And when I am his age, will anyone be left who can remember the old world the way Dad does? That's odder still, when you think about it. Though I'd rather think about that than what a man looks like with his ribs showing like a rack of lamb at butchering time.
The stranger seemed to be waiting for someone to speak, but Alex Vinton preferred to stay in the background when he could. The archer shrugged, returned the arrow on his string to the quiver, and extended his hand.
"Edain Aylward Mackenzie, of Dun Fairfax and the Clan Mackenzie," he said formally, and touched the wolf tail that hung from the back of his helmet: "My sept is Wolf."
The man's hand was strong and callused, by work more than the sword. He blinked at Edain's clothes. The younger man had learned what outlanders thought, and went on with a slight sigh.
"This is a kilt -" he began.
The girl flashed a smile. "We know what kilts are," she said. "We just haven't seen anyone wearing them in a while."
He nodded at her, pleased, and touched the horns and-moon emblem on the breast of his brigandine. "This is the Mackenzie sigil."
The other man collected himself. "I'm Bishop Jo seph Nystrup, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, and the Republic of New Deseret. This is my daughter Rebecca. Many thanks to you, strangers. They'd have broken in that time if not for you and your friend. But I'm afraid you've leapt onto the deck of a sinking ship here."
"You're the ones who are after buying horses from Rancher Brown, eh?" Edain said, glancing at Rebecca.
Even then, he was tempted to try a smile; she was about his age, with blue eyes and a thick yellow braid down her back and a comely snub-nosed face with a dusting of freckles across her nose and cheekbones. The haunted look in her eyes stopped him, and he nodded grave thanks to her instead.
"Yes. Are you one of his men?" Nystrup answered eagerly.
"I'm from farther west, but my friends and I are traveling with his son. We're thirty strong altogether."
"Do they know about these Rovers?" the man asked anxiously.
He wasn't like any bishop that Edain had seen be fore-for one thing, he was in denim overalls-but he supposed customs would be different this far from home. The Mackenzie smiled grimly.
"Oh, they know," he said. "And if you'll look north, you should be seeing Rancher Brown's men the now."
They did, scrambling up on the bed of one of the wag ons and looking through the singed and tattered canvas of the tilt. The Rovers were mostly gathered around the well to the northward, about a double bowshot away, with a few little clumps sitting their horses around the laager at a respectful distance but ready to dart in.
Suddenly the main knot of them boiled like a kicked-over ant heap. With his binoculars he could see-just-how many of them were pointing a little west of north. He swung his gaze that way and saw the plume of dust.
With a grin, Edain handed the field glasses to the bishop. Garbh jumped up beside them and barked at the distant figures, a woof with a bit of a growl in it; the doggy equivalent of: We sure showed them, didn't we, boss?
The older man fumbled a little with the focusing screw and then exclaimed, "Those are Rancher Brown's men?" Edain nodded, and the man from New Deseret went on: "There must be more of them than we thought! Perhaps enough to destroy these agents of the Adversary!"
"Not so many in that lot right there," Edain said with a grin. "But that's not the only arrow in the quiver."
Which reminded him he'd shot off a dozen from his. Reluctantly, he jumped down and began collecting them. Many of them were still in bodies, and he'd never pulled a shaft out of a man's gut before.
I've tweaked their nose, Chief, he thought. Now it's time you kicked them in the arse, eh?
Chapter Fifteen
Southeastern Oregon
May 15, CY23/2021 A.D.
"So, so, wait for it, girl. We don't arrive before the dance starts," Rudi crooned to Epona.
"It's all in getting them to stay still long enough to hit, when you're fighting wanderers like the Sioux or these Rovers," Ingolf said, adjusting the chinstrap of his kettle helmet.
Epona tossed her head again as if in agreement, with a clatter of bridle fittings against the chamfron and peytral. The hills lay on either side of them now. Rudi squinted over his shoulder at the westering sun, glanced aside at Ingolf's imperceptible nod, and then waved a hand forward.
"Let's go."
They all set their horses moving, down from the saddle between the hills and along the old gravel road; nobody had done any repairs since the year he was born, but it was still passable in this dry climate. Gear clattered and clanked, hooves crunched, and the taste of the desert dust was sharp and salty on his lips. They turned left-north-when they hit the flat, and picked up the pace to a walk trot-canter trot-walk. The big horses couldn't keep that up all day the way cow country ponies could, not carrying the load of steel they were, but it was only about five miles to the old ranch buildings. Everyone would arrive fresh enough for a charge or two.
The road ran north, with a low plateau two or three hundred feet higher a mile or so to their east; if Rudi had been in charge of the Rovers he'd have had look outs there, but it looked like they were as sloppy-undisciplined as the CORA men said they were. And this effort would be two or three gangs of them working together; none of them would know where all the others were.
"Uh oh," he said, looking slightly off to the right. "Look there, where the road turns east, north of the hills. Right on the way we have to go."
Everyone did. Ingolf's eyes were the next keenest. "Looks like horsemen. Say five or six."
"There's a well there, according to the old maps," Father Ignatius said.
"Getting right up their ass without their noticing was a long shot," Odard said in a resigned tone.
Rudi's lips thinned as he nodded. It would have been nice, though, he thought.
"Bet you they don't notice who we are for a while," Ingolf said.
"We certainly don't look much like Rovers!" Rudi said, with a toss of his helmet to indicate their armor-clad bodies and big steel-barded horses.
Ingolf grinned, a hard expression. "Oh, you'd be surprised. People see what they're expecting to see, mostly, and nowhere more so than in a battle. I could tell you…"
The Rovers were watering their horses; at first they just glanced up. It wasn't until they were within a hundred yards that the first of them pointed and yelled.
Then they leapt into the saddle, reining around and spattering every which way, shooting as they went. Arrows went by with nasty vvvvvwpt sounds; one ticked off the curved surface of Rudi's sallet, a painful whack even with steel and padding between it and his scalp. Several of the Rovers rode right back east towards the main gang; the others just headed anywhere that wasn't blocked off by hills. The quarter-horse mounts they all rode had acceleration like jackrabbits, and they left trails of dust with a speed the bigger western horses couldn't match. Rudi shifted his weight backward and Epona-after a moment's reluctance-slowed.
Ingolf had an arrow sticking out of his brigandine. He pulled it free and looked at the bent point with an expression of mild interest that Rudi had to admire.
"I think it popped a rivet," he said. "There's something to this sandwich armor you folks make. I don't think my old mail shirt would have stopped it nearly so well."
"It's a good thing it was long-range, even so," Rudi said.
Ingolf nodded, then called loudly, so that everyone could hear: "Keep it down to a canter. If your horse gets blown you're dead."
Rudi nodded in turn; he was relieved that nobody in their party had been hurt, or wounded beyond the bruise-and-scratch level. But even the best harness didn't always stop a hard-driven shaft. If the arrow that had banged off his helmet had been three inches to the right it would have punched on through his face and the brain behind it, and he'd have been riding with the Dread Lord on his way to the Summerlands.
Another mile and they could see the ruins of the old Whiteho
rse Ranch and the wagon laager there. Just north of it the Seffridge Ranch men were skirmishing with the Rovers; the distant twinkle of arrows went flicking through the clouds of dust, and then the longer flash of bared steel as saber and shete and ax swung. War cries came faint with distance, the catamount shrieks of the Rovers and the yipping, whoops and barking, "CORA! CORA!" of the rancher's men.
"Looks like the cowboys are retreating," Ingolf said. "Yeah, the Rovers're trying to work around their flanks."
Then the scene changed in an instant; most of the enemy pulled out and galloped southwest towards Ru di's party, warned by the dust plumes and the fugitives from the skirmish at the well. Their rush was led by a standard of two horsetails on a pole. It fluttered in the wind, streaming out with the speed of the sudden at tack. A few remained behind to hold the rear guard as Rancher Brown's retainers went forward in turn.
"Things certainly change fast in a fight out here," Rudi said, proud that his voice held nothing but interest.
"Yeah," Ingolf said, and his mouth quirked up at the corner. "I remember being surprised about that myself. Richland's like your home territory-lots of trees and ridges and such. But the Red River country is more like this-well, flatter and with grass instead of sagebrush, but the principle's the same, you know? There's usually room to run away… but not the way we've arranged it."
Rudi nodded. Right, he thought, taking in the field of battle. Between those people in the laager, the hill behind it, us, and Bob's men, we're three sides of a triangle and they can't get out, just like we planned.
"Good," Ingolf said on his left. "Got 'em boxed."
"It spares our horses if they come to us, too," Mathilda agreed.
Only an experienced ear-and a young, keen one-could have picked their voices out of the rumble and clank, creak of leather and rustling chinking clatter of harness, and through the steel and liner of the helm and coif.
Of course, there is one thing… Rudi thought, and then spoke aloud:
"Of course, we've got people who outnumber us four to one boxed." He grinned. "But with a military genius on either side of me, what can go wrong?"
Someone male wearing a coif with a flap covering the lower face-which meant Odard-answered: "Well, that's why you have a fight, isn't it? To find out what the hell can go wrong."
Rudi ignored that and went on, louder: "Canter until we're just out of bow range; then hit them hard."
Epona had a good smooth rocking-horse motion in a canter, not like some horses that could pound your guts loose with it. He tugged at the strap that held his round shield over his back, brought it around and slid his left forearm into the loops. Then he reached back with his right hand and lifted his lance out of the tubular leather socket, holding it loosely with the point well up; the tapering length of ashwood surged and dipped with the motion of the pace and the streamer fastened below the point began to thutter and snap. Epona tossed her head and snorted again; he could see the great red pits of her nostrils flare through the holes in the chamfron, and she mouthed in eagerness, a little foaming slobber running down the metal and leather of the bridle.
Closer, closer…
The Rovers in front rose in their stirrups and drew, those who still had arrows in their quivers. The rest waved their blades and screeched; it made a blinking ripple along their line as the whetted metal caught the sun. Dust smoked behind them in a cloud that hid every thing beyond. They came on fast, to ride over this little band of strangers they outnumbered so greatly, to cut them into hacked meat and return to the real fight with the enemy they knew.
"Morrigu! Morrigu! Charge! " Rudi shouted.
He'd inherited a baritone version of his mother's voice, and the belling shout carried through the noise of hooves and harness effortlessly as the band responded. In the next instant he used the edge of his shield to snap his visor down.
"Morrigu!"
Black wings vaster than worlds beat at the corners of vision for a moment, and he heard a song like the slow implacable strength of glaciers that grinds rock to dust. The sunlit plain with its sagebrush and patches of white alkali vanished into a world of gloom, lit only by the bright strip of vision through the slit.
His voice sounded like something in a bucket now, lost in the thundering rumble as the horses rocked forward into a gallop. He brought his shield around to cover his body between the rim of his visor and the metal shod arch of his saddlebow. Epona was the fastest here, even if she was carrying more weight than some; lance points came down on either side of him, pennants streaming and snapping backward, then fell to the rear as he forged a little ahead. His comrades turned into a blunt wedge pointed at the shapeless swarm of the Rovers.
Arrows flickered by, half seen. One banged off the chamfron over Epona's face, startling a snort out of her. Another slammed into his shield, punching through the sheet-metal cover and standing humming in the double thickness of bullhide and plywood beneath. It rocked him back in the saddle for an instant, and felt like a sharp rap with a hammer. The evil quiver of it ran into his hand through the grip.
With it came that little fillip of astonishment you always felt, that someone was trying to kill you. Then everything seemed to slow down, as it usually did in a fight-as if he were in a universe of amber honey, or the floating movements of a dream, with noise and danger and death something infinitely distant.
He slanted the lance down to the level over Epona's neck where her head pounded up and down with the convulsive effort of her gallop. A man on a pony was just ahead, wide staring blue eyes and a shock of sun bleached blond hair and a young faced spotted with zits, dropping his bow and reaching for the shete at his belt and trying to dodge all at once.
Too late. Rudi clenched thighs and braced his feet, hand and arm clamping his lance against his side at the last instant, putting nearly a ton-weight of gallop ing horse and man behind its narrow foot-long point. Epona swerved on her own to help place that point exactly where it needed to go.
Thud.
The massive impact slammed him back against the high cantle of the war saddle, his whole body feeling as if it flexed like a snapping whip… or as if only the armored shell that surrounded him kept parts of him from flying off and his spine breaking in two. The lance head crunched through meat and bone and out the other side of the Rover's body in a double spray of red and an other from his mouth and nose, flipping him into the air as his pony ran out from under him. There was a drag ging weight for an instant, then a hard crack as the lance shaft split across. Epona stumbled slightly, and gathered herself again.
Rudi clubbed the stump of the lance down on a head shaven save for a roach at the back. Wood cracked, or bone, or both; he couldn't tell which, but he let the bro ken shaft drop and swept out his longsword. He kept his head moving from side to side; a helmet hurt your pe ripheral vision and one with a visor killed it dead. Something coming at you when you couldn't quite see it could turn that literal really fast.
Dust and screaming men and wounded horses sound ing like women in a bad childbirth, and a flicker of steel half seen. He brought his shield up and around, slanting it above his head without blocking his vision. An ax filed down from an old tree chopper bounced off its curved surface and he stabbed beneath the shield's lower edge, across his own body from right to left. The ugly soft heavy resistance meant that the point had gone into a belly, and he twisted his wrist sharply as the speed of the horses dragged it free. The Rover already stank beyond belief of sour milk and rancid butter and old sweat, and the wound added to the smell as he shrieked and fell away.
An enemy to his right cut skillfully at his sword-side leg with a shete while he was occupied, striking hard enough to bruise his calf even through the spring steel greave that covered it, then froze for an instant with his mouth in an O of surprise as the curved slashing blade bounced away, vibrating in his hand and almost cutting into his own horse. Rudi smashed a backhanded cut at the man and sent him reeling away as the heavy knife-edged blade raked his shoulder and arm. A
spray of blood followed the yard of edged metal, casting red drops through the air in a looping spray.
"Morrigu!"
Another Rover had been unhorsed and tried to roll under Epona's belly with a long knife. She used her speed and armored breast to knock him down, and then stamped on him as she galloped over, deliberately and hard. Rudi didn't have time to pay attention to the popping, crunching crackling sound that followed as the man's body was caught between those pile-driver hooves and the hard, hard ground, but some part of him knew he'd remember it later. He caught flickers of movement to either side: Rovers going down with lances in the chest or belly, cow ponies bowled over by the mas sive impact of the barded destriers and rolling right over their riders often as not. Then the swords were out, and the charge slowed into a melee.
"Morrigu!" he screamed again, stabbing and hacking and keeping Epona moving. "Morrigu!"
Ugly steel-in-meat sensations flowed up his arm, and the harder crack of an edge meeting bone. Epona aided him with hoof and teeth and battering weight, as if their bodies were one.
"Red Hag! Red Hag!"
A medley of war cries joined his: "Haro! Holy Mary for Portland!" and "Richland!" and "Lacho calad, drego Morn!" and "Face Gervais, face death!" all blending into a single stuttering roar under the sudden scrap-and-anvil sound of battle.
Ingolf's shete took half a face away, then cut back into a thigh. Mathilda hung back at Rudi's left, the big kite-shaped shield with its blazon of the Lidless Eye in crimson on black covering her from eyes to ankle, sword moving in economical chops and thrusts at anyone who tried to engage him. Odard slammed his sword into the back of a skull, nearly died as he tried to tug it free, then abandoned it and snatched the war-hammer that hung at his saddlebow and swung it in an arc that ended with a gruesome popping as the serrated steel head struck a rib cage…
Sunrise Lands c-1 Page 36