Dies the Fire (70 page)

Few of them were really masters of their weapons as yet, but the target was massed and stationary and nowhere more than fifty yards away. They had all shot at marks further than that for an hour or more most days since the Change, under Sam Aylward's merciless tuition, and everyone here could draw a bow of fifty pounds weight or better.

Now the strings began to snap against the bracers, and the gray-feathered arrows flickered across the weed-grown field. Cloven air whistled under a hail of steel points and cedarwood. Juniper's was among the lightest bowstaves, but it seemed she could not miss and that two more shafts were in the air before her first had struck.

Then she reached over her right shoulder and her hand grasped at emptiness. There had been forty-five arrows in the leather cylinder on her back, and as many in every other quiver. Near two thousand shafts had flown, in the brief minutes while the Protector's soldiers wavered between the Sutterdown men before them and the clan's warriors to their left. Those who tried to charge the line of archers along the woods simply made better targets of themselves, attracting the eye as they came running into the teeth of the Mackenzie arrow-storm.

Many of those shafts had missed, and stood upright in earth or broken on asphalt; many were turned by shields or armor. Still horror wailed and crawled and writhed across the ground, and death lay still with the arrows still quivering.

“At them!”
Juniper screamed, dropping her bow and ripping out her shortsword.
“At them, Mackenzies!”

She snatched up her buckler and ran forward, keening a wordless saw-edged ululation. The armor seemed no more than a cotton shirt on her back, and the rough ground merely gave strength to her feet as she bounded forward like a deer.

Dennis ran beside her on the right, bellowing and flourishing his great ax; Chuck was to her left, snarling and intent behind the point of his spear; Aylward came behind, with an extra quiver slung over his shoulder and a shaft nocked to his terrible hundred-pound bow.

Chaos greeted her, as the Sutterdown men came out from their barricade in a roaring wave. Most of the invaders threw away their weapons and ran. It did them little good. The armor which had guarded them also slowed them, and vengeful spears and axes ran behind in the hands of those whose homes they'd seized.

Some remained to fight, but they seemed to be moving as if encased in amber honey. An armored man swung a jointed iron flail from a pre-Change martial-arts store at her; she ducked beneath it and smashed the edge of her buckler across his instep. Then she came erect like a jack-in-the-box as he doubled over in pain, driving the point of her shortsword up under his chin. Chuck's spear drove into a belly, hard enough to snap scales loose from their leather backing; wet ruin spun away from the edge of Dennis' bearded ax.

A man came at her with a spear, but she didn't bother to guard; a flash drawn across her vision was Aylward's arrow, and it went through his throat in a red splash and spray, hardly slowing . . .

It seemed only seconds later when the only living enemy were a handful who fled, wailing as they ran across the reaped wheat towards the tree-lined creek beyond. Juniper laid her sword in front of Aylward's bow.

“No,” she said, conscious of the same cold wind still blowing through her.

Others were shooting, but they missed. Aylward wouldn't.

“We want a few to spread the word that this is no place for reivers to come.”

Quiet had fallen, save for a broken whimpering and the wheezing breath of the enemy commander's horse, dying slowly with three shafts through his ribs. Sutterdown men and Mackenzies alike hesitated for an instant of ringing silence, their eyes on her.

Of themselves, Juniper's arms reached up again, holding her buckler and dripping blade this time, spread over the field of battle. Wings beat at the corners of her consciousness, vast and black-feathered.

“O you of humankind!”
she cried.
“Make peace with your mortality. For when you call on Me in such wise, then this too is God!”

Then she staggered, knees buckling and eyes turning back up into her head for an instant. The world turned gray and light shrank to a point. Hands grabbed her under the arms, supporting her as she wheezed and fought for breath.

“Anyone got any candy left?” she croaked.

Someone did, giving it up without question; she stuffed it into her mouth despite the salt blood on her hands, washed it down with water and felt the dizziness recede, and the grayness fade from the edges of her sight.

“I'm all right,” she husked. “I'm all right.”

The men supporting her stepped back. One of them was Dennis; his ax was bloody, and more was splashed across his face and body, but the fear in his eyes was directed at her.

She shook herself. “I feel . . . I feel like a flute that Someone was playing on.”

“Jesu—I mean, God and Goddess, Juney, that was the scariest fucking thing I've ever seen!”

He shook his head, leaning on his ax and panting like a great wheezing bellows for a second.

“What happened? First it was like you were screaming right in my ear—or inside my head—and then you were like the original whirling Dervish, you were a
blur.
I didn't even think about anything else except following you and hacking these guys up.”

She felt her everyday self return, and with it a sharp twist of nausea at the sights and smells about her, and held up a hand palm out while she struggled back to self-command.

Before the Change, this would have sent me catatonic,
she thought.
Now it just sickens me. Goddess, let me never see such things without sorrow. Let me never see such things again, please.

Dennis was still staring at her. She answered his question: “Well, there's a rational explanation for what happened, Dennie.”

“Shit, I hope so, Juney.”

She nodded: “Hysterical strength, amok, berserkergang; it's all a well-known phenomenon, right there in the textbooks. There weren't any miracles, were there? I didn't glow red, or levitate, or cast thunderbolts, after all. Although . . . this is the sort of thing that gets legends and myths started.”

“Ah,” he said, looking relieved. His face relaxed. “You think that's what happened? Your subconscious took over?”

“Oh, no, Dennie, you don't get off that easy—and neither do I,” she said, looking into his eyes.

He retreated a little as she went on: “What I think—know—is that I called on the Dark Goddess . . . and She came to me. It isn't all light and love and laughter, my friend. There's blood and fear and death and wickedness in the world, and the Mighty Ones act through
us.
”

She reached out and touched the pentagram-and-circle amulet he'd taken to wearing. “And if this is more than a piece of jewelry, you've picked which explanation you want to believe, haven't you?”

“Yeah,” he said soberly. “I suppose I have.”

Chuck came up to her. “One dead of ours,” he said, his eyes avoiding hers a little. “John Carson. A couple of wounded, but . . . mostly it was over by the time we reached the road. Judy and Dr. Gianelli are getting to work. They think the clan won't lose anyone else.”

“Blessed be,” she said sadly. “But it could have been worse.” She looked around, letting her eyes fall out of focus a little to miss detail. “Was worse, for them.”

Aylward paused in recovering arrows and spoke with a surgeon's calmness: “It's like that, with surprise. Especially if the side surprised just gets the wind up and sods off regardless. They can't run and fight, but you can chase and kill at the same time.”

She nodded. “Find out how the Sutterdown people did, Chuck,” she said. “Get me Sheriff Laughton, if he's alive and fit to move.”

When he showed up a few minutes later Laughton had a bandage covering half his face, but he seemed to be coherent enough; a dozen of his townsmen came with him, some of them bandaged or limping.

“Lady Juniper,” he said. This time there was no awkwardness to the title. “Thank you. Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts. We'll get our homes back, now.”

“You will,” Juniper said. “And you'll be able to feed your children through the winter.”

Which are the only reasons good enough for this vileness,
she thought.

“We had thirty wounded and . . . nine dead,” Laughton went on. He swallowed. “Including Reverend Dixon.”

Her brows went up. “Dixon?” she said. “How?”

“He just . . . died. He just dropped down and died,” Laughton said.

Well, he
was
a coronary waiting to happen,
Juniper thought.
Plenty of stress today to set it off.

“He'll be missed,” she said soberly, and fought not to think:
But not by many.

Then she saw the eyes of his men on her, all wide and fearful and a few of them full of the beginnings of adoration. The echo of a cold wind seemed to blow up her back, despite the hot sun and the sweat-dripping weight of mail and padding.

This is how legends and myths start,
she reminded herself, and shivered ever so slightly.
Goddess gentle and strong, powerful God, what is it that You want of me?

“Well, we'll have to see to the wounded,” she said, dragging herself back to practicalities.

Her voice gained strength. “And to getting your families back to your homes, and we Mackenzies will pitch in to help get the rest of your crops in safe—we don't have anything to waste. And then we'll talk about making sure we're not caught by surprise like this again, and with all the other communities around here about defense. The man who set this on us, the one who calls himself Protector . . .”

“Yes, Lady,” Laughton said.

Ray and Cynthia were kneeling by their father's body when she found them. A crossbow bolt had struck him just left of the breastbone, sinking in through the armor until only the fletching showed. There was a spray of blood beside his mouth, but the wide eyes looked surprised, as if it had been very quick. The flies were already coming, but they had plenty to feed on today.

Cynthia started to rise. Juniper sank down on her knees on the hot pavement between them, pressing a hand gently on the girl's shoulder and on her brother's. He looked stunned, unbelieving, his face much younger than the body beneath his warrior's gear, blinking his eyes at his father as the bloody work of cleanup went on around them. A seeping bandage marked where the little finger of his left hand had been, but he ignored that too.

“S-sorry, Lady Juniper,” Cynthia said. “We should help—”

“You should both stay here and mourn your father,” Juniper said quietly. “There's hands enough to do what needs doing.”

The girl's face crumpled, turning red. “He . . . he shouldn't have died like this!” she cried.

“No,” Juniper agreed. “He shouldn't. He was a good man, who only wanted to tend his fields and do right by his family and neighbors. There were years yet of work and joy ahead for him. He should have died old and tired and ready for the Summerlands, with you and your brother and
your
children around him to bid him farewell. He gave all that up, for us.”

“I'm sorry,” Cynthia said, putting the heels of her hands to her forehead. “Can . . . can we have a rite for him?”

“Certainly we can among ourselves, honey,” Juniper said gently. “But he respected your choice; you have to respect his. We'll get the ritual he'd have wanted for his burial. Just let it go, for now. Mourn him, girl, and you too, Ray. Cry. Scream if it helps. There's no way around the pain, you have to go through it to the end and beyond. Blessed be.”

She left them sobbing in each other's arms; Eilir was coming, riding a horse and leading another for her mother, her eyes wide with horror as she looked about.

When Juniper Mackenzie stood it was as if the weight of the world pressed down on her shoulders.