He looked at them, carefully scanning each individual; all the travelers had their fighting gear on. The Portlanders hadn't brought the latest articulated plate suits because they were too difficult to get into without a squire to assist, but Odard and Mathilda and Ignatius all had full knee-length hauberks with greaves and vambraces and kite-shaped shields, twelve-foot lances in their hands with the butts resting on the stirrup-irons. They'd even had time to put the barding on their destriers; Rudi hadn't bothered with Epona, calculating that the extra weight would be more burden than it was worth out here where a horse had room to run as far as its legs would take it.
The Indian finished the once-over and went on: "So unless you're looking for a fight, why don't you just turn around and go right back the way you came?"
"Well, we'd be seriously inconvenienced if we did," Rudi said. "First, because we're heading for the Far East. Next and more important, because the Cutters would kill us all if they caught us, do you see, and there are so wretchedly many of them in that direction"-he pointed westward over his shoulder-"the pity and the black sorrow of it, ochone, ochone."
The younger man grunted, and the older's black eyes narrowed.
"We're at peace with the Church Universal and Triumphant," he said. "And we're not supposed to take in refugees from their territory."
But he said it as if the words made his mouth hurt. His companion grunted again and spat on the grass, then unexpectedly spoke:
"We're not supposed to harm their missionaries, either. But it's funny how many of them fall off their horses and break their necks or get run down by stampeding herds."
Hooves sounded behind Rudi. He looked over his shoulder and swore silently; Virginia Kane was pushing her borrowed mount up beside him, and herself into a negotiation that wasn't going so well. She raised her hand in the greeting gesture and spoke herself:
"Wacantoognaka," she said unexpectedly. "Oun she la yea."
The Indian's eyes went wide. "Virginia? Christ, you've grown!" he blurted.
"I remember you, leksi Whapa Sa, even if I'm a woman now."
"What about Dave?"
"My father's dead," she said shortly. "The Cutters killed him. It was supposed to be outlaws… but I never thought they'd stand by the terms of the peace treaty. And they weren't going to let me inherit!"
"Damn. He was a good man. Yeah, of course you can have sanctuary. Dave Kane was my blood-brother, and we don't forget."
"And for these people too; they took me in and fed me without asking anything for it just because the Cutters were after me."
The man studied her face. "Yeah, I'll stretch it that far. Sorry, tonjan -you're welcome in our camps anytime, but I know it's hard."
"I'm just glad Mom didn't live to see the Cutters take over Skywater."
He sighed and said a phrase that Rudi hadn't heard before and couldn't even render into syllables in his mind without repetition. The swift-rising, slow-falling sounds of Lakota were pleasant, but the strangeness to an English-speaking ear made Gaelic sound like a first cousin.
Our lady guest must have learned some of it early, he thought.
Virginia relaxed slightly; she didn't have any trouble following it. "Thank you for accepting my friends as guests, Uncle Red Leaf," she said formally.
The Sioux leader nodded to her, edged his horse closer and extended a hand to Rudi.
"John Red Leaf, Kiyuska tiyospaye of the Ogallala and the Lakota tunwan," he said resignedly as they shook, then smiled. "Also BS in Range Science from SDSU, class of 1998. This is my son, Rick Mat'o Yamni-Rick Three Bears. Welcome to our land, oh sacred guests, yada yada yada."
Three Bears looked faintly scandalized, at a guess because of his father's irreverence, but shook hands as well. The Mackenzie clansman sympathized; he'd had the same experience with people who'd grown up before the Change. Sometimes they had no idea of what to take seriously.
"Rudi Mackenzie, tanist of the Clan Mackenzie," Rudi said politely. "My sept is Raven. Many thanks for your hospitality. We're from Oregon. Well, most of us."
"Ingolf Vogeler, of nowhere in particular," Ingolf said.
Virginia looked at the warriors behind Red Leaf. "Kit Foxes, Uncle John?"
"Yeah, I'm akicita chief right now. We're out patrolling the border."
"I…" She looked at Rudi, and winced slightly.
She's going to be franker with her uncle John than she was with us, Rudi decided. He smiled and inclined his head to her. And I wouldn't be blaming you, moi glic caileag.
"I think I lost the ones who were after me. Vince Rickover decided right at Dad's funeral that it was time I had protection…"
Red Leaf nodded. "Figures. Wants to marry you to get the land, right?"
She nodded. "But there was a unit of the Sword at his place, the Bar Q-they were what gave him the nerve to move on us. My people would have fought, and we could handle the Bar Q easy enough, but trying to fight Corwin would just get them and their families killed, so I took some horses and ran for it. I think I lost them, but…"
"But we'd better push it hard," Red Leaf said. "The damned Cutters' idea of a peace treaty is that it means whatever suits them from moment to moment-which is sort of unpleasantly familiar, though at least they didn't promise to leave us alone while the sun shone and the grass grew."
Pushing it involved turning and riding a little north of east without losing any time about it, which was the way Rudi's band had been going; the pace was a lot harder, though. The Mackenzie didn't object.
If the people with the local knowledge think it best, it's best, he thought. Especially as this Red Leaf has survived all the time since the Change.
As he thought, the Sioux leader spoke: "So, Rudi Mackenzie, are you guys refugees, traders, or what?"
Rudi thought for a moment. "What," he said. "Very much what."
"Oh, crap," John Red Leaf said four hours of walk-trot-canter-trot-walk later. The Sioux pointed to a circle of vultures in the sky ahead. "Again."
He flung up his hand. The Lakota and Rudi's party had been riding along more or less in a loose clump, shifting as people wanted to talk; now they came to a halt, with the loudest sound the endless sshhhh of the wind through the ankle-high green grass. Virginia, he noted, had been accepted by the warriors as if she were everyone's younger sister, chaffing with them-in English and in scraps of the older tongue, which she spoke as well as anyone in this band, Red Leaf included. These folk seemed to use it about the way Mackenzies did Gaelic, which was to say mostly for emphasis and the odd word for flavor, but rather more so since there were quite a few actual speakers.
It's an odd language they'll be speaking in a few generations, he thought.
The prairie rose and fell, rose and fell in long swales; it was hot now, enough to make Rudi unpin his plaid and fold it into a saddlebag, and it leached out the land until everything looked like a green-brown vacancy, with only the occasional sagebrush for visual relief.
"You know what that is they're circling?" Rudi said, cocking an eye at the buzzards.
"I've got a strong suspicion. Same as last week… oh, well, we can water there."
"And my folk can change out of their armor, so they could."
"Yeah, it looks heavy," Red Leaf said. "Sort of inconvenient, having to stop and get in and out of it, I'd say. With our gear you can be ready to fight anytime."
"It is a bit of a nuisance, I'll grant. But worth it in a stand-up fight, the which is more common where we come from."
The Indian nodded. "I can see that. Less room to run and dodge out on the West Coast."
The whole group proceeded cautiously. More buzzards rose from the ground as they crested the low rise. The two buffalo ahead were very dead, mostly eaten and buzzing with flies; from the smell it had been a couple of days ago. The bones and heads lay near the edge of the muddy little stream-it would dry up later in the summer, but for now it still held a slow trickle between banks of grass thicker and greener than that on the uplands to either side, with a few cottonwoods just coming into leaf. It also made the ground soft enough to hold prints; you could see clearly where the ambushers had pounced from the cover of a clump of rabbitbrush, and the splashing, thrashing fight it had been until two young bulls were brought down.