The Protector's War (62 page)

She moved over to him when a glance showed Cynthia conscious, and paused beside the wounded horse. The legs weren't moving but it still breathed, chest going like a bellows; frothy blood poured out of the nostrils and the great wound in its chest, and the big dark eyes swiveled to look at her, pleading with her to make it better.

Juniper drew her dirk. “Forgive me, beautiful sister,” she said quietly, going down on one knee. “Forgive humankind for making you party to our quarrels. All I can give you is a swift end to pain. Dread Lord, take her home to the sweet meadows of the Summerlands. Epona, Lady of the Horses, let her run free with the living wind.”

As she spoke she pulled a cloth free from her belt pouch and threw it over the mare's eyes so that she couldn't see the sharp steel, then pressed the point home and twisted expertly. The horse gave a long shuddering twitch, kicked and went limp.

Juniper wiped the blade clean on the mane as she stood. The main body of the wagon train was under control too—a swarm of figures moved over it. An unwilling smile tugged at her mouth despite grief and grimness; that one standing on a tarpaulin-load and kicking someone off it with a tremendous swing of his boot was Sam Aylward, up there with his archers, knocking some order into the farmers who'd swarmed down from the hills while everyone's attention was firmly elsewhere.

Thank you, Horned Lord,
she thought; she'd always considered Sam to be a personal gift of Cernunnos.

She turned back to the task at hand. The fallen rider's shield was the first thing wrong. She could read Protectorate heraldry well and was familiar with all the major blazons; it was based on the Society's system anyway, and she'd learned that busking at fairs and tournaments before the Change. This was simply the Protector's, the red cat-pupiled eye on black, with a baton of cadency across it. Cynthia staggered up clutching herself while Juniper toed it aside; the neck loop had broken, the strong leather snapped by the torquing action of the fall. The short slim figure beneath rolled onto its back, fumbling a hand at the empty sword sheath. The helmet was one of the newer model, with a nasal bar flared so broadly at the base that it was nearly a mask covering the lower face. And the armor was of the best, links black-enameled and fine enough that the mail flowed like silk; the sword belt had gold and niello plaques.

“What have we…got here?” Cynthia croaked. She was holding herself, arms crossed across her gut. “Just a few ribs sprung, Lady.”

“I don't know what we've got,” Juniper said.
But I do have a horrible suspicion—who even among Arminger's barons could afford to refit a child in costly first-class armor every six months—

Greenish-brown eyes blinked open, aware enough to glare at her on either side of the nasal bar. Then they went wide and hands scrabbled at the helmet; half a cupful of yellow bile spewed out on the grass near her boot. To be expected after a wacking great thump on the head like that, and lost amid the savage stinks of battle.

“That's a girl!” Cynthia said.

“Indeed it is,” Juniper said wonderingly. “And a young one.”

There weren't more than a couple of dozen female knights or squires in the Protectorate, although they hadn't been all that uncommon in the Society; Arminger wasn't what you would call an equal-opportunity employer, and neither were the gangers and thugs who'd made up many of his initial followers. This one couldn't be more than ten. The girl scrubbed her gauntlet's leather palm across her mouth and spat, glaring at Juniper again. Greenish eyes, reddish brown hair, a foxy freckled face…

Rowan came up, dragging the other youngster; he was about the same age, but thicker-built and with a coffee-and-cream complexion.

“This one's Baron Molalla's son, believe it or not,” he said. “Young Chaka. Now isn't that going to be interesting!”

“Not half so much as this,” Juniper said. “Mackenzies, meet Princess Mathilda…Mathilda Arminger, the Lord Protector's only child.”

Crossing Tavern, Willamette Valley, Oregon

May 12th, 2007 AD—Change Year Nine

“
J
esus!” Mike Havel said, spraying a few crumbs from the cookie he was nibbling.

Signe thumped him on the back as he coughed. “Drink some water, darling.”

“Never touch the stuff,” he said, but beyed. His mind was racing as he stared at Juniper's cat-ate-canary grin and am Aylward's raised eyebrow:
That surprised you just a bit, dinnit?

“Where is she? Where did you put them?”

“Well…”

 

Barony of Molalla, Willamette Valley, Oregon

May 10th, 2007 AD—Change Year Nine

 

Aoifo and Daniel Barstow knelt on either side of their brother Sanjay, their wails rising to keening shrieks and dying away again in a saw-edged rhythm as they rocked back and forth. Juniper winced at the raw grief of it, even faint with distance, and they weren't the only Mackenzies grieving a friend or loved one. She wasn't looking forward to telling Judy about Sanjay's death, either, and she'd liked the young man herself; he'd been bright and sweet-natured and brave, and there was a girl…she'd expected to see them handfasted come Lughnassadh.

But on the whole…

“Not 'alf bad, if I say so meself,” Sam Aylward said, looking down from the rooftop platform of the passenger carriage. “Of course, it's easy to shine when you take the other side by surprise and outnumber them eight to one, but this sort o' ambush and guerrilla work is a lot harder than it was before the Change. Great force multipliers, explosives and automatic weapons were. Cuts down on the advantage of surprise when you have to run up to a bloke to bash 'im, and do it one head at a time.”

About a hundred of the local farmers had turned out to help; twice that, with their families. The ones who were staying had already departed. They carried plundered weapons and war harness to hide carefully in hollow trees and bury under convenient rocks, along with the bowstaves and arrowheads the Mackenzies had brought and a good bit of the taxes-in-kind that had gone into the train's cargo. Practice in stolen hours and lonely places wouldn't turn them into expert archers, or men-at-arms either for that matter, but it would be a great deal better than nothing. The rest were packing loads for themselves and the captured horses from the cargo of the wagon train; that was food, mostly, in the form of double-baked hardtack biscuit, smoked sausage, jerked beef, bacon and hams, along with sacks of beans and dried fruit and desiccated vegetables. Rowan still stood near the smashed-in barrels of liquor, wine and brandy, beer and whiskey. That hadn't made him popular, but she wasn't going to add drunkenness to the difficulties of getting the unorganized locals moving in the right direction.

Some locals stacked railway ties crisscross in a long baulk of creosoted timber, ten feet high, that would serve as a funeral pyre for the Mackenzie dead, and serve the double purpose of wrecking the rails beyond repair as they softened and bent in the heat.

“Field rations,” Juniper said, watching a ragged bond tenant stuff pieces of tough salty ham into his mouth as he worked; his jaws moved with the mechanical persistence of a water mill. “And headed for the Protector's main stores in Portland, where he can shift them by road or rail or water. Field rations for an army in the field.”

“Right enough. Convenient for us, though,” Aylward said, resting his arm on a pivot-mounted heavy crossbow the baron's men hadn't had time to use. “But what are we going to do with
those
two?”

He jerked a thumb at Mathilda and Chaka, where they sat with their arms around their knees, sullen amongst the surviving prisoners—a few heavily bandaged men-at-arms, a glowering priest, some clerks and personal servants. Three trios of Mackenzies guarded them, as much to protect them from the revengeful locals as to prevent escape.

“That
is
a question,” Juniper said.

On an impulse she climbed down from the car's observation platform and walked over; there was a very convenient little folding ladder along the side. It reminded her of the private railway cars very wealthy men had had, back in the Gilded Age.

Robber barons once again—literally, this time,
she thought, and went on aloud: “And what should we do with the lot of you?”

The priest had been on his knees, praying; he stood as Juniper approached. “We shall remain steady in our faith, even if you sacrifice us to Satan,” he said, holding up his cross. “The Holy Father has said—”

Juniper giggled and then suppressed the guffaw that followed. Several others didn't, and the lanky man in black clericals and dog collar glared. He was young as well, with the light of fanaticism burning in his eyes.

“Padre, I'm afraid you'll not be granted opportunity for martyrdom the now,” she said dryly, hoping someone wouldn't make a stupid crack about wicker men and mistletoe—it encouraged cowan superstitions.

“Ransom, of course,” Mathilda said, standing herself and crossing her arms on her narrow chest; her manner was older than her face, in a way that reminded her a little of Rudi.

She was glaring too, and doing a rather better job of it than the priest. Underneath the armor and padding they'd removed—a quilted-silk gambeson of all things—she wore a black T-shirt and jeans, tucked into polished riding boots. She was slim but not skinny, with the coltish all-limbs look of preadolescence, a tomboy air and no trace of fear at all.

Perhaps she doesn't believe the bits about human sacrifices.

“My father will pay whatever you ask,” she went on. “Then he'll come and take it back with the sword! And if you dare to hurt me, he'll kill you all!”

“Let me see your hand,” Juniper said, extending her own.

The girl glared for a moment more. “I'm not shaking hands with you!”

“Good,” Juniper said dryly. “For I wasn't offering to. Show your hand, or I'll have one of my clansfolk march you over, young lady.”

The hand confirmed a guess: callus around the rim made by forefinger and thumb. “Swordsmans' hand,” they called it these days. It was just starting with the youngster, but there. Which said interesting things about the girl, and possibly even more interesting things about her father and her father's attitudes and plans.

“I'm not interested in the tyrant's gold, girl,” Juniper said, releasing her.

She flushed, something Juniper could sympathize with, being a redhead herself and of a more extreme type. You couldn't hide it when the blood moved under your skin.

“My father is not a tyrant!” she said. “He saved everyone from the Change!”

“And mine is a good lord,” young Chaka said, glowering in his turn. “He'll pay ransom for me and all his men here.”

There was muscle on his arms and shoulders already, fruit of an early start with the sword, and judging by his hands and feet he'd be a tall man himself if he lived.

“It's true that your father's not so bad as some,” Juniper said to the boy. “However, think about one thing—could we have done what we've done, without their help?” She indicated the farmers with a jerk of her head. “And think about why they were ready to help
us.
Ask your father about it, too, when you see him next.”

The boy sat again, as if someone had cut his strings; that jarred his head, and he put his hands to it. Evidently he'd taken more of a thump on the noggin than his friend.

“Aren't you going to get him a doctor?” Mathilda asked scornfully.

“Indeed we will, when our medicos have finished with the gravely hurt,” Juniper said. “But you can rest easy, we don't harm children.”

That
got under her composure a bit, and she nearly growled. Juniper hid a smile, and waved Eilri and Astrid over.

This one's going to be trouble,
she signed—with her back to the girl.

The others moved so that their fingers couldn't be seen either; no sense in taking chances.

We've got sixty civilians to move a day's march to the border and a fight if any of their cavalry patrols catch us,
Eilir signed.
What's the priorities, Chieftainly Mom?

Getting those people home,
Juniper said.
But this girl could be very important politically. Arminger has no other child, and he dotes on this one, from what we hear.

Astrid's mouth opened to reply, and then her head whipped up. “Nazgûl!” she shouted, a huge, clear, bell-like sound, and reached over her shoulder for an arrow.

So did everyone else, as the slender thin-winged shape of the sailplane banked over their heads. It was a standard pre-Change sporting model, whispering silent through the air overhead, although the Protector's eye on the wings was new, as was the shark mouth painted on the teardrop-shaped nose. Counterweight-powered launching ramps on hilltops could get the gliders well into the air, and the mountain-flanked trough of the Willamette was good soaring country.

Juniper's voice tripped on Aylward's as they shouted:
“Careful!”
and
“Ware the drop!”

Arrows went soaring up if you shot into the sky. They also came down, pointy-end first, and traveling fast.

Nobody bothered the first time the aircraft came down the line of the rail; it was at over a thousand feet, and probably moving more than sixty miles an hour. It came from the southeast and over the bridge, down to where the wreckage of the railcar lay, then banked sharply to the right over the two wooded hills where the Mackenzies' local friends had hidden. The glide turned into a soar as it struck the updraft over the hills, turning, banking, sweeping upward in a gyre like a hawk circling for height…exactly like a hawk.

“He'll see you, and report to the citadel, and my father's men-at-arms will hunt you down like rabbits,” Chaka said.

“Shut up, boy,” Rowan growled, eyes on the sky as he laid his ax aside and pulled his bow from the loops beside his quiver.

“He's coming back!” Aylward called. “Wants a closer look to be sure what's going on. Ready!”

The glider pivoted on a wing tip, pointed its nose on a downward slant, and came on as it traded height for speed; the pilot could do that safely now that he knew there was a source of lift in easy reach. Juniper felt her breath grow quick, and grabbed it with an effort of will. A flight of arrows went up from the Mackenzies grouped around the toppled railcar, and a groan from everyone watching except the two children, who cheered—the heads winked in the sunlight as they turned, well below the glider.

“Ready!” Aylward shouted. “Nice no-deflection shot, now. Wait for it!”

Juniper didn't bother to set an arrow to her bow; she just didn't draw a heavy enough stave to be useful at extreme ranges. Aylward kept his bow on his back, hands working deftly on the big crossbow instead, moving screws and sighting rings. The bow was a complete set of leaf springs from a truck; it needed a complex crank mechanism to pull the string back against two thousand pounds of resistance, and Sam would get only one shot…

Tunggg-whack!

The three-foot bolt of forged steel disappeared northward, its curved vanes twirling it like a rifle bullet. It moved far too fast to see more than an elongated blur, but Aylward's shout of satisfaction echoed the heavy flat plinking sound of the missile striking the light fiberglass of the glider. There was a reason he was known throughout the Willamette country as
the
archer.

“Shoot!”
he bellowed.

The scout glider staggered in the air when the bolt hit, but it recovered quickly—apparently neither the pilot killed nor anything vital in the controls destroyed. It
did
lose a crucial three hundred feet of altitude.

Forty bowstrings snapped against the leather and metal of bracers. They would have only one shot as well; the aircraft was doing better than ninety miles an hour, skimming less than a hundred feet up. None of them was used to shooting at targets moving that fast, either.

All but two of them missed; Eilir, Astrid and Rowan would argue for the rest of their lives over whose shots hit. The glider nosed up, up and up until its climb passed the stall point, and then it fell like a fluttering leaf as the wings lost lift.

“We'd best move, Lady,” Sam was saying before the sound of the rending crash and the shrill cheers of the Mackenzies died. “He won't be reporting back”—they could see the pilot hanging limp in the broken canopy, and that was splashed red on the inside—“but when he doesn't come back on time, someone with his flight plan will have someplace to look.”

Juniper nodded, feeling oddly depressed for an instant at the sight of the broken glider, despite all the other fears and griefs of the day. It had been so long since she saw manmade wings in flight, and it was like a glimpse of the lost world.