Dangerous Women (77 page)

Jamie released her. “What are you doing?”

Cait looked down to see the glow that enveloped her. Warm and sweet, it smelled like sunshine. It was Elizabeth.

“This ends, Louina. As you said, you are the poison that must be purged.”

Shrieking, Louina ran at her.

True to her warrior heritage, Cait stood her ground. She would not back down. Not in this.

Louina’s spirit slammed into Cait with enough force to knock her down. She groaned as pain filled her. Still, she stood up again, and closed her eyes. “You will not defeat me. It is time for you to rest. You have not shown respect to those who dwell on this earth.”

“They didn’t show it to me!”

“And you allowed them to turn you away from the Great Spirit, who loves us all. To do things you knew weren’t right!”

“They spat in my face!”

“You returned their hatred with more hatred.” Cait reached her hand out to Louina. “Like Elizabeth, you’re tired. Nothing is more draining than to keep the fires of hatred burning.”

“Nothing is more draining.”

“You will not fight me?”

Cait shook her head. “I want to comfort you. It’s time to let go, Louina. Release the hatred.” And then she heard Elizabeth in her ear, telling her what to say. “Remember the words of Crazy Horse. Upon suffering beyond suffering, the Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world filled with broken promises, selfishness, and separations. A world longing for light again. I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again. In that day, there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom. I salute the light within your eyes where the whole Universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am that place within me, we shall be one.”

Louina pulled back as she heard those words. “We are one,” she repeated.

Elizabeth pulled away from Cait and held her hand out to Louina. “I have missed my sister.”

“I have missed mine.”

Jamie placed his hands on Cait’s shoulders. “Are you all right?”

She wasn’t sure. “Did you see any of that?”

“Yes, but I’m going to deny it if you ever ask me that in public.”

Tears filled her eyes as she remembered Anne and Brandon. “Why did we come this weekend?”

“
We
came for greed. You came to help a friend.”

Suddenly, a low moan sounded.

“Call for help!” Jamie said. He released her and ran back to their camp.

She dialed 911, hoping it would pick up.

“Anne’s still breathing.” Jamie pulled his jacket off to drape it over her.

“What about Brandon?”

He went to check while the phone rang.

“It’s faint, but yeah … I think he’s alive too.”

Cait prayed for a miracle that she hoped would be granted.

Cait sat next to Anne’s bed while the nurse finished checking her vitals. She didn’t speak until after the woman had left them alone.

“Sorry we didn’t have any readings to show you guys.”

Anne shook her head. “Who cares? I’m just glad I’m alive. But …”

“But what?”

“Are you and Jamie ever going to tell us what really happened?”

Cait reached up to touch the small gold ring that she’d found on her car seat when she’d gone out to the road to help direct the medics to where Brandon and Anne had been. Inside the band were the names John and Elizabeth. It was the only gold to be found in Louina.

The treasure so many had sought had been used to fund a school and church over a century ago.

Years after her sister had given her the gold to support herself and her children, Elizabeth had taken the last of it and had it melted into this ring.

Smiling, Cait met Anne’s gaze. “Maybe one day.”

“And what about the treasure?”

“Anne, haven’t you learned yet that it’s not gold that is precious? It’s people. And you are the greatest treasure of my life. I’m glad I still have my best friend.”

Anne took her hand and held it. “I’m grateful to be here and I’m truly grateful for you. But—”

“There are no buts.”

She nodded. “You’re right, Cait. I’d lost sight of what my grandfather used to say.”

“And that was?”

“‘When all the trees have been cut down and all the animals have been hunted to extinction, when all the waters are polluted and the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money.’”

Jamie laughed, drawing their attention to the door where he stood with a balloon bouquet for Anne.

“What’s so funny?” Cait asked.

“I think we all came away from the weekend with a different lesson.”

Cait arched her brow. “And that is?”

“Anne just said hers. You learned that revenge is a path best left alone. Brandon learned to shut up and get help when he’s wounded.”

“And you?” Anne asked.

“I learned two things. One, the most dangerous place for a man to be is between two fighting women. And two, no matter the species, the deadliest gender is always the female. Men will fight until they die. Women will take it to the grave and then find a way
back
.”

When all that’s left between you and the total collapse of civilization is the law, you need somebody tough enough to enforce it—no matter what the cost.

Considered by many to be the natural heir to Harry Turtledove’s title of King of the Alternate History Novel, fast-rising science fiction star S. M. Stirling is the bestselling author of the Island in the Sea of Time series (
Island in the Sea of Time,
Against the Tide of Years,
On the Oceans of Eternity
), in which Nantucket comes unstuck in time and is cast back to the year 1250
B.C
., and the Draka series (including
Marching Through Georgia,
Under the Yoke,
The Stone Dogs,
and
Drakon,
plus an anthology of Draka stories by other hands edited by Stirling,
Drakas!
), in which Tories fleeing the American Revolution set up a militant society in South Africa and eventually end up conquering most of the Earth. He’s also produced the Dies the Fire series (
Dies the Fire,
The Protector’s War,
A Meeting at Corvallis
), plus the five-volume Fifth Millennium series, and the seven-volume series The General (with David Drake), as well as stand-alone novels such as
Conquistador
and
The Peshawar Lancers
. Stirling has also written novels in collaboration with Raymond E. Feist, Jerry Pournelle, Holly Lisle, Shirley Meier, Karen Wehrstein, and
Star Trek
actor James Doohan, as well as contributed to the Babylon 5, T2, Brainship, War World, and the Man-Kzin Wars series. His short fiction has been collected in
Ice, Iron and Gold
. Stirling’s newest series include the Change series, consisting of
The Sunrise Lands,
The Scourge of God,
The Sword of the Lady,
The High King of Montival,
and
The Tears of the Sun,
and the Lords of Creation series, consisting of
The Sky People
and
In the Courts of the Crimson Kings
. Most recently, he started a new series, Shadowspawn, which consists so far of
A Taint in the Blood
and
The Council of Shadows
. His most recent novel is a new volume in the Change series,
Lord of Mountains
. Born in France and raised in Europe, Africa, and Canada, he now lives with his family in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

DUN CARSON

(EAST-CENTRAL WILLAMETTE VALLEY)

DÙTHCHAS OF THE CLAN MACKENZIE

(FORMERLY WESTERN OREGON)

5TH AUGUST, CHANGE YEAR 1/1999 AD

I am riding to pass sentence on an evildoer,
Juniper Mackenzie thought.
It’s part of being Chief, but I liked being a folk musician a lot better! The old tales were less stressful as songs than real life.

“Water soon, Riona,” she said to her horse, and the mare twitched her ears backward.

The smell of horse sweat from the dozen mounts of her party was strong, though she’d been used to that even before the Change; a horse-drawn Traveler wagon had been part of her persona, as well as fun. It was a hot day after a dry week, perfect harvest weather, which was more important than comfort. It didn’t
usually
rain in summertime here, but that didn’t mean it absolutely couldn’t happen.

In the old world before the machines stopped, rain would have been a nuisance. Now, in the new world—where food came from within walking distance or didn’t come at all—it would be a disaster. So the heat and the sun that threatened her freckled redhead’s skin was a good thing, and the sweat and prickling be damned. At least there was less smoke in the air than there had been last summer, in the first Change Year.

Her mouth thinned a little at the memory; it had been burning cities then, and forest fires raging through woods where deadwood had accumulated through generations of humans trying to suppress the burn cycle. The pall had lain like smog all over the Willamette country, caught in the great valley between the Cascades and the Coast Range until the autumn rains washed it out.

Always a little bitter on the lips, the taste of a world going down in flame and horror. Always reminding you of what was happening away from your refuge.

With a practiced effort of will she started to force herself back into the moment, to the slow clop of hooves on the asphalt, the moving creak of leather between her thighs and the sleeping face of her son in the light carrying-cradle across the saddlebow before her. Strips of shadow from the roadside trees fell across her face, like a slow flicker as the horses walked.

You had to learn to do that, or the memories would drive you mad. Many
had
gone mad with what they’d seen and done and endured after the machines stopped, in screaming fits or rocking and weeping or just an apathy that killed as certainly as knife or rope or
Yersinia pestis
in the lungs. Many of them people who might have lived, otherwise. Even now there was still very little to spare for those not functional enough to pull their weight, though the definition of
sane
had gotten much more elastic.

What surplus there was had to go to the children; they’d rescued as many orphans as they could. When a youngster learned to laugh again, it gave you heart that the world would go on.

So you’re not smelling fire all the time this year. Enjoy that. Think about the children growing up in a world you have to make worth it;
your
children, and all the others. Don’t think of the rest.
Especially
don’t think of what those mass graves in the refugee camps around Salem smelled like, where the Black Death hit.
She hadn’t gotten very close, on that scouting trip. But close enough—

No.

Scents of dust, the subtly varied baked-green smells of grass and trees and crops, the slight musty sweetness of cut stems. The lands around Dun Carson were mostly harvested now, flat squares of dun stubble alternating with pasture, clumps of lushly green Douglas fir and Garry oak at intervals or along creeks running low and slow with summer.

A reaper pulled by two of those priceless quarter horses traded from the ranching country east of the Cascades was finishing its work as they passed. The crude wire-and-wood machine had been built over the winter from a model salvaged from a museum. Its revolving creel pushed through the last of a rippling yellow-blond field and the rattling belt behind the cutting bar left a swath of cut grain in its wake. The driver looked up long enough to wave, then went back to her work.

Last year they’d used scythes from garden-supply stores and from walls where they’d been souvenirs for lifetimes, and improvised sickles and bread-knives and the bare hands of desperately unskilled refugees working until they dropped. Farming like this was grinding hard work even if you knew what you were doing, and so few did. Fortunately they had a few to direct and teach the rest, some real farmers, some hobbyists, and a few utterly priceless Amish fled from settlements overrun by the waves of starving refugees or the kidnap squads of Norman Arminger, the northern warlord.

We’ve mostly harvested what we planted last year; now we need to get on to the volunteer fields.

Much—most—of the land planted to grain before the Change had just stood until the kernels fell out of the ear. Chaos and fighting as people spilled out of cities instantly uninhabitable when electricity and engines failed, plague and bandits and sheer lack of tools and skill. A field left like that self-seeded enough to produce a second crop, thin and patchy and weedy but a thousand times more valuable than gold.

Sunlight flashed off the spears of the binders following along behind the reaper. They moved the weapons up each time they advanced to tie a new double armful of cut wheat into sheaves and stand them in neat tripods. She blinked at the way the honed metal cast the light back, remembering …

… the little girl the Eaters used as decoy giggling and bringing out the knife and cutting for her throat, and the smell so much like roast pork from the shuttered buildings behind her …

“Focus,” Judy Barstow Mackenzie said from her other side.

And we help each other to … not exactly forget … put it aside. Are any of us still completely sane? Are there any of us who aren’t suffering from … post-traumatic stress disorder, wasn’t it called? Certainly it’s the ones who were least anchored in the world-as-it-was who’ve done best since the Change. The rest cling to us.

“Thanks,” Juniper said.

“What’s a Maiden for?” Judy said stoutly. “If not to keep her High Priestess on track?”

The tone was light, but Juniper leaned over and touched her shoulder.