The Sword of the Lady

by S. M. Stirling

  Dalan looked at him, then up at the low clouds, then to the north and east. Two of the savages′ shamans were behind him. Their movements followed his exactly, as if they and his shadow were all linked by invisible cords. One of them was weeping from an expressionless face, tears freezing on the skin.

  ″We can gain on them if we go that way,″ he said, and pointed. ″We cut the cord of their arc. And . . . if we miss them there, another Seeker was sent this way last year. He will await us with supplies and help. On the river the ancients called Lawrence, near the ruined city of Royal Mount.″

  Graber nodded; he was well schooled in mathematics, which were one of the languages of the Ascended Masters, and useful besides, and in maps.

  ″As you command, High Seeker,″ he said.

  The wind howled counterpoint as he gave his orders. He shivered a little; not with the cold, but with the gray sameness of it. Had there ever been anything but pursuit and fight and endless trudging? Had he ever ridden in the flower fields of spring, with the wind blowing keen pine-scented sweetness from the slopes of the Tetons? Or sat of an evening after dinner and watched his son take his first steps, laughing as he waved chubby arms?

  No weakness! he told himself sternly. The Prophet gave you this task himself, and you knew death in a foreign land was the most likely outcome.

  ″Bad, Chief,″ Edain said succinctly. ″They got hit less than a week ago, I′d say. More than a day. Hard to tell closer, in this icebox of a land.″

  Rudi looked over the little steading. Four or five families had dwelt there, in two long houses. They′d had a fishing boat for use on the northernmost of the great inland seas. That stretched northwards, frozen now, towards a little rocky islet half a mile away. The only remarkable thing in sight was the bow of a broken ship of the ancient world, towering in crumbling rust-eaten majesty where some storm had driven it on the rocks and broken its back.

  The shore bore some scratched-out fields in the rocky earth, with low pine and birch and aspen elsewhere. Shaggy stretches of bush marked ground which would be bog in the warm season, rich in berries and grass. The dwellers had probably hunted a good deal—the travelers had taken several deer they found in a winter yard not long ago themselves—and mined the wreck for metal to work up and trade elsewhere. A modest rectangular barn hinted at livestock, and a substantial smithy near it had two fieldstone chimneys. From the look of things he′d have guessed that the whole had been put up after the Change, but mostly of old-world materials salvaged from nearby.

  There was no smell of woodsmoke, and the cold was bitter. It had more moisture in it than usual, too, and that made it cut harder and sap the strength more.

  ″All dead,″ Pete said, and spat. ″I knew these people here. They were clean. My folks lived a bit east and south, and we traded with ′em. Whoever hit here, they call the Wendigo to themselves on purpose.″

  Edain nodded. ″Parts of them are . . . gone. Like it was a rite.″

  He looked indignant at that, at the profanation of sacred things as much as the cruelty.

  ″They′re pinned to the walls, what′s left of them. It went hard for them, even the little ones.″

  The younger Mackenzie spat, to show what an honorable warrior thought of such dealings. He also held out a broken bit of arrow, just enough to show the black fletching and neatly made horn nock.

  ″This was in one of the bodies outside, where they tried to fight.″

  Rudi rolled it between his fingers, then made a gesture that brought the core of his questers gathered around him.

  ″Any fodder left?″ he asked.

  ″No grain,″ Edain said. ″That was cleared out—oats and rye, it was, from the few kernels left, and spuds. Plenty of hay still, to be sure. No clover in it, looks like marsh grass, but lots of it and well cured.″

  ″Good. We′ll let the horses gorge; and we′ll have shelter.″

  Edain shook his head violently. ″I′ll not be sleeping under that roof, Chief.″

  Rudi smiled mirthlessly. ″I wouldn′t either. No, the houses we′ll burn, to make Earth clean of it. The barn will do for us and our beasts as well.″

  ″That′ll draw them,″ Ritva warned. ″It′ll tell them exactly where we are.″

  ″Sister of mine, I′m counting on it. Pete, what′s the ice like out there?″

  ″Thicker than it should be. More like Christmas, or even Janvier, maybe. But it′s spotty and don′t go too far out. Still too thin to carry any weight in some places, foot or better thick in others, so you could drive a sled or even ride horses over it.″

  Ingolf nodded. ″Some places hard as rock, and then you hear a crackle. Seemed to me it′s thicker eastwards. Piled up by the current, maybe. Snow′s wind-packed on the surface, not too deep except drifts here and there. Like Pete says, it′s way, way ahead of time.″

  Rudi looked out over the lake, out to where white ice faded into the white-gray sky without a perceptible horizon. The surface wasn′t table smooth, as he′d imagined it would be; it was more as if waves themselves had frozen, with lumps like congealed porridge here and there, and it was covered with hard-packed snow driven by the wind into rippled patterns. The rocky islet was visible on the edge of sight, topped by a few twisted pines; only the shipwreck made it easy to spot now. Wisps of snow or ice crystal scudded over the surface, gusting up man-high now and then, ankle deep most of the time.

  He thought for a moment longer, then held up the stub of arrow: ″I think this was done by our un-friends,″ he said. ″Not just the Sword of the Prophet—say what you like of the Cutters, they aren′t Eaters. They′ve picked up local allies, such as our friend Walks Quiet warned they might have.″

  Everyone nodded. The Indian′s hand fell unconsciously to the hilt of his bowie knife with its beaded sheath.

  ″And it′s also my thought that they′ve gotten ahead of us and are planning on an ambush, the creatures.″

  Jake sunna Jake grunted. ″Bad,″ he said succinctly. ″Don′t like trap-inside.″ Then he grinned. ″Like when you and the Archer see us first, eh, Rudi-man?″

  Everyone nodded. Fred said thoughtfully:

  ″Dad always said that you should force a fight when the enemy′s got the jump on you and can make you give battle anyway. Force it on your own terms.″

  Victoria pursed her lips thoughtfully. ″My Dad always said if you know it′s a trap, it′s still a trap—for the other guy. You can bust it from the inside. He wrecked the Cutters good a couple of times that way, ′fore they wore us Powder River folks down.″

  Rudi nodded respectfully. ″That′s my thought exactly. The enemy will outnumber us, so we need to seize advantage. This will require careful scouting, but we have that heavy little surprise in the last sled of the four—″

  The pillar of smoke on the horizon turned to a tiny thread as Major Graber lowered his binoculars.

  ″That is the hamlet the Bekwa destroyed,″ he said, his voice freighted with disgust. ″Allowing that was . . . unwise. Bad tactics.″

  ″They are savages,″ Dalan said, with a shrug. ″Besides, it matters little what happens to the bodies of the soulless. They are as animals anyway.″

  Graber grunted noncommittally. That was perilously close to making apologies for abomination; the Dictations were clear that the form of humanity was sacred, even among the merely physical who lacked true men′s atman and who it was fully lawful to kill. In any case . . .

  ″It gave us away,″ he said.

  What was that ancient saying? Worse than a crime, a mistake.

  ″We cannot wait for them, then, if they are likely to be too wary,″ Dalan said. ″There are less than forty of them in all. Your troopers of the Sword of the Prophet alone outnumber them, and we have more than a hundred of the Bekwa and their allies.″

  Reluctantly, Graber nodded.

  I do not like to give battle when an enemy invites it, he thought. Even when I have the advantage of numbers. Especially with this enemy. Still, we do have the numbers,
and there are no extraneous factors here. It′s a flat plain, in effect; hell for quartermasters, but a tactician′s paradise. I need only hit them with a hammer heavier than any they can lift.

  A brief brightness: And then . . . home?

  ″They′re coming in straight from the east,″ Ritva panted. ″About forty mounted men, the rest on foot.″

  ″How many of those?″

  ″Better than one hundred of them, less than two.″

  ″Ready, then,″ Rudi said; he ignored the arrow standing in the cantle of her saddle, as did she. ″Fall in.″

  Now, let′s either all get killed, or do something I′d be calling truly spectacular, he thought with a taut grin. Lady Morrigú, cover me with Your wings. Lugh of the Many Skills, be with me now!

  The little island and its wreck were not far to their rear; the shore was a line of gray and dark green off to the left. It had begun to snow again, a slow light drift of large fluffy flakes. He suppressed an impulse to catch one on his tongue, as he′d liked to do as a child. He′d been praying for a little extra snow, not too much, just enough to cover everything better than careful brushwork could do. And there were worse things to do than catch a snowflake, on what might be your last day in this turn of the Wheel of Life . . .

  Instead he looked behind himself and made sure that the guide marks were plainly visible but inconspicuous; he′d made himself unpopular by taking everyone through it over and over again. Even though they′d all known that more likely than not the plan would go south, or change unpredictably. A few crows went by overhead from the shore woods to the island, or perhaps ravens. Somehow they always knew when men were about to lay a feast for them.

  ″Forward, my friends,″ he said quietly. ″The Lord and Lady keep Their hand over you.″

  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, th
e 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: