Sunrise Lands

Rape was bad enough, a dirty profanation of the Mys teries, of the loving union between Lord and Lady that made all creation. But there were evil men in any people and such things happened sometimes, especially in war. To kill a woman's child and then force her and then kill her through the womb, though-he half expected Earth Herself to open up and swallow him and everything else male and breathing within a mile, down to the hedge-hogs, and at a gulp.

The thought made him look down uneasily and shud der, but at least it distracted him enough to let his stomach settle.

Rudi winced and looked aside and began to speak, to wave them all forward, but Eithne held up a hand and stopped him. Her face was white and set as well, but in fury rather than fear. She moved forward and bent quickly to rearrange the dead woman's clothes. When she straightened again there was blood on her hand; the woman's blood, and the child's.

"Stand still!" she snapped as he and the other men began to back away. "We don't have time for nonsense! You first, tanist of the Chief."

Rudi bent to receive the defiled blood with a face like iron. Edain shuddered again as she touched his fore head and cheeks, then repeated it quickly with the other men.

"You who bear the Lord's semblance-avenge this His Lady's blood, and make Earth clean of it," she said. Suddenly her lips ski

She was an initiate and priestess; Edain was still sim ply a dedicant, but he knew the voice of the Mother when he heard it… and She was angry. There was blood and death in that sound, and his skin rippled like a restive horse's at the midnight magic in it.

Rudi nodded grimly. "Let's go, Mackenzies!"

They did. Ri

"Your girl," Ri

"That means we'll win this fight," Otter said, snarling eagerly. "Good!"

Edain shook his head. The Mackenzie herself had stood as Goddess-mother at his Wiccaning-and Dun Juniper was the center of the Mysteries. Also his mother was high priestess of a coven. He knew more about it all than most young men his age.

"No, it means the other side's going to lose this fight," he said grimly. "That's not the same thing as us wi

Ri

Whether the kettle hits the pot, or the pot hits the kettle… Edain thought, but did not say.

"Lord Goibniu, shelter us with Your arm," Otter prayed; his family were smiths, and favored the Iron master. "Goddess Mother of-All, gentle and strong, be gracious to Your warriors."

Fire showed through the murk. They stopped, fitted arrows to string, then moved forward at a walk. Mud squelched beneath his brogans, and the pleated wool of his kilt shed beads of wet as it swayed about his thighs. Edain took a deep breath and let it out, another and another; ground and center, ground and center.

Dad was right; waiting's hard. The fighting just past spun through his mind in a welter of foul images, like butchering time but with people, and then there was the horror near the cart. Lugh Long-Spear, spare me to avenge that!

The mud smell was starting to yield to that of burning timber, but the fog was thicker than ever close to where the river ran into the bay, like having wool pushed in your nose and ears. The firelight was like a candle seen through glass thick with frost.

"Good as a beacon," Raen said to Rudi, softly.

"Probably why they did it, to show their raiding par ties the way back. The fog works for them, but not if they get lost themselves."

The Haida had scouts out, but the fog that had helped them hindered now. One loomed out of the dimness, started to level his spear, started to yell, a high thin sound. Rudi killed him with a snapping lunge to the throat and it ended in a gurgle. More yells came out of the fog, from the direction of the burning light. The raiders there knew something was wrong.

Rudi turned and vaulted into Epona's saddle.

"Hit them hard and keep moving," he said to the Mackenzie warriors. "They won't know how many we are if we don't let them have time to think, and by the time they do the Tillamookers will be here."

Then he filled his lungs and called, a great brass cry like a chorus of trumpets given words:

"We are the point- "

Edain drew a deep breath and joined in as the others took it up:

"We are the edge "We are the wolves that Hecate fed!"

"At them, Mackenzies! Follow me!"

A knot of Haida warriors loomed out of the fog, standing guard over a clot of several dozen locals, men and women and children bound and sitting on the ground; bundles of tools lay beside them-adzes and broadaxes and two man saws and drills and the rest of what you used for working wood.

The whole party dashed forward. A sudden banshee wail from beside him made Edain start; Eithne had been quiet since they left the dead woman. Now she wrenched a spear away from one of the Sutterdown men as she gave that appalling cry, a snatch so hard and swift he yelled in turn from the pain of his bruised fingers as she dashed past.

It was what the Clan called a battle spear, six feet of ashwood with a foot of double-edged blade on one end and a heavy steel butt cap on the other. There was an art to using one…

Eithne charged into the knot of guards with the spear blurring over her head like the fan of a wi

Too many of them for her to handle, Edain thought grimly, setting his feet and ignoring everything else. Got to The string of his longbow went snap on his bracer. A man about to swing a war-hammer with a head of pol ished green stone into the back of Eithne's skull went down as the arrow tore through his throat in a double splash. Another, another…

Dimly he was conscious of shooting better than he ever had before, even at Sutterdown at the Lughnasadh games just past, when he'd carried away the silver arrow. Not much distance, but bad light and moving targets-and some of the arrows were passing close enough to Eithne to brush her with the fletching, a shaft for every two quick panting breaths.

Things burned behind them: sheds and houses and the ribs of a fair sized ship on a slipway. Four big boats of cedar and fir were grounded bow-first on the mud nearby, shark-lean flat bottomed things forty or fifty feet long, their prows carved in blocky angular depictions of ravens and orcas and hawks colored black and white and bloodred. Heads were spiked to the wood below their gri

Edain was even more distantly aware that Rudi and the others were doing something… cutting the bonds of the first set of prisoners, and the men were snatching up their tools-a maul or a broadax made a weapon, if you were strong and full of hate.

The freed captives swarmed over the last of the Haida guards. But more raiders were coming in, driving peo ple before them, often laden with huge bundles of their own goods; and then armed Tillamookers started arriv ing themselves in dribs and drabs, hunting through fog for the flames and the sounds of battle. Village militia with hunting spears and crossbows and farming tools, the town guard with glaives and poleaxes, a snarling scrambling brabbling fight amid burning buildings and ankle-deep mud and shoreside rocks that shifted underfoot as the fog began to lift. Some of the Haida tried to keep them off while others heaved to push the boats back into the water.