He turned and took up the great spear, its head graven with the same symbols that glowed on the brooch of his blue-lined gray cloak. Then his arm went back, paused, whipped forward with the unstoppable certainty of a catapult. The spear disappeared into the snow in a blurred streak.
"Was that a straight cast?" Wanderer asked.
"Very straight, lord; and I wouldn't like to be in its way."
They paused, in a silence broken only by the whistle of the wind. The single gray eye watched him, a chill amusement in it. Something warned Rudi, perhaps a whistle of cloven air that wasn't part of the storm's music; he turned and jumped backwards with a yell, nearly stepping on the wolf's tail. The spear flashed past, smashing a sapling to splinters as it came, and then there was a deep hard smack as the Wanderer caught it. His long arm swayed back with the impact, and then he grounded the weapon and leaned on it, the head glinting above his head as the dark wind blew flecks of ice past into the night.
"That was a straight cast," Wanderer said. "But the line only seems straight because you can't see its full course. Draw it long enough and it meets itself, like Jormungandr."
"I don't understand!" Rudi said again, baffled.
"You don't need to… yet," the gray one said. "No man can harvest a field till it is ripe, but the seed must be planted. The heroes offer to me for luck and victory. But the Kings… they ask for wisdom, if they have any to begin with."
"I'd be glad of that," Rudi said; he felt like arguing, but… that wouldn't be wise at all.
"Would you? Then know this. Fact becomes history; history becomes legend; legend becomes myth. Myth turns again to the beginning and creates itself. The figure for time isn't an arrow; that is illusion, just as the straight line is. Time is a serpent."
Rudi blinked. He noticed the bracelet around one thick wrist, where the coat rode up; it was in the form of a snake, wrought of gold so finely that the scales were a manifold shiver that seemed to spin away in infinite sets.
Wanderer stepped closer. "Your friends are waiting for you, Artos, son of Bear and Raven," the tall gray-haired figure said. "Go!"
He clapped a hand to Rudi's back. The touch was white fire, and the Mackenzie stiffened as if existence shattered about him.
"I've got it!" he heard a voice say.
Gods and holy men, never a straight answer, he thought as he bit back a groan.
The white fire still ran in his veins; it narrowed down to a patch on his lower back, and he could hear the voice again. It was Father Ignatius.
"Holy Mary and every saint and God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit be thanked. That was why!"
Shuddering, Rudi felt the sting as something swabbed at the wound, and a hand dropped a pus-stained bandage into a bucket. He could smell the sweetish odor of it, oily and with a hint of something like vinegar. Then real fire bathed it.
"I'm sorry, Rudi, but it's necessary," the priest's voice soothed.
A hand took his; he knew it was Mathilda's, and tried to remember not to crush her fingers. Then he realized he couldn't, not even if he tried; her hand was carefully gentle on his. His whole body felt like the limp blood-and-matter soaked rag, hot and weak and stiff at the same time, with localized throbbing aches in his shoulder and back. He could speak, but he simply did not wish it. Even lifting his eyelids was too much effort.
"There was a fragment of the arrowhead still in the wound," Ignatius said as he worked. "But this time the probe found it as I was debriding the dead tissue. Praise to the Lord in His infinite mercy! And Praise Him that Rudi was delirious through it. It's far too close to the Great Sciatic."
"Will he heal now?" Mathilda said anxiously.
"That is with God. But there's a better chance."
Another voice: Odard's. "He needs proper food and warmth and a real bed," the Baron said. "So does Mary. My lady, let me take a little food and try to find a settlement. Ingolf, you said-"
"-that they're not all Cutters in this part of the country, south of Yellowstone, yes," the big Easterner said. "But the operative word is not all. And my information's a year out of date-a year ago, Deseret was holding out, too."
"I'm willing to chance it," Odard said.
"Are you willing to not talk, if they do take you?" Ingolf said.
"I… think so," Odard said.
"Thank you, my old friend," Mathilda said softly.
Then a complex whistle came from outside; Ignatius' hands finished fastening the band across Rudi's back, and he heard the soft wheep of a sword leaving a scabbard, and the little rustle of an arrow twitched out of a quiver.
"Gil sila erin lu e-govaded vin!" Ritva's voice, and then in English: "I've found friends!"
Then in a strong ranch-country twang: "Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha, y'all!"
"We've got to move you, Chief," Edain Aylward Mackenzie said gently.
The blue-green eyes opened, more like jewels than ever in the shockingly wasted face, and Rudi smiled at him.
"Good… glad to be… going somewhere," he said.
Edain swallowed. "It's going to hurt."
"Means I'm not dead yet!" Rudi said.
He looks different, Edain thought. Better. But still sort of… like glass.
"Glad to have you back with us, Chief," he said.
The strangers had a stretcher with long poles on the cave floor now, next to the injured man; it could be rigged as a horse litter, and it was padded with sheepskins. Together they eased him onto it; the thin face convulsed a little as they set him down.
"Sorry, Chief!" Edain said.
"Glad… to have you… there, boyo," Rudi said.
"I don't know why," he said suddenly, as if a boil had burst inside him. "I got you wounded! And-"
Rudi opened his eyes again; he looked tired, but more there. "Bullshit," he said crisply.
"What?" Edain rocked backwards, as if slapped on the cheek.
"You were going to say you couldn't save Rebecca. But you did save her, in the fight with the Rovers, remember?"
Edain shook his head. "And killed her later!"
"So you couldn't save her always. You're not going to live forever, boyo. You've saved my life more than once-but I'm not going to live forever either! Someday I'll die whatever you do, or I do. It's not just going on that makes life. That's fear talking; or the fear of losing someone. I've… wrestled Thanatos knee to knee, this last while, and I know. It's when you beat fear every day, that's when you're immortal. And I want you with me."
He reached out and caught Edain's wrist. "You're my friend… you're my comrade of the sword and my brother. My brother doesn't run out on me!"
Edain gulped, and took a deep breath. "Right, Chief. It's just.. ."
"Grief's hard."
"That it is." He straightened his shoulders. "So's the work halfway through harvest, but that never stopped me."
TheScourgeofGod
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"They're holding out there!" Sir Ivo said. "St. Michael must be looking out for them!"
"You're right," Tiphaine said.
She resisted a temptation to sip at her canteen, despite the dry dust blowing across the land. What you had to go through to pee in one of these steel suits…
Ivo crossed himself, and she reflected that sometimes it was a bit lonely, being one of the last agnostics.
"God grant that they're still alive when we get there," she said with pious hypocrisy.