Little bit. Want more.
Juniper was looking over her shoulder. Eilir started forward with the others, still feeling a slow burn as she stared at Astrid's back.
I'm your anamchara, not the designated sidekick!
They led their mounts over to the stables and spent a minute tending to them; she saw without surprise that Al-leyne Loring knew his way around horses with an easy competence. In fact he moved so gracefully that—
John Hordle leapt backward, his mouth open in what must have been a shout of alarm. Eilir grounded her pitchfork with a wince and privately thanked the Lady that he'd been wearing a mail shirt; otherwise something rather nasty might have happened.
Astrid looked at her in astonishment: Where were you, anamchara? she signed.
Deep thought, Eilir replied, flushing and racking the long two-tined hayfork. Sorry. Apologize for me, would you?
Alleyne smiled, and after a moment so did John Hordle.
"That's my mom," Rudi Mackenzie said proudly; the Chief of the Mackenzies winked at him as she rode by and he waved enthusiastically.
"Well, yeah," Mathilda Arminger said, deliberately unimpressed. "I saw her when she attacked my train, you know."
There was the trace of a sulk still in her voice; Rudi ignored it; it was only natural to miss her family, when she couldn't go home. Then she went on: "Who's the guy in the funny armor?"
"That's the real English baron," Rudi said proudly. "He and my mom rescued Lord Bear."'
"Oh, him," Mathilda said, sticking her hands in her pockets; she was wearing a Clan-style kilt, though in a plain gray guest-weave rather than the Mackenzie tartan, and a baggy sweater.
"Don't be a grouch," Rudi said. "Want to go and see if we can get something in the kitchens? I'm starving and it's a while until dinner."
"OK," Mathilda said. "But why can't you just tell them to give you something?"
"Did your mom and dad let you eat anything you want between meals?" Rudi said; he knew that was wrong, but it sounded like fun too.
"Well… no. I mean, my mom didn't."
Her face crumpled for an instant, then firmed; she shrugged off the sympathetic arm he put around her shoulder.
"She didn't like me hanging around low places and peons, you know."
"Lady bless, hanging around the kitchens is fun," Rudi said. "It's a lot better than arithmetic lessons, that's for sure."
"Yeah, but they make you do stuff. Chores. And that's not what lords and ladies are supposed to do."
"My mom's a Lady," Rudi pointed out reasonably. "And she does chores. That's fun sometimes too. Anyway, it's got to be done."
Mathilda considered this and nodded, looking a little uneasy. "I suppose so. I don't think my mom would like it, though."
"Look—" He glanced around. "Want to know a secret?"
"Yeah!"
"My mom got a letter from your dad." He smiled as her face glowed. "He's going to send someone to talk to my mom about you at the Sutterdown Horse Fair, after Lugh-nassadh. And you can write a letter back. So why don't we go hit the kitchens, like I said?"
After a moment, Mathilda replied, "Maybe they'll have some of those sweet buns with the nuts?"
"And there's some new kittens there," he said.
"I miss my cat Saladin," she said. "But kittens are always fun."
They trotted off through the dispersing crowd. As they went, Mathilda caught sight of the stars-and-tree sigil on Astrid Larsson's tunic.
"Oh, that stuff again," she said. "Doesn't she ever get tired of it? She's a grown-up."
"Don't you like the story?" Rudi asked. "I liked The Hobbit best, but Astrid says that's 'cause I'm still a kid."
"I think I'll still think it's way too long and full of boring stuff when I'm old, even if Dad got the idea for the flag out of it," Mathilda said. She giggled and dropped her voice to a whisper: "Have you heard about the other Ring story?"
"Other story?"
"The one where the hero's called Dildo Bugger?"
Rudi's face twisted in an expression halfway between fascination and disgust. "You've got to be kidding, Matti."
"No, really—"
Dun Fairfax, Willamette Valley, Oregon July 22nd, 2007 AD—Change Year Nine
"It took me two Harvests to really get the trick of this, even though I already knew how to drive a team," Juniper called over her shoulder; then as she came to the end of the row: "Whoa! Dobbin! Maggie!"
There were two horses pulling the reaper, big platter-hoofed draft beasts with dark brown hides, sweating after a long day working in the hot July sun. They stopped as she called and leaned back against the reins; then she rose and rubbed at her backside for a moment; the metal bicycle-seat of the machine was hard, and muscling the big horses around was real work. Her hands and forearms were sore with day after day of doing it from can to can % and the long sinews of her legs ached as well.
Eilir waved from the seat of the other reaper, pausing a second. I'll take the last of it! she signed, and Juniper bowed from the waist and waved a hand.
"Be my guest, daughter mine! Too much like hard work for us crones!"
They'd been working their way in from the edges of the field since the dew lifted with no more rest than the horse teams required, and only one ten-foot-wide band of standing grain remained, stretching from east to west along the contour of the hillside. It still wasn't nearly as hard as cutting wheat with twenty pounds of cradle-scythe the way they had their first two harvests, though; she didn't have the height or heft to use one of those. And a reaper could harvest many times the amount a cradler did in a single day, which was a blessing. Summer rainstorms were van-ishingly rare in the Willamette's reliable climate, but you still had to get the wheat and barley and oats in as fast as you could. Too much delay and the grain would start to shatter, drop out of the head and be lost on the ground.
"It took you a while to learn the trick because of the slope?" Nigel Loring asked, straightening as he bound the last sheaf of a row and rubbing at the small of his back for a moment.
"Yes," she said. "You have to be careful on a thirty-degree slant like this, or you keep heading down and the horses get into the wheat—and you only get to practice two weeks in the year. It's a lot easier out on the flat, say over at Dun Carson west of here. More difficult on a hillside for the team, too, but Dobbin and Maggie are good-hearted and willing for all they're young."
She glanced over at him as he stacked a brace of sheaves, heaving one in each hand—and they weighed sixty pounds each. Loring handled the task with an easy economy of motion, bare to the waist and tanned nut-brown. He was only a few inches taller than she, but broad-shouldered and built like a greyhound; deep chest, flat belly and narrow waist. His tanned skin was scarred here and there, a little loosened with middle age, and his sparse blond chest hair was as grizzled as the thinning yellow thatch on his pate, yet his slender body was nearly as tight and compact as a boy's. Farmwork would keep you fit, but she knew that the hint of dancer's grace in his movements came from martial arts in his youth and sparring with the sword since—one had to be cat-agile for both.
The hillside field they were cutting was one of Sam Ayl-ward's, the last of the Dun Fairfax crop. Eilir's reaper wheeled away as her mother reined in and started to cut the last strip down the center, the long boards of the creel whirling and bending the yellow-gold grain back as the teeth of the cutter-bar snipped it, amid a smell of dust and meal and green juices. Poppies fell as well, like bloodred drops among the gold of the wheat—they were traditional English corn poppies, which seemed to have mysteriously naturalized themselves around here, starting with the Dun Fairfax fields. Juniper suspected Sam's clandestine homesick hand with a few packets of seed salvaged from a garden-supply store rather than natural spread from garden plots, but either way they were pretty.
Birds and insects and small beasts fled the advancing machine as the straw fell onto the moving canvas belt behind the cutting teeth, and an endless belt of wooden tines raked it
into a smooth windrow that fell onto the ground behind. Juniper groaned slightly as she stretched again, then jumped down and bent and put her palms against the ground; the wheat stubble was prickly beneath her hands, but shot through with soft young shoots of the clover sown among it. When the small of her back felt relaxed she straightened and twisted until something went click! in her spine, and then bent backward with her hands linked over her head.
And were you watching, good Sir Nigel? she thought with amusement as she opened her eyes. Hard to tell, with that polite poker face of yours. And of course, would I be pleased or annoyed if you did?
The reaper left a long row of cut wheat in a snakelike trail over the ground for the workers who bound the grain, a score or better for each machine. Bend and grab a handful, bend and grab a handful, and keep on until you had a bundle as thick as your arms could span. Then take a swatch in each hand, twist it around to hold it, tuck it in, and you had a bound sheaf; eight leaning together in a pyramid made a stook, and they could wait overnight with their heads up out of the dew, ready to be pitched onto a wagon and carted back to Dun Fairfax for threshing. The air was warm and still as they bent to the rhythmic effort, the tips of the trees motionless; it was a relief to have a good excuse simply to watch. She could feel the westering sun beating on her like warm pillows, as the thin homespun linsey-woolsey shirt clung to her body.
Sam's daughter Tamar led up a two-wheeled cart pulled by a pair of little yearling oxen, her own hand-reared pets. It held a big plastic barrel of water and a motley collection of mugs; she filled one for each of them. All Sam's household were here in the field, and most of the able-bodied from the other families who held land in Dun Fairfax. None of the farms were big enough to justify a reaping machine of their own, so the dun kept two owned in common to share around, and everyone worked together getting in the harvest, turn and turn about as fields came ready—the usual arrangement in a Mackenzie settlement. People had come down from Dun Juniper as well, trading working time for future barrels of flour, or simply pitching in for neighborliness' sake since they planted little grain themselves; altogether there were about enough to bind and stook the wheat as fast as the two machines cut it.
"Thank you, sweetling," Juniper said to the girl. "And the horses are thirstier than we, sure. They should have something before they're taken to the pond or they'll overdo."
Juniper took off her straw hat and fanned herself as she drank; most of the scores of people in the field were in kilt and singlet or less, but she wore a long-sleeved shirt against the sun, and kneesocks, and tied a scarf around her coppery hair beneath the hat; even so her freckles had spread and multiplied, as they did every summer. The lukewarm water tasted wonderful in her gummy, dusty mouth, and she wished she could plunge her head into the barrel. Instead she handed back the mug for a refill, with a murmur of thanks; it was plastic too, with the beginning of a crack on the rim. Nigel's was clay and made after the Change, a reddish brown ware plain except for a stylized feather drawn on the side, but skillfully thrown and fired.
"My ninth harvest since the Change," Nigel said meditatively. "And every one seems—"
"Like a reprieve?" Juniper suggested.
He raised the mug of water in salute. "Just so."
"Is this very different from a harvest in England?" Ju-niper asked; the first year had been hard here, and she suspected much worse in the British Isles, even on the islands.
"The harvest? Surprisingly similar; a bit earlier, and if this weather is typical—"
"It is that."
"—then the climate's more reliable here. In England it can rain any day of the week in any month of the year, and nowadays with no warning at all. It makes getting in the corn a trifle nerve-racking."
He looked north and east towards the towering peaks of the Cascades and the green slopes that were like a wall along the edge of the world.
"We've nothing like that in England, of course. I won't say this is the single most beautiful spot I've ever seen, but it's wonderfully varied. I like the contrast, the fields and orchards here—which are very much like parts of southern England—and then the tall mountains and wildwood so close, and the changing patterns of sun and shadow… beauty on very different scales, but complementary."
Juniper looked at him. "Well, well," she said. "It's hidden depths you have, Nigel."
His slightly watery blue eyes twinkled. "Sandra Arminger said much the same thing. But it was far more alarming, coming from her."
Juniper snorted and threw a twist of straw at him. "I should hope so!"
Her eyes went across the crowded field; Mathilda Arminger was there, running around with the other children, and helping, as they did.
"I'm surprised she's not a total horror, with parents like that," she said quietly. "And she's just a child, when you get to know her. Spoiled more than a little, and with some odd notions, but not spoiled to the point of being really rotten, if you know what I mean."
"Is minic ubh bhdn ag cearc dhubh, as the Gaels say," Loring replied, and winked at her.
"A black hen may often have a white egg, yes," she agreed. "But it's what hatches that counts."
"She's young, yet, very young. It takes a good deal to spoil a child that age, and I'd venture that the Armingers would shield her from the worst of the world they've made, for a while at least. Even complete rotters often love their children, in my experience."
He stared a moment, as if lost in memory. Tamar had gone around to fill buckets for the horses; they lowered their massive square heads and drank with slobbering enthusiasm. Down at the other end of the field the second reaper cut the last of the wheat, and there was an explosion of cheers from the folk at work. A half-dozen of them lifted the driver out of the seat and began tossing her in the air amid whoops and screams; she recognized Astrid, and the massive form of Little John Hordle, and the bright head of Alleyne Loring.
And all three of them pitched in to help as if there were no question of it being otherwise, Juniper thought. Which is a good sign, in my experience.
Rudi Mackenzie was around the edges there as well; then he and Mathilda Arminger came sprinting up to where Juniper waited.
"Can we take Dobbin and Maggie?" her son said. His eyes sparkled like green-gray gems in his tanned face, and he was still full of energy despite being allowed to work with the binders for the first time this year. "Please?"
"All right," she said. "But remember; get them cooled down a bit before you let them drink."
"I know, Mom," he said, politely not adding an of course, though he'd grown up with horses in general and these two in particular—they were half his age.
Juniper and Nigel unharnessed the animals; Rudi and Mathilda sprang onto their massive backs, sitting as proudly as knights on their destriers. The horses accepted it calmly, moving off at an ambling walk towards the pond in the far southwestern corner of the field, where a willow-grown earthen bank held back the creek and made a watering point when this field was in the pasture-lea part of its rotation. Of course, they'd have done that without any guidance at all. Horses were not mental giants, but they usually had enough sense to betake themselves to water when they were thirsty; the problem was keeping them from drinking too much and doing themselves an injury.
"Good-natured beasts," Loring said, as they straightened the harness and draped it over the seat of the reaper. The bells on the great collars jingled one last time. "Mostly Suffolk punch, aren't they?"
"About three-quarters," Juniper agreed. "Chuck, ummm, found eight Suffolk mares right after the Change, and I like the breed. Strong as elephants and friendly as dogs, mostly. The stallion we put them to was a Percheron but we've been breeding back."
He cocked an expert's eye. "Your son has a way with horses; I've noticed it before. He reminds me of Alleyne at that age. Maude taught him mostly, of course. She had the better seat, in any case—far better than mine, then."
For a moment a bleak misery of grief settled over his usual mild cheerfulness,
and then he shook it off with a scarcely visible effort, turning instead to the scene before them. Melissa Aylward came down from the gate at the top of the field, where a brace of wagons had drawn up half an hour ago. Quiet fell as she halted by Eilir's reaper and took the last grain cut in her hands, plaiting and shaping it into the form of the Queen Sheaf; she was the High Priestess of Dun Fairfax, and it was her right to make the Corn Mother and give Her the first blessing.
Juniper had been a little surprised at how good Nigel Loring was at binding a sheaf—or any other of a countryman's tasks, from handling a plow team to plashing a hedge. When she said so he smiled at her.
"My dear Ms. Mackenzie—"
"Nigel, Nigel! You've been living under the same roof as me all summer! You're being Stiff, Reserved and Proper again, like an old central-casting Englishman! And Dennie accuses me of putting it on!"
"Very well, my dear Lady Juniper. I grew up in farming country."
"Aristocrats though, I thought? Landed gentry of Hampshire?"
He laughed aloud at that. "Well, we were saddled with an ancient, leaky, slowly subsiding stone barn of a house and a large, very shaggy garden, which we were too stubborn to hand over to the National Trust, yes. Plus a few weedy fields around the mausoleum that raised a regular crop of debt every year."
"I resemble that remark," she said, laughing in turn. "When I inherited my great-uncle's house and land"—she inclined her head northward towards the hills and what was now the Mackenzie clachan—"right up until the Change the real legacy was a continual threat of having it sold from under me for back taxes, with a minor key in un-affordable roof repairs. I had more disposable income when I was living in a trailer and busking for meals than I did with a fortune in real estate."
"And the taxes appertaining thereunto. As the saying goes, Land gives one a station in society and then prevents one from keeping it up."
"Oh, yes. Though I'm surprised to hear you going Wilde like that, Nigel."
"In deadly Earnest, I assure you." Loring chuckled. Then he went on with a wealth of experience in his tone: "There are few so poor as the land-poor."
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