″And this is the Chief′s business, not mine, deciding such matters,″ he muttered to himself. ″Or King′s business.″
He knew more about cities than the Southsiders did—it would be hard to know less—but he didn′t like them beyond a day′s visit or so, even a small and friendly one like Sutterdown, half a day′s walk west of Dun Fairfax. Much less this alien monstrosity. The townsmen had sticks—not proper quarterstaves, but heavy enough to give a shrewd knock—and a few had knives; one or two carried short broad chopping swords, what these easterners called footman′s shetes.
More than one had picked up rocks or bits of broken concrete or bricks. A ragged figure knocked a bottle against a building′s wall as he watched, and held the jagged stump in one fist. All of which was well enough for a brawl, but if he had to fight he was going to fight.
Behind him and Jake the grown men—and the odd woman—of the Southside Freedom Fighters fingered their new hickory bows. Some of them were fidgeting, feeling penned in by the three-story brick buildings to either side, or by the distant glow of a gaslight at a corner and the constant grumbling mumble of wheels and hooves and Gods-knew-what that never seemed to stop here. Others grinned at the city folk, an expression that would have frightened the urbanites more if they′d known the wild-men better.
Raising his voice: ″You good people should give us the road, that you should. We want no trouble, our quarrel isn′t with you Iowa folk, but we′re ready to shed blood if we must.″
One of the locals turned to the rest of the mob. ″Remember what the Seeker said! The Prophet raises the lifestreams of his followers! The poor ′n lowly are his and he′ll reward them.″
″Oh, sod all, that tears it,″ Edain said. ″The Cutters have been at ′em.″
I′m a peaceable man, sure and I am.
His father had gotten any inclination to brawling for its own sake out of him early, on one memorable occasion with a whistling bow stave on the shoulders and the observation that any young gallybagger in his family who wanted hard knocks could get them at home without bothering the neighbors.
But Da taught me never to back down when a fight was needful, so. The Chief needs me, and these Southside lads are depending on me to see them through, and those townsmen there are getting themselves into a real fight, whether they expected that or not.
The thought made sweat break out on his brow; not the fighting, but the responsibility.
″And these fucks brought Eaters into Dubuque!″ the Church Universal and Triumphant′s convert said. ″Eaters! Chicago scum!″
Behind the Mackenzie a snarl went through the tribesmen, as much felt as heard. The Southsiders really didn′t like being called Eaters, which was unsurprising since they′d spent their entire lives fighting those who deserved the name. Also in their legends Chicago was a lost paradise where their ancestors had been demigods, not to be mentioned with disrespect.
We′ll have to go through them, and no holds barred, Edain decided. They asked for it, and by Lugh of the Long Spear and the Morrigan′s black host, we′ll give it them.
And there was a certain relief to the thought. He was a peaceable man, but fighting was something he knew how to do. Talking with a bunch of strangers wasn′t.
″Yes, you can kill them,″ he said.
The Southsiders surprised him by falling into ranks as they′d been taught; given how little time there had been for instruction and how their blood was up he′d expected a pell-mell rush. They set arrows to their strings and waited. Then one started a chant; it made him start to hear it in their slurred speech rather than the Clan′s lilt, but there was a raw menace to the sound in the shadowed, crowded night. It came like a breath of mountain and forest, the wildwood come stealing home into the walled town:
″We are the point—
We are the edge—
We are the wolves that Hecate fed!
″We are the bow—
We are the shaft—
We are the bolts that Hecate cast!″
″Wholly together . . .″ He whipped an arrow out of his own quiver and drew past the angle of his jaw. ″. . . let the gray geese fly . . . shoot!″
Thirty bows snapped. The whistling sound of the arrows′ passage was oddly magnified by the buildings on either side. The light was bad, and the Southsiders weren′t even middling archers yet by his exacting standards. Against a bunched, unarmored target less than a second′s arrow flight away it didn′t matter much. A score of men went down, screaming and thrashing and clawing at the iron and wood piercing them, or silent and still.
″Again! Shoot!″
Another volley. Many of the townsmen turned to run, but the long shafts slashed down out of the darkness at them, the arrowheads glinting at the last second as the honed edges of the triangular broadheads caught the light.
″At them!″ Edain shouted.
The Southsiders swarmed forward, throwing down their bows and sweeping out knife and hatchet. They had no order at this yet or formal training to the blade; but they had a dreadful bounding agility, and each aided the other in a unison like a pack of wolves slashing at an elk. Their catamount screeching echoed from the buildings; it was actually much like the Mackenzie battle yell. After a moment the only sound from the Dubuque men was panic flight, or the moans and cries of their hurt.
″Leave their wounded!″ Edain snapped; he′d stayed back and shot, something he didn′t trust anyone else here to do in this dim light and when friend and foe were at close quarters. ″No need to finish them.″
One knifeman ignored him, jerking up the chin of an Iowan trying to crawl away and preparing to cut his throat. Edain tossed him backward with a snatch and grab—he wasn′t more than average height, but his shoulders and arms were broad and thick—and cuffed him silly with a forehand and backhand slap. The man almost lunged at him, but then the mad light died out of his eyes and he grinned sheepishly despite the blood running from his nose and lips, abashed as a child caught with his hand in the nut jar.
″Get your bows and follow me!″ Edain snapped. ″We′ve work to do yet.″
″Screw this,″ Ingolf Vogeler said. ″It′s too long—we have to get going.″
Jack Heuisink hissed between clenched teeth. ″Leading a band of armed men to the place the Bossman′s staying isn′t real healthy,″ he pointed out. ″Particularly as the Heuisinks and the Heasleroads aren′t what you′d call friendly. Unless there′s already an attack.″
″Something′s gone wrong, Jack—″
He stopped as a knock came at one of the warehouse windows: tap, then tap-tap, then tap.
Three strides took him there. When he opened it a face was hanging there upside down. All he could see besides the dark cap was the strip of skin across the eyes . . . and one of those was missing.
″Denson′s dead and the Cutters are headed for the Bossman′s quarters,″ Mary Havel said. ″They′ll be there before you. Hurry! Edain and the Southsiders and Ignatius and Fred and Virginia are on their way.″
The last of the State Police troopers who′d turned went down in a thrashing tangle on the floor as Rudi landed a drawing cut behind one knee; Odard made a quick downward smash with the lower point of his shield, and the curved metal rim hit bone with an ugly crunching sound. Mathilda covered Rudi for a moment with hers, and a spear point scored across the surface, leaving a bright scratch through the paint that covered its metal sheath. The impact rocked her back; she had to use shield and sword in a blur of movement as two more thrust at her unarmored body.
When men fought with no regard at all for their lives, they died quickly . . . but the last of them had forced Rudi back into the room. An unarmored man couldn′t just slug it out; he needed room to take advantage of his height and quickness.
Two soldiers of the Sword of the Prophet shoved through in that instant, too quickly for any of the westerners to stop them. They weren′t berserkers of any sort, and they were in good armor, their round shields up under their eyes. Rudi leapt forward
again; he could feel the ache in his muscles and the hard straining as his lungs sucked in air, but the ríastrad that was the gift of the Crow Goddess made it seem distant, unimportant. His body would serve his need, until it dropped dead. A shield′s frame cracked under the edge of his sword, and the arm beneath it broke, but then he had to whirl and parry a cut at his leg. He gave back, and more men crowded in—
One of the little pauses that happened in most close-quarters fights fell; the three from the west stood together, panting. Rudi recognized Major Graber, the man who′d been after them since Idaho.
The hard blue eyes met his. ″If you give up now, I can promise you all a quick death,″ he said. ″But only if you surrender now, before the High Seeker comes.″
Rudi′s mouth quirked; he′d spared the Sword officer′s life once.
And this is my thanks? he thought whimsically. And the jest of it is, it is a gesture of grace, so. He might not be such a bastard of a man at all, were he born and reared elsewhere.
″I′ll be thanking you, but declining nonetheless,″ Rudi said, his voice detached and amused. ″If you want us, come and take us and pay the price of it.″
Graber′s tuft of chin-beard moved very slightly as he gave a brief un-surprised nod, and there was a quirk to the corner of his mouth as he slid the spiked helmet back on his head.
″Kill these three,″ he said. ″Take the Iowa ruler and his woman and the child alive if you can. They′ll be useful as hostages.″
″Wait!″ Rudi heard.
Another man pushed through the door—and the soldiers of the Sword of the Prophet, men who would bite through their own tongues and die at a command, leapt aside to let him. His head was shaven, and a robe the color of old dried blood covered him; a shete was in his hand, but that was the least of the menace that surrounded him.
It was the eyes you saw. Ordinary brownish-green eyes, that were somehow windows into negation, to the bottom of all things where despair itself had drained to lie dead, dust and bones.
″I—see—you,″ he said, his head tilted at an odd angle, and even to one caught up in the battle-fury of the Goddess the words struck chill. ″Son—of—Bear—Son—of—Raven.″
″And I you, ill-wreaker,″ Rudi said quietly. ″You shall not pass while I live, or harm those I love.″
″We—are—abroad—and—loose—and—will—not—be—put—back,″ the High Seeker of the Church Universal and Triumphant said. ″You—cannot—stand—against—us—without—It.″
Something struck Rudi then, impalpable but with a wave of torment that made him feel his bones crack and grind against themselves until only seared powder was left. He grunted and flexed backward, as if a fist had hit him between the eyes. Then Raven′s mark on his brow flared again, a good white pain that cut through the sick agony.
″Lady of the Crows, fold me in Your wings!″ he choked. ″Lugh of the Sun—″
His head cleared enough for him to remember something else. Master Hao′s hard dry voice, in a practice field on the mountainside above Chenrezi monastery, in the Valley of the Sun. Words as crisp and strong as the bronze bell ringing from below:
But the hand is not the weapon—the mind is the weapon, and the hand only its extension. Discipline your mind!
As he had then he turned his will into a dart, and thrust. The Cutter priest threw up his arms and howled, a sound that stunned the ears and made even his own followers stagger. Then they hurled themselves forward, shetes raised to kill, and there was only the dance of blades.
I′m about to die.
Mathilda Arminger had time for that one thought. Her blade stopped the stroke of a Cutter′s shete, but force of impact almost tore the longsword from her numb hand. Her broken shield turned another, just enough that the flat rather than the edge slammed into her unprotected ribs. It might have broken bones even if she′d been wearing a hauberk and padding; now she heard bone crack through her own flesh, and spikes of pain lanced through her chest as she tried to breathe. The shield arm dropped strength-less, steel scored her sword arm, and she fell backward against the wall with an ear-ringing thump of head against stucco and slid downward.
Odard flung himself between her and the rising steel. His shield was tattered and split; the edge cracked down through the wood and leather, into his arm. He shrieked, but in the same motion he stabbed the broken stump of his sword into a face. The man reeled backward and Odard went to his knees, his right hand scrabbling at his belt for the dagger. Another Cutter wrenched his broad-tipped blade out of Anthony Heasleroad′s belly and kicked his body aside.
Beyond him she saw Rudi moving like quicksilver, whirling and striking as he fought his way towards them, and as the mist of pain and fuddlement darkened her eyes he seemed limned in fire, a winged shape that danced like spears of lightning amid dark thunderclouds. Then someone else was beside her.
″Jesu-Maria!″ Ignatius shouted, and struck.
The man who′d been about to kill her fell backward, trailing blood. The priest′s voice rang thunder deep; Mathilda felt it resonate through her aching bones, as she slumped against the wall with the force of the blow that had felled her still buzzing through her head and down her limbs in spikes of agony. A taste like brass and sulfur filled her mouth, and her breath came rapid through a dry throat. Odard crouched at her feet, swaying on one knee with his ruined shield propped against his shoulder.
″On my right hand Michael! On my left hand Uriel!″
The soldier-monk′s sword and shield swung in beautiful unison, leaving trails of silver light to her dazzled eyes. Ignatius shouted again, over the slithering crash of steel, the dull ugly sound of a blade in flesh, and the panting snarls of his opponents:
″Before me Raphael! Behind me Gabriel!″
There was anger in that shout, but no rage; instead a happiness that was fierce and joyous at the same time. It was as if the spirit of anger filled him, pure and hot and infinitely clean.
As if this was the thing that anger was for.
The Cutter in the dried-blood robe came through the press, throwing his followers to either side in his eagerness. Murk moved with him to Mathilda′s aching eyes; not darkness that hid him from sight, but something of which darkness was merely a symbol—a whirling chaos that hummed with power but was somehow decayed, as if he were a window to a place where even the stuff of matter itself perished in an endless denial of possibility.
″ I—see—you ,″ he said, in syllables of burning ash.
The battle ceased for an instant that stretched. Rudi used it to step to the warrior-cleric′s side. The Cutter magus looked from one of them to the other with a grin of hatred.
″And I see you,″ Ignatius said into the panting silence. ″Go back, Hollow Man, to the nothingness that waits for you; for you have chosen it.″
″You are nothing!″ the High Seeker rasped. ″A bag of bones and slime and dung, a worm that feeds on sunlight and turns it to shit!″
Ignatius smiled. ″I am her knight, and through her the servant of the Most High, a miles of Christ; in His name I command you, not mine. From the bottom of my heart I pity you. Repent! Even for you there can still be mercy. Go back!″
The Cutter howled; Mathilda felt an almost irresistible impulse to beat her own head open on the wall behind her. Only weakness and the thought that that face and voice might be waiting for her on the other side of death stopped her. The curved shete leapt at Ignatius, and his sword met it. Sparks flew through the air, and she smelled brimstone and lightning.
″On my right hand Michael! On my left hand Uriel! Before me Raphael! Behind me Gabriel!″
Rudi struck as well, and the shadow of a great scythe seemed to move with the sword: ″Morrigú!″
As the monk shouted, Mathilda′s vision blurred. Men fought, but it seemed to her that the two between her and the enemy struggled with a heaving roil rather than another human. Or as if the Cutter was the shadow of a man, a skin sack around a mass of coiling tendrils, behind a gaping screa
m of agony. Shapes stretched about the knight-brother of the Order as well; were they wings vaster than the Earth could contain, or were they blazing wheels, or a swirling cloud of flashing eyes?
And beyond them a blue-mantled figure whose hands stretched down, touching Ignatius on his forehead and the cross guard of the sword he gripped, a power blazing into flesh and steel. And behind them all a radiance that was terror and longing all in one, that shone through her bones as if they were wisps of air—
″Retreat!″ a voice called.
″No!″ the Corwinite magus in the red robe—bloody in truth now—screamed. ″We are too close!″
Even then Mathilda could sense how a trace of humanity had returned to the voice; there was human evil in it now, bloodlust and a furious anger at being balked, as if the Presence that had ridden him was too exhausted to maintain its grip. When he howled as Graber grabbed him by the shoulders and wrestled him back it was merely shrill.
″High Seeker! Now, or we die without fulfilling the mission. They′re hitting us from both sides down there in the street and those whores in black are shooting from the roofs! Brave men are dying to buy us time to try again later. Now!″
The Sword of the Prophet′s commander gestured, and three men rushed Ignatius and Rudi. The rest backed, then turned and fled, hustling the suddenly limp and half-conscious form of the High Seeker between them. Fred and Virginia shot in unison, and the last man through pitched forward with arrows through the backplate of his armor standing up like masts from a ship.
From below came the sounds of battle, war cries, and a high screeching like so many great cats. Then Rudi was beside her, slamming his notched sword point-first in the floorboards and easing the wrecked shield off her injured arm while Ignatius bound it up with the sterilized bandage from his belt pouch. She almost fainted at the wave of pain, then forced awareness back; more voices were shouting, and others burst through the shattered door, Edain and Ingolf at their head.
The Sword of the Lady Page 22
