The Protector's War

by S. M. Stirling

  Uh-oh, Eilir thought. Wild Huntress, help!

  She didn't pause, even though she knew exactly what the man wanted—to get her into the water where the knee-deep flow and bad footing would soak away her agility. If she waited until he got to the other bank chances were he'd escape altogether. The stream was sickeningly cold as she jumped in, and the smooth rounded rocks shifted under the soles of her boots. She knew an instant's fleeting gladness she was in a kilt rather than trousers—that much less sodden cloth to cling to her legs.

  His mouth moved, but between moonlight and intent-ness of purpose she couldn't read the words. They didn't matter, compared to the way his hands went crossways down to his waist and came up with two blades, the heavy machete chopper and long bowie. They moved in small precise circles as he crouched and grinned at her, backing away slightly towards the eastern bank…

  He's not frightened. He just wants to get away before anyone else gets here, so he can report us. I have to kill him fast.

  Closer. Blue eyes that turned pale in the cold light, and a golden earring. Three inches taller than her five-eight, and long arms—enough lines around his eyes that he was probably over forty, but strong as well and likely still quick enough. Scars on his hands and under the beard showed fights survived and opponents who'd died.

  It's not my first time either.

  The bbwie knife stabbed for her belly, swift enough to blur in the moonlight and very hard. She knocked it aside with the buckler; the collision sent pain shooting through her left hand and wrist, but she drove the point of her short sword towards his face at the same time. He got the machete-falchion in between, and the guards locked. He braced shoulders and feet and she let the strength of it throw her backward; no point in getting into a wrestling match. But the water turned what would have been a cat-quick bound into almost a stumble; if it hadn't slowed him a little too the backhand cut would have taken off half her face. As it was, she felt a featherlight sting along the line of her jaw, and a hot trickle on her water-cold skin.

  His eyes went a little wide as he dodged her counterchop; the edge touched cloth, and grated on mesh mail beneath. That almost let her shin-strike to the crotch succeed, but the water slowed her again. His bowie lanced towards her thigh; time slowed as she poised, let the point go past and then struck with the edge of the buckler at the exposed wrist.

  The impact sent a grisly thud up her arm, and the knife flew free as bone crumpled. One hand down. She snarled and struck again, a stooping chop to the outside of the knee. He blocked again with his machete in a shower of sparks, ducked aside to turn her gut-punch with the buckler into a glancing blow…

  And hit her—hit her impossibly in the face with his broken left hand. The cheekpiece of her helmet took some of it, but her head snapped back and she staggered off-balance, tasting salt in her mouth and feeling her knees buckle. He launched himself forward, striking lizard-swift with the machete; one stroke she blocked, but the other landed on her stomach. The brigandine's small plates held, but the blow still had a strong man's shoulders behind it and she went down winded, a great splash throwing water chest-high as arrows sprayed from her quiver and she pancaked on her back. Again the river clutched at her, leaving her roll half-completed when he landed on her, water flowing into nose and open mouth as heaviness crushed her into the stones of the creek bed. Alone in utter darkness, the fog and water together like the inside of a closet.

  He felt like boulders atop her, weight half again hers, his elbows on her shoulders and his good hand closing around her throat. The universe vanished in wet blurred blackness, and the blood pulsed in her throat as she tucked her chin down to try to stop the terrible crushing power in his cal-lused fingers. Red shot across her eyes as she fumbled for the hilt of her dirk and got it out; the mail beneath his coat turned a stroke gone feeble as her starved lungs robbed her arms of strength.

  Relief, then agony—reflex sucked ice water into her lungs as the iron grip on her throat vanished. She lunged up, and found herself nearly face-to-face with the man who'd been killing her, his distorted countenance looming at her out of the fog. A foot of steel poked out of the front of his jacket, and blood flooded out of his slack mouth into her face as she coughed and retched out river water, the blood black as the water in the moonlight, tasting of copper and salt and iron. Then the body swung aside as Astrid wrenched her backsword free with a ruthless boot on the man's body.

  You all right? she signed, wiping the blade and sheathing it over her shoulder.

  Fffffff- Eilir stuttered as cold and shock froze her fingers for an instant, sitting in the river. Fine.

  A hand clasped her forearm and helped her up; she stooped to cough once more, felt carefully for her sword and dirk in the dark water, and waded to the western bank. There she went to one knee for an instant, panting and hacking to clear her lungs and suck in air. The weight of her sodden armor-padding and plaid dragged at her already, and there was a mortal chill in it. Astrid handed her a flask; she took a brief nip of the Larsdalen brandy to let the sweet fire warm her belly, then poured a little more into her palm and rubbed it over her face—an old trick against cold Sam had taught them years ago. Then she signed:

  How are you, anamchara? I thought you were knocked out at least.

  To herself: And I thought I was dead. Not ready for the Summerlands, not just yet. Things to do and be first.

  Just a bruise, and woozy for a few seconds, Astrid said,

  ST. M. STIRLING

  though the aluminum-feather raven on her helmet was slightly the worse for wear—the rock had bent its neck and beak, and knocked out one of the ruby eyes.

  Eilir nodded; it couldn't have been a real concussion. You didn't get up from one of those and prance around as if you'd woken up from a nap, as she knew from painful experience.

  Then I didn't know where on earth I was or which way was up, lying in that ground mist. Come on, you've got to keep moving or you'll stiffen up.

  Thanks, by the way, Eilir signed, as they puffed up the slope to the road.

  You're still one ahead in the save-your-oath-sister's-life league, Astrid replied.

  Eilir felt a little better as she moved, despite the cold water dripping from every portion of her. A thought made her smile.

  You know how stretch fabric gets unstretchy when it's been washed too many times?

  Yeah?

  That was why pre-Change underwear still in the package were worth their weight in gold and more. Most people were back to rag loincloths or less. Drawstrings just didn't work very well at keeping boxers up, either.

  Well, getting soaked like this made me think. What are we going to do when the last sports bra dies?

  Astrid grimaced, then shook her head: The same thing we did when the tampons ran out. Improvise. Use very thin well-tanned kidskin, maybe. Or if we could tan your sense of humor, it would stretch!

  Then it was Eilir's turn to twist her mouth. That turned from mock horror to the real thing as they came onto the road. The rest of the Rangers had dragged the bodies under the slope on the west side, where they couldn't be seen from the heights above. There were four, two with wounds where arrow shafts had been pulled free for reuse, the other pair spilling all their blood from sword wounds; it glistened black in the moonlight. The wet cold kept the smell down a little, but nothing could hide the undignified sprawling look of sudden violent death.

  It wasn't the enemy dead who left her stricken, though—they'd chosen to carry blades for one of Arminger's barons, and it was up to them to make accounting to the Guardians—Reuben Hutton was lying bleeding as well.

  Kevin looked up as they came to Reuben's side; he was the Dunedain's best medico, and he shook his head slightly at their questioning glance. Eilir felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold water; Reuben had played and trained and then fought with them for a long while now.

  The young man probably knew what the crossbow bolt angled up under his floating rib meant, and he'd had just time for the first shock
to wear off; his pleasantly homely face was milk pale and contorted as he tried not to scream. Drowning as a slashed artery drained into your lungs wasn't a very slow way to go, but it hurt. Astrid reached down and pulled a silver cross on a chain out from under the Mackenzie-style brigandine he was wearing; Reuben clutched it convulsively and brought it to his lips. He was Christian—Catholic, specifically, like his adopted family. Eilir didn't know precisely how he'd ended up with the Huttons; there was something about his birth father and mother dying heroically in a fight where Will's wife, Angelica, was nearly killed, back when the first Bearkillers were making their way westward from Idaho. Nobody seemed to want to go into the details, and she'd never wanted to push it.

  Kevin brought out one of the hypodermics they all carried in a padded boiled-leather pouch; poppies grew well in the Willamette, and homemade morphine was available, though scarce. Eilir signed Two, which was a fatal dose and didn't matter anymore, and then went on to Astrid: Hold him. When she looked surprised, Eilir went on: Just do it! Now!

  Astrid put an arm under his broad shoulders as Kevin stabbed one hypodermic and then another into the angle of neck and shoulder. Reuben's face relaxed quickly as the drug took effect. He kept the cross before his lips; Astrid bent down and pressed hers to his brow for a moment. He tried to smile, tried to speak, stiffened and jerked as blood ran out of the corners of his mouth. Then his chest moved in a sigh, and he went slack. More blood ran down his lips and onto Astrid's black jerkin with its sigil of white tree and stars.

  The five remaining Rangers put his body beside a massive fallen log and covered it quickly with brush. Eilir took advantage of an instant of privacy as she and Astrid recovered their bows. I told you to do that because he'd been in love with you for years, she signed. As the silver-blue eyes went wide in shocked surprise: Don't ask. I'll tell you about it later, my dearest doink. We've got work to do.

  Kevin went ghosting down the trail; when he came back he had part of the work with him, in the person of Sam Ayl-ward's stocky form, striding along cradling his bow in his arms just as he had his rifle when he yomped his way to Port Stanley a generation before. The shrewd eyes took in the scene as he and the Ranger eased into the woods beside the roadway, and Eilir felt a rush of relief. She thought Astrid did too, from the way she shifted slightly in the darkness.

  Nice quiet job, he signed. Nobody got away? Anyone cut out for the river?

  More reasons than Eilir's status had made knowledge of Sign widespread among the Clan Mackenzie, although that had probably started the fashion—that and children's love of secrets and codes. It was useful in a surprising range of tasks, especially talking while you were hunting or fighting.

  One, the leader, Astrid signed, and reported the facts with stark simplicity.

  Too bad about Reuben, he was a likely lad and always gave his best, the stocky bowman replied. Then, with a veteran's stoicism: Good work otherwise. Of course, there were six of them originally. They sent one back to the trail up Table Rock when they ran into your tracks, before they chased after you. Downy bird, whoever was in charge of them. Glad you scragged him. Speaking of which, the one they sent back ran straight into me and my lot.

  He reached behind himself with his hand and patted the arrows that jutted over his right shoulder.

  Urrk! Eilir thought, and saw him wink. Astrid went on:

  We've got a way up the slope to the cliffs—the turnoff's about two thousand yards north. Then around a mile and. a

  half through the woods to the base of the cliff. Our contact dropped the codeword, so we know that's OK.

  Aylward grinned, not unkindly. Or we know that evil bugger's Inquisitors tortured it out of our contact, and we're walking into a trap, he signed. But I don't think so, and you've got to take risks in this business. He looked up. Two hours to moonset. Just right, with a little margin for taking it slow. This fog's thickening—that'll help.

  "Mist," Juniper Mackenzie whispered. "Blessed be!"

  "Straight from the Cauldron of the Goddess," Rowan agreed.

  His sister Cynthia nodded; her band had rejoined at the base of Rooster Rock and made the climb with them. Several of the others made Invoking signs, and glanced aside at the Lady of the Mackenzies. Juniper bit back an impulse to snap I'm not your good-luck charm, you adolescent idiots/ Or the Wiccan pope-ess!

  Though she had been wishing hard for something like this, and what was magic if not the trained mind and will directing the forces of the universe? Useless to feel guilty at the impulse to bark, either, as long as she didn't actually do it; nerves were natural enough. She'd never pretended to be a fighter by trade, even when she embodied that Aspect of the Powers. And the Mighty Ones were at work here.

  How not? There's nowhere they aren't at work.

  Table Rock stood before them to the north, looming out of the rising tide of silvery fog as the moon sank towards the horizon, growing larger to the eye as it did. Rooster Rock stood behind; it was several hundred feet lower, but straight up and down in its central parts and harder to climb. The Mackenzie war band had crept up the slopes of the long ridge that connected them, something made possible by the dense forest that grew to the top, and easier by the fog. That was rising even as she watched, and it turned the flat-topped height ahead into a black island amid the vapors, muffling every sound in the nighted wilderness. She unshipped her binoculars for a last look.

  The outline of the low mountain hadn't changed since she came through here, backpacking through the wilder-ness with some friends… Lord and Lady, going on twenty years ago! She pushed aside a wistfulness; as far as she knew, every one of that little group was dead save Judy Barstow—Judy Lefkowitz, she'd been then. A long finger of land sloped gently up to just under five thousand feet; the last half mile was surrounded by cliffs on three sides, leaving only this approach. When she saw it as a young woman there had been only a trail, and the summit had been like a rock garden of wild rose, parrotbeak and kin-nikinnick. There was a wall across the top of the trail now, less than a fortress and more than a fence, three feet of dry-laid stone and a six-foot-high stretch of thick boards nailed to posts on top of it; the roofs of several buildings rose over the wall, and a tall timber-frame tower reared skyward. It was like seeing an old friend whose face had been slashed. A little lantern light showed behind it, even at near two in the morning. She looked up at the moon; another hour and a half until it set, and then—God and Goddess willing—they could get on with it.

  Eilir goes into danger first, Juniper thought. And Astrid and Sam and all the others with them. Silently, beneath her breath, lips barely moving, she chanted:

  "Through darkened wood and shadowed path Hunter of the Forest, be with my loves: Lady of the Stars, fold them in Your wings So mote it be!"

  Then she settled down under her war cloak to wait. Behind her, three-score and ten Mackenzies did likewise, relaxed as tigers, bows waiting by their hands.

  Here, Eilir signed, no farther from the recipient's eyes than his nose. Eilir followed him, the last of the party, as the five Rangers and Aylward's picked band of six slipped under the lee of a black basalt cliff that made them utterly invisible to anyone above. A great semicircular chunk had fallen from the base of it here long ago, and made a broad shallow cave; likely the fog would have hid them anyway, and it made moving through the darkness like walking in a giant broom closet. They waited in the blackness, waited to see if anyone had heard the noise from their crossing of the boulder field and scree that lay a little north. She worried about that less than the hearing; the everlasting silence she moved in allowed her to concentrate more. She'd long since learned how to move silently, starting with long summer days in the woods with her mother before the Change observing beast and bird. When one could sneak up unheard on a ground squirrel or get close enough to a deer to touch it, it wasn't hard to avoid human notice…

  Nothing; the moon hung huge above, blurred through the mist, then dipped below the edge of tree-clad ridges. Darkness became more abso
lute, and silence stretched as they waited. She reviewed the layout above mentally: the fence and gate across the neck of the rising finger of land, then frame buildings on either side of the old trail with a narrow lane between, then a long timber-and-metal ramp out to the summit, with the signal tower beside it. She'd memorized the maps thoroughly before they left Sutter-down, though.

  That left an uncomfortable amount of time to think. This would be a famous deed, if it went well. She enjoyed thinking of that; there was nothing wrong with being proud of doing right, and getting recognized for it; and if fighting the Protector's men wasn't right, nothing was. But watching Reuben drown inside, with all his life unlived…

  Is this sort of thing what I want for all the rest of my life? she thought. I love the travel and outsmarting the bad guys and sneaking under their eyes and making them look like idiots, and hanging with Astrid is great—someone has to keep my darling sister-soul from flapping her arms and flying off with the wild geese—and the Dunedain are my best friends, and yes, I get a rush from the danger, but watching friends die… well, we all have to risk that.

  When the Mackenzies went to war, everyone strong enough marched and fought; if you didn't like that, you were welcome to go live somewhere else.

  I really don't know… this is something I do well, and it helps everyone. I do know I want children. And a man who's more than short-term fun, I'm getting too old to be satisfied

  with that. And I think Mom wants me to take over her job someday, but Rudi… of course, while I'm with the Dunedain, everyone knows Sign, which is really a help.