"Cernunnos!" he blurted as it did.
There's miles of the things!
He could hear them, even miles away and on a galloping horse, a fast drumming rumble that struck at his face and chest. Too far to see individual animals, even ones as big as buffalo, but the great black-gray mass seemed to undulate, like waves on the sea. The forefront of the herd was a spray of dots; as they got a little closer he could see that they were the big ton-weight herd bulls, their massive heads down and the great shaggy humps rising and falling. At rest or walking they would look clumsy and slow, but now they were moving as fast as a horse could, or a little faster, their mouths open and lines of white foam falling from their tongues, everything lost but the need to flee.
"Going to be close!" Three Bears said again.
Rudi looked behind, over the head of the remount on its leading rein. The foremost Cutters were much closer now, and foam was slobbering from their horses' mouths and clotting on their forequarters. Probably none of the Corwinites was Rudi's size or weight, but they all had their war-harness on, which more or less equalized things. As he watched one of the ones at the rear fell away, his horse shaking its head and stumbling. The three in the lead rose in the stirrups and drew. Their upper bodies hardly seemed to move at all as their horses galloped…
"Uh-oh!" Three Bears called.
"I know what Uh-oh means!" Rudi replied.
"It means we're fucked!"
They both hunched down in the saddle. Wearing helms and with their round shields slung over their backs, they presented a minimum target. His back crawled a little as he waited for the whipppt of arrows.
And since that fight after Picabo, I've been just a little more nervous of that sound.
It came, but faintly. He looked around; the last shaft hit the ground as he watched, about ten yards behind them. Rudi clamped his thighs on the saddle and twisted, bringing up the bow. The recurve was a masterpiece from the best bowyer in Bend, and the long muscles of his arm coiled as he drew to the ear. Then loose, and the snap of the string on his bracer, the slam of the recoil, the shaft seeming to slow as it arched out at the doll-tiny shape of the pursuers.
Three Bears whooped as one of them ducked, and his horse took a half-step sideways in a puff of dust as an arrow landed between him and the Mackenzie. They fell back a little as Rudi sprayed three more shafts towards them as fast as he could draw, but hitting a moving target from a horse at better than two hundred yards was more a matter of luck than skill.
"Cernunnos!" Rudi grunted again as he looked forward.
The herd was much closer, and closing fast; the beasts were running straight north, and the travelers were angling to cut across their front. That might be possible; Ingolf and Mary were already past the first of them. The noise was much louder now, and the dust-cloud turned the morning sun into a swollen red orb. Looking back southward they stretched to the end of sight-and you could see a long way on the plains; it was as if a carpet of running bison extended from here to the other end of the world. The angle gave him a view across the front of the herd, where the mass frayed out into individuals, and it was half a mile to the other side.
The noise was stunning, and growing with every stride, building to a roar like all the waterfalls in the world, the sound of a million hooves hitting the soil as a quarter-million buffalo stampeded in blind fear and fury. He could smell them too, dung and piss and the hard dry stink of their bodies, like oxen working in the sun but wilder, and the rank exhalations of their panting breath. It took an effort of the will to keep angling towards them; his gut was convinced that it was insanity, that they could pound down mountains and turn him into a paste mixed inextricably with the flesh of his horse.
Whipppt!
An arrow went by, not ten feet to his left, and then three more followed it; the last was uncomfortably close to his horse's haunches. He turned and shot again himself, and one of the pursuers went down in a tumble of man and horse-he must have hit the mount.
"Sorry, brother horse!" he called, and then whooped laughter as the Cutter staggered to his feet only to topple face-first on the grass.
This is immortality! he exulted. I'm immortal because I could die in the next second!
Three Bears shot too; he rode twenty-five or thirty pounds lighter than Rudi and his horse was pulling ahead, turning across the front of the herd.
Thock!
The arrow hit Rudi's shield with an impact like a blow from a club; there was no pain beyond that, and a quick glance showed it standing in the bullhide like a weed sprouting from dirt. The narrow point showed just under his armpit, dimpling through the felt glued to the inside of the shield.
Rudi twisted and shot again. That let him see the Cutter shaft hit his horse just behind the saddle, as well as hear the wet sharp slap of it. He kicked his feet free of the stirrups instantly, dropping the bow and planting both hands on the saddlehorn as he swung his body over and down, hitting the ground running as the horse fell over on its side.
Momentum was too much for him; he went down head over heels, but an acrobat's training gave him a little control as the hard ground battered at his body and snapped the leather strap that kept the shield on his back. It went flying as he tumbled; the arrows scattered from his quiver in a spray like oracle sticks tossed for a divination and his sword hilt hit him under the armpit with a thump that sent agony running through the arm and down his torso. Then he was on his feet again, long legs pumping.
The remount's leading rein had snapped as his horse fell; it was slowing down as he vaulted onto its back, bare except for the saddle-blanket left on. That made it rear and bolt…
Too late!
A single glance to his right showed that the head of the dense-packed buffalo herd was past him; where Three Bears was he couldn't say. All that existed eastward was a wall of flesh, rising and falling as it ran; his horse was doing its valiant best, but it was sliding backwards along that rampart of hair and horns and mad rolling eyes. The Cutters gave a shout of triumph as they closed in, casing their bows and tossing their lances up into the overarm stabbing grip. They'd be within range in seconds. They didn't even have to kill him themselves-just keeping him in play until the rest of them came up would do nicely.
Do me, nicely, Rudi thought.
There was only one thing to do, save that it was utterly mad. Rudi wrenched at the reins, forcing the unwilling horse closer to the buffalo. A Cutter trooper was almost within killing range now, raising his lance over his head, his face a mask of effort as mindless as the glazed eyes of his horse. The six-inch head of the lance glittered through the dust, light breaking off the honed edges and needle point.
Rudi gathered his long legs beneath him against the back of the horse, waited until the next heave of the mount's back was rising beneath him, and leapt.
For a moment he was soaring through the air, and he could see the goggling of the Cutter's eyes as his thrust cut empty space. Then he landed and his hands gripped the hair on a buffalo's hump, closing with convulsive strength. His feet dragged painfully; he bent his knees and drove them down in the trick-rider's leap, matched with the thrust of his arms.
He bounced up out of the dust, and then he was astride the buffalo's back behind the hump, looking leftward as the Cutter troopers rode not ten yards away, lances poised and utter disbelief on their faces.
And none of them can shoot at me, unless they're left-handed, he thought, fighting down a crow of laughter-a mounted archer could only shoot forward and back and to the left.
He rode with his knees braced high up to keep them from being crushed between his buffalo and the one to the right, leaning forward with the curly mass of the hump inches before his face. If it had been at rest the beast would have bucked him off or crushed him by rolling, and then stomped and gored him in short order. Now it virtually ignored him, intent only on the blind flight that was carrying it northward nearly as fast as a railcar with half a dozen men pedaling madly. The musky smell of it filled his nostril
s; he turned his head left and grinned at the Cutters as they ever-so-gradually began to slip behind.
Somewhere deep within his mind a voice wailed, What next?
Right now in this instant of time he was thoroughly enjoying the look on their faces, the lances held as if they simply could not believe they were to be denied that first deep, soul-satisfying stab. And Major Graber had the expression of a man with an insect dancing on his ear-drum and no way to get at it.
Then one of the troopers gave a cry of raw frustration loud enough to be heard even through the thunder of the bison stampede and threw his lance. The weapon wasn't made or balanced for casting, but it landed point-first in the rump of the buffalo bearing Rudi anyway. He pulled his feet up even as the forequarters started to go down and jumped, letting the motion of its body fling him skyward.
No good landings in sight, he thought, a crazed memory of piloting a glider into a wheat field near Portland running through his mind's eye.
The buffalo he'd left tripped, and the one behind it rammed helplessly into the prone shape kicking on the ground. Seconds later half a dozen of the beasts were piled in a heaving mound ten feet high, and the stream behind parted on either side of it. Rudi landed with an impact that half winded him; for a moment he was half across the next buffalo, slipping as its pounding motion threw his body down the slick right side, wet with foam from its lungs and slimy with the mud it had made of the dust in the animal's thin summer coat. He locked his hands in the thicker hair on its hump, and then nearly fell as a patch came off in his hands where it was still shedding.
"Dagda's dick!" he swore, the world lurching down towards the pounding hooves.
His feet struck the ground. He ran as he would by a horse when he was doing tricks, bounding, touching down only once every six feet, working his hands into the curls of coarse hair. They cut at his fingers like wire, even through the hard callus, and he made himself relax the death grip a little; he would need all the strength of his hands, if he lived more than a few seconds longer.
Then the animal bawled with a different note than its panting fear. An arrow had struck it not far from where his hands gripped, slanting downward into the hump. He risked a quick backwards look; the Cutters were just barely visible through the dust, and they'd fallen back twenty or thirty yards-enough that they could shoot forward and have some chance of hitting him, if they were very good shots and rode like centaurs.
"The which they do," he snarled.
Blood was leaking down towards his hands. He let his feet hit the ground again, pushing up off the buffalo's hump as he leapt like a high jumper in the Lughnasadh games. To the Cutters it must have appeared as if he'd popped up out of the dust like a man on a trampoline.
This time the soles of his moccasins came down on a buffalo's back, the surface heaving beneath him like an earthquake. He crouched in the same motion and sprang again before the checked leather of his footwear could slip against the slick hide, and landed two beasts over. He let his feet slide apart and came down on his buttocks astride the bison, hands once more sunk in the thick hair on the animal's neck; it stuttered in its stride and crab-jinked, bruising his leg against the beast beside it, but not quite hard enough to do more than set up a ripple in the great flow of animal flesh.
That gave him an instant's time to look back. Graber had managed to get his horse almost level with Rudi, and the lance was in his hand. But thirty feet separated them, an impossible cast with something not meant to be thrown, and with the awkward positioning. Rudi raised his own hand. Instead of throwing the spear the officer of the Sword raised his weapon in what was almost a salute, then turned his horse away to the west.
Leaving me to the tender mercies of tatonka, Rudi thought.
Escaping from the Sword had been one thing. Escaping from the escape was likely to be more difficult…
Because I ca n 't get off while they're running, but when they stop running, they'll notice I'm here and kill me, he thought.
The dust was thick in his mouth, even though he wasn't far from the front of the herd; he coughed and spat, coughed and spat, blinking eyes that felt as if ground glass had been rubbed under the lids. Ahead of him the rumps of bison rose and fell, rose and fell, looking absurdly tiny compared to the huge hairy shoulders, but shoving the massive bodies forward with graceless efficiency. And looming up through the dust, a rock-twelve feet of jagged gneiss, one of the bones of the earth that sometimes stuck through the thin skin of the high-plains soil.
Rudi's buffalo was headed straight for it. I'll pour out a bottle of whiskey for you, Coyote Old Man, he thought, raising his legs until they were along the buffalo's back. Just no more of your jokes, now, you hear?
He turned his feet in, frantically trying to dig in with the toes. Then the world shook with a whump as the buffalo struck the rock and staggered sideways; another as it rammed into the animal on that side, which promptly tried to hook its horn into whatever had hurt it. Rudi could feel his stones trying to crawl up into his belly now; the beast he rode was staggering, and there was nothing he could do…
A horse loomed out of the dust, pacing the buffalo; he realized it must have been in the lee of the rock, where the stampede parted around it.
Rick Three Bears rode it, leaning low over the neck as he urged it up to speed, death closing in all around and on his heels.
"Hey, Strong Raven!" he screamed, just barely audible through the cataclysmic noise of a million hooves, his streaming braids framing a wild grin. "Room for two on Big Dog here!"
Rudi waved back the circle of faces as he staggered forward and then collapsed to his knees. A hand held a canteen in front of his face; he drank, spat, coughed, drank more and coughed again convulsively, dust-colored water shooting out of his nose. His stomach heaved with a sick dropping sensation, and he swallowed acid at the back of his throat. When he raised the canteen again, his hand shook so badly that the horn mouth rattled against his teeth.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Ground and center.
He struggled and controlled his diaphragm. Behind him Three Bears was talking:
"Jesus Christ, I've never seen anything like it-we'll have to rename him Rides Mad Buffalo-"
"Rudi, Rudi, are you all right?"
That was Mathilda's voice; he could feel her hands on his shoulders. He concentrated, and her face came into focus, the big hazel eyes soft with concern.
"Anamchara," he croaked, and fell forward into her embrace.
"Are you all right?" she asked, her hands stroking his hair.
Another shuddering breath, and he felt a little control come back. "Apart from feeling like I'm going to puke, the which would be no return at all to you for your care of me, I think I am," he said.
Amazingly, it seemed to be true; he felt stiff and bruised, and he'd be sore as a graze tomorrow-and he had more than a few of those-but nothing was damaged.
Mathilda rose, helping him up. He stood, panting, and took a real drink of the water, giving her a squeeze around the shoulders with his left arm. He held his right out to the itancan 's son, and they gripped forearm to forearm.
"We're even," he said to Three Bears. "In fact, I'm in your debt."
The dark face was flushed now too; the memory of those moments was coming out, and it was harder to bear than the doing had been.
"Shit, they were only going to kill us, not eat us like the lions!" Rick said, his own voice a little shaky. "Brother," he added.
Rudi nodded gravely. "You'll be wanting to get back to your father and family, brother," he said. "But I'm thinking we'll be meeting again."
"Yeah, and we'll be fighting Cutters together again," Three Bears said.
Then he looked west. Half a mile away the herd was still streaming by. "I'll head back when the Buffalo People get out of the way!"
TheScourgeofGod
CHAPTER TWENTY
Wide is the land, and high under heave n
Many the folk, their gods and ways;
All Artos would see,
and with them take counsel
Wisdom win from friend and from foe From: The Song of Bear and Raven
Attributed to Fiorbhinn Mackenzie, 1st century CY
BIG SIOUX RIVER
WESTERN BORDER, PROVISIONAL REPUBLIC OF IOWA
JULY 25, CY 24/2022 AD
"I could use a watermelon," Ingolf said, as the whole party slowed their mounts. "Kept nice and cool in a well. You cut it open with your bowie, and then that first bite into a big slice, crisp and sweet, with the juice just dribbling down your chin-"
"You're not helping," Mary said, and slapped him on the back of the head.
"It's not the heat, it's the humidity," Rudi added, and wondered why Ingolf laughed.
"Welcome to the Midwest," he said.
Mary groaned: "I'm sweating like a horse. I can't tell where my sweat stops and Rochael's begins anymore."
"You still smell better than she does, honey," Ingolf said, and reached over to pat her dapple-gray Arab on the neck. "Though she's mighty pretty, for a horse."
Ritva snorted. "I don't mind sweating, but it doesn't seem to be doing me any good-I'm still just as hot, only sticky too. Is it like this all the time?"
"Only about half the year. The other half's freezing cold and snows like hell," Ingolf said. Then he shrugged: "Actually there's a month or so of good weather in spring and fall, but we don't like to admit it."
They'd been ambling through farm country; now the land dropped away to a river valley, wooded with hickory and oak and cottonwood and spanned by a pre-Change metal bridge. Beyond it just past the immediate floodplain was a small walled town; rumpled hills rose gray-blue-green above the flats a few miles away eastward. Rudi could see several children sitting on the eastern bank, fishing or playing with a dog, their sun-faded tow hair bright against the dark earth. One of them rose and waved at the travelers, then turned back to his rod as the float on the string dipped below the water.
The Scourge of God c-2 Page 46
