The bandits were clad in a patchwork of pre-Change scraps, badly tanned leather, or the crudest and cheapest sort of modern homespun. One or two wore better clothes, doubtless taken from the body of some victim, though they were just as filthy and on their way to being ragged.
Banditry wasn't a very well-paying profession for most practitioners, particularly in winter.
"Well armed, though," she said thoughtfully.
Their crossbows were good, smoothly finished with rifle-style wood stocks and leaf-spring steel bows, and spanning cranks at their belts; the others had competently shaped yew bows; all of them had some sort of sword, most often the heavy machete-like choppers known as falchions … or as machetes, outside the Valley. Several had boiled-leather jerkins strapped with pieces of sheet metal, and a couple had bowl or kettle helmets.
"Yes, suspiciously well armed," Alleyne agreed. "And the weapons are far too uniform."
"Now that you mention it—" Astrid began, and then whirled at a sound of distress.
Crystal was kneeling beside the dead bandit, being noisily sick into a growing pool of blood. Eilir made a tsk sound with her lips.
Sometimes, soul-sister, you are sort of insensitive, she signed, and went over to put an arm around the girls shoulders and urge her away from the body.
Astrid blinked. Well, I said she'd done well, she thought, then dismissed it.
The horses were restive, tossing their heads; then they pricked their ears and snorted. More hooves pounded on the trail, and then another dozen mounted Dunedain came up, as many again running on foot beside them gripping the stirrup-leathers for support, all well spattered with muck and woods-duff thrown up by busy hooves. Astrid waved them forward, and turned back to Alleyne.
"—now that you mention it, yes, they are well armed," she said. "Normally bandits just have odds and ends, no two alike. The ones we ran out of the lodge here a couple of years back, they were using it for a base, they were certainly like that … and these all have shoes, see? Fairly new shoes, too."
The robbers' footwear was modern, tanned leather uppers with laces, and either hobnail-studded alder wood or pieces of rubber tire for soles. Not expensive: village cobblers and workshops in a dozen towns from the Protectorate to Corvallis turned out the like. A Mackenzie crofter might have worn them, or a Bearkiller tenant-farmer. But oddly uniform, again; not identical, nothing was these days when handmade was the rule, but as if they'd all come from the same place. She frowned, absently taking her bow as someone handed it to her, and a handful of arrows with bloody points and shafts. Her hands moved automatically, wiping blood off the steel, checking the fletching and slipping them back into her quiver.
"Now, if I was trying to make a gang of bandits more effective, what would I give them?" she mused aloud.
Eilir was back. She and John Hordle began to speak simultaneously, in Sign and aloud, then looked at each other and grinned. Alleyne answered instead.
"Weapons, and in this season, shoes. A man with chilblains can't fight very well."
The lookout she'd posted called down from his perch high in a Douglas fir. "They're coming back! More of them!" Then, after an instant: "I think someone's after them. They look like they're running! Running hard!"
"Positions!" Astrid said. "Kevin, you stay with Sadb."
She joined Alleyne behind his boulder this time; there weren't as many good positions, with their numbers more than doubled. He was chuckling as she settled in. At her arched brow, he leaned his head towards the trail.
"Eilir is reusing the rope," he said. "I like that girl's spirit, damn me if I don't."
Astrid chuckled herself as she saw the trip-rope deployed; covered in mud, it would be nearly invisible while lying slack. There wasn't time for anything fancy, just a knot around one tree and a half hitch around another.
"Eilir's lawar," she agreed happily.
The first of the bandits came around the bend again, running hard. The rope snapped up, and three went down like puppets with their strings cut. A clash of metal and war cries sounded from behind them; somebody was chasing them. And then she noticed another figure with the outlaws; this one had a white-and-brown camouflage surcoat over his mail hauberk; both were knee-length. Similar cloth masked his kite-shaped shield, and a conical nose-guarded helmet, his blade was a double-edged longsword.
The rest of the Dunedain stood as she did, and the outlaws screamed in despair at the sight of better than thirty bows drawn to the ear. A few tried to run on the Dunedain bows snapped, and nearly every one of the slashing volley struck.
"Surrender!" Astrid called, carefully not adding any promise of quarter. "Throw down and kneel!"
Most of the survivors threw down their weapons and knelt in the mud, hands clasped on top of their heads, silent amid the moans and screams of the wounded.
The man in the knight's hauberk didn't; he just shouted wordlessly and charged, blade up and shield covering his body from knees to nose. Hordle's bow snapped; the bodkin point slammed into the shield and the shaft punched through the metal and wood, stripping its feathers to flutter to the ground as it did. The man pivoted as if he'd been hit in the shoulder with a sledgehammer, and it must have felt much like that. At close range, a heavy bow could smash a bodkin point right through even the best armor. This went through shield and arm and hauberk, snapping the links of the riveted mail like cloth, then through the shoulder bone and out the other side of the hauberk as well. He pitched over backwards and lay writhing.
The pursuers behind them came into view, and stumbled to a halt at the sight. There were two dozen of them, armed with broad-bladed spears and crossbows or pre-Change compound hunting bows, shortswords and daggers and bucklers. All were clad with rough practicality for a foray in the winter woods, but the leader drew her eye. He was a stocky man in a black robe over mail-and-lamellar armor, with a poleax in his hands and a heavy broadsword belted at his waist. He wore a helmet with a neck flare and an eyeslit visor, now pushed up; on the brow of it was a black cross in a white disk, and the face below it was covered in a close-cropped brown beard. When he handed the long-hafted ax-spear-warhammer to a follower and pulled off the helm, it showed bowl-cut hair and a tonsure in the center of it, the artificial bald spot gleaming with sweat. He passed a gauntleted hand over it.
"Bind them," he snapped to his followers, and then waved at the Dunedain as the arrows were returned to their quivers.
"Hello, Lady Astrid," he went on genially, climbing towards her, puffing like someone who'd come hard and fast for miles with fifty pounds of steel strapped to his body.
The men behind him worked in pairs, one holding a spearpoint to a bandit's neck, the other pulling cords from his belt to bind the robbers' arms behind them, tight-cinched at elbow and wrist. Those badly wounded were given the mercy-stroke. There was no point in letting them suffer until their inevitable execution.
"Mae govannen, Brother … ?" Astrid said.
"Father Andrew," the man said, smiling broadly; he was about her own age. "Ordained priest, and also a humble brother monk of the Benedictine order. I don't think you noticed me, my child, but you were with Lord Bear when he visited the abbey two years ago, for the treaty talks."
That meant he was one of Abbot-Bishop Dmwoski's men, from Mount Angel. The abbey had organized survival around the town and governed its own small state there now; it was a thumb thrust into the Protectorate. There was absolutely no love lost between Dmwoski and the Protector, either, or between the abbot and what he called the blasphemous Antipope Leo, the prelate Arminger sponsored in Portland. Anathemas as well as arrows had flown over that border.
"I'm with the border guards," he went on. "We had a report of livestock missing from a farmer with an outlying steading, and tracked them well past our usual patrol range. We spotted these scum crossing the creek south of Scott's Mills."
Astrid's brows went up. That was about twenty miles north; deserted country, which made boundaries a bit theoretical.
"We th
ought they might be trying to slip down over the Santiam and into the Mackenzie country," the soldier-monk said. "So I called out some militia and gave chase. We lost their tracks for a day. But when we found them again, they came straight south and into your territory. I hope you don't mind our pursuing onto your land, but it seemed a shame to give up. Particularly when they hadn't spotted us."
"Thank you very much, Father Andrew," she said. "We appreciate the help. They'd have scattered if you weren't behind to corral them. Chasing them down might have cost us lives—probably would have. An ambush is one thing, but a running fight is something else again."
He shrugged robed and armored shoulders. "Just doing our job, my daughter, looking after the flock. And there were a few too many for us to tackle comfortably ourselves. It's a comfort to have you Dunedain taking up residence in this stretch of forest. They're too cursed convenient for woods-running swine like these otherwise."
Alleyne called to her. "This one's no bandit," he said, as he stripped off a man's sword belt and tossed it aside.
It was the man Hordle had shot. Blood welled out around the broken arrow-shaft, but he clutched it and glared hatred at her. Another young face, a little younger than her own, but neatly shaved; when Alleyne pulled off the coif—a mail-covered, tight-fitting leather hood—his light-brown hair was moderately long in front, cropped like a crew cut behind the ears. A blunt face with an old scar on one cheek, and gray-blue eyes. Beneath the armor he was broad-shouldered and thick-armed, not skinny-scrawny like most of the outlaw gang. It was the body of a man who ate well but worked sweating-hard with sword and shield and lance while wearing full armor.
"False priest and devil-worshipping whore," he rasped, and tried to spit at her. "Kill me now!"
The sword that lay a little distance away was a broad double-edged slashing type, though with a respectable point, the classic Norman sword that most of the Portland Protective Association's men used. She looked down at his feet. Good boots, but no golden spurs. Still …
"Protectorate knight," she said. "A man-at-arms wouldn't be so bold."
She looked up at the priest. "Shall we dispose of them, or do you claim the privilege, Father Andrew? You saw them first, after all, and on abbey soil."
He shrugged. "The abbot and Lord Bear and the Lady Juniper all agreed this forest of Mithrilwood was Dunedain land, and that you have the right to dispense justice here, my lady. High, middle and low."
"Only as custodian for the Dunedain Rangers," she corrected, not wanting to claim more than her due.
Another shrug. John Hordle had been talking in Sign with Eilir. He nodded and went over to the fallen knight; a muffled scream broke past clenched teeth as Hordle gripped the stub of the arrow between thumb and forefinger and casually drew it out, then stripped off the mail hauberk. That was normally a complex business, but the big man handled the other as if he had been a doll, despite respectable height and solid weight. When the armor had been tossed aside he ripped open the man's gambeson and shirt over the uninjured right shoulder.
"Ahh," Astrid said.
There was a symbol tattooed there, a circle with a Chinese ideograph in it. She'd learned that Eddie Liu had adopted that as his blazon in mockery; it was the glyph for Poland, which was where his maternal ancestors had come from. Liu was very dead, Eilir had killed him last summer, but …
"You're a liege-man of his," she said grimly.
The captive spat at her again, making a worse job of it; his mouth must be dry with pain and shock. "I'm brother to Lady Mary, the dowager Baroness Ger-vais. My name is Sir Jason Mortimer of Loiston manor," he said. "Baron Gervais was my liege lord and my kin by marriage. His handfast men will never rest until we've avenged him!"
Eilir made a clicking sound with her tongue, and Astrid looked over at her. He probably hired the bandits, she signed. What's the old phrase, plausible deniability?
As if on cue, one of the bound men spoke: "You motherfucker!" he swore at the knight. "You said there'd be food and women and a place of our own for the winter!"
"We'll keep you for ransom, then, Sir Jason," Astrid said; nobody paid any attention to the outlaw's outburst. "And it'll be a heavy one." She grinned. "You can explain back home how a pair of girls captured you. The same ones who killed your liege-lord, by the way."
She turned to the priest and away from the knight's incoherent curses. "Why don't you and your patrol stay with us tonight at Mithrilwood Lodge, Father Andrew? It's no trouble, we've plenty of space, and it'll spare you a winter bivouac." At his slight hesitation and frown: "And not all of us are of the Old Religion. I'm sure there are some who'd be grateful to make confession, if you wished, and receive communion if you've the Bread and Wine with you."
That seemed to tip the balance. "Most generous of you, my child."
"We've some of Brannigan's Special Ale, too," Astrid said impishly, and just a bit louder. "We traded venison and boar for it, but that's not all gone either. Roast yearling boar tonight, and scalloped potatoes, and cauliflower with cheese, and dried-blueberry tarts with whipped cream to follow."
The warrior-monk's company of militiamen suppressed a cheer, and let grins run free. Mount Angel had a winery of note and fine maltsters, but Brannigan's brew was famous all over the Valley. Juniper Mackenzie had made a song about it years ago, and it was sung in taverns from Ashland to Boise. Hot food and dry beds were a great deal more attractive than damp sleeping bags and trail rations, as well.
"Let's finish up here, then," Astrid said.
The monk addressed the half-dozen other captives who waited on their knees. "Do any of you wish to confess your sins and save your miserable sin-stained souls from Hell? No?"
Astrid's face was calmly lovely as she looked at the row of men, kneeling in the mud with elbows and wrists lashed behind them. A few wept or babbled; most were silent and shocked, a few bleeding from wounds.
"Does anyone think there's any doubt these are outlaws, bandits and wolf-heads, the enemies general of human kind?" she said formally, looking from face to face of the Dunedain, and then to Alleyne and Little John Hordle.
"That's buggering obvious, if you ask me," Hordle said.
Nobody else bothered to do more than nod assent. Hordle hefted the long, heavy sword he carried, checking for nicks, and Father Andrew took back his poleax, running an experienced thumb down the edge. Two of his men unlim-bered their axes. Eilir nodded herself, and then sighed in silent regret; Astrid smiled at her.
You always were tender-hearted, soul-sister, she signed. Do you want to ask mercy for any of them?
No, I'm afraid not. Though they might have been decent enough men, with different luck, Eilir replied.
"But they are as they are," Astrid said. Then she raised her voice slightly, in a tone of calm command: "Behead them every one, and that instantly."
Chapter Five
North Corvallis, Oregon
January 10th, 2008/Change Year 9
The lands claimed by the Faculty Senate of Oregon State University—in effect, by the city-state of Corvallis—began where the village of Adair had been, before the Change. The steep crest of Hospital Hill to the west overlooked Highway 99 from less than a quarter mile away; on it beetled a small but squat-strong fortress of stone and concrete and steel with a round tower rearing on its eastern edge. The snouts of engines showed, ready to throw yard-long darts, steel roundshot and glass globes of clinging fire four times that distance.
As Michael Havel watched a light blinked from it, as bright as burning lime and mirrors could make it, flashing on the news of their arrival southward to the posts that would relay the message to the city. Most of the village east of the highway was brush-grown rubble; a few houses had been linked by cinderblock and angle iron and barbed wire into an enclosed farmstead, with barns and outbuildings about, and a sign—"Lador's Fine Liquor and Provisions"— showing that it sold to passersby as well. The dwellers had heard the fort's bell and turned out from field and barn with bill and spear and cross
bow, then relaxed when they saw it was friendly Bearkillers, remaining to stare and comment at the size of the party and its members.
He'd brought a dozen armored A-listers along for swank—he had to keep up the Outfit's credit with the Corvallans, who were overbearing enough as it was. Their lances swayed slightly as the standing horses shifted their weight from hoof to hoof, and the whetted steel of the heads glittered in the pale sun of a winter's noon. It was one of the rare clear January days, only a few high wisps of cloud in a sky pale blue from the Coast Range on his right—he could see the four-thousand-foot treeclad summit of Mary's Peak, a rarity in winter— to the High Cascades in the far distance on his left, hints of dreaming snowfields at the edge of sight. Overhead a red-tailed hawk floated, the spread feathers of its wings sculpting the air, then stooped on a rabbit. The air was crisp and colder than usual, cold enough that the frost still rimed grass and twig and brush with white even at noon; the breaths of men and horses steamed, a light fog strong with the mounts' grassy scent. A four-horse wagon brought up the rear with their gear, a few household staff walking beside it and the Bearkiller's chief physician riding atop; he'd lost a foot to some Eaters soon after the Change, and loathed riding as well.
Havel and Signe were mounted and armed but in civilian garb; tooled-leather boots, broad-brimmed hats, brown serge jackets and precious intact pre-Change bluejeans, almost new, and cunningly reinforced on the inner thighs with soft-tanned deerskin. Their eldest children were with them, eight-year-old twin girls identical down to the silver rings on the ends of their long, tow-colored braids and the slant to their cornflower-blue eyes; he'd left young Mike Jr. behind at Larsdalen, with the staff and nannies and indulgent grandfather and step-grandmother, since he was at the stage where he could move pretty quickly but still had a toddler's suicidal lack of common sense. Mary and Ritva were excited enough to bounce up and down in their silver-studded charro-style saddles, or would have been if they hadn't ridden nearly as long as they'd been walking. They pointed and exclaimed as the drawbridge on the fort came down and the gates swung open.
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