Corelle pursed her lips together as if to keep in bitter words, her blue eyes cold as winter sky.
In the high chair behind Corelle. Kai started indignant squawking.
“Take care of the baby,” Corelle snapped, to give herself the last words of the fight, and stalked out of the kitchen.
Jerin had just put Kai down to sleep when he heard the first rifle shot. He froze beside the cradle, listening to the sharp crack echoing up the hollow.
Maybe it was just thunder, he rationalized, because he didn’t want it to be gunfire. He replayed the sound in his mind. No, the sound definitely came from a rifle.
Who would be shooting in their woods? Damn her, had Corelle gone out hunting? Eldest had told all four of the middle sisters to keep at the house, to forgo even fence mending, while their mothers and elder sisters were gone.
Another shot rang out from the creek bottom, then a third, close after the second. The back door banged open. His younger siblings spilled into the house like a covey of quail, the littlest sister running in first, the older ones doing a slower rear guard, scanning over their shoulders for lost siblings or strangers.
Blush, second oldest of the youngest sisters, stationed herself at the door, tapping shoulders to keep count. “Drill teams! Prepare for attack! Shutter the windows, bar the doors, and get down the rifles.
Fifteen! Sixteen!” Blush snapped, and tagged Jerin. “Three.” Then pointed to the cradle. “Four?”
“Four boys,” Jerin said automatically, although stunned. Sixteen? There should be seventeen youngest, and the four middle sisters.
Blush dropped the bars on the upper and lower halves of the back door. First downstairs, then upstairs, the shutters banged shut and their bars rattled into place. Little girls moved through the shutter slats of sunlight, working in teams of mixed ages to load two rifles and guard every window.
“What’s going on?” Jerin asked. “Who’s shooting? Where are Corelle and the others?”
Blush gave a look of disgust that only a twelve-year-old could manage. “Corelle, Summer, Eva, and Kira went over to the Brindles‘. courting Balin Brindle. Heria said she thought she heard riders in the woods. She took her rifle and went out to have a look-see.”
“Heria!” The fourteen-year-old oldest of his youngest sisters had more courage than sense. “Holy Mothers above!”
“Eldest is going to skin Corelle alive,” one of the youngest whispered.
There was a ripple of agreement.
“Watch the windows!” Blush barked.
Too precious to risk in a fight, the boys were left with nothing to do but whisper. Liam complained about his blocks, left outside in the sudden retreat. Doric speculated that it was only Corelle in the woods, doing a bit of hunting while coming home from courting. Jerin would have liked to believe that-but Corelle knew perfectly well there was no need for fresh meat with the elder half of the family gone and a thirty-pound goose in the oven. Most of the youngest still ate like birds.
“What do we do?” a youngest asked Blush after several minutes of silence.
Blush clutched one of the family’s carbine rifles. “We stand guard until Corelle comes back.”
A thunderous pounding at the back door stopped them cold.
Blush scurried to Jerin’s side, the soldier training that had been carrying her vanished, leaving only a frightened twelve-year-old. “Jerin?”
Jerin swallowed his fear and whispered, “Identify the enemy and establish numbers.”
Blush nodded rapidly, her eyes wide and rounded with fear. Still, she managed to shout, “Identify yourself!”
The pounding stopped. “Let me in! Let me in! Let me in!”
A sigh of relief went through the room.
“It’s Heria!” Doric cried and was immediately hushed.
“Everyone, get to posts.” Blush struggled to return to their training. “What’s the password, Heria?”
“I don’t remember!” Heria wailed beyond the door. “Lemme in!”
Blush looked at Jerin, unsure what to do.
“Use the spyhole.” Jerin gave Blush a slight push toward the kitchen door. “Make sure she’s alone. Then let her in, but only open the bottom half of the door.”
Blush had to fetch a stool to reach the spyhole. She covered the delay by calling out, “You know we can’t let you in without a password, Heria!”
There came a minute of cursing that would have made their father blush and their grandmothers proud.
Finally,
Heria remembered the week’s password. “Teacup! It’s ‘teacup’!”
“Well, the whole county knows it now!” Blush complained. “She’s alone! Let her in.”
Heria pushed her rifle and ammunition pouch in first. then scrambled in on hands and knees. Once inside, she remained crouched on the flagstones, panting, as the door was bolted shut again. The red stain of blood on her shirt made Jerin forget to stay out of the way. He dropped down beside her.
“Are you hurt?” He tried to get her up so he could see where she bled. “Did someone shoot you?”
Heria shook her head, squeezing his shoulder comfortingly, and gasped. “Not my blood.” She swallowed hard. “The-they didn’t have guns, only clubs and sabers. There’s a soldier-in the creek!”
“Did you shoot her?” Jealous admiration tinted Blush’s question.
Heria shook her head. “No. Riders chased her down out of the woods by the bend. They knocked her off her horse, into the creek. I thought they were going to kill her. and we’d get blamed, so I shot at them. The first shot just startled them.” Which meant she probably missed, and they hadn’t realized how lucky they had been. “They didn’t start to run until the second shot. 1 winged one of them.”
This got a murmur of admiration from the others.
Jerin hushed them. His youngest sisters might not see the danger remaining with the riders gone. “But they didn’t kill the soldier?”
“She’s got a big bruise on her forehead and she’s out cold in the creek.”
“In it?” Jerin cried. “Oh, Heria, you didn’t leave her to drown, did you?”
“No, of course not,” Heria said, which earned her a few dark looks from her sisters. “I got her sat up, put some rocks behind her, then laid her back down. It was the best I could do because I couldn’t move her otherwise. She’s Corelle’s size and all dead weight.” Which meant the soldier was nearly as tall as Jerin. “I didn’t know what else to do. She’s out of the water, and I’ve got her pinned so if she only half wakes, she’s not going to roll in and drown.”
“Good!” Jerin said. He was relieved that the entire younger half of the family was all accounted for, sound and secured. Now if only the older half were here, armed and ready!
“What about the riders?” Blush pressed Heria. “How many were there? Did they look like a raiding party? Are they coming back?”
“I saw five women. They didn’t look like sisters, didn’t act like sisters. They looked like river trash.
Dirty. Ragged. Poor. I winged the biggest.”
As she spoke, Jerin glanced about the kitchen at the girls clustered around him. Most barely came to his chest and only Heria weighed more than a hundred pounds. Three or four of the older girls combined could get the soldier out of the creek and to the house. But that would leave girls under ten to guard the boys.
“I’m going down to the creek and getting the soldier,” he announced, standing up.
“What?” all his little sisters shouted.
“If she’s alive, we can’t let her die on Whistler land,” he said.
“Damn right we can!” Blush snapped. There was a roar of agreement.
“We can’t!” Heria shouted. “Jerin’s right. It’s the law. We have to lend aid to travelers in distress.”
“Who would know?” Leia, the third to oldest, argued. “We just say that we never found her until after she died.”
“Her attackers would know,” Jerin pointed out. “They probably know that the soldier is alive, and that at least one of us knows it, because a Whistler shot at them.”
“Who would they tell?” Blush asked. “It would be stupid for them to tell anyone. They’ll be admitting to beating the soldier up.”
