"Your Highness commands," he said, bowing his head and chuckling again before he put the lance at rest.
Over with the Seffridge Ranch folk Bob Brown gave Rudi a thumbs-up. The horse herd was safely penned in a box canyon, with Mrs. Jason and her daughter-who usually managed the chuck wagon-watching them. The cowboys were well equipped, for light horse; Bob and four others had short mail shirts, and the rest steel-strapped leather breastplates, and they all had good round shields and bowl helmets. They'd all slung an extra quiver to their saddlebows, too; you ran out of shafts fast in a serious fight, and the man with the last arrow was likely to be the one who rode home. The youngest of them was looking mutinous, and leading a train of several packhorses with panniers full of bundled arrows.
Rudi rested the butt of his lance on the toe of his boot and nodded. The rancher's men formed up in a rough column of twos and trotted away eastward, their hooves a growling rumble on the hard alkaline dirt. Dust fol lowed them as the sound faded away; there wasn't any way around that with so many horses.
But we want them to be seen. Let's see, they've got a mile to go, he thought. Of course, we seven don't want to be seen…
Ingolf looked up at the sun. "Nothing shows up at a distance on a clear day like a bright lancehead," he said, and flipped his down and buried the point in the mud of a drying puddle for an instant. "Everyone, get it muddy."
Everyone did, though not eagerly in some cases. "Hell of a thing to do to good steel," Odard grumbled.
"You can wash it soon in blood, hopefully," Mary pointed out, as she unhappily followed suit.
Vain as peacocks, Rudi thought affectionately as he looked at his sisters… and Odard. Or as cats.
"And I said stop showing off, Odard," Mathilda added sharply. "The point is to kill them, not make them applaud our chivalric brilliance."
"Point taken," Odard replied.
"Let's get going," Rudi said, as the Baron of Ger vais reluctantly daubed the bright-polished steel in the puddle.
They did, straight eastward rather than a little north of east as Bob and his men had done. That put them on course for a gap between two high rocky hills or low mountains; the one on the left had the remains of an old radio tower on it, and the one on the right a name, Red Mountain, from the ruddy sandstone of the cliffs. Seven horses put up a good deal less dust than twenty; the plume from the rancher's party was bigger still be cause half a dozen of his men were dragging clumps of sagebrush behind them on their lariats. Feint to distract, then strike to kill…
The CORA men said the Rovers were wild and undis ciplined to a fault, but that might be prejudice speaking. Hopefully not. Ingolf agreed; from his tales, the Sioux were the same way.
Mathilda was on his left. "I hope the Mormons who were supposed to buy Rancher Brown's horses hold out till we get there," she said, leaning closer. "It would be sort of futile to do this if they were all dead already."
"Thanks," he replied with a grin. "I didn't have worries enough to occupy my mind the now!"
Edain and Alex would be seeing to that. He forced aside worry for the young man, and even for the thought of having to tell Sam Aylward that his boy had died so far from home. That Sam would be so brave about it made the thought worse, not better.
It'll either work, or it won't, he told himself. And if it does. .. well, my totem is Raven, but maybe Ingolf's is Coyote. It's a trick worthy of the Trickster!
****
"Hssst!" Edain breathed quietly.
Hooves clattered on rock and gravel. Two Rovers passed by below at the bottom edge of the hill and stopped by the rough stone circle of a well. If they saw his horse and Alex's back in that ravine…
They both lay motionless, letting their war cloaks hide them, gray-green fabric with sagebrush twigs stuck through the loops. He could see fairly clearly through the gauze mask of the hood; the Rovers looked up the slope for an instant before they heaved the heavy timber cover off the well and threw in a leather bucket on the end of a lariat. His hand closed on the grip of his longbow, and he could smell the acrid sweat beneath his brigandine, strong even with the overwhelming smell of dust and creosote-like scents baked out of the bushes. The two horsemen were only fifty yards away; an easy shot.
At fifty yards, I'd be certain-haven't missed a shot like that since I was a kid. Father Wolf, totem of my sept, strengthen me now! Don't let me flinch!
The older Rover was a man in his thirties, bald or shaven-headed, with a long dark brown beard tied into two plaits with leather thongs, and a bucket of javelins slung across his back. The younger was about Edain's age; the yellow hair on the front of his head was cut down to stubble, with a patch at the back grown long enough to braid. The bearded man had a boiled leather breast-plate over a ragged shirt and threadbare jeans tucked into rawhide boots; the blond youngster wore only a breechclout and a bracer on his left arm, his sinewy feet bare in the molded leather stirrups of his mustang's sad dle, but he carried a good recurve bow and had a quiver over his back. Both had shetes at their belts, and round shields and leather helmets sewn with plates of metal slung at their saddlebows.
The younger man kept watch while the older hauled up water hand over hand, carefully holding the bucket so the horses could drink without spilling much.
"I hope those farmers got some pretty gals along," the young man said.
"Hey, what'll Sandy say about that?" the other asked.
"She'll say, 'Thank you kindly,' if I bring her a Mor mon gal to do the camp chores and help with the baby," the young man said.
Then he clutched boastfully at his crotch for a moment. " 'Sides, I got plenty. I ain't a wore out old man like you who couldn't get it up with a rope tied to it."
"Yeah, the sheep all run when they see you comin', Jimmie," the other man said dryly. "Rams and ewes both."
They both laughed as they swung back into the sad dle. The older Rover went on: "Me, I want their gear. My kids could use some blankets and coats, and my ol' woman needs a new cookpot pretty bad since the patch come off the old one."
Edain gave a silent sigh of relief as the two men can tered off northward, disappearing behind the bulk of the hill.
"Let's go," he hissed to Alex, then saw with a start he was already halfway to the crest.
He followed, placing his feet carefully; the last thing he wanted now was to start a rain of pebbles and rocks. Even the quiet snick-snick of the arrows in his quiver sounded as if some malicious redcap or boggart were doing a heel clicking tap dance on his back. At last he reached the crest overlooking the ruins where the Mormon expedition had camped.
"They're still holding out," he said, licking his lips and then spitting to get the bitter-sour taste of alkali out of his mouth.
"As your master said they would," Alex Vinton replied.
Edain scowled at him. "I'm a Mackenzie. We don't have masters. Rudi's my Chief. And my father was first armsman of the Clan for sixteen years."
He glared, leaving the as opposed to body servant and bum-kisser to the by blow of some gangbanger-turned-lord unspoken… for now.
"No offense, no offense," the older man said soothingly. "Let's get on with our work."
The two lay behind a greasewood brush atop the ridge behind the ruins of Whitehorse Ranch; the sun was half way down the sky towards the west, still baking spicy medicinal smells out of the herbs and bushes. Edain cau tiously raised the precious pair of field glasses he'd inherited from his father, making sure they wouldn't catch sunlight and betray the position.
The Rovers were prowling in closer to the wagon fort; he saw fire-arrows flick out and stand in the tilts of the prairie schooners. Ordinary arrows snapped at the men who stood to throw buckets of water at the spots where the burning ones hit. A dozen Rovers rode in close, and there was a scrimmage along the northern edge of the laager, figures doll-tiny even through the glasses.
"They're something determined," Edain said thoughtfully. "Both sides."
"Your first battle?" the man from the Protectorate
asked.
"No," Edain replied shortly. "Second, more like-one real fight, some skirmishes." Then he went on: "Look!
Half of the Rovers are drawing off to that well north of here to water their horses. Let's go!"
They headed downslope; their own mounts were hidden in a short ravine at the rear of this hill. Garbh paced beside him, silent but bristling all over, lips peeled back from her long yellow teeth. He tried to walk as quietly as he could, but rock rattled and slid as they went crouching down the juniper-strewn slope.
"Uh-oh!" Edain said. "It was a feint- run!"
They were approaching the south side of the improvised fort, a section of crumbling mud brick wall flanked by wagons on either side. He was still just high enough on the hillside to see the forty or so Rovers who'd ridden out towards the well suddenly turn their horses as one, an eerily uniform motion, like a flock of birds wheeling. They broke into a gallop back towards the north side of the laager, screaming like a grindstone on metal as they came, and shooting as fast as they could draw bow.
A bellowing war cry rose to meet them from within the encampment: " Come, ye Saints! "
Edain could see men rushing to that side of the laager. He could also see that they weren't all going in that direction, and someone who'd stayed behind on the south side was leveling a crossbow at him.
"Friends!" he shouted. "We're friends… oh, sod all!"
The last came as he threw himself flat, to the tunng of a crossbow shot and the shunk of a bolt hammering into the dirt far too close to his nose. Someone hadn't believed him.
On the ground he could also feel hooves hammer ing, the vibration coming up through the palm of his right hand; and they were also far too close. Garbh spun around, snarling like ripping canvas. Edain did too, com ing up to one knee, feeling the gritty soil bite at his bare kneecap above the knit stocking. Two mounted Rovers were coming at them, less than a hundred yards away-the ones he'd seen at the well. One had a javelin in his hand, cocked back to throw; the other was raising his bow. The points of spear and arrow looked uncomfortably sharp, and all aimed at him.
And they weren't just targets; they were men he'd heard talking and joking and concerned about their children…
Suddenly he was calm as his right hand went back for an arrow; somewhere far away he knew his blood was racing and his bladder felt too full, but it didn't matter.
Nock shaft, he heard his father's voice say. Tilt the bow so the tip doesn't catch on the ground when you're kneeling… Don't look at the arrow, just where it's going to hit…
The string went snap against his bracer. The arrow flashed out, flying almost level with the short range and heavy draw, just at the instant the other man loosed as well. The blond young horse archer threw his arms up and pitched over the back of his rough-coated pony as the arrow went through his chest without stopping, leav ing a double splash of red along the way. In the same instant something punched Edain in the pit of the belly, hard enough to knock most of the wind out of him.
"Ooof!"
He looked down. A broken arrow was on the ground, still moving, the point curled back on itself where it had slammed into his brigandine. He wheezed and struggled to get air into his lungs.
Tunnng.
Another crossbow-Alex's, this time-and it missed; the javelin man was already ducking in the saddle and the bolt went whhhpptt through the space he'd occupied an instant before. Then it was the young Mackenzie's turn to dodge-aside, in a dive that left him rolling as the pony flashed by and the throwing spear buried its head in the dirt where he'd been.
He came erect again in time to see a bolt from the laager hit the surviving Rover's horse just behind the shoulder. That was either fantastically good shooting, or the Hunter's own luck; the horse took three steps and dropped limp as a wet rag hitting the floor on washing day. The bearded rider who'd wanted blankets for his children and a cookpot for his wife shot forward, landed on shoulder and neck in an audible snap of bone, and rolled until he lay still jerking and twitching in a cloud of dust. That sank around his body as his heels drummed on the ground.
"Come on, friends!" someone yelled from the laager. "Come on!"
"We're coming, so don't bloody well be shootin' at us this time!" Edain shouted back.
He ran, the bow pumping in his left hand and his kilt swirling about his knees. Alex ran beside him, trying to work the lever in the forestock that cocked his crossbow at the same time. Garbh dashed ahead, then cleared the bed of the wagon ahead with a long smooth leap, like some hairy salmon migrating upstream past an obstacle. Edain and his companion followed her with a scramble nearly as swift if considerably less graceful.
Two men confronted him-no, one a girl a bit younger than he was, in an impractical-looking denim dress that reached to her calves and a headscarf under a straw hat, but holding a businesslike crossbow in her arms. The man was older, with an odd-looking fringe of beard about his jaw but his cheeks and upper lip shaved. He wore a pot-shaped helm and held a glaive-a giant knife on a six-foot pole; the blade glistened with a liquid coat ing of bright red, and there was more spattered across his bib overalls.
"You're a man!" the girl blurted, staring at Edain's kilt and then his still mostly beardless face.
"And you're not," he snapped, suddenly conscious of how dry his mouth was.
"Thank you, strangers-" the man began.
Garbh snarled again, and they all looked up in dismay. The wagon laager was roughly oval in shape with its long axis running east-west. The northern face was only twenty yards away, and it suddenly changed shape. The Rovers had managed to get half a dozen lariats around one of the wagons there and then backed their horses together to drag it out of position.
It swiveled away and then fell over on its side, like an opened door; two-score of mounted warriors boiled through. The defenders tried to stand them off with pikes and glaives and short chopping swords, but there weren't enough of them, not nearly enough, and everything was dissolving into a mass of rearing horses and shouting screaming men who stabbed and slashed and clouted at one another. He could see a Rover dodge under a thrust from a pike shaft, then lean far over in the saddle and swing a light ax with dreadful skill in an arc that took off the pikeman's hand at the wrist. The hard tock of steel in bone came through the roaring brabble of the fight.
"Right, then." Edain grunted, taking stance in the ar cher's T, feet at right angles. "Twenty yards, clout shots."
After struggling with the unfamiliar recurves on horseback, some straightforward shooting Mackenzie style would be a pleasure… almost. And he could hit a squirrel's head to spare the flesh and hide, nine times out of ten, at this range. The yew stave bent in a smooth flexing motion. Not much armor to worry about either; most of them didn't even have a boiled-leather breast plate. He could as well have been using hunting broad-heads as bodkin points.
Snap.
A horseman looked down in astonishment at the gray goose fletching that stood against his breastbone, and toppled forward.
Snap.
Another screamed as a shaft pinned his thigh to the saddle and punched on through that into the horse's body, breaking a rib along the way. The wounded animal turned and went bucking off across the plain, tossing the man like a rag doll in an ill-natured child's hands until he fell and let out all his blood onto the thirsty gray soil through the severed femoral artery.
A Rover with a metal strapped leather cap spurred at him. Edain pivoted on his left heel as he drew.
Snap.
The clothyard arrow banged off the helm, turned by the acute angle at which it met the piece of old highway sign laced to the bullhide. The head left only a bright streak in the metal, but a shaft driven by a hundred and fifteen pounds of draw weight hit hard. The rider dropped shield and shete and sat dazed for a moment. Then he screamed-briefly-as Garbh lifted off the ground, her jaws wide. They closed on his face as the bodies went down in a thrashing tangle. He tried to tear the big half mastiff bitch loose with frenzied strength, a
nd did, but a lot of the face came with her.
Nock… draw… aim… loose…
Snap. Snap. Snap The attack was blunted before his quiver was half empty. Someone behind the scrimmage around the overturned wagon shouted an order in an unfamiliar accent and waved a pole with two horsetails sprouting from either side at the top. The Rovers who could turned their mounts and galloped off northward. Some of them shot backward as they went; none of the fighters in the laager seemed inclined to reply. They lifted the wagon back onto its wheels and shoved it into place instead, and then slumped or saw to their wounded or drank wearily from canteens, too tired even to wonder at the pair who'd turned up here in the back end of beyond and in the middle of their battle.
"Not many of them left here," Alex murmured to the young Mackenzie.
He thumbed another bolt into the firing groove of his crossbow and held the weapon business-end up. Edain nodded, a quick slight jerk of the head.
"Heel!" he called.
The bitch slunk to take station behind him, still growling low and bristling, licking at shaggy jaws that dripped red. There looked to be about a dozen still on their feet within the laager, but many of them had bandages showing blood. More wounded were lying on blankets, with a medico of some sort working on them and a couple of walking wounded as helpers. Edain winced a little as a man shrieked for his mother and bucked against the hands holding him down while the arrow spoon went in after a barbed head-either they didn't have morphine or they were out of it.
A round dozen more lay with blankets over their faces. A few near where the breakthrough had happened weren't covered yet. Aylward's son gulped quickly and looked away, then made himself look again. Back when he'd been about ten he'd gotten a close up view of a man who'd tripped while drunk and fallen face first into the business part of a threshing machine, and that had given him nightmares for years. These were worse. At least back at Tillamook there'd been other people to clean up afterwards.
The older man he'd seen first came up, with the girl. He wasn't as old as Sam Aylward's sixty-plus, as Edain had thought at first; a closer look put him at a very, very tired forty. There weren't many people around as old as Edain's father. Which meant this one had been about Edain's own age at the Change. That was an odd thought.
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