Dies the Fire

"Isn't that made from one of that load of blankets we salvaged?" she said, pursing her lips as she struggled not to laugh.

The ribbing does pass the time.

"There's plenty," he said. "Nice strong wool, too. And it's quick and easy to make-Andy's got that sewing machine working off a treadle-and it wears longer than jeans."

"It's not even the Mackenzie tartan!"

"It is now," he said cheerfully. "Didn't you say the Victorians made up that stuff about clans having special tartans after the fact anyway? This is what we've got-we're the Mackenzies around here-it's the Mackenzie tartan if we say it is. QED."

She threw up her hands. "Cuir sioa ar ghabhar agus is gabhar I gconai й.

"You calling me a goat?" he said, mock-frowning.

"No, just a Sassenach. A goat's a goat even in a silk coat, if you want a translation. But I suppose if you want to wear a pleated skirt, you can wear a pleated skirt. It's a harmless eccentricity."

She pointed at the wooden model his cu

"Now that-that is a menace! We've a limited amount of time and work, in case you hadn't noticed, and an infinity of things to do with both."

He gri

That put her brows up again. Alex was a housebuilder by trade, and he knew his business-she'd hired him for repairs before the Change, and knew others he'd done more ambitious work for.

De

She heard a subdued snort, possibly from Sam Aylward; the only use De

"- and yeah, you have a lot of stacked logs in the woods here. Nicely seasoned by now, too. More than enough."

Alex nodded. "Log construction is fast and simple, and strong and warm if you do it right-square the top and bottom so they fit snug, deep-notch the ends-it just needs lots and lots of big high-quality logs. Back before the Change that was expensive, but we've got the logs, great big thirty-foot monsters."

He pointed to the middle of the model: "See, we've already started on the bathhouse. Now, the next thing we do is double the space in the Hall-your cabin. It's just a log box; the foundation's the difficult part, and that's already done. All we have to do is take off the roof, put on an extra story of log wall minus cutouts for windows, then put the same roof back on. This lean-to extension out back is the new kitchen, with those woodstoves we salvaged."

Diana nodded. "That'll save a lot of cooking time."

"And bingo, we have another three thousand square feet of living space," Alex enthused; his blond ponytail bobbed as he spoke.

"All right," Juniper said dubiously. "Much as I love every darling one of you, my treasures, I've grown fair weary of hearing you all snore, and that's the truth. But this Fort Apache arrangement-"

She pointed at the palisade that surrounded the buildings.

"Nah, that's not all that hard either," Alex said. "Actually, Chuck gave me the idea, something about how the ancient Gauls did it, plus some bits I remembered from a book on the frontier stations, you know, Kentucky in Daniel Boone's day. Look, the Hall's on an oblong rise, right? The sides slope back at about forty-five degrees and then it's flat on top, pretty well, except where the spring bubbles up and flows off the edge."

He pointed to the north. "Twenty-five, thirty feet above the level of the meadow here. So what we do is just dig a ditch halfway up the slope, say seven or eight feet deep. We stand a log upright, pour concrete around the base, then use that and some block and tackle to set the next log upright-next four or five-spiking them together and then pouring the base-and eventually we have a complete oblong log palisade. Really not too complicated, good and strong, and it'll last if we do the drainage right."

"Hmmm."

Those poles are thirty feet tall. Fifteen feet of steep hill, then twenty feet of yard-thick logs above the surface. We would sleep better of a night.

"Why not at the top of the slope, where it would be that much taller?" she said. "If we start the wall further down the slope, here will be a big notch between the inside of the wall and the flat top of the rise the Hall's on."

Alex's smile had a crackling enthusiasm that was hard to resist. "That's the good part! We do a little cutting and filling, and we've got a twelve-foot-deep ditch all around on the inside. Or a fieldstone-and-concrete-lined cellar, with a little more work. Good drainage, too."

"More than enough storage space for all our crops," Chuck cut in.

His brother burbled on: "Then we run more logs out from the flat to the wall, and plank 'em over, and we've got the floors above the cellars, and we plant the cabins-or workshops or whatever-overtop of that. Fighting platform for the wall goes above the roofs; and we pipe all the rainwater to cisterns, to help out the spring. We can get windows, doors, roofing shingle and plumbing fixtures from half a dozen abandoned places not far away, and sawn timber from that mill south of Lebanon-there's a couple of hundred thousand finished board feet sitting in their covered yard."

"Floors? Roofs?" Juniper said; she didn't have a painter's imagination, or a draughtsman's. Then: "Oh, of course!"

Alex nodded. "We use the palisade as the outside wall for the cabins, give every family their own bedroom and hearth. Sort of like log row housing-"

"And we can spare the people and horse teams, until harvest and fall plowing, so-"

Juniper sat back, smiling and nodding as the enthusiasm spread and the clan convinced itself.

This will get a majority vote, no matter that it'll keep everyone working, she thought. It's good to have the Chief overridden now and then. And it's no bad thing to be busy, and tired at night. It keeps you from thinking about what you've lost, and who you've lost, and what the world is like right now outside our little enclave.

She let herself cry for Rudy now and then, mostly at night. Sleep came quickly, a gift of the Mother-of-All, and her dreams of him had been good.

After a while most of the adults and half the children were crowded around the table, adding suggestions. Judy gave her own:

"And that'll give us a regular place to hold school lessons."

A subdued groan, but not much of one-after pulling weeds all day, even a ten-year-old could contemplate sitting still at a desk for a while.

"And a place for Esbats and Sabbats when it's too wet to use the nemed. The barn's smelly and it leaks."

Juniper nodded; her Sacred Wood with its eerie circle of oaks and stone-slab altar had made the Singing Moon Coven the envy of pagan Oregon, but when it settled into rain, come September or October here in the foothills, it rained. Sometimes the sky wept chill drizzle for weeks at a time.

"We'll have space for a Moon School as well," Judy said. "And for private Craft workings."

As Maiden, she was responsible for training; the children enjoyed it, too, a lot more than the conventional schoolwork.

"Right," Judy said, looking around. "All in favor?"