The Protector's War Page 7

  Alive in Oregon, at least, she thought. On the other side of the world… who knows?

  She suspected and hoped Ireland had done better than most places, uncrowded as it was and protected by the sea. And Achill Island… it was likely lonely places in the Gaeltacht had done better still than Dublin, but who could tell for certain?

  "Was it your face you put in the dish, instead of your fork? What would the Mother-of-All say, to see you wasting it so?" she went on, plying the cloth as the boy wiggled and squirmed.

  She was only half serious as she wiped sticky butter and syrup from around Rudi Mackenzie's mouth, but the serious half was there too. Nobody who'd lived through the Dying Time right after the Change would ever be entirely casual about food again; plague had taken millions, fighting there had been in plenty, but sheer raw starvation had killed the most. Some survivors were gluttons when they could be, more were compulsive hoarders, but hardly anyone took where the next meal was coming from lightly. Nobody decent took the work involved in producing food now lightly, either.

  "The Lady? She'd laugh an' tell me to lick my fingers," Rudi said, also an Gaeilge, and did so.

  Then he grinned an eight-year-old's grin at her, and stuck out his tongue. "So there."

  "I expect She would," Juniper said. "And yes, you can go play."

  The boy's smile grew dazzling, and Juniper felt her heart turn over as he threw his arms around her neck.

  "Graim thu, maime!"

  "I love you too, son of my heart. Scoot!"

  Most of the Willamette communities had envoys sitting along the high table. There was her friend Luther Finney, a whipcord-tough old man who'd been a farmer near the town of Corvallis and still was—and sat on the University Council as well, since the ag faculty of Oregon's Moo U had ended up taking over that area. Captain Jones of the university's militia, too. The abbot of the warrior monks of Mt. Angel was wearing armor under his black Benedictine robe—presumably to mortify the flesh; they'd gotten rather strange there. Nobody from farther north than that; the abbey's lands were a thumb poked into the territories of the Portland Protective Association, and Lord Protector Norman Arminger was no man's friend.

  A scattering were from the smaller groups south of the empty zone around the ruins of Eugene; some of those were Witch folk like her clan, and had taken to imitating Mackenzie customs, or taken them and run with them, often to embarrassing lengths—the leaders of the McClin-tocks were not only dressed in kilts, but in the wraparound Great Kilt rather than the more practical tailored feile-beag style her folk wore. Some others were the saner type of survivalist, of which southern Oregon had had many, some just survivors. There was even a kibbutz.

  Juniper and her party were sitting at the center of the upper table, near Mike Havel and his folk. The Bearkillers were hosts here, and the Mackenzies honored guests and allies—which was good, but a bit awkward in one respect…

  Well, shit, this is a problem, Mike Havel thought, watching the boy run. Oh, is it ever a problem.

  He had to hide a grin as Rudi's mother tousled his hair before he jumped off the bench and dashed shouting to join an impromptu soccer game not far from where the trestle tables stood on the great lawn, bare feet flashing and kilt flying—that and a Care Bears T-shirt were all he was wearing; most had a broader comfort range with temperatures these days.

  He had something of her pale coloring, though there was as much gold as red in the hair that fell in ringlets to his shoulders, and his eyes were gray-green. Feet and hands promised he'd have a tall man's height when he got his growth; right now he was all arms and legs. He was already agile as a young collie, though, vaulting across a friend's back and cartwheeling from sheer exuberance. Even in youth his face had a promise of jewel-cut handsomeness, square-jawed and straight-nosed, and a trace of the exotic—high cheekbones, a tilt to his eyes. Those were the legacy of Havel's blood, east-Karelian Finn mingled with Norse and Swede and a dash of Ojibwa; he'd run into Juniper while he was scouting the Willamette that spring and she was out of her home territory over in the Cascade foothills with a small party doing the same thing. Only for three days, but it had been intense, starting with a stiff fight with a cannibal band and moving on to…

  Well, to screwing our brains out beneath the pines for one glorious night. Damn, how was I to know she'd get pregnant? The whole thing was real odd, almost like a dream.

  That she had gotten pregnant was the problem, this last little while. Turn the boy's bright hair raven dark and he was his father's spitting image, minus a quarter century—his actual blood father, not Juniper's handfasted husband Rudy, who'd died with so many others when the Change hit precisely nine years ago, caught in an airplane taking off from Eugene's airport. Young Rudi had been born nine months later, but this year it was finally unmistakably clear that he'd been conceived some time after Rudy Starn's life ended in flame.

  I can't really regret fathering him. His inward grin grew wider as he applied himself to the breakfast. It was a hell of a lot of fun, to begin with. And he's a great kid, and it looks like Juney's making a good job of raising him.

  Wistfully: I wish I could see him more often, show him stuff… being a father is a lot more enjoyable than I thought it would be, but Christ Jesus, they grow fast!

  His twin daughters, Mary and Ritva—named for his mother and his father's mother—had brought out a soccer ball, and the kids started kicking it around in a whooping impromptu game that swarmed over the lawns. It didn't much resemble a pre-Change match, starting with the forty-odd kids of various ages playing, moving on from there to the hound dogs joining in and culminating with a fair bit of grabbing and tackling. The twins had a particularly wicked method: one of them would drop, curled up into a ball, in front of someone's shins and the other would accidentally-on-purpose run full-tilt into their backs. They were identical—snub-nosed, with straw blond braids and cornflower blue eyes that slanted like his—and young Rudi went flying head over heels. The pair of them were only a few months younger, and they proceeded to pin him to the turf in a laughing tangle. All three were good-natured as tussling puppies but still exhibited half-learned judoka holds.

  "You know, back before the Change, some schools thought playing dodgeball during recess encouraged too much aggressiveness," Havel said with a grin, nodding towards the scrimmage.

  Most of the others at the high table laughed with him; a large percentage had children of the same age range. Not many people past their prime had lived through the first year after the Change, and the leaders were mostly in their thirties, like him. Even Abbot Dmowski, fortysomething and fiercely celibate, smiled in a lean way; he was an uncle, according to the intel reports.

  The only one not smiling was Signe Havel.

  Ooops, Mike thought. Perhaps not the most tactful remark.

  With their faces close together, the parentage of the three was quite obvious; so were the maternal admixtures, with the originals sitting so close together, and people must be noticing—and Signe Havel had a much better eye for the little nuances of social interaction than he did.

  Falling over your own large feet again, Havel thought.

  He could see Signe Havel turn her head and follow Rudi with her eyes—and those eyes narrow, anger the hotter for her suspicion not being quite certain.

  "OK," he murmured in her ear, leaning close. "But this ain't the time or place to discuss things. And it isn't the kid's fault, anyway."

  "No, it's yours," Signe said—but she kept her voice equally low.

  It's too bad, Juniper Mackenzie thought as the younger woman turned to glare at her. And we were good friends before she realized. Perhaps Mike and I should have told her; it's not as if I wanted to take the man from her, or there was anything between us after that one night but friendship. I wanted to. Well, done is done.

  In self-defense she loaded her plate with buckwheat pancakes studded with dried blueberries, slathered on applesauce and butter, added bacon on the side, and poured herself a big glass of rich Je
rsey milk. Then she dug in, making small talk with her neighbors. She'd learned acting skills as a traveling musician before the Change, and more since; being a leader was mostly keeping up a show.

  Signe Havel—nee Larsson—was a Nordic beauty in her midtwenties, tall and sleekly curved, her hair a golden fall and her features perfection, save for a slight nick in the straight nose and a corresponding scar on her cheek—and the small blue mark of an A-lister between her brows. Besides her own twin girls playing with the pack, a two-year-old son sat in a high chair not far away with a nanny in attendance. She was younger than Juniper by just over a decade, but a power in the land nonetheless. Larsdalen had been her family's country home before the Change; her brother Eric was Mike's right-hand man and her father Kenneth his close advisor.

  "Well, it's off to the clachan we'll be going, then," Juniper said cheerfully, pushing the plate away after she mopped it with a piece of pancake and swallowed that. "It's been grand guesting here, Mike, and meeting you ladies and gentlemen again, but there's much to do at home."

  Mike frowned in disappointment and his wife hid a smile.

  Mike, you are a darling man, strong and handsome as the dawn, and clever in a heavy-footed male way, and I

  wouldn't regret that lovely night even if it hadn't given me Rudi… but it's surprised I am Signe hasn't knifed you… yet, Juniper thought, and went on aloud, wiping her fingers on the napkin: "Ah, there's some good in every turn of fate. Now calories are what keep you alive, not what make you fat."

  "We all have things to talk about," Mike said, waving a hand to the others at the head table. "We're not finished yet, Juney."

  You've gotten used to telling people what to do, Mike, she didn't say aloud. Now when you have to persuade them you should remember there's a time to talk, and a time to stop hammering and let the arguments filter through on their own.

  "We've had three days of talk and we've all agreed to wait and see," Juniper replied.

  Much to your displeasure, Mike, and a bit to mine, but the Corvallis people aren't coming 'round this month; I think Abbot Dmowski scared them green with his talk of a Crusade to crush Evil, not to mention his anathemas against Arminger's own pet pope.

  Aloud: "The Protector's not going to attack tomorrow, is he now?"

  Unwillingly, Mike Havel shook his head. "Nah, he's too cautious," he said. "But—"

  "But we Mackenzies need to prepare for Ostara."

  That argument was true—the spring equinox festival came very soon—and had the additional merit of being religious and hence unanswerable. Good-byes were made, horses rounded up—so was a protesting Rudi—and the Mackenzies mounted, a double-twelve of them not including her son on his pony.

  Mom? her daughter signed.

  My heart? Juniper replied.

  Eilir Mackenzie had been born long before the Change; fourteen years before, to be precise, and on the day of Ostara, the festival of the vernal equinox in the Old Religion. Not that that had meant anything to the teenaged single mother Juniper had been then; she'd been a nominal Catholic then, and only started to study the Craft after the fight to keep her child. That hadn't been made any easier by the daughter being deaf.

  Now she's twenty-three herself! Juniper thought, bemused. Well, twenty-three in four days. How swift the Wheel spins!

  Astrid wants to come along, Eilir signed. And Reuben—it's Ranger business. That OK?

  Juniper hid a sigh. The two girls had come up with the Dunedain Rangers the year after the Change, and she'd thought it an excuse to playact with their friends—an equivalent of the Scouts. Maybe it had been, then, but they hadn't grown out of it. She looked over the heads of the crowd and raised a brow to Mike; he nodded. Astrid Lars-son was his sister-in-law, for all that she'd been adopted as an honorary Mackenzie years ago, and Reuben one of his people.

  Eilir waited, taller than her mother and black-haired, but with the same green eyes, straight-featured face and pale freckled skin; slender and strong, able to outrun a deer and ride like Epona Herself and dance the night through. Back in high school her blood father had been Juniper's first lover, if you could call him that—the backseat of a Toyota had been involved, just the once. He'd turned out to be a faithless fink as well, but at least Eilir had gotten the good points of his splendid athlete's body and his charm, with a lot more character; Juniper flattered herself she'd supplied some of that.

  To be sure, Juniper went on. I'll be as glad of Astrid's company as any of her friends, and Reuben is a good lad.

  Astrid had spent a good part of her time among the Mackenzies these past nine years, and she was a dear, and much admired by the younger generation. Also wild and… not crazy, but perhaps touched by a Power more mischievous than kind.

  Juniper's hands went on: But she'll have to stay a few weeks, maybe a month. Rangers or no, they can't come back across the Valley alone. It'll have to wait until we drive that horse herd over, and it's not in from the Bend country yet.

  Eilir grinned. No problemo, Supremely Autocratic Clan Chieftain Mom. She wants to be there for the Circle on Os-

  tara too. And then we could go up to Mithrilwood for a while, get in some hunting and Rangering around.

  Juniper nodded, and gave a final wave to the Larsdalen folk. Then she made the Invoking sign—a pentagram, drawn in the air from the top point down—before she chanted:

  "Lord and Lady, bless this journey Keep it safe to wandering's end; Yours in parting and in meeting—Guard loves and hearth as home we wend."

  The rest of her riders and a fair number of the bystanders joined in with the final "Blessed be." The youth beside her had the pole of the Mackenzie banner socketed into a cup welded on his left stirrup, proudly holding the ashwood flagstaff as the green-and-silver horns-and-moon flag snapped in the cool spring breeze. He unslung his cow-horn trumpet from the saddlebow with the other hand and blew into the silver mouthpiece: Huuuu-huuuu-huuuuu!

  Folk shouted farewells as the horses' hooves beat out a grinding clop on the old crushed shell and new gravel of the long driveway. Juniper looked over her shoulder for a moment; Mike raised his hand in salute and turned.

  Looking that way, the big yellow-brick house with its white pillars didn't seem very different from the time before the Change when it had been a Portland industrialist's toy—set at the head of a long east-facing valley in the Eola Hills, gracious with a century's mellowing amid gardens and lawns and giant trees.

  It was when you turned and looked down the broad V of the valley that you returned to the Changed world with a vengeance. The Bearkillers hadn't been idle since they got here towards the end of the first Change Year, nor the folk they gathered around them. There were buildings flanking the roadway; the original manager's house and sheds and barns, and others ranging from the rawly new to seven or eight years old. Some were log-cabin style, in squared timber; if there was one thing you weren't going to run short of in western Oregon, it was logs. Others were frame, disassembled and reerected here. Digging an earth dam and berms turned part of the creek into a pond; below it a waterwheel turned to power sawmill and gristmill. Next were the big storage warehouses and grain elevator, the rows of workshops, then the cottages, and the low-slung barracks, last, closest to the fortifications.

  A steep-sided earthwork thirty feet high and twenty thick spanned the valley's cut. The Bearkillers were pushing it up the hills on either side and along the summit of the steep scarp in back of the house, and now a thick stone curtain wall stood atop it—big rocks set in concrete mortar hiding a framework of steel I-beams, with more cement plastered over the surface until it was fairly smooth, albeit patchy where the sides of the bigger boulders showed. A massive stone blockhouse sat over the cleft where the roadway went though the middle of the berm. Four round towers of the same construction flanked the gatehouse, crenellations showing at their tops like teeth bared at heaven; nothing else broke their exteriors except narrow arrow slits, and more towers walked down the wall to either side at hundred-yard intervals. A
tall flagpole on one of the gate towers flaunted the brown-and-red banner of the Bearkillers. A militia squad guarded the open gates, farmers and laborers and craftsfolk in kettle helmets and tunics of boiled leather or chain mail doing their obligatory service, polearms or crossbows in hand.

  Their mounted leader was in the more elaborate harness of an A-lister—the Bearkiller elite force—and there was a crisp lordliness in the gesture he made to the troops.

  "To the Mackenzie—salute!"

  His squad lined the road and crashed the ironshod butts of pike and halberd and glaive down on the pavement. The leaves of the inner gate were pulled back to either side—massive doors of welded steel beams running on tracks set into the concrete of the roadway.

  Juniper led her people into the echoing gate tunnel, under the chill shadow of the massive stone. As she rode, she looked up at the murder holes above, where boiling oil or water, flaming gasoline or hard-driven bolts could be showered down at need; and at the fangs of the twin portcullis that could be tripped to drop and seal the passageway off.

  You could call Mike Havel a hard man, but not a bad one; he and his friends were capable, rather—and realists. But you could say they were businesslike to a daunting degree, which was mostly a good thing, and had saved her life and others' many times, but…

  There was still a hulking brutal strength to the stonework; when she looked at it the ancient ballads she'd sung for so many years came flooding back, with a grimness added to their words by hard personal experience since the Change. You could hear the roaring shouts and the screams, the wickering flight of arrows and the ugly cleaver sound of steel in flesh, smell the burning.

  "My, and haven't we come a long way in nine short years," she murmured, as they rode out into the bright sunshine and the rolling vineyards beyond the earthwork, their hooves beating hollow on the planks of the drawbridge.

  It's a good thing that there's no more copyright, Mike Havel thought. Astrid would be going to the big house for all the places she ripped off the details for this, not on a visit to her friends'.