Shock and fear happened, but distantly; as distantly as pain. Will forced air back into his lungs in a whooping gasp. He could see his own shock reflected in the other man?s dark face, exaggerated by the bar of white paint across his eyes, as the knife tip stopped on a plate of the brigandine beneath the Mackenzie?s parka. The knife kept prodding, reflexively, as if the man couldn?t believe it hadn?t sunk hilt-deep and ripped upward. ?Merd?!? the Bekwa blurted.
Rudi snarled, an utterly unconsidered guttural sound that sprang from the back of his throat. His long-fingered hands flashed out, weaponless, and clamped on the man?s chin and the back of his head, twisted and pushed in one sharp ninety-degree turn to the left. There was a brief fibrous resistance and a sharp sound like green willow sticks breaking. He released the body instantly, and it fell limp as a banker?s charity as Rudi whirled.
His sword hissed out, but the knee-deep snow leached agility. Two men had come out of the same sort of deep hide as his attacker, snow allowed to drift over loosely woven spruce branches. Rudi?s mind calculated without prompting, and his arm swept forward in a smooth arc. The long hilt left his fingers with a feeling of inevitability like the sensation when you leap from a height into water. The yard-long blade turned twice in a blurring twinkle.
Thunk.
A heavy wet sound with a crackling beneath it, incongruous somehow in the cold air. The Bekwa who?d been about to stab at Mathilda?s back looked down, goggling at two feet of longsword sticking out from his chest just below the breastbone. Blood steamed on the steel, and as it leaked out of his mouth and nose. Rudi stalked forward as the third man attacked Mathilda; she had her kite-shaped shield up, and the smooth curved visor of her sallet down. The long parka concealed her coat of titanium-alloy mail, but not the vambraces or greaves or gauntlets, and the metal had a gray glint in the bleak morning sunlight.
The Bekwa was bulky in his furs, but no taller than she, with a four-foot spear tipped with a spike of ground-down steel strip in his right hand and a knife in his left. Snow fountained out from under his feet, the moccasins throwing up trails like arcs of powdered diamond. The same snow was more than knee-deep on Mathilda; she waited in the perfect knightly form her instructors had taught, left foot forward and sword ready over her head. He could see d?Ath?s instruction in it.
The savage came in with desperate speed. He leapt the last few feet, just as Rudi reached his dead comrade and wrenched his longsword free; the hilt and blade stood up like a mast from a ship. Then he was close enough to hear Mathilda grunt as the weight of the Bekwa struck her shield, the point of the spear grating across her helmet as she flicked her face and the vision-slit away. But she was already crouched and ready for the impact; the broad curved surface of the shield turned the swift thrust of the knife. The man reeled back, and her sword moved in an economical over-hand chop that ended with a crack of steel in bone, then a low stab under the ribs. He sat down, staring at the nearly severed forearm that jetted blood onto the snow, clutched it to his chest and sank backward to die.
There was only the panting of their breath in the cold silence, and a murmur of something like melleur place from the wounded savage. The face beneath the crude paint was young, thin with bad feeding and rather sad as the ferocity leached out of it. His eyes wandered for a moment, blinking and glazing with a look Rudi recognized; blood loss starving the brain. The Dread Lord?s wing had passed over his face, and it would be only seconds now. ?Maman?? he whispered.
Then he smiled uncertainly for an instant, and the expression fell away as he went limp. Mathilda closed his eyes, drew the Cross on his forehead, then rose and leaned against Rudi?s shoulder. ?He said we were going to a better place,? she said quietly as he squeezed her for a moment with his free arm. ?I don?t doubt he has,? he said. Then:?Earth must be fed.?
Rudi touched a finger to the blood on his steel and then marked his forehead, murmuring the salute to the departed. After that he whistled a fluting trill like a bird?s-not any particular type, but with a generic avian sound. A few minutes later the same call came from the woods about. Edain appeared with Asgerd trailing him; she looked a little wobbly. Garb trotted at his heels, massive head low and licking her hairy chops, with a little congealed blood from a slight cut on her right shoulder. ?All right?? Rudi said; he couldn?t see any wounds on the Bjorning girl, though there was a spatter of red drops drying on the mottled white of her coat. ?In the event, Chief,? the young clansman said.?They?d come down from their perches, though, and weren?t where we expected, and there was an extra one. I had to shoot a bit fast-the last one was only winged. Asgerd took care of him, though. Might have been right nasty, if she hadn?t.? ?My first.? She swallowed and added.?It… wasn?t like practice. More like pig-butchering time. And as if I was watching myself kill him.?
Edain put a hand on her shoulder for a moment.?He chose to come onto your land uninvited with a weapon in his hand,? he said.?When a man does that, he consents to his fate and makes you clean of his blood.?
She took a pair of deep breaths and nodded.?That?s true. And.. . that?s one towards my oath,? she said, her voice growing stronger.
Then she looked at Garbh.?That dog is a man-killer.?
Edain grinned.?To be sure, when she needs to be, or when I tell her, she is a man-killer. So am I. And so are you, now.?
Asgerd nodded, but there was a dubious expression on her face, as if she was trying to frame an objection but couldn?t quite think of the words. ?And we?ve both hunted wolves, eh?? She nodded again.?The Gods have made the world so that sometimes we must kill to live; not just us, but our brother wolf and tiger and bear too. In the end, the Hunter comes for us all. Earth must be fed.?
Mary and Ritva were silent when they came ghosting up; the one-eyed Ranger was wiping the sickle blade on the end of her fighting chain, which was comment enough. Fred and Virginia appeared next; the girl from Wyoming had a fresh scalp at her belt, and the dark young man was limping very slightly. Rudi went forward with slow care, then down on one knee behind a screen of leafless brush at the edge of the woods-where forest met open country there was always a screen of it. Through his binoculars he could see past the besieger?s camp, which looked empty now except for a few threads of smoke that were probably cookfires, or heating water for healers to use.
Beyond that the town wall was even more battered than it had been from his treetop lookout earlier; they were getting a boulder into the air every fifteen minutes or so, good practice with a hastily built weapon and untrained crew. Shattered timber and rock made a rough low slope through the gap the trebuchet had pounded. The two scorpions bucked again, and the loads they threw trailed smoke. They were using incendiaries now, the best possible way to knock back any defenders massing to hold the breach. Thick volleys of arrows hissed up from behind the mantlets, not individually aimed but falling in a steel-tipped rain where any defenders would be.
Graber knows his business, to be sure. And I?d be betting that the pirate captains do so, too.
Crackling and muffled footfalls came from behind him; you couldn?t move two-score warriors through the forest silently at a trot, even if they were all woodsmen individually. ?Ready,? Ingolf said, slightly breathless; running in armor did that, no matter how fit you were. ?Their outposts didn?t give any alarm,? Rudi said; which was a stroke of luck, even with experts in what the Dunedain called sentry removal at work.
He raised his voice:?Form on me. Archers to the front, and then on the flanks when we charge. Edain, the usual for an assault. Now wait for the word… and when I give it, a steady trot keeping good order, no more. It?s useless a man is when he?s too winded to fight.?