S. Stirling - Dies The Fire

Another crossbow bolt struck in the wood ahead of him, this time a bare inch from his outstretched fingers.

"Crawl faster!"

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.