The three young men came up with Ingolf; the big Easterner was just pulling his shete out of a man's back, bracing his foot on the body to get the broad point free of the bone.
"The sentries?" he said.
"Dead," Rudi replied succinctly.
"Let's go pay a call on Rancher Smith," Ingolf said quietly. "Kill them ourselves, or wait? I'd like to kill them, but…"
"Let's see how things lie," Rudi said. "Nystrup should be here soon, but it's better to overrun them ourselves, if they're still rocked far enough back on their heels. We can't let them get their feet under them."
They ran on, past wagons and horses wandering loose or rearing and tearing at their picket ropes, past blankets and tumbled cookware and bodies lying still, or crawling or writhing or clutching themselves and calling for their mothers-high-plains cowboys and Mormon women both. The smell of blood and filth mixed with brewing chicory and scorched bacon that had fallen into the embers.
Some of the wounded just shrieked with pain greater than they had ever imagined, and those were of both sides too. The Mormon women still standing fell in with them, running or hobbling at their heels, holding weapons snatched from their captors. Rudi was disappointed when he saw the Cutters' forming shield-wall; there were thirty men still on their feet, though many of them were wounded. They all had their shetes and shields, and many had managed to snatch up bits and pieces of their war-harness as they ran to the sound of the horn and the rally-call. His own folk had all been able to put on their gear, mostly leather with pieces of steel riveted to it, but Ingolf had his mail-shirt.
A good many of the women were naked and barefoot, and none had more than a shift and drawers.
"Here, here, here! " the Cutter leader called. "Kill those bitches!"
"Hey, Rancher Smith!" Ingolf cried; there was a note of playful ferocity in his voice, release from the role he'd had to act. "Why don't you kill me? I'm more your size."
Rudi saw Smith's face change, twisting into something inhuman. Then he and Ingolf were at handstrokes, their blades lashing out in the hacking Eastern shete-style. An arrow flashed past the Mackenzie chieftain's shoulder, and lanky brown-haired Lin toppled backwards limp as a rope, with a gray-fletched Mackenzie arrow in his eye.
"Now be eating that, and a sodding apple too, a phiosa chaca brean !" Edain shouted. Then in angry frustration: "Get out of my way!"
The mass of women ignored that; ignored anything. They threw themselves on the Cutters' points in a shrieking mass, sheerly mad-at home he'd have said the Dark Goddess had them, from the fixed glaring eyes and the froth on some lips. Rudi engaged a Cutter himself, bringing his round shield up in a looping curve to stop the downward stroke of the shete without blocking his own vision. The weapon banged on the hard leather; he threw it sideways with a twitch of his long arm, but another came at him from the side and he had to block that. ..
Even Lugh can't fight two, he knew angrily; not in a straight-up fight between lines. There aren't enough of us!
Then three women threw themselves on the man ahead of him, so quickly that he nearly put his back out halting his own strike; one grabbed at the Cutter's shield, the second hung on his sword arm despite a chop that sliced open her leg to the bone, and the third leapt up and wound her legs around his waist and stabbed him in the face, over and over again with a long-tined roasting fork held in both hands, her arms pumping like a water-driven machine in a foundry. She stopped only when a tomahawk whirred across the width of the Cutter formation and sank into her skull with a chock that was horribly like an axman landing a cut on a tree.
Rudi's shete and shield moved as fast as he could turn and wheel and strike, a blur of motion, but the other two women died in the next three seconds; one quickly with a shete thrust to the gut, the other thrashing and gobbling with half her face cut away. Then an arrow struck his own shield with a hard whirr- thuck and a blow like a sledgehammer, the sharp point showing on the inside of the curve of bullhide and sheet metal and wooden frame. He blocked, struck, blocked, skipped backwards two steps to give himself room to look to either side.
"Cover!" he snapped.
He retreated again and crouched behind an overturned wagon. Edain was beside him.
That's as well, Rudi thought, wincing at what he saw. This isn't war. It's… sure, and I don't know what it is, except that it's ugly.
The mass of women had struck the Cutter shields with a reckless fury that made them more effective than he'd dreamed; half a dozen of the plainsmen were down, dead or badly hurt. But for the most part they hit the wall of shields edged with sharp swinging metal and splashed, the way a man might if he'd been shot out of a catapult at a castle's ferroconcrete ramparts. They had few proper weapons, no shields or helmets or armor, and none of the Cutters' hard-gained fighting skills; and while they were strong from churn and loom and hoe, the enemy were stronger still by far.
Rebecca had said the women were all willing to die rather than be led away captive; and they were. It would be good if they accomplished something by it. Trying to fight with them would do nothing but see Rudi and all his companions dead at their sides.
"Cut, cut, cut!" the war cry rang out.
Then the rush was over, and the recurve bows of the plainsmen began to snap.
Moments now, Rudi thought, judging the distance to their horses. Nothing more we can do unless Nystrup comes. What's keeping the man?
He pursed his lips and whistled for Epona. Another arrow slammed into the wagon beside his ear and he ducked backwards. The sun was up now, over the peaks eastward, and casting long shadows down the road. A knot of horsemen came over the rise, dust and gravel and bits of broken asphalt paving flying up from the hooves of galloping horses, and Rudi let out his breath in a whuff of relief. They were supposed to have been here a little earlier, but things like that happened in fights, and there'd been no way to coordinate more than to say at dawn.
Then he saw that the Deseret guerillas and his own companions were shooting backwards from the saddles, and arrows flickered towards them. They had most of Rancher Smith's remount herd running ahead of them, though, running wild-eyed and with their heads down.
What There wasn't time to give way to bewilderment. Epona was there, drawing ahead of the other horses with every step, moving with a grace that was beautiful even then. Rudi leapt with all the power of his long legs, three bounding paces and a snatch at the saddlehorn. It slapped into his hand, and he clamped down with a blaze of determination, pouring will up his arm and into fingers and wrist. Two-thirds of a ton of horse tore by, and his grip turned the momentum that threatened to rip his arm out at the socket into a vault that landed him in the saddle and his feet in the stirrups seconds later.
That was good, because they'd almost run into Rancher Smith and his men. Epona reared, crow-hopping on her hind legs; Rudi leaned forward until his face was in the black silky-coarse hair of her mane. Her forefeet milled like steel-edged clubs. A shield cracked under them, and the arm under it, and another man catapulted backwards as a shod hoof crushed his face. Rudi caught himself as his legs clamped down on his mount's barrel. The Cutters' rank was broken, more by the rush of rider-less horses than by the mounted men and women behind and among them; the Easterners were too surprised to fight and too brave to run.
One of them shook himself out of his daze and ran in at Rudi's side; it was Rancher Smith, moving with lizard-quick skill to slash at Epona's hamstring. With most horses it would have worked. The big black mare had already set herself, her head around and judging the range. She kicked out with her left hind, powerful and accurate and blurring-fast. Smith would have died then if he hadn't turned his rush into a frenzied leap backwards, dropped his shete and tucked his shield into his gut as he realized what was happening.