S. Stirling - The Protectors war

"No! Mine!" a deep bass voice bellowed, and John Hordle's bastard sword hammered its way past a shield and sent a man reeling, then turned the stroke of Mack's blade with a grunt of effort, a harsh clangor in the night and a stream of sparks. Alleyne tried to use the moment to take the troll-man from behind, but Katrina Georges was suddenly between them, a sword in one hand, a long knife in the other. The circle of shields was breaking up into combats that raged through the flame-shot darkness, two against one, a pair against three.

Eilir was there too, light glittering from eyes gone huge in a face bone-white pale, shining ruddy-bright on teeth bared in a silent gape as she turned the stroke of Liu's bao on her buckler and struck, struck:

Juniper ignored all of it. Instead she saw her moment and darted in, dragging her son free of the melee. His face was a mask of blood, but it was the wound under his short ribs that pulsed red, where the tip of the greatsword had passed after it punched through Nigel's shield. She staunched it with her hands, leaning to put pressure on it.

"Healer!" she shouted. "A healer here! Now!"

Her eyes swiveled, through chaos and death. Glimpses struck her vision and slid from the focus of her mind: Mack sinking to his knees, with Alleyne's sword and a spear through his gut, and Little John Hordle's sword sweeping through a horizontal arc towards his neck; Eddie Liu shrieking as Eilir's short sword punched up under the skirt of his mail and sank home; the lance points of Bear-killer A-listers flickering as they rode into the circle of firelight.

Suddenly Kevin of the Rangers threw himself on his knees beside her. "Let me see: Oh, sweet Goddess, there's too much blood lost-"

He shouted, and the sound carried; battle was dying down, save for someone who shrieked for his mother in a long gurgle that cut off sharply. "I need a donor here! Emergency!"

Shadows fell across them. Juniper looked up, with her son's lifeblood on her hands. Mike Havel stood there, blood on his sword and his face twisted with raging grief; Astrid, supporting Alleyne Loring as he slumped with both hands clapped to a wounded face. And Signe Havel, calm as she stripped the vambrace of her right forearm and pushed the mail sleeve of her hauberk back, lying down beside the wounded boy.

"I'm type O," she said. "Universal donor. As much as he needs, Juney. As much as he needs."

Mathilda Arminger had to call her name several times before Juniper Mackenzie heard the words. The cold light of dawn made the tumbled filth of the battlefield bleaker and more lost; somewhere a raven croaked, and tatters of mist lay along the ground. She could taste something old and dead in her mouth as she leaned back against the wagon wheel, but it was too distant to make her move her hand towards the water bottle someone had put there.

I should sleep. Fear and grief and raw magic have hollowed me, and I should sleep.

"Lady Juniper?"

Juniper looked up; tears made runnels down the girl's face, melting a track through a spray of dried blood.

"Will Rudi be OK? Please, can't you, I don't know, make magic about it?"

"I have, girl. I don't know if he'll be all right. He's lost a very great deal of blood, and they're doing what they can. He may get well."

"I'm so sorry. It's because of me."

I should tell her it isn't but I'm too tired, the Chief of the Mackenzies thought.

"It's because I lent Rudi the book," Mathilda sobbed. "I lent him the book and Baron Liu went to get it. Katrina didn't want him to but he wouldn't leave without the book!"

That pierced the gray chill that swaddled her mind. "Your book, child?"

A shaking hand held a blue-tinted paperback. "I got it out of Baron Liu's belt pouch after he: when I could. It's not my copy. Kat said she got it at Castle Gervais, and the baron got so angry, and he went for it-"

Memory stabbed her. Eddie Liu's face in that room at Sutterdown: Goddess gentle and strong, was it only yesterday?

"Altendorf substitution codes," she whispered, looking northward-to where Arminger brewed his plots.

She rose. Eilir was close, and she looked up sharply, a tentative wisp of smile curling her lips at the sight of her mother moving.

Get me Mike Havel, she signed. Now, girl! Run!

To herself: The Protector wants war. He'll have it, and not only with the Mackenzies: but we'll need more than talk to do it. When his plans are laid bare: but we'll have to do it at the right time and place. A meeting of all the communities, yes, but not at Larsdalen or Dun Juniper or Mt. Angel. It will have to be a blow to the heart-the heart of the Valley. A meeting at Corvallis.

"Goddess of the raven wings," she whispered, gathering herself. "Strong avenger, give me Your strength."

The path that led upward from Dun Juniper to the mountainside nemed was steep; it wove back and forth beneath tall trees, turning on itself like a serpent in a bed of reeds or the words of an oracle. She had walked it in daylight under summer leaves, and when moonlight shone on snow white as salt beneath stars uncountable. Today gray skies pressed down like the grief of gods, hiding the mountain peaks eastward and the valley to the west alike, and sending drifts of mist through the tops of the great dark-green firs. A wet wind tossed their limbs with an edge of ice; the air soughed around them with the prickling smell of cold snow heavy in it, and the darkness was coming before the cusp of day and night.

Juniper shivered a little, despite the heavy wool of her black ritual robe; the hood was drawn forward shadowing her face and the crescent moon on her brows. It was her folk's custom to sing as they walked to the sacred Wood, but today:

She stilled her mind and raised her voice:

"As the sun bleeds through the murk

'tis the last day we shall work

For the Veil is thin and the spirit wild

And the Crone is carrying Harvest's child!"

The Initiates and Dedicants were robed as she, though only the High Priests and Priestesses wore the tricolored cord belts. Many were masked on this day; some danced with spears flashing dully in the gray light, enacting the Wild Hunt. A harp played, and a flute, and the eerie sweetness of the Uilleann pipes; the beat of the bodhran was like the pulse of blood in her ears. Threescore voices rose in the chorus:

"Samhain! Turn away

Run ye back to the light of day

Samhain! Hope and pray

All ye meet are the gentle Fae."

Leaves from oak and maple blew past in a cloud of old gold and dark crimson.

"Burn the fields and dry the corn

Feel the breath of winter born

Stow the grain 'gainst season's flood

Spill the last of the livestocks blood!"

They came to the Wood, with its great circle of oaks. The trunks were closely placed on a nearly level knee that thrust out from the mountainside; each tree was forty feet and more to the first branch, candle-straight, thicker through than her body. Her great-uncle had planted many trees on his land, three generations ago. What had prompted him to plant this he had never said, but she could guess.

"Let the feasting now begin

Careful who you welcome in

The tables set with a stranger's place

Don't stare openly at his face!"

Iceplant still grew beside the spring that bubbled outside the circle. Juniper led the weaving passage around it, as the song went through heart and bone:

"Stranger, do you have a name?

Tell us all from whence you came

You seem more like god than man

Has curse or blessing come to this clan?"

Then all together, gathering strength:

"Samhain! Turn away

Run ye back to the light of day

Samhain! Hope and pray

All ye meet are the gentle Fae."

And one last great shout: