Dies the Fire (78 page)

“
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 co-religionists 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 . . .

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. Hutton. Definitely.”

 

 

 

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.