The Protector's War (27 page)

They followed the humans down the gentle slope and towards the gate—he cocked a satisfied eye on the hawthorn seedlings he'd planted along the fences here and elsewere; they were growing fast, already chest-high, glowing with their early-set white flowers, scent a faint cool sweetness. By the time the planks had rotted out, they would be good cow-tight barriers that needed no sawn timber to repair; he'd learned how to lay, stake, pleach and ether a hawthorn hedge when he was about Tamar's age. His hands remembered, and others were learning.

Me dad didn't get a tractor until I was Tamar's age, either. The house never did have running water, just a hand pump. Until that sodding burke of a stockbroker bought it for a weekend place.

That made him smile again; the same mix of stubborn conservatism and sheer poverty that doomed his father as a farmer had given the younger Aylward a set of archaic skills that were coming in very handy indeed, post-Change.

The laughingstocks of Crooksbury, we were…but
this
Aylward's laughing last.

A collie wagged its tail as they opened the gate, but stood alertly until they'd hitched the wire to close it again. A little further along the fence a man leaned against a post with resigned patience, his bow in his crossed arms and a spear propped beside him.

“G'night, Larry,” Aylward called, while the dogs exchanged sniffs.

“A good night as long as it doesn't rain, Sam,” the shepherd said with a brief wave, then turned back to his charges.

He had his supper in a cloth-tied bundle at his feet, and a good thick coat and rain slicker, but Aylward didn't envy him—the more so as a kilt was a bit drafty at times, even with drawers beneath. The fashion had taken strong hold, though. Everyone teased you if you didn't wear one most of the time, and teasing was no joke living close with the same faces every day.

“I'm shrammed already,” Smith grumbled.

Got that word from me,
Aylward thought, with a wave and a nod.
At least he got it right.
It
was
a cold and shivery night, at least by Willamette standards.
And
I'm-
headed back to a hot dinner and a nice warm kitchen
.

Dun Fairfax had been built around a century-old farmhouse left vacant by the Change—the owners been elderly Latter-Day Saints, and very, very diabetic—to be a base for those who worked this stretch of the clan's land. The graves of the Fairfaxes stood on a slight rise not far from the gate, well-fenced and with a stone marker. Juniper Mackenzie had gone to some trouble to get Mormon rites said for them; several of the residents also made small offerings now and then, from courtesy and because the supplies in the old couple's barn and basement had helped to keep the proto-clan going for crucial months. He didn't know what they'd think of becoming the tutelary spirits of a Wiccan farming hamlet…

The Mackenzies had added twelve more homes, ranging from log cabins to frame buildings built from salvaged materials to what the Yanks called a double-wide, that last hauled in by a four-hitch of Suffolk punch draft horses. Then they'd enclosed it with a ditch, bank and log stockade, plus a square-set blockhouse over the gate. The circuit included the old Fairfax barn, a meetinghall-cum-covenstead, more sheds, storage and workshops, and room enough to drive all the livestock in come an emergency. The whole was in a west-tending valley with Dun Juniper perched up the slope to the north.

The high peaks to the northeast were touched with pink by the setting sun, and tall ranks of Douglas fir stood north and east and south where the rolling bottomland crinkled upward into high hills or low mountains. From here he could see down a swale in pasture, over a fence and a trickle of creek, up through an apple orchard with the buds just burst, and past the truck gardens that surrounded the dun to the pointed logs of the palisade itself.

The original farmhouse was his—he held sixty-four acres from the Clan, a good little bit of a farm, the biggest in this settlement—and it had been built on a rise; that and its own two-story-and-attic height left the top of it visible from here over the wall.

As he watched a lantern came on behind a window, showing soft yellow flame through glass and curtains, and then another and another. No other lights flickered within eyesight, though Dun Juniper was just up the slope to northward. The chuckle of Artemis Creek a little to his south was loud tonight, full with the spring rains and the beginning of snowmelt on the heights; underneath it he could hear the low humming moan of a spinning wheel, rising and falling and then abruptly cutting off as someone laid it by for the night. An owl dropped out of the woods to the north and soared over his head to the pasture beyond, on the lookout for field mice and rabbits.

He laughed softly as he took a deep breath of the fir-scented air down from the mountains; it mixed with the damp grass, a whiff from the pigpens, woodsmoke and cooking from the dun. Edain's patience broke, and he ran on ahead; the dogs looked for permission before dashing off in pursuit.

“What's funny, Dad?” Tamar asked, putting her free hand in his.

“Well, girl, I was just thinking that it's an ill wind that blows nobody good.”

Or even an ill disaster-beyond-all-reckoning that didn't leave
someone
better off.
No fault of mine the Change happened—it came as near as bugger-all to killing me too, slow and nasty. But all I've ever liked doing is soldiering, hunting and farming; and here I get to do all three as much as suits me—with chick and child thrown in, which I never expected. None of that frabbling with the bank and the prices and regulations that broke Dad, either; we eat what we raise, or trade it straight-up for what else we need. And when I fight, I do it for my own family and friends and the land that feeds us.

He'd taken the queen's shilling before he was old enough to vote, gone where she sent him and fought whoever the officers told him to fight, and given it all he had. The whys and wherefores weren't rightly any of his business; he was a soldier, and it was his trade.

Defending his own was…
Sort of…direct-feeling—more
personal
, like.

“Where does that song about the yew tree and the bows come from, Da?” Tamar asked as they walked along; she was getting old enough to be curious about the family history. “I mean, not just from England?”

“God”—he caught himself and added—“and the Goddess know, girl. I learned it from my grandfather. Tough old bugger—must've been eighty as I first remember him and still strong as an oak root; I was the youngest of four, the rest all girls, you see, and
my
dad married late. We Aylward men do. Granddad fought in World War One, he did. Came back limping.”

She nodded understanding, walking along beside him in the gathering dusk. “Yes, I know, Dad. But the song?”

“Well,
he
said he'd got it from
his
grandfather, who got it from his—who fought bloody Napoleon if you can believe it—who got it from
his,
and I don't know how many more generations. Tell you the truth, it's what first got me interested in bows as a nipper. I liked to play at Hundred Years War.”

She gave him a puzzled look: “You were a soldier over in England, Dad. Didn't you always shoot a bow?”

“That was before the Change, remember. We used guns.”

“Oh,” she said with a shrug, obviously dismissing a time that distant.

Never heard a firearm set off, probably, and doesn't remember cars or the telly much,
he thought, shaking his head a little.
And to Edain, they're fairy tales, like Robin Hood to me, or Jack and the Beanstalk.

“But that's cool about the song, though,” she went on generously. Aylward hid a grin.

They walked up the graveled way to the blockhouse. The gateway through the man-thick palisade logs was open; it was just wide enough for a two-horse wagon, built up of heavy timbers covered in bolted-on steel strapwork. The forging was crude—Aylward had turned his hand to smithing a little, but was no expert—yet immensely strong. The villager on gate-guard duty for the night was just lighting a lantern and hauling it up a flagpole before climbing the steep plank stairs to the platform under the parapet.

“Cheryl,” Aylward said, nodding. “Seen a young boy go by, well-plastered?”

“Hi, Sam, Tamar. Edain went up the street in a rooster-tail of mud a couple of seconds ago,” she replied, settling her steel cap with a sigh and going up with a lunchbox in one hand and her bow and quiver in the other. “Followed by two mud statues shaped roughly like dogs,” she added over her shoulder.

That was one more reason you couldn't live alone on your land; there had to be enough to trade off chores like guard duty that needed doing the clock round.

The laneway between the cottages within was graveled too; chickens pecked about in it until a couple of children shooed them off towards their coop for the night, and ducks and geese came up from the pond for their evening feed—they had a good strong perennial spring here. Dun Fairfax was a well-to-do settlement, with much of its draft-work done by horses rather than oxen; one nickered off in the stable sheds built up against the inside of the palisade; there were eight of the beasts, including two mounts of his that doubled for riding and light farmwork. Keeping riding horses was a bit of a luxury, but necessary for his other job as Armsman; the rest of the families all had at least one bicycle, and it was going to be yet another pain in the arse when those started to unfixably break down.

He passed various neighbors with a smile and a nod; Katherine Doors came by from the big pre-Change barn where all the households kept their milch cows along with the communal straining tub, and barrel churn and cream separator; two big plastic buckets of milk rode at either end of a yoke over her shoulders. Several interested cats followed her, noses and tails up as they traced the swaying of the pails and hoped for a spill.

“This is working a treat, Sam, just like you said it would,” she called, tapping the fingers of her steadying hand on the smooth garry-oak stave he'd carved for her. “Saves a lot of work.”

“You're welcome, Kate,” he said.

Everything's relative,
he thought silently.
Those buckets must weigh eighty pounds, together.
But it
was
saving a good many trips back and forth. At least Dun Fairfax had piped water to everyone's kitchen.

He circled the old two-car garage of the Fairfax house, now a bowyer's workshop and spinning-and-weaving room with the sliding door replaced by salvaged windows for light. What had been the backyard of the house was his wife's herb garden, with roses trained up against trellises on the walls, and a bordering edge of dahlias and peonies; Edain waited with the dogs, suddenly a little apprehensive as he looked down at the state of his shoes and kilt.

“Can't have that,” Aylward said, and gave the dogs a bucket of water each and a brush with an old burlap sack; they laid back ears but submitted to the rough cleaning.

“Dad? What about me?”

“Talk to your mother about that.”

Man and girl walked down the brick pathway to the kitchen door, savoring the good cooking odors that came out the opened window, and stamping to get the mud off their soles. The leather went
splat
on the wet brick and Tamar suddenly started kangaroo-hopping down the path, giggling as she landed, her bow held over her head in both hands, and her brother joined her.

“Boots! Boots, all of you!” his wife Melissa cried, sticking her head out a window; she was a comfortable-looking woman in her late thirties, with a halo of yellow-brown curls just touched with the first gray strands. “I cleaned the floors for Ostara while you were gone and I'm not doing it again!”

Aylward snorted.
Wipe yer web feet, ninny!
he heard, remembering his mother's voice when he came in from the fields with
his
father.

“And watch out for the hob's milk!”

His mother had put out a bowl too, come to think of it—ostensibly for the barn cats, though, rather than the house hob, but the moggies around here wouldn't mind who got the credit for emptying it.

“
Edain! That kilt was clean this morning! You were supposed to be with your father, not rolling with the pigs! Get to the bathroom and clean up
this instant.
And don't you
‘aw, Mom'
me, you little hooligan!”

Melissa's own mother was speaking in the background; Aylward groaned a little inwardly at that. Eleanor was…

Not quite stark raving bonkers, but not quite normal, either, since the Change.

“Why potatoes with the meat again, dear?” she asked Aylward's wife. “Wouldn't some nice steamed rice be pleasant for a change?”