Then the twins started a tune he knew and he joined in with his strong baritone:
"A shadow in the bright bazaar;
A hint of gold where none should shine-"
More of Red Leaf's people drifted over, listening quietly.
"-her gold flanks heaving in distress;
Half woman and half leopardess;
From either side-nowhere to hide It's time to fight or die!"
TheScourgeofGod
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The faithless often treachery suffer;
Ill-will will evil mar
Luck is the gold of the Gods
And open-handed they bestow
To the hero whose courage earns From: The Song of Bear and Raven
Attributed to Fiorbhinn Mackenzie, 1st century CY
PRAIRIE, WESTERN SOUTH DAKOTA
JUNE 11, CY24/2022 AD
He dreamed of drums; drums that beat softly in the distance, and they woke him. His head had slipped from the blanket rolled around spare clothing that was his pillow, and his ear was pressed to the ground.
Hooves, he realized. Many.
He coiled erect, the night air cool on his naked skin and his sheathed sword in his right hand, his left on the long leather-and-wire wrapping of the hilt. A shape moved in the darkness, and he drew a handspan of the sword, moonlight and starlight glittering on the honed edge and the intricate damascene patterns in the steel.
"It's me," Red Leaf said. "Someone's coming from the hocoka, fast and at the wrong time."
Rudi sniffed the scents-dew, the stale ash odor of banked campfires. Then he cocked an eye at the heavens; no moon, and the stars had moved to "Three-quarters of an hour to dawn," he said. "You're right; they must have left not long after midnight."
Traveling in the dark is somewhat dangerous, even if you know the ground. They wouldn't have done it unless it was an emergency.
Ingolf was already awake when he began nudging his foot; Mary turned over and opened her eye as well. The others woke silently, except for a slight groan from Odard. They rose and dressed quickly and quietly, putting on the light war gear they'd brought with them, swords and bows, helmets and shields. By the time they were finished and had tied up their bedrolls Rick Three Bears had their horses and remounts cut out of the herd.
The whole Sioux party were awake and ready not long after, moving their wagons into a circle, the warriors ready to fight and the youngsters and women within-not that they weren't armed as well, and prepared to do whatever they had to. Even then, Rudi was a little impressed.
I wouldn't like to have to fight these people, he thought. Doubly so not on their own ground. It would be like trying to hit a ghost with a club-and sure, you'd have to grow eyes in the back of your head, too.
One of the perimeter scouts came trotting in on foot-it was hard to be inconspicuous on horseback, even for the lords of the High Plains.
"Horseman and a cart, itancan," he said.
"There's more behind them, by a couple of miles," Red Leaf said grimly. "Big party."
"I'm sorry if we've brought this on you," Mathilda said steadily.
Red Leaf made a single fierce gesture. "It's our land! Nobody comes on Lakota land without our leave, and nobody attacks our guests on our land!"
There was an answering growl from the crowd of his people. He pointed to six, all young and slight-built, and spoke rapidly in a mixture of English and Lakota
"You get going," he said at the end. "Tell 'em we need everyone, and fast, and to pass it on."
Then he turned to Rudi. "That'll bring a couple of thousand of our zuya wicasa here, but that'll take a while. You'd better get going."
Rudi winced slightly; that meant abandoning their extra gear. But needs must…
The sound of hooves and wheels came out of the darkness; the sky was just beginning to pale eastward, but the western horizon was still purple-black.
"It's me, Father Ignatius!" the priest's voice called.
He pulled up the two-wheeled mule cart; his horse was tethered to the rear of it, with the stirrups looped up over the saddlehorn.
"Two hundred of the Sword of the Prophet are approaching, according to the scouts around your hocoka," he said succinctly. "They're looking for Rudi and the rest of us."
"Right," Red Leaf said. He turned to Rudi, then pointed: "See that star? Keep it directly ahead of you until full daylight, then turn north and you'll hit the Black Hills. That's better than heading straight east-flat as a plate thataway."
Then he hesitated. "And the big herd is in that direction too; the one we hunted yesterday has probably joined it. It'll be moving north, pretty well, this time of year. Get across in front of it and it'll cover your tracks. Then you can turn north while they're trying to find you."
"How long would that take?"
Red Leaf smiled, or at least showed his teeth. "That's the main southern herd. How long does it take a quarter million of the Buffalo People to go by? And what's left of a trail after they've crossed it?"
"Right," Rudi said. He swung up onto Epona's back and leaned down to shake hands. "Lord and Lady bless you and yours, my friend."
"Wakantanka walk with you, Rudi Mackenzie, and all of you."
"I'd have liked to spend a summer hunting with your folk, and seen the Sun Dance. Maybe someday I can, and you and Rick can come to Dun Juniper for the Lughnasadh festival."
Red Leaf spoke a phrase in Lakota, then translated, first literally, and then the meaning: " On the hillside. Someday, maybe."
Then he looked around for his son: "Rick, you go along until they're on their way-"
The young man looked a little mutinous at leaving when a fight might be coming.
"You forget what you owe Rudi?" his father asked. "Hokahe!"
The troopers of the Sword rode in disciplined silence despite the disconcerting vastness of the morning prairie and the subliminal knowledge of what the Sioux preferred to do to trespassers. Most of them were from mountain-and-valley country, only a few from the Hi-Line of central Montana, and they felt helplessly exposed here where the horizon merged into the slowly lightening sky.
Major Graber ignored the sensation, and the pain in his left arm, with equal indifference; he kept in mind that it would weaken his shield work and that he couldn't use his bow properly, and he would adjust his actions accordingly. He was here to command anyway, not fight with his own hands if avoidable.
And there was nothing wrong with his nose. The abattoir reek of death mingled with an ever-stronger hint of smoke, and of cooking meat. Drying-smoking racks… and yes, there was a plume silhouetted against the lighter eastern sky. He squinted into the sunrise that edged a few clouds there with crimson and faded to pink and then green and blue above, as the last stars guttered out behind him.
The smell and clutter as they rode through the Sioux hunting camp offended him, but…
What can you expect from savages who know not the Dictations? he thought, remembering the ordered neatness of Corwin with pleasure.
The new Seeker had arrived from the capital with reinforcements when they returned to the Bar Q ranch. That had been very fortunate. ..
Then he glanced quickly aside at the Seeker. The man had arrived before any message could have gotten to Corwin that he'd found the trail again. All they would have known from his dispatches there was that High Seeker Twain was killed in the Teton foothills last fall, and that he intended to work through the mountains and resume the search in the spring. Even that would have been lucky… and there was no possible way the Hierarchy could have known how his own first foray across the border had ended.
But the Seeker had been there at the ranch, waiting-with troops who must have left weeks ago to make it through the wilderness and the passes.
Graber swallowed. The Ascending Hierarchy commands all power, he thought. Doubtless he commands the Seventh Ray. That is an amethyst on his wristband.
His own service was with the Fourth Ray, as the diamond on his personal amulet
showed; that was under the Master Serapis Bey, and hence largely physical. The Seeker might even be an adept of Djwal Khul, who ruled communications of all sorts.
Dalan is different from most Seekers I've seen. Usually they were thin or gaunt; this one was stocky-muscular. But the eyes are the same.
He wrenched his mind back to the present, despite the thin film of sweat on his forehead. His was to obey. That he didn't like Seekers was between him and his conscience and the long wrestling with the emanations of the Nephilim that any soul must undergo.
There were no Sioux working around the drying racks, though the low fires under them still smoldered. A dozen wagons had been drawn up in a circle on a nearby rise, and between them he could see spears and the twinkle of arrowheads. That would be the noncombatants-not that they wouldn't fight if need be, of course. A good sixty Sioux warriors were drawn up a little way off, armed with bows and shetes and hunting-lances. Few of them had any body-armor beyond shields and steel caps, but they would fight like cougars, as he knew from painful experience.
Graber swung his fist aloft, and the formation halted, spreading out into a two-deep staggered line, bows in hand and the butts of the lances in the scabbards. Seeker Dalan spoke:
"They are not here. Close, but not here."
"Can you be more precise, honored Seeker?"
The square face with the flat black eyes turned back and forth, frowning. "No. I am… resisted. A shadow is drawn."
He put his hands to the sides of his head; the sleeves of the robe of dried bloodred he wore fell back, showing arms encased in black leather guards striped with narrow steel splints.
"A woman? Or is it a buffalo? And a raven… the blockage is not so complete as when they were in the Valley of the Sun, but you must rely on the physical. For now."
He felt relief at that, and reined out towards the mounted Indians. The Seeker followed; he had to admit the man was fearless, not like many of the red-robed ecclesiastical bureaucrats Corwin bred, who always put him in mind of the maggots that had writhed in a dead raccoon he'd found under the floorboards of his home two summers ago.
A man rode down to meet them, though he stopped well within bowshot of his own position.
"Hau kola," Graber said, raising his right hand in the peace gesture as he drew rein.
The Indian was a dark middle-aged man, muscular and heavy-featured, with a little gray in his braids; a full-blood from his looks. He wore a steel helmet with bison horns and fur, and a fox pelt over his colorful war-shirt. There were scalp-locks down the seams of the arms, more than was comfortable to contemplate; he'd have fought in the long indecisive struggle between the Church and his nation.
He didn't return the gesture, or speak at all.
Bad, Graber knew. But, then, I expected that.
"We're here after some fugitives, itancan Red Leaf," Graber said, guessing at his rank and remembering the briefing files. "Under the Treaty of Newcastle, the Lakota tunwan agreed not to harbor refugees from our territory or to hinder our recapture of such criminals."
The black eyes were chill as they rested on him. "Under the Treaty of Newcastle, the Church Universal and Triumphant agreed to recognize our sovereignty. Last time I looked, sovereign nations didn't have to let other countries send troops onto their soil uninvited. You invade us, the war starts up again-and from what I hear, you folks are busy out West."
Damn those rebels to the Void! Graber thought.
"These criminals are under the personal ban of the Prophet," Graber said softly.
"Remind me why I should care what the Crackpot of Corwin thinks."
Graber felt himself flush at the blasphemy; rage came off the Seeker like heat from a closed stove in winter.
"You deny that there were fugitives here?" Graber said, his voice still flatly unemotional.
"Nobody here but my relatives," the Indian said, baring his teeth.
"He speaks truth, but with intent to deceive," Seeker Dalan said. Then: "There! There!"
He pointed north and east. The impassive face of the Sioux didn't move… but Graber was experienced at reading men's eyes. Their lips lied, speaking or smiling, but the pupils never.
"We will pursue," he said. To Red Leaf: "Don't get in our way, and none of your people need be hurt."
The Sioux leader raised his hand, and his folk began to draw their bows. Graber smiled thinly, and raised his own left hand-despite the savage twinge of pain that shot into the joint. The long formation broke into motion again, advancing and reaching over their shoulders for arrows in a sinuous unison like a tiger uncoiling from sleep.
"I have two hundred men, itancan," he said. "We outnumber you four to one, and my men are in full armor. If you fight me at close quarters like this, I will lose perhaps twenty dead, including any too seriously wounded to ride. We will kill you all, and it will take less than ten minutes. Then we kill all the women and children in this hunting camp. Then we will proceed on our mission."
"None of you would leave Lakota territory alive!"
"Words cannot express how much I do not care, as long as my mission is fulfilled," Graber said flatly. "Or as long as I die in the pursuit of it."
A boast would have rung false; the Indian was no fool. Graber's eyes never left his. After a moment, the Sword commander nodded curtly and reined his horse around.
It will take them some time to assemble a war-party that outnumbers us sufficiently. We have that long.
He remembered blue-gray eyes looking into his, and a pleasant lilting voice speaking:
It is easy to kill. Any fool can do it.
"Shite," Rudi said in exasperation.
Maybe it wasn't a good idea to stop long enough to put the gear on pack-saddles, he thought. But if we'd kept the cart, they'd be a lot closer. And we're going to need that equipment, later.
The sun was well up now; his binoculars showed the wink of its light on lance-heads southeastward. Far too many of them and far too regular to be Sioux; and besides, the Lakota didn't use nine-foot lances or russet-colored armor, as far as he knew.
But the Sword of the Prophet do, the creatures.
Ritva rode towards them and reined in, pointing eastward in the direction she'd come. "The buffalo are there, Rudi. You would not believe how many. But…"
"But?"
"They're moving north, and picking up speed. It looks like something spooked them. We'd better hurry if we want to get across the front of them-if we don't, we'll have to wait on this side. It is definitely impossible to get through that herd while they're moving."
"Shite," Rudi swore again, this time with more feeling.
He couldn't see them yet, but he thought there was a haze of dust in that direction. And even when the ground looked as tabletop flat as it did here, he'd learned that distances were deceptive-the slightest roll or fall of the ground could hide anything shorter than a hill even if it was only a few miles off.
"No," Three Bears said. "It's good. If we can get across the herd before the Cutters catch up, I mean. It'll take hours-maybe a whole day-for them to pass. If we're on the other side, we might as well have mountains in between."
Ritva nodded vigorously.
"Then go," Rudi said. "Ingolf, you and Mary take lead. Three Bears and I will bring up the rear; we're the best mounted archers. Now."
The Easterner nodded grimly and legged his horse up to a hand gallop.
Rudi wished briefly that he had time to switch to Epona, but he'd been riding one of the remounts to spare her. It was a good beast, but not quite fifteen hands-and even riding in kilt and shirt, he was a little heavy for it. It was sweating already, the musky scent strong under the dust and crushed grass of their passage. Usually being six-two and built like a cougar was an advantage, but sometimes…
Three Bears cut out two more for them as the remount herd went by, with Edain and Virginia and Fred driving them forward. The pack-saddles some of them carried had only about half a rider's weight and wouldn't slow them much.
Ahea
d, Ingolf signaled and the travelers turned sharply east of north, moving in a compact mass with the remuda of remounts in the middle. Rudi shifted his balance forward, and the well-trained animal stretched its legs, head beating up and down as if to set the pace. He looked over his shoulder, and the enemy were visible to the naked eye; as he watched the ant-tiny dots seemed to swarm, and then some of them were pulling out ahead of the others.
"How many do you make it?" Rudi called over the rising rumble of the hoofbeats, as a covey of quail burst from the grass ahead of him; he gentled the horse instinctively as it started.
"Ten or fifteen pulling away from the others," Three Bears said, nodding at Rudi with his brown braids flying in the wind of their passage.
They'd both had the same thought: the Cutters knew they couldn't catch the smaller, better-mounted group all at once. Two hundred mounted men could only proceed at the speed of the slowest mounts, and in a group that size there would always be some slugs, especially if they'd been taking horses where they could get them. So they'd sent their best riders and beasts on ahead, to push their quarry into tiring their horses.
"It's going to be close!" Rudi shouted back.
The Indian grinned; he was a young man, after all, younger than the Mackenzie, and of a warrior people. Then he turned in the saddle and shook his bow in the air.
"Kye-eee-kye!" he screamed. "Hoo'hay, hoo'hay! The sun shines on the hawk and on the quarry!"
Rudi bared his teeth too; he wasn't an oldster yet, either, and the Clan wasn't shy of a fight, and it was a bright summer's day with a good horse beneath him. His spirits lifted, seeming to fly with the long stride of the valiant mount between his legs. He added the saw-edged wailing ululation that Mackenzies took into battle.
Then he settled down to coaxing as much speed as he could out of the horse, short of the all-out dash that would set its lungs foaming out. The Cutters were pushing theirs to the uttermost; they could fall back and let others take up the sprint if they had to. And the buffalo herd was just coming into sight eastward.
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