For his blood runs through my veins-
No man's been born
Who could best John Barleycorn
For he's suffered many pains!"
Then a little faster:
"They've buried him well beneath the ground
And covered over his head
And these men from the West
Did solemnly attest
That John Barleycorn was dead!
John Barleycorn was dead!
But the warm spring rains
Came a'pouring down
And John Barleycorn arose-"
It was a very old tune, and popular:
"And upon that ground he stood without a sound
Until he began to grow!
And they've hired a man with a knife so sharp
For to cut him through the knees-"
More and more joined her, but then the voices jarred to a sudden halt.
A haunting huu-huu-huu from the west brought heads around; that was the alarm from the mounted sentries, blowing on horns donated by slaughtered cattle. Everyone felt uncomfortably exposed here; the valley floor was dead flat and the road net was still in good shape; with bicycles raiders could strike from anywhere. Horses were faster in a sprint, but men on bicycles could run horses to death over a day or two.
Aylward laid down his flute and rose as smoothly as if he hadn't spent the hours since dawn swinging a twenty-pound cradle scythe, usually with half a sheaf of wheat on it. He picked up his great yellow longbow and strung it the quick, dirty and dangerous medieval way-right foot between string and stave, the horn tip braced against the instep from behind the anklebone, hip against the riser, flex the body back and push the right arm forward and slide the cord up into the nock at the upper tip.
Juniper used the more conservative thigh-over-riser method for her lighter weapon, and then relaxed slightly at the next horn call.
All around her people paused as they reached for jacks and bucklers and spears and quivers.
Huu-huu-huu, huuuuu-huuuuu, repeated twice. Three short and two long meant friendly visitors, not attacking bandits, in the current code.
The sentry rode over the ditch and into the field from the western edge, raising Juniper's brows again; it was Cynthia Carson Mackenzie, with ends of blond hair leaking past the metal-and-leather cheekpieces of her bowl helmet. She was in jack and full fig-longbow and quiver across her back, buckler hooked over the scabbard of the shortsword at her belt, and spear in her right hand. That also held the reins of a second horse.
"Where's Ray?" Juniper asked as she pulled up.
Sentries never operated in groups of less than two, and it was her brother's mount the blond girl was leading, with the stirrups tied up to the saddle. The usual patrol was three, and three threes to make a squad; mystically appropriate, and solidly practical.
"He's with the others," Cynthia said. "We thought you'd better come quick, Lady Juniper. It's Sutterdown-they're here, by our… by the old Carson place."
"Someone from Sutterdown?" she replied.
She took a moment to put her shirt back on; Sutterdown was a straitlaced community these days. Then she slung her quiver over her back on its baldric and thrust her strung bow through the carrying loops beside it before she buckled on her sword and dirk.
"We told them no visitors until the sickness passes out there."
"No, not just visitors. The whole town, and a lot of others. Lady, you'd better come."
"Coming, coming," Juniper said, alarmed. "Sam, get the word out."
Anything out of the ordinary was likely to be a threat. Not while we're getting the grain in, please! she thought, as she put a foot in the stirrup, swung aboard, and took the reins.
Have they gotten hit by the plague, Goddess forfend?
That wouldn't make them up stakes and head for Mackenzie land, though. Nobody let in anyone who might be infected; and anyway, from what she'd heard, Sutter-down had been singularly fortunate-which in turn was fortunate for Clan Mackenzie, since Sutterdown and its associated area neatly blocked off the rest of the Willamette and made a buffer against the Death.
They cut across the laneway opposite, through a field in shaggy pasture with a couple of dozen recently acquired and painfully thin ranch-country Herefords gorging themselves in it, and then along a dirt-surfaced, tree-lined farm lane in grateful shade to the old Carson place.
The laneway from that gave out onto a paved local road; the house was on a slight rise, brick-built, a hundred and twenty years old, and until recently it had been bowered in century-old maples and oaks and ash trees.
Those had been cut down and a square was pegged out about the farmstead, where the ditch, mound and palisade would go when they had time after the harvest. Juniper regretted the trees-they'd been beautiful, and had stood so long-but you couldn't leave cover near someplace you intended to live. In the meantime it was their border post and base for the frontier patrols.
Juniper's eyes widened as she saw the crowd filling the road beyond the house. There were at least a hundred people there, both sexes and all ages, and a round dozen vehicles, horse- or hand-drawn; all of the men and a lot of the women were armed, mostly with improvised weapons of various sorts, spears made from fitting knives to the ends of poles, pruning hooks, axes, machetes, a scattering of bows and crossbows-and Aylward-style longbows they'd bought in the past few months. Few had any body armor, or worthwhile shields.
They also looked thinner and dirtier and more ragged than her clan on average, and a few were bandaged; some of the bandages seeped blood. She recognized individuals from Sutterdown, and the farms about that centered on it.
If they've run into a bandit attack they can't handle, that's bad. That's very bad.
The area between her lands and Sutterdown had been tranquil-by post-Change standards-not least because both communities were fairly well organized, and acted together against reivers and Eaters.
Most of them rested quietly, except for the crying of children. There were five armed Mackenzies strung across the road, spears or bows in their hands. Three of the Sutterdown folk stood arguing with the guards, trying to come closer and then flinching back at shouts of warning. It didn't look like a fight brewing-they wouldn't have brought their families along if they were going to try and run the clan off the disputed Smith land-but she didn't like it at all. They knew about the quarantine regulations; and had their own, for that matter.
"Stand back there, and we'll talk," she called as she reined in; the horse's hooves rang hollow on the asphalt.
Juniper dismounted; no sense in towering over the men waiting for her and putting their backs up even more. Men were strange about things like that, even the best of them-which these weren't.
"Sheriff Laughton," she said, nodding in greeting as polite as you could make without coming close enough to shake hands; he was a middling man of about her own age, in a long leather coat covered with links of light chain sewn on with steel wire.
"Dr. Gianelli." Slight and dark and balding, glaring at her.
"Reverend Dixon." Heavyset before the Change, sagging now, and glaring twice as hard as the doctor, in a black business suit and tie that fit him like a flopping sack. There was a mottled purple look to his face that might be anger, or might be ill health, or both. Judy would have prescribed a regimen of herbs and meditation to control choler, and willow bark to thin the blood.
"We need to talk to you, privately," the preacher said abruptly, stepping forward; he had a Bible in his hand, with a golden cross gleaming on the cover and his finger inside it marking a place.