The Protectors war

The two Bearkillers stayed in the saddle, but edged their mounts a little farther back into the shade; they were equipped to shoot from the saddle, of course. The others slipped down and dropped their knotted reins-another requirement for the Rangers was the ability to train a horse to stand stock-still without being tethered. Eilir reached over her shoulder for an arrow and stepped behind a tree, checking to see that everyone else had too. Their gear was all green and brown save for their kilts and plaids, and the Mackenzie tartan was the same colors with dark blue and a very little orange added; it made excellent camouflage.

Eilir bared her teeth as the newcomers darted out into the sunlight, ru

All four of the adults had steel collars riveted around their scrawny necks, hastily wrapped in bits of cloth with rough raw spots and calluses beneath. Both couples looked enough alike to be peas in a pod, save that one pair and their children looked Anglo-fair and the other mixed, the man Hispanic of a darker kind, Guatemalan or Mexican.

Eilir's eyes met Astrid's.

Well, this is the sort of thing we made that oath about, she signed.

"Yup. 'Protect the helpless' and I've never seen a clearer case," Astrid replied.

Her dreamy eyes looked thoroughly alert now. "OK, I can hear the hunting horn too and it's not a Bearkiller or Mackenzie one. Those people are out of the Protectorate, or I'm an ore. So are the ones chasing them-who are ores."

Eilir turned to Marcie. Get back to the Mackenzie and tell her we've got trouble. No estimate on their numbers, but we're going to have to cover these people one way or another.

The younger girl nodded, sprang into the saddle and flicked her mount into motion, galloping with her head bent low over its neck.

The refugees looked up; they'd probably heard the sound of the hooves that Eilir could feel as a fading vibration under the leaves and fir needles of the forest floor. They cried out in mindless despair and halted as Astrid rode out into the sunlight. The three clansfolk walked beside her horse, Eilir on her right, Do

"Look, it's OK!" Astrid called; she gestured broadly, calling them forward. "This is Clan Mackenzie land-keep going south, we Dunedain will hold them off!"

The teenager looked more alert than the others. At the clear female voice she darted forward again, breasting the tall grass and weeds with difficulty. The others followed like water through a broken dam; Eilir could smell them when they came closer, a rank feral odor. The children were barefoot, the older girl wore some sort of light shoe and the others had only sneakers-cracked and worn and held together with thongs and rawhide patches-or bundled rags. The darker man had a woodchopping ax in his right hand; he kept it ready as he sidled around them, and his companion likewise gripped a hoe with the head bent forward and sharpened to make a crude spear. The children watched the armed and armored strangers with huge frightened eyes.

Trying to question them would be useless-even if they knew how many were on their tracks, they'd been beaten into mindlessness by fear and exhaustion. It would take hours to get anything coherent. Eilir fought down another surge of anger; one of the children was the same age as her brother Rudi, and they were being hunted with dogs. They cowered at the sight of a sword or bow.

She needed control now. Breathe in. Suck it down into the diaphragm, then let it slowly out to carry away rage and fear and worry. Breathe out. Ground and center, ground and center. The metallic taste in her mouth lessened, and the fluttering under her diaphragm. The buckskin that covered the grip of her longbow drank sweat and stayed steady under her palm.

"Go! Run!" Astrid snapped, and the refugees did, faster than they had, a little hope lending strength to their legs.

"Here come the dogs," she went on, with a tightening of her lips.

The animals were almost as invisible as the pigs had been, and more so than the tiger; just a massive waving in the grass, a glimpse of whiplike tails lashing in the pleasure of the hunt, and tan-and-white patched hides. Occasionally a floppy-eared head came up :

But not all were hounds. Five were huge mastiffs, shaggy gray-furred creatures heavy as men, with long legs and great square heads like barrels-barrels that split open to show wet, yellow teeth like knives. Mastiffs were sight hunters, and these had been trained to follow human prey-to follow and to kill. Now they charged, like hairy orcas rising out of the chest-high sea of grass at every bound.

"Shoot!" Astrid snarled.

She loosed first, having a better vantage point from the saddle. A mastiffs leap turned from a thing of grace to a broken cartwheel, and the young woman reached back over her shoulder for another shaft.

But the dogs were fast. Eilir waited until hers was close, then drew as Sam Aylward had taught her-throwing the left arm forward and matching it with a twist of gut and torso that put all the muscle of her body into the effort as well. She needed that; the stave had been made with Sam's own hands, a birthday present a year ago. It was tillered for her full growth-a war bow and not a hunting tool-with a draw just under eighty pounds. She'd punched shafts through chain mail with it on the practice field.

A smooth breath out as she drew, until the triangular broadhead she'd filed from a stainless-steel spoon touched the riser's arrow shelf, and the kiss ring on the string brushed her upper lip at precisely the right spot.

Hold the draw, until the unseen line met the next leap:

The bow surged a bit as the string snapped against her bracer, but Aylward's bows had little hand shock. The arrow was a flash, a blurred sweet streak that had to meet the white triangle at the base of the mastiff's throat fifty yards away:

Got him! she thought with cold glee, as the big animal somersaulted backward and disappeared. You're not going to tear open any more kids, you son of a bitch.

She was already wheeling and setting another shaft. Kevin had brought his beast down too, a clean hit slantwise from the left shoulder and out at the right hindquarter, the arrow speeding off into the grass after razoring a path through heart and lungs and guts. The mastiff twitched and fell, an almost comical look of surprise in its eyes. Do

Eilir blinked, suddenly conscious of the sweat ru

"Here they come," Astrid said. "I can see riders, and hear them-there goes that stupid trumpet again."

Down! Eilir signed.

"Good idea," Astrid replied. "Look, everyone, we've got to give those people all the time possible-and hope the Mackenzie gets here quick, too. I'm going to try talking. Reuben, you stay back there unless I call you. You may have to cover our retreat."