The Sword of the Lady (18 page)

″And that would be showing off, if you ask me, fine folk though they are.″

This June past they′d spent some time in a hocoka of the Lakotas, as guests of Itancan-Chief John Red Leaf. It had been a brief period, if eventful—fights with pursuing troops of the Sword of the Prophet, hunts that included an unexpected little brush with some ex-Texan lions, buffalo stampedes, a sweat lodge ceremony, and another that ended with them being adopted as Strong Raven and Swift Arrow.

But they′d also gotten quite a few stories on the theory and practice of horse theft as the lords of the High Plains managed it these days, it being their pastime and delight. He′d adapted one technique of theirs for this night′s work, but a look over his shoulder made him hiss between his teeth. The fire was a
lot
higher than anything you could get up in the short-grass country, and a lot hotter, and it was coming along faster. Faster than they were moving. Unfortunately their Sioux friends had been quite clear that you
didn′t
mount up and silhouette yourself against the fire until you absolutely had to.

″That moment being at hand,″ he muttered to himself, inaudible under the Epona′s hoof falls and panting, and the crackling white-noise roar of the flames.

Then shapes moved in the middle distance ahead, horses amid an area of grass trampled down where they′d fed and rolled. The herd was up now, awake and beginning to be frightened from their sounds. The Knifer guards were running from one beast to another, frantically yanking the slipknots on their hobbles free; others already mounted snapped crude whips in their faces to keep them from bolting as soon as they were freed.

They were utterly focused on their work; the seventy mounts here represented years of work, and to lose the herd would be a catastrophe for all their tribe.

The which they deserve, for not leaving the Southsiders in peace. It′s not as if they were so crowded here that they
need
to fight each other for land, like two wolf packs in the same valley. Still, I′m glad I′ll be free of them after this night. I have no wish to be the ogre their mothers frighten children with.

The last of the restraints came free as Rudi watched, and the three men who′d been removing them raced for their own horses, looking over their shoulders with their eyes wide in terror. One checked as he ran and opened his mouth to yell warning as he finally picked out the two Mackenzies beside their horses.

″Now!″ Rudi said.

He grabbed for the bridle of Edain′s horse with his free hand. There was no possibility of sparing these men.

The other Mackenzie had four arrows out and gripped between his forefinger and the riser of his bow, and another between his teeth, with most of its length off to his left. He brought his bow up and shot that one first, almost spitting it onto the string, and then the others in a ripple of effort so swift and sure that the second had just struck when the last flew free. The flickering light behind them was tricky; only three of them hit. One slammed into the chest of the man who′d seen them; the other two punched the riders out of their saddles. Then Edain leapt and scrabbled aboard his mount, cursing as the beast crabbed sideways between his hand on the reins and its impulse to run free.

Epona had already started moving. Rudi bent his knees between one stride and the next and vaulted as he ran, dropping into the saddle in a way that would have been painful if his thighs hadn′t caught the weight of his body before his crutch slammed into the leather. His sword came out, but shadowy figures were already in among the horses; the last of the Knifer herd guards were down or had fled. Jake′s gap-toothed grin shone a little in the light of the fire.

″Got ′em, Rudi-man!″

″And let′s
go
!″

The half dozen best riders of the Southsiders were on either side of the three-score-and-ten horses, whooping and swinging lengths of braided cord. The snapping and the noise kept the panicked horses bunched; Garbh ran at their heels, snapping now and then to keep them focused. They were letting them run southward—exactly what the Knifers′ own herdsmen would have done, with a grassfire coming. After a few moments they angled westward as much as they dared; the main camp of their foemen was to the east. And probably dissolving in chaos right now, as everyone scrambled to get out of the fire′s way, though they were by a slough with open water even in late summer.

Probably they′d all wade out into it, carrying what they could. The flames were twenty feet high now, dreadfully bright. They raced forward in a flickering wave, a dancing front of red and gold that towered farther yet into the air in a wall of sparks. The roar was like all the hearth fires on the ridge of the world added together, with the forges of the smiths thrown in; he eyed the end of the line of fire to his right, judging just where it would pass.

He also thought he heard screams of rage from the savages behind; it was possible that they′d seen their horses disappearing, not in a scattered spray but in a solid mass of plunging heads and tossing manes. Or they might have heard the whoops of the Southsiders, who were calling pleasantries of their choice; they all had their new bows slung over their backs, worn through loops beside the equally new quivers in the Mackenzie fashion. Rudi grinned and added the keening ululation of the Clan to the chorus.

And just to be polite to the folk who′d taken him in and taught him this plainsman′s trick—

″Kye-eee-kye!″
he screamed. ″Hoo′hay,
hoo′hay
! The sun shines on the hawk and on the quarry!″

″Hand and hand seven!″ Jake called to Rudy, pumping a clenched fist with one finger extended towards the Knifer camp.

″Seventy,″ Rudi replied, and the Big Man of Southside repeated the word several times to lock it in his memory.

He′ll know each one of his new herd by its looks and maybe by a name within a few days,
the Mackenzie thought.
But he couldn′t
say
the number until I told him. They have forgotten a good deal, his folk!

The horses ran reckless through the dark until they were out of the fire′s path, and some miles to the west of it. Then they slowed, freed to fear for their legs once more. The whole horizon behind them was turning ruddy where the fire spread out into a front miles long, as if the dawn was coming hours early, and the hot dry smell of it was slow to fade. Then the animals began to slow, down from a gallop to a canter and then to a walk as the night drew its cloak about them once more. The riders touched them up again, half a mile at a trot and half at a walk; that was harder as the horses grew calmer and started to resent this interference with their rest, or to notice that there were strange individuals of their own kind among them without a recognized place in their hierarchy.

Prairie fires were dreadful, and they could travel faster than a horse and scorch your lungs out when the flame front passed you, but they were also routine—from what the Southsiders told him they happened every year as soon as the tall grass went dry, started deliberately to spur fresh growth, or by friction or lightning strikes. Beasts and humans both were used to them.

Which is one reason why there′s so little mark of man left in this land,
he thought.
With fires like that every year, all that could burn has, of that you may be sure.

As if to illustrate the point a silo loomed out of the darkness ahead; tall as many a castle tower, and as broad, but canted to one side, and the lower part was cracked open where years of fires past had buckled the sheet metal plates away from the frames. Someday soon a strong wind would catch it and send it to the ground; in the end it would be a stain on the soil.

It′s a pity we have no metalworker′s tools, and no great fund of time,
he thought.
We could teach the Southsiders to make proper brigandines. Or at least scale shirts . . .

Then he snorted quietly to himself. He′d never thought he would catch the teacher′s passion—learning had always been his pleasure—but the situation made it tempting. Rudi Mackenzie had known such people all his life; his mother sitting endlessly patient, coaxing out the music within a novice bard′s fumbling eagerness; Sam Aylward′s callused hand giving him a genial ear-ringing slap on the back of the head when he let his attention wander at the archery butts; Aunt Judy listing the uses of a plant′s roots and leaves in a way that made it more a game than a lesson and then holding the blossom up as she said:

Or even Mathilda passing on her mother′s ideas of what it meant to be a King to Fred Thurston, as they rode east.

″But I′m not the best of teachers, even for blade and bow,″ he murmured to himself. ″Too hasty, I′d have said. Well, to travel is to learn, eh?″

The rest of their party was waiting for them there by the ruin. There were younger men—the Southside Freedom Fighters seemed to account a male ready to fight at about fifteen—and a few bold women, and the youngster with the limp and the strong voice who was the closest thing they had to a bard.

″I′ll make this a telling word for you, Jake,″ he said. ″All these horses! Even Old Jake the sailor man never got so many. Jake sunna Jake, big man who hands out bows n′ horses!″

Jake made a gesture of dismissal, but Rudi could see he was pleased at the thought of the praise song. The rest mounted up silently and kept the stolen horses moving; Epona snorted a little. She wasn′t as young as she had been, but she could keep
this
pace a lot longer than these scrubby beasts.

″There!″ Jake said.

It was nearly dawn now; the hour between dog and wolf, as the saying went, when you could first tell the difference between a black thread and a white. The air wasn′t exactly cold, but there was a hint of cool in it as it dried the sweat on Rudi′s face and arms, a token that autumn wasn′t impossibly far off. The road was a long stretch of open ground in the ocean of the grass; there were trees along it, short scrubby fire-scarred oaks and cot tonwoods and sycamores, growing up through cracks in the pale faded asphalt that protected them. The rest of the Southsiders ran shrieking and dancing with glee to meet the warriors, until Jake cursed them imaginatively for nearly spooking the new horses. That made them a little quieter, except for the children and—until thumped—the dogs.

Rudi confined his attention to the wagons. A long breath of relief at the lack of serious damage escaped him as they walked about; only the last one had been thoroughly looted, and that was the one that had carried the expedition′s stores. They were all big, even for road vehicles carrying five or six tons each, the rubber-tired steel wheels nearly as tall as Edain, and the hoops of the blackened canvas-covered tilts were nearly twice his height above the roadway. The outsides showed scorch marks—from that fire Ingolf had described, when the Cutters ambushed his men here, and from later ones, but the pavement acted as a firebreak until the swift flame front passed. Someone had cut slits in the canvas on each and pulled out a few of the rectangular steel boxes. The locks had been sledged off; he opened one of them.

″Ah,″ Edain said behind him, as he pulled out the picture within and propped it against one wheel. ″Now that′s . . . something, by Brigid of the Bright Mind and Lugh of the Many Skills.″

It was a painting, near man-high, and undamaged save for splintering around the frame where it had been tossed roughly back into the box by some wild-man disappointed it wasn′t anything useful.

″Now, I wonder who he was?″ Rudi murmured after a moment.

A young man, in black clothing a little like what Associates wore, but different in detail; a white ruff stood all around his neck, and the sword he rested one hand on was a rapier with an intricate hilt. The more Rudi looked the more were the intricacies he saw—yet the more it was also a
whole
, a thing in itself. You could see the haughtiness in the heavy-lipped, strong-nosed face, and the way the columns and domes behind focused attention on the figure in the foreground. The glow of rich fabrics brought out the olive of the man′s complexion, and the glint off a ruby in his ear . . .

Edain gave a wordless sigh, and Rudi nodded. They came of a folk who respected a skilled maker above all things save courage and loyalty.

″That′s something which makes me feel better about doing this,″ the older Mackenzie said. ″I′ll never be a friend of Iowa′s Bossman, and it may be that he sent Ingolf to fetch this out of nothing but vanity . . . but he′ll keep it safe, sure and he will. And his great-grandchildren′s subjects will thank him for it.″

Edain nodded. ″What′s that number down there?″ he said, indicating the bottom of the frame with the end of his bow.

″A date, in the Christian fashion, from the year their God was born,″ Rudi said. ″The year it was painted, I′d say.″

The stocky archer whistled softly; he recognized the system, though Mackenzies of their generation mostly reckoned from the time of the Change.

″More than four centuries ago!″ he said.

Jake stood silent, then stooped to peer more closely at the painting as the sun brightened.

″Bitchin′ tough stud,″ he said after a moment. ″Some Bossman, right?″

″Right you are,″ Rudi said, reflecting—not for the first time—that ignorant wasn′t the same thing as
stupid
.

″The Iowa-man, he wants this just ′cause it looks good?″

Doubt was in his tone. Rudi replied:

″No. Because having such things of beauty will make others respect him more.″

″Yeah. Tha′ big-man thinkin′,″ Jake said with satisfaction. ″They rich, in Iowa. Do things for looks good.″

″That′s one of the better things
about
being rich,″ Rudi said.

And Matti′s mother has scoured the museums and mansions of the west coast for a generation now,
he mused.
And Corvallis has too. We Mackenzies and the Bearkillers perhaps a little less, but we′ve found our share.