The Protectors war

"Can I have the tusks?" black-haired Julie asked Alleyne. "I know that they're yours, you're the first spear, but seeing as it's my totem and all: "

Alleyne nodded, a bit bemused. It would all seem a bit put-on, if I hadn't spent the past decade playing at knights-in-armor, he thought. Then: Well, no. I played at it before the Change, with lath swords and careful rules. With edged steel, it's all too real: and these Rangers are all younger than I.

He'd noticed that in England, too. Alleyne had been twenty when the Change struck; a young adult, but adult. Those who'd been in their early teens when the world went mad were different; almost as different as men his age or Hordle's were from his father's generation.

And I suppose children born since will be more different still.

He was working as he thought. They lashed the hogs' hind legs to sticks, tied ropes to those and then over convenient branches, hoisting the carcasses to drain and for ease of access. Besides the monster boar there was another of about two hundred pounds, a young sow of the same age, and half a dozen others down to near suckling size. Gutting and ski

"I hate to lose the heads and guts," a red-haired boy said. "Wasting all that headcheese and sausage casing, it's not right."

"Be thankful we can salvage most of the meat, this time of year," Astrid said. It was mildly warm, in the seventies,

Alleyne estimated. "Lucky none of them are wormy. Besides, the coyotes and crows and ants have to eat, too. It'll cool well in the springhouse, though, and be all the better for hanging a little when we get it to Dun Laurel."

"Do you get many boar that size?" Alleyne asked, whetting a curve-bladed ski

"Christ, I hope not," Hordle added, as he slung the animal's head-minus the tusks-aside; half a dozen hounds squabbled a little over precedence; then the victors settled in for concentrated gnawing while the others went for lesser prizes. "This one was more excitement than I like when I'm standing up."

There are more and more of them every year, Eilir signed, pausing with the hilt of the knife in her teeth before she made the first anus-to-throat cut on one of the sows. And the big ones get bigger and bigger. There were so many hunters in the old days, with guns, that they could keep them down. We can't.

"Pigs like brushy country, right enough, after oak or beechwood," Hordle said, hauling the boar up hand-over-hand without perceptible strain; the huge muscles bunched and coiled under the pale skin of his shoulders and back. "Lots of roots and such. They're a bloody menace back in Blighty these days and getting worse. Not enough people to keep them down there either."

Eilir nodded; this time she stuck the knife into the tree trunk to speak for an instant-you had to be careful about the uncooked blood and flesh of pigs.

The things are getting to be a real pest here in the Valley too, and there's all the camas root and abandoned farmland for them. Nothing short of a tiger will tackle a grown boar, or a sounder of sows with piglets, and what they do to a garden or vineyard is just enough to make you cry, not to mention the way they rip up the woods. And they breed like rabbits.

"They might as well be people," Astrid said dryly, to general laughter; Eilir laughed too, a silent mirth with a toss of her head that made Alleyne chuckle himself.

They loaded the carcasses on the packhorses-the boar was quartered first, since it would be unfair to make any one horse carry quite that much. The canyon path ran beside a waterfall; then behind the falling water. A deep pool lay below; they all slid down a rope secured to a steel piton driven into the living rock and dove and swam in it, or stood under the fringes-but only the fringes, since the stream was narrow but the water fell from nearly two hundred feet above. After a moment-it was cold water-they hauled themselves out on the rocks and spread towels to dry off.

And I'm just as glad that it's cold water, Alleyne thought. Given the scenery, one doesn't wish to make one's interest too clear, eh? Free and easy is one thing, rampant another.

Astrid leaned back on her palms and looked up at the water falling down the green-mantled black rock, seeming to drift as it launched itself free from the cliff and then turning to swift-plunging silver lace farther down. She signed instead of speaking, clearer under the toning roar of the falls: That's why we call this area Mithrilwood. In the winter, when the mist freezes on everything it's like a world of silver.

I'd like to see it then, he replied. But not to wash in.

She laughed at his shiver, and then looked away with a flush that spread down from face to breasts.

Eilir leapt up: Let's get home!

Home in Mithrilwood had turned out to be, somewhat to his surprise, a log-cabin lodge with a stone kitchen attached, built in the 1930s by the CCC. Whoever that acronym belonged to had had high standards of craftsmanship. The low building was better than a hundred feet long and nearly forty wide, with a great fieldstone hearth set in one wall. The high-peaked shingle roofs were green with moss save where the Rangers had made repairs in recent years; outbuildings of the same construction were sleeping quarters, stables, storehouses, and a springhouse-diverting a cool stream through it provided a semblance of refrigeration, enough to keep meat and milk fresh a bit longer. The works of man hugged the earth amid tall Douglas firs, maples and oaks, scattered through a stretch of rolling hilly land; brush and saplings were reclaiming the road that had led here before the Change, save for a narrow path kept open by axes and hooves.

Once the meat was stowed and the horses stabled, the Rangers set to practice for the rest of the afternoon, except for a pair whose turn it was to cook. Alleyne saw Hordle's eyebrows rise as they shot at the mark; every one of them was a good archer, and some were very good even by the exacting standards Nigel Loring had set for the regulars. They joined in for the unarmed-combat practice, recognizing Sam Aylward's eclectic freeform, and then for sword drill:

"Give it a go?" Astrid asked.

"Ah: certainly," Alleyne said.

I'll have to be careful not to hurt her feelings, he reminded himself.

He had his own heater-shaped shield along, and there were plenty of the alderwood practice blades much like the longsword he customarily used; he took stance with his left foot advanced, shield up under his eyes and his sword over his head, hilt towards her. The protective bars across the face of the drill helmet they found for him might well be an advantage, since he was used to wearing a visored sallet rather than the open-faced helms favored in western Oregon. Astrid was using Bearkiller gear-a round shield two feet in diameter, and a long single-edged sword with a basket hilt, much like a Renaissance schiavone or a claymore.

"Kumite!" said the Ranger acting as referee. Fight!

The point of Astrid's sword flicked out at his eyes, seeming to float and then blur like a frog's tongue after a fly. Fast, he thought admiringly, and smacked it aside with a two-inch movement of his shield, whipping the longsword down in an overarm cut.

Crack!

The hard polished leather of the targe shed the edge, precisely angled to throw him off-balance and jar every bone in his body down to the small of his back. He recovered with a skipping hop like a child jumping rope as her blade hissed in from the side in a hocking cut at the side of his knee; she blocked his counterthrust with an upward flick of the practice blade, striking from the wrist: