Dies the Fire Page 19

  "Dennie!" she called. "Careful! There's a ravine here, and it's hidden!"

  "I see it!" he bellowed in return. "Wait a minute, and I'll work around the head!"

  She waited, breath slowing. The path of the deer's fall was just visible, and a patch of brown hide where he lay; it was a two-year-old male, she thought, and already nicely plump—the Willamette's climate was mild and there was good grazing in the foothill woods year-round. The bottom of the ravine was full of fallen timber and thick brush; not the distinctive three-leaf mark of poison oak, thank the Goddess and Cernunnos.

  A slight sadness passed through her at the thought of the deer's loveliness broken, but she'd been around enough small farmsteads to know firsthand that meat didn't come from a factory wrapped in plastic.

  And sure, my stomach is rumbling so loud I can hear it over my panting, she thought. Venison in the Eternal Soup, sweet richness of fat on the tongue … Lord and Lady, did people ever worry about too much fat? Little medallions of tenderloin. Grilled liver. Maybe sausages, with sage and dried onions—there's some of those left, surely? Smoked haunch …

  Dennis arrived, with much crackling of brush; he was a city man still, although he was learning—in coordination with the shrinking of his gut, which had gone from embarrassing to merely substantial since the Change. He also had a coil of rope around his shoulder, and his ax slung with its handle through two loops sewn to the back of his jacket.

  They made the rope fast to a firmly rooted tree. Cuchu-lain went down the steep slope with four-footed recklessness, but the two humans were more cautious—danger to themselves aside, the clan simply couldn't spare the working time lost in an unnecessary injury. Even Sally Quinn was helping with the poultry and around the house, on a crutch. The tangled mass below was just the sort to hide a branch broken off stabbing-sharp.

  The deer was freshly dead, a trickle of red running from nose and mouth.

  "You'll get some, fool dog," she scolded, pushing Cuchu-lain aside as he lapped at the flow. "Feet and ears and offal."

  Then she spoke more formally, kneeling beside the deer and stroking its muzzle: "Thank you, brother, for your gift of life. And thanks to You, Cernunnos, horn-crowned Lord of the Forest, Master of the Beasts! We take of Your bounty from need, not in wantonness; knowing that the Huntsman will come for us too in our appointed day, for we also are Yours. Take our brother's spirit home to rest in the woods of summer in the land beyond the world, and be reborn through the cauldron of the Goddess, who is Mother-of-All."

  Then they ran a cord through its hind feet between tendon and bone, cast a loop of cord over a convenient branch, and hoisted it up, working quickly; she put a basin from Dennis's pack beneath it and cut the throat with two deep diagonal slashes. The carcass had to drain or the meat wouldn't keep, and the blood would go into oatmeal to make a pudding. Privately she thought that tasted awful, but she'd eat her share.

  Dennis sharpened the skinning knives while she drew a sign in the air over the basin; then Cuchulain yelped, a sudden squeal of pain. Juniper looked up sharply—there were black bear and cougar in these forests as well. She caught a flash of movement in the thicket twenty yards up the gully from them, a hand holding a rock waving from beneath a pile of brush and dirt.

  "That's a man!" Dennis said sharply.

  "Yes," Juniper said; the patterns sprang out at her, once she knew to expect camouflaged cloth. "And a hurt one, too!"

  They made their way carefully through the tangle. Closer, and she could smell human waste—the man had been trapped here long enough for that, then. She looked up, and saw slick mud and fallen dirt where the treacherous edge had crumbled beneath him. He was under an overhang of the ravine's side, jammed awkwardly up against it, and his leg had been caught between two downed saplings—the springy wood had snapped closed around the flesh again. His lips were swollen …

  Dying of thirst, she thought. In this wet wilderness, and not ten feet from running water!

  She brought her canteen to his lips. Dennis studied the situation, pursed his mouth, and then swung the ax twice. The man's hips and legs swung down a bit as the tension was released.

  "Sorry," he said, coughing, and then sipping again— which showed considerable self-control. "Thanks, mate," he went on to Dennis.

  "Don-niah iss anim dyum," Dennis said carefully, then winked at Juniper as he dragged brush away. "But you can call me Dennis."

  "That's Donnacadh is anim dom, Dennie; your pronunciation would give a goat glanders," she said, propping the canteen upright and digging in her pack for some hoarded trail mix. "And speaking of which, my fake harp, mas maith leat slochain, cairdeas, agus moladh, eist, feic, agus fan balbh."

  The injured man smiled as he took the concentrated ration, and managed not to gulp it.

  "I chucked a bit of wood at your dog because I thought it was that coyote again. One's been visiting, waiting for me to come ripe."

  There was an English twang to his voice, but not Cockney or boarding school; instead a broad yokel burr that reminded her of documentaries she'd seen about places with thatched cottages and Norman churches.

  Juniper nodded, examining. "He wasn't hurt, just startled. Your shoulder's dislocated," she said. "Ball right out of the socket and displaced up."

  "I know, lass," he said. "Tried fixing it, but I couldn't get the leverage."

  Dennis looked at him and grinned. "That's Lady Juniper of the Clan Mackenzie you're talking to, man," he said.

  "You're not Scots, surely?" the Englishman said, giving her another head-to-foot glance. "Irish, I'd have said."

  "My mother was born in west Ireland, my father's family came from Scotland a long time ago by way of Ulster, and Dennie here has a weird sense of humor," she said. "What else is wrong?"

  "I don't think aught else's broken or torn—just sommat bruised and battered! I couldn't come at the legs with me arm out, is all."

  Dennis laid down his ax and held the man steady. Juniper braced herself with a foot under his armpit and took his wrist in a strong two-handed grip; a quick jerk, and he gave a sound that was halfway between a muffled yelp and a sigh of relief.

  "Dennie, you go get help," Juniper said. "Chuck, Vince, Alex, Judy if she can be spared—warn her to expect business, anyway—and a horse to the base of the trail; stretcher, tools and ropes and such."

  A grin. "And tell Diana that the guest comes with a venison dinner!"

  Dennis nodded, stuck the haft of the ax through its loops, and swarmed his way up the rope and the ravine's steep side, puffing like a grampus but more easily than he would have before the Change.

  That done, she studied her … Well, probably new clansman, if he's at all suitable, she thought. The unsought omen should never be disregarded. A gift from the Horned Hunter, this one.

  The man was older than her by a decade but younger than Dennis, she judged; square-faced, not tall but very broad-shouldered, with thick muscular arms and gray eyes bloodshot now; his hair was light-streaked brown, and his naturally fair skin had been tanned to the color of old beechwood by harsh suns.

  She shook hands carefully; his great square paw swallowed hers. "And you're English, by the sound of you?"

  "Samuel Aylward, at your service, lady," he said, then winced when he tried to give a half bow. "Samkin to his friends. Late of Crooksbury, Hampshire, late sergeant in the Special Air Service."

  "You're a long way from home!"

  "Not much wild land left back in old Blighty. I like wandering about in the woods; it's an old family tradition, you might say, Lady Juniper."

  "That Lady Juniper is just a joke of Dennie's, Mr. Aylward. He's always teasing—well, it's a long story."

  He looked at her and quirked a smile. "It's Lady Juniper or call you an angel from heaven, lass; I was getting fair anxious, there. What was that last bit of Erse you said to him? Stumped him, I could see."

  "Roughly translated: If you want to be liked, shut up and listen. We're old friends."

  "Thought so," Ayl
ward said, then sighed and closed his eyes for a moment.

  Long-held tension released his face, making it look younger despite stubble and lines and dirt. She held his head while he drank again; he knew enough to pace himself, and nibbled on some dried fruit when she gave it to him. He was wearing camper's or hunter's garb, and a pack; a long case lay not far away. She snagged it and worked it out of the tangled branches.

  "What's this?"

  "My bow, if it's not a broken stick," Aylward said. "I bloody well hope not. I'm no Adams, but I spent a lot of time making it, I did; it's my favorite reflexdeflex longbow."

  She opened the soft waterpoof case; the stave within was yellow yew, about six feet long with a riser of some darker wood and a leather-wrapped grip; a neat little quiver held six goose-feathered arrows. The wood shone and slid satin-smooth under her touch. When she took it up by the grip it had the fluid natural feeling of handling a violin from a master craftsman's hands, despite being far too long for someone only three inches over five feet in her socks.

  "It's fine, indeed. Were you poaching?" she said, teasing to distract him from his injuries—it hadn't been the deer-hunting season when the Change hit.

  "There's no season on boar here," he said a little defensively; feral swine were an invasive pest, and unprotected. "And—"

  She nodded encouragingly and gave him another drink of the water. Best if he talks a little, she thought.

  "And I've the time for it these days. Call me a masochist."

  He took a deep breath; she could sense he wasn't much of a man for chatting with strangers, in more normal times. Not surprising now, when he's half-delirious and just reprieved from a very nasty death. Juniper waited, her face calmly attentive, ready to accept words or silence.

  "Is the war over?" he said, after half a minute.

  "War?" she said, bewildered.

  "I was looking north towards Portland from the mountainside when I saw the flash," he said. "And then everything went dark—lights out good and proper, none since, and everything electronic in my gear was buggered for fair. I was staying high, working my way south and waiting out the fallout, until I ran too hard and looked too little after a buck and landed down here."

  She looked at him with pity. "Oh, you poor man!" she exclaimed. "You thought it was World War Three? It's much worse than that, I'm afraid!"

  * * * *

  A day later Juniper finished adding the column of figures, wishing for one of the old mechanical crank-worked adding machines as she did, and putting it on a mental list for scavenging or swapping.

  All the adults were present, including a near-silent Sam Aylward propped up on the couch with his wrenched leg and sore shoulder; Sally Quinn could sit well enough now, and move without a crutch if she was careful. The children were up in the loft with Eilir, who was the eldest, minding them—learning Sign had become a mark of status with the youngsters, since Eilir made up one hundred percent of their adolescent reference-figures. None of the other adults had teenagers, and Juniper did only because she'd started so early.

  The adults of … she supposed she couldn't just say the Singing Moon Coven; half the people weren't coveners at all. Though to be sure they weren't exactly cowan, either.

  Well, I may have suggested we call it a clan, she thought. But it was Dennis who suggested Clan Mackenzie, the black-hearted rapparee!

  He'd been ribbing her for years about her musician's Celt-persona; she supposed this was either revenge, or a streak of buried romanticism coming out.

  Most of the front of the cabin.was a big living room, with the stone-built fireplace dominating the north wall. A fire crackled and spat in it now, casting a welcome warmth and filling the room with the delicate flower scent of burning applewood—she was still using the salvage from clearing out the old orchard last summer. A kerosene lantern on the plank table gave acceptable reading light—you could use gasoline, if you were extremely careful. Firelight ruddy and yellow brought out the grain of the big logs that made up the walls. Rain beat like gentle drums on the strake roof above them, and the windows looked out on the veranda like caves of night.

  She'd always liked the great room; she remembered winter days, with Eilir sprawled on the rug and her school-books before her, Cuchulain curled before the hearth, Juniper strumming at her guitar as she worked on a tune and listened for the whistle of her teakettle, and snow patting feather-paws against the windowpanes.

  Now it had rolled-up bedding tied in neat bundles stacked around the walls; the children slept in the loft and her own former bedroom was assigned to the handfasted couples on a roster, so that they could all have a chance at some privacy.

  The Hall of the Mackenzies was stuffed to the bursting point. The crowding would have been tolerable for a week or so at a pagan festival, but the prospect of living like this all her life …

  She shook her head and got up to throw another log on the fire. Aylward spoke:

  "Wait a minute, lass—Lady. That's yew, isn't it? Could I have a look?"

  Everyone glanced over at the Englishman; he'd seemed a friendly enough sort, but on short acquaintance not given to inconsequential chat.

  "To be sure, it is," Juniper said. "It's an understory weed tree here."

  She put the billet in his big spade-shaped hands; it was four inches thick and a little over four feet long, with thin smooth purplish bark scattered with red-brown papery scales.

  "Nicely seasoned," Aylward said, running a critical eye over it. "Is there any more like this?"

  "A ton or so; the whole bottom half of my woodpile, out in the shed. The loggers cleared out a lot of it last year and I salvaged it for firewood; hadn't worked my way down through the applewood yet. Do you have a use for it?"

  Aylward grinned. "We all do! If you let me at a drawknife and spokeshave, and a bit of hardwood for the risers, and a little glue."

  Sally Quinn looked at him sharply. "You're a bowyer?"

  Aylward nodded. "A hobby; I make and fletch me own shafts, too. Longbows are simple enough, even with a separate riser; I could do two or three a day, and anyone who's handy with wood could learn the trick."

  Dennis grinned enormously; he was handy with wood, and loved learning a new way to work it. There was a pleased murmur all around the table. They had the three crossbows, which were irreplaceable once they broke down, and Sally's fiberglass target weapon, but that was it.

  "Threefold return indeed!" Juniper said happily, resuming her seat and tapping the pile of figures Andy and Diana had worked up. "Now, people, we have just enough food to get everyone here"— And how we've grown! —"through to harvest. At a minimum diet for people working hard."

  There were groans at that. Her own hands itched where the blisters never quite had time to heal. She'd had a big garden every year since she inherited this place, and now knew the difference between that and growing all your own food.

  "Over to you, Chuck. Tell us what we can expect to get, for all the sweat we've been investing."

  "Chuck, Lord of the Harvest," Judy said, grinning, leaning into his shoulder with her arm around his waist.

  A laugh went around the table; it was a title of the High Priest of a coven, and Chuck had been the only candidate for that post, as well as farm manager. It also meant the Great Rite would be symbolic rather than actual from now on, with the High Priest not Juniper's man.

  Rudy …

  She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then forced a smile.

  He took up the story, with a pad of his own. "OK, we've got all the acreage we need turned and fitted, and most of the potatoes planted—we'll keep the rest to put in between now and June, to stretch the harvesting season out, same with the veggies. Seven acres so far all up, here and down by the Fairfax place, counting what Frank Fairfax had in before the Change."

  He paused to glare at Dorothy and Diana and Andy, who were organic-produce fanatics … or had been, before direct personal experience of hunger, which tended to make one less finicky.

  "I pr
esume nobody's going to object to using fungicides if we have to? 'Cause those potatoes are the margin between living and dying, and anyway, they came treated."

  "If we have to, Chuck," Juniper said soothingly. "If we have to. We've got them on hand, haven't we?"

  He nodded, and the three made unwilling gestures of assent as well.

  I'm Chief Soother, that's what I am! Juniper thought. Unruffler of Feathers! Dennis should have taken to calling me the Clan Facilitator, not the Chief.

  "The Fairfaxes had four and a half acres of fall-planted oats, which should come ripe in June; English hulled variety, good stuff. And I think we got that barley Alex found for us sown in time for some sort of yield. We've got a deal with the Carsons to help harvest some of their wheat on half-shares come summer; enough to really help and for seed grain of our own this autumn too. We might do the same elsewhere, but I'm not counting on it … "

  He took a deep breath. "Let's put it this way, Mackenzies; it'll be tight until June, and after that we're going to get awful sick of potatoes boiled and mashed and oatmeal and carrots and turnips and cabbage and beans and barley soup and whatnot, but we'll have enough to last through until the next crop year. More than enough, if we're reasonably lucky. In fact, we may not have enough people to harvest it all!

  "Of course," he went on, amid the cheers, "that brings up the question of storage. Potatoes take a lot of space, and we'll be storing by the ton, and we're going to have a fair amount of grain as well. I think more root cellars should be the first priority now that we've got some time to spare—"

  "Oh, no you don't," Judy said. "We need a better bathhouse and laundry system for heath reasons—"

  "Hey, wait a minute," Dennis cut in. "There's that old gristmill east of Lebanon, we could put it in below the waterfall with only a short sluice gate to build. Nobody's claimed it yet, and we could charge to grind other people's grain come summer—"

  "And on second thought," Chuck said, glaring a little, "we ought to do a regular daily training schedule with archery and sword-and-buckler. The bandit gangs are getting—"