Edain brought the animal under control and started to try again, his square face grimly intent. Sweat streaked the white dust and brown-yellow stubble on his face; two days ago they'd been taking an icy plunge in Mustang Lake, which memory was too pleasant to recall in this hot dry saltbox.
"Clamp down with both your thighs evenly," Ingolf said patiently. "Stand a little in the stirrups when you do it. That's a range-country horse and he's trained to it."
The lesson went on. There wasn't much else to do as the horse herd and Rudi's party made their way slowly eastward. Even in the spring flush the grazing here wasn't much, which meant a hundred and twenty horses-not counting the riding and draft animals-had to spread out and spend a lot of time eating. The cowboys told a joke about a jackrabbit that starved to death hereabouts because it forgot to run between one blade of grass and the next.
With excruciating care, Edain did everything the way Ingolf had told him to. This time the arrow went shnnnk right into the base of a brush fifty yards away. By his banshee whoop, it had even been the one he was aiming at.
"Keep practicing," Ingolf said.
"That I will," the younger man said. He waved a hand around at the arid emptiness. "It's not as if I had anything else that needs doing, eh?"
Rudi nodded, and gave him a smile and a slap on the shoulder as he legged his horse up to a canter. I'll make him self conscious if I practice around here, he thought.
He was giving Epona all the rest he could, so he was on her daughter Rhiannon; the five-year old needed the exercise too, being more full of monkeyshines than her mother. Mathilda and the others were wearing light armor and practicing as well; Odard's man Alex was throwing rawhide disks to skip and bounce along the ground as they galloped by and shot, since he was good with a crossbow but no archer at all.
Hope he brought along a couple of extra crossbows, Rudi thought ironically. Not likely to find replacement parts out here.
Some of the score of Rancher Brown's hands along on the trek were practicing archery as well; it didn't take many to keep the horses moving. Rudi gave them a glance as he reined in next to the others.
"Not bad at all," he said.
Everyone nodded. They were all young, but they had been trained by professionals from childhood.
"Strange they're such good archers," Odard observed. "Most of them are barely even middling with the sword, and they're mere dubs as lancers."
"Not really strange," Rudi said. "It's the same reason they're such good riders. What they do to feed themselves in peace is training for war, you see. They spend most of their working lives in the saddle watching their stock. The bow's a tool for them too, for hunting or guarding the herds."
Mathilda spoke thoughtfully: "Mom and the Grand Constable are a bit worried about that," she said. "About the trouble it might cause in the long run. There's a lot of cowboys, not many in any one spot but a lot in total, because there's a lot of ranching country out there."
Mary and Ritva nodded silently. One of them took a small jar out of her saddlebag and they both applied the greasy looking lotion within to their faces and necks and hands. Mathilda took it with a sigh and began to do likewise.
"This stuff smells and feels like someone dragged a dead sheep through a field of wilted flowers, and then bottled it," she said.
"Lanolin with lavender extract," Ritva or Mary said. "Believe me, it's better than what the sun and wind out here do to your skin. This is from a shop in Bend."
Bob Brown came trotting over and heard the last re mark. "The Rovers use butter instead," he said, grinning. "Or sheep's-wool grease. You could try that…"
Mathilda shuddered again. Rudi took the jar and began to apply the lotion; he didn't like the feel or the smell either, but it helped. He wasn't quite as blister by lamplight as his redheaded mother, but it was close, despite his blood father, Mike Havel, being a quarter Indian. He didn't tan even as well as the twins, and the drying wind made his skin feel as if it were about to split over his cheekbones.
"Ride a bit with me," Bob said to Rudi.
The two men turned their horses aside; as he did so, Rudi caught Mary's eye-or Ritva's-and let one eyelid droop for an instant. The rancher's son pointed to their right, southward, as they ambled away from the main party. A rocky eminence stood about two thousand feet above the level of the plain.
"That there pimple is Lookout Butte-Buckskin Mountain, some call it."
Then he pointed directly east. "The old Whitehorse Ranch is thataway, less than a day's travel. That's where we're supposed to meet the buyers from Deseret and turn over the herd. There's good water there, wells, but pretty deep and not too much of it. The Rovers use it, but not usually this time of year-more in summer, when things dry up farther out. The Saints probably plan to head back east through Blue Mountain Pass afterwards; that's about another twenty, twenty five miles. Or maybe south over the old Nevada line. I didn't ask and they didn't tell me."
Rudi looked at the older man. "You're expecting trouble?" he said crisply.
"Hope not. But if there is trouble, that's where it'll be. The Rovers would rather steal horses than silver, but they wouldn't mind stealin' horses and silver and the gear from my bunch and the Deseret folks too, right down to our socks, you see what I mean? Not to mention our scalps."
Rudi looked slowly around the circle of the horizon. "They've been tracking us," he said.
" 'Course they have," Bob growled. "Herd this big, I might as well be wavin' a sign says, 'Rob me.' Or 'Kill me and lift my hair and then rob me.' Only that wouldn't be as dangerous as throwin' up a dust trail, on account of the Rovers can't read."
"Thanks for the heads-up," Rudi said. "If it comes to a fight, we'll do our part."
"We ought to scout ahead, but I don't like splittin' my people. We'd be shorthanded if they tried something tricky, like cutting part of the herd out after dark while another bunch made noise. Any of your folks you'd recommend?"
"I figured you'd ask that. Send the twins," Rudi said without hesitation. "For a quiet sneaky skulk, they're the best there is."
"You sure?" Bob said.
Rudi grinned. Cow-country people weren't as odd about girls and what they should do as Protectorate folk, but they weren't Mackenzies or Dunedain or Bearkillers either.
"You can come out now," he said, in a normal conversational tone.
One of them rose from behind a sagebrush that grew on the edge of a shallow gully, one small enough you'd swear it couldn't have hidden a jackrabbit. Rudi could tell she was breathing fast-she'd had to duck into the depression and run crouched over-but she hid it well.
"Shit! Jesus! " Bob said.
Then he swore again as he looked over his shoulder and saw the other twin raise her head over a rock and wiggle her fingers too, with a smug little can't catch me smile.
"Maybe you know what you're talking about, Rudi."
"Maybe. And we should get Ingolf in on this. He's got a lot more experience running a war band than I do."
Bob looked at him. "Not all that many men your age admit they've got anything to learn."
"I'm young," Rudi said, putting on the air of a man making a great concession. "But I'm not stupid… I hope."
****
"There it is," Mary-or Ritva-said.
Rudi, Ingolf and Bob Brown lay on the ridge, about a hundred feet above the level of the plain. The ruins of Whitehorse Ranch lay a little less than a mile to the east, with steeper heights rising beyond above the clump of dead cottonwoods and maples. Rudi watched, occasionally raising his binoculars, and fought back a sneeze from the pungent desert herbs crushed under their bodies.
There were people there now, using the roofless buildings and their half dozen wagons to make an improvised fortress; a dark banner hung limp in the warm dry air over one of the vehicles. Horsemen prowled around the laager, with no more order than a pack of wolves. .. and no less. As they watched a dozen of them suddenly set their horses forward at a gallop, raising a plume of dust. Steel twink
led within it as they rose in the stirrups and shot, then wheeled away again. The field glasses showed long spears leveled among the wagons, and the flash of bolts as they shot back-crossbows rather than archery, he decided.
"How many of the Rovers?" he asked thoughtfully.
"Around ninety, assuming all the ones we saw this morning are here," one of the twins said.
Bob had a pair of binoculars too. "Make that around eighty-nine," he said. "One of 'em just dropped out of the saddle and they're carryin' him away looking limp. It surely is a war party, right enough-no stock but their remounts, no women or kids or wagons, just some packhorses and a couple of tents."
"That's your buyers forted up?" Rudi asked.
"Yup. See the flag? A golden bee on dark blue-that's New Deseret."
"There can't be many of them," Rudi said regretfully; if there were, the little attack just now would have cost the Rovers more.
"Nope," Brown agreed. "About as many as we got to start with, no more. Less now."
He looked up at the sun; it was about noon. "I'd say the Rovers hit them at dawn, maybe snuck someone up to cut out their horses first. The Mormons're good enough in a tussle from what I hear, but they're farmers and townsmen mostly, and their ranchers 'n' horse sol diers are all out east fightin' the Prophet. This sure isn't a place for a farmer's fight."
Rudi looked over the little battlefield, and the endless rumpled landscape around them. Brown was right, and he felt uneasily self conscious about it. He'd never come so far east… and he'd never been involved in a fight this size, either.
Ingolf squinted at the Rovers. "So there's the nine of us, twenty-one of your men, Rancher, and maybe fifteen or so in the wagons down there-and they don't know we're here."
"But we've got some heavy horse," Rudi pointed out. "We bought Ingolf the gear for it too"-he nodded to the older man-"and you were already fine with a lance. If we could get in range for a charge, we could spatter them."
Bob Brown shook his head. "Hell, I was in the Mount Angel fight in the war," he said. "I remember how the Protector's knights cut us CORA folk up. It was like try ing to outbutt a mean old bull. But that was in the Wil lamette, where we couldn't run far. You try that here, they'll just run-and then when those big horses of yours are tuckered from a-haulin' all that iron around, they'll shoot you full of arrows."
"Like wolves with an elk." Rudi sighed. "So much for that idea."
"Wait a minute," Ingolf said. "Bob's right if they can run away. But back in the Sioux War, there was a time when…"
He went on, giving the details and then pointing out the features below-the hills, the water, the wagons and ruins, how far a horse could run…
"Oh, now that's a lovely plan, sure!" Rudi said, watching it take shape in his mind's eye.
"Lovely if it works. Four-to-one odds just purely don't leave you much to fall back on if things get fucked," the heir to Seffridge Ranch said dubiously.
"But we'll have to be quick; they're going to get overrun down there before sunset," Rudi said.
"Well, dip me in shit and roast me with nuts if it isn't our only real chance," the rancher's son said ruefully. "Can't just go home and tell Dad, 'Sorry, the Rovers done kilt all our customers.' "
Then his eyes went back to the ruins. "Be tricky timing, though. If it goes south, we're in it up to our asses."
"Never yet been in a fight that didn't have some risks," Ingolf said. "I wouldn't try it if there weren't those hills in back, but that makes it a chance worth taking."
Chapter Fourteen
Southeastern Oregon
May 15, CY23/2021 A.D.
"I hope this is worth it," Odard said, slapping each palm against the vambrace on the opposite fore-arm to make sure it was seated firmly, and then pulling on his mail backed gauntlets.
"You have to help your friends," Mathilda said, as she bloused her long tunic of titanium mail a little around her sword belt. "And your friends' friends. And we need their help getting farther east after Rancher Brown's men turn back, unless we want to try swinging far south and tackling the Colorado Rockies by ourselves."
"Point," the Baron of Gervais said.
Rudi grinned as his head emerged through the neck of his brigandine; he pulled out the bottom of his coif and tossed his head so the lower part of the mail hood would lie on the shoulders.
"And it's a nice day for a fight," he went on. "No clouds, not too hot… Someone give me a hand here?"
Edain did; putting on full lancer's armor was always a bit awkward. Mathilda met Rudi's eyes and gave him a grave nod as she fastened the flap of her coif across her mouth, then lowered the conical helmet with its splayed nasal bar onto her head and buckled the chinstrap. A plume of black-dyed ostrich feathers rose from the peak, traded from hand to hand at incredible cost from the deserts of the southwest where the birds ran free.
"Well, I'm off to do my bit, then, Chief," Edain said. "Wings of the Morrigu shelter you."
"Horned Lord with you," Rudi replied, clapping him on the shoulder. "And may the Wolf fight by your side."
Edain started towards his horse, then turned his head to say, "And thank Him and Her and Father Wolf too that I don't have to use that bloody saddlebow!"
The lancers' horses were ready; they'd armed them before themselves, with chamfrons to cover their heads save for the eyes and nostrils, and peytrals of steel plates mounted on padded leather backing on their chests and necks and shoulders. Epona whickered greeting; the chamfron went clink on the mail that covered Rudi's upper arm as she tried to nuzzle him. Her eyes rolled behind the ridges of steel that protected them as she snorted and stamped a foot eagerly.
She knows what the gear means, just as I do, Rudi thought. But she likes it more than I.
He settled the sallet helm on his head-a low dome of steel that came down to the angle of his jaw save for the open space before his face, and flared out to protect his neck. A smooth curved visor with a narrow vision slit slid up under his hand, shading his eyes like the bill of a cap.
Twin sprays of raven feathers stood in holders at each temple. Thin lines had been graven in the steel, and filled with black niello, in the likeness of more feathers; the visor came down to a slight peak. On this trip he wasn't supposed to advertise who he was, but he could still show what he was.
His thoughts went grimly on:
Epona just doesn't like people, except me; she wants to hurt them, the way they hurt her before we met. We're old souls to each other, I think; we've met in past lives, or in the Summerlands. But I don't enjoy killing men. It's necessary, sometimes, that's all.
He leaned against the saddle for a moment, closed his eyes, and murmured under his breath, "Dread Lord, Father of Victories, Storm rider, Wild Huntsman, aid us now. Dark Goddess, Morrigu of the Crows, Red Hag of Battles, to You I dedicate the harvest of the unplowed field of war, and the blood to be spilled this day on Your earth. Be You both with Your children; and if this is my hour, then know I go most willingly to You."
Sometimes the regard of the Powers could be as warm as a lover's embrace or a summer's wind lying in new mown hay; but most often They came in the Aspect that you called. Now he felt as if a wind were blowing, blowing along his spine and into the spaces of his head, cold and bitter from a place of ice and iron and bones. Then he swung into the saddle and picked up a lance from the seven that leaned against the wagon.
Father Ignatius had the band's Catholics gathered about him for a moment. Rudi could hear their voices following his:
"Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. Come to the aid of us Christians and make us worthy to fight to the death for our faith and our brothers. Strengthen our souls and our whole bodies, Mighty Lord of Hosts, God of Battles. Through the intercession of the Immaculate Mother of God, and of all the saints, we humbly beg this of You. Deus lo vult! Amen."
Then the monk swung into the saddle and rode over. He smiled and hefted the next of the eleven foot ash wood shafts, looked critically along the length, and gave the n
od of a workman satisfied with his tools.
Their eyes met, and Ignatius smiled. "Serious business, Rudi. It's always well to start it with a prayer."
"Right you are, Father," Rudi acknowledged.
The twins and Mathilda seemed to think so too. Odard was cool and detached, making sure his gear was just so.
"This is a damn good plan, Ingolf," the baron said. "If it works, I owe you a bottle of wine." He laughed. "And if it doesn't we'll be too dead to drink, most likely."
Odd, the Mackenzie thought. I wonder what it's like to be Odard? You can hunt and drink and spar with a man, and laugh at his jokes and play poker and talk about girls, and still you wonder what the inwardness is like, when he talks to himself in his head.
Odard went on: "They won't have ever dealt with real knights, this far east."
Rudi nodded; that was the plan. Unfortunately there were only seven of them fit to carry a lance-himself, the twins, Matti, Ingolf, Odard, and the soldier-monk.
Ingolf looked down at the kit he was wearing-much like Rudi's, a brigandine supplemented by mail collar and sleeves and breeches, with plate greaves on his shins and vambraces on his forearms. He'd stuck to his own kettle helmet, though.
"I'm not used to wearing this much armor," he grumbled. "Boy isn't either."
"He'll get used to it," Rudi said. "And you're already pretty good with a lance. Full armor doesn't make that any different."
"Just safer." Odard laughed, slinging his long kite-shaped shield over his back by the guige strap and swinging up into the saddle. "Safer for you, and more dangerous for the other guy."
His voice was muffled behind the mail coif; he tossed the lance's length of ashwood and steel overhead and twirled it like a baton until it made the air whir and the pennant crackle-a flamboyant and mildly danger ous trick that took good timing and enormously strong wrists.
"Stop showing off, Odard," Mathilda said sharply. "This is a fight, not a tournament with barriers and re-bated points. I don't want to get that thing in my back because you slipped."
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