The Protector's War (78 page)

The Corvallis men cut the pleasantries shorter than most Mackenzies would have considered polite, and came to business sooner:

“It's a viable proposition,” one said; his name was Turner, and he was as close as the Willamette Valley came to a banker these days, as well as half-owner of a big metalworking shop and foundry. “Provided the contract is reasonable. Obviously, a project this big requires long-term guarantees for the amount of capital we'll have tied up. It's not like selling a load of anvils or sledgehammers.”

“My thought exactly, Mr. Turner,” she said. “And your papers were quite detailed. Ms. Kowalski, we've done business before.”

She cast a sidelong glance at Nigel before she went on: “That's why I'm inclined to reject the deal as it stands. Or to recommend to the town's assembly that it be rejected, that is. Of course, if you can persuade them better than me, or refer it to the Clan as a whole…”

Turner's eyes went wide; Brannigan's closed in a wince. The chance of Dun Sutterdown's adults voting the two-thirds majority required to override the Chief was somewhere between nil and nothing. Even a simple majority would be vanishingly unlikely without Lady Juniper's agreement.

“Why?” the Corvallan said. “Lady Juniper, breaking and scutching flax and slubbing and carding raw wool by hand are a
lot
of work, but they're easy and simple to do with powered machinery. Granted there isn't the market or population to support a full-blown mechanized spinning and weaving industry yet, but we could make a start. Cloth's getting more and more expensive.”

Juniper nodded, smiling sweetly. “Yes, both those are sort of labor-intensive. I've done both myself, on many a long winter's day. And everyone needs to make more cloth, now that we're finally running out of the last of what was left from before the Change.”

“Well, then,” Turner said. “This is a perfect location for a slubbing and scutching mill. And there's plenty of wool and flax available, and more wool from the CORA country over the mountains.”

“Processing it here makes sense—it cuts down on transport costs,” Agnes Kowalski added. “The finished goods are a
hell
of a lot less bulky to ship. Particularly getting the fiber out of the raw flax, that's
got
to be done close to the point of production.”

They'd known each other—slightly—before the Change; Kowalski had made and sold handlooms to hobbyist weavers like Juniper. After things stabilized in the Corvallis area, she'd taken up the trade again, then to renting looms to those who couldn't afford to buy them, buying wool as well in bulk, doling it out on credit to the weavers using her looms and taking the output in payment at a fixed, usually low, price. These days she had a dozen workmen building and repairing looms, and several score weavers and spinsters in and around Corvallis working for her on contract.

Ken Larsson had told Juniper once that had been known as the “putting-out system” in Europe in the old days, and Juniper disliked both it and the woman who'd reinvented the idea all on her own.

“Yes,” Juniper said patiently once more. “But you two had best understand that we're not interested in a wonderful mill the wonderfulness of which benefits only
you.
Corvallis, in my opinion, is too given to falling in love with toys for their own sake. And you, Tom, but it's mostly Mr. Turner and Ms. Kowalski I'm concerned with. You see, most of the flax-breaking and wool-carding gets done in the winter, as I've said, when our crofters have little else to do, particularly now that most of our duns have threshing machines and they don't need to beat the grain out with flails in the off-season. If the slubbing and scutching's to be done in a mill instead, then the crofters have to sell their raw flax and wool, and buy them back for spinning and weaving.”

“If it's still cheaper—” Kowalski said.

“Then yes, they'll benefit, because they can spin and weave the more, or make shoes, or whatever takes their fancy and suits their skills. But that depends on how much of their produce they have to pay to the owners of the mill for the processing of their materials, doesn't it?”

Turner closed his mouth with a comment unspoken.
Didn't think I'd understand
that, did you?
Juniper thought.
And thanks to Nigel I know just
how
much of the added productivity you were planning on keeping for yourselves.

“What's your objection to the contract, Lady Juniper?” he said.

“That you plan on
renting
us the millwork,” she said. “And we end up paying you for it forever, the more so as you seem to feel we should take all responsibility for breakage, wear and replacement as needed. I've no objection to paying you a fair price for your contributions. Mr. Turner, you've got forges that can do castings on that scale and we don't and it would be expensive for us to duplicate them, and Ms. Kowalski, you've got useful outlets for our produce. That doesn't mean we're going to be your tenants. At seventh and last, we can do without you more easily than you can without us. You'd have built these mills in Corvallis territory if you could get the water-power as cheaply and a location as good, and that's just the start of why you want to locate here.”

Turner was a short stocky man, with burn scars on the spade-shaped hands below his embroidered shirt cuffs. He took off his felt hat and slapped it against his thigh.

“What's your counteroffer, my lady?” he said, his voice clipped.

“Oh, it's not my place to tell Sutterdown and its people what to do with their own,” Juniper said lightly, and watched Turner surreptitiously grind his teeth. “I would
suggest
to them that they keep full ownership, with a phased purchase arrangement…”

When the talk was over the short muscular Turner and his tall lanky companion walked away towards their tethered horses to give the matter
further consideration.

Which means they'll take
our
terms, in the end, more or less,
Juniper mused with satisfaction.
I thought so.

“OK,” Brannigan said. “I got too hungry and jumped at the fly without looking at the hook.”

“Let that be a lesson to you, Tom,” she said. “And thank Sir Nigel here, too. I smelled a rat, but it was he skinned the beast for me and read its entrails, sure.”

When the mayor had gone, she let her hand rest on the pommel of her saddle and looked at the town, the checkerboard of small farms about it, and the tents and rope corrals of the folk arriving for the horse fair.

“This is what I should be doing, if I have to be Chief,” she said after a moment, surprised at the passion in her own voice. “Helping my people better their lives! Instead I have to spend most of my time thinking about wars and threats. I hate it!”

“You should,” Nigel Loring replied. “God preserve me from a leader who
likes
to fight; that's tolerable in a soldier, bad in an officer, and a disaster in a ruler. But it's all part of what a Chief has to do as well, and you know it.” He nodded down the valley. “You're keeping their homes from the torch and their children from death.”

“Thank you, Nigel,” she said. “You understand.”

His hand rested on hers; she turned her fingers and clasped his for an instant, worn and strong like her own. Then he cleared his throat and looked down at the town.

“I suppose we should go find ourselves some lunch.”

“That we should,” Juniper said, smiling as she neck-reined her horse about.

 

Sutterdown's horse fair had started modestly in Change Year Two with a group of ranchers bringing surplus stock over the mountains to swap, cutting down on the expense of guards and the risk of bandits by driving their herds together. Then it made sense for folk from other parts of the Willamette to come and buy horses here as well, this being the slack season after the grain harvest and Sutterdown being very well placed. Once the habit was established, it was also a fine chance for anyone with
anything
to sell to meet potential customers, which made a fine market for food and drink, so crofters from all over the Clan's territories brought their surpluses here.

“So you see, it's very much to our Clan's benefit, because it's to everyone else's as well,” Juniper said to Eilir and Rudi. “People meet and exchange ideas and plans and news as well as goods and stock.”

Astrid was walking with their party as well, Sam and his lady and their daughter Fand in a backpack, and the Lorings and Little John Hordle. They were all working on ice-cream cones; it was a fine bright late-summer day, comfortable shirtsleeve weather without being hot, and the morning sun shone from a sky azure from horizon to horizon.

“Beneficial even in small things,” Juniper went on. “For instance, the stock-breeders need to rent pasture. Farmers for miles around get a fee for it—and also manure for the fields they plan to plow and plant this fall.”

Rudi nodded gravely, but Mathilda wrinkled her nose. “Manure!” she muttered.

“Manure grew the fodder for the cow that made that ice cream and fertilized the beets that gave us the sugar, my girl,” Juniper said sternly. “Earth must be fed or we all go hungry.”

A horse fair was necessarily a sprawling affair; tents were pitched for miles in every direction, over pastures and harvested grain fields and in orchards still heavy with fruit. There were jugglers and singers as well, and vendors of everything from taffy to toasted nuts, and food stands, and sellers of salvaged books and silverware and jewelry—some new-made, these days—and traveling sword masters showing off their style and taking on all comers for a bet, and wrestlers and martial artists doing likewise, and games where you threw balls to win a prize, and even a few carousels and miniature Ferris wheels, all horse-or ox-powered, of course. The children were goggle-eyed, and Astrid and Eilir and the young Englishmen were enjoying themselves as well; you didn't see many strangers day-to-day in these years, or hear such a babble of voices talking and shouting and singing, or the mixture of music and neighs and shouts—there was even a table with a woman shifting a pea between three cups.

They came to a big paddock set up with a six-rail fence; there seemed to be a commotion there, and then Juniper saw a horse rearing and bugling its battle call, hooves flailing. “Make way, there!” she said quietly; she knew the difference between a horse venting and one in genuine fear and anger.
I won't have cruelty here.

Sam filled his lungs and shouted: “
Make way for the Chief!”

People did a double-take and let her and hers through to the fence. For a moment everyone was spellbound, watching tense black loveliness canter around the enclosure, forgetting even the bleeding groom being helped through the gate as hooves seemed to barely touch the ground beneath floating grace. The mare arched her neck and dodged back and forth as she saw the staring mass of humanity, then did another circuit, wedge-shaped head high and high-held tail streaming.

“Oh, my goodness,” Nigel murmured. “Sixteen hands, would you say, Alleyne?”

“And a fraction. Warmblood with a fair bit of Arab folded into its family tree,” he replied. “Looks a little like a hunter, but faster, I'd say. Fit for a destrier of the best. Have to see how her wind holds up over a long course, but I'd wager she'll run most things on four feet into the ground.”

The horse chose that moment to hop in place, lashing out with its hooves behind in case anyone should be sneaking up in its blind spot, then landed and took up its canter without missing a beat.

“
Look
at her motion, would you, Father? That one has dressage in her genes,” said Alleyne. “What a
horse
!”

Rudi wiggled forward and sprang onto the fence, standing on a rung and resting his hands on the top rail, his face shining. Nobody paid him mind; across the paddock was the party from Larsdalen, Mike Havel at their center. The murmuring died down until it was a background hum, quieter than the drum of shod hooves on packed dirt.

In the quiet, the voices of the men were easy to make out; and the desperation in the voice of the ranch-country wrangler talking to the Bearkiller bossman.

“My lord, you aren't going to see a better horse than Donner here. She's worth every penny of three hundred new silver dollars, but for you, I'll take two seventy-five.”

Mike Havel's slanted eyes looked at him coldly; that was a
lot
of money in terms of the ninth Change Year in central Oregon, where barter was still more common than coin; easily twenty times the price of a good-quality riding horse. Then he handed his sword to his wife and vaulted over the tall fence with fluid grace, approaching the horse slowly, speaking softly and soothingly. That turned to a curse and a catlike leap backward as it reared and milled its forefeet like lethal steelshod clubs, and then stood with its head cocked and ears forward, nostrils flaring red pits as it snorted warning and wrath.