"Goibniu, Lord of Iron!" he wheezed when the first came free. Then he looked at the others: "All right, get those spikes pulled and the rail loose in the chairs, while I do this!" he said sharply.
"Channeling the Dread Lord again, Roe?" Sanjay Barstow grumbled, but they obeyed.
All that took muscle and skills she lacked. Juniper occupied herself instead with looking around, making sure nobody else was visible along the edge of the woods to either side-and taking a last sight and smell and taste of the sweet wild world, in case she passed over this day. When the clanking, clattering, cursing work was done-if the rails had had lives to blast, they'd have been in very bad trouble, and so would the ill-wishers-and the bolts and spikes and keys replaced with replicas of wood and wax, she spoke.
"Pick your spot. We're supposed to have another hour, but that's only a guess."
Sam had selected well. Bushes and patches of tall grass attracted them like moth to a flame; quick work with knives and nimble fingers freshened and thickened the twigs and grass in the loops of their war cloaks to match the meadow. Rowan helped her, despite her grumbling that she'd been woods wise before the Change came.
"Before you were born, sure," she went on.
"But you weren't wearing a war cloak then, Lady," he said, infuriatingly reasonable.
"Neither were you. Sam taught us, and I met him before you did, too, so there," she grumbled.
"Crawl in under here," he went on.
And is it more annoying to be treated like the Goddess, or like a baby? Juniper thought, obeying.
The cloak covered her like a tent, and like a tent it quickly grew stuffy in the bright daylight. Juniper made her breathing slow, not withdrawing from herself but instead concentrating on every sensation, every itch and tickle and buzz of insect, until she was one with everything about her: and unconscious of self, the self that worried and fretted and feared for Eilir and her people, and dreaded having to tell parents why their sons or daughters weren't coming home.
Clickity-clack: clickity-clack:
Slowly, slowly, her head turned within the hood. Her eyes blinked, bringing her back to full awareness; pupils flared and her nostrils spread to take in a sudden deep breath, but the rest of her was motionless. Motion drew her vision southwestward.
The railcar was silent save for the hum of wheels on steel, the louder clatter as it passed the joins in the rails, and the flutter of the two flags on poles at the prow, Arminger's red cat-pupiled eye on black, and the local baron's lion-and-spear. There was no engine, of course, unless you counted the four men who pumped either end of the big pivoted lever in its center. They were ragged but no more than wiry-gaunt, and not chained to the wooden handles they swung up and down with the regularity of machines, driving through gears to power the wheels beneath. That surprised her a little; it was work that by Protectorate standards should be done by peons-slaves for all practical purposes. Before them a waist-high wooden barricade hid the chair of the man-at-arms who commanded the little vehicle; the plume on his conical Norman helmet fluttered in the rapid passage of the railcar, forty miles an hour and swifter than anything else on land these days. He rested casually, one boot up on the railing, and a hand on that knee holding a pair of binoculars At the rear four crossbowmen stood, facing out on either side with their weapons in their hands.
I bind you, she thought. I bind your eyes, your ears, your nostrils. See not, hear not, smell not; by Herne the Wild Hunter, so mote it be!
The massed wills of every Mackenzie must be beating on the railcar's crew. The field craft that the First Armsman had spent the last decade hammering into them didn't hurt either, of course, or the fact that this select band were all good hunters used to silent waiting.
A moment, then another: and the knight's eyes went wide, and he yelled and reached for the brake lever.
That was too late for the fast-moving weight of metal and wood, though the brakes locked and squealed with an ear-piercing shriek and sparks poured from them in a red-gold roostertail torrent. The railcar slid onto the section of rail that had been loosened, onto metal held only by stubs of punkwood and wax painted to resemble steel. The long rails slewed sideways and the railcar leapt free, plowing into the roadbed with a shower of gravel and a chorus of screams.
"Now!" she said, rising.
Six Mackenzies sprang to their feet, tossing aside the camouflage cloaks. The railcar hadn't gone over, quite, but it lay steeply canted with the wheels on one side digging deeply into the dirt of the embankment. The knight had been thrown free and had the wind knocked out of him; he crawled and then began to rise, propping himself up with the lower point of his shield and pushing at the helmet that had slewed half around on his head. The crossbowmen all landed together in a heap in their enclosure, a heap that cursed and heaved as they tried to push each other off and regain their feet. One of the laborers on the pump handles of the railcar screamed as he was flung down and landed on some metal fitting with the point of his shoulder, breaking bone from the volume of sound he made. The others gasped and crouched and glared.
"Throw down!" Juniper shouted, drawing her bow. "Throw down, now, or you die!" She was close enough to see the knight's eyes narrow as he cast off shock.
Damn, she thought, as he ripped out his sword and charged.
The range was too close for comfort, and the big shield covered the man from nose to knee, held expertly; her arrow punched through the lion-with-spear painted on the sheet-metal surface and into the plywood with a vicious crack. The man checked half a step at the solid slamming impact but came on in his crabwise crouching run.
"Haro! Haro for Molalla!" he shouted, the long glitter of his sword going up for a looping cut. "Haro! Portland!"
"Your choice," Juniper said, skipping backward as her right hand reached over her shoulder.
Crack!
That was Cynthia Carson's bow; the bodkin punched through the tough plywood and through the vambrace on the knight's forearm beneath. He screamed as steel and cedarwood cracked bone, and threw out his sword as he twisted to keep balance.
Crack! Rowan's hundred-thirty-pound stave slammed a shaft right through the shield and into the knight's shoulder.
That gave Juniper and four others a shot at the gray chain mail covering his torso. The snapsnapsnapsnapsnap of their bowstrings striking their bracers sounded within a second of each other, fractionally before the ugly muffled punching thumps of impact and the low musical thunk! of the arrowheads' brutal passage through the strong riveted steel links of the ring mail. Two sank to the fletchings-light-gray goose and Sanjay Barstow's gaudy peacock feathers-and another went into his breastbone and stood there quivering until his knees gave way an instant later.
Sweet Mother-of-All, Juniper thought as the man crumpled, going on hands and knees and coughing out blood and bits of lung. You never got used to it: Dread Lord, lead him home to the Summerlands. Rowan's ax swung up and then down, in what might be mercy, before he cleaned it on the dead man's cloak and slid it back in the loops across his back.
She turned with a question on her lips. It died unasked as she saw Cynthia Carson lean over the railing at the rear of the car and make two careful thrusts with her short sword; that settled what had happened to the crossbow-men.
Or at least I don't get used to it, she thought, and nodded to Rowan.
"Let's get going!" he said.
Kevin Lewis of the Dunedain was already on the railcar, jabbing a hypodermic into the thigh of the man who rolled moaning on its floor. "Broken collarbone and socket," he said shortly, then cursed as Rowan rocked the vehicle. "Brigid leave just when you need Her, Rowan Mackenzie! Careful! I have to get him down!"
Rowan grumbled but helped lift the wounded man down. Kevin swore again at his haste and laid his patient hastily on the ground; the man's companions followed, staring wide-eyed at the kilted warriors and in awestruck fear at Juniper herself.