Though it was dark and the kilt and plaid were fairly good camouflage, as was the dark green of their brigandines and helms, the sentries would spot them soon. And therefore…
And I don't particularly like killing men, even bad ones. But it's
… Necessary, sometimes, he thought, and let the thought flow away with his next breath.
"You take the one with the bow," he said softly to Edain.
The man was fifty yards away, riding with a shaft on the string and his reins knotted on the cantle of his saddle, controlling the beast effortlessly with thighs and balance. His head came up before Edain started to move, prompted by some warning sign, but the Mackenzie arrow was on its way before the Prophet's man could begin to bend the short thick recurve. The snap of the string on Edain's bracer came a tiny instant before the tooth-grating crunch of the bodkin as it smashed its way into the man's Adam's apple and out through his neck bone.
That was showing off; they were the two best archers of their generation in Clan Mackenzie, and Edain was a bit touchy about it. Rudi's own shaft went through the second man's chest, the safer center of mass, even at the price of the harder, louder crack as it punched into the lacquered-leather armor.
The Cutter went over the cantle of his saddle with lance and shield flying to either side. The horses reared and neighed at the scent of blood, and there were shouts from the dark camp of the Prophet's men. The twins broke to either side as hooves thundered in the dark, vanishing into a swifter version of their behind-the-lines crawl.
Good, Rudi thought, lips skinning back from his teeth, as the enemy approached with a twinkle of starlight on edged metal and a thunder of hooves he could feel through the soles of his boots. Didn't occur to them to come on foot.
War out here in the dry rangelands was mostly a quicksilver mounted snap-and-run, a wolfpack business. Western Oregon's country of forest and farm-field had developed different ways after the Change. The Cutters were about to learn why Mackenzie longbows were the terror of every battlefield that saw them.
But there's only two of us, remember, Rudi thought. What I wouldn't give for a hundred, and a how-captain shouting to let the gray geese fly!
He pulled the hundred-and-fifteen-pound draw past the angle of his jaw Clan-fashion, and loosed at the dim shape that was a rider brandishing a shete, aiming as much by instinct as by eye. The arrow vanished in the darkness with a whirrt and a flicker of gray vanes as the bow surged against his left hand. The right hand snapped back over his shoulder to the quiver, twitched out another shaft, put it to the string and drew with a smooth twist that was as much gut and torso as arms against the pressure of the yew stave, nock-draw-loose, as fast as a man counting aloud one-two-three. Beside him Edain did the same.
The Cutters recoiled for a moment, shouting in confusion amidst the screams of wounded men and horses. Then their officer's voice overrode it; he was too far away to see and shoot, but Rudi and Edain both shifted aim to chance a dropping shaft at the sound. They were rewarded with a yelping curse, but the voice went on rallying his men, shouting that there couldn't be many of whoever it was and damning them for cowards. They weren't cowards, just jumpy and confused for an instant; they were veteran fighting men, and there were more than enough of them to overrun the two Mackenzies with numbers.
If the other part of the plan didn't work, he was going to die in the next five minutes; it would either work very well, or not at all. If it failed he couldn't even run away, not on foot.
He loosed at a flicker of movement; if the blade was there, then the man had to be here.
Not that he intended to run, anyway.
Knight-Brother Ignatius of the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict said his rosary as he waited, patient beneath the weight of his long mail hauberk and visored sallet helm, coif and vambraces and greaves and steel-backed gloves. His tall destrier snorted quietly and tossed its head with a muted clatter of peytral and chamfron and crinet, scenting the Cutters' mounts in the darkness ahead, but too well trained to bugle a challenge.
"So, so, Godfrey," the priest soothed it, thumping the leather palm of his gauntlet down on the big gelding's metal-covered neck. "Soon, soon, boy."
Frederick Thurston sat his own mount beside the warrior-cleric; a dozen Boise cavalry formed a blunt wedge on either side of them, light horse in short mail-shirts, armed with saber and bow and small round shields. They'd remained loyal to the young man, believing his version of their ruler's death rather than his elder brother's. And because the travelers from the West had saved his life in that massacre, the younger son was willing to risk all for them.
Impulsive. Still, he is only eighteen, Father Ignatius thought, from the lofty height of his mid-twenties; but he had been trained to self-command in a hard school.
Yet he is one who seeks the good, I think. In somebody who may have the ruling of men and lands, that is a pearl beyond price. Wisdom can be learned-able men are common, but good ones are far rarer.
"Very soon now, my son," he said quietly.
Frederick's nod was half seen in the night. Starlight glittered on honed metal as the Boiseans drew their curved swords. They left their bows cased in the boiled-leather scabbards at their knees; shooting in a nighttime melee was an invitation to friendly fire casualties. Ignatius pulled on the strap that slung his long kite-shaped shield over his back, shifting it around until he could run his arm through the loops, and then took the long ash lance in his right hand. A long deep breath, and one last prayer. It was too dark to make out the black cross and raven on its sheet-metal cover, but he knew they were there, and what those symbols stood for.
Suddenly they could all hear horses neighing in fear, and a sudden brabble of shouting from the camp three long bowshots ahead of them, and then a scream of human pain. And the war cry of the Church Universal and Triumphant: "Cut! Cut! Cut!"
Ignatius filled his chest and shouted, "Jesu-Maria!" from the bottom of his lungs.
He swung the lance-point forward as he did, bracing his feet in the long stirrups. The curved top of the shield came up under his eyes, the blunt point at the other end reaching down to his foot in the stirrup. The light Eastern quarter horses on either side picked up speed faster than his charger, and they were carrying a lot less weight anyway. But the destrier was seventeen hands tall, and a great deal of that was leg; it caught up quickly and then gained a little with each stride. Riding at this speed over unknown ground in the dark was asking for your horse to break a leg and roll over you when it fell…
But I'm riding towards men who want to kill me anyway, he thought. The Lord God has a sense of humor, eh?
The Boiseans were shouting, USA! USA! as they rode. Figures loomed up out of the night, on foot and horseback, scattering or turning to fight, and the sabers slashed. The long point of the knight's lance took a mounted man in the belly; Ignatius could feel the double crunch-crunch up the ashwood as it speared through the front and back plates of the Cutter's armor.
Impact slammed him back against the high cantle of his war-saddle. Black under starlight, blood shot out of the Cutter's mouth in a spray that wet the cleric's shield and face. The lance broke across in a hard crack; he clubbed the stub of the shaft on a footman's head and then let it drop, sweeping out his cross-hilted sword.
"Jesu-Maria!" he yelled again. Then: "A rescue! A rescue!"
Mathilda Arminger could see the Cutter leader-not the officer in charge of the fighting men, but the one-eyed man named Kuttner-start erect and put a hand on the hilt of his shete. She tensed silently; the troopers hadn't been gratuitously cruel, but they hit the captives if they tried to speak. Beside her Odard turned his head, blinking his eyes… or at least the one that wasn't swollen nearly shut. He'd kept trying to talk longer than she had. Her rage had been a slow-burning fire; now it swelled up, and hunger and thirst and aches dropped away, and even the maddening consciousness of her own filthy itchiness. She was suddenly very glad the enemy hadn't bothered to take her armor, instead of being driven nearly mad by the heat and constriction.