The Sword of the Lady c-3

by S. M. Stirling

  She was a tall fair woman a little past forty; the face under the raised visor of her sallet helm was still beautiful, in a fashion now slightly harsh. The sixty pounds of Bearkiller cavalry armor-breastand backplate of articulated steel lames, similar cover for upper arms and thighs, vambraces and greaves-didn?t bother her.

  It?s about the only thing about this cock-up that doesn?t bother me very much indeed, she thought. But Mike taught me a long time ago that you have to look positive for the troops.

  She?d kept all her skills up, enough that she wasn?t a handicap on a battlefield where command was her primary job, but she hadn?t taken the field for years. Most of the time she ran the civil side of Bearkiller affairs from Larsdalen-the core of which had been her family?s summer home even before the Change-and left active military leadership to her twin brother, Eric Larsson.

  But most of the time we?re not scraping the bottom of the barrel and holding on with our fingernails, she thought bleakly.

  And then, as she watched the skirmish half a mile away:

  I haven?t forgotten how to do this. I also haven?t forgotten how much I dislike watching men die. Even strangers who?ve never done me any personal harm; my friends, even less.

  It was a chilly winter?s day here up on the high sagebrush plains east of the Cascades, which introduced yet another of the discomforts of wearing armor-in summertime she?d have been roasting like a pig after a blot in the suit of articulated plate, and now it made her sweat whenever she was active and then let the moisture in the padding beneath turn dank and greasy-chill as soon as she was still for more than a few moments.

  Which right now is the least of my worries.

  The enemy had thrown up the earthwork fort beside the old road bridge in less than a day; her own field engineers were lost in professional admiration at how swift and thorough it had been.

  Damn them all, Signe thought. Hella eat them and spit the bones into Ginnungagap!

  The foursquare earth walls appeared as if dug by a race of giant prairie dogs, with four low thick towers of prefabricated timbers at the corners, sheathed in steel plates and a broad abatis covered in angle iron and barbed wire. The United States of Boise?s flag flew over it; since they considered themselves the United-States-of-America-full-stop they used the Stars and Stripes. Which her husband, Mike Havel, had always considered slightly blasphemous for any of the thousand-and-one successor states in the ruins of the world left by the Change.

  At least Lawrence Thurston had really believed in restoring the United States. His parricide son, Martin, just wanted to be Emperor, as far as the reports could tell.

  The cavalry deployed around it to protect the construction were mostly Pendleton rancher levies, light cavalry armed with bow and slashing-sword, few with any protection beyond a bowl helmet and steerhide jacket. And a platoon?s worth of the Sword of the Prophet, elite troops of the Church Universal and Triumphant out of Corwin. Boise?s theocratic allies were armored in lacquered leather and chain mail, and unlike the ranchers and their cowboys they used both lance and bow.

  Which was supposed to be our Bearkiller A-list?s monopoly, she thought. There aren?t as many enemy horses as there were yesterday, when I decided we couldn?t take them on. That?s because the fort?s finished today. Do we get anything by winning this action? But if we just retreat every time they run up a fort, why not surrender right away?

  The Bearkillers had ranchers? retainers with them as well, men and the odd woman from the CORA, the Central Oregon Ranchers? Association. The two forces of light horse were skirmishing, loose knots of horsemen galloping and exchanging arrows that twinkled as they reached the top of their trajectories and plunged downward. Now and then a man would fall, or a horse. A clump of riders would drive in to the rescue, and light broke off the honed edges of the swords as little squads cut and stabbed at each other, saber against shete. One such rescue party got a little too close to the new fortlet, and there was a deep unmusical tunnnggg-whap! sound as the heavy truck springs that powered a murder-machine on one of the towers cut loose. ?Shit,? she said flatly.

  The ball from the six-pounder scorpion was too fast to really see save as a streak until it was nearly to the target. Distance mercifully hid the details, but she thought it smashed a man?s head off; certainly he rode on for a dozen paces before toppling. The others exploded outward like a drop of water on a hot greased skillet; one of them paused a second to swing the unhorsed comrade they?d first come for up behind him. The dead man?s horse followed the rest of the war band with the stirrups bouncing loose. ?The High One receive him, and the valkyr bring him the mead of heroes,? she murmured, and signed the Hammer with her was. ?And that one who rescued his friend is a brave man too,? her son Michael Jr. said.

  He?d filled out and shot up as he turned sixteen, and though he was taller now he looked more like his father than ever-save that his hair was fine and corn yellow, rather than Mike Havel?s coarse black mane. That meant Michael Jr. also looked more like his half brother Rudi, a thought which made her force herself not to scowl; they were both exceptionally handsome young men, straight-nosed, with square dimpled chins and high cheekbones. Mike had the brand of the A-list between his brows, despite his youth. He?d won it by bravery on the field, at the Battle of Pendleton last year, and the privilege of carrying the lance that bore the Bear-head flag.

  The lance was perfectly functional. Bearkillers didn?t bring empty symbols to a battlefield.

  The mounted trumpeter on her other side was also close kin, her twin brother Eric?s son Will, and also young for his task. A field-force commander?s signaler had to get things right. That branch of the family was Catholic; he crossed himself. Both the youngsters wore only mail shirts and leather armguards over their brown uniforms. Not even Bearkiller thoroughness went to the hideous expense of refitting fast-growing teenagers in a new set of plate armor every year. It had to be tailored like a fine suit of clothes. ?Signal execute retreat,? Signe said.

  His brown face was solemn as he raised the trumpet to his lips and blew the six-note call the regulation three times. ?Now let?s see if the CORA boys are still fixated on being ornery independent cusses of sure enough cowpokes by goddamn, or whether they?ve finally learned to do what they?re told,? she said.

  They had; the whole hundred-odd of them started to fall back at a hand gallop, turning in their saddles to shoot. The Pendleton cowboys pursued their outnumbered opponents, yelling and whooping and bunching up, which was almost instinctive in a situation like that. Signe?s lips peeled back from her teeth in a she-wolf grin as they approached a certain point and her hand rose. The forces of the realms allied in the Meeting at Corvallis were stretched thin. She had thirty A-list lancers with her, no more, and the lower your numbers the less the margin you had for error.

  I don?t have any at all.

  The retreating CORA riders passed over a low ridge, and towards a section of sparse grassland dotted with sagebrush that looked no different from a hundred thousand square miles just like it in this part of the continent. The CORA horsemen weren?t trying to lead the enemy towards her; reckless or not, the pursuit wouldn?t come anywhere near the A-listers. Not within charging range of armored lancers on armored horses; not so close that they couldn?t disengage on their more lightly burdened mounts and pepper the heavy horse with arrows from a distance.

  And… yes, one or two of them were starting to look at the ground ahead suspiciously. One stood in his stirrups to shout something. Beside her Will put the instrument to his lips and took a deep breath. ?Wait… now!?

  Her arm chopped downward. Will?s bugle call rang out instantly, loud and sweet. The CORA horse-archers split left and right as the sagebrush erupted. A hundred Mackenzies sprang up from where they?d lain prone beneath their war-cloaks since they?d crawled forward in the middle of last night. The cloaks were mottled coarse cloth sewn with loops that held sage and bunchgrass; they fell aside to reveal kilt and plaid… and brigandine and helmet and well-stuffed quivers of clothyard shafts fletched in gray-g
oose feathers.

  It was cold last night. Better them than me!

  A piper was with them, and the harsh, hoarse squeal of the drones wailed out. As it did the long yew bows came up, bent into beautiful shallow curves, and began to snap. Arrows flicked out in a sudden ripple, thirty a second at point-blank range into a bunched target; a target of horses completely unprotected, and of men with nothing more than boiled leather or the odd mail shirt. The charge of the Pendleton men shattered like a glass bottle flung at a castle wall as men and horses went down in a thrashing, screaming tangle, and now – ?Sound charge!? she called.

  The trumpet sang, high and sweet. The A-listers? deep shout of Hakkaa Palle! rang out as the lances dipped and the big horses began to move away from her in a mounting rumble of hooves. Tactical doctrine specified a two-deep staggered row for this. Sheer lack of numbers meant a single line. ?Hakkaa Palle! Hack them down!?

  They started slower than a ranch-country quarterhorse; sometimes she thought those were crossbred with jackrabbits, and the Bearkiller mounts were carrying the armor of their riders and their own on neck and chest as well. But their long legs were fast enough when they got going… and the Pendleton cowboys were too tangled with their own dead and dying to react quickly. The arrow storm stopped as the Bearkillers struck. Five minutes later the enemy were running hard, but by then far fewer of them were able to move.

  The CORA horse-archers rallied behind the Mackenzies and slid back around to their right, to the north and as close to the fort as they could get without being back in artillery range. That put them on the flank of any attack by the block of the Sword of the Prophet waiting under the fort?s cover.

  They weren?t moving. It wasn?t cowardice.

  It?s iron discipline, she thought. Damn. We were supposed to be ahead in that, too.

  The Pendleton men still outnumbered the Bearkillers by three to one, even after most of the A-list fighters had speared one enemy out of the saddle in the first onset. That was about as important as fresh eggs outnumbering ball-peen hammers, though; now the backswords were out, armored riders on tall barded horses working in drilled teams. The eastern cowboys stood the melee for moments only, just long enough to look for a way out. Most instinctively broke southward away from the Bearkillers… which meant they had to cross the front of the Mackenzies again, as the A-listers left them to the longbowmen.

  Even at this distance and over the sound of the?Ravens Pibroch? she could see the grins of the clansfolk, and hear them shouting cheerful bets at each other as they drew and tracked the moving targets and loosed. A superficial acquaintance with Mackenzies could leave you with the impression that they were a friendly, musical, fanciful, harmless people. Signe Havel had been dealing with them almost as long as there had been Mackenzies, and she knew that stereotype was about three-quarters right.

  The last bit was a very bad mistake, though. Lethally bad.

  Three more of the enemy squeezed out northward and made straight for her in a triple plume of dust either just trying to get by, or out for some revenge on the party under the enemy banner. They grew swiftly from doll-size to real men on real horses, close enough to see the fixed snarls of terror and rage, the thin reddish beard of one, the bleeding slash along another?s cheek. ?Heads up, troopers,? she said to her son and nephew, drawing her sword and sliding her round shield onto her arm.

  Will slung the trumpet around over his back and pulled the recurve bow out of its saddle scabbard before his left knee; his other hand went back and twitched three arrows out of his quiver, putting one on his string and the other two between a forefinger and the bow stave. They all signaled their horses forward with thighs and balance, walk-trot-canter-gallop; an A-lister usually didn?t touch the reins in battle.

  Three deep breaths and everything left her mind but the now. The cowboys drew closer with shocking speed, strings of foam and slobber running from their horses? jaws. The men were nearly as wild-eyed, their shetes in their hands. None of them had any arrows left in their quivers-most of these cow-country men were fine shots, but the sort of organization that brought ammunition forward during a fight wasn?t their long suit. Beside her Mike Jr. was riding with perfect form, shield on arm and lance slanted forward at forty-five degrees, held loosely. The popping fluttering rattle of the flag increased as the wind of their passage cuffed at it.

  Will?s bow snapped, once, twice, the boy bracing himself up in the stirrups of the heavy war-saddle as he drew and loosed. The cowboy opposite him ducked below the first shaft as it wasp-whined by his face. That put his collarbone right in the path of the next; there was a wet crack sound of parting bone audible over the pounding of hooves, and he pitched backward off his horse.

  Signe gave her opponent the point, sword extended at the end of her outstretched arm like a lance, but he threw himself to one side just in time. She wrenched her sword up and over to rest behind her back for an instant as they flashed past. Tunng and the heavy shete?s backhand stroke hit it hard enough for the blow to wrench at her hand, just over the spot where there was a gap between the flare of her sallet helm and the upper edge of the backplate.

  Her horse reared and crow-hopped three times on its hind legs as it killed its momentum in response to her signals. It whirled as it came down, eyes bulging, huge yellow chisel-teeth bared as it snapped at the cow pony. That agile beast had already wheeled and put its master within chopping range; he struck at her three times in fewer than three heartbeats, overarm and forehand and backhand.

  Tung. Crack. Tung.

  One blow caught on her backsword, one glanced off the surface of her shield, another on the sword, and this time it slid down to hit the guard and numbed her hand again. She had no time to strike back. The man was shrieking as he hewed at her, half her age and quick and strong…

  Then he coughed, looked down at the arrowhead that jutted from his leather coat, coughed again in a spray of red, and slumped away. One high-heeled boot caught in a twisted stirrup as he fell, and the horse moved away dragging him and looking back over its shoulder, dancing sideways until the boot slid off the foot and the body dropped free. Then it galloped away.

  Mike Havel had given the Bearkillers many sayings. One was:

  Fair fights are for suckers.

  Another was:

  One for all, and all on one. ?Thanks,? she wheezed to Will Larsson, wiping drops of blood off her eyelids with the leather on the palm of one gauntlet.?Been a few years since I did this.?

  Long enough to forget how it can leave you feeling like a wet dishcloth in a few seconds, she thought, struggling to take steady deep breaths. ? De nada,? he replied, his smile white.

  He came by the tag naturally; his mother Luanne?s mother was Tejano, and Angelica Hutton had been the Outfit?s quartermaster-general since that meant cooking dinner personally. His maternal grandfather had been a black horse-breaker from the Texas hills. The combination of that Afro-Anglo-Hispano-Indio mix with Eric?s Nordic heritage had given him exotic good looks, bluntly regular full-lipped features, skin the smooth pale light brown of a perfect soda biscuit, eyes midnight blue and hair curling from under the edge of his helmet in locks of darkest yellow.

  A look around the Sword of the Prophet were cantering forward a little as her A-listers pursued the fleeing ranchers? men. The A-list lancers reined in at the very fringe of the area covered by the fort?s war engines, turned, and cantered back towards her. The Corwinites halted again when the CORA men started lofting arrows at them from extreme range, a bit over two hundred yards with a saddle bow. The survivors of the Pendleton force drew up behind the Prophet?s guardsmen-all but a few who kept going east as fast as they could quirt their horses. ?We beat?em!? Will said. ?Good as we can expect, dammit,? she said.

  Mike Jr. was out of the saddle, pulling at the shaft of his lance with a foot braced on the body of the man it pierced, looking grim but not too wobbly. The lance was disposable, but the banner had to be retrieved. And bloodstains were nothing new on a Bearkiller battle flag.

&nb
sp; This was his second real fight, not his first, she reminded herself. ?Trooper,? she said. Mike looked up.?Put something white on the end of that, and ask the enemy commander whether he?s interested in a mutual half-hour truce, for each side to retrieve their wounded.?

  It took an effort to say; the enemy-even the Prophet?s fanaticsusually respected a flag of truce on the battlefield. About as often as her side did, for the same self-interested reasons. That still meant sending her son into talking distance of men for whom mercy was scarcely even a concept.

  I can?t treat Mike any different from the way I would any bannerman, she told herself.

  He grinned at her and saluted crisply.?Yes, ma?am!?

  Signe slid her unmarked sword back into the scabbard and rested the palms of her gauntlets on the horn of her saddle for an instant, waiting tensely while her son cantered over the battlefield and picked his way between fallen men and horses. The sun had barely risen at all; the whole affair had taken less than half an hour. Mike waved at her after an instant?s conversation with the man beneath Corwin?s flag of golden-rayed sun on a bloodred ground before turning and galloping back. She kept her breath of relief behind her lips until he was out of arrow range.

  Will used his trumpet again, and the light two-wheel carts came forward to gather the hurt, with medics jumping down to administer first aid. For a moment there was little sound, except the sough of wind and the shrieks and moans and whimpers of humans and horses in pain. That became less, as the wounded animals were put down and the men given morphine.

  The Mackenzie commander came up, running afoot with one hand on the stirrup leather of his mounted opposite number from the CORA contingent, the longbow pumping in his left hand. ?Montival?s secret weapon strikes again, you might be after sayin?,? the grinning leader of the Mackenzie archers said; he was an olive-skinned young man named Beech, after the tree.?We?ve only a few hurt. They should all make it.? ?Stung?em bad,? the rancher said.?We paid for it, but they?re busted for now. Bastards won?t have as many men to go raiding after our herds next time!?