Dry mild wind on his face, a good horse beneath him, his sons Ted and Andy and Mark riding by his side, grown to tall men and talking horses and hunting, grass and cattle. The land at peace again, not even a feud on his borders. Then somehow he was at the head of his table, forking steaks from the serving platter onto plates, while Katy spooned out beans and Lorrie came in with a basket of biscuits in each hand and the kids were young again as they bowed their heads for the grace from the Book of Dzur…
He yawned again and shook the last of it off; it wasn't quite dawn, and he could go back to sleep for another half hour. One of the perks of being the Rancher was that you didn't have to stand a guard-watch yourself, but he always got up and did the rounds himself at least once a night, in enemy territory. And at unpredictable intervals.
Dad taught me that. But he forgot, that once.
And he and Gramps and that whole party had been left stripped and butchered by a gang of road people who crept past a sleeping sentry. Jed had been only twenty then, but he'd held the Rippling Waters spread together and led them into the embrace of the Dictations.
It was pleasantly warm inside the glazed leather sleeping bag; it was made of sheepskins with the fleece turned in, and the girl who shared it with him now was as good as a campfire. She'd been much less sullen last night, and the thought and the feel of her and the scent tempted him to have another go while he had the chance-women generally didn't like it in the morning, and a sensible man didn't push his wives that way too often. It wouldn't be the same even with the bought gals they kept, when they got back to Rippling Waters.
Whatever the priests said should be, a man's wives did object if he diddled the slave girls openly in his own house, in the morning or otherwise. And Church law might say a man could correct his wives with a quirt if they scolded or back talked, but a man who tried that too often was asking for trouble with them and maybe with their kin, and it didn't make for a happy home life either. The only worse thing than having your women quarreling was having them gang up on you.
He was a man who liked tranquillity and smiles under his own roof-tree, not sulks. Everyone on the ranch had to pull together for things to go well-though an occasional quick one behind a haystack did no harm.
And I'm not nineteen no more, he thought. C'mon, Jed, get up, take a leak, lead the morning prayers, get some breakfast and chicory inside you and git this outfit on the road. Those Newcastle men'll be splittin' off today; good riddance. Long way to home, so up an' at 'em! Sooner we're back, the sooner we can start getting the place back running smooth.
The decision saved his life. He pushed the woman aside and was yawning and stretching rather than helpless on his back when she turned, snatched his bowie knife and drove it at his throat.
He'd grown to manhood in the years after the Change when chaos and death went stalking through the Hi-Line country, and survived them. There was nothing wrong with his reflexes, even in the strait confines of a sleeping bag. The blade slithered along his forearm in a shallow cut as he blocked it, turned his hip to take the attempt to knee him in the crotch on his hip bone, and smashed his forehead down into her face. That hurt him, but nose and cheek bones crunched under the blow and she screamed in shock and agony. The bowie dropped from her hand. He snatched the hilt; the cutting edge was turned in and he stabbed downward twice with all the strength in his lean corded arm and shoulder. The scream cut off in a gurgling, choking sound.
There were more screams as he pushed himself clear of the twitching body and climbed to his feet. And a shout he recognized all too well from the past few years:
"Come, ye Saints!"
Though he wasn't used to hearing it in high-pitched female voices. The dim light showed a heaving, thrashing confusion in the rocky flat where they'd camped; he dropped the bowie and snatched out his shete just in time to cut down another woman running at him with a wood-chopping ax already wet with blood.
"Rippling Waters men! Here, here, here! " he shouted in the rally call.
"Back to back!"
He quickly stamped his feet into his boots, which were the only part of his clothes he had taken off to sleep, and caught up his shield. A man came running, limping with blood on his knee but with his shield and shete. Another, and another… and his horse came trotting as well, and then a clump of men. He jerked his cow-horn trumpet loose from the pile of gear on the ground as they formed up around him and blew a long dunting blast, huuu-hhhhrrr-uuuu!
"Here, here, here! "
The light was waxing, and he could see half a dozen little fights going on, and men sprawled bloody and still in their bedrolls, one going down under half a dozen shrieking women armed with knives and a camp kettle and snatched-up rocks. How had they planned it? But that didn't matter now; if they could just live through the first couple of minutes, strength and weapons would beat down any amount of desperation. A woman could knife a sleeping man, but that was about all she could do.
"Here, here, here! Kill those bitches!"
Then the trader Ingolf came loping; his shete was wet too. More of his party was behind him. They'd be useful, but they were running away from a mob of women Then the hatchets and knives in their hands registered, and the blood dripping from the steel. The women weren't chasing the Newcastle men; they were following them into battle. Rage warred with disgust.
That gal of theirs, Rebecca. She went around among the others before the shoot… They must have used her as their go-between for this!
"Hey, Rancher Smith," Ingolf called. "Why don't you kill me? I'm more your size!"
Steel slammed into steel, shedding a tail of sparks, banged on shields. His sworn men and kin closed in on either side of him and threw the outlanders back.
"Bastard!" Smith wheezed. His arm dripped blood, and one of his men took an instant to tie it up. "Lying bastard! Cut! Cut! "
Rudi Mackenzie leaned aside and thrust past Edain's back, feeling bone pop and crunch as the point went through the body and into the dry gritty soil. The Cutter named Jack tried to scream once as the blade nailed him to the ground, writhing around the steel and coughing out a single gout of dark blood that steamed in the cold dawn air.
"I had him!" Edain said-almost snarled.
From the red-purple blotches on the dead Cutter's throat he was right. And Garbh's fangs had already cut his hamstring; the right leg sticking out beneath his dirty shirt looked as if it had been chewed to rags, which was a pretty accurate description.
"We don't have time to settle scores," Rudi panted.
A rally shout sounded, and the dunting of a war-horn, and someone screamed out: Cut! Cut! Cut! A good many other people were simply screaming.
"Come on. We've a fight to win."
Edain came, snatching up his bow. Odard was finishing a man already wounded by the woman who sprawled beside him dying slowly with a crushed larynx; he whipped the shete around his head in a Portland-style flourish blow, and the sharp edge drove halfway through the Cutter's neck.
"Haro! Face Gervais, face death!"
Odard surprised the Mackenzie by dropping to his knees for an instant and pressing the heels of both hands against the woman's throat.
"All I could do," he panted, loping on beside him. "If the tissues don't swell shut… and damn this peasant's overgrown weeding tool! I want a proper longsword, and a knight's shield!"