Conquistador

by S. M. Stirling

  “Short form, they’ll catch us eventually, if we can’t break contact,” she said, obviously thinking hard. “Bad if they catch us where there’s water. Fatal if it’s a dry spot. Or possibly fatal anyway, since the only water near here is at the bottom of a canyon.”

  “Afton canyon? Just east of Barstow?” he said.

  “Right. Give me a minute.”

  Think hard, think hard, askling, he thought—and even then was a little startled that he’d mentally used the Norski term for darling.

  He looked around himself, and was startled at how close the sun was to the horizon. Adrienne rode side by side with Simmons for a moment, then dropped back to each in turn.

  “We’re going to hit the Afton canyon soon,” she said. That was where the intermittent Mohave flowed east before it sank into the desert playas. “We’ll turn east, water the horses and fill our bags as fast as we can, then get up one of the low spots on the north face of the wall. If we can get into the Calico range north of there we can lose them and then swing west again.”

  Tom looked back at the dust cloud their pursuers raised, tinged bloody by the setting sun, estimated times, and then called up his knowledge of the land.

  “That’ll be shaving it pretty close,” he said. “They could cut the angle again, if they figure out what we intend. And that canyon gets pretty damned narrow in places; I’ve walked it and camped there.”

  “You’re right, but it’s our best chance,” she said, loud over the drum of hooves and the rattle of iron on rock. Sparks flew up from the feet of her mount as she dropped farther down the column.

  Jesus, what a woman! he thought warmly. Of course, we may die horribly in a couple of hours, but what a rush it’s been!

  The pursuit slowed to a canter for a few minutes, and the pursued did as well. Then Tom saw the great clot of horsemen behind them split; sixty or so kept up the chase, and forty angled off to the right, eastward—toward the rim of the canyon through which they’d have to run…

  This bunch are savages, right enough, he thought. That doesn’t mean they’re stupid, especially within their own stamping ground.

  “That’s torn it!” he called to Adrienne.

  “Going to make it interesting, at least,” she said.

  “We’re going to have to sting them a bit at the crossing!” he shouted back. “Me first.”

  The land was sloping down before them, sparsely dotted with sage and creosote and clumps of grass dried to blond straw; the plain was interrupted by mesas and buttes, all turning dark purple and gold as the sun sank on their left. It was almost too classically Western; this area had been used for a lot of movies, back FirstSide. Being chased through it by real live Indians intent on killing you gave a whole new perspective to memories of The Searchers….

  “Yo!”

  Adrienne’s shout gave them all warning, and they spurred their mounts. The dry bed of the Mohave lay before them—not quite dry here, a muddy trickle in the center, flanked by long grass, reeds, cottonwoods and willows. Water and soupy mud flew up in plumes to either side as the driven horses hit it at a gallop, then jinked hard to the right on the other bank.

  Tom pulled in his own mount and let the others pass him; it reared slightly, neighing protest, then stood panting with its body parallel to the river. That put the charging Akaka warriors to his left. The horse was hunt-trained; when he squeezed it with his thighs it stayed motionless save for its rapid breath as he leveled the militia rifle. The Indians were out in the open, still well lit; he breathed out and let the blade of the foresight fall down across the circle of the rear aperture. Take up the slack and stroke the trigger…

  Crack. The .30-06 rounds punched his shoulder harder than the assault rifles he was used to. No use trying for precision, not at two hundred yards in bad light and from an uncertain platform. Move the aiming point and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. One sharp blast merged into another in a ripple of fire as he emptied the magazine and spent brass spun away to his right; the muzzle blast was a strobing ball of red-yellow, dazzling the eyes.

  Horses went down, and men. Some of the screams were of pain—horses sounded like enormous terrified children when they were hurt, an aspect of preindustrial battles he hadn’t anticipated and didn’t like at all. More were shrieks of rage; other muzzle flashes winked at him, muskets with a duller red than the nitro powder of this weapon, and the near-silent hiss of arrows. He didn’t wait to study the results of his fire; he pulled his horse’s head around and booted it into motion. The big gelding labored as it cross the riverbed, muck flying from its hooves, and its labored breathing reminding him of how hard it had worked; the smell of the wet earth was heavy in his nostrils after the long dryness of the desert. The Indians were closer, and arrows passed him on either side with hissing whup of cloven air; they’d sink to the feathers in him if they hit, or if they struck the horse… which would be almost as bad.

  Worse, if they took him alive.

  Then he was out of the swale and up on the sandy bank on the other side of the nearly dry river. A dark shape loomed there: Henry Villers sitting his horse, with the Bren gun trained on the shallow spot where the pursuers would inevitably bunch as they crossed. His smile was very white in the growing gloom.

  “You stung ’em, Warden Tom,” he called out. “I’m just going to purely spoil their whole day, then follow right along.”

  “Semper Fi, you betcha!” Tom called to him.

  The canyon started as a wedge of flattish sand between two ranges of hills, but it rapidly grew narrower as he pounded east. After a minute he heard a sudden roaring stutter behind him—Villers emptying a thirty-round magazine into a crowd of men and horses; there was a brief pause, and the sound was repeated. Then silence, except for faint screams and shrieks, and the growing drum of a horse’s hooves.

  Narrower still, rising walls on either side crowding him toward the chain of pools and trickles that made the river; the sun was right behind him, and the fluted stone curtains on either side were striated in red and salmon pink and green and black as the volcanic rock caught the dying beams of sunset.

  He caught up with the rest at a broad shallow pool. There was a frenzy of movement around the northern bank, where firm ground ran down to the water under the shade of a stretch of huge cottonwoods. Sandra was trying to keep the desperately thirsty horses from foundering themselves, waving her arms and sometimes slapping noses with her quirt, leading one set in before the others wanted to leave, amid shrill squeals and a snapping, snorting chaos she managed to control—somehow. Jim Simmons was scanning the southern edge of the canyon’s cliffs with his scope-sighted rifle; he gave a shout as Tom slugged his horse back on its haunches.

  “Company coming!” Simmons shouted, and fired.

  “Leave him,” Sandra barked as she ran by, leading four more horses by their reins. “He’s foundered—just get your gear on this’n.”

  He snatched at the reins she offered; the horse he’d been riding stood with its head down, wheezing painfully, staggering a little in place. Tom felt a stab of pity; it didn’t prevent him from stripping off the saddle and saddlebags and throwing them on the new mount with indecent speed. The saddle blanket was rank and running with sweat, and spattered with foam. The new horse was his original spare—even then he gave a thought of thanks for Sandra, who’d kept track through the confusion. She might well have saved his life; a smaller horse wouldn’t go nearly as far or fast under his weight.

  His first mount made for the water with trembling legs. Then something went shwuup! through the umber-tinted sunset air and hit it with a meaty sound, lost under the huge, piteous scream of surprise and pain from the horse. He saw an arrow quivering in its withers as it collapsed; then more were flying at them from the south rim of the canyon. He could look up from the darkness beneath the cottonwood to see the cliff there ruddy and sunlit, the arrowheads winking as they reached the top of their arcs. The black shafts looked slow then, but that turned to zipping speed as they plunged down
. Some went thunk into the big trees and quivered like malignant bees; others hit the sand with a shunking sound. Muskets banged as well; he could see the shooters bobbing up and down from cover, and the puffs of dirty smoke from muzzle and pan.

  Simmons’s sniper rifle cracked, flashes in the dark and the sharp stink of nitro powder as he tried to keep the enemy suppressed, but there were too many of them—their firepower was diffuse, but huge. Henry Villers came up on a horse as badly blown as Tom’s had been, threw himself out of the saddle and prepared to add the Bren gun to the suppressing fire.

  “No!” Adrienne shouted. “This place is a deathtrap. Get mounted, everyone; we have to make it past the narrows! Tully!”

  “Trust me, trust me!” the little man shouted, scrambling components from one of the packsaddles into a canvas bag. “OK! Go for it! Go, go, go.”

  Villers scrambled aboard one of the presaddled spares. Then they were all splashing through the pond and onto the only clear ground eastward—a strip of wet sand along the southern edge of the stream; elsewhere the floor of the canyon was boulder-strewn and brush-grown. It was also a pit of darkness now; Tom managed to get his night-sight goggles out of their pouch and onto his face, and a new magazine into his rifle, all at a pounding gallop and without losing anything but his hat. That went flying off into the night behind him like a bat as water-worn rock cliffs rushed by, swerving in a crazy snake’s passage as they wove among the rocks and fallen trees and ponds. Sand spurted up from the hooves of the horses ahead, flicking him in the face. The Akaka up on top of the canyon wall were pacing them on their right, shooting down into the riverbed—right ahead of him someone’s horse went down at the head, its hind legs and hooves flying up almost in his face, and then his horse had hopped over it in a sudden pig-jump that almost cost him his seat.

  He risked a look behind. It was Sandra; she was up and running, and Tully was riding alongside her, bouncing around but staying on. He reached down; she grabbed his hand and stirrup leather and made an astonishing bounding jump, coming down on the horse behind him and clinging tight. His teeth and eyes shone wide, in a face that was all nose and chin and straining effort.

  On the cliff face above him something swept through the night amid a circular trail of sparks—and Tom’s mind made a leap of its own: It was some sort of primitive grenade, gunpowder stuffed into a clay pot lined with rocks, then a fuse lit and the whole whipped around in a sling for throwing.

  It soared down from the cliff, trailing sparks. Crannggg! And gravel-shrapnel spurted all around him; his horse missed a step for a heartstopping instant, and then was on its way again. But more circles of sparks flowered on the cliff….

  Then they were out into a marginally broader part of the canyon, one where the river ran close under the steep southern cliffs. North of that bend was a broad patch of sand, and north of that a side canyon, a triangular wash that made a path to the northern rim of the canyon, littered with stones from gravel size up to chunks as big as his torso. It was passable… just.

  “Sandy, young Botha, get the horses up—everyone else, rearguard! Quick, or they’ll catch us on two flanks!” Adrienne called.

  “No, they won’t,” Tully said, panting, as Sandra slipped down.

  He pulled a controller from a pouch on his harness, extended it westward and mashed his thumb down with vindictive force. A rolling boom shot around the curve of the canyon, with a cloud of dust on its heels.

  “Satchel charge under a boulder,” he said, and threw back his head for a catamount-in-agony rebel yell that would have done one of his great-grandfathers proud. “That’ll hold ’em for a few minutes.”

  “Good work!” Adrienne cried.

  Tom slapped him on his shoulder as he passed, then took cover behind a big rock about ten yards up the cut.

  “Jim, Henry!” he called. “Fall back by pairs, leapfrog!”

  He took two turns of the rifle’s sling around his left fist, braced his elbow on the rock—what luxury, after bouncing around on a horse!—and sighted. It was a bit awkward with the goggles, but a lot better than trying to see in the dark like a cat. The range was two hundred yards away and a hundred up; only the height difference had let the arrows reach them. The smoothbores would hit only by accident at that range, but get enough of them going and accidents would happen, and he didn’t like the thought of being hit by one of those three-quarter-inch lead balls. They were the size of a kid’s biggest conker marble and traveling around eight hundred feet per second.

  It’s times like this that you miss Uncle Sam’s expensive body armor, he thought, and squeezed off a round. Arrows came flickering back at the muzzle flash.

  Up on the southern cliff where the sun was dying an Akaka slinger whirled another grenade around his head. Tom brought the blade of his foresight down on the moving blur, squeezed…

  Crack.

  The man lurched backward as a .30-06 hollow-point blasted through his chest and out his back, leaving a small round hole in his stomach and an exit wound the size of a bread plate. The grenade he’d been loading into the soft antelope-leather pocket of his sling fell at his feet, and three seconds later it exploded—right next to the other four in the pouch hung across his chest. A great snap of red fire lit the cliff, and rocks and dust and bits of his body shot out and fell downward over the steep rock.

  Just then Henry Villers’s machine gun began to stutter, raking rock and water in a flurry of spouts and stone chips and ricochets, driving back the pursuers who’d finally come up along the canyon floor in their quarries’ tracks. Simmons’s rifle had never stopped. Tom shot his magazine empty, clicked in another one and jacked the operating rod.

  “Fall back,” he said. “Jim, you and me—Henry, on the word! Watch your flanks, guys.”

  Because unless the Akaka are conveniently stupid, they’re not going to rush a machine gun and two automatic rifles from the front in a narrow slot, he thought. Of course, a lot depends on how many Tully got with his satchel charge; no way to tell. Maybe we can sicken them of it. Maybe the horse will learn to sing. Fuck it.

  The cut became less well defined as they scrambled up and north. A dead horse lay inconveniently—the stupid beast had slipped and broken its neck and someone had shot it; it said something about the situation that he hadn’t noticed. He clambered over the sweat-and-blood-stinking, foam-slick and unpleasantly yielding obstacle and into loose scree that slipped under his feet.

  If he hadn’t been wearing the goggles, the silent tiger rush from his left would have taken him completely by surprise—the Akaka’s soft moccasins made no sound at all as he skipped from rock to rock and flung himself headlong at Tom.

  A flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye brought him around and crouching; the duck and lift was purely instinctual. A hard, heavy weight slammed into his shoulders just as he heaved up, and the war shriek turned to a yell of dismay as the warrior flipped up and over. Tom used the same motion to wheel, but even so the Akaka had bounced back to his feet on the rough stone. He was a bundle of sinew and steel-spring muscle no more than arm’s length away, and the knife and tomahawk glittered in his hands—they would be in Tom’s flesh long before he could bring the rifle up to shoot. Instead he twirled it like a quarterstaff, and the muzzle smashed across the other man’s left wrist. The hatchet flew away; Tom’s hips swayed aside like a matador’s, and he clamped the knife hand between his arm and flank before the razor steel could do more than slice his bush jacket and sting the skin. The rifle clattered away.

  The two men strained against each other in the dark for an instant, a private universe of fear-stinking sweat and desperate effort. The Indian’s free hand clawed for his eyes and slid off the slick surface of the goggles; Tom’s teeth snapped into the wrist, and blood ran sickeningly rank into his mouth. He spat it out and caught his own left wrist in his right hand behind the Indian’s back, lifting him off the ground with a surge and wrenching with arms like pythons. The painted gargoyle face inches from his contorted, scre
aming, and then Tom had to duck his head to save his eyes from the other’s teeth; they ground into his scalp, tearing the skin.

  That loosed something deep in his gut; the berserkergang of his ancestors perhaps—if it was, it was colder than ice, not hot.

  “Yaaaaaah!” he shouted, a hoarse, guttural sound that echoed through the night.

  And his arms ground inward with the inexorable force of glaciers. The tough cotton drill of the bush jacket ripped from the neck halfway to the waist with a crack as his shoulders bunched, and red blood vessels writhed across his vision. The Akaka warrior screamed once more, high and shrill—then flopped limp with blood pouring out of his mouth, spine snapped and ribs driven into his lungs like daggers of bone.

  Tom staggered and threw the corpse from him, glaring about. It took an instant for his vision to clear, and for him realize that the others were staring at him. He coughed and shook his head.

  “Let’s get going,” he said, scrubbing his sleeve across the filmed surface of the goggles.

  “He can’t ride with it,” Adrienne said. “He’d bleed out inside two miles.”

  Schalk Botha lay facedown. The wound wasn’t one that would be fatal under any circumstances but these—the arrow had gone through the thicker fleshy part of his right buttock, a broad-bladed triangle of metal slicing down out of the night. Adrienne had cut off the shaft at the skin and freed it with a single long pull, then packed the wound with antiseptic pads and strapped them down with strong adhesive.

  It would heal in a couple of weeks, without doing anything other than making young Schalk the butt of jokes for the rest of his life. Here and now, it was a sentence of death. The young man knew it, and his face had the strained impassiveness of someone realizing his own mortality and determined to meet it with eyes open.

  Tom looked around at the circle of faces, ghostly in the moonlight. Everyone who needed it had been patched up; he had a pad along his forehead over the left eye himself, and another on his side a handspan down from the armpit. A couple of the others looked worse, but there was nothing crippling, nothing that would keep a man—or woman—from riding and fighting.