The Protector's War

by S. M. Stirling

  There just weren't many deaf people around these days—partly because there just weren't as many people, period, and partly because a smaller share of the deaf had survived the Dying Time. Not more than a score or so in the whole of the Clan's territories, certainly, including kids born since.

  She sighed silently. How did that old saying.go?

  The lame can go horseback

  The handless tend herds;

  The deaf are undaunted in war;

  Better to be blind than burnt on your pyre

  No deeds can a dead man do.

  Of course, that was Odin talking, and He was a notorious fink… Just then one of the others tapped her on the shoulder, and she moved forward with eagerness blazing up again. Yup, I'm undaunted, all right!

  Three ropes had fallen from the top of the cliff, good strong hemp. There was no need to talk; everyone knew what they were supposed to do.

  Her bow went over her shoulder into the loops beside her quiver; that was new-filled with a full load of forty-five shafts. All the rest of her equipment was padded against noise. Sam Aylward spat on his palms and took the middle rope, climbing rapidly hand-over-hand. Eilir and Astrid flanked him, going up inchworm-style—locking the rope between crossed feet, holding on with their hands while they slid the feet up, locking them again and pushing with their legs. Halfway up they came out of the fog, and faint starlight showed on the surface of the mist like reflections on a dully phosphorescent sea, doubly so by contrast with the black basalt cliff. Then the ropes grew close to the rough, pitted surface of the rock as the overhang grew less, and she had to switch her feet to the cliff surface, boots scrabbling at it as she pulled herself up with arms and shoulders burning. They all reached the top at the same time, sweating and breathing deeply after the hundred-foot climb, but not winded. A figure darted forward and Eilir's hand went to her dirk for a moment, then upward as the stranger bent to offer a hand to help her. There was more light here from lanterns and fires, just enough to see that it was a woman in a housedress and shawl, but not enough to read lips well.

  Eilir took the hand for the last scramble, then smiled and touched her own lips and an ear with two fingers and shook her head: I can't hear you or speak.

  The woman blinked surprise but then seemed to grasp what she meant, and went over to Sam Aylward, bending and listening; then she ran quickly back towards the long low frame building that faced the cliff edge only ten feet or so away. It was blank on this side save for small windows, darkened now—barracks and stables, according to the briefing. The three of them made a triangle in front of the ropes, waiting with their bows ready as the nine others below climbed up behind them.

  Five minutes, Aylward reminded the six in the gate party, pointing southward.

  They nodded and ghosted away. The others waited until they saw them reach the building and two make stirrups of their hands, throwing the others up to the roof one by one in vaulting leaps, then hauling their comrades up. They crawled along below the ridgeline, planting their feet carefully on the wooden shingles of the roofing until they were in position to sweep the rear of the fence and the gate in it. One turned and used the broad gestures that communicated over distance: Six men by the fence. Quiet. End of their shift. We're ready to support main attack on gate.

  Aylward nodded. "Let's go," he whispered, easy enough to read in the darkness.

  It was just past four in the morning, the hour when a sleeper's life and mind flicker lowest. Even so Aylward's party had the hardest task, silencing the signal tower before the men there could light their beacon. That would alert posts north and south of here and be relayed deep into Baron Molalla's section of the Protectorate, reaching Portland itself not long after sunrise. The tire-tread soles of their boots went swiftly over the stony surface as they ran stooping. Even the dogs were mostly asleep; one raised a questioning head as the Mackenzies ran into the open space between the two rows of shacks, then sprang to all fours in alarm.

  Eilir pivoted on one heel, drew, shot at the flash of teeth and collar, turned back and ran on. The arrow flickered through darkness and the hound flopped back down, transfixed from the left side of its neck to its right hip, dead before its body struck the ground.

  Sorry, brother dog, she thought. This one wasn't a killer, just a loyal beast, helping to guard its pack territory and puppies. Enjoy chasing the rabbits in the Summerlands and think kindly of me. Now let's get going. The others will smell the blood soon, or us.

  The building was along one side of the old trail to the summit; there was another on the other side, and then only the signal tower—and a long ramp of two-by-fours and rails curling gently upward at its end, with a shape at its beginning covered by a tarpaulin. Eilir's eyes were on the tower, and those with her too. It was a mere unenclosed framework with a ladder running up the center, but the platform at the top had a signal fire waiting in an iron bowl, and mirrors for flashing messages.

  Aylward held out a hand and they halted. Then he chopped it forward. Sanjay dashed past her, and his two sibs; they hit the ladder running and went up it with their feet and hands moving at sprint speed, scampering like squirrels. The rest of the scaling party stood back, arrows on their strings. Eilir risked a quick glimpse over her shoulder. That was just in time to see three more shafts arching upward, southward towards the fence that enclosed this outpost; the five minutes were up. She could see them clearly, for each had a gasoline-soaked rag tied around it behind the head, and lit before they were fired. They traced arcs of fire across the night, southward over the outpost's fence and gate.

  OK, most excellently sorcerous Mom, she thought, switching her gaze back towards the platform above. Over to you, and the Lady!

  * * *

  "Now!" Juniper Mackenzie shouted, as the three fire arrows arched skyward above the dimness ahead—headed safely out of the outpost, which must not burn. "Up and at them, Mackenzies!"

  Around her there was a mass rustling as seventy clans-folk shed their war cloaks and sprang to their feet; then a frenzied shout, a howling like wolves, hawk screeches, the bellowing of bull elk, all uniting into a long ululating wail like catamounts at war, with more than bit of rebel yell in it. Now they wanted to be heard. They dashed forward, packed into a blunt wedge on the narrowing finger of stone, rising up out of the fog as the rock rose beneath their feet and the outpost stood stark before them, a solid darkness against the black sky. Shouts of alarm rose behind the wall, and lanterns flared in the predawn blackness. At a hundred yards, Rowan flung his arm up.

  "Halt! Four shafts! Shoot!"

  The Mackenzie onrush looked disorderly, but that was illusion; each knew what to expect, by long practice. They halted as one, raised their bows for a dropping shot behind the wall. The massed crack of bowstrings on bracers sounded in the darkness, and then the whickering hum of the arrowstorm, the dim flicker of the arrowheads at the height of their arc, and the hissing plunge of steel-tipped cedarwood as it fell out of the sky like sleet, the second and third shafts in the air before the first struck. Plunging fire was doubly terrible in the dark, invisible until the last second, impossible to dodge or guard against. Screams of pain followed the shouts of alarm.

  "Forward—"

  The mass loped on.

  "Halt! Four shafts! Shoot!"

  Juniper fitted another nock to the cord of her bow. For Eilir! she called to herself, and drew the cord to the ear.

  Eilir knew when the terrible baying screech of the Clan's war cry struck the Protector's outpost. Light flared behind her among the buildings, as panicked hands turned the knobs and raised the wicks of lanterns, or set lighters to candle. Feet pounded, many and hard enough to let her feel the vibrations on the soles of her feet. And a hundred feet above her, three men ran to the edge of the tower's platform, peering southward towards the gate.

  Aylward, Eilir and Astrid drew their bows to the ear and loosed within a half second of each other. A man spun back with a shaft in his shoulder; another pitched forward, turning an
d turning with his mouth open in a great O until he struck not far away and bounced—once. The third threw himself flat and rolled away from the edge, probably to light the alarm fire near the center.

  But also towards the hole where the ladder comes up, Eilir thought grimly.

  She knew pretty much what he'd be seeing there; San-jay's face coming through the trapdoor, grinning in the dark around the dirk clenched in his teeth. After climbing all that way expecting to see a crossbow aimed down at him, he wasn't going to be in any mood for half measures, either. Seconds after the thought two more men in the Protector's gear soared out from the edge of the platform, one limp, one falling windmilling and head-down until he landed not far from his comrade; the skull broke open on the rock and spattered.

  Ouch, Eilir thought. An instant later Sanjay and Aoife and Daniel waved from the spot he'd fallen and then faded backward.

  The three on the ground turned at once, going to the earth and crawling away. More and more figures were spilling into the trail between the buildings. Time to sow a little confusion.

  Eilir rose, crouching, and ghosted forward to the corner of the building, waited until a door opened on the other side, drew and shot…

  Juniper ran panting towards the gate, but the mass of the Clan's war band surged past her on either side—all but her standard-bearer and the three told off to accompany her. The kilted mass struck the arrow-studded wood of the heavy fence and scarcely paused. One with a raven painted on his face in black and gold hit the low stone wall running and leapt clear over the points of the uprights with a banshee howl, chopping with his sword even as he landed on the other side. Others were less flamboyant but nearly as quick; one in each three would brace his back against the wood with knees bent and fingers linked into a stirrup, and toss the other two up as they jumped and planted a boot in his hands. Then hands would come down and haul them up to drop down on the other side of the fence.

  Getting too old for that! she told herself, following in Rowan's wake with the banner bearer at her side. The green-and-silver flag flapped in the wind of their passage, the crescent moon cradled between antlers.

  The gate was of iron bars, welded into a diagonal lattice with openings palm-broad; the bars themselves were twisted from lengths of rebar heated and hammered together. A crossbow bolt flashed out and a clan warrior fell with a shriek of pain, but an instant later a Mackenzie arrow fired from behind him struck the crossbowman in the small of the back. He dropped; boots trampled across him in the darkness, and bones broke. Then the foremost Mackenzie rank was up to the iron, a murderous scrimmage with swords and short-gripped spears and dirks used at close range through the openings. The gate heaved and rattled against the bar that held it against the weight of many strong bodies, but it held.

  "Room! Give me room!" bellowed the man who was a blacksmith in peacetime.

  They did, and the hammer side of his ax struck once, twice, and again. Sparks blasted out where it hit on the outside of the rightward edge, over the hinges. One blow and it sagged; another, and the upper corner came free. A dozen Mackenzies launched themselves at it then, some recklessly feetfirst. The iron grille fell inward, taking men down with it and beneath it.

  Screaming, the warriors of the clan surged across it and into the narrow lantern-lit space beyond. There had been two dozen of Baron Molalla's foresters here, and as many ordinary soldiers. She had watched her folk do well against odds; with surprise and numbers on their sides, they were terrifying. The Protector's men tried again and again to form in ordered lines as they'd been taught, but the Mackenzies were all around them, fighting three on two or two on one, each a leaping, dodging blur of stabs and chops and smashing blows with the buckler. Everyone was too close-packed for distance weapons, and the sound was like a dozen loads of scrap metal falling on a stone smithy floor, with the white-noise surf of human voices thrown in.

  Then the men-at-arms came out of the commandant's house; it took time to put on that gear. There were only four of them, but they were armored from neck to ankle, their kite-shaped shields broad and heavy and strapped with metal, held up face-high until nothing showed but the glaring eyes on either side of the helmet's nasal bar. They formed up in a blunt wedge and trotted forward in a jingle of steel and pounding of boots. An eddy of combat erupted around them and the Mackenzies drew back, one clutching a slashed arm, two dragging another more seriously wounded. Protectorate survivors elsewhere fought their way towards them, and a knot of civilians followed, including babes in arms. It would be difficult to shoot them down without injuring the noncombatants, but they couldn't let them escape either—and swarming them under would cost gruesomely.

  And behind them, a glimmer of flames through the windows of the house; they must have set a blaze before they left. We've got to get that fire out! she thought.

  She opened her mouth to make a call for their surrender. Rowan forestalled her, loping forward with his teeth showing in a fixed rictus of bloodlust amid the gorgon menace of his painted face, helmet gone and flaxen hair blowing wildly, a beacon in the dimness that drew clansfolk after him. And fighting, he shrieked, an ululating wail like fingernails on slate.

  "Haro!" the knight shouted, sloped his shield and cut downward with the Norman longsword.

  Rowan's headlong rush had been a trick. His ax met the other's blade in midair and steel crashed on steel, sparks and clamor; sheer battering and mass swept the lighter weapon aside and nearly out of his opponent's hand, and the armored man staggered. His wrist and arm must have been numb with the impact, robbed of strength for a moment. The ax looped up overhead in a deceptively graceful motion, held at end and middle, and then Rowan's hands slid together at the end of the shaft as it slammed down again with all his better than two hundred pounds of muscle and bone behind it. The edge bit through the good riveted mail, through flesh and bone, and the knight dropped to the ground with a metallic crash, thrashing and bleeding from an arm half-severed at the shoulder.

  Cynthia had been holding the man on her brother's unshielded left in play with her battle spear, using it like a bladed quarterstaff, the head and butt cap like streaks of light in the darkness, booming on the shield, sweeping towards his face, stabbing down at a foot. The baron's trooper was so fixed on it he never noticed the hammer side of Rowan's ax until it crashed into his neck below the flare of his helmet. Bone snapped, and the others were falling…

  "Scathach!" Rowan shrieked in terrible exultation, whirling the weapon up again.

  Then Juniper was moving, faster than she thought was in her, leaping before him. She spread her arms wide and met his eyes; there was an almost palpable shock as green met blue—although the pupils of his had expanded to almost swallow the iris, lilce windows into night.

  "No!" she said, driving her will forward like a spearpoint of her own. "These aren't fighters, Rowan!"

  For a moment she thought that dreadful ax would come down on her, and then humanity flooded back into the younger Mackenzie. He staggered, mouth loose and slack; well she knew that weakness which flooded in when you returned from beyond the world of common day.

  "Get the fire out," she snapped. An order will help him come to himself. "Quickly, before it shows at a distance."

  The fight was over—nothing left but pursuit and killing amid the shadows, and the long scream of a man who'd chosen the cliff over the red blades and painted grinning faces running behind him. Juniper grimaced as she slid her own unmarked sword back into its sheath.

  Then, very softly, she murmured to herself: "What is it we've brought back, to run wild once more on the ridge of the world?"

  Sixteen hours later and twenty miles to the west, the Mackenzies turned to watch stars appearing over the Cascades as night came towards them like a moving wall of shadows. They were encamped on an island of firm ground in a new swamp; the smells of evening were abroad, woodsmoke, cooking, horses and cut grass over by the picket line. Other stars appeared against the mountains now—great fire beacons burning in the gloaming,
distance-shrunk to trembling candle flames dancing against encroaching night; first one north of Table Rock, then more to either side, and racing past them to the northward, heading west.

  Juniper shivered as she looked at them. Like the old days, she thought. Very old days, along the frontier between England and Scotland; half her ballads came from there, from the ancient tales of her father's people—the folk who'd given the words blood feud and unhallowed hand and black mail to the English language.

  There had been nights like this there, when the balefires burned from hilltop to hilltop, from the North Sea to the Irish Channel. Warning laird and crofter that the great reiver clans were out, swarming from Liddersdale and Teviotdale and a dozen other nests, riding a thousand lances strong to break the Border.

  And now the Mackenzies are out, she thought mordantly. Granted we're on foot and carrying longbows, but the principle of the thing…

  "They've twigged," Sam Aylward said, coming to stand beside her with a piece of sausage in his hand, his prosaic matter-of-fact tone doubly welcome. "Probably those prisoners got loose—well, we knew they'd not stay tied up forever. Everything gets harder now."

  Juniper nodded. "But they're reacting to what we do," she pointed out. "Now we have to move faster, arid always be doing something new before they can deal with what we've done. It's only thirty miles to cross the Valley; a day's travel, maybe two."

  Sam smiled. "This will draw their troops away from the southern border, too, pull them north and east," he said. "That'll make it a lot easier for our folk and the refugees."

  "And we're appropriately dressed," Juniper said, touching kilt and plaid. At his look she grinned and went on, quoting a poem from wars older and more savage than any this land had yet known:

  "On foot should be all Scottish war Let hill and marsh their foes disbar And woods as walls prove such an arm That enemies do them no harm. In hidden spots keep every store And burn the plainlands them before So, when they find the land lie waste Needs must they pass away in haste Harried by cunning raids at night And threatening sounds from every height Then, as they leave, with great array Smite with the sword and chase away. This is the counsel and intent Of Good King Robert's Testament."