Edain shrugged; Rudi thought he alone could see the flash of despair in the archer's eyes, but anger was deeper. He turned and smoothed the fletching of the arrow against his lips, blowing softly on the feathers and setting the shaft on the string. Then he stood stock still while he took one long breath, drew past the angle of his jaw and loosed in a single continuous movement.
The arrow flashed out, seeming to drift as it gained distance. There was less than a second before it struck… and Rebecca Nystrup pitched forward on her face, limp as a sack.
Silence fell for a long moment. "Well," Jed Smith said. "Want me to finish her off for you?"
TheScourgeofGod
CHAPTER SEVEN
BD fanned herself with one dangling end of the loose sun-turban she wore over an inconspicuous steel cap. A quarter mile ahead of her eastbound wagon train on Highway 84 was a baulk of timber studded with blades, mounted on old truck axles with modern spoke wheels. And besides the ten men behind it on foot with pikes and crossbows, a round dozen or more armed cowboys waited to either side.
It all looked tiny in this huge landscape, beneath a sky blue from horizon to horizon; the weather was clear and dry, typical for fall hereabouts. And just on the comfortable side of warm, also standard, but the wind was from the east and it held the slightest hint of autumn beneath the acrid scent of dust. But no view with that much edged metal in it was particularly friendly.
"Tia Loba?" the head of her guards said, as some of the cowboys cantered forward and flanked them to either side, just within bowshot.
"Keep calm, Chucho," she said. "We'll just walk on up to them and have a talk."
The slow creak and clatter and bounce of wagon travel went on, and the figures around the barricade grew from dolls to men.
"Whoa!" she said, pulling on the reins, just as they barked out: "Halt!"
Dobben and Maggie were well trained, once they woke from their patient ambling daze; the big half-Suffolk lead pair came to a stop inside six paces, the rear pair had to halt perforce, and she pulled and locked the brake lever. The four other carts behind them came to a halt as well, and the six guards reined in beside them.
They were just far enough away that the Easterners would have to come to her if they wanted to talk without shouting, which was what she'd wanted. Silence replaced the clop of shod hooves on the freeway's broken asphalt, silence and the long hiss of the wind through the rolling fields on either side. You couldn't see Pendleton proper from here-it was down in the river valley about six miles farther east-but you could just make out the rounded heights of the Blue Mountains on the horizon.
"And this used to be a tourist spot," she muttered to herself.
BD looked around casually, wiping her forehead on the tail of her turban and checking for more armed men. Northward was a reaped wheat field with some of the shocks of grain still standing in yellow tripods, but elsewhere the rolling swales around had long since gone back to arid wilderness. Pale bleached-brown bunchgrass studded with the olive green of sagebrush rippled in waves; a flock with a mounted shepherd and his dogs and guard llamas drifted south of the road, moving slowly through the middle distance. Farther off some pronghorns danced, and a pair of buzzards swept in and perched on the tilted shape of an old telephone pole not far away. It moved slightly under their weight.
I hope that's not an omen, she thought. And of course, this was the Oregon Trail before it was Interstate 84. Not all that different from the way it looked when some of my ancestors came through in ox-carts.
Footmen and mounted archers alike scowled at her party, and there were two flags flying from a post by the road. One was the expected blazon of the local Rancher-the Circle D in black on light green. The other was the white-on-red cowboy and bucking bronco of the Associated Communities of the Pendleton Emergency Area.
What everyone else calls the Pendleton Round-Up, BD thought. Or, alternatively, "those Pendleton sheep rapers." But they usually don't bother with the flag. Pythian Apollo witness I am getting too old for this.
She was just short of sixty now, and getting a bit gnarled. People said she was tough as an old root, but…
Yeah, tough as an old root, and stiffer. People age faster these days, she thought. I spent the past generation heaving loads and hauling on reins, not behind a keyboard. It's time to sit by the fire and tell the grandchildren stories.
Then, smiling to herself: Who am I kidding? The Powers gave me my marching orders back at DUN Juniper last Lughnasadh, and Apollon confirmed it.
Her guards closed up around the lead wagon; they and the wranglers were her own people from the Kyklos, mostly unofficial nephews-or in one case, a niece-by-courtesy. They favored Japanese-style armor, another legacy of hobbyists-turned-deadly-serious right after the Change. The outfit included flared helmets and armor of metal lozenges laced together, and they carried naginatas, five-foot shafts topped with curved swordblades. Quivers and asymmetric longbows rode across their backs, and katana and wazikashi at their belts.
They were also bristling a little at the show of force. Young men
…
"Whoa, everybody," BD said loudly, carefully not touching the naginata that rode in a scabbard behind her, or an assortment of concealed weapons on her own person. "Let's be sensible here; it's good for business."
She climbed down from the seat and rubbed at the small of her back, looking deliberately as nonthreatening as possible; she was in shapeless linsey-woolsey pants, belted tunic and boots, practical traveling garb. An expert could probably catch the mail-vest beneath, but that was just a reasonable precaution traveling in lands without much law. Peering at the cowboys, she saw a face she knew, and got out her glasses to confirm it.
"Hey, Rancher Jenson!" she called; Sandy Jenson was an old customer. "What is this? Another shakedown? If you people don't stop this shit, nobody will come this way at all, and then where'll you be?"
The Rancher walked his horse over, followed by some of his retainers. They were certainly loaded for bear; Jenson's long reddish beard splayed down on a mail-shirt of the short type that cow-country fighters wore if they could afford it, and the men behind him fairly bristled with weapons and bits and pieces of armor. One had an arrow on the string of his recurve and they were all scowling.
Twenty cowboys, she thought. Hmmm. That's a quarter of the riders Jenson can bring to a fight. Enough to cut into the Circle D's usual routine. It must be fairly serious. Plus those other guys look like Pendleton City militia.
"This isn't a transit fee, BD," Jenson said, using the local terminology for shakedow n. "The Bossman says he's heard you Westerners may be getting ready to invade. We've been called up to guard against spies and infiltrators."
"Hey, Sandy, you know me," BD said. "I've done business with you and I did business with your father."
She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the pony drawn on the canvas tilts of her wagons, scuffing along amid puffs of dust.
"The Plodding Pony Service is neutral. I carry stuff, I buy, I sell. Everybody benefits. And I'm not exactly hiding or sneaking around here. Also I'm old enough to be your mother. Do I look like Jane Bond?"
That went past him; he'd been about nine when the Change happened.
"Do I look like a spy?" she amplified.
"You're from the Willamette. Your bunch-"
"-the Kyklos."
"-yeah, the Kyklos, you're part of the Corvallis Meeting," he said, but his frown relaxed a bit.
Unexpectedly, one of Jenson's cowboys spoke, a gangling youngster with a scatter of spots.
"She's an abomination, a woman doing a man's part," he said. "And flaunting herself shamelessly in man's garb. The Ascended Masters say-"