The Sword of the Lady c-3

by S. M. Stirling

  In the same instant the blade in his left hand flicked out, the point driving through a throat and past it with scarcely a tug. Behind it a spray of droplets hung in the air for a second, black in the dying light.

  There was a wisssst- thud behind him and an earsplitting scream, as an arrow struck and lodged in bone; more hissed past to strike, one close enough for the fletching to brush the skin of his neck in passing. The first -ranked archer in the Clan was in back of him, twice winner of the Silver Arrow at the Lughnasadh Games and a hunter of beasts and men. Then another cry of horrified pain, beneath a roaring growl; Garbh was at work protecting her master as he shot, darting in to slash at a hamstring and then close her great jaws on the man?s face as he fell, jerking him back and forth as she worried at what her long fangs held.

  The twisted gorgon mask of Rudi?s face made a man stumble back in midattack. And die an instant later in a galvanic convulsion as the sword point flicked into and out of his eye faster than a frog?s tongue licking up a passing insect on the wing, punching through the thin bone and into the brain.

  Another time, and the grating, crunching sensation that flowed up his hand and arm might come back to leave him sweating and clenched in some moment of peace. Now it was only a slight tug on his wrist as he wrenched the sword free and sliced down a spear shaft in a motion that left a long curl of wood flying free with the wielder?s fingers.

  A thunder of hooves, and Epona was there, her eyes white and rolling, her great slab teeth bared as she bugled a challenge. One of the wild-men looked around just in time to see her milling forehooves come down on him like steel-shod warhammers, and threw up his arms in a gesture as futile as his scream. The remaining attackers crowded forward towards Rudi, half attacking him, half fleeing her. A thought flickered through some remote corner of his mind:

  There are people who think horses can?t be dangerous because they eat grass.

  A stab as precise as a surgeon?s scalpel in over the collarbone, and a man collapsed with the great mass of arteries above the heart severed. The withdrawal turned into a smashing backhand chop that sent a spearhead pinwheeling away into the evening with half a foot of shaft still attached. He slid forward in a smooth savage rush; the man made one futile jabbing motion with the stub before Rudi cracked the pommel of his sword into the temple and drove bone-splinters into his brain.

  Get in close, he thought/knew.

  He leapt over the hocking swing of a blade that had probably started life as some sort of hedging tool and was near enough to the weapon westerners called a billhook. It hissed beneath his boots, and one of the wild-men screamed as it struck his leg, as much in rage as pain. Rudi kicked as he landed, a solid heel-strike to the billman?s knee; something gave under the boot with a grisly snapping, crunching sound.

  Ignore that one, he?s out of it.

  He pushed off the impact, using it to swing himself around, the longsword slashing horizontally as he spun.

  Get close, get close…

  Too close for anyone to draw a spear back for a stab, and himself a whirling screaming striking blur that left death and ululating agony in its wake as the melee stumbled across the hillside?s uncertain footing. Edges and clubs grated and banged on his helmet, thumped into his brigandine, hard enough to leave bruises he?d feel later, if he lived-they were striking at the head and body from instinct, unused to dealing with real armor and not knowing how vulnerable they were to his ironclad violence.

  If I had full war-harness on and a knight?s shield I could take the lot of them!

  But he didn?t, and it could only be seconds until sharp metal hit something unprotected and vital, throat or limbs; he couldn?t block a dozen men, couldn?t kill them all. There wasn?t time An ax looped towards his neck. Rudi?s buckler deflected it with a crang, and his sword licked down on the man?s arm above the elbow. The edge cracked into bone and through it with an ugly thump that jarred up the weapon and into his arm and shoulder. The man spun away, staring at the bleeding stump and then sitting down to die. Startled as the blood spurted over her fetlocks, Epona stopped stamping a body into rags of flesh and bone-splinter and reared to pound her hooves into him instead.

  Rudi recovered with desperate speed and a spray of leaves and twigs beneath his boots, but the next man was poised with his spear cocked back to thrust into Rudi?s face, the lunge already beginning. ..

  … and he froze, with an expression of intense surprise on his features for an instant, as a wet red point appeared through his chest. Then he went flaccid and collapsed at the Mackenzie?s feet. Behind him a horseman swerved his mount and snatched another javelin out of the hide bucket slung over his back, throwing it with a whoop. The shadowed woods were alive for an instant with leaping fleeing men, throwing aside their weapons to run with heedless speed and crashing through the thickets as the horsemen they?d ambushed harried them on.

  Rudi thrust the point of his sword into the earth as a support, leaning with his mouth open to suck in the air his lungs craved despite the raw stinks it bore. His other arm went around Epona?s neck as she nuzzled him, the sweet grassy-musky scent of her breath and sweat strong in his nostrils as he panted. The wave of rage that had filled his veins and nerves like liquid fire cooled, leaving his skin rippling with a sudden cold and his body full of a leaden weakness.

  Suddenly half a dozen minor cuts stung like itching fire, above the duller ache of wrenched and battered muscle. For a moment he was not sure if the gathering darkness was natural, or the product of a body driven beyond its limits. Fighting was the hardest labor in the world. He was young and very strong and in hard condition, but his body still tried to shake like an overworked horse, and he had to swallow again and again with a paper-dry mouth to keep the heaves from starting. His trainers back home, Mackenzies and Bearkillers and Association knights alike, had warned him that he pushed himself too hard.

  So had Master Hao in Chenrezi Monastery, in the Valley of the Sun, where they?d taken refuge last winter from blizzards and pursuers; he?d been more specific about it, too:

  There is a deep inner well that the body can tap, a store of great strength, and of great speed. Most never reach it; and of those who do, most only when uttermost need breaks down the barriers. A few by long training in the inner disciplines. But you, Raven-man, you can open that gate by wishing it so; it is in your nature. Be cautious with this gift! The merciful Buddha buried this deep within us for a reason! It is the last reserve against extremity. You shorten your life a little each time you draw from it.

  The problem being, of course, that having your skull dished in or six inches of steel shoved through your gut shortened life by much more than a little. He was very good with a blade, but nobody was good enough to deal with fighting many against one, unless something took him beyond himself. His skin quivered again. And you didn?t feel the fear until afterwards, some place in the mind knowing how it would be when the edged metal grated through your eye sockets and the world went black There?s a place beyond the Gate, and we return, he thought, not for the first time. But not to this life. Death is a forgetting, whether it comes in terror like a tiger hunting in the night, or as the gentle Mother whose last gift is an end to pain. I?m not through being Rudi Mackenzie yet! Yet neither were these ready, who had their own purposes and needs. Dread Lord, Keeper-of-Laws, be gentle with those torn untimely from the world of men; and me also when my hour is come.

  He?d straightened when the three horsemen returned from their pursuit, and was wiping his blade on a swatch of rags torn from a body; Edain stood ready with another arrow on the string, discreetly pointed down and not drawn… yet. Garbh was glaring at his heel, tongue licking her reddened muzzle, ready for a leap to take a man out of the saddle. Epona abandoned a rear as Rudi grabbed at her hackamore with his free hand-you didn?t use a bit on her-and she prepared to tolerate the men as she did those around him when he asked it of her.

  Three. They lost a man, then. All of them wounded, but none very badly.

  She tossed her head and
whickered a little disdainfully at the strangers? mounts; they were all shorter than her seventeen hands of sleek black height, and none had her long-limbed grace. Their harness was crude, simple pad saddles and pre-Change bridles patched and repaired with bits and pieces of this and that. The Mackenzie chieftain waited with the sword still drawn, ready to strike if the three were inclined to add him to the larder. ?Owe you one, west-men,? their leader said to Rudi, dismounting and extending a hand to them both in turn.

  Ah. They can tell we?re from west across the Mississippi. From the gear, most likely. Though probably not quite how far west. ?I?m Jake sunna Jake, n? these are my bros Tuk n? Samul.? His smile revealed several missing teeth.?We runs with the Southside Freedom Fighters. I?m the big man a? Southside. Youze save our asses.?

  Rudi thrust his sword into the earth and took the man?s hand, as callused as his own and very strong for his size. Probably big man meant something like chief. The native of the Wild Lands was several inches shorter than his own six-two, and failed to match Edain?s five-nine by a finger or so; he was wiry-slender, with a sparse young black beard and hair haggled off below his ears and eyes so crow-colored that the pupil disappeared in the iris.

  The dark olive face was scarred and weathered, but he judged the man was about his own twenty-three years, give or take. His short pants of crudely tanned and worse-sewn rabbit skins were held up by a broad belt with a buckle of salvaged metal; his weapons were a knife and a hatchet, besides his javelins, and all but the wooden shafts of the throwing spears looked to be of pre-Change make.

  His eyes were shrewd as he took in Edain?s bow, and he nodded at the peace gesture as the archer returned his arrow to the quiver. They went a little wider as he looked around and realized how many of the enemy had long gray fletched shafts in their bodies, and how far away some of them were; both were obvious as the younger Mackenzie went about the grisly but essential task of retrieving intact arrows and the heads of the broken ones. It was also obvious how easily they?d smashed through crude armor-leather studded with bits of metal, wooden shields surfaced with salvaged STOP signs and similar makeshifts for the most part, though one body wore a modern mail shirt stolen or bartered from the other shore of the Mississippi.

  That hadn?t helped its wearer either, though it made it harder to get the arrow out undamaged. ?Kin I zee?? he said.?Thass new.?

  Edain shook his head wordlessly as he grasped an arrow delicately with both sets of forefinger-and-thumb and pulled. He didn?t like letting strangers touch his longbow-that one had been a special gift from his father, Aylward the Archer, the old man?s personal war-bow that he?d set aside when he could no longer bend it. Rudi bent to retrieve his own and let the other man try it. Jake grunted incredulously; his arms were knotted with hard lean muscle, but they quivered and shook and he abandoned the effort before the string was halfway to his jaw. Drawing the great war-bow wasn?t just a matter of raw strength, though it needed that too. You had to have the knack, and that came from long and constant training-Mackenzies started their children at age six or so.

  Edain slipped his own weapon into the carrying loops beside his quiver, cleaned his hands on a tuft of grass and pointed to the bow riding behind one of the horsemen?s saddles with a crook-fingered let me have that gesture. The rider hesitated for a moment, then handed it down. ?Fiberglass,? the young Mackenzie archer said, at the feel of the

  stave.

  That meant it was pre-Change, and lucky not to have aged and cracked into uselessness. The stuff the old world had confusingly called plastic mostly didn?t rot, but it lost strength and suppleness unpredictably. Then he bent it with one contemptuous finger on the string before handing it back. ?Twenty, twenty-five pounds draw. Nobbut a toy for little children, and feeble children at that, sure.?

  Most warriors were proud of their gear. Rudi could see the man begin to bridle before he looked around and spat in reluctant agreement.

  Jake pushed a body over on its back with his foot. ?Knifers,? he said, pointing a bare toe at two long-healed zigzag scars on the dead man?s cheek like parallel thunderbolts, evidently some tribal mark.?Shig-man?s boys, all three bunches got together fer dis. Bettuh we git outta here.?

  One of the others snorted.?Runs allem till dark-dark aftah dis comin?.?

  They?ll still be running at sundown tomorrow, Rudi translated mentally.

  Jake shrugged.?Mays they come back. Tuk, Samul, git gowin.?

  The other two Southsiders had a family resemblance to their leader, save that one was naturally dark brown of skin with tight-curled hair and broader features and the other pale blond. The ragged blankets all three had thrown over their saddle bows were probably their only other garments, and their bare feet were broad, callused enough that they likely went so always unless the weather was freezing. As the leader spoke, his companions were collecting any weapons worth having and making sure of the enemy wounded.

  Rudi grimaced slightly to himself. That was sometimes needful, but never pleasant-much harder than killing in the white-hot savagery of battle. He noticed with relief that the wild-men were going about it with a rough mercy, taking care to make the final stroke as quick as possible. The sounds of agony died down into an echoing silence. ?Youze got free of our turf,? Jake went on to the Mackenzie clansmen.?Come Southside fires anytime y? want, sit down?nd put a hand in the pot like a Freedom Fighter stud.?

  Rudi had to strain for a moment to understand the words through a thick accent, harsh and slurred and nasal at the same time, that turned these into deeze and are into ur. ?My thanks to you, Jake son of Jake,? he said, slowly and clearly. ?My name?s Rudi Mackenzie, of the Clan Mackenzie; my sept totem is Raven. This is my blade-brother and sworn man Edain Aylward Mackenzie, called the Archer, of the Wolf sept. And you saved my life with that last spear-cast, as well, so I?m thinkin? we?re even, so.?

  From his frown Jake found Rudi?s lilt-stronger than most in Clan Mackenzie and the product of Juniper Mackenzie?s own County Mayo accent-hard to follow as well. One of his tribesmen brought up a horse with a dead man across it. ?Thass our bro Murdy. The bastards killed him,? Jake said. To the air:?You don?t haunt us none, spook-Murdy,?cause we got?em for y?!?

  The others in the Southsider party added more to the same effect. Rudi nodded approval; it was a warrior?s duty to avenge his comrades, and a kinsman?s too. ?And speaking of duties, now that we have time…?

  He and Edain each bent to one of the bodies of the slain foemen, touched blood to a finger and that to his forehead. Then they faced the west and he murmured with raised hands: ?To Your black-wing host we dedicate the harvest of this unplowed field, Morrigu, Lady of the Ravens. Dread Lord of Death and Resurrection, Guardians of the Western Gate, guide the souls of these our foemen to the Lands of Summer where no evil comes and all hurts are healed. Goddess Mother-of-all, gentle and strong, through whose Cauldron we are all reborn, witness that we killed these Your children from need and duty, not wantonness, knowing that for us also the hour of the spear shall come, soon or late. For Earth must be fed.? ?So mote it be,? Edain finished.

  They exchanged a glance and a slight nod. Rudi could tell the other Mackenzie was adding the same silent observation:

  And return these rotters in better condition for their next go-round on the Wheel, once they?ve spent some time with You.

  Jake gave Rudi a sharp look.?Hey, that?s a good saying word t? keep spooks down… You two aren?t part?a those bastards from Iowa, are you? You sure don?t sound like?em and they pray to the Jesus-man.?

  It took Rudi a moment to realize what doze bassids meant; he made a mental effort to switch sounds and fill in the missing parts of speech. ?No, that I am not,? he said.?We?re from the Far West, from the lands of sunset, where we follow the Star Goddess, Who is also Earth the Mother, and Her consort the Sun Lord.?

  Well, some of us do, he thought. ?I came to Iowa with my friends on a journey eastward-? To the farthest East, to the lands of sunrise, to seek a sword seen in visions. That might perhaps be a wee bit complicated to
discuss right now. Also the way the Prophet?s men pursue us. ?-and the Bossman?s men set on us and took them captive.?

  Which oversimplifies a bit, but is true in the essence. ?He holds them hostage, until I return with a treasure-wagons left on a road north of here, just past a ruined town. The fall of… three years ago now.?

  Jake?s brows went up; it was visible, in the light of moon and stars. ?Those? We know?em. Nothing worth taking there. We checked. Not cloth or saddles or blades or nothing. Wagons too big for us, so we left?em. Mebbe haunts there, mebbe bad spook luck.?

  Rudi shrugged and smiled.?They?re what he wants, nonetheless. And I?ve been trying to get to them, and not be killed by everyone I meet.? ?Talk about it later,? Jake said. He glanced up at the sky, obviously judging distance and time by the stars.?We gotta get Murdy away fore we bury him. Otherwise the Knifers, they?ll track and dig him up and eat his heart?n balls.?

  The dark young man, Tuk, spat on one of the bodies.?Bassids. Eaters. Monssers.? ?Monssers?? Rudi asked, as they collected Edain?s mount and the pack animal with their gear.

  The living men mounted and headed westward along the river. Fireflies flickered across the waters, and a cool wet breath came from the river?s surface. Rudi took a deep lungful, glad to be away from most of the stink of blood and opened bodies, though Murdy and the game on the packhorses-a white-tail, an elk and a feral cow-weren?t all that fragrant either. Something hooted in the woods; they all stiffened, and then relaxed when experienced ears told them it was a real bird. Tuk continued: ?Yeah, monssers, like the ones who chased our pamaws-?

  Ancestors, Rudi realized, as they crossed the river where a fallen bridge broke the current and made a ford. ?-outta Chi-town in the Bad Time. They were just littles, but they was clean, our pamaws. Clean!?

  In fact Jake and his friends were a fair bit ranker than the wet heat of summer here demanded, and their ill-cured clothes and harness smelled worse, not to mention the spatters of sticky drying blood that they ignored, despite the river being close at hand. Jake explained for the stranger as Rudi quickly bent and scooped up water and sand in passing to rub his hands free of the sticky mass that threatened to gum his fingers together. He could finish the job later, and take care of his sword-even the finest metal got nicks when you slammed it through bone. ?Didn?t eat nobody, even when they had to kill?em anyhow to keep their own asses off the cookfire. Not even once. The Knifers, they still eats man-meat sometimes. Even when they don?t hafta. Think it makes?em spook-strong.?