The Protectors war

"Padre, I'm afraid you'll not be granted opportunity for martyrdom the now," she said dryly, hoping someone wouldn't make a stupid crack about wicker men and mistletoe-it encouraged cowan superstitions.

"Ransom, of course," Mathilda said, standing herself and crossing her arms on her narrow chest; her ma

She was glaring too, and doing a rather better job of it than the priest. Underneath the armor and padding they'd removed-a quilted-silk gambeson of all things-she wore a black T-shirt and jeans, tucked into polished riding boots. She was slim but not ski

Perhaps she doesn't believe the bits about human sacrifices.

"My father will pay whatever you ask," she went on. "Then he'll come and take it back with the sword! And if you dare to hurt me, he'll kill you all!"

"Let me see your hand," Juniper said, extending her own.

The girl glared for a moment more. "I'm not shaking hands with you!"

"Good," Juniper said dryly. "For I wasn't offering to. Show your hand, or I'll have one of my clansfolk march you over, young lady."

The hand confirmed a guess: callus around the rim made by forefinger and thumb. "Swordsmans' hand," they called it these days. It was just starting with the youngster, but there. Which said interesting things about the girl, and possibly even more interesting things about her father and her father's attitudes and plans.

"I'm not interested in the tyrant's gold, girl," Juniper said, releasing her.

She flushed, something Juniper could sympathize with, being a redhead herself and of a more extreme type. You couldn't hide it when the blood moved under your skin.

"My father is not a tyrant!" she said. "He saved everyone from the Change!"

"And mine is a good lord," young Chaka said, glowering in his turn. "He'll pay ransom for me and all his men here."

There was muscle on his arms and shoulders already, fruit of an early start with the sword, and judging by his hands and feet he'd be a tall man himself if he lived.

"It's true that your father's not so bad as some," Juniper said to the boy. "However, think about one thing-could we have done what we've done, without their help?" She indicated the farmers with a jerk of her head. "And think about why they were ready to help us. Ask your father about it, too, when you see him next."

The boy sat again, as if someone had cut his strings; that jarred his head, and he put his hands to it. Evidently he'd taken more of a thump on the noggin than his friend.

"Aren't you going to get him a doctor?" Mathilda asked scornfully.

"Indeed we will, when our medicos have finished with the gravely hurt," Juniper said. "But you can rest easy, we don't harm children."

That got under her composure a bit, and she nearly growled. Juniper hid a smile, and waved Eilir and Astrid over.

This one's going to be trouble, she signed-with her back to the girl.

The others moved so that their fingers couldn't be seen either; no sense in taking chances.

We've got sixty civilians to move a day's march to the border and a fight if any of their cavalry patrols catch us, Eilir signed. What's the priorities, Chieftainly Mom?

Getting those people home, Juniper said. But this girl could be very important politically. Arminger has no other child, and he dotes on this one, from what we hear.

Astrid's mouth opened to reply, and then her head whipped up. "Nazgul!" she shouted, a huge, clear, bell-like sound, and reached over her shoulder for an arrow.

So did everyone else, as the slender thin-winged shape of the sailplane banked over their heads. It was a standard pre-Change sporting model, whispering silent through the air overhead, although the Protector's eye on the wings was new, as was the shark mouth painted on the teardrop-shaped nose. Counterweight-powered launching ramps on hilltops could get the gliders well into the air, and the mountain-flanked trough of the Willamette was good soaring country.

Juniper's voice tripped on Aylward's as they shouted: "Careful!" and "Ware the drop!"

Arrows went soaring up if you shot into the sky. They also came down, pointy-end first, and traveling fast.

Nobody bothered the first time the aircraft came down the line of the rail; it was at over a thousand feet, and probably moving more than sixty miles an hour. It came from the southeast and over the bridge, down to where the wreckage of the railcar lay, then banked sharply to the right over the two wooded hills where the Mackenzies' local friends had hidden. The glide turned into a soar as it struck the updraft over the hills, turning, banking, sweeping upward in a gyre like a hawk circling for height: exactly like a hawk.

"He'll see you, and report to the citadel, and my father's men-at-arms will hunt you down like rabbits," Chaka said.

"Shut up, boy," Rowan growled, eyes on the sky as he laid his ax aside and pulled his bow from the loops beside his quiver.

"He's coming back!" Aylward called. "Wants a closer look to be sure what's going on. Ready!"

The glider pivoted on a wing tip, pointed its nose on a downward slant, and came on as it traded height for speed; the pilot could do that safely now that he knew there was a source of lift in easy reach. Juniper felt her breath grow quick, and grabbed it with an effort of will. A flight of arrows went up from the Mackenzies grouped around the toppled railcar, and a groan from everyone watching except the two children, who cheered-the heads winked in the sunlight as they turned, well below the glider.

"Ready!" Aylward shouted. "Nice no-deflection shot, now. Wait for it!"

Juniper didn't bother to set an arrow to her bow; she just didn't draw a heavy enough stave to be useful at extreme ranges. Aylward kept his bow on his back, hands working deftly on the big crossbow instead, moving screws and sighting rings. The bow was a complete set of leaf springs from a truck; it needed a complex crank mechanism to pull the string back against two thousand pounds of resistance, and Sam would get only one shot:

Tunggg-whack!

The three-foot bolt of forged steel disappeared northward, its curved vanes twirling it like a rifle bullet. It moved far too fast to see more than an elongated blur, but Aylward's shout of satisfaction echoed the heavy flat plinking sound of the missile striking the light fiberglass of the glider. There was a reason he was known throughout the Willamette country as the archer.

"Shoot!" he bellowed.

The scout glider staggered in the air when the bolt hit, but it recovered quickly-apparently neither the pilot killed nor anything vital in the controls destroyed. It did lose a crucial three hundred feet of altitude.

Forty bowstrings snapped against the leather and metal of bracers. They would have only one shot as well; the aircraft was doing better than ninety miles an hour, skimming less than a hundred feet up. None of them was used to shooting at targets moving that fast, either.

All but two of them missed; Eilir, Astrid and Rowan would argue for the rest of their lives over whose shots hit. The glider nosed up, up and up until its climb passed the stall point, and then it fell like a fluttering leaf as the wings lost lift.

"We'd best move, Lady," Sam was saying before the sound of the rending crash and the shrill cheers of the Mackenzies died. "He won't be reporting back"-they could see the pilot hanging limp in the broken canopy, and that was splashed red on the inside-"but when he doesn't come back on time, someone with his flight plan will have someplace to look."

Juniper nodded, feeling oddly depressed for an instant at the sight of the broken glider, despite all the other fears and griefs of the day. It had been so long since she saw manmade wings in flight, and it was like a glimpse of the lost world.