“Good, she is?”

“Better than good, by the Blessing! Such beer as Lord Gobniu brews in the Land of Summer. And her meat pies would make you weep. Also their sausages are good, and their cheese is very fine, as good as the mother’s or the best from Tillamook.”

“You always did take tender care of your stomach, Edain. You’ll get all you can guzzle tonight,” Dick said, with a smile that was half-sour. “I fair couldn’t stand it the more. A fine fat yearling buck I brought in yesterday, and six rabbits—”

They both absently made the gesture of the Horns to Cernnunos, the Master of the Beasts, to acknowledge that their two-legged kind took of the bounty of the woods only when they walked with His power. Deer swarmed in the forests round about, and even more in the overgrown abandoned fields that still made up most of the Willamette country; not only were they good eating, but hunting helped protect the crops and gardens from their nibbling scourge. No fence or hedge made by man would keep a deer out, or a rabbit or a fox.

“—and that’s as much as I propose to do. Running about waving their hands in the air, they all are, and screeching. Nerves on end, with the levy and the war and all.”

Edain looked out, listening to his brother’s voice with the ears of the mind.

“It’s not just the womenkind who’ve driven you out on this fine day,” he said. “You’re not one to balk at peeling a few spuds.”

“Well . . . mind, I’m happy to be in the High King’s Archers. But it’ll be a wee bit odd, not to march with the Dun’s levy.”

Edain laughed and slapped his brother on the shoulder, callused palm echoing on hard muscle.

“If you’re afraid of being too safe . . . well, lad, we’ll be by the High King’s side. Never a dull moment in battle, I promise you that. That’s not all that’s bothering you, mo bhràthair!”

Dick sighed, a sound like the relaxing of a constraint.

“It’s the father,” he said after a moment, his voice catching a little. “Fair worried I am. He would do too much when we brought in the wheat, and I think he pulled something in his back, though the barbs of the Gáe Bolga itself couldn’t drag a word of it out of him, you know how he is.”

“That I do, and I know just what you mean.”

“I’m that afraid he’ll kill himself when the spring-planted barley comes ripe, we’ll be gone to the war and the Dun’ll be shorthanded. If any man with Mackenzie on the end of his name has earned the right to take a rest in the sun, then by Lug Longhand and Ogma and Brigid and the threefold Morrigú and all the Gods of our people, isn’t it him? By hard work and harder fighting both. But will he listen to me, or you, or Tamar, or even the mother?”