The Sword of the Lady c-3

by S. M. Stirling

  The seven of them sent their horses to the east; besides Rudi, there were Ignatius, Odard, Fred, Victoria and the twins. Most of the rest of their party were spread out on the rear slope of a long low dune, standing in scooped-out firing positions that left only head and shoulders visible, with spare arrows sticking in the hard snow point down by their hands. It all looked like the best possible disposition of an inferior force.

  The dune disappeared quickly behind them; it was hard to see features in this world of white-on-white. His mount?s coal silk blackness was the most vivid thing in sight.

  Like being inside that snow globe of mother?s, he thought. But one the size of the world.

  Epona was feeling better after a couple of days with all the hay she could stuff down, as well as their hoarded feed pellets. Her knees came up proudly as she advanced at a canter, throwing little rooster tails of light snow up and forward as she paced; it would have glittered if the sun had been out. The older layer beneath creaked and gritted under the ironshod hooves of their warhorses; now and then it creaked a little more with a different, brittle note, that put his teeth on edge like biting down on copper foil.

  Epona weighed a bit over a half ton. Add in him, his weapons and armor, and the war-saddle-they?d left off the steel-faced horse-barding today-and it was a third again more. All of that came down on those dancing hooves she seemed to place so lightly and delicately, but he?d seen them punch through a prone man as if he were made of wrapping paper. The water beneath him wasn?t far away, it was extremely deep and very, very cold, and in this gear he?d sink like a rock… only rocks didn?t need to breathe air.

  And to be sure, I do. Drowning was supposed to be a comparatively painless way to die, but so stuffy… Yet a man lives just as long as he lives, and not a day more, he reminded himself.

  The snow picked up a little more, but not enough to be called a storm; he was becoming a judge of those, in this land and in this fimbul winter of a season. After a moment he saw a line of black dots ahead. In another, they were men, tiny but distant. He unshipped his binoculars and adjusted the focusing screw with his thumb. ?Ah, as I thought,? he said. ?Your Majesty?? Ignatius said. ?They replaced their horses coming north from wherever they beached their ship on the Ohio, but what they?ve got are crowbait and badly trained, a lot like the ones I suffered with bringing back Ingolf?s wagons. And they?ve lost more condition than ours, besides starting lower.? ?Good,? the warrior-priest said.?We can control the distance of our engagement.? ?Exactly. For a while, at least.?

  The fringe of troopers of the Sword of the Prophet were in a formation more ragged than any he?d seen them using before. He nodded again and recased his field glasses. Horse soldiers were only half of what made up a troop of cavalry of any sort. The other half was the horse, and its training and condition were every bit as important as the rider?s. ?Bows!? he said.

  They all pulled out their saddle recurves and set arrows to the string. All his companions save Edain were good horse-archers; Virginia was among the best he?d ever met, though she didn?t draw a very heavy stave. The troopers of the Sword were fine shots too… but to use bow and arrow well from a horse?s back you needed one you could guide with knees and balance alone.

  And I?m counting on that. Otherwise I?d not have dared take us within range of better than twenty bows. Other things being equal, numbers count… except to be sure when things aren?t equal and hence they don?t.

  Closer now. He could see one of the Cutters belaboring his mount with a quirt; it turned its neck and tried to bite him on the knee, before he popped it on the nose. That was a sensitive spot for a horse; then it bolted back the way they?d come with the trooper sawing at the reins. Rudi smiled the special smile of a man seeing an enemy?s discomfiture, but there were still an unpleasant lot of the Cutters. Closer, three hundred yards, a little less… ?Now!?

  He stood in the stirrups and drew. The recurve bent into a deep C-shape as he drew to the ear. He let the string fall off his gloved fingers, and the rest of his band did likewise. Arrows arched out from the enemy, seemed to rise slowly and then come faster and faster as they went chunk into the hard-packed snow and the ice below, or whipppt as they flew past.

  A Cutter toppled from the saddle, and another; he thought several more were wounded despite their armor. Closer still… ?Retreat!? he called.

  They turned their mounts; there was a crunch as Epona turned, and black water leaked out of star-shaped cracks where her left rear had pivoted. He ignored it and shot again, Parthian-style, backward. ?Keep it at this range!? he said, as the group spread out into a line.

  Bang.

  A shaft struck the long triangular shield slung over his back. The heavy bit of knight?s gear turned it, though he felt like he?d been hit with a diffuse hammer. Another shot of his own arched up into the pale gray haze above at forty-five degrees, and an enemy horseman ducked as it went just over his spiked helmet. The companions were rocking along at a slow canter, instinctively focusing their arrows on any of the Cutters who came out of the pack, slowing when the enemy did to keep in touch with the dun mass of Bekwa on foot who swarmed along to their northwards.

  Victoria sped a shaft to the east over her horse?s rump and whooped:?Yippie-kye-ey! Hoo?ay! We got the sweet spot, you motherfuckers!?

  Fred shot next, with that grim businesslike air his father?s realm of Boise taught, then Odard and Ignatius, then the twins and Rudi together. They were all shooting as fast as they could get a good target, but at nearly two hundred yards from a moving horse against moving targets that was guess and luck as much as skill. One more hit

  … no, two. Excellent practice at this range and with the snow and white background making it hard to judge distance, and the pursuer?s shafts were all over the map. Sooner or later they?d make damaging hits by sheer volume and chance, though.

  And I had a perfectly good excuse for keeping Matti out of this one. Even she thought so. Sweet Brigid, but that makes me worry less! Except about winning, the which we need for any of us to survive.

  It was almost a surprise when Epona snorted, and he noticed they were about back where they?d started. They crested the low dune they?d built and pulled up. A Southsider dashed over with bundles of arrows for their quivers, and then they were waiting with only their heads and shoulders showing over the crest. A few last enemy arrows dropped near them, and then the Sword troopers reined in to a barked command-some of them with considerable difficulty; those must have been the ones with the most recently stolen horses.

  Rudi pulled back another arrow; closer this time, say eighty yards, just raise the point so.

  Whihhht.

  The shaft flew out in a sweet shallow curve that had a rightness to it. A man threw up his hands to claw at his face and slid backward over the crupper of his saddle. The horse bolted towards shore at a hammering gallop. Halfway there it went through the ice in a billowing gout of water and sheets of broken crystal levering up in angular patterns. A terrible shrill scream rose as it went under the surface and came up again to paw at the edge with its forehooves. That broke off more; it floundered again, and the current swept it below the surface for good and all. ?Bad for the poor beast, but good for us,? Rudi said.?Let them watch us carefully for the safest routes! And abandon all thought of swinging around our flank.?

  A trumpet sounded, and the Sword men drew out of easy range. He didn?t envy their commander even the obvious chance he had of charging straight into the teeth of seven good bows whose wielders had cover. ?Now he?ll try sending in his footmen,? he judged, and looked over to his left, northward.

  Pierre Walks Quiet and Edain were there, with Jake and most of the Southsiders; call it twenty-eight bows. He waited, enduring the growing cold that seeped in under his armor and gambeson, working his fingers now and then to keep them from stiffening in his gloves. The Cutters? savage allies grew from a dun mass to something larger, until he could see their standards of skull and horns and rayed sun, see them leap and brandish their weapons, hear the yelping nasal
war cries: ?Jemesowiens!?

  Whatever that meant; and raw shrieks of hatred and menace. They walked forward, gradually building up speed, snow misting up around their feet, looming larger and larger through the gray-white landscape. ?They?ll hit a full run just at maximum bow range,? Ingolf said meditatively.?That?s smarter than any Eaters I ever ran into. They?re going to eat their losses and charge home. Glad I never came this far north.? ?Three hundred fifty yards,? Fred muttered.

  He didn?t have to estimate it, though he was good at that; they?d marked the range inconspicuously. The Cutters began to move again too, walking their horses so they could shoot more effectively. ?Three hundred. Two seventy-five. Two fifty…?

  The savages were moving at full pelt now, a mass six or seven deep and broad enough to overlap the archers on both sides. ?Now!? Rudi muttered to himself.

  He wasn?t giving the order; Edain could do that just as well. In the same instant Rudi heard him shout: ?Let the gray geese fly-wholly together- shoot!?

  Snap.

  The arrows rose in a cloud; then again, and again. The heads didn?t sparkle on this sunless day, but the honed metal had a cold glitter. And from the island Tunnnggg. ?Pump! Pump!? Mathilda Arminger shouted.

  The vast wreck?s bow loomed over them, looking tattered by decay and men?s tools, a stretch of letters just visible:- mund Fitz -

  The two Southsiders worked their cranks, grinning through their frizzy beards, dark faces running with sweat even in the hard chill. This Richlander-made engine was worked with mechanical cocking devices through high-aspect geared winches and bicycle-chain sprocket drives, rather than the hydraulic bottle jacks the Association armies used for their murder-machines. There wasn?t much difference in the speed with which it compressed the sets of heavy truck coil springs that powered the throwing arms; whoever had made the design had known their business.

  Click, a heavy soft sound as the trigger mechanism engaged.

  Mathilda slapped the bundle of darts down in the throwing trough. They were eight inches from base to point, heavy elongated steel pyramids drawn out into fins at the rear, all bound together with a wicker band carefully weakened to last just long enough. She craned her neck to see over the line of bowmen a hundred yards away, spun the elevating wheel to the next spot, and shouted: ?Clear!?

  The two crewmen jumped aside, and she jerked the lanyard.

  Tunnnggg the second time, ten seconds after the first. ?Pump! Pump!?

  Twenty-four darts arched out eastwards and up, towards the massed enemy, spreading as they reached the top of their trajectory and plunged downward. The savages looked up and screamed. The results of the first round, and the continuous rain of arrows, were all about them.

  Click. ?Clear!?

  She spun the traversing wheel and turned the trough towards the block of troopers from the Sword of the Prophet; they were better disciplined, and hence more tightly bunched… and their horses were bigger targets. A firm jerk on the lanyard…

  Tunnnggg. ?By God, I think we could break them!? Odard shouted.?With that scorpion. Face Gervais, face death!? ?No. We might be able to knock them back a bit, but they?d just go around. Shoot!?

  Rudi drew and loosed; he was sweating again now. Drawing a hundred-and-twenty-pound saddle bow was as much heavy labor as throwing sacks of grain onto a wagon, with all the muscles of your torso and gut working. The savages were wavering-the scorpion could throw six times a minute, and that meant a hundred and forty-four of those deadly little darts, and as many arrows again from Edain and his band. A volley of the darts slashed into the Sword troopers as he watched, and horses exploded outward in pain and panic, bugling shrilly. ?They?ll come at us now!? he said.?Wait… wait…?

  The enemy trumpet screamed charge. The Cutters cased their bows, drew shetes or leveled their lances, booted their skinny garrons into motion. Rudi shot, again, again-the range was closing, and nobody was shooting back right now. ?The which is a great aid to concentration. Wait… Wait…?

  Even a bad horse could cover ground very fast indeed. ?Now!?

  Every one of them wheeled their mounts and set them going. Rudi focused on the markers; left and then straight and then right and straight -Epona?s great muscles bunched beneath him, her body an extension of his own as it had been since his boyhood, as if their thoughts meshed through the same fire of nerve and balance. The seventeen-hand warmblood danced.

  He heard a sudden scream to his right. Mary?s horse had broken through; she catapulted out of the saddle, landed rolling and spraying arrows from her quiver. ?Rochael!? she shrieked.

  The dappled Arab mare?s forehooves hammered at the broken, floating ice before her. Mary started to run back to help her, but Ingolf swung inward on her blind side. He leaned out of the saddle with skill that made Rudi blink and snatched with a huge and desperate strength at his wife?s quiver, throwing her across the saddle in front of him. Boy?s rear hooves slipped and the surface cracked beneath them, but he scrambled free and onto the unweakened section of the ice. Tears ran down Mary?s face as she slipped free, but she reached over her shoulder for one of the remaining arrows. ?Clear!? Mathilda shouted.

  Tunnnggg. ?Pump! Pump!?

  Round shot this time, the six-pound cast-iron sphere arching up like a blurred black dot. It landed behind the oncoming figures that marked Edain and his archers… right among the pursuers. Water gouted skyward, and men slid down tilting slabs of ice. Suspiciously regular slabs in part, where they?d patiently drilled holes to be covered with snow. More and more of the weakened ice broke, away from the jagged paths the retreating archers trod, carefully calculated to look like panic-stricken men dashing about witless. The forest-runners? shrieks turned from triumphant to terrified in an instant.

  She could see a war chief with bars painted across his face throw his arms out in a frantic halt! gesture, but it was too late. Three men tumbled into him, and they all rolled together towards a stretch of black water where ice bobbed and men thrashed. To their left the horse soldiers of Corwin were in a worse state; a galloping horse couldn?t stop quickly. One went right into the spot where Mary?s horse had broken through, and the slim mare started to climb it, hammering the rider under her hooves. Another went through, and another.

  Click. ?Clear!?

  Tunngggg.

  A lumpy, gritty stuff was packed around the frame of the scorpion. Thermite ignited easily, and they wouldn?t be leaving the engine intact. ?Pump! Pump!? ?She?s just limping!? Mary said, joy shining in her one eye as she looked back at her Rochael. ?Mary,? Ingolf said, a little reproof in the tone.

  Rudi frowned at them, and Mary dropped her eyes as his flicked to the limp burdens the other horses bore. Pierre Walks Quiet?s face had fallen in on itself a little in death; the stiff red ice on his parka hid the wound that had killed him in five seconds of startled agony. Jake sunna Jake simply looked surprised, his hands still clutching at the stump of the javelin that had taken him in the throat. Bodies stiffened quickly in this cold. ?Pierre Walks Quiet was your friend, Ingolf,? Rudi said.?What words would have pleased him?? ?Pete wasn?t Catholic… or anything, that I knew of,? Ingolf said.?Said he could talk to God out in the woods with the animals, better than in any church. I don?t think he?d mind anyone he liked saying words over him, though.? ?Now he walks beneath the forever trees,? Rudi said quietly.

  Ingolf nodded, lost in his own thoughts. Rudi looked at Jake?s body.

  What will I tell his woman? he thought. Or how explain to his children what their father was?

  He helped the others bear them into the barn; Father Ignatius murmured the service for the dead beneath his breath. There was still a heap of loose hay; the bodies were laid in it, a faint scent of summers past rising amid the iron smell of blood. ?Ingolf?? Rudi asked.

  The big Richlander swallowed, then spoke:?I knew Pete… Pierre Walks Quiet all my life, from the Change. It?s hard to realize the old man?s dead. He was like… like one of the manitou he used to tell me about. Taught me two-thirds of what I know about woodcraft and beasts a
nd I wouldn?t have learned the rest without the start he gave me. Taught me to love it, too. Good-bye, Pete. Damn and hell, I?ll miss you.?

  He turned aside, as his voice went thick. Rudi nodded and stepped forward. ?I knew Jake sunna Jake for a far shorter time, but in that time we fought side by side, and saved each other?s lives. He was called a savage, but I never saw him kill without need, or heard of it. He was untaught, but he learned more quickly than many I?ve met who are called great scholars. He saw the beauty in the world the Lord and Lady have given us, though nobody had given him the words to tell of what his heart said. And everything he did, he did first for his people. There were the seeds of greatness in this man, and now all that he might have done and been is sacrificed for us, his friends. Let us remember him, and be worthy of it!?

  Rudi?s voice rose:?Lords of the Watchtowers of the West, ye Lords of Death and Resurrection. We light the torch for Jake sunna Jake, brave warrior who fell for his kin and friends, face to the foe; and for Pierre Walks Quiet of the Anishinabe folk, who left comfort and safety to aid in the world?s need. Aradia and Cernnunos, accept Jake?s spirit in the Land of Youth. Manitou, bring Pierre?s spirit to the council fires of his people in their long home-?

  The fire flared up, and they retreated through the doors; the barn was tinder-dry wood and beam, and it would go up like kindling. Already the fire was beginning to roar. Rudi paused for a moment to lay his hands on the shoulders of Tuk and Samul, Jake?s half brothers. ?He?s a good one, us?n bro Jake,? Tuk whispered, his hands tight on his bow.?Done good for Southside.?

  Rudi nodded.?He was a man I was proud to call brother-in-arms,? he said soberly.?I will help raise his children as my own. Dun Jake will bear his name. Now let?s go! Mounted until we?re well clear, then back to skis; the horses can?t keep going fast with burdens in this.?