The Protectors war

Chapter Sixteen

Barony of Molalla, Willamette Valley, Oregon

May 10th, 2007 AD-Change Year Nine

"This way," the farmer hissed to Juniper.

He was sweating with fear as he led the Mackenzie party down the old private road with woods and scrub close on either hand, and vines twining across the cracked surface. It was an early May dawn, and there was an intense stillness-as if life waited while the gray gloaming faded into light that trickled down through the leaves overhead. The mosquitoes were unfortunately all too active, little itching needles stabbing at the backs of her knees and face and hands as bodies brushed through dew-wet grass and bushes.

They passed the rusting hulk of a car still resting where it had swerved off the road and struck a tree nine years ago, mostly covered in vine and weed; through the dirt-encrusted window Juniper could see there were still some wisps of hair on the skull that rested against the steering wheel within. Then they left the roadway and went more slowly along a faint game trail, through older established woods. In a clearing where sun speared down through the broken canopy a ruffled grouse cock stood on a stump and went fooom-hoot! as the yellow pouches on either side of his neck swelled and shrank amid the white downy feathers.

The grouse took alarm at the farmer's passage. She hissed impatiently at him; he was hurrying along a familiar way, and even so made more noise in his hib overalls than her clansfolk did with all their gear and weapons. Not that it should matter right now, but there was the principle of the thing. The gray look to his skin as he slowed down made her feel briefly ashamed; he was risking his family and home, not just his life.

"Should be around here I left 'em: " he whispered, as they came near the eastern edge of this patch of woods.

A bit of branch struck him on the head, and he started violently, leveling the spear he carried and glaring all around him. Juniper smiled reassuringly and pointed up.

The tree overhead was a hundred-foot Douglas fir. The farmer stared into the branches, and still started again when a rope uncoiled from one of them; the figures in their war cloaks hugging the trunk above were hard enough to notice even if you knew where to look. Astrid and Eilir and Sam Aylward came sliding down it; the young women jumped free at head-height and landed lightly as cats, grinning silently. Her First Armsman waited until his boot soles were a foot from the ground before dropping, dusting his palms and walking over to her.

"Just as this gentleman said, Lady," he reported quietly. "The railroad's in use-wear keeping the steel bright, ox-and horse-droppings. Handcar patrol along at the intervals he mentioned, too."

"And the local coven vouches for him and his friends," Astrid pointed out.

She was eager to the point of quivering slightly; this was exactly the sort of trip around Robin Hood's barn that she gloried in. Eilir leaned on her bow and shrugged slightly with a smile. Her expression spoke louder than words, or Sign: Your call, Splendiferously Supreme Clan Chieftainly Mom-person.

Juniper looked at the farmer again. He was in his late thirties, probably, or possibly half a decade older; people's looks often aged faster when they got into that range nowadays. He didn't look particularly starved or harried-nothing like the refugee couples they'd rescued back around Ostara. Shaggy with brown beard and hair long except for the bald patch on top, and weathered and worn like any outdoor worker, but well fed and shod. He had the spear, too, and a long hunting knife.

"You're a free tenant, and better off than most here in the Protector's lands," she said softly, catching his eye with hers and holding it. "Is it worth the risk to you and your kin, and the loss of all you own? Do you have a particular grudge against Lord Molalla?"

"Yeah," he said, squaring his shoulders and licking his lips. "Sitting in that goddamned concrete castle and telling me what to do and taking a quarter of what I grow! Making me take off my goddamned hat and bow when he rides by! So I'm treated like a better grade of dirt than the poor bastards who ended up as bond tenants or peons. Great! I remember what things were like before the Change; I was born a free man and an American citizen, by God. We're not starving anymore. Nobody would be going hungry, if those bloodsuckers would leave us alone. It's just-"

He lifted the short spear. It was a good enough weapon to frighten off wild dogs; against mail-clad men-at-arms on armored horses it might as well have been a breadstick. The rest of his weaponry was a knife and a pre-Change camper's hatchet.

Juniper smiled sadly. And it's not surprising that you're the leader in this. It's the man who has a little who wants more, not the starveling with nothing but an empty belly. Also things haven't quite had time to settle down and set hard yet. A generation or two, and our friend's grandchildren here might be fighting for the baron, not against him.

Aloud she went on: "Well, most places to the south do better than Arminger, sure. And we'll help you; I just wanted to be certain you all knew what you were getting into."

"We do," he said. "And we've heard about what you folks did to the east last week. We're willing to take a chance."

"Go then," she said. "Have your people ready to join in. But be quick. Joanne, Liam, Ibar, go along. You know the signals. And chomh gilc ie sionnach. "

The young Mackenzies grinned silently at the play on words; they all had wisps of red fur attached to the brooches that pinned their plaids at the shoulder: Clever as a fox was the motto of their sept, and she knew they didn't need anything more explicit to make them alert for betrayal. They nodded, touched their bows to their helmet brims and trotted along with the local farmer to make sure he got back to his gathered friends; they would also ensure he didn't survive any treachery. The locals knew where the Mackenzies were, but only in the most general sense. She didn't doubt their hearts were in the right place, but she also didn't doubt that they'd hold back until the Clan's warriors had shown what they could do, and there might be an informer:

Juniper turned back to the brushy edge of the woodlot, going the last ten yards on her belly through the rank new spring growth. The crushed stems smelled musky-green as she carefully parted a path for sight with the horn tip of her bow-looking through cover rather than over it was always a good idea, whether you were sneaking up on an enemy or out to watch a mother fox and her cubs at play. The low swale ahead was as the locals had described it: open and uncultivated, shrubby and shabby but not too badly overgrown. The ground was common pasture, for the Baron's stock and those of his town of Molalla a little to the south. The railway ran through it from southeast to northwest, crossing Milk Creek just a hundred yards to her right, on the south; usually a trickle, but now better than waist-deep with spring. At their back floodplain woods ran far to the northwest, with the Molalla River a third of a mile away threading through them, deeper and broader than the creek. On the other side of the open ground and the old Canby-Mulino road were forested hills, two hundred feet or better above the plain.

Six pair of field glasses studied the ground, and threescore sets of keen eyes. Sam nodded to her, and she sighed silently and gave the order. Aylward took the party to the bridge himself; there was nobody else in the clan he trusted to handle the thermite properly. Juniper led six to the rail line several hundred yards farther north. As they jogged across grass rough-cropped by sheep and cattle her eyes went north and east; pillars of smoke stood there, thread-thin in the distance. Smoke by day, fire by night:

And good Mackenzies should stay out of sight, she told herself with mordant humor. They know we're out, but they've no idea where, not yet. When they learn, it will be very unpleasant.

Rowan did the honors when they reached the track; he was a smith, after all. "Lucky this isn't continuous welded rail," he said, fitting a long wrench to the bolts where one rail joined the next. "That would be a real problem: hey, a little of that WD-40, would you?"

Old-fashioned rail like this was in forty-yard lengths, joined by butting up the sections against each other and fastening them with a fishplate bolted home on each; that was what made the clackety-clack as a train went over them-or had made it, when there were locomotives. There was still a bright strip atop these rails, but rust elsewhere, and a thick scatter of dung showed what the motive power was nowadays. Rowan strained at the five-foot handle of the wrench he'd forged and fitted and tested on rail closer to home, long muscles bulging in his bare arms below the short chain-mail sleeves of his arming doublet.

"Goibniu, Lord of Iron!" he wheezed when the first came free. Then he looked at the others: "All right, get those spikes pulled and the rail loose in the chairs, while I do this!" he said sharply.

"Channeling the Dread Lord again, Roe?" Sanjay Barstow grumbled, but they obeyed.

All that took muscle and skills she lacked. Juniper occupied herself instead with looking around, making sure nobody else was visible along the edge of the woods to either side-and taking a last sight and smell and taste of the sweet wild world, in case she passed over this day. When the clanking, clattering, cursing work was done-if the rails had had lives to blast, they'd have been in very bad trouble, and so would the ill-wishers-and the bolts and spikes and keys replaced with replicas of wood and wax, she spoke.

"Pick your spot. We're supposed to have another hour, but that's only a guess."

Sam had selected well. Bushes and patches of tall grass attracted them like moth to a flame; quick work with knives and nimble fingers freshened and thickened the twigs and grass in the loops of their war cloaks to match the meadow. Rowan helped her, despite her grumbling that she'd been woods wise before the Change came.

"Before you were born, sure," she went on.

"But you weren't wearing a war cloak then, Lady," he said, infuriatingly reasonable.

"Neither were you. Sam taught us, and I met him before you did, too, so there," she grumbled.

"Crawl in under here," he went on.

And is it more annoying to be treated like the Goddess, or like a baby? Juniper thought, obeying.

The cloak covered her like a tent, and like a tent it quickly grew stuffy in the bright daylight. Juniper made her breathing slow, not withdrawing from herself but instead concentrating on every sensation, every itch and tickle and buzz of insect, until she was one with everything about her: and unconscious of self, the self that worried and fretted and feared for Eilir and her people, and dreaded having to tell parents why their sons or daughters weren't coming home.

Clickity-clack: clickity-clack:

Slowly, slowly, her head turned within the hood. Her eyes blinked, bringing her back to full awareness; pupils flared and her nostrils spread to take in a sudden deep breath, but the rest of her was motionless. Motion drew her vision southwestward.

The railcar was silent save for the hum of wheels on steel, the louder clatter as it passed the joins in the rails, and the flutter of the two flags on poles at the prow, Arminger's red cat-pupiled eye on black, and the local baron's lion-and-spear. There was no engine, of course, unless you counted the four men who pumped either end of the big pivoted lever in its center. They were ragged but no more than wiry-gaunt, and not chained to the wooden handles they swung up and down with the regularity of machines, driving through gears to power the wheels beneath. That surprised her a little; it was work that by Protectorate standards should be done by peons-slaves for all practical purposes. Before them a waist-high wooden barricade hid the chair of the man-at-arms who commanded the little vehicle; the plume on his conical Norman helmet fluttered in the rapid passage of the railcar, forty miles an hour and swifter than anything else on land these days. He rested casually, one boot up on the railing, and a hand on that knee holding a pair of binoculars At the rear four crossbowmen stood, facing out on either side with their weapons in their hands.

I bind you, she thought. I bind your eyes, your ears, your nostrils. See not, hear not, smell not; by Herne the Wild Hunter, so mote it be!

The massed wills of every Mackenzie must be beating on the railcar's crew. The field craft that the First Armsman had spent the last decade hammering into them didn't hurt either, of course, or the fact that this select band were all good hunters used to silent waiting.

A moment, then another: and the knight's eyes went wide, and he yelled and reached for the brake lever.

That was too late for the fast-moving weight of metal and wood, though the brakes locked and squealed with an ear-piercing shriek and sparks poured from them in a red-gold roostertail torrent. The railcar slid onto the section of rail that had been loosened, onto metal held only by stubs of punkwood and wax painted to resemble steel. The long rails slewed sideways and the railcar leapt free, plowing into the roadbed with a shower of gravel and a chorus of screams.

"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 crossbow-men.

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 hinds 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 13th, 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 Jumper," 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 Mo-Ialla'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.

Uh-oh, she said, carefully not aloud. Everyone knew what uh-oh meant; it meant we screwed up.

"Best we depart," she said.

More shouts from the bridge; the spearmen had gotten to within twenty yards before a dozen Mackenzie archers hiding in the stream bed came to their feet, standing with only their heads and chests exposed and drawing to the ear. One of them was Sam Aylward. The seven spearmen were five when they'd backed out of range despite their full armor, crouching behind shields that bristled like porcupines, and several of them were wounded.

Juniper's party hopped down from the light railcar, set their shoulders to it:

"Heave!"

It went over with a crash, and they dashed for the woods three hundred yards westward. She ran silently, concentrating on her breathing and hoping the men who'd been on the levers could keep up-they had arms and shoulders that looked like sets of steel cable, but they hadn't been getting much in the way of work with their feet and legs, nor been overly well fed. The whoops and cries of Haro! from the horsemen proved to be a remarkably good incentive, and they went with the kilted clansmen step for step.

"We're not going to make it to the woods!" Rowan called, looking over his shoulder. "They'll be on us a hundred and fifty yards out!"

Juniper made a wordless but heartfelt inward cry for help as she estimated distances. All of them knew that to show your back to a lancer was death-the problem was that with the numbers nearly even, facing them on open grassland was nearly as bad.

"Get ready to turn on them!" she called. "Not you men, you're unarmed-you keep on for the woods. Now! "

She stopped and wheeled. The enemy were coming on in a thunder-roll of hooves, traveling many times faster than a human could run-it was like being chased down by dirt bikes. Five of them in front, lances out ahead of hooves that hammered divots of brown dirt into the air, horse heads with spiked steel chamfrons on their faces and steel peytrals on their chests. The two behind were in knights' hauberks and had shields, but they didn't carry lances, and their horses were different-small and showy and slender-limbed, not the big bruiser warmbloods knights rode:

The lances came down with a ripple, eleven feet with the twelve-inch heads included, the honed metal of point and edge glinting in the bright spring sunlight. Devices showed on the kite-shaped shields, old Society heraldry mixed with chop-shop Jesuses and shock-rock album-cover art; even then she was a little surprised to see they were all knights with their own blazons, not just men-at-arms. The faces of the men were hidden save for the eyes, shields up and broad splayed nasals covering most of what showed above that.

Get them focused on us, she thought tautly. Then -"Spread!"

The Mackenzies kept running, but to either side, spreading out with yards between each of them. A solid mass of spears or bills or pikes could stop mounted knights-as long as it was very solid, shoulder to shoulder and ranked deep, a bristling wall of points. Most of the Clan warriors here didn't have spears, and there weren't enough of them to make a spear wall anyway-or to drown the charge with sky-darkening arrow storm. There were other ways, though, and this was a picked band of the Clan's best:

Except for middle-aged me! went through her. Well, I'm in 'late youth' at least The lancers hesitated slightly, a fractional check in their boot-to-boot charge as the target spread out to either side. Bows snapped, and arrows began to flicker out towards them; they booted their horses back into a full hard gallop to get across the killing ground as fast as possible, spreading out slightly themselves as they picked targets of their own. She could feel the impact of the hooves through the soles of her feet, making the turf quiver, like the shiver of fear traveling up your legs and into your gut.

One had a sword-wielding zombie painted on his shield with skin tunneled by mocking worms; he headed for her. Her first arrow stuck quivering in the zombie's eye. She shot again, but the peytral on the horse's breast shed it with a bang and a spark of steel on steel. Ten seconds for a galloping horse to cross a hundred yards; she tried to draw again as the lance point drove for her chest:

Snapsnap.

An arrow from another bow sank to the feathers in the horse's chest through the triangular protective plate-fletched with peacock feathers, Sanjay Barstow's. Another crunched into the horse's fetlock. The beast went over as if its legs had been cut from under it, with a scream piteously loud. The rider tried to curl himself up as he flew out of the high-cantled saddle, but the loose shield strap that went around his neck made it impossible; the point of the shield struck the ground first, the strap broke and sent it bouncing away and then the knight himself hit in an ungainly sprawl. He staggered half erect as he tried to lever himself up not ten paces from her.

The brown glaring face showed plain at that distance, wet with sweat and with blood pouring from his nose above bared white teeth; a young face with only a wisp of black beard, grown from child to man since the Change.

Snap.

This time her arrow had its way with the armor, through the links on the collar that warded his neck and out the other side. He screamed in a spray of blood, falling on his back and arching in dying reflex as his mail-gloved hands scrambled at the cedarwood transfixing his throat.

Juniper wheeled as the arrow released, knowing where it would strike with the certainty a good shot always brought. That let her see Sanjay Barstow dodge a little too slowly, and the lancehead move with cruel precision to compensate. There was a massive dull thud as it drove into the young man's chest, and his whole body flexed and snapped like a whip, face fluid with shock. The lance cracked across as it speared through his breastbone, through the mail shirt and out his back in a fan of blood, and the impact drove the Protectorate knight back against the high cantle of the saddle that cradled his hips. His horse checked, almost staggering for two paces as it recovered its balance.

Aoife Barstow was three yards away. She gave an eerie wail as she saw her foster brother die, and leapt. Even then Juniper's eyes went a little wide as she landed crouching, grabbed the knight's stirrup leather, and let the savage jerk of the horse's speed add to her next jump. The young woman flowed upward, pivoting as she rose, the kilt falling back from her long slender legs as her booted heels drove into the side of the rider's head. The knight tried to club at her with the stump of the broken lance, but that and the shield and the sudden violent shying of his horse hampered him; all three went over sideways in a tangle of limbs and screams and the endless banshee shrieking of the Mackenzie woman.

Aoife landed uppermost, riding the tangle down as fourteen hundred pounds of horseflesh and gear crashed across the knight's leg and ground it into the dirt. He lost all interest in his assailant as bone and flesh pulped inside his armor and the horse thrashed in convulsions. The short sword flashed as she grabbed the nasal of his helmet and used it to lever his head back for a slash across the throat. Then she drove the blade down with short chopping strokes. As the three surviving knights reined in and around-you couldn't stop nearly a ton of armor and horseflesh quickly-she rose with the dripping head dangling by its hair in one hand and red sword gripped in the other. She waved both aloft, the red-and-white wolf mouth painted on her skin no more grisly than the contorted shrieking face beneath.

That checked even hardy fighting-men for an instant. Long enough to hide what poured out of the woods behind them:

"Down!" Juniper shouted, with all the power of her lungs.

Aoife Barstow ignored her, lost in an ecstasy of fury, the embrace of something beyond men and men's concerns. Her brother tackled her behind the knees, rolling away instantly to dodge the reflexive chop of her sword. Juniper saw it out of the corner of her eye. Most of her attention was on the twoscore Mackenzies dashing forward out of their hiding place in the brushwood at the forest's edge, Eilir and Astrid and the Clan's green-and-silver banner at their head. They halted as they saw Juniper and the others take cover, and the bows came up:

Yikes! Juniper thought.

Any haven in a storm; she rolled and grabbed at the shield of the knight she'd killed, pulling it over her and curling herself into as tight a ball as she could. She squeezed her eyes shut as well; there was nobody she had to show brave for right here and now, and at least she wouldn't have to see death coming if someone overshot. Which was more than likely, with forty archers dropping shafts at an area target a hundred and fifty yards away from their position.

A rising whistle split the air, and another, and another. Someone did overshoot, and a long arrow fletched with gray-goose feathers went shhhunk! into the ground ten feet away. Underneath the hiss of cloven air came screams of men and horses, and a sound like a brief spate of hail on the shakes of a roof. Juniper threw aside the shield and rose; the knights were a kicking mass of flesh that bristled with shafts. The oncoming Mackenzies flowed over them; dirks flashed in mercy-strokes for man and beast.

Another shout brought her head around. The two riders who'd been behind the knights had drawn their swords and were charging themselves, their whoops oddly shrill. They were in man-at-arms' armor, but:

Those horses are lovely, but they're thirteen hands at most, hardly more than ponies for size. One's Arab, the other's an Appaloosa, and even so the riders look too small "Rowan!" she called, a prickle at the back of her mind prompting her. "Alive, if you can! I don't think those are fighting men at all! They're kids!"

He shrugged and nodded, thrusting his bow through the loops, drawing his battle-ax from the set on the other side of his quiver and flicking the leather guard off the edge with a quick snap of his wrists. The first rider had Baron Molalla's blazon, unquartered; he leaned forward with his sword point presented as his horse galloped. Rowan crouched slightly, then let one knee relax as the horse thundered down on him. That pushed him to the side with a swooping gracefulness; he turned it into a whirl like a hammer thrower at the Beltane games, with his long arms out and the four-foot shaft of his ax at the end of them. The slender horse screamed as the broad cutting edge flashed through its hamstring with no more effort than a kitchen knife jointing a chicken, and the beast went over and cast its rider free. The horse thrashed, ululating its pain; Rowan frowned and approached it carefully, murmuring an apology as he swung the ax twice-once with the hammer side, to stun, and then with the blade to kill.

The armored rider had managed to shed his shield and land well, but he had only begun to rise when Rowan kicked his arms out from under him and planted a boot between his shoulder blades.

"Naughty!" the big blacksmith said, leaning his ax down to pin the other's sword and watching with mild curiosity as his sister faced the other horseman.

She knelt, buckler in her left hand, the other holding her battle spear-but parallel to the ground, the butt braced under the instep of her right foot, the head only a few inches from the ground and hidden in the long grass. Even if the rider was a child, the mount was far too much weight in rapid motion to take lightly.

Horses were deeply stupid compared to anything except sheep, but they had a lively sense of self-preservation and save in a blind panic would not run onto a point. They swerved at the last moment instead, swerved slightly if well-trained, and then a mounted swordsman could strike from above, inside the longer weapon's reach; that was why it took a whole hedge of polearms to stop cavalry.

But a horse would not shy from a spearpoint it couldn't see coming. That was where the stupidity came in handy if you didn't have a few dozen friends on either side.

Cynthia jerked the ashwood spear haft up with savage precision, presenting the point at breast-height when the lovely little Appaloosa was only two strides away. The sharp foot-long blade knifed into its chest, the weight driving the butt deep into the dirt and slewing sideways as it made a frantic last-second attempt to dodge with the steel already in it. That left the strong wood braced between the immovable earth and the nearly irresistible weight that even a modestly sized horse galloping full-tilt represented.

It was two feet deep in the bone and gristle of the horse's brisket, and the strain was immense. The snap of its cracking was like nothing Juniper had heard since the Change, ear-hurting loud. The four-foot stub of the shaft blurred sideways and struck Cynthia in the side of her brigandine, knocking her half a dozen paces through the air to sprawl groaning. The horse hit the ground limp, its neck cracking as it tumbled head over heels. The slim rider landed rolling as well, lying stunned where his shield twisted horizontally across him and blocked any more movement, but it had been very creditable to get out of the stirrups and avoid the horse's body.

She moved over to him when a glance showed Cynthia conscious, and paused beside the wounded horse. The legs weren't moving but it still breathed, chest going like a bellows; frothy blood poured out of the nostrils and the great wound in its chest, and the big dark eyes swiveled to look at her, pleading with her to make it better.

Juniper drew her dirk. "Forgive me, beautiful sister," she said quietly, going down on one knee. "Forgive humankind for making you party to our quarrels. All I can give you is a swift end to pain. Dread Lord, take her home to the sweet meadows of the Summerlands. Epona, Lady of the Horses, let her run free with the living wind."

As she spoke she pulled a cloth free from her belt pouch and threw it over the mare's eyes so that she couldn't see the sharp steel, then pressed the point home and twisted expertly. The horse gave a long shuddering twitch, kicked and went limp.

Juniper wiped the blade clean on the mane as she stood. The main body of the wagon train was under control too-a swarm of figures moved over it. An unwilling smile tugged at her mouth despite grief and grimness; that one standing on a tarpaulin-load and kicking someone off it with a tremendous swing of his boot was Sam Aylward, up there with his archers, knocking some order into the farmers who'd swarmed down from the hills while everyone's attention was firmly elsewhere.

Thank you, Horned Lord, she thought; she'd always considered Sam to be a personal gift of Cernunnos.

She turned back to the task at hand. The fallen rider's shield was the first thing wrong. She could read Protectorate heraldry well and was familiar with all the major blazons; it was based on the Society's system anyway, and she'd learned that busking at fairs and tournaments before the Change. This was simply the Protector's, the red cat-pupiled eye on black, with a baton of cadency across it. Cynthia staggered up clutching herself while Juniper toed it aside; the neck loop had broken, the strong leather snapped by the torquing action of the fall. The short slim figure beneath rolled onto its back, fumbling a hand at the empty sword sheath. The helmet was one of the newer model, with a nasal bar flared so broadly at the base that it was nearly a mask covering the lower face. And the armor was of the best, links black-enameled and fine enough that the mail flowed like silk; the sword belt had gold and niello plaques.

"What have we: got here?" Cynthia croaked. She was holding herself, arms crossed across her gut. "Just a few ribs sprung. Lady."

"I don't know what we've got," Juniper said. But I do have a horrible suspicion-who even among Arminger's barons could afford to refit a child in costly first-class armor every six months Greenish-brown eyes blinked open, aware enough to glare at her on either side of the nasal bar. Then they went wide and hands scrabbled at the helmet; half a cupful of yellow bile spewed out on the grass near her boot. To be expected after a wacking great thump on the head like that, and lost amid the savage stinks of battle.

"That's a girl!" Cynthia said.

"Indeed it is," Juniper said wonderingly. "And a young one."

There weren't more than a couple of dozen female knights or squires in the Protectorate, although they hadn't been all that uncommon in the Society; Arminger wasn't what you would call an equal-opportunity employer, and neither were the gangers and thugs who'd made up many of his initial followers. This one couldn't be more than ten. The girl scrubbed her gauntlet's leather palm across her mouth and spat, glaring at Juniper again. Greenish eyes, reddish brown hair, a foxy freckled face:

Rowan came up, dragging the other youngster; he was about the same age, but thicker-built and with a coffee-and-cream complexion.

"This one's Baron Molalla's son, believe it or not," he said. "Young Chaka. Now isn't that going to be interest-ing!"

"Not half so much as this," Juniper said. "Mackenzies, meet Princess Mathilda: Mathilda Arminger, the Lord Protector's only child."