Dies the Fire (28 page)

Now it had rolled-up bedding tied in neat bundles stacked around the walls; the children slept in the loft and her own former bedroom was assigned to the handfasted couples on a roster, so that they could all have a chance at some privacy.

The Hall of the Mackenzies was stuffed to the bursting point. The crowding would have been tolerable for a week or so at a Pagan festival, but the prospect of living like this all her life . . .

She shook her head and got up to throw another log on the fire. Aylward spoke:

“Wait a minute, lass—Lady. That's yew, isn't it? Could I have a look?”

Everyone glanced over at the Englishman; he'd seemed a friendly enough sort, but on short acquaintance not given to inconsequential chat.

“To be sure, it is,” Juniper said. “It's an understory weed tree here.”

She put the billet in his big spade-shaped hands; it was four inches thick and a little over four feet long, with thin smooth purplish bark scattered with red-brown papery scales.

“Nicely seasoned,” Aylward said, running a critical eye over it. “Is there any more like this?”

“A ton or so; the whole bottom half of my woodpile, out in the shed. The loggers cleared out a lot of it last year and I salvaged it for firewood; hadn't worked my way down through the applewood yet. Do you have a use for it?”

Aylward grinned. “We all do! If you let me at a drawknife and spokeshave, and a bit of hardwood for the risers, and a little glue.”

Sally Quinn looked at him sharply. “You're a bowyer?”

Aylward nodded. “A hobby; I make and fletch me own shafts, too. Longbows are simple enough, even with a separate riser; I could do two or three a day, and anyone who's handy with wood could learn the trick.”

Dennis grinned enormously; he
was
handy with wood, and loved learning a new way to work it. There was a pleased murmur all around the table. They had the three crossbows, which were irreplaceable once they broke down, and Sally's fiberglass target weapon, but that was it.

“Threefold return indeed!” Juniper said happily, resuming her seat and tapping the pile of figures Andy and Diana had worked up. “Now, people, we have just enough food to get everyone here—”
And how we've grown!
“—through to harvest. At a minimum diet for people working hard.”

There were groans at that. Her own hands itched where the blisters never quite had time to heal. She'd had a big garden every year since she inherited this place, and now knew the difference between that and growing all your own food.

“Over to you, Chuck. Tell us what we can expect to
get,
for all the sweat we've been investing.”

“Chuck, Lord of the Harvest,” Judy said, grinning, leaning into his shoulder with her arm around his waist.

A laugh went around the table; it was a title of the High Priest of a coven, and Chuck had been the only candidate for
that
post, as well as farm manager. It also meant the Great Rite would be symbolic rather than actual from now on, with the High Priest not Juniper's man.

She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then forced a smile.

He took up the story, with a pad of his own. “OK, we've got all the acreage we need turned and fitted, and most of the potatoes planted—we'll keep the rest to put in between now and June, to stretch the harvesting season out, same with the veggies. Seven acres so far all up, here and down by the Fairfax place, counting what Frank Fairfax had in before the Change.”

He paused to glare at Dorothy and Diana and Andy, who were organic-produce fanatics . . . or had been, before direct personal experience of hunger, which tended to make one less finicky.

“I
presume
nobody's going to object to using fungicides if we have to? 'Cause those potatoes are the margin between living and dying, and anyway, they came treated.”

“If we have to, Chuck,” Juniper said soothingly. “If we have to. We've got them on hand, haven't we?”

He nodded, and the three made unwilling gestures of assent as well.

I'm Chief Soother, that's what I am!
Juniper thought.
Unruffler of Feathers! Dennis should have taken to calling me the Clan Facilitator, not the Chief.

“The Fairfaxes had four and a half acres of fall-planted oats, which should come ripe in June; English hulled variety, good stuff. And I
think
we got that barley Alex found for us sown in time for some sort of yield. We've got a deal with the Carsons to help harvest some of their wheat on half-shares come summer; enough to really help and for seed grain of our own this autumn too. We might do the same elsewhere, but I'm not counting on it. . . .”

He took a deep breath. “Let's put it this way, Mackenzies; it'll be tight until June, and after that we're going to get awful sick of potatoes boiled and mashed and oatmeal and carrots and turnips and cabbage and beans and barley soup and whatnot, but we'll have enough to last through until the
next
crop year.
More
than enough, if we're reasonably lucky. In fact, we may not have enough people to harvest it all!”

“Of course,” he went on, amid the cheers, “that brings up the question of storage. Potatoes take a
lot
of space, and we'll be storing by the
ton,
and we're going to have a fair amount of grain as well. I think more root cellars should be the first priority now that we've got
some
time to spare—”

“Oh, no you don't,” Judy said. “We need a better bathhouse and laundry system for heath reasons—”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Dennis cut in. “There's that old gristmill east of Lebanon, we could put it in below the waterfall with only a short sluice gate to build. Nobody's claimed it yet, and we could charge to grind other people's grain come summer—”

“And on second thought,” Chuck said, glaring a little, “we ought to do a regular daily training schedule with archery and sword-and-buckler. The bandit gangs are getting—”

Juniper sighed and put her hands to her forehead. The threat of starvation had kept this collection of strong-willed individualists moving in one direction. Now she was going to have to earn
her
corn.

She looked around the table and caught several pairs of eyes—Dennis, Sally, Alex and his three friends.
Let's see, how many votes . . .
Sam wasn't comfortable enough with them to take much part yet, but she had hopes there, which was for the best.

Because some weren't going to like what
she
would suggest they do now that the most of the potatoes were planted, but the will of the Lady and Lord were plain.

At least to me it is,
she thought.

She reached back and picked up her fiddle and bow from a table beside the couch. The first long strong note brought silence.

Then she improvised; a pompous boom for Chuck's voice, a piercing commanding shrill for Judy's, short anxious tremulos for Diana and Andy, a querulous rising inflection for Dennis's Californian accent . . .

Chuck was the first to snort. After a minute they were all laughing, and she wove the discords into a tune, one they all knew; the rollicking “Stable Boy,” and moving on to “Harvest Season” and “Beltane Morning.”

People missed music, with a craving almost as strong as that for food; there just wasn't any, in the Changed world, unless you made it yourself or persuaded someone in the room with you to do it. Soon everyone was singing. Eilir's head poked down through the stairs to the loft; she couldn't hear the tunes, but she loved watching the audience. Smaller heads peeked around hers.

When she stopped the tension had gone out of the gathering. Everyone was ready to move the furniture aside and unroll their bedding; Andy and Diana were sleeping in the loft with the kids tonight, and they went up the stairs with a candle in its holder.

“
S
pear
,
spear, where's the goddamned spear!”
Havel shouted, setting himself for a last-second dodge.

There wasn't time to be afraid. He didn't bother to draw his knife—with a bear this size, you might as well try to tickle it to death—or pay attention to the shouts and the wild neighing of the hobbled horses or to Signe dashing away.

He did when she came back seconds later, tossing the shaft of the spear in his direction. Grabbing it and whirling back to the bear gave him just enough time to set himself, with a fractional second more to be thankful he and Will had spent some time reshafting the blade firmly.

The animal would have run right over him if it hadn't paused, but bears liked to attack from an upright rear. It towered over him like a wall of cinnamon-black fur as he crouched with the spear poised; it was roaring, clawed paws raised like organic trip-hammers to smash his spine and spatter his brains across the ground.

He knew how to kill bears. You shot them from a hundred and fifty yards with a scope-sighted rifle firing hollow-point game rounds. . . .

“Yaaaaaah!” he shouted, lunging.

The impact was like ramming a pole into an oncoming truck, and it jarred every bone and tendon in his arms and shoulders and back. He shouted again, this time in alarm, as the onrushing weight drove him backward, his heels skidding in the damp grass of the meadow. The foot-long knife blade sank into the bear's middle, and part of the spear shaft after it, and the growling roar of pain and anger that followed it sprayed into his face along with saliva and a fan of blood.

The butt of the spear slid along the ground until it jammed in a root, carrying him with it like a bundle. Then the bear screamed again as the weapon was driven deeper by its own strength and weight. It twisted frantically, trying to escape the thing that hurt it, and Havel clung with all his strength as the animal pounded him against the ground in its writhing.

Then his elbow hit ground with a jarring thump that made his hand open by sheer reflex as white agony flowed up the arm and down into his torso. The bear twisted again, and Havel felt himself thrown through the air with no more effort than a child's doll. Long training made him relax as he flew, curling loosely.

The hard, hard ground still knocked the air out of his lungs and rattled his brain; he fought to breathe and collect his wits.

“Jesus!” he wheezed, scrambling backward on his butt and pushing himself with his heels.

The bear was heading for him. More slowly—the spear shaft stuck out of its middle at an angle; he'd seen before with the plump bandit that the shape of the knife blade made it difficult to withdraw once it was deep in a body. Now the long shaft kept catching on the ground and making the animal wince and stumble, and every time that happened the sharp steel was waggled about in the bear's body cavity.

But it moved, at a hunching, lurching amble, and it was coming straight for him. Blood poured from the wound in its belly, but it didn't spout with the pulsing arterial torrent that would have killed it quickly.

And he
couldn't
get up fast enough.

He tried and fell over backward; his left leg wasn't working properly yet, where he'd landed on it. The bear hunched closer, snarling in a basso growl, spit and blood drooling from its long yellow teeth. Havel fumbled at his belt for his
puukko,
snarling back at the approaching animal with an expression not much different from its own.

Then it stopped and reared. Eric was there, shouting and jabbing at its face with his
naginata.

Nothing wrong with that boy's guts,
Havel thought.
His common sense, yes; guts, no.

The sharp curved edge of the blade scored along the bear's shoulder. That angered it enough that it ignored everything else and swatted; it also gave Havel time to push himself backward far enough that he could lever himself erect with his hands and good leg. The other one didn't seem broken, or the joints torn; it just hurt like fire to put his weight on it. That didn't mean he wouldn't, but he'd be slowed.

“No!” he shouted, hobbling forward as he saw Eric coming back for more. “Don't get close! Just back off and let it die!”

Signe was back again too, gone no longer than it took her to run and fetch the bow. She had an arrow to the string, but her brother was far too close for her to fire. And he was too far gone in a fine fighting rage to listen, as well; he stepped in, chopping at the bear's paw as it flashed at him. Perhaps that was
his
way of showing the strain of the terrible things he'd seen and done, or maybe it was just teenage-male hormone poisoning turning off his brain's risk-management centers.