S. Stirling - Dies The Fire

Dixon's face went still more blotchy. "I cast no spells!" he spat. "I pray to the living God!"

Juniper took a deep breath. "Let's put it another way: We both believe in the power of prayer. If a group of people get together to chant and ill-wish someone, it has a way of working regardless of the details of the ritual. and then of bouncing back on the ill-wishers, which has already happened to your town, no?"

She raised a hand. "Or let's discuss it in purely secular terms. You're an influential man, ruler as well as priest- and believe me, I've come to understand what that means, however much I didn't want to. If you go on inciting people to regard us as evil Satanists worthy of death, and quoting Exodus 22:18 or Galatians 5:19 as if they applied to us-"

"It is the Word of God-"

Judy slapped the table with a crack like timber breaking and barked: "They're mistranslations, you nitwit, as anyone who knew more Hebrew or Greek than King James's so-called scholars could have told you. M'khasephah means someone who malevolently uses spoken curses to hurt people, which we're specifically forbidden to do by the Wiccan Rede, and pharmakia means a poisoner. If you want to preach against suffering a poisoner to live, go right ahead!"

"Spiritual poison-"

"Shut up!" Juniper said. Then, more calmly: "Whatever the origins of the phrases, keep repeating them and eventually you'll produce a community which hates us and attacks us physically. In which case, why should we fight for one enemy against another?"

Laughton cut in: "We have freedom of religion in Sut-terdown, Ms: Lady Juniper."

"And we Mackenzies do too," she said, nodding towards John Carson. "Our livestock boss here is a Presbyterian. Some of our clan are Witches, some are unbelievers, some are Christians of various sorts."

The latter two a rapidly diminishing proportion, I admit, she didn't say aloud. That would diminish the force of my point.

"We don't call anyone evil because of their faith. There are many roads to the Divine. We'd just like you to promise to reciprocate, as a demonstration of goodwill."

Dixon looked out the windows, then back at her.

"You'll take my promise?" he said, sounding surprised.

"I don't like you," Juniper said bluntly, meeting his eyes. "But I've never heard that your word isn't good."

The silence stretched; then he nodded. Juniper returned the gesture with an inclination of her head.

"Chuck, rumors are probably flying. Tell everyone we'll have a clan meeting after supper to thrash things out, and an Esbat tomorrow night to call for the Lord and Lady's aid, and would welcome any other variety of prayers as well. We'll need all the help we can get."

The moon wouldn't be full or dark for the Esbat, but that wasn't absolutely required, just customary and preferred.

"We'll also send out scouts to get our own information. Sam, handle it, and get us ready." He nodded silently. "John, we'll need pretty well all the saddle-broke horses."

"Not bicycles?" he said.

"No. Horses are faster over the distances we're talking. And a wagon team at least. Diana, Andy, supplies. And whatever we can spare for the Sutterdown folk, until this is over; slaughter some stock if you have to. Judy, as far as getting our people protected against the plague, and for casualty care: "

When she was finished, she leaned over the table to shake hands with the town's three leaders. Dr. Gianelli looked drained, as if he'd had some noxious cyst lanced; Sheriff Laughton was relieved, like a man drowning who'd been thrown a spar. And Dixon, as usual, looked full of suppressed fury.

You did help neighbors. It wasn't necessary to like all of them.

"L ord Jesus, Mike, these were a bad bunch did this," Will Hutton said quietly; his face was grayish.

They bore the last of the bodies out of the Clarke farmhouse wrapped in blankets. They could each carry one easily; neither corpse weighed more than fifty pounds. They'd found these in an upstairs bedroom. It looked as if they'd tried to hide under a bed, and been dragged out by the ankles-a small leg had been severed at the knee.

One still had a stuffed toy bear in a cowboy outfit in his hands when they found him; Havel had wrapped it with the body.

"Bad as I've ever seen," the Texan went on as they carried them out to where the gravediggers labored. "Bad as those crazy men north of Kooskia."

"Worse, Will," Havel said. "More of them, and better organized."

He didn't add: And dead is dead; it doesn't matter much what happens to the body. Hutton was a more conventional man than he, and Havel wouldn't willingly offend him.

And the skin between his shoulders crawled a little at the memory, anyway. It reminded him a little too much of stories he'd heard Grannie Lauder tell, stories of wendigo and mischepesu. Only those had been stories, something for a kid to shiver over while he sat on the floor in front of the fire. This had been unpleasantly real: and in the Changed world, who could tell what was real, anyway? Maybe there were man-eating spirits in the winter woods, now.

He didn't want to talk about that, either.

"Glad it's still coolish weather," he said instead.

The Clarkes had a family graveyard, in a patch bordered by pines and willows near the crest of the low hill to the west of the homestead. The first headstones marked Clarke were dated before 1914, but these would be the last of that line, he supposed.

More than twenty fresh graves doubled its size, and spadefuls of the wet black earth were still flying up; two Bearkillers helped stand guard, and another six helped Sheriff Woburn's posse dig, their armor and weapons draped across their saddles. The horses all grazed nearby, hobbled, rolling now and then. There was no point in keeping them out of the wheat.

Woburn called one of his men over, turning his back when he drew up a corner of each blanket so that only the two of them need see the faces.

"That's little Mort Williams, all right," the man said. "And Judy Clarke, old man Clarke's great-granddaughter, her parents came back from Lewiston right after the Change. Jesus wept."

"I don't doubt Mary did," Hutton said quietly, crossing himself; he'd become a Catholic to make peace with his wife's relatives, but it had taken.

"This the Devil Dogs' work, all right," Woburn said with frustrated anger leaking through the iron calm of his voice. "Worse than ever."

"Devil Dogs?" Havel said.

They stood back from the graves. He'd kept the gruesome work of wrapping the bodies for himself and Hutton while the younger Bearkillers dug. Sheriff Woburn had done the same, pitching in with the disgusting task, which put him up a notch in Havel 's view. He'd always respected an officer who was willing to share the unpleasant bits.

"Devil Dogs, the bikers," the lawman went on. "It's the gang's name. They broke away from the Hell's Angels years ago-thought the Angels had gone soft. Bunch of them were holding a meet at a motel south of Lewiston when the Change came. Iron Rod's their leader, I don't know his real name."

"Duke Iron Rod?" Havel enquired.

Woburn's face went crimson. "That's new the last little while. He's trying to extort protection money, I mean payments in food and supplies, from the ranchers and towns. Bastard's claiming to be Duke of the Camas Prairie!"

Havel's brows went up. Have to get the details on this, he thought. Doesn't sound right. Or: if it's our good friend Arminger prompting, it does sound right.

They'd seen plenty of petty theft and one-on-one violence in the first weeks after the Change, and hit-and-run banditry on an increasing scale since, plus what Ken Lars-son and Pam Arnstein and Aaron Rothman called incipient feudalism-strong-arm rule. That was mostly by local bossmen, though, and the more unscrupulous ranchers taking advantage of homeless, desperate city-dwellers and travelers as cheap labor.