Dies the Fire

She shook herself. "I feel… I feel like a flute that Someone was playing on."

"Jesu- I mean, God and Goddess, Juney, that was the scariest fucking thing I've ever seen!"

He shook his head, leaning on his ax and panting like a great wheezing bellows for a second.

"What happened? First it was like you were screaming right in my ear-or inside my head-and then you were like the original whirling Dervish, you were a blur. I didn't even think about anything else except following you and hacking these guys up."

She felt her everyday self return, and with it a sharp twist of nausea at the sights and smells about her, and held up a hand palm out while she struggled back to self-command.

Before the Change, this would have sent me catatonic, she thought. Now it just sickens me. Goddess, let me never see such things without sorrow. Let me never see such things again, please.

De

"Shit, I hope so, Juney."

She nodded: "Hysterical strength, amok, berserkergang; it's all a well-known phenomenon, right there in the textbooks. There weren't any miracles, were there? I didn't glow red, or levitate, or cast thunderbolts, after all. Although. this is the sort of thing that gets legends and myths started."

"Ah," he said, looking relieved. His face relaxed. "You think that's what happened? Your subconscious took over?"

"Oh, no, De

He retreated a little as she went on: "What I think- know-is that I called on the Dark Goddess… and She came to me. It isn't all light and love and laughter, my friend. There's blood and fear and death and wickedness in the world, and the Mighty Ones act through us."

She reached out and touched the pentagram-and-circle amulet he'd taken to wearing. "And if this is more than a piece of jewelry, you've picked which explanation you want to believe, haven't you?"

"Yeah," he said soberly. "I suppose I have."

Chuck came up to her. "One dead of ours," he said, his eyes avoiding hers a little. "John Carson. A couple of wounded, but… mostly it was over by the time we reached the road. Judy and Dr. Gianelli are getting to work. They think the clan won't lose anyone else."

"Blessed be," she said sadly. "But it could have been worse." She looked around, letting her eyes fall out of focus a little to miss detail. "Was worse, for them."

Aylward paused in recovering arrows and spoke with a surgeon's calmness: "It's like that, with surprise. Especially if the side surprised just gets the wind up and sods off regardless. They can't run and fight, but you can chase and kill at the same time."

She nodded. "Find out how the Sutterdown people did, Chuck," she said. "Get me Sheriff Laughton, if he's alive and fit to move."

When he showed up a few minutes later Laughton had a bandage covering half his face, but he seemed to be coherent enough; a dozen of his townsmen came with him, some of them bandaged or limping.

"Lady Juniper," he said. This time there was no awkwardness to the title. "Thank you. Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts. We'll get our homes back, now."

"You will," Juniper said. "And you'll be able to feed your children through the winter."

Which are the only reasons good enough for this vileness, she thought.

"We had thirty wounded and… nine dead," Laughton went on. He swallowed. "Including Reverend Dixon."

Her brows went up. "Dixon?" she said. "How?"

"He just. died. He just dropped down and died," Laughton said.

Well, he was a coronary waiting to happen, Juniper thought. Plenty of stress today to set it off.

"He'll be missed," she said soberly, and fought not to think: But not by many.

Then she saw the eyes of his men on her, all wide and fearful and a few of them full of the begi

This is how legends and myths start, she reminded herself, and shivered ever so slightly. Goddess gentle and strong, powerful God, what is it that You want of me?

"Well, we'll have to see to the wounded," she said, dragging herself back to practicalities.

Her voice gained strength. "And to getting your families back to your homes, and we Mackenzies will pitch in to help get the rest of your crops in safe-we don't have anything to waste. And then we'll talk about making sure we're not caught by surprise like this again, and with all the other communities around here about defense. The man who set this on us, the one who calls himself Protector… "

"Yes, Lady," Laughton said.

Ray and Cynthia were kneeling by their father's body when she found them. A crossbow bolt had struck him just left of the breastbone, sinking in through the armor until only the fletching showed. There was a spray of blood beside his mouth, but the wide eyes looked surprised, as if it had been very quick. The flies were already coming, but they had plenty to feed on today.

Cynthia started to rise. Juniper sank down on her knees on the hot pavement between them, pressing a hand gently on the girl's shoulder and on her brother's. He looked stu

"S-sorry, Lady Juniper," Cynthia said. "We should help-"

"You should both stay here and mourn your father," Juniper said quietly. "There's hands enough to do what needs doing."

The girl's face crumpled, turning red. "He… he shouldn't have died like this!" she cried.

"No," Juniper agreed. "He shouldn't. He was a good man, who only wanted to tend his fields and do right by his family and neighbors. There were years yet of work and joy ahead for him. He should have died old and tired and ready for the Summerlands, with you and your brother and your children around him to bid him farewell. He gave all that up, for us."

"I'm sorry," Cynthia said, putting the heels of her hands to her forehead. "Can… can we have a rite for him?"

"Certainly we can among ourselves, honey," Juniper said gently. "But he respected your choice; you have to respect his. We'll get the ritual he'd have wanted for his burial. Just let it go, for now. Mourn him, girl, and you too, Ray. Cry. Scream if it helps. There's no way around the pain, you have to go through it to the end and beyond. Blessed be."

She left them sobbing in each other's arms; Eilir was coming, riding a horse and leading another for her mother, her eyes wide with horror as she looked about.

When Juniper Mackenzie stood it was as if the weight of the world pressed down on her shoulders.

Twenty-seven

Problems, Mike Havel thought.

I didn't have enough of my own, so I took on a hundred other people's. Then we all decide to make a living solving problems for strangers…

Mother Superior Gertrude was a horse-faced woman in her early sixties. She wasn't quite what Havel had expected in a nun; she did wear a headdress, but the rest of her clothing was overalls and a checked shirt and heavy shoes of the sort once called sensible.

Now she finished making corrections on the graph paper that Ken Larsson had pi