Closer, closer . . .
The Rovers in front rose in their stirrups and drew, those who still had arrows in their quivers. The rest waved their blades and screeched; it made a blinking ripple along their line as the whetted metal caught the sun. Dust smoked behind them in a cloud that hid every thing beyond. They came on fast, to ride over this little band of strangers they outnumbered so greatly, to cut them into hacked meat and return to the real fight with the enemy they knew.
“Morrigú! Morrigú! Charge!” Rudi shouted.
He’d inherited a baritone version of his mother’s voice, and the belling shout carried through the noise of hooves and harness effortlessly as the band responded. In the next instant he used the edge of his shield to snap his visor down.
“Morrigú!”
Black wings vaster than worlds beat at the corners of vision for a moment, and he heard a song like the slow implacable strength of glaciers that grinds rock to dust. The sunlit plain with its sagebrush and patches of white alkali vanished into a world of gloom, lit only by the bright strip of vision through the slit.
His voice sounded like something in a bucket now, lost in the thundering rumble as the horses rocked forward into a gallop. He brought his shield around to cover his body between the rim of his visor and the metal shod arch of his saddlebow. Epona was the fastest here, even if she was carrying more weight than some; lance points came down on either side of him, pennants streaming and snapping backward, then fell to the rear as he forged a little ahead. His comrades turned into a blunt wedge pointed at the shapeless swarm of the Rovers.
Arrows flickered by, half seen. One banged off the chamfron over Epona’s face, startling a snort out of her. Another slammed into his shield, punching through the sheet-metal cover and standing humming in the double thickness of bullhide and plywood beneath. It rocked him back in the saddle for an instant, and felt like a sharp rap with a hammer. The evil quiver of it ran into his hand through the grip.
With it came that little fillip of astonishment you always felt, that someone was trying to kill you. Then everything seemed to slow down, as it usually did in a fight—as if he were in a universe of amber honey, or the floating movements of a dream, with noise and danger and death something infinitely distant.
He slanted the lance down to the level over Epona’s neck where her head pounded up and down with the convulsive effort of her gallop. A man on a pony was just ahead, wide staring blue eyes and a shock of sun bleached blond hair and a young faced spotted with zits, dropping his bow and reaching for the shete at his belt and trying to dodge all at once.
Too late. Rudi clenched thighs and braced his feet, hand and arm clamping his lance against his side at the last instant, putting nearly a ton-weight of gallop ing horse and man behind its narrow foot-long point. Epona swerved on her own to help place that point exactly where it needed to go.
Thud.
The massive impact slammed him back against the high cantle of the war saddle, his whole body feeling as if it flexed like a snapping whip . . . or as if only the armored shell that surrounded him kept parts of him from flying off and his spine breaking in two. The lance head crunched through meat and bone and out the other side of the Rover’s body in a double spray of red and an other from his mouth and nose, flipping him into the air as his pony ran out from under him. There was a drag ging weight for an instant, then a hard crack as the lance shaft split across. Epona stumbled slightly, and gathered herself again.
Rudi clubbed the stump of the lance down on a head shaven save for a roach at the back. Wood cracked, or bone, or both; he couldn’t tell which, but he let the bro ken shaft drop and swept out his longsword. He kept his head moving from side to side; a helmet hurt your pe ripheral vision and one with a visor killed it dead. Something coming at you when you couldn’t quite see it could turn that literal really fast.
Dust and screaming men and wounded horses sound ing like women in a bad childbirth, and a flicker of steel half seen. He brought his shield up and around, slanting it above his head without blocking his vision. An ax filed down from an old tree chopper bounced off its curved surface and he stabbed beneath the shield’s lower edge, across his own body from right to left. The ugly soft heavy resistance meant that the point had gone into a belly, and he twisted his wrist sharply as the speed of the horses dragged it free. The Rover already stank beyond belief of sour milk and rancid butter and old sweat, and the wound added to the smell as he shrieked and fell away.
An enemy to his right cut skillfully at his sword-side leg with a shete while he was occupied, striking hard enough to bruise his calf even through the spring steel greave that covered it, then froze for an instant with his mouth in an O of surprise as the curved slashing blade bounced away, vibrating in his hand and almost cutting into his own horse. Rudi smashed a backhanded cut at the man and sent him reeling away as the heavy knife-edged blade raked his shoulder and arm. A spray of blood followed the yard of edged metal, casting red drops through the air in a looping spray.
“Morrigú!”
Another Rover had been unhorsed and tried to roll under Epona’s belly with a long knife. She used her speed and armored breast to knock him down, and then stamped on him as she galloped over, deliberately and hard. Rudi didn’t have time to pay attention to the popping, crunching crackling sound that followed as the man’s body was caught between those pile-driver hooves and the hard, hard ground, but some part of him knew he’d remember it later. He caught flickers of movement to either side: Rovers going down with lances in the chest or belly, cow ponies bowled over by the mas sive impact of the barded destriers and rolling right over their riders often as not. Then the swords were out, and the charge slowed into a melee.
“Morrigú!” he screamed again, stabbing and hacking and keeping Epona moving. “Morrigú!”
Ugly steel-in-meat sensations flowed up his arm, and the harder crack of an edge meeting bone. Epona aided him with hoof and teeth and battering weight, as if their bodies were one.
“Red Hag! Red Hag!”
A medley of war cries joined his: “Haro! Holy Mary for Portland!” and “Richland!” and “Lacho calad, drego Morn!” and “Face Gervais, face death!” all blending into a single stuttering roar under the sudden scrap-and-anvil sound of battle.
Ingolf’s shete took half a face away, then cut back into a thigh. Mathilda hung back at Rudi’s left, the big kite-shaped shield with its blazon of the Lidless Eye in crimson on black covering her from eyes to ankle, sword moving in economical chops and thrusts at anyone who tried to engage him. Odard slammed his sword into the back of a skull, nearly died as he tried to tug it free, then abandoned it and snatched the war-hammer that hung at his saddlebow and swung it in an arc that ended with a gruesome popping as the serrated steel head struck a rib cage. . . .
Then the standard of the two horse tails was near Rudi. A young man bore it in his left hand and a war-pick in his right—cut down from an old pickax, spike on one side and narrow hammerhead on the other. Beside him was another Rover with a good steel helm shaped like an old-time football helmet, and metal and-leather armor on his body. That and the fine shete in his hand probably marked him as the chief of this band. A red beard streaked with a few strands of gray and powdered with dust fell down his chest. Ritva and Mary came in at him from the other side, one with the sword, the other thrusting overarm with her lance from behind.
The chief banged the lance head up with his shield and cut at the shaft in the same motion, cunningly aiming behind the metal lappets that guarded the wood for a foot below the business end. There was a crack and the top two feet of the weapon went twinkling away. The shete looped up in a backstroke that beat down the other twin’s sword thrust in a shower of sparks, and then the press swept them away. Rudi’s knees and balance set Epona at him; the banner bearer’s horse was in the way, but the destrier’s shoulder set the lighter pony back on its haunches with a thudding smash. The Rover chief pivoted his mount with effortless skill to avoid the ru
sh and come in on Rudi’s unshielded side.
The black wings beat behind Rudi, invisible, more solid than stone and vaster than worlds. He felt as if his blood had been replaced with something that scalded and froze at the same time, like boiling acid. Somewhere an eerie keening wail sounded, and he knew it was from his own throat. The shete floated out towards him, aimed at the vulnerable underside of his jaw. He ducked his head and cut at the Rover’s thigh; the plate of metal-rimmed steerhide shed the blow.
Bang.
The shete glanced off the upper part of his visor, and then slid from the curved surface of his helm. Weight carried it upward, and the long point of Rudi’s sword darted out like a frog’s tongue striking for a fly. It went in under the chief’s armpit, broke the links of the patch of mail there and ran another three inches into flesh.
Behind the wire grid face mask of the Rover’s helm his eyes went wide and shocked at the sudden agony. His shield arm dropped useless to his side. Rudi stood in the stirrups and brought his longsword up and around and back until the point tapped his brigandine over his own kidney, then down with all the lashing power of arm and shoulders and gut. Hard leather and thin metal parted under the knife sharp edge of the heavy blade, and the chief was galloping away shrieking, with blood spouting from the ruined arm that hung by a few shreds of flesh and gristle and armor.
Beside him Mathilda sent the bannerman reeling back with his face laid open and teeth showing through the flap; she let her shield fall by the guige strap and used her freed left hand to wrench the pole with the horse tails away from its wounded bearer, brandish it overhead and throw it down in the dust.
The Rovers were brave men, but they’d never met true heavy horse before; nobody had reinvented it yet in their part of the world. It took them a few moments and more than a few lives before the survivors realized how terribly vulnerable they were to that ironclad violence at close quarters. The sight of their chief’s fall and the loss of the horse tail banner broke them; they turned and scattered, leaving their kin on the ground and a small herd of horses running with empty saddles.
Suddenly Rudi had no targets within arm’s reach; he pushed his visor up with the edge of his shield to gain better vision, and the world opened out before him. His sword sank . . . then rose again with frantic haste at a glimpse of motion behind him, something long and looping spinning through the air.
Epona whirled at the shift in his balance, as cat-nimble as a roping pony at a roundup despite her size and weight. One of the Rovers had used a lariat as soon as he had the room for it. The braided rawhide had settled down around Mathilda’s shoulders, clamping her arms to her sides and her shield to her body. She was half out of her high saddle already as Rudi slashed with reckless speed. The good steel of his sword was still knife-sharp, and the pull of the leather rope kept it taut. He grunted as the weight of the awkward cut leftward and back pulled at shoulder and arm; he had to risk wrenching a muscle to keep from cutting Epona on the neck as he recovered, and the edge did touch the barding lower down.
The Rover didn’t stop, but he was still looking at the severed length of rope when Bob Brown cut him out of the saddle with a sweep of his stirrup hilted saber. His eyes went blank as he slumped and fell.
“Howdy,” Brown said, grinning at the two of them, his weathered face speckled with someone else’s blood. “Do I know you folks from someplace?”
Rudi rested the longsword across his saddlebow and nodded back, panting like a bellows and feeling as if his armor were squeezing him to death; he had been be yond the world for a while, and the return always came hard, hard. The dry air cut the death stink a little, but his gauntlet and steel-clad right arm were running red, and it was soaking into the padded arming doublet below. He slid his shield onto his back by the strap.
The Rovers were scattering for real now, in panic flight and not as a tactic, like beads of mercury under a ham mer; some of them were far enough away already that they were trails of dust turned reddish by the setting sun rather than men and horses. Brown’s men were after them, their quivers refilled from the packhorses, shooting them down as they fled.
“Now, that was one good plan, Mr. Vogeler,” Brown went on.“It actually worked the way you laid it out, which in a fight is somethin’ of a prodigy of nature. You can dance lead any hoedown I’m at, far’s I’m concerned.”
Ingolf shrugged. “Worked the last time I tried it,” he said. “Worked even better this time.” To Rudi: “These western style lancers of yours have real punch, if you can get them into position.”
“I’ll remember that,” Rudi said, as he checked to see that none of his band were badly hurt.
The cowboys definitely had a few down, and more wounded, but they weren’t carrying nearly as much ironmongery as his folk.
It’s needful, he knew, as Brown’s retainers drove their ruthless pursuit to the edge of sight.
We have to frighten the Rovers down to their toenails to make them leave us alone; if the ones still alive aren’t afraid enough, they could try another attack.
It still wasn’t to his taste, any more than finishing off the enemy wounded was. That was needful too; the Rovers weren’t a civilized foe who dealt in ransoms and exchanges, and the hate between them and the settled ranchers farther west was bitter. It was a blood feud; if you let enemies crawl away and heal today they’d kill you or your kin or friends a week or a month or a year or five years down the road.
Odard had dismounted to recover his sword; he limped as he came back to his horse, swearing softly and leaning against its side instead of swinging back up.
“Are you all right?” Mathilda asked her liegeman sharply; she’d unhooked the flap of her coif, and it dangled beside her sweat-wet face.
“Got a whack on the knee from something,” he said, wiping and sheathing his blade. “It’s not broken, but I’m going to buy some plate poleyns after this, and damn flexibility. It’s a good thing those Rovers couldn’t run away, though. We’d never have caught them in a long chase.”
Rudi wiped his own sword clean, carefully making sure nothing was left to get under the guard and rust unseen, then sheathed it with a hiss of metal on leather and a steel-on-steel ting of quillions against the guard at the lip of the scabbard.
Ingolf snorted. “If they’d had time to get their asses in gear and room to run, they’d have pecked us to death like crows mobbing a hawk,” he said shortly. “How would you go about beating eighty men you can’t catch and who can shoot at you from sunup to sundown?”
Rudi’s canteen seemed to be missing; he took Mathil da’s with a grateful nod as she extended it, washed a mouthful around and spit to clear his mouth of the thick gummy saliva. He’d cut the inside of his mouth against his teeth at some point, and he was just now conscious of the sting; the gobbet was tinged with pink. Then he drank deeply of the water, blood-warm and salt-bitter and delicious.
Mathilda was looking a little wide-eyed at the conse quences of their plan, and crossed herself twice. There were nearly three score bodies scattered over the rolling sagebrush plain between the wells and the wagon laager; this was far and away the biggest fight either of them had ever seen. Buzzards were circling overhead already. More would come as soon as the first felt safe enough to glide down; they watched one another for that, and the ripple could bring them in from hundreds of miles away.
He handed the canteen back and gave her armored forearm a slight squeeze as she took it. Their eyes met, and he felt a momentary warmth, as he saw him self thanked God for. Ignatius crossed himself as well, touching his crucifix to his lips afterwards. Rudi could hear him murmuring beneath his breath:
“Ora pro nobis . . .”
One of the twins was near him; she was saying some thing in Sindarin, a Dúnedain prayer of thanks for the shelter of the Lady’s wings and the Dread Lord’s spear. He nodded agreement and added his own silent gratitude.
And men were coming out from the wagons. Rudi saw Edain among them, and broke into a delighted gr
in; Odard nodded calmly to his multitalented manservant Alex. A middle aged man was walking with Edain, and beside him a pretty girl in a dress with a crossbow in her arms.
No, Rudi thought a moment later.
He scrabbled at the chin fastener of his helm with his free hand, pulling the confining weight of the sallet off his head and hanging it from the saddle horn, then tossed his head to let the air at his damp hair; the shock was almost like cold rain, and wonderful.
Not a pretty girl. She’s young, but she’s a woman, and beautiful.
* * * *
Edain waved to Rudi as his chief sat easily with his raven-plumed helm on his saddlebow, looking like the young Lugh as the dry evening wind cuffed at his long red gold hair. His own smile soured just a little bit as he noticed Rebecca staring at the horseman with her jaw dropping slightly and her eyes wide.
Well, that’s not fair or right! he thought, then gave a rueful chuckle. He does look like the young Lugh come again in glory. I look like a farmer who’s good with a bow . . . which is what I am.
“I hope it’s not going to be like this all the way to the coast, Chief,” he called. “That was just a bit more lively than comfortable.”
Chapter Sixteen
Southeastern Oregon
May 15, CY23/2021 A.D.
Two hours after sunset Rudi pushed the beans and salt pork around his plate with the spoon, then made himself eat; you had to, even after a battle. He hadn’t had much appetite, but it was unwise a to be careless of Her gifts. The Saints had buried their own dead, and they were very quiet as they went about their chores; the scents of cooking food competed with the faint iron and sewage smell of spilled blood and violent death, despite everyone’s efforts at cleaning up.