"Guns," Gwenhaskieths said. "It's started."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
April, 11 A.E.-Feather River Valley, California
November, 10 A.E.-Great River, southern Iberia
December, 10 A.E.-West-central Anatolia
November, 10 A.E.-Great River, southern Iberia
December, 10 A.E.-West-central Anatolia
November, 10 A.E.-Great River, southern Iberia
"Peter Giernas felt himself begin to shake as the canoe came to shore and he vaulted out and splashed ashore, leaving the others to haul the dugout craft onto the bank.
The campsite where he'd left Spring Indigo and Jared was empty… empty save for burned scraps and tattered leather flapping in the breeze. Heads remained as well, stuck on stakes; heads of local warriors, and of his dogs Saule and Ausra. No Spring Indigo. No Jared. A low bitter smell of smoke and shit wisped up from coals mostly dead with dawn dew. His eyes misted over, and he heard sounds coming from his throat as if from a great distance. The shaking grew worse. He turned in the direction of the distant Tartessian fort and took a step…
"Snap out of it!" Sue said, grabbing his arm. The muscle was rigid under her fingers, like carved wood. "Going berserk won't help!"
He shuddered again, like a horse twitching at the bite of flies, and shook his head. Eddie's arms gripped him from behind, and he heaved and twisted. Sue and Jaditwara joined in, wrestling him to a halt; he wasn't quite far enough gone to hurt any of them.
"Blood brother!" Eddie Vergeraxsson shouted in his ear. "Call back your spirit! We'll get them, or get revenge, but we have to think."
Step by step he won back to himself. At last he relaxed. "Thanks," he said, his voice harsh and unfamiliar in his own ears. "Now let's look around."
They did, keeping the locals at the shoreline. Most of the ground around the Islander campsite was trampled too heavily for useful information, but some of it gave him a grim satisfaction that took a little of the shadow from the bright spring day.
"I think at least one of them bled out here," he announced.
"Pete!"
Sue's voice called him to the line where the horses had been picketed. "Pete, I think there was a hell of a fight here."
He came, bent low and shading his eyes with a hand. "Yup," he said. "Pawprints, lots of 'em… then most of the horses got led away, some of 'em broke free… Look, this is a blood trail."
Not much of one, an occasional brown drop. It led to the narrow band of riverside swamp.
"Cover me," he said, stripping off his buckskin tunic and taking knife and tomahawk in hand. He eeled through, the wind warm on his bare back as he followed the tiny clues-a broken tule reed, an impression in a patch of mud, tufts of brown and gray fur. A low uncertain whine greeted him.
"Perks?" he said incredulously. "Perks, boy?"
His left hand reached out through the reeds, his right ready with his tomahawk. The palm came down on a dead man's face, half-chewed away. He suppressed a startled curse and swept the tall tule rushes aside. Flies buzzed around the dead man's caked blood, and on more-his own and others'-that matted the wolf-dog's fur. Perks quivered, crawling forward on his belly, ears laid back, and licked his face and hands.
"Here, Perks. Steady, fellah."
A jet of fear went through him as the dog struggled to rise. He yelped gently as Giernas slid the tomahawk through the loop at the back of his belt and picked him up; the ranger moved carefully, but a hundred and twenty pounds was a considerable weight even for his strength.
Sue came running at his call. She ran her hands over the wounded animal. "Nothing fundamental," she said. "Except… yes, there's a pistol ball under the skin here on his left shoulder, must have skipped around. And this slash, and a stab here. I'll have to probe for the bullet, the rest is antiseptic and some stitches. This is one tough dog."
"He was tougher than one Tartessian, at least," Giernas said. "Do what you can."
He and Eddie and Jaddi were better trackers. He joined them, casting about through tall grass, riverside mud, beneath stands of live oak.
"Here's where the Tartessians left," Eddie said. "North-down the wagon track."
That would lead the enemy a day's hard ride north, and then they'd find the missing patrol's wagon-the Indians with it had peeled off by ones and little groups, in places where they'd be hard to trace. The wagon would be alone, destroyed, with its load of charred Tartessian bodies. That would drive the enemy troops absolutely bugfuck, of course.
"And they had most of our horses with them," Eddie went on, pointing. "Look."
Giernas nodded. They'd gotten familiar enough with their tracks to identify individuals by their hoofprints. Those were as individual as a man's fingerprints, when you knew how to look.
"They had a net of outriders all around," Giernas said. "Look, there and there."
Eddie frowned and nodded. "If Indigo got away, I don't think she could avoid or outrun them," he said unhappily. "Not after sunrise. They were pressing it hard, by the looks of it."
"Pete!" Jaditwara called, her voice faint with distance. "Eddie!"
They trotted over, running easily at a steady wolf trot with their rifles pumping back and forth in their right hands and their moccasins rustling through the soft ground cover. Insects and a few birds burst out ahead of them. Jaditwara was lying on her belly, hands parting two clumps of the tall grass. They circled up behind her to avoid overtreading the trail and knelt, reaching out with their riflebarrels to part more of the grass. Hoofprints, unshod ones…
"That's two horses… Shadowfax and Grimma, isn't it?" he asked.
Jaditwara nodded; those were two of hers, a mare and a gelding named after characters from some old story she liked; she'd read big chunks of it aloud to them around the fire overwinter.
"Shadowfax is carrying a rider," she said. "But a light one. Grimma is on a lead rope."
Hope blazed up in him. "Spring Indigo got away!" he said. "She must have cut west and then south, back along the Tar-ties' trail. That's the one way they wouldn't look."
The three of them jumped up and ran down the trail for a quarter hour; even through thigh-high grass you could follow it, once you knew roughly what and where to look for. Peter brought himself to a halt and scratched his head.
"She stopped and changed off here," he said.
"Awe," Eddie said, and Jaditwara nodded.
"And she's pushing the horses hard," the ex-Fiernan ranger said, tossing her head in puzzlement. "Trot and gallop."
You could do that, if you had two mounts, especially if you sat light in the saddle. It was a good way to cover ground quickly, as well-better than a hundred miles in a day's journey.
Uh-oh, Peter Giernas thought, looking south.
"I think I know what she was doing," he said slowly. "She didn't know when we'd be back-everything went real quick, quicker than we thought-and she knew the Tartessians were out in force. Thirty or more, and with native trackers. Where would you go?"
Eddie leaned on his rifle and frowned, turning his head in a wide sweep. The fringe on the sleeve of his buckskins wobbled as he scratched his head.
"Over the river to the east?" he said tentatively. "Hide in the hills?"
"Cross two big rivers with a baby?" Jaditwara said. "And no more gear than in her saddlebags? No. She has to get shelter and food, and quickly, for her child's sake."