The Sword of the Lady

Will?s bow snapped, once, twice, the boy bracing himself up in the stirrups of the heavy war-saddle as he drew and loosed. The cowboy opposite him ducked below the first shaft as it wasp-whined by his face. That put his collarbone right in the path of the next; there was a wet crack sound of parting bone audible over the pounding of hooves, and he pitched backward off his horse.

Signe gave her opponent the point, sword extended at the end of her outstretched arm like a lance, but he threw himself to one side just in time. She wrenched her sword up and over to rest behind her back for an instant as they flashed past. Tu

Her horse reared and crow-hopped three times on its hind legs as it killed its momentum in response to her signals. It whirled as it came down, eyes bulging, huge yellow chisel-teeth bared as it snapped at the cow pony. That agile beast had already wheeled and put its master within chopping range; he struck at her three times in fewer than three heartbeats, overarm and forehand and backhand.

Tung. Crack. Tung.

One blow caught on her backsword, one glanced off the surface of her shield, another on the sword, and this time it slid down to hit the guard and numbed her hand again. She had no time to strike back. The man was shrieking as he hewed at her, half her age and quick and strong…

Then he coughed, looked down at the arrowhead that jutted from his leather coat, coughed again in a spray of red, and slumped away. One high-heeled boot caught in a twisted stirrup as he fell, and the horse moved away dragging him and looking back over its shoulder, dancing sideways until the boot slid off the foot and the body dropped free. Then it galloped away.

Mike Havel had given the Bearkillers many sayings. One was:

Fair fights are for suckers.

Another was:

One for all, and all on one. ?Thanks,? she wheezed to Will Larsson, wiping drops of blood off her eyelids with the leather on the palm of one gauntlet.?Been a few years since I did this.?

Long enough to forget how it can leave you feeling like a wet dishcloth in a few seconds, she thought, struggling to take steady deep breaths. ? De nada,? he replied, his smile white.

He came by the tag naturally; his mother Lua

A look around the Sword of the Prophet were cantering forward a little as her A-listers pursued the fleeing ranchers? men. The A-list lancers reined in at the very fringe of the area covered by the fort?s war engines, turned, and cantered back towards her. The Corwinites halted again when the CORA men started lofting arrows at them from extreme range, a bit over two hundred yards with a saddle bow. The survivors of the Pendleton force drew up behind the Prophet?s guardsmen-all but a few who kept going east as fast as they could quirt their horses. ?We beat?em!? Will said. ?Good as we can expect, dammit,? she said.

Mike Jr. was out of the saddle, pulling at the shaft of his lance with a foot braced on the body of the man it pierced, looking grim but not too wobbly. The lance was disposable, but the ba

This was his second real fight, not his first, she reminded herself. ?Trooper,? she said. Mike looked up.?Put something white on the end of that, and ask the enemy commander whether he?s interested in a mutual half-hour truce, for each side to retrieve their wounded.?

It took an effort to say; the enemy-even the Prophet?s fanaticsusually respected a flag of truce on the battlefield. About as often as her side did, for the same self-interested reasons. That still meant sending her son into talking distance of men for whom mercy was scarcely even a concept.

I can?t treat Mike any different from the way I would any ba

He gri

Signe slid her unmarked sword back into the scabbard and rested the palms of her gauntlets on the horn of her saddle for an instant, waiting tensely while her son cantered over the battlefield and picked his way between fallen men and horses. The sun had barely risen at all; the whole affair had taken less than half an hour. Mike waved at her after an instant?s conversation with the man beneath Corwin?s flag of golden-rayed sun on a bloodred ground before turning and galloping back. She kept her breath of relief behind her lips until he was out of arrow range.

Will used his trumpet again, and the light two-wheel carts came forward to gather the hurt, with medics jumping down to administer first aid. For a moment there was little sound, except the sough of wind and the shrieks and moans and whimpers of humans and horses in pain. That became less, as the wounded animals were put down and the men given morphine.

The Mackenzie commander came up, ru

His name was McGinty, and he had a bullhide breastplate with his own Bar Z brand pyrographed on the boiled leather. The horsehair plume on his helmet bobbed as he chuckled.

He?s younger than me, too. So many are these days. Forty?s not old! Well, forty-two.

That thought marked her age itself. These days, forty was fairly well along. Not many people beyond their first youth had survived the generation since the Change; she?d been eighteen then, herself. It was some consolation that she looked a lot younger than her age by today?s standards, since she didn?t pass her days in field labor. ?Get your people heading east to camp,? she said to the Mackenzie. ?Don?t get settled in there, either.? ?We?re leaving?? he said.?After this fine and glorious thrashing we gave them, and the kicking of their arse so hard their teeth came marching out like little pikemen on parade??

Signe nodded towards the fort; a century of Boise infantry were double-timing out of the gates… and they had a fieldpiece with them. ?With that as a base, this isn?t a healthy locality,? she said grimly.?Move. We?ll accompany and the Bar Z men will cover us both. Eat, get your gear packed, get on your bicycles and clear out to the next rally point. And could you get that so-called musician to stop torturing that poor agonized pig?? ??Tis scarcely war at all without a piper!?

The clansfolk moved in a ground-eating trot that made it easy for the cavalry to hang behind them. The allied force?s hasty encampment was four miles up the road-where another small bridge had spa