The Protectors war

For a moment a thought moved in her, formless as roiling cloud, and she closed her eyes-then her will gave it words and purpose. She murmured beneath her breath, moving her hands in certain symbols:

"Sweet foam-born Cyprian, send them each the love that will be best for them. As the Young God rises to wed You in this season, to each send him, send him on the wings of Your wind, send him on the tides of Your sea." Then, surprising herself: "And for me also. By Your Cauldron, by the spear of the Horned Lord, by the joining of the two that brings all creation, so mote it be!"

She could feel the spell prayer leave her like a dart cast into a tempest; feel it borne up by winds that smelled of apple blossom and fresh-cut hay and somehow also of musk and heat. Laughter sounded in her ears, proud and fond.

The thought barely had time to bring unease when there was a buzz of comment from outside, and the sound of the gate horn. Seconds later a youngster ran into the Hall, panting and disheveled and slightly damp; she stopped to take a deep breath and smooth down her kilt and plaid before she came to Juniper in the high seat and shyly dipped knee and head, pulling off her bo

Why, it's Melissa's Tamar! Juniper thought. Must have run all the way up from Dun Fairfax.

It wasn't that far, even counting the way the hidden direct path wound back and forth up the hillside, but it was steep and awkward in the dark.

"Lady Juniper," she said. "My Dad, he's sent me with a message. Private message."

The girl was fairly bursting with the importance of her mission, and Juniper smiled indulgently.

"Is i an eorna nua tu a flieiciail, Tamar. You're as welcome as the first shoots of barley, and every Mackenzie has a right to speak to the Chief."

She signaled the other musicians to keep going, laid down her fiddle and bent a little to let the girl whisper in her ear. More dancers moved out onto the floor, and the bustle built back.

"He says you should come. Come with Chuck, he said, and no more others than you must. He's found something you need to see."

Chapter Eight

North Sea/Grand Canaria

August 21st-30th, 2006 AD-Change Year Eight

The captain's cabin of the Pride of St. Helens held a bunk, a desk, several chairs, and a curved couch ru

"Thank you very much," Sir Nigel said to Captain Nobbes, fighting down a slight pang of envy at the family portrait. Alleyne's alive; that's what really matters.

The Tasmanian was a slim man only a few inches over Loring's five-foot-five, snub-nosed, with graying brown hair and close-cropped beard and dark blue eyes, his face ta

"To your escape, Sir Nigel," he said.

Nigel lifted his glass, sniffed and sipped; the brandy was excellent, with a complex fruity aftertaste beneath the bite.

"A Tasmanian brand?" he asked.

"Kiwi. Nelson, South Island," Nobbes said. "I've Bund-aberg rum, if you'd rather, six months old and fit to grow hair on yer chest."

He laughed at the flitting expression of distaste on Nigel's face, and went on: "The Kiwis helped finance this expedition- New Zealand 's a sort of federation centered on Christchurch, nowadays. I'm afraid the North Island got knackered, with Auckland at one end and Wellington at the other, but the South Island took surprisingly little damage-about like Tasmania, in fact."

" Tasmania sounds rather paradisical."

Nobbes chuckled. "Maybe, compared to the rest of the world. It was tight, but we brought ourselves through with no famine or plague or warlords. Though you should hear how the folk from Hobart and Launceston complained at having to move out to the country and do some real hard graft."

Sixty million dead here would have been thankful for the opportunity, Nigel mused grimly, hiding his thoughts with a sip of the brandy.

He remembered driving refugees back into the waters of the Solent at pike point, and improvised galleys ramming boats where gaunt women held up their children just before the steel-plated bows struck.

And towing rafts of bodies out to sea, with the fish and gulls at them. You fellows had an easy time of it with the Bass Strait and distance between you and the worst.

The ship heeled a little more as a gust of wind struck her sails; Nobbes cocked his head at a volley of orders and rush of feet, and nodded absently in approval at the "Heave- ho!" of a deck team hauling on a rope.

"Taking you in wasn't pure good nature," Nobbes admitted. A smile: "And not just that King Charles gets my royal Aussie hackles up. You've got knowledge and skills that'll be useful on the other part of my mission."

Nigel nodded. "What do you actually do with the nuclear weapons?"

"Put them in big steel boxes, fill the boxes with molten lead-the Pride's ballast is lead ingots in stainless-steel boxes-then dump them in subduction zones off the edges of the continental shelves," Nobbes said.

"Hardly seems worth the trouble," Nigel said. It will work – thank God for plate tectonics – but: He went on aloud: "Seeing that even if the explosive triggers would function, which they will not, chain reactions are inhibited somehow. Certainly the power reactors just sit and glow, even without the cooling systems. The boffins in Winchester think they'll keep doing that until the isotopes decay."

Nobbes shrugged. "Prime Minister Brown is a raving Green with a bee in his bo

"British ships have orders to scuttle them too," Nigel said. And how nice it must be to have the chance to worry about environmental issues, rather than starving or having ca

Nobbes finished his brandy. "Another? No? And then there are the war gasses. We certainly don't want those to fall in to the wrong hands. We can't do anything about the ones stored in places like Kazakhstan, but those nearer the coastlines-"

Nigel smiled. "My dear fellow, you don't have to convince me. You've saved my life, and my son's, and Hordle's-and Hordle left everything behind and risked his life to save ours, which is a debt I can only repay through your generosity. You're offering us asylum in what appears to be the last outpost of civilization. I'm perfectly willing to work my passage, and I'm well used to implementing plans I consider total codswallop, simply because I'm told to do it. Dealing with the war gasses isn't even that dangerous, if you're careful. The organophosphate nerve agents can be neutralized with ru