The Protector's War (60 page)

“Now!”
she said, rising.

Six Mackenzies sprang to their feet, tossing aside the camouflage cloaks. The railcar hadn't gone over, quite, but it lay steeply canted with the wheels on one side digging deeply into the dirt of the embankment. The knight had been thrown free and had the wind knocked out of him; he crawled and then began to rise, propping himself up with the lower point of his shield and pushing at the helmet that had slewed half around on his head. The crossbowmen all landed together in a heap in their enclosure, a heap that cursed and heaved as they tried to push each other off and regain their feet. One of the laborers on the pump handles of the railcar screamed as he was flung down and landed on some metal fitting with the point of his shoulder, breaking bone from the volume of sound he made. The others gasped and crouched and glared.

“Throw down!”
Juniper shouted, drawing her bow.
“Throw down, now, or you die!”
She was close enough to see the knight's eyes narrow as he cast off shock.

Damn,
she thought, as he ripped out his sword and charged.

The range was too close for comfort, and the big shield covered the man from nose to knee, held expertly; her arrow punched through the lion-with-spear painted on the sheet-metal surface and into the plywood with a vicious
crack.
The man checked half a step at the solid slamming impact but came on in his crabwise crouching run.

“Haro! Haro for Molalla!” he shouted, the long glitter of his sword going up for a looping cut.
“Haro! Portland!”

“Your choice,” Juniper said, skipping backward as her right hand reached over her shoulder.

Crack!

That was Cynthia Carson's bow; the bodkin punched through the tough plywood and through the vambrace on the knight's forearm beneath. He screamed as steel and cedarwood cracked bone, and threw out his sword as he twisted to keep balance.

Crack!
Rowan's hundred-thirty-pound stave slammed a shaft right through the shield and into the knight's shoulder.

That gave Juniper and four others a shot at the gray chain mail covering his torso. The
snapsnapsnapsnapsnap
of their bowstrings striking their bracers sounded within a second of each other, fractionally before the ugly muffled punching thumps of impact and the low musical
thunk!
of the arrowheads' brutal passage through the strong riveted steel links of the ring mail. Two sank to the fletchings—light-gray goose and Sanjay Barstow's gaudy peacock feathers—and another went into his breastbone and stood there quivering until his knees gave way an instant later.

Sweet Mother-of-All,
Juniper thought as the man crumpled, going on hands and knees and coughing out blood and bits of lung. You never got used to it…
Dread Lord, lead him home to the Summerlands.
Rowan's ax swung up and then down, in what might be mercy, before he cleaned it on the dead man's cloak and slid it back in the loops across his back.

She turned with a question on her lips. It died unasked as she saw Cynthia Carson lean over the railing at the rear of the car and make two careful thrusts with her short sword; that settled what had happened to the crossbowmen.

Or at least
I
don't get used to it,
she thought, and nodded to Rowan.

“Let's get going!” he said.

Kevin Lewis of the Dunedain was already on the railcar, jabbing a hypodermic into the thigh of the man who rolled moaning on its floor. “Broken collarbone and socket,” he said shortly, then cursed as Rowan rocked the vehicle. “Brigid leave just when you need Her, Rowan Mackenzie! Careful! I have to get him down!”

Rowan grumbled but helped lift the wounded man down. Kevin swore again at his haste and laid his patient hastily on the ground; the man's companions followed, staring wide-eyed at the kilted warriors and in awestruck fear at Juniper herself.

“Later, unless he's going to die,” Rowan said impatiently to the Rangers' medico.

“Can we lift this without tackle?” Daniel Barstow said dubiously, kicking at the railcar. It rocked slightly under his boot, with a clatter and crunch.

“It's no heavier than a compact, from the report and the look of it,” Juniper said. That comparison meant nothing to the younger Mackenzies, and she saw the puzzlement in their eyes. She corrected himself: “Than a draft horse, or a twenty-foot wall log.”

“We can do it,” Rowan said confidently.

The big blacksmith spat on his hands and reached under the prow of the vehicle for the forward frame. Everyone else crouched and put their shoulders to the sides of the railcar and prepared to lift and shove. Juniper did herself; she was strong for her size, and every bit counted when the twelve had to shift a hundred pounds each.

“And one…and two…and
three
.”

With a unified grunt they stood, and the twelve hundred pounds of wood and metal came with them.

“Ready…
step,
” Juniper said, feeling her thighs trembling with the strain, grunting each time a foot came down.
Don't let this come down on anyone's instep. Feel for the footing.
“Step…step…step…”

Wheezing, gasping, they paced forward and lowered the railcar onto the next section of track. One snatched his boot free from under a wheel at the last second, and went white, but that and a few splinters and a little torn skin on some palms were the only injuries; it helped that they all had hands toughened by years of hard labor. Juniper bent to tear a clump of grass free and use it to scrub with a grimace of distaste at the left shoulder of her brigandine, where blood leaking through the floorboards had stained it.

“See who can fit into those mail shirts,” she said quickly.

One of the ragged laborers came up. “Ma'am—” he began.

“That's Lady Juniper, the Mackenzie,” Rowan said sharply.

Juniper made an impatient
not now
gesture; Rowan had always been a lot more protective of her titles and dignity than she was.

“Ah, Lady, ma'am—you need to know the signals the scout car was using? 'Cause me and Jerry and Luke, we know 'em pretty good. We've been doing this for a year now, since the cow died and Dad couldn't…well, for a year now.”

“Lady Juniper's luck!” someone muttered. Juniper began to smile.

Rowan grinned too. “All right, let's get those rails looking good again,” he said. “Hup, hup!”

“Hup yours, Row,” Sanjay said, as he bent to help lift the length of steel rail back into its chairs. He was smiling himself.

 

Crossing Tavern, Willamette Valley, Oregon

May 12th, 2007 AD—Change Year Nine

 

Well, that's an incomplete report if I ever heard one,
Mike Havel thought.
Something important here, though…

He made a small sign with his hand, saw Hutton's nod.

“And they fell into it, neat as neat could be,” Juniper finished, to general applause.

Sir Nigel inclined his head. “Very smoothly planned and carried out, Lady Juniper,” he said sincerely.

“Oh, Juniper or Juney,” she replied, with an urchin grin. “If you only knew how tired I get of titles!”

“Juniper, then, if you'll call me Nigel.” His smile was genuine too. “That sort of guerrilla operation is more difficult to bring off, since the Change.”

“So Sam tells me,” Juniper said, resting a hand for a moment on the stocky bowman's shoulder. “If I know anything about fighting, I learned it from him.”

“You couldn't wish for a better teacher,” the baronet said, and smiled back. “But it does show considerable native wit to learn so well.”

“Figure I'll turn in,” Will Hutton said with a yawn. “We can fill in the rest tomorrow.”

Good old Will,
Havel thought.
Always picks up on what's needed. And Juney can fib with the best of them. Comes from all that storytelling, I suppose. Sir Nigel seems to take a hint well, too.

The Crossing Tavern's staff bustled in and cleared the plates. When they left, Havel and Signe confronted Juniper and Sam Aylward across the table; the fire burned low, and the candles as well, scenting the room with the smells of fir-sap and beeswax, tinting the rug-hangings on the wall with gleams of color that were all shades of red.

“So, what really happened?” Signe said; her voice wasn't exactly cold, but it was curiously flat.

“Pretty much what I said,” Juniper replied. “It's what happened next that needs to be private, for now, until we can all figure out what to do about it.”

 

Barony of Molalla, Willamette Valley, Oregon

May 10th, 2007 AD—Change Year Nine

 

I feel completely absurd,
Juniper thought.
It would be too bad entirely to die looking like someone eight years old dressed up in her parents' clothes.

The knight's helmet was bad enough; it had to be padded with a pair of spare kneesocks so that it wouldn't fall down to the level of her upper lip. Wrapping up in the cloak and sitting on a haversack to look taller…

Three of the original engine-team and a volunteer stood at the levers; four Mackenzies of suitable size had donned the gear of the dead crossbowmen. It all looked fairly convincing, unless you got close enough to see faces…or smell the sewer-and-slaughterhouse stinks of violent death.

“Here they come,” one of the clansfolk said.

The knight's seat had turned out to be a swivel, a padded luxury from some office. Juniper used it to turn and look past the lever-pump and over the south-facing rear of the railcar, as her clansmen raised two paddles like oversized Ping-Pong rackets and began using them to semaphore a message:
All clear four miles up the road,
in this case. Normal procedure was for the railcar to dart ahead and then back, from what they'd been able to gather.

The train approached, at a plodding walking pace—the Hereford and Angus steers weren't going to hurry for anyone. There were six rail wagons in the train, each about forty feet long and pulled by eight hitch of oxen. The first held a dozen crossbowmen, eight heavy infantry carrying long spears, a man-at-arms and a tall flag with Baron Molalla's standard; the next four were piled high with cargo under lashed tarpaulins. The last was a covered traveling carriage; part of the roof was a flat space with deck chairs and a table with an umbrella in its center. It was pulled by six big black horses, which was pure swank unless they planned on getting ahead of the freight wagons later, or switching the team around and heading back this way.

The locals said five wagons were normal, not six. Something unexpected, and in a fight,
unexpected
usually means
bad.

There were more horsemen than they'd expected too, walking their mounts beside the slow-moving train, and there were other saddled mounts trailing along behind the rail carriage on a leading line, saddled but with their stirrups looped up.

Call it off?
she thought. They could. Just give the signal and streak ahead…
No. I've promised that farmer and his friends.
You piled up a debt with Fate when you made a promise, and if you refused to pay when it was due, it was invariably collected later—usually at the worst possible time.
We go ahead.

Juniper raised her hand and waved; the train would think it a friendly gesture, and Sam would know it for the go-ahead. The passenger carriage rumbled over the little bridge that crossed Milk Creek.

Or the Rubicon,
she thought, her heart thudding, then slowing as she made herself breathe steadily as the train came on at the immemorial pace of the ox.
Let them come on, let them get well past, your trusty railcar scouts have checked all this ground for you…

A sound came from the bridge then, a giant's hissing roar. Thermite didn't work quite the way it had before the Change, but it still got very, very hot—more than hot enough to turn the wooden trestle of the bridge into an instant inferno of black smoke and licking yellow flame. Even a few of the oxen looked over their shoulders in surprise at the noise and stink; the men reacted like a kicked-in ant's nest. The frantic milling went on for only seconds before a trumpet blatted; the spearmen hopped down from the leading wagon and trotted towards the rear, forming up before a horseman who waved them on ahead.

The man-at-arms in the front wagon was signaling again, and Daniel replied with more soothing lies. Men boiled out of the passenger wagon at the rear of the train, some of them still helping each other on with their war harness, and began mounting the horses on the leading line. One, two, three…five lances. Two more accoutered like men-at-arms, though there was something odd about them.