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A jarring thump as he dodged in under a lance-point and cut into the inside of a man's elbow, where there was a gap between the mail on his upper arm and the leather vambrace on his forearm. The man rode on, shrieking and looking in disbelief at the spouting stump where his arm had been.
Rudi whirled away with dark drops spi
Two men coming at him on foot. A thrusting lunge as he ran, and his point went under the brim of a helmet and crunched through the thin bone at the bridge of a nose and crack into a brainpan. His buckler stopped a full-armed cut, the force of it jarring the little shield back until the edge of the shete just touched his shoulder; then the Cutter was staggering off balance and the boss punched back into his jaw, and bone crumbling under it like candy cane in a careless grip…
"Ingolf! Move, man, move!"
Father Ignatius abandoned the sword jammed tight in bone and spurred his horse forward, jerking his war-hammer free where it hung by its thong at his saddlebow. Godfrey's armored shoulder struck the Cutter who'd been about to chop down the dazed-looking man manacled to the yoke, but even in the dimness Ingolf's battered face looked blank and his eyes were haunted pits. The destrier reared and crow-hopped on its hind legs as the cleric slugged it to a desperate halt and wheeled it around.
Then in the midst of the melee the warrior-priest's eyes went wide. Mary Havel was fighting sword-and-shield against a short one-eyed man Ignatius recognized from descriptions, but that wasn't what made him stare.
"Lord of Hosts!" he blurted.
Rudi Mackenzie was coming through the thick of the Cutter press, killing at every second step, eyes showing white all around pupils grown huge, teeth bared in a ululating banshee wail loud even in the clamor of battle. A swordsman staggered back and fell, his pelvis shattered by a kick. Another reeled away with half his face sheared off, hands scrabbling at the impossible wound. An enemy rider struck downward with the horrified desperation of a man finding a scorpion on his chest. Sparks flew in a blue-and-red shower where the Mackenzie's buckler knocked the shete away, and a thrust to the man's armpit sank six inches deep in a snap like a frog's tongue after a dragonfly. That turned into a backhand cut…
Even given surprise and shock the Cutters were tough fighters; he'd seen that in the battle with the Boise army two days ago, and they'd rallied swiftly tonight. Now they began to give way, a first few blundering away in panic, or lashing their horses heedless into the night, others trying to break contact so that they could flee without taking a blade in the back.
Ignatius knew why, and his mind stuttered. A man could strike swiftly, or precisely, or very hard; a little more of one meant a little less of the others, and you had to do the best you could of all three at once. The Mackenzie was moving like moonlight on a waterfall despite all the handicaps of darkness and unknown ground, each blow laid like a surgeon's, each landing with the lashing force that clove mail-links and lacquered bullhide… and then topped a man's head like a boiled egg. He'd seen Rudi fight before, and had been impressed, but that had only been a skirmish. Nothing like…
Like a sighted man among the blind, Ignatius thought numbly. Like some pagan God of war.
Then the fight was over, the survivors of the Cutter force throwing down their weapons and exploding outward in screeching panic. All but one; the one-eyed man landed a cut on the side of Mary Havel's helmet. A sharp bonk rang, and the woman buckled at the knees. The victor raised his shete to kill.
Cra
The shete blow skidded off Rudi's longsword. Strong and skilled, Kuttner cut backhanded at the bigger man's neck. The blow stopped halfway, and the longsword was through Kuttner's body just below the breastbone, two feet of blood-slick steel glistening out his back.
And he smiled, with blood ru
"I-see-you," he rasped.
The voice had nothing to do with the bits of lung he spat out through a laughing mouth. It ground out the words like a mill that minced human bone, and it was gleeful.
"Raven-Son-of-Bear. I-see-your."
Rudi lunged backwards, releasing the hilt of his sword, striking upward with hands bunched between Kuttner's arms in a move skilled and quick and hugely strong. He might as well have struck a statue cast in bronze, and for a moment he froze in goggling surprise as a move he knew had to work failed totally. The blood-covered teeth gri
Behind Kuttner, Ingolf Vogeler moved at last, with the clumsy intensity of an exhausted ox. Staggering, his eyes showing nothing but blind determination and an even deeper hate, he drove the end of the heavy ashwood yoke across his shoulders into the back of Kuttner's head.
Thunk.
Bone crunched, and the walking corpse froze for an instant, but its grip did not loosen. Rudi hammered at wrists and elbows, struck a desperate upward blow with the heel of his hand at the angle of the other man's jaw. Kuttner's head jerked to the side, then turned back at an angle, dangling loose but still gri
But Mary Havel was already coiling up off the ground, her sword held in the two-handed grip and one foot locked around the Cutter's ankle for leverage. The sharp blade landed behind the man's knee, and cut all the way through to the kneecap. He buckled sideways and fell like a tree, taking Rudi with him.
And his hands still squeezed. Ignatius half fell out of the saddle, ru
A panting silence fell amid the latrine-salt-and-copper odors of violent death, with the sound of someone vomiting in the background and a few cries as the Boise cavalry made sure of the enemy wounded. Ignatius looked around, and saw Edain and Mathilda Arminger kneeling on either side of Rudi's limp form. The woman tore off his padded mail coif and pressed on either side of his larynx with the palms of her hands.
"It's not crushed!" she cried, a little shrill with relief.
The Mackenzie coughed, and his eyelids fluttered open. Then he coughed again, deep and racking. Edain offered him a canteen; Ignatius didn't have time to intervene before Rudi sucked at the water, coughed and snorted it out his nose, spat aside and drank more. The cleric released a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
Awareness returned to Rudi's blue-green eyes. "We'd best be going," he said hoarsely. "It's not a spot that seems pleasant to linger in, so."
Rudi and his companions made camp ten miles southward, in a place where two brick walls of a farmhouse burned out a generation ago still made a corner. That let them have a small sheltered fire that couldn't be seen at a distance; they'd sleep during the day and continue by night. They'd managed to get a fair amount of their gear out of Boise, if not the big Conestoga wagon they'd been carrying it all in. Ignatius tended a pot of stew, salt pork with dried vegetables and beans; the dark close-coupled priest was the best camp cook they had. Horses whickered in the darkness from the picket line, and their smell added to the strong scents of sage and sweat and oil and metal and burning greasewood.