The Protectors war

Chapter Fourteen

Crossing Tavern, Willamette Valley, Oregon

May 13th, 2007 AD-Change Year Nine

"I thought you had some direct action in mind, back on Gunpowder Day," Mike Havel said. "Good for you. If Arminger's barons think they can violate the truce on the quiet whenever they like, I'll be damned if we can't do likewise."

He grinned. "And each of us can blame it on the others."

Juniper nodded. "It's a cunning fellow you are, Mike. We left Chuck and Judy in charge at Dun Juniper, and the fair at Sutterdown this Beltane was a good cover for what we had to do. No better time to gather the right people secretly, and to leave unnoticed."

What a wealth of living that packs into a couple of sentences, Juniper thought, looking around the Crossing Tavern's private room at them. Mike's eyes, friendly and shrewd and as ruthless as a wolf in winter as his strong white teeth ripped the meat off a pork rib; his Signe's blue gaze, intelligent and not in the least friendly; the calm strength of Will Hutton that always reminded her of Sam, and the polite curiosity of the English group.

"Arminger has been nipping at us for years, and we've been nipping right back," she said, taking a sip of her ale. "It was time to sink some real fangs right in his arse. And while there may or may not have been an underground of Witches in Europe in the old days, there most certainly is in the Protectorate this ninth year of the Change, and other folk who're friendly to us and not him-secretly, of course. Relatives of those who've made it out and settled among us, for starters. First our people gathered by twos and threes, slipping away and eastward, up into the mountains on the old tracks."

"Safer than trying to sneak over the border around Salem, say?" Mike asked.

"Less conspicuous, certainly," Juniper said. "Except for the odd hunter not many go up into the high country these days, and most of those stick to the lower levels; the game's thicker there, and it's safer. We've never been able to scour the mountains completely clean of bandits and Eaters, not north of Route 20 at least. Too big, and too far from our duns. We can't spare the people for constant patrols. Plus there are too many ways to slip over the mountains."

"Yeah," Will Hutton growled. "Them CORA folks, they don't watch any of their side as close as they should, 'cept maybe the main passes. Lots of wanderin' folk and broken men east of the mountains, always a few coming on to the west. Worse these last two years, with the war in the Pendleton country."

Juniper nodded. "But nothing that's a threat to a big well-armed party, so we drew together at Elk Lake, and worked our way north to Table Rock in three separate groups, not too far apart. Forest country, still a bit chilly and wet in May, but tolerable if you know how. The Protector doesn't entirely ignore that area, though. It's where runaway serfs head for, to begin with: "

Table Rock Wilderness, Willamette Valley, Oregon

May 6th, 2007 AD-Change Year Nine

Not enough birds, Juniper thought suddenly.

This land near Table Rock was home to many; she'd been listening to a golden-crowned kinglet until just a second ago. All at once they were silent, on both steep slopes above and below the trail:

"Whoa!" someone exclaimed, up near the head of the column.

The Mackenzies halted; it was eight, just two hours after sunrise, and May was still chilly enough in the mountains for the horse's breath to show as white plumes of steam in air crystal-clear and scented with fir sap and pine. Juniper could see over the heads of the dozen or so on foot ahead of her. She went mounted as a concession to age and rank; there wasn't enough grass on these upland trails for more to ride, unless you wanted to get into a circular-argument trap where more horses carried fodder so you could have more horses carrying fodder. She still didn't see what was ahead for a moment, because her mount was forgetting its training, snorting and trying to rear on the narrow forest track. From the sound of it, so were the four packhorses behind her. Where they thought they could go was a mystery, since the land was forty-five degrees from vertical in all directions and densely covered in big trees and underbrush.

Bear was her first thought, when she saw what blocked the trail, along with minor irritation; they were common here in the western Cascades and most likely it would trundle off soon enough. Then she got a better look; brown, higher at the shoulders than the rump, dished face, and big-very, very big.

Grizzly! What did the man say? "I expected this, but not so soon!"

There had been rumors of grizzly sightings in the last couple of years, but nothing confirmed-like wolves and buffalo, they'd been half wishful tale rather than fact. This was Old Eph right enough, an adult male with the beginnings of the whitening on his hump hairs. Probably he'd been born right after the Change, and wandered in westward from the Montana-Wyoming mountains, or down from British Columbia, looking to stake out his own feeding ground. Grizzlies needed big territories to support their bulk, and with guns gone and humans scarce again they were spreading fast throughout their historic range. In Oregon that meant everywhere except some of the southeastern deserts, but she hadn't thought they'd make it this far in only nine years. A jolt of excitement went through her as she watched the majestic beast move its long neck back and forth enquiringly. At least Earth is healing Herself. Thanks and praise, Lord Cernunnos of the Forests, Lady Artemis of the Beasts!

Then she decided it was perhaps more pleasant to contemplate the bear's majesty at a distance; say, viewed through binoculars across a valley and a nice swift creek. And that up close like this it was perhaps more exciting than she wished; grizzlies were a lot more temperamental than ordinary black bears. This one looked to be still slightly gaunt from winter, and hungry. It also seemed to be sniffing the air with mounting interest, which was unfortunate-it could smell the horses. And even more, the blood-and-meat scent of the butchered mule deer carcass slung over one of them.

They'd split the Mackenzie war band into three to work their way through these mountains, with the Rangers scouting on ahead and carrying messages between the columns. Sam was with one group, Cynthia led another, and Juniper presided over this, with Rowan handling most of the actual leading. He was near the head of the column, and flung up a hand to freeze everyone in place. Two in the lead leveled battle spears; the rest put arrow to string and made ready to draw; the movements were quick, fluid. The razor edges of the broadheads glinted in the olive-green gloom of the morning forest as light flickered through the needles of the Douglas firs and hemlocks.

"Shall I shoot?" someone said.

The archers sidled out to get a clear field of fire; that wasn't easy given the footing, but the path did curve a little towards the west. Between them they could probably put a dozen shafts into the beast inside a second, but:

"Don't be a fool," Rowan said, his voice steady but pitched low. "There aren't enough of us to use the meat and we can't pack the hide out, and he might get through to us anyway. Shoot if he charges or I say so. And get those horses under control!"

Juniper did; she was riding Eilir's Celelroch, and the well-trained beast quickly subsided into tense quiet. Between her daughter's knees the Arab mare probably wouldn't have started acting up at all; Juniper was a good rider, Eilir a superb one. The people tending the pack animals took a little longer, and the bear was getting more curious about the smells of blood and meat.

Rowan stepped up between the spearmen-although one of them was a spearwoman, if you wanted to get picky. His shaggy hooded war cloak made the big blond man look even larger-it was loose-meshed cloth mottled in shades of green-brown, and sewn thickly with narrow dangling loops. This last day, they'd all taken the time to stick twigs and vegetation in the loops, which made you look bulkier except when you were keeping very still, in which case it made you near-as-no-matter invisible. Rowan faced the bear and slid his bow into the crook of his arm. His right hand reached out, and effortlessly snapped off a thumb-thick, arm-long branch from a hemlock that rose from lower down the slope to stand beside the trail.

"Peace between us today, brother bear," he said. "You go your way, and we'll go ours. Everyone get ready!"

Juniper echoed the thought in her head, her hand making a sign, concentrating her will like a dart. So mote it be!

Rowan took the branch in his left hand; now his right moved to his belt, slowly and carefully, and brought out a lighter. The alcohol-soaked wick caught immediately as his thumb spun flint against steel in a shower of sparks, and the hemlock needles went up with a woosh as he touched the flame to them. Then he waved it overhead, yelling; to the bear's senses a twelve-foot figure tipped with the terror of fire. The rest of the party raised their arms and waved them as well, shouting nonsense-or in a couple of cases, prayers. The bear half reared, nostrils wrinkling, and let out a deep moaning grunt of protest that showed its long yellow teeth.

Juniper had noticed years ago that predators were less afraid of humans since the Change; even before that they'd known the difference between a man with a gun and one without quite well, and they'd quickly realized that the dangerous noisemakers were gone. They were still wary of fire, though, and by now the bear's weak eyes and keen ears must have noticed that there were a good many of the irritating, noisy bipeds as well as the tempting smell of food. Hunger and aggravation warred with caution, and then the great beast turned and crashed off into the rhododendron thickets. The noise of its passage gradually dwindled, and the normal forest sounds replaced it.

Phew! she thought, shaken. That could have been unfortunate!

The clansfolk waited until the bear was obviously gone; a member of the sept named for him gathered tufts of cinnamon fur from the bushes, chuckling with delight as he wrapped them in a rag and tucked them into a pouch-they would make much-admired marks for his bonnet clasp, and fine gifts for friends who were of his totem. The rest kept their eyes busy, then calmly resumed their steady ground-eating pace; a few discussed the meeting in low tones for a while, then went quiet again. She knew that was mostly simple prudence; they weren't very near enemy-controlled territory yet, but they were well north of any area the Mackenzies controlled or made safe. Yet most of it was that they simply didn't care much, beyond having an interesting story to tell when they got home.

I do not understand the younger generation of our Clan, she thought, shaking her head a little. I love them, but I do not understand them, even my own dear son. And even Eilir is stranger to me than she would have been, in the old world.

Most of those here were younger than her daughter, who'd been fourteen nine years ago; Rowan was the eldest at twenty-six. Only blurred childhood memories of the time before the Change remained to the youngsters, and that had left its mark. It was more obvious on this venture, days alone with her juniors.

What is it exactly? she thought. It's not just that they're hardy and tough. So are Sam or Chuck: or myself myself, to be sure. Or that they 're devout Witches; so am I, and a legion of our converts are wildly so, like drowning folk clutching at a sturdy log. I think it's that they just: take it all for granted. They're not haunted by the Change, this is their world. And it's not that they believe in the Craft; it's the way they do. It's not an affirmation with them; they believe the way we believed in atoms.

Plus they didn't hold themselves quite like late-twentieth-century Americans, or walk like them, or sit like them: and there was an indefinable something in their speech, too. And in the way they treat me. It wasn't the sometimes embarrassing reverence of those who'd joined the Clan in the Dying Time and lived because of it, although there was a deep respect. They were ready enough to banter with her, or argue for that matter, but underlying it:

The fact of the matter is they really do think of me as the Goddess-on-Earth, and they're easy with that, too-a lot easier than I! They've grown up foreign to me and their parents, and that's the long and short of it. Their children will be more alien still. Juniper shook her head. Later, she decided. Time to think of such things later.

The season was less advanced than down in the warmer lowlands to the west, earth wet underfoot, a damp chill in the air whenever they were out of the sun, but the effort kept them all warm. The path wound through forest still as the long day wore on into midafternoon; they were pushing to reach their destination well before nightfall, and merely gnawed biscuit or other trail food as they walked, and swigged from canteens. This had been private land, mostly regularly harvested for timber and replanted. Nine years hadn't changed it all that much, although fires had left patches of open ground where bushy thin-leaf huckleberry grew thickly in a profusion of small yellow flowers, mixed with manzanita pink. Wildlife and birds were thicker too, in this rich edge habitat without many human hunters; the paths and trails more overgrown, kept open more by paw and hoof than boot or wheel.

The peaks about weren't tall, even their destination was a bit under five thousand feet, but they made a tangle of sharp ridges and deep V-shaped valleys, mostly densely covered in trees right to their summits, woven with a net of creeks and small lakes. Now and then a view opened up to the east and showed the white cone of Mt. Jefferson , and sometimes the Three Sisters farther southward, less often Mt. Hood far to the northeast. Mostly the land reared in close about them. Then they passed an old fallen park sign, deep in a swale, and angled east behind a tall butte.

A sound not quite like a chickadee greeted them. Using the signal was wise; when the war-cloaked figure rose from the side of the trail nobody sank an arrow through the body beneath. A hand in an archer's glove threw the hood back above a Mackenzie helmet covered in the same fabric, and an implausibly young face grinned at them. Black eyes snapped in a brown face beneath a shock of raven hair that showed around the edge of his bowl helmet-it was Sanjay Barstow Mackenzie, one of the adoptees Chuck and Judy had rescued from a stalled schoolbus just after the Change, while they were on their own journey from Eugene to Juniper's cabin.

"The Archer sends greeting, and you're where you were supposed to be," the young man said; he was just turned nineteen. His voice held a slight sardonic edge, as if he was surprised to find them there. "He says Nohorn Butte there will hide you from Table Rock if you're careful with your fires."

"Tell Sam to teach his grannie how to suck eggs," Rowan growled. "What sort of idiot does he take me for?"

Sanjay's grin grew wider: "Well, he didn't specify what sort exactly, but if you want me to guess I could come up with a few-" He cut off at Rowan's snort, and went back to business: "The Dunedain say it's just as our secret Witch-kin in Molalla said: a launcher, and a lookout station there. They'll lead us into position before dawn, and you're to be ready for the frontal attack on the signal-three fire arrows, out over the gate."

Juniper nodded. "We'll be ready," she said.

Sanjay took in the disassembled mule deer slung across one packsaddle; they'd done a rough job of draining and butchering, then packed the meat and edible organs back into the hide in a shapeless blood-wet bundle.

"Ah, you were lucky, by Cernunnos!" he said.

"Ah, you mean we were quiet," Rowan boasted. "He crossed the path not a hundred feet ahead of me. One shaft-the heart-ten paces and he dropped."

To be sure, he's still a young man, Juniper thought, smiling to herself.

"Lucky I said; lucky I meant," Sanjay jibed.

"Ah, you mean we can shoot," another of the party chuckled. "And Cernunnos rewarded us for it."

"Well, the Horned Lord may have taken pity on you," Sanjay returned.

Even as they joked, two of the Mackenzies were lifting the hundred-odd pounds of meat to the ground; they opened the hide, cut some of the raw leather loose and rewrapped a thigh and half the ribs in it. Others helped Sanjay load it into his oiled-leather backpack. The slender fine-boned young man's step didn't falter when another forty pounds went on his back, along with the weight of his brigandine and weapons and gear. He touched the stave of his longbow to his helmet brow in salute to Juniper and disappeared into the woods upslope, climbing the hillside in a series of springy elastic bounds without touching his hands to ground or trunk, kilt swirling around his thighs, the dandy-gaudy peacock fletchings of his arrows bobbing.

"This is a good place," Rowan said, looking around. "Aidan, Donnal, Susie, get water. Tom, Ed, Silvermoon, you're first watch. The rest of you, set up camp here. I'll make the fire."

Juniper rubbed her jaw to hide a smile; evidently he'd taken Sam's warning to heart. She went to help those setting up a picket line to hold the horses; that was a rope stretched between two trees, and a pile of oats and alfalfa pellets from the sacks for each beast. They were out of the logged-over section here, into what had been National Wilderness territory; the trees were tall, a hundred feet or better in mixed stands of hemlocks and firs- Douglas, silver and grand-mostly grown up since the last wildfire went through here over a century ago. By the side of the stream a little southeast were some Douglas firs that looked to be four or five times that age, towering living columns near two hundred feet high and twelve through at the base.

All these mountains will look like this, when Eilir's grand-children walk them, Jumper thought, looking up into that majesty.

Undergrowth was sparser under the shade of the canopy, save where the steep rock just north kept out the roots of the big firs; the crest was five hundred feet above them, and Aylward was right-it would hide anything but a pillar of smoke nicely.

"Sunset's in about five hours," she said.

Rowan put the lower tip of his bowstave to the earth, looked at the length of the shadow it cast and nodded; then he glanced up at the three-quarter moon-up since two hours past noon, and it wouldn't set until about the same before dawn.

"Hmmm," he said. "Rendezvous on the way with Cynthia at two hours past midnight. Call it four and half miles to Table Rock as the raven flies, another three on foot: three hours' travel, and the pace to leave us fresh at the end. Plenty of time if we leave at sunset, and we'll all be the better for a meal and some rest."

She opened herself to the weather, looked at the sky, sniffed deeply. "More cloud later, though not soon. Perhaps a little rain. Damp and heavy dew, certainly. That'll lay scent and muffle sound."

Rowan nodded again; he broke the deadwood for the fire himself, feeling to make sure it was bone-dry all the way through, to burn without smoke. Then he set up a screen of woven branches before he kindled it with his lighter, making a fire that quickly turned to embers low and hot. The meat of the deer was cut into chunks and strung on sticks, with no seasoning but salt as it sizzled at the edges of the fire. Soon he was saying over and over again:

"Keep that back there, the Dagda club you dead, don't drip more grease on the coals, keep it off to the side, it makes less smoke that way!"

To go with it two thin griddle plates were set over the coals; onto them went a batter made from stream water and the coarse meal everyone carried in their haversacks. It had baking powder and salt already mixed with the stone-ground flour, and it quickly rose and bubbled and browned into a thick biscuitlike wheat cake that went well with the last of the strong-tasting sour-cream butter in its Tupperware container. Despite the packhorses, they had only the most basic foodstuffs along; the bulk of the loads were weapons and tools to make them-bowstaves, strings, arrowheads, bowyer's draw knives and little printed booklets on the art of turning Pacific yew into longbows.

Gifts, so to speak, Juniper thought a little grimly. To the Protectorate's common folk.

She juggled a hot gobbet of deer's liver from hand to hand until she could bite into it and lick the delicious juices from her fingers. Someone made an inarticulate sound of pleasure, then said:

"Venison always tastes better like this."

"When you're famished?" Juniper said. "Of course! Is maith an t-anlann an t-ocras. Hunger is a good sauce."

A small cauldron boiled water for herb tea-they had some water-purification powder along, but it tasted bad and the folk in Corvallis charged the earth for it. Bringing creek water to a hard rolling boil for fifteen minutes killed the giardia parasites just as dead, and a few handfuls of herbs were easy enough to carry. Cold, the excess would go into their canteens.

One of the watch came in to report, and to take food back to his companions. "Silvermoon's up on the crest," he said, jerking a thumb in that direction. "And yes, I reminded her not to let the binoculars flash when she had them pointing west. Nothing between here and there that she can see."

He made a wide circling gesture. "No man-sign on any side, either; not recent enough to see, at least. I don't think they patrol this far."

Juniper nodded. "That post is there to watch for people trying to get out of the Protector's territory," she said. "There's nothing east of here for a hundred miles except the Cascades, and he holds Highway 25 and 26. And Hood River northeast, but he has that too."

When Tom had gone off with two bark plates loaded with food for his friends there was nothing much to do but smother the fire with shovelfuls of dirt-and only then with a bucket of water. They all made a murmured apology for disturbing the earth here, laid out their crumbs as an offering for the birds and the spirit of the crag, and settled in to wait. Some went over their gear again, checking the fletching on their arrows, flexing their brigandines to make sure all the rivets that held the metal plates between the layers of canvas or leather were sound, scanning every inch of their longbows for cracks and the horn tips to make sure they were still tightly glued.

The veeep: veeep: of steel on hone sounded quietly, as the blades of swords and spears and dirks, the edges of arrowheads, were ground a little sharper. It was the sort of obsessive detail-work you did on tools that might mean the difference between life and death; then everyone went over the maps one last time. When that was done, many of the young warriors sat in facing pairs, painting each other's faces and hands with triskeles, spirals, abstract patterns, or the forms of their totems. Sam disapproved of the fashion for painting up before a fight-he claimed it reminded him too much of football hooligans in the old days back in England-but even the First Armsman hadn't been able to forbid it. When it was finished Rowan's face was overlain with a dragon's in gold and black and scarlet, with the tail curving around his neck.

And to think I once thought I was joking when I told Dennie that he'd have them all painting their faces blue if he kept up with the Celticity, she thought. Little did I imagine! Here I'm to blame, though. The patterns are all from my library. Who knew just loaning books would: well, there's not much else to do in wintertime, at that.

Those who'd finished set gear by and rested quietly; a few lovers went aside-they might be dead this time tomorrow-and others played cards, tossed dice, or told stories. She heard a snatch of that:": and then he said as the outlaw turned at bay: 'This is the most powerful war bow in the clan, and even I can't hold the draw forever. So tell me, punk, do you feel lucky?'"

Rowan took extra care with his great war ax, rubbing a swatch of raw wool up and down the smooth ashwood shaft, checking the rawhide binding at the lower end, taking out a pocket hone to touch up the broad curved cutting surface. That had a blade of hard spring steel, welded with forge fire and hammer into the mass of a head made out of twisted bundles of softer low-carbon rebar; that let the rear face serve as a smashing hammer on targets that would shatter the cutting edge. When he was finally satisfied he rubbed the wool over the metal-the lanolin kept rust from starting-and slipped on a leather cover fastened with a snap.

It was a trifle cruder than Dennie's weapon, but skillfully made, and graven with runes and symbols that had made her blink a little the first time she'd seen it bare and close enough to read them.

And made me wonder where he dug those up. They weren't in any book I lent to Dun Carson! Bane and blight and ruin were worked into that metal with every hammer stroke. I'd as soon go into battle with a rattlesnake in my naked hand! Yes, it's a terrible weapon, but it will betray him in the end; doesn 't he realize that?

Quiet fell. Juniper Mackenzie set herself cross-legged, controlled breathing, brought up the image of a still pond reflecting the crescent moon and sank inward. More and more of the others followed her, unless they had immediate tasks to do. When she stirred it was just short of the time for leaving; the westering sun touched the distant Coast Range, and eastward the high Cascade snows burned crimson along the horizon of encroaching night. Overhead the moon shone through patches of clear sky and glowed when streamers of white haze covered it; the air smelled moist.

"Come," she said, and they knelt in a Circle around symbols scratched into the dirt with a dirk for an athame-but the best symbol for a sharp knife was still a sharp knife.

Here could be no elaborate rite; nor was this one she would have chosen to lead, except from hard necessity. The quiet words still rang in her mouth and in the cold wind that blew along her spine and into mind and heart. And at last:

": so come to us, Lugh of the Shining Spear, Dread Lord, mighty Warrior, All-Conquering Sun; come to us, Badb-Macha-Neman called the Morrigan, Great Queen of Battles, raven-winged and strong, Chooser of the Slain! Your own faithful people call upon You, and to You we dedicate the acorn harvest of the red field. Arise and come with storm and terror, in blood and in wrath! So mote it be!"

Then they clasped hands, chanting:

"I am the wind that breathes on the sea

I am the wave, wave on the ocean

I am the ray, the eye of the Sun

I am the tomb, cold in the darkness

I am a star, the tear of the Sun

I am a wonder, a wonder in flower

Who but I can sing the meeting of the mountains?

Who but I will cry aloud the changes in the moon?

Who but I can find a place that hides away the sun?

Through a word of great power,

I am the depths of a frozen pool

I am the song of the Raven black

I am the spear that cries out for blood!"

They rose with the last words and set out, all but the pair watching the horses, filing into the shadows of the trees.

A figure came ghosting up the pathway behind the Rangers, where it wound below Table Rock. Eilir stepped into the shadows of the trees with the rest, but Astrid made the Safe gesture; it must be Kevin, their rear guard, the one who wielded brushwood to wipe out their tracks. He was panting a little, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

We're being followed. The hands moved in starlight and moonlight; that washed his freckled face pale, or perhaps tension did. They're a half mile behind me. Six of them.

And there were six Rangers in the nighted woods below the mountain. The Protector's men evidently did patrol this close to home. She watched Astrid bite her lip, then sign swiftly: Upslope, then back along our tracks. Linear ambush. Quick and quiet, Dunedain!

They'd been moving north along an overgrown old dirt road, upslope from a creek brawling with snowmelt and about a mile east of Table Rock. The water would cover most noise. A lifetime among the hearing had taught her how to calculate such things; the vibration was perceptible beneath her feet, and it was only a few hundred feet to the water-the pitch was at least a foot of descent for every three or four laterally. The woods upslope were thicker than those towards the creek, but neither was thin, and it was a mile or better to the enemy lookout; as long as they stayed under the branches, at night they might have been ten miles away, or a hundred. Tattered wisps of mist trailed from the treetops above, drifting down the slope towards the water and half covering it as they thickened.

They eeled through the woods east of the road, racing back along the direction of their own travel and trying not to break the brushwood in their paths; it grew darker, and she drank in her surroundings through her fingertips and the movement of air on her face and arms. It was cold and damp now, dew beading on grasses and ferns and moss, dropping down her neck and wetting her kilt and legs. The scent of needles and leaves decaying under her feet was strong, though the fog gave a muffled feel to everything, as if her nose was stuffed with soft cloth.

Here, Astrid signed. We can't stop and swap arrows with them. Too much chance one might get away and warn the lookout station-it's only a mile upslope from here. Eilir and I will shoot at the leader, and so on down the line; everyone shoot twice at the same first target as your anamchara, move down one, then out blades and at them. No prisoners, no battle cries, and do it fast. We can't let any get away.

She disposed them along twenty yards of the road, each in a position with a clear sight of the trackway. Each stood where they would shoot, drew four arrows from their quivers and stuck them lightly in the ground at their feet, then stepped back behind the chosen tree. It wasn't hard to find ones that offered complete concealment; they folded their shaggy twig-woven war cloaks around them and drew up the hoods, looking through the wide mesh of the gauze masks. From the moonlit road, the space beneath the trees would be caverns of blackness.

Eilir turned her eyes to Astrid, got a grin, and gave one in reply. It wasn't a fake, but not as easy as her soul sister's either. That's the thing about playing a role all the time, she thought, with tender exasperation. After a while, you are what you pretend. And Astrid's been pretending to be utterly fearless so long she really is.

Then they settled in with their backs to each other, ready to step around the tree in opposite directions. Calm was a little harder for Juniper Mackenzie's daughter. She controlled her breathing, drawing the chill wetness slowly in through her nose down into the bottom of her lungs, and sought through open eyes the image of a single star appearing on the horizon of morning. After a moment thought died down, and with it flashes of memory, of sights and smells and horrors. Instead the awareness of the night flowed into her, drops trickling on her skin, the bite of an insect. Time seemed to slow and lose the herky-jerky quality of tension. A moth went by heedless of her, less than hand's-breadth from her face. Then there was a flash of pointed leathery eight-inch wings behind a yellowish brown furry head, and the moth was gone save for head and wings tumbling towards the forest floor in the departing killer's wake.

Hoary bat, she thought with mild detachment. Then: Here they come.

Five men, walking in a long staggered line down the brush-grown dirt road below, with the gathering fog reaching to their knees in patches where it lay thick. Two had floppy-eared hounds on chain leads, and the animals pulled forward eagerly, noses to the ground. They wore uniforms of a sort-much like pre-Change camouflage hunting garb-and carried crossbows; they didn't seem to be wearing armor, though they might have light mail under the loose jackets. Besides that they wore small backpacks, with knives at their waists and machetes in place of swords-what the Protector insisted be called "falchions" in his domain.

In a way Arminger is Astrid's evil twin, she thought with a distant corner of her mind.. The rest of her was focused on the: targets. Just targets.

They walked fast, their eyes raking the sides of the road upslope and down. The man in the lead drew closer, clearer in the bright moonlight that washed the road at intervals. He walked gracefully, though he looked to be older than his followers; he had a pointed beard that was gray-streaked brown, and a silver badge pinned to the turned-up brow of his floppy hat. That was in the shape of a rampant lion holding a broad-bladed spear.

Lord Molalla's sigil. They must be his foresters. And that one, he was a soldier before the Change, or a hunter, or both. Probably both.

Foresters were huntsmen-of runaway peons and serfs not least-and border guardians; the town of Molalla was down in the center of the barony, although the river it stood on had its source in these mountains. Their leader was scanning the ground, not entirely trusting to his dogs but following the Rangers' tracks; that was no easy feat, at night and after a skillful attempt to disguise them, and through the rampant brush and grass that had hidden most of the bare ground. Occasionally he would stop and toe aside some vegetation to get a better look at the damp earth.

At last he came level with them. Eilir felt a nudge from Astrid behind her, and each hit the quick-release toggle on their war cloaks, letting them fall as they took a stride forward, pivoting and bringing up their bows in the same motion.

Loose. A sharp quick rap as the bowstring slapped against her bracer, and the hum of recoil in her bow hand.

The arrow had only a hundred feet to go, but it was downhill, and the man with the pointed beard was already diving forward towards the Rangers' side of the road, going under the trajectory of the shafts. The dogs went down, and several of the huntsmen; a spatter of crossbow bolts came back from the rest. Eilir's hand went down for one of the arrows she'd stuck in a moss-grown root and the lead huntsman popped back up again; he hadn't wasted the one quarrel of his slow-loading weapon on a reflexive shot at an invisible target. He aimed with careful speed and then fired, dodging back behind the roadside growth at once. The bolt didn't come anywhere near the two young women; instead another figure toppled down the slope towards the track, clawing at stems and branches.

No time to think which of her friends it had been. The bearded huntsman was out of sight even as the two return arrows hissed down and thumped into the place he'd been.

Another was fleeing down the road but he dropped with limp sack-of-grain finality and two long arrows in his back.

Astrid dropped her bow and swept out the long Bear-killer sword she wore slung with the hilt jutting beyond her left shoulder. Eilir drew her short sword; in the same motion her left hand snatched the buckler from its hook on the weapon's sheath. Then they leapt down the steep rocky mountainside, their boots kicking up black basalt gravel and clods of dark wet earth. Steel glimmered under the moon, almost matching the sheen of the fog:

And Astrid's probably busting a gut not shouting A Elbereth Gilthoniel! as loud as she can, Eilir knew.

Since Juniper's daughter couldn't talk without using her hands she contented herself with a wide carnivore smile; opponents often found her silence disconcerting.

Come on, soul sister, you may be a goof but you're a swordswoman goof!

They both jinked and dodged as they came down the slope, the rest of the Rangers on their heels; not too difficult, when you were running at speed down an unfamiliar steep slope in darkness, caroming off trees and trying as hard as you could not to trip on the things that snatched at your feet and wanted to throw you helpless at the feet of men with hungry swords. By unspoken agreement they were both headed for the leader with the pointed beard; he was far too deadly skilled to be granted even a few seconds to draw his band together or take thought, and there were no points for fighting fair.

Both thought he might be waiting as they burst through the brush with a quarrel in the groove. Instead he'd done something even smarter, realizing that this fight was lost; they caught the sway of weeds and saplings on the other side of the road, as he headed quick-foot for the stream below. There he could break his trail, get around them and warn the lookout station on Table Rock.

A buckler was useful for running through a forest at night. You could hold it up to protect your eyes from things that would otherwise poke them out. Their legs were long and they were young; the man was only halfway across the brawling snow-swollen creek when they crashed onto the gravel on its bank. Fog came to his waist over the water, ripped aside now and then for an instant as the current pulled eddies through the air.

Mustn't let him out of sight. He'd disappear too well.

None of the three had a distance weapon. Or at least, none had a bow-the man stooped instantly, came up with a fist-sized rock and threw with a motion that said he'd played baseball once, whatever his other lifeways. Astrid ducked in her headlong charge, but not quite quickly enough; the rock slammed into the front of her helmet instead of her face, and ricocheted up into the darkness. The young woman's head slapped backward and her heels shot out from under her as she pitched flat on her back, disappearing in the ground mist.

Uh-oh, Eilir thought. Wild Huntress, help!

She didn't pause, even though she knew exactly what the man wanted-to get her into the water where the knee-deep flow and bad footing would soak away her agility. If she waited until he got to the other bank chances were he'd escape altogether. The stream was sickeningly cold as she jumped in, and the smooth rounded rocks shifted under the soles of her boots. She knew an instant's fleeting gladness she was in a kilt rather than trousers-that much less sodden cloth to cling to her legs.

His mouth moved, but between moonlight and intent-ness of purpose she couldn't read the words. They didn't matter, compared to the way his hands went crossways down to his waist and came up with two blades, the heavy machete chopper and long bowie. They moved in small precise circles as he crouched and grinned at her, backing away slightly towards the eastern bank:

He's not frightened. He just wants to get away before anyone else gets here, so he can report us. I have to kill him fast.

Closer. Blue eyes that turned pale in the cold light, and a golden earring. Three inches taller than her five-eight, and long arms-enough lines around his eyes that he was probably over forty, but strong as well and likely still quick enough. Scars on his hands and under the beard showed fights survived and opponents who'd died.

It's not my first time either.

The bowie knife stabbed for her belly, swift enough to blur in the moonlight and very hard. She knocked it aside with the buckler; the collision sent pain shooting through her left hand and wrist, but she drove the point of her short sword towards his face at the same time. He got the machete-falchion in between, and the guards locked. He braced shoulders and feet and she let the strength of it throw her backward; no point in getting into a wrestling match. But the water turned what would have been a cat-quick bound into almost a stumble; if it hadn't slowed him a little too the backhand cut would have taken off half her face. As it was, she felt a featherlight sting along the line of her jaw, and a hot trickle on her water-cold skin.

His eyes went a little wide as he dodged her counterchop; the edge touched cloth, and grated on mesh mail beneath. That almost let her shin-strike to the crotch succeed, but the water slowed her again. His bowie lanced towards her thigh; time slowed as she poised, let the point go past and then struck with the edge of the buckler at the exposed wrist.

The impact sent a grisly thud up her arm, and the knife flew free as bone crumpled. One hand down. She snarled and struck again, a stooping chop to the outside of the knee. He blocked again with his machete in a shower of sparks, ducked aside to turn her gut-punch with the buckler into a glancing blow:

And hit her-hit her impossibly in the face with his broken left hand. The cheekpiece of her helmet took some of it, but her head snapped back and she staggered off-balance, tasting salt in her mouth and feeling her knees buckle. He launched himself forward, striking lizard-swift with the machete; one stroke she blocked, but the other landed on her stomach. The brigandine's small plates held, but the blow still had a strong man's shoulders behind it and she went down winded, a great splash throwing water chest-high as arrows sprayed from her quiver and she pancaked on her back. Again the river clutched at her, leaving her roll half-completed when he landed on her, water flowing into nose and open mouth as heaviness crushed her into the stones of the creek bed. Alone in utter darkness, the fog and water together like the inside of a closet.

He felt like boulders atop her, weight half again hers, his elbows on her shoulders and his good hand closing around her throat. The universe vanished in wet blurred blackness, and the blood pulsed in her throat as she tucked her chin down to try to stop the terrible crushing power in his callused fingers. Red shot across her eyes as she fumbled for the hilt of her dirk and got it out; the mail beneath his coat turned a stroke gone feeble as her starved lungs robbed her arms of strength.

Relief, then agony-reflex sucked ice water into her lungs as the iron grip on her throat vanished. She lunged up, and found herself nearly face-to-face with the man who'd been killing her, his distorted countenance looming at her out of the fog. A foot of steel poked out of the front of his jacket, and blood flooded out of his slack mouth into her face as she coughed and retched out river water, the blood black as the water in the moonlight, tasting of copper and salt and iron. Then the body swung aside as Astrid wrenched her backsword free with a ruthless boot on the man's body.

You all right? she signed, wiping the blade and sheathing it over her shoulder.

Fffffff- Eilir stuttered as cold and shock froze her fingers for an instant, sitting in the river. Fine.

A hand clasped her forearm and helped her up; she stooped to cough once more, felt carefully for her sword and dirk in the dark water, and waded to the western bank. There she went to one knee for an instant, panting and hacking to clear her lungs and suck in air. The weight of her sodden armor-padding and plaid dragged at her already, and there was a mortal chill in it. Astrid handed her a flask; she took a brief nip of the Larsdalen brandy to let the sweet fire warm her belly, then poured a little more into her palm and rubbed it over her face-an old trick against cold Sam had taught them years ago. Then she signed:

How are you, anamchara? I thought you were knocked out at least.

To herself: And I thought I was dead. Not ready for the Summerlands, not just yet. Things to do and be first.

Just a bruise, and woozy for a few seconds, Astrid said, though the aluminum-feather raven on her helmet was slightly the worse for wear-the rock had bent its neck and beak, and knocked out one of the ruby eyes.

Eilir nodded; it couldn't have been a real concussion. You didn't get up from one of those and prance around as if you'd woken up from a nap, as she knew from painful experience.

Then I didn't know where on earth I was or which way was up, lying in that ground mist. Come on, you've got to keep moving or you'll stiffen up.

Thanks, by the way, Eilir signed, as they puffed up the slope to the road.

You're still one ahead in the save-your-oath-sister's-life league, Astrid replied.

Eilir felt a little better as she moved, despite the cold water dripping from every portion of her. A thought made her smile.

You know how stretch fabric gets unstretchy when it's been washed too many times?

Yeah?

That was why pre-Change underwear still in the package were worth their weight in gold and more. Most people were back to rag loincloths or less. Drawstrings just didn't work very well at keeping boxers up, either.

Well, getting soaked like this made me think. What are we going to do when the last sports bra dies?

Astrid grimaced, then shook her head: The same thing we did when the tampons ran out. Improvise. Use very thin well-tanned kidskin, maybe. Or if we could tan your sense of humor, it would stretch!

Then it was Eilir's turn to twist her mouth. That turned from mock horror to the real thing as they came onto the road. The rest of the Rangers had dragged the bodies under the slope on the west side, where they couldn't be seen from the heights above. There were four, two with wounds where arrow shafts had been pulled free for reuse, the other pair spilling all their blood from sword wounds; it glistened black in the moonlight. The wet cold kept the smell down a little, but nothing could hide the undignified sprawling look of sudden violent death.

It wasn't the enemy dead who left her stricken, though-they'd chosen to carry blades for one of Arminger's barons, and it was up to them to make accounting to the Guardians-Reuben Hutton was lying bleeding as well.

Kevin looked up as they came to Reuben's side; he was the Dunedain's best medico, and he shook his head slightly at their questioning glance. Eilir felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold water; Reuben had played and trained and then fought with them for a long while now.

The young man probably knew what the crossbow bolt angled up under his floating rib meant, and he'd had just time for the first shock to wear off; his pleasantly homely face was milk pale and contorted as he tried not to scream. Drowning as a slashed artery drained into your lungs wasn't a very slow way to go, but it hurt. Astrid reached down and pulled a silver cross on a chain out from under the Mackenzie-style brigandine he was wearing; Reuben clutched it convulsively and brought it to his lips. He was Christian-Catholic, specifically, like his adopted family. Eilir didn't know precisely how he'd ended up with the Huttons; there was something about his birth father and mother dying heroically in a fight where Will's wife, Angelica, was nearly killed, back when the first Bearkillers were making their way westward from Idaho. Nobody seemed to want to go into the details, and she'd never wanted to push it.

Kevin brought out one of the hypodermics they all carried in a padded boiled-leather pouch; poppies grew well in the Willamette, and homemade morphine was available, though scarce. Eilir signed Two, which was a fatal dose and didn't matter anymore, and then went on to Astrid: Hold him. When she looked surprised, Eilir went on: Just do it! Now!

Astrid put an arm under his broad shoulders as Kevin stabbed one hypodermic and then another into the angle of neck and shoulder. Reuben's face relaxed quickly as the drug took effect. He kept the cross before his lips; Astrid bent down and pressed hers to his brow for a moment. He tried to smile, tried to speak, stiffened and jerked as blood ran out of the corners of his mouth. Then his chest moved in a sigh, and he went slack. More blood ran down his lips and onto Astrid's black jerkin with its sigil of white tree and stars.

The five remaining Rangers put his body beside a massive fallen log and covered it quickly with brush. Eilir took advantage of an instant of privacy as she and Astrid recovered their bows. I told you to do that because he'd been in love with you for years, she signed. As the silver-blue eyes went wide in shocked surprise: Don't ask. I'll tell you about it later, my dearest doink. We've got work to do.

Kevin went ghosting down the trail; when he came back he had part of the work with him, in the person of Sam Aylward's stocky form, striding along cradling his bow in his arms just as he had his rifle when he yomped his way to Port Stanley a generation before. The shrewd eyes took in the scene as he and the Ranger eased into the woods beside the roadway, and Eilir felt a rush of relief. She thought Astrid did too, from the way she shifted slightly in the darkness.

Nice quiet job, he signed. Nobody got away? Anyone cut out for the river?

More reasons than Eilir's status had made knowledge of Sign widespread among the Clan Mackenzie, although that had probably started the fashion-that and children's love of secrets and codes. It was useful in a surprising range of tasks, especially talking while you were hunting or fighting.

One, the leader, Astrid signed, and reported the facts with stark simplicity.

Too bad about Reuben, he was a likely lad and always gave his best, the stocky bowman replied. Then, with a veteran's stoicism: Good work otherwise. Of course, there were six of them originally. They sent one back to the trail up Table Rock when they ran into your tracks, before they chased after you. Downy bird, whoever was in charge of them. Glad you scragged him. Speaking of which, the one they sent back ran straight into me and my lot.

He reached behind himself with his hand and patted the arrows that jutted over his right shoulder.

Urrk! Eilir thought, and saw him wink. Astrid went on:

We've got a way up the slope to the cliffs-the turnoff's t about two thousand yards north. Then around a mile and, a half through the woods to the base of the cliff. Our contact dropped the codeword, so we know that's OK.

Aylward grinned, not unkindly. Or we know that evil bugger's Inquisitors tortured it out of our contact, and we're walking into a trap, he signed. But I don't think so, and you've got to take risks in this business. He looked up. Two hours to moonset. Just right, with a little margin for taking it slow. This fog's thickening-that'll help.

"Mist," Juniper Mackenzie whispered. "Blessed be!"

"Straight from the Cauldron of the Goddess," Rowan agreed.

His sister Cynthia nodded; her band had rejoined at the base of Rooster Rock and made the climb with them. Several of the others made Invoking signs, and glanced aside at the Lady of the Mackenzies. Juniper bit back an impulse to snap I'm not your good-luck charm, you adolescent idiots! Or the Wiccan pope-ess!

Though she had been wishing hard for something like this, and what was magic if not the trained mind and will directing the forces of the universe? Useless to feel guilty at the impulse to bark, either, as long as she didn't actually do it; nerves were natural enough. She'd never pretended to be a fighter by trade, even when she embodied that Aspect of the Powers. And the Mighty Ones were at work here.

How not? There's nowhere they aren't at work.

Table Rock stood before them to the north, looming out of the rising tide of silvery fog as the moon sank towards the horizon, growing larger to the eye as it did. Rooster Rock stood behind; it was several hundred feet lower, but straight up and down in its central parts and harder to climb. The Mackenzie war band had crept up the slopes of the long ridge that connected them, something made possible by the dense forest that grew to the top, and easier by the fog. That was rising even as she watched, and it turned the flat-topped height ahead into a black island amid the vapors, muffling every sound in the nighted wilderness. She unshipped her binoculars for a last look.

The outline of the low mountain hadn't changed since she came through here, backpacking through the wilderness with some friends: Lord and Lady, going on twenty years ago! She pushed aside a wistfulness; as far as she knew, every one of that little group was dead save Judy Barstow-Judy Lefkowitz, she'd been then. A long finger of land sloped gently up to just under five thousand feet; the last half mile was surrounded by cliffs on three sides, leaving only this approach. When she saw it as a young woman there had been only a trail, and the summit had been like a rock garden of wild rose, parrotbeak and kin-nikinnick. There was a wall across the top of the trail now, less than a fortress and more than a fence, three feet of dry-laid stone and a six-foot-high stretch of thick boards nailed to posts on top of it; the roofs of several buildings rose over the wall, and a tall timber-frame tower reared skyward. It was like seeing an old friend whose face had been slashed. A little lantern light showed behind it, even at near two in the morning. She looked up at the moon; another hour and a half until it set, and then-God and Goddess willing-they could get on with it.

Eilir goes into danger first, Juniper thought. And Astrid and Sam and all the others with them. Silently, beneath her breath, lips barely moving, she chanted:"

"Through darkened wood and shadowed path

Hunter of the Forest, be with my loves:

Lady of the Stars, fold them in Your wings

So mote it be!"

Then she settled down under her war cloak to wait. Behind her, three-score and ten Mackenzies did likewise, relaxed as tigers, bows waiting by their hands.

Here, Eilir signed, no farther from the recipient's eyes than his nose. Eilir followed him, the last of the party, as the five Rangers and Aylward's picked band of six slipped under the lee of a black basalt cliff that made them utterly invisible to anyone above. A great semicircular chunk had fallen from the base of it here long ago, and made a broad shallow cave; likely the fog would have hid them anyway, and it made moving through the darkness like walking in a giant broom closet. They waited in the blackness, waited to see if anyone had heard the noise from their crossing of the boulder field and scree that lay a little north. She worried about that less than the hearing; the everlasting silence she moved in allowed her to concentrate more. She'd long since learned how to move silently, starting with long summer days in the woods with her mother before the Change observing beast and bird. When one could sneak up unheard on a ground squirrel or get close enough to a deer to touch it, it wasn't hard to avoid human notice:

Nothing; the moon hung huge above, blurred through the mist, then dipped below the edge of tree-clad ridges. Darkness became more absolute, and silence stretched as they waited. She reviewed the layout above mentally: the fence and gate across the neck of the rising finger of land, then frame buildings on either side of the old trail with a narrow lane between, then a long timber-and-metal ramp out to the summit, with the signal tower beside it. She'd memorized the maps thoroughly before they left Sutter-down, though.

That left an uncomfortable amount of time to think. This would be a famous deed, if it went well. She enjoyed thinking of that; there was nothing wrong with being proud of doing right, and getting recognized for it; and if fighting the Protector's men wasn't right, nothing was. But watching Reuben drown inside, with all his life unlived:

Is this sort of thing what I want for all the rest of my life? she thought. I love the travel and outsmarting the bad guys and sneaking under their eyes and making them look like idiots, and hanging with Astrid is great-someone has to keep my darling sister-soul from flapping her arms and flying off with the wild geese-and the Dunedain are my best friends, and yes, I get a rush from the danger, but watching friends die: well, we all have to risk that.

When the Mackenzies went to war, everyone strong enough marched and fought; if you didn't like that, you were welcome to go live somewhere else.

I really don't know: this is something I do well, and it helps everyone. I do know I want children. And a man who's more than short-term fun, I'm getting too old to be satisfied with that. And I think Mom wants me to take over her job someday, but Rudi: of course, while I'm with the Dunedain, everyone knows Sign, which is really a help.

There just weren't many deaf people around these days-partly because there just weren't as many people, period, and partly because a smaller share of the deaf had survived the Dying Time. Not more than a score or so in the whole of the Clan's territories, certainly, including kids born since.

She sighed silently. How did that old saying. go?

The lame can go horseback

The handless tend herds;

The deaf are undaunted in war;

Better to be blind than burnt on your pyre

No deeds can a dead man do.

Of course, that was Odin talking, and He was a notorious fink: Just then one of the others tapped her on the shoulder, and she moved forward with eagerness blazing up again. Yup, I'm undaunted, all right!

Three ropes had fallen from the top of the cliff, good strong hemp. There was no need to talk; everyone knew what they were supposed to do.

Her bow went over her shoulder into the loops beside her quiver; that was new-filled with a full load of forty-five shafts. All the rest of her equipment was padded against noise. Sam Aylward spat on his palms and took the middle rope, climbing rapidly hand-over-hand. Eilir and Astrid flanked him, going up inchworm-style-locking the rope between crossed feet, holding on with their hands while they slid the feet up, locking them again and pushing with their legs. Halfway up they came out of the fog, and faint starlight showed on the surface of the mist like reflections on a dully phosphorescent sea, doubly so by contrast with the black basalt cliff. Then the ropes grew close to the rough, pitted surface of the rock as the overhang grew less, and she had to switch her feet to the cliff surface, boots scrabbling at it as she pulled herself up with arms and shoulders burning. They all reached the top at the same time, sweating and breathing deeply after the hundred-foot climb, but not winded. A figure darted forward and Eilir's hand went to her dirk for a moment, then upward as the stranger bent to offer a hand to help her. There was more light here from lanterns and fires, just enough to see that it was a woman in a housedress and shawl, but not enough to read lips well.

Eilir took the hand for the last scramble, then smiled and touched her own lips and an ear with two fingers and shook her head: I can't hear you or speak.

The woman blinked surprise but then seemed to grasp what she meant, and went over to Sam Aylward, bending and listening; then she ran quickly back towards the long low frame building that faced the cliff edge only ten feet or so away. It was blank on this side save for small windows, darkened now-barracks and stables, according to the briefing. The three of them made a triangle in front of the ropes, waiting with their bows ready as the nine others below climbed up behind them.

Five minutes, Aylward reminded the six in the gate party, pointing southward.

They nodded and ghosted away. The others waited until they saw them reach the building and two make stirrups of their hands, throwing the others up to the roof one by one in vaulting leaps, then hauling their comrades up. They crawled along below the ridgeline, planting their feet carefully on the wooden shingles of the roofing until they were in position to sweep the rear of the fence and the gate in it. One turned and used the broad gestures that communicated over distance: Six men by the fence. Quiet. End of their shift. We're ready to support main attack on gate.

Aylward nodded. "Let's go," he whispered, easy enough to read in the darkness.

It was just past four in the morning, the hour when a sleeper's life and mind flicker lowest. Even so Aylward's party had the hardest task, silencing the signal tower before the men there could light their beacon. That would alert posts north and south of here and be relayed deep into Baron Molalla's section of the Protectorate, reaching Portland itself not long after sunrise. The tire-tread soles of their boots went swiftly over the stony surface as they ran stooping. Even the dogs were mostly asleep; one raised a questioning head as the Mackenzies ran into the open space between the two rows of shacks, then sprang to all fours in alarm.

Eilir pivoted on one heel, drew, shot at the flash of teeth and collar, turned back and ran on. The arrow flickered through darkness and the hound flopped back down, transfixed from the left side of its neck to its right hip, dead before its body struck the ground.

Sorry, brother dog, she thought. This one wasn't a killer, just a loyal beast, helping to guard its pack territory and puppies. Enjoy chasing the rabbits in the Summerlands and think kindly of me. Now let's get going. The others will smell the blood soon, or us.

The building was along one side of the old trail to the summit; there was another on the other side, and then only the signal tower-and a long ramp of two-by-fours and rails curling gently upward at its end, with a shape at its beginning covered by a tarpaulin. Eilir's eyes were on the tower, and those with her too. It was a mere unenclosed framework with a ladder running up the center, but the platform at the top had a signal fire waiting in an iron bowl, and mirrors for flashing messages.

Aylward held out a hand and they halted. Then he chopped it forward. Sanjay dashed past her, and his two sibs; they hit the ladder running and went up it with their feet and hands moving at sprint speed, scampering like squirrels. The rest of the scaling party stood back, arrows on their strings. Eilir risked a quick glimpse over her shoulder. That was just in time to see three more shafts arching upward, southward towards the fence that enclosed this outpost; the five minutes were up. She could see them clearly, for each had a gasoline-soaked rag tied around it behind the head, and lit before they were fired. They traced arcs of fire across the night, southward over the outpost's fence and gate.

OK, most excellently sorcerous Mom, she thought, switching her gaze back towards the platform above. Over to you, and the Lady!

"Now!" Juniper Mackenzie shouted, as the three fire arrows arched skyward above the dimness ahead-headed safely out of the outpost, which must not burn. "Up and at them, Mackenzies!"

Around her there was a mass rustling as seventy clans-folk shed their war cloaks and sprang to their feet; then a frenzied shout, a howling like wolves, hawk screeches, the bellowing of bull elk, all uniting into a long ululating wail like catamounts at war, with more than bit of rebel yell in it. Now they wanted to be heard. They dashed forward, packed into a blunt wedge on the narrowing finger of stone, rising up out of the fog as the rock rose beneath their feet and the outpost stood stark before them, a solid darkness against the black sky. Shouts of alarm rose behind the wall, and lanterns flared in the predawn blackness. At a hundred yards, Rowan flung his arm up.

"Halt! Four shafts! Shoot!"

The Mackenzie onrush looked disorderly, but that was illusion; each knew what to expect, by long practice. They halted as one, raised their bows for a dropping shot behind the wall. The massed crack of bowstrings on bracers sounded in the darkness, and then the whickering hum of the arrowstorm, the dim flicker of the arrowheads at the height of their arc, and the hissing plunge of steel-tipped cedarwood as it fell out of the sky like sleet, the second and third shafts in the air before the first struck. Plunging fire was doubly terrible in the dark, invisible until the last second, impossible to dodge or guard against. Screams of pain followed the shouts of alarm.

"Forward-"

The mass loped on.

"Halt! Four shafts! Shoot!"

Juniper fitted another nock to the cord of her bow. For Eilir! she called to herself, and drew the cord to the ear.

Eilir knew when the terrible baying screech of the Clan's war cry struck the Protector's outpost. Light flared behind her among the buildings, as panicked hands turned the knobs and raised the wicks of lanterns, or set lighters to candle. Feet pounded, many and hard enough to let her feel the vibrations on the soles of her feet. And a hundred feet above her, three men ran to the edge of the tower's platform, peering southward towards the gate.

Aylward, Eilir and Astrid drew their bows to the ear and loosed within a half second of each other. A man spun back with a shaft in his shoulder; another pitched forward, turning and turning with his mouth open in a great O until he struck not far away and bounced-once. The third threw himself flat and rolled away from the edge, probably to light the alarm fire near the center.

But also towards the hole where the ladder comes up, Eilir thought grimly.

She knew pretty much what he'd be seeing there; Sanjay's face coming through the trapdoor, grinning in the dark around the dirk clenched in his teeth. After climbing all that way expecting to see a crossbow aimed down at him, he wasn't going to be in any mood for half measures, either. Seconds after the thought two more men in the Protector's gear soared out from the edge of the platform, one limp, one falling windmilling and head-down until he landed not far from his comrade; the skull broke open on the rock and spattered.

Ouch, Eilir thought. An instant later Sanjay and Aoife and Daniel waved from the spot he'd fallen and then faded backward.

The three on the ground turned at once, going to the earth and crawling away. More and more figures were spilling into the trail between the buildings. Time to sow a little confusion.

Eilir rose, crouching, and ghosted forward to the corner of the building, waited until a door opened on the other side, drew and shot :

Juniper ran panting towards the gate, but the mass of the Clan's war band surged past her on either side-all but her standard-bearer and the three told off to accompany her. The kilted mass struck the arrow-studded wood of the heavy fence and scarcely paused. One with a raven painted on his face in black and gold hit the low stone wall running and leapt clear over the points of the uprights with a banshee howl, chopping with his sword even as he landed on the other side. Others were less flamboyant but nearly as quick; one in each three would brace his back against the wood with knees bent and fingers linked into a stirrup, and toss the other two up as they jumped and planted a boot in his hands. Then hands would come down and haul them up to drop down on the other side of the fence.

Getting too old for that! she told herself, following in Rowan's wake with the banner bearer at her side. The green-and-silver flag flapped in the wind of their passage, the crescent moon cradled between antlers.

The gate was of iron bars, welded into a diagonal lattice with openings palm-broad; the bars themselves were twisted from lengths of rebar heated and hammered together. A crossbow bolt flashed out and a clan warrior fell with a shriek of pain, but an instant later a Mackenzie arrow fired from behind him struck the crossbowman in the small of the back. He dropped; boots trampled across him in the darkness, and bones broke. Then the foremost Mackenzie rank was up to the iron, a murderous scrimmage with swords and short-gripped spears and dirks used at close range through the openings. The gate heaved and rattled against the bar that held it against the weight of many strong bodies, but it held.

"Room! Give me room!" bellowed the man who was a blacksmith in peacetime.

They did, and the hammer side of his ax struck once, twice, and again. Sparks blasted out where it hit on the outside of the rightward edge, over the hinges. One blow and it sagged; another, and the upper corner came free. A dozen Mackenzies launched themselves at it then, some recklessly feetfirst. The iron grille fell inward, taking men down with it and beneath it.

Screaming, the warriors of the clan surged across it and into the narrow lantern-lit space beyond. There had been two dozen of Baron Molalla's foresters here, and as many ordinary soldiers. She had watched her folk do well against odds; with surprise and numbers on their sides, they were terrifying. The Protector's men tried again and again to form in ordered lines as they'd been taught, but the Mackenzies were all around them, fighting three on two or two on one, each a leaping, dodging blur of stabs and chops and smashing blows with the buckler. Everyone was too close-packed for distance weapons, and the sound was like a dozen loads of scrap metal falling on a stone smithy floor, with the white-noise surf of human voices thrown in.

Then the men-at-arms came out of the commandant's house; it took time to put on that gear. There were only four of them, but they were armored from neck to ankle, their kite-shaped shields broad and heavy and strapped with metal, held up face-high until nothing showed but the glaring eyes on either side of the helmet's nasal bar. They formed up in a blunt wedge and trotted forward in a jingle of steel and pounding of boots. An eddy of combat erupted around them and the Mackenzies drew back, one clutching a slashed arm, two dragging another more seriously wounded. Protectorate survivors elsewhere fought their way towards them, and a knot of civilians followed, including babes in arms. It would be difficult to shoot them down without injuring the noncombatants, but they couldn't let them escape either-and swarming them under would cost gruesomely.

And behind them, a glimmer of flames through the windows of the house; they must have set a blaze before they left. We've got to get that fire out! she thought.

She opened her mouth to make a call for their surrender. Rowan forestalled her, loping forward with his teeth showing in a fixed rictus of bloodlust amid the gorgon menace of his painted face, helmet gone and flaxen hair blowing wildly, a beacon in the dimness that drew clansfolk after him. And fighting, he shrieked, an ululating wail like fingernails on slate.

"Haro!" the knight shouted, sloped his shield and cut downward with the Norman longsword.

Rowan's headlong rush had been a trick. His ax met the other's blade in midair and steel crashed on steel, sparks and clamor; sheer battering and mass swept the lighter weapon aside and nearly out of his opponent's hand, and the armored man staggered. His wrist and arm must have been numb with the impact, robbed of strength for a moment. The ax looped up overhead in a deceptively graceful motion, held at end and middle, and then Rowan's hands slid together at the end of the shaft as it slammed down again with all his better than two hundred pounds of muscle and bone behind it. The edge bit through the good riveted mail, through flesh and bone, and the knight dropped to the ground with a metallic crash, thrashing and bleeding from an arm half-severed at the shoulder.

Cynthia had been holding the man on her brother's unshielded left in play with her battle spear, using it like a bladed quarterstaff, the head and butt cap like streaks of light in the darkness, booming on the shield, sweeping towards his face, stabbing down at a foot. The baron's trooper was so fixed on it he never noticed the hammer side of Rowan's ax until it crashed into his neck below the flare of his helmet. Bone snapped, and the others were falling:

"Scathach!" Rowan shrieked in terrible exultation, whirling the weapon up again.

Then Juniper was moving, faster than she thought was in her, leaping before him. She spread her arms wide and met his eyes; there was an almost palpable shock as green met blue-although the pupils of his had expanded to almost swallow the iris, like windows into night.

"No!" she said, driving her will forward like a spearpoint of her own. "These aren't fighters, Rowan!"

For a moment she thought that dreadful ax would come down on her, and then humanity flooded back into the younger Mackenzie. He staggered, mouth loose and slack; well she knew that weakness which flooded in when you returned from beyond the world of common day.

"Get the fire out," she snapped. An order will help him come to himself. "Quickly, before it shows at a distance."

The fight was over-nothing left but pursuit and killing amid the shadows, and the long scream of a man who'd chosen the cliff over the red blades and painted grinning faces running behind him. Juniper grimaced as she slid her own unmarked sword back into its sheath.

Then, very softly, she murmured to herself: "What is it we've brought back, to run wild once more on the ridge of the world?"

Sixteen hours later and twenty miles to the west, the Mackenzies turned to watch stars appearing over the Cascades as night came towards them like a moving wall of shadows. They were encamped on an island of firm ground in a new swamp; the smells of evening were abroad, woodsmoke, cooking, horses and cut grass over by the picket line. Other stars appeared against the mountains now-great fire beacons burning in the gloaming, distance-shrunk to trembling candle flames dancing against encroaching night; first one north of Table Rock, then more to either side, and racing past them to the northward, heading west.

Juniper shivered as she looked at them. Like the old days, she thought. Very old days, along the frontier between England and Scotland; half her ballads came from there, from the ancient tales of her father's people-the folk who'd given the words blood feud and unhallowed hand and black mail to the English language.

There had been nights like this there, when the balefires burned from hilltop to hilltop, from the North Sea to the Irish Channel. Warning laird and crofter that the great reiver clans were out, swarming from Liddersdale and Teviotdale and a dozen other nests, riding a thousand lances strong to break the Border.

And now the Mackenzies are out, she thought mordantly. Granted we're on foot and carrying longbows, but the principle of the thing:

"They've twigged," Sam Aylward said, coming to stand beside her with a piece of sausage in his hand, his prosaic matter-of-fact tone doubly welcome. "Probably those prisoners got loose-well, we knew they'd not stay tied up forever. Everything gets harder now."

Juniper nodded. "But they're reacting to what we do," she pointed out. "Now we have to move faster, and always be doing something new before they can deal with what we've done. It's only thirty miles to cross the Valley; a day's travel, maybe two."

Sam smiled. "This will draw their troops away from the southern border, too, pull them north and east," he said. "That'll make it a lot easier for our folk and the refugees."

"And we're appropriately dressed," Juniper said, touching kilt and plaid. At his look she grinned and went on, quoting a poem from wars older and more savage than any this land had yet known:

"On foot should be all Scottish war

Let hill and marsh their foes disbar

And woods as walls prove such an arm

That enemies do them no harm.

In hidden spots keep every store

And burn the plainlands them before

So, when they find the land lie waste

Needs must they pass away in haste

Harried by cunning raids at night

And threatening sounds from every height

Then, as they leave, with great array

Smite with the sword and chase away.

This is the counsel and intent

Of Good King Robert's Testament."