Dies the Fire

"Damned right," Waters said. "Damned right. It's like being in the fucking Marines!"

They entered a nondescript ranch-style bungalow; the two on either side were abandoned; all the lawns had been plowed up for vegetables.

Jeb waved a hand at the houses on either side: "Stupid bastards are out somewhere shoveling cowshit for a rancher," he said. "There are easier ways of making a liv-ing, even these days."

"Yeah," Billy Waters said again.

"Me, I swap things and, ummm, sort of arrange deals," Smith said as they seated themselves in the dim coolness of the living room. "You need something, like say an old hand pump, or parts for a windmill, and you come to Jeb. Jeb can find it, or put you in touch with someone who has it or can make it. All for a very reasonable commission."

A woman came out with a pitcher of beer; it wasn't refrigerated, but drops of condensation slid down the sides of the glass, and Billy licked his lips. He had time to notice how good-looking she was before she handed him the tumbler.

"Ahhh," he said as the first glorious swallow slid down.

It wasn't like anything he'd tasted before the Change, but it was undoubtedly beer. For a wonder, he didn't feel like gulping it and going right for another, either. Maybe it was because, for the first time in months, he wasn't bored.

"Your daughter, Jeb?"

"Naw, girlfriend," the other man said, giving her a casual slap on the butt as she went past. "Sort of. A man with co

Waters looked around. The house was well furnished; it had an iron heating-stove in one corner of the living room, with its sheet-metal chimney already installed, and he could see through an archway that the kitchen had a wood cooking range. That was wealth, these days. Waters gri

There was also a good hunting crossbow racked beside the door, and a belt with a bowie and hatchet scabbarded on it, with a steel helmet-an old pre-Kevlar Army model-and a plywood shield faced in sheet metal.

"So, you one of the sheriffs posse?" he asked.

"Nope. Not interested in getting myself killed for Woburn's benefit," Smith said. "Any more than busting my ass playing farmer."

He smiled and leaned forward. "Let's talk."

And I thought that things would get easier after the harvest, Juniper thought bitterly. And surely after we beat the Protector's men back from Sutterdown.

Aloud she spoke to Laughton with patient gentleness: "Sheriff, I really can't turn the McFarlanes down if they want to join us. Even though it's inconvenient for all concerned."

He was looking mulish again. Juniper fought an impulse to bury her face in her hands, and an even stronger one to grab her fiddle and head out into the woods with Cuchulain and lean against a tree and play until her nerves un-knotted and she floated away on a tide of music.

Instead she took another sip of chilled herbal tea and looked out the north-facing window of her loft-bedroom-office for an instant and sighed. August was hot this year and there was a little smoke haze in the air over the mountains from the big burn further northeast, towards the Three Sisters; she worried about it spreading, too.

At least I'm not huge yet. Showing, but not huge. That will be later, when it's cool and there's nothing much to do.

She turned back to Laughton, looking over his shoulder through the west-facing dormer. She could see a squared timber swinging up on its rope, ru

"I know it makes things awkward, Sheriff," she said.

The gatehouse and nearly finished palisade were reassuring. So was Sally, with her tummy starting to bulge out over her chinos. Life went on; children got born, crops got planted, things got built. They'd get through somehow, Lady and Lord helping.

"You think it doesn't make it awkward for us, too?" she asked, tapping the map on the table between them.

That was of the Artemis Creek area, from the high hills north and east of Dun Juniper, down through the spreading V-shaped swale that held the old Fairfax place and out into the flats around Sutterdown, with the Butte beyond.

"Even out of Dun Carson"-the old Carson homestead, now well on its way to being a fortified steading-"getting our people up to work this farm will be a nightmare of time wasted traveling back and forth. What we'rhight talk about is a swap for something closer, if any of your folk are interested."

"Hey, wait!" Rodger McFarlane said.

"Well, if you don't want to join and put the land at the clan's disposal… "

Maisie McFarlane stamped on her husband's foot under the table; at least that was what Juniper assumed, from the way her shoulders moved slightly and her tight smile and the way he smothered a yelp. She'd probably heard the sudden hope Juniper tried to conceal.

The farmer went on: "We certainly do want to join, Lady Juniper. It's not that everyone in Sutterdown doesn't do their best, but we're scared spitless out on the edge the way we are, never getting a good night's sleep. And we want school for our kids and stuff-we're just too far out and on our own we can't spare them from work. It's just. it's good land, two hundred and eighty acres."

"I thought we'd be moving in here," Maisie McFarlane said.

I would really like to find that tree and my fiddle, Juniper thought. Instead she made her voice kind and went on: "The palisade around Dun Carson is going up very quickly, and it'll be as safe as this."

Or nearly. Maybe I am turning into a politician, she thought, and made a sign of aversion under the table.

And the McFarlanes had brought in a good harvest-the fighting hadn't touched them much, though it had scared them green when the Protector's men marched past.

I must not just see them as a nuisance, or an opportunity, she told herself sternly. They're people and terrified. For their children and kin and the people they've taken in, as well as themselves. And they're right to be terrified. Mother-of-All, help me be wise!

"There's still a problem," Laughton said. "Look, we're all grateful for the help you gave us, in the fight and afterward. But the fact is the people who've joined you since- the Hunters, the Dowlingtons, the Johnsons, now the McFarlanes-they're not only putting islands of your territory in ours, they're the ones with the biggest grain reserves- and everyone in town pitched in to help get that grain harvested. We've got a system for sharing things around, but it's… Lady Juniper, it's all just falling apart without Reverend Dixon. Reverend Je

"I can't say that I liked Dixon," Juniper conceded. "But he was a strong man and he could get people to do the needful."

She sighed. "Sheriff, you can tell your townspeople that nobody's going to starve this coming winter because someone else has joined us. We'll see about the… swapping."

Laughton smiled as he rose and shook her hand, but he had that odd look in his eyes again-the one she'd seen on the day of the battle.

"Lady Juniper, you may find that there's a simple solution to that problem; everyone in Sutterdown joining up. Barring the Reverend Je

Urk! She hoped she didn't look as sandbagged as she felt.