Tunnng.
Another crossbow—Alex’s, this time—and it missed; the javelin man was already ducking in the saddle and the bolt went whhhpptt through the space he’d occupied an instant before. Then it was the young Mackenzie’s turn to dodge—aside, in a dive that left him rolling as the pony flashed by and the throwing spear buried its head in the dirt where he’d been.
He came erect again in time to see a bolt from the laager hit the surviving Rover’s horse just behind the shoulder. That was either fantastically good shooting, or the Hunter’s own luck; the horse took three steps and dropped limp as a wet rag hitting the floor on washing day. The bearded rider who’d wanted blankets for his children and a cookpot for his wife shot forward, landed on shoulder and neck in an audible snap of bone, and rolled until he lay still jerking and twitching in a cloud of dust. That sank around his body as his heels drummed on the ground.
“Come on, friends!” someone yelled from the laager. “Come on!”
“We’re coming, so don’t bloody well be shootin’ at us this time!” Edain shouted back.
He ran, the bow pumping in his left hand and his kilt swirling about his knees. Alex ran beside him, trying to work the lever in the forestock that cocked his crossbow at the same time. Garbh dashed ahead, then cleared the bed of the wagon ahead with a long smooth leap, like some hairy salmon migrating upstream past an obstacle. Edain and his companion followed her with a scramble nearly as swift if considerably less graceful.
Two men confronted him—no, one a girl a bit younger than he was, in an impractical-looking denim dress that reached to her calves and a headscarf under a straw hat, but holding a businesslike crossbow in her arms. The man was older, with an odd-looking fringe of beard about his jaw but his cheeks and upper lip shaved. He wore a pot-shaped helm and held a glaive—a giant knife on a six-foot pole; the blade glistened with a liquid coat ing of bright red, and there was more spattered across his bib overalls.
“You’re a man!” the girl blurted, staring at Edain’s kilt and then his still mostly beardless face.
“And you’re not,” he snapped, suddenly conscious of how dry his mouth was.
“Thank you, strangers—” the man began.
Garbh snarled again, and they all looked up in dismay. The wagon laager was roughly oval in shape with its long axis running east-west. The northern face was only twenty yards away, and it suddenly changed shape. The Rovers had managed to get half a dozen lariats around one of the wagons there and then backed their horses together to drag it out of position.
It swiveled away and then fell over on its side, like an opened door; two-score of mounted warriors boiled through. The defenders tried to stand them off with pikes and glaives and short chopping swords, but there weren’t enough of them, not nearly enough, and everything was dissolving into a mass of rearing horses and shouting screaming men who stabbed and slashed and clouted at one another. He could see a Rover dodge under a thrust from a pike shaft, then lean far over in the saddle and swing a light ax with dreadful skill in an arc that took off the pikeman’s hand at the wrist. The hard tock of steel in bone came through the roaring brabble of the fight.
“Right, then.” Edain grunted, taking stance in the ar cher’s T, feet at right angles. “Twenty yards, clout shots.”
After struggling with the unfamiliar recurves on horseback, some straightforward shooting Mackenzie style would be a pleasure . . . almost. And he could hit a squirrel’s head to spare the flesh and hide, nine times out of ten, at this range. The yew stave bent in a smooth flexing motion. Not much armor to worry about either; most of them didn’t even have a boiled-leather breast plate. He could as well have been using hunting broad-heads as bodkin points.
Snap.
A horseman looked down in astonishment at the gray goose fletching that stood against his breastbone, and toppled forward.
Snap.
Another screamed as a shaft pinned his thigh to the saddle and punched on through that into the horse’s body, breaking a rib along the way. The wounded animal turned and went bucking off across the plain, tossing the man like a rag doll in an ill-natured child’s hands until he fell and let out all his blood onto the thirsty gray soil through the severed femoral artery.
A Rover with a metal strapped leather cap spurred at him. Edain pivoted on his left heel as he drew.
Snap.
The clothyard arrow banged off the helm, turned by the acute angle at which it met the piece of old highway sign laced to the bullhide. The head left only a bright streak in the metal, but a shaft driven by a hundred and fifteen pounds of draw weight hit hard. The rider dropped shield and shete and sat dazed for a moment. Then he screamed—briefly—as Garbh lifted off the ground, her jaws wide. They closed on his face as the bodies went down in a thrashing tangle. He tried to tear the big half mastiff bitch loose with frenzied strength, and did, but a lot of the face came with her.
Nock . . . draw . . . aim . . . loose . . .
Snap. Snap. Snap—
The attack was blunted before his quiver was half empty. Someone behind the scrimmage around the overturned wagon shouted an order in an unfamiliar accent and waved a pole with two horsetails sprouting from either side at the top. The Rovers who could turned their mounts and galloped off northward. Some of them shot backward as they went; none of the fighters in the laager seemed inclined to reply. They lifted the wagon back onto its wheels and shoved it into place instead, and then slumped or saw to their wounded or drank wearily from canteens, too tired even to wonder at the pair who’d turned up here in the back end of beyond and in the middle of their battle.
“Not many of them left here,” Alex murmured to the young Mackenzie.
He thumbed another bolt into the firing groove of his crossbow and held the weapon business-end up. Edain nodded, a quick slight jerk of the head.
“Heel!” he called.
The bitch slunk to take station behind him, still growling low and bristling, licking at shaggy jaws that dripped red. There looked to be about a dozen still on their feet within the laager, but many of them had bandages showing blood. More wounded were lying on blankets, with a medico of some sort working on them and a couple of walking wounded as helpers. Edain winced a little as a man shrieked for his mother and bucked against the hands holding him down while the arrow spoon went in after a barbed head—either they didn’t have morphine or they were out of it.
A round dozen more lay with blankets over their faces. A few near where the breakthrough had happened weren’t covered yet. Aylward’s son gulped quickly and looked away, then made himself look again. Back when he’d been about ten he’d gotten a close up view of a man who’d tripped while drunk and fallen face first into the business part of a threshing machine, and that had given him nightmares for years. These were worse. At least back at Tillamook there’d been other people to clean up afterwards.
The older man he’d seen first came up, with the girl. He wasn’t as old as Sam Aylward’s sixty-plus, as Edain had thought at first; a closer look put him at a very, very tired forty. There weren’t many people around as old as Edain’s father. Which meant this one had been about Edain’s own age at the Change. That was an odd thought.
And when I am his age, will anyone be left who can remember the old world the way Dad does? That’s odder still, when you think about it. Though I’d rather think about that than what a man looks like with his ribs showing like a rack of lamb at butchering time.
The stranger seemed to be waiting for someone to speak, but Alex Vinton preferred to stay in the background when he could. The archer shrugged, returned the arrow on his string to the quiver, and extended his hand.
“Edain Aylward Mackenzie, of Dun Fairfax and the Clan Mackenzie,” he said formally, and touched the wolf tail that hung from the back of his helmet: “My sept is Wolf.”
The man’s hand was strong and callused, by work more than the sword. He blinked at Edain’s clothes. The younger man had learned what outlanders thought, and wen
t on with a slight sigh.
“This is a kilt—” he began.
The girl flashed a smile. “We know what kilts are,” she said. “We just haven’t seen anyone wearing them in a while.”
He nodded at her, pleased, and touched the horns and-moon emblem on the breast of his brigandine. “This is the Mackenzie sigil.”
The other man collected himself. “I’m Bishop Jo seph Nystrup, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, and the Republic of New Deseret. This is my daughter Rebecca. Many thanks to you, strangers. They’d have broken in that time if not for you and your friend. But I’m afraid you’ve leapt onto the deck of a sinking ship here.”
“You’re the ones who are after buying horses from Rancher Brown, eh?” Edain said, glancing at Rebecca.
Even then, he was tempted to try a smile; she was about his age, with blue eyes and a thick yellow braid down her back and a comely snub-nosed face with a dusting of freckles across her nose and cheekbones. The haunted look in her eyes stopped him, and he nodded grave thanks to her instead.
“Yes. Are you one of his men?” Nystrup answered eagerly.
“I’m from farther west, but my friends and I are traveling with his son. We’re thirty strong altogether.”
“Do they know about these Rovers?” the man asked anxiously.
He wasn’t like any bishop that Edain had seen be fore—for one thing, he was in denim overalls—but he supposed customs would be different this far from home. The Mackenzie smiled grimly.
“Oh, they know,” he said. “And if you’ll look north, you should be seeing Rancher Brown’s men the now.”
They did, scrambling up on the bed of one of the wag ons and looking through the singed and tattered canvas of the tilt. The Rovers were mostly gathered around the well to the northward, about a double bowshot away, with a few little clumps sitting their horses around the laager at a respectful distance but ready to dart in.
Suddenly the main knot of them boiled like a kicked-over ant heap. With his binoculars he could see—just—how many of them were pointing a little west of north. He swung his gaze that way and saw the plume of dust.
With a grin, Edain handed the field glasses to the bishop. Garbh jumped up beside them and barked at the distant figures, a woof with a bit of a growl in it; the doggy equivalent of: We sure showed them, didn’t we, boss?
The older man fumbled a little with the focusing screw and then exclaimed, “Those are Rancher Brown’s men?” Edain nodded, and the man from New Deseret went on: “There must be more of them than we thought! Perhaps enough to destroy these agents of the Adversary!”
“Not so many in that lot right there,” Edain said with a grin. “But that’s not the only arrow in the quiver.”
Which reminded him he’d shot off a dozen from his. Reluctantly, he jumped down and began collecting them. Many of them were still in bodies, and he’d never pulled a shaft out of a man’s gut before.
I’ve tweaked their nose, Chief, he thought. Now it’s time you kicked them in the arse, eh?
Chapter Fifteen
Southeastern Oregon
May 15, CY23/2021 A.D.
“So, so, wait for it, girl. We don’t arrive before the dance starts,” Rudi crooned to Epona.
“It’s all in getting them to stay still long enough to hit, when you’re fighting wanderers like the Sioux or these Rovers,” Ingolf said, adjusting the chinstrap of his kettle helmet.
Epona tossed her head again as if in agreement, with a clatter of bridle fittings against the chamfron and peytral. The hills lay on either side of them now. Rudi squinted over his shoulder at the westering sun, glanced aside at Ingolf’s imperceptible nod, and then waved a hand forward.
“Let’s go.”
They all set their horses moving, down from the saddle between the hills and along the old gravel road; nobody had done any repairs since the year he was born, but it was still passable in this dry climate. Gear clattered and clanked, hooves crunched, and the taste of the desert dust was sharp and salty on his lips. They turned left—north—when they hit the flat, and picked up the pace to a walk trot-canter trot-walk. The big horses couldn’t keep that up all day the way cow country ponies could, not carrying the load of steel they were, but it was only about five miles to the old ranch buildings. Everyone would arrive fresh enough for a charge or two.
The road ran north, with a low plateau two or three hundred feet higher a mile or so to their east; if Rudi had been in charge of the Rovers he’d have had look outs there, but it looked like they were as sloppy-undisciplined as the CORA men said they were. And this effort would be two or three gangs of them working together; none of them would know where all the others were.
“Uh oh,” he said, looking slightly off to the right. “Look there, where the road turns east, north of the hills. Right on the way we have to go.”
Everyone did. Ingolf’s eyes were the next keenest. “Looks like horsemen. Say five or six.”
“There’s a well there, according to the old maps,” Father Ignatius said.
“Getting right up their ass without their noticing was a long shot,” Odard said in a resigned tone.
Rudi’s lips thinned as he nodded. It would have been nice, though, he thought.
“Bet you they don’t notice who we are for a while,” Ingolf said.
“We certainly don’t look much like Rovers!” Rudi said, with a toss of his helmet to indicate their armor-clad bodies and big steel-barded horses.
Ingolf grinned, a hard expression. “Oh, you’d be surprised. People see what they’re expecting to see, mostly, and nowhere more so than in a battle. I could tell you . . .”
The Rovers were watering their horses; at first they just glanced up. It wasn’t until they were within a hundred yards that the first of them pointed and yelled.
Then they leapt into the saddle, reining around and spattering every which way, shooting as they went. Arrows went by with nasty vvvvvwpt sounds; one ticked off the curved surface of Rudi’s sallet, a painful whack even with steel and padding between it and his scalp. Several of the Rovers rode right back east towards the main gang; the others just headed anywhere that wasn’t blocked off by hills. The quarter-horse mounts they all rode had acceleration like jackrabbits, and they left trails of dust with a speed the bigger western horses couldn’t match. Rudi shifted his weight backward and Epona—after a moment’s reluctance—slowed.
Ingolf had an arrow sticking out of his brigandine. He pulled it free and looked at the bent point with an expression of mild interest that Rudi had to admire.
“I think it popped a rivet,” he said. “There’s something to this sandwich armor you folks make. I don’t think my old mail shirt would have stopped it nearly so well.”
“It’s a good thing it was long-range, even so,” Rudi said.
Ingolf nodded, then called loudly, so that everyone could hear: “Keep it down to a canter. If your horse gets blown you’re dead.”
Rudi nodded in turn; he was relieved that nobody in their party had been hurt, or wounded beyond the bruise-and-scratch level. But even the best harness didn’t always stop a hard-driven shaft. If the arrow that had banged off his helmet had been three inches to the right it would have punched on through his face and the brain behind it, and he’d have been riding with the Dread Lord on his way to the Summerlands.
Another mile and they could see the ruins of the old Whitehorse Ranch and the wagon laager there. Just north of it the Seffridge Ranch men were skirmishing with the Rovers; the distant twinkle of arrows went flicking through the clouds of dust, and then the longer flash of bared steel as saber and shete and ax swung. War cries came faint with distance, the catamount shrieks of the Rovers and the yipping, whoops and barking, “CORA! CORA!” of the rancher’s men.
“Looks like the cowboys are retreating,” Ingolf said. “Yeah, the Rovers’re trying to work around their flanks.”
Then the scene changed in an instant; most of the enemy pulled out and galloped sou
thwest towards Ru di’s party, warned by the dust plumes and the fugitives from the skirmish at the well. Their rush was led by a standard of two horsetails on a pole. It fluttered in the wind, streaming out with the speed of the sudden at tack. A few remained behind to hold the rear guard as Rancher Brown’s retainers went forward in turn.
“Things certainly change fast in a fight out here,” Rudi said, proud that his voice held nothing but interest.
“Yeah,” Ingolf said, and his mouth quirked up at the corner. “I remember being surprised about that myself. Richland’s like your home territory—lots of trees and ridges and such. But the Red River country is more like this—well, flatter and with grass instead of sagebrush, but the principle’s the same, you know? There’s usually room to run away . . . but not the way we’ve arranged it.”
Rudi nodded. Right, he thought, taking in the field of battle. Between those people in the laager, the hill behind it, us, and Bob’s men, we’re three sides of a triangle and they can’t get out, just like we planned.
“Good,” Ingolf said on his left. “Got ’em boxed.”
“It spares our horses if they come to us, too,” Mathilda agreed.
Only an experienced ear—and a young, keen one—could have picked their voices out of the rumble and clank, creak of leather and rustling chinking clatter of harness, and through the steel and liner of the helm and coif.
Of course, there is one thing . . . Rudi thought, and then spoke aloud:
“Of course, we’ve got people who outnumber us four to one boxed.” He grinned. “But with a military genius on either side of me, what can go wrong?”
Someone male wearing a coif with a flap covering the lower face—which meant Odard—answered: “Well, that’s why you have a fight, isn’t it? To find out what the hell can go wrong.”
Rudi ignored that and went on, louder: “Canter until we’re just out of bow range; then hit them hard.”
Epona had a good smooth rocking-horse motion in a canter, not like some horses that could pound your guts loose with it. He tugged at the strap that held his round shield over his back, brought it around and slid his left forearm into the loops. Then he reached back with his right hand and lifted his lance out of the tubular leather socket, holding it loosely with the point well up; the tapering length of ashwood surged and dipped with the motion of the pace and the streamer fastened below the point began to thutter and snap. Epona tossed her head and snorted again; he could see the great red pits of her nostrils flare through the holes in the chamfron, and she mouthed in eagerness, a little foaming slobber running down the metal and leather of the bridle.