The discussion went on for some time; when it was over and Laurel went glowing on her way, Judy blew out her lips with a sound like a skeptical horse.
"Oh, great. The septs of the Clan Mackenzie: Wolf, Bear, Coyote, Elk, Raven: and now the Fluffy Bunnies. Robin Wood? No Starhawk? What about Matthews: even Zee Budapest?"
"They'll do very well, once they've settled in," Juniper said stoutly. "Nobody who's survived this long can really be an F-B. Lord and Lady witness, looking back on it we seem like F-B's."
The others of her advisors trickled in; she hadn't wanted them all there during the discussion with Laurel. That would have been too intimidating.
And what's to come intimidates me, she thought.
She sighed and closed her eyes, controlling her breathing, let calm if not peacefulness flow through her. Then she opened them again and looked around the table.
"Cogadh," she said. "War. Whether we will or no. Not very soon, not this month, but not more than a year's grace, either, I'm thinking."
"August at the earliest," Andy Trethar said. "When the harvest is in."
His wife Diana nodded. They were alike as long-married couples sometimes became, both slim and dark, with a little salt in the pepper of Andy's beard. They'd run an organic foods store and restaurant in Eugene, then done the cooking for the clan when all they had was the Eternal Soup, and now they looked after food supplies in general besides running the kitchens of the Chief's Hall here at Dun Juniper.
"We've got plenty stored, and so do the Bearkillers and Corvallis and Mt. Angel. But the Protectorate isn't nearly so well off-they'll be short, until their harvest comes in. That's why they're buying grain now."
Sam Aylward nodded. "Right you are. He'll want to conquer our storehouses, not burn our crops. And he's got projects under way that will take time, things that would improve his position when the balloon goes up. Those ruddy great castles, for starters. More likely after next year's harvest, but possibly this autumn. He's not the sort to attack before he's ready, worse luck."
Chuck made a gesture of agreement, and then one of Invocation. "It's too early to say for sure, but the Lord and Lady willing the harvest this year looks excellent, we ought to average fifty to sixty bushels an acre on the wheat and better on the barley and oats, potatoes look good, and our herds are doing well."
"Plenty of spare weapons," Sam said. "And a reserve of five hundred made arrows for every archer, besides what they keep at home. Chuck?"
"We've got bicycles or horses for the whole levy, and enough draft animals for the supply train; full equipment for everyone, and enough gear to replace losses." He looked at his wife.
"I wouldn't call all the medicos doctors, exactly," Judy said. "Any more than I am. But they know what they need to know, and we've got enough medical supplies: such as they are and such as we can make."
Juniper nodded decisively. "We're agreed he probably won't attack until after the grain harvest, at the earliest?" After a chorus of nods, she went on: "That's what Mike Havel and Luther Finney and Captain Jones think, and the abbot for that matter. But there's the matter of those refugees: what about them, by the way, Sam?"
"If Wally and Leigh are leaving me to set up with this new lot, I'll have room for them, and work in plenty. The girl-"
"She's following Eilir and Astrid around like a lost puppy," Juniper said with a chuckle. "But I had in mind her little gift."
Her chuckle raised eyebrows. "It's Laurel," she said. "Or rather her husband, Collin. It occurred to me while we were considering what to do about them that he'll be useful."
"How so?" Judy said. "Frankly, he seemed dreamier than the lot of them, and that's saying something!"
"He's a stereotype of a professional mathematician," Juniper said, grinning as the others sat up straight. "And he is a genuine PhD. Which would be rather helpful to us, now wouldn't it? It would mean, with luck, we could figure out just what the Protector has planned, as well as when."
A chorus of agreement. Juniper's smile was not at all her usual amiable expression. "And in any case we should do something to him, first, shouldn't we?"
She laughed at the surprised expressions. "We can't loosen his hold until we break his spell of fear. That requires: practical demonstrations. We've been stinging him like mosquitoes. Time to become hornets. Also to demonstrate to him the folly of ruling a hostile countryside, to be sure. You can't be too careful in which enemies you make, and how many, and where."
Chapter Twelve
Near Amity, Willamette Valley, Oregon
May 13th, 2007 AD-Change Year Nine
"St. George for England!"
The bandit in front of Havel started to turn, jolted by the unfamiliar cry from behind him. He jerked his head back with a scream of panic as he realized what he'd done by dropping his guard, then looked down incredulously at the yard of steel through his stomach.
Havel wrenched the sword back. Muscles tried to clamp on it, but the knife-sharp blade severed them as they did; the sensation was hideously like carving a pork roast. The man doubled over with an oooff, like someone who'd been punched in the gut-except that he wouldn't be getting up. Havel turned the motion of withdrawal into a loop, ending in a short economical overarm chop at the man behind the one who collapsed hugging his gut. The sword smacked into bone, and when the bandit clutched at his left arm with his other hand the limb came off in it. He stared at it for an instant and then turned, shrieking like a machine grinding through rock, spraying blood into the faces of his fellows.
"Hakkaa paalle!" Havel shrieked, sword and shield working together in a blur of speed.
A spray of red drops flew through the air as he cut backhand; the frame of a shield cracked like a gunshot, and the arm bone beneath it. He smashed the edge of his own shield into the man's face as he dropped his guard, then thrust over the falling body; the point went home in the meat of an upper arm, and he twisted it like a coring knife:
"Oh, shit, Bearkillers!" one of the outlaws screamed.
"Hakkaa paalle!"
Signe screeched the war cry and killed the man in front of her with a stepping thrust to the neck that snapped out and back in a blurred glitter of steel. Then the bandits broke, backing up fast, crowding each other in the doorway and then turning and running. Havel followed. The sunlight outside made him blink for an instant, shield and blade up. Nobody struck at him; they were too busy running away.
And dying. Another horse stood nearby; the rider had dismounted, a big man plying a longbow with wicked skill.
It was the two mounted men close by who were really startling. As he watched, one pulled his lance out of the back of a fleeing bandit-running away from a lancer on foot was an exercise in futility-and swung the long shaft into an upright position. His companion sloped his red-running sword over one shoulder; both used their bridle hands to push up their visors as their horses turned back towards the ruined video store and away from the dozen or so outlaws flogging their horses east across the tall grass of the fallow field.
Visors, Havel thought, mentally gibbering. Yikes!
The two horsemen were in full plate armor, cap-a-pie, head to foot, the sort of thing people before the Change would have thought of as a King Arthur knight-in-armor outfit. It was enameled in green, and he blinked and squinted to see the details.
Sallet helms. Milanese style, he thought. Fifteenth century. Agincourt armor, Henry V, Wars of the Roses, once more unto the breach, St. Crispin's Day, Joan of Arc and all that good shit.
The Larsdale library had a book on it, part of a series on the history of arms and armor with illustrations and diagrams. He'd gone through it when they'd considered making some like it; the plate harness was good equipment, not much heavier than a mail hauberk, nearly as flexible, and better protection against arrows or crushing weapons. In the end they'd decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Plate had to be shaped to the individual the way a tailor hand-cut a good formal suit, and the level of time and trouble required was a whole order of magnitude greater than with the mostly chain armor they were using.