"There's been war in the Pendleton country almost since the Change, and a cruel war at that," she said. "They've grown up fighting, even more than we have here. That's how Arminger got them to join him, backing some of them against the rest."
"Bad bargain," Alleyne said.
"By then they hated their neighbors so much they'd take any help against them," Astrid said, between pity and disgust.
At a guess, none of the men down there were older than she or Eilir, and the time before the Change had grown dreamlike to her. War to the knife would have been all they knew, that and hunger and fear and hate.
The leader with the crested helmet called an order, swinging up a hand.
"In yrch derir," one of the Dunedain whispered: The enemy stop.
The mercenary light horse shook themselves out on either side of the road, combing the bush and checking any patch of trees that might shelter a watcher. The leader and three others rode on towards the bridge, arrows ready on their bows. Just then two figures burst out from underneath it, leapt on horses tethered and hidden among brushes and galloped away southwestward. The mercenaries pursued, rising in the stirrups to shoot, arrows flicking out. Astrid caught her lip in her teeth as she watched; those were her folk, her friends:
They passed out of sight around a bend in the road. The leader of the Pendleton scouts threw up his arm again, sensibly calling off the pursuit, since the fleeing men might be leading his into an ambush; he had to shout to make one man stop, and clouted him across the helmet when he returned. The rider extended a fist with one finger raised, and they both laughed. Then they dismounted and looked at the support pillars, one of them climbing awkwardly down a little and pointing, holding something up for his leader to see. The figures were tiny in the distance, their voices insect-small as they argued and shouted. After a moment one of the easterners turned his horse and cantered back northward towards the main body of the Protectorate's column.
"They found the cut marks and the tools, then," Alleyne said. Astrid felt a warm glow below her breastbone as he went on: "That was a remarkably clever idea, letting them find incomplete sabotage. Well worth all that night work."
A curled trumpet spoke, and the rest of the Protectorate force came around the curve of the northward road. A score of crossbowmen on bicycles came first, weaving among the obstacles on the road; they dismounted and set their machines on their kickstands, fanning out to either side of the road. That freed the mercenary horse who'd been guarding the crossing, and most of them trotted southward over the bridge to scout further on. Next came gangs of laborers in metal collars and rags, carrying mattocks and picks and shovels, some pushing wheelbarrows, all guarded by infantry equipped with shields and spears, conical helms and mail hauberks. The peons set to work on the roadway, shoving aside the rusting hulks of cars, chopping back the vegetation and filling holes with earth and rock. After that the wagons came, huge things with steel frames and twin four-wheel bogies from heavy trucks, drawn by sixteen span of oxen each and loaded high with shapes of metal and timber-a prefabricated fort, with the hundreds-strong labor force that would build it trudging in coffles beside the roadway and carrying their tools. Then there were several dozen ordinary baggage wagons loaded with food and supplies, and last of all a dozen mounted men-at-arms around a rider in a knight's plumed helmet, the lanceheads swaying bright above their heads. The horseman beside the knight carried a banner that hung from a crossbar-the Portland Protective Association's Lidless Eye, not quartered with a baron's blazon; that meant the commander must be of the Protector's own household troops.
"Didn't expect the lancers," Alleyne said, as the mercenary with the horsetail crest cantered back to report. "Now let's see: "
Astrid felt the tension rise, and trained reflex take control of her breathing, making the diaphragm pull air down to the bottom of her lungs and release it slowly. That slowed the beating of her heart, and kept her hands steady. Words and images flitted through her mind: fire and arrows and a white tower like a spike of pearl and silver, tall gray-eyed men riding through wilderness and by tumbled ruins, a host of horsemen charging across a plain wracked by battle, while winged shapes hovered overhead:
"Nazgul!"
Everyone froze. Astrid let her head drift up. The slim shape of the glider slid through the sky above, toy-tiny at about two thousand feet. None of her Rangers should be visible from there: but it turned on a wing and dove, coming down the road at a third that height. Which will be a real test of our fieldcraft, she thought.
Fingers moved in gestures of aversion among the Dunedain, with here and there a sign of the Cross. John Hordle raised one massive fist, with the middle finger extended, but kept it below head height.
Then it was past; it flashed across Puddle Creek, swift and graceful, and soared on an updraft that rose from the slope opposite, wheeling skyward like a falcon in a gyre until it was high above. Then it waggled its wings and turned southward once again, scouting the road the column would take.
"He didn't see a thing," Alleyne chuckled. "Victory through Air Power, what?"
They all nodded, though they also knew it would be a hideous handicap to have the Protector's gliders overhead when they were trying to move larger forces than this raiding party, spying and dropping messages to his troops.
The knight commanding the column nodded and waved his men forward. Half of them went over the bridge, and the forward labor gangs to clear the way, while the first of the huge freight wagons inched into movement. That took a minute or two. Whips cracked as the long line of paired oxen leaned into the traces with their heads down and shoulders straining at the yokes, nostrils flaring wide and mouths open with the effort. Here and there one slipped a little on the asphalt, lurching and scrabbling and bawling in alarm. A man-at-arms barked a command, and several score of the laborers added their shoulders to the effort, and the wheels began to turn slowly. The humans fell away gasping as the big vehicle moved, building up to a steady walking pace.
Astrid felt her smile waver as the first team put its hooves on the bridge. Wait for it, wait for it, the bulk of the weight's in the wagon -
It rolled across. The next two wagons followed, each occupying one lane, and she felt sweat trickling down her flanks. They'd had to calculate the stresses roughly "What's plan B?" Alleyne whispered.
"Tail, caro!"
Her beloved wasn't the first to chuckle; his Sindarin was still improving, and he took a moment to realize that she'd just said, Feet, do your stuff. Because if the trap failed, running away was all they could do:
The paired wagons rolled onto the bridge; she could see the man leading the first ox-team suddenly stop and look around him in puzzlement, then stare down at his feet in horror before running screaming for solid ground. The first lurch came soundlessly; they'd labored all night on the bridge pillars just below the water level, miserable work in relays as hands grew too numb to grip the saw handles. They'd gone through an implausible number of the blades, too, which could never be replaced. But it was worth it; and if the scouts detected a little incomplete sabotage they'd stop looking before they found the real thing.
We hoped, she thought, with an enormous relief that left her stomach feeling oddly liquid for an instant. And it worked, it worked :
The scream of tortured metal was joined by the screams of the rest of the wagon crews as they pelted either way off the lurching length of the bridge, arms and legs pumping in panic flight. The next jolt was even louder, with a popping, crackling sound beneath it as the leverage of the severed uprights ripped welds and rivets loose. The bridge swayed right, hesitated for a moment and then collapsed to the left. The bellows of the oxen did tear at her heart, but there was no way to spare the innocent beasts.