The Protectors war

Chapter Nineteen

Dun Juniper, Willamette Valley, Oregon

May 31st, 2007 AD-Change Year Nine

So, what's this Sir Nigel like? Eilir asked.

She looked around one last time to check that everything was in place. The sun was setting to her right, westward; the sky there bright towards the Coast Range, while the snow peaks of the High Cascades on her left were touched with a last touch of crimson, and a first few stars bloomed in the purple above. Birds sang towards evening, under the murmur of voices and the eternal sough of the forests above.

From what Mom writes, he's quite a man, she went on. Sam thinks so too of course. It's enough to turn me against him, almost.

"I only saw him for a few minutes. He's nice enough, for an old guy, I suppose: sort of like Theoden, if you know what I mean," Astrid replied.

Decrepit, senile and playing sub to a bearded top in a dress? Eilir signed, and dodged a revengeful elbow.

Most of Dun Juniper was gathered to greet the Mackenzie and her guests, and to celebrate victory. For some like Judy Barstow grief was uppermost, but since the Change people had learned death wasn't something that happened invisibly to old people in hospitals. Most were happy, and the walls were a blaze of flower wreaths as colorful as the gardens at the foot of the plateau beneath a bright blue sky scattered with white cloud. Even the meadows beyond seemed to celebrate, their green grass lavish with scarlet foxglove, white daisies, purple lupine and trembling sheets of blue camas flower; the year's colts ran up and down the fences and hedges, kicking up their heels at the excitement and noise. Eilir and Astrid stood before the closed gates with Chuck Barstow and a few others; the rest lined the walls, or stood beside the road, or waited inside. Astrid had a wreath of crimson penstemon in her hair; Eilir had her Scots bonnet on, with raven feathers in the clasp, but some of the flowers in the brooch that held her plaid.

How come you didn't stay over at Larsdalen? Eilir went on. Not that I don't appreciate the company, but you have those horses you were working on.

The approaching column turned from toy-tiny to human-sized as it rode westward down the winding gravel road through the benchland and towards the Dun. Her mother was there, and Sam Aylward, and three figures who must be the Englishmen, and an escort that included Rowan and Cynthia Carson. They were just close enough to hear Juniper Mackenzie throw back her head and laugh.

Astrid went on: "What, don't you want help keeping an eye on the Little Girl from Udun?"

She's improved, Eilir signed. Rudi's been showing her around and she's not sulking nearly as much.

"Yeah: but Larsdalen is getting too crowded to stand," Astrid said. "Especially the big house. You know, with Signe's kids and Luanne's kids and Pam's two-euuu, at Dad's age!-and the staff and their kids and all. It'll be dull with the visitors gone: I've been thinking again we should find a place of our own, you know, a base for the Dunedain. Somewhere strategic, with good hunting and not too many people. Mithrilwood, for preference."

Yeah, I love it here at Dun Juniper, but there are times it drives me crazy the way Larsdalen does for you, Eilir agreed in Sign. I sort of get nostalgic about the way it was here before the Change, just Mom and me and the dogs, even though I hardly remember it, really. Mithrilwood sort of reminds me of that.

"Of course, it'll be a bit crowded anywhere, when we're not camping out," Astrid. said with a certain resignation.

You had to live behind walls with strong friends at hand, if you wanted to live at all; solitude meant deadly danger. "But not as crowded. And not as many kids, running all over the place and yelling and messing things up."

"Wait till you've got some of your own," Dennis Martin said; he was there in peaceful kilt and plaid and flat bonnet, but he carried his great ax, and leaned on the helve.

Astrid shuddered and rolled her eyes at his remark, but stayed silent.

What's with the chopper, Unc' Dennie? Eilir signed.

Chuck's weaponry was part of his role, but Dennis Martin Mackenzie usually didn't carry steel unless he was away from home, and a battle-ax was a lot less handy than a short sword anyway.

"It's to hit Princess Legolamb here with, the minute she starts in with that 'He's just like Barliman Butterbur' stuff again," he said. "To hit her hard. With the sharp side. Many times. Brannigan, OK, you can call him goddamned Tom Benzadril and his wife is Hashberry, but leave me out."

Astrid ignored him, except for a slight elevation of her straight nose and a sniff; Eilir snickered. The cavalcade was closer now. Some of them dismounted at the foot of the rise and came up the rise leading their horses, others riding slowly behind them; a few of the strangers looked up sharply as the Lambeg drums and bagpipes sounded from the gate towers. Eilir waved to her mother, feeling her face blossom in a smile and a load of worry lift. Chuck and Judy Barstow went forward with the welcoming-cup in its long silver-mounted horn; her mother gave each a brief sympathetic hug before she Invoked the God and Goddess and poured their libation. Eilir expected her to turn to them once more after that, but Juniper Mackenzie was laughing again, talking to the older man in the suit of plate-armor. Behind him :

Oh, wow, this one's pretty! Eilir signed discreetly.

Alleyne Loring was whipcord elegance in his leather-and-wool riding clothes, a smile lighting his face as he swung down from the tall black horse and looked around with his left hand on the hilt of his longsword, and a peacock-feather curling in the band of his broad-brimmed hat; the animal rested its head on his shoulder, and he stroked its nose absently. Medium tall, broad in the shoulders, narrow-hipped, moving like a cat: then he removed the hat and bowed to the images on the Dun Juniper gateway, shoulder-length golden hair swaying as he did, and politely poured out a few drops before he emptied the horn of the last small mouthful of wine.

Eilir glanced sharply aside at Astrid. Her anamchara was standing before the gateway, motionless, sighing. The expression on her face:

Oh, wait a minute, Eilir thought. The first time you ever show any interest, and it's one who looks like young Lugh come again? It's not fair!

Astrid murmured aloud, but from the way her lips moved was probably not really aware of it:": for he was young, and he was king, the lord of a fell people: "

Alleyne Loring's eyebrows went up as he took in Astrid Larsson's tall elegant figure. Then he saw the details of white tree and stars on the black leather of her tunic, and his smile widened into a boyish grin.

"Elen sila lumen' omentielvo," he said.

You couldn't be Astrid Larsson's anamchara for near ten years and not know that tongue; besides, those were Eilir's favorite books, too, even if she kept a stricter grasp on the boundaries between fantasy and the common everyday world.

He'd said: A star shines on the hour of our meeting. But even though she could lip-read Elvish, there was no Sign equivalent. Eilir felt her own lips compress in annoyance.

He went on, upending the empty horn: " Si man i yulma nin equantuva?"

Astrid laughed in delight and clapped her hands together: "That's a special-occasion cup, but there's plenty to eat and drink waiting in the Hall, and I'll be glad to get you a refill."

This is not fair! Eilir thought. This is my home and you're the one who gets to talk to him about it. This is just not right!

The young man noticed her and signed-slowly and clumsily: I'm sorry; I don't know much of this language.

Eilrir made herself smile and returned a greeting. Not fair or right at all!

"You've come a long way," Astrid went on, as they all turned and fell into step into the interior of Dun Juniper. "You and your father and your friend."

Behind them the outer gates closed for sunset with a slow soft boom that shuddered through the feet, and then the inner leaves. Lantern light blossomed within-from windows, from larger glass-and-metal lamps on the towers and from the ridgepoles of the log homes that lined the inside of the walls, and bright from the windows of the Hall. That turned the carving and color of beam and pillar into a fantasy of shadow and brightness, crimson and gold and green; the timbers of the eaves continued up above the peak of the roof, and the spirals on them curled deasil and widdershins, gilded by the last rays of the sun. The carved totem-heads at the ends of the rafters loomed over their heads-wolf and bear, coyote and raven and more.

Alleyne checked a pace as the great building loomed up; his huge companion shaped a whistle.

"Well, there's a sight, and no mistake," the bigger man said.

"Like the hall of Meduseld," Alleyne said quietly.

"Just so!" Astrid replied.

Hey! My house! My mom's Hall! Eilir thought. That's where I live!

"We haven't seen anyone from overseas since the Change, much less from England! You'll have a lot to tell us!" Astrid continued enthusiastically.

"Si vanwa na, Romello vanwa: England," he said, laughing again; his teeth were very white. Eilir's nostrils flared; he had a very pleasant masculine scent, clean and hard beneath the usual odors of horse and leather and woodsmoke.

Another figure moved. Eilir started; she'd noticed the man-it was hard not to, since he was six-seven and broad in proportion-but only out of the corner of her eye. He waited until she was looking straight at him before speaking, which was a courtesy she appreciated.

"Nattering on in Elvish again, is he?" he said; it was probably the sort of voice that felt like a bass rumble under your fingertips, if you touched his chest or throat while he spoke. "Bad habit of his: John Hordle's my name."

You do Sign? Eilir asked; the lipreading was a bit more of a strain than usual, given his accent.

Little bit. Want more.

Juniper was looking over her shoulder. Eilir started forward with the others, still feeling a slow burn as she stared at Astrid's back.

I'm your anamchara, not the designated sidekick!

They led their mounts over to the stables and spent a minute tending to them; she saw without surprise that Alleyne Loring knew his way around horses with an easy competence. In fact he moved so gracefully that John Hordle leapt backward, his mouth open in what must have been a shout of alarm. Eilir grounded her pitchfork with a wince and privately thanked the Lady that he'd been wearing a mail shirt; otherwise something rather nasty might have happened.

Astrid looked at her in astonishment: Where were you, anamchara? she signed.

Deep thought, Eilir replied, flushing and racking the long two-tined hayfork. Sorry. Apologize for me, would you?

Alleyne smiled, and after a moment so did John Hordle.

"That's my mom," Rudi Mackenzie said proudly; the Chief of the Mackenzies winked at him as she rode by and he waved enthusiastically.

"Well, yeah," Mathilda Arminger said, deliberately unimpressed. "I saw her when she attacked my train, you know."

There was the trace of a sulk still in her voice; Rudi ignored it; it was only natural to miss her family, when she couldn't go home. Then she went on: "Who's the guy in the funny armor?"

"That's the real English baron," Rudi said proudly. "He and my mom rescued Lord Bear."'

"Oh, him," Mathilda said, sticking her hands in her pockets; she was wearing a Clan-style kilt, though in a plain gray guest-weave rather than the Mackenzie tartan, and a baggy sweater.

"Don't be a grouch," Rudi said. "Want to go and see if we can get something in the kitchens? I'm starving and it's a while until dinner."

"OK," Mathilda said. "But why can't you just tell them to give you something?"

"Did your mom and dad let you eat anything you want between meals?" Rudi said; he knew that was wrong, but it sounded like fun too.

"Well: no. I mean, my mom didn't."

Her face crumpled for an instant, then firmed; she shrugged off the sympathetic arm he put around her shoulder.

"She didn't like me hanging around low places and peons, you know."

"Lady bless, hanging around the kitchens is fun," Rudi said. "It's a lot better than arithmetic lessons, that's for sure."

"Yeah, but they make you do stuff. Chores; And that's not what lords and ladies are supposed to do."

"My mom's a Lady," Rudi pointed out reasonably. "And she does chores. That's fun sometimes too. Anyway, it's got to be done."

Mathilda considered this and nodded, looking a little uneasy. "I suppose so. I don't think my mom would like it, though."

"Look-" He glanced around. "Want to know a secret?"

"Yeah!"

"My mom got a letter from your dad." He smiled as her face glowed. "He's going to send someone to talk to my mom about you at the Sutterdown Horse Fair, after Lugh-nassadh. And you can write a letter back. So why don't we go hit the kitchens, like I said?"

After a moment, Mathilda replied, "Maybe they'll have some of those sweet buns with the nuts?"

"And there's some new kittens there," he said.

"I miss my cat Saladin," she said. "But kittens are always fun."

They trotted off through the dispersing crowd. As they went, Mathilda caught sight of the stars-and-tree sigil on Astrid Larsson's tunic.

"Oh, that stuff again," she said. "Doesn't she ever get tired of it? She's a grown-up."

"Don't you like the story?" Rudi asked. "I liked The Hobbit best, but Astrid says that's 'cause I'm still a kid."

"I think I'll still think it's way too long and full of boring stuff when I'm old, even if Dad got the idea for the flag out of it," Mathilda said. She giggled and dropped her voice to a whisper: "Have you heard about the other Ring story?"

"Other story?"

"The one where the hero's called Dildo Bugger?"

Rudi's face twisted in an expression halfway between fascination and disgust. "You've got to be kidding, Matti."

"No, really-"

Dun Fairfax, Willamette Valley, Oregon

July 22nd, 2007 AD-Change Year Nine

"It took me two Harvests to really get the trick of this, even though I already knew how to drive a team," Juniper called over her shoulder; then as she came to the end of the row: "Whoa! Dobbin! Maggie!"

There were two horses pulling the reaper, big platter-hoofed draft beasts with dark brown hides, sweating after a long day working in the hot July sun. They stopped as she called and leaned back against the reins; then she rose and rubbed at her backside for a moment; the metal bicycle-seat of the machine was hard, and muscling the big horses around was real work. Her hands and forearms were sore with day after day of doing it from can to can't, and the long sinews of her legs ached as well.

Eilir waved from the seat of the other reaper, pausing a second. I'll take the last of it! she signed, and Juniper bowed from the waist and waved a hand.

"Be my guest, daughter mine! Too much like hard work for us crones!"

They'd been working their way in from the edges of the field since the dew lifted with no more rest than the horse teams required, and only one ten-foot-wide band of standing grain remained, stretching from east to west along the contour of the hillside. It still wasn't nearly as hard as cutting wheat with twenty pounds of cradle-scythe the way they had their first two harvests, though; she didn't have the height or heft to use one of those. And a reaper could harvest many times the amount a cradler did in a single day, which was a blessing. Summer rainstorms were van-ishingly rare in the Willamette's reliable climate, but you still had to get the wheat and barley and oats in as fast as you could. Too much delay and the grain would start to shatter, drop out of the head and be lost on the ground.

"It took you a while to learn the trick because of the slope?" Nigel Loring asked, straightening as he bound the last sheaf of a row and rubbing at the small of his back for a moment.

"Yes," she said. "You have to be careful on a thirty-degree slant like this, or you keep heading down and the horses get into the wheat-and you only get to practice two weeks in the year. It's a lot easier out on the flat, say over at Dun Carson west of here. More difficult on a hillside for the team, too, but Dobbin and Maggie are good-hearted and willing for all they're young."

She glanced over at him as he stacked a brace of sheaves, heaving one in each hand-and they weighed sixty pounds each. Loring handled the task with an easy economy of motion, bare to the waist and tanned nut-brown. He was only a few inches taller than she, but broad-shouldered and built like a greyhound; deep chest, flat belly and narrow waist. His tanned skin was scarred here and there, a little loosened with middle age, and his sparse blond chest hair was as grizzled as the thinning yellow thatch on his pate, yet his slender body was nearly as tight and compact as a boy's. Farmwork would keep you fit, but she knew that the hint of dancer's grace in his movements came from martial arts in his youth and sparring with the sword since-one had to be cat-agile for both.

The hillside field they were cutting was one of Sam Aylward's, the last of the Dun Fairfax crop. Eilir's reaper wheeled away as her mother reined in and started to cut the last strip down the center, the long boards of the creel whirling and bending the yellow-gold grain back as the teeth of the cutter-bar snipped it, amid a smell of dust and meal and green juices. Poppies fell as well, like bloodred drops among the gold of the wheat-they were traditional English corn poppies, which seemed to have mysteriously naturalized themselves around here, starting with the Dun Fairfax fields. Juniper suspected Sam's clandestine homesick hand with a few packets of seed salvaged from a garden-supply store rather than natural spread from garden plots, but either way they were pretty.

Birds and insects and small beasts fled the advancing machine as the straw fell onto the moving canvas belt behind the cutting teeth, and an endless belt of wooden tines raked it into a smooth windrow that fell onto the ground behind. Juniper groaned slightly as she stretched again, then jumped down and bent and put her palms against the ground; the wheat stubble was prickly beneath her hands, but shot through with soft young shoots of the clover sown among it. When the small of her back felt relaxed she straightened and twisted until something went click! in her spine, and then bent backward with her hands linked over her head.

And were you watching, good Sir Nigel? she thought with amusement as she opened her eyes. Hard to tell, with that polite poker face of yours. And of course, would I be pleased or annoyed if you did?

The reaper left a long row of cut wheat in a snakelike trail over the ground for the workers who bound the grain, a score or better for each machine. Bend and grab a handful, bend and grab a handful, and keep on until you had a bundle as thick as your arms could span. Then take a swatch in each hand, twist it around to hold it, tuck it in, and you had a bound sheaf; eight leaning together in a pyramid made a stook, and they could wait overnight with their heads up out of the dew, ready to be pitched onto a wagon and carted back to Dun Fairfax for threshing. The air was warm and still as they bent to the rhythmic effort, the tips of the trees motionless; it was a relief to have a good excuse simply to watch. She could feel the westering sun beating on her like warm pillows, as the thin homespun linsey-woolsey shirt clung to her body.

Sam's daughter Tamar led up a two-wheeled cart pulled by a pair of little yearling oxen, her own hand-reared pets. It held a big plastic barrel of water and a motley collection of mugs; she filled one for each of them. All Sam's household were here in the field, and most of the able-bodied from the other families who held land in Dun Fairfax. None of the farms were big enough to justify a reaping machine of their own, so the dun kept two owned in common to share around, and everyone worked together getting in the harvest, turn and turn about as fields came ready-the usual arrangement in a Mackenzie settlement. People had come down from Dun Juniper as well, trading working time for future barrels of flour, or simply pitching in for neighborliness' sake since they planted little grain themselves; altogether there were about enough to bind and stook the wheat as fast as the two machines cut it.

"Thank you, sweetling," Juniper said to the girl. "And the horses are thirstier than we, sure. They should have something before they're taken to the pond or they'll overdo."

Juniper took off her straw hat and fanned herself as she drank; most of the scores of people in the field were in kilt and singlet or less, but she wore a long-sleeved shirt against the sun, and kneesocks, and tied a scarf around her coppery hair beneath the hat; even so her freckles had spread and multiplied, as they did every summer. The lukewarm water tasted wonderful in her gummy, dusty mouth, and she wished she could plunge her head into the barrel. Instead she handed back the mug for a refill, with a murmur of thanks; it was plastic too, with the beginning of a crack on the rim. Nigel's was clay and made after the Change, a reddish brown ware plain except for a stylized feather drawn on the side, but skillfully thrown and fired.

"My ninth harvest since the Change," Nigel said meditatively. "And every one seems-"

"Like a reprieve?" Juniper suggested.

He raised the mug of water in salute. "Just so."

"Is this very different from a harvest in England?" Juniper asked; the first year had been hard here, and she suspected much worse in the British Isles, even on the islands.

"The harvest? Surprisingly similar; a bit earlier, and if this weather is typical-"

"It is that."

"-then the climate's more reliable here. In England it can rain any day of the week in any month of the year, and nowadays with no warning at all. It makes getting in the corn a trifle nerve-racking."

He looked north and east towards the towering peaks of the Cascades and the green slopes that were like a wall along the edge of the world.

"We've nothing like that in England, of course. I won't say this is the single most beautiful spot I've ever seen, but it's wonderfully varied. I like the contrast, the fields and orchards here-which are very much like parts of southern England-and then the tall mountains and wildwood so close, and the changing patterns of sun and shadow: beauty on very different scales, but complementary."

Juniper looked at him. "Well, well," she said. "It's hidden depths you have, Nigel."

His slightly watery blue eyes twinkled. "Sandra Arminger said much the same thing. But it was far more alarming, coming from her."

Juniper snorted and threw a twist of straw at him. "I should hope so!"

Her eyes went across the crowded field; Mathilda Arminger was there, running around with the other children, and helping, as they did.

"I'm surprised she's not a total horror, with parents like that," she said quietly. "And she's just a child, when you get to know her. Spoiled more than a little, and with some odd notions, but not spoiled to the point of being really rotten, if you know what I mean."

"Is minic ubh bhan ag cearc dhubh, as the Gaels say," Loring replied, and winked at her.

"A black hen may often have a white egg, yes," she agreed. "But it's what hatches that counts."

"She's young, yet, very young. It takes a good deal to spoil a child that age, and I'd venture that the Armingers would shield her from the worst of the world they've made, for a while at least. Even complete rotters often love their children, in my experience."

He stared a moment, as if lost in memory. Tamar had gone around to fill buckets for the horses; they lowered their massive square heads and drank with slobbering enthusiasm. Down at the other end of the field the second reaper cut the last of the wheat, and there was an explosion of cheers from the folk at work. A half-dozen of them lifted the driver out of the seat and began tossing her in the air amid whoops and screams; she recognized Astrid, and the massive form of Little John Hordle, and the bright head of Alleyne Loring.

And all three of them pitched in to help as if there were no question of it being otherwise, Juniper thought. Which is a good sign, in my experience.

Rudi Mackenzie was around the edges there as well; then he and Mathilda Arminger came sprinting up to where Juniper waited.

"Can we take Dobbin and Maggie?" her son said. His eyes sparkled like green-gray gems in his tanned face, and he was still full of energy despite being allowed to work with the binders for the first time this year. "Please?"

"All right," she said. "But remember; get them cooled down a bit before you let them drink."

"I know, Mom," he said, politely not adding an of course, though he'd grown up with horses in general and these two in particular-they were half his age.

Juniper and Nigel unharnessed the animals; Rudi and Mathilda sprang onto their massive backs, sitting as proudly as knights on their destriers. The horses accepted it calmly, moving off at an ambling walk towards the pond in the far southwestern corner of the field, where a willow-grown earthen bank held back the creek and made a watering point when this field was in the pasture-lea part of its rotation. Of course, they'd have done that without any guidance at all. Horses were not mental giants, but they usually had enough sense to betake themselves to water when they were thirsty; the problem was keeping them from drinking too much and doing themselves an injury.

"Good-natured beasts," Loring said, as they straightened the harness and draped it over the seat of the reaper. The bells on the great collars jingled one last time. "Mostly Suffolk punch, aren't they?"

"About three-quarters," Juniper agreed. "Chuck, ummm, found eight Suffolk mares right after the Change, and I like the breed. Strong as elephants and friendly as dogs, mostly. The stallion we put them to was a Percheron but we've been breeding back."

He cocked an expert's eye. "Your son has a way with horses; I've noticed it before. He reminds me of Alleyne at that age. Maude taught him mostly, of course. She had the better seat, in any case-far better than mine, then."

For a moment a bleak misery of grief settled over his usual mild cheerfulness, and then he shook it off with a scarcely visible effort, turning instead to the scene before them. Melissa Aylward came down from the gate at the top of the field, where a brace of wagons had drawn up half an hour ago. Quiet fell as she halted by Eilir's reaper and took the last grain cut in her hands, plaiting and shaping it into the form of the Queen Sheaf; she was the High Priestess of Dun Fairfax, and it was her right to make the Corn Mother and give Her the first blessing.

Juniper had been a little surprised at how good Nigel Loring was at binding a sheaf-or any other of a countryman's tasks, from handling a plow team to plashing a hedge. When she said so he smiled at her.

"My dear Ms. Mackenzie-"

"Nigel, Nigel! You've been living under the same roof as me all summer! You're being Stiff, Reserved and Proper again, like an old central-casting Englishman! And Dennie accuses me of putting it on!"

"Very well, my dear Lady Juniper. I grew up in farming country."

"Aristocrats though, I thought? Landed gentry of Hampshire?"

He laughed aloud at that. "Well, we were saddled with an ancient, leaky, slowly subsiding stone barn of a house and a large, very shaggy garden, which we were too stubborn to hand over to the National Trust, yes. Plus a few weedy fields around the mausoleum that raised a regular crop of debt every year."

"I resemble that remark," she said, laughing in turn. "When I inherited my great-uncle's house and land"-she inclined her head northward towards the hills and what was now the Mackenzie clachan-"right up until the Change the real legacy was a continual threat of having it sold from under me for back taxes, with a minor key in unaffordable roof repairs. I had more disposable income when I was living in a trailer and busking for meals than I did with a fortune in real estate."

"And the taxes appertaining thereunto. As the saying goes, Land gives one a station in society and then prevents one from keeping it up."

"Oh, yes. Though I'm surprised to hear you going Wilde like that, Nigel."

"In deadly Earnest, I assure you." Loring chuckled. Then he went on with a wealth of experience in his tone: "There are few so poor as the land-poor."

"Although come the Change: "

He nodded. "But what with one thing and another, I learned my way around the Home Farm. And Sam's family were neighbors of the Lorings. In fact, until we sold off everything apart from the manor house and one farm in 1921, they rented land from us, and had for generations. My father died when I was an infant, and my mother when. I was about three. My grandmother raised me, bless her, and turned me into the Edwardian fossil that I am. Her world stopped changing about the time my grandfather Eustace stood too close to a German howitzer shell near Mons in 1914."

"What was she like?" Juniper asked; her mind conjured up a hawk-faced old dame in a high-collared bombazine dress. Though that's probably my hyperactive storyteller's imagination at work.

Nigel shook his head. "She was what is politely called 'formidable'-which meant she terrified everyone, including myself-a memsahib right out of Kipling. Which is one reason I spent a good deal of time over at Crooksbury when I was a lad; Sam and I were always getting into mischief together, and later I used to help out there when I was down from school, until Sam's father gave up the struggle."

"Your grandmother didn't make a fuss? If she was that stiff and old-fashioned-"

"Oh, no, she didn't object at all." He smiled reminis-cently. "Grandmamma was of the old breed; it was quite the thing for me to have a friend like Sam while I was young, as long as he didn't, as she would put it, 'presume.' And since Sam would rather have spent a week shoveling muck onto a spreader than one afternoon taking tea with Grandmamma, it all turned out for the best. Though God knows it would have been different if I'd been a girl: In any event, I learned a good deal that was extremely useful after the Change; not that anyone could have anticipated it would happen, nor that I would then spend the better part of a decade teaching ex-urbanites how to farm in a very old style."

"I resemble that remark too, except that I was learning with them while I taught," Juniper said. "Although I did have a nice little half-acre vegetable garden before the Change, and an orchard, and Cagney and Lacey-my Percherons-and I took up weaving as a winter hobby in my teens. Thank the God and Goddess we had some real farmers around here, and Chuck, and Sam most of all."

Now the rest of the folk were coming towards her. Juniper and Nigel Loring spent a moment unbolting the cutter bar, folding the creel and raising it and the bar to the traveling position.

"This is a good piece of work," he said as they worked with wrench and pliers from the toolbox beneath the seat. "We've: they've been making some much like it in England, these last few years. After salvaging the better-preserved working models from exhibits, of course."

"Only the last few?" Juniper said, raising a brow.

"There weren't enough horses left in England before that, or even oxen. We had to breed up our herds from what few we could bring through the first year on the offshore islands, plus a very scanty trickle from Ireland. Mainland Britain was eaten bare, except of animals that could hide well, which mostly turned out to mean noxious vermin of various sorts. It was strictly spades and hoes and sickles for quite some time, and we're: they're: still shorter than you are here."

Juniper shuddered in sympathy. Farming was sweating-hard work with plenty of oxen and horses to help and the tools and machines for them to pull and power. Doing without that help meant brutal killing toil, and you got a lot less out of it. Unaided humans just couldn't cultivate enough ground to do more than live hand-to-mouth.

"We were lucky-the ranching country over the mountains had stock we could trade for, though getting the working equipment was another story."

She patted the reaper affectionately. "We were certainly glad to buy these and retire the cradle scythes! Change Year Three it was; a stiff price, but worth it."

"They're not local?"

"No, from Corvallis," she said. "We could make them"-there was nothing in the simple machine that couldn't be duplicated by any good carpenter and a smith-"but they have machines worked by waterwheels for their little factories, so it's cheaper. Most of the Valley buys from them."

Loring nodded. Just then the others came up in what would have been a procession if it weren't so casual and hadn't included so many children and dogs running around; Miguel Lopez and his family stood a little aside, looking awkward, although his friend Jeff Dawson was an enthusiastic Dedicant now.

Melissa Aylward led, walking before the corn dolly she'd just plaited, impressively solemn. Sam Aylward and Chuck Barstow carried it behind her, held high on crossed spears. This Queen Sheaf would belong to Clan Mackenzie as a whole, as well as Dun Fairfax, which was an honor for the smaller settlement. The wheat-straw figure she'd plaited was four feet from splayed feet past swelling belly to rough-featured head, and crowned with poppies. Melissa herself had shed most of the extra weight she'd put on before the birth of her new daughter, but hadn't gone back to full fieldwork yet and looked solidly matronly and deep-bosomed in her airsaid, a fit vessel for the Mother. The more so as she held a handful of wheat as a scepter in her right hand and red-haired little Fand in the crook of her left arm.

Juniper bent her head and Melissa touched it with the stalks; then both High Priestesses fell in behind the Queen Sheaf, leading the harvesters walking two and two to the north end of the field where a great oak stood beside the laneway and the field gate and a young hawthorn hedge. Most of the rest of the settlement's people waited there, the ones who hadn't been in the fields today by reason of age or infirmity or very pressing business.

The two men knelt and lowered the plaited figure before Juniper; she made the Invoking pentagram above it. "All hail to Brigid, Goddess of the Ripened Corn, who accepts the given sacrifice!" she called aloud, smiling. "And to the Corn King, Lugh of the Sun, who dies in this season so that the harvest may be reaped!"

Her voice became a little more solemn for a moment as she turned to her people: "With the work of our hands we help the Lord and Lady make this place the fruitful garden that it is-not wilderness nor iron desert paved and bound, but instead our rightful home. For though we here shall die, as die men and trees and beasts and ripened corn each in their appointed season, yet the blood, the house, the field, the woods endure; and every babe and lamb and new-sprouted leaf proves the immortality we share."

Chuck and Sam braced their spears against the gnarled trunk of the oak, so that the Corn Mother could oversee the festivities; the spears stood for the Lord of the Harvest as well. Melissa broke the loaf made from the first sheaf they'd cut and set it before Her, standing for an instant with a fold of her airsaid drawn over her head.

"And She says: eat!" she said, turning and dropping the shawl back on her shoulders.

The harvest workers stood in a circle around her; they gave three cheers, flinging up their joined hands. After that everyone pitched in, helping set the trestle tables and benches and unload the harvest supper, taking turns to run down to the pond in the lower corner of the field and shed their kilts and dive in to slough off the dust and sweat. One of the wagons carried soap and towels, clothes for the Dun Fairfax folk and robes for the guests who'd be walking back to Dun Juniper later. This wasn't the harvest feast proper-that would come on Lughnassadh, next week, when everyone had had a chance to rest a bit, and be a lot more elaborate-but it was the beginning of it. In most duns there was considerable good-natured rivalry between households to outdo each other at a harvest potluck.

Juniper shook out her water-darkened hair, then pinned her plaid with a jeweled brooch done in swirling knotwork of sinuous gripping beasts; she'd brought along a clean set of gear that included silver-buckled shoes and an embroidered shirt with a ruffled front as well as clean kilt and plaid. Someone handed her a wreath of poppies and oxeye daisies, and she set that on her head as well.

Since the Chief must look spiffy where possible, she thought, with a wry inward shrug. Well, I was used to dressing up in costume like this for a performance before the Change! Now it's different, though. Now these are my clothes and the performance is my life.

Sir Nigel, on the other hand, wore one of the coarse, gray, hooded guest robes with casually regal authority, as if it were his everyday garb, despite the way the hem trailed on the ground. He bowed slightly as she reappeared.

"My word, but you look dramatic," he said. "And quite authentically Celtic, if not quite Scottish."

Juniper turned up her hands. "What can I say? I was just now thinking that I wore stuff like this before the Change to look exotic-and today, it's just what I wear."

"Quite. I felt: a proper burke wearing plate armor, as Sam would say, for the longest time after I'd learned to use it well. As if I were trapped in one of Alleyne's tourneys and couldn't get out, or in one of my childhood daydreams. Now it's quite natural, except when I think about it."

He offered her an arm with a courtly gesture, and she tucked a hand through it; the forearm under her hand felt as if it had been molded out of hard living rubber.

"Ahhh!" Sam Aylward said, seating himself and taking a first swallow of beer from a crock kept cool in an old plastic trash barrel full of cold springwater. "Dennis Martin Mackenzie, my thanks!"

The big bearded man doffed his bonnet and showed his bald spot in a bow. "Hell, they're your hops and barley, Samuel Aylward Mackenzie. Plus the mountains contributed the water free of charge."

"But you did the brewing, mate."

"Pity we don't have any ice, to get it really cold," Dennis replied, with a malicious twinkle.

Aylward shuddered dramatically. "Bite your tongue, Yank! If I didn't like to taste the beer, I could drink ice water cut with vodka."

Then he looked out at the field of stooked sheaves. "Well, that's done and now we can all relax and lie about eating chockies till next spring."

He was smiling as he said it, and there were groans from most within earshot; the work of the harvest wouldn't really be over until Mabon, still months away-at which time the fall plowing started anyway. Late-planted winter gardens under mulch would yield a bit through most of the cold season. But at least the main crop was in, the breadstuff that was the literal staff of life. Plenty of it was on the long plank tables, in the form of biscuits tapped still hot out of thick clay traveling ovens, and of baskets full of warm round loaves marked with the eight-spoked Wheel of the Year on their crusts.

They went with butter, cheese, fresh salads-everyone gorged on greens this time of year-glazed hams, a great cold roast beef, fried chicken, a noble dish of Sam's apple-cured bacon with wild chanterelle mushrooms, steamed vegetables, a huge pot of baked beans with bits of fat pork standing amid the crumbling brown crust, and for dessert, cream with the first peaches and berries and bowls of dark red Mona cherries, and honey for dipping. Jugs of cold water, milk, Dennie's home brew, cider and wine and chilled herbal tea went down on the planks.

Juniper was suddenly conscious of how ravenous she was, and how good the salty brown smell of the ham was, and that the first new potatoes were waiting, steaming gently as the lids of the pots were removed, beside deep royal purple baby beets:

And I'm aware of the fact that I intend to not worry about anything for the rest of the day, starting with letters from the Protector and the negotiations. Work drives out care, but so does sheer willpower.

Everyone waited politely while the Lopez family said their grace, then started passing plates. Juniper took a sampling of side dishes around a slab of the ham, added a dab of the strong homemade mustard before she began to eat, and noticed Nigel Loring dipping a spoon into a crock of equally strong homemade creamy horseradish to put beside thin-sliced rare roast beef.

"Careful," she said. "It's good, but Melissa makes it hot enough to jump over for luck like a Beltane bonfire."

"All the better," he said, nodding up the table.

Melissa sat at the head of the trestle table, with Sam Ayl-ward at her right and an improvised cradle of sheaves and blankets on her left. There was a tender fondness in Loring's face as he saw the other man raising his infant daughter in both hands, chuckling when she grabbed at his face and tiny pink fingers closed on one nostril.

"I always thought Aylward would be a good father," he said; the buzz of conversation was loud enough that privacy was possible, even in the open air, if you leaned close. "I'm very glad to see him settled. He claimed he was married to the SAS, of course, and that 'roots are for ruddy turnips, sir.' "

"That's hard to imagine, after all these years. Sam seems like a butte or some other natural feature-anything solid and strong-and about as rooted as a man can be and not sprout leaves like the Jack-in-the-Green," Juniper said.

Then she paused to cut one of the new potatoes across, add a pat of butter and chew blissfully. When she had swallowed: "Of course, the time before the Change seems: unreal a good part of the time."

"Except when you wake and everything since the Change seems like a fading dream, and in a minute you'll hear autos and aircraft and the television," Loring said quietly.

Juniper nodded. "Less and less often, but it still happens," she said. "And will until the last of us who were old enough to remember the time before pass on."

Then she shrugged and smiled. "As for Sam, not a day's gone by since I found him in April of the first Change Year that I haven't thanked Cernunnos for him."

Loring coughed slightly. Juniper grinned at his blush and went on: "Yes, I'm quite serious about it," she said. "Really I am, all the way through. Though I'm told I can be surprisingly rational most of the time: "

It's true that most stereotypes have a core of fact in 'em, she thought with amusement. So some Englishmen really do dread embarrassment more than they do fire and sword! I think before the Change the Lorings were very, very old-fashioned. Now they may be back in fashion: who knows? He doesn't talk much about his past, or hasn 't until just recently.

Nigel cleared his throat, "We have: they have traditions much like this back in England," he said. "The harvest supper and even the corn-straw figurines. Done with an Anglican emphasis, of course. The king encouraged it; for that matter, so did I, before we had our little falling-out."

"You mean before he tried to kill you?" Juniper chuckled and filled her mug with Dennie's brew, then held the tall pitcher over his. "More? Here you go then. I'm not surprised some of it's familiar: Who do you think you Christians stole it all from originally? Or to put it another way, we modern Witches reconstructed-plundered, stole and copied, some say-from the same sources."

"Pass those creamed potatoes, would you? Ah, reconstruction is one thing, but I don't doubt the whole affair feels a little different since the Change, eh? More serious for most? And we're none of us really modern anymore, are we?"

Juniper gave him a considering look. "Well, you're not just a pretty face, are you then?" she said, and enjoyed his blush again. "Or just a strong sword arm. Yes, it's: different now. I suppose you were always Church of England yourself?"

"Nominally, for tradition's sake." He smiled at himself. "I was a choirboy, if you can believe it."

They chatted and ate as the sky darkened and the last of sunset's gold faded from the stooked grain and turned ruddy on the mountaintops eastward. Lamps were hung from the branches of the oak tree, and eventually the youngsters down at the foot of the table began a round of songs. Someone brought Juniper her fiddle case; she spent a moment tuning, then joined in as one tune after another was called.

At last something unfamiliar came, and she cocked her head, listening:

"We'll run the course

From Stonehenge up to Uffington!

On a white chalk horse we'll ride: "

Hordle's deep bass and Alleyne's firm baritone sounded through the warm darkness, as everyone listened to catch the unfamiliar words. Sir Nigel unexpectedly joined in, his voice a little rougher than his son's:

"Within the wood where Robin Hood once made his secret den We'll play a song and sing along with all his merry men And tell a tale with fine-brewed ale and friends from long ago And tread the miles of Robin's cross-"

She caught the lilt and whistled softly, nodding her head to the beat as she memorized the words, then struck up her fiddle to follow along. Not long after yawns said it was time to go, after a long day of heavy work and a full meal; a good many of the children were already asleep on blankets, and scarcely stirred as they were lifted into the wagons for the short trip home. Their older siblings helped the adults stow the rest of the gear and the remains of the feast, and hitch the reapers for towing. Juniper walked alongside one cart where Tamar and Rudi, Mathilda and young Edain Aylward all lay tumbled amid blankets and straw like exhausted puppies, stirring a little when the vehicle jounced.

The farm lane twisted away eastward like silk ribbon in the night, field and forest murmurous on either side. Ahead she could see the outline of Dun Fairfax's walls, and lights behind them; a few hundred yards to her right Artemis Creek chuckled over its bed, and the roadway beside it was white beneath stars and moon, next to the dark riverside trees.

Nigel Loring was not far away, she noticed, and he'd slung on the heater-shaped shield with the five roses, and his sword. Along with the loose robe, it gave him an oddly Biblical look, or perhaps that of some warrior monk of the Crusades.

Although I doubt he'd do well at Mt. Angel, she thought whimsically. Abbot Dmowski is a good enough man, but sadly lacking in a sense of humor, I think. There's a good deal of quiet humor in this man, when he isn't sad.

Alleyne Loring was on the other side of the wagon, also armed and unobtrusively alert. Near him were Astrid Lars-son and Eilir, both looking as if they were trying to crowd next to him without making it too obvious.

Not obvious to anyone who's blind, perhaps, she thought, and suppressed a grin. It wasn't that she didn't sympathize with both girls, but: The Foam-Born will have their little jokes, and oh, how the young suffer! What storms and stress and follies! And how they hate it when anyone laughs!

John Hordle was not far away, whistling the old tune softly in the mild summer night. He didn't have the same air of hidden tension as the others; more one of alert patience, if she read him aright-and she had some confidence in her skill at that. They bid farewell to the Dun Fairfax folk at their own gate and turned north through the winding track that climbed the densely wooded hillside. Within it light vanished save for a few lanterns hooked over spearheads, casting flickering illumination upward into the branches, and once glinting suddenly from eyes beside the trail-a fox or coyote, from their green flash and the swift flight.

Then they came through onto the benchland that held Dun Juniper; stars and moon were almost painfully bright for an instant, silvering the waterfall to her right and the tall white walls of the Mackenzie citadel. The wind blew in her face, cooler now and fir-scented. The horses snorted, knowing their stalls were close; a sentry hailed them quietly, out among the stock in the fenced paddocks. The gates swung open with a groan, and suddenly there was light from the windows of homes and Hall, and hands to help.

Mom? Eilir signed.

Juniper started from a reverie. My heart?

Astrid and I thought we might take some of the Dunedain: and Alleyne and his friend: up through the woods after Lughnassadh, she said, and nodded eastward and north. These are some boar that have been sniffing around the gardens, and: well, just in case anyone was nosing around who shouldn't. Her eyes flicked to Mathilda Arminger.

Good idea, Juniper said. The crew working on Dun Laurel could use some feeding, if Cernunnos favors you.

Then on impulse, looking down at her son: "Nigel, give me a hand with these two, would you?" Not even the rocking passage through the woods had woken the two nine-year-olds.

"My pleasure," he said, and seemed to mean it.

"It seems a shame to wake them at all," Juniper said softly.

"Then don't," Nigel replied unexpectedly. "They grow so quickly, and very soon they'll be too old to be carried to bed anymore."

They lifted carefully; Mathilda was considerable weight in her arms, but the Englishman bore her son's solid sixty pounds without evidence of strain. The big loft room was dark but welcoming, warm from the heat soaked into the brick chimney that ran through it from the hearth below, scented with flower sachet, wool and wood and wax; neither child did more than stir and mutter as they were undressed and tucked into the blankets on their futon beds. Nigel Loring paused for a moment, looking down at Rudi Mackenzie. His sword-callused fingers brushed back a lock of tousled hair the color of raw gold.

"I envy you," he murmured softly. At her look he went on: "Alleyne has grown to be a man any father would be proud of, but sometimes I still miss the boy he was. There was so little time, and I was often away, as a soldier had to be then. Maude and I wanted more children, but-ah, well, forgive an old man's foolishness."

He looked up and smiled at her, blinking in the darkness. Suddenly the thought rammed home in her: I want this man.

Less a thought than knowledge, felt with heart and belly and loins as much as brain, but that too. I have been too long alone; and this man is the one I want-the one She sent to me. Fierce and tender, terrible and gentle. And I will bring out that quiet laughter, and make him whole again.

He rose and bowed slightly. After his footsteps had faded on the treads of the stairs, her smile remained.

I will have him. So mote it be!