The Protector's War (26 page)

“Come on, Dolly, let's get the little bugger born and you comfortable,” he said, interrupting himself, then went back to the work and the song. “You should have done this a month ago like the rest of your woolly mates. Breeding out of season, shame on you.”

His broad hands moved with surprising gentleness, as the ewe bleated and struggled in the straw of the sheep shed he'd built at the highest point in the big plank-fenced field. Fingers traced the leg; the joint went the right way this time, which meant it was the
front
legs, the ones which should be facing this way, at last. He reached in to make sure that it wasn't twins, and the ewe gave an indignant wiggle.

Most of the breeders could drop theirs out in the pasture, in this gentle climate, but he preferred to have them dry and out of the wind on a raw afternoon like this. The rain had barely stopped when he arrived, beneath a sky colored like old iron and darkening towards the early spring nightfall. He'd come home soaked, and then it was out to check on the last of the flock to deliver with no more than a quick word to the wife. The weather had turned nasty the last half of their trip back from Larsdalen, though now the clouds were breaking open to show belated blue sky in the west.

As well I did check.

No single family here at Dun Fairfax had very many woolies, so they managed them as one flock to save time and work—and Larry Smith, the shepherd, had been off after a couple of strays. Dolly and the lamb both would have died if Aylward hadn't been there and pitched in.

It was turning dark; the cries of a flight of swans went by overhead, and outside his eldest son Edain was romping with the dogs. His stepdaughter Tamar was waiting not far away, crouching in the straw with her arms around her knees and singing along with him as he worked, and doing a much better job of carrying the tune:

“All right, girl, keep her steady,” he said. “Firm but gentle, now.”

Tamar knelt and held the ewe's head and forelegs while he grasped the lamb's feet and began a steady pull; his grating bass and the girl's clear contralto sounded together over the frantic bleats as the nose came free.

“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 Larsdalen. 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 Aylward'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 better 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.”