The Protector's War (35 page)

Until they heard the footsteps, and saw light breaking off the honed edges of the spears. The children shrieked, but the adults and teenager sprang up—an improvised spear, an ax, branch-clubs, stones, the girl with a good knife.

“Hold it!” Aylward barked. “Nobody do anything bloody stupid, and nobody needs to get hurt. Drop the stickers. Throw down!
Now!
”

He watched the adults count the spearheads, and turn to see that they were ringed around. The man with the hoe-spear slumped in despair as he let it fall; there were thuds and thumps as the others followed suit. The girl, he noted carefully, sheathed her knife rather than following the letter of his instructions.

“Look, mister,” the fair-bearded man said. “Look, please…” Then anger burst into his voice: “What harm have we ever done you?”

“You're eating our sheep,” Aylward observed.

“Our kids are hungry, goddammit!”

“Ours aren't,” Aylward said. “One of the reasons they're
not
hungry is that we don't let people steal our sheep…Wait a bit, though. Were you lot up north a couple of days ago? Running away from a right nasty little sod who calls himself Baron Liu? Keeps company with a big bugger called Mack?”

The man gaped at him, and the others clutched each other. “How'd you know?”

One of the others grabbed at a crucifix and whimpered. Aylward grinned at that. There were enough rumors about Lady Juniper's people in the free sections of the Valley; he supposed it was natural the Protector should be spreading even more ridiculous propaganda about them in his bailiwick, and using his puppet church to spread the message. Enough of his subjects ran off as it was. Telling them tales about the Wicked Witches would be a cheap way of keeping them home and working.

“Because I was
there,
you dozy burke!” he said genially. “If you'd just stopped after that, we'd have seen you right. We're the Mackenzies. If you'd
asked
for help, you'd have gotten it.”

That seemed to frighten them more, and the women clutched at their children.

“You shouldn't believe all you hear,” Alice Dennison said. Then: “By Cernunnos and the sweet Lady, Sam, these folks aren't a threat to anyone but that sheep, and it's dead already.”

The teenager spoke. “Jeff, Miguel, we shouldn't believe
anything
the Protector or the Baron or their tame priests told us.”

That seemed to get home, but these people had been afraid so long that it had become a habit, and one probably hard to break.

“Right,” he sighed, and grounded his spear.

Then he reached back into his haversack and pulled out the bundle Melissa had made up for him. “This is ready to eat. Have your cruncheon on me.”

He tossed it, and the cloth-wrapped food fell at the teenager's feet with a thump. She didn't waste any time, and when the others saw the bread and meat, and the roast potatoes and twist of salt his wife had packed, their resistance crumbled. The other members of the Dun Fairfax party followed his example. The adult fugitives looked as if they felt like crying as they crammed roast pork and cheese and hard-boiled eggs into their mouths; the children
stopped
crying as they were fed.

“Careful there,” Aylward said. “Don't do yourself an injury.”

One of the women nodded, and made the children slow down—by force, mainly. The teenager had been pacing herself from the start. She had striking light eyes, and they met his levelly.

“Do you know the Queen of Witches?” she asked.

“Yes, love, but she wouldn't be overjoyed to hear you call her that,” he said. “Lady Juniper's good enough. Sam Aylward's my name.”

“Aylward the
Archer?
” one of the men asked, sounding incredulous.

“I shoot a bit now and then, yes. And you're not four miles from Dun Juniper right now, and herself's in residence.”

That got attention, even through the food. The two men looked at each other, but the girl didn't hesitate; instead she stood up and approached him, holding out a squarish bundle wrapped in coarse cloth.

“I took this from the castle,” she said. “Baron Gervais's castle. From the office. I was part of the cleaning staff.”

Ah,
Aylward thought, taking it and stripping off the container.
Probably his bar bills. On the other hand, it might explain why he was out after this lot personal-like.

Larry Smith stepped up and shone the bull's-eye on the pages. His eyes opened wider, and Aylward gave a long whistle. The text was in some sort of code, but the maps were plain enough.

“Alice,” he said, rewrapping it. “You know your way back?”

“Hell, yes, Sam.”

“Get back to the dun, then. Send someone to Lady Juniper and tell her to come—to bring Chuck, and no more else than she must, and come quickly. Send Tamar, and tell her to hurry. We'll get these people back to my place,” he concluded. “And everyone, don't chatter on about what you've seen. Alice, you hop to it!”

Alice nodded, tossed her spear to her husband and went downslope in a controlled fall. Aylward looked at the quasiprisoners and sighed as he stuffed the documents into his haversack. Garm and Grip had discovered the guts and head of the sheep, and looked up at him questioningly, waiting for permission. Aylward used the blade of his spear to crack open the skull for them, and they dove in noisily as he stabbed the steel into the earth to rough-clean it.

“All right, you two go first,” he said to the male refugees. “And we'll carry the kids, ladies. Someone pack up the meat from that wether. No sense in letting it go to waste.”

 

The direct way down the steep scarp to Dun Fairfax was rough, twisting back and forth through the darkened forest; it had been a logging road, long ago. That was why most traffic took the longer U-shaped route westward along Artemis Creek, then north with it and so onto the bench that held Dun Juniper, even though it tripled the distance. But the horse knew this trail, and Juniper Mackenzie did as well from long years before the Change. She still took it slowly, as mist curled between the great trees, flattening the sound of hooves; the moist air beaded on her hooded cloak, and more dripped from branches over the trail. Tamar clung, perched behind her with her arms around Juniper's waist, and three more horses followed; she'd pulled the tail of the cloak around the girl to give her a little extra protection. It was made of unfulled wool—with the natural grease left in the fiber and then the thread hard-woven—and it shed water nearly as well as a pre-Change rain slicker. Those were getting worn and brittle and hard to find, and weren't nearly as good at keeping you warm. It
did
smell rather strongly of lanolin, though, particularly when it was wet.

Wet wool, wet horse, wet me,
Juniper thought, as the fog drank the dull sound of hooves on soft dirt, and moisture dripped on them as steadily as rain.
Just when I'd gotten comfortable again. This had better be good, Sam!

Under that went a chill. She knew it would be. Sam wasn't the sort to start at shadows…unless something important was doing the shadow-casting.

They came out of the woods, and Tamar hopped down lithely to open the gate in the plank fence that edged the Dun Fairfax farmlands. Then she trotted along beside Juniper's horse, one hand gripping the stirrup leather to ease her pace, tireless as a yearling deer. The gates of the dun were abustle, with people standing about and dogs barking and lanterns burning bright; the hum of conversation rose as the riders from Dun Juniper drew near.

Juniper stood in the stirrups and held up a hand: “Merry met,” she said, and then waved down the greetings. When silence fell, she went on: “I know you're all fair ruptured with curiosity, Mackenzies…but as a favor to me, could you keep it quiet for a wee bit?”

“That means keep your sodding mouths
shut,
” Sam said as he came out of the gate, genially enough, but with an edge to it.

There were murmurs at that; the folk of her clan tended to be talkative, and to love argument and assembly and debate—it had become as much a mark of a Mackenzie as shooting skillfully with the bow. Probably they'd caught it from her original core group of coveners and recreationists, who could talk black into white and up into down, and loved to do it—plus it was entertainment to replace TV.

On the other hand, they also tended to take what she said seriously, sometimes excessively so. The little crowd broke up as people went back to their homes—doubtless to hash over the events of the evening, but at least they weren't getting in the way. Most of them would delight in keeping the news within their own dun, too, and hug a secret close until they couldn't bear it anymore.

Sam whistled sharply, and several of his household people came up to collect the horses as the visitors swung down.

“Started with a missing sheep,” he said quietly to her as they walked towards his house. “And from there…”

“Hmmm,” she replied when he was done. “Let's go see.”

“
And
they're frightened at the name of you, Lady Juniper. But most anxious to see you, as well.”

“Not the first time it's been like that.”

“Not a bad bunch. They made it out with Baron Liu chasing them, after all.”

“Thanks to Eilir and Astrid,” she said quietly, looking over her shoulder at the pair in question.
As well try to keep water from flowing downhill as keep those two out of it.
“But I see your point.”

“Plus some little things…they've been eating short for years and running hard on next to nothing for days now, but we didn't have to stop them from rupturing themselves. Thanked us polite-like when we used the bolt cutters on those dog collars around their necks.”

Juniper nodded, and took off her cloak to shake free the moisture before she walked into the warm, well-lit space of Aylward's hearth room and hung the garment on a peg; there was a mat underneath to catch drips. Then she made a gesture with one hand and bowed her head towards the family altar over the fireplace.

Melissa Aylward smiled as her kin cleaned away plates and bowls. “Merry met and welcome to our home, Lady of the Clan,” she said, and extended a plate and cup.

“Merry met and thanks, Lady of the Hearth,” Juniper replied, taking a cookie and popping it into her mouth—she wasn't hungry, but symbolism was important. The hot mead was soothing, though.

Melissa grinned then, and said less formally, “Sam's always bringing home something that needs cleaning up and feeding, Juney.”

“A big softie, under that gruff shell,” Juniper agreed.

The children Sam had mentioned were being borne off by members of the household, to be bathed—and deloused—and tucked into beds; several of the younger were already lolling limp into sleep by then, between the warmth and full bellies. Others of those who lived here had suppressed their natural curiosity and scattered off to the rest of the big farmhouse. That left only Sam, her, Chuck, Eilir and Astrid apart from the two refugee couples and the teenager. She looked at them…

Something. Something important. The worm biting its tail, things yet to be casting their shadow through the circles of time…

The power points of her body flaring in an electric tingle, a cool wind blowing through her mind, a hint of a star-shot darkness that glowed with an inner light…She damped down frustration at the uncertainty of it.

Even to her most beloved child, a mother doesn't reveal all her mind—she can't, because the child can't grasp it yet. How then does the Divine speak to us? In song and myth, dream and vision, like a serpent in a bed of reeds, coil upon counter-coil.

The dark Hispanic-looking man gulped at her green-eyed stare.
“Ojos garzos”
—
The eyes of wizardry—
he said softly, and crossed himself.

Juniper shook herself back to the waking world, and remembered discussions she'd had with Jose and Carlita over platters of
camarones al mojo de ajo
.

“Si,”
she whispered in his tongue.
“Si, garzos, pero para el bien, no el mal. Bruja, si, bruja de los buenos—Sacerdotiza.”

He inclined his head.
“Queen
of Witches.”

Her smile grew wry as she swept aside the tail of her plaid and sat, tossed her bonnet on the table and ran her hands through unruly red curls where the first gray threads had made their way this winter past.

“Yes, but that doesn't mean what you think it means. Look, let's be practical, shall we? First, you don't have to worry about the Protector or Baron Liu anymore. You're free of them now. We'll find you food and decent homes. And work, but work for yourselves—rely on it—and land of your own eventually. We don't turn anyone away who's running from those…I won't call them swine because it would be an insult to that noble beast the pig, sure.”