A Meeting at Corvallis (40 page)

“Epona!” he shouted, trying to make his will into a dart, the way his mother had taught him. “Home, Epona.
Home! Go home!
”

The horse came down and turned in the same motion, bounding forward with that astonishing jackrabbit leap she had, going from a standstill to a gallop in less time than it took to draw a breath. Four of the men shot at her; three missed, and one bolt scored across her withers just as she turned the corner and vanished back eastward on the road to Dun Juniper. Hands grabbed at his hair. Rudi drew his dirk and slashed back and up. The keen edge hit flesh; he could feel it part under the steel, and a man swore: “Jesus, the little bastard cut me!”

Christians,
Rudi thought, rolling erect and kicking his feet free of his loosened plaid. He felt calm somehow, and everything was very slow, like swimming underwater in the pool by the mill. More closed in on him, grown men, with hoods and masks of the same mottled cloth as their jackets and pants. The others laughed at the man clutching a slashed arm, with blood leaking from between his fingers.
Not bandits. From the Protectorate.

“Watch out, the little fuck's quick as a snake!” the wounded man growled; he was thickset and bearlike, with a fringe of reddish hair over hazel eyes.

“Don't you hurt him!”
Mathilda screamed, and a woman's voice answered:

“Take him alive if you can.”

“Aoife! Liath!
Danger!
” he shouted—once, and darted a thrust at a slim olive-skinned man advancing with his arms spread wide to grab.

The man-at-arms grunted as the point took him in the belly, but there was mail under the jacket, and the hand that closed on his wrist was quick and troll-strong, twisting the knife out of his grasp. Rudi kicked—neatly, the way he'd been taught—but his toe hit a box protector and produced only a pained grunt, not a scream. Then a hard hand clouted him on the side of the head, and everything went gray and remote as he slid to the ground, not quite unconscious but not connected to the world. A pad of cloth went over his mouth, fastened with a strip of priceless duct tape, and another twist pinned his wrists in front of him.

“Gutsy little prick,” someone muttered. Then a woman's voice: “Joris! Enguerrand! Two horses coming!”

Aoife and Liath came around the corner; they'd slowed back a little way as they saw Epona dashing by riderless, but they were galloping now, screaming war cries. Liath was two horse lengths ahead, with her battle spear held overarm; she threw it just before three crossbow bolts hit her mount in the chest. The heavy stabbing weapon wasn't designed to be used that way, but the range was short, and it had the momentum of a galloping horse behind it as well as the strength of her arm.

A dark-skinned man jerked his left arm up diagonally across his breast, as if he was used to having a knight's long kite-shaped shield on it. The solid length of ashwood and metal struck him in the chest, the twelve-inch steel head punching in with an ugly dull, wet thudding
smack
sound, through cloth and mail, flesh and bone. He flew back and landed, kicking, blood spraying red from his mouth and nose but already dead. The young woman's horse fell in the next instant, screaming itself. That gave her just time enough to slide her feet out of the stirrups, hitting and rolling in a tumble of spilled arrows; her bowstring parted too as the six-foot yew stave slung diagonally across her back caught violently on a root with a strong, unmusical
snap
. Her horse came down with its neck outstretched, and the greenstick sound of its neck breaking cut the huge scream of bewildered terror off with the abruptness of a knife slicing a taut rope.

Aoife managed to get her horse to jump before it ran into the rope, but the rest of the raiders were too close for her to use her bow, and the animal was crow-hopping in near panic. She drew her sword instead, her left hand stripping the buckler off the sheath, slugged her mount's head around until it pointed directly at Rudi and the man standing over him, and booted the horse into motion. The man dodged aside, not quite quickly enough, and drew his own blade; there was a flash and a rasp of steel, and he staggered back with his hands clapped to his face as one of his comrades closed in on the mounted warrior. Liath had shaken off her fall in seconds and was on her feet as well, fighting the other two men left, a skirling crash of steel on steel and desperate gasps of effort as she backed and they tried to get behind her.

“Oh, by the saints!” the woman's voice he'd heard before snapped. “Will you clowns just
kill
them? Do I have to do
everything
myself?”

Rudi felt as if his eyes weren't under his control; as if he was watching everything on
teevee,
like the old stories, small and distant and not quite real. Even his feelings seemed distant. All that was left was facts. The woman who'd spoken stepped into view; she was dressed like the men, with her sword slung across her back, and she held a crossbow—an odd-looking one, like the black skeleton of the weapon he was used to, and with a telescopic sight mounted on it.

She shot once, and Aoife's horse stopped in the middle of a bugling neigh, with the dark fletchings of the crossbow bolt standing right behind one ear. The Mackenzie warrior managed to kick her feet free and land standing as the horse collapsed like a puppet with cut strings, but the northerner stood unconcerned, turning a crank handle built into the crossbow and slipping another silvery bolt into it, then aiming with quick grace.

Tung!

The bolt took Liath squarely in the back, punching through the brigandine and the spine beneath. She collapsed backward beneath the arc of a sword's blade that would have taken off half her face, landing limp and wide-eyed. Blood bubbled out of her mouth when she tried to scream.

“Go watch the pathway,” her killer said, and set the crossbow down, drawing her sword instead, and a long knife with a basket hilt in her left hand, smiling faintly. “All of you! Shoot anyone who comes down it, but be
quiet
.”

And as she saw Liath fall, Aoife gave a high, wailing screech and charged the woman who'd shot her friend. The Protectorate fighter met her with sword held high and knife low, and then they were whirling in a rage of flickering steel, cut and thrust with the lengths of razor-edged metal sparking in the forest gloom as they met and clashed and sparked. Aoife's face was bone white, her eyes gone dark as the pupils expanded to swallow the iris, and her teeth showed in a rictus-grin of frenzy.

“Morrigú!”
she screamed, transported and possessed, face twisted into a Gorgon mask.
“Morrigú!”

The Black-Winged One
was
with her. Aoife wouldn't have been assigned to guard him if she wasn't good, but now sword and buckler moved with a speed and power beyond anything she'd shown before. The woman from the Protectorate gave ground smoothly before the frenzied attack, moving with a fluid dancer's grace that reminded Rudi of something—

Astrid,
he realized, his thoughts still muzzy and slow and distant.
She moves like Aunt Astrid.

Fine swordswoman that she was, Aoife couldn't have stood for more than a few moments before Astrid Larsson,
Hiril Dúnedain
. The Crow Goddess gave her strength and speed to drive the stranger back for a dozen paces. Then a root caught at her foot, the winter-softened moss on it coming loose beneath the hobnails, leaving streaks of raw white sapwood amid the black. The stranger struck like sudden summer lightning, as if she'd known and planned for the misstep. The long knife in her left hand blocked Aoife's shortsword and locked at the guard; she ducked her shoulder into a blow with the buckler aimed at shattering her jaw, and stabbed downward neatly with the sharp point of her sword. It sliced into the clanswoman's inner thigh below the edge of her brigandine, through the wool of the kilt and deep into the flesh. She twisted it, withdrew and cut backhand with the knife at Aoife's neck in the same motion, scoring her savagely just above the mail collar, below the angle of the jaw.

Aoife staggered forward two more paces and collapsed; the blood flowed with a bright arterial pumping that showed the wounds were mortal.

“Joris, Ivo, get the horses, all of them!” the victor snapped, and men dashed off. “Ruffin, can you ride?”

The man whose arm Rudi had cut looked up, his teeth clenched on a bandage he was tightening around his forearm. The slash had bled spectacularly, but the canvas sleeve of his jacket had taken most of what force Rudi could put into the blow, and the wound wasn't serious. He nodded, making an inarticulate grunt, then managing:

“'s not deep. Just bleeding like a stuck hog.”

The woman nodded back, and stepped over to the man whose slashed face bore the mark of Aoife's sword. He was on the ground, one eye sliced open and blood leaking between the palms he had pressed to the side of his face.

“You
can't
ride, Enguerrand,” she said. “Do you want to be left for the kilties, or—” And she showed him the sword.

He started to shake his head, gave an awful bubbling moan, and then tilted his head back and to one side. One hand scrabbled in the dirt, and he brought a clod to his lips; Rudi recognized the rite, a symbol of his desire to receive communion and his unworthiness to do so.

“God witness it's his wish and none of mine,” the woman said formally, looking at her men; there were three left on their feet, two holding leading-reins with four horses on each.

“You're free of blood-guilt, Rutherton,” the man she'd called Joris said formally; his mask was down and revealed a pointed yellow beard and heavy-lidded blue eyes. “Any one of us would ask the same, or do it if they were commander.”

The others nodded. She set the point of the sword behind the crippled man's ear and pushed with a hard lunge of arm and shoulder; the man's body flexed once in a galvanic shudder and went limp. A flap of cheek peeled back when his hand fell away, showing a grin red and white. Then the woman stood and turned and looked at Rudi. Her eyes were gray, pale and cold as glass.

Mathilda was off her horse and in front of Rudi in a single scrambling rush. “No!” she said shrilly, spreading her arms. “You can't hurt him, Tiphaine! We're
anamchara
! Blood-brothers. I'll have right of vengeance against anyone who hurts him, all my life! I'm gonna be Protector someday and I'll remember!”

Tiphaine Rutherton seemed to sense the men behind her looking at each other in doubt—that was a credible threat to anyone who knew how stubborn Mathilda could be—and made an exasperated sound between her teeth. Before she could move, Mathilda's knife was out, and she pressed it to her own throat—hard enough that a trickle of red blood started down the white skin as she swallowed convulsively.

“If you hurt him, I'll
kill
myself! I swear it by God and the Virgin, and then you'll have to explain to Mom and Dad and His Holiness how come I'm dead and in Hell for suicide!” Mathilda said with desperate earnestness. “Not just now! If you hurt him later, I'll do it!”

Rutherton stopped as if she'd run into a stone wall; she stared into the girl's eyes for an instant, saw a bright focus of intent.

“Princess, I'm not planning on hurting him,” she said gently. “My orders from your mother are to take him alive if possible. But to do that I have to restrain him, because now we have to run for our lives and we can't have him slowing us down. You understand?”

Mathilda swallowed, nodded and brought the knife down. Tiphaine turned her head.

“Well, what are you all waiting for, the kilties to arrive? Ivo, get the brat over a horse.” To Mathilda: “This is just to keep him quiet, Princess. I won't hurt him now; on my honor as a warrior of the Association.”

Something stung Rudi in the cheek of one buttock as hands heaved him over a saddle and lashed him to it with leather thongs. His head felt as if it were spinning down a whirlpool, with the world upside-down. He saw Aoife twitch as she tried to crawl; the blond woman who'd killed her bent for a moment, grabbing her by the collar of her brigandine and dragging her closer to Liath's body. Then everything contracted to a point of light and went out.

Waldo Hills, Willamette Valley, Oregon
March 5th, 2008/Change Year 9

L
ord Piotr Stavarov lowered his binoculars and scowled. “Are those scouts back yet?” he asked.

“Yes, my lord,” Sir Ernaldo Machado said. “They report no enemy presence on the right. There are light screening forces in the woods to the left, although not all the scouts are back from that area yet. The glider couldn't see any of them except
those
.”

He pointed to the band that blocked the road ahead. Stavarov gritted his teeth; they were excellent teeth, white and even, in a handsome, regular young snub-nosed, high-cheeked face. He knew he was young for this post…but the Stavarovs and their followers had backed Norman Arminger in his initial grab for power in Portland, less than ten days after the Change. He'd been sixteen then, and he could remember his father's relief and excitement that
someone
offered a way out. And now he was out from under the thumb of that scar-faced lout Renfrew.

Though, to be fair, at least he isn't as much of a pussy as most of those Society retreads.

He raised the field glasses. The Protectorate force was halted in column on the road, blocks of bicycle-mounted spearmen and crossbowmen and supply wagons, the two hundred infantry sitting motionless on their cycles, flanked by two mounted columns with fifty knights and men-at-arms each. The pennants on their lances snapped in the morning breeze, and the same wind poked trickles of grateful cool through the mail of his hauberk and the padded gambeson beneath.

There aren't enough of them to hold us,
he thought, looking at the Mackenzie force.

There were a hundred of them, barely enough of them to block the road between the hills on either side; fifty with spears or polearms—what the kilties called Lochaber axes, broad arm-long slashing blades that tapered to a point and had a hook on the reverse. Swung two-handed, the six-foot weapons could cut right through mail just as well as a glaive or halberd; best to remember that. Another fifty of their archers to the west of that, thrown forward along the edge of the low scrub-grown hills that had been pasture once and were head-high brushwood and thorn now. It was a good position, but they didn't have the numbers to stop his men, and if they broke his lancers would hunt them like game. Odd, you'd usually expect a lot more longbows in a Mackenzie formation, from what the briefing papers said….

And under the banner, there was a figure in plate armor enameled green, not the brigandine and kilt the Mackenzies usually wore. Piotr's lips skinned back from his teeth.

The Lord Protector has a serious hard-on for Sir Nigel Loring after the way he betrayed him last year. It won't do me or the family any harm at all at court, if I bring him the Englishman's head. Maybe another fief? There's good wheatland out by Pendleton, or perhaps around here after the war…

“Nothing much on the left?” he said, swinging his glasses eastward.

The hills there were higher and steeper than the low, rolling ground on the westward side of the road, the crests better than a hundred and fifty feet above him. The rising face on their north slope was also heavily wooded with oaks and alders, Douglas fir and western hemlocks, all big trees planted long before the Change. The edge where the patch of forest met the abandoned fields was thick with saplings and bramble and thorn and Oregon grape. It was like a wall along the edge of the forest, and he couldn't see far into the depths beneath the big trees. Presumably there was a lot less undergrowth in their shade; farther out towards him the open ground was covered with nothing more than green grass knee-high on a horse, kept free of brushwood by a fire last summer. Good open ground where his troops could use their superior discipline and formation.

I wish they'd put some of their bare-ass miniskirt militia there,
he thought.
Still, I can't expect them to be
that
stupid.

“Nothing on the left as yet, my lord. As I said, not all the scouts have returned from that direction.”

“Probably still sniffing around the road on the other side,” Piotr said. “Let's get going. All three columns are supposed to be over the Santiam by nightfall. Speed is why we're traveling in separate bodies.”

A hesitation. “My lord, shouldn't we wait for the Grand Constable and his escort to get back?”

Piotr felt himself flush, hot blood darkening his skin from the mail collar of his coif upward. “Count Odell is in overall command, but I'm in charge of this column!” he snapped. “Do you dispute that, Sir Ernaldo?”

“No, my lord,” he said dutifully. “We can make them scatter from beyond bowshot, if we set up a couple of the catapults.”

Piotr shook his head. “That would delay the march for hours. We should be able to reach the Santiam today, that's the objective.”

“My lord, their archers are good. And a solid line of spearmen and halberdiers is no joke. We only outnumber them by three to one on this field, and we'll be the ones attacking. It will cost us.”

Piotr made an impatient gesture. “Yes, yes. But there aren't enough of the rabble to hold us up, and we can afford the losses more than they. Spearmen are easy enough to replace.”

“Still, we could work men over the hills to either side. Then they'd either have to withdraw or be surrounded.”

Piotr considered, then shook his head. “We'll have to fight them sooner or later anyway. They're obviously here to delay us while their militia gets mobilized. I won't risk a destrier's legs on them, though. Send in the foot. Spearmen on the left, centered on the roadway. Crossbows on the right; they should be able to drive off half their number of bowmen. Lancers to hold themselves ready for pursuit.”

Piotr smiled at the thought. Once they turned their backs on mounted lancers, foot soldiers were so much meat to be shishkebabbed. Some of them might get away if they ran up into the forested hills, but most would probably just panic and try to escape and bolt down the road leading southward. His knights and their
menie
of men-at-arms would spear them from the saddle as if they were wild boar. He reached back to pull the padded weight of his mail coif over his head, fastening the lower part across his chin, then snapped his fingers. His squire rode forward to be ready with helm and shield and lance.

Juniper Mackenzie hugged the tree and peered around its trunk; the dark furrowed bark of the Douglas fir was rough under her free hand. The branches were thick with blunt, thin-stalked needles an inch long, green and whitish on the underside. Twigs of the same breed had been thrust through the loops that made her war cloak shaggy, turning her into a part of the forest; the strong resin smell of the sap was heavy in her nostrils, and it made sticky spots on her gloves. More needles obscured her vision when she leveled the binoculars, for the branch she stood on was fifty feet up on the pillar-shaped trunk. The column of Protectorate troops shifted as she watched, the spearmen and crossbowmen dismounting from their cycles and quick-stepping forward, spreading out from a thick marching column to a four-deep line as they moved. The black-and-scarlet banner of the Lidless Eye swayed from the crossbar as the line came on down the road to her left, edging out into the fields to overlap the knot of Mackenzies waiting where the road ran between the two hills. That would put them in a broad, shallow V, this forest on the east, the western flank low hills covered in thick scrub you couldn't move through without hacking a pathway.

Her stomach knotted. Those were her friends and neighbors and clansfolk waiting on the road to lure the Protector's men forward. And leading them was Nigel Loring. It made sense—he had his suit of plate armor, and he was an experienced commander—but she still didn't like any of it.

On the other side of the tree, Sam Aylward was watching as well. “Taking the bait,” he said quietly, his deep, slow voice calm. “At least the first bite of it. Impatient bugger, 'ooever's in charge—good thing Eilir and Astrid drew Renfrew off. Now things get lively.”

That was a curiously antiseptic way of talking about people dying, but every trade had its jargon.
And it's a business I'm in, like it or not,
she reminded herself.

“I'd better get down and help things along,” Aylward said stolidly. “Remember, Lady—only if they send in the lancers. Otherwise, we all just sod off on our bicycles.”

“Yes, teacher,” Juniper said, and gave the older man a smile. Then more seriously: “Merry meet, and merry part—”

“And merry meet again,” he replied, giving her a thumbs-up.

Then he reached out for the rope that was fastened to a branch above their heads, took an expert half hitch around his blocky armored torso and slid swiftly downward, landing as lightly as a man stepping out of his own home. Even knowing who was where, she was a little surprised when three figures rose and followed him, trotting silently between the great trees. That was reassuring. If
she
couldn't see them, it was unlikely their foemen could.

She looked back out over the open field. The lancers were in a single block a hundred strong now, waiting, a flashing ripple above their heads as the honed steel moved and caught the sun. The Protectorate foot soldiers double-timed forward.

The spearmen broke into a trot as they approached, their booted feet hitting the broken asphalt in a uniform pounding thump that Nigel Loring could feel through the soles of his steel shoes, their mail coats jingling and clashing as the skirts swirled around their legs. The enemy crossbowmen were fanning out west of the road; they and the archers would be occupied with each other. This would be edged metal at arm's length. Not everyone had the eyesight or inclination to make a good archer, even among Mackenzies.

“Haro!”
the enemy shouted.
“Haro! Portland! Molalla!
Haro!”

They came with their big kite-shaped shields up under the eyes that glared from either side of the helmet nasal bars, the front rank holding their spears underarm, the second and third raised in an overarm stabbing grip, the ones behind slanting theirs upward; they'd add weight to the attack with their shields pressed against the backs of the men in front.

“Ready!” Nigel called to the men around him.

It was mostly men, in the front rank, you needed a fair bit of weight and heft to swing a Lochaber ax, or the war-hammers or broadaxes some of the others carried. He swung his visor down with the edge of his shield, and the day darkened to a single slit of light through the bucketlike steel dome of his sallet.

“On the mark…
now!
”

They surged forward with a shriek, whirling their huge polearms up to the ready position. Nigel strode forward with them, his own shield up and his longsword held over his right shoulder with the hilt forward and the point back. Others followed behind them with spears ready to stab over their shoulders or around them. It was best not to let the enemy charge strike home while you stood still.

Closer, closer, oiled mail and black shields and whetted iron reaching for his life—

A spearpoint flashed towards his eyes. Sir Nigel Loring caught the ugly glint of sunlight on honed steel as it drove at the narrow slit of his visor and ducked his head; the twelve-inch blade scored a groove across the smooth enameled metal of his sallet helm, a painful thumping blow even with the steel and padding, but then the dangerous point was past. He snarled behind the face-covering combination of visor and bevoir and cut over the top of his shield, aiming at the man's neck. The spearman's eyes went wide with alarm, and he raised his own shield and ducked, slapping sideways with the shaft of his spear. The ashwood bounced off the side of Nigel's helmet, staggering him; his own sword struck wood and metal, not vulnerable flesh. Then the hook on the reverse of one of the Lochaber axes snagged the enemy's shield and yanked him forward. He came with it, attached by his left arm in the loops and by the leather
guige
attached to the shield that ran over one shoulder like a bandolier. A spearpoint eeled past Nigel and stabbed the Protectorate soldier in the face, not a killing blow but enough to break teeth and bone and make him stagger back, shrieking.

Nigel recovered, catching a spearpoint on his shield and then throwing the man behind it back by tucking his shoulder into the curve of it and pushing with all his weight. An ax flashed past him and broke a man's shoulder; he stabbed at another's face and gashed open a cheek. He panted to draw air into lungs that seemed stiff and dry and reluctant to move. The clamor around him was enormous, a white-noise cataract of screams and shouts, trampling, weapons beating dully on shields and with a harsh scrap-metal clangor on the steel bucklers of the Mackenzies, and now and then the dull thudding of edged metal ramming home in meat and bone.

He slid forward, hooked his heater-shaped shield inside a spearman's bigger kite-shaped one and heaved it aside with a twisting wrench of body and shoulder and arm. The man's eyes went wide with fear as he was dragged off-balance, and the spear in his right hand was far too long to strike at close quarters like this. The Englishman's longsword punched up under the Protectorate soldier's chin; the man convulsed as the long point rammed through his mouth and brainpan. Nigel grimaced as he yanked it free and bowled the man over, sending him backward to disrupt the others. Three more spearheads probed for him; he caught one on his shield, but the other two glanced off his breastplate and the fauld that protected his right thigh. The suit of plate wasn't invulnerable, but it gave him a terrible advantage.