Even at this distance and over the sound of the?Ravens Pibroch? she could see the grins of the clansfolk, and hear them shouting cheerful bets at each other as they drew and tracked the moving targets and loosed. A superficial acquaintance with Mackenzies could leave you with the impression that they were a friendly, musical, fanciful, harmless people. Signe Havel had been dealing with them almost as long as there had been Mackenzies, and she knew that stereotype was about three-quarters right.
The last bit was a very bad mistake, though. Lethally bad.
Three more of the enemy squeezed out northward and made straight for her in a triple plume of dust either just trying to get by, or out for some revenge on the party under the enemy banner. They grew swiftly from doll-size to real men on real horses, close enough to see the fixed snarls of terror and rage, the thin reddish beard of one, the bleeding slash along another?s cheek. ?Heads up, troopers,? she said to her son and nephew, drawing her sword and sliding her round shield onto her arm.
Will slung the trumpet around over his back and pulled the recurve bow out of its saddle scabbard before his left knee; his other hand went back and twitched three arrows out of his quiver, putting one on his string and the other two between a forefinger and the bow stave. They all signaled their horses forward with thighs and balance, walk-trot-canter-gallop; an A-lister usually didn?t touch the reins in battle.
Three deep breaths and everything left her mind but the now. The cowboys drew closer with shocking speed, strings of foam and slobber running from their horses? jaws. The men were nearly as wild-eyed, their shetes in their hands. None of them had any arrows left in their quivers-most of these cow-country men were fine shots, but the sort of organization that brought ammunition forward during a fight wasn?t their long suit. Beside her Mike Jr. was riding with perfect form, shield on arm and lance slanted forward at forty-five degrees, held loosely. The popping fluttering rattle of the flag increased as the wind of their passage cuffed at it.
Will?s bow snapped, once, twice, the boy bracing himself up in the stirrups of the heavy war-saddle as he drew and loosed. The cowboy opposite him ducked below the first shaft as it wasp-whined by his face. That put his collarbone right in the path of the next; there was a wet crack sound of parting bone audible over the pounding of hooves, and he pitched backward off his horse.
Signe gave her opponent the point, sword extended at the end of her outstretched arm like a lance, but he threw himself to one side just in time. She wrenched her sword up and over to rest behind her back for an instant as they flashed past. Tunng and the heavy shete?s backhand stroke hit it hard enough for the blow to wrench at her hand, just over the spot where there was a gap between the flare of her sallet helm and the upper edge of the backplate.
Her horse reared and crow-hopped three times on its hind legs as it killed its momentum in response to her signals. It whirled as it came down, eyes bulging, huge yellow chisel-teeth bared as it snapped at the cow pony. That agile beast had already wheeled and put its master within chopping range; he struck at her three times in fewer than three heartbeats, overarm and forehand and backhand.
Tung. Crack. Tung.
One blow caught on her backsword, one glanced off the surface of her shield, another on the sword, and this time it slid down to hit the guard and numbed her hand again. She had no time to strike back. The man was shrieking as he hewed at her, half her age and quick and strong…
Then he coughed, looked down at the arrowhead that jutted from his leather coat, coughed again in a spray of red, and slumped away. One high-heeled boot caught in a twisted stirrup as he fell, and the horse moved away dragging him and looking back over its shoulder, dancing sideways until the boot slid off the foot and the body dropped free. Then it galloped away.
Mike Havel had given the Bearkillers many sayings. One was:
Fair fights are for suckers.
Another was:
One for all, and all on one. ?Thanks,? she wheezed to Will Larsson, wiping drops of blood off her eyelids with the leather on the palm of one gauntlet.?Been a few years since I did this.?
Long enough to forget how it can leave you feeling like a wet dishcloth in a few seconds, she thought, struggling to take steady deep breaths. ? De nada,? he replied, his smile white.
He came by the tag naturally; his mother Luanne?s mother was Tejano, and Angelica Hutton had been the Outfit?s quartermaster-general since that meant cooking dinner personally. His maternal grandfather had been a black horse-breaker from the Texas hills. The combination of that Afro-Anglo-Hispano-Indio mix with Eric?s Nordic heritage had given him exotic good looks, bluntly regular full-lipped features, skin the smooth pale light brown of a perfect soda biscuit, eyes midnight blue and hair curling from under the edge of his helmet in locks of darkest yellow.
A look around the Sword of the Prophet were cantering forward a little as her A-listers pursued the fleeing ranchers? men. The A-list lancers reined in at the very fringe of the area covered by the fort?s war engines, turned, and cantered back towards her. The Corwinites halted again when the CORA men started lofting arrows at them from extreme range, a bit over two hundred yards with a saddle bow. The survivors of the Pendleton force drew up behind the Prophet?s guardsmen-all but a few who kept going east as fast as they could quirt their horses. ?We beat?em!? Will said. ?Good as we can expect, dammit,? she said.
Mike Jr. was out of the saddle, pulling at the shaft of his lance with a foot braced on the body of the man it pierced, looking grim but not too wobbly. The lance was disposable, but the banner had to be retrieved. And bloodstains were nothing new on a Bearkiller battle flag.
This was his second real fight, not his first, she reminded herself. ?Trooper,? she said. Mike looked up.?Put something white on the end of that, and ask the enemy commander whether he?s interested in a mutual half-hour truce, for each side to retrieve their wounded.?
It took an effort to say; the enemy-even the Prophet?s fanaticsusually respected a flag of truce on the battlefield. About as often as her side did, for the same self-interested reasons. That still meant sending her son into talking distance of men for whom mercy was scarcely even a concept.
I can?t treat Mike any different from the way I would any bannerman, she told herself.
He grinned at her and saluted crisply.?Yes, ma?am!?
Signe slid her unmarked sword back into the scabbard and rested the palms of her gauntlets on the horn of her saddle for an instant, waiting tensely while her son cantered over the battlefield and picked his way between fallen men and horses. The sun had barely risen at all; the whole affair had taken less than half an hour. Mike waved at her after an instant?s conversation with the man beneath Corwin?s flag of golden-rayed sun on a bloodred ground before turning and galloping back. She kept her breath of relief behind her lips until he was out of arrow range.
Will used his trumpet again, and the light two-wheel carts came forward to gather the hurt, with medics jumping down to administer first aid. For a moment there was little sound, except the sough of wind and the shrieks and moans and whimpers of humans and horses in pain. That became less, as the wounded animals were put down and the men given morphine.