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It was a risky thing to do even for a rider of her skill, especially in armor, and for an instant she felt herself begin to slip towards the earth dashing by at thirty miles an hour beneath her before a desperate wrench of straining thigh muscles brought her back upright. The horses flashed past each other as her left foot found the stirrup again; as it did she turned in the saddle, the cord coming to the angle of her jaw as she drew against the heavy resistance of wood and horn and sinew. The lancer was pulling up, screaming a curse as he tried to get his mount around and to turn the long point of his shield behind him to cover his back, but the same weight and momentum that put terrible power behind a lancehead made a galloping destrier hard to turn. Shield and weapon, mount and rider were locked into a drive forward behind the narrow steel point.
Even with the combined velocities of the two horses she was less than twenty yards behind him when she shot. Snap of the string on the bracer, a flash of fletching and pile-shaped bodkin head, and the arrow struck the knight's hauberk over the kidney. It broke the links of the riveted mail and sank three-quarters of its thirty-inch length into his body with a solid, punching impact, a dull thudding sound audible even over the thunder of scores of hooves and the screaming of men, the shrill calls of horses, the low, deep bellowing of oxen. He shrieked again, wordlessly this time, dropping his lance in reflex and then toppled leftward to the ground, dragging with one foot tangled in the stirrup until his warhorse came to a halt, looking back to see what it was that tugged so at its harness. Asfaloth braked to a halt, rearing and turning in her own length.
"Lacho calad! Drego morn!"
That was Eilir's party, dashing in at the gallop from northward along the road. Eilir herself was silent of course, but she was the first to throw her Molotov cocktail on a load of massive timbers; it was a quart glass bottle with its neck wrapped in oily cloth that gave off a long, thin line of black smoke as it smoldered. Glass shattered, and the sticky fluid within spurted out, caught fire and burned as it dripped and spattered over the dry Douglas fir wood. The flames were a fierce red-orange; the stuff was made of gasoline and laundry soap and rubber dissolved in alcohol and turpentine, until it had the consistency and stickiness of thin honey. More arched out as her team of six dashed down the line of wagons. By the time they'd pulled up near the wrecked bridge, pillars of smoke and fire were begi
All that came out of the corner of her eye in an instant. If there was one thing in all the world she was certain of, it was that she didn't need to check on Eilir doing her part.
Astrid's eyes flicked over the action nearer her as Asfaloth's forehooves touched down again. Alleyne's man was down with a stub of broken lance-shaft sticking from his chest. Two of her Dunedain riders were down likewise, dead or crippled, with their horses ru
She'd learned combat from Sam Aylward and Mike Havel. The rest of the Dunedain ru
The fighting was over in moments, with only a whimpering left that ended as steel was carefully driven home. A dozen or so of the laborers ran up to her, brandishing their bloodied tools or weapons snatched from the fallen Protectorate troopers. She stood in the saddle and held a hand up; beside her Alleyne raised his visor with a red-splashed steel gauntlet.
"Silence!" he shouted. Quiet fell. "Listen to the Lady of the Dunedain."
"Or listen to this," John Hordle said, hefting his great sword.
The workers were rebels, but they'd lived in the Protectorate for a long time-half their lives for most of them, from their looks. They were used to obeying armored men.
Astrid went on quickly, with the growing crackle and roar of the burning timbers in the background: "There will be soldiers here soon. We have to get you to safety. Cut the oxen loose from the harness, take as much food as you can carry, and weapons, and nothing else and follow."
They scrambled to obey, pulling sacks of hardtack and beans and flitches of bacon and strings of dried sausage and blocks of cheese off the supply wagons, loading them onto their own backs or the bicycles of dead crossbowmen; the more alert stripped the weapons and gear from the enemy fallen, and drove the oxen into wild, stampeding flight with shouts and spear-prods. Dunedain guides divided the labor gangs into parties of twenty or thirty and led them away quickly, up into the trackless hills. Her riders went after the enemy horses with their lariats.
And we must give the mercy stroke to any of the workers who are badly wounded, she thought; there were enough horses to get the hurt Dunedain out, but that was all. It would be no kindness to let them fall into the hands of the yrch again.
Astrid herself rode down to the edge of Puddle Creek, reining in beside Eilir.
They didn't seem inclined to shoot at us, Eilir signed, resting her bow across the saddle in front of her and nodding across the creek and the wrecked bridge. So I didn't see much point in provoking them.
"Right," Astrid said.
The Pendleton mercenaries were back, but the swift water was too deep on this spring day to cross easily, and the bridge was a tangle of twisted metal like some monstrous dish of ferrous pasta littered with whole dead oxen. They might try to get the two wagons on the far side away, but Eilir's group had carefully shot a couple of draught-beasts in each team. John Hordle came up with a dozen arrows clutched in his great right hand; each of them had a wad of napalm-soaked cloth just behind the head, the scent sharp and mineral under the fug of blood and smoke.
"Thought you'd want to do the honors, luv," he said, offering one to Eilir.
The mercenaries' scar-faced leader reined in on the other side of the river, within easy bowshot, but with a white rag tied to a light spear.
"Neat job," he called, laughing. "You're that Astrid they told us about, aren't you? Or are you the deaf one? I'm Hank Bauer, Sheriff of Lonerock."
"I am Astrid, Hiril Dunedain," she called coldly. "Lady of the Rangers. This is Lady Eilir."
Sheriff was equivalent to baron, in the country east of the mountains. And Rancher usually meant lord or knight, pretty well, with cowboy filling in for man-at-arms.
He chuckled. "You are one mean pair of killin' bitches, I've got to give you that. The big fellah there's no slouch either, I'd guess, or the guy in the fancy armor. Pleasure to meet y'all."
"Leave this country, Sheriff Bauer, you and all your men, or you will leave your bones here. Go home to your own land and your families."