Dies the Fire dtf-1

by S. M. Stirling

  “Cynthia?” Juniper said. What’s a Carson doing on sentry-go for us? “Does your family know you’re here?”

  “My folks are up at the Hall, Lady Juniper; it’s Cynthia Carson Mackenzie now,” the girl replied with selfconscious dignity.

  Juniper felt herself flush slightly, and Alex gave her a wink as he leaned on his spear, grinning.

  Goddess, it’s embarrassing when people call me that!

  So was the growing practice of calling her cabin the Chief’s Hall. Dennie’s fault again, she thought. And he’s enjoying doing it to me!

  “Dennie and Chuck can give you the whole story about the Carsons and the Smiths,” Alex said. “Hey, fancy armor-where’d you get it? Who are the new folks?”

  Juniper wasn’t in a jack herself. She wore a thigh-length, short-sleeved tunic of gray-brown chain mail.

  “Corvallis; and these are three of my coveners-made it out of Eugene after the Change and were on their way here, and a couple of-but you’ll all get the full tale of our travels at dinner in the Hall,” she said, retaliating a little for frustrated curiosity.

  “Pass then, Lady Juniper,” Alex said formally, rapping his spear on his buckler and stepping aside; Cynthia and Aylward tapped their helmets again.

  The travelers pushed their bicycles upslope. Judy Barstow leaned over and whispered in her ear: “Maybe you should have taken a horse anyway, Lady Juniper,” she said. “More dignified, for the exalted chieftain of the Clan Mackenzie… “

  “Oh, go soak your head, you she-quack,” Juniper grumbled, sweating as they pushed their bicycles up the slope.

  “Just what I was hoping to do,” Judy said. “I hope they’re stoking the boiler in the bathhouse right now.” Then her smile faded. “And we need to do it, just in case. I’m pretty sure we’re all still clean of infection and that the fleabane worked and that we scrubbed down enough, but… “

  Juniper shrugged, lightening her mood with an effort of will: “And horses are far too conspicuous and edible to take into the valley. And too valuable.”

  The creekside road wasn’t very steep, but the chain mail shirt and the padding beneath were hot on the fine late-spring afternoon, besides weighing a good quarter of her body weight. She had her quiver, buckler, helmet and other gear slung to racks behind the seat, and the bow across her handlebars, but she still had to push the weight uphill; and none of them had eaten much for the past full day, or very well over the last ten.

  She could smell her own sweat, strong under the green growing scents; the faint cool spray from the stream tumbling down the hillside in its bed of polished rocks was very welcome. They were deep in shade now too, big oaks meeting overhead, and flowers showing white and crimson and blue through the grass and reeds and shoulder-high sword ferns. The other side of the water was a steep hillside, covered in tall Douglas fir.

  “It’s the Mackenzie!” someone shouted as they came out of the woods into the meadowland. “The Mackenzie herself!”

  A crowd of adults and more children were waving and running onto the rough dirt road ahead of her, alerted by the horn or by a runner from the outer sentries. Dennis’s bulky form led them.

  And yes… every third adult was in a kilt now, and half the children.

  “It’s herself herself!” he caroled, waving on the cheers as more people ran in from the fields.

  “Will you stop doing that, you loon!” Juniper called, laughing. “You’ll have them all clog dancing and painting their faces blue next!”

  “There can be only One,” he said, making his voice solemn and portentous.

  “How about the One throttles you with your fake kilt?” she said. Then louder to the crowd, holding up her hands: “Slainte chulg na fir agus go maire na mna’ go deo!” she said, laughing: “Health to the men and may the women live forever! I said I’d be back by Beltane, didn’t I?”

  That was the spring quarter-day festival, not long off now, a time of new beginnings.

  And my, things have been happening here, too!

  There was more than one face she didn’t recognize; evidently her lectures about sharing when you could had born fruit. She did know Dorothy Rose, who was not only in a kilt but wore a plaid improvised out of one of the same batch of blankets and a flat Scots bonnet with a feather on the side.

  She pumped up the bellows of her bagpipes and then lead off the procession, stepping out with a fine swirl and squeal, not spoiled in the least by half a dozen dogs going into hysterics around her-Cuchulain was throwing himself into the air like a hairy porpoise breaching, wiggling in ecstasy. The rest of the people crowded around her and her companions, taking their baggage. and then suddenly seizing her and carrying her along behind the pipes, whooping and laughing as they tossed her overhead on a sea of hands.

  “Put me down!” she cried, laughing herself. “Is this how you treat your Chief, returned from a quest?”

  “Damn right it is!” Dennis bellowed.

  She felt a huge load lift from her chest at the cheerful expressions; obviously nothing too dreadful could have happened while she was gone-dreadful by the standards of the first year of the Change, that was. Dennis was looking good himself; the kilt flattered him, and it was perfectly practical in this climate, and he had the additional excuse that none of his old clothes came close to fitting anymore.

  But mostly it’s playacting. Well, people need play and dreams. In bad times more than good, and there are no bad-der times than these, surely?

  Jack and Muriel and Carmen were weeping openly as their fellow coveners danced them around in circles; Juniper finally struggled back to her feet and called Diana aside and gave instructions; the three were still too weak for her taste, and it would be better to get them fed and rested before the stress of meetings and explanations.

  Dennis was tanned dark and wet with sweat from whatever work he’d been at; carpentry, going by the sawdust and wood shavings in the curly, grizzled brown hair on his barrel chest. With just barely enough food and more hard work than they’d ever dreamed of doing every adult in the clan had lost weight, but it looked much better on him than most. The sagging paunch had shrunk away, and the heavy muscle stood out on his tanned arms and shoulders like cables. He’d gone for a close-trimmed beard rather than the distinctly unflattering muttonchops, and overall he looked ten years younger than he had that night in Corvallis.

  Sally Quinn evidently thought he was good enough to eat; she was beside him, hanging on to one arm, unconsciously curving towards him as they walked despite her mud-stained working clothes. Her delicate amber-skinned looks made a vivid contrast to his hairy massiveness; her son, Terry, walked on the other side, with Dennis’s arm around his shoulders.

  Now, that’s only a surprise in that it took so long, Juniper thought happily. I saw that coming the day they met, I did.

  She finally persuaded the mob to set her down, and even reclaimed her bicycle.

  “Good thing we cleaned up yesterday,” Judy grumbled. “This bunch have no idea what it’s like out there.”

  “That’s why we went on our journey,” Juniper said. “To find out. But I would like a hot-water bath very, very much.”

  She raised her voice: “Is the bathhouse finished? And if something to eat could be arranged, that would be very welcome. We’re tired and dirty and hungry, Mackenzies.”

  Most of the crowd went back to their work, save for Dorothy marching before; everyone had gotten used to the fact that there were never enough hours in the day to get everything done that needed doing.

  And everyone’s been very busy, Juniper thought, as she pushed her bicycle back westward along the dirt track that led to the Hall; the dust and ruts were worse than they’d been, with the wagon and sledge traffic.

  Mental note three thousand and sixty-three: Get someone to run a scraper over the bumps and maybe pitch gravel in the holes, in our copious spare time. Or this will turn to a river of mud come autumn.

  She’d left on the meet-and-survey trip because the main crop w
as planted. It all looked much neater now, turned earth showing green shoots and tips in orderly rows. Adults and children were at work, hoeing or kneeling to weed with trowels; Juniper almost drooled at the thought of harvest.

  I crave fresh greens in an astonishing way, she thought. Not to mention food in general.

  Others were laboring with pick and shovel, horse-drawn cart and wheelbarrow on the contour ditch that Chuck Barstow had laid out from the pool below the waterfall to water the garden. It was another blessing that they had a year-round stream tumbling down from the steeper hills northeastward.

  Which reminds me…

  She craned her head over her right shoulder for a second. The twenty-foot wheel of the mill was actually turning now; they’d been arguing over how to mount it when she departed. Dennis deserved a lot of credit for it, even if they had simply carried off most of the works from a tourist trap near Lebanon.

  Nobody had been around to object-another opportunity that had been worth the risk and effort to get done before someone else had the same idea.

  Ahead to westward the open land had been left in grass, a rippling green expanse starred with hyacinth-blue cam-mas flowers, better than knee-high already; grass never really stopped growing in the Willamette, and in spring it took off as if someone was pushing hard from below. Some of it was being mown by a team swinging their scythes together in a staggered row, followed by another with rakes gathering it into rows. The wild sweet smell lifted her spirits further as they passed the swaths of drying hay.

  Not to mention the fact that nobody’s digging the point into the ground every second stroke, or the blade into their neighbors’ ankles. I nearly cut off my own foot on my first try, she remembered. Chuck’s lessons have sunk in, at last.

  The haymakers stopped to wave and shout greetings, and the travelers replied in kind; so did a brace of archers practicing at the butts. Improvised rail-and-wire fences made corrals for the precious horses and the livestock on the rest of the open land; there were moveable pens for the poultry and pigs. They had about twenty sheep now, with a ram among them, along with half a dozen lambs; and as many cattle.

  Or more, she thought with keen interest; there were white-faced, red-coated Herefords among the cows that she didn’t recognize, skinny yearling beasts that grazed with concentrated zeal as if they’d been on short rations. New horses, too…

  Aha! The other emissaries’ trip bore fruit as well.

  The higher plateau that held the old cabin stuck out into the benchland like a steep-sided U; she was surprised at the amount the clan had gotten done there while she was away. The roof was off the main cabin, and poles stretched down to ground level to make ramps for the logs of the second story. What was really surprising was the progress on the palisade; the first log hadn’t yet gone in when she left. Now a hundred feet of the defensive wall was complete.

  Thank You, Goddess Mother-of-All, and You, Lord Cernunnos of the Forest, she thought. We take these trees from Your woods that our clan may live.

  The better her group did at feeding itself, the more likely it was that some gang of killers would come and try to take it all away.

  She puffed a bit as they went up the last section. The area around her half-dismantled cabin was nearly unrecognizable; half a dozen other structures in stages of construction ranging from sticks and string outlining their foundations to cellars nearly complete; dirt and rocks and ruts and horse dung in the open spaces between, sawhorses and frames and people cutting with everything from hatchets to two-man whipsaws, the clatter of hammers…

  Nothing of the serenity she’d known here before the Change when it was her refuge from the world, a well of deep peace broken only when her coven arrived for the Sabbats and Esbats or by a rare guest. And yet—

  And yet I don’t feel the least saddened at how it’s changed, she thought, waving and shouting greetings as Eilir came out of the cabin door with a book in one hand-she was helping teach school, with younger children crowding behind her.

  Perhaps because now it’s my home-a refuge from horror and death. Home isn’t a place. Home is people.

  From the rear of the cabin there came an intoxicating odor along with the woodsmoke. Juniper’s nose twitched involuntarily at the unmistakable smell of barbecue; if they had meat enough to actually roast and grill, rather than throwing it into the Eternal Soup cauldrons, then things were looking up. She felt slightly guilty at the waste, but her stomach rumbled disagreement. Soup got boring.

  “Now give me some peace!” she called, putting her hands on her hips and facing those who’d followed her all the way to the bathhouse door, grinning. “Let me wash, at least, and put on some clean clothes!”

  They stripped to the skin before the door of the bathhouse; smoke was pouring out of its sheet-metal chimney, and Juniper’s skin itched in pleased anticipation. Stripping took a little doing, when you were wearing a mail shirt; first taking off the sword belt, then bunching up the skirts as much as you could, then bending over with your hands on the ground and wriggling until it fell in a rustling, clinking heap.

  “What a relief!” she wheezed-the contortions required were rather active. Like a rich armor worn in the heat of day, that scalds with safety.

  The padded tunic underneath came off more easily, and soon the clean wind was telling her exactly how much rancid sweat had stuck to her skin.

  It’s like wearing winter clothes in summer, and then lifting weights, and not being able to change into clean. How Mike and his friends bore those hauberks, I can’t imagine.

  She hopped on one foot and then the other to get the hiking boots off, and scrambled out of jeans and T-shirt and underwear even faster.

  “Take all the cloth and boil it in the laundry,” Judy said, dumping the party’s clothing in a hamper. “Boil it for fifteen minutes at least, with the special soap. Move!”

  The helpers moved. Despite being tired to the bone, Juniper practically skipped up the steps and into the washing room with its flagstone floor. They’d set things up Japanese-style, that being simplest. The boiler they’d made from a big propane tank was hissing; water from that and the cold taps got splashed everywhere in glorious abandon, as the returned travelers sluiced each other down with bucketsful, soaped, rinsed again, massaged suds into their hair. The gray water ran out a drain and down a pipe into the orchard and herb garden below the plateau, so nothing was wasted.

  Juniper groaned with pleasure even when her loofa hit spots that had chafed raw and the strong soap stung her eyes and the blistered bits. Eventually Judy was satisfied, and they trooped through into the next room to sink into the tub-that was a big sheet-steel grain bin, one of a series lined with planks and sunk halfway into the ground, separated by board partitions. They settled into the water, scented by herbs and the sauna smell of hot damp pinewood.

  “Hey, you folks noninfectious now?” came a deep voice from the doorway. “Mind if we join you?”

  “Yeah, Dennie,” she said. “But don’t get between me and the kitchen, or I may trample you!”

  He stood dripping in the doorway; Sally was with him, and Eilir, and Chuck Barstow. Everyone tried to speak at once, and Eilir’s hands flew, her slim coltish body dancing accompaniment to the signing.

  Thanks to the Lady you’re back, Mom. I was so worried, I’ve got pages of new protective spells in my Book of Shadows!

  And the same back to you, my child of spring, she replied. I could feel your well-wishes every moment of night and day.

  Meanwhile Dennis brought one thick hand out from behind his back. He had a bowl, a huge turned-wood thing; her eyes went wide as she saw it was heaped with vegetables: snow peas, green peas, carrots, deep-green broccoli florets, pieces of snow-white cauliflower…

  Her mouth actually cramped in longing for a moment.

  “Blessed be the fruits of the Lady’s womb, and hand ‘em over, Dennie! Don’t tell me you’ve found some way to make veggies grow that fast!”,

  “Nah, we came across a big winte
r garden, well-mulched,” he said, complying.

  You could grow hardy vegetables over the Willamette’s mild winters, with luck and a lot of work. Few had bothered, back when you could just drive down to the supermarket.

  “Where?” she cried. “Frank Fairfax didn’t have one!”

  “Believe it or not, it’s from the Smiths.”

  Juniper made a wordless sound as she popped pieces into her mouth, trying to decide whether the carrots really were as sweet as apricots, or if it just felt that way because they were the first fresh food she’d had since the Change.

  And here I thought the Smiths disliked us, she thought; they were strong followers of the Evangelical minister in Sutterdown. Maybe Dixon’s mellowed!

  “You won’t believe what dinner is,” he said, as the four sank into the tub.

  Eilir crowded under her mother’s arm and laid her sleek dark head on her shoulder. The bowl was thick wood and floated easily, which let them push it around the circle like a food-bearing boat.

  “We’re having something besides Eternal Soup, from the blessed smell of it?” Juniper said, lying back with a sigh of contentment. “And fresh veggies… “

  He nodded, smiling smugly. “Our hunters must be in right with Herne, or Sam the Silent’s finally learning how to teach as well as he stalks. We’ve been getting a mule deer or whitetail every couple of days for the last ten, and then yesterday I got a young boar. All two hundred pounds of whom is over the coals as we speak. Ribs, loin, crackling, gravy, liver… “

  She threw a splash of water at him as her stomach rumbled and saliva spurted into her mouth. There were plenty of feral swine in the Cascades, crossed with European wild boar introduced by hunters; they’d been regarded as pests before the Change. A lot of them hung around this section, because the hardwoods her great-uncle planted left mast for them to eat, and there was camas-root in the mountain meadows. The problem was that they were fierce and wary, and hard for mostly inexperienced hunters to take without guns. Which prompted a thought…