The Protector's War Page 20

  "There we go, Dolly old girl!"

  The newborn came clear of the birth canal in a final slippery rush; not much blood, he'd gotten the legs turned in time, though only just. The ewe lay panting for a moment, tongue out.

  "I knew you could do it," he said encouragingly, stripping off the birth sack to make sure the lamb didn't suffocate and toweling it down with an old burlap sack.

  Edain came in as he finished—all over mud as might be expected of a healthy six-year-old; luckily he wasn't wearing much but a singlet and his kilt which left a lot of easily washable skin exposed—and he crouched to watch with his damp, sun-streaked fair hair plastered to his forehead.

  Dolly was exhausted—this was her first lamb and a hard delivery—but she had plenty of strength to turn and sniff her offspring before licking it clean; it got to shaky legs and butted at her udder, feeding naturally and not needing a helping hand as they sometimes did. Which was as well; hand-rearing a lamb its mother rejected was a royal pain in the arse. He put down a little grain and hay for Dolly, who had the lamb tucked in against her now.

  Tamar brought over the big tin bucket of water and the towel and washcloth and a chunk of strong-smelling homemade lye soap.

  "There you go, Dad," she said, and wrinkled her nose slightly.

  "It's a messy business, girl," he said. "And that's a fact."

  She nodded undisturbed. A farmgirl didn't grow up squeamish, and she'd lived two-thirds of her lifetime in the Changed world. She was thirteen this year, a gangling girl just tipping over the edge of adolescence, all legs and knees and elbows, with a shock of yellow hair and blue eyes and a round cheerful face. She might have been his own as far as looks went; there was even a trace of Hampshire to her talk now, for all that her blood kin had been farming around Boone's Lick and thinking about the Oregon Trail while Aylward's great-great-grandfather froze his toes off in the Crimea. He supposed that in a few more years he'd be beating off the boys with a stick and grumbling that none of them seemed worthy of her.

  He stripped off the canvas apron, stained with the blood and fluids that gave the air a tang of iron and copper under the smells of wet turned earth and straw and manure. Beneath it he wore only kilt and boots, showing a matt of grizzled brown hair on his chest and the ugly white scar-tracery left by bullets, blades, arrows and grenade fragments on his muscular stocky body.

  Plus Arabic letters on his stomach, where someone had started to spell out the name "Abdullah" with a red-hot knife. The last letter trailed off, fruit of a terminal interruption.

  I wonder what happened to Colonel Loring? he thought, not for the first time; it had been his old commander who provided the interruption—hand over the mouth, Fairburn knife through the kidney. Well, if anyone survived, it would be Sir Nigel Loring—not that it's likely anyone much in Britain did survive.

  He grew conscious of his children's gaze, shook himself free of the brown study that had gripped him for a moment and bent over the bucket with busy hands. Their mother Melissa was finicky about what she let in the door too. Tamar and Edain sat on a stall partition and swung their feet as he washed, filling him in on what had gone on around home and at school and Moon School while he was away with the mission to the conference at Lars-dalen. Tamar was beginning algebra, which she didn't like, archery practice, which she did—

  At that point Edain sprang up and took an ax handle, holding it out vertically in his left hand with the arm parallel to the ground, the strengthening exercise for the bow arm.

  "We do that at school for a whole hour every day now!" he boasted, beaming, a gap showing where two of his milk teeth had gone recently.

  Tamar rolled her eyes. "Just the same way you showed me, Dad," she said with the heavy patience of thirteen for six.

  "That's the way to raise children," Aylward said with grave approval in his tone. "Good lad."

  He'd been the one who got Lady Juniper to put that in the curriculum for all the Clan's schools, back in the second Change Year. Edain dropped the ashwood and went to examine the lamb, poking it with a finger and earning a suspicious look and bleat from Dolly.

  "And what else?" Aylward asked.

  What else for Tamar turned out to be herb lore, and the use of the spinning wheel, which she could take or leave, plus the usual chores. And making colored eggs to be buried around the hamlet for the sake of the crops, and practicing the Ostara dances.

  Aylward nodded tolerantly at her enthusiasm; he gave the predominant local religion the same grave formal courtesy he'd always extended the Church of England, but neither moved him much. Melissa was the High Priestess of the Dun Fairfax coven now, though, and strong for the whole business—also slightly irritated her husband had never become more than a Dedicant. She'd have preferred him as an Initiate at least, and preferably her High Priest.

  Can't see meself prancing around under the moon with antlers on me head, he thought with a grin, then spat as the expression let some of the harsh soap into his mouth. Larry Smith had that job here at Dun Fairfax, and looked, in Ayl-ward's considered opinion, a complete prat in the role. I must admit, it's a good religion for farmers. The festivals all make sense that way.

  He'd seen Juniper's faith spread through the Mackenzie territories and beyond over the years like fast-growing ivy over a wall. Starting with the core group of coveners and friends who'd gathered at her cabin days after the Change, and out from there as they took in refugees—One recently retired English soldier caught out on a hunting trip, for instance—and then became the seed crystal of order and survival in this corner of the Valley. Now Tamar's generation was growing up, and to them the whole thing was as natural as water to a fish. Their children would probably forget that their pre-Change ancestors had mostly been Christians.

  Lady Juniper's charisma hurts not a bit, too. She's come close enough to convincing me more than once, just by being what she is, not by preaching.

  "I wish I could have come with you to Larsdalen, Dad," Tamar went on. "It must have been so cool with all the Dun Juniper people. You know, back when I was just a little girl, right after the Change, Lady Juniper gave me a candy bar? I can remember it clear as anything, when I went out in the road and asked her if she was a Witch? And now we're all Witches. That was right before the battle, when those people chased us out of Sutterdown and she called the Dark Lady to help us."

  "I remember that, poppet," he said.

  It had lost nothing in the retelling since; watching fact grow into legend and legend become myth in a few short years had been eerie, and the original skirmish had been weird enough. He splashed his face repeatedly to get the lye soap out of his eyelids, and then stuck his whole head in the bucket, coming up blowing before he scrubbed vigorously at his curly brown hair with the towel.

  "I was at the battle meself, remember. And you haven't reminded me about the candy more than a thousand times."

  His smile took any sting out of the words. Inwardly: And that put the plums in the pudding, beating back that probe the Protector sent. Herself going wild like that, running at them screaming like a bloody banshee and everyone following just as stark raving bonkers… And the Reverend Dixon dropping dead after the battle, too, he was her only rival in the faith-will-save-us brigade around here. If she'd

  been a Buddhist, we'd all be spinning ruddy prayer wheels by now.

  He shook off memory: a chalk pale blood-spattered face, eyes showing white all around the rims, red hair bristling like a fox's crest, and a voice that had echoed down from his head into his gut…

  Edain took up the ax handle again, this time wielding it like a sword—or a six-year-old boy's conception of how you used a sword, tempered by watching adults practice the real thing fairly often.

  "When Lady Juniper called the Lord 'n Lady 'n they smote the wicked!" he said with bloodthirsty enthusiasm. "She's great. She sings real nice, too."

  Baraka and to spare, she has.

  "And Dad was a hero. I'm gonna be a hero too!"

  "I'll teach you be
tter than that," Aylward snorted. "Heroes run themselves onto spearpoints. I won, is what I did. Now come here, young'un."

  He held the squirming boy by the neck while he did a quick daub-and-wipe with the towel. "There, that's got the worst of it off."

  When he'd pulled on his shirt and jacket Tamar hopped down and proudly took up her light bow; he picked up a spear leaning against one of the poles that held up the lean-to roof of the open-fronted structure. It was six feet of smooth ashwood, with another foot of steel on top, ground down from a leaf spring to a knife shape that tapered to a vicious point along two razor edges, and he politely declined Edain's offer to carry it for him. One thing he'd gotten into the boy's head good and proper—via a few smart smacks on the backside—was that he didn't touch a weapon without permission. Of course, Edain craved the day when he'd be able to walk abroad with dirk and bow like his elder sibling, rather than just shooting at the mark under close supervision.

  He balanced the spear over one shoulder as they all left the long shed, and whistled up his dogs—a big Alsatian and an even larger shaggy mutt, both rescued as pups. They'd been lying outside the shed, eyeing the sheep wistfully but far too well trained to do any bothering. The herd looked apprehensive; sheep didn't really like either men or dogs, and these had the comically naked look woolies always had right after shearing. At least there weren't many nicks or cuts this year; everyone had finally learned how to use hand shears on a wiggling sheep held clamped between the knees.

  "Garm, Grip," he called, and they fell in behind him with eyes alert and tails wagging, accepting an ear-ruffling from Tamar and an arm around each neck from Edain. "We're off home, mind. No chasing rabbits. Heel."

  They followed the humans down the gentle slope and towards the gate—he cocked a satisfied eye on the hawthorn seedlings he'd planted along the fences here and elsewere; they were growing fast, already chest-high, glowing with their early-set white flowers, scent a faint cool sweetness. By the time the planks had rotted out, they would be good cow-tight barriers that needed no sawn timber to repair; he'd learned how to lay, stake, pleach and ether a hawthorn hedge when he was about Tamar's age. His hands remembered, and others were learning.

  Me dad didn't get a tractor until I was Tamar's age, either. The house never did have running water, just a hand pump. Until that sodding burke of a stockbroker bought it for a weekend place.

  That made him smile again; the same mix of stubborn conservatism and sheer poverty that doomed his father as a farmer had given the younger Aylward a set of archaic skills that were coming in very handy indeed, post-Change.

  The laughingstocks of Crooksbury, we were… but this Aylward's laughing last.

  A collie wagged its tail as they opened the gate, but stood alertly until they'd hitched the wire to close it again. A little further along the fence a man leaned against a post with resigned patience, his bow in his crossed arms and a spear propped beside him.

  "G'night, Larry," Aylward called, while the dogs exchanged sniffs.

  "A good night as long as it doesn't rain, Sam," the shepherd said with a brief wave, then turned back to his charges.

  He had his supper in a cloth-tied bundle at his feet, and a good thick coat and rain slicker, but Aylward didn't envy him—the more so as a kilt was a bit drafty at times, even with drawers beneath. The fashion had taken strong hold, though. Everyone teased you if you didn't wear one most of the time, and teasing was no joke living close with the same faces every day.

  "I'm shrammed already," Smith grumbled.

  Got that word from me, Aylward thought, with a wave and a nod. At least he got it right. It was a cold and shivery night, at least by Willamette standards. And I'm headed back to a hot dinner and a nice warm kitchen.

  Dun Fairfax had been built around a century-old farmhouse left vacant by the Change—the owners been elderly Latter-Day Saints, and very, very diabetic—to be a base for those who worked this stretch of the clan's land. The graves of-the Fairfaxes stood on a slight rise not far from the gate, well-fenced and with a stone marker. Juniper Mackenzie had gone to some trouble to get Mormon rites said for them; several of the residents also made small offerings now and then, from courtesy and because the supplies in the old couple's barn and basement had helped to keep the proto-clan going for crucial months. He didn't know what they'd think of becoming the tutelary spirits of a Wiccan farming hamlet…

  The Mackenzies had added twelve more homes, ranging from log cabins to frame buildings built from salvaged materials to what the Yanks called a double-wide, that last hauled in by a four-hitch of Suffolk punch draft horses. Then they'd enclosed it with a ditch, bank and log stockade, plus a square-set blockhouse over the gate. The circuit included the old Fairfax barn, a meetinghall-cum-covenstead, more sheds, storage and workshops, and room enough to drive all the livestock in come an emergency. The whole was in a west-tending valley with Dun Juniper perched up the slope to the north.

  The high peaks to the northeast were touched with pink by the setting sun, and tall ranks of Douglas fir stood north and east and south where the rolling bottomland crinkled upward into high hills or low mountains. From here he could see down a swale in pasture, over a fence and a trickle of creek, up through an apple orchard with the buds just burst, and past the truck gardens that surrounded the dun to the pointed logs of the palisade itself.

  The original farmhouse was his—he held sixty-four acres from the Clan, a good little bit of a farm, the biggest in this settlement—and it had been built on a rise; that and its own two-story-and-attic height left the top of it visible from here over the wall.

  As he watched a lantern came on behind a window, showing soft yellow flame through glass and curtains, and then another and another. No other lights flickered within eyesight, though Dun Juniper was just up the slope to northward. The chuckle of Artemis Creek a little to his south was loud tonight, full with the spring rains and the beginning of snowmelt on the heights; underneath it he could hear the low humming moan of a spinning wheel, rising and falling and then abruptly cutting off as someone laid it by for the night. An owl dropped out of the woods to the north and soared over his head to the pasture beyond, on the lookout for field mice and rabbits.

  He laughed softly as he took a deep breath of the fir-scented air down from the mountains; it mixed with the damp grass, a whiff from the pigpens, woodsmoke and cooking from the dun. Edain's patience broke, and he ran on ahead; the dogs looked for permission before dashing off in pursuit.

  "What's funny, Dad?" Tamar asked, putting her free hand in his.

  "Well, girl, I was just thinking that it's an ill wind that blows nobody good."

  Or even an ill disaster-beyond-all-reckoning that didn't leave someone better off.

  No fault of mine the Change happened—it came as near as bugger-all to killing me too, slow and nasty. But all I've ever liked doing is soldiering, hunting and farming; and here I get to do all three as much as suits me—with chick and child thrown in, which I never expected. None of that frab-bling with the bank and the prices and regulations that broke Dad, either; we eat what we raise, or trade it straight-

  up for what else we need. And when I fight, I do it for my own family and friends and the land that feeds us.

  He'd taken the queen's shilling before he was old enough to vote, gone where she sent him and fought whoever the officers told him to fight, and given it all he had. The whys and wherefores weren't rightly any of his business; he was a soldier, and it was his trade.

  Defending his own was… Sort of… direct-feeling—more personal, like.

  "Where does that song about the yew tree and the bows come from, Da?" Tamar asked as they walked along; she was getting old enough to be curious about the family history. "I mean, not just from England?"

  "God"—he caught himself and added—"and the Goddess know, girl. I learned it from my grandfather. Tough old bugger—must've been eighty as I first remember him and still strong as an oak root; I was the youngest of four, the rest all
girls, you see, and my dad married late. We Aylward men do. Granddad fought in World War One, he did. Came back limping."

  She nodded understanding, walking along beside him in the gathering dusk. "Yes, I know, Dad. But the song?"

  "Well, he said he'd got it from his grandfather, who got it from his—who fought bloody Napoleon if you can believe it—who got it from his, and I don't know how many more generations. Tell you the truth, it's what first got me interested in bows as a nipper. I liked to play at Hundred Years War."

  She gave him a puzzled look: "You were a soldier over in England, Dad. Didn't you always shoot a bow?"

  "That was before the Change, remember. We used guns."

  "Oh," she said with a shrug, obviously dismissing a time that distant.

  Never heard a firearm set off, probably, and doesn't remember cars or the telly much, he thought, shaking his head a little. And to Edain, they're fairy tales, like Robin Hood to me, or Jack and the Beanstalk.

  "But that's cool about the song, though," she went on generously. Aylward hid a grin.

  They walked up the graveled way to the blockhouse.

  The gateway through the man-thick palisade logs was open; it was just wide enough for a two-horse wagon, built up of heavy timbers covered in bolted-on steel strapwork. The forging was crude—Aylward had turned his hand to smithing a little, but was no expert—yet immensely strong. The villager on gate-guard duty for the night was just lighting a lantern and hauling it up a flagpole before climbing the steep plank stairs to the platform under the parapet.

  "Cheryl," Aylward said, nodding. "Seen a young boy go by, well-plastered?"

  "Hi, Sam, Tamar. Edain went up the street in a rooster-tail of mud a couple of seconds ago," she replied, settling her steel cap with a sigh and going up with a lunchbox in one hand and her bow and quiver in the other. "Followed by two mud statues shaped roughly like dogs," she added over her shoulder.

  That was one more reason you couldn't live alone on your land; there had to be enough to trade off chores like guard duty that needed doing the clock round.