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Aoife staggered forward two more paces and collapsed; the blood flowed with a bright arterial pumping that showed the wounds were mortal.
"Joris, Ivo, get the horses, all of them!" the victor snapped, and men dashed off. "Ruffin, can you ride?"
The man whose arm Rudi had cut looked up, his teeth clenched on a bandage he was tightening around his forearm. The slash had bled spectacularly, but the canvas sleeve of his jacket had taken most of what force Rudi could put into the blow, and the wound wasn't serious. He nodded, making an inarticulate grunt, then managing:
"'s not deep. Just bleeding like a stuck hog."
The woman nodded back, and stepped over to the man whose slashed face bore the mark of Aoife's sword. He was on the ground, one eye sliced open and blood leaking between the palms he had pressed to the side of his face.
"You can't ride, Enguerrand," she said. "Do you want to be left for the kilties, or-" And she showed him the sword.
He started to shake his head, gave an awful bubbling moan, and then tilted his head back and to one side. One hand scrabbled in the dirt, and he brought a clod to his lips; Rudi recognized the rite, a symbol of his desire to receive communion and his unworthiness to do so.
"God witness it's his wish and none of mine," the woman said formally, looking at her men; there were three left on their feet, two holding leading-reins with four horses on each.
"You're free of blood-guilt, Rutherton," the man she'd called Joris said formally; his mask was down and revealed a pointed yellow beard and heavy-lidded blue eyes. "Any one of us would ask the same, or do it if they were commander."
The others nodded. She set the point of the sword behind the crippled man's ear and pushed with a hard lunge of arm and shoulder; the man's body flexed once in a galvanic shudder and went limp. A flap of cheek peeled back when his hand fell away, showing a grin red and white. Then the woman stood and turned and looked at Rudi. Her eyes were gray, pale and cold as glass.
Mathilda was off her horse and in front of Rudi in a single scrambling rush. "No!" she said shrilly, spreading her arms. "You can't hurt him, Tiphaine! We're anamchara! Blood-brothers. I'll have right of vengeance against anyone who hurts him, all my life! I'm go
Tiphaine Rutherton seemed to sense the men behind her looking at each other in doubt-that was a credible threat to anyone who knew how stubborn Mathilda could be-and made an exasperated sound between her teeth. Before she could move, Mathilda's knife was out, and she pressed it to her own throat-hard enough that a trickle of red blood started down the white skin as she swallowed convulsively.
"If you hurt him, I'll kill myself! I swear it by God and the Virgin, and then you'll have to explain to Mom and Dad and His Holiness how come I'm dead and in Hell for suicide!" Mathilda said with desperate earnestness. "Not just now! If you hurt him later, I'll do it!"
Rutherton stopped as if she'd run into a stone wall; she stared into the girl's eyes for an instant, saw a bright focus of intent.
"Princess, I'm not pla
Mathilda swallowed, nodded and brought the knife down. Tiphaine turned her head.
"Well, what are you all waiting for, the kilties to arrive? Ivo, get the brat over a horse." To Mathilda: "This is just to keep him quiet, Princess. I won't hurt him now; on my honor as a warrior of the Association."
Something stung Rudi in the cheek of one buttock as hands heaved him over a saddle and lashed him to it with leather thongs. His head felt as if it were spi
Chapter Eleven
Waldo Hills, Willamette Valley, Oregon
March 5th, 2008/Change Year 9
L ord Piotr Stavarov lowered his binoculars and scowled. "Are those scouts back yet?" he asked.
"Yes, my lord," Sir Ernaldo Machado said. "They report no enemy presence on the right. There are light screening forces in the woods to the left, although not all the scouts are back from that area yet. The glider couldn't see any of them except those."
He pointed to the band that blocked the road ahead. Stavarov gritted his teeth; they were excellent teeth, white and even, in a handsome, regular young snub-nosed, high-cheeked face. He knew he was young for this post: but the Stavarovs and their followers had backed Norman Arminger in his initial grab for power in Portland, less than ten days after the Change. He'd been sixteen then, and he could remember his father's relief and excitement that someone offered a way out. And now he was out from under the thumb of that scar-faced lout Renfrew.
Though, to be fair, at least he isn't as much of a pussy as most of those Society retreads.
He raised the field glasses. The Protectorate force was halted in column on the road, blocks of bicycle-mounted spearmen and crossbowmen and supply wagons, the two hundred infantry sitting motionless on their cycles, flanked by two mounted columns with fifty knights and men-at-arms each. The pe
There aren't enough of them to hold us, he thought, looking at the Mackenzie force.
There were a hundred of them, barely enough of them to block the road between the hills on either side; fifty with spears or polearms-what the kilties called Lochaber axes, broad arm-long slashing blades that tapered to a point and had a hook on the reverse. Swung two-handed, the six-foot weapons could cut right through mail just as well as a glaive or halberd; best to remember that. Another fifty of their archers to the west of that, thrown forward along the edge of the low scrub-grown hills that had been pasture once and were head-high brushwood and thorn now. It was a good position, but they didn't have the numbers to stop his men, and if they broke his lancers would hunt them like game. Odd, you'd usually expect a lot more longbows in a Mackenzie formation, from what the briefing papers said :
And under the ba
The Lord Protector has a serious hard-on for Sir Nigel Loring after the way he betrayed him last year. It won't do me or the family any harm at all at court, if I bring him the Englishman's head. Maybe another fief? There's good wheatland out by Pendleton, or perhaps around here after the war:
"Nothing much on the left?" he said, swinging his glasses eastward.
The hills there were higher and steeper than the low, rolling ground on the westward side of the road, the crests better than a hundred and fifty feet above him. The rising face on their north slope was also heavily wooded with oaks and alders, Douglas fir and western hemlocks, all big trees planted long before the Change. The edge where the patch of forest met the abandoned fields was thick with saplings and bramble and thorn and Oregon grape. It was like a wall along the edge of the forest, and he couldn't see far into the depths beneath the big trees. Presumably there was a lot less undergrowth in their shade; further out towards him the open ground was covered with nothing more than green grass knee-high on a horse, kept free of brushwood by a fire last summer. Good open ground where his troops could use their superior discipline and formation.