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The words were quiet, but they dropped into a silence that echoed; she felt as if a hand had brushed her eyes, and a faint scented warmth elusive as the memory of a dream.
TheSwordoftheLady
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sunlight blinked off metal far ahead as the road wound downward. His warrior?s eye recognized that rippling sparkle: polished mail, perhaps, or lance heads, or helmets. Someone was coming who didn?t much care whether anyone spotted him, which meant it was not any native dweller in these lands. Hiding was ground into their souls by now, hiding and skulking and the grisly game of stalk and ambush that had killed their parents young.
By what the oldsters say, soldiers all fought like that in the days before the Change, Rudi Mackenzie thought. Not just bandits and savages, scouts and Rangers. No wonder, when they all had weapons that could kill at a thousand paces like a catapult, and shoot so fast, too! Anyone who could see you could kill you.
It wasn?t like that now. Men who fought with discipline, shoulder to armored shoulder, could plow through those who scattered. Many scorned to conceal themselves at all, thinking it the heart of a fighting man?s pride to stand and meet the battle-rush, or to lock shields with their oath-brothers and stride unhesitating towards a line of bright spears in the hands of angry strangers. The Clan were less prickly, but in anything like a pitched battle even Mackenzie longbowmen had to pack pretty tightly together to brew an arrow storm dense enough to stop a charge. ?Whoa!? he said aloud, shifting his balance back, and then reminded himself to pull firmly on the reins; he wasn?t on Epona now.
Over his shoulder he called to the woman sitting on the wagon?s board: ?Brake!?
The slug of a horse he was riding was both stupid and malicious-either that, or it missed its former Knifer master so much it was grieving-mad.
Which I doubt, he thought with exasperation, while worrying whether the other vehicles would notice in time.
The brake lever locked padded drums against the axles; it was that more than his efforts that made the improvised team stop. He used the slack of the long rein to give the horse a sharp pop on the nose as it responded to the halt with its usual attempt to turn its head and bite him on the knee. It took the rebuke as a signal to try and buck, bolt and kick sideways at its teammate in the traces beside it, and it took a few more moments to convince it that was a bad idea. The fact that it would break its legs and die if the eight beasts hauling the first wagon were to be thrown into a struggling heap didn?t seem to matter to it-probably it was too dim-witted even to fear for its legs, which
… ?Puts it about on a level with a sheep,? he said with disgust. ?Except that sheep are usually better natured.?
And to be sure, he had to make certain Epona wasn?t in view while he rode with the team here. She didn?t like it when he rode another horse, even her own get. She definitely wouldn?t like him riding this crowbait. Horses could be as difficult as people, sometimes. And the thought of trying to put her in harness made him shudder. She might or might not have the HorseGoddess for which he?d named her as her dam, but she certainly acted as if she did. In her pride not least.
He gri
To his left was about a mile of floodplain, densely wooded but mostly with new growth, here and there a pre-Change tree towering with the height that abundant water and the rich silty soil would endow. Others were dead and gaunt and bleached bone white, killed out when their roots were smothered by the spreading water of renascent swamp. Parts of it were full marsh now; he could smell it, the sweetish-rank scents of black muck and vegetable decay, and see the glints of water where the old levees along the Mississippi had broken. It had probably been cropland before the Change, and very good land at that.
The reeds were brown with the late season, and a few of the velvet sausage shapes of the cattails were begi
Off to his right was hilly land, the bluffs that edged the floodplain. The rumpled surface had a pelt of old forest, with here and there brick snags through tangled vines and saplings marking where buildings had stood, and brush growing over stands of thick short bluish grass interrupted by sandy spots.
The underbrush had been cleared back about half a bowshot on either side of the road, and the rust-rotted hulks of automobiles and trucks were missing. That meant that they were within the area regularly patrolled by Iowan troops from their beachhead in East Dubuque. Edain came trotting up from farther south, with Garbh at the heel of his horse. He was riding the quarterhorse he?d picked up in the Valley of the Sun, in what had once been Wyoming, a decent and civilized beast who didn?t even object when the great dog leapt up to sit behind her master. ?Those bearings on the third wagon?s rear axle aren?t going to last much longer, no matter how much lard we bless?em with, Chief,? he said.?Then we?ll be worse off than with an ordinary iron collar and no fancy salvage. But I?m thinking we could-?
His square face had the bullock-stubborn look of a man who was pacing himself by the task, and giving it everything he had. ?Boyo, they have to keep going for another four miles, or an hour and a bit, so. After that it?s Bossman Heasleroad?s problem, and none of ours.?
Edain blinked and shook his head like a man coming out of deep sleep. Then he gri
Edain nodded, then raised a warning fist as Rudi?s mount turned a considering head towards him: ? Keep your teeth to yourself, y? evil-eyed keffle! Forever and a day, Chief. And the Sword there needing to be gotten, the which weighs on my mind.?
Rudi showed his teeth in what was not quite a smile.?Do you think it does not for me also? But the quest of the Sword is only a bit about the finding of the Sword. It?s what we do along the way, too.?
Edain blinked at him.?Learning how to travel three thousand miles, then, would that be it?? ?No, boyo. Learning how to travel three thousand miles and make an ally against the Cutters every few hundred of those miles. Allies ready to fight with us when we return. Remember the Lakota? And Chenrezi? And those guerillas in Deseret??