"Blessed be," Juniper murmured after a moment. "May he rest in the Summerlands, and return to us in joy."
"So mote it be," everyone replied.
Then she took a deep breath, and wiped her hand across her eyes.
I'll grieve later, she thought. Right now there's work to be done.
"Where did you get all this stuff? " she said, waving at the wagons and the livestock; there were chickens and ducks and geese, as well as the quadrupeds.
"At the museum's exhibit-Living Pioneer History, where else?" Chuck grinned.
The plumed hat looked a little incongruous over the workaday denim and flannel; he usually wore it with a troubadour's costume at the RenFaires, or his knight's festival garb for Society events. He was wearing his buckler slung from his belt over his parade sword, too…
Which is perfectly good steel, she remembered with a shiver. Like the one I'm wearing.
He went on: "The exhibit was mostly abandoned when we got there, right after the Change… all gone off to try and find their families, I suppose, poor bastards. It was chaos and old night in Eugene by then. So we just… liberated it, you might say, having as good a claim as anyone else. The rest of the livestock the same-some we bought, from people still taking money."
"You saved lives by doing that," Juniper said. "Ours to start with; we'll use the tools and do it in time. It'll come back to you threefold, remember. And the children? Not that I'm objecting… but it's going to be very tight for food before harvest."
She made a quick calculation. The Fairfaxes' stores would easily have been eighteen months' eating for three, without stinting; for…
Good Goddess gentle and strong, twenty-eight including those children!
… it would be about three months, carefully rationed.
Of course, they could eat the livestock if they had to, even the horses… the chickens would yield something…
"They were on a school bus," Andy Trethar said. "All the way from Seattle to Ashland, and returning when the Change hit. And… well, we just couldn't leave them."
Chuck cut in: "Juney, Diana and Andy had just taken a delivery for their store, which we brought along, and we picked up everything we could along the way, and we cleaned out a garden-supply place that had a lot of seeds… We only got here a couple of hours ago ourselves, you understand."
"Well, every mouth comes with a pair of hands," she said stoutly.
Though many aren't very large or strong hands, in this case, she thought. But we'll make do-for a start.
Rudy had always been on at Andy and Diana for carrying too much inventory at the MoonDance, tying up their scanty capital. That looked as if it was going to be a very fortunate mistake.
Lord and Lady, we're probably better off than anyone else within a hundred miles!
Chuck bent close: "And you don't know how glad I am to see you here," he half whispered. "I'd just about run out of charisma by this point. People are getting really scared. You're the High Priestess; give 'em some oomph, Goddess-on-Earth."
Juniper swallowed, then planted her hands on her hips and raised her voice to address them all. At least she had a good voice, experience with crowds, and had long ago lost all tendency to stage fright.
"Another hundred thousand welcomes, my darlings," she said. "But listen to your High Priestess now. We've got a lot of work to be done, and not much time to do it in. Here's what I think-that it's a clan we'll have to be, as it was in the old days, if we're going to live at all… "
Nine
Men on foot were a lot quieter than galloping horses. That was the only way Havel could justify this last-minute dash through the night to himself; he prayed with every footfall that they were going to be in time.
Idiots, he thought. They're acting like idiots and it's making my job harder. Doesn't seem fair.
The bandits had flogged their horses on all through the night, even after they'd caught up with Will Hutton, halting only when they'd run into the ranger cabin half an hour ago.
Which meant that he had to stop too, to let them have enough time to lose fear of pursuit. Fortunately he'd been able to follow them through the open patches with the telescopic sight from his old rifle. He hoped it was the right thing to do, but he could feel sand grinding in the gears of his brain; it had been nearly thirty hours of hard effort since he last slept.
"Stop!" he hissed to Eric, sinking to one knee.
He'd blackened the heads of their weapons with mud, and now he held the spear low and level to the ground. From the edge of the pines that fringed the area around the old ranger station he gave the cabin a quick once-over, looking for the men on guard. There was light from the windows, firelight and lamplight, enough to endanger his night vision; he squinted and looked aside. Four horses were hobbled in the clearing near the cabin, looking tired and discouraged and nosing at the rock and pine duff in a futile search for something to eat.
He could see two human figures there: one slumped near the steps that led to the broad front veranda, and another standing on it-a stout figure carrying a bow, but looking through the front window, with his back to the outside world.
A woman's scream probably indicated what was occupying his attention.
"Now!" Havel said, and ran forward. Eric followed.
Will Hutton was sitting on the edge of the veranda, his hands tied behind him around one of the wooden pillars that supported the roof. He'd obviously gotten another beating, but he watched the men coming across the pine needles and rocks of the space between the trail and the cabin with a hunted alertness. He raised his feet and hitched himself around the post silently as the two neared, pressing himself down flat as he did.
Just a second more, Havel thought. Just a second and young Jimmie is dead meat and the odds are even.
Eric was making a lot more noise than his companion; he wasn't used to running in the dark. Fat Boy Jimmie turned when they were still ten yards away. Havel abandoned any attempt at stealth at his strangled whinney of surprise and just ran as fast as he could, but it wasn't quite fast enough; the young man managed to draw the bow to his ear.
Havel held the rough spear underarm with both hands, like a giant rifle-and-bayonet combination, hoping that the boy would be flustered or simply miss in the shadowy light with his eyes still dazzled from looking through the firelit windows-the bow wasn't a submachine gun and he couldn't spray-and-pray.
There was no time to be afraid, but plenty to watch the archer's hands stop shaking, and steady with the three-edged blade of the arrowhead pointed directly at Havel's liver. He was using a snap-release glove, which argued for a distinctly uncomfortable degree of accuracy. Havel's snarl turned to a guttural roar of triumph as a foot lashed out and kicked the bowman behind one knee and the arrow flashed out into the night over his head, close enough to hear.
Will Hutton had just saved his life, before they'd ever really met.
Jimmie screamed and tried to dodge as Havel came up the last ten feet of rock path before the stairs to the cabin. The spearpoint took him low in his belly and he screamed again, high and shrill. The impact shocked up Havel's arms as the young man thudded back violently into the logs of the cabin and the point jammed in bone, bending back with the violence of the impact. He snarled in the ferocity of total focus, wrenched the kitchen-knife blade out of his opponent's flesh and then thrust again, with all the power of his arms and shoulders behind it and his weight as well.