by SM Stirling
“Christ, there’s hundreds of them. Maybe thousands,” Corporal Dudley said.
“That’s why . . . the birds and animals . . . were so quiet,” she said, timing the words to her breath. “They hid very well . . . but there were so many of them . . . it spooked the wildlife.”
No more talk for a while. She caught glances going up to the ceiling; their shields were all in racks there, forming a second roof beneath the outer shell of the vehicle. The Force used one much like the Dúnedain model she carried, a shallow convex disk about a yard across, made of birch plywood covered in bullhide and then with thin sheet steel. It was much better protection than the body of the railcar, but there were gaps between the shields.
Corporal Dudley began to turn the crank of a siren mounted beside him; its horn was flush with the exterior of the car. The sound built, an earsplitting rising-falling wail that drove into the ears like ice picks. The homeplace would hear that long before they arrived. Workers outside the walls would hear it and head home too, or ride for safety if they couldn’t. Ritva looked at the speedometer again; thirty-five miles an hour, more than a horse could maintain for any distance but less than it could do in a flat-out rush. The interior of the railcar was thick with panting and rank sweat; it ran stinging into her eyes. Then she glanced back to the mirror, and bit back a curse.
Four hundred yards.
That large a group was bound to have some very light men—no women, not in a Cutter war band—riding without anything but their clothes and weapons on very fast horses. As she watched, one of them stood in the stirrups and bent his recurve, aiming high for a long-distance shot.
“In your dreams, maybe, fool,” the corporal hissed. “It’s a bow, not a catapult.”
The arrow disappeared from the mirror’s view, but her mind’s eye could see it, arching up, hesitating at the peak, turning and rushing downward. A little bit of trivia from an early lesson back at Larsdalen came to her, from the schooldays before she and Mary got bored and exasperated past bearing with Mother and moved out to Mithrilwood to become Rangers. It might even be from before Father died in his duel with Norman Arminger at the end of the War of the Eye; the facts came with a feeling of sleepy boredom and warmth and the smell of chalk.
An arrow shot upward at forty-five degrees hit the ground going at seventy percent of its initial speed. Some part of her mind did a quick calculation:
Say two hundred feet per second when it leaves the string, so that’s a hundred and forty feet per second when it hits you and does nasty things.
The shaft reappeared as a blurred streak across the mirror for a fractional second, and then again quivering in the dirt as it fell away behind the speeding vehicle. The man who’d shot it had lost some ground while he did; now he was hunched forward in the saddle, beating his horse on the rump with the bow stave and probably screaming curses. They wouldn’t make that mistake again.
Twenty, twenty-five minutes since we sprung their ambush—they can’t keep this up much longer. Their horses must be foaming out their lungs, she thought. We’ll be in sight and hearing of the ranch in about another seven minutes. Or I’ll be dead.
Being captured would be worse, of course. Even with ordinary bandits, and infinitely more so with Cutters, but there were ways to avoid being taken alive. Usually. If you didn’t lose your nerve. There were ways to stop yourself thinking, too: she used one, focusing tightly on the feel of the burning muscles in her legs, push and push and push—
The pursuers were much closer now, a long dark column rising and falling with the roll of the land behind them; even over the wail of the siren the dull rumble of the hooves was loud. Three hundred yards, extreme effective range for longbowmen in still air. Most saddle bows didn’t shoot quite as far. Closer, closer . . .
This time a dozen of them rose in the saddle at the same time, probably to someone’s order or signal. The tiny figures in the mirror seemed to writhe in unison, drawing long and then jerking backward as recoil made them sway. The Change had changed a good many things, but not the equal and opposite reaction when you threw something away fast and hard.
“For what we are about to receive—” Corporal Dudley began.
A rising whistle even through the whine of gears and the song of steel on steel from the wheels beneath them. The sound of arrows striking in dirt or railroad ties or banging off the rails was lost, but not the shink-thack! of one punching through the thin sheet aluminum of the roof and hammering into the more resistant surface of a shield.
“—may the Lord make us truly thankful shit!”
Ritva craned her neck around as far as she could without interrupting the rhythm of her feet on the pedals. A sharp-pointed bodkin head stood out three inches from the felt on the inner surface of the shield over Dudley’s head, just where it would have gone through his forearm if he’d had it in the loops. That was one of the many unpleasant things about being shot at with arrows from powerful war-bows; they were very hard to stop short of your own precious irreplaceable body. The light mail lining the redcoats’ jackets or her green leather tunic was fair protection against cuts and of some use against stabs, but it was only marginally better than cloth when it came to a hard-driven arrow with an armor-piercing head.
The railcar swayed with its speed. She tore her eyes away from the mirror, since there was literally nothing she could do about that. The buildings of the Anchor Bar Seven homeplace and their protective wall were visible now, dot-tiny in the distance but growing; they’d certainly have heard the siren, and everyone outside the walls would be running pell-mell for the gates, if they had a good emergency drill. Her impression of Avery McGillvery was that they’d have one, and practice it frequently.
“All right, squad!” Corporal Dudley bellowed. “We were tasked with getting the lady through, so she’s the mission priority. She goes out first and the rest of us follow, and if she’s wounded she gets carried but you leave anyone else—no, don’t argue, ma’am. Get ready—shit!”
This time six arrows hit the railcar’s roof: shink-thack! shink-thack! shink-thack! shink-thack! shink-thack! and then one that ended in a nasty wet sound, shink-thwack! as it missed the shields and struck flesh. There was a short, high-pitched shriek. She took a look behind; the man next to the corporal had one through his left arm between elbow and shoulder, and his face was contorted in pain. He was still pedaling, though, and he gasped out:
“Leave it! It’s plugging the hole! Just cut it off on both sides Jesus Christ fuck shitshitshit!”
That’s a brave man, she thought soberly. And he can’t run fast with that. It’s a death sentence.
Another volley, and something hit her hard between the shoulders; there wasn’t any pain or the unmistakable feeling of split flesh, so the back of the seat must have held it. The siding and warehouse were getting closer and closer; now she could see people streaming in the gate of the ranch headquarers, on foot and horseback; and she thought others were forcing their way out.
I certainly hope they are! she thought, and called aloud:
“We should halt just beyond the warehouse building. It’ll give us a little cover for a couple of seconds.”
“Right, we’ll do it that way. Good!”
That accompanied a glance in the mirror. She looked in hers; the foremost Cutters were falling away, their horses shaking their heads and crabbing or just slowing down despite spur and riding crop. One simply keeled over, hopefully pinning and mangling its rider’s leg in the process. Even at this distance she could see how the poor beasts were foaming and heaving; they were being ridden to death. And behind them was the whole mass of the attacking force, coming on at a hand gallop, parting to pass the exhausted front-runners—not quite as fast, but that pace was something a horse could keep up much longer. They’d be within range in ten or fifteen minutes if the railcar kept going, and then there would be hundreds of them shooting. These were plainsmen, born to the saddle and the bow, and the chances of surviving that storm of shafts were somewhere
between bloody nothing and bugger-all, as Uncle John would have put it.
What a pity. Just another few hundred yards’ start, and we could have run their horses’ hearts out and pulled away from them and gone straight back to Artos and the rest!
Though there were an uncomfortable number of the Cutters, enough to outweigh the nine-hundred-odd in the main party. The warehouse flashed by, and everyone lifted their feet. There was a screech and rooster-tails of sparks and lurching momentum threw her forward as Corporal Dudley hit the brake and then there was no time for anything but moving.
Dart upright, hit the door latch, and snatch her shield out of the holder above with her right hand on the leather sling strap. Duck her head through that and pull it tight even as she turned and shouldered the door open, with her helmet rattling where it was hooked and strapped to the shield. Left hand stripping the longsword out of the rack, leave the bow and quiver, a bit of a momentary pang because it was a good bow and she was used to shooting it. Feet on the ground—blessed flow of clean air after the stuffy fetor of the car into her lungs and out into her limbs as extra strength—praise to the Valar—and out with her feet on hard ground covered in scrubby grass and brown ruts dried like iron and old cowflops and horse dung. The long low-slung warehouse was to her left, and the track to the gate was ahead of her. The corporal released the brakes again, and the redcoats gave the vehicle one last push, so it coasted off downhill, slow but gathering speed.
Meanwhile she ran. Long strides, arms pumping with the sword scabbard in one hand, shield rattling on her back, making her chest swell with a deep quick rhythm. Not shallow panting, and willing that no stitch should cut into her side.
I’m probably going to die now. This is about the way I always expected it to happen. Better than typhus or a breech birth. Just not so soon, maybe! By the pits of Thangorodrim and the Mace of Morgoth, my story isn’t finished yet! Or maybe it’s Rudi’s story and he’s about to lose his sister which is a terrible tragedy that will show how noble his grief is to everyone hearing the bards singing his epic—
Now she could hear the rumble of the oncoming host. Hear it and feel it through the ground when her bounding feet touched down. And a crashing bark, underneath a growling as of wolves when they closed in after a chase:
“Cut! Cut! Cut!”
Ritva could tell the redcoats were right behind her, a double rank of them—except the wounded man, and she felt a stab of shame that she’d never even learned his name. She’d flashed by him where he was crouched behind a watering-trough/hitching-rail combination, with his sword out and his shield hanging over his useless shoulder and his kettle helmet askew on his head—it looked like a steel version of what her mother had called a lemon-squeezer—getting ready to do what he could to slow down a couple of thousand men.
Run, woman, run. You have to deserve that.
The enemy had checked as the railcar went behind the warehouse, from their perspective, and then coasted out into view again. Someone must have suspected what had happened, but they were moving too fast to stop without a clear sign, and the whole clot at the head of their rush went past the warehouse after the moving target, shooting as fast as they could draw and loose and take the curve without going over. Probably it was superstition as well; their religion hated any but the simplest machinery.
It was the next clump who saw the small figures running down the road towards the gates of the Anchor Bar Seven’s homeplace, and even they couldn’t be absolutely sure that it was the ones they were chasing, instead of a clerk and his helpers caught stacking bales of wool or hides or barrels of tallow in the warehouse when the alarm went off. The ranch’s big bell was ringing frantically, too. A quick glance told her that a clump of fifty or so Cutters had peeled off after them with more behind; they had a standard at their head, a rayed golden sun for the Church Universal and Triumphant, with six horse-tails hanging from a crossbar beneath. Their horses . . .
Started out reasonably well but they were ridden hard and put away wet even before they chased us for miles. They’re blown, they won’t be any real use for a day or two. But even a blown horse is faster than a human, until it falls over.
There were men coming out of the ranch gates. About thirty of them, all armed and mounted, some of them in the heavier lancer gear she’d seen earlier. They spread out in two neat ranks and came on at a gallop, shooting over her head—which meant the Cutters would be in range soon, if not already. Then they were past her in spurts of dust and clods of dirt and glimpses of set faces and sabers and honed lanceheads. She certainly wasn’t going to look back now. Arrows began falling around her, but not nearly as many as she’d feared; the enemy were distracted by the counterattack and the gates began to loom ahead. There was a deep dry ditch all around the wall—that was probably where the earth for the structures had come from—and it was filled with sharpened angle-iron and rusty barbed wire, and there was a bridge over it to the gate.
There’s no gate! her mind gibbered. It’s not just open; it’s gone. They must have had it down to repair it—
Even that didn’t make her pause in her sprint, and then she realized that it had a gate, just not one with the usual outward-swinging twin doors. Instead the whole thing slid out of a slit in one side of the wall along a strip of metal laid in the roadway, and then into a matching opening on the other side. It was something new to her, but it certainly looked strong.
Best of all, it’s still open for us! she thought.
Dry air sobbed into aching lungs and the ground shocked up through foot and ankle and shin. The Rancher would have been justified in closing it; after all, his first responsibility was to his own. That wasn’t just a fort held by a garrison, it was where his family and those of his followers lived, including their children. It was home.
Behind them there was a series of hard thud sounds as lances struck home in bodies, a sudden burring roar, the hard cracking sound of blades on shields, the discordant ringing of steel on steel, and the screams of men and horses in rage and pain. The little party from the ranch was grossly outnumbered by the Cutter force as a whole, but not by the vanguard directly behind the fugitives. And their horses were fresh and their ranks compact. The noise faded quickly, and hooves sounded behind her as the Anchor Bar Seven men turned and raced for home. They’d knocked the pursuers back on their heels, at least.
“Grab on!” a man yelled, as a horse came level with her.
Her right hand snatched at the stirrup leather and closed on it. The quarter horse’s acceleration almost snatched it away again, but she held on and used the horse’s momentum to add to her own, bounding along faster than she could have run herself. The squat towers flanking the gate were close now; something went tung on one of them, and a four-foot dart flashed by just over her head and a horse screamed briefly, louder than any human but just as piteous. Two arrows hit her shield from behind, tak! tak!, like blows with a hammer, but the points didn’t go through and strike her jerkin. The other horsemen were all around her, and redcoats among them running as she was.
Then right ahead of her Ian Kovalevsky gave a cry and loosed the stirrup leather he held and fell, an arrow pinning his coattail to his trousers and another through his upper shoulder. Ritva let go too, throwing herself forward so quickly that she caught him before he’d finished hitting the ground. A deep-knee squat and his body was over her back in a fireman’s carry, and she wheezed upright. He wasn’t a big man, no taller than her five-nine, but he was heavy, thirty pounds more than her at least. She blanked her mind and pushed, and she was running forward with horses buffeting her on all sides and a series of faint screams in her ears from the wounded man she carried. Then just in the gateway something hit her in the leg.
She sprawled, pulling at the redcoat across her back so he wouldn’t land wrong and drive the arrows deeper. She stared downward numbly; there was an arrow in her, through her left calf, and blood leaking from where it transfixed her boot. Then the pain started, and she ground her teeth and ga
ve a muted sound like a teakettle boiling. More horses trampled around her, and then someone grabbed her under the arms to pull her backward; the press of bodies and men and horses was blocking the gate, and unless it was cleared the enemy would get in. The pull dragged the flight-feathers of the arrow against the ground, working it in the wound, and she screamed in earnest then.
Others were screaming, men screaming but not in pain. Raw terror, somehow harder to listen to. She looked up and saw the long blackened muzzle of a steel tube protruding from a horizontal slit in the right gate-tower, and behind it the flicker of movement as men heaved at a pivot-pump. That shocked her into silence despite the agony, as the amber stream of liquid arched out to play over the dense-packed mass of men and horses where the Cutters had halted. They shrieked as the stream splashed into their bearded faces; she could smell the sharp kitchen-and-laboratory scent of canola and coal-oil and wood alcohol mixed with quicklime and powdered aluminum and dissolved rubber.
Her eyes met one man’s, as blue as hers, wide and staring as napalm dripped from his face in thick liquid strings. Then the flame began, running down the arching stream in a flicker of blue and crimson almost too fast to see, and the whole area it had soaked went up with a WHUMP and a pillow of hot air struck her, making her skin prickle and the little hairs in her nose start to shrivel. The gate swung across the scene before she could force her staring eyes to close, sliding home with a rumble and chunk and a clunking sound that was some sort of locking mechanism going in.