The Protector's War (17 page)

But you didn't string a yew longbow until you had some prospect of using it. Wooden bows tended to “follow”—to develop a permanent weakening bend—if left strung too long. Even the reflex-deflex models Sam had taught them to make, with their subtle, shallow double curve heat-treated into the staves. Archery and hunting had been his hobbies for decades before the Change.

Juniper watched with fond pride as Eilir pulled her longbow from the carrying loops beside the quiver slung over her back. Then she put the lower tip's nock-piece of polished antler against the outside of her left boot and stepped through between string and stave. That let her brace the riser handle against her right buttock; she pulled down sharply with both hands as she flexed her body against the heavy resistance of the seasoned wood, using one hand to slide the cord's loop up into the grooves of the polished elkhorn tip. The movements had the easy, practiced grace of an otter sliding down a riverbank.

That left her with a smooth shallow curve just under six feet long, D-section limbs of oiled and polished yellow yew on either side of a black-walnut riser grip; forty-five arrows jutted over her right shoulder, fletched with gray goose feathers and armed with a mixture of delta-shaped broadheads and narrow six-sided bodkins designed to punch through armor. Juniper bent her own bow as well; it had a fifty-pound draw, which was the lightest in the group. Aylward's was more than twice that; she'd seen him put a shaft right through a bull elk's ribs and have it come out the other still going fast—and once knock an armored man off a galloping horse at two hundred paces.

Lord and Lady, it doesn't even disturb me to think about that anymore,
she thought with a slight mental shudder.
Not that I was ever really a pacifist, but…

She cut a last section of sausage so that Rudi would have something to worry at, cleaned and sheathed the knife and swung into the saddle with a creak of leather, tucking up her kilt into a comfortable position—she wore good woolen boxer-style underwear anyway—and signaled to the bannerman.

He put the horn to his lips again and blew, a dunting howl of jaunty defiance.

“Ill-doers flee! Friends take heart! The Mackenzies are riding!” she called, a great high shout in her trained singer's voice, and the horses clattered down towards Center Street.

 

Eilir Mackenzie rubbed the fingers of her right hand on the tooled leather scabbard of her dirk as she rode; tracing the intricate interwoven patterns was her equivalent of whistling idly. It was pleasant to ride out on a bright spring day after being pinned so long in the Hall at Dun Juniper by the wet gray gloom of a Willamette winter. Not that the Black Months were all bad: there were the great festivals of the Year's Wheel; and making things, sports and storytelling, visits and books and games to pass the time; raw chilly days hunting in dripping woods, and long drowsy evenings to follow, lying on sheepskins before the hearth, roasting nuts and sipping hot cider; and of course chores.

So winter has its points, but spring's like throwing open a window when a room's gone fusty and stale.

She looked over her shoulder at Salem for a moment as the dead city faded in the living horsemen's wake, then turned back with a slight shudder. It was good to get out of
there,
too. Her mare Celebroch kept to the same walk-trot-canter-walk cycle as the rest of the group, but she did it with a high-tailed, arch-necked Arab grace that only Astrid's Asfaloth could match; the horses were twins, silky-maned and dapple gray. The feel of the great muscles between her thighs was like coils of living steel, longing to run…

They'd needed less than an hour to clear the built-up section and reach open country southeast of the last outskirts, only the occasional vine and creeper-grown mound showing where a burnt-out farmhouse had stood, its flowers and rosebushes lost among weeds. The hearing members of the Mackenzie party—everyone except her—were probably having their ears numbed and attention distracted by the rumbling, clattering, clopping beat of hooves on the asphalt.

She wasn't, and noticed something odd out of the corner of her eye—movements in the roadside thickets. They were level with a peach orchard gone wild; thin spindly volunteers sprung from fallen fruit, and a tangle of whiplike unpruned branches starred with a first few pink blossoms. A streak of red fire blurred out of it…

That fox broke cover and went across the road
before
the rabbits did. And none of them paid any attention to
us.
Game's gotten less wary, but not
that
much less wary. They were both running from something. Or somebody.

Nobody honest lived around here; too close to foragers and Eaters in the early years and too solitary now; the only towns still living on the river itself were Corvallis and Portland. Her eyes probed the fields as she emptied her mind and let the patterns show themselves.

The lush fruit of the Valley's rich soil and reliable rains gave the land a disheveled dryad beauty. The stretch east past the old orchard was bushy and overgrown: weeds and grass that rose stirrup-high or better, a new growth of yarrow rank and tall through last year's dead brown stalks, shrubby Oregon grape with spiny hollylike leaves and clusters of yellow flowers. The field had been cultivated for flower bulbs before the Change; amidst the strangling invaders early tulips and iris pushed up forlorn in crimson and blue; darting swarms of rufous hummingbirds hovered around their blossoms. Patches of waving reeds showed livid green amid a buzz of gnats and swift predatory dragonflies; that was wetland returning as ditches were blocked and field drains silted up and the untended levees along the Willamette and its tributaries broke down.

An abandoned tractor near the road was already a mound of blackberry vines and golden pea starred with pale gold blooms, with only the regular curve of the rear wheels and the shape of the square cab showing the hand of man. Patches of wood left along creeks and field boundaries before the Change now sprouted thick fringes of saplings, young trees as tall as her own five-eight or higher. There were red alder and black cottonwood, fir and pine and oak spreading out as the skirmishers of the triumphant forest's march. The fresh spring leaves fluttered like the banners of a conquering army; maroon trillium bloomed in the shade beneath their feet, bright orilachrium coins scattered beneath the victor's feet.

More small animals ran across the road. Birds went by overhead. They'd bred back fast, but there were still a few too many to be chance; she spotted tree swallows flying in swooping curves, grebes, scruffy-looking jays…And everything going north to south.

Eilir made a sharp clicking sound with her tongue. Astrid Larsson turned in the saddle. Her pale brows went up as Eilir's hands moved. Then her eyes narrowed, startling blue rimmed and veined with silver.

Can you hear anything unusual that way?
Eilir signed.
North?

Astrid's long, narrow head turned, flicking the rope of braided white-blond hair across her back.
Nope,
she signed.
Too noisy right here. Come on!

The two young women reined their horses aside, down through the roadside ditch and into the field north of the road. A skull hidden by rampant goldenrod crunched under an iron-shod hoof. Elessar and Undomiel were agile as cats and just as smart, and they could tell something a little unusual was up, their nostrils flaring and ears swiveling radarlike. Eilir kept her eyes busy. Her friend ostentatiously closed hers as she took off her helmet to rest on her saddlebow, frowning in a pose of concentration.

Even under her gathering anxiety that made Eilir smile a little. Astrid was her oath-sworn
anamchara
—soul sister and best friend—and had been since they met when the Bearkillers came west over the Cascades late in the first Change Year. She was her own age to the month—fourteen then, twenty-three in a few days. And they'd put together the Rangers, who even the Bearkiller and Mackenzie elders had conceded were useful over the last year or two. She was just plain totally cool to hang with, too. But there was no denying…

Astrid's a bit of a flaming goof at times.
“Self-dramatizing” was the way her mother put it.
Like that vest.

It was good, supple, black leather, sleeveless and thigh-length, and lined with tough nylon, with a layer of fine chain mail between; so far, so practical, if she didn't want to wear the whole elaborate panoply of an A-list Bearkiller on a ride through—mostly—safe country, and the color went well with her dark brown pants and boots. But what she'd put on it wasn't the stylized, snarling bear's head of Mike's outfit or the moon-and-antlers of the Mackenzies; it was a white tree topped by a crown and seven white stars.

Not to mention the helmet.

It had a good steel pot underneath, but it was also covered with a raven built up from individual feathers of black-lacquered aluminum, the wings covering the cheekpieces down to her chin, and the eyes were genuine rubies salvaged from a jeweler's shop. Yes, it looked even cooler than the white tree and stars and crown; she was a
stylish
goof even at her worst. And yes, Astrid had chosen the Raven sept when she was adopted into the Clan; Eilir and her mother were Ravens themselves. But Raven wasn't just the sept's totem and tutelary spirit. It was the bird of the Threefold Warrior Goddess Badb-Macha-Neman, the Morrigu Herself. Seriously big mojo, not to be invoked lightly; and the Gods had a tendency to show up in the aspect you called. As within, so without.

Astrid had been the one who insisted on calling their gang the
Dunedain
Rangers, too.

She
really
ought to find a boyfriend and get her nose out of the Tolkien. Yeah, it's a
great
story, none better, I love it too, but she needs to relate to the
real world
more. Plus she's still a
virgin
, sweet Lady Arianrhod witness and pity her.

After a moment Astrid spoke and signed: “Yes. I
do
hear something, I think. Dogs—a lot of 'em.”

Feral pack?
Eilir asked, following both—she read lips well. Then, since Astrid preferred the term:
Wargs?

There were a lot of dogs who'd managed to avoid going into the pot in the Dying Time, outliving their masters, or been turned loose before people got really hungry, and by now they'd had several generations of descendants, mingled with coyotes. There weren't any actual wolves this far south and west—yet—but the dog packs still in business were
real
survivor types, big and fierce, and they'd gotten used to eating manflesh in the bad times. That made them a lot more dangerous than real wolves, though more to children or individuals caught alone than an armed group.

“No,” Astrid said and signed, her hands moving fluidly above the saddlebow. “No, they sound more…
organized
than a warg pack, sort of. And they're not just barking. It's more of a baying sound, like hounds. Like the ones Mike keeps for hunting.”

The rest of the Mackenzies had passed on another few hundred yards, long bowshot; heads were turning back to look at them. The two put their horses up to a hand gallop—Arabs had jackrabbit acceleration, too—then jumped them over a section of wire fence still standing, overgrown until it was like a shaggy hedge, landed in a spurt of gravel, and reined in beside Juniper. The Mackenzie chieftain smiled for a second at the casual display of horsemanship; then the smile died as she saw their faces.

She frowned when Eilir explained, and flung up a hand. The loose column came to a halt, riders facing alternate directions, looking hard and listening as they fingered bowstrings. First one and then another waved and called that they'd heard the dogs too.

“Should we push on southeast?” Juniper said thoughtfully, looking down at Rudi's excitement. Then: “No. The university and Mike and Mt. Angel all agreed this is Mackenzie land, even if we're not using it much at the moment.”

The extremely theoretical western border of the Clan's territories ran along the river and Highway 99W, I-5, south from Salem to Eugene, and east to the crest of the Cascades—eastern Linn and Lane Counties, and a chunk of southern Marion. Most of it had been too close to the cities, and now it was empty and reverting to wilderness; the Clan's cultivated land and people were in the southeastern part tucked up against the foothills, ending at an outpost in the ruins of Lebanon.

Grimly, the Chief of the Mackenzies went on: “That's someone's hunting pack. Let's see who's on our land without our leave, and what it is they're hunting. I suspect it isn't deer.”

We Rangers should scout it out,
Eilir signed; Astrid nodded vigorously.

Another hesitation, and then: “Be careful,
mo chroi,
and you too, Astrid dear. Don't be long, and come right back when you've learned something.”

I'm
always
careful, Mom,
Eilir signed, and the Chief of the Mackenzies winced.