Dies the Fire Page 29

  "No!" she said, and held up her bow to stop the chant when it threatened to start again. She continued into the ringing silence: "No, we will not give you our food. Not because we grudge help, but because we have little ones of our own to think of. If we gave you all that we have, you'd be starving again in a week—and so would we! Starving to death, before the crops came in! And we need our stock to pull plows and carts, and breed more for the years to come. You've already taken more than we can spare."

  "You're as bad as those people in Corvallis," the woman said bitterly.

  Juniper's ears pricked up at that, but she made her voice stern: "If you want to do something for those poor city people, get them moving," she went on, pointing over her shoulder at the distant snowpeaks of the Cascades floating against heaven. "East of the mountains, to where there's more. Or set them to work planting, find them seeds and tools. Or both. We'll help all we can with either. Don't keep them sitting until they die!"

  Something's wrong, Juniper thought suddenly, as the woman opened her mouth again—most likely to plead for anything they could spare.

  A harsh voice spoke from the ranks of the local folk; not one of her clan, probably a farmer: "Not as easy as beating people up when you outnumber them, or robbing us one by one, is it, you useless thieving bastards?"

  "Wrong, wrong, wrong," Juniper said under her breath, her eyes flickering over the foragers as they bristled with anger, feeling the future shifting like tumbling rocks. "Watch out—"

  Sam Aylward's thick-muscled arm brushed her aside. She staggered back, turning and waving her arms to recover balance. That let her see the crossbow bolt hit his shoulder with a flat hard smack sound, and a ringing under it, and to know it would have hit her if she hadn't moved— or been moved.

  The short thick bolt hit glancingly and bounced away, because the Englishman was wearing the first of Dennie's brigandine jacks—a sleeveless shirt made from two layers of canvas with little thumb-sized metal plates riveted between. One of them peeped out through the ripped fabric now, the metal bright where the head of the bolt had scored it, then going dull red as blood leaked through.

  Everything moved very slowly after that. She let the stagger turn her back westward. The Salem folk were looking at one of their own; he stood by their cart and frantically spanned his crossbow to reload. On both sides people shifted their grips on improvised weapons, some edging backward, others leaning forward like dogs against a leash.

  Somehow she could hear the whirr of the crank as the man who'd shot at her spun it; even louder was the creak of Aylward's great yellow bow as he drew to the ear.

  Snap-wuffft! String against bracer; whistle of cloven air.

  The distance was only thirty feet; the arrow was traveling two hundred feet a second when it left the string, and to the human eye it was nothing but a bright blur in the sunlight. Then tock as it struck bone, smashing into the cross-bowman's face and slamming him brutally back against the cart.

  Snap-wuffft! Snap-wuffft!

  Two more of the cloth-yard shafts hit the man, bare inches apart in his chest, the gray-goose fletching bobbing as he slumped, held up by the deep-driven heads punched through him and into the boards. Aylward had a fourth shaft on his string, half-drawn, the point shifting back and forth in deadly menace.

  "Don't try it!" he roared as blood poured down the dying man's body, trickled down his own side. "Don't you bloody try it!"

  Juniper felt the crystalline balance of the moment that followed, silent enough that she could hear the wind that cuffed at her hair and the scrabble of the dead man's heels as they drummed on the asphalt. She slung her bow and stepped forward into that quiet, between the two forces. The thought of hands clenching on ax hafts, fingers trembling on bowstrings and crossbow triggers was distant, remote.

  "Stop!" she shouted, filling her lungs and pitching it to carry. "Stop right now!"

  The moment sighed away, and people were looking at her. The trained singer's voice let her reach them all.

  "There's been enough blood shed today." She spread her arms wide and up, palms towards the west. "Go back. There's nothing for you here. We don't want to hurt you, but we'll fight for our homes and our children if we must. Go! Get out!"

  "Out!" Other voices took it up. "OUT! OUT!"

  Aylward's eyes were gray and bleak and level as he waited. One by one the foragers turned and mounted their bicycles and left; Juniper let out a sigh.

  "You felt it too, then?" Aylward said, as she passed a shaky hand over her face.

  "Felt what?" she asked.

  "The flux. We might have pulled it off without killing, if that loudmouth bugger hadn't up and told them to sod off. Nice work, Lady, the way you turned it around after that. I wasn't looking forward to a massacre."

  She nodded absently, swallowing against a quick nausea-He went on: "It's a gift, feeling the flux—situational awareness, the officers call it. Maybe you've the makings of a soldier."

  "And maybe you've the makings of a Witch," she answered.

  Then her giddy relief drained away, remembering the savage maul-on-wood sound of the arrowhead striking bone.

  "I know you saved my life, Sam, but … Goddess Mother-of-All, can't we stop killing each other even now?"

  Aylward shrugged. "Never," he said with conviction. "And especially not now. You said it—there just isn't enough to go 'round, not if it were shared ever so fair."

  Juniper nodded bleakly. "Then you and Chuck have the right of it," she said.

  At his questioning look, she touched her bow:"I thought they'd think we could all shoot like you, but that was a bluff, and bluffs get called if you go on long enough. Na nocht d'fhiacla go bhfeadair an greim do bhreith!"

  "Which means?"

  She shook herself. "Sorry. Don't bare your teeth until you can bite!"

  "You'll push for more practice, then?"

  "Starting tomorrow."

  * * * *

  "Watch that!" Chuck Barstow shouted, striding over to where the older children were whacking with wooden swords at poles set in the dirt—and occasionally at each other.

  "You can hurt someone with those things! Do it the way I showed you or I'll take them away."

  It was an excuse to stop for a while. Juniper lowered her bow gratefully and rubbed at her left shoulder. The bright spring day caressed her face with a soft pine-scented breeze down from the mountains. It cut the haze, too, perfect for militia practice in the flower-starred meadows below her cabin.

  Militia was what it was, even if a few were set on calling it the war band or the spear levy.

  You know, I thought it was just a harmless bit of speechifying to call this a clan, she thought. A bit of playacting to distract people from how close to death we all were—are.

  Wiccans were given to romantic archaisms and usually it was harmless enough; she'd been known to indulge in them herself, and not just for professional reasons. Now, though …

  I may have let a genie out of the bag. Words have power!

  Sally Quinn was in charge of the children and absolute beginners, most of them using what they'd scavenged from sporting-goods stores; she had the same fiberglass target bow she'd carried the day Juniper met her. She patiently went through the basics of stance and draw, and occasionally let them shoot a practice shaft at the board-and-dirt targets. Fortunately modern bows with their stiff risers and centerline arrow-shelves were a lot easier to learn than the ancient models.

  Sam Alyward had the more advanced pupils; he'd turned out enough longbows for all, courtesy of her woodpile.

  Thank You, she thought to the Lord of the Forest, and stepped back to watch Aylward demonstrate.

  His stave had a hundred-pound draw. When he shot, the snap of the string against the bracer seemed to trip on the smack of the arrowhead hitting the deer-shaped target fifty yards away, and the malignant quiver of the shaft that followed. Between was only a blurred streak; she forced herself not to dwell on the hard tock of an arrowhead sledging into bone.
>
  He sent three more arrows on the way at five-second intervals, all of them landing in a space a palm could have covered, then turned to her. The Englishman was sweating, but then everyone was. Sweating as hard as they had during the planting, which she almost remembered with nostalgia. The cheerful noise made it plain everyone thought this was more fun, though.

  "Shoulder sore, Lady?" he said gravely.

  "Just a bit," Juniper replied; in fact, it ached.

  "Then you should knock off," he said. "Watch for a while instead. Push too hard too soon, and you're courting a long-term injury. You may be over-bowed for a beginner."

  "I don't think so. Forty pounds isn't so much when you've fiddled for hours straight! But I will take a break."

  She braced the lower tip of her bow against the outside of her left foot, stepped through with her right and bent it against her thigh to unstring it. She called the weapon Artemis, after the Greek archer-goddess, and although getting the trick of it was harder, she'd discovered she actually liked using it, far more than the crossbow.

  When she glanced up from the task, she saw Aylward looking over at the children, and smiling with a gentle fondness you wouldn't suspect from his usual gruff manner.

  Or from the feel of his hands when he's teaching unarmed combat! she thought, grinning. Chucking folk about, as he calls it.

  The important thing was that with Aylward around, they had someone who really understood this business; for starters, he could make the bows, and their strings, and the arrows. In the long run, that would be very important. The machine-made fiberglass sporting toys hadn't stopped working the way guns had, but the prying roots of vine and tree had already begun their reconquest of factories and cities. In a generation those wastelands of concrete and asphalt would be home to owl and fox and badger, not men.

  Dennis had made them all quivers, and waterproof waxed-leather cases for the bows that clipped alongside them; she reached back and slid hers home. She was wearing a brigandine now as well, like the one that had saved Sam Aylward from the crossbow bolt meant for her; the jack was hot even in the mild April air, and weighed twenty-five pounds. When you added in the sword and dagger and buckler—the latter was a little steel shield about the size and shape of a soup plate—it took a good deal of getting used to.

  Which is why I'm wearing it, she thought glumly. To get used to moving in it.

  Unlike most of the Mackenzies, she didn't see all this as a combination RenFaire and holiday, despite the moon-and-antlers design on the breast of all the jacks.

  It's not like Society gear. It's real and I hate the necessity. Fate throws us all into the soup, and we're still killing each other.

  She watched the shooting for a while; Aylward was a good teacher, firm but calm and endlessly patient. At last he looked up at the sun and spoke: "Break for dinner!"

  Juniper suppressed a smile; the man had some old-fashioned turns of phrase. A clatter continued when all else fell quiet. Chuck Barstow was sparring with the two young men who'd come in with his brother, Vince Torelli and Steve Matucheck. Sword-and-buckler work was an active style, and they were leaping and foining in a pattern as acrobatic and pleasing to the eye as a dance. She'd never felt a desire to join in when she was busking at Society events, but it looked pretty; now that she'd done a fair bit with the other neophytes, she could even say it was fun in an active sort of way.

  If you can forget what happens when it's done with edged metal rather than padded sticks.

  Chuck jerked back from the waist to dodge a strike, then leapt to let the other sword pass beneath his boots. His buckler banged down on Vince's helmet; the blow was pulled, but it still gave a solid bonging thump that sent the younger man down clutching at his head. In the same instant he caught Steve's sword-blow with his own, locked the guards, put a foot behind his opponent's leg and threw him staggering backward with a twist of shoulder and hips. A lizard-swift thrust followed, leaving Steve white with shock as the blunt wooden point tapped him on the base of the throat.

  Cheers burst out; Mary and Sanjay and Daniel rushed over and nearly knocked Chuck over himself in their enthusiasm.

  "Dad's the best!" they chorused. "Dad's the best!"

  Little Tamsin stumped around crowing and waving her arms, happy because her father was the center of attention. He scooped her up onto his shoulder, tucked Mary and Daniel each under an arm and let Sanjay proudly rack his equipment as he staggered over towards the trestle tables.

  Quick work, Juniper thought.

  It hadn't been long before the rescued children realized they weren't going home, or at least before most stopped talking about it; shared hunger and fear and unaccustomed hard work had probably sped up the process, and the sheer strangeness of everything.

  Now, is it a good, sign of healthy resilience that some of them have started calling their foster parents Mom and Dad, or is it unhealthy denial and transference? I don't think those three in particular had parents before, not really, just people who paid the bills.

  "Lad knows his business as far as the moves go," Ayl-ward said thoughtfully. "Hope he doesn't freeze up when the red wine's served for true, though."

  Juniper shivered slightly and changed the subject. "You've settled in better than most, Sam," she said. "I'd have thought it would be harder for you, being so far from home."

  For a moment the square, good-humored Saxon face went bleak. "It'll be worse back there," he said. "Sixty million people in one little island? It doesn't bear thinking of, and at least I don't have to watch it."

  Juniper winced slightly and swallowed. Any more than I do Los Angeles or New York, she thought. Or Mexico City or Tokyo or …

  He shook his shoulders. "Besides, I've no near kin to home, no wife or child, and even before the Change … it's not really the place I grew up in, not anymore it isn't— wasn't. Full of commuters, bought all the old cottages up and gussified them, they did. And the local farmers were all for ripping out hedges and trees and getting rid of their livestock and making the place look like bloody Canada; fat lot of good their combines and thousand-acre fields of hybrid barley will be to them now, eh?"

  He shook his head. "I'd just been playing, fossicking about with this and that, since I mustered out of the SAS. Traveling, making bows, doing a little hunting."

  "They must have a generous pension plan," Juniper said teasingly.

  "Not bloody likely!" he said with a grin. "But my da had a bit put by—from selling the farm about the time my mother died and I went for a soldier, you see. Left it to me; fair knackered I was, when I found out, since he'd done naught but live in a cheap flat in Portsmouth and haunt the pubs. Thought he'd drunk it up years ago … "

  Then he looked at her with his head slightly to one side: "You've a gift for getting people talking, don't you, Lady?"

  Juniper grinned. "What can I say? I'm a Witch, a singer, and a storyteller—all three. So … the Change interrupted your life as a gentleman of leisure?"

  "That it did." A shrug. "Play's all very well, but a man's life is his work; I've got a real job of work to do here."

  Well, that's more than Mr. Strong and Silent's said before, she thought, giving him a genial slap on the shoulder; it was like hitting an oak beam. Lord and Lady be thanked for sending him our way!

  Everyone headed for the trestle-tables and the fires with the soup cauldrons; on a day like this, it was a relief to do things out-of-doors. Juniper shed her battle gear—they had two-by-four racks set up for it—and got in line. Diana grinned at her as she ladled the Eternal Soup into bowls.

  "You know, Juney, one of the things I enjoyed most about running MoonDance was looking up recipes and planning the menu?"

  Juniper laughed out loud, despite the rumbling of her stomach. "And what's on the menu today, Di?"

  "Eternal Soup, Eternal Soup, or today's extra-special dish: delicious zuppa di eterno."

  "Eternal Soup!" Juniper made her eyes go wide. "What a surprise! Still, I think I'll have something from the dessert
tray instead, and some nice organic hazelnut coffee."

  Diana gave a sour laugh and plopped her ladle into Juniper's bowl. Her husband, Andy, gave her a platter of wild-greens salad, half a hard-boiled egg, and one precious baking-powder biscuit.

  There was also a great jug of rich Jersey milk fresh from their—single—milking cow. But that was for the children and Dorothy Rose, who was pregnant; birth control was already getting more difficult, and there would be a couple of babies before Yule.

  Juniper's nose twitched as she carried the big bowl of soup over to her table. It actually smelled pretty good today, probably because they'd been getting in a little game and wild herbs—dandelion roots, fireweed shoots—plus Andy had thrown in some more of the soup barley and miso stock from their restaurant-store's inventory, plus a little pasta from the Fairfax storehouse.

  They were always talking about butchering one of the steers or sheep, and always kept putting it off until absolutely necessary—everyone was worried about the gap between the preserved foods and the first harvest, with the way their numbers had grown. They had plenty of grass to keep the beasts hale, courtesy of the Willamette's mild climate and the way foragers had swept it bare of livestock.

  "Mmmm," she said appreciatively as she hunted down the last barleycorn in her bowl with an eager spoon.

  I crave starch. In fact, I crave starch and fat and meat and sugar...

  Then she went for the salad; dandelion greens and henbit shoots and various other crunchy green things from the meadows and woods, about half of which she recognized; and some canned beets from the Fairfax stores, with the juice making do for salad dressing. It wasn't bad if you liked eating bitter lawn clippings drizzled with diluted vinegar. She saved the half-egg for last; it had a little paprika on the yolk, and a strong free-range taste. The biscuit had a chewy crust; she alternated bites with the egg, tiny nibbles to stretch out the flavor.

  In fact, I crave everything except dandelion greens.

  Judy Barstow licked her spoon: "You know, if there were a few more calories, this would be an ideal, healthy diet."