across his saddlebow.

"My son-in-law will enlighten you."

Havel nodded: "Before the Change, you wouldn't put a firebase-a fort-down on a low spot like that, not with high hills so close to either side. Death trap. Anyone could have put a mortar on the hills and hammered them there. We have to get a lot closer, a trebuchet is sort of bulky- and what we throw isn't explosive."

The CORA leader's name fitted his appearance-his hair, eyes, and skin were all shades of that brown, and so were his rough outdoors clothing and wide-brimmed hat, and the horse he rode.

"And they've got that wall and tower an' about two hundred men with crossbows," he said, and spat aside in disgust. "Got dart-throwers there, and something inside the walls that lobs rocks, and containers of gasoline; they can hit all the way from the south hills to the north. Our local council of the Association tried havin' a run at them before you fellahs arrived-didn't like the thought of 'em settin' up shop here-and they stopped us before we got started, so we yelled for CORA."

And CORA insisted on talking about things for most of a month, Havel thought. God knows how long it'd have gone on without the Mackenzies. Though to be fair, with the way they're spread out meetings aren't easy.

"Siege?" he asked. He suspected the answer, but…

"Nope." Brown pointed south at the low gnarled mountains. "That's bad country, all wrinkled like an ol' lady's… ass."

Then north. "That's worse. Oh, you could get around on foot, even take a horse, we got people who know the country real good… but it wouldn't be no damn use at all. This is the perfect place for a cork on Highway 20. And according to Ellie Strang, they've got plenty of food in there anyway. Enough to last to spring if they aren't picky."

"Ellie Strang?"

"She, ah, sort of works there. Local gal, not what you'd call respectable, but patriotic."

"Be a right butcher's bill, trying to storm it, even if it weren't for that riverbed between," Aylward said.

Will Hutton cantered up along the roadside verge; avoiding the pavement was easier on the horse's hooves, when you could.

"Everything's ready, boss," he said to Havel. "Ken's people are champin' to get set up."

The Bearkiller leader grinned at the others. "You know what Arminger's problem is?" he said.

"He's a bloody maniac?" the Englishman replied.

"No, that's our problem. His problem is that he thinks it's 1066 come again."

The Englishman touched the bow slung over his shoulder, and looked at the Bearkillers' hauberks. "It isn't?" he said.

"Let my father-in-law-to-be tell it. He's the intellectual."

Ken Larsson made a rude gesture with his hook before he spoke. "Look, Alien Space Bats may have stolen our toys-"

Several men snorted laughter.

"- but we're not eleventh-century people. We know how to do things they couldn't, including things that don't require powered equipment or electronics or explosives. Someone's done something to… "

"Mucked about with," Aylward said helpfully. "Buggered for fair."

"… those parts of natural law, somehow. But all the other parts seem to be working as usual."

He held up his hook. "I lost this hand because someone cut it mostly off with a sword. But I didn't get gangrene; we had a doctor who didn't rely on eye of newt and dust from a saint's tomb. You expecting to lose many men to dysentery?"

"Of course not," Aylward said, indignation in his tone. Then: "Oh. Well, bugger me blind. I see what you're driving at."

"Yes. We can keep a camp clean, if not a city, just because we know why clean water is important. And the same thing applies to other tricks."

Havel took up the thread: "Which I sort of suspect Arminger doesn't know much about. His interest in history stops about the time of Richard the Lionheart. I think he thinks it's been all downhill since then."

Larsson grinned. "Why do guys like that always imagine they'll be the king and not the man pushing a plow?"

"Plus his men are mostly frighteners," Aylward said thoughtfully. "Hmmm."

"Yes, and frighteners aren't Norman knights, either; different motivations. Meanwhile, let's go have breakfast," Larsson said.

The command group turned and cantered eastward down the verge of the road, eyes slitted against the rising sun; it got a bit warmer as the orange globe rose. The valley got wider as well; they turned off 20 and onto a local road that wound southward around a butte that hid them from the Protector's castle.

There were over a thousand people camped on a long sloping shoulder of that rise. You could tell who was who easily enough. The Bearkillers' encampment was laid out in neat rows of tents and wagons-not too many of the latter, since this was an A-list expeditionary force, not the whole outfit. Surrounding it were coils of barbed wire, and mounted sentries rode the perimeter. The Mackenzie camp was further upslope, among the pines; less geometric, but taking advantage of the ground for shelter from the keen wind and prying eyes as well, tents in circles around central hearthfires.

They'd brought their supplies on packhorses-the enemy controlled all the roads across the mountains-but they didn't look as if they lacked for much.

And as for the CORA men…

Well, I've never really seen a gypsy camp, Havel thought. But I think that's how they were supposed to do it, pretty much.

Every rancher-member of the Association had arrived as he-or in a couple of instances, she-pleased, and with what followers they could muster; and that ranged from four mounted men with their bedrolls to thirty or forty with a chuck wagon and a big pavilion tent for the boss-man and his family. They'd come with what they pleased too, which often meant as much of the comforts of home as they could carry. They'd also scattered themselves across a huge sweep of hill and down the tree-clad banks of Hackleman Creek towards the blue of Fish Lake, just visible now. Herds of horses and cattle moved in that direction as well.

The smoke of their campfires wafted towards the riders, along with the sounds-a farrier's hammer shaping a horseshoe, the shouts of playing children…

Havel's eyes met Aylward's. They'd only met the day before, but they'd already discovered a great deal in common.

Shambolic, Aylward's lips shaped soundlessly.

What a cluster-fuck, Havel's eyes replied.

Brown seemed to catch some of the byplay. "Well, you've got some womenfolk with you too," he said defensively.

"The only ones in our camp are in our support echelon, medicos and such, and some who're wearing a hauberk," Havel said bluntly. "And those all passed the same tests as everyone else on our A-list. The noncombatants and kids are all back where we've got our base set up."

Brown flushed a little. "We're providing most of the men for this fight," he said. "And the supplies. We've got plenty of veterans, too."

But no single one with enough authority to get you all organized, Havel thought. He didn't say it aloud, or let it show on his face; they weren't here to quarrel with the locals. Instead he went on: "Granted. And you've provided first-rate intelligence-"

Or at least Ellie Strong has.

"- that drawing of the gate and drawbridge is going to be extremely useful, I think. See you at the noon conference."

One corner of Havel's mouth drew up as the mollified rancher smiled and turned aside with his men. Aylward laid his rein on his mount's neck and came closer.

"Not telling him exactly what you have planned for that information, are you, Lord Bear? Perhaps a little worried intel might be flowing into the castle as well as out?"

"Does the Pope shit in the woods?" Havel said. He hesitated: "How's your boss, by the way?"

"Lady Juniper?" Aylward said. "Coming along fine, if you mean her condition."

"More a matter of 'What's she like.' We only met for three days and a bit; I was impressed on brief acquaintance, but you've been at Dun Juniper for most of the time since the Change."

Aylward nodded. "She's strange. And lucky, and it rubs off."

"Rubs off?"

"Well, take me-when she found me, I was trapped in a gully, dying of thirst four feet from water, and like to be eaten alive by coyotes. And that's gospel."

"That would have been a waste," Havel said.

He looked at the square tough weathered face; it would indeed, to lose this man of formidable strengths and so many skills.

"Lucky for her you were there," he said. "But even luckier for you."

"That's exactly what I mean, mate," Aylward said. "But it was lucky for me because I was in the ruddy ravine in the first place. Think about it for a bit. Here's me, traveling about doing as I please, South America, Africa, Canada, and I get an impulse to go fossick about the Cascades in bleedin' March-might as well be Wales, that time of year. Then I take the Change for a nuclear war-well, that's not so hard to believe-so I stay up in the mountains afterward. Then that fuckin' ravine crumbles in just the right spot, I put me shoulder out an' get me legs caught in a scissors by two saplings, and she 'appens by, before I'm too far gone."

He touched the horns-and-moon symbol on his jack. "It's enough to get you thinkin' serious about this Goddess of hers, innit? Not that I'm not grateful to her and hers, mind." A shake of the head. "She's got the flux. Daft things happen around her."

"Flux?" Havel asked.

"Chap I knew used the word-when I met him I was in the SAS and he was runnin' a pub called The Treadmill. Did everything in his day, Foreign Legion an' all, right tough old bastard. He thought some people had it, sort of like a magnetic field that pulled in odd happenings. Willie was always on about some bint he'd known in the old days, and if half what he said was true… anyway, Lady Juniper has it in great job lots."

"When I think of the times I almost died before the Change and after… maybe I do too."

"Nar, I figure you were just born to hang, mate."

They both laughed; after a moment the clansman went on: "But she's not just lucky. She's fly." At Havel's raised eyebrow he went on: "Clever at outguessing you. Dead fly."

Thirty

"Are you sure you're up to this?" Judy asked, turning and needlessly arranging some instruments in one of the clinic's cupboards.

"No," Juniper said frankly to her tense back. "But I think I've got a better chance of bringing it off than anyone else. What's your medical advice?"

Her friend swallowed. "Well, you're a day or two short of eight months," she said. "But it's been as smooth a pregnancy as I've seen, right out of a textbook. As long as you don't try leaping about or riding a horse-"

"Come on, Judy, we've known each other since we were teenagers."

"That's why I specified," she said dourly. "It's a wonder you're not east over the mountains with Sam and the others, waving your sword and waddling into battle like a pregnant duck."

"Is maith an scathan suil charad!" Juniper replied ruefully. "A friend's eye is a good mirror!"

"Then delegate," Judy said.

"I can't. There are others to fight for us, but this I honestly think I'm best for-and I don't need to be all that mobile, just able to talk."

Judy shook her head and bit her lip; Juniper gave her an impulsive hug and left the little clinic. The corridor of the Hall's second story was dark, lit only by the windows at either end that gave out on a cloudy, foggy morning; the staircase was in the center of the hallway, and it was steep.

And I am waddling, she thought. You two should not make me come up and get you.

She sighed and waddled up the steps; it didn't occur to her to call instead until she was nearly at the top-you lost the habit, when your daughter was deaf.

"You two were supposed to be packed by now and- what are you doing?"

She choked the words off. Eilir and Astrid were kneeling on the floor facing each other, across three taper candles with a chalice and two cups, and a pinch of incense burning in that, and ritual tools scattered about. Eilir's Book of Shadows was open on a folding rest nearby, and they had the backs of their right wrists pressed together as they chanted.

You didn't interrupt a ritual.

"… all my wisdom and all my secrets I share with you for as long as this life endures. Until we meet in Tir na m Ban," they finished. "So mote it be!"

Juniper frowned as they put down their wrists, and a bright bead of blood showed on each-the loft office-bedroom got a lot more light, which was one reason she'd snaffled it off for her own.

"Now, what on earth are you two doing?"

"Swearing blood-br-well, blood-sisterhood!" Astrid said brightly. "Like, we're going to be friends and comrades forever! And be Paladins who fight evil and right wrongs and, oh, all that sort of stuff."

Eilir wiped off the bead of blood with a piece of cotton swab and handed Astrid another.

Like she said, Mom, she signed. You know, like Roland and Oliver. Anamchara.

"Or Gimli and Legolas," Astrid said helpfully. "Only we're both… well, Eilir's not a dwarf."

Tolkein and the others have a great deal to answer for, Juniper thought. Do they think those white horses are magical totems, somehow? As I recall, at their age my best friend and I were mostly concerned with music and TV shows and talking about boys. Of course, things have Changed…

Silently, she held out her hand and looked a question. She didn't order. Eilir's Book was her own; she generally didn't mind her mother reading it, but Juniper never did so without permission.

Oh, my, she thought, looking, through the ritual that her daughter had come up with.

The girl had a natural gift for it, probably someday she'd be a great High Priestess and leave a lasting mark on the coven's own Book of Shadows, but…

Oh, my. No sense of proportion at all. Well, neither did I at that age-but I wasn 't raised in the Craft, with magic sung over my cradle.

She spoke, signing at the same time: "And on the strength of a two-week acquaintance, you're promising to… let's see. Defend each other to the death and always answer the other's call. Be guardians of the weak and helpless. Be Goddess-mothers to each other's kids; that's all right… Goddess gentle and strong, you've each given the other a veto on choice of boyfriends and spouses!"

Well, we couldn't be Paladins together if the other fell for someone yucky, could we?

"That's something you have to get right," Astrid said forcefully.

Juniper stifled a small moan. "M thagann ciall roimh aois," she said, and didn't translate: Sense does not come before age.

Eilir recognized it anyway, and gave her a stare and a sniff.

Juniper held on to silence with both hands: Oh, won't that turn adolescence into a total paradise! Did your best friend ever think a boyfriend was worthy of you, any more than a father did? Unless your best friend wants him herself.

Aloud, she went on: "At least you didn't make vows of celibacy or promise to always to wear the same outfits and do each other's hair and eternally help each other with dishes and homework!"

Both gave her hurt looks. She sighed. "Eilir, Astrid is cowan… "

… though I suspect not for long, she added to herself, as she continued aloud with voice and hands: "… but I suppose you did remember that a ceremony like this is a promise to the Mighty Ones? That you've asked Them to bind you to a purpose? And that They are likely to hold you to it?"

Her daughter nodded solemnly, and so did Astrid.

Juniper sighed. "Parenthood! All right, done is done. If you're coming, come along, Oh Blood-sworn fourteen-year-old Paladins."

The girls picked up their saddlebags, shouldered their bows and followed as Juniper turned and walked cautiously down the stairs.

The open space before the Hall was crowded, horses milling, kilted archers saying good-bye to children and spouses and friends; Dennis and Sally were in a desperate clinch made awkward by a stomach the size of Juniper's, with Terry sobbing and clutching at their legs. The climb down the stairs to the ground floor left Juniper puffing a bit, and lagging behind the youngsters who tumbled out the door and sprang into the saddles of their Arabs.

Before she stepped into the waiting buggy-another bit of useful museum plunder, well-sprung comfort for her currently cumbersome self-she turned and looked at the Hall. The great house loomed dark above her in the morning gloom, hints of color and shape and drifting fog. Then a break in the lowering sky let the morning sunlight in, and the shapes blazed out at her, curling up out of the mist that lay along the ground and drifted amid the tall wet forest that rose north and east, breaking like surf over the teeth of the palisade.

The great tree-trunk pillars that ran from veranda to second-story gallery and supported the roof above had been shaped smooth, then carved with intertwined running designs like something out of the Book of Kells, stained and painted in rich browns and greens with gold hints and then covered with varnish. Where the support beams for the gallery crossed the pillars their ends jutted a yard further out, worked into the shapes of beasts real and mythical, the newly chosen totems of the Mackenzie septs- snarling wolf and horned elk, hawk and raven, dragon and tiger.

At each end of the house the two timbers of the roof had been extended up past the peak, curling around into spirals- one deosil, the other widdershins-and between them the antlers and crescent moon.

"It's like Edoras, and the Golden Hall of Medusel!" Astrid said behind her, her voice soft with awe.

It's like a cross between an Irish museum and a very gaudy backwoods Chinese restaurant, Juniper jibed to herself. Dennie and his apprentices went bloody well berserk.

All the same, she shivered a little. If she'd seen something like this before the Change, she would have laughed until she cried. Now…

We need myths, she thought. We live by them. But can we live in them?

"Now, when this pin has been pulled free, Mr. Trebuchet is no longer our friend. Understand?" Ken Larsson said.

He ignored an impulse to beat his hands together against the chill of the mountain valley and the cold wind that blew down from the heights. That really wasn't very productive when one hand was off at the wrist, and you had a leather sheath tipped with a hand-sized steel hook strapped over the forearm. It still hurt a little too, even a quarter-year after Iron Rod's sword hacked through, and he could still wake up remembering the ugly grinding sensation of steel cracking through bones. Rothman and Pam had done a good job with it.

She never said it didn't make any difference to her; just showed it by the way she acted, he thought, with a brief stab of amazed pleasure even now. Christ, I'm lucky.

Aloud he went on genially: "Mr. Trebuchet is ready to go and anything you get in the way of the parts-like your hand, for instance-is going to go with it."

He waggled the steel hook at them and grinned. The squad of young Bearkillers and ranchers' kids nodded back at him eagerly, looking up at the great machine. None of them seemed to notice the late-afternoon chill or overcast that made his bones ache a little, and the stump where his left wrist used to be ache a lot. Their enthusiasm did make him feel better… and the trebuchet was something to be proud of, as well.

It was basically an application of the lever principle; a long beam between two tall A-frames, pivoted about a third of the way down its length. Swinging from the end of the shorter arm was a huge basket of welded steel rods full of rocks; fastened to the other end was a sling of chains and flexible metal mesh. You hauled down that, fastened it to the release mechanism, and loaded a rock or whatever else you wanted to throw into the sling-dead horses or plague victims pitched over a city wall had been a medieval favorite.

Then you hit the trigger, and the huge weight of the basket full of rocks swung that end of the lever down, hard.

The longer section on the other side of the pivot went up, and turned that force into speed, with the sling adding more leverage. Your projectile went hurtling downrange, as far and fast as anything before cannon. Or after cannon stopped working. It was that simple.

Simple. Simple until you get down to the details, Larsson thought.

He was quite proud of his version. The basic idea was seven centuries old; like so much else, it originally came from China. But he'd thought of improvements-from the base resting on wheel bogies from heavy trucks, to the geared winches that hauled the weight up, to the neat grapnel mechanism that gripped the lever. The medieval models had been built by rule of thumb; precise calculation of mechanical advantage and stronger, lighter materials made this one considerably more efficient.

And now it was ready…

"Stand back, kiddies," Larsson said, remembering Fourth of July celebrations past. Fireworks didn't work, not anymore, but…

"Daddy's going to give the Protector a boot in the ass!"

They cheered, but obeyed. Larsson squinted at the outline of the Protector's Echo Creek castle-at least the sky was cloudy, so he wasn't looking into the sun-ran his hook through the loop at the end of the lanyard cord, and gave a sharp tug.

Chang-whack!

The claws holding the beam snapped back. Cable un-spooled with a rumbling whirr. The great basket of rock seemed to drop slowly at first, then faster and faster, and the steel beam of the throwing arm whirred upward so swiftly that inertia bent it like a bow.

Sss-crack!

At the very top of its arc the chain-and-mesh sling swung upward as well. Another hook was cunningly shaped to let the upper chain of the sling go free at precisely the right moment, and the big boulder flew westward-tumbling as it went, slowing as it reached the height of its arc and then dropping down towards the fort like an anvil from orbit. Dust puffed up around the trebuchet, from under its wheels and the four screw jacks that stabilized it for firing.

"Hit!" shouted a Bearkiller trooper, looking through a pair of heavy tripod-mounted binoculars they'd reclaimed from a tourist lookout point. "Hit!"

Larsson had his own monocular out and put to his good eye-the castle was about half a mile away, and he wanted to know just how his baby functioned. He could see where the quarter-ton rock had struck; in the middle of the earth wall of the fort, halfway between ditch and the palisade. A cloud of dirt drifted away, and he saw the boulder three-quarters buried in the heaped soil.

Well, so far we're just helping build the castle wall, Lars-son thought. No damage except to the barbed wire. But next time…

"Incoming!" the woman at the binoculars shouted. Then: "Short!"

Larsson looked, tensed to dive for the slit trench. A rock rose over the gate of the castle, arching up-in a reverse of his own shot, it seemed to get faster and faster as it approached.

Thud.

It landed in the roadway, cracking and cratering the asphalt, then rolling along until it came to a halt about a hundred yards in front of his own trebuchet. More than enough to hammer anything trying to sneak by the castle on either side, but less range than his, with a lighter load. Probably mounted on some sort of turntable.

"You shouldn't have thought you'd be the only one to come up with this idea, Professor," Larsson said with an evil chuckle.To the crew: "All right, winch her down!"

The crew sprang to work, pumping at the cranks on either side of the frame's rear. There was a quick ratcheting clatter as they took up the slack on the two woven-wire cables that ran up to the peak of the throwing arm and out through block-and-tackle at the middle of the rear brace. That slowed as the weight came on the cables and they had to work at it, but the gearing made the effort steady rather than hard. At last the arm was down, and Larsson threw the lever that brought the jaws of the clamp home on it and slipped home the safety pin-a steel rod the thickness of his thumb and as long as his forearm.

"We need something a little lighter, if we want to hit the palisade or the interior," he said, looking down the row of boulders. Each had its weight chalked on the surface, along with a serial number.

"Number thirty-two!"

The loading crew had two-man pincers for carrying stones, with turned-in sections at the tips, and stout horizontal wooden handles like spades. Four men went after boulder thirty-two, each pair clamping their pincers on it and walking it over to the sling. Larsson carefully raised the chain and loop and dropped them over the hook, removed the pin…

"Incoming!"

This time the yell was much louder, and the sound from the castle was different, a long vibrating tunnngg! from the motte tower.

"Cover!" Larsson said, and jumped into a slit trench; Havel had smiled that crooked smile when he told them those should go in first.

I'm not doing bad for an old man, he thought, puffing and keeping his head down. So I may not be good at waving swords…

Something went over his head with a loud whhht. A fractional second later there was a sharp crack from behind him. He turned and raised his head. There was a row of mantlets about ten yards behind the rock-thrower-heavy shields on bicycle wheels, for archers and crossbowmen to push towards hostile walls. One had been hit.

Not just hit, he thought, whistling softly to himself.

The missile was a four-foot, spear-sized arrow with plastic vanes and a pile-shaped head. It had punched right through the metal facing and double thickness of plywood, and buried itself in the rib cage of a rancher's man who'd been leading a horse behind. The man went down, screaming like a rabbit in a trap and flailing with his arms, but the legs stayed immobile. More people scattered eastward, running from the sudden danger; a few ran three or four steps, then turned and dashed back to drag the injured man to safety. He screamed even louder at that, and was undoubtedly going to die anyway-a pre-Change trauma unit probably couldn't have saved him, but…

That was well done, Larsson thought, wincing slightly. Still… ouch.

He'd gotten case-hardened since the Change-his mind suppressed memories of the night of blood and screams in the ranger cabin with an effort so habitual that he didn't even have to think about it.

But this isn't just a game of engineers, the way business was a game with money for counters. Or if it is, it's a game with human beings as pieces.

On the heels of the thought came more distant sounds from the castle: six together this time, tunng-tunng-tunng-tunng-tunng-tunng.

"The first one was a ranging shot!" Larsson shouted. "Heads down, everyone!"

More black dots came floating out from the castle, from the tower and along the wall. Deceptively slow-looking at first, then gathering speed. Larsson dropped to the bottom of his hole and looked upward. Something went overhead in a blur, and there was a hard whack! sound of metal on metal, duller chunks as steel spearheads buried themselves in wet dirt. There were shouts, but no screams.

Larsson shouted himself: "Everyone stay in their holes until I say you can come out!"

There was no quaver in his voice; he was proud of that. He knew the javelins probably couldn't hurt him… but his gut and scrotum didn't seem to know that, and they were sending very unpleasant messages up to his hindbrain. When he thought about what he was going to do next, his sphincter got into the action.

And I can come out myself whenever I want. I don't want to, but I'm going to do it anyway.

He launched himself out of the trench. The loop at the end of the firing lanyard was about a dozen yards away; the point of his hook sank into the dirt in the middle of it, and he let his backward slither pull it taut.

Chang-whack!

The boulder arched out towards the Protector's castle; before it was halfway the multiple, musical tunnng of the dart-throwers sounded.

"Now I understand why they had so many sieges in the Middle Ages, and why everyone hated them," he muttered to himself as he tumbled back into the protective embrace of his foxhole.

"Hit!" someone shouted, after the javelins struck. "Broke off a section of the palisade this time!"

He could hear the crew cheering from their trenches and felt like shouting himself… until he realized that he'd just probably pulped several men into hamburger with a three-hundred-pound boulder, and equally probably mutilated and crippled several more.

"But I'm not going to get bent out of shape about it, as Mike says," he murmured to himself, his lips thinning. "So many dead, and you cretins are adding to the total, when you could be helping. If your Protector had organized to get people out of Portland-"

He yelped involuntarily as one of the man-length darts plowed into the dirt near him; it sank a third of its length into the hard-packed rocky soil and quivered with a harsh whining sound that played along his nerves like a saw-edged bow on a violin. Three more banged off the steel framework of his rock-thrower.

And we are not going to stand around cranking Mr. Tre-buchet down again, he thought, swallowing an uneasy mix of terror and exhilaration. Hmmm… next time, really big, thick movable shields to protect the crew?

"All right!" he called out aloud. "Next flight of javelins, one of us runs back-you, Jackson, the minute they hit you get out of your hole. We've given the Protector's men the kick in the ass we promised 'em!"

The crew cheered again. Larsson nodded, looking at the luminescent dial of the mechanical watch he'd found. Just before sunset-though with this overcast, it was hard to tell; it was definitely getting dark, though.

He looked towards the castle-and saw only mud, because he certainly wasn't going to risk his life for a gesture.

"When you want to set a man up for a punch in the face, get someone to kick him in the ass," he muttered to the dirt.

Thanks for getting Astrid off to that bunch of Wiccans, Mike, he thought, not caring to share the thought even with the wall of his trench. Just the thing to keep her fascinated.

With a wrench like a hand reaching into his chest and clutching:

And take care of Pam and my kids, you hear? My strong and beautiful kids. Christ, why did it take a disaster to realize how great they are?

The trail was doubly dark, with the overcast night and the branches overhead. It smelled cold, and wet as well-it hadn't started raining yet, but the wind from the west had a raw dampness to it, a hint of storms to come. They were nearly a thousand feet above the castle at Echo Creek, and the air was colder here, closer to the approaching winter.

Mike Havel grinned to himself in the darkness, an expression that had little mirth in it, placing each foot carefully on rock and damp earth.

Which means we better get this done soon, if it's to be done at all, or we winter at Pendleton. Which would be goddamned chancy for half a dozen reasons.

He walked slowly but quietly, listening to the quick panting of the burdened men ahead-locals from the CORA force, hunters who knew the deer-tracks over these hills as well as their home-acres. He didn't, and neither did Sam Aylward, but they moved almost as easily, instinct and the faint reflected light and the whispering of air through trees and around rocks giving them clues enough. Both were dressed alike, in loose dark clothes and boots and knit caps and dark leather gloves; Havel had his sword across his back with the hilt ready over his left shoulder, and his bow case and quiver slanting to the right.

Aylward had a take-down longbow resting in two pieces beside his arrows, all muffled so that they wouldn't rattle and under a buckled cap. Neither bore armor, besides buckler or targe.

"Wish we could have practiced this more," the Englishman grumbled softly.

They didn't need to keep absolute silence, but quietness was a habit in circumstances like this.

"Too much chance they'd have heard about it," Havel answered in the same tone-not a whisper, which actually traveled further than a soft conversational voice. "That camp leaks like a sieve. Hell, I didn't tell you what I had in mind, until I learned you'd done a lot of hang gliding, did I?"

A soft chuckle. "Run me down on the others," he said. "I presume they're the best-or I bloody well hope so."

"They're the best who happened to have the necessary experience; it's not a sport your ordinary Idaho plowboy takes up," Havel said. "Pam's cold death with a sword, and she's learned the rest of the business very fast. Eric and Signe are pretty good, they've had seven months hard practice and they're natural athletes, and I've seen them both in real action. Good nerves and good muga, both of them, and coming along fast."

Aylward nodded, unseen in the darkness. Muga was a term they were both familiar with from unarmed-combat training; it meant being aware of everything around you as a single interacting whole.

And I wish to hell Signe was knocked up and off the A-list for now; we're going to be married soon, for Christ's sake, he thought, then pushed it away with a swift mental effort.

Can't afford to get worked up about that, or I'll make mistakes and get us killed. Christ Jesus, that's likely enough anyhow!

There was a little amusement in the Englishman's voice: "And this is probably the last chance you'll get to go off on your own, away from the paperwork and the all those cloudy decisions, eh? Corporal to general-and if you knew how hard I'd fought to keep the same bloody thing from happening… "

Mike shrugged. "Maybe not. Things are different now. No Pentagon, no brass."

And how. There's probably nothing but bands of Eaters haunting the Pentagon, he thought. Sort of. what did Greenberg call it? A literalized metaphor?

He'd loathed the place and the city it was located in at long distance every day of both hitches.

Idly: I wonder what happened to the President? He'd never liked the man much. Probably the Secret Service got him out, and he's still running things.in about a hundred square miles around Camp David, maybe.

He went on aloud: "Hell, what was that Greek king, the one who got all the way to India-"

"Alexander the Great?"

"Yeah. Always the first one in… here we are."

The hunters had brought them to the clearing on the crest of Echo Mountain, and carried the hang gliders as well, bearing them lengthwise up the narrow trail. Aylward went forward to check them over, using a tiny metal lantern with a candle within and a moveable shutter. Havel did his own examination, and then went the other way, up the sloping surface of the open space until he reached the steep up-curled lip facing southeast.

That made a natural slope to lie on with only his head above it, until all the others had gathered behind him. He used the time to see what could be seen of the castle, matching it to the detailed maps he'd memorized.

There was more light over there than you'd expect; he hadn't seen anything like the actinic glare of the searchlight since before the change. The beam flicked out, traversing slowly back and forth along the parapet.

"Puts them in the limelight, doesn't it?" Signe said from his left.

Havel grinned in the darkness. Literally in the limelight; lime burning in a stream of compressed air, with a big curved mirror behind it. That was what they'd used in theaters to light the stage, before electricity. His father-in-law's education was coming in really useful.

"Don't look at it," he said, turning to repeat the order on the other side. "It's supposed to blind them, not us. All right, now take a good look at that tower. Match what you're seeing to the maps you studied."

He did himself. The enemy had obligingly put torches all along the palisade of their motte-and-bailey castle, which would give them a better view of the first ten yards and kill their chances of seeing anything beyond that, even without the searchlight stabbing into their eyes.

"Amateurs," Aylward muttered.

Havel nodded; the best way to see in the dark, barring night-sight goggles, was to get out in the dark, well away from any source of light. It was a lot easier to see into an illuminated area than out of it. If he'd been in charge of that fort, he'd have killed every light, and had a mesh of scouts lying out in the darkness and damn the cost. The CORA men hadn't been able to threaten the fort, or get much past it… but they had been able to discourage the garrison from walking around after sunset.

The torches outlined a round-shouldered rectangle with Highway 20 running through it from east to west. There were buildings on either side of the roadway, and the circular cone of the motte halfway between the corner and the gatehouse. Obligingly, the Protector's men had a big iron basket full of pinewood burning on top of the tower.

"Everybody satisfied they know where they're going?" Mike said, waiting for the nods.

Aylward's had an edge in it: We should have practiced this more, chum.

Havel's reply: We should have, but we couldn't. Pray hard.

"There's a nice updraft over the lip of this cliff and we've got better than fifteen hundred feet of height on the target, so there's not going to be any problem with that. Come at the tower from the west, with a bit of height to spare. If you miss, just keep going-we've got people out there in the ground between our lines and the creek. And do not-I say this twice-do not launch until I'm down and give the signal."

He caught Pamela's eye, and Aylward's; they could be counted on to restrain any adolescent foolishness. Eric was grinning, despite all that had happened since the Change…

I told him he'd be a dangerous man once he got some experience, and Christ Jesus, I was right! Havel thought.

It wasn't that his brother-in-law had a taste for blood, but he did like to fight.

Signe and Pam were ready, both looking tautly calm. Good. They both know this is serious business. Aylward's calm was relaxed; for a moment Havel felt a bitter envy of Juniper Mackenzie. God, I'd give a couple of fingers for someone with his skills and no ambition to be numero uno!

It was time.

Thirty-one

Two of the ranchers brought Michael Havel his wing. They helped him into the special quick-release harness as well; nobody could have made it before the Change, for fear of lawsuits.

Well, the world may have collapsed into death and darkness, but at least we don't have lawyers and nervous Nellies trying to encase us in bubble-wrap, he thought. Hurrah, not.

He gave a slight chuckle at the thought, and found them staring at him in awe as he tested his grip on the steering bar of the hang glider and the bundle of rope lashed to the frame above his head.

It's not courage, boys, just realism, he thought sardonically. It's a little late for the 'Christ Jesus, this is crazy, run away, run away!' reaction.

One of them handed him a pair of goggles, and he slipped them down over his eyes.

Then: "Remember the guide-lights. See y'all soon!"

Four steps forward and leap…

Wind pouring up the slope caught the black Dacron above him and jerked him skyward; the lights below dwindled, and the air grew yet more chill, making his cheeks burn as his body swung level in the harness. A great exultation flowed through him: Flying again, by God!

In a way, this was even more fun than piloting light aircraft. Less power, but you were one with the air and its currents, like a fish in water. Pull back on the control bar and tilt yourself to the right; the nose came down, the right wingtip tilted up, and you went swooping across the night like an owl. You weren't operating a machine; you were flying, as close to being a bird as a human being could get, barring magic. Once you'd learned how, you didn't have to think of controlling the wing any more than you did of directing your feet.

You just went where you wanted to go, down the mountainside and over the tall pines, out into the valley…

There.

The oval of the castle lay eastward, with the great beacon fire atop the tower on the motte. He banked, leaning and pushing leftward, inertia pressing him against the harness as the hang-glider swerved. And beyond it, beyond Echo Creek, six more big fires; set by Ken Larsson, in a line that gave a precise bearing if you kept them strung like beads behind the beacon.

And don't forget altitude, he told himself, lips peeling back from teeth despite the cold wind in his face.

Too high, and you overshoot and the mission fails. Too low, and you bugsplat on the side of the tower or land right in the middle of the bailey.

Wind cuffed at him, pushing him away from the line of lights. The darkness rushed past… he imagined a line through the night, a line drawn straight towards the beacon fire and tried to keep to it; like a landing approach at night, but without instruments.

Suddenly it was close. The beacon fire wasn't a flickering point of light in the darkness any more; it was a pool of light, then a mass of flames spitting sparks upward, with the black lines of the basket outlined against the ruddy embers… and slightly too low. He was headed for the side of the tower, the rows of narrow arrowslits.

Up. Push at the bar, bring the nose of the triangular wing up… just a little, just a little, feel how she turned speed into height but don't slow down too much, or you'll stall and drop…

There was a checkerboard of machicolations around the top of the tower, unpleasantly like a gap-toothed grin with square teeth. They loomed up at him as he approached, swelling faster and faster.

Mind empty, he felt for the currents of air. They turned rough and choppy-heat rising from torches and fires and hearths bouncing him up and down as he sliced the air over the castle; it made things a lot harder, since he couldn't judge his angle of attack as well. Fabric cracked and thut-tered along the rear edge of the hang glider.

Nobody looking up, he thought, with some corner of his consciousness that wasn't in use processing the information that flowed in through balance and the skin on the palms of his hands. No point in looking up, not anymore…

And the moment was now.

A sentry turned at the last moment; he could see the man's mouth and eyes turn to great Os of horrified surprise. Havel pushed forward on the control bar with all his strength as the edge of the crenellations passed beneath him. Now he did want the wing to flare nose-up and stall, turning from a lifting surface into a giant air-brake catching at the wind.

It jerked Havel's body forward with savage force as it stopped in midair, as if he'd run into a solid wall. He let that force pivot him in the harness, booted feet snapping forward as he swung like a trapeze artist. Both heels struck the guard in the face with an impact that knocked Havel's teeth together so hard that he tasted blood despite the tight clench of his jaw. Stars exploded before his eyes; pain lanced through his body at the contact, and then again when he fell to the rough timbers buttocks first and four feet straight down.

The guard flew backward and landed with his head folded back between his shoulders, so freshly dead that his heels drummed on the wood in a series of galvanic twitches. Havel scrabbled at the release of the harness and flipped himself to his feet while he took an instantaneous inventory; bruises, but nothing torn or broken or too badly wrenched, and the joints worked. The wing fell back behind him, tenting up on the central pole that held the bracing wires.

Someday I'm going to pay for all this…

The other guard turned at the sound of boots meeting face and the jangling thump of an armored body falling limp as death. He stood goggling at the black-clad man from nowhere for a crucial three seconds, then brought his shield up and drew his spear back for a thrust.

Havel drew the puukko from its sheath in a backhand grip with his thumb on the pommel, the thick reverse of the blade lying along his forearm. By then he was charging in a swift silent rush, and the spearhead jabbed out to meet him. He ducked under it with a motion as precise as a matador's, and the edged steel hissed past his left ear; he felt something cold touch him there, too thin and sharp to be pain, and a hot trickle down his neck.

Then he was in past the point, the spear useless. His left hand clamped on the edge of the kite-shaped shield, down below the curve, and he wrenched with all his strength- pushing up and to his right, drawing the man's left arm across his body. In the same fluid motion Havel's right hand punched to the left, and the blade of the puukko snapped out from his fist, shaving-sharp and with all the force of arm and shoulder behind the cut.

The spearman had been about to shout, mouth wide. Now nothing came out of it but the sound of a loud cough, with a fine spray of blood. Havel threw an arm around him and dragged his body to the wall, taking care to prop him over the crenellations-his throat was sliced through the windpipe, and there was a lot of blood in a human body. He didn't want a huge pool making things slippery, and perhaps dripping through to the guardroom below. Nobody would notice it running down the timbers of the motte tower.

Probably. Not in time to make any difference.

For a moment he stood, panting; sweat soaked his clothes despite the night chill, running down his flanks and dripping from his chin mixed with blood. Then he shed his goggles, dragged an arm across his face and let out a long breath. The brief burst of violent effort had taken as much out of him as half a day's marching, and he suppressed a bubble of half-hysterical laughter.

I threw sixes again and it's got to stop sometime! But not right now, please.

Instead he wiped the knife on the dead man's sleeve and re-sheathed it, and unslung the targe from his back. The night was quiet; the crackle of the fire was the loudest sound, and underneath it ran the soughing of the wind, and an occasional challenge-and-response from sentries on the walls.

Christ Jesus but I'd rather be back in my tent, making out. I discover the delights of soon-to-be-married life, and what do I get? Sent back to doing goddamned Black Side ops! And right now I'm remembering very vividly why I didn't reenlist.

A whistle sounded from the rear left-southwestern- corner of the tower top; a wooden stand there held a section of three-inch pipe, with a cone to listen or speak into-an old-fashioned speaking tube, the sort they'd used on ships before telephones. Havel trotted over, pulled out the rubber cork at the base of the cone and whistled back. A voice floated up, tinny and distorted but understandable enough.

"Dinkerman, what the fuck are you two lazy SOBs doing up there? Dancing?"

"We're doing zip, Sergeant Harvey," Havel called back.

He kept his mouth away from the opening, and blessed the patriotic hooker who'd flatbacked her way into a thorough knowledge of the fort's routine. Men heard what they expected to hear, and saw that way too. If you were sitting on the only way up a tower most of a year after the day the aircraft fell, you didn't expect to have someone drop in from the sky and replace your sentries…

"Except we're fighting off enemy paratroopers," he went on. "That keeps us awake."

"Ha fucking ha ha, Dinkerman. You'd fucking better keep awake," the voice warned. "It's seventy-five strokes with the blacksnake if I catch you napping."

Really vigorous zero-tolerance policy, Havel thought. I was always in favor of discipline, but flogging? This is ridiculous.

The round target let him signal, by waving it in front of the fire; it would be visible to the others back on the mountainside, and to the men hidden out on the flat prairie behind the creek too. Then he examined the basket that held the fire; it had a solid concave bottom, hinged on one side and with a release catch on the other, presumably for cleaning and removing ash in the daytime.

One more cheer for you, Ellie Strang, he thought. I'm going to see you get a retirement fund out of this, God damn me if I don't.

The rest of the tower top was a flat square thirty feet by thirty, bare save for a keg of water, a slop bucket, and racks of javelins and piles of stones just right for throwing down on anyone trying to get up. The only equipment was a little portable crane, probably used for hauling up firewood; that was on the eastern side. The floor felt solid beneath his boots; the intel was that it was two sets of twelve-by-twelve timbers laid at right angles to each other with a couple of inches of asphalt and roofing shingle in between, the whole held together with massive bolts. The trapdoor was in the center, a slab of the same square timbers, strapped with sheet metal on top and bottom.

There were strong steel bars that slid across it into loops set in the equally massive floor. Havel grinned in the fire-lit night as he pulled them through and dropped in the locking pins. The tower had been designed for defense from the bottom up, each floor a fortress on its own if the one below was taken. Hence the hinges were on this side, and the trapdoor opened upward; or didn't open, with the bars locked home. The story below was only ten feet from floor to ceiling, and its trapdoor wasn't in line with this one.

Good luck to you trying to batter it open when you twig to what's happened, he thought. You'd have to use drills and cutting tools, it'd take hours.

The hang glider came apart easily; he bundled it off to one side. Then there was nothing to do but check the layout; so far their informants had been right all down the line. He looked over the outer, eastern side. The tower face was sheer to the ground; its walls were yard-thick interlocking timbers, smoothly covered with quarter-inch sheet metal in ten-by-ten squares spiked to the wood and then welded at the edges to make a homogenous slab.

Well, Ken was right. Throwing incendiaries at the surface wouldn't work, even if we could get within range. But…

The mound the tower stood on was narrow and steep, sloping right down into a dry moat filled with barbed wire; a staircase went down the inner side to the bailey. Eastward a raised walkway connected the tower with the fighting platform behind the outer palisade; to the right that ran right to the gatehouse.

Not too many men on the wall.

No point; if the Protector's CO here had them well drilled, they could turn out of their barracks and pack it full in far less time than an assault force would need to get going.

But…

His ears caught a flutter of cloven air. He turned, back against the crenellations, mouth firmed to a thin line. Signe was scheduled to come in next. She was also supposed to be a better hang glider than he was; that might be true, but he was certain she hadn't had as much time in the air… or experience at judging distances in the dark, with life for a forfeit if you were wrong. He pulled out one more piece of equipment; a Ping-Pong paddle with one side painted luminescent white.

His heart tried to hammer as he waved it back and forth with the bright side westward, but he seized control by forcing his breath into regularity-slow, steady and deep. Tension unlocked, and he waited with his hands ready, knees bent and weight forward on the balls of his feet. His eyes were dazzled by looking at the fire, and the torches below; the black wing and black-clad flier were invisible until the last moment…

"Too high!" he barked, throwing out his hands and waving the paddle downward. "Too high, damnit, Christ Jesus, girl, too high!"

The wing cut across the stars overhead, a wedge of deeper blackness. Signe seemed to realize her mistake at the last moment, and did what Havel had done: flared the nose upright to let the wing brake itself against the air. She'd cut it far too close, though: it was above him-and the eastern edge of the tower-when it jerked to a near-halt against the air and started to slide downward.

Havel hopped backward, onto the top of one of the crenellations, one foot braced on the arm of the cargo crane. His hand caught something, clamped hard on a guy wire; it would have cut his hand to the bone, like piano wire through a cheese, save for the tough leather of his glove. The weight tried to snatch him forward off the wall, would have if he hadn't had the crane under his foot for leverage. He threw himself backward instead, and it pivoted inward like a weight on the end of a rope. The half-seen length of Signe's body came down half on and half off the wall, with a startled oofff as the edge drove the wind out of her.

Havel released the wingtip, and she started to slide backward; he leapt and grabbed, a black blur in the darkness, and his hands slapped down on the control bar. He heaved again, feeling the muscles of his shoulders crackle with the grunting strain, heedless of the way she knocked against the parapet; the alternative was falling sixty feet straight down into a moat full of sharp angle iron and barbed wire.

"You all right?" he asked.

"No," she wheezed, one hand on her stomach and the other rubbing her knee. "But I'll do."

"That you will," he said, grinning relief, and helped her out of her harness, stripping her section of rope loose from the frame.

By then it was time; after they saw his signal from the tower top the others were supposed to launch at four-minute intervals. He and Signe spread out to the eastern corners of the tower, waving their paddles with the light side westward. This time it was Aylward, and he flared his wing neatly right in the middle of the flat space. He shed his equipment with businesslike speed, then pulled out his longbow and snapped the halves together; the bottom half of the riser was a metal-lined hollow, and the top its mirror image.

"Next," Havel muttered, as the Englishman strung his weapon.

That was Pamela; she came in so low that for a heart-stopping instant he thought she was going to ram the tower's western wall.

"Not quite!" Signe said beside him, with a gasp of relief.

Instead she skimmed it, so close that a corner of the control bar tapped against the corner of a crenellation; the wing went pinwheeling across the surface of the tower, while she threw her hands in front of her face. Despite that there was a bleeding graze across cheek and nose when she rose.

Havel gave her a nod as she came to her feet and collapsed the wing, hauling it aside to clear the landing area.

"One more and we're safe… on top of the tower of an enemy castle," she said.

"Yeah," he replied dryly.

He did a quick check; they all had their tools ready, and a bandolier of rope over a shoulder. The speaking-tube whistled again. Havel pulled out the plug.

"Dinkerman, why the hell have you locked the trapdoor?" Sergeant Harvey barked. "Get it open, now!"

"Can't do that, sergeant," Havel said regretfully. "The enemy paratroopers are landing more men."

"You make me look bad in front of the baron and I'll have your fucking balls for this, Dinkerman!" Harvey shrieked. "And that's a goddamned promise!"

Ooops, Havel thought, replacing the plug in midtirade. Surprise inspection coming. Well, unless I misread the Protector's little toy army completely, Sergeant Harvey is going to do everything he can to get that hatch open before he pushes it up the chain of command-probably afraid of ol' Blacksnake himself.

He grinned like a shark. That was the problem with a zero-fault policy; people got desperate to cover their asses, rather than get the job done. The Protector was just the type to assume warriors could only be disciplined by terror, too.

But what, O Protector, do you call men who can be easily controlled by fear? he asked sardonically.

Signe's shout of alarm brought him wheeling around. Eric's hang glider was coming in…

"Too high!" someone shouted.

This time it was really too high; fifteen or twenty feet too high, even with the steep dive he'd started when he realized the mistake.

"Wave him on!" Havel said.

They did, with blasphemous additions from Havel and Aylward; the glider was still at least ten feet above the level of the crenellations when it crossed the eastern side of the tower. Havel caught a glimpse of Eric's face, wide-eyed and teeth bared.

"No, no, just pass on and clear the wall!" Havel shouted, knowing exactly what was going through that adrenaline-saturated teenage-male mind.

The shout was probably futile and possibly dangerous, if Sergeant Harvey was listening at one of the arrow slits below. Eric tried to bank and turn instead, and for that he was too low. Any turn loose enough not to stall would bring him around below the level of the tower's top; he saw that, and tried to turn more tightly instead-more tightly than the hang glider's speed and lift could take. For a long instant the black shape hung with its left wingpoint down; then it fell off and fluttered groundward like a huge leaf falling in autumn. Then it struck, vanishing in the blackness to the left of the bridge that spanned the motte's protective ditch.

Signe stifled a scream as she watched her brother fall. Havel nodded respect as she choked it back, and again as Eric augured in silently.

"That's torn it," he said grimly. "Let's go-get that cable down!"

A heave and a kick sent the piled firewood toppling; it was mostly pine, and nicely dry. With the tip of his sword he flicked at the release catch on the fire basket, skipping backward as a torrent of ash and embers and burning wood came flooding out.

Stay warm, Sergeant Harvey, he thought.

Behind him he could hear a chunk sound, then a whirr as the cable on the crane paid*out and down. As he turned, Aylward had swung the crane out-that put the cable six feet out from the wall-and taken stance beside it, one foot up on a crenellation, an arrow nocked, his quiver over his shoulder with the cap open, and the spare bundle of arrows leaning against the parapet ready to his hand.

"Go!" Havel said.

Pam nodded, leaned out, grabbed the cable and went down it with her shins and boots locked around it in good rappelling form-all that rock climbing hadn't gone to waste. He followed, stepping off into space, grabbing the cable and locking it between hands and feet. It was smooth woven wire, three-quarter-inch, capable of bearing a dozen tons and well greased. He clamped hard, felt heat on the insteps of his feet and palms of his hands as friction heated boots and gloves. As he slid-fell through the darkness, there was one wash of light after another. Narrow slivers of light-lanterns coming on behind the firing slits of the tower. Then he let go and fell the last eight feet, landing crouched and drawing his sword with a hiss of metal on leather.

Pam's sword was already out. The walkway they'd landed on was twelve feet across, and the door into the tower was about the same width and height. It had already swung partly open-outwards-and he squinted against the wash of lantern light from within. Men crowded forward, half-armed, confused.

The Bearkillers' swordmistress danced. Her targe beat aside a spearhead, and then the backsword flicked out in a blurring thrust. There was a gurgling scream, a moment of whirling chaos as a man staggered with blood spurting from a severed jugular; a louder scream as she pierced a thigh beneath a scale-mail shirt, ripping the point free with a twist. Havel stepped in, swerved aside from a clumsy spear thrust, grabbed the wood behind the metal and jerked forward. The wielder came with the weapon, running face-first into the punching brass guard of Havel's sword with a wet crunch that jarred up his arm and back with a gruesome finality.The impact kicked the man's body back into the arms of his comrades.

That left three dying men in the entrance, blocking the others with their thrashing and spreading confusion with their screams. Havel and Pamela set their shoulders to the door and ran it closed in stamping unison, like football forwards at a training bar, desperate with haste. Someone would think to get a crossbow eventually…

Booom, as it rammed home.

Pamela was already down on one knee, knocking home three wedges with a wooden mallet and then sticking the handle through loops at their rear to give them each six twists-Ken Larsson had designed them to screw open and lock rear-facing tines into the wood, and Springs had a functioning machine-shop running off horse-cranked belts.

Havel was faintly conscious of boots hitting the walkway behind him, a shout, the clash of steel.

There were two firing slits on either side of the doorway, and only one of him. He'd just have to be quick…

His sword went point-down in the wood beneath his feet. The aerosol can came out instead, and his lighter in his left hand. A savage smile, despite the need of the moment: he'd gotten in trouble for doing this at school, too, but it had impressed Shirley to no end.

This can was much larger and its contents a lot more volatile.

The mist sprayed across the flame, and turned to flame itself-a four-foot gout of it, through the slit and into the eyes and face of the crossbowman within, then two more to set the edges aflame. A bolt whipped out from the other slit; he leapt across, repeated the trick, heard a scream within just as the can hissed dry.

"Eric's alive!" Signe called, as Pamela and he whirled and snatched up their blades.

Havel spared a glance that way. There was more light- the fire on the tower top was brighter as the timbers of the platform caught, lanterns from the upper stories were being brought to the firing slits, and there was a growing blaze around the ground-level slits he'd torched.

That made the black shape of the hang glider in the moat clear enough, and the form writhing out from beneath it. Two of the sharp-pointed angle irons that braced the wire filling the moat pierced the cloth, but none had speared into Eric Larsson. The face raised to the light was still a mask of blood; it had gone into the barbed wire at speed with only his arms and hands to shelter it… though the goggles had probably saved his eyes.

But the wire saved his life, too, Havel knew-the springy mass of it had acted like a pile of mattresses to cushion the impact.

"Get him out," he said. "Don't get caught up in that stuff!"

Signe nodded, lifted the coil of rope from her shoulder and hooked the grapnel over the railing of the walkway. Then she went over it backward, rappelling down as they had on the cable.

"Slight glitch in the plan," Havel said.

Pamela and he exchanged a glance, then stepped past the grapnel. There was another ten yards of walkway beyond that, then the broad, well-braced fighting platform inside the castle's palisade. Just across from that joining was one of the throwing engines, a metal shape hulking under its tarpaulin; the platform extended into a circle around it, and their intel said it could be quickly traversed three-hundred-sixty degrees.

And running towards them were a dozen men-spearmen with shields, and crossbows following. More men shouted and milled around along the wall, but they'd be getting things in gear soon enough.

"Horatius on the fucking bridge," Havel snarled.

"Except that the Etruscans were too idiotic to stand back and shoot arrows," Pamela said tightly. "You know, this isn't what I had in mind when I went to veterinary college."

Noise was mounting too; shouts, the thud of boots on timber, and the growing crackle of the fire on the top of the tower. The snap of bowstring on bracer was lost in it, and the wet meaty thunk of an arrowhead striking flesh at two hundred feet per second. One of the rearmost cross-bowmen stopped and raised his weapon, then buckled at the knees and collapsed forward. Havel saw the arrow strike the next man, even before the first dropped facedown. An armor scale sparked as the bodkin point struck. And another, and another, working forward from the rear-

The tower top was forty yards away. The ripple of fire would have done credit to a bolt-action sniper rifle in an expert's hands.

"Angel on our shoulder," Havel said, and then: "Haakkaa paalle!"

Three men survived, the first three in the enemy group, too close to the Bearkillers for even a marksman of Ayl-ward's quality to shoot at safely; he'd transferred his attention to the walkway, sweeping it to left and right. All the attackers were in full-length hauberks, with the big kite-shaped shield of the Protector's forces. Havel was acutely aware that he had a lot more target area to cover, with only his sword and targe to protect himself.

Not to mention Signe and her damned fool of a brother, he thought. You know, things are going to get a lot tougher when people who really know how to shoot bows and use swords get more common.

Then there was no time for thinking. Pamela struck first with that smooth economical motion he envied, utterly without wasted effort; she wasn't faster than he was-he'd never met anyone who was-but she did have a lot more experience with sword work.

And a nasty trick of doing the unexpected. Her long lunge started out as a thrust to the face of the man on the left. He threw up his shield, glaring over the edge and drawing back his double-edged sword for a counterattack. But Pam's right knee bent farther, and her arm darted down and to the right, towards the man in the middle, a little behind his comrades.

Into the top of his foot, carelessly advanced beyond the protection of his shield. Pamela's strike was at the end of the foot-arm-blade extension, and the boot was tough leather; there was a crisp popping sound as the point struck. But two inches of sharp steel punched into a man's instep were more than enough, considering the tendons and small bones and veins, not to mention the nerves. She recovered as if driven by coil springs. The injured man shrieked in a high falsetto and spun in a circle, shedding shield and spear and then toppling to the boards with a clash of armor scales, clutching his crippled foot.

The man facing Havel stumbled backward and threw his spear. The weapon wasn't designed for it, but surprise nearly made it work; Havel felt the edge sting his skin right above the kidney as he dodged. The spearman fumbled for his sword and got ijt out, staring wide-eyed past a shock of black hair-he'd forgotten or lost his helmet. Havel feinted low to draw shield and attention, then attacked with a running step, backsword flashing in a looping circle.

"Haakkaa paalle!" he screamed, as foot and arm and blade moved together.

Underneath it came a sickening crack of cloven bone that jarred back into his arm and shoulder, like the feeling of hitting a post at practice, except that this time the blade went right on in a broad follow-through. The Protector's trooper stumbled backward with a giant slice taken out of the top and side of his skull; brain and membrane glistened pink-white and bloody in the firelight. Weirdly, the man didn't fall at once; instead he turned and took three weaving steps, shrieking like a machine in torment with each one, before he went over the side of the walkway and into the barbed wire of the moat.

Well, shit, Havel thought. Ouch.

His eyes were darting about. Aylward came sliding down the cable; he'd probably fired off all eighty shafts, and the tower top showed another reason. The fire up there had spread to the bone-dry pine timbers; melted asphalt was probably dripping down into Sergeant Harvey's ready room… or catching fire and falling as little burning drops. The tower looked like a candle now, with a broad teardrop of fire reaching into the night.

"You two take the ballista," Havel snapped. "Move!"

They ran past him. Havel ran as well, to the spot where Signe's grapnel stood in the wood of the walkway. When he looked down, she waved up at him; the loop at the other end of the rope was under Eric's armpits.

Guts, he thought, as she signaled. She's been wading in barbed wire; has to feel like a pincushion.

Havel heard a sullen boom as he braced a foot against the railing and started to haul hand over hand, slow and steady. Someone inside the tower was trying to break down the door out onto the walkway; they should be able to do that eventually, smashing the hinges if nothing else. The growing bellow of the fire over their heads would add motivation; the only other exit was the staircase down into the courtyard of the castle's bailey.

And I wouldn't want to try to run away while the command structure here is intact.

Ken and Pamela and Aaron Rothman had given him a rundown on various tyrants of history while they discussed Arminger.

Stalin had put it very succinctly: It takes a brave man not to be a hero in my army.

Weight came on the rope-Eric weighed in at around two hundred pounds. Havel couldn't haul quickly; Signe had to free her brother barb by barb as he came clear. She'd already snaggled away hanks of Eric's longish hair that had caught in the dense tangle of wire. Havel had to keep a steady tension so Eric wouldn't drop back into the embrace of the barbs.

After a while Eric could help her, but it still took minutes that stretched like days, and the boom… boom… of the ram beating to free the tower door was like the thudding of some great beast's heart. Seconds ticked by, counting out the balance of life and death, but you didn't save time by rushing.

"Got it," Havel snarled, as the younger man's boots cleared the wire.

"Sorry-" Eric began, as his bloody face came over the railing; blood leaked out from beneath his gloves as well, but he chinned himself and rolled over to the walkway planking.

"Shut up," Havel said. "Let's get her out."

Signe waved as Havel came to the edge of the walkway; she'd managed to crawl onto the surface of the wing, but that didn't help as much as it would have if the hang glider had landed closer to the walkway. They couldn't just snatch her up; there was too much lateral distance.

Boom-crack!

This time a crunching sound ran under the battering; the men in the tower were going to knock the door free soon.

Havel and Eric couldn't wait for her to unhook each barb when she hit the wire, either. They'd have to rip her free by main strength and hope that most of what tore was cloth rather than flesh.

"Get ready!" Havel called, tossing the rope. "We can't take this slow!"

Signe rigged the loop under her arms and crouched on the fabric of the hang glider's wing.

"Now!"

She leapt as the rope came taut and pulled up her legs in a tight tuck, and the two men hauled the line in hand over hand as fast as they could.

The lower half of her body still sagged into the barbs. Both of them heaved at the rope again, pulling her free despite the half-stifled scream as the metal hooks had their way with cloth and flesh. Once more, and she was right beneath the walkway, and from there it was a straight lift. He let Eric take the weight on the rope and leaned down, caught her by the back of her harness and heaved her straight over the railing with six inches to spare.

"Mike!" Eric cried.

The rending crash of breaking timber came a second before a flood of lantern light. And from behind him, Ayl-ward's cry of:

"Down!"

Havel launched himself forward with Signe still in one arm, taking her twin behind the knees with the other; neither of the Larsson twins had his conditioned reflexes- they'd seen a lot of fighting these past eight months, but none of it was that sort. All three of them thumped down on the timbers; Eric screamed a curse as his abused flesh struck, and Signe moaned.

Ahead of them the Protector's men were in the doorway. Ready this time, conical helmets and mailcoats and big kite-shaped shields up, the first rank had their swords out, and the one behind spears ready, hefted to stab overhand.

Chance of us surviving more than thirty seconds in contact with them, somewhere between zip and fucking zero…

Behind the three Bearkillers, something mechanical sounded, a clicking, ratcheting sound. Then:

Tunnngg.

The shot from the ballista went overhead in a rush of flame, with a sound like wind whipping through burning pines and a stench of burning fuel; it was a glass fisherman's float filled with a mixture of gasoline, soap flakes and benzene, and wrapped in gas-soaked cloth.

Score another one for Ms. Strong, he thought. They can throw weights as well as javelins.

The missile struck the line of shields hard enough to knock a man over backward, and the one behind him too. It also shattered; gobbets flew, caught fire from the coating of burning cloth, clung and burned. Men screamed as the liquid flame splashed into their faces or ran beneath their armor; their formation broke apart like the glass of the missile.

Tunnngg.

Another globe of fire flew overhead. This one went directly into the garrison hall and armory that occupied the bottom story of the tower, shattering on the floor and spattering across bedding, furniture and support timbers.

"Start crawling!" Havel said, and did so.

Aylward had the ballista pivoted at right angles to the wall now, and he was lobbing incendiary missiles at the' main gatehouse.

And just maybe we can make something out of this cluster-fuck.

It was then that the crossbowmen in the second level of the tower started firing down at the three black-clad figures crawling away from them along the walkway. A bolt slammed into the thick planks before Havel's face, the heavy dart quivering for an instant like a malignant wasp stinger. More were shooting from the walkway on either side of the ballista, their shafts going overhead with vicious whickt sounds.

If you surprised someone and knocked them back on their heels, got them running in circles, you could use their confusion as a force multiplier. The trouble was that when they got their shit together, numbers started counting again. In a plain stand-up fight, they counted for a great deal.

Another crossbow bolt struck in the wood ahead of him, this time a bare inch from his outstretched fingers.

"Crawl faster!"

Thirty-two

Juniper Mackenzie had lived in the Willamette all her life. Autumn was her favorite season there, and it was a relief to find that the Change at least hadn't changed that. Winter she liked hardly less, and the two seasons were in balance as she led the war levy of the Mackenzies northward.

The greens were still more vivid once the rains started, and the leaves still turned bronze and old gold against the darker, unchanging firs, streaking the lower parts of the hills until they flew away like coins, or wishes fading into memory. Fallen leaves still gave their damp musty smell, and the air had a wet coolness that would endure the long months to come, when the gray clouds marched in from the sea and rain would drizzle down day after day.

Today the sky was bright, dazzling afternoon light slanting through white foaming canyons of cloud, gilding stub-blefields and bringing out the different shades of green in firs and grass, of brown in turned earth and bare-limbed fruit trees.

Mind you, some things are different, she thought wryly.

Forty on horseback followed on either side of the road, the yellow yew staves of their longbows slanted over their shoulders, and the baggage wagons and ambulance were on the pavement behind her. Wheels hissed on wet asphalt; hooves clattered or made a duller rumbling crunch on the graveled verges. This stretch had been cleared of dead cars and trucks some time ago, but it was best to keep hoof off hard pavement as much as you could. She waved to a party working the fields as the buggy trotted northeastward towards the beginning of the hills.

The face of the man behind the handles of the lead plow in the field to her left was calm and intent, with the slight frown of someone concentrating on his work. The plowman jerked in surprise, startled as he broke the focus of his effort and looked up, leaning back to halt his team with the reins knotted around his waist and a long whoa. Two more teams followed him, and the furrows lay neatly parallel, stretching off towards the distant fence and line of trees. The dark brown earth curled up behind the moldboards, moist and soft; the green clover sod went under amid a sweet scent of cut roots.

The other plows kept going for a moment more, making more acres ready to be planted with wheat.

Doing a lot better than we managed this spring, she thought, as all of the plowmen halted to shout greetings. And we need to; it's those fields we'll harvest by next Lughnassadh. The Wheel of the Year, and the wheel of worries!

Every day since the Change had reminded her why her ancestors had so celebrated getting a season's work done successfully.

"The bicycle corps is half a day ahead of you," one of them called, and added a little awkwardly-he was still in jeans, not a kilt-"Blessed be! Goddess with you, Lady Juniper!"

"Blessed be, and She's with us all!" she called back. "And She is, you know! Merry meet, merry part, merry meet again!"

Beside the buggy, Eilir and Astrid were deep in conversation:

"- we're finishing off late because we sent a lot of teams to get you guys' land plowed and seeded over at Larsdalen, us and the University Council people-"

Which had been the essence of the deal; the Bearkillers' military services, and grain stored over winter in Bend and Madras to be paid next spring, in return for the plowing and planting they'd been too late to do this year themselves.

"Not to mention we and Corvallis acknowledge that Lord Bear owns a great whacking chunk of the valley west of Salem and rules all those on it," she murmured to herself, too softly to be heard.

That sort of conversation could help you organize your thoughts, and it was a habit she'd fallen into through long years mostly alone or with Eilir.

"Not that Mike isn't the charming lad"-she smiled reminiscently and laid a hand on her stomach-"and not that we don't need him to help against the Protector, for he's a very Lugh of the Long Spear come again in splendor and in terror, but still, the precedent of the thing… "

"Talking strategy to yourself?" Chuck Barstow said.

He was riding close by her right hand; looking nervous, too, if you knew him very well.

"Who better?" she replied. "We're none of us professionals at it, Chuck."

"I wish Sam Aylward were here," he said, looking to check that the scouts were busy, out on the edge of sight and beyond. "It takes more than nine months to learn all I need to do his job."

"Well, the man's neither a god nor an electron, to be in two places at once," Juniper said. "And with luck, we'll but have to look imposing; over the mountains, they have to fight for certain-sure."

"You ever play poker, Juney?"

"No. Bridge, a little… Why?"

"I do play poker, and I hate bluffing."

Juniper's mouth firmed into a pale line. "But we're not, Chuck. And that's the best sort of bluff there is. I'm not going to have that gang of bandits a half day's travel from my home and kids and clan, or controlling our access over the mountains."

He nodded. "That's why I wish we had Aylward with us."

The road wound northeast up into forested hills as the day wore on; occasionally they came in sight of the main Mackenzie war party on their bicycles, but the horses had to rest more often than the humans. About noon they halted for an hour; horses bent their heads over oats and pellets of clover hay, and the Mackenzies ate bread and cheese, smoked sausage and dried fruit. The bread was still soft and crumbly-fresh; tomorrow they'd be down to twice-baked crackerlike waybread-what they'd called hardtack in seafaring days.

A challenge-and-response came from the sentries up the winding road, and then Dennis, puffing as he pushed his bicycle up to them; it was downhill from here to Sweet-Home. He'd acquired a length of the sausage from someone and was munching on it as he came up. What with kilt, jack, bearded ax and longbow, bicycle and helmet pushed back he looked like…

Like nothing from the twentieth century or any other! she thought. But it's good to see him, nonetheless.

He looked at her as she chomped her way through her share, and grinned. "God, Sally would howl and throw things if she could see us stuffing ourselves like this!"

Juniper snorted: Sally was about as enormous as she was, but unlike the original Mackenzie, she'd had so-called morning sickness at unpredictable and frequent intervals since her second month. She was also safely back behind the palisade at Dun Juniper, and the Chief of the Mackenzies frankly envied her.

"What do you know about these mysteries of the Goddess, male one?" she said.

"As much as you, iron-gutted female one," Dennis pointed out with irritating calm. "More. I was holding the bucket for her all these months." Then he sighed.

"The news isn't bad, I take it?" Juniper said.

"No. Met the Corvallis guys outside Lebanon, and the Protector's men did just what the Bearkillers said they would-bugged out fast."

She relaxed with a sigh of her own. "That's what the Bearkillers hoped they'd do," she said. "They're relying on those castles further east on Route 20. Those have Route 22 to link them to Portland. There's no point trying to hold the towns; besides which, we outnumbered them fifteen to one."

Dennis frowned. "Why bother to put men in Lebanon or Sweet Home at all, then?" he said.

"The Protector's greedy, and he was expecting us to sit and wait until he was ready," she said. A deep breath. "Let's hope it's an omen."

Dennis hesitated. "There are still a couple of hundred civilians there… They're in pretty bad shape, Juney."

But for once we can do something for them without worrying, she thought. With the grain we'll be getting from the Bearkillers. That was clever of Mike, to realize we could still use the railroads, for a few years at least, until there are too many washouts.

"Let's be about the work of the day, then," she said, and nodded to Chuck. "There's no point in just chasing the rest back to Portland; we'd just have them back at us again next year."

"Crawl faster!" Mike Havel shouted again.

Another fireball rippled overhead. Then Signe screamed.

"Christ Jesus!" Havel hissed.

The crossbow bolt had hit her high on the left shoulder, slanting right down through the meat and leaving the head sticking out the other side. She screamed again when Eric grabbed her under that arm; Havel took the other, and they ran crouching to the shelter of the catapult. Aylward hit the release toggle one more time, then snatched the arrows out of Signe's quiver.

"We're cutting it too bloody tight," he said, turning and shooting. "You two take the north approach; we'll cover the blockhouse."

Havel grunted agreement, taking the remaining loops of rope from Eric and Signe and fastening them to the bailey's outer palisade, dropping the long knotted cords down the wall and into the moat. Pamela bent over Signe, then pulled out a hypodermic, stripped it with her teeth and stabbed it dagger fashion into the back of the younger woman's thigh. The morphine brought a long hissing sigh, and relaxation.

"I don't know how much damage there is inside, but she's not in immediate danger," the veterinarian-swordswoman said.

"Oh, yes she is," Havel snarled, crouching behind the throwing engine's cover. "We all are."

The ballista was in a horseshoe-shaped embayment in the castle wall, and it was mounted on a turntable about six feet across. There was a sloping steel shield with a slot for the throwing trough; that was pointed towards the burning tower right now. Crossbow bolts were pattering off it at about one a second, each one with a nerve-wracking ptinnng sound and a spark as the points hit the quarter-inch sheet plate and the bolts pinwheeled off into the night.

It was crowded, too; they had to get right up against the shield because the upper floors of the tower overlooked them and the crossbowmen there could shoot down… at least until the fire got that far. The tower's own moat and the bellowing fire in the main gateway meant they were cut off from the tower otherwise, though; its garrison could shoot-until the fire drove them out-but they couldn't come out on foot. The heat of the burning tower was enough to dry the sweat it brought out on Havel's face.

Unfortunately, there was no cover at all on either side, where the fighting platform of the eastern wall ran, and everyone else could get at them that way.

"Get here fast, stalwart ranchers," Mike snarled to himself, and slid the recurve bow free from its case over his shoulder. "Real fast. Eric, you fit to fight?"

A drift of wind down from the mountains and the pass blew smoke over them, thick and dense and sooty-hot.

Eric coughed. "I'll manage," he said.

"Good," Havel snapped. "Shoot when I do."

By the increasing light of the tower's fire he could see more of the Protector's men dashing across the open ground from the barracks and up ramp-ladders to the palisade. A few of them were already trotting towards the ballista; Havel coughed again as he saw their heads weaving.

Trying to figure out what's going on, he thought, carefully not thinking of the probability that he'd be dead in a few minutes. Got to get closer before the impossible becomes visible.

At about fifteen yards they goggled and halted. Havel came up to one knee and drew, the familiar push-pull effort.

Snap. An instant later; the crack of a bodkin point on sheet metal as the arrow punched into a black-painted shield.

A soldier yelled and danced, shaking his shield and screaming-four inches of arrowshaft had pinned his forearm to the plywood. Havel ducked back as another crossbow bolt went by with an eerie whuppt of cloven air, close enough that he felt the wind of it on the sweat-wet skin of his face.

Movement brought his head around, with the bow rising behind it. He lowered it again as he saw the CORA fighter lever himself over the palisade.

"Get down, you fool!" Havel shouted, crouched back under the ballista's shield.

The rancher's man looked at him, then jerked and grunted as two bolts hammered into his chest. He toppled backward, but three more heads followed, and then hands held up a pair of thick shields…

Eric shot once more and then slowly toppled over backward in a dead faint.

"I am getting too old for this shit," Havel wheezed, suddenly exhausted beyond bearing. Then he shouted:

"Corpsman! Stretcher party, here!"

"I'll look like a football!" Signe said. "All over stiches!"

"Actually, you look more beautiful than a sunset," Havel said. "See? I'm learning!"

She smiled back at him from the cot, then winced as motion pulled at the shoulder wound. She drifted back off to sleep.

Aaron Rothman sighed. "Thank God for morphine," he said. "I really, really hope someone is planting opium poppies!"

The big hospital tents were crowded; mostly CORA ranchers and their men, but more Bearkillers than he liked-it would have been politically dicey to hold them all back. There was a smell of disinfectant and blood, faces waxy and pale under the light of the Coleman lanterns. Gasoline stoves kept it fairly warm, but the air was close and stuffy as well.

"Her brother was just faint from loss of blood," Rothman said. "I gave him some plasma and a painkiller; he'll be sore with all those superficial cuts and punctures, but he had his tetanus shots, thank God."

"What about Signe?" Havel asked, his face impassive.

"I used the pin test," Rothman said, holding one up. "She's got feeling and movement in all the fingers and no numb spots on the arm, so there isn't any nerve damage to speak of. The clavicle's cracked, though, and the cut muscles will take some time to heal. Full function, or nearly, but not for a while, and she'll need physical therapy."

Havel gusted a sigh. "Could have been a lot worse," he said.

Then he went down the rows of cots; for many of them it had been a lot worse. He talked with those who could use it, gave a nod and a touch to others.

"Thanks!" a young Bearkiller they'd picked up in Grangeville said, with a smile despite the broken leg.

"Been there, done that," Havel said, grinning back.

The grin died as he ducked out of the tent's entrance, pulling on his armored gauntlets and settling his helmet; for one thing, the blanket-wrapped bodies of the dead weren't far away, waiting for friends and relatives to take them away, or for time to free up for burial details. For another, out here the smoke of the burning castle still lay thick, in the cold gray light just before dawn. The tower had fallen in a torrent of flame and sparks hours ago, and most of the rest of the palisade still smoldered.

Also present were the prisoners taken, two score of them; all the guards were Bearkillers or Mackenzies, most of them lightly wounded.

The CORA fighters and camp followers gathered glaring in the dark chill of morning, bundled up in down jackets and muffled in wool scarves. Breath steamed. Enough could be seen of their faces to know their mood, though; some were bandaged, and all had lost friends or family in the swarming, confused fight through the Protector's burning fort.

"String the bastards up!" sounded again; the Bearkillers turned their horses' heads outward, and a few of the kilted clansfolk reached over their shoulders for arrows.

Havel opened his mouth. Before he could speak, another voice sounded-John Brown, the CORA delegate.

"Go on!" he shouted, waving his hands. "These folks fought for us-do you want to start a battle with them, too? Go on-go on back to your tents. We're civilized people here, by God; we're Americans, not a lynch mob. Git!"

Then the leathery bearded rancher turned to Havel. "Sorry about that."

"No problem, but we'd better get under way," Havel said. Everyone's gotten a bit rougher-edged since the Change.

"Well, we've got the roadway through the fort cleared and the bridge is ready," Brown said. "Pretty hot and smoky, though."

Havel shrugged. "Well over half of them got out of the castle. We need to make sure of them before they get west to their other fort."

Josh Sanders came up, leading Havel's horse. Havel swung into the saddle with a clink and rustle of chainmail; the horse was a strawberry roan mare, not quite as well-trained as Gustav. He quieted it and stroked a gloved hand down its neck.

"No sign of a rear guard?"

The Hoosier grinned. "Boss, once they bugged out of the castle, that bunch straggled so bad I'm surprised they managed to get anyone together. But they're closed up into one group now, more or less, and less the wounded they've been leaving behind. Stopped about two hours ago, but not for long is my guess. They remembered to take their bicycles, at least."

"Good work, Josh," he said. "Aylward's people are in position?"

"Got into place about the time the fight was over here. That Brit's pretty damn good in the woods."

Will Hutton was ready at the head of the Bearkiller column, a hundred armored riders with Sanders's scouts in a clump before, and their supply echelon on wagons and packhorses behind. Havel trotted down the column of fours and into position at the front beside Luanne Larsson, where she rode with the outfit's flag drooping from her lance in the still, cold air.

A sudden gust snapped it out, brown and red in the soot-laden breeze; humans coughed, and horses stamped and snorted, tossing their heads in a jingle of bridles.

Ahead was the column of smoke from the castle, bending towards them like a reaching hand. On either side the mountains reared steep and rugged; to the north the dawn sun gilded the snowpeaks, leaving the blue slopes below in shadow.

"This part ought to work fairly well," he said.

Will Hutton nodded and spat thoughtfully aside. "Whole strategy feels sort of… odd, Mike."

"Lady Juniper is odd." Havel grinned. "And it's her idea. Yeah, it's not my own first impulse-I was always the kill-'em-all-let-God-sort-'em-out type by natural inclination, and God knows life is cheap these days-but I can see her point, long-term. And she put this whole deal together."

He raised his arm and chopped it westward. With the sun at their backs, the long shapes of horse and rider lay before them, and the hooves trod the shadows down as the Bear-killers advanced. The honed edges of the lanceheads above caught the dawn light with a rippling sparkle like stars on the sea.

"Here," Sam Aylward said.

West of Santiam Pass, Route 20 wound between forested hills that crowded close to the roadway. Eventually it swung north and east for a while before turning west and then south again, like a long U around an outthrust ridge of the mountains that reared-ever higher to Three Fingered Jack on the north and Mount Washington to the south.

Creeks brawled down from the steep slopes on either hand; they were west of the Cascade crest here, and the extra moisture showed-more Douglas fir and western hemlock, less lodgepole pine. The forest was dense, dark green, seeming to wait eagerly for the heavy snows to come, breathing a cold clear scent of pine and moist earth.

Speaking of moisture… hope Lady Juniper's magic actually works. A blizzard would bugger things for fair.

The Englishman cocked an eye at the sky; about noon, not quite time for the party to begin, but getting there, and he didn't like the look of the clouds. It was chilly enough to make him think that might mean snow, too-they were four thousand feet up here, with wet air sliding in from the Pacific, and it was December, albeit only just.

Just enough to make me doubt me sanity, wearing this Jock skirt, he thought wryly.

In fact, the kilt wasn't all that uncomfortable-the Jocks had worn them in all seasons in the Scottish Highlands, after all, with a climate that made western Oregon look like Barbados. The colors were good camouflage, and the boost to morale was more than worth it. Few of these people had been fighters before the Change, any more than they'd been farmers; wearing strange clothing helped them adjust to doing things strange to them.

There was a clatter and rustle as the Mackenzies moved into position; a lot of them were puffing from the night march in full gear, but nobody had fallen out. He grinned slightly to himself at the thought; after the past eight months, most of them were stronger and fitter than they'd ever been in their lives-Yanks had tended to lard before the Change, but he hadn't seen a fat one for months now.

Now if only they were better shots, he thought.

About a dozen out of fifty were what he'd call passable archers, and as for the rest…

Well, they can hit a massed target at close range. Most of the time. And we've got plenty of shafts along.

He looked up and down the stretch of road. There were four abandoned vehicles in sight, all shoved off the road- courtesy of the Protector's men when they moved in on Route 20-but one was impossible, a heavy truck. The other three included two ordinary four-doors and a Ford Windstar van, and should do nicely.

"That one, that one, that one, and put them there. Move your arses, Mackenzies!"

A platoon's-worth flung themselves on the vehicles. They weren't easy to move, with months for the transmission fluid to solidify, and resting on the rims of the flat wheels, but enough musclepower served. Once the cars were in place, more hands rocked them until they went over on their sides, spanning the whole width of the road and its verges, presenting their undersides to the enemy. Those would stop a crossbow bolt well enough, and they were too high to easily climb over. Of course, that meant they were also too high for defenders to shoot or stab over the top.

"Right, get rocks and dirt and logs; get a fighting platform in behind them," Aylward went on. "Move it!"

The section leaders gathered around him, shaggy in their war cloaks, leaves and twigs pushed into the netting of the hoods drawn up over their bowl helmets.

"Look up there," Aylward said, pointing northwest up the road. "We're a good five hundred yards down from that curve. I want two sections"-eighteen archers-"behind the barricade. The rest of you, get your people up on the slopes either side-no more than fifty yards total, but I want each and every one to have a good tree to hide behind and a clear field of fire. Go do it!"

Everyone did. Aylward watched, which made him itch; circumstances and the growth of the Mackenzies had pushed him into an officer's boots, much against his will.

He comforted himself by walking back up the road and looking to either side. You couldn 't see far; the verges at the edge of the road's cleared swath were thick with Pacific rhododendron, vine maple and bear grass. His eye could trace the Mackenzies settling in, but once they were motionless, only knowing where they were let him see them.

"Good enough," he muttered to himself. "In a couple of years, they'll be bloody good, if I do say so myself."

A check behind the barricade showed that everyone there had a good step, high enough to shoot over the metal, but convenient for ducking down. They also all had a spear to hand, if things got close and personal; he'd picked two sections with people who'd fought the Protector's men back before Lughnassadh…

"Christ, they've got me doing it," he muttered to himself again, as he climbed up into the woods. "It didn't even occur to me to think August."

There was a little more work for him here. The archers were spaced about three paces apart, with a tree or bush to conceal each-and with the hoods of their cloaks pulled up over their helmets and shadowing their faces, they were hard to see. A few had picked spots that would block their fields of fire, though. He patiently corrected those, with a quick explanation why and how to check-he wanted them to do better next time-and made sure that each had two bundles of extra arrows from the packhorses, which made a hundred and twenty arrows altogether, counting those in the quivers. Most of the archers had a dozen or so pushed point-down into the dirt or a convenient fallen log, which was a good trick-faster than reaching back over your shoulder.

"Listen for the horn calls, lad," he repeated again and again, or variations, with the odd slap on the shoulder. "Just do what you've practiced, and it'll all come right."

And if things go wrong, the order will be to scarper up-slope, right quick; we can climb the hillsides faster than the Protector's men; their armor is heavier and they're going to be a lot more tired.

All done, he settled down to wait behind a hundred-foot-tall lodgepole pine on the west side of the road, taking out a hardtack and gnawing quietly at it, his bow across his knees. It took him half an hour to eat it-if you went too fast, you risked damage to your teeth, which since the Change was no joke. It was about two o'clock when the scout stationed at the northward curve of the road stepped out onto the pavement, waved her bow overhead, then vanished back into the undergrowth.

"That's that, then," Aylward said, standing and dusting a few crumbs off the front of his jack.

"How many's that?" Havel asked, as they stopped to pick up a wounded straggler.

"Twenty," Luanne said. "Not counting the three deaders."

Havel made a tsk sound as he looked at the steep slopes on either side. In theory the Protector's men could have set an ambush; Josh's scouts were only a couple of hundred yards ahead, and the only way to get a horse into the forest would be to dismount and lead it. The enemy still had half again his numbers. In practice…

"The Protector thought he had a real army because they had weapons and ranks," he said to her father. "Big mistake."

Will Hutton nodded; he had his helmet pushed back, and now he pulled it back down by the nasal bar.

"Sure was," he said, looking as a Bearkiller stretcher party carried the wounded prisoner back towards the ambulance wagons. An abandoned bicycle lay tumbled not far away.

"What was that you said about these here?"

"Low unit cohesion," Havel said with a grin. "Aka, bugging out on your buddies. Gunney Winters would have been livid. Still, they may improve with time, if we let them."

He looked around, matching the terrain to the maps. "All right, people!" he said, louder. "Dismount by squads, water and feed the horses, and final equipment check. We're going to be caught up to them pretty soon."

"Timing's going to be tricky," Hutton said. "Don't want too much of a battle goin' before we get there."

Havel shrugged. "Well, that wasn't Lady Juniper's plan," he said. "We'll see what happens."

Aylward made a sound of disgust between his teeth. "Straight into it," he said contemptuously.

"You'd rather they were alert?" someone muttered.

He snorted; the Mackenzies had learned to do what the one in charge told them when a fight was brewing, but they weren't long on deference. And they did love to talk; probably picked it up from Juniper and her original crew.

The column of Protectorate troops halted and milled around when they saw the barricade; through binoculars he could see some of them looking over their shoulders.

There was shouting and shoving before they all got off their bicycles; eventually a banner eddied forward, black with the lidless eye in red, hanging from a crossbar on the pole. The enemy opened out into a deep formation, sixteen across and eight or nine deep, and began to trot forward; the man beside the flag had a plumed helmet, and was almost certainly the leader-the baron, in Protector Arminger's terminology. Besides the plume and the position, he was wearing a chain mail hauberk, and that was officer's garb in the Portland Protective Association's forces.

Probably has to lead from the front this time, Aylward thought. Or the others won't follow at all.

Lady Juniper's plan depended on demoralization. It was time to help that along…

He rose, throwing a wisp of dried grass in the air to gauge the wind direction, and looking at the extremely helpful banner to do the same for the target area. Seventy-five yards, give or take a foot; not too far…

"Now," he said, throwing off his cloak and plucking an arrow out of the ground to set it on the string of his war bow.

A signaler put his cowhorn bugle to his lips and blew. Huuu-huuu-huuuu, the weird dunting bellow echoed back from the hills. A banshee squeal answered it; this time they had four bagpipers. They stayed hidden, but all along the hillsides on. both sides of the road Mackenzie archers shed their war cloaks and stepped forward, bows in their hands.

The sudden appearance and rustle of movement combined with the eerie keening of the pipes to make them appear more numerous than they were; imagination painted scores more behind them in the trees. Aylward watched as the ranks eddied and milled, heads twisting this way and that-and behind them again. The baron beside the banner of the Lidless Eye drew his sword.

Well, I can read your bloody mind, mate. Neck or nothing, a charge is the only way you’re getting out. Got to put a stop to that.

Swift as a thought, he drew the string to the angle of his jaw, the heavy muscle bunching in his right arm, then let the string fall off the balls of his fingers. The cord went snap against his bracer; before the sensation faded the next was drawn, and the next, and the next. Pale and gray and directionless, the light was still good for shooting; he could see the slight glint as the arrow hit the top of its arc, and anticipate the sweet smooth feeling you got when you knew it was going to hit…

The bagpipes and the rustling and clanking of his own men must have masked the whistle of cloven air. The first arrow smashed into the face of the Protector's baron beside the nose. The steel point and six inches of the shaft came through just behind the hinge of his jaw, sending him turning in place with a high muffled shriek. The second hit him in the upper chest, made a metallic tink! sound as it broke two metal rings and sank almost to the feathers. The third struck between his shoulder blades as he continued the turn; that ended with his knees buckling and the armor-clad body falling limp with a thud and last galvanic drum of feet on the pavement. The conical helmet rolled away, its strap burst by the force of impact.

Aylward flung up his bow. The bagpipers fell silent, and the Mackenzie archers stood motionless, their bows up, the pointed-chisel bodkin heads of the arrows aimed down at the dense mass of men on the road. The silence was so profound for an instant that he could hear the sheet metal of the helm ring on the asphalt of the roadway.

His own mind could paint what came next; the whistling of the arrow-storm, the hundreds of shafts arching out and down, the punching impact on armor and flesh and bone, the screams of the wounded and dying…

And those laddies don't know that most of us can't shoot as well as I, or draw a hundred-pound stave. So their imaginings will be still more vivid and unpleasant.

A Mackenzie beside him raised a white cloth on the butt-end of a spear and walked forward, gulping a little as crossbows were leveled. He got to within talking distance of the men grouped around Arminger's standard, but when he spoke he pitched his voice to carry to the whole group:

"You'd better surrender," he said, keeping his voice neutral-getting their hackles up was the last thing he wanted. "I'm authorized to offer you your lives, food for the winter and homes for you and any families you had back at the fort-for everyone not guilty of war crimes."

The second-in-command swallowed and looked up from where he'd been staring, at the leaking corpse of the baron. Blood pooled under the slack arrow-transfixed face and spread; there was an astonishing lot in a human body, and it looked worse when it spread on a watertight surface like this. The fecal smell of violent death was muted by the chill of the air, but nonetheless final and unpleasant for that.

A bugle sounded from the northeast, and the clopping roar of hundreds of hooves on pavement. Every face in the Protector's force turned over their shoulder as the Bear-killers came in sight. They pulled up four hundred yards away, their armored bulk and their horses filling the roadway from verge to verge; heads swiveled back to the silent longbowmen on either side, ready to shoot.

Aylward hid his grin. The expression felt far too carnivorous to let into the negotiations.

"You can see we've treated our prisoners well," Juniper Mackenzie said. "And you can see that you can't fight us all-we're on both sides of you."

She was close enough to the western wall of the castle at Upper Soda for the troops who lined the gatehouse and ramparts to hear her plainly. The air was still and cold in the bright day, and her voice had always been bigger than you'd think to look at her. They stirred and murmured along the fighting platform behind the sharpened logs; she could hear the buzz of their voices in the intervals between her sentences, and see the twinkle of sunlight on edged metal. She was almost close enough to see expressions.

Unfortunately that put her well within crossbow range, not to mention that of the great dart-casters and ballistae. The men beside and in front of her-unarmed prisoners from the eastern castle, at once witnesses and shield- knew that too. Their sweat stank of fear, and her stomach turned a little at the smell. Then the baby kicked, and she gave a little whoosh of effort as she kept herself erect and forced her hands away from the gravid curve of her stomach.

Yet it heartened her. "Just look!" she said.

Memory filled in what lay behind. The University militia had come tramping in step; it was even more impressive when they fanned out across the grassland to either side of the road. Three hundred long pikes, moving in bristling unison like the hair on some steel-spined porcupine's back; as many crossbowmen to either side; flanking those her own clan's archers, moving to the wild skirl of the pipes and the hammering of the Lamberg drums, shaggy in war cloak and kilt and plaid, voices roaring out:

"From the hag and the hungry goblin

That into rags would rend ye;

All the sprites that stand by the Horned Man

In the Book of Moons defend ye-"

"And to be sure," she murmured softly to herself, "the trebuchets and catapults are impressive, too, in their own way. And Mike and Aylward on the other side with their merry bands."

She took another breath; beneath her plaid her hand moved in a certain sign, and her will poured into the words:

"All the world is full of dying," she went on. "Why add more? We've food enough for all of you and your families"-the reports said about half did have their womenfolk and children along-"for the winter, and there's land and work in plenty, or we'll help you go anywhere else you will. We know the most of you did what you had to do to live; it's only your leaders who are evil. But don't you want to live like free men again? Don't you want to live without hurting anyone, live honestly without being surrounded by hate and fear? And to show we're honest, here are ten men who're your friends to tell you how we've treated them. Don't let the men who use you and abuse you silence them!

"Go," she added in a normal conversational voice.

Ten of the prisoners trotted forward towards the gate of the castle. They'd volunteered-they must be brave men, and none of them seemed to be very fond of the Protector right now, or his barons. And she didn't think the baron of Upper Soda would dare order them shot down, or thrown into prison.

It's a cleft stick he's in, and nobody to blame but himself, she thought. Bionn an fhirinne searbh an bhfeallaire: The truth is bitter to the betrayer!

Actions had consequences. You didn't have to be in the Craft for the Threefold Rule to apply.

"You have until tomorrow morning," she called aloud. "Be wise and make peace, and you'll see tomorrow's sun set."

She turned and walked away… or waddled, as Judy would have put it. The rest of the prisoners crowded along behind her, until she spread her arms to remind them to hang back a little. Still, the distance to her buggy seemed eternal, the climb into it hard-even with Eilir and Astrid to assist, and as well try to catch the moon with a spoon as keep them back! The whole party walked back to the safety of the allied armies…

Armies! She thought. And aren't we getting grand! That Astrid has a talent for the grandiloquent, that she does!

Luther Finney waited with the others; he was the University Committee's man here, though not in command of their militia.

"Juney, you've got more guts than sense!" he scolded. "You shouldn't be doing that sort of thing in your condition!"

Juniper smiled at him. "Well, why not, Luther? I'm doing it for him, too."

She laid her hand on her stomach and looked at Mike Havel. "What better reason?"

He nodded soberly. "And that was quite a speech, too," he said. "I think-"

Everyone froze as her expression altered. "Oh, my," she said, both hands on her stomach this time. "Oh, my."

Dennis and Chuck were at her side as if by magic, supporting her elbows.

"I think someone should fetch Judy," Juniper said. "This feeling's all too familiar."

Exhausted, Juniper lay back against the pillows and looked down at the tiny crumpled face in the crook of her arm; amazed blue eyes looked back at her from beneath a faint fuzz of wispy red-gold hair. For once she didn't feel guilty about having a fair-sized tent all to herself; the baby needed warmth, and the Coleman stove and air mattress made it fairly comfortable.

"And my own battered, stretched, sore-isn't-the-word self can use a little comfort," she muttered to herself.

Thank You, she added to the image of the Mother-of-All on the portable altar in one corner of the tent. Incense burned there, sweet amid the canvas-and-earth scents and the underlying tang of sweat and blood.

Judy came back in, buttoning the sleeves of her shirt and yawning; she'd taken out the last of the soiled linen, and the birthing stool.

"Half the camp is still up," she said. "The other half is getting up and asking for the news. You'd think nobody had ever had a baby before."

"Born on a battlefield, poor mite," Juniper said. "My little Rudi, my warmth in a darkling time."

A voice coughed outside. Juniper sighed, weary but not ready to sleep just yet.

"Yes, yes," she said.

Four men crowded in; Dennis, Aylward, Luther Finney… and Mike Havel. He was out of his armor and padding, looking younger and less strange-more as a man might have before the Change.

He was also carrying a tray; porridge cooked with dried apples and cherries, cream, scrambled eggs. Juniper's nose twitched, and she was suddenly conscious of a bottomless hunger, deeper than anything since the harvest.

Judy took the well-wrapped baby and handed him to Luther; the elderly farmer took the tiny bundle with the calm ease of experience as father and grandfather and great-grandfather.

As she helped Juniper sit up and fluffed the pillows, Judy launched a preemptive strike:

"Easy ten-hour delivery, nice bouncing six pounds, eight ounces baby boy, with all the limbs and facilities-including good hearing, by the way."

The women's eyes met: And you'd scarcely know he's nearly a month early.

"And a good set of lungs, as you may have heard earlier. He's eaten; the mother should now."

The other men awkwardly admired the baby. The flap of the tent opened again as Eilir darted in with Astrid on her heels.

Mom! she signed, her gestures broad with excitement. Mom! Someone inside hit the baron on the head with an ax, and they're fighting each other-the ones who want to surrender have opened the gate! Chuck's going there now!

Luther Finney put the infant back on Juniper's stomach, careful even in his haste. Her arms took it, but her eyes held Mike Havel for an instant.

"Mike… keep my word for me," she said quietly.

A silent nod, and he was gone. She sighed and lay back; a wail, and she put the baby, to her breast.

"It's not the quietest of worlds, my sweetling," she murmured, stroking his cheek. "But I'll try to make it the best I can for you."

Thirty-three

Yeah, she's calling him Rudi-after her husband; he didn't make it through the day of the Change," Mike Havel said.

They were all standing and watching with satisfaction as the long wagon train trundled west through the little town of Sisters and up Route 20. The wagons-everything from old buckboards from rodeo shows to post-Change made-from-anything makeshifts-were loaded high with the Bearkillers' gear, but all of it was on a solid foundation of plump grain sacks, usually two or three deep. It was eerily appropriate that Cascade Street was lined with false-front stores like something out of a Western movie; pre-Change pretense and makeshifts done after the Change in desperate earnest.

The horses' breath puffed out in the chill as they bent to the traces, but the road was smooth and still dry…

At least here, Havel thought, looking westward at the clouds that hid the mountains. I hope to hell we don't get any more snow-we've had to shovel more than I like already. And this is definitely the last load until spring!

Signe was walking well now if she was careful, but her left arm was in a sling and immobilizing elastic bandage. Every once in a while she'd reach over and, very very cautiously, scratch. Right now she was obviously counting back nine months, reaching a conclusion that pleased her, and smiling.

"I sort of envy her," she said wistfully. "So much death… it makes you feel better, new lives starting."

"Well, when you're feeling better-" Mike grinned and dodged as she cuffed at him with her good arm.

"Are you sure it's all right for us to drop in on them?" Signe said. "I'd love to, but-"

"We're just taking the headquarters group," Havel said. "Bearkillers are still the blue-eyed boys with our allies; they want to give us a feed before we settle in."

"We're going to be busy this winter," her father said, only half paying attention to the discussion. "How many did you say were living in the area we've been handed?"

"About two thousand, including the ex-POWs who want to settle on our land," Havel said. "Which puts our total numbers up by eight times overnight! Mostly it's people who managed to survive hiding out in the hills; families and little groups. Surprising so many came through, so close to Salem… but human beings are tough."

He thought for a moment. "A lot of them are at the end of their tethers, wouldn't make it through the winter. How much land would you say it would take to support a family?"

Ken Larsson began to scratch his head, then stopped when he realized he was about to use his steel hook.

"In the Willamette? Well, real intensive gardening style… say five acres. It's good land and the weather's reliable."

Havel nodded, feeling things slip into place in his head.

"OK, let's kill a lot of birds with a few stones. Look, we've got a hundred and twenty A-lister fighters to support. An armored lancer takes a lot of supporting; it's not just the gear and horses, though those're no joke. He-"

Pamela stood with her hand on Ken's shoulder; she cleared her throat ostentatiously.

"- or she, in some cases… anyway, they need time to practice. So they can't be farming all the time. And we can't have them all camping on the front lawn and hand them a peck of meal and a side of bacon every week, either. Christ Jesus, it's inconvenient, not having any money! Swapping's so damned slow and clumsy. So, we've got a lot of vacant land, a lot of people with no seed, stock or tools, and an army to support-an army we're definitely going to need for the foreseeable future. Let's put 'em together."

He tapped the back of one hand against the palm of the other. "See, we give each Bearkiller family a square mile, we jigger it so they've got a good mix of plowland, pasture, woods and such."

"That's a lot of land," Hutton said. "Even if we get some reapers and horse-drawn gear together."

"Yeah, but we don't just give them a farm," Havel said. "We need those A-listers for fighting. They'll be the local Justice of the Peace and they'll train and command the militia, and look after the roads and local school."

Josh Sanders nodded. "Sort of decentralized. I like it. How do we handle the fightin' side, though?"

"They have to equip and bring… oh, say three or four lancers and an apprentice for each when there's a call-up, and we make arrangements to check training and so forth, and muster like the National Guard did back before the Change in peacetime."

"That'll be a heap of work," Hutton said. He shrugged his shoulders. "Still, what's life for, if you don't have a job worth doin'? Most of our A-listers, they've got some farmin' background, too. The ones who don't can learn fast."

Havel nodded. "Some of these people we're taking in, the clueless ones, they can work for the Bearkiller family- help work the farm, get paid in food and clothes, and a house and a big garden, too. The rest, say ten or twelve families, they each get thirty acres and a yoke of oxen and tools we make or trade for, and they help the Bearkiller with his… OK, Pam, her… their, goddamnit… farm. More land for troop and squadron commanders, of course, but they'll get more responsibilities, too. We at Larsdalen sort of supervise the whole setup and collect a reasonable tax through the JPs, and keep a chunk of land around the house for ourselves; your original spread, Ken, and a bit more."

He beamed at the others. Will Hutton was nodding and rubbing thoughtfully at his jaw.

"Sounds sensible enough, Mike," he said. Brightening: "Even without money, we could arrange the taxes pretty fair-you know, every tenth calf or sheaf or something, or work with their plow teams; the A-listers collect it, and pass on a share. And heck, we'll need our own infantry, too, pikes 'n' bows for the farmers. Hmmm, and mebbe these apprentices, they could sort of spend some time at Larsdalen, learning?"

"Sounds good," Josh Sanders said. "I was wondering how we were going to keep our edge once we settled down.

With farms that size, we could get all the, ah, the renters, to clump together, too. I could help the A-listers run up some sort of berm and so forth, so people could duck in if there's an attack, while we pass the word and mobilize."

They turned to the others, their smiles fading a little when they saw the raised eyebrows on Ken Larsson and Pamela and Aaron Rothman.

Ken cleared his throat. "You could call the square mile grants fiefs, for starters," he said. "That was the traditional term. Or a knight's fee. And you could call the apprentices pages and then squires… ."

Havel frowned. "Well, so much for my brilliant originality. Someone's come up with this before?" he said. "I was thinking of strategic hamlet for the A-lister grants, actually."

Pamela coughed into her hand, and Rothman giggled. The swordmistress spoke: "Ah… yeah, Boss. Something a little like it has happened before. You might want to make a few modifications… "

"Welcome to Dun Juniper, Lord Bear, you and yours," Dennis Martin Mackenzie said formally.

He was heading up the ceremonial guard of archers and spearmen, down at the base of the plateau that held the Hall. Juniper could just barely hear him up here on the flat roof of the gatehouse tower; there was a murmur from the crowd waiting inside the gate, and it was a fair distance- they'd run the new approach road up the side of the slope below the palisade, so that you had to come up with your right hand towards the wall and your shield arm uselessly away.

She could see the Bearkillers all look up for a moment, and grinned to herself. The little plateau looked a lot more imposing now that the palisade was all in place; twenty-five feet of steep hillside, and then the thirty-foot rampart of thick logs, sharpened on top. Sunset light sparkled on the spearheads of the guards on the fighting platform behind the parapet, and hearth smoke drifted up in near-perfect pillars; it was a still, chilly early-winter evening. Snow had fallen last night; it wouldn't last long, and things would be dismally muddy when it went, but for now the thick blanket gave field and branch and roof a fairyland splendor.

While they talked with Dennis, she hurried down the interior stairway, arriving in time to be composed and dignified as they walked up the roadway, leading their mounts.

They'd come unarmored; all wore broad-brimmed dark hats with silver medallions on their bands, and they were all dressed alike in what wasn't quite a uniform. Boots, loose dark trousers and lapover jackets secured by sashes and broad leather belts, with a bear's head embroidered in red over the left breast…

She felt something of that first shock again, like an echo from distant cliffs. Her body remembered the way he moved, light and quick and easy, with a relaxed alertness…

Mom, Eilir signed discreetly. Stop it with the lascivious drooling! You're practically ripping his clothes off with your eyes!

I am not! she signed, and then thought silently to herself: Not quite. Still, if this one were a movie star in the old days… as the saying goes, there wouldn't have been a dry seat in the house.

The tall young woman beside him. Her looks were Nordic perfection, in an outdoorsy way, down to the long butter-blond braids that framed her face. Except for a small scar across the bridge of her nose, almost a nick, leaving a slight dent, and a continuation on one cheek; her coat hung loose, and her left arm was in a sling. That didn't seem to dampen her spirits, though; she smiled as she walked, curving in instinctively towards the Bearkiller leader.

Ah, well, Juniper thought wistfully. I have my Rudi. and the best of the bargain, perhaps. Lord Bear's luck is hard on those close to him, I think.

As the Bearkillers walked up the roadway, Dorothy cut loose with her pipes, pacing formally back and forth along the battlement of the gatehouse. That was three stories of squared logs up, but it was still loud. Juniper and her Advisors-it was becoming a title, somehow- stood to meet the Bearkiller leaders. She was in full fig; jacket, ruffled shirt, kilt, plaid fastened over her shoulder with a brooch, down to the flat Scots bonnet with antlers-and-moon clasp and raven feather and the little sgian dhu knife tucked into her right stocking. Most of the others were in kilts as well, and as much of the rest as could be hastily cobbled up-some of it had served as costumes, at Samhain.

The blond woman leaned closer to Lord Bear. Juniper had a great deal of experience at picking voices out from background noise; it went with being a musician. She fought to keep her lips from quirking upward as she heard:

"Help, Mike! I've fallen into Brigadoon and I can't get out!"

"It's like. it's like Edoras, and the Golden Hall of Medusel!" Astrid said, waving an arm through the open gates at the carved and painted wood of the Hall. "Didn't I say so?"

"Oh, great, Hobbiton-in-the-Cascades," Eric grumbled.

He had new scars since she'd seen him that spring; long white ones on the backs of his hands, and several the same on his face; he'd also shaved his head, save for a yellow scalp lock on top. It all made him look older and grimmer, and there was a hard light in his eyes now, but his grin was still charming and reminded her of the boy he'd been.

The Bearkiller leader made a slight shushing sound, and his eyes met Juniper's. That gave her a slight jolt; it also made her sure as they narrowed slightly that he knew she'd overheard the remark, and met her suppressed grin with an equally discrete one of his own.

I like this man, she thought, and went on aloud:

"Lord Bear."

She glanced down the laneway; that was where they'd set their rampant-bear flag with with the polished bear skull on the top of its pole.

"Point taken," he said, acknowledging the flamboyant standard and his own title. Then he did grin. "My fianc? Signe Larsson."

"I'm Juniper Mackenzie, chief of Clan Mackenzie," Juniper said, shaking hands and smiling. "And a musician before the Change. I'll play at your wedding, I hope!"

He went on with introductions for the rest of his party: "Angelica Hutton; our camp boss and quartermaster. My prospective brother-in-law, you've met. Only since then he's become Taras Bulba."

Eric snorted as he shook her hand; a strikingly pretty dark-skinned girl stood next to him. "Glad to see you again, Lady Juniper. And Mike has no sense of style. Besides which, I nearly got killed when my hair was caught in some barbed wire. My wife, Luanne. Nйe Hutton."

Lord Bear-Mike Havel, let's not keep the show going all the time, she thought-took up the thread smoothly:

"My father-in-law to be, Kenneth Larsson, engineer."

He looked to be nearly sixty, though fit: with another small shock Juniper realized he was the oldest person she'd seen in weeks; the first year of the Change hadn't been easy on the elderly. It took an instant before she realized that his left forearm ended at a cup and steel hook where his wrist and hand should be.

The woman beside him was in her thirties, tall and wire-slender, olive-skinned, with a narrow hawk-nosed face and russet-brown hair.

"Pamela Arnstein, our swordmistress-fencing instructor- and historian."

"Also the vet and horse doctor," she said. Her accent was Californian, like Dennis's.

Juniper let herself smile as she introduced her people in turn.

"This way," she said when the introductions were done. "Doubtless you've seen our wall-"

"Very impressive," Havel said, sounding like he meant it.

She nodded, proud, and even more proud of the cabins built against its inner surface; that meant every family living here had its own hearth at last. The rest of the four-acre plateau held the two-story Hall, flanked by two near-identical structures, an armory on one side and a school-library-guesthouse on the other. And sheds, workshops and storehouses, log-built on stone foundations.

It all looked a lot neater now that they'd had time to clean up the litter and lay flagstone paths to connect the buildings. Open space lay at the rear of the U, used for everything from soccer matches to public meetings, with another blockhouse tower to watch over the gully that separated the plateau from the hillside behind.

"This is where we started," she said. "There was nothing here but my cabin and some sheds, back before the Change."

Havel's brows rose; she could see that he was impressed again. "Log construction goes fast, but that's a hell of a lot of timber to cut, considering everything else you had to do."

Dennis cut in: "Lady Juniper's luck-Cascade Timber Inc. felled a couple of thousand trees before the Change, and hadn't gotten around to hauling the timber out. We just dragged it out and set it up."

Juniper nodded. "We've got other sites fortified pretty much like this, except that they're down in the flats," she said. "Dun Carson, Dun McFarlane and Dun Laughton- where the other septs of the clan are based."

Signe Larsson chuckled. When Juniper looked over at her, the younger woman said:

"It reminds me of a story I heard once, about some Scottish pirates who retired and settled down. They built three towns-Dunrobbin', Dunrovin', Dunleavin'."

"God, Mike, they have a salad bar!" Signe Larsson said, licking her lips. "Come on, Pam, give me a hand! That'll make three between us."

"Get me some too, would you, askling?" Havel said. "I won't say I'd kill for a green salad, but I'd certainly maim."

She bounced up eagerly. "And this is the man who said a Finnish salad started with a dozen sausages," she cast over her shoulder.

"Impressive spread," Havel went on to his hostess.

Juniper nodded with what she thought was a pardonable smile of pride at the setting as well as the meal. During the rebuilding they'd taken all the interior partitions out of the first floor of her old cabin, save for the cubicle around the bathrooms; the kitchens were gone too, replaced by a long lean-to structure along the rear of the building with salvaged woodstoves and clan-built brick hearths.

That made it easier to use the ground floor of the Hall for public occasions; tonight tables along the rear wall held the food, and clansfolk and guests sat along the outer perimeter elsewhere; the old fireplace was freestanding now, crackling and adding a reddish glow to the butter-yellow of the kerosene lamps. Holly and ivy festooned the walls, to invite the Good Folk in and bring luck; there were baskets of apples and hazelnuts laid in evergreen boughs, twined with wheat stalks and dusted with flour. Above the hearth where the huge Yule log burned were candles: red, green, white for the season; green and gold and black for the Sun God; and white, red and black for the Great Goddess.

And a big barrel had been set up, full of water and thick with apples.

"Bobbing for apples?" Havel said.

Juniper grinned. "Symbolizing the apples of eternal life," she said. More gravely: "After the past year, we need reminders."

Two roast wild pigs and a haunch of venison held pride of place on either side of it, and roast chicken and barons of beef. But there were heaps of greens as well, the last of the winter gardens: tomatoes, onions, peppers, steamed cauliflower and broccoli, boiled carrots, mashed turnips, potato salad with scallions and homemade mayonnaise, and potatoes grilled with pepper and garlic, mashed and whipped…

For dessert there were fresh fruit and dozens of pies, apple and blueberry and strawberry with rhubarb-honey sweetener instead of sugar, although next year they might be able to cultivate some sugar beets. There was even whipped cream, now that they had a decent dairy herd.

Dennis had the product of his brewery-it was getting a bit large to call it a micro-set up in barrels, along with the mead and wine and applejack.

Juniper waved a hand. "Yule is a major holiday, of course, and… well, right after the Change, we-my original bunch-just planted every garden seed we could get, regardless. So did most of the people around here, the ones who joined us later. Things were very tight until about June, and we're storing all we can, but you can't keep lettuce or green peppers, and we might as well eat the last of them while they're here. Things will be a lot more monotonous again come January and February."

Monotonous, but ample, she thought with profound satisfaction.

The thought of the storehouses and cellars full of wheat and barley and oats, of potatoes and cabbages and dried tomatoes and dried fruit and onions and parsnips and turnips and beets, of the herds and flocks in paddock and byre and pigpen, the full chicken coops, gave her a warm glow she'd never known before the Change. She'd never cared much about money, but hunger and hard work had taught her what real wealth was; it was being full and knowing you could eat well every coming day to next harvest-and that the seed for that harvest was safely in the ground.

Havel nodded. "You're certainly doing very well," he said.

The buzz of conversation rose to a happy roar as people filled their plates and made their way back to the seats. There were a hundred adults here, and many of the older children-the youngsters were over in the schoolhouse building, having their own dinner.

Dorothy Rose, their piper, strode up and down the open space within the tables, making what the charitable or extremely Scottish would consider music.

"You know why pipers walk up and down like that while they play?" Juniper asked.

Havel shook his head; so did Signe, back with a heaped plate, followed by Pam with two more.

"To get away from the music, of course," Juniper said.

They both laughed, although that didn't slow down their eating; roast pork with applesauce, she noticed, as well as the salads and steamed vegetables. She'd scattered the other Bearkillers among the people at the high table; Astrid was deep in conversation with Eilir again, catching up on all they'd missed in two weeks' separation.

When the plates were cleared, the children filed out.

"This is our… well, sort of a school play," she said.

The leads were Mary, Sanjay and Daniel. Mary got to play the Goddess with tinsel woven into her mahogany hair, as the Crone, while Sanjay was the Holly King, slain by the Oak King in a dramatic duel with wooden swords; the Goddess held a wand out over them during it, then made a speech about the Wheel of the Year. A chorus sang in the background, skipping around each other in a dance that looked quite pretty between the collisions.

It gave the kids a chance to show off what they learned in Moon School, and it didn't have to compete against TV.

"Errr… you're all pagans here now?" Havel said. "Not that I object-I'm a lapsed Lutheran myself-"

Juniper nodded: "Well, we call ourselves Witches. To be technical, we're rather old-fashioned Wiccans, at least my original group were, and something like two-thirds of those who've joined us since have signed up-as fast as we can run the Training Circle, with some corners cut. It's a new situation for us, having actual congregations!"

A little way down the table, Ken Larsson leaned forward to talk to her:

"Founder effect," he said. "First bunch in a community tend to have a disproportionate influence on what comes after."

He waved around the room with his fork. "I suspect this is happening all over the world-some leader or small group is lucky and smart and attracts individuals to join, and then they take on the same coloration, grabbing at anything that seems to work in a world of death. It certainly happened with us. I bet there will be some pretty weird results in a couple of generations."

Havel nodded. "Although-" He cut himself off and nodded again.

Juniper grinned. "Although we don't remind you much of pagans you met before the Change?" she said helpfully. "Although you might think the obsession with dressing up in costumes has survived?"

Havel coughed into his hand, then looked around as if he was contemplating something on the order of: My, aren't the walls vertical today?

Signe smiled slyly and nudged him with an elbow. "Gotcha, Lord Bear. Roll over and show your tummy, boy! You're whipped! I told you to leave all the diplomatic stuff to Dad."

Juniper took pity on him: "Types like that did get lot of attention before the Change," she said. "They weren't the whole story even then." She smiled. "Do I believe magic works since the Change? Of course! But I believe it worked before the Change, too, remember, and I never took"-she gestured at the decorations- " 'My other car is a broomstick' bumper stickers literally."

"Err… thanks," he said. "It's nice to know we'll have sensible neighbors."

"Good save," Signe muttered in a stage whisper.

"If only we didn't have the Protector as a neighbor," Juniper said. "We've been fighting him most of the year-"

"Us too," Havel said, and smiled grimly. "Oh, yes, the castles on Route 20 weren't our first encounter."

She frowned. "I think you mentioned… well, tale-telling is a Yule tradition too. We'd be very interested to hear it. If you wouldn't mind?"

"Not at all."

Juniper smiled and nodded. Havel looked as if he'd rather gouge out his own liver than talk in public, so…

She caught Signe Larsson's eye, and got a wink.

"In fact… "

She used a fork to ring a small iron triangle before her, tapping out a simple tune. The pleasant buzz of conversation died away.

"Our guest, Lord of the Bearkillers, has a tale to relate."

The buzz warmed up again for a second; hearing a story like that was entertainment now, and of high practical value as well. Everyone was eager for news from outside their strait local horizon.

"He and his had to fight earlier in the year-even before the Protector's men attacked Sutterdown. He'd like to tell us about it."

Havel gave her a stricken look. Signe gave him a nudge in the ribs, and he sighed and cleared his throat.

"We were around Craigswood, in Idaho," he said. "A bunch of bandits-they called themselves the Devil Dogs; a lot of them were in a biker gang before the Change- were trying to-"

Juniper leaned back with a cup of the mead and listened, smiling slightly to herself. Havel gave the story baldly, in what she imagined was the style of a military report.

The Chief of the Mackenzies let her storyteller's mind take them and weave in scent and sound and the thoughts of humankind; she could feel the beginnings of a song stirring and that felt very good indeed. Her fingers moved, unconsciously strumming-Mike Havel's theme, sharp as knife steel, but with hidden depths like rushing water, and a cold clear tang of danger…

It had been too long a time since she'd done much composing, and she'd never had quite this sort of subject.

Thirty-four

So that's Larsdalen," Juniper Mackenzie said.

Her clansfolk-the score or so who'd come along to escort their allies home-clustered behind her, their horses stamping and snorting breath-plumes into the crisp evening air. The clouds had parted for a while, and the sun gilded every grass blade and spiderweb with diamonds. The noise and bustle of the Bearkiller caravan and their herds were behind for now, though she could hear the lowing of cattle in the distance.

Ahead the broad valley narrowed, rising to low forested heights north and west, shaggy with Douglas fir and yellow-leaved oak, silhouetted against the setting sun. Below the rolling lands were silent, grass waist-high in the pastures, the blocks of orchard and vineyard gone shaggy with a year's neglect and sere with winter-save that not one bunch of grapes hung withered into raisins. Willows dropped their tresses into ponds, and ducks swam. The big house on its hill was yellowish-red brick, mellow, bowered in its trees-from this distance the broken windows and doors swinging free couldn't be seen.

No smoke came from its chimneys, but you could imagine it, and a bustle of life among the barns and cottages and outbuildings, under the musty damp-leaf smell of the dying year.

Havel and his Signe walked past them, leading their horses. Hooves and feet crunched on the gravel of the drive. The Bear Lord stopped, handed her his helmet with its snarling namesake crest. His people gathered around him, mostly afoot; from the saddle Juniper could still see him over their heads.

"I've ran far enough, come far enough. This earth is mine."

Signe whispered in his ear, and he nodded before he went on, a little louder: "None of its folk will want for bread or justice or a strong arm."

His eyes met Juniper's for an instant, wholly serious. He went to one knee, cut a section of turf loose, and plunged his hand into the moist dark dirt below. For a moment he looked at it, brought it to his lips for an instant.

Then he stood, his voice powerful, harder somehow than usual:

"And I shall be father to this land and all its people. So witness all of you here." ^t-

"So witness Earth-" He held out the handful of soil. His fist rose heavenward, clenching on the dirt:

"So witness Sky."

Juniper felt a sudden chill as the Bear-killers broke into cheers and waved their blades aloft; not fear or anger or alarm, but a whistling like great winds blowing through her soul. With an effort, she shrugged it aside and rode her own horse forward, Eilir at her side.

"Lord Bear," she said.

He turned, and something seemed to pass from his face; the crooked smile came back.

"You're still welcome to stay the night," he said. "We owe you Mackenzies, and it's a long ride back to your land."

Juniper laughed. "I'll take you up on that, and many of mine, often. But right now you'll have plenty to do settling in."

"God knows we do," he said, reaching up and shaking her hand. Then: "Sorry."

Juniper looked down and saw that the soil had rubbed off on her fingers as well.

"Not a problem," she said. "It's our Mother's earth, after all. Good luck-and blessed be. Merry met, and merry parting, and merry meet again!"

She nodded to Signe and turned her mount. They rode beside the graveled road, then cut across a pasture to let the great caravan pass, waving to faces they knew. Eilir turned in her saddle to exchange an exuberant two-armed wave to Astrid Larsson, before the youngster lifted her horse over a fence and rode whooping up the valley to her home.

Astrid is very cool, Eilir signed. I am most definitely going to visit my anamchara a lot.

Juniper nodded absently. Her daughter cocked an eye. What's with, excessively spooky High Priestess Mom? You've got that the-Otherworld-is-talking-to-me look again.

The Chief of the Mackenzies made herself shrug and laugh. "Nothing, my heart," she said.

Oh, sure.

"It's just… the King is Bridegroom to the land, and the Goddess… "

Eilir looked at her. What is that supposed to mean?

"I don't know," Juniper said.

Suddenly she wanted to be home, very badly. She legged her horse up to a trot, and the clansfolk settled their longbows over their shoulders and followed, their plaids fluttering in the wind of their passage.

I don't know, she thought to herself, and made the Invoking sign. But perhaps You will be telling me, eh?

Epilogue

A Wiccanning was a merry sort of ritual, introducing the newborn or new-come children to the Lady and the Lord; it was usually done during the day. Today was cold, but there had been a break in the clouds, and the great snow-peaks towered over them like citadels, the firs deep green and secret. Her people sang as they trod the path up to the sacred wood, carrying the bundled little ones and leading those a little older by the hand, and there was to be a party day afterwards, with roast spiced apples and games.

"… Come away, human child

To the woods and waters wild;

With a faerie, hand in hand… "

The oaks were leafless, and the spring burbled over rocks flecked with ice, but the last of the snow had melted; the grass within the trees was a soft muted frost-kissed green. The air smelled of earth and cold, a smell like deep sleep, and the chill freshness of the conifers. Eilir carried her brother-with the High Priestess and the High Priest both having children of their own to be welcomed, there would be a bit of juggling back and forth.

Outside the Circle they all stood silent for a moment, listening to the world. A crow cried somewhere, gruk-gruk-gruk, loud beneath the creaking of wood and the fall of water. Dennis sighed as he opened his eyes and looked down on the face of his daughter; Terry stood beside his mother and watched his newborn sister with something of the same wonder.

Sometimes casting the Circle was a thing that made the hair bristle along Juniper's spine with awe. Today it was as if a hand was laid gently on her head, bringing spring's promise, dancing in a meadow starred with flowers. Sword and censer, water and salt went about the ring.

Chuck's face was smiling behind the elk mask as he spoke:

"Now do I call you to this our Circle, great Lord of all, by Your many names; Green Man, Horned One, Trickster, Brother, Lover; mighty Warrior, strong Defender, wise Sage-"

Her own voice was soft: "I call You as Mother-of-All. Triple Moon, Ever-changing One, I invoke and call upon Thee."

The words and gestures flowed, as each child was presented to the Quarters. For Chuck and Judy, things were a little different as they brought Mary and Sanjay and Daniel to the altar in turn, lighting a candle for each; the ritual changed a bit for an adoption:

"We chose this child above all others. We freely bring Mary to the altar to thank the Lady and the Lord for joining her with us…."

But for the solemnity of the moment she would have laughed with joy as the girl sipped gravely from the consecrated chalice and tasted the biscuit, face brimming with the moment, as the voices rose in the cry of Blessed be.

Then it was her own turn. Little Rudi had been quiet all through the rite, and he was now, as she took him from his sister's arms-still and wide-eyed even when she raised him to the Quarters, a small bundle of infinite possibilities.

She dipped her fingers into the chalice, and gently touched her son's forehead:

"We bless you with Water and Earth. I name you-"

Her tongue stumbled. Chuck looked at her curiously; that wasn't expected.

"- in the Craft, I name you Artos," she said very softly.

The High Priest's eyes widened, and so did the Maiden's-Judy was close enough to hear as well. Chuck passed the candle over her son.

"We bless you with Fire." He waved incense smoke towards the baby. "We bless you with Earth, Air, Fire and Water; Four do we give. The fifth is Spirit, and that lies in the gift of the Lady and the Lord."

The rite flowed on; she touched the infant's lips with a drop of the wine, a crumb from the plate; then she reached into the cauldron for the piece of jewelry. Normally she'd hand that to the parents; here she would pin it on his blanket herself.

Her foot turned on the damp earth as she reached across the wide top of the hewn boulder that made the altar. With a gasp she righted herself, but for an instant Rudi-Artos slid as she struggled for balance. Then she had him in both hands…

… but not before his own had reached out in instinctive reflex. The perfectly formed pink fingers waved, then clamped down with the surprising grip-strength of newborns.

On the hilt of the ritual sword that rested across the altar in its rack; the long steel blade quivered and turned as the baby groped at the rawhide-wound grip.

Time stretched. There was a long-drawn aaaaah from those within the Circle, awe and a little fear and wonder, too.

Then she knew what she must do; or better, knew that she must step aside and let Another do through her. Of themselves, her hands rose, lifting Artos upward-presenting him not to the Quarters, but to the altar itself, and the Ones who presided over it. With that, she turned, her son still raised over her head, feet and arms making the double-V of power:

The voice that sounded out in tones as perfect as cut crystal was hers, but the words…

"Sad Winter's child, in this leafless shaw-

Yet be Son, and Lover, and Horned Lord!

Guardian of My sacred Wood, and Law-

His people's strength-and the Lady's sword!"