He felt himself toppling, knew he couldn't recover in time, and kicked his other foot out of the stirrup as he came off, tucking himself into a ball as he flew, landing loose and rolling. His brooch burst; his plaid came loose and wrapped itself around his legs, and his bow flipped him onto his face. Something rapped him painfully as he slid to a stop in the wet, loose leaves and fir needles, knocking the wind out of him. He smelled blood as he landed, the thick copper-iron scent of it heavy and rank like butchering-time, when a carcass was hung up to drain into the oatmeal-filled tubs below.
And as he fell, a crossbow bolt whined through the space he'd occupied an instant before, hammering into the hard, dense wood of the walnut with a sharp crisp tock! sound.
Just beyond him, behind a bush, Fenra lay dead with a great slash in her neck and the red still ebbing out of it, her lips curled back from her fangs in a last snarl. The shaggy leaf-strewn shape beyond with the stiff plastic flight feathers of a crossbow bolt showing against its flank must be Ulf. Epona reared and bugled as she stood over him, milling her forefeet in the air like steel war-hammers, her nostrils flaring as she took in the scents of death. And men in camouflage clothing were running towards them. One stopped and bent to span his crossbow so that he could reload; others were raising theirs.
"Epona!" he shouted, trying to make his will into a dart, the way his mother had taught him. "Home, Epona. Home! Go home!"
The horse came down and turned in the same motion, bounding forward with that astonishing jackrabbit leap she had, going from a standstill to a gallop in less time than it took to draw a breath. Four of the men shot at her; three missed, and one bolt scored across her withers just as she turned the corner and vanished back eastward on the road to Dun Juniper. Hands grabbed at his hair. Rudi drew his dirk and slashed back and up. The keen edge hit flesh; he could feel it part under the steel, and a man swore: "Jesus, the little bastard cut me!" Christians, Rudi thought, rolling erect and kicking his feet free of his loosened plaid. He felt calm somehow, and everything was very slow, like swimming underwater in the pool by the mill. More closed in on him, grown men, with hoods and masks of the same mottled cloth as their jackets and pants. The others laughed at the man clutching a slashed arm, with blood leaking from between his fingers. Not bandits. From the Protectorate.
"Watch out, the little fuck's quick as a snake!" the wounded man growled; he was thickset and bearlike, with a fringe of reddish hair over hazel eyes.
"Don't you hurt him!" Mathilda screamed, and a woman's voice answered:
"Take him alive if you can."
"Aoife! Liath! Danger!" he shouted—once, and darted a thrust at a slim olive-skinned man advancing with his arms spread wide to grab.
The man-at-arms grunted as the point took him in the belly, but there was mail under the jacket, and the hand that closed on his wrist was quick and troll-strong, twisting the knife out of his grasp. Rudi kicked—neatly, the way he'd been taught—but his toe hit a box protector and produced only a pained grunt, not a scream. Then a hard hand clouted him on the side of the head, and everything went gray and remote as he slid to the ground, not quite unconscious but not connected to the world. A pad of cloth went over his mouth, fastened with a strip of priceless duct tape, and another twist pinned his wrists in front of him.
"Gutsy little prick," someone muttered. Then a woman's voice: "Joris! Enguerrand! Two horses coming!"
Aoife and Liath came around the corner; they'd slowed back a little way as they saw Epona dashing by riderless, but they were galloping now, screaming war cries. Liath was two horse lengths ahead, with her battle spear held overarm; she threw it just before three crossbow bolts hit her mount in the chest. The heavy stabbing weapon wasn't designed to be used that way, but the range was short, and it had the momentum of a galloping horse behind it as well as the strength of her arm.
A dark-skinned man jerked his left arm up diagonally across his breast, as if he was used to having a knight's long kite-shaped shield on it. The solid length of ashwood and metal struck him in the chest, the twelve-inch steel head punching in with an ugly dull, wet thudding smack sound, through cloth and mail, flesh and bone. He flew back and landed, kicking, blood spraying red from his mouth and nose but already dead. The young woman's horse fell in the next instant, screaming itself. That gave her just time enough to slide her feet out of the stirrups, hitting and rolling in a tumble of spilled arrows; her bowstring parted too as the six-foot yew stave slung diagonally across her back caught violently on a root with a strong, unmusical snap. Her horse came down with its neck outstretched, and the greenstick sound of its neck breaking cut the huge scream of bewildered terror off with the abruptness of a knife slicing a taut rope.
Aoife managed to get her horse to jump before it ran into the rope, but the rest of the raiders were too close for her to use her bow, and the animal was crow-hopping in near panic. She drew her sword instead, her left hand stripping the buckler off the sheath, slugged her mount's head around until it pointed directly at Rudi and the man standing over him, and booted the horse into motion. The man dodged aside, not quite quickly enough, and drew his own blade, there was a flash and a rasp of steel, and he staggered back with his hands clapped to his face as one of his comrades closed in on the mounted warrior. Liath had shaken off her fall in seconds and was on her feet as well, fighting the other two men left, a skirling crash of steel on steel and desperate gasps of effort as she backed and they tried to get behind her.
"Oh, by the saints!" the woman's voice he'd heard before snapped. "Will you clowns just kill them? Do I have to do everything myself?"
Rudi felt as if his eyes weren't under his control; as if he was watching everything on teevee, like the old stories, small and distant and not quite real. Even his feelings seemed distant. All that was left was facts. The woman who'd spoken stepped into view; she was dressed like the men, with her sword slung across her back, and she held a crossbow—an odd-looking one, like the black skeleton of the weapon he was used to, and with a telescopic sight mounted on it.
She shot once, and Aoife's horse stopped in the middle of a bugling neigh, with the dark fletchings of the crossbow bolt standing right behind one ear. The Mackenzie warrior managed to kick her feet free and land standing as the horse collapsed like a puppet with cut strings, but the northerner stood unconcerned, turning a crank handle built into the crossbow and slipping another silvery bolt into it, then aiming with quick grace.
Tung !
The bolt took Liath squarely in the back, punching through the brigandine and the spine beneath. She collapsed backward beneath the arc of a sword's blade that would have taken off half her face, landing limp and wide-eyed. Blood bubbled out of her mouth when she tried to scream.
"Go watch the pathway," her killer said, and set the crossbow down, drawing her sword instead, and a long knife with a basket hilt in her left hand, smiling faintly. "All of you! Shoot anyone who comes down it, but be quiet."
And as she saw Liath fall, Aoife gave a high, wailing screech and charged the woman who'd shot her friend. The Protectorate fighter met her with sword held high and knife low, and then they were whirling in a rage of flickering steel, cut and thrust with the lengths of razor-edged metal sparking in the forest gloom as they met and clashed and sparked. Aoife's face was bone white, her eyes gone dark as the pupils expanded to swallow the iris, and her teeth showed in a rictus-grin of frenzy.
"Morrigu!" she screamed, transported and possessed, face twisted into a Gorgon mask. "Morrigu!"
The Black-Winged One was with her. Aoife wouldn't have been assigned to guard him if she wasn't good, but now sword and buckler moved with a speed and power beyond anything she'd shown before. The woman from the Protectorate gave ground smoothly before the frenzied attack, moving with a fluid dancer's grace that reminded Rudi of something—
Astrid, he realized, his thoughts still muzzy and slow and distant. She moves like Aunt Astrid.
Fine swordswoman that she was, Aoife couldn't have sto
od for more than a few moments before Astrid Larsson, Hiril Dunedain. The Crow Goddess gave her strength and speed to drive the stranger back for a dozen paces. Then a root caught at her foot, the winter-softened moss on it coming loose beneath the hobnails, leaving streaks of raw white sapwood amid the black. The stranger struck like sudden summer lightning, as if she'd known and planned for the misstep. The long knife in her left hand blocked Aoife's shortsword and locked at the guard; she ducked her shoulder into a blow with the buckler aimed at shattering her jaw, and stabbed downward neatly with the sharp point of her sword. It sliced into the clanswoman's inner thigh below the edge of her brigandine, through the wool of the kilt and deep into the flesh. She twisted it, withdrew and cut backhand with the knife at Aoife's neck in the same motion, scoring her savagely just above the mail collar, below the angle of the jaw.
Aoife staggered forward two more paces and collapsed; the blood flowed with a bright arterial pumping that showed the wounds were mortal.
"Joris, Ivo, get the horses, all of them!" the victor snapped, and men dashed off. "Ruffin, can you ride?"
The man whose arm Rudi had cut looked up, his teeth clenched on a bandage he was tightening around his forearm. The slash had bled spectacularly, but the canvas sleeve of his jacket had taken most of what force Rudi could put into the blow, and the wound wasn't serious. He nodded, making an inarticulate grunt, then managing:
"'s not deep. Just bleeding like a stuck hog."
The woman nodded back, and stepped over to the man whose slashed face bore the mark of Aoife's sword. He was on the ground, one eye sliced open and blood leaking between the palms he had pressed to the side of his face.
"You can't ride, Enguerrand," she said. "Do you want to be left for the kilties, or—" And she showed him the sword.
He started to shake his head, gave an awful bubbling moan, and then tilted his head back and to one side. One hand scrabbled in the dirt, and he brought a clod to his lips; Rudi recognized the rite, a symbol of his desire to receive communion and his unworthiness to do so.
"God witness it's his wish and none of mine," the woman said formally, looking at her men; there were three left on their feet, two holding leading-reins with four horses on each.
"You're free of blood-guilt, Rutherton," the man she'd called Joris said formally; his mask was down and revealed a pointed yellow beard and heavy-lidded blue eyes. "Any one of us would ask the same, or do it if they were commander."
The others nodded. She set the point of the sword behind the crippled man's ear and pushed with a hard lunge of arm and shoulder; the man's body flexed once in a galvanic shudder and went limp. A flap of cheek peeled back when his hand fell away, showing a grin red and white. Then the woman stood and turned and looked at Rudi. Her eyes were gray, pale and cold as glass.
Mathilda was off her horse and in front of Rudi in a single scrambling rush. "No!" she said shrilly, spreading her arms. "You can't hurt him, Tiphaine! We're anamchara! Blood-brothers. I'll have right of vengeance against anyone who hurts him, all my life! I'm gonna be Protector someday and I'll remember!"
Tiphaine Rutherton seemed to sense the men behind her looking at each other in doubt—that was a credible threat to anyone who knew how stubborn Mathilda could be—and made an exasperated sound between her teeth. Before she could move, Mathilda's knife was out, and she pressed it to her own throat—hard enough that a trickle of red blood started down the white skin as she swallowed convulsively.
"If you hurt him, I'll kill myself! I swear it by God and the Virgin, and then you'll have to explain to Mom and Dad and His Holiness how come I'm dead and in Hell for suicide!" Mathilda said with desperate earnestness. "Not just now! If you hurt him later, I'll do it!"
Rutherton stopped as if she'd run into a stone wall; she stared into the girl's eyes for an instant, saw a bright focus of intent.
"Princess, I'm not planning on hurting him," she said gently. "My orders from your mother are to take him alive if possible. But to do that I have to restrain him, because now we have to run for our lives and we can't have him slowing us down. You understand?"
Mathilda swallowed, nodded and brought the knife down. Tiphaine turned her head.
"Well, what are you all waiting for, the kilties to arrive? Ivo, get the brat over a horse." To Mathilda: "This is just to keep him quiet, Princess. I won't hurt him now; on my honor as a warrior of the Association."
Something stung Rudi in the cheek of one buttock as hands heaved him over a saddle and lashed him to it with leather thongs. His head felt as if it were spinning down a whirlpool, with the world upside-down. He saw Aoife twitch as she tried to crawl; the blond woman who'd killed her bent for a moment, grabbing her by the collar of her brigandine and dragging her closer to Liath's body. Then everything contracted to a point of light and went out.
Chapter Eleven
Waldo Hills, Willamette Valley, Oregon
March 5th, 2008/Change Year 9
Lord Piotr Stavarov lowered his binoculars and scowled. "Are those scouts back yet?" he asked.
"Yes, my lord," Sir Ernaldo Machado said. "They report no enemy presence on the right. There are light screening forces in the woods to the left, although not all the scouts are back from that area yet. The glider couldn't see any of them except those."
He pointed to the band that blocked the road ahead. Stavarov gritted his teeth; they were excellent teeth, white and even, in a handsome, regular young snub-nosed, high-cheeked face. He knew he was young for this post … but the Stavarovs and their followers had backed Norman Arminger in his initial grab for power in Portland, less than ten days after the Change. He'd been sixteen then, and he could remember his father's relief and excitement that someone offered a way out. And now he was out from under the thumb of that scar-faced lout Renfrew.
Though, to be fair, at least he isn't as much of a pussy as most of those Society retreads.
He raised the field glasses. The Protectorate force was halted in column on the road, blocks of bicycle-mounted spearmen and crossbowmen and supply wagons, the two hundred infantry sitting motionless on their cycles, flanked by two mounted columns with fifty knights and men-at-arms each. The pennants on their lances snapped in the morning breeze, and the same wind poked trickles of grateful cool through the mail of his hauberk and the padded gambeson beneath.
There aren't enough of them to hold us, he thought, looking at the Mackenzie force.
There were a hundred of them, barely enough of them to block the road between the hills on either side; fifty with spears or polearms—what the kilties called Lochaber axes, broad arm-long slashing blades that tapered to a point and had a hook on the reverse. Swung two-handed, the six-foot weapons could cut right through mail just as well as a glaive or halberd; best to remember that. Another fifty of their archers to the west of that, thrown forward along the edge of the low scrub-grown hills that had been pasture once and were head-high brushwood and thorn now. It was a good position, but they didn't have the numbers to stop his men, and if they broke his lancers would hunt them like game. Odd, you'd usually expect a lot more longbows in a Mackenzie formation, from what the briefing papers said …
And under the banner, there was a figure in plate armor enameled green, not the brigandine and kilt the Mackenzies usually wore. Piotr's lips skinned back from his teeth.
The Lord Protector has a serious hard-on for Sir Nigel Loring after the way he betrayed him last year. It won't do me or the family any harm at all at court, if I bring him the Englishman's head. Maybe another fief? There's good wheatland out by Pendleton, or perhaps around here after the war …
"Nothing much on the left?" he said, swinging his glasses eastward.
The hills there were higher and steeper than the low, rolling ground on the westward side of the road, the crests better than a hundred and fifty feet above him. The rising face on their north slope was also heavily wooded with oaks and alders, Douglas fir and western hemlocks, all big trees planted long before the Change. The edge whe
re the patch of forest met the abandoned fields was thick with saplings and bramble and thorn and Oregon grape. It was like a wall along the edge of the forest, and he couldn't see far into the depths beneath the big trees. Presumably there was a lot less undergrowth in their shade; further out towards him the open ground was covered with nothing more than green grass knee-high on a horse, kept free of brushwood by a fire last summer. Good open ground where his troops could use their superior discipline and formation.
I wish they'd put some of their bare-ass miniskirt militia there, he thought. Still, I can't expect them to be that stupid.
"Nothing on the left as yet, my lord. As I said, not all the scouts have returned from that direction."
"Probably still sniffing around the road on the other side," Piotr said. "Let's get going. All three columns are supposed to be over the Santiam by nightfall. Speed is why we're traveling in separate bodies."
A hesitation. "My lord, shouldn't we wait for the Grand Constable and his escort to get back?"
Piotr felt himself flush, hot blood darkening his skin from the mail collar of his coif upward. "Count Odell is in overall command, but I'm in charge of this column!" he snapped. "Do you dispute that, Sir Ernaldo?"
"No, my lord," he said dutifully. "We can make them scatter from beyond bowshot, if we set up a couple of the catapults."
Piotr shook his head. "That would delay the march for hours. We should be able to reach the Santiam today, that's the objective."
"My lord, their archers are good. And a solid line of spearmen and halberdiers is no joke. We only outnumber them by three to one on this field, and we'll be the ones attacking. It will cost us."
Piotr made an impatient gesture. "Yes, yes. But there aren't enough of the rabble to hold us up, and we can afford the losses more than they. Spearmen are easy enough to replace."
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