The Protectors war

I wonder what happened to Colonel Loring? he thought, not for the first time; it had been his old commander who provided the interruption-hand over the mouth, Fairburn knife through the kidney. Well, if anyone survived, it would be Sir Nigel Loring – not that it's likely anyone much in Britain did survive.

He grew conscious of his children's gaze, shook himself free of the brown study that had gripped him for a moment and bent over the bucket with busy hands. Their mother Melissa was finicky about what she let in the door too. Tamar and Edain sat on a stall partition and swung their feet as he washed, filling him in on what had gone on around home and at school and Moon School while he was away with the mission to the conference at Lars-dalen. Tamar was begi

"We do that at school for a whole hour every day now!" he boasted, beaming, a gap showing where two of his milk teeth had gone recently.

Tamar rolled her eyes. "Just the same way you showed me, Dad," she said with the heavy patience of thirteen for Six.

"That's the way to raise children," Aylward said with grave approval in his tone. "Good lad."

He'd been the one who got Lady Juniper to put that in the curriculum for all the Clan's schools, back in the second Change Year. Edain dropped the ashwood and went to examine the lamb, poking it with a finger and earning a suspicious look and bleat from Dolly.

"And what else?" Aylward asked.

What else for Tamar turned out to be herb lore, and the use of the spi

Aylward nodded tolerantly at her enthusiasm; he gave the predominant local religion the same grave formal courtesy he'd always extended the Church of England, but neither moved him much. Melissa was the High Priestess of the Dun Fairfax coven now, though, and strong for the whole business-also slightly irritated her husband had never become more than a Dedicant. She'd have preferred him as an Initiate at least, and preferably her High Priest.

Can't see meself prancing around under the moon with antlers on me head, he thought with a grin, then spat as the expression let some of the harsh soap into his mouth. Larry Smith had that job here at Dun Fairfax, and looked, in Aylward's considered opinion, a complete prat in the role. I must admit, it's a good religion for farmers. The festivals all make sense that way.

He'd seen Juniper's faith spread through the Mackenzie territories and beyond over the years like fast-growing ivy over a wall. Starting with the core group of coveners and friends who'd gathered at her cabin days after the Change, and out from there as they took in refugees- One recently retired English soldier caught out on a hunting trip, for instance -and then became the seed crystal of order and survival in this corner of the Valley. Now Tamar's generation was growing up, and to them the whole thing was as natural as water to a fish. Their children would probably forget that their pre-Change ancestors had mostly been Christians.

Lady Juniper's charisma hurts not a bit, too. She's come close enough to convincing me more than once, just by being what she is, not by preaching.

"I wish I could have come with you to Larsdalen, Dad," Tamar went on. "It must have been so cool with all the Dun Juniper people. You know, back when I was just a little girl, right after the Change, Lady Juniper gave me a candy bar? I can remember it clear as anything, when I went out in the road and asked her if she was a Witch? And now we're all Witches. That was right before the battle, when those people chased us out of Sutterdown and she called the Dark Lady to help us."

"I remember that, poppet," he said.

It had lost nothing in the retelling since; watching fact grow into legend and legend become myth in a few short years had been eerie, and the original skirmish had been weird enough. He splashed his face repeatedly to get the lye soap out of his eyelids, and then stuck his whole head in the bucket, coming up blowing before he scrubbed vigorously at his curly brown hair with the towel.

"I was at the battle meself, remember. And you haven't reminded me about the candy more than a thousand times."

His smile took any sting out of the words. Inwardly: And that put the plums in the pudding, beating back that probe the Protector sent. Herself going wild like that, ru

He shook off memory: a chalk pale blood-spattered face, eyes showing white all around the rims, red hair bristling like a fox's crest, and a voice that had echoed down from his head into his gut:

Edain took up the ax handle again, this time wielding it like a sword-or a six-year-old boy's conception of how you used a sword, tempered by watching adults practice the real thing fairly often.

"When Lady Juniper called the Lord 'n Lady 'n they smote the wicked!" he said with bloodthirsty enthusiasm. "She's great. She sings real nice, too."

Baraka and to spare, she has.

"And Dad was a hero. I'm go

"I'll teach you better than that," Aylward snorted. "Heroes run themselves onto spearpoints. I won, is what I did. Now come here, young'un."

He held the squirming boy by the neck while he did a quick daub-and-wipe with the towel. "There, that's got the worst of it off."

When he'd pulled on his shirt and jacket Tamar hopped down and proudly took up her light bow; he picked up a spear leaning against one of the poles that held up the lean-to roof of the open-fronted structure. It was six feet of smooth ashwood, with another foot of steel on top, ground down from a leaf spring to a knife shape that tapered to a vicious point along two razor edges, and he politely declined Edain's offer to carry it for him. One thing he'd gotten into the boy's head good and proper-via a few smart smacks on the backside-was that he didn't touch a weapon without permission. Of course, Edain craved the day when he'd be able to walk abroad with dirk and bow like his elder sibling, rather than just shooting at the mark under close supervision.

He balanced the spear over one shoulder as they all left the long shed, and whistled up his dogs-a big Alsatian and an even larger shaggy mutt, both rescued as pups. They'd been lying outside the shed, eyeing the sheep wistfully but far too well trained to do any bothering. The herd looked apprehensive; sheep didn't really like either men or dogs, and these had the comically naked look woolies always had right after shearing. At least there weren't many nicks or cuts this year; everyone had finally learned how to use hand shears on a wiggling sheep held clamped between the knees.

"Garm, Grip," he called, and they fell in behind him with eyes alert and tails wagging, accepting an ear-ruffling from Tamar and an arm around each neck from Edain. "We're off home, mind. No chasing rabbits. Heel."

They followed the humans down the gentle slope and towards the gate-he cocked a satisfied eye on the hawthorn seedlings he'd planted along the fences here and elsewere; they were growing fast, already chest-high, glowing with their early-set white flowers, scent a faint cool sweetness. By the time the planks had rotted out, they would be good cow-tight barriers that needed no sawn timber to repair; he'd learned how to lay, stake, pleach and ether a hawthorn hedge when he was about Tamar's age. His hands remembered, and others were learning.