A Meeting at Corvallis (62 page)

The Pendleton men were reckless fighters, but not fools: they'd reined in at long bowshot rather than ride straight into territory they couldn't see, even in hot pursuit. Where they came from war was largely a matter of raid and skirmish; feigned retreats to draw pursuers into an ambush were standard operating procedure. Half a dozen came whooping forward to the road, where they could see into the orchard and warn the others if it was a trap.

Eilir and Hordle came to their feet along with the rest of the Rangers. She drew again, sensibly aiming at one of the men in the vanguard only twenty yards away, and drove a bodkin point through his leather cuirass and chest and out the spine in a shower of blood and chipped bone. Hordle was grinning and he had a heavy four-ounce arrow to his bow, the type of four-to-a-pound shaft that his seven-foot stave with its hundred-and-fifty-pound draw-weight could throw. The muscles knotted in his arm as he pulled the shaft to the ear and loosed upward at a forty-five degree angle.

Two hundred and fifty yards away the doll-tiny figure of the enemy standard-bearer looked up sharply. Then he dropped the flag and fell off his horse, scrabbling at the arrow that had slammed through his face from right cheek to left jaw.

She gave him a glance that said as plainly as Sign:
Showoff!

“They always look up,” he said, and fell into a steady rhythm of draw-aim-loose, once every four or five seconds. “Bloody odd, if you ask me. I mean, here you are, bits of pointed iron flying about in a roit frightening way, you 'ear this
sssssss
noise, like an arrow coming down at you, so what do you do…look
up
?”

Eilir waggled her ears.
Wouldn't happen to me,
the gesture said.

The loss of their standard-bearer enraged the mercenaries, and so did the sight of the same dozen enemies they'd been chasing making a stand and inflicting yet more losses. They surged forward in a mass; Eilir could feel the growing drumroll of their horses' hooves through the soles of her feet. Arrows flicked out, and heavy, curved slashing blades were swung in menacing circles.

“Time to scarper,” Hordle said cheerfully.

They all turned and dashed back—which meant that the men from the eastern plains would see their prey escaping
again
, after killing yet more of their kinfolk.

They must be frothing and drooling,
she thought.
From what I've been told and seen, they're very sensitive about being made to look foolish.

Ahead in the orchard the CORA riders were swinging into the saddle. They rode the same type of ranch-country quarter horse that the Pendleton men did and were likewise lightly armed, although there were more with short mail shirts rather than boiled-leather cuirasses; a few had brigandines and their leader was resplendent in a steel breastplate painted brown. They all had bows and a long blade or light ax; most swords were stirrup-hilted sabers whose first models were the blades of the US cavalry of Old West times, salvaged from museums and antique stores after the Change; a few bore light lances, shorter and slimmer than those of Protectorate knights or Bearkiller A-listers. Rancher John Brown did, and he waved it at her before he slapped his horse on the rump with the shaft. His followers moved forward in a rough double line, not a rigid formation but a lot more orderly than their enemies'.

Quarter horses had good acceleration. The four hundred riders went from a stop to a walk to a canter in half a dozen paces. The board fence along the road went over with a thud she felt even through the hoofbeats, its uprights cut through and smeared with mud in the night—that had been her idea, and she felt a flush of pride as she swung around and led Celebroch forward. Astrid and Alleyne had snatched up lances left leaning against cherry trees and were off with the rest. Astrid held back a little; with a six-foot man clothed from head to toe in jointed alloy steel on its back, the big gelding her lover rode took a little longer to hit a hand gallop. When it did it was as fast as any of the horses there; Asfaloth had no trouble accelerating with Astrid wearing a Bearkiller-style hauberk and her raven helm.

The mercenaries had checked only an instant when they saw the CORA force coming at them; more a matter of men leaning back in the saddle than of the horses actually slowing. Then they came on faster than ever; there wasn't room to switch and make a chase of it. A fast horse could make thirty miles an hour for short distances, and with their combined speeds the two groups were approaching each other at better than sixty. Arrows flew between them, but only for a few seconds. That was enough to empty a dozen saddles, but nobody wanted to be left with a bow when his enemy came within saber range. Then the two formations passed through each other in a mutual blur of speed and slashing steel, bright blades sparking on metal, or leaving trails of red through the damp air to glisten on the dew-wet grass. Astrid and Alleyne lifted their targets out of the saddle and discarded the lances, sweeping out their long swords as the battle turned into a wheeling melee. Eilir's eyebrows went up as she saw the swath the steel-clad figures cut through the plainsmen. She knew that Astrid was cold death with any weapon, but Alleyne was such a gentleman—

He dodged the sweep of an eastern slashing sword, broke the man's jaw with the edge of his heater-shaped shield. In the same instant a backhand cut across the eyes left another mercenary lurching back with his hands pressed to his face, mouth an O beneath them…

—that she sometimes forgot what he was like in a fight.

“Seems like a shame to disturb them,” John Hordle said calmly, reaching over his shoulder for an arrow. “Still one always 'as to do one's bit, as Sir Nigel used to say.”

Hordle was no more than passable at mounted combat. Eilir was far better than that, but she'd decided without thought to stand by him…and now she felt a sudden slight pang, as if she'd abandoned her
anamchara
.

Don't be ridiculous,
she thought stoutly.
Didn't we swear to be goddess-mother to each other's children, all those years ago?

Also she and Hordle were among the few present who could shoot into that whirling, slashing, hoof-milling chaos without much risk of friendly-fire accidents.

“I'll take the one with the steel cap and feathers,” the big man said, lifting his seven-foot bow. “You want the one with the fringed…what are those things called?”

Chaps,
Eilir signed shortly, and drew her own bow.

“Got two chaps on 'is legs,” Hordle chuckled, and let the string roll off his fingers.

I don't like killing people,
she thought, and shot.
John doesn't either but he does like to fight—there's a difference. Me, I'd rather not do either. Odd. Alleyne's more like me that way, and John's more like Astrid—she doesn't like killing either but it's all the old stories to her while she's fighting, so she glories in
that.
I think she really
means
it when she says
yrch.

An arrow—almost certainly hers—nailed the man's thigh to his saddle through his fringed chaps. The horse must have been wounded too, for it suddenly went berserk, bucking and plunging while the man screamed and clawed at the steel and cedarwood that held him fast. A sweep from someone's sword put an end to that, and the body flopped and dangled and then fell as the horse bolted.

I don't want to fight them, but if they take the Protector's silver and come here to fight, they have to expect what happens,
she thought, arrow on string and looking for another target.
May the Guardians help them choose a better way next time 'round. In the meantime, I'm not ready for the Summerlands yet!

Outnumbered two to one, the mercenaries could not take the punishment for more than a few seconds. Then they broke like quicksilver and scattered, the largest clump of them running north, back towards the enemy camp. The CORA fighters hung on that group's flanks and rear, shooting and hacking with a ferocity born of feuds as old as the Change, which was either ten years or since the beginning of time, depending on how you wanted to look at it.

Alleyne and Astrid cantered back, talking to each other in Sindarin; Eilir thought he was using it to bring her down from that scary-exalted place she went when she fought, and humanness was returning bit by bit to the blue-silver eyes. She and John Hordle swung into their saddles along with the rest of the Dúnedain. They turned and trotted eastward, cross-country; that was the other big advantage of horses over most bicycles—you didn't need to stick to a road, or even a track. The gray clouds overhead had lightened a bit, but didn't look like either going away or raining. Ahead eastward the land rose, growing more rolling as it did; another ten miles and they'd be into the mountain foothills, trackless and densely forested.

They weren't going quite that far.

Now we find out whether that idea of yours works, me girl,
Hordle signed.

Don't remind me,
Eilir replied with a shudder.
I'll be
so
embarrassed if it doesn't.

No, love, you won't be embarrassed, not likely,
Hordle answered, his usually good-natured face gone more sober.

She nodded unwillingly. The chances were that if it didn't work, she'd be too dead to be embarrassed, along with her kinfolk and friends and all their hopes.

Boom.

“Sound
halt,
” Baron Emiliano said.

The curled trumpets screamed. The long column of men on bicycles clamped on their brakes, skidding to a halt and resting on one booted foot; they'd just turned east at what the old maps said was a Lutheran church and what looks said was a Catholic one now. The long, crunching rumble of the cavalry moving up on the graveled verges stopped a little more slowly. For a moment, the Marchwarden of the South idly thanked the monks for keeping the roadways in their territories so well; the surface was smooth, the potholes patched not just with gravel but fresh melted asphalt, and the fields on either side were neatly trimmed.

Silence fell, or as much silence as a force of twelve hundred men could maintain; even their breathing was a susurrus under the sough of the wind, shifting of horse hooves, snap of banners, chink and jingle of chain mail and bridle-fittings, the occasional thud of a noncom's fist and
silence in the ranks!
The air was wet and close otherwise, leaving the sweat un-dried on his face despite its coolness. He sniffed at the breeze as if it could tell him what he wanted to know, and peered eastward down the road, at the empty fields on either side where only the distant cantering dots of his scouts and the odd drift of wildfowl feasting undisturbed on new-sown grain showed movement.

Boom.

The sound was deep and resonant, even in the muffling dankness, traveling as if it would echo across miles.

Boom. Boom. Boom…boom-boom-boom—

The thudding continued, building to a continuous thudding crash. Beside him, Lord Jabar stirred in the saddle. “Drums,” he said unnecessarily, and then more precisely: “Lambegs. Mackenzies.”

As to confirm his guess a raw, squealing drone started underneath the deep hammering, weaving around it with a sound at once jaunty and menacing; the war-pipes of the Clan.

“That's Mackenzies all right,” Emiliano said with a grin. “But not close. From the sound, say two, three miles.”

He started to raise his hand to shade his eyes, then stopped, feeling faintly foolish for a moment. For one thing it was very cloudy; for another he was wearing a new type of helmet, with a hinged visor like a pierced mask of flat steel. It was swung up at the moment, sticking out like the bill of a cap. Instead he glanced skyward, cocking his head as he judged where the bright patch was.

“Not ten o'clock yet,” he said happily. “We got time.”

Hails came from ahead, and he watched a figure approach at a canter. When he drew rein, it was one of Emiliano's own mounted scouts; the Pendleton cowboys weren't what you could call organized right now, though they were mad enough to get into a chewing match with a bear.

“Hey, my lord,” the Association commander said to Jabar. “Remind me, next time we see the Grand Constable, if we hire any of those cow-country clowns next time, we put them under our officers. They make my old gangers look like fucking Marines.”

The scout saluted. “My lord Marchwarden,” he said. “We've located the enemy.”

“How many, and where?” Emiliano asked, unfolding a map glued on stiff leather from his saddlebag; it was pleated accordion-style, and he held it open across the saddlebow.

The scout brought his horse close and sketched with a fingertip. “This road we're on, South Drake, it goes right east past the orchard where the cowboys got suckered this morning, till it hits Cascade Highway about three miles from here at this little town—town called Marquam. The town's empty, looks like the people ran for Mount Angel. Cascade Highway runs south from there, angling back west a bit too, down to Butte Creek, about a mile and a quarter. The Mackenzies and the CORA-boys are there at the southern end—they've got their left anchored on the bridge there where Cascade Highway crosses the creek, Jacks Bridge, and then up the road north and east.”