Dangerous Women

by George R. R. Martin

  We’ve mostly harvested what we planted last year; now we need to get on to the volunteer fields.

  Much—most—of the land planted to grain before the Change had just stood until the kernels fell out of the ear. Chaos and fighting as people spilled out of cities instantly uninhabitable when electricity and engines failed, plague and bandits and sheer lack of tools and skill. A field left like that self-seeded enough to produce a second crop, thin and patchy and weedy but a thousand times more valuable than gold.

  Sunlight flashed off the spears of the binders following along behind the reaper. They moved the weapons up each time they advanced to tie a new double armful of cut wheat into sheaves and stand them in neat tripods. She blinked at the way the honed metal cast the light back, remembering …

  … the little girl the Eaters used as decoy giggling and bringing out the knife and cutting for her throat, and the smell so much like roast pork from the shuttered buildings behind her …

  “Focus,” Judy Barstow Mackenzie said from her other side.

  And we help each other to … not exactly forget … put it aside. Are any of us still completely sane? Are there any of us who aren’t suffering from … post-traumatic stress disorder, wasn’t it called? Certainly it’s the ones who were least anchored in the world-as-it-was who’ve done best since the Change. The rest cling to us.

  “Thanks,” Juniper said.

  “What’s a Maiden for?” Judy said stoutly. “If not to keep her High Priestess on track?”

  The tone was light, but Juniper leaned over and touched her shoulder.

  “And friends,” she said. “Friends do that.”

  They’d known each other since their early teens—a decade and a half ago, now, and they’d discovered the Craft together. They were very unlike: Juniper short and slight and with eyes of willow-leaf green, Judy bold-featured, big-boned, and olive-skinned, raven-haired and inclined to be a little stout in the old days.

  “That too, sure and it is, arra!” Judy said in a mock-Irish accent plastered over her usual strong trace of New York, and winked. “I wouldn’t be thinkin’ otherwise.”

  Juniper winced slightly at the brogue. She could talk that way and sound like the real thing. Her mother had been genuine-article Irish when she met a young American airman on leave in the London pub where she was working. From Achill Island in the west of County Mayo at that, where she’d grown up speaking Gaelic. That burbling lilt had only tinged Juniper’s General American, except when she let it out deliberately during performances—she’d been a singer before the Change, working the Renaissance Faires and pagan festivals and conventions.

  Nowadays she used it more and more, especially on public occasions. If people were going to put it on anyway, at least she could give them something more to imitate than fading memories of bad movies on late-night TV.

  “It’s going to be unpleasant, but straightforward,” Judy said seriously. “I did the examination and there’s no doubt about it. He’s guilty and he deserves it.”

  “I know.” Juniper took a deep breath. “I don’t know why I’m feeling so … out of control,” she said. “And that’s a fact. It’s …”

  She looked upward, into a sky with only a few high white wisps of cloud.

  “It’s as if there were a thunderstorm coming, and there isn’t.”

  The Dun Juniper procession came around the bend and Juniper sighed to herself at the sight of the tarps strung by the crossroads between the roadside firs and oaks and Lombardy poplars. Partly that was sheer desire for shade. Partly it was …

  Her daughter’s fingers flew; Eilir had been deaf since birth:

  Why the frustrated sighing, Great Mother? she asked. They’ve done what you asked.

  Juniper sent her a quick, irritated glance. Eilir looked as tired as her mother felt, despite being fourteen and very fit. She was tall, already a few inches taller than her mother, strong and graceful as a deer; the splendid body was a legacy of her father, who’d been an athlete and football player.

  And a thoughtless selfish bastard who got a teenager pregnant on her first time and in the backseat of his car at that. But then Eilir’s wit and heart come from the Mackenzie side, I think!

  Juniper filled her lungs and let the flash of temper out with the breath, a technique mastered long ago.

  She signed: Do you feel it? There’s an anger in the air. In the ground, in the feel of things, like a louring threat.

  Eilir’s pale blue eyes narrowed, then went a little distant.

  I think so, Spooky-Mom, she replied after a moment. Yes, a bit.

  They both looked at Judy, who shook her head and shrugged.

  “Not me. You’re the mystical one. I just made sure we had clean robes and plenty of candles for the Sabbats.”

  The Earth is the Mother’s, Eilir signed, her face utterly stark for once. Maybe it’s Her anger we’re feeling.

  They halted in the center where the roads met. Juniper handed down her nine-month-old son, Rudi, to Melissa Aylward Mackenzie, swelling with her own pregnancy.

  “I feel it too,” the younger woman said seriously.

  She was new-come to the Old Religion, like so many others, but already High Priestess of Dun Fairfax, and here to help with organizing the rite.

  “Let’s hope we’re doing the right thing in Her eyes, then,” Juniper said. “Get the littles in order, would you, Mellie? This is going to be hard on them.”

  She nodded soberly, then smiled a little as she hefted Rudi expertly. Juniper shook her head and stretched in a creak of saddle leather; riding made your back ache. Some distant part of her noticed how casual people had already become about standing in the middle of roads, now that cars and trucks were a fading memory.

  We’ve better things to do than this, she went on to her daughter. Her fingers and hands danced, as fluent as speaking aloud: It’s the harvest and nobody has time to spare. Spending most of yesterday and last night hammering out the ritual and the guidelines for this was hard, even with ten minds pooled together. I hate having to do things on the fly, especially when it’s setting a precedent … but what else can we do?

  Eilir shrugged. Lock him up like they used to, until it’s convenient?

  Juniper didn’t bother to dignify that with an answer; it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. Nor could they spare anyone to supervise a criminal’s labor, even if they were willing to go down that road, which they weren’t.

  Sam Aylward, her chief armsman, held her stirrup as she dismounted. She stretched again as her boots touched the asphalt, settling the plaid pinned across her shoulder with a twitch. The Dun Juniper contingent were all wearing the same Highland costume, one that had started as half a joke and spread because it was so convenient. All in a sort of dark green–light brown–dull orange tartan that owed everything to a warehouse full of salvaged blankets and nothing whatsoever to Scotland.

  About a third of the Dun Fairfax folk wore the kilt too, and the clothing of the rest showed in tears and patches and tatters why the pre-Change clothes were running out so shockingly fast. They just weren’t designed to stand up under the sort of daily grind of hard outdoor labor that nearly everyone did these days. And salvaging more from the unburned parts of the cities was getting to be impossibly dangerous and labor-intensive now that the nearby towns had been stripped. Only big well-armed parties could do it at all, what with bandits and pint-sized warlords popping up everywhere and the crawling terror of the Eater bands lurking in the ruins amid their hideous game of stalking and feasting.

  A note popped up from the vast sprawling mental file cabinet she had to lug around these days:

  Check on the flax and wool and spinning-wheel projects after we’ve got the harvest out of the way. We don’t need to make our own cloth yet, but we have to have the seeds and tools and skills built up for when we do.

  She’d been a skilled amateur weaver herself before the Change, and they’d organized classes in it over the winter. Fortunately it was something you could p
ut down and pick up later.

  Melissa left her group and walked over to the stretched tarp shelter to the southwest of the crossroads where the children and nursing mothers sat. Rudi gurgled and waved chubby arms, his eyes and delighted toothless smile fixed on her face.

  Thank the Lord and Lady he’s a good baby. Eilir was a lot more trouble. Of course, I had less knowledge then, and a great deal less help. It really does take a village, or at least that makes it a lot easier.

  “They’re doing flags for all the Duns,” Juniper observed to Chuck Barstow. “It’s a good idea, sure. People need symbols.”

  “Dennie had it right when he insisted on the green flag, though,” Chuck said. “We need a symbol for the whole Clan as well. Where do you want it?”

  Juniper pursed her lips. She’d made the old sigil of the Singing Moon Coven into a flag: dark antlers and crescent silver moon on green silk. Embroidery was another skill that had turned from hobby to cherished lifeline. The still air of the late summer made it and all the others planted around the tarp shelters hang limp, as if waiting with indrawn breath. Fortunately hers was suspended from a crossbar on the staff, which meant you could see what was on it.

  “Next to Dun Carson’s, please.”

  Dun Carson’s silver labrys on blood red was planted right in front of the northwest tarp, where the crossroads made a vaguely north–south, east–west cross. Chuck planted the point on the bottom of the Clan’s into the earth with a shove and twist. Brian Carson stood with his brother’s widow and his orphaned niece and nephew, next to the two tables she’d requested at the center. His wife, Rebekah, stood on his other side, looking a little stiff.

  Melissa and her helpers took over the job of looking after the littles. The southeast quadrant held representatives from other duns within a fifteen-mile radius; volunteers came forward to take the horses, unsaddling and hobbling and watering them before turning them loose in a pasture.

  How the Change has limited us, thought Juniper. Fifteen miles is a long way again! This will be recorded and sent out in the Sun Circle. Some witnessing is a good idea, but turning it into a circus is not.

  There were better than fifty adults under the judgment tarp, probably ten or fifteen teenagers—

  —eòghann, thought Juniper. We’ll call them eòghann.

  That meant youth or helper in her mother’s language.

  We need a name for the teenagers who are ready to begin to learn the adult needs and responsibilities, but not yet given a vote. Eóghann will do, since everyone seems determined to play at being Celts.

  Juniper shook herself slightly. The profound silence was broken only by the occasional wail from one of the babies, the hoof-clop of a horse shifting its weight or a cough coming through clearly. No trace of the whine and murmur of machine noise in the background anymore, and that still startled her sometimes with a quietness unlike anything she’d ever experienced unless on a hiking trip in wilderness. It made familiar places unfamiliar.

  She stood behind the large folding table. There was a tall chair for her …

  A bar stool! she thought. That’s funny on more levels than I can cope with today.

  Most people were sitting on sturdy boxes and baskets in neat rows, very unlike the Clan’s usual laissez-faire order. Front and center sat the man who was the focus of this day’s process, set apart from them by the white tarp under him and a clear circle of aversion.

  On either side of him stood men from the Dun. They had knives in their belts, but that was simply the tool everyone carried now. One also had a pickax handle in his hand, though, and the other a baseball bat.

  And they’re needed, Juniper thought as she took him in with a grimace. Yes, with this one.

  He was a strong man, of medium height and well muscled, with striking chiseled features and curly black hair he wore fairly short. The sort who quivered with suppressed anger at the world, to whom everything that thwarted his will was an elemental affront.

  He’s not afraid, really, she thought; she’d always been good at reading people. Which means he’s not only wicked, he’s very arrogant, very stupid, or both.

  As she watched, he shot a sudden glance over his shoulder, a flicker of something triumphant on his face, which he schooled at once as he looked forward again.

  “Armsmen, take custody of the prisoner,” she said coolly, and saw a moment’s doubt on his face.

  The men of the Dun moved aside for Sam and Chuck and went to sit with the rest. From their expressions, they were thankful to turn the task over to a uniformed authority, and they weren’t the only ones.

  Besides their kilts, the two men wore what had been chosen as the Mackenzie war kit, though there hadn’t been time to craft enough for everyone yet: a brigandine of two layers of green leather (salvaged from upholstery) with little steel plates riveted between, quivers and yew longbows slung across their backs, shortswords and long dirks and soup-plate bucklers at their belts, a small wicked sgian dub knife tucked into one boot-top. The plain bowl helmets with the spray of raven feathers at the brow made them somehow seem less human and more like walking symbols.

  Chuck Barstow had a spear as well as the war-harness. The prisoner would have been less surly if he knew what it portended, or that Chuck was High Priest of the Singing Moon Coven as well as second-in-command of their militia. The spear’s polished six-foot shaft was rudha-an, the same sacred rowan wood used for wands. The head was a foot-long section cut from a car’s leaf spring, ground down to a murderous double-edged blade and socketed onto the wood white-hot before it was plunged into a bath of brine and blood and certain herbs.

  It had also been graven with ogham runes, the ones that had come again and again when she tossed the yew sticks of divination on the symbol-marked cloth of the Bríatharogam. Just two:

  Úath, terror.

  Whose kenning was bánad gnúise, the blanching of faces. For horror and fear and the Hounds of Anwyn.

  Gétal, death.

  Whose meaning was tosach n-échto, called the beginning of slaying. For the taking of life and for sacrifice.

  Juniper took a deep breath, and closed her eyes for an instant to make herself believe she was truly here and not imagining it. The dull heat she had felt before came back, manyfold, as if the soil beneath her feet was throbbing with rage.

  “Bring him before me.”

  Her own voice startled her, though casting her trained soprano to carry was second nature for a professional singer. Now it was somehow like the metal on the edge of a knife.

  “You heard Lady Juniper, gobshite,” Sam said, just barely loud enough for her to catch.

  The hand he rested on the man’s shoulder to move him forward might have looked friendly, from any distance. Juniper could see the wrist and scarred, corded forearm flex, and the prisoner’s eyes went wide for an instant as it clamped with crushing precision. Sam had been born and raised on a small English farm; his trade had been a peculiar type of soldiering for half his forty-two years, before chance or the Weavers left him trapped and injured in the woods near her home just after the Change.

  His hobby had been making and using the longbow of his ancestors. He was stocky and of middle height, but those thick spade-shaped hands could crack walnuts between thumb and two fingers. And she happened to know that he hated men like this with a pure and deadly passion.

  Chuck Barstow looked grimmer; he’d been a Society fighter and a gardener besides a member of the Singing Moon, not a real warrior by trade, though everyone had seen death and battle in the last eighteen months. But he was equally determined as he paced forward to keep the prisoner bracketed. From the way his eyes were fixed and showed white around the blue, he was feeling something too, besides the gravity of the moment, and not enjoying it.

  Judy Barstow was at the far right of the table next to a woman who sat tensely upright; her white face frightened and her eyes carefully not focused.

  Our prime exhibit, thought Juniper. Even if I just nursed Rudy, my breasts ache. But
why is it so hard to breathe?

  Eilir had moved to sit at the smaller, shorter table, set in an L to the larger one. She turned and her fingers flew. Shall I find some cold tea for you?

  Yes, thanks.

  She drank the lukewarm chamomile thirstily as her daughter pulled a fresh book out of her saddlebags. Ice in summer was a memory, and a possibility someday when they had time for icehouses, but you could get a little coolness by using coarse porcelain.

  The book was covered in black leather, carefully tooled with the words:

  The Legal Proceedings of Clan Mackenzie, Second Year of the Change.

  And below that:

  Capital Crimes.

  Eilir opened it to a fresh page, pulled out an ink bottle and a steel-nibbed pen that had come out of retirement in an antiques store in Sutterdown. Nobody thought it odd that a fourteen-year-old was acting as court clerk. Standards had changed.

  The first pages of the book contained the rituals they had come up with last night, after they had hashed out the legal and moral basis for judging the case. The first pages of the book covered all that, written in Eilir’s neat print.

  Juniper looked over to the Dun Carson witnesses sitting in the southeast quadrant. Everybody was still, the sensation of their focused attention like and unlike a performance.

  “I have been called here to listen to the Dun’s judgment against Billy Peers Mackenzie …”

  “Hey!” the man yelled. “I ain’t never said nothing about Mackenzie. That was you-all. I’m William Robert Peers.”

  Juniper hesitated and then turned her head.

  “I will only say this once, Mr. Peers. You will keep your mouth closed until I give you leave to speak. If you speak out of turn again, your guards will gag you. Gags are very uncomfortable. I advise you to be quiet.”

  “But you can’t do that! It isn’t legal!”

  Sam’s hand moved once, and the man stopped with his mouth gaping open. He reached into his sporran, pulled out the gag and shoved it into the man’s mouth with matter-of-fact competence, checking carefully to make sure that his tongue lay flat and that it wasn’t so large as to stop him from swallowing. The rags wrapped around the wooden core had been steeped in chamomile and fennel seed tea and dried so that it wouldn’t taste too foul. Straps around the head held it in place without cutting at the corners of his mouth. He struggled, though it was as ineffectual as a puppy in a man’s hands.