The Protectors war

Will Hutton spoke as he reached for a rib: "I don't think Arminger's men were pushin' hard, Mike, not once they realized these English folks was past 'em for good. We may have killed a couple; had about half a dozen wounded ourselves. Susa

Nigel Loring stirred. Michael Havel held up a hand: "Everything in its place, Sir Nigel. Let's hear Lady Juniper first."

Juniper took a pull at her beer. "Is tuisce deoch na sceal. A story begins with a drink."

To her surprise, Sir Nigel answered in the same tongue: "But Nuair a bhio

Juniper chuckled and inclined her head. "Ah, but beer, now: Well, it all started a little before Beltane-May Eve to you cowans," she went on, her storyteller's voice clear without loudness, the words smoothly knit. "We'd gotten word that the Protector and most of his household troops were out away past the Columbia Gorge."

Signe nodded; so did Sir Nigel.

"We were with him, worse luck," the Englishman said. "Pretty country, but deplorable company."

Juniper chuckled. "And it struck us that since Witches are not obliged to turn the other cheek, a good ringing slap across his was due for the breaking of our border. I was killing half a flock of birds with one stone: "

Chapter Thirteen

Dun Juniper/Sutterdown, Willamette Valley, Oregon

April 29th-May 3rd, 2007 AD-Change Year Nine

Juniper yawned as she set the big basket of eggs down on the wooden counter, then went to one of the smaller sinks to wash her hands-getting their potential offspring out from under sitting free-range hens wasn't the most sanitary procedure in the world. Besides which, the birds pecked even when you thanked them politely and explained your need, which was understandable but a

"Thanks, Juney," Diana Trethar said absently, sitting at a table and making notes. "I'm trying to come up with something different for this Beltane feast coming."

"Diana, it's going to be a potluck anyway! Do a pig or two, roast venison if Cernu

The slim dark woman returned to her lists, obviously not having heard a word. Unlike most people, her current job wasn't all that different from what she'd done before the Change-in her case, ru

"I just want something new," she said after a moment of pure focus, eyes blank as she tapped the feather of her quill pen against her lips.

Juniper gave a peal of laughter. "Remember when the problem was making food for twenty feed thirty-five?"

Diana flashed her a quick grin. "That's what the Eternal Soup was for," she said. "Most efficient way of feeding a big group ever invented."

"Most boring, you mean."

"That too. But we were usually too hungry and too scared to be bored back then, if I remember it right." Her eyes went back to the paper. "Hmmm: custards for dessert, maybe: "

The rest of the long kitchen set against the rear of the Hall was bustling; ancient Mackenzie tradition, hallowed by all the years since their very first harvest, was that the Chief kept open house and a free table-for clansfolk, visitors, and even for gangrels and tramps. Bakers reached into the arched brick ovens with long wooden paddles, bringing out rolls and fruit tarts and round arched loaves of bread with an eight-spoked Wheel cut into their brown crusts; the ovens and the bank of woodstoves made it warm even early in the morning with doors and windows all open, and pleasantly full of a medley of good scents that made the saliva rush into her mouth: the sharp odor of brewing herbal tea, bread and biscuits baking, pancakes in butter-greased skillets bubbling and developing lacy crusts around their edges, porridge giving off smooth thick pooofh: pooofh sounds, and then there were bacon and ham and sausages sizzling and popping:

Dishes were already coming back on trolleys. At one of the large sinks salvaged from the kitchens of a hotel, a team of "corks"-individuals who could be stuffed into any empty chore that needed doing-were scrubbing briskly and setting the plates and saucers and mugs to drain. One of them had a braid of white-blond hair down her back and a slightly mutinous look on her long sculpted face.

Juniper gri

She let the washing continue until the current stack was done, then called her name, jerking her chin towards the main Hall. Astrid tapped Eilir on the shoulder, and they took off their bib-aprons and dodged out into the great room, tossing them at two others who were on the duty roster and looking reasonably finished. There were more folk at the long tables than was usual, making a cheerful clatter of cutlery and of voices as they called back and forth; most of those who were going to Sutterdown for the ceremonies had chosen to eat here rather than in their own homes. Juniper went to the sideboard where food and crockery waited, filled a big bowl with oatmeal porridge-it was studded with dried fruit, cherries and chunks of apple and pear and crumbled hazelnuts-poured on thick yellow cream, put a mug of the tea on her tray, and made her way to the head table. That was raised on a low dais, and her chair was a thronelike affair carved from oak and maple and walnut by De

That and a view over the room were privileges of rank. The sun was just up, and the verandas outside made it a little dim here without artificial light; god-faces and colored symbols loomed out of the tall dimness above. Racked spears and swords glittered near the big side doors; men, women, children and dogs wandered in and out, along with a damp, chilly spring morning air.

She threw hellos and good mornings left and right as she walked up to the head table; eating there had come to seem normal, albeit a little like living forever in a hotel. Sometimes it was a relief to sneak down to the kitchens late at night and have a muffin with just Eilir, or make something herself with a few old friends.

"At least when I was a singer, I wasn't on display all the time," she muttered, after she'd set her tray down and made the blessing and Invocation over the food and began to ply her spoon.

"Getting nostalgic again?" Chuck Barstow said.

He set down a tray heaped with eggs and fried ham and potatoes and biscuits beside her and started stoking his leanly muscular frame; Second Armsman and Lord of the Harvest were both jobs that kept you sweating. In the seat beyond him Judy yawned and blinked over a bowl like Juniper's. It was just six o'clock and she'd never been a morning person, one of the few serious incompatibilities she and Juniper had; it was also one reason she and Chuck lived in the Hall, where you didn't have to get your own breakfast. Her black cat clambered painfully onto her lap, curled up and went to sleep, not even waking up for the cream-pouring, but then Pywackett was fourteen and a bit decrepit, which made it natural. Cuchulain thumped his tail on the floorboards behind her chair and then went back to sleep himself, despite determined attempts at dog-bothering by a couple of young Hall cats just out of kittenhood.