"Saunders," she said to the only one of the command group still leading a horse. "We need some help, and we need it fast. Go."
The cadet threw herself across the back of the shaggy pony and drummed her heels into its flanks. A horseman from the enemy group began to pursue, then turned back at a shouted order. She spared a moment to touch hands with Swindapa as the little group of allied warriors spread out into a line and moved to cut the easterners off from the forest.
"Can we hold them?" Swindapa asked. She leaned her sword against her armored thigh for a moment, clenching and unclenching each hand and shaking out her wrists.
"They outnumber us, but they've been beaten and run once," Alston said. "On the other hand, we're between them and safety. We'll see." She paused. "By the way, I love you."
"Me too," Swindapa said. Her face was radiant for an instant through dirt and weariness. It changed, clenching in. "Here they come."
"Halt!" Alston called, "when they came in earshot. "Lay down your weapons and you won't be harmed."
Alston ground her teeth slightly as she saw the familiar boyish grin… although it looked more twisted now. Walker himself looked older, a little thinner in the face.
"What, even me, Skipper?" he gibed.
"You get a rope around your neck," Alston replied.
"Not interested," he replied jauntily. "How's this-you get out of our way, right now, and I'll let you and your squeeze there live."
His hand began to creep toward the rifle at his knee. Oh, damn, she thought, taking a closer look. It was the Island-made flintlock. Androwski must be dead. Dammit to hell.
She blinked, rigid in shock for a second. How to delay them, how, how-
"I challenge you," she said-in Iraiina. The men behind Walker were mostly locals, all from the Sun People. "If you have the courage, meet me blade to blade and let the gods decide between us."
Her smile was cruel as she saw his face whiten. Gotcha, she thought. He had to keep these men with him if he wanted to get out alive-and if he refused a challenge to single combat, they'd turn on him like wolves on a crippled pack leader. Particularly a challenge from a woman. There was a certain satisfaction to catching him out this way.
Neither of them wasted time on words after that. Walker swung down, murmured a few orders to the men around his horse, and walked forward drawing his sword. Alston swung hers in a few practice arcs to loosen the arm muscles and came to meet him at the same measured pace. I'm tired. I'm better with the sword-ought to be, lots more training-he's stronger and younger and has the reach on me. And he's… ahhh, favorin' the left arm, by God. Now let's do it, woman. Empty the mind. Don't think, just do.
The katana came up to chudan no kame, the middle guard position. Alston let the breath slide out through half-open lips, felt her attention focus down to the man alone, hands and eyes and blade and feet. In a way this was homelike, like a kenjutsu match in the dojo back by the Bay, even the style of the armor. Throat, waist, hips, underarm, inside of the thigh, face, she remembered. Bad habits had crept in from fighting near-naked opponents.
Now. Walker cut, smooth and very fast… but there was a tiny grimace, a tensing, first. She parried, contact on the flat-you never parried edge to edge. A long musical soring sound and they were circling again, the tips of their blades almost crossing.
Again. Again. Hard attacking style, Alston thought dispassionately. He likes overarm strikes. Safer for him, with his longer reach. A bit of a tremor in her arms, but just as much in his-whatever that injury to his left was, it must be hurting him badly. Good. You took what was offered and used it.
Victory is achieved in the heiho of conflict by ascertaining the rhythm of each opponent, by attacking with a rhythm not anticipated by the opponent, and by the use of knowledge of the rhythm of the abstract.
"Very well, Master Musashi," she murmured, trancelike. Just words. You had to do.
She lunged forward with a two-handed stab, cutting edge up-very difficult to counter, since you exposed the wrists. He jerked his torso backward from the waist and snapped his blade across and down. She followed with an attack, overarm, the pear-splitter. The response to that was automatic… but it put the strain of holding the block on your left arm as the swords clashed and slid and locked at the guards.
They stood corps a corps, and his arm began to buckle. Another leap back, and she stepped in, the last thing he expected, leaving her vulnerable to his greater weight and strength… and able to hammer the pommel of her sword two-handed into his arm, six inches above the elbow.
Walker screamed, as much rage as pain, as his left hand spasmed open on the long hilt of the katana Martins had forged for him. Momentum spun him half around, setting the sight path for her stroke. The sword seemed to float along the line of its own volition, angling up and to the right-under the flared brim of his helmet, his first-model helmet without the hinged cheek guards she'd had added after the Olmec war. The move had a dreamy slow-motion inevitability, even as her breath came out in a rasping kia to add force to the blow.
So did his response, dropping the sword, punching out with the bladed fingers of his right hand. Mail coif and padding took some of it, but the impact threw her off enough that she felt her blade grate glancingly on bone instead of sinking into the soft flesh under the jaw. Walker fell backward as her sword flew free trailing a line of red droplets. She was down in the dirt, choking, trying to suck air through her impacted larynx, trying and failing.
A voice, in the Sun People's tongue: "Save the chief! Save him, Hwalkarz's men!"
Vision flickered. Americans driving forward past her. Walker's native guards throwing themselves onto the points, selling their lives for time with furious gallantry as others of their band dragged away the man whose salt they had taken. Grayness closing in around her vision as Swindapa knelt above her, hands scrambling under the coif, thumbs pressing on either side of the dented section of cartilage. A pop and a shooting pain, and unbelievable fainting relief as air flooded back into her lungs. Then the pain hit, enough to bring a breathless scream. Blood thundered behind her eyes, turning the rain-misted landscape reddish.
The power of will could substitute for strength. Her right hand scrabbled at her hip and pulled the Beretta; Walker wasn't ten paces away.
A shadow loomed over them both, the bleeding figure of one of Walker's troopers, his ax raised in both hands over Swindapa's neck. An instant to alter the point of aim, and the man's kneecap exploded into ruin. A crushing weight fell-two bodies on top of hers. She dropped the pistol and locked her fingers into the man's windpipe. He drew his knife and stabbed clumsily, wheezing; Swindapa grabbed the flailing arm.
Alston poured herself into the gripping hand. Fingers sank in behind the windpipe as awareness faded, and with the last strength in her she wrenched. There was a scream from very far away, and a warm soft falling.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
October – November, Year 2 A.E.
"Will the chieftain live?" Ohotolarix said, his voice shaking.
"He'll live," Alice Hong said, completing the bandaging. "Bad scar, and that eye's gone, I'm afraid. Still, it's clean and the stitching was neat if I say so myself," she added, twiddling her fingers before she washed them in the bowl.