Dies The Fire

Chapter Thirty-two

J uniper Mackenzie had lived in the Willamette all her life. Autumn was her favorite season there, and it was a relief to find that the Change at least hadn't changed that. Winter she liked hardly less, and the two seasons were in balance as she led the war levy of the Mackenzies northward.

The greens were still more vivid once the rains started, and the leaves still turned bronze and old gold against the darker, unchanging firs, streaking the lower parts of the hills until they flew away like coins, or wishes fading into memory. Fallen leaves still gave their damp musty smell, and the air had a wet coolness that would endure the long months to come, when the gray clouds marched in from the sea and rain would drizzle down day after day.

Today the sky was bright, dazzling afternoon light slanting through white foaming canyons of cloud, gilding stub-blefields and bringing out the different shades of green in firs and grass, of brown in turned earth and bare-limbed fruit trees.

Mind you, some things are different, she thought wryly.

Forty on horseback followed on either side of the road, the yellow yew staves of their longbows slanted over their shoulders, and the baggage wagons and ambulance were on the pavement behind her. Wheels hissed on wet asphalt; hooves clattered or made a duller rumbling crunch on the graveled verges. This stretch had been cleared of dead cars and trucks some time ago, but it was best to keep hoof off hard pavement as much as you could. She waved to a party working the fields as the buggy trotted northeastward towards the beginning of the hills.

The face of the man behind the handles of the lead plow in the field to her left was calm and intent, with the slight frown of someone concentrating on his work. The plowman jerked in surprise, startled as he broke the focus of his effort and looked up, leaning back to halt his team with the reins knotted around his waist and a long whoa. Two more teams followed him, and the furrows lay neatly parallel, stretching off towards the distant fence and line of trees. The dark brown earth curled up behind the moldboards, moist and soft; the green clover sod went under amid a sweet scent of cut roots.

The other plows kept going for a moment more, making more acres ready to be planted with wheat.

Doing a lot better than we managed this spring, she thought, as all of the plowmen halted to shout greetings. And we need to; it's those fields we'll harvest by next Lughnassadh. The Wheel of the Year, and the wheel of worries!

Every day since the Change had reminded her why her ancestors had so celebrated getting a season's work done successfully.

"The bicycle corps is half a day ahead of you," one of them called, and added a little awkwardly-he was still in jeans, not a kilt-"Blessed be! Goddess with you, Lady Juniper!"

"Blessed be, and She's with us all!" she called back. "And She is, you know! Merry meet, merry part, merry meet again!"

Beside the buggy, Eilir and Astrid were deep in conversation:

"-we're finishing off late because we sent a lot of teams to get you guys' land plowed and seeded over at Larsdalen, us and the University Council people-"

Which had been the essence of the deal; the Bearkillers' military services, and grain stored over winter in Bend and Madras to be paid next spring, in return for the plowing and planting they'd been too late to do this year themselves.

"Not to mention we and Corvallis acknowledge that Lord Bear owns a great whacking chunk of the valley west of Salem and rules all those on it," she murmured to herself, too softly to be heard.

That sort of conversation could help you organize your thoughts, and it was a habit she'd fallen into through long years mostly alone or with Eilir.

"Not that Mike isn't the charming lad"-she smiled reminiscently and laid a hand on her stomach-"and not that we don't need him to help against the Protector, for he's a very Lugh of the Long Spear come again in splendor and in terror, but still, the precedent of the thing : "

"Talking strategy to yourself?" Chuck Barstow said.

He was riding close by her right hand; looking nervous, too, if you knew him very well.

"Who better?" she replied. "We're none of us professionals at it, Chuck."

"I wish Sam Aylward were here," he said, looking to check that the scouts were busy, out on the edge of sight and beyond. "It takes more than nine months to learn all I need to do his job."

"Well, the man's neither a god nor an electron, to be in two places at once," Juniper said. "And with luck, we'll but have to look imposing; over the mountains, they have to fight for certain-sure."

"You ever play poker, Juney?"

"No. Bridge, a little: Why?"

"I do play poker, and I hate bluffing."

Juniper's mouth firmed into a pale line. "But we're not, Chuck. And that's the best sort of bluff there is. I'm not going to have that gang of bandits a half day's travel from my home and kids and clan, or controlling our access over the mountains."

He nodded. "That's why I wish we had Aylward with us."

The road wound northeast up into forested hills as the day wore on; occasionally they came in sight of the main Mackenzie war party on their bicycles, but the horses had to rest more often than the humans. About noon they halted for an hour; horses bent their heads over oats and pellets of clover hay, and the Mackenzies ate bread and cheese, smoked sausage and dried fruit. The bread was still soft and crumbly-fresh; tomorrow they'd be down to twice-baked crackerlike waybread-what they'd called hardtack in seafaring days.

A challenge-and-response came from the sentries up the winding road, and then Dennis, puffing as he pushed his bicycle up to them; it was downhill from here to Sweet-Home. He'd acquired a length of the sausage from someone and was munching on it as he came up. What with kilt, jack, bearded ax and longbow, bicycle and helmet pushed back he looked like:

Like nothing from the twentieth century or any other! she thought. But it's good to see him, nonetheless.

He looked at her as she chomped her way through her share, and grinned. "God, Sally would howl and throw things if she could see us stuffing ourselves like this!"

Juniper snorted: Sally was about as enormous as she was, but unlike the original Mackenzie, she'd had so-called morning sickness at unpredictable and frequent intervals since her second month. She was also safely back behind the palisade at Dun Juniper, and the Chief of the Mackenzies frankly envied her.

"What do you know about these mysteries of the Goddess, male one?" she said.

"As much as you, iron-gutted female one," Dennis pointed out with irritating calm. "More. I was holding the bucket for her all these months." Then he sighed.

"The news isn't bad, I take it?" Juniper said.

"No. Met the Corvallis guys outside Lebanon, and the Protector's men did just what the Bearkillers said they would-bugged out fast."

She relaxed with a sigh of her own. "That's what the Bearkillers hoped they'd do," she said. "They're relying on those castles further east on Route 20. Those have Route 22 to link them to Portland. There's no point trying to hold the towns; besides which, we outnumbered them fifteen to one."

Dennis frowned. "Why bother to put men in Lebanon or Sweet Home at all, then?" he said.

"The Protector's greedy, and he was expecting us to sit and wait until he was ready," she said. A deep breath. "Let's hope it's an omen."

Dennis hesitated. "There are still a couple of hundred civilians there: They're in pretty bad shape, Juney."

But for once we can do something for them without worrying, she thought. With the grain we'll be getting from the Bearkillers. That was clever of Mike, to realize we could still use the railroads, for a few years at least, until there are too many washouts.

"Let's be about the work of the day, then," she said, and nodded to Chuck. "There's no point in just chasing the rest back to Portland; we'd just have them back at us again next year."

"Crawl faster!" Mike Havel shouted again.

Another fireball rippled overhead. Then Signe screamed.

"Christ Jesus!" Havel hissed.

The crossbow bolt had hit her high on the left shoulder, slanting right down through the meat and leaving the head sticking out the other side. She screamed again when Eric grabbed her under that arm; Havel took the other, and they ran crouching to the shelter of the catapult. Aylward hit the release toggle one more time, then snatched the arrows out of Signe's quiver.

"We're cutting it too bloody tight," he said, turning and shooting. "You two take the north approach; we'll cover the blockhouse."

Havel grunted agreement, taking the remaining loops of rope from Eric and Signe and fastening them to the bailey's outer palisade, dropping the long knotted cords down the wall and into the moat. Pamela bent over Signe, then pulled out a hypodermic, stripped it with her teeth and stabbed it dagger fashion into the back of the younger woman's thigh. The morphine brought a long hissing sigh, and relaxation.

"I don't know how much damage there is inside, but she's not in immediate danger," the veterinarian-swordswoman said.

"Oh, yes she is," Havel snarled, crouching behind the throwing engine's cover. "We all are."

The ballista was in a horseshoe-shaped embayment in the castle wall, and it was mounted on a turntable about six feet across. There was a sloping steel shield with a slot for the throwing trough; that was pointed towards the burning tower right now. Crossbow bolts were pattering off it at about one a second, each one with a nerve-wracking ptinnng sound and a spark as the points hit the quarter-inch sheet plate and the bolts pinwheeled off into the night.

It was crowded, too; they had to get right up against the shield because the upper floors of the tower overlooked them and the crossbowmen there could shoot down: at least until the fire got that far. The tower's own moat and the bellowing fire in the main gateway meant they were cut off from the tower otherwise, though; its garrison could shoot-until the fire drove them out-but they couldn't come out on foot. The heat of the burning tower was enough to dry the sweat it brought out on Havel's face.

Unfortunately, there was no cover at all on either side, where the fighting platform of the eastern wall ran, and everyone else could get at them that way.

"Get here fast, stalwart ranchers," Mike snarled to himself, and slid the recurve bow free from its case over his shoulder. "Real fast. Eric, you fit to fight?"

A drift of wind down from the mountains and the pass blew smoke over them, thick and dense and sooty-hot.

Eric coughed. "I'll manage," he said.

"Good," Havel snapped. "Shoot when I do."

By the increasing light of the tower's fire he could see more of the Protector's men dashing across the open ground from the barracks and up ramp-ladders to the palisade. A few of them were already trotting towards the ballista; Havel coughed again as he saw their heads weaving.

Trying to figure out what's going on, he thought, carefully not thinking of the probability that he'd be dead in a few minutes. Got to get closer before the impossible becomes visible.

At about fifteen yards they goggled and halted. Havel came up to one knee and drew, the familiar push-pull effort.

Snap. An instant later; the crack of a bodkin point on sheet metal as the arrow punched into a black-painted shield.

A soldier yelled and danced, shaking his shield and screaming-four inches of arrowshaft had pinned his forearm to the plywood. Havel ducked back as another crossbow bolt went by with an eerie whuppt of cloven air, close enough that he felt the wind of it on the sweat-wet skin of his face.

Movement brought his head around, with the bow rising behind it. He lowered it again as he saw the CORA fighter lever himself over the palisade.

"Get down, you fool!" Havel shouted, crouched back under the ballista's shield.

The rancher's man looked at him, then jerked and grunted as two bolts hammered into his chest. He toppled backward, but three more heads followed, and then hands held up a pair of thick shields:

Eric shot once more and then slowly toppled over backward in a dead faint.

"I am getting too old for this shit," Havel wheezed, suddenly exhausted beyond bearing. Then he shouted:

"Corpsman! Stretcher party, here!"

"I'll look like a football!" Signe said. "All over stiches!"

"Actually, you look more beautiful than a sunset," Havel said. "See? I'm learning!"

She smiled back at him from the cot, then winced as motion pulled at the shoulder wound. She drifted back off to sleep.

Aaron Rothman sighed. "Thank God for morphine," he said. "I really, really hope someone is planting opium poppies!"

The big hospital tents were crowded; mostly CORA ranchers and their men, but more Bearkillers than he liked-it would have been politically dicey to hold them all back. There was a smell of disinfectant and blood, faces waxy and pale under the light of the Coleman lanterns. Gasoline stoves kept it fairly warm, but the air was close and stuffy as well.

"Her brother was just faint from loss of blood," Rothman said. "I gave him some plasma and a painkiller; he'll be sore with all those superficial cuts and punctures, but he had his tetanus shots, thank God."

"What about Signe?" Havel asked, his face impassive.

"I used the pin test," Rothman said, holding one up. "She's got feeling and movement in all the fingers and no numb spots on the arm, so there isn't any nerve damage to speak of. The clavicle's cracked, though, and the cut muscles will take some time to heal. Full function, or nearly, but not for a while, and she'll need physical therapy."

Havel gusted a sigh. "Could have been a lot worse," he said.

Then he went down the rows of cots; for many of them it had been a lot worse. He talked with those who could use it, gave a nod and a touch to others.

"Thanks!" a young Bearkiller they'd picked up in Grangeville said, with a smile despite the broken leg.

"Been there, done that," Havel said, grinning back.

The grin died as he ducked out of the tent's entrance, pulling on his armored gauntlets and settling his helmet; for one thing, the blanket-wrapped bodies of the dead weren't far away, waiting for friends and relatives to take them away, or for time to free up for burial details. For another, out here the smoke of the burning castle still lay thick, in the cold gray light just before dawn. The tower had fallen in a torrent of flame and sparks hours ago, and most of the rest of the palisade still smoldered.

Also present were the prisoners taken, two score of them; all the guards were Bearkillers or Mackenzies, most of them lightly wounded.

The CORA fighters and camp followers gathered glaring in the dark chill of morning, bundled up in down jackets and muffled in wool scarves. Breath steamed. Enough could be seen of their faces to know their mood, though; some were bandaged, and all had lost friends or family in the swarming, confused fight through the Protector's burning fort.

"String the bastards up!" sounded again; the Bearkillers turned their horses' heads outward, and a few of the kilted clansfolk reached over their shoulders for arrows.

Havel opened his mouth. Before he could speak, another voice sounded-John Brown, the CORA delegate.

"Go on!" he shouted, waving his hands. "These folks fought for us-do you want to start a battle with them, too? Go on-go on back to your tents. We're civilized people here, by God; we're Americans, not a lynch mob. Git!"

Then the leathery bearded rancher turned to Havel. "Sorry about that."

"No problem, but we'd better get under way," Havel said. Everyone's gotten a bit rougher-edged since the Change.

"Well, we've got the roadway through the fort cleared and the bridge is ready," Brown said. "Pretty hot and smoky, though."

Havel shrugged. "Well over half of them got out of the castle. We need to make sure of them before they get west to their other fort."

Josh Sanders came up, leading Havel's horse. Havel swung into the saddle with a clink and rustle of chainmail; the horse was a strawberry roan mare, not quite as well-trained as Gustav. He quieted it and stroked a gloved hand down its neck.

"No sign of a rear guard?"

The Hoosier grinned. "Boss, once they bugged out of the castle, that bunch straggled so bad I'm surprised they managed to get anyone together. But they're closed up into one group now, more or less, and less the wounded they've been leaving behind. Stopped about two hours ago, but not for long is my guess. They remembered to take their bicycles, at least."

"Good work, Josh," he said. "Aylward's people are in position?"

"Got into place about the time the fight was over here. That Brit's pretty damn good in the woods."

Will Hutton was ready at the head of the Bearkiller column, a hundred armored riders with Sanders's scouts in a clump before, and their supply echelon on wagons and packhorses behind. Havel trotted down the column of fours and into position at the front beside Luanne Larsson, where she rode with the outfit's flag drooping from her lance in the still, cold air.

A sudden gust snapped it out, brown and red in the soot-laden breeze; humans coughed, and horses stamped and snorted, tossing their heads in a jingle of bridles.

Ahead was the column of smoke from the castle, bending towards them like a reaching hand. On either side the mountains reared steep and rugged; to the north the dawn sun gilded the snowpeaks, leaving the blue slopes below in shadow.

"This part ought to work fairly well," he said.

Will Hutton nodded and spat thoughtfully aside. "Whole strategy feels sort of: odd, Mike."

"Lady Juniper is odd." Havel grinned. "And it's her idea. Yeah, it's not my own first impulse-I was always the kill-'em-all-let-God-sort-'em-out type by natural inclination, and God knows life is cheap these days-but I can see her point, long-term. And she put this whole deal together."

He raised his arm and chopped it westward. With the sun at their backs, the long shapes of horse and rider lay before them, and the hooves trod the shadows down as the Bear-killers advanced. The honed edges of the lanceheads above caught the dawn light with a rippling sparkle like stars on the sea.

"Here," Sam Aylward said.

West of Santiam Pass, Route 20 wound between forested hills that crowded close to the roadway. Eventually it swung north and east for a while before turning west and then south again, like a long U around an outthrust ridge of the mountains that reared-ever higher to Three Fingered Jack on the north and Mount Washington to the south.

Creeks brawled down from the steep slopes on either hand; they were west of the Cascade crest here, and the extra moisture showed-more Douglas fir and western hemlock, less lodgepole pine. The forest was dense, dark green, seeming to wait eagerly for the heavy snows to come, breathing a cold clear scent of pine and moist earth.

Speaking of moisture: hope Lady Juniper's magic actually works. A blizzard would bugger things for fair.

The Englishman cocked an eye at the sky; about noon, not quite time for the party to begin, but getting there, and he didn't like the look of the clouds. It was chilly enough to make him think that might mean snow, too-they were four thousand feet up here, with wet air sliding in from the Pacific, and it was December, albeit only just.

Just enough to make me doubt me sanity, wearing this Jock skirt, he thought wryly.

In fact, the kilt wasn't all that uncomfortable-the Jocks had worn them in all seasons in the Scottish Highlands, after all, with a climate that made western Oregon look like Barbados. The colors were good camouflage, and the boost to morale was more than worth it. Few of these people had been fighters before the Change, any more than they'd been farmers; wearing strange clothing helped them adjust to doing things strange to them.

There was a clatter and rustle as the Mackenzies moved into position; a lot of them were puffing from the night march in full gear, but nobody had fallen out. He grinned slightly to himself at the thought; after the past eight months, most of them were stronger and fitter than they'd ever been in their lives-Yanks had tended to lard before the Change, but he hadn't seen a fat one for months now.

Now if only they were better shots, he thought.

About a dozen out of fifty were what he'd call passable archers, and as for the rest:

Well, they can hit a massed target at close range. Most of the time. And we've got plenty of shafts along.

He looked up and down the stretch of road. There were four abandoned vehicles in sight, all shoved off the road- courtesy of the Protector's men when they moved in on Route 20-but one was impossible, a heavy truck. The other three included two ordinary four-doors and a Ford Windstar van, and should do nicely.

"That one, that one, that one, and put them there. Move your arses, Mackenzies!"

A platoon's-worth flung themselves on the vehicles. They weren't easy to move, with months for the transmission fluid to solidify, and resting on the rims of the flat wheels, but enough musclepower served. Once the cars were in place, more hands rocked them until they went over on their sides, spanning the whole width of the road and its verges, presenting their undersides to the enemy. Those would stop a crossbow bolt well enough, and they were too high to easily climb over. Of course, that meant they were also too high for defenders to shoot or stab over the top.

"Right, get rocks and dirt and logs; get a fighting platform in behind them," Aylward went on. "Move it!"

The section leaders gathered around him, shaggy in their war cloaks, leaves and twigs pushed into the netting of the hoods drawn up over their bowl helmets.

"Look up there," Aylward said, pointing northwest up the road. "We're a good five hundred yards down from that curve. I want two sections"-eighteen archers-"behind the barricade. The rest of you, get your people up on the slopes either side-no more than fifty yards total, but I want each and every one to have a good tree to hide behind and a clear field of fire. Go do it!"

Everyone did. Aylward watched, which made him itch; circumstances and the growth of the Mackenzies had pushed him into an officer's boots, much against his will.

He comforted himself by walking back up the road and looking to either side. You couldn 't see far; the verges at the edge of the road's cleared swath were thick with Pacific rhododendron, vine maple and bear grass. His eye could trace the Mackenzies settling in, but once they were motionless, only knowing where they were let him see them.

"Good enough," he muttered to himself. "In a couple of years, they'll be bloody good, if I do say so myself."

A check behind the barricade showed that everyone there had a good step, high enough to shoot over the metal, but convenient for ducking down. They also all had a spear to hand, if things got close and personal; he'd picked two sections with people who'd fought the Protector's men back before Lughnassadh:

"Christ, they've got me doing it," he muttered to himself again, as he climbed up into the woods. "It didn't even occur to me to think August. "

There was a little more work for him here. The archers were spaced about three paces apart, with a tree or bush to conceal each-and with the hoods of their cloaks pulled up over their helmets and shadowing their faces, they were hard to see. A few had picked spots that would block their fields of fire, though. He patiently corrected those, with a quick explanation why and how to check-he wanted them to do better next time-and made sure that each had two bundles of extra arrows from the packhorses, which made a hundred and twenty arrows altogether, counting those in the quivers. Most of the archers had a dozen or so pushed point-down into the dirt or a convenient fallen log, which was a good trick-faster than reaching back over your shoulder.

"Listen for the horn calls, lad," he repeated again and again, or variations, with the odd slap on the shoulder. "Just do what you've practiced, and it'll all come right."

And if things go wrong, the order will be to scarper up-slope, right quick; we can climb the hillsides faster than the Protector's men; their armor is heavier and they're going to be a lot more tired.

All done, he settled down to wait behind a hundred-foot-tall lodgepole pine on the west side of the road, taking out a hardtack and gnawing quietly at it, his bow across his knees. It took him half an hour to eat it-if you went too fast, you risked damage to your teeth, which since the Change was no joke. It was about two o'clock when the scout stationed at the northward curve of the road stepped out onto the pavement, waved her bow overhead, then vanished back into the undergrowth.

"That's that, then," Aylward said, standing and dusting a few crumbs off the front of his jack.

"How many's that?" Havel asked, as they stopped to pick up a wounded straggler.

"Twenty," Luanne said. "Not counting the three deaders."

Havel made a tsk sound as he looked at the steep slopes on either side. In theory the Protector's men could have set an ambush; Josh's scouts were only a couple of hundred yards ahead, and the only way to get a horse into the forest would be to dismount and lead it. The enemy still had half again his numbers. In practice:

"The Protector thought he had a real army because they had weapons and ranks," he said to her father. "Big mistake."

Will Hutton nodded; he had his helmet pushed back, and now he pulled it back down by the nasal bar.

"Sure was," he said, looking as a Bearkiller stretcher party carried the wounded prisoner back towards the ambulance wagons. An abandoned bicycle lay tumbled not far away.

"What was that you said about these here?"

"Low unit cohesion," Havel said with a grin. "Aka, bugging out on your buddies. Gunney Winters would have been livid. Still, they may improve with time, if we let them."

He looked around, matching the terrain to the maps. "All right, people!" he said, louder. "Dismount by squads, water and feed the horses, and final equipment check. We're going to be caught up to them pretty soon."

"Timing's going to be tricky," Hutton said. "Don't want too much of a battle goin' before we get there."

Havel shrugged. "Well, that wasn't Lady Juniper's plan," he said. "We'll see what happens."

Aylward made a sound of disgust between his teeth. "Straight into it," he said contemptuously.

"You'd rather they were alert?" someone muttered.

He snorted; the Mackenzies had learned to do what the one in charge told them when a fight was brewing, but they weren't long on deference. And they did love to talk; probably picked it up from Juniper and her original crew.

The column of Protectorate troops halted and milled around when they saw the barricade; through binoculars he could see some of them looking over their shoulders.

There was shouting and shoving before they all got off their bicycles; eventually a banner eddied forward, black with the lidless eye in red, hanging from a crossbar on the pole. The enemy opened out into a deep formation, sixteen across and eight or nine deep, and began to trot forward; the man beside the flag had a plumed helmet, and was almost certainly the leader-the baron, in Protector Arminger's terminology. Besides the plume and the position, he was wearing a chain mail hauberk, and that was officer's garb in the Portland Protective Association's forces.

Probably has to lead from the front this time, Aylward thought. Or the others won't follow at all.

Lady Juniper's plan depended on demoralization. It was time to help that along:

He rose, throwing a wisp of dried grass in the air to gauge the wind direction, and looking at the extremely helpful banner to do the same for the target area. Seventy-five yards, give or take a foot; not too far:

"Now," he said, throwing off his cloak and plucking an arrow out of the ground to set it on the string of his war bow.

A signaler put his cowhorn bugle to his lips and blew. Huuu-huuu-huuuu, the weird dunting bellow echoed back from the hills. A banshee squeal answered it; this time they had four bagpipers. They stayed hidden, but all along the hillsides on. both sides of the road Mackenzie archers shed their war cloaks and stepped forward, bows in their hands.

The sudden appearance and rustle of movement combined with the eerie keening of the pipes to make them appear more numerous than they were; imagination painted scores more behind them in the trees. Aylward watched as the ranks eddied and milled, heads twisting this way and that-and behind them again. The baron beside the banner of the Lidless Eye drew his sword.

Well, I can read your bloody mind, mate. Neck or nothing, a charge is the only way you 're getting out. Got to put a stop to that.

Swift as a thought, he drew the string to the angle of his jaw, the heavy muscle bunching in his right arm, then let the string fall off the balls of his fingers. The cord went snap against his bracer; before the sensation faded the next was drawn, and the next, and the next. Pale and gray and directionless, the light was still good for shooting; he could see the slight glint as the arrow hit the top of its arc, and anticipate the sweet smooth feeling you got when you knew it was going to hit:

The bagpipes and the rustling and clanking of his own men must have masked the whistle of cloven air. The first arrow smashed into the face of the Protector's baron beside the nose. The steel point and six inches of the shaft came through just behind the hinge of his jaw, sending him turning in place with a high muffled shriek. The second hit him in the upper chest, made a metallic tink! sound as it broke two metal rings and sank almost to the feathers. The third struck between his shoulder blades as he continued the turn; that ended with his knees buckling and the armor-clad body falling limp with a thud and last galvanic drum of feet on the pavement. The conical helmet rolled away, its strap burst by the force of impact.

Aylward flung up his bow. The bagpipers fell silent, and the Mackenzie archers stood motionless, their bows up, the pointed-chisel bodkin heads of the arrows aimed down at the dense mass of men on the road. The silence was so profound for an instant that he could hear the sheet metal of the helm ring on the asphalt of the roadway.

His own mind could paint what came next; the whistling of the arrow-storm, the hundreds of shafts arching out and down, the punching impact on armor and flesh and bone, the screams of the wounded and dying:

And those laddies don't know that most of us can't shoot as well as I, or draw a hundred-pound stave. So their imaginings will be still more vivid and unpleasant.

A Mackenzie beside him raised a white cloth on the butt-end of a spear and walked forward, gulping a little as crossbows were leveled. He got to within talking distance of the men grouped around Arminger's standard, but when he spoke he pitched his voice to carry to the whole group:

"You'd better surrender," he said, keeping his voice neutral-getting their hackles up was the last thing he wanted. "I'm authorized to offer you your lives, food for the winter and homes for you and any families you had back at the fort-for everyone not guilty of war crimes."

The second-in-command swallowed and looked up from where he'd been staring, at the leaking corpse of the baron. Blood pooled under the slack arrow-transfixed face and spread; there was an astonishing lot in a human body, and it looked worse when it spread on a watertight surface like this. The fecal smell of violent death was muted by the chill of the air, but nonetheless final and unpleasant for that.

A bugle sounded from the northeast, and the clopping roar of hundreds of hooves on pavement. Every face in the Protector's force turned over their shoulder as the Bear-killers came in sight. They pulled up four hundred yards away, their armored bulk and their horses filling the roadway from verge to verge; heads swiveled back to the silent longbowmen on either side, ready to shoot.

Aylward hid his grin. The expression felt far too carnivorous to let into the negotiations.

"You can see we've treated our prisoners well," Juniper Mackenzie said. "And you can see that you can't fight us all-we're on both sides of you."

She was close enough to the western wall of the castle at Upper Soda for the troops who lined the gatehouse and ramparts to hear her plainly. The air was still and cold in the bright day, and her voice had always been bigger than you'd think to look at her. They stirred and murmured along the fighting platform behind the sharpened logs; she could hear the buzz of their voices in the intervals between her sentences, and see the twinkle of sunlight on edged metal. She was almost close enough to see expressions.

Unfortunately that put her well within crossbow range, not to mention that of the great dart-casters and ballistae. The men beside and in front of her-unarmed prisoners from the eastern castle, at once witnesses and shield- knew that too. Their sweat stank of fear, and her stomach turned a little at the smell. Then the baby kicked, and she gave a little whoosh of effort as she kept herself erect and forced her hands away from the gravid curve of her stomach.

Yet it heartened her. "Just look!" she said.

Memory filled in what lay behind. The University militia had come tramping in step; it was even more impressive when they fanned out across the grassland to either side of the road. Three hundred long pikes, moving in bristling unison like the hair on some steel-spined porcupine's back; as many crossbowmen to either side; flanking those her own clan's archers, moving to the wild skirl of the pipes and the hammering of the Lamberg drums, shaggy in war cloak and kilt and plaid, voices roaring out:

"From the hag and the hungry goblin

That into rags would rend ye;

All the sprites that stand by the Horned Man

In the Book of Moons defend ye-"

"And to be sure," she murmured softly to herself, "the trebuchets and catapults are impressive, too, in their own way. And Mike and Aylward on the other side with their merry bands."

She took another breath; beneath her plaid her hand moved in a certain sign, and her will poured into the words:

"All the world is full of dying," she went on. "Why add more? We've food enough for all of you and your families"-the reports said about half did have their womenfolk and children along-"for the winter, and there's land and work in plenty, or we'll help you go anywhere else you will. We know the most of you did what you had to do to live; it's only your leaders who are evil. But don't you want to live like free men again? Don't you want to live without hurting anyone, live honestly without being surrounded by hate and fear? And to show we're honest, here are ten men who're your friends to tell you how we've treated them. Don't let the men who use you and abuse you silence them!

"Go," she added in a normal conversational voice.

Ten of the prisoners trotted forward towards the gate of the castle. They'd volunteered-they must be brave men, and none of them seemed to be very fond of the Protector right now, or his barons. And she didn't think the baron of Upper Soda would dare order them shot down, or thrown into prison.

It's a cleft stick he's in, and nobody to blame but himself, she thought. Bionn an fhirinne searbh an bhfeallaire: The truth is bitter to the betrayer!

Actions had consequences. You didn't have to be in the Craft for the Threefold Rule to apply.

"You have until tomorrow morning," she called aloud. "Be wise and make peace, and you'll see tomorrow's sun set."

She turned and walked away: or waddled, as Judy would have put it. The rest of the prisoners crowded along behind her, until she spread her arms to remind them to hang back a little. Still, the distance to her buggy seemed eternal, the climb into it hard-even with Eilir and Astrid to assist, and as well try to catch the moon with a spoon as keep them back! The whole party walked back to the safety of the allied armies:

Armies! She thought. And aren't we getting grand! That Astrid has a talent for the grandiloquent, that she does!

Luther Finney waited with the others; he was the University Committee's man here, though not in command of their militia.

"Juney, you've got more guts than sense!" he scolded. "You shouldn't be doing that sort of thing in your condition!"

Juniper smiled at him. "Well, why not, Luther? I'm doing it for him, too."

She laid her hand on her stomach and looked at Mike Havel. "What better reason?"

He nodded soberly. "And that was quite a speech, too," he said. "I think-"

Everyone froze as her expression altered. "Oh, my," she said, both hands on her stomach this time. "Oh, my."

Dennis and Chuck were at her side as if by magic, supporting her elbows.

"I think someone should fetch Judy," Juniper said. "This feeling's all too familiar."

Exhausted, Juniper lay back against the pillows and looked down at the tiny crumpled face in the crook of her arm; amazed blue eyes looked back at her from beneath a faint fuzz of wispy red-gold hair. For once she didn't feel guilty about having a fair-sized tent all to herself; the baby needed warmth, and the Coleman stove and air mattress made it fairly comfortable.

"And my own battered, stretched, sore-isn't-the-word self can use a little comfort," she muttered to herself.

Thank You, she added to the image of the Mother-of-All on the portable altar in one corner of the tent. Incense burned there, sweet amid the canvas-and-earth scents and the underlying tang of sweat and blood.

Judy came back in, buttoning the sleeves of her shirt and yawning; she'd taken out the last of the soiled linen, and the birthing stool.

"Half the camp is still up," she said. "The other half is getting up and asking for the news. You'd think nobody had ever had a baby before."

"Born on a battlefield, poor mite," Juniper said. "My little Rudi, my warmth in a darkling time."

A voice coughed outside. Juniper sighed, weary but not ready to sleep just yet.

"Yes, yes," she said.

Four men crowded in; Dennis, Aylward, Luther Finney: and Mike Havel. He was out of his armor and padding, looking younger and less strange-more as a man might have before the Change.

He was also carrying a tray; porridge cooked with dried apples and cherries, cream, scrambled eggs. Juniper's nose twitched, and she was suddenly conscious of a bottomless hunger, deeper than anything since the harvest.

Judy took the well-wrapped baby and handed him to Luther; the elderly farmer took the tiny bundle with the calm ease of experience as father and grandfather and great-grandfather.

As she helped Juniper sit up and fluffed the pillows, Judy launched a preemptive strike:

"Easy ten-hour delivery, nice bouncing six pounds, eight ounces baby boy, with all the limbs and facilities-including good hearing, by the way."

The women's eyes met: And you'd scarcely know he's nearly a month early.

"And a good set of lungs, as you may have heard earlier. He's eaten; the mother should now."

The other men awkwardly admired the baby. The flap of the tent opened again as Eilir darted in with Astrid on her heels.

Mom! she signed, her gestures broad with excitement. Mom! Someone inside hit the baron on the head with an ax, and they're fighting each other – the ones who want to surrender have opened the gate! Chuck's going there now!

Luther Finney put the infant back on Juniper's stomach, careful even in his haste. Her arms took it, but her eyes held Mike Havel for an instant.

"Mike: keep my word for me," she said quietly.

A silent nod, and he was gone. She sighed and lay back; a wail, and she put the baby, to her breast.

"It's not the quietest of worlds, my sweetling," she murmured, stroking his cheek. "But I'll try to make it the best I can for you."