Dies the Fire

by S. M. Stirling

  "We were attacked," he said bluntly. "Not by the ordinary sort of trash, road people and Eaters—we could deal with them. By about a hundred men, organized, with good weapons—much better than ours."

  All three flicked their eyes to the improvised militia among the crowd on the road, and then to the near-uniform, purpose-made equipment the Mackenzie warriors carried.

  Dixon cleared his throat and continued: "They hit us just before dawn, killed six of our people who tried to resist, ran us out of town. They claim—their leaders claim—to be from Portland and say they've come to settle and govern the area, and they made demands."

  "Demanded that we give them a third of our crops, and every family send someone to work for them one day in three!" Sheriff Laughton said indignantly.

  The doctor took up the tale: "Said they'll burn the town and all the farms if we don't obey! They say they work for … what was it, the Portland Protective Association? And said their leader is the baron of this area."

  "The Protector, that was who they talked about mostly," Dixon said. "Perhaps . ah, we should have taken your warnings about this Protector more seriously. But we didn't expect anything this early in the year."

  Neither did I, Juniper thought, feeling an inner chill. But farmers are most vulnerable when the crops are ripe. A band of Eaters would be less of a threat.

  Eaters tended to be self-destructive and usually more than half mad, and they also died of disease faster than anyone else, naturally enough—a case of catching whatever you ate had. They were like wildfire: hideously dangerous, but inclined to burn itself out quickly.

  "We need your help … Lady Juniper," Dixon said.

  The last came out as if he had to force it; for herself, she didn't care, but she couldn't let an outsider scorn or disrespect the clan. Reputation mattered these days; it might be the margin between being left in peace and attacked.

  "I'll need to talk this over with my advisors, and put it to the clan's vote," she said. "I'd be inclined to help you, gentlemen; it's what neighbors do, and these people are likely to be a threat to us, too. But the plague … you understand why we've been very isolated since the outbreak."

  The doctor spoke: "None of our people have the plague," he said, and the others nodded vigorously. "I swear it."

  He looked around. "I can … I can reassure you on that, Lady Juniper. If we could talk privately."

  Decision firmed. "That's as it may be. I'll have to ask you to scrub down and change clothing at least, before we can go up to the Hall. Ray, show them where."

  They'd got the bathrooms in the old Carson place functioning, if you didn't mind hand-pumping and toting wood for heating.

  "It shouldn't take long."

  "Yes, Lady Juniper," he said, scowling and signaling them towards the farmhouse with the point of his spear.

  "And Ray?"

  He looked at her, then flushed and hung his head when she shook an admonishing finger; his face looked very young then.

  "Be polite. And see that drinking water's brought out for all these folk and their beasts; they're our neighbors and friends, not our enemies. Aithnitear car ?cruat? a friend is known in hardship. Threefold, remember?"

  When the Sutterdown men had gone, Juniper turned to her escort; Cynthia had the best horse and was the best rider besides.

  "I want … Judy, Chuck, Dennis, Diana, your father, and Sam, ready for a private conference at the Hall, and fast," she said.

  She looked out at the fresh refugees. Curse it, these are people who were doing all right until today! They had crops harvested, they were going to make it!

  "And tell Diana to throw together what ready food we can spare, load a wagon and have it brought down here— we can push it out to them. Eternal Soup ought to do, and maybe some bread and dried fruit. Git, girl!"

  Cynthia left in a thunder of hooves. Juniper spent the time pacing and thinking, and once sent out a rider with more orders. Other members of the clan trickled in to take over making sure that the people of Sutterdown didn't surge past the notional line that marked the boundary, and the scouts went back about their business. One emergency didn't mean that another might not pop up.

  When the three Sutterdown leaders came out they were in plain dark sweatsuits, though Dixon still grasped his Bible. The wagon arrived promptly at about the same time; Diana had probably diverted something meant for the harvesters, or a party of herd-watchers.

  Juniper turned to the men: "We'd like to leave the food on the road, and then have your people share it out. It's not much, but … "

  "Thank you very kindly," Laughton said, sincerely.

  After the spring and summer past, giving away food was something people took seriously. Even Dixon nodded. He'd been accused of many things, but never of taking more than his share, or letting anyone under his authority do so either.

  "And if you'll follow me?"

  They perched in the buckboard, one of the ones her clansfolk had liberated from a tourist attraction; it was odd how long that idea had taken to spread. Juniper took the reins and flicked them on the backs of the team. She took the long way round—the fewer people who knew about the other way up from the back of the old Fairfax place, the better.

  She could feel them gawking as she drove past the mill, working now and roofed, although the walls were still going up; past the truck plots and potato fields and watering furrow; past haystacks, past archers practicing on deer-shaped targets and others who used sword and buckler on posts or wooden blades on each other; past a hunter, coming in with a brace of deer slung across the packhorse that walked behind her jaunty bow-crossed shoulder.

  The Mackenzie clachan, she thought wryly. I wonder what Great-uncle Earl would think of it now—that respectable small-town banker, who left the place to me, of all people? Or any of the other Mackenzies?

  Such a trail of their generations, in the Old Country and the long drift westward over mountain and forest, prairie and river. Bad and wicked, a few, feud-carriers and cattle-lifters. Some heroes—her favorites were the two sisters who'd been lynched in North Carolina for helping the Underground Railroad. A scattering of backwoods granny-witches and cunning-men, as well. Plain dirt farmers, the most of them, down all their patient plowing centuries— living in the homes they built and eating from the fields they tilled, until they laid their toil-worn bodies to rest in earth's embrace.

  She glanced over her shoulder at the three men from Sutterdown, and felt all those ancestors behind her.

  They didn't often walk away from a neighbor's need— and never backed down from bullies!

  When they came to the Hall with its half-completed palisade, Laughton burst out:

  "How did you get all this done? There aren't that many of you, and I swear nobody could have worked harder than we have!"

  The curiosity seemed genuine. Because of that, Juniper answered frankly: "Apart from the favor of Brigid and Cernunnos? Well, mutual help. You people are trying to live mostly with each family on its own, like they did before the Change, but without the machinery and exchange that made that possible."

  "We get by," Laughton growled, then flushed and waved a hand around. "Sorry. You obviously do better than 'getting by.'"

  Juniper nodded. "Our clan work together and live close, so we can take turns on sentry-go, or support people doing one thing most of the time … or throw nearly everybody at a job that needs doing, like the harvest, with only a few to cook or keep an eye on the children."

  "Sounds like communism," Dixon growled.

  "It's more like tribalism, Reverend, with a bit of kibbutz thrown in," she said, keeping her voice neutral. "Call it common sense, for now. Things may be different in a few years … or not. And if you'll excuse me a moment, I need to freshen up while my advisors arrive."

  She pulled in before the Hall, finished just before the wheat came ripe; Dennis had already started stenciling the designs he wanted to carve into a lot of it, particularly the tall pillars that supported the wraparound second-story galle
ry and the new roof.

  Eilir came out and took the horses.

  It's all ready, Mom, she signed, looking at the three men in the wagon with a mixture of curiosity and distaste. Want me to lay out some ceremonial stuff for you? Scare them green, that would!

  Thanks, but I'm trying to get them in a mood to cooperate! she replied. A plain brown around-the-house robe … oh, and just for swank, that moon pendant Dennie and Sally made for me.

  She dropped to the ground, and winced a little as that jarred into the small of her abused back. It was almost a pity in some ways that they'd reverted to peasant attitudes about early pregnancy. There wouldn't be time for anything but a quick sluice-down, either.

  And they're going to make me miss my soak, too, she signed. We old ladies are wont to get irritable and cranky when we miss our soak … Show them up to the room and get 'em the refreshments, my child of spring.

  * * * *

  The loft bedroom-office-sanctum was one luxury she'd allowed herself when the Hall was put back together. It still brought her a surge of slightly guilty pleasure as she climbed up the steep staircase from the second-story corridor to join the waiting Sutterdown men.

  The attic space under the steep-pitched roof was brightly lit by the dormer windows on two sides and the bigger one in the eaves. Dennis had pitched in to furnish it; there were hanging bookcases, a long trestle table for conferences or paperwork that could be folded out of the way, shelves for her Craft tools and for the neatly rolled futons and bedding that she and Eilir used, and a little iron wood-stove for winter. Her old loom was set up at the far end.

  A big desk held a mechanical adding machine they'd salvaged, and a manual typewriter. There were filing cabinets as well, map boards, all the necessities of administration, which she loathed even as she did her share. And a cradle Dennis had made for her, ready for later in the year, carved all over with knotwork and intertwining beasts.

  She was amused to see that the Reverend had a reflex Juniper shared, whenever she went into a new house: checking the bookshelves. You could tell from the slight tilt of his head.

  The bulging eyes were probably because of the selection, though. Here, besides books like Langer's Grow It!, Livingston's Guide to Edible Plants and Animals, Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living and of course Seymour's Forgotten Arts and Crafts—their most valuable single work—the shelves held references useful to a High Priestess.

  Eight Sabbats for Witches—a slightly outdated classic— and the more modern Spellworking for Covens, just for starters. Dixon's face was getting mottled again.

  She tried to see the room through the eyes of the Sutterdown men. Judy's cat had managed to get in, for one thing. It was a big black beast with yellow eyes, and it was glaring at Reverend Dixon, who stared back in what he probably didn't know a cat would regard as an insult and challenge.

  "Out, Pywackett!" she said, and slung the protesting beast down the stairs, closing the doorway after her.

  Then there was a lectern, the top covered with a black cloth that had a golden pentacle-and-circle on it; Dixon would probably guess, rightly, that the square shape beneath was her Book of Shadows. Her personal altar stood below the north-facing window in the eaves, with candlesticks and chalice and ritual tools and small statues of the Lady and Lord. A few prints were pinned up on the log walls, and a ceramic tile she'd bought back in 1986 that showed elk-headed Cernunnos playing on a flute as he skipped through an oakwood surrounded by skyclad dancers …

  Well, by the Cauldron and the Wand, if they want to beg our help they're just going to have to take us as we are, she thought, and sat at the head of the table.

  Eilir had set out plates of fresh-cut bread, butter, cherry jam and small glasses of mead—they didn't have much yet—along with a big pot of rose-hip tea; she was glad to see that even Dixon had sampled the refreshments.

  Because now he's a guest and I can't lose my temper with him.

  The food scents went well with the beeswax-paint-and-fresh-wood smell of the building; rather less well with the sweat-and-cows aroma of several of the clansfolk, who'd come straight from the fields without bothering to hit the bathhouse. She hoped they'd remembered to use the wooden boot-scraper at the front door. Keeping clean was hard work these days.

  "Let's get going," she said when the last person was seated and the strained attempt at chat ended. "This is one of those no-time-to-waste things, so we'll have to put aside our cherished tradition of talking everything to rags. You're all up to speed on what our neighbors have told me?"

  She looked around, checking the nods. "Subject to the voice of the clan assembled, is everyone agreed that if the information proves to be true, we can't tolerate a big bandit gang making its headquarters next to us? Worse, one that tries to set itself up as overlords, and has ties to the Protector in Portland."

  Another chorus of nods; everyone had heard a little of what was happening there, and even by the standards of the fifth month after the Change, the stories were gruesome.

  "Then the first order of business is what Dr. Gianelli said about guaranteeing against exposure to the plague."

  Everyone's ears perked up at that; the silence grew taut.

  Gianelli licked his lips. "I said that would have to be in private, Lady Juniper."

  She looked at him, her green eyes level under the hood of her robe, which she'd drawn up to cover her damp hair.

  "This is private," she said. "These are my advisors. And I'm not a dictator here, unlike some places I could name. Something that important can't stay between the two of us; my people expect to be informed, and listened to, when decisions are made. And I'm not going to expose my clan to the Death on just a hint from you, Doctor."

  Gianelli looked down at his hands, then clenched them into fists. He was an olive-skinned man in his thirties; when he went pale the blue-black stubble stood out vividly.

  "Streptomycin," he said, still staring at his hands and spitting the word out as if it were a blow.

  Judy Barstow gasped. The other Mackenzies looked at each other uncertainly.

  "That's an antibiotic, isn't it?" Juniper said.

  Judy nodded, a quick hard jerk of the chin. "It's a specific against Yersinia pestis, if it's administered early," she said. "A good prophylactic at low doses, if you take it a couple of days before possible exposure, but it can damage your kidneys if you continue for more than a month. It's also valuable against a lot of other bacteria, and it keeps indefinitely in powdered form at room temperature. We ran out of it two months ago—I could never locate more than a couple of doses."

  Her calm broke. "How much have you got!"

  Gianelli went on in a monotone: "Bulk powder from my hospital in Albany in sealed packages. Twelve thousand adult doses."

  Crack!

  Her palm slammed the doctor's head to one side; the arm rose again for a backhand as she leaned far across the table. Sam Aylward had Judy by the shoulders before the second blow could fall, forcing her back into the chair.

  "Bastard!" she spat at the Sutterdown doctor, fighting against the great callused hands; there were two red spots on her cheeks, as bright as the print of her palm on his.

  "Bastard! I lost one of my patients, one of our children, and you had—you weren't even using it!"

  Gianelli looked up again, ignoring the imprint of the hand on his cheek. "It was all I had! It's like food—I can't give it to everyone who needs it, or it'll all be gone in a week, and then everyone will be as bad off as before! The other antibiotics, most of them need refrigeration. I had to save it!"

  He buried his head in his hands, and the rigid brace went out of his shoulders. "The hospital … there were so many … so many, and I couldn't do anything, we didn't have any food, and the head of administration killed himself and I took the box and I ran, I ran … "

  "Quiet," Juniper said.

  She heard what Judy was muttering under her breath— in this context, there was only one reason for calling on Three-Fold Hecate—and reache
d aside to lay a finger across her lips.

  "Don't say that, Maiden," she said, in her High Priestess voice.

  That seemed to startle Judy out of her anger somewhat, or at least back to control. "Don't think it, either. Not if you want to stay under my rooftree."

  Her eyes flicked across the three men. "As I said, neighbors help each other. We'd all be better off now if we'd cooperated more before. It has to be mutual, though. So if we're going to help you, you have to help us."

  "We're willing to share the medicine," Dixon put in.

  "Excellent. We'll want enough to protect any of our people who go out to fight, and then half the remainder." Her tone made it clear that the statement wasn't a question or a request.

  All three of them nodded; not that they had much choice. Inwardly, she felt a single cold knot relax for the first time since she smelled the death pits outside Salem; with five or six thousand doses, they could stop any plague outbreak among the Mackenzies cold—and possibly protect some other communities she knew of, combined with preventative measures.

  "And if we're going to fight and win where you lost, we insist on being in command of our joint muster," she said.

  More nods, a bit slower this time, and glances at Aylward and Chuck.

  "And good neighbors don't preach hatred against each other."

  Now Dixon sat rigid, glaring at her, and the doctor and the sheriff exchanged worried glances. Juniper went on: "We don't cast spells of bane and ruin against you. I'd appreciate it if you'd stop doing so against us, Reverend. Times are difficult enough as it is without wasting effort on counterspells."

  Dixon's face went still more blotchy. "I cast no spells!" he spat. "I pray to the living God!"

  Juniper took a deep breath. "Let's put it another way: We both believe in the power of prayer. If a group of people get together to chant and ill-wish someone, it has a way of working regardless of the details of the ritual and then of bouncing back on the ill-wishers, which has already happened to your town, no?"

  She raised a hand. "Or let's discuss it in purely secular terms. You're an influential man, ruler as well as priest— and believe me, I've come to understand what that means, however much I didn't want to. If you go on inciting people to regard us as evil Satanists worthy of death, and quoting Exodus 22:18 or Galatians 5:19 as if they applied to us—"