Maybe I could have eaten enough crow to stay home, he thought. His spine stiffened, and he remembered Pierre Walks Quiet’s voice around a campfire one night: A man lives as long as he lives, and not a day more.
He glanced over his shoulder at the walls of the village double-bowshot away across the flat yellow blond field. He’d run all night and into the dawn. Almost made the village wall, almost made the hills beyond. So close . . .
And I’m going to die thirsty and hungry and tired. Shit.
“The last time was a good ways east of here,” he said. “It wasn’t as good a day as you thought, or as bad as I did at first.”
“Indeed we have met so,” High Seeker Kuttner said. “Glad to see you again like this, Vogeler. Oh, so very glad to see you.”
“Not seeing as much of me as you did the last time when you had two eyes, you pissant little Cyclops,” Ingolf taunted, forcing a sand-dry mouth to speak and to smile.
He gave a silent sigh of disappointment as the ges ture that had almost ordered the horse archers to shoot stopped unmade.
The commander of the score of Corwinite cavalry looked around anxiously. Every third man of his troop was wounded, some with bandages still leaking blood, and foam streaked the shoulders and necks of their horses. Only two unsaddled horses followed on leading reins. He licked his lips and spoke: “High Seeker, there are enemy patrols all around us.”
“They may not be looking very enthusiastically,” Kuttner said, with a secret smile.
“High Seeker, we must break eastward now if we’re to get through before the Boise cavalry get their screen tight. What shall we do?”
Kuttner smiled more broadly. Even ready for death and raising his shete for the final rush, Ingolf found his stomach twisting a little at the cruelty in the expression. Killing this one would be a service to humankind in gen eral. His eyes flicked around; a dozen bows, but he might just live long enough to cross the ten yards and strike—
“What shall we do? What there wasn’t time to do when this apostate escaped from Corwin,” Kuttner said.
Then he spoke three words and moved his hand in a sign. Ingolf dropped his shete to his side. Incredulously, he looked down at it and told it to move. Instead the thick muscular fingers opened, and the weapon fell point-first to go shink in the gritty volcanic soil beneath the wheat; the golden heads waved around the leather-wrapped hilt.
Kuttner rode close, and slapped him casually across the face. Sweat broke out on Ingolf’s skin as he strove to move.
“You have much to learn,” he said. “Much to experience, Ingolf apostate. The Ascended Masters have called your name. It echoes through the Valley of Paradise and whispers in the Eternal Flame. The Prophet is dying, and in His passing He will require servants. And there is a drum you desecrated that needs a new hide to cover it. Come with me.”
* * * *
“Lacho Calad! Drego Morn!” Ritva shouted in unison with her sister.
There were four men in the Cutter patrol that came over the rise, pushing hard to catch the pair they’d been chasing for hours. Two died as the sisters shot, the ar rows cracking into their breastplates and sinking halfway to the feathers; it was only thirty yards, and they’d carefully picked the ones with bows in hand and arrows on the string. The Cutters had all been in the battle yesterday, and the quivers of the other two were empty.
They charged without hesitation anyway, one leveling a lance and the other holding his shete up. Acrid dust shot up from the hooves of their horses, heavy with pebbles in this stretch where the flat plain met the northern foothills.
“Where did you two get that ambling crowbait?” Ritva shouted, as she legged her horse into a gallop towards them.
Which was unfair; Duélroch and Mary’s Rochael had been standing idle all yesterday, and the Arabs had uncanny endurance to boot. On the other hand, fighting was the last thing on the Lord and Lady’s earth you wanted to do fairly. The mares built speed with jackrabbit bounds despite the shallow slope they were climbing.
The two Dúnedain and the pair of Cutters closed with the shocking abruptness a combined gallop produced, but the Cutters’ horses were laboring. She could see snarls of effort on the men’s faces, and the marks of exhaustion. Then only a pair of pale eyes over the shield rim as the enemy braced themselves for impact, ducking down behind their shields against arrows . . .
. . . and the twins pivoted left and right, splitting to either side like water from a wedge and throwing themselves away and down in the saddle as well. Ritva took her weight on her bent left leg and pressed her face into Duélroch’s flying mane for an instant. The lance head went through the space she’d been in; then she was back in the saddle as her leg uncoiled like a spring, bringing the mare up on her haunches to shed her hurtling forward momentum.
Or most of it; still on her hind legs, Duélroch had to crow-hop twice to keep from tumbling, with dust shooting forward from under her hooves. Then she landed and whirled, superbly responsive to Ritva’s shift of balance. The Ranger’s hand went back over her shoulder and she had the arrow drawn to the ear before the horse had fully settled again. It stood stock-still to the signal of knees and legs as she aimed for half a second, with the kiss-ring on the string touching the chapped skin of her upper lip and the narrow pile shaped arrowhead resting on the arrow ledge over her gloved knuckle.
The Cutters were frantically trying to rein their own horses in and around, but they’d only begun when the snap snap of bowstrings on steel cut sharply through the whistle of the wind and the hammer of hooves.
Crack.
At less than twenty feet even the best armor wouldn’t stop a bodkin point from a powerful bow. The leather plates over the Corwinite horse soldier’s upper spine hardly even slowed it as it punched through and into bone. The man dropped limp as an empty sack, striking the ground and rolling twice, snapping the shaft of the arrow off.
Crack.
Mary’s arrow missed the spine, smashing through just beside it and out the man’s chest, transfixing the lungs but not the heart. He screamed and fell and dragged, one boot twisted in the stirrup; the horse stopped and looked back at him in puzzled alarm. Mary swung down out of the saddle and did the needful thing with her sword, putting the point behind one ear and giving a single sharp push; the man didn’t resist, either too nearly unconscious or glad of the release from pain.
Then they freed the horses, stripping off saddle and bridle and slapping their rumps to set them off; they’d find water, and probably somebody would round them up eventually.
Mary grimaced as she came up, wiping and sheathing her sword.
“I hate doing that,” she said, taking a drink from her canteen after they had both tasted earth and murmured the prayer.
“Me too, sis,” Ritva said, thankful her kill had been clean.
Her hands fought to shake; suddenly she was conscious of sweat and itches and the heat of the noonday sun. Hot dry wind was cool on her sodden hair as she slung her helmet to her saddlebow.
“I think Rudi got cut off a little south of here,” she said worriedly.
“Mer,” Mary said, agreeing. “But he might get ahead of them and circle north. Let’s get to the rendezvous and see who made it.”
They worked their way northward, towards a butte shaped like a camel’s head and hump. Ritva’s head came up as she caught the ringing stamp of a shod hoof on rock, and then she relaxed again and lowered her bow as Father Ignatius stepped out from behind a curve of stone. Edain came next, and then young Frederick Thurston. He looked like a man who’d been hit behind the ear with a sock full of wet sand, but not quite hard enough to knock him out.
But then, Ritva thought compassionately, he’s got it worse than us. He’s seen treachery by his own kin.
“Rudi?” Mary said sharply; he and the younger Mackenzie left the battlefield together.
Edain’s sunburned face flushed. “We had a big clump of them on our heels so we split up. I managed to lose mine and get here.” His lips thin
ned. “We’ve been waiting since.”
Father Ignatius nodded and glanced at the sun. “Anyone who is not here yet isn’t going to arrive,” he said.
Then he pointed north, to a tall hill. “And there is a dust trail heading in this direction. At least a score of men.”
Ritva winced. That meant either the enemy, or Boise cavalry . . . who might well now be the enemy; she didn’t have enough of a feel for the place or the politics to know how openly Martin Thurston could hunt the ones who knew he’d killed his father.
If it’s the Cutters, they caught someone and made them talk, she thought.
“What do we do?”
Ignatius smiled; it was grim, but confident. “We need to find the others ... Rudi most of all.”
“Head back towards the Prophet’s men?” Mary said. “And . . . well, if they’ve caught him, they’ll either kill him or take him east. That’s a big piece of flatland and then hills east of here. We can’t search it all.”
“Not on the ground,” Ignatius said. “But I think there is an alternative, God willing.”
* * * *
Ignatius looked at the leveled crossbows and raised his empty hands in a sign of peace.
“Give me a moment to speak, my sons, and then do as you will,” he said.
The great curved shape of the Curtis LeMay filled most of the emergency airfield; it was staked down to a dozen heavy steel posts sunk in the earth on either side. The gliders and their launching apparatus were scattered across a wide stretch of sparse pasture around about. Soldiers and ground crew stood about in clumps, their faces grim; many showed the marks of weeping. The air was warm and very still, and smelled of latrines and metal and crude cookery, and under that a chemi cal taint from the steel gas-generating boxes on a half dozen great six wheeled wagons.
“The couriers said you were wanted in connection with the president’s death,” Hanks replied flatly.
The men and women behind him growled slightly, gripping their weapons and staring narrow eyed.
“We saved the president once,” Ignatius pointed out. “You know that, and that it makes no sense for us to save him once to kill him a few weeks later. But don’t take my word for it.”
He urged his horse aside. A gasp broke out as Frederick Thurston’s brown face came clear to their sight.
“And here’s your own president’s son to tell you the truth,” Ignatius said, his trained voice rolling out clear.
* * * *
“I know this place,” Rudi Mackenzie said to himself and his horse, his voice hoarse with thirst.
Mountains rose before him, bare save for a scattering of silvery gray scrub, up great walls of rock and scree to the glaciers floating far above. The smell of cold rock and aromatic herbs and old sweat soaked into wool and leather filled his nostrils. The rattle of stone under shod hooves was loud, and far and faint came a baying like wolves that he knew was men. Ahead was the rest of the bare ridge, and over it another huge empty valley. The mountains were very far.
On the slopes of the ridge he could look far behind. Three separate plumes of dust headed towards him; he judged their speed and then ran his hand down Epo na’s neck. She snorted and tossed her head, weary as she was.
“So, my girl, you’ve run well, it’s splendid and brave and strong you are still,” he said.
But there’s only one of you, and I’m riding heavier than most of those even with only my helm and brigandine, I think, he mused. Soon you will be grazing the meads of the Land of Youth.
High above, black wings cruised through the air. He chuckled. “It’s often I’ve said I’m ready to come when You call me, Lady of the Crows. If this is the time . . . well, I’ll harvest a field as a bridal gift for You, so!”
He dismounted and took a careful swallow of his water, then poured the rest of it into his helmet and held that for Epona. She slobbered eagerly and her lips chased every drop into the padded lining.
“Now, don’t be greedy, my fair one. That’s all there is,” he said gently, and put the sallet back on his head.
The raised visor acted as a sunshade; it was six hours past noon, and the long night of pursuit had tired them both.
“Sure, and they’re a very determined lot, and have most impolitely kept between me and the rendezvous,” he said. “Now let’s see if I can break through them eastward and circle about beyond them.”
He couldn’t; that was obvious. He might be able to take some of them with him to the Summerlands, and give them a good talking-to there along with the Guard ians, to shame them for serving a bad cause even if they did it bravely.
“And Edain got away,” he said. “Now, that’s a comfort. If Mother must grieve, at least old Sam is spared that.”
Then he laughed, full-bodied. “So much for my grand journey across the continent! Yet I don’t regret that as much as never really trying to give Matti a sound kissing.”
He mounted again, waiting, and working his sword arm to limber it. There was no fear now, and he thought he could hear voices singing—a deep humming, perhaps the bees making honey in the flowering clover meads of Tir-na nog.
“Perhaps my father lingers there yet,” he murmured as he drew his sword. “I never knew him as a man. We could talk, eh, and perhaps ride together and hunt and yarn, before we return once more.”
The Cutters approached with shocking speed. Their “Cut . . . cut!” sounded triumphant as they saw him, and his answering shout was as joyous. Epona belled chal lenge, rearing, and he stood in the stirrups to call: “Welcome, brothers, in the name of the Crow Goddess!”
He laughed to see their rage, brought his shield up be neath his eyes as his legs prepared to clamp the horse’s barrel one last time. For one long instant he thought the humming and song behind him were Her train, and the shadow that suddenly fell Her wings.
Then the Cutters were stopping, pulling their horses up so sharply that some of them reared or crashed in a neighing tangle into their neighbors. Bows dropped from nerveless hands. One stood and fired into the air, but a shaft streaked down from behind Rudi’s head and went crack into his armor, the gray fletching of the Mackenzie clothyard shaft blossoming against the red-brown leather. As he slid from the saddle his mates wheeled and fled, only the cursing of an officer trying in vain to rally them.
Silence filled the air, along with a vast creaking. Slowly, slowly Rudi turned his head to see the Curtis LeMay ris ing further from behind the ridge, a hundred yards in the sky. That was close enough to see the faces—Edain, his half sisters, Frederick Thurston, Father Ignatius.
“Where—” he began.
Two of the crew slid down from the fore and aft of the gondola, planted anchors against solid rock, and winches squealed. Soon his friends and kinfolk were around him.
“What took you so long?” Rudi mock-scolded. Then his face grew serious. “The others?”
“No sign,” Ritva said, and her sister nodded somberly. “There were enemy approaching the rendezvous.”
Which means someone was captured, and talked, Rudi thought grimly.
He turned to Ignatius. “It’s a luck bearer you’ve been for me, my friend,” he said formally, bowing his head a little.
“God’s will,” the other man said.
“And Hers,” Rudi added with a grin. That died as he looked at the others.
“It’s a good deal of work we have to do,” he said.
“I have to let everyone know how my father died,” Frederick Thurston said; his young face looked somber, and more like his father’s.
“And we have the others to find,” Edain added; Garbh pressed her flank against him and whined, looking up at his head.
Rudi’s eyes turned eastward. “And all that’s part of something larger,” he said softly. “The quest we started on, and that cannot stop either. Because—”
Then he staggered, pressing his hands to his head. Cold! So cold!
“Like fire,” he muttered aloud, and then: “Lord and Lady!”
It was
a matter of minutes before he was aware of hands guiding him to the ground and leaning him back against a boulder; a sharp scent of sagebrush rose as his brigandine crushed the herb against a rock. The mouth of a canteen touched his lips, and he drank eagerly, choked a little, swallowed more. The hard metallic taste of the lukewarm water was delightful as no mountain stream had ever been.
“What is it?” Ritva said sharply, going down on one knee. Blue eyes met gray green.
She suspects something, he thought. I wish I could make it clear to her, that I do.
“What’s happened?” her sister repeated.
“I don’t know,” Rudi said softly. “But it’s something terrible.”
Epilogue
Siege Lines,
Sword Of The Prophet Twin Falls,
Idaho/New Deseret
July 22, CY23/2021 A.D.
Sethaz screamed and fell to his knees, hammering his fists on the sides of his head. The generals of the Sword of the Prophet stumbled back in horror as the endless wailing shriek grated at their ears; even the unmoving sentries facing outward around the open leaves of the command tent stirred, until an underofficer’s bark brought them back to statue-stillness.
Veins stood out in the face of the Prophet’s chosen son, and after a moment twin trickles of blood ran down his face from the corners of his eyes. He screamed again, and this time it turned into a howl like a hunting wolf, ending in a squeal and a long panting.
“Water,” he croaked at last. “Water.”
General Walker sprang forward to offer it, and Sethaz grabbed eagerly, then forced himself to drink more slowly.
“Brandy,” he said in a voice like rust flaking off old iron.
The generals looked at one another, and then one pro duced a silver flask. Sethaz took two swallows, coughed, stood, handed it back, and looked around the circle of hard scarred faces.
“All is well, Light bearers,” he said, and smiled.
A few of them blinked, though none showed obvious fear. Cowards didn’t achieve high rank in Corwin’s armies.
Sethaz’s voice grew stronger, though it might never fully recover from that scream. He could feel the strength in it now, and he marveled as the dark wave of it flowed out through the lifestreams about it.
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