Dies the Fire

by S. M. Stirling

  Juniper smiled, heart-glad to hear her friend was still alive, and only somewhat surprised; Luther was a tough old bird, and nobody's fool. And … it never hurts to have references.

  A good deal of that happiness evaporated when they stopped at 99W and Polk. Someone had gone to the trouble of knocking down the ruins that stretched along the riverfront—she saw a wagon of cleaned-up bricks go by, pulled by a dozen sweating townsfolk—but the sheer extent of it shocked her. She could see all the way to the waterfront from here. A sour ashy smell clung to the fallen buildings. Broad streaks of destruction reached north and westward, too, looking more recent. There were a fair number of people about, but nothing like the numbers before the Change; about a tenth as many, at a quick estimate, but probably a lot more had moved out of town to work the land.

  "I was here the night of the Change … presumably a lot of other people had the same idea, and headed out?"

  Jones cleared his throat. "A lot happened that first week—the fires burned for days, and we had to tear down firebreaks to stop them. Then there were the food riots … we had outbreaks of cholera and typhus … a fair number of people moved off to Salem when the state government said they should … We've got about six thousand in the area the Committee controls."

  She nodded, but suspected that "food riots" covered a lot of internal conflict; better to blame everything on outsiders, once order was restored once more.

  She took a deep breath. It had been silly, expecting anything but devastation here, too. This was a hopeful sight.

  I should be glad so much was saved, she thought. It's a good sign that they're already salvaging building materials.

  Jones made another throat-clearing noise: "So you'll realize . well, probably you can't stay very long. We're still extremely short of food, just barely enough to get ourselves through to harvest, and except in special circumstances we just can't feed outsiders."

  Juniper looked at the rubble that covered the site of the Hopping Toad. Odds were nobody had tried to search the basement.

  "Oh, I think we may have some things that would interest your Committee," she said with a smile. "Besides our trade goods, that is."

  * * * *

  Luther Finney nodded. "Figure you made a good choice, Juney," he said. "Most places, it was just as bad as you thought it would be, from what I hear. Salem and Albany, for sure, and there aren't any words for what we've heard of Portland. H— heck, it was bad here! If it hadn't been for you and your friend warning me, I might not have done near as well myself."

  The big farmhouse kitchen was a lot more crowded than it had been that night of the Change; brighter, too, with three gasoline lanterns hanging from the ceiling. Juniper's presence required a lot of shuffling and pushing about of tables and chairs; and the meal wasn't anything like the fried-chicken feast she remembered so fondly, either. There were a round dozen sitting down to dinner, counting children, and more out in what had been the rarely used formal dining room.

  She got a bowl of porridge, some anonymous mixture of grains with husks in it, and the dried beans she'd contributed from the basement cache of the Hopping Toad were served with obvious reverence. Everyone got one hardboiled egg, as well. For the main meal of the day among people doing horse-heavy manual labor, it wasn't much.

  At least the porridge is fairly good. Smells nice, too, like fresh-baked bread, and it tastes a little sweet. Maybe molasses-and-rolled-oats livestock feed?

  "We got to work right away, because of that. And we were lucky," Finney said, after they'd bowed their heads for grace. "Real lucky," he went on, beaming at his son and daughter and their spouses and his grandchildren and one wiggling pink great-grandchild.

  Edward Finney shrugged; he was a square-built man in his forties, a compromise between his mother's stocky frame and his father's lean height. The erect brace of his shoulders showed the legacy of twenty years in the Air Force.

  "We were lucky to get out of Salem before everything went completely to hell," he said. A grin. "Looks like I'm going to be a farmer after all, like Dad wanted. And my kids after me."

  "Not just farming," Luther said grimly.

  His eyes went to the door. Outside in the hallway chain mail shirts hung on the wall, with swords and crossbows racked near them, and pikes slung from brackets screwed into the ceiling.

  "Well," he went on to Juniper. "Things are looking up, provided we can keep this sickness away; the doctors have some medicine left, but not much. The first of the garden truck looks set to yield well—I give those people at the University that, they busted their … butts getting seed out to everyone and into the ground, and we've laid claim to a fair piece of fall-seeded wheat. Lord, though, doing everything by hand is hard work! If we could get some more harness stock, that would be grand—that team of yours would have been real useful around here."

  "Cagney and Lacey are useful around our place too, Luther."

  He nodded. "I expect they were, but if you can spare any … We stopped using horses when I was about twelve, but I remember how."

  "We could use more stock too," she said happily. "But my people were going to try scouting east for them." Then: "About this committee running things here, Luther—"

  * * * *

  "Back!" Havel shouted as the crossbow bolt buzzed past his ears.

  All three men spun their mounts and went crashing through greenery and lawn until they were out of range— a hundred yards was plenty, unless the crossbowman was a crack shot. He blessed Will Hutton's liking for nimble quarter horses and his training of man and beast; and the wide sweep of Larsdalen's lawn made it next to impossible for anyone to sneak up on them.

  One nice thing about horses was that for the first ten miles or so they were a lot faster than men on foot.

  "Christ Jesus, what the fuck do you people think you’re doing? " Havel shouted, rising in his stirrups to shake a fist at the window.

  "They weren't trying to kill us, Boss," Josh said.

  "I know that, or I wouldn't be trying to talk," Havel snarled. "But anyone who got in the way of that bolt would be just as dead, accidentally or not. What sort of idiot fires a warning shot that close without a parlay?"

  Eric was flushed with anger too. He pushed his helmet back by the nasal and called out: "What are you doing in my family's house?"

  A voice came from the same upper window, thin and faint with distance: "Who the hell are you, mate?"

  Havel blinked at the harsh almost-British accent … An Aussie, by God. What in the hell?

  "Mr. Zeppelt?" Eric said, still loud but with the anger running out of his voice. "What are you doing here?"

  "Eric? Your pa bloody well hired me, didn't he, sport? I've been looking after the place and the staff."

  "Wait a minute," Havel said, baffled. "You know him?"

  "Well, bloody hell," the voice from the house said, dying away.

  A few moments later the doors opened and a short stout man with a crossbow in his arms came out; he was balding, with a big glossy-brown beard falling down the front of his stained khakis. A tall horse-faced blond woman with an ax followed him. Several other figures crowded behind her.

  "That you in the Ned Kelly suit, Eric-me-lad?" the man called. "Who're your cobbers? S'truth, it's good to see yer! C'mon in and have a heart starter—we're a bit short of tucker, but there's some neck oil left."

  Chapter

  Twenty

  "For the road is wide—

  and the sky is tall

  And before I die, I will see it all!"

  Juniper Mackenzie broke off at the chorus as three armed figures stepped into the roadway. She stopped her bicycle and leaned one foot on the dirt road and called a greeting, putting a hand up to shade her eyes against the bright spring sun. Judy Barstow stopped likewise, and Vince and Steve waved hellos of their own; the rest of their party stopped as well, uncertain.

  They'd all relaxed now that they were well into the clan's land—past the Fairfax place, and just where the county road tur
ned north along Artemis Butte Creek—and they'd been singing from sheer thankfulness, despite the bone-deep ache of exhaustion.

  Homecoming was sweet almost beyond bearing.

  "Hi, Alex, Sam," Juniper shouted, returning their waves of greeting as she swung her other foot down and started pushing the bicycle towards them. "Merry meet again!"

  Alex had his bow over his back, a buckler in one hand and a spear in the other; six feet of ashwood, with a foot-long head made from a piece of automobile leaf spring. He leaned the spear against a tree to put a horn to his lips—it was the genuine article, formerly gracing the head of a cow—and blew one long blast and three short ones, a blat-ting huuuu noise not like any sound metal had ever made.

  Then he grinned and waved it overhead as the bicyclists approached. The other two slipped their arrows back into their quivers—which meant poking a razor blade on a stick past your ear, so you had to be careful—and tapped their longbows on their helmets in salute. One was stocky and broad-shouldered, unmistakable even in green jack and helmet and …

  And a kilt, by Cernunnos! Dennie's got them all doing it, the black-hearted spalpeen!

  "Glad to see you've got them alert, Sam," she said to the Englishman. "That's the second time I've been stopped!"

  Because one guard post at the border isn't enough, curse the expense and lost work of it!

  The other archer was a lanky blond girl in her late teens, and definitely not a member of coven or clan that Juniper remembered, despite the Mackenzie sigil on her jack—the crescent moon between elk antlers.

  "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 self-conscious 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-skin
ned 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 was 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.