She could feel the wet gravel scrunch under their feet and see little milky spurts of mud come up under the horses' hooves; this was a road built after the Change. One of the enemy mounts had galloped away north after the wounded scout; another was down with an arrow through its ribs, breathing like a bellows and rolling an eye at her in piteous entreaty: make it better. She signed the air to ask its forgiveness and used her dirk to give it peace; Pilimor did likewise with a wounded mercenary with three shafts through his body who lay arching his back in a bow and spitting out wet bits of lung as he clawed at the stone with bloody fingers. Then they led the horses east at a trot through the orchard. Their own mounts and a dozen more Dunedain waited there. Astrid slid down from the crown of a tall Douglas fir and dashed across the open ground. Alleyne was leading Asfaloth, with the mare's head already in the right direction, and the Dunedain leader vaulted laughing into the Arab's saddle.
"Go!" she shouted. "They're coming! They had a force ready; two hundred riders or better. They probably think we're the ones who shot their chief yesterday, and they want vengeance."
The score of Dunedain turned their horses' noses towards the east and a little north and the band surged into motion. John Hordle wasn't with them; it wouldn't have been sensible, when a pursuit on horseback was in order. The half-Percheron they'd found for him could bear his weight easily enough, and it was even fairly fast given time to work up a gallop, but it couldn't keep the pace they expected for long. The ground ahead was open farmland with plank or wire fences, a few with new, low hedges, mostly wheatfields or pasture, or half-readied for the spring planting and abandoned when the northern foe arrived. They fell into a long lope, the sort of gait used when they expected to be running for a while, turning a little aside now and then to avoid plowed ground where the mud would suck speed and strength out of the hooves and legs of their mounts.
Eilir looked over her shoulder. Horses didn't raise dust this time of year in the Willamette and the easterners' gear was mostly dull-colored, hard to spot against the brown of plowland and the green of pasture. Another fence came up, and Celebroch took it without needing directions: yes, she could see a mass of horsemen boiling down from the northward, angling out from the enemy camp, with one in the lead carrying a banner with a mountain lion worked on the cloth, and another beside him wearing the tanned head of one on his helmet. Perhaps they'd copied that from descriptions of the Bear Lord's headgear.
How Mike would scowl, she thought.
The Dunedain slanted more directly east to avoid them, making a great show of urging their horses on without adding much speed.
Celebroch tossed her head, as if to say: Don't you know what you're doing? Am I supposed to run all out, or not? Make up your mind, woman!
There were two hundred in the band that pursued them. She could make out the numbers clearly enough once they'd fallen in behind the Rangers, despite their having no more order than a swarm of attacking bees. Arrows began to flick out from them, falling well short-two hundred yards was about the maximum you could really expect to hit someone when both were moving fast. Their mouths were all open too, probably howling curses-or just howling. Eilir left the knotted reins on Celebroch's neck and stood in the stirrups, slanting her longbow across the mare's rump as she turned and drew. A six-foot bow was awkward on horseback, but not impossible if you practiced enough. Aim high There.
The arrow plunged down among the very first of the mercenaries; two of them surged away from each other a bit as they galloped. It must have come down between them. Both of them shot back at her; one had a pre-Change compound bow, and the arrow came uncomfortably close to Celebroch's heels.
Astrid fell back beside her and drew her recurve. The arrow struck. Eilir couldn't see exactly where but a horse went over as if it had been poleaxed, and the rider hit the ground rolling. He gathered himself into a ball and put his arms over his head; one of his friends jumped his mount right over him, and others swerved, with a couple of near collisions corrected with impressive skill. Then the Rangers were plunging down a bank into the shallow, gravelly expanse of Zollner Creek; they surged through in exploding sheets of cold spray, holding their bows high overhead to avoid wetting them, and then galloped in earnest. Something hit her between the shoulder blades-hard-and she gasped and lurched forward in the saddle for an instant, making her mount check its stride. Astrid reached over and pulled something free of her brigan-dine, showing it to her before tossing it aside; it was an arrow with a barbed head. There would be a spot on her back where the leather was scraped free of the little steel plates.
Wow. Too close for comfort – -maybe we left it a little too long! They didn't have to shoot her to kill her, just cripple Celebroch. Probably they don't shoot at horses much 'cause they want to steal them. But sooner or later they'd get mad enough to ignore the niceties.
The Dunedain were thundering over a stretch of rolling meadow now, towards an old country road and then a big orchard about a mile long and a quarter wide, the riders ahead throwing divots of turf and dirt at her. The trees were neatly tended, and the buds were just about to break, but she could only see the top halves though they were twenty feet tall or better. The northeast-southwest line of the road ran along a low ridge; the cherry trees were on the other side, and sloped down a little to a creek. Closer and closer, the white-painted fence along the roadway looming up and the first of the Dunedain taking it in flying leaps. One had his horse refuse and fought it to a standstill, forcing its head around until it went in a circle for a moment, then riding off southward along the line of the fence, probably hideously embarrassed.
Asfaloth and Celebroch soared over it. She could see John Hordle there just beyond the other side of the road, lying flat as she had only a few moments before, grinning the way a Lughnasadh baked ham would if it had teeth. The twin Arab mares halted in a few strides; the rest of the Rangers continued for a few more paces, under the cherry trees, and among the CORA ranchers and their retainers waiting there. Those were all standing by their horses to keep out of sight from the meadow on the west side of the road; they grinned and gave her thumbs-up and worked their mouths.
Astrid drew up beside Alleyne. Eilir kicked her feet out of the stirrups, vaulted to the ground, dropped the reins-that meant Celebroch would stay, unless her mistress blew the high-frequency whistle that dangled around her neck-and ran a dozen paces to kneel beside John Hordle.
The big Englishman was lying on his back with his hands behind his head, helmet pushed forward over his eyes, chewing a grass stem and smiling around it at her. She scowled and thumped him on the top of his headpiece with the flat of her hand, driving it down until it covered everything above his nose. Since it was a good, solid steel sallet with a padded lining, his grimace and wince was undoubtedly put on.
Get ready! she signed as he pushed it back and winked.
"I am ready," he said, turning his head towards her.
One of the many things she liked about him was that he always remembered to face her when he spoke; lip-reading was half guesswork at the best of times, though she was very good at it.
"I'm just not rushing about getting hysterical, like some people I could name," he went on.
Eilir would have thumped him again, except that he was rising to one knee and turning with a smooth ease astonishing in a man who stood six-foot-seven in his stocking feet. Then he took up his bow, and they raised their heads until they were looking head and shoulders over the much-patched asphalt of the roadway.
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.