BD fell as well, then set her teeth and reached out to grab the fallen man and drag him backwards. Pain shot through her back; Estrellita Peters had kicked her just above the base of the spine and leapt over her, and her sons followed her, lost in the not-so-miniature riot.
Turnabout's fair play, BD thought, and set herself to crawl and pull the wounded man again.
That gave her a view through a momentary gap. The red robes and blue uniforms of the Church Universal and Triumphant had closed around their leader too, though they hadn't been allowed weapons. She could see him behind them; he was standing with arms raised and spread wide, on wide-planted feet, and his mouth was stretched in what might be a smile-it bared his teeth, at least, and there was a joy in it that made her want to close her eyes and beat her face against the hard tile of the floor in an effort to scrub the memory out of her head.
His eyes were an ordinary brown, but she could see something surfacing there, like a dead body floating up towards the surface.. . an absence, an un-meaning…
His hands swept closed on the head of the cowboy she'd heard called George. As they did the young man's expression became a mirror of that on the face of the Cutter prophet leering over his shoulder.
"Kill," Sethaz said again, and it was no louder than an ordinary speaking voice, but it seemed to echo back and forth within her skull.
The young man grinned, moving in jerks, like a man whose limbs were attached to strings. But these strings wove him through the complex obstacles of battle like a weaver's shuttle through the loom.
"Look out!" BD shouted, trying to move away on the blood-slippery tile and pull the man with her.
The sound was lost in the uproar, but a Dunedain arrow struck the young man in the shoulder. The arrow sank deeply; it was a powerful bow, and close. His lean body recoiled with the impact, flexing loosely; then he reached up and pulled the arrow out and threw it away, advancing with that same fixed grin. John Hordle stepped forward. The great blade of his sword spun up and around and down in a hissing loop, lost in the guttural roar that split his face beneath the thatch of bristling dyed hair.
George moved aside, just enough, and the greatsword sliced empty air and smashed into tile with a crackle and a shower of sparks as it pierced to the lime-rich concrete beneath. His fist lashed out and caught Hordle beneath the short ribs, and the big man's breath came out in an agonized huff!
Then he was past, and Astrid came at him in a lunge, fluid and smooth and so fast she seemed to stretch rather than move, with the round shield she carried hugged impeccably against her.
The young man's hands slapped together, and the blade of the longsword was imprisoned between them. Astrid Larsson froze, her silver-veined eyes going wide, and the hands jerked forward, punching the hilt of her sword out of her hands and into her forehead.
The thock resounded even through the white noise of riot. The sword clattered on the tile floor near BD's nose, the shimmering water-patterned steel flexing as it jumped and whined and fell back again. One of George's hands flashed out and caught Astrid by the throat as she began to crumple. The other clamped down on the top of the woman's head, ready to twist… and BD recognized the gesture. She'd killed hundreds of chickens that way herself, these past twenty years and more, and before then in Mexico when she was a girl.
The balisong was in her hand again. She reared up on one elbow and sliced at the back of the young man's knee. The finger-length blade was honed to a wire edge; it slid through denim and flesh and with only a little tick of extra effort when it cut the tendon. George howled, a sound of bestial frustration rather than pain, and lurched before his other leg could adjust to carry his weight. Hordle was turning even as he did, and the blade spun-horizontally this time, from left to right across the other man's shoulders. The head came free, and fell beside her.
BD looked into the dead man's eyes. And they looked back at her; his mouth was still grinning as she saw consciousness flow back into them, a single instant of utter horror before the blackness.
I'm going to faint dead away, for the first time in my life, she thought with a curious detachment, and did.
"No," Sethaz said. "Do not waste more men down that tunnel. Send them to scour the land outside the walls instead. We'll have a battle to fight tomorrow anyway."
Thurston of Boise gave him an odd look, a single nod, and then turned to stride away, issuing orders to the men around him even as he did.
Estrellita Peters stood before him, flanked by guardsmen and with her hand resting on the shoulder of her eldest son. Behind them servants were clearing away the ruins of the Bossman's feast. She swallowed and met the Prophet's gaze for a moment before she shifted her eyes to look over his head. Her voice was still calm as she spoke:
"The thanks of my family and Pendleton to you, my lord Prophet. My husband has been abducted by these vicious bandits, but at least you saved me and my sons from captivity. In the future, you and yours may carry weapons here as you please."
Sethaz smiled, a wryly charming expression. "For the present, Dona Peters, we'll be wielding our weapons outside the walls, against your enemies."
She nodded. Her son spoke, eagerness on his seventeen-year-old face.
"Your man was so brave, and so quick and strong! He defeated the head of the Rangers, and knocked down John Hordle! The truth you teach must have much in it, if you can inspire men so!"
The Bossman's wife gave her son a warning squeeze, and he cleared his throat and extended his hand. Sethaz took it in both of his, a firm shake:
"Thank you for rescuing me and my mother."
"Your mother did a good deal to rescue herself," Sethaz said, looking into the dark young eyes. "We will speak more of such matters later, Mr. Peters."
And a whisper, felt along the edges of his mind: I-see-you.
TheScourgeofGod
CHAPTER TEN
As fire forges steel
So pain brings wisdom forth;
Not lightly won, but with blood
All the God suffers is known
By His chosen ones From: The Song of Bear and Raven
Attributed to Fiorbhinn Mackenzie, 1st century CY
I bind your eyes, your nose, your ears, brother deer, Ritva Havel thought, turning her will into a dart. By the Hunter and the Huntress, come to meet your fate!
Then she withdrew her mind, becoming one with the musty scent of damp decaying leaves and wet earth and pine sap from the twigs that studded the loops set on her war cloak, the feel of water soaking through the knee of her pants from the damp earth where she knelt, with the gray light through the misty rain. The mule deer was a second-year buck, his rack of antlers still a modest affair. He was plump with autumn though, his ruddy-brown coat glossy, working his way down from the heights where the snow season had already started.
Here it was just cold, the drizzle slanting down through open forest of tall slender lodgepole pine and short squat limbers, knocking more of the faded old-gold foliage of the quaking aspens and narrow-leaf cottonwoods to flutter down and make the earth beneath slippery with wet duff. The brush ahead of her and to either side was viburnum, scarlet in this season; the withered red berries were still dense on the spindly stems, and the deer was working its way along the edge of the tongue of woodland, nibbling at the fruit while its tall ears swiveled like a jackrabbit's and the black-tipped white tail quivered over the snowy patch on its rump. Mountain bluebirds called as they flitted from branch to branch, feeding on the same bounty.
Closer, and she could hear the slight mushy tock as the deer's hooves cleared the ground. Her own breath scarcely moved the gauze mask, but her stomach abruptly cramped-they'd been hungry, and Rudi needed better food if he was to heal. Fifty yards, forty, thirty… you looked at the spot where you wanted the arrow to go… twenty. ..