A Meeting At Corvallis

by S. M. Stirling

  She'd heard there were a couple of old zoo elephants in Portland, but they were kept for ceremonial occasions.

  The Waldo Hills weren't very high; more of a rolling tableland split by abrupt gullies. Most of it had been grassland with scattered oak groves before the pioneers came west on the Oregon Trail. By the Change it had been cleared and cultivated, with patches of forest on the higher parts, and fir and willow and alder along the small streams. Mount Angel was on their northern fringe, and it had preserved an island of survival during the first Change Year; the rest had gone under in the tidal waves of refugees and Eaters. You still found human bones here and there, sometimes burnt and split in token of dreadful feasting. Nobody had returned since except occasional hunters and the odd bandit, and brush and bramble grew thick on the old fields, checked only by summer blazes set by lightning or campfires or branches rubbing. The field edge they occupied now had been planted in oaks; they'd grown taller, and seeded saplings amongst the thick, spiny Oregon grape and thornbush that had grown up around them. Pink flowers clustered on the grape-stems; the hedge-nettle wasn't flowering yet, but the stalks were already a yard high.

  The horses were back a bit, under spreading trees that hid them from above, grazing hobbled among chest-high grass and brush starred with scarlet fritil-lary. John Hordle came that way; Astrid was amazed again at how quietly the big man could move. Then he dropped prone and crawled up beside the leaders, in a sweet-pungent cloud of crushed herbs. He might be stealthy, but he wasn't light.

  "They're coming," he said softly. "Eilir says she recognized the contact with the labor gang and passed the signal—got too close for comfort to do it, too. Their cavalry screen should be here any moment."

  Astrid nodded, looking downward. "Regular scouts?" she asked.

  Hordle shook his head. "Pendleton levies, it looked like; hired light cavalry. Horse-archers. Saw the buggers myself last year, when Sir Nigel and I were east up the Columbia with the Protector's men. Fair enough riders and good men of their hands. Always ready to mix it up, but not what you'd call long on discipline."

  "And they're not used to this country," Alleyne said thoughtfully. "That may be rather helpful."

  Poor melindo nin, she thought, sensing the strain beneath his hard calm. He's not used to campaigning with his beloved.

  Even as she pushed the glow of that word out of her consciousness, Astrid smiled. This was my idea, she thought. I know Alleyne loves me, but sometimes I think he doesn't think I'm very practical. This will convince him … if it works.

  There was a short, steep slope below them, falling two hundred feet to the marshy banks of Puddle Creek a few hundred yards southeast; the road came looping down from her left and ran south towards the Mackenzie territories. Ten years of neglect hadn't been kind to it. Subsidence and rushing water had cut half-moon bites out of it where culverts had been blocked and ditches overflowed; vines covered it in places; silt had drifted over in others, and young saplings were sprouting in potholes and cracks, their roots working at the foundations with the endless patience of growing things. In a few lifetimes of Men water and trees would have made it a memory and a faint trace through forest, but for now it was still passable for wheeled traffic, with a little effort. The bridge over the little stream still looked solid, though streaks of rust marked the concrete where cracks exposed the rebar within.

  A clatter of hooves came from the north. Slowly, cautiously she raised the binoculars to her eyes. A dozen men rode into view, and the glasses brought them close. They rode mounts of range-quarterhorse breed, which were familiar enough. Their clothes were rough leather and homespun wool, with here and there a patched pair of pre-Change jeans, the same outfits you might have seen on the cowboy-retainers of a rancher from the CORA—Central Oregon Ranchers' Association—country around Bend and Sisters, but a little more ragged. All of them had plain, round bowl helmets of steel; one of them had a horse's tail mounted as a crest in the center of his headpiece. That man also had a sleeveless chain-mail vest; the rest had cured-leather breastplates, usually strapped with chevron-shaped patterns of metal strips. Most of them carried short saddle-bows, some pre-Change compound types, more modern copies of hunting recurves; their small round shields bore the Lidless Eye newly painted. Their swords were strange, looking like a machete lengthened into a point-heavy slashing saber … which was probably exactly what the design came from.

  She froze as the leader with the crested helmet stood in the stirrups and scanned around carefully. The binoculars brought his face close, broad and flattish-looking because his nose had been squashed and healed that way, with a dark beard trimmed into a fork shape and a terrible scar that curled one lip up in a permanent sneer. He shielded his eyes with a hand as he peered eastward, then turned again to look up at her. She knew that he couldn't see her— they were too far away, and in scrub like this a war cloak made you nearly invisible even at arm's length—but it was still a little daunting.

  "Tough-looking chaps," Alleyne said softly. Speech vanished into the background noise as well.

  He hadn't been out east last year; the Protector had kept him hostage while his father and John Hordle were searching the old poison-gas dump at Umatilla. They'd fooled that hard and wary man into thinking they'd found what he wanted and would work for him, and then run for it … Nigel Loring's cunning had seen that the poison gas didn't fall into Arminger's hands, but the stretch of country around Pendleton had. The Lord Protector had the whole of the Columbia's south bank now, as far east as the old Idaho border.

  "There's been war in the Pendleton country almost since the Change, and a cruel war at that," she said. "They've grown up fighting, even more than we have here. That's how Arminger got them to join him, backing some of them against the rest."

  "Bad bargain," Alleyne said.

  "By then they hated their neighbors so much they'd take any help against them," Astrid said, between pity and disgust.

  At a guess, none of the men down there were older than she or Eilir, and the time before the Change had grown dreamlike to her. War to the knife would have been all they knew, that and hunger and fear and hate.

  The leader with the crested helmet called an order, swinging up a hand.

  "In yrch derir," one of the Dunedain whispered: The enemy stop.

  The mercenary light horse shook themselves out on either side of the road, combing the bush and checking any patch of trees that might shelter a watcher. The leader and three others rode on towards the bridge, arrows ready on their bows. Just then two figures burst out from underneath it, leapt on horses tethered and hidden among brushes and galloped away southwestward. The mercenaries pursued, rising in the stirrups to shoot, arrows flicking out. Astrid caught her lip in her teeth as she watched; those were her folk, her friends …

  They passed out of sight around a bend in the road. The leader of the Pendleton scouts threw up his arm again, sensibly calling off the pursuit, since the fleeing men might be leading his into an ambush; he had to shout to make one man stop, and clouted him across the helmet when he returned. The rider extended a fist with one finger raised, and they both laughed. Then they dismounted and looked at the support pillars, one of them climbing awkwardly down a little and pointing, holding something up for his leader to see. The figures were tiny in the distance, their voices insect-small as they argued and shouted. After a moment one of the easterners turned his horse and cantered back northward towards the main body of the Protectorate's column.

  "They found the cut marks and the tools, then," Alleyne said. Astrid felt a warm glow below her breastbone as he went on: "That was a remarkably clever idea, letting them find incomplete sabotage. Well worth all that night work."

  A curled trumpet spoke, and the rest of the Protectorate force came around the curve of the northward road. A score of crossbowmen on bicycles came first, weaving among the obstacles on the road; they dismounted and set their machines on their kickstands, fanning out to either side of the road. That freed the mercenary
horse who'd been guarding the crossing, and most of them trotted southward over the bridge to scout further on. Next came gangs of laborers in metal collars and rags, carrying mattocks and picks and shovels, some pushing wheelbarrows, all guarded by infantry equipped with shields and spears, conical helms and mail hauberks. The peons set to work on the roadway, shoving aside the rusting hulks of cars, chopping back the vegetation and filling holes with earth and rock. After that the wagons came, huge things with steel frames and twin four-wheel bogies from heavy trucks, drawn by sixteen span of oxen each and loaded high with shapes of metal and timber—a prefabricated fort, with the hundreds-strong labor force that would build it trudging in coffles beside the roadway and carrying their tools. Then there were several dozen ordinary baggage wagons loaded with food and supplies, and last of all a dozen mounted men-at-arms around a rider in a knight's plumed helmet, the lanceheads swaying bright above their heads. The horseman beside the knight carried a banner that hung from a crossbar—the Portland Protective Association's Lidless Eye, not quartered with a baron's blazon; that meant the commander must be of the Protector's own household troops.

  "Didn't expect the lancers," Alleyne said, as the mercenary with the horsetail crest cantered back to report. "Now let's see … "

  Astrid felt the tension rise, and trained reflex take control of her breathing, making the diaphragm pull air down to the bottom of her lungs and release it slowly. That slowed the beating of her heart, and kept her hands steady. Words and images flitted through her mind: fire and arrows and a white tower like a spike of pearl and silver, tall gray-eyed men riding through wilderness and by tumbled ruins, a host of horsemen charging across a plain wracked by battle, while winged shapes hovered overhead …

  "Nazgûl!"

  Everyone froze. Astrid let her head drift up. The slim shape of the glider slid through the sky above, toy-tiny at about two thousand feet. None of her Rangers should be visible from there … but it turned on a wing and dove, coming down the road at a third that height. Which will be a real test of our fieldcraft, she thought.

  Fingers moved in gestures of aversion among the Dunedain, with here and there a sign of the Cross. John Hordle raised one massive fist, with the middle finger extended, but kept it below head height.

  Then it was past; it flashed across Puddle Creek, swift and graceful, and soared on an updraft that rose from the slope opposite, wheeling skyward like a falcon in a gyre until it was high above. Then it waggled its wings and turned southward once again, scouting the road the column would take.

  "He didn't see a thing," Alleyne chuckled. "Victory through Air Power, what?"

  They all nodded, though they also knew it would be a hideous handicap to have the Protector's gliders overhead when they were trying to move larger forces than this raiding party, spying and dropping messages to his troops.

  The knight commanding the column nodded and waved his men forward. Half of them went over the bridge, and the forward labor gangs to clear the way, while the first of the huge freight wagons inched into movement. That took a minute or two. Whips cracked as the long line of paired oxen leaned into the traces with their heads down and shoulders straining at the yokes, nostrils flaring wide and mouths open with the effort. Here and there one slipped a little on the asphalt, lurching and scrabbling and bawling in alarm. A man-at-arms barked a command, and several score of the laborers added their shoulders to the effort, and the wheels began to turn slowly. The humans fell away gasping as the big vehicle moved, building up to a steady walking pace.

  Astrid felt her smile waver as the first team put its hooves on the bridge. Wait for it, wait for it, the bulk of the weight's in the wagon—

  It rolled across. The next two wagons followed, each occupying one lane, and she felt sweat trickling down her flanks. They'd had to calculate the stresses roughly—

  "What's plan B?" Alleyne whispered.

  "Tail, caro!"

  Her beloved wasn't the first to chuckle; his Sindarin was still improving, and he took a moment to realize that she'd just said, Feet, do your stuff. Because if the trap failed, running away was all they could do …

  The paired wagons rolled onto the bridge; she could see the man leading the first ox-team suddenly stop and look around him in puzzlement, then stare down at his feet in horror before running screaming for solid ground. The first lurch came soundlessly; they'd labored all night on the bridge pillars just below the water level, miserable work in relays as hands grew too numb to grip the saw handles. They'd gone through an implausible number of the blades, too, which could never be replaced. But it was worth it; and if the scouts detected a little incomplete sabotage they'd stop looking before they found the real thing.

  We hoped, she thought, with an enormous relief that left her stomach feeling oddly liquid for an instant. And it worked, it worked …

  The scream of tortured metal was joined by the screams of the rest of the wagon crews as they pelted either way off the lurching length of the bridge, arms and legs pumping in panic flight. The next jolt was even louder, with a popping, crackling sound beneath it as the leverage of the severed uprights ripped welds and rivets loose. The bridge swayed right, hesitated for a moment and then collapsed to the left. The bellows of the oxen did tear at her heart, but there was no way to spare the innocent beasts.

  Chaos boiled among the hundreds of men below as two of the giant wagons slid into the water. Astrid hit the toggle that released her war cloak and rose to her feet with a slight grunt—she was wearing a full hauberk and gear. She filled her lungs as she rose, drew her bow and shouted: "Lacho calad! Drego morn!" The same Dunedain war cry broke out from two-score throats: Flame Light! Flee Night!

  Arrows followed. By prearrangement, everyone was aiming at the crossbow-men at first. There were a dozen of them left by the side of the road. As many again had crossed to the other side of the bridge, but they were out of range and the swift-moving water was as deep as a tall man's chest. That cut them off from the action here. And most of the ones within range of the Dunedain had turned to gape at the disaster unfolding as ten tons of metal and wood and two score of oxen slid inexorably into the river. The first forty shafts struck before they could do more than begin to turn back. Two more volleys were in the air before the first hit; the Dunedain were all good with the bow, and the range was nowhere more than two hundred yards, mostly less. The light mail shirts the crossbowmen wore were no more protection than their woolen jackets.

  "Yes!" Alleyne shouted as he drew and shot, using a longbow as skillfully as any Mackenzie. "Yes!"

  There were sixty Association troops with the convoy. There were more than seven times that number of laborers … and as the crossbowmen fell beneath the arrowstorm, the workers turned on the soldiers guarding them in a screaming mass of fury, swinging shovels and mattocks and dragging men down with their bare hands to be beaten and stomped to death. A dozen swirls of vicious combat broke out all at once, arms and armor and skill against numbers and surprise and hate; the soldiers fought their way towards each other, the laborers hanging on their flanks like wolves. Here and there a knot stood back-to-back and beat off their assailants. More went down before they could reach help …

  The Protectorate lancers had their destriers as well as their weapons, rearing and lashing out with steel-shod hooves; only two of the men-at-arms were pulled out of the saddle and pounded into bags of shattered bone and pulped meat inside their harness. The others cut their way free, with short-gripped lances stabbing and swords casting arcs of red into the morning air. One laborer died as a warhorse sank its great yellow teeth into his shoulder and shook him like a terrier with a rat. Ten men-at-arms and the knight who commanded them spurred into the open, drawing together, getting ready to charge to the aid of the footmen in a wedge of armored muscle. That couldn't be allowed.

  "To horse!" Astrid shouted with a voice like a silver trumpet, then whistled sharply. "Tolo, Asfaloth!" she called to her own mount.

  Her gray Arab mare came, cant
ering, moving so lightly her feet barely seemed to touch the ground. Astrid caught the saddlebow and used the momentum and a skipping spring to vault into the saddle, her feet catching the stirrups easily. The raven-topped helmet hung by her bow-case. She slipped it on. The cheek-pieces that clipped beneath her chin were covered with wings, their pinions blackened aluminum; the tail feathers that made up the aventail protecting her neck were steel of the same color, on a mail backing, and the eyes that looked out over hers were rubies. One of the Dunedain offered her a long ash lance, but she shook her head.

  "Lacho calad! Drego morn!" she called again, and then to the horse that trembled with eagerness beneath her, tossing its head and snorting. "Noro lim, Asfaloth, noro lim!"

  A dozen of the Rangers were in the saddle, Alleyne beside her. They put their horses recklessly at the steep slope ahead; her Asfaloth plunged down it agile as a cat, sometimes resting her weight on her haunches for an instant and sliding, sometimes twisting to avoid a sapling or tangle of thorny brush. When she hit the level ground it was with a long bound that landed her in a hand gallop. Alleyne's heavier mount reached the flats almost as quickly; the big gelding had a steel barding plate on his chest and simply smashed through much that Asfaloth had dodged. The other mounted Dunedain all made the passage, though two had to struggle back into the saddle after losing a stirrup.

  Behind them the rest of the Rangers were leaping down the slope in turn, shouting their war cry. Ahead the Protectorate men-at-arms were turning to meet the menace of their mounted foes; they had no choice, if they weren't to be taken in the rear. The laborers took heart and threw themselves on the spears that faced them in a screaming swarm, led by men willing to hold the steel in their own dying flesh while their comrades beat at heads and shoulders beyond. A helm and mail coat and the padding beneath were good protection, but there was a limit.