The Sword of the Lady

by S. M. Stirling

  And haul those wagons to Iowa I must, since that is the price demanded to release Matti. And Ingolf and all my friends and kin by that . . .

  Right now he had to keep his mind cool. Thinking mad tyrant of Anthony Heasleroad would just make him rage, though the very Gods knew it was accurate.

  ... by that... eccentric gentleman... the Bossman of Iowa. Will there ever be a chance with less risk? Even trying to back away might spook the ones hiding there. And what better, quicker introduction to the men they mean to kill than a rescue? If I must work with cannibals or the children of such, I will.

  After all, if you got too choosey about people′s ancestors . . .

  Were the Gael not once headhunters who burned men alive as sacrifices? Did the English not come to these lands with fire and massacre? And was not my anamchara Matti′s father a monster to turn a man′s stomach, sure?

  Decision jelled. With his free hand he reached down and picked up a clod of soil, touching it to his lips in silent prayer for an instant: Earth must be fed. To take life was to accept your own death′s part in the world, and the gesture acknowledged it. Edain copied the motion, and they both set their fingers to the strings of their longbows.

  The horsemen riding unaware into the trap down the road below were stripped to the waist in the muggy heat, regardless of the mosquitoes that were beginning to whine. Even at a hundred yards and through the gloaming he could see that three of them carried long spears tipped with ground-down butcher knives, and they all had a clutch of javelins slung over their backs as well in something like a big quiver. Then the still air shifted and a little breeze cuffed at leaf and twig around him, cooling the sweat that stuck strands of his hair to the back of his neck beneath the flare of the helm. The horses tossed their heads at the scent of their own kind; one nickered, and was answered by an equine snort from behind the two Mackenzies.

  Rudi came smoothly to his feet, as swiftly as if he and the animal had practiced the signal together.

  ″Ambush!″ he shouted, his trained voice throwing the sound from deep in his chest. ″Trap! In the brush above you!″

  The scrub exploded with armed men, screams and ragged figures and the ugly sheen of spearheads; manymore than he′d thought there would be, but it was too late to undo his decision. They wavered for a moment, caught between the foemen they had expected to take unawares and the strangers above them.

  Closer to thirty than to six of them. More like forty, the Dagda club them dead! went through him in a flickering instant. I do hope the men they wanted to kill can take some of the weight!

  ″Morrigú!″ Rudi screamed, to rivet their attention. ″Morrigú!″

  He called on the Crow Goddess as he drew and shot, for She was the one whose feathered host fed on the fruits of battle, the Dark Mother who had sent Raven to claim him in the nemed while he was still a child. Edain simply howled, the cry of the Wolf that was his sept totem, and then their voices rose together in the racking banshee shriek of the Clan′s battle-yell.

  One of the ambushers had a short stiff bow of some sort ready, and he had the presence of mind to turn and aim at the tall figure on the slope above. Rudi had already started to draw Mackenzie-style past the angle of his jaw as he called the warning, shoulders and gut and hips as much as arms in the force that bent the great stave of yellow yew-wood, but Edain was a fractional second ahead of him.

  The cloth yard shaft snapped out as he let the string roll off his fingertips and lash at the bracer on his left forearm. The range was short, and his war-bow drew well over a hundred pounds. The arrow was a blurred streak in the dimness and then a crack of parting bone before the enemy archer flipped backward with the gray-goose fletching standing up like a brutal exclamation point from his face. Edain′s shaft hadn′t missed either; it went through the man′s torso in a double splash, breaking ribs going in and coming out, then struck the next man behind in the stomach and stayed there. Rudi′s hand flicked to the quiver again and again, nock-draw-aim-loose in the deadly fast ripple Mackenzies were taught from childhood, three seconds for an arrow. They were both shooting wherever a telltale shape or motion betrayed the obvious threat of an enemy archer.

  Some sort of leader grabbed ambushers and pushed them towards the pair of clansmen as he yelped an order in a yammering dialect. It cut off in a gurgling scream as Edain shifted aim and sent an arrow through his throat. A score of the wild-men came uphill at the Mackenzies in a bounding rush, while as manymore boiled down towards the river; they must have thought there were more than two new foemen, fooled by shock and the eye-watering brightness that lingered behind him and the shower of cloth yard arrows stabbing down at them.

  ″Left, mine!″ Rudi called sharply as the foe came on in a yelling mob, then spread out into a rough line.

  The enemy must have had some concept of archery; they knew that they had to get across the killing ground as fast as they might. They had no idea at all of what the west-country longbow could do in skilled hands, from the way they came straight on regardless with their shields up instead of dodging to and fro as they charged. And they were about to learn.

  Snap. Snap.

  The waxed linen of the bowstrings struck their leather bracers with a light whapping sound, and the arrows blurred out with a whirrrt of cloven air. A man dropped from each end of the attackers′ rough formation, with the flat punching smack of arrowheads striking flesh loud enough to hear.

  Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap.

  Four more men died in eight seconds, three instantly and one screaming and thrashing as a cedarwood shaft hammered through shield and arm and chest before it lodged in his spine. Then the rest were upon him, snarling shouting hairy faces vaguely seen as they labored up the hillside as if from a well of darkness, weapons reaching for his life. He tossed aside the bow and swept out his longsword in a hiss of steel on greased wood and leather. The other hand stripped the little buckler from its clip on the scabbard.

  He was the second-ranked archer in the Clan Mackenzie, who were a people of the bow. But Rudi had never met his own equal with the sword since he got his full growth, not anywhere in his travels. Not yet. Everything slowed, sound burring deeper, vision fading except for faces, hands, weapons; he felt light and easy, his motions flowing like water over rocks in a mountain torrent.

  I′m dead if I let them get around me and settle themselves, he knew. And I must keep their eyes on me and away from Edain. He has my back.

  Existence was a dance through the purple dusk, lines precise as those scribed with compass and surveyor′s strings linking blade to target. It was ríastrad, the battle-madness of the warrior Goddess whose scythe reaped men. He charged, shrieking, clearing the bush ahead of him with a long lunging stride; a yard of layer-forged steel in his fist and the eerie keening scream of the Mackenzies on his lips. A rust-pitted spearhead ground down from one blade of a pair of garden shears went over his right shoulder as he ducked beneath a thrust, and he struck with the buckler as it did.

  The soup-plate shape of the metal shield cracked into a face covered in a black beard that crawled with lice, hard enough to make bone crumble and throw the wild-man backward to roll downslope in a tangle of limbs. With the weight of his armor added in there were better than two hundred pounds behind the blow, and the man wouldn′t be getting up again. The twinge from the old wound in his right shoulder was distant, unimportant except to remind him of how the infected arrow had weakened it a little.

  In the same instant the blade in his left hand flicked out, the point driving through a throat and past it with scarcely a tug. Behind it a spray of droplets hung in the air for a second, black in the dying light.

  There was a wisssst-thud behind him and an earsplitting scream, as an arrow struck and lodged in bone; more hissed past to strike, one close enough for the fletching to brush the skin of his neck in passing. The first-ranked archer in the Clan was in back of him, twice winner of the Silver Arrow at the Lughnasadh Games and a hunter of beasts and men. Then another cry of ho
rrified pain, beneath a roaring growl; Garbh was at work protecting her master as he shot, darting in to slash at a hamstring and then close her great jaws on the man′s face as he fell, jerking him back and forth as she worried at what her long fangs held.

  The twisted gorgon mask of Rudi′s face made a man stumble back in midattack. And die an instant later in a galvanic convulsion as the sword point flicked into and out of his eye faster than a frog′s tongue licking up a passing insect on the wing, punching through the thin bone and into the brain.

  Another time, and the grating, crunching sensation that flowed up his hand and arm might come back to leave him sweating and clenched in some moment of peace. Now it was only a slight tug on his wrist as he wrenched the sword free and sliced down a spear shaft in a motion that left a long curl of wood flying free with the wielder′s fingers.

  A thunder of hooves, and Epona was there, her eyes white and rolling, her great slab teeth bared as she bugled a challenge. One of the wild-men looked around just in time to see her milling forehooves come down on him like steel-shod warhammers, and threw up his arms in a gesture as futile as his scream. The remaining attackers crowded forward towards Rudi, half attacking him, half fleeing her. A thought flickered through some remote corner of his mind:

  There are people who think horses can′t be dangerous because they eat grass.

  A stab as precise as a surgeon′s scalpel in over the collarbone, and a man collapsed with the great mass of arteries above the heart severed. The withdrawal turned into a smashing backhand chop that sent a spearhead pinwheeling away into the evening with half a foot of shaft still attached. He slid forward in a smooth savage rush; the man made one futile jabbing motion with the stub before Rudi cracked the pommel of his sword into the temple and drove bone-splinters into his brain.

  Get in close, he thought/knew.

  He leapt over the hocking swing of a blade that had probably started life as some sort of hedging tool and was near enough to the weapon westerners called a billhook. It hissed beneath his boots, and one of the wild-men screamed as it struck his leg, as much in rage as pain. Rudi kicked as he landed, a solid heel-strike to the billman′s knee; something gave under the boot with a grisly snapping, crunching sound.

  Ignore that one, he′s out of it.

  He pushed off the impact, using it to swing himself around, the longsword slashing horizontally as he spun.

  Get close, get close . . .

  Too close for anyone to draw a spear back for a stab, and himself a whirling screaming striking blur that left death and ululating agony in its wake as the melee stumbled across the hillside′s uncertain footing. Edges and clubs grated and banged on his helmet, thumped into his brigandine, hard enough to leave bruises he′d feel later, if he lived—they were striking at the head and body from instinct, unused to dealing with real armor and not knowing how vulnerable they were to his ironclad violence.

  If I had full war-harness on and a knight′s shield I could take the lot of them!

  But he didn′t, and it could only be seconds until sharp metal hit something unprotected and vital, throat or limbs; he couldn′t block a dozen men, couldn′t kill them all. There wasn′t time—

  An ax looped towards his neck. Rudi′s buckler deflected it with a crang, and his sword licked down on the man′s arm above the elbow. The edge cracked into bone and through it with an ugly thump that jarred up the weapon and into his arm and shoulder. The man spun away, staring at the bleeding stump and then sitting down to die. Startled as the blood spurted over her fetlocks, Epona stopped stamping a body into rags of flesh and bone-splinter and reared to pound her hooves into him instead.

  Rudi recovered with desperate speed and a spray of leaves and twigs beneath his boots, but the next man was poised with his spear cocked back to thrust into Rudi′s face, the lunge already beginning . . .

  ... and he froze, with an expression of intense surprise on his features for an instant, as a wet red point appeared through his chest. Then he went flaccid and collapsed at the Mackenzie′s feet. Behind him a horseman swerved his mount and snatched another javelin out of the hide bucket slung over his back, throwing it with a whoop. The shadowed woods were alive for an instant with leaping fleeing men, throwing aside their weapons to run with heedless speed and crashing through the thickets as the horsemen they′d ambushed harried them on.

  Rudi thrust the point of his sword into the earth as a support, leaning with his mouth open to suck in the air his lungs craved despite the raw stinks it bore. His other arm went around Epona′s neck as she nuzzled him, the sweet grassy-musky scent of her breath and sweat strong in his nostrils as he panted. The wave of rage that had filled his veins and nerves like liquid fire cooled, leaving his skin rippling with a sudden cold and his body full of a leaden weakness.

  Suddenly half a dozen minor cuts stung like itching fire, above the duller ache of wrenched and battered muscle. For a moment he was not sure if the gathering darkness was natural, or the product of a body driven beyond its limits. Fighting was the hardest labor in the world. He was young and very strong and in hard condition, but his body still tried to shake like an overworked horse, and he had to swallow again and again with a paper-dry mouth to keep the heaves from starting. His trainers back home, Mackenzies and Bearkillers and Association knights alike, had warned him that he pushed himself too hard.

  So had Master Hao in Chenrezi Monastery, in the Valley of the Sun, where they′d taken refuge last winter from blizzards and pursuers; he′d been more specific about it, too:

  There is a deep inner well that the body can tap, a store of great strength, and of great speed. Most never reach it; and of those who do, most only when uttermost need breaks down the barriers. A few by long training in the inner disciplines. But you, Raven-man, you can open that gate by wishing it so; it is in your nature. Be cautious with this gift! The merciful Buddha buried this deep within us for a reason! It is the last reserve against extremity. You shorten your life a little each time you draw from it.

  The problem being, of course, that having your skull dished in or six inches of steel shoved through your gut shortened life by much more than a little. He was very good with a blade, but nobody was good enough to deal with fighting many against one, unless something took him beyond himself. His skin quivered again. And you didn′t feel the fear until afterwards, some place in the mind knowing how it would be when the edged metal grated through your eye sockets and the world went black—

  There′s a place beyond the Gate, and we return, he thought, not for the first time. But not to this life. Death is a forgetting, whether it comes in terror like a tiger hunting in the night, or as the gentle Mother whose last gift is an end to pain. I′m not through being Rudi Mackenzie yet! Yet neither were these ready, who had their own purposes and needs. Dread Lord, Keeper-of-Laws, be gentle with those torn untimely from the world of men; and me also when my hour is come.

  He′d straightened when the three horsemen returned from their pursuit, and was wiping his blade on a swatch of rags torn from a body; Edain stood ready with another arrow on the string, discreetly pointed down and not drawn . . . yet. Garbh was glaring at his heel, tongue licking her reddened muzzle, ready for a leap to take a man out of the saddle. Epona abandoned a rear as Rudi grabbed at her hackamore with his free hand—you didn′t use a bit on her—and she prepared to tolerate the men as she did those around him when he asked it of her.

  Three. They lost a man, then. All of them wounded, but none very badly.

  She tossed her head and whickered a little disdainfully at the strangers′ mounts; they were all shorter than her seventeen hands of sleek black height, and none had her long-limbed grace. Their harness was crude, simple pad saddles and pre-Change bridles patched and repaired with bits and pieces of this and that. The Mackenzie chieftain waited with the sword still drawn, ready to strike if the three were inclined to add him to the larder.

  ″Owe you one, west-men,″ their leader said to Rudi, dismounting and exte
nding a hand to them both in turn.

  Ah. They can tell we′re from west across the Mississippi. From the gear, most likely. Though probably not quite how far west.

  ″I′m Jake sunna Jake, n′ these are my bros Tuk n′ Samul.″ His smile revealed several missing teeth. ″We runs with the Southside Freedom Fighters. I′m the big man a′ Southside. Youze save our asses.″

  Rudi thrust his sword into the earth and took the man′s hand, as callused as his own and very strong for his size. Probably big man meant something like chief. The native of the Wild Lands was several inches shorter than his own six-two, and failed to match Edain′s five-nine by a finger or so; he was wiry-slender, with a sparse young black beard and hair haggled off below his ears and eyes so crow-colored that the pupil disappeared in the iris.

  The dark olive face was scarred and weathered, but he judged the man was about his own twenty-three years, give or take. His short pants of crudely tanned and worse-sewn rabbit skins were held up by a broad belt with a buckle of salvaged metal; his weapons were a knife and a hatchet, besides his javelins, and all but the wooden shafts of the throwing spears looked to be of pre-Change make.

  His eyes were shrewd as he took in Edain′s bow, and he nodded at the peace gesture as the archer returned his arrow to the quiver. They went a little wider as he looked around and realized how many of the enemy had long gray fletched shafts in their bodies, and how far away some of them were; both were obvious as the younger Mackenzie went about the grisly but essential task of retrieving intact arrows and the heads of the broken ones. It was also obvious how easily they′d smashed through crude armor—leather studded with bits of metal, wooden shields surfaced with salvaged STOP signs and similar makeshifts for the most part, though one body wore a modern mail shirt stolen or bartered from the other shore of the Mississippi.

  That hadn′t helped its wearer either, though it made it harder to get the arrow out undamaged.