Condors were spectacularly messy feeders, and the camels were extremely ripe after days in this heat.
“Keep it quiet,” Simmons said—quietly. “Dismount, spread out, and don’t get too close. Jake, get the net. Kolo, you’re our backup.”
Condors had never been hunted in New Virginia; they were a protected species, which could be taken only with an authorization from the Central Committee or the Chairman. They wouldn’t be very wary of human beings, but their dim little instinct-machine minds would associate anything large and alive with danger if it was close enough.
The party all swung down from the saddle, drew their rifles from the saddle scabbards and slung them over their backs, moving cautiously and with minimal noise; it was very quiet, nothing louder than the sough of wind through the tule reeds and the buzz of insects, punctuated by an occasional clatter of harness and clop of hooves as the horses shifted position. Simmons’s cousin Jake drove in a tethering stake and tied the pack-mule’s leading reins to it before he unlimbered the net and hurried up to join his relative at the front of the party. Adrienne and her two assistant-bodyguards followed on foot as well, leading their mounts; she admired the smooth way Simmons and his cousin deployed the net between them, stooping carefully to reduce their height and visual signal to their prey. Kolomusnim waited farther back, the cages at his feet and the reins of the two white men’s horses draped over his arm.
The Scouts came closer and closer to the carcasses, moving more and more slowly, until there was a pause of several seconds between steps and a freeze every time the condors seemed to pay attention. The birds looked, ruffled their feathers and then quieted again, looked and ruffled….
“Go!” she heard Simmons whisper, when the condors didn’t seem to quiet down at all after the last advance.
He and the other Scout sprinted forward at a dead run. The birds croak-squawked their alarm, turning and running awkwardly away with their wings spread out to their full ten-foot span, trying to build up enough momentum to take a leap into the air and thrash themselves upward—condors spent most of their time soaring on thermals, and they weren’t very efficient at getting off flat ground quickly. That let the men get within casting distance; Jake let go the net at another command, and Simmons whirled it in a circle over his head before he let fly.
It glinted in the harsh sunlight as the lead weights along the edge spun it open into a perfect circle, pausing for a moment at the top of its trajectory and then dropping like a swift-stooping eagle. One of the panic-stricken condors made its escape, hoisting itself into the air with desperate strokes of its great wings and banking out over the swamp, turning and circling to gain altitude and escape. Its cries drifted down through the hot still air. The others were a heaving, squawking chaos under the net, their flapping terror serving only to tangle them more securely. Simmons and his assistant waded in, cautious of the beaks and strong snaky necks. They used the net to throw the birds down; then Jake immobilized each in turn while Simmons slid a loose sock over its head. That quieted the big scavengers enough for a swift but gentle trussing.
Adrienne smiled to herself; it was always enjoyable to watch experts at work, and Jim Simmons’s boyish pride in his skills was entertaining in its own right. She watched Kolomusnim bend to pick up the two wire cages… and then freeze and come erect slowly, his head swiveling back and forth toward the walls of tule reeds on either hand. Then everything seemed to happen at once, yet in slow motion.
An instant before the Yokut called out a warning, Simmons came erect as well, reaching for the rifle slung over his back. Jake looked at him, puzzled, and then the expression went blank. The crack of a rifle followed instantly; she could distinctly see his body jerk, then a spot on the front of his khaki jacket blow out in a shower of red.
Another rifle spoke as the Scout fell, and a horse screamed; her head whipped around to see Schalk’s mount collapsing, thrashing with a broken foreleg. Then more shots, a fast rapid crack-crack-crack: two rifles at least, and used with more skill than Indians could generally achieve with pilfered ammunition and stolen weapons they didn’t know how to maintain. Of course, the shooters could be renegades; occasionally criminals or malcontents from New Virginian settlements ran off to live with any tribe that would take them in. They usually ran farther than this, though….
The thought ran through her head as she tried to get her horse under control and the rifle off her back. Then there was a sudden shhhhhwhup—shhhhhwhup —shhhhhwhup sound, and the saddle sprouted an arrow. The head made an ugly whacking sound as it stuck in the leather and wood, standing there with the shaft humming like an angry bee. Two more went into the animal’s rump with wet, meaty sounds, and the horse went wild—screaming and squealing as it reared and then went into a twisting buck.
“That’s torn it,” she said in a snarl, then took a step back, drew her FiveseveN automatic and shot the horse three times, the last one striking right behind an ear, not without a slight wince; the poor beast hadn’t done anything but what she asked of it. It hadn’t asked to be born in the Commonwealth, either; this wasn’t its fight.
The horse fell with a limp thud and she cast herself down behind it; the little 5.7mm bullets were high-velocity and armor piercing, but composed of some dense plastic that deformed and gave up all its kinetic energy when it struck soft tissue. This one had drilled through the horse’s skull and turned its brain into jelly; she had the pistol back in its holster before her mount’s final reflex kick, and the rifle out across the flank she huddled behind for cover. The smell of blood and offal from the horses was added to the stink of the rotting camels, and the ground was turning to mud underneath her as the animal bled out, but the knot of tension under her breastbone made all those things details she could ignore easily enough.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been shot at, exactly, but it’s certainly the most serious, she thought grimly. The other occasions had all been short, for starters. This one looks like it could spoil my entire day.
Simmons was down on the ground, leopard-crawling toward Jake with his rifle across the crook of his elbows. Three Indians were out of the reeds, their bodies striped in horizontal bands of white, black and ochre; they were howling like wolves and loosing arrows as they ran toward Kolomusnim. The Yokut shot one in the chest with the arrow on his bow; Adrienne carefully led the last and dropped him at a hundred and twenty paces. The militia battle rifle kicked against her shoulder, a quick hard punch, and the brass of the empty .30-06 round spun off to the right, glinting in the sun and then tinkling on some metal part of the horse’s bridle. More arrows came whupp-whupp-whupp out of the reeds and she had to duck, curling under the barrel of the horse as they plunged down at her from out of the sky, dropping like mortar rounds. From that angle and past the head of her former mount she could see the third Indian and Kolomusnim go over in a tangle of brown limbs. Then the tracker rose on top, his hatchet in his hand, smashing it downward over and over again in a quick hard flurry of blows accompanied by sickening cleaving thuds.
A quick glance behind her. Schalk and Piet were alive, but their horses weren’t; one of the mules was down too, and the other had pulled the tethering stake loose and was dragging it behind as it fled westward, braying hysterically. The two Afrikaners and she formed a rough triangle about a hundred feet on a side, each crouched down behind the carcass of a dead horse.