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He rode with his knees braced high up to keep them from being crushed between his buffalo and the one to the right, leaning forward with the curly mass of the hump inches before his face. If it had been at rest the beast would have bucked him off or crushed him by rolling, and then stomped and gored him in short order. Now it virtually ignored him, intent only on the blind flight that was carrying it northward nearly as fast as a railcar with half a dozen men pedaling madly. The musky smell of it filled his nostrils; he turned his head left and gri
Somewhere deep within his mind a voice wailed, What next?
Right now in this instant of time he was thoroughly enjoying the look on their faces, the lances held as if they simply could not believe they were to be denied that first deep, soul-satisfying stab. And Major Graber had the expression of a man with an insect dancing on his ear-drum and no way to get at it.
Then one of the troopers gave a cry of raw frustration loud enough to be heard even through the thunder of the bison stampede and threw his lance. The weapon wasn't made or balanced for casting, but it landed point-first in the rump of the buffalo bearing Rudi anyway. He pulled his feet up even as the forequarters started to go down and jumped, letting the motion of its body fling him skyward.
No good landings in sight, he thought, a crazed memory of piloting a glider into a wheat field near Portland ru
The buffalo he'd left tripped, and the one behind it rammed helplessly into the prone shape kicking on the ground. Seconds later half a dozen of the beasts were piled in a heaving mound ten feet high, and the stream behind parted on either side of it. Rudi landed with an impact that half winded him; for a moment he was half across the next buffalo, slipping as its pounding motion threw his body down the slick right side, wet with foam from its lungs and slimy with the mud it had made of the dust in the animal's thin summer coat. He locked his hands in the thicker hair on its hump, and then nearly fell as a patch came off in his hands where it was still shedding.
"Dagda's dick!" he swore, the world lurching down towards the pounding hooves.
His feet struck the ground. He ran as he would by a horse when he was doing tricks, bounding, touching down only once every six feet, working his hands into the curls of coarse hair. They cut at his fingers like wire, even through the hard callus, and he made himself relax the death grip a little; he would need all the strength of his hands, if he lived more than a few seconds longer.
Then the animal bawled with a different note than its panting fear. An arrow had struck it not far from where his hands gripped, slanting downward into the hump. He risked a quick backwards look; the Cutters were just barely visible through the dust, and they'd fallen back twenty or thirty yards-enough that they could shoot forward and have some chance of hitting him, if they were very good shots and rode like centaurs.
"The which they do," he snarled.
Blood was leaking down towards his hands. He let his feet hit the ground again, pushing up off the buffalo's hump as he leapt like a high jumper in the Lughnasadh games. To the Cutters it must have appeared as if he'd popped up out of the dust like a man on a trampoline.
This time the soles of his moccasins came down on a buffalo's back, the surface heaving beneath him like an earthquake. He crouched in the same motion and sprang again before the checked leather of his footwear could slip against the slick hide, and landed two beasts over. He let his feet slide apart and came down on his buttocks astride the bison, hands once more sunk in the thick hair on the animal's neck; it stuttered in its stride and crab-jinked, bruising his leg against the beast beside it, but not quite hard enough to do more than set up a ripple in the great flow of animal flesh.
That gave him an instant's time to look back. Graber had managed to get his horse almost level with Rudi, and the lance was in his hand. But thirty feet separated them, an impossible cast with something not meant to be thrown, and with the awkward positioning. Rudi raised his own hand. Instead of throwing the spear the officer of the Sword raised his weapon in what was almost a salute, then turned his horse away to the west.
Leaving me to the tender mercies of tatonka, Rudi thought.
Escaping from the Sword had been one thing. Escaping from the escape was likely to be more difficult…
Because I ca n 't get off while they're ru
The dust was thick in his mouth, even though he wasn't far from the front of the herd; he coughed and spat, coughed and spat, blinking eyes that felt as if ground glass had been rubbed under the lids. Ahead of him the rumps of bison rose and fell, rose and fell, looking absurdly tiny compared to the huge hairy shoulders, but shoving the massive bodies forward with graceless efficiency. And looming up through the dust, a rock-twelve feet of jagged gneiss, one of the bones of the earth that sometimes stuck through the thin skin of the high-plains soil.
Rudi's buffalo was headed straight for it. I'll pour out a bottle of whiskey for you, Coyote Old Man, he thought, raising his legs until they were along the buffalo's back. Just no more of your jokes, now, you hear?
He turned his feet in, frantically trying to dig in with the toes. Then the world shook with a whump as the buffalo struck the rock and staggered sideways; another as it rammed into the animal on that side, which promptly tried to hook its horn into whatever had hurt it. Rudi could feel his stones trying to crawl up into his belly now; the beast he rode was staggering, and there was nothing he could do…
A horse loomed out of the dust, pacing the buffalo; he realized it must have been in the lee of the rock, where the stampede parted around it.
Rick Three Bears rode it, leaning low over the neck as he urged it up to speed, death closing in all around and on his heels.
"Hey, Strong Raven!" he screamed, just barely audible through the cataclysmic noise of a million hooves, his streaming braids framing a wild grin. "Room for two on Big Dog here!"
Rudi waved back the circle of faces as he staggered forward and then collapsed to his knees. A hand held a canteen in front of his face; he drank, spat, coughed, drank more and coughed again convulsively, dust-colored water shooting out of his nose. His stomach heaved with a sick dropping sensation, and he swallowed acid at the back of his throat. When he raised the canteen again, his hand shook so badly that the horn mouth rattled against his teeth.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Ground and center.
He struggled and controlled his diaphragm. Behind him Three Bears was talking:
"Jesus Christ, I've never seen anything like it-we'll have to rename him Rides Mad Buffalo-"
"Rudi, Rudi, are you all right?"
That was Mathilda's voice; he could feel her hands on his shoulders. He concentrated, and her face came into focus, the big hazel eyes soft with concern.
"Anamchara," he croaked, and fell forward into her embrace.
"Are you all right?" she asked, her hands stroking his hair.
Another shuddering breath, and he felt a little control come back. "Apart from feeling like I'm going to puke, the which would be no return at all to you for your care of me, I think I am," he said.
Amazingly, it seemed to be true; he felt stiff and bruised, and he'd be sore as a graze tomorrow-and he had more than a few of those-but nothing was damaged.
Mathilda rose, helping him up. He stood, panting, and took a real drink of the water, giving her a squeeze around the shoulders with his left arm. He held his right out to the itancan 's son, and they gripped forearm to forearm.