The Protectors war

Di sighed. "I'd like to see the court, and Winchester. It moost be bee-yootiful."

Her eyes were wide at the thought of the metropolis. Nigel smiled; Winchester was the capital these days, and had all of ten thousand people year-round, the largest city in the British Isles after Cork. That was just enough to keep the eighteenth-century core of the cathedral town from falling completely to ruin. To this child and her generation, whose horizons were bound by the farm and the enclosing wilderness and the little hamlet of Wavendon to the west where she went to church on Sundays and school in the winter months, Winchester was what London had been to him. Only far more distant and unobtainable-a trip there a wistful daydream rather than an hour or two on a train or in a car.

"Perhaps you will take a trip there, one day," Nigel said.

Another solemn nod, then she looked at him more closely, and at Alleyne. "Dad says you're a hero, for standing up to the king," she said, and he blushed. Then she frowned. "But you don't look like a hero. You're too old, and you're going bald. You look like a daddy. He" -she pointed at the younger Loring- "He looks like a real hero. Right dreamy, he is. Laak t'old pictures."

Nigel laughed outright at that, and Hordle turned redder than ever as he suppressed bellow of mirth. The younger Loring brushed hay from his tousled yellow hair and smoothed his mustache in furtive embarrassment.

"Thank you," he said. "But he is my daddy, and he's far more of a hero than I. Let's have our di

The basket contained a pair of farm-style loaves, stone-ground whole meal baked that morning and still a little warm, butter out of the churn, two roasted chickens, their skins golden brown and crisp, potatoes done in their skins and a salad of fresh greens and tomatoes, a seasonal delicacy nowadays. Diana Bramble said a brief grace; John Hordle converted his reach for a leg into a vague gesture and clasped his hands as she spoke, then compensated by spi

" 'Bye, Little John!" she said. "I've got to go and do my jobs now. Carding and spi

"What a charming young miss," Nigel said. We always wished we'd had a daughter as well, he thought, and sighed slightly.

"Reminds me of my sister's kids," Hordle agreed, yawning.

"I'll take first watch, then," Nigel said, and gri

Alleyne snorted and they settled down again, but it was he who first lifted his head a few minutes later. "Hooves," he said.

Young ears, his father thought, and said aloud: "How many?"

"Half a dozen, at a guess, one more or less. Hordle?"

"Horses it is, sir. Not likely to be the neighbors dropping in for a cuppa, either, is it?"

Tension crackled through the loft. They looked at each other and began preparing with silent speed, the two Lorings helping each other into their complex harness as Hordle pulled on his padded tunic and the chain shirt over it. The great muscles in his arms coiled and bunched as he strung his longbow, and then he slipped the leather-and-steel guards on his forearms and counted the arrows in his quiver. They left the helmets for last; it would take only a few seconds, and they needed every fraction of sight and hearing to avoid having to use the gear at all.

"Thirty-nine," the bowman said quietly, his sausage-thick fingers deft on the feathered shafts.

"I don't want any of Bramble's people hurt," Nigel said in the same tone, but with a snap of command in it. "For any reason whatsoever. That's clear?"

The other men both nodded. By then the hooves were clear to the older man as well, a dull hollow clopping on the dirt and broken pavement of the A5130. Alleyne wormed through the hay to put his eye to a knothole, moving cautiously to spare the laths under them-there were sixty pounds of steel on him now, in addition to his own whipcord hundred seventy-five.

"Half a dozen and a packhorse," he whispered. "Just turning onto the lane to the farm. They're hobelars."

That meant mounted infantry archers, like the bulk of the regular army, equipped as Hordle was. Six made a section, the smallest unit; adding two mounted men-at-arms made it a lance. Nigel caught sight of them an instant later, jogging their mounts up the laneway, turning east at the dogleg that led past the pond and barns. A woman was there, the farmer's wife, a solid figure with a long rake in her hands and her brown hair done up in a bun under a wide-brimmed straw hat-real wheat straw, with a frayed edge.

She turned for an instant and shouted in purest West Riding, confirming Nigel's guess: "Di! Roon and fetch yer dad!" Then she went on to the soldiers: "Don't water yer 'orses there, lads. There's flax in t'pond, we just put it in ter ret and it's reet mucky, ba 'eck. Cum on oop t' t'ouse and use trough in t'yard instead, t'gate's open. There's soom apple tarts left over from di

That brought delighted smiles to the fresh-faced young men; one thing that hadn't changed was that army field rations were fit to gag a stoat. Nigel Loring realized with a start that only the section leader had been old enough to shave when the Change came-in fact, it looked as if most of them hadn't had their voices break by that day eight and a half years ago. They seemed younger than their years to him as well, despite the weather-beaten skins of outdoors-men.

"It's a kindly thought, Mrs. Bramble," the section leader said." 'Tis a hard late camp we'll hae tha night."

His patrol were all dust caked, with sweat ru

Nigel was close enough to hear him well. The accent was Scots, but not the gentle lilt of a Highlander; he'd pronounced the ght in "thought" with an almost guttural sound, not a simple hard T, and "night" as ni'cht. An Orkneyman, at a guess, and from somewhere remote like Westray at that, with bright blue eyes and a close-cropped black beard that had the white line of a scar through it. There was a corporal's chevron riveted to the sleeve of his mail shirt. The men took off their helmets at his waving gesture and swung down, leading the beasts over to the metal trough, joking with three girls only a bit younger than themselves who came out of the farmhouse kitchen bearing the promised food and drink. One Junoesque blonde had a tray of mugs and a stoppered jug, and two freckled redheads carried heaped plates of tarts.

Gu

"Drink water first, y' daft boogers," the section leader snapped. The men obeyed, most dumping a helmetful over their heads as well. "And one mug each, nae more. We've work tae do and it's eight hours before sunset." He held up a gauntleted fist. "Any man drunk on duty weil ansur tae my little friend here."

Then to the girls, in a quite different tone, reaching for the pastries: "Thank you, young misses. Ah'll cheust tak a nave-fil."

Nigel found himself nodding in approval as the patrol watered their horses and applied salve to their hides; the men hadn't even had to be told to see to their mounts before themselves, and their equipment was as neat as you could expect when working this overgrown country-the green-enameled metal of the mail shirts gleamed with a thin film of oil, and the fletchings on the arrows that jutted over each man's right shoulder were tight and even. There was a charge he recognized on the bucklers slung from their belts, too: the royal arms quartered with a chevron argent, three roses gules.