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"Get going," Oak grated, cuffing him sharply across the back of his helmet, and heaving the body over the saddle with one lift and wrench. "Now!"
That last charge was a mistake, Eric Larsson thought.
Men in the russet-brown armor of the Sword and the patchwork harness of the CUT's Rancher levies swarmed around him. Blades flickered, rippling in the dying sun as the melee boiled around the stalled Bearkiller wedge.
There's too fucking many of them and they do n 't give up for shit.
He smashed the broken stump of his lance over a man's head and swept the backsword out. Images strobed across his vision, targets and threats, everything else blurred. The sword lashed down on the junction of a man's neck and shoulder. Leather armor parted under the steel and the edge drove halfway to the man's breastbone; muscle and gristle locked around it. He wrenched it back with desperate strength and caught a shete on his shield in the same motion, the curved bullhide booming under the stroke as the horses circled and chopped with hooves and teeth, wild-eyed and as battle-mad as their riders. Something else hit his thigh, but the armor stopped it, and he stabbed into a familiar soft heavy resistance and heard an earsplitting shriek.
He wrenched his mount about and let that motion drag the steel free. Time to go… he looked for his signaler.
"Hakkaa Paalle!"
He didn't know if the war-shout of the Bearkillers came from his own throat or someone else's. A blow came at him out of the corner of his eye, and he whipped the shield around desperately. It was a man with a shaven head, leaking blood from a palm-sized graze where his helmet had been knocked off, his yellow goat-beard bound with golden rings and blue eyes glaring in a face inhuman with a rage beyond all bearing. A stylized wolf's head was painted across his lacquered hide breastplate, some Eastern Rancher's sigil.
"Cut!" he screamed, and struck with a war-pick whose haft was gripped in both hands, the horse moving beneath him as if it were part of his own body. "Cut!"
The long steel beak struck Eric's shield; the awkward angle of it hammered his arm back against him, and the spike punched through, through the shield and the armored gauntlet beneath and into flesh. He'd been wounded before, but the pain was enormous, a cold wash of astonishment that paralyzed him while the man wrenched the weapon free and stood in the stirrups for the killing blow. For a confused moment he saw something, a horse and a shield and a shining spear.
St. Michael- he thought. Warrior saint, aid "Hakkaa Paalle!"
This time he knew it wasn't him yelling; all he was capable of shouting right now was Jesus, that hurts! And thankful it wasn't Mother, help!
Bright metal speared across the side of the goat-bearded man's throat from behind; it carried the Outfit's ba
Eric let the ruined shield slide off his arm, but the jarring sent fresh waves up it and into his gut and balls, like a tooth being drilled but all over his body; the sword slipped from nerveless fingers. Then his own son Billy was there, an arrow drawn to the ear as he galloped past, perfect form with the recurve a single smooth C.
Thunk.
The bodkin punched into the side of the man with the war-pick, so deeply that the gray feathers were all that showed. Billy Larsson brought his horse up in a rearing halt; the beast pivoted like a cow pony despite the weight of an armored rider, and he snaked out the bow to catch at the reins of Eric's horse.
"The Mackenzies are out!" he shouted. "Let's go!"
"Sound retreat!" Eric snarled.
It was necessary. He still didn't like it.
Eric Larsson watched as the bodies were lifted onto the railcar. It was nearly dark, but flames underlit pillars of foul-tasting black smoke with flickering red where pyramids of boxed supplies had been torched to keep them out of enemy hands. A dozen Mackenzies were fitting their bicycles into the slots in the light-alloy car's surfaces, ready to pedal it up to speed, faster than anything a horse could do and far more enduring.
Others were already underway, stretching off towards the northeast along the rusty steel rails until they were moving dots against the flare of sunset. The CORA men and the bulk of the Bearkillers were a column of dust to the southwest, pulling back towards Bend and the passes of the Cascades.
"Mind if I hitch a ride?" Eric said, cradling the mass of bandages that was his left hand against his chest.
Every time he took a step, it was as if invisible cords inside the arm were stretched out and scraped with knives, all the way up his shoulder and into his chest. He knew a flicker of pride at the steadiness of his voice, but he certainly wasn't in any shape to get out of here on horseback.
Or anything else that requires more than lying on my back and whimpering.
The man overseeing the loading looked up; it was Chuck Barstow's foster son Oak. Smears of dried blood across his face looked black in the fading light, leaving his blue eyes like jewels of turquoise set in jet.
"Sure, and you're welcome, a hundred thousand welcomes," he said. "We'd none of us have made it out if you hadn't held them until we broke contact."
Eric waved the others forward; Billy was there, nothing but scrapes and bruises, memories of horror warring with the exhilaration of realizing By God, I'm alive! on his face. He was helping Mike Jr. along; the boy still had the broken shaft and the blood-clotted Bearkiller ba
"Oh, shit," he said, looking down at Chuck Barstow's still face, relaxed into an inhuman calm beneath the blood; someone had closed his eyes. "I didn't realize-"
"He died well," Oak said, his voice harsh despite the musical lilt. "And he'll have company beyond the Western Gate before the last thread of this is woven!"
Chuck Barstow stood and breathed. For a long moment the sheer wonder of that was enough; and the air was like all the Willamette springs he'd ever loved, and warm scented summer nights amid the fields and the long wistful mornings of Indian Summer and a crisp autumn evening with the leaves blowing yellow about his feet thrown in. He was naked, but the feel of the grass on his bare feet was like a caress, and the forest floor was thick with white fawn lily and blue camas. Douglas fir towered over him, as majestic as redwoods, dropping their deep resinous scent into the still dim air. There was a thrill to it all, an eagerness for the day that he'd lost long ago bit by bit without even noticing it.
Motion drew his eyes. There was a meadow ahead, hints of color and gree
The woman was Judy; as he remembered her from that first meeting, solid in her festival robe and three-colored belt, and beautiful. His own eyes went wide with alarm.
"No," she said, smiling at him, that smile that had made him feel like a boy on his first date for thirty years of marriage. "Time's different here. You came first, but I've been waiting."
He nodded. Somehow that made sense. The wolf made an impatient wurrrff sound and jerked its nose towards the meadow where light shimmered on flowers of gold. Judy extended her hand.