"No," Three Bears said. "It's good. If we can get across the herd before the Cutters catch up, I mean. It'll take hours-maybe a whole day-for them to pass. If we're on the other side, we might as well have mountains in between."
Ritva nodded vigorously.
"Then go," Rudi said. "Ingolf, you and Mary take lead. Three Bears and I will bring up the rear; we're the best mounted archers. Now."
The Easterner nodded grimly and legged his horse up to a hand gallop.
Rudi wished briefly that he had time to switch to Epona, but he'd been riding one of the remounts to spare her. It was a good beast, but not quite fifteen hands-and even riding in kilt and shirt, he was a little heavy for it. It was sweating already, the musky scent strong under the dust and crushed grass of their passage. Usually being six-two and built like a cougar was an advantage, but sometimes…
Three Bears cut out two more for them as the remount herd went by, with Edain and Virginia and Fred driving them forward. The pack-saddles some of them carried had only about half a rider's weight and wouldn't slow them much.
Ahead, Ingolf signaled and the travelers turned sharply east of north, moving in a compact mass with the remuda of remounts in the middle. Rudi shifted his balance forward, and the well-trained animal stretched its legs, head beating up and down as if to set the pace. He looked over his shoulder, and the enemy were visible to the naked eye; as he watched the ant-tiny dots seemed to swarm, and then some of them were pulling out ahead of the others.
"How many do you make it?" Rudi called over the rising rumble of the hoofbeats, as a covey of quail burst from the grass ahead of him; he gentled the horse instinctively as it started.
"Ten or fifteen pulling away from the others," Three Bears said, nodding at Rudi with his brown braids flying in the wind of their passage.
They'd both had the same thought: the Cutters knew they couldn't catch the smaller, better-mounted group all at once. Two hundred mounted men could only proceed at the speed of the slowest mounts, and in a group that size there would always be some slugs, especially if they'd been taking horses where they could get them. So they'd sent their best riders and beasts on ahead, to push their quarry into tiring their horses.
"It's going to be close!" Rudi shouted back.
The Indian grinned; he was a young man, after all, younger than the Mackenzie, and of a warrior people. Then he turned in the saddle and shook his bow in the air.
"Kye-eee-kye!" he screamed. "Hoo'hay, hoo'hay! The sun shines on the hawk and on the quarry!"
Rudi bared his teeth too; he wasn't an oldster yet, either, and the Clan wasn't shy of a fight, and it was a bright summer's day with a good horse beneath him. His spirits lifted, seeming to fly with the long stride of the valiant mount between his legs. He added the saw-edged wailing ululation that Mackenzies took into battle.
Then he settled down to coaxing as much speed as he could out of the horse, short of the all-out dash that would set its lungs foaming out. The Cutters were pushing theirs to the uttermost; they could fall back and let others take up the sprint if they had to. And the buffalo herd was just coming into sight eastward.
"Cernunnos!" he blurted as it did.
There's miles of the things!
He could hear them, even miles away and on a galloping horse, a fast drumming rumble that struck at his face and chest. Too far to see individual animals, even ones as big as buffalo, but the great black-gray mass seemed to undulate, like waves on the sea. The forefront of the herd was a spray of dots; as they got a little closer he could see that they were the big ton-weight herd bulls, their massive heads down and the great shaggy humps rising and falling. At rest or walking they would look clumsy and slow, but now they were moving as fast as a horse could, or a little faster, their mouths open and lines of white foam falling from their tongues, everything lost but the need to flee.
"Going to be close!" Three Bears said again.
Rudi looked behind, over the head of the remount on its leading rein. The foremost Cutters were much closer now, and foam was slobbering from their horses' mouths and clotting on their forequarters. Probably none of the Corwinites was Rudi's size or weight, but they all had their war-harness on, which more or less equalized things. As he watched one of the ones at the rear fell away, his horse shaking its head and stumbling. The three in the lead rose in the stirrups and drew. Their upper bodies hardly seemed to move at all as their horses galloped…
"Uh-oh!" Three Bears called.
"I know what Uh-oh means!" Rudi replied.
"It means we're fucked!"
They both hunched down in the saddle. Wearing helms and with their round shields slung over their backs, they presented a minimum target. His back crawled a little as he waited for the whipppt of arrows.
And since that fight after Picabo, I've been just a little more nervous of that sound.
It came, but faintly. He looked around; the last shaft hit the ground as he watched, about ten yards behind them. Rudi clamped his thighs on the saddle and twisted, bringing up the bow. The recurve was a masterpiece from the best bowyer in Bend, and the long muscles of his arm coiled as he drew to the ear. Then loose, and the snap of the string on his bracer, the slam of the recoil, the shaft seeming to slow as it arched out at the doll-tiny shape of the pursuers.
Three Bears whooped as one of them ducked, and his horse took a half-step sideways in a puff of dust as an arrow landed between him and the Mackenzie. They fell back a little as Rudi sprayed three more shafts towards them as fast as he could draw, but hitting a moving target from a horse at better than two hundred yards was more a matter of luck than skill.
"Cernunnos!" Rudi grunted again as he looked forward.
The herd was much closer, and closing fast; the beasts were running straight north, and the travelers were angling to cut across their front. That might be possible; Ingolf and Mary were already past the first of them. The noise was much louder now, and the dust-cloud turned the morning sun into a swollen red orb. Looking back southward they stretched to the end of sight-and you could see a long way on the plains; it was as if a carpet of running bison extended from here to the other end of the world. The angle gave him a view across the front of the herd, where the mass frayed out into individuals, and it was half a mile to the other side.
The noise was stunning, and growing with every stride, building to a roar like all the waterfalls in the world, the sound of a million hooves hitting the soil as a quarter-million buffalo stampeded in blind fear and fury. He could smell them too, dung and piss and the hard dry stink of their bodies, like oxen working in the sun but wilder, and the rank exhalations of their panting breath. It took an effort of the will to keep angling towards them; his gut was convinced that it was insanity, that they could pound down mountains and turn him into a paste mixed inextricably with the flesh of his horse.
Whipppt!
An arrow went by, not ten feet to his left, and then three more followed it; the last was uncomfortably close to his horse's haunches. He turned and shot again himself, and one of the pursuers went down in a tumble of man and horse-he must have hit the mount.
"Sorry, brother horse!" he called, and then whooped laughter as the Cutter staggered to his feet only to topple face-first on the grass.
This is immortality! he exulted. I'm immortal because I could die in the next second!
Three Bears shot too; he rode twenty-five or thirty pounds lighter than Rudi and his horse was pulling ahead, turning across the front of the herd.
Thock!
The arrow hit Rudi's shield with an impact like a blow from a club; there was no pain beyond that, and a quick glance showed it standing in the bullhide like a weed sprouting from dirt. The narrow point showed just under his armpit, dimpling through the felt glued to the inside of the shield.