For safety's sake, Juniper still fetched the crossbow hanging beside the seat of the disk harrow and spanned it, and strapped on her sword belt, before walking over to the guardpost. Dennis and Chuck had been talking about a simple, quick way to make body armor, and perhaps when they had the plowing and planting done:
Chuck brought his sword and buckler, too, his hand resting on the hilt as he peered down into the shadow of the streamside road. Then: "Alex!" he blurted, letting the long sword swing free.
Chuck's younger brother smiled and swayed, leaning against the horse he'd been leading; he had the family looks-sandy blond and leanly muscular. The girl beside him wasn't one Juniper remembered, but she'd never been much involved with Alex, since he wasn't of the Craft and didn't like her type of music-he'd been strictly a thrash-metal fan. The closest they'd come was when she'd hired him to do repairs on her barn in '95; he was a builder by trade.
The two young men behind were strangers as well-one fair and short, the other dark and tall. Polite strangers, though, since they laid down the ax and shovel they'd been carrying. All four were gaunt but not skeletal, and all carried heavy packs; the horse's load was mainly large sacks made of heavy paper, bulging with something small and homogenous, and topped by bedrolls and blankets.
"Oh, God," Alex said. "I thought we'd never make it, honestly, I did: And you're here…"
He was almost crying with relief, and the haunted-eyed young woman clung to him with tears streaking the grime on her face.
"I: this is Barbara. Vince and Steve, they saved our lives. We got caught around Lebanon by some: "
He swallowed. Everyone winced; they knew what he meant. Not everyone out there was starving quite yet, but enough were, the more so since everyone who did have food was hoarding it against the future. Some were already hungry enough to eat anything at all-and there was only one large animal still common and easily caught.
"Eaters," the girl whispered.
Suddenly his eyes went wide. "Can we stay?" he blurted, looking from face to face.
Juniper caught eyes, willing acceptance; there were nods, mostly; Chuck's and Judy's were emphatic.
"Of course," she said, turning back to the younger Barstow. With a smile: "And the horse you rode in on, too."
The animal was tired-looking, but well-fed otherwise- the valley wasn't short of its sort of food. And it was a saddle breed, unlike Cagney and Lacey or the big Suffolks Chuck had liberated from the living-history exhibit. That would be useful.
"Welcome to the Clan Mackenzie, Alex," she said. "What's in the sacks?"
He grinned; even that was weary. "Barley," he said. "Certified seed barley. We found it yesterday in an overturned truck-the other half of the cargo was sacks of fertilizer, and they covered it up, but we saw rats digging; there's more, we hid the rest and brought what we could. And if you knew how tempting it was to just eat it: "
"Come have some Eternal Soup instead," she said, smiling. "And then we'll get a wagon ready."
Threefold return indeed! she thought. Actions most definitely do have consequences.
Not a matter of a celestial scorebook of punishments and rewards, just that everything was connected.
Then another thought struck her: Oh, Goddess – we'll have to plow more!
There, Juniper thought, freezing, the only motion the slow rise and fall of her chest.
You don't see me. You don't smell me. You don't hear me. I bind your eyes, your ears, your nostrils, horned one; in the name of Herne the Wild Hunter, so mote it be.
The mule deer hesitated, then caught Cuchulain's scent-the dog was with Dennis, two hundred yards northeast through the dense bush. The animal turned swiftly away from the smell of predator, head high and ears swiveling. The mottled clothing she wore would fade into the spring woods, and the wind was wrong for him to pick out human scent from the cool decaying-wood and damp-earth smells. Ferns and brush stood between her and it, but for a moment it poised motionless, quivering-alert.
They were up in the mountain forest, a thousand feet above the old Mackenzie land. This area had been clear-cut much more recently than hers, and there was more undergrowth. It was still cold here, the more so on a rainy day- there might be sleet or snow if they went a little further upslope. The deer had already begun to head up towards their summer pastures, though: even without guns, the hunting pressure on their herds in the foothills was much worse than usual.
She exhaled, ignoring the cold drops trickling down her neck, remembering what the book said and practice had reinforced: stroke the trigger gently:
Thunggg!
The short heavy bolt flashed out, and the butt of the crossbow thumped at her shoulder. Her breath held still, as she waited for it to be deflected on some strand of second growth, but instead there was a heavy, meaty whack. She didn't see the strike, but nothing could hide the deer's convulsive leap.
"Dennie!" she cried, springing forward. "I got him!"
Dennis roared in triumph as he heard her voice, and he plunged towards her-she could hear Cuchulain's frenzied barking as he scented blood, and the shaking of branches as the ex-manager of the Hopping Toad pushed his way through the thickets.
Blood splashed last year's stems and the green of the new growth. She ran crouched over, sliding through the undergrowth easily. Juniper had never hunted before the Change, but she'd walked these woods on visits all her life, lived here six months in the twelve for the past decade- and all those years she'd watched the comings and goings of its dwellers, deer and fox and coyote, otter and eagle, rabbit and elk.
She half remembered the lay of the land even here, well off her great-uncle's property; she wasn't altogether bewildered when the deer disappeared in a crashing and snapping. The depth of the ravine that opened beneath her feet still shocked, and she threw herself backward and slapped a hand on a branch slimy with moss to steady herself.
"Dennie!" she called. "Careful! There's a ravine here, and it's hidden!"
"I see it!" he bellowed in return. "Wait a minute, and I'll work around the head!"
She waited, breath slowing. The path of the deer's fall was just visible, and a patch of brown hide where he lay; it was a two-year-old male, she thought, and already nicely plump-the Willamette 's climate was mild and there was good grazing in the foothill woods year-round. The bottom of the ravine was full of fallen timber and thick brush; not the distinctive three-leaf mark of poison oak, thank the Goddess and Cernunnos.
A slight sadness passed through her at the thought of the deer's loveliness broken, but she'd been around enough small farmsteads to know firsthand that meat didn't come from a factory wrapped in plastic.
And sure, my stomach is rumbling so loud I can hear it over my panting, she thought. Venison in the Eternal Soup, sweet richness of fat on the tongue: Lord and Lady, did people ever worry about too much fat? Little medallions of tenderloin. Grilled liver. Maybe sausages, with sage and dried onions – there's some of those left, surely? Smoked haunch:
Dennis arrived, with much crackling of brush; he was a city man still, although he was learning-in coordination with the shrinking of his gut, which had gone from embarrassing to merely substantial since the Change. He also had a coil of rope around his shoulder, and his ax slung with its handle through two loops sewn to the back of his jacket.
They made the rope fast to a firmly rooted tree. Cuchu-lain went down the steep slope with four-footed recklessness, but the two humans were more cautious-danger to themselves aside, the clan simply couldn't spare the working time lost in an unnecessary injury. Even Sally Quinn was helping with the poultry and around the house, on a crutch. The tangled mass below was just the sort to hide a branch broken off stabbing-sharp.
The deer was freshly dead, a trickle of red running from nose and mouth.