Dies the Fire

Juniper nodded bleakly. "Then you and Chuck have the right of it," she said.

At his questioning look, she touched her bow: "I thought they'd think we could all shoot like you, but that was a bluff, and bluffs get called if you go on long enough. Na nocht d'fhiacla go bhfeadair an greim do bhreith!"

"Which means?"

She shook herself. "Sorry. Don't bare your teeth until you can bite!"

"You'll push for more practice, then?"

"Starting tomorrow."

"Watch that!" Chuck Barstow shouted, striding over to where the older children were whacking with wooden swords at poles set in the dirt-and occasionally at each other.

"You can hurt someone with those things! Do it the way I showed you or I'll take them away."

It was an excuse to stop for a while. Juniper lowered her bow gratefully and rubbed at her left shoulder. The bright spring day caressed her face with a soft pine-scented breeze down from the mountains. It cut the haze, too, perfect for militia practice in the flower-starred meadows below her cabin.

Militia was what it was, even if a few were set on calling it the war band or the spear levy.

You know, I thought it was just a harmless bit of speechifying to call this a clan, she thought. A bit of playacting to distract people from how close to death we all were-are.

Wiccans were given to romantic archaisms and usually it was harmless enough; she'd been known to indulge in them herself, and not just for professional reasons. Now, though…

I may have let a genie out of the bag. Words have power!

Sally Qui

Sam Alyward had the more advanced pupils; he'd turned out enough longbows for all, courtesy of her woodpile.

Thank You, she thought to the Lord of the Forest, and stepped back to watch Aylward demonstrate.

His stave had a hundred-pound draw. When he shot, the snap of the string against the bracer seemed to trip on the smack of the arrowhead hitting the deer-shaped target fifty yards away, and the malignant quiver of the shaft that followed. Between was only a blurred streak; she forced herself not to dwell on the hard tock of an arrowhead sledging into bone.

He sent three more arrows on the way at five-second intervals, all of them landing in a space a palm could have covered, then turned to her. The Englishman was sweating, but then everyone was. Sweating as hard as they had during the planting, which she almost remembered with nostalgia. The cheerful noise made it plain everyone thought this was more fun, though.

"Shoulder sore, Lady?" he said gravely.

"Just a bit," Juniper replied; in fact, it ached.

"Then you should knock off," he said. "Watch for a while instead. Push too hard too soon, and you're courting a long-term injury. You may be over-bowed for a begi

"I don't think so. Forty pounds isn't so much when you've fiddled for hours straight! But I will take a break."

She braced the lower tip of her bow against the outside of her left foot, stepped through with her right and bent it against her thigh to unstring it. She called the weapon Artemis, after the Greek archer-goddess, and although getting the trick of it was harder, she'd discovered she actually liked using it, far more than the crossbow.

When she glanced up from the task, she saw Aylward looking over at the children, and smiling with a gentle fondness you wouldn't suspect from his usual gruff ma

Or from the feel of his hands when he's teaching unarmed combat! she thought, gri

The important thing was that with Aylward around, they had someone who really understood this business; for starters, he could make the bows, and their strings, and the arrows. In the long run, that would be very important. The machine-made fiberglass sporting toys hadn't stopped working the way guns had, but the prying roots of vine and tree had already begun their reconquest of factories and cities. In a generation those wastelands of concrete and asphalt would be home to owl and fox and badger, not men.

De

Which is why I'm wearing it, she thought glumly. To get used to moving in it.

Unlike most of the Mackenzies, she didn't see all this as a combination RenFaire and holiday, despite the moon-and-antlers design on the breast of all the jacks.

It's not like Society gear. It's real and I hate the necessity. Fate throws us all into the soup, and we're still killing each other.

She watched the shooting for a while; Aylward was a good teacher, firm but calm and endlessly patient. At last he looked up at the sun and spoke: "Break for di

Juniper suppressed a smile; the man had some old-fashioned turns of phrase. A clatter continued when all else fell quiet. Chuck Barstow was sparring with the two young men who'd come in with his brother, Vince Torelli and Steve Matucheck. Sword-and-buckler work was an active style, and they were leaping and foining in a pattern as acrobatic and pleasing to the eye as a dance. She'd never felt a desire to join in when she was busking at Society events, but it looked pretty; now that she'd done a fair bit with the other neophytes, she could even say it was fun in an active sort of way.

If you can forget what happens when it's done with edged metal rather than padded sticks.

Chuck jerked back from the waist to dodge a strike, then leapt to let the other sword pass beneath his boots. His buckler banged down on Vince's helmet; the blow was pulled, but it still gave a solid bonging thump that sent the younger man down clutching at his head. In the same instant he caught Steve's sword-blow with his own, locked the guards, put a foot behind his opponent's leg and threw him staggering backward with a twist of shoulder and hips. A lizard-swift thrust followed, leaving Steve white with shock as the blunt wooden point tapped him on the base of the throat.

Cheers burst out; Mary and Sanjay and Daniel rushed over and nearly knocked Chuck over himself in their enthusiasm.

"Dad's the best!" they chorused. "Dad's the best!"

Little Tamsin stumped around crowing and waving her arms, happy because her father was the center of attention. He scooped her up onto his shoulder, tucked Mary and Daniel each under an arm and let Sanjay proudly rack his equipment as he staggered over towards the trestle tables.

Quick work, Juniper thought.

It hadn't been long before the rescued children realized they weren't going home, or at least before most stopped talking about it; shared hunger and fear and unaccustomed hard work had probably sped up the process, and the sheer strangeness of everything.

Now, is it a good, sign of healthy resilience that some of them have started calling their foster parents Mom and Dad, or is it unhealthy denial and transference? I don't think those three in particular had parents before, not really, just people who paid the bills.