As one, they all signaled their horses up to a gallop and turned in the saddle to shoot back, rising in the stir rups and clamping their thighs hard against the leather in the moment they loosed. The surviving pair of re mounts galloped ahead as their reins were dropped, herd instinct keeping them from doing the sensible thing and scattering. Ingolf exhaled as he drew, the thick muscles of his right arm bunching against the sinew and Osage-orange wood and horn of the recurve. Thousands of hours of practice starting when he was seven guided the angle to which he raised the bow before letting the string roll off the fingers.
Snap of bowstring against the scarred steel surface of his bracer, and the recoil slammed him back against the high cantle of his saddle. Snap-snap, and the brother and sister fired as well.
The arrows slapped out, seeming to slow as they arched towards the distant dot-sized figures of the pur suers. More came back, and those seemed to go faster as they approached. Two went by with unpleasant vvvvvptttt sounds before burying themselves in the ash-black ground, shunk shunk.
This wasn't the first time he'd done something like this. It was just as unpleasant as he remembered, and would have been worse if he hadn't been so caught up in surviving moment to moment. That sound of arrows going by was the sort you remembered years later, leav ing you depressed and sweating just when you were about to kiss a girl or bite into an apple.
Assuming I ever get to do either again, he thought, hearing Boy's valiant laboring beneath him as he shot and shot again.
Then the lip of the ravine leading down to the river was close. Another flight of arrows came in just as they urged their mounts over the edge. The animals went down it fast, sometimes squatting on their haunches, then hit the old path at the base running until they were around a corner two hundred yards eastward, with tall oak and maple all around and thick brush between the trees, the steep bank close to the water's edge.
Kaur's gasp of pain was bitten off. Ingolf didn't look over until they'd stopped. When he did his stomach lurched. Not that the wound was mortal in itself; the chain mail and the padded canvas underneath had ab sorbed most of the force of the arrow, leaving only a few inches of it sticking into her hip. Red was leaking out through the mail already, and running down her leg, though not the arterial pumping that spelled a swift end. With nursing and care she could recover. But with the arrowhead lodged in bone, it would be impossible for her to ride fast, or to run and fight.
Right now, that meant death. He saw her accept it, biting her lip until the blood flowed; then her brother did as well.
"We will see pitaji again," she said. "I knew when we saw their faces again in the place of magic that we were fated. Karman. "
Singh nodded, then turned his face to Ingolf: "This is as good a place as any. We'll hold them as long as we can. Ride hard, my friend."
They leaned over to clasp hands for an instant. "It has been an honor, Captain. Avenge our blood."
Ingolf nodded, not wasting time on saying what they both knew. Singh swung down and handed him the reins of his horse.
His teeth were bared as he turned and got Boy back to a gallop, and clods of earth flew up from the hammering hooves. No point in holding back now; he had to try to break contact before the enemy caught up with him, and he ignored the low branches and brush that flogged at his face or rang off his helmet as he ducked and wove. The Illinois River was to his right, flowing from east to west here as he rode upstream, a long bowshot across-call it three hundred yards. It flowed quietly, with only a little gurgling chuckle at the edge. His own harsh breathing sounded louder in his ears.
A yell came from behind him, faint and far now. Then another, a man screaming in astonished pain, and then a clash of steel on steel. That followed him for perhaps a hundred of Boy's long strides; then it stopped, and he knew the two Sikhs were dead. He glanced behind as he went down a long straight stretch, and caught the first glitter of steel.
"Shit!" he snarled, and reached over his shoulder for an arrow. "They must have sent men around Singh."
The pursuers dropped back as he shot again, dropped out of sight, though that wouldn't last for more than seconds. The path twisted around and split. He made an instant decision and turned right, throwing aside the leading reins of Singh's horse and slapping it on the rump with his bow as it went by. Then he took the righthand branch, down to the edge of the water.
It was nearly under the piers of the Spring Valley bridge; Boy gave a single are you sure-boss snort and jumped into the water, striking out strongly for the op posite shore. Ingolf let himself slip out of the saddle, holding his bow above the surface with one hand and clinging to the saddle horn with the other. Water sloshed into his clothing with a cold shock, and he could feel the dragging weight as the padding under his mail shirt soaked it up. You could swim in war gear… but not for long.
He was three quarters of the way across and in the shadow of the bridge when the first of the enemy went pelting past the spot he'd left, galloping flat out. That meant the men in the lead were either very brave or completely reckless; there were any number of nasty tricks you could play on a narrow trail.
One… two… three…
The total had gone up to nine before one of them reined in, bringing his horse up on its hind legs. That took skill; so did avoiding a tangled collision by the two behind him, who split around the rearing horse. The too alert one pointed to the ground, then across the river. Yelling, the three horsemen spurred down to the water's edge, and into it.
"Shit!"
That had been a long shot, and it hadn't panned out. But three-to one was a lot better odds than twelve-to one. As Boy came out of the water he thought quickly while hooves went clattering on rock and making wet sucking sounds in the muck. The horse shook himself, spattering more water around; Ingolf got into the saddle and headed east again, on the south side of the river this time, urging the most out of his mount. The trees grew thicker as they blurred past; this path had been graveled once, but it had seen only the hooves of deer and elk, mustangs and feral cattle for the past generation.
One hour to sunset now, he thought. Only an hour.
Rock grew higher south of the river, layers of banded sandstone that caught the dying sun bloodred. They made sound echo, and sometimes treacherously die off or seem more distant than it was. The more so as he bore south and high walls closed around him on both sides, dark where the rock blocked the sun. Hooves clattered on stones and thudded on sand, where the ancient floods had carved this passage.
There.
The right spot, where a bulge of rock narrowed the passage through the canyon. His bow went into the sad dle scabbard, and he brought his shield around from his back and slid his left forearm into the loops.
He reined in and slid from Boy's saddle while the animal was still moving; it carried on around a curve in the canyon wall, slowing down and looking back. The man plastered himself flat against the rock; in the same motion he drew his shete, holding it high with the point back, suddenly conscious of his own panting breath, and how paper dry his mouth was, while the rest of him streamed water. The pursuers' gallop hammered at his ears, bouncing off the stony walls around him, making it hard to judge just where they were.
He could hear their barking, yelping cry, too: "Cut! Cut! Cut! "
"I'll give you a cut, you son of a bitch," he snarled to himself.
A lance point flashed as it came around the corner, giv ing him a fractional second's warning and showing where the man's arm must be-poised to thrust it into his back as he fled.