May 15, CY23/2021 A.D.
“I hope this is worth it,” Odard said, slapping each palm against the vambrace on the opposite fore-arm to make sure it was seated firmly, and then pulling on his mail backed gauntlets.
“You have to help your friends,” Mathilda said, as she bloused her long tunic of titanium mail a little around her sword belt. “And your friends’ friends. And we need their help getting farther east after Rancher Brown’s men turn back, unless we want to try swinging far south and tackling the Colorado Rockies by ourselves.”
“Point,” the Baron of Gervais said.
Rudi grinned as his head emerged through the neck of his brigandine; he pulled out the bottom of his coif and tossed his head so the lower part of the mail hood would lie on the shoulders.
“And it’s a nice day for a fight,” he went on. “No clouds, not too hot . . . Someone give me a hand here?”
Edain did; putting on full lancer’s armor was always a bit awkward. Mathilda met Rudi’s eyes and gave him a grave nod as she fastened the flap of her coif across her mouth, then lowered the conical helmet with its splayed nasal bar onto her head and buckled the chinstrap. A plume of black-dyed ostrich feathers rose from the peak, traded from hand to hand at incredible cost from the deserts of the southwest where the birds ran free.
“Well, I’m off to do my bit, then, Chief,” Edain said. “Wings of the Morrigú shelter you.”
“Horned Lord with you,” Rudi replied, clapping him on the shoulder. “And may the Wolf fight by your side.”
Edain started towards his horse, then turned his head to say, “And thank Him and Her and Father Wolf too that I don’t have to use that bloody saddlebow!”
The lancers’ horses were ready; they’d armed them before themselves, with chamfrons to cover their heads save for the eyes and nostrils, and peytrals of steel plates mounted on padded leather backing on their chests and necks and shoulders. Epona whickered greeting; the chamfron went clink on the mail that covered Rudi’s upper arm as she tried to nuzzle him. Her eyes rolled behind the ridges of steel that protected them as she snorted and stamped a foot eagerly.
She knows what the gear means, just as I do, Rudi thought. But she likes it more than I.
He settled the sallet helm on his head—a low dome of steel that came down to the angle of his jaw save for the open space before his face, and flared out to protect his neck. A smooth curved visor with a narrow vision slit slid up under his hand, shading his eyes like the bill of a cap.
Twin sprays of raven feathers stood in holders at each temple. Thin lines had been graven in the steel, and filled with black niello, in the likeness of more feathers; the visor came down to a slight peak. On this trip he wasn’t supposed to advertise who he was, but he could still show what he was.
His thoughts went grimly on:
Epona just doesn’t like people, except me; she wants to hurt them, the way they hurt her before we met. We’re old souls to each other, I think; we’ve met in past lives, or in the Summerlands. But I don’t enjoy killing men. It’s necessary, sometimes, that’s all.
He leaned against the saddle for a moment, closed his eyes, and murmured under his breath, “Dread Lord, Father of Victories, Storm rider, Wild Huntsman, aid us now. Dark Goddess, Morrigú of the Crows, Red Hag of Battles, to You I dedicate the harvest of the unplowed field of war, and the blood to be spilled this day on Your earth. Be You both with Your children; and if this is my hour, then know I go most willingly to You.”
Sometimes the regard of the Powers could be as warm as a lover’s embrace or a summer’s wind lying in new mown hay; but most often They came in the Aspect that you called. Now he felt as if a wind were blowing, blowing along his spine and into the spaces of his head, cold and bitter from a place of ice and iron and bones. Then he swung into the saddle and picked up a lance from the seven that leaned against the wagon.
Father Ignatius had the band’s Catholics gathered about him for a moment. Rudi could hear their voices following his:
“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. Come to the aid of us Christians and make us worthy to fight to the death for our faith and our brothers. Strengthen our souls and our whole bodies, Mighty Lord of Hosts, God of Battles. Through the intercession of the Immaculate Mother of God, and of all the saints, we humbly beg this of You. Deus lo vult! Amen.”
Then the monk swung into the saddle and rode over. He smiled and hefted the next of the eleven foot ash wood shafts, looked critically along the length, and gave the nod of a workman satisfied with his tools.
Their eyes met, and Ignatius smiled. “Serious business, Rudi. It’s always well to start it with a prayer.”
“Right you are, Father,” Rudi acknowledged.
The twins and Mathilda seemed to think so too. Odard was cool and detached, making sure his gear was just so.
“This is a damn good plan, Ingolf,” the baron said. “If it works, I owe you a bottle of wine.” He laughed. “And if it doesn’t we’ll be too dead to drink, most likely.”
Odd, the Mackenzie thought. I wonder what it’s like to be Odard? You can hunt and drink and spar with a man, and laugh at his jokes and play poker and talk about girls, and still you wonder what the inwardness is like, when he talks to himself in his head.
Odard went on: “They won’t have ever dealt with real knights, this far east.”
Rudi nodded; that was the plan. Unfortunately there were only seven of them fit to carry a lance—himself, the twins, Matti, Ingolf, Odard, and the soldier-monk.
Ingolf looked down at the kit he was wearing—much like Rudi’s, a brigandine supplemented by mail collar and sleeves and breeches, with plate greaves on his shins and vambraces on his forearms. He’d stuck to his own kettle helmet, though.
“I’m not used to wearing this much armor,” he grumbled. “Boy isn’t either.”
“He’ll get used to it,” Rudi said. “And you’re already pretty good with a lance. Full armor doesn’t make that any different.”
“Just safer.” Odard laughed, slinging his long kite-shaped shield over his back by the guige strap and swinging up into the saddle. “Safer for you, and more dangerous for the other guy.”
His voice was muffled behind the mail coif; he tossed the lance’s length of ashwood and steel overhead and twirled it like a baton until it made the air whir and the pennant crackle—a flamboyant and mildly danger ous trick that took good timing and enormously strong wrists.
“Stop showing off, Odard,” Mathilda said sharply. “This is a fight, not a tournament with barriers and re-bated points. I don’t want to get that thing in my back because you slipped.”
“Your Highness commands,” he said, bowing his head and chuckling again before he put the lance at rest.
Over with the Seffridge Ranch folk Bob Brown gave Rudi a thumbs-up. The horse herd was safely penned in a box canyon, with Mrs. Jason and her daughter—who usually managed the chuck wagon—watching them. The cowboys were well equipped, for light horse; Bob and four others had short mail shirts, and the rest steel-strapped leather breastplates, and they all had good round shields and bowl helmets. They’d all slung an extra quiver to their saddlebows, too; you ran out of shafts fast in a serious fight, and the man with the last arrow was likely to be the one who rode home. The youngest of them was looking mutinous, and leading a train of several packhorses with panniers full of bundled arrows.
Rudi rested the butt of his lance on the toe of his boot and nodded. The rancher’s men formed up in a rough column of twos and trotted away eastward, their hooves a growling rumble on the hard alkaline dirt. Dust fol lowed them as the sound faded away; there wasn’t any way around that with so many horses.
But we want them to be seen. Let’s see, they’ve got a mile to go, he thought. Of course, we seven don’t want to be seen. . . .
Ingolf looked up at the sun. “Nothing shows up at a distance on a clear day like a bright lancehead,” he said, and flipped his down and buried the point in the mud of a drying pudd
le for an instant. “Everyone, get it muddy.”
Everyone did, though not eagerly in some cases. “Hell of a thing to do to good steel,” Odard grumbled.
“You can wash it soon in blood, hopefully,” Mary pointed out, as she unhappily followed suit.
Vain as peacocks, Rudi thought affectionately as he looked at his sisters . . . and Odard. Or as cats.
“And I said stop showing off, Odard,” Mathilda added sharply. “The point is to kill them, not make them applaud our chivalric brilliance.”
“Point taken,” Odard replied.
“Let’s get going,” Rudi said, as the Baron of Ger vais reluctantly daubed the bright-polished steel in the puddle.
They did, straight eastward rather than a little north of east as Bob and his men had done. That put them on course for a gap between two high rocky hills or low mountains; the one on the left had the remains of an old radio tower on it, and the one on the right a name, Red Mountain, from the ruddy sandstone of the cliffs. Seven horses put up a good deal less dust than twenty; the plume from the rancher’s party was bigger still be cause half a dozen of his men were dragging clumps of sagebrush behind them on their lariats. Feint to distract, then strike to kill . . .
The CORA men said the Rovers were wild and undis ciplined to a fault, but that might be prejudice speaking. Hopefully not. Ingolf agreed; from his tales, the Sioux were the same way.
Mathilda was on his left. “I hope the Mormons who were supposed to buy Rancher Brown’s horses hold out till we get there,” she said, leaning closer. “It would be sort of futile to do this if they were all dead already.”
“Thanks,” he replied with a grin. “I didn’t have worries enough to occupy my mind the now!”
Edain and Alex would be seeing to that. He forced aside worry for the young man, and even for the thought of having to tell Sam Aylward that his boy had died so far from home. That Sam would be so brave about it made the thought worse, not better.
It’ll either work, or it won’t, he told himself. And if it does . . . well, my totem is Raven, but maybe Ingolf’s is Coyote. It’s a trick worthy of the Trickster!
* * * *
“Hssst!” Edain breathed quietly.
Hooves clattered on rock and gravel. Two Rovers passed by below at the bottom edge of the hill and stopped by the rough stone circle of a well. If they saw his horse and Alex’s back in that ravine . . .
They both lay motionless, letting their war cloaks hide them, gray-green fabric with sagebrush twigs stuck through the loops. He could see fairly clearly through the gauze mask of the hood; the Rovers looked up the slope for an instant before they heaved the heavy timber cover off the well and threw in a leather bucket on the end of a lariat. His hand closed on the grip of his longbow, and he could smell the acrid sweat beneath his brigandine, strong even with the overwhelming smell of dust and creosote-like scents baked out of the bushes. The two horsemen were only fifty yards away; an easy shot.
At fifty yards, I’d be certain—haven’t missed a shot like that since I was a kid. Father Wolf, totem of my sept, strengthen me now! Don’t let me flinch!
The older Rover was a man in his thirties, bald or shaven-headed, with a long dark brown beard tied into two plaits with leather thongs, and a bucket of javelins slung across his back. The younger was about Edain’s age; the yellow hair on the front of his head was cut down to stubble, with a patch at the back grown long enough to braid. The bearded man had a boiled leather breast-plate over a ragged shirt and threadbare jeans tucked into rawhide boots; the blond youngster wore only a breechclout and a bracer on his left arm, his sinewy feet bare in the molded leather stirrups of his mustang’s sad dle, but he carried a good recurve bow and had a quiver over his back. Both had shetes at their belts, and round shields and leather helmets sewn with plates of metal slung at their saddlebows.
The younger man kept watch while the older hauled up water hand over hand, carefully holding the bucket so the horses could drink without spilling much.
“I hope those farmers got some pretty gals along,” the young man said.
“Hey, what’ll Sandy say about that?” the other asked.
“She’ll say, ‘Thank you kindly,’ if I bring her a Mor mon gal to do the camp chores and help with the baby,” the young man said.
Then he clutched boastfully at his crotch for a moment. “ ’Sides, I got plenty. I ain’t a wore out old man like you who couldn’t get it up with a rope tied to it.”
“Yeah, the sheep all run when they see you comin’, Jimmie,” the other man said dryly. “Rams and ewes both.”
They both laughed as they swung back into the sad dle. The older Rover went on: “Me, I want their gear. My kids could use some blankets and coats, and my ol’ woman needs a new cookpot pretty bad since the patch come off the old one.”
Edain gave a silent sigh of relief as the two men can tered off northward, disappearing behind the bulk of the hill.
“Let’s go,” he hissed to Alex, then saw with a start he was already halfway to the crest.
He followed, placing his feet carefully; the last thing he wanted now was to start a rain of pebbles and rocks. Even the quiet snick-snick of the arrows in his quiver sounded as if some malicious redcap or boggart were doing a heel clicking tap dance on his back. At last he reached the crest overlooking the ruins where the Mormon expedition had camped.
“They’re still holding out,” he said, licking his lips and then spitting to get the bitter-sour taste of alkali out of his mouth.
“As your master said they would,” Alex Vinton replied.
Edain scowled at him. “I’m a Mackenzie. We don’t have masters. Rudi’s my Chief. And my father was first armsman of the Clan for sixteen years.”
He glared, leaving the as opposed to body servant and bum-kisser to the by blow of some gangbanger-turned-lord unspoken . . . for now.
“No offense, no offense,” the older man said soothingly. “Let’s get on with our work.”
The two lay behind a greasewood brush atop the ridge behind the ruins of Whitehorse Ranch; the sun was half way down the sky towards the west, still baking spicy medicinal smells out of the herbs and bushes. Edain cau tiously raised the precious pair of field glasses he’d inherited from his father, making sure they wouldn’t catch sunlight and betray the position.
The Rovers were prowling in closer to the wagon fort; he saw fire-arrows flick out and stand in the tilts of the prairie schooners. Ordinary arrows snapped at the men who stood to throw buckets of water at the spots where the burning ones hit. A dozen Rovers rode in close, and there was a scrimmage along the northern edge of the laager, figures doll-tiny even through the glasses.
“They’re something determined,” Edain said thoughtfully. “Both sides.”
“Your first battle?” the man from the Protectorate asked.
“No,” Edain replied shortly. “Second, more like—one real fight, some skirmishes.” Then he went on: “Look!
Half of the Rovers are drawing off to that well north of here to water their horses. Let’s go!”
They headed downslope; their own mounts were hidden in a short ravine at the rear of this hill. Garbh paced beside him, silent but bristling all over, lips peeled back from her long yellow teeth. He tried to walk as quietly as he could, but rock rattled and slid as they went crouching down the juniper-strewn slope.
“Uh-oh!” Edain said. “It was a feint—run!”
They were approaching the south side of the improvised fort, a section of crumbling mud brick wall flanked by wagons on either side. He was still just high enough on the hillside to see the forty or so Rovers who’d ridden out towards the well suddenly turn their horses as one, an eerily uniform motion, like a flock of birds wheeling. They broke into a gallop back towards the north side of the laager, screaming like a grindstone on metal as they came, and shooting as fast as they could draw bow.
A bellowing war cry rose to meet them from within the encampment: “Come, ye Saints!”
&
nbsp; Edain could see men rushing to that side of the laager. He could also see that they weren’t all going in that direction, and someone who’d stayed behind on the south side was leveling a crossbow at him.
“Friends!” he shouted. “We’re friends . . . oh, sod all!”
The last came as he threw himself flat, to the tunng of a crossbow shot and the shunk of a bolt hammering into the dirt far too close to his nose. Someone hadn’t believed him.
On the ground he could also feel hooves hammer ing, the vibration coming up through the palm of his right hand; and they were also far too close. Garbh spun around, snarling like ripping canvas. Edain did too, com ing up to one knee, feeling the gritty soil bite at his bare kneecap above the knit stocking. Two mounted Rovers were coming at them, less than a hundred yards away—the ones he’d seen at the well. One had a javelin in his hand, cocked back to throw; the other was raising his bow. The points of spear and arrow looked uncomfortably sharp, and all aimed at him.
And they weren’t just targets; they were men he’d heard talking and joking and concerned about their children....
Suddenly he was calm as his right hand went back for an arrow; somewhere far away he knew his blood was racing and his bladder felt too full, but it didn’t matter.
Nock shaft, he heard his father’s voice say. Tilt the bow so the tip doesn’t catch on the ground when you’re kneeling. . . . Don’t look at the arrow, just where it’s going to hit. . . .
The string went snap against his bracer. The arrow flashed out, flying almost level with the short range and heavy draw, just at the instant the other man loosed as well. The blond young horse archer threw his arms up and pitched over the back of his rough-coated pony as the arrow went through his chest without stopping, leav ing a double splash of red along the way. In the same instant something punched Edain in the pit of the belly, hard enough to knock most of the wind out of him.
“Ooof!”
He looked down. A broken arrow was on the ground, still moving, the point curled back on itself where it had slammed into his brigandine. He wheezed and struggled to get air into his lungs.
The Sunrise Lands Page 36
