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Hmmm, Rudi thought. He also looks quick as a weasel.
The young warrior nodded soberly at the chief's call, sliding his round shield onto his left arm and taking a two-foot stick from his belt, one with a feather at the end.
"He's toast, itancan," he replied, and rode back along the Sioux column with a whoop.
"Challenger gets choice of weapons," Red Leaf said. "Sorta."
A cowboy spurred out to meet Jimmy. He had a metal-strapped leather breastplate, and a helmet like a steel bowl topped with a horsetail that bobbed and fluttered with the motion of his gallop; there was a letter Q with a diagonal slash through it in white on the dark brown bullhide of his shield. He cased his bow and drew his shete, which showed what Red Leaf had meant by sorta; evidently no bows were used if the challenger started with an impact weapon.
The two horsemen met in the field between the war-bands. Rudi didn't think the life and death of brave men should be just a show.. . but he was a warrior by trade, and it was frustrating not to be able to see the details. The men came together with the combined speeds of their horses, screaming their war cries, and there was a tangle as the Cutter's blade chopped down. Rudi's breath caught for an instant as the shete flashed… and then Jimmy was past, shaking his stick in the air and whooping, and the Powder River man was reeling backwards in the heavy Western saddle, pawing at his face with both hands.
A groan that was half growl went up from the ranch-hands and their patron; the Sioux gave a high shrill cheer-one that contained the banshee Mackenzie shriek, and shouts of Haro!, Richland!, Lacho Calad, Drego Morn! and USA! as well as Father Ignatius' more restrained Good!
Red Leaf gri
"Which is?" Rudi said, his eyes still glued to the two small figures.
" Many Coups. In the old days sometimes they'd just whack someone with a coup stick and leave them to swallow the humiliation, but we're more practical now."
Jimmy Many Coups brought his pony around in a tight circle, dust spurting up from under its hooves. He ducked under a wild swing of the cowboy's weapon-Rudi guessed that the first stroke had been a blinding slash across the eyes-and struck again. The shete pinwheeled away from a broken hand, and the stick jabbed. The cowboy fell. This time it was the Sioux who screamed triumph and led his enemy's horse back with the captured weapons across its saddle, waving the fresh scalp to an admiring chorus from the other Sioux:
"Ohitike!"
"You rock, Jim!"
"Ohan, Many Coups!"
"Dude! That so does not suck!"
The deadly game continued as the sun crept past noon. Father Ignatius punched his opponent neatly out of the saddle with his heavy lance, then dismounted to offer the dying man absolution. Which, to the visible fury of the Sword of the Prophet, he accepted. Rudi nodded to himself; not all the folk the CUT had overrun really accepted its teachings. The Sword troopers kept to their solid disciplined block, but an hour later the Sioux had lost five men and their opponents seven.
Then:
"I'll take this one," Rudi said. Because honor demands it, he thought. We can't let our hosts do all the fighting for us.
Epona turned beneath him, so responsive that he didn't need to conciously think of directing her.
"So, so, my fine lady," he whispered, smoothing a hand down her sleek neck.
Sweat ran on it, and she wasn't as young as she'd been… but she wasn't too tired, either. Rudi guided her past the little two-wheeled cart; it had kept up so far, and Edain was driving it, being the worst horseman in the group.
"Show them how a Mackenzie fights, Chief!" he said.
"I'll show them how the Morrigu wards her own," Rudi replied grimly.
He reached for his sallet helm and settled it on his head. The steel dome had a flare of raven feathers in holders at either side; the helm and the smooth semicircular visor were graven with feather patterns inlaid in niello, and the curve of the visor was drawn down in a point over his mouth like a beak. He'd switched his sword to his right hip, but he used that hand to pick up one of the lances in the wagon bed.
It'll do, he thought, hefting it. Better than trying to use my left; I haven't had enough time to get the memory into the muscle there.
He snapped the visor down with the edge of his shield, and the world shrank to a narrow horizontal slit. Then he tensed his thighs and Epona came up to a canter; he halted in the space between the two bands, tossing the lance up and shrieking the Clan's battle-yell. There was a hesitation; the cowboys had already seen that these twelve-foot lances were something entirely again from the light spears some of them used. Even if they didn't recognize the brigandine that armored Rudi's torso, they could see that he had a knight's four-foot shield, plate shin guards and vambraces, and mail-sleeves and mail covering on the outer sides of the leather breeches he'd pulled on beneath his kilt. Fighting a steel tower on a tall horse was simply outside their experience…
After a few moments one pulled out of the slow-moving crescent mass, coming forward at a hard gallop. The Rancher's man left his round shield over his back and his shete at his belt, but he didn't use his bow either-evidently he was going to stick to the rules that far. Instead he unlimbered the coiled lariat from his saddlebow and held it out to one side, spi
"Well, friend, at least you're being different!" Rudi called.
Epona drifted forward, her long legs moving in an easy canter. Rudi kept the lance sloped up as long as he could; it protected his head from a cast of the rope. Only in the last fifty yards did he bring it down and clamp his thighs tight against the saddle and brace his feet. Both war-parties roared as the horses headed towards each other at full tilt, their combined speed closing at seventy miles an hour. Rudi could see the taut grin on the cowboy's red-bearded face, and the flexing of his greasy leather coat as his right arm moved in wider and wider circles. The foot-long lance-head pointed at his chest didn't seem to bother him at all.
An instant later Rudi found out why. The plainsman threw himself sideways-for a moment the Mackenzie thought he'd jumped out of the saddle altogether, and then he saw that he was crouched down with one knee around the horn.
The spectators roared again, this time in admiration at the feat of horsemanship; the lance-head punched through the space where he'd been, and the cowboy brought himself back into the saddle with a snapping flex of leg and body. Rudi turned Epona with desperate speed as she felt the appeal of his body and pirouetted with a speed astonishing in a horse her size. The noose settled over his head nonetheless, and over his left arm, pi
The lance was already falling as he released it. He grabbed the lariat instead, the braided three-quarter-inch rawhide rope clamped tight in the soft chamois of his gauntlet's palm. Then he set his feet in the stirrups and hauled; Epona reared, adding her weight to the grip. Pain flexed deep in his shoulder despite all the healing, but the cowboy hadn't quite had time to snub the end of the lariat to his saddlehorn.
It ripped through his hands instead, and his horse staggered sideways as the force of the tug was transmitted through the rider's body and the grip of his legs. The man lurched to one side, the easy centaur grace of his seat on the quarter horse destroyed for a moment at the shocking force of it. Then he drew his shete, setting himself. Rudi's shield was on his left arm, the one he used for the sword now; he didn't attempt to juggle the weapons. Instead he pushed in close.