The Protectors war

"How did the last lambing go?" Melissa asked.

Tamar played with her brother and the dogs on the floor. Edain came back in, his light hair sticking up in three or four directions, despite last-minute attempts to slick it down with his fingers, then joined them.

"The delivery went well enough, love," he said, wandering over. "After I turned the lamb. Fair bollixed up to start with, it was, and no mistake."

A small wooden keg rested in an X-trestle of boards on the counter, with mugs on shelves above; he took one down and tapped himself some beer. He'd paid De

"Want one, love?"

"Later, thanks, when I can sit still and enjoy it. The ewe's OK?"

"Dolly's fine, and the lamb should live. Larry shouldn't have had to deal with the whole flock, not this time of year, not the way it's grown. He's well enough with a birthing ewe, but Tamar will learn the way of it better, I think. We might put her and, mmm, young Hickock to work helping him when school's out for summer."

She gri

"Lord and Lady forbid!" he answered, equally quiet. "Though she and Billy Hickock get on well enough. Give it six or seven years, though."

The rest of the household came in, from the other rooms or from work outside, and busied themselves setting out the cutlery and butter and bread and beer amid a cheerful crackle of conversation about the day's work and gossip and the Ostara dance that would be held in the big threshing-barn after supper. There was Eleanor, over her temper now, Aunt Joan-a nice enough old bird, and unlike her older sister, fully functional, thank God-and the aunt's two children, a boy named Harry about eighteen and a girl called Jeanette a little younger; also two unrelated young men from Sutterdown and their wives. Both couples were working for him to get experience while they saved up to start and stock their own crofts; one of the wives had a new baby and the other was expecting, but not as far along as Melissa.

Not a bad crew, he thought. And very helpful around the farm.

As the First Armsman he could call on the other households to fill in for him when he was called off on duty by the Chief, and they could deduct it from their dues to the Clan in turn. It wouldn't even cause much resentment, given how the rest of them had leaned on him for teach-and-show in the early years, when they were learning the farmer's trade and mistakes could mean empty bellies. Still, he preferred to manage from his own resources as much as he could-nobody liked having to neglect their own land. The last of the spring plowing was still to do, barley and potatoes to plant:

Though all the youthful energy makes me feel me own age now and then, right enough.

He snaffled off a roll from a pan Melissa had just taken out, tossing it in one callused hand until it was cool enough to eat; it had been a long time since bread and cheese in the saddle at noon, and the steaming-fresh wholemeal was good enough to eat without butter. She smiled sideways at him while she held the oven door open and prodded the meat, then stood and gave him a kiss; a little awkwardly, since she was six months along.

"That's ready: make yourself useful then, Sam," she said. "We're supposed to eat it at the table, you know."

The main dish was a roast of pork; the Smiths had slaughtered recently, and everyone swapped around to even out the fresh meat. He lifted the pan out and set it aside to stand for a few minutes before he carved, while Melissa made the gravy; the side dishes were potatoes roasted in the juices, and winter vegetables-boiled parsnips and carrots in a butter sauce, sauerkraut from the crocks in the cellar, and a dried-apple pie with whipped cream for dessert, which latter they'd been having more often since he managed to track down a hand-cranked beater whose owner felt like swapping for a bow.

He brought the great pot of soup to the table first, nose twitching, and ladled it into the bowls handed up. It was potato-and-cream, with bits of onion and densely flavored chunks of bacon that had been cured over applewood in an old Aylward family recipe.

Melissa seated herself at the other end of the table, and said the blessing-another advantage of Wicca, he'd found, was that you could shove off things like that on the lady of the household. He put his spoon to the soup, and lifted it "Sam! Sam!"

"Oh, bugger," Aylward said, at the shout and the sound of a fist pounding at the door; then he blew on the soup and swallowed hastily.

Larry Smith stuck his head in, the fog beads in his chin beard glistening. "Sorry, but something took one of the sheep, one of yours-a wether. I didn't hear anything, but Lurp"-the collie-"started barking. There's blood-sign but I couldn't pick up any tracks. It's down in the corner of the field, by the road."

"Bloody hell," Aylward sighed. Then: "You did the right thing."

Larry had been a bookseller before, but he was a fair tracker; he'd actually hunted deer a fair bit even then, and more since. Surprising to an English way of thinking, but the Yanks had had a lot more woodland than old Blighty even before the Change. If he hadn't seen anything, that meant there probably weren't any really obvious tracks.

"It could be anything, dogs or a big cat or some human dinlo," Aylward said.

Men were least likely; it would be bold bandits who went this deep into Mackenzie territory, and such wouldn't settle for one sheep. They'd go for horses and cattle-more valuable and easier to drive off-and for bicycles, tools, cloth, stored food.

Or it might be a trap meant to draw us off and then raid the dun.

"Get-" He thought, mentally crossing off the stumble-footed, feeble and incompetent, women pregnant or nursing, and a few steady types to keep an eye on things here. "-yourself, Bob, Alice, Steve, Jerry, and Carl. Full kit, but spears, not bows. It's going to be too dark to shoot worth shite and I wouldn't want to tangle with a cat in the dark without a nice big cat-sticker. Double guard on the wall and everyone else can kit up too, just in case. Meet me at the gate."

Larry nodded, turned and dashed back out. Aylward turned."Wally, you come with me. Shane, Deirdre, Allison, Nancy, you kit up but head for the walls with the others-it might be a trick. Lively!

"Probably just a hungry dog gone wild," he said to the rest at the table. "But we have to check."

A few of the youngsters on the verge of adulthood looked mutinous about being left out of the search party, but they knew better than to complain openly-this was something that came under his authority as an Armsman, and he didn't tolerate indiscipline.

Someone did mutter plaintively, "Does this mean the dance is off?"

He pulled on his arming doublet with its short sleeves and stiff leather-backed collar of chain mail, the fabric still wet and smelly, and swung his brigandine down from its hook on the wall; the accordion pleat in the leather along the left side let you put it on over your head like a jersey, and then tighten it and strap the catches. Then his sword belt, a bow-he took down and strung his hunting weapon, an eighty-pound popper, better suited to this work than the great war bow-plus quiver and spear; he left the cheek-pieces of the helmet pushed back for a moment.

Melissa and a few of the others had been busy cutting and buttering bread and slicing meat while those he'd named armed themselves. She wrapped the bundle in a cloth and put it into the haversack, then clipped that to the rings on the back of his brigandine and handed him a piece of the pork-the outer cut of the roast with some of the crackling, his favorite.

"You be careful, Sam," she said.

Wally and he knelt and bent their heads briefly as she made a sign over them and went on: