Dies the Fire dtf-1

by S. M. Stirling

“We get by,” Laughton growled, then flushed and waved a hand around. “Sorry. You obviously do better than ‘getting by.’”

  Juniper nodded. “Our clan work together and live close, so we can take turns on sentry-go, or support people doing one thing most of the time… or throw nearly everybody at a job that needs doing, like the harvest, with only a few to cook or keep an eye on the children.”

  “Sounds like communism,” Dixon growled.

  “It’s more like tribalism, Reverend, with a bit of kibbutz thrown in,” she said, keeping her voice neutral. “Call it common sense, for now. Things may be different in a few years… or not. And if you’ll excuse me a moment, I need to freshen up while my advisors arrive.”

  She pulled in before the Hall, finished just before the wheat came ripe; Dennis had already started stenciling the designs he wanted to carve into a lot of it, particularly the tall pillars that supported the wraparound second-story gallery and the new roof.

  Eilir came out and took the horses.

  It’s all ready, Mom, she signed, looking at the three men in the wagon with a mixture of curiosity and distaste. Want me to lay out some ceremonial stuff for you? Scare them green, that would!

  Thanks, but I’m trying to get them in a mood to cooperate! she replied. A plain brown around-the-house robe… oh, and just for swank, that moon pendant Dennie and Sally made for me.

  She dropped to the ground, and winced a little as that jarred into the small of her abused back. It was almost a pity in some ways that they’d reverted to peasant attitudes about early pregnancy. There wouldn’t be time for anything but a quick sluice-down, either.

  And they’re going to make me miss my soak, too, she signed. We old ladies are wont to get irritable and cranky when we miss our soak… Show them up to the room and get ‘em the refreshments, my child of spring.

  The loft bedroom-office-sanctum was one luxury she’d allowed herself when the Hall was put back together. It still brought her a surge of slightly guilty pleasure as she climbed up the steep staircase from the second-story corridor to join the waiting Sutterdown men.

  The attic space under the steep-pitched roof was brightly lit by the dormer windows on two sides and the bigger one in the eaves. Dennis had pitched in to furnish it; there were hanging bookcases, a long trestle table for conferences or paperwork that could be folded out of the way, shelves for her Craft tools and for the neatly rolled futons and bedding that she and Eilir used, and a little iron woodstove for winter. Her old loom was set up at the far end.

  A big desk held a mechanical adding machine they’d salvaged, and a manual typewriter. There were filing cabinets as well, map boards, all the necessities of administration, which she loathed even as she did her share. And a cradle Dennis had made for her, ready for later in the year, carved all over with knotwork and intertwining beasts.

  She was amused to see that the Reverend had a reflex Juniper shared, whenever she went into a new house: checking the bookshelves. You could tell from the slight tilt of his head.

  The bulging eyes were probably because of the selection, though. Here, besides books like Langer’s Grow It! Livingston’s Guide to Edible Plants and Animals, Emery’s Encyclopedia of Country Living and of course Seymour’s Forgotten Arts and Crafts-their most valuable single work-the shelves held references useful to a High Priestess.

  Eight Sabbats for Witches-a slightly outdated classic-and the more modern Spellworking for Covens, just for starters. Dixon’s face was getting mottled again.

  She tried to see the room through the eyes of the Sutterdown men. Judy’s cat had managed to get in, for one thing. It was a big black beast with yellow eyes, and it was glaring at Reverend Dixon, who stared back in what he probably didn’t know a cat would regard as an insult and challenge.

  “Out, Pywackett!” she said, and slung the protesting beast down the stairs, closing the doorway after her.

  Then there was a lectern, the top covered with a black cloth that had a golden pentacle-and-circle on it; Dixon would probably guess, rightly, that the square shape beneath was her Book of Shadows. Her personal altar stood below the north-facing window in the eaves, with candlesticks and chalice and ritual tools and small statues of the Lady and Lord. A few prints were pinned up on the log walls, and a ceramic tile she’d bought back in 1986 that showed elk-headed Cernunnos playing on a flute as he skipped through an oakwood surrounded by skyclad dancers…

  Well, by the Cauldron and the Wand, if they want to beg our help they’re just going to have to take us as we are, she thought, and sat at the head of the table.

  Eilir had set out plates of fresh-cut bread, butter, cherry jam and small glasses of mead-they didn’t have much yet-along with a big pot of rose-hip tea; she was glad to see that even Dixon had sampled the refreshments.

  Because now he’s a guest and I can’t lose my temper with him.

  The food scents went well with the beeswax-paint-and-fresh-wood smell of the building; rather less well with the sweat-and-cows aroma of several of the clansfolk, who’d come straight from the fields without bothering to hit the bathhouse. She hoped they’d remembered to use the wooden boot-scraper at the front door. Keeping clean was hard work these days.

  “Let’s get going,” she said when the last person was seated and the strained attempt at chat ended. “This is one of those no-time-to-waste things, so we’ll have to put aside our cherished tradition of talking everything to rags. You’re all up to speed on what our neighbors have told me?”

  She looked around, checking the nods. “Subject to the voice of the clan assembled, is everyone agreed that if the information proves to be true, we can’t tolerate a big bandit gang making its headquarters next to us? Worse, one that tries to set itself up as overlords, and has ties to the Protector in Portland.”

  Another chorus of nods; everyone had heard a little of what was happening there, and even by the standards of the fifth month after the Change, the stories were gruesome.

  “Then the first order of business is what Dr. Gianelli said about guaranteeing against exposure to the plague.”

  Everyone’s ears perked up at that; the silence grew taut.

  Gianelli licked his lips. “I said that would have to be in private, Lady Juniper.”

  She looked at him, her green eyes level under the hood of her robe, which she’d drawn up to cover her damp hair.

  “This is private,” she said. “These are my advisors. And I’m not a dictator here, unlike some places I could name. Something that important can’t stay between the two of us; my people expect to be informed, and listened to, when decisions are made. And I’m not going to expose my clan to the Death on just a hint from you, Doctor.”

  Gianelli looked down at his hands, then clenched them into fists. He was an olive-skinned man in his thirties; when he went pale the blue-black stubble stood out vividly.

  “Streptomycin,” he said, still staring at his hands and spitting the word out as if it were a blow.

  Judy Barstow gasped. The other Mackenzies looked at each other uncertainly.

  “That’s an antibiotic, isn’t it?” Juniper said.

  Judy nodded, a quick hard jerk of the chin. “It’s a specific against Yersinia pestis, if it’s administered early,” she said. “A good prophylactic at low doses, if you take it a couple of days before possible exposure, but it can damage your kidneys if you continue for more than a month. It’s also valuable against a lot of other bacteria, and it keeps indefinitely in powdered form at room temperature. We ran out of it two months ago-I could never locate more than a couple of doses.”

  Her calm broke. “How much have you got!”

  Gianelli went on in a monotone: “Bulk powder from my hospital in Albany in sealed packages. Twelve thousand adult doses.”

  Crack!

  Her palm slammed the doctor’s head to one side; the arm rose again for a backhand as she leaned far across the table. Sam Aylward had Judy by the shoulders before the second blow could fall, forcing her back into the
chair.

  “Bastard!” she spat at the Sutterdown doctor, fighting against the great callused hands; there were two red spots on her cheeks, as bright as the print of her palm on his.

  “Bastard! I lost one of my patients, one of our children, and you had-you weren’t even using it!”

  Gianelli looked up again, ignoring the imprint of the hand on his cheek. “It was all I had! It’s like food-I can’t give it to everyone who needs it, or it’ll all be gone in a week, and then everyone will be as bad off as before! The other antibiotics, most of them need refrigeration. I had to save it!”

  He buried his head in his hands, and the rigid brace went out of his shoulders. “The hospital… there were so many… so many, and I couldn’t do anything, we didn’t have any food, and the head of administration killed himself and I took the box and I ran, I ran… “

  “Quiet,” Juniper said.

  She heard what Judy was muttering under her breathin this context, there was only one reason for calling on ThreeFold Hecate-and reached aside to lay a finger across her lips.

  “Don’t say that, Maiden,” she said, in her High Priestess voice.

  That seemed to startle Judy out of her anger somewhat, or at least back to control. “Don’t think it, either. Not if you want to stay under my rooftree.”

  Her eyes flicked across the three men. “As I said, neighbors help each other. We’d all be better off now if we’d cooperated more before. It has to be mutual, though. So if we’re going to help you, you have to help us.”

  “We’re willing to share the medicine,” Dixon put in.

  “Excellent. We’ll want enough to protect any of our people who go out to fight, and then half the remainder.” Her tone made it clear that the statement wasn’t a question or a request.

  All three of them nodded; not that they had much choice. Inwardly, she felt a single cold knot relax for the first time since she smelled the death pits outside Salem; with five or six thousand doses, they could stop any plague outbreak among the Mackenzies cold-and possibly protect some other communities she knew of, combined with preventative measures.

  “And if we’re going to fight and win where you lost, we insist on being in command of our joint muster,” she said.

  More nods, a bit slower this time, and glances at Aylward and Chuck.

  “And good neighbors don’t preach hatred against each other.”

  Now Dixon sat rigid, glaring at her, and the doctor and the sheriff exchanged worried glances. Juniper went on: “We don’t cast spells of bane and ruin against you. I’d appreciate it if you’d stop doing so against us, Reverend. Times are difficult enough as it is without wasting effort on counterspells.”

  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 Sutterdown, 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.

  Twenty-four

  “Lord 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!”