The Protectors war

Sam's daughter Tamar led up a two-wheeled cart pulled by a pair of little yearling oxen, her own hand-reared pets. It held a big plastic barrel of water and a motley collection of mugs; she filled one for each of them. All Sam's household were here in the field, and most of the able-bodied from the other families who held land in Dun Fairfax. None of the farms were big enough to justify a reaping machine of their own, so the dun kept two owned in common to share around, and everyone worked together getting in the harvest, turn and turn about as fields came ready-the usual arrangement in a Mackenzie settlement. People had come down from Dun Juniper as well, trading working time for future barrels of flour, or simply pitching in for neighborliness' sake since they planted little grain themselves; altogether there were about enough to bind and stook the wheat as fast as the two machines cut it.

"Thank you, sweetling," Juniper said to the girl. "And the horses are thirstier than we, sure. They should have something before they're taken to the pond or they'll overdo."

Juniper took off her straw hat and fa

"My ninth harvest since the Change," Nigel said meditatively. "And every one seems-"

"Like a reprieve?" Juniper suggested.

He raised the mug of water in salute. "Just so."

"Is this very different from a harvest in England?" Juniper asked; the first year had been hard here, and she suspected much worse in the British Isles, even on the islands.

"The harvest? Surprisingly similar; a bit earlier, and if this weather is typical-"

"It is that."

"-then the climate's more reliable here. In England it can rain any day of the week in any month of the year, and nowadays with no warning at all. It makes getting in the corn a trifle nerve-racking."

He looked north and east towards the towering peaks of the Cascades and the green slopes that were like a wall along the edge of the world.

"We've nothing like that in England, of course. I won't say this is the single most beautiful spot I've ever seen, but it's wonderfully varied. I like the contrast, the fields and orchards here-which are very much like parts of southern England-and then the tall mountains and wildwood so close, and the changing patterns of sun and shadow: beauty on very different scales, but complementary."

Juniper looked at him. "Well, well," she said. "It's hidden depths you have, Nigel."

His slightly watery blue eyes twinkled. "Sandra Arminger said much the same thing. But it was far more alarming, coming from her."

Juniper snorted and threw a twist of straw at him. "I should hope so!"

Her eyes went across the crowded field; Mathilda Arminger was there, ru

"I'm surprised she's not a total horror, with parents like that," she said quietly. "And she's just a child, when you get to know her. Spoiled more than a little, and with some odd notions, but not spoiled to the point of being really rotten, if you know what I mean."

"Is minic ubh bhan ag cearc dhubh, as the Gaels say," Loring replied, and winked at her.

"A black hen may often have a white egg, yes," she agreed. "But it's what hatches that counts."

"She's young, yet, very young. It takes a good deal to spoil a child that age, and I'd venture that the Armingers would shield her from the worst of the world they've made, for a while at least. Even complete rotters often love their children, in my experience."

He stared a moment, as if lost in memory. Tamar had gone around to fill buckets for the horses; they lowered their massive square heads and drank with slobbering enthusiasm. Down at the other end of the field the second reaper cut the last of the wheat, and there was an explosion of cheers from the folk at work. A half-dozen of them lifted the driver out of the seat and began tossing her in the air amid whoops and screams; she recognized Astrid, and the massive form of Little John Hordle, and the bright head of Alleyne Loring.

And all three of them pitched in to help as if there were no question of it being otherwise, Juniper thought. Which is a good sign, in my experience.

Rudi Mackenzie was around the edges there as well; then he and Mathilda Arminger came sprinting up to where Juniper waited.

"Can we take Dobbin and Maggie?" her son said. His eyes sparkled like green-gray gems in his ta

"All right," she said. "But remember; get them cooled down a bit before you let them drink."

"I know, Mom," he said, politely not adding an of course, though he'd grown up with horses in general and these two in particular-they were half his age.

Juniper and Nigel unharnessed the animals; Rudi and Mathilda sprang onto their massive backs, sitting as proudly as knights on their destriers. The horses accepted it calmly, moving off at an ambling walk towards the pond in the far southwestern corner of the field, where a willow-grown earthen bank held back the creek and made a watering point when this field was in the pasture-lea part of its rotation. Of course, they'd have done that without any guidance at all. Horses were not mental giants, but they usually had enough sense to betake themselves to water when they were thirsty; the problem was keeping them from drinking too much and doing themselves an injury.

"Good-natured beasts," Loring said, as they straightened the harness and draped it over the seat of the reaper. The bells on the great collars jingled one last time. "Mostly Suffolk punch, aren't they?"

"About three-quarters," Juniper agreed. "Chuck, ummm, found eight Suffolk mares right after the Change, and I like the breed. Strong as elephants and friendly as dogs, mostly. The stallion we put them to was a Percheron but we've been breeding back."

He cocked an expert's eye. "Your son has a way with horses; I've noticed it before. He reminds me of Alleyne at that age. Maude taught him mostly, of course. She had the better seat, in any case-far better than mine, then."

For a moment a bleak misery of grief settled over his usual mild cheerfulness, and then he shook it off with a scarcely visible effort, turning instead to the scene before them. Melissa Aylward came down from the gate at the top of the field, where a brace of wagons had drawn up half an hour ago. Quiet fell as she halted by Eilir's reaper and took the last grain cut in her hands, plaiting and shaping it into the form of the Queen Sheaf; she was the High Priestess of Dun Fairfax, and it was her right to make the Corn Mother and give Her the first blessing.

Juniper had been a little surprised at how good Nigel Loring was at binding a sheaf-or any other of a countryman's tasks, from handling a plow team to plashing a hedge. When she said so he smiled at her.

"My dear Ms. Mackenzie-"

"Nigel, Nigel! You've been living under the same roof as me all summer! You're being Stiff, Reserved and Proper again, like an old central-casting Englishman! And De

"Very well, my dear Lady Juniper. I grew up in farming country."