Dies the Fire

"Jesus!" he shouted, leaping backward.

Signe half stumbled as the deer carcass swayed unexpectedly, but pivoted with fluid balance and drove the long knife home, grunting with effort as it sliced into flesh.

Only then did she turn to see what had startled him. A drumroll thunder of hooves a

The bear behind the horse was traveling very nearly as fast, its mouth open and foam blowing from it; an arrow twitching in the hump over its shoulders showed why.

It was a black, not a grizzly, but the point was moot-it was also a very large boar bear, four hundred pounds if it was an ounce, and moving at thirty miles an hour. Astrid turned in the saddle as her horse pounded by in a tearaway gallop, drawing her bow again and firing directly over its tail in what an earlier age had called the Parthian shot.

"No!" Havel shouted futilely.

Well, now I know how a horsey teenage girl snaps from combat stress. She goddamn well tries to shoot a bear!

Havel had hunted bear; he knew the vitality and sheer stubborn mea

Unfortunately, it also pointed the bear directly at Havel. It hesitated for an instant, as he stood motionless; then its eyes caught the sway of the mule-deer carcass, and the glint of afternoon sun on Signe's knife.

It went up on its hind legs for an instant, narrow head swaying back and forth as it gave a bawling roar and estimated distances with its little piggy eyes. Then it dropped to all fours again and came for him, as fast as a galloping horse.

"I don't fucking believe this!" he cried, and then, much louder: "Spear, spear, where's the goddamned spear?"

Eleven

There was a hypnotic quality to riding the disk harrow, Juniper decided. The horses leaning into the traces ahead, their shadows falling before them, the shining disks sinking into the turned earth behind the plows and leaving a smooth seedbed behind…

"Goddamn it!" De

His single-furrow walking plow had jammed up with bits of tangled sod again; it was one of the half-dozen copies they'd made of the museum's original. And it was scraping along on top of the turf rather than cutting it, the handles jarring at his hands. De

Then they looked over their shoulders. Horses didn't have very expressive faces, but she would have sworn both of these were radiating indignation-at the unfamiliar task, and at the sheer ignorant incompetence behind the reins.

"Easy, De

"I'd like to use a goddamned log on these beasts," he said, but shrugged and smiled.

Of them all, only Juniper had any real experience at driving a horse team, and that only with a wagon; she did know how surprisingly fragile the big beasts were, though. She looked up at the sun and estimated the time since the last break…

"Whoa!" she called to her own team. Then: "All right, all teams take five! Rest and water the horses!"

She hauled on the reins, wincing as they slid over fresh blisters beneath her gloves. When they'd stopped she wiped a sopping sleeve over her face, tender with sunburn despite the broad-brimmed hat and bandana-the early-April day was bright and warm. Damp reddish brown earth was soft under her feet as she jumped down. It had a scent at once sweetly green and meaty, a compound of cut grass and damp dirt and severed roots and the crushed camas flowers that starred it. That made a pleasant contrast to the smell of her own sweat, and of Cagney and Lacey's.

"Goddamn it, why does this thing keep jamming?" De

There was an edge of frustration to the point of tears in his voice. He knelt and began pulling at lumps between the coulter knife that cut the furrow and the moldboard that turned it over.

Chuck Barstow and John Carson halted their teams as well; Carson turned and looked at the crooked, irregular furrows that lay behind the three plowmen.

"The plows jam because it's old meadow sod," Carson gri

He was a lean fortysomething man, with sun-streaks through his light brown hair, and blue eyes. He also owned the property four miles west, where Artemis Butte Creek flowed out into the valley proper and the real farmland began, and he was here as part of a complicated swap of labor, animals, and equipment.

"Hasn't been plowed in a hundred years," he went on as they unharnessed their teams. "Not even been grazed heavy these past forty or more, this bit. Lots of tangled roots, most of 'em thick as a pencil. A big tractor could just rip it all to shreds, but horses… Well, two hundred fifty horsepower against two-nothing, it stands to reason!"

The furrows were roughly along the contour of the sloping meadow, and very roughly parallel; oblong islands of unplowed grass showed between them, and the depth varied as if they'd been dug by invisible land-dolphins porpoising along.

At least there weren't very many rocks to hit around here.

"I thought I knew what hard work was," he said. "No work harder than farmin'. Now I know my granddad knew what hard work was, and I've been kidding myself. He farmed-I operate machinery. Did operate machinery."

They all unhitched their teams, leaving plows and harrow standing where they lay, and led the big animals over beneath the shade of a spreading oak to the north. They brought buckets of water from the creek rather than taking them to it-it was easier to make sure they didn't overdrink that way. The little pool below the waterfall was close there, and she gave it a longing look as she hauled the water.

The thought of stripping off her sweat-sodden clothing and diving in, then standing beneath the falling spray…

Better not, she said. Got to keep going. And Mr. Carson might shock easily. Presbyterians tended to be more cautious about nudity than Wiccans, in her experience.

Juniper banished the image of a whooping dive into the cold water. Instead she uncorked a big ceramic jug-until recently an ornamental sitting on the mantelpiece over the kitchen fireplace in her cabin. It held spring water, cut with cold herbal tea. When you were really thirsty, that quenched better than water alone.

After a swallow she passed it around, trying not to think about fresh lemonade. De

"My thanks, gracious Lady Juniper, High Chief of the Clan Mackenzie, herself," he said.

"Go soak your head, De

"If only I could!" he said, passing the jug on to John Carson. "Soak my head, that is."

Their neighbor glugged and passed it to Chuck in turn. "Time was an acre was a few minutes' work," he said. "On a tractor, that is! Even if I was towing the rototiller for a truck crop. Now I feel like I've plowed Kansas if I get an acre done in a day."

His mouth quirked: "You know, I had an old three-furrow riding plow in a shed-"

All their ears perked up; then they groaned as he went on: "-but I sold it for scrap instead of making it into a lawn ornament like I'd pla