The Protector's War

by S. M. Stirling

  The bowl-shaped hearth in the very center of the pavement was full of split oak, stacked ready to light. That would be the Sutterdown teine eigin, the needfire; all the community's hearths and the Beltane bonfires would be kindled from it.

  Warm spring wind cuffed at Juniper's robe; the hood was back, and a garland of lilies and verbena covered the headband that held the silver crescent moon on her brows, with green ribbons fluttering. The air held a scent of incense and flowers; and of damp coolness from the river, of fresh timber and mortar and brick. Most of the other robed participants about her wore garlands as well, and many carried thyrsi, long willow wands decorated with bells and ribbons and cowslips; their slight silvery music made a pleasant undertone to the murmur of voices from the crowd on the slope below. Then a great cheer came from the eastern gate, and roars from the others; the winners of the race about the town's outer boundaries were coming.

  Soon Juniper could see the first of them running up the steep way from the town square and city hall to the hilltop, the leader with the yellow banner of the East and of Air waving it aloft. Grinning and panting the others followed, spreading out around the pillar circle to place their banners at the Quarters.

  Dennis Martin Mackenzie, High Priest of the Singing Moon, was beside her as she moved forward then; he had a solid dignity to him in the robe and antlered headdress, a gravity that his smile did nothing to dispel. The High Priest and Priestess of Sutterdown—Tom Brannigan and his wife Mora—followed, as Juniper took up the bowl of May wine and poured a libation to the new-set pillars.

  "Aphrodite, Foam-born Goddess, Bringer of joy, Lady of our hearts' delight! Apollo of the Sun, Lord of Light, God who loves justice and due proportion in men and cities! Sutterdown today dedicates itself to the God and Goddess in Your shapes. Bring Your gifts within its walls, and within our hearts!"

  She sipped from the bowl; strawberries and cool wine, flowers and ground woodruff. Another cheer rose from below, and a sudden thudding of drums; drums and chant-ing to drive the power outward, out to the markers beyond the walls where the banners had been. She looked up to meet the carven eyes, and blinked a little; Dennie had been at her all winter to advise him on the work, but she'd told him to go meditate and ask the deities how they wanted to be shown. Evidently, he'd done just that, but you could only see the full fruit of it when the pillars were in their appointed place.

  At first glance the face of Apollo was purely the Olympian, balanced and clear, the ever-victorious Light that dispels darkness. But if you looked a little longer the eyes seemed dark themselves, fathomless with incommunicable wisdom…

  Apollo Loxias, the voice from the fissure in the navel of Earth. Pythian Apollo. The words of the ancient poet rang in her heart: He came down the mountain like the shadow of falling night… and the words became a vision in her heart, of a tall striding darkness edged with fire.

  The delicate beauty of the Cyprian was more than it seemed as well; one minute a woman in the full flush of beauty whose parted lips promised, next a shy girl, then someone older, stern and wise…

  Dennie, you are wiser than you know or will admit. These will remind anyone who sees them that the forms the God and Goddess take are true—but that They are also more than any form can contain.

  Juniper took up the sword and made the first ritual cut in the space between the carved pillars, closing the Circle to create the sacred space; then paced around it sunwise:

  "I conjure you, O Circle of Power, that you may be a meeting place of love and joy and truth; a shield against all wickedness and. evil; a boundary between the world of human kind and the realms of the Mighty Ones…"

  Sutterdown Dedicants tossed and twirled the banners as she called the Quarters. The Sutterdown High Priest and Priestess knelt to receive the gifts on the Eastern table; wands, crowns of silver leaves and moon opal', of antlers and gold; and the trifold woven cords that Juniper and Dennis bent to tie around their waists, white and black and red.

  "Priest and Priestess are you, as are we," Juniper said, raising them and exchanging the ritual kiss. "Free are you, and your folk, as are we."

  She'd known Tom Brannigan for a decade and a half now, since she first drove herself through Sutterdown to visit the land she'd inherited from her great-uncle and stopped for a beer and to try to set up a gig playing her brand of music. Most of that time he'd seemed a slightly stolid sort like his wife, Mora, people whose imagination came out in his brewing and a mutual gift for making others feel at home in their tavern. She had no doubt he'd taken up the Craft because everyone else in Sutterdown seemed to be converting after the Reverend Dixon dropped dead, which made it a likely looking thing to do, and had risen in it because he was shrewd and popular, ambitious for his town and himself as well.

  Together, Juniper and Dennis chanted; and now there was a look on Brannigan's face that she had never seen there before, but recognized without a moment's hesitation—recognized from the inside. A wild torrent that was joy and terror and neither, a communion with something utterly Other and yet as familiar as a parent's touch in the night; vast beyond knowing and woven into every atom of your being.

  When he rose the Dun Juniper pair stepped back and bowed low and listened as he called the Goddess into his High Priestess, and tears of happiness poured down her cheeks.

  For Juniper the feeling was different this time; more like warm hands pressed on her shoulder, and the shadow of an infinite smile: Well done, daughter of our hearts.

  Speeches, Juniper thought. Do I never get away from them?

  Brannigan and Mora were still shaken; joyful, but not all that coherent. And it took a lot to leave Tom Brannigan speechless…

  There were about a thousand people living in Sutterdown, and double that here for the festival; more than one in eight Mackenzies, and a rather higher proportion of the teenagers and adults. All of them seemed to be looking up at her, grouped in a big semicircle on the eastern slopes of the hill that held Sutterdown's great covenstead. Behind her the needfire crackled in the new covenstead's hearth, and torchbearers stood ready to race out with the teine eigin blaze to kindle festival bonfires and household stoves.

  "Mackenzies!" she said. "Ostara is the promise of spring, and Beltane is the promise fulfilled as summer comes back to us. We've pruned and we've planted, plowed and sown, sheared and doctored our stock and seen to the lambing, swept winter out of our houses and our hearts. I think we've earned a little celebration on this night when the veil between the worlds is thin, don't you?"

  A roaring cheer spread up the hillside; the bagpipers were at it again, and the massed drums at the foot of the hill thundered, until she raised her hands once more.

  "Now, we've dedicated this town to the God and the Goddess, and that's something else to celebrate. There's one thing I want each and every one of you to remember, though: That does not mean that it's any less the hometown of our friends and kinfolk who still follow other ways. There are many pathways; what matters is that they head for the same place, and rightly walked, they all do. Remember that!"

  And don't be unkind to poor Reverend Jennings and his flock, she thought, nodding to where they stood among the crowd. Dwindling and aging though they were; not more than one in five here in Sutterdown, less elsewhere in the Clan's territories. And few of them under thirty these days; she suspected their children would be the last Christians among the Mackenzies. Poor wee, well-meaning, bewildered man.

  She raised her arms and her voice, casting it to reach them all. "And listen to the words of the Great Mother, Who of old was called Artemis, Astarte, Dione, Melusine, Aphrodite, Ceridwen, Diana, Arianrhod, Brigid . ; . Sing, feast, dance, make music and make love, all in My presence, for My law is love unto all beings… all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals."

  She paused, put her hands on her hips, and tossed her head. "Well then, what would you be waiting for the now? Didn't you hear what the Goddess just said? Get out there and have fun, by Divine command! Go! Scat!"

  T
he drums roared, and a long chain of dancers began to weave its way through the flower-decked streets.

  It was the third night of the Beltane festival, and Juniper Mackenzie and her First Armsman were down in the parkland outside Sutterdown's western gate. Juniper's mask was that of a raven; it overshadowed her mouth without covering it, which was convenient as she watched the dancers and nibbled on a skewer of chicken grilled with an intriguing honey-mustard-garlic glaze. By unspoken convention, festival masks meant you weren't really you, and so nobody could approach her on business.

  She felt a little hoarse from the singing she'd done over the past days, and the talking; her legs were slightly sore with all the dancing. She'd been around a dozen maypoles, and presided at games and contests, in archery and sword-play, running and wrestling and jumping, music and dancing, judged pie-baking and embroidery and cabbages of unusual size and children's cherished hand-reared prize sheep. The festival had been fun; also useful, taking the pulse of her folk, chatting with leaders from this dun and that, quite a few quiet sessions with the Brannigans and others prominent here in Sutterdown; they'd agreed to repay help they'd had with the town wall by assisting several smaller settlements to improve their defenses, and take a lead in the building of Dun Laurel.

  The likelihood of another serious clash with the Protector had been glumly accepted.

  Other needful things had gotten hammered out: the new high school, a preliminary consensus to clear the pilings of the bridges in Salem at low water, after Lughnassadh, if they could get the Bearkillers to help, which she was fairly confident of. The look and range of goods brought to sell or swap also told her much about how farms and workshops and trade were going, as much as Andy Trethar's record books. Things were going well, or would be if war wasn't looming over them; in some ways her people were better off than the Bearkillers. They seemed to have a broader range of handicraft skills, if perhaps less machinery, and they didn't have to support a group of full-time fighters either, or Corvallis's heroic but slightly crazed determination to keep their university in being.

  To top it all off, Rudi had led the Juniper Ravens—his Junior Little League team—to triumph in the inter-sept competition just that afternoon, and was now sleeping off a well-earned ice-cream gorge back at the hostel Sutter-down's Ravens had set up in an old building for the use of visiting members of their sept. Most of the town's residents were of the Elk totem, and many had been Elks even before the Change, but there were a fair scattering of others.

  Juniper gave a reminiscent smile that verged on a purr. Speaking of topping… On the second day of the festival she'd also managed a very pleasant time of her own in a Beltane bower with a friendly Sutterdown shoemaker of her acquaintance, a handsome man who had extremely educated hands.

  And Sam and I got something still more private yet put together, too, she thought with a mixture of grim resignation and wistfulness. I've plenty of good friends, but love, that hasn't come my way. Someday, Goddess willing…

  The pair near the bonfire were doing a sword dance in modern Mackenzie style, only distantly related to the old Scottish version. Here the swords were Clan-style short swords rather than claymores, and they were laid in turf with one edge down and the other up, points inward to make a circle divided into four Quarters. The dance was done with a partner, though still with one hand on the waist and the other high, and it involved a good deal of stepping and leaping; the tune was "Ghillie Chalium," which began slow and then went more and more swiftly as fifes and pipes squealed, bodhrans rattled, and the fiddle rang.

  She'd managed to insist that the sword blades be dulled first, and that had become the rule—she hoped. She'd never been one to think that life could be made smooth and safe altogether, but…

  It's appalling, the younger generation's attitude towards risk!

  "I'm keeping an eye on that young man," she said aloud.

  "Me too," Aylward replied; his wolf mask was pushed back so that he could tip up the mug he held, full of Bran-nigan's Special, a dark Guinnesslike malt brew of extraordinary potency. "Moves like a big cat, doesn't he?"

  The dancer in question was Rowan Carson Mackenzie, one of the leading lights of Dun Carson, whose heart had been his father's farmstead before the Change; he'd changed his name from Raymond when he became a Ded-icant. He was in his midtwenties, a broad-shouldered long-limbed man two inches over six feet, arms heavy-muscled from his trade of blacksmith and bladesmith, with a jut-jawed face. Like most male Mackenzies his age he shaved his beard save for a mustache and wore his hair at shoulder length, spilling from under his flat bonnet in a flaxen torrent and whirling with the effort of the dance. His sister Cynthia was dancing with him, and their feet flashed and blurred as the pace of the music picked up and they sprang from one Quarter to another.

  "He's big, which rarely hurts," Aylward went on. "Strong as a bloody ox, which never hurts, and he's very quick, which is even more important. Works hard at it too; you've seen him with that ax he made."

  Juniper nodded, finishing the kebab and tossing the stick into a trash barrel. She had seen it; the weapon was much like Dennie's, built to the ancient Viking pattern, and Rowan handled it like a willow switch at practice or in competitions. He'd fought with it, too—against bandits, and in a few border skirmishes with raiders from the Protectorate—and won a fearful name. She had her doubts about that ax… And before that, he'd been just barely old enough to be in that initial battle with Arminger's men, back in the harvest summer of the first Change Year.

  "Good shot, too, if not quite as good as Cynthia," Aylward enthused. "Bends a heavier bow than hers, of course—heavier than me. And he's clever, and he's got motivation."

  "That's why I've got my eye on him," Juniper said. "Perhaps a little too much motivation, Sam?"

  "Natural enough, Lady," he said. "After all, Arminger's men did kill 'is father, back in the first Change Year."

  Juniper shook her head. "Cynthia hates Arminger because he killed their father," she said. "Rowan's… obsessive about it. I meant that I was keeping an eye on him to see if I could help ease his soul, somehow. Black hatred like that damages you more than the one it's aimed at."

  Aylward shrugged and spread his hands, and Juniper sighed in turn. They were close friends, but that didn't mean they saw everything the same way—or tha,t they should, of course.

  "Perfect for this job we have in mind, though," he said. "Both of them are good at rough-country work."

  Juniper nodded. "At least they're well past twenty-one," she said. "I don't want to second-guess you on your job, Sam, but aren't most of the rest a bit… young? I doubt the average is much above voting age. Sanjay and Dan Barstow don't shave much more than their sister Aoife."

  He nodded towards the Carsons. "They're older than those two were, the first fight we had," he pointed out.

  "We were desperate and fighting at our doorsteps."

  "Thing is, Lady, it's the younger ones who've had the most training now, and at the most impressionable ages, especially the ones we've picked for this job. The best archers start with the bow as a kiddie. They've grown up rough, too, rougher than anyone our age. On this trip they'll need all the youthful endurance they can get. And they're… more adjusted to the circumstances, if you take my meaning. Also they're less likely to have young children of their own."

  "What about you and me?" she said, with a quirking smile.

  He shrugged again. "I've got enough age and treachery to make up for youth and strength," he said. "And you're needful for the political side."

  The dance ended with a long-drawn roll from the bodhrans and squeal from the pipes, and a chorus of hoots and claps. Flushed and happy, the brother and sister came over to where they stood—which was near a table that bore beer kegs and mugs, and trays of eatables.

  She smiled at their greetings as they tapped the barrel. "Rowan, Cynthia, merry met. All's well at home? Are

  Joanne and Jack along? I should have asked before, but the Sutterdowners have been run
ning me from one thing to the next."

  "Joanne's fine and sends regards, Lady Juniper, but she didn't fancy the trip seven months along," Rowan said. "Besides which, little Morianna has just learned how to say no."

  Juniper winced and laughed, and raised her mug. "All my sympathies. And you, sir, are a black traitor to run out on Joanne at such a time. And yours?" she went on to his sister.

  "Sean's well over that fever, and little Niamh's fine too—I keep telling this hulking lout, all you have to do is say Want to take a nap? and then right afterward Want a cookie? Do that a couple of times, and they learn no isn't the answer to every single thing. Jack wanted to keep a close eye on the new vineyard, though, and we're just putting in the foundations for the crusher."

  "Brannigan's vineyard needs some competition," Juniper agreed.

  Cynthia's brother smiled a wolfish smile. "And neither of our spouses are around to try to talk us out of… something."

  "Ah, and here's two more," Juniper said, giving him a quelling glance.

  A chant went up in the middle distance:

  "Fire, burn this Beltane night Fire to greet the Sun—"

  Then it turned into a cheer as a pair took a run and leapt over a bonfire flaring in a trench. The group broke up in laughter and shouts, streaming away to the high-school amphitheater where Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne was being put on. All but the pair who'd leapt for luck and love; they walked over to Juniper, and turned out to be Astrid and Eilir. They joined the two from Dun Carson at the barrels, and then in a circle around the Chief.

  I finally got her out of the covenstead, Eilir signed. Meditation and prayer, prayer and meditation! It would be too much for Samhain, and this is Beltane, for Her sweet sake!

  Astrid flushed a little and opened her mouth, but Juniper held up a hand. "Dear, Eilir's right. For us, this world isn't a preparation for another. The God and Goddess are the world, and it's our rightful dwelling-place; to know Them, you have to live in it. It's the Summerlands that are a preparation for coming right back here—another life is a gift, not the loss of nirvana. Remember the Charge of the Goddess!"