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"Quite the squire, eh, Samkin?" Hordle asked, a teasing note in his voice, and Barstow laughed.
"No, I'm not," Aylward said shortly. "I've got a good farm and some help with it, like more than one here. If you want squires, you'll have to go and apply at the Bearkillers. Bad enough I ended up ru
"Ru
Men and dogs walked in companionable silence out through the blockhouse and narrow gate, waving answer to the sentry's hail, then down the farm road that ran southward from Dun Fairfax; Aylward and Chuck made a gesture of reverence at the grave of the Fairfaxes not far distant, and Hordle nodded respectfully. A pair of ravens flew up from the gravestone, probably attracted by the offerings of milk and bread that some left there-which was ironic, since the old farmer and his wife had been Mormons, who'd bought the farm not long before the Change as a retirement place.
The settlement was in a valley that thrust into the foothills of the mountains and opened out westward towards the plain of the southern Willamette. The snowpeaks of the High Cascades were hidden by cloud, but the lower slopes rose north and south and east, shaggy with Douglas fir and western hemlock and the odd broadleaf oak or maple; drifts of mist trailed from the tops of the tall trees. There was a scent of damp earth as they walked past rolling fields, plowland and pasture and orchard, until they reached the road that followed Artemis Creek west out towards the plain.
That was blocked by a flood of off-white sheep for a moment, parting around the men like river water around rocks; the heavy, slightly greasy scent of them was strong, and their breath steamed in the damp, chill air. The man who watched the combined flocks of the Dun Fairfax families waved to Aylward, who made an exasperated sound and then waited as he came up, his collie at his heels. He wore sword and dirk as well, had his bow in the loops beside his quiver and a heavy ashwood shepherd's crook in his hands.
"Anything, Larry?" Aylward said to the man who'd once owned a bookstore.
"Took a shot at a coyote skulking around, but I missed," he said. His face was irregular and shrewd, with a tuft of chin-beard, what people meant when they said full of character.
Then the crook darted out and fell around the neck of a ewe who'd decided to head down towards Artemis Creek.
"Back there, unless you want to hit the stewpot early, you brainless lump of fuzzy suet!" he said wearily, then went on to the men: "Otherwise, just another day with the damned sheep. Lord and Lady, but they're boring! It could be worse; I could be herding turkeys. Anyway, I wanted to talk about the Yule rites, if you had a minute, Sam."
"I'm a bit busy just now, Larry," Aylward said. "Later. And I'm only a Dedi-cant, any rate."
As they walked on past the sheep Chuck gri
"Larry does a perfectly good job of it," Aylward said stolidly. "Better than I could, any rate."
"And you can't see yourself with antlers on your head dancing beneath the moon, eh, Samkin?" Hordle teased.
"Chuck's High Priest at Dun Juniper when he's not Lord of the Harvest and Second Armsman," Aylward pointed out with satisfaction. "Antlers, robe, dancing and all."
"Ooops! Sorry, mate, I forgot-no offense."
"None taken," Chuck Barstow said, laughing aloud. "I just like getting a rise out of Sam about it now and then."
"It's being raised Church of England," Hordle said, entering into the spirit. "Actually believing in anything isn't allowed."
Aylward chuckled himself, then shook his head. "When you're around Lady Juniper for a while, you can believe anything, straight up. I just embarrass easily: well, I'm still English, so it's only natural, i
Chuck Barstow nodded. "Juney's right about you being a gift from Cernu
He elbowed the tall form of John Hordle. "And figure the odds on you and Sir Nigel and Alleyne ending up here, too, nine years later, you scoffing cowan. The Lord and Lady look after Their own."
"He's got a point there, John," Aylward said. "It's turned into Old Boys Day here for the 'ampshire 'ogs. Must be the Gods, mucking about with the numbers."
Hordle snorted. "Mate, everyone still alive is lucky enough to have won the bloody National Lottery twice over back before the Change. For that matter, the sodding Change burned out my habit of asking why things turn out the way they do. If that can happen, what's impossible?"
They came to the pasture Dun Fairfax was using for target practice and vaulted the gate. It was ten acres, surrounded by decaying board and wire fences that were lined with young hawthorn plants in the process of becoming hedges, and studded with a dozen huge Oregon oaks. They checked carefully-they didn't want someone's cow, or worse still a child, wandering about-and threw back their cloaks to free their right arms.
"Dropping shots over the third oak suit you two for a start?" Aylward said, indicating a tree a hundred and fifty yards off.
When the others nodded he brought up his bow and shot three times in eight seconds, the flat snap of the string on his bracer like a crackle of fingers; two more shafts were in the air when the first one went thunk into the board outline of a man with a shield. All three struck; the first two within a handspan of each other in the target's chest, but the last was pushed a little aside and down at the last instant by a gust of wind.
"Well, even if you didn't kill him outright, foe's not going to breed again," Hordle said, drawing the new bow to the ear and raising it at a fifty-degree angle towards the sky. Then: "Bugger!"
His shaft cleared the crown of the oak, and the target as well, by about twenty yards.
"Told you you'd overshoot with that, Little John," Aylward said smugly. "You're getting another dozen feet per second with the same draw."
"First try with a new bow," Hordle said defensively. "Only natural I'm off the once." The second landed a little short; the third:
"Did he miss?" Chuck Barstow asked, peering.
"Not from the sound," Aylward replied. "Punched right through. Extra point."
"It does have that little extra flick. I'll get used to it."
"Over by the tree, this time," Chuck said.
Those targets were rigged to resemble men leaning out from behind the trunk, and they were hung on hinges so that they swung in and out of sight when there was any wind. Barstow shot three times with the smooth action of a metronome, and the shafts flicked hissing through the gray gloaming to land with a hard, swift tock-tock-tock rhythm.
Hordle looked at the chewed-up surface of the targets. "Does everyone here practice like your kilties, Sam? It's the law back in Blighty these days everyone has to keep a bow and use it, but most just put in an hour or two on Sunday and take the odd rabbit."
Chuck Barstow gri
"Which are?"