Then the standard of the two horse tails was near Rudi. A young man bore it in his left hand and a war-pick in his right-cut down from an old pickax, spike on one side and narrow hammerhead on the other. Beside him was another Rover with a good steel helm shaped like an old-time football helmet, and metal and-leather armor on his body. That and the fine shete in his hand probably marked him as the chief of this band. A red beard streaked with a few strands of gray and powdered with dust fell down his chest. Ritva and Mary came in at him from the other side, one with the sword, the other thrusting overarm with her lance from behind.
The chief banged the lance head up with his shield and cut at the shaft in the same motion, cunningly aiming behind the metal lappets that guarded the wood for a foot below the business end. There was a crack and the top two feet of the weapon went twinkling away. The shete looped up in a backstroke that beat down the other twin's sword thrust in a shower of sparks, and then the press swept them away. Rudi's knees and balance set Epona at him; the banner bearer's horse was in the way, but the destrier's shoulder set the lighter pony back on its haunches with a thudding smash. The Rover chief pivoted his mount with effortless skill to avoid the rush and come in on Rudi's unshielded side.
The black wings beat behind Rudi, invisible, more solid than stone and vaster than worlds. He felt as if his blood had been replaced with something that scalded and froze at the same time, like boiling acid. Somewhere an eerie keening wail sounded, and he knew it was from his own throat. The shete floated out towards him, aimed at the vulnerable underside of his jaw. He ducked his head and cut at the Rover's thigh; the plate of metal-rimmed steerhide shed the blow.
Bang.
The shete glanced off the upper part of his visor, and then slid from the curved surface of his helm. Weight carried it upward, and the long point of Rudi's sword darted out like a frog's tongue striking for a fly. It went in under the chief's armpit, broke the links of the patch of mail there and ran another three inches into flesh.
Behind the wire grid face mask of the Rover's helm his eyes went wide and shocked at the sudden agony. His shield arm dropped useless to his side. Rudi stood in the stirrups and brought his longsword up and around and back until the point tapped his brigandine over his own kidney, then down with all the lashing power of arm and shoulders and gut. Hard leather and thin metal parted under the knife sharp edge of the heavy blade, and the chief was galloping away shrieking, with blood spouting from the ruined arm that hung by a few shreds of flesh and gristle and armor.
Beside him Mathilda sent the bannerman reeling back with his face laid open and teeth showing through the flap; she let her shield fall by the guige strap and used her freed left hand to wrench the pole with the horse tails away from its wounded bearer, brandish it overhead and throw it down in the dust.
The Rovers were brave men, but they'd never met true heavy horse before; nobody had reinvented it yet in their part of the world. It took them a few moments and more than a few lives before the survivors realized how terribly vulnerable they were to that ironclad violence at close quarters. The sight of their chief's fall and the loss of the horse tail banner broke them; they turned and scattered, leaving their kin on the ground and a small herd of horses running with empty saddles.
Suddenly Rudi had no targets within arm's reach; he pushed his visor up with the edge of his shield to gain better vision, and the world opened out before him. His sword sank… then rose again with frantic haste at a glimpse of motion behind him, something long and looping spinning through the air.
Epona whirled at the shift in his balance, as cat-nimble as a roping pony at a roundup despite her size and weight. One of the Rovers had used a lariat as soon as he had the room for it. The braided rawhide had settled down around Mathilda's shoulders, clamping her arms to her sides and her shield to her body. She was half out of her high saddle already as Rudi slashed with reckless speed. The good steel of his sword was still knife-sharp, and the pull of the leather rope kept it taut. He grunted as the weight of the awkward cut leftward and back pulled at shoulder and arm; he had to risk wrenching a muscle to keep from cutting Epona on the neck as he recovered, and the edge did touch the barding lower down.
The Rover didn't stop, but he was still looking at the severed length of rope when Bob Brown cut him out of the saddle with a sweep of his stirrup hilted saber. His eyes went blank as he slumped and fell.
"Howdy," Brown said, grinning at the two of them, his weathered face speckled with someone else's blood. "Do I know you folks from someplace?"
Rudi rested the longsword across his saddlebow and nodded back, panting like a bellows and feeling as if his armor were squeezing him to death; he had been be yond the world for a while, and the return always came hard, hard. The dry air cut the death stink a little, but his gauntlet and steel-clad right arm were running red, and it was soaking into the padded arming doublet below. He slid his shield onto his back by the strap.
The Rovers were scattering for real now, in panic flight and not as a tactic, like beads of mercury under a ham mer; some of them were far enough away already that they were trails of dust turned reddish by the setting sun rather than men and horses. Brown's men were after them, their quivers refilled from the packhorses, shooting them down as they fled.
"Now, that was one good plan, Mr. Vogeler," Brown went on."It actually worked the way you laid it out, which in a fight is somethin' of a prodigy of nature. You can dance lead any hoedown I'm at, far's I'm concerned."
Ingolf shrugged. "Worked the last time I tried it," he said. "Worked even better this time." To Rudi: "These western style lancers of yours have real punch, if you can get them into position."
"I'll remember that," Rudi said, as he checked to see that none of his band were badly hurt.
The cowboys definitely had a few down, and more wounded, but they weren't carrying nearly as much ironmongery as his folk.
It's needful, he knew, as Brown's retainers drove their ruthless pursuit to the edge of sight.
We have to frighten the Rovers down to their toenails to make them leave us alone; if the ones still alive aren't afraid enough, they could try another attack.
It still wasn't to his taste, any more than finishing off the enemy wounded was. That was needful too; the Rovers weren't a civilized foe who dealt in ransoms and exchanges, and the hate between them and the settled ranchers farther west was bitter. It was a blood feud; if you let enemies crawl away and heal today they'd kill you or your kin or friends a week or a month or a year or five years down the road.
Odard had dismounted to recover his sword; he limped as he came back to his horse, swearing softly and leaning against its side instead of swinging back up.
"Are you all right?" Mathilda asked her liegeman sharply; she'd unhooked the flap of her coif, and it dangled beside her sweat-wet face.
"Got a whack on the knee from something," he said, wiping and sheathing his blade. "It's not broken, but I'm going to buy some plate poleyns after this, and damn flexibility. It's a good thing those Rovers couldn't run away, though. We'd never have caught them in a long chase."
Rudi wiped his own sword clean, carefully making sure nothing was left to get under the guard and rust unseen, then sheathed it with a hiss of metal on leather and a steel-on-steel ting of quillions against the guard at the lip of the scabbard.
Ingolf snorted. "If they'd had time to get their asses in gear and room to run, they'd have pecked us to death like crows mobbing a hawk," he said shortly. "How would you go about beating eighty men you can't catch and who can shoot at you from sunup to sundown?"
Rudi's canteen seemed to be missing; he took Mathil da's with a grateful nod as she extended it, washed a mouthful around and spit to clear his mouth of the thick gummy saliva. He'd cut the inside of his mouth against his teeth at some point, and he was just now conscious of the sting; the gobbet was tinged with pink. Then he drank deeply of the water, blood-warm and salt-bitter and delicious.
Mathilda was looking a
little wide-eyed at the conse quences of their plan, and crossed herself twice. There were nearly three score bodies scattered over the rolling sagebrush plain between the wells and the wagon laager; this was far and away the biggest fight either of them had ever seen. Buzzards were circling overhead already. More would come as soon as the first felt safe enough to glide down; they watched one another for that, and the ripple could bring them in from hundreds of miles away.
He handed the canteen back and gave her armored forearm a slight squeeze as she took it. Their eyes met, and he felt a momentary warmth, as he saw him self thanked God for. Ignatius crossed himself as well, touching his crucifix to his lips afterwards. Rudi could hear him murmuring beneath his breath:
"Ora pro nobis…"
One of the twins was near him; she was saying some thing in Sindarin, a Dunedain prayer of thanks for the shelter of the Lady's wings and the Dread Lord's spear. He nodded agreement and added his own silent gratitude.
And men were coming out from the wagons. Rudi saw Edain among them, and broke into a delighted grin; Odard nodded calmly to his multitalented manservant Alex. A middle aged man was walking with Edain, and beside him a pretty girl in a dress with a crossbow in her arms.
No, Rudi thought a moment later.
He scrabbled at the chin fastener of his helm with his free hand, pulling the confining weight of the sallet off his head and hanging it from the saddle horn, then tossed his head to let the air at his damp hair; the shock was almost like cold rain, and wonderful.
Not a pretty girl. She's young, but she's a woman, and beautiful.
****
Edain waved to Rudi as his chief sat easily with his raven-plumed helm on his saddlebow, looking like the young Lugh as the dry evening wind cuffed at his long red gold hair. His own smile soured just a little bit as he noticed Rebecca staring at the horseman with her jaw dropping slightly and her eyes wide.
Well, that's not fair or right! he thought, then gave a rueful chuckle. He does look like the young Lugh come again in glory. I look like a farmer who's good with a bow… which is what I am.
"I hope it's not going to be like this all the way to the coast, Chief," he called. "That was just a bit more lively than comfortable."
Chapter Sixteen
Southeastern Oregon
May 15, CY23/2021 A.D.
Two hours after sunset Rudi pushed the beans and salt pork around his plate with the spoon, then made himself eat; you had to, even after a battle. He hadn't had much appetite, but it was unwise a to be careless of Her gifts. The Saints had buried their own dead, and they were very quiet as they went about their chores; the scents of cooking food competed with the faint iron and sewage smell of spilled blood and violent death, despite everyone's efforts at cleaning up.
If they hadn't had so many wounded and been tired beyond exhaustion, it would have been better to move camp a bit. The Seffridge Ranch men had packed their chests of bullion, turned over their horses and were ready to head west anyway, anxious to get back to the CORA territories before the Rovers recovered from the drubbing they'd been handed. It gave the camp a lonely feel, though Bob Brown had said he'd be around to say good-bye.
That's what this trip is going to be, Rudi thought, looking around at the faces of his friends.
Apart from us, it's a series of meetings and partings. A bit like being a ghost, flitting through the life of the land without much touching it.
A voice started up from the Saints' part of the encampment, half chanting in a strong carrying tone:
"… Why am I angry because of mine enemy? Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul. Do not anger again because of mine enemies."
Rudi sighed at the chorus of "Amen!" That was not bad advice, even if it was from a different path than his.
He made himself eat, concentrating on the physical sensations, the smoky taste of the food, the chink of the spoon against the tin plate, the cool slightly metallic tang of the well water in his cup, even the bruises and stiffness and the pain in his right calf, refusing to let his thoughts chase their own tails. The others looked fairly glum too, apart from Ignatius, who had his usual steady calm, and Odard, who was in quiet good spirits apart from the occasional twinge in his swollen, bandaged knee.
He whistled tunefully-Rudi recognized the song, a nice bouncy one called "The Bastard King of England"-as he worked over the edge of his longsword with a hone mounted on a wooden holder. The damascene patterns in the steel shone and rippled in the firelight as he ground down on a spot where the edge had nicked on bone or a piece of harness. Rudi looked over at Mathilda, where she sat beside him with her arms around her knees and her chin on them, staring into the low flicker of the greasewood fire, and put his emptied plate aside.
"Second thoughts about the trip, Matti?" he said qui etly, as he unpinned his plaid and folded it blanketlike around his shoulders; the temperature was dropping fast in the thin air of the high desert.
"No… no, not really," she said, her voice equally low. "It's just… I don't like killing men. I'll do it when I have to, yeah, and I won't get all sick about it like the first time, but I don't like doing it."
With a sniff: "I'm not like Odard."
"Odard doesn't like killing; it's not that he's got a taste for blood. He likes fighting. There's a difference," Rudi observed.
Of course, he thought, I like fighting too. The difference is that I really don't like killing; I'm not indifferent to it, even when it has to be done. I hope I don't ever become so, sure.
"I don't like fighting or killing." Her mouth quirked, and she added: "Despite having had Baroness d'Ath teaching me how all my life."
"Well, you don't like girls the way Tiphaine does, either; some things are just the way the gods make you," he said with something just short of a chuckle.
Mathilda smiled, but there was duty in it as much as amusement. "Really the problem is… well, I'm feeling guilty at how Mom must be feeling."
"Hey, you're Catholic-of course you're feeling guilty," he teased. "You see the advantage of the Old Religion? Praise and blessing, we don't go in for guilt. Or prolonged virginity, either," he added slyly.
This time her grin at the chaffing was genuine. "Licentious pagan!"
"Uptight beadsqueezer!"
"Tree hugger!"
"No, that's the elf wannabes," he said, and they shared a chuckle. "We Mackenzies may worship trees, yes: hug them, no."
"But I really am feeling guilty about hurting Mom this way," Mathilda said, the smile dying away from her face. "She must be going out of her skull. I know she doesn't try to keep me wrapped in padding like an egg… but I know she really has to make herself not do it, too. She's always afraid for me, even if it's just a hunt or a tournament. Now she's got real reasons to be afraid. I could have bought it today, and we'll be taking risks like that for a long time."
"Then why did you do it?" Rudi asked, more to help her than to satisfy his own curiosity; self-knowledge was never wasted.
"I'm… not really sure," Mathilda said; she picked up a stick and prodded at the fire; something crackled, and a trail of sparks drifted upward. After a half minute she went on:
"I mean, yes, I'd miss you like hell, and yes, we're anamchara, so I've got an obligation to you, but I'm heir to the Protectorate and that's a duty too. I think… the real reason I'm guilty about it is I think deep down part of it's that I wanted to punish Mom. Or part of me does, and it sneaks up on me, so I do things that hurt her without really meaning to."
"Oh?" Rudi said. "Well… you know, she's always been pretty good to you, Matti. And to me, for that matter. Even back during the War, when I was a prisoner."
"Yes." She hesitated. "But… Rudi, sometimes I think that she's not a good person, you know? She… I know she's done some. .. questionable things. And a lot of the time, when she does good things she does it because it's… efficient, expedient. Not because it's right. And Dad…"
She shr
ugged. They didn't talk about her father. He didn't know how much she really knew about Norman Arminger, who'd been a tyrant's tyrant even by the bru tal standards of the first Change Years; how much she knew, how much she knew but didn't let herself know, and how much she'd carefully avoided knowing.
"Matti?"
She looked up, probably not seeing him as more than a dim outline after staring at the red-yellow flicker over the coals for so long.
"OK, I'm not going to run a moral checklist on your parents for you."
Because you'd defend them and then we'd just get into a screaming fight. Once was enough for that. OK, what can I say that's true and tactful both?
Aloud, he went on: "But keep one thing in mind-your mother raised you, you know? And she raised you to think about this stuff and worry about doing the right thing, sure and she did. And you turned out to be a pretty good person. So that's got to count for something, eh?"
The smile she gave him was warm, and a hand followed it; they closed their fingers together for a moment.
"So what you're really afraid of is that you'll end up turning into your mother, right?"
She squeezed his hand again, gratefully. "Yeah, I am. Especially if I'm going to be Protector. Maybe that's what I'm running away from, do you think? I have to do the job, but can I do it and still be me?"
"Yeah, maybe that's what you're afraid of. But you don't need to be, I think." He winked. "I mean, and aren't I your conscience, so? Just the thought of me looking at you with sad-puppy disappointed eyes and my lip starting to tremble and perhaps a tear running down my cheek would keep you on the straight and narrow."
She freed her hand to punch his shoulder and snorted. " Thanks, Rudi. That makes everything all right… I don't think."
" De nada. I mean, we're anamchara; what are soul friends for? And freeing you of guilt is a lot more fun than giving you funeral rites if you fall in a foreign land."
The snort grew into a real laugh. She opened a bag of dried peach slices and cranberries and walnuts and offered it to him, and they sat in companionable silence for a moment; she leaned against his shoulder, and he spread the plaid around them both.
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