The Protector's War

by S. M. Stirling

  Uh-oh, she said, carefully not aloud. Everyone knew what uh-oh meant; it meant we screwed up.

  "Best we depart," she said.

  ^lore shouts from the bridge; the spearmen had gotten to within twenty yards before a dozen Mackenzie archers hiding in the stream bed came to their feet, standing with only their heads and chests exposed and drawing to the ear. One of them was Sam Aylward. The seven spearmen were five when they'd backed out of range despite their full armor, crouching behind shields that bristled like porcupines, and several of them were wounded.

  Juniper's party hopped down from the light railcar, set their shoulders to it…

  "Heave!"

  It went over with a crash, and they dashed for the woods three hundred yards westward. She ran silently, concentrating on her breathing and hoping the men who'd been on the levers could keep up—they had arms and shoulders that looked like sets of steel cable, but they hadn't been getting much in the way of work with their feet and legs, nor been overly well fed. The whoops and cries of Haro! from the horsemen proved to be a remarkably good incentive, and they went with the kilted clansmen step for step.

  "We're not going to make it to the woods!" Rowan called, looking over his shoulder. "They'll be on us a hundred and fifty yards out!"

  Juniper made a wordless but heartfelt inward cry for help as she estimated distances. All of them knew that to show your back to a lancer was death—the problem was that with the numbers nearly even, facing them on open grassland was nearly as bad.

  "Get ready to turn on them!" she called. "Not you men, you're unarmed—you keep on for the woods. Now't"

  She stopped and wheeled. The enemy were coming on in a thunder-roll of hooves, traveling many times faster than a human could run—it was like being chased down by dirt bikes. Five of them in front, lances out ahead of hooves that hammered divots of brown dirt into the air, horse heads with spiked steel chamfrons on their faces and steel peytrals on their chests. The two behind were in knights'

  hauberks and had shields, but they didn't carry lances, and their horses were different—small and showy and slender-limbed, not the big bruiser warmbloods knights rode…

  The lances came down with a ripple, eleven feet with the twelve-inch heads included, the honed metal of point and edge glinting in the bright spring sunlight. Devices showed on the kite-shaped shields, old Society heraldry mixed with chop-shop Jesuses and shock-rock album-cover art; even then she was a little surprised to see they were all knights with their own blazons, not just men-at-arms. The faces of the men were hidden save for the eyes, shields up and broad splayed nasals covering most of what showed above that.

  Get them focused on us, she thought tautly. Then—"Spread!"

  The Mackenzies kept running, but to either side, spreading out with yards between each of them. A solid mass of spears or bills or pikes could stop mounted knights—as long as it was very solid, shoulder to shoulder and ranked deep, a bristling wall of points. Most of the Clan warriors here didn't have spears, and there weren't enough of them to make a spear wall anyway—or to drown the charge with sky-darkening arrow storm. There were other ways, though, and this was a picked band of the Clan's best…

  Except for middle-aged me! went through her. Well, I'm in 'late youth' at least—

  The lancers hesitated slightly, a fractional check in their boot-to-boot charge as the target spread out to either side. Bows snapped, and arrows began to flicker out towards them; they booted their horses back into a full hard gallop to get across the killing ground as fast as possible, spreading out slightly themselves as they picked targets of their own. She could feel the impact of the hooves through the soles of her feet, making the turf quiver, like the shiver of fear traveling up your legs and into your gut.

  One had a sword-wielding zombie painted on his shield with skin tunneled by mocking worms; he headed for her. Her first arrow stuck quivering in the zombie's eye. She shot again, but the peytral on the horse's breast shed it with a bang and a spark of steel on steel. Ten seconds for a galloping horse to cross a hundred yards; she tried to draw again as the lance point drove for her chest…

  Snapsnap.

  An arrow from another bow sank to the feathers in the horse's chest through the triangular protective plate—fletched with peacock feathers, Sanjay Barstow's. Another crunched into the horse's fetlock. The beast went over as if its legs had been cut from under it, with a scream piteously loud. The rider tried to curl himself up as he flew out of the high-cantled saddle, but the loose shield strap that went around his neck made it impossible; the point of the shield struck the ground first, the strap broke and sent it bouncing away and then the knight himself hit in an ungainly sprawl. He staggered half erect as he tried to lever himself up not ten paces from her.

  The brown glaring face showed plain at that distance, wet with sweat and with blood pouring from his nose above bared white teeth; a young face with only a wisp of black beard, grown from child to man since the Change.

  Snap.

  This time her arrow had its way with the armor, through the links on the collar that warded his neck and out the other side. He screamed in a spray of blood, falling on his back and arching in dying reflex as his mail-gloved hands scrambled at the cedarwood transfixing his throat.

  Juniper wheeled as the arrow released, knowing where it would strike with the certainty a good shot always brought. That let her see Sanjay Barstow dodge a little too slowly, and the lancehead move with cruel precision to compensate. There was a massive dull thud as it drove into the young man's chest, and his whole body flexed and snapped like a whip, face fluid with shock. The lance cracked across as it speared through his breastbone, through the mail shirt and out his back in a fan of blood, and the impact drove the Protectorate knight back against the high cantle of the saddle that cradled his hips. His horse checked, almost staggering for two paces as it recovered its balance.

  Aoife Barstow was three yards away. She gave an eerie wail as she saw her foster brother die, and leapt. Even then Juniper's eyes went a little wide as she landed crouching, grabbed the knight's stirrup leather, and let the savage jerk of the horse's speed add to her next jump. The young woman flowed upward, pivoting as she rose, the kilt falling back from her long slender legs as her booted heels drove into the side of the rider's head. The knight tried to club at her with the stump of the broken lance, but that and the shield and the sudden violent shying of his horse hampered him; all three went over sideways in a tangle of limbs and screams and the endless banshee shrieking of the Mackenzie woman.

  Aoife landed uppermost, riding the tangle down as fourteen hundred pounds of horseflesh and gear crashed across the knight's leg and ground it into the dirt. He lost all interest in his assailant as bone and flesh pulped inside his armor and the horse thrashed in convulsions. The short sword flashed as she grabbed the nasal of his helmet and used it to lever his head back for a slash across the throat. Then she drove the blade down with short chopping strokes. As the three surviving knights reined in and around—you couldn't stop nearly a ton of armor and horseflesh quickly—she rose with the dripping head dangling by its hair in one hand and red sword gripped in the other. She waved both aloft, the red-and-white wolf mouth painted on her skin no more grisly than the contorted shrieking face beneath.

  That checked even hardy fighting-men for an instant. Long enough to hide what poured out of the woods behind them…

  "Down!" Juniper shouted, with all the power of her lungs.

  Aoife Barstow ignored her, lost in an ecstasy of fury, the embrace of something beyond men and men's concerns. Her brother tackled her behind the knees, rolling away instantly to dodge the reflexive chop of her sword. Juniper saw it out of the corner of her eye. Most of her attention was on the twoscore Mackenzies dashing forward out of their hiding place in the brushwood at the forest's edge, Eilir and Astrid and the Clan's green-and-silver banner at their head. They halted as they saw Juniper and the others take cover, and the bows came up…

  Y
ikes! Juniper thought.

  Any haven in a storm; she rolled and grabbed at the shield of the knight she'd killed, pulling it over her and curling herself into as tight a ball as she could. She squeezed her eyes shut as well; there was nobody she had to show brave for right here and now, and at least she wouldn't have to see death coming if someone overshot. Which was more than likely, with forty archers dropping shafts at an area target a hundred and fifty yards away from their position.

  A rising whistle split the air, and another, and another. Someone did overshoot, and a long arrow fletched with gray-goose feathers went shhhunk! into the ground ten feet away. Underneath the hiss of cloven air came screams of men and horses, and a sound like a brief spate of hail on the shakes of a roof. Juniper threw aside the shield and rose; the knights were a kicking mass of flesh that bristled with shafts. The oncoming Mackenzies flowed over them; dirks flashed in mercy-strokes for man and beast.

  Another shout brought her head around. The two riders who'd been behind the knights had drawn their swords and were charging themselves, their whoops oddly shrill. They were in man-at-arms' armor, but…

  Those horses are lovely, but they're thirteen hands at most, hardly more than ponies for size. One's Arab, the other's an Appaloosa, and even so the riders look too small—

  "Rowan!" she called, a prickle at the back of her mind prompting her. "Alive, if you can! I don't think those are fighting men at all! They're kids!"

  He shrugged and nodded, thrusting his bow through the loops, drawing his battle-ax from the set on the other side of his quiver and flicking the leather guard off the edge with a quick snap of his wrists. The first rider had Baron Molalla's blazon, unquartered; he leaned forward with his sword point presented as his horse galloped. Rowan crouched slightly, then let one knee relax as the horse thundered down on him. That pushed him to the side with a swooping gracefulness; he turned it into a whirl like a hammer thrower at the Beltane games, with his long arms out and the four-foot shaft of his ax at the end of them. The slender horse screamed as the broad cutting edge flashed through its hamstring with no more effort than a kitchen knife jointing a chicken, and the beast went over and cast its rider free. The horse thrashed, ululating its pain; Rowan frowned and approached it carefully, murmuring an apology as he swung the ax twice—once with the hammer side, to stun, and then with the blade to kill.

  The armored rider had managed to shed his shield and land well, but he had only begun to rise when Rowan kicked his arms out from under him and planted a boot between his shoulder blades.

  "Naughty!" the big blacksmith said, leaning his ax down to pin the other's sword and watching with mild curiosity as his sister faced the other horseman.

  She knelt, buckler in her left hand, the other holding her battle spear—but parallel to the ground, the butt braced under the instep of her right foot, the head only a few inches from the ground and hidden in the long grass. Even if the rider was a child, the mount was far too much weight in rapid motion to take lightly.

  Horses were deeply stupid compared to anything except sheep, but they had a lively sense of self-preservation and save in a blind panic would not run onto a point. They swerved at the last moment instead, swerved slightly if well-trained, and then a mounted swordsman could strike from above, inside the longer weapon's reach; that was why it took a whole hedge of polearms to stop cavalry.

  But a horse would not shy from a spearpoint it couldn't see coming. That was where the stupidity came in handy if you didn't have a few dozen friends on either side.

  Cynthia jerked the ash wood spear haft up with savage precision, presenting the point at breast-height when the lovely little Appaloosa was only two strides away. The sharp foot-long blade knifed into its chest, the weight driving the butt deep into the dirt and slewing sideways as it made a frantic last-second attempt to dodge with the steel already in it. That left the strong wood braced between the immovable earth and the nearly irresistible weight that even a modestly sized horse galloping full-tilt represented.

  It was two feet deep in the bone and gristle of the horse's brisket, and the strain was immense. The snap of its cracking was like nothing Juniper had heard since the Change, ear-hurting loud. The four-foot stub of the shaft blurred sideways and struck Cynthia in the side of her brigandine, knocking her half a dozen paces through the air to sprawl groaning. The horse hit the ground limp, its neck cracking as it tumbled head over heels. The slim rider landed rolling as well, lying stunned where his shield twisted horizontally across him and blocked any more movement, but it had been very creditable to get out of the stirrups and avoid the horse's body.

  She moved over to him when a glance showed Cynthia conscious, and paused beside the wounded horse. The legs weren't moving but it still breathed, chest going like a bellows; frothy blood poured out of the nostrils and the great wound in its chest, and the big dark eyes swiveled to look at her, pleading with her to make it better.

  Juniper drew her dirk. "Forgive me, beautiful sister," she said quietly, going down on one knee. "Forgive humankind for making you party to our quarrels. All I can give you is a swift end to pain. Dread Lord, take her home to the sweet meadows of the Summerlands. Epona, Lady of the Horses, let her run free with the living wind."

  As she spoke she pulled a cloth free from her belt pouch and threw it over the mare's eyes so that she couldn't see the sharp steel, then pressed the point home and twisted expertly. The horse gave a long shuddering twitch, kicked and went limp.

  Juniper wiped the blade clean on the mane as she stood. The main body of the wagon train was under control too—a swarm of figures moved over it. An unwilling smile tugged at her mouth despite grief and grimness; that one standing on a tarpaulin-load and kicking someone off it with a tremendous swing of his boot was Sam Aylward, up there with his archers, knocking some order into the farmers who'd swarmed down from the hills while everyone's attention was firmly elsewhere.

  Thank you, Homed Lord, she thought; she'd always considered Sam to be a personal gift of Cernunnos.

  She turned back to the task at hand. The fallen rider's shield was the first thing wrong. She could read Protectorate heraldry well and was familiar with all the major blazons; it was based on the Society's system anyway, and she'd learned that busking at fairs and tournaments before the Change. This was simply the Protector's, the red cat-pupiled eye on black, with a baton of cadency across it. Cynthia staggered up clutching herself while Juniper toed it aside; the neck loop had broken, the strong leather snapped by the torquing action of the fall. The short slim figure beneath rolled onto its back, fumbling a hand at the empty sword sheath. The helmet was one of the newer model, with a nasal bar flared so broadly at the base that it was nearly a mask covering the lower face. And the armor was of the best, links black-enameled and fine enough that the mail flowed like silk; the sword belt had gold and niello plaques.

  "What have we… got here?" Cynthia croaked. She was holding herself, arms crossed across her gut. "Just a few ribs sprung. Lady."

  "I don't know what we've got," Juniper said. But I do have a horrible suspicion—who even among Arminger's barons could afford to refit a child in costly first-class armor every six months—

  Greenish-brown eyes blinked open, aware enough to glare at her on either side of the nasal bar. Then they went wide and hands scrabbled at the helmet; half a cupful of yellow bile spewed out on the grass near her boot. To be expected after a wacking great thump on the head like that, and lost amid the savage stinks of battle.

  "That's a girl!" Cynthia said.

  "Indeed it is," Juniper said wonderingly. "And a young one."

  There weren't more than a couple of dozen female knights or squires in the Protectorate, although they hadn't been all that uncommon in the Society; Arminger wasn't what you would call an equal-opportunity employer, and neither were the gangers and thugs who'd made up many of his initial followers. This one couldn't be more than ten. The girl scrubbed her gauntlet's leather palm across her mouth and spat, glar
ing at Juniper again. Greenish eyes, reddish brown hair, a foxy freckled face…

  Rowan came up, dragging the other youngster; he was about the same age, but thicker-built and with a coffee-and-cream complexion.

  "This one's Baron Molalla's son, believe it or not," he said. "Young Chaka. Now isn't that going to be interesting!"

  "Not half so much as this," Juniper said. "Mackenzies, meet Princess Mathilda… Mathilda Arminger, the Lord Protector's only child."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Crossing Tavern, Willamette Valley, Oregon

  May 13th, 2007 AD—Change Year Nine

  Jesus!" Mike Havel said, spraying a few crumbs from the cookie he was nibbling.

  Signe thumped him on the back as he coughed. "Drink some water, darling."

  "Never touch the stuff," he said, but obeyed. His mind was racing as he stared at Juniper's cat-ate-canary grin and Sam Aylward's raised eyebrow: That surprised you just a bit, dinnit?

  "Where is she? Where did you put them?"

  "Well…"

  Barony of Molalla, Willamette Valley, Oregon May 10th, 2007 AD—Change Year Nine

  Aoifo and Daniel Barstow knelt on either side of their brother Sanjay, their wails rising to Jceening shrieks and dying away again in a saw-edged rhythm as they rocked back and forth. Juniper winced at the raw grief of it, even faint with distance, and they weren't the only Mackenzies grieving a friend or loved one. She wasn't looking forward to telling Judy about Sanjay's death, either, and she'd liked the young man herself; he'd been bright and sweet-natured and brave, and there was a girl… she'd expected to see them handfasted come Lughnassadh.

  But on the whole…

  "Not 'alf bad, if I say so meself," Sam Aylward said, looking down from the rooftop platform of the passenger carriage. "Of course, it's easy to shine when you take the other side by surprise and outnumber them eight to one, but this sort o' ambush and guerrilla work is a lot harder than it was before the Change. Great force multipliers, explosives and automatic weapons were. Cuts down on the advantage of surprise when you have to run up to a bloke to bash 'im, and do it one head at a time."