"Richland!" he bellowed.
As he shouted Ingolf pivoted with tiger precision and swung, whipping the long cutting blade forward with every ounce of strength his shoulders and back could muster. Combined with the speed of the galloping horse the sharp metal cut through a mail shod gauntlet, through flesh and bone and flesh and then through the tough shaft of the lance itself. The mounted warrior rode on for a dozen paces, screaming in shock and staring at the stump where his hand had been, the blood spurting out with fire-hose speed, then toppled and lay flopping and twitching.
The one following him slugged his mount back on its haunches with desperate brutality, dropping his lance and going for his shete. Ingolf ignored it, dropping his own weapon and darting in to grab one booted foot and heave with all his strength. The rider flew out of his saddle and into the rock wall of the canyon as if springs had pulled him. The helmeted head went bonnnngggg on the rock and the neck snapped beneath it. That horse went past too, riderless, buffeting Ingolf back with a force that brought a grunt as he was slammed into the canyon wall.
The third rider had an arrow on his bowstring. He drew and shot, in the same instant that Ingolf's hand whipped up across the small of his back and forward in a throw. Tomahawk and arrow crossed each other in flight. The arrow banged painfully off Ingolf's mail-clad shoulder, and the head of the tomahawk sank with a meaty smack and crunch into the rider's jaw. He toppled backward over his horse's crupper, trying to scream and succeed ing only in gobbling. Gauntlets beat at the ground in futile agony as Ingolf pounced. The back of the wounded man's neck was protected by an aventail of steel splints fixed to rings on the helmet brim, but they bent and snapped as Ingolf drove his boot heel down again and again.
Silence fell, except for the sound of the wind hooting through the rock, and the horses stamping and moving restlessly. Ingolf limped back to his shete-where had that small cut on his left thigh just below the mail shirt come from?-and sheathed it. That gave him a chance to examine his opponents for the first time. They were young men, younger than he was, of middling height but with the broad shoulders of bowmen and dressed alike in coarse blue woolen pants and tunics and high horseman's boots. They'd all been armed with dagger, shete, bow and lance, and all wore the same equipment, not just the helmets; back-and-breasts of overlapping leather plates, chaps of the same protecting their legs, mail sleeves. In fact…
That's like the gear Kuttner was wearing!
Things went click behind Ingolf's eyes. He'd been fu rious before. Now the rage went coldly murderous. For certainty's sake he examined one of the shetes; it was a twin to the one he'd taken from the wild-man chief near Innsmouth, though not quite as good.
"Time to get out," he muttered to himself.
Boy had stopped a hundred yards down the canyon, and the other horses were milling around, unable to get past him. He didn't bother to investigate the gear; time enough for that later. Instead he simply looped the stirrups of each up over the saddle horn and improvised a leading rein. Taking them in hand he looked up at the sky; it was turning dark blue in the east, nearly nightfall.
There was just enough sunlight to gild the arrowheads, when he came out of the eastern mouth of the canyon and found a semicircle of the enemy waiting for him, their stiff horn-and-sinew recurve bows drawn to the ear.
Kuttner sat his horse behind them, grinning…
Flying M Baronial Hunting Preserve,
Near Yamhill
Portland Protective Association,
Oregon
January 30, CY22/2021 A.D.
The fire had died down to coals while he told Ingolf's story. When Matti spoke her voice was as quiet as the blue and-yellow flickering over the embers. as the blue-and-yellow flickering over the embers.
"That would be hard, to lose your best friends all on the same day, and then be betrayed like that."
"Yes," Rudi said somberly. Then he smiled. "But you know what Mom said to him?"
"What?"
"She told him what his friends' names meant-the Sikhs. He hadn't known… She said-"
His gaze went beyond the wall, recalling that night in Dun Juniper.
"Lion," the Mackenzie chieftain said softly. "And Lioness."
Ingolf looked up, startled out of memory. "Ma'am?"
"That's what Singh means: Lion. And Kaur means lioness. Your friends died faithful to their ancestors, Ingolf."
"We'll have to get by the… Cutters? The Cutters, yes… when we go east," Mathilda said thoughtfully.
She picked up the poker and stirred the embers; they crackled and let a few dull red sparks drift upwards. The hall was silent now; they were alone, though there were servants within calling distance.
Rudi sat up. "Wait a minute!" he said sharply. "What's this we?"
Mathilda looked at him, her brown eyes hurt. He'd seen it done better… and they'd spent a lot of time together since they were children.
"We're anamchara."
"Yes, we are," Rudi said.
They'd been children when they went through that rite, back during the War of the Eye, when she was held prisoner by his people and before he'd been taken captive by hers; they'd done it to make sure that they weren't caught up in the quarrels of their parents. That didn't make it any less real, or less binding.
"But that doesn't mean you can run off with me, soul sister," he said. "You're heir to the Protectorate, for sweet Brigid's sake!"
"And you're heir to the Mackenzie," Mathilda shot back.
Her back had gone stiff, and she wasn't trying the puppy eyes on him anymore. Rudi ran a hand through his red-gold mane.
"I am not! It's not hereditary!"
She made a rubbing gesture between thumb and forefinger. "That's the world's smallest violin playing for you 'cause you'll be tossed out to starve or go beg in the gut ters of Corvallis, Rudi. The assembly made you tanist, didn't they?"
He flushed, which was unfortunately obvious with his complexion; not quite as milk white as his mother's but pale enough to show the blood mounting to his cheeks, particularly in winter. There wasn't much doubt who the Clan would hail as Chief… but he didn't want to think about his mother taking the voyage to the Summerlands, not yet. That might be a long time, anyway; she was only in her fifties, strong and healthy.
"Look, Matti, I'd love to have you along. There's nobody in the world I'd rather have my back. But you can't go. Your mother would never let you do something that crazy."
She pounced. "If it's that crazy, why is your mother letting you do it?"
"I'm of age," he said, and instantly regretted it as her lips narrowed.
Oops. Matti doesn't come of age until she's twenty-six. That had been part of the agreement at the end of the War.
"And besides, you heard about the dream Ingolf had. I'm supposed to be doing this. Mom doesn't like it, of a surety she doesn't, but she knows I have to."
"Pagan superstition," Mathilda spit.
"Hey!" Rudi replied, dismayed. I did get her angry, and no mistake!
Then she took a deep breath and relaxed. The problem was that she relaxed the way a lynx did, waiting on a branch for something edible to pass by. And he recog nized that expression; it was too much like her mother's. She was thinking.
"Well, who is going with you?" she said reasonably.
"Ingolf, of course," Rudi said. Anamchara did have to share their secrets. "And one more-I think Edain, Sam Aylward's son. He showed very well in that dustup with the Haida last year."
Mathilda nodded; they both knew the young man well. "And?" the young woman went on ruthlessly.