The Sword of the Lady c-3 Read online

  The Sword of the Lady

  ( Change - 3 )

  S M Stirling

  S M Stirling

  The Sword of the Lady

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE WILD LANDS (FORMERLY ILLINOIS) MIDDLE ILLINOIS RIVER AUGUST

  18, CHANGE YEAR 24/2022 AD

  ?Shining pearl within the crimson sky,

  Guide me in the coming night

  Perfect seed within the humble husk,

  Ground my feet in soil so I may rise

  Patient leaf within the endless pool

  Calm me when the torrent falls

  Gentle wind within the slanting grass

  Bear me ever on until I rest-?

  Rudi Mackenzie and Edain hadn?t been singing the hymn; more of a breathy whisper, though it rang loud in their minds as the moon rose enormous on the horizon, and they?d come down here below the lip of the valley where there was more cover for the rite. Rudi stopped instantly when a stick snapped. The warm sense of communion ghosted away like dust in a desert, and he sank down behind the tangle of wild rose in a motion that was swift but smooth rather than a catch-the-eye jerk.

  Five paces to his right and a little behind him Edain Aylward Mackenzie did the same; his great shaggy half-mastiff bitch Garbh vanished even more completely, belly to the ground, ears cocked and only her black nose moving as it wrinkled. The air wasn?t moving enough to carry scent any distance, but her blocky barrel-shaped head seemed to split as the thin black lips drew back silently from her long yellow fangs.

  The other half of her was probably wolf.

  Both men listened hunter-fashion, with their whole bodies: not straining, but opening themselves to the summer twilight, letting sound and sight and smells and the movement of air on skin flow in until you knew. The evening hush was strong and the hot thick air hazy along the ridge where they lay above the river valley, full of rank odors of flowers and greenery and warm earth damp from yesterday?s thunderstorm. Sweat trickled down Rudi?s flanks beneath the brigantine torso-armor he wore, a corselet of little steel plates riveted between two layers of soft green leather. Something with too many legs bit the back of his left knee below the kilt and above the sock-hose, adding to the prickling itches. The coarse sandy grain of the leather on the riser grip of his longbow drank moisture from the palm of his left hand, growing damp but not slippery, which was the point.

  The steep fall of ground to the river below was a patchy almost-forest. Single stands or clumps of mature pre-Change burr oak and shagbark hickory, black walnut and sugar maple reared above teardrop-shaped surrounds of saplings, where they?d rolled their seed downslope in the decades since the State foresters had stopped coming to prune and tend. The new growth ranged from fresh sprouts to fair-sized trees as old as Rudi, but the canopy wasn?t tall or closely spaced enough to shade out the undergrowth yet, and a dense understory of weeds and scrub was just past its summer prime.

  The open spaces were brushy meadow scattered with white pasture thistle and Queen Anne?s lace, and thickets of four-foot-tall Gaura, its pink flowers a wash of fading color as the deeper scarlet of its leaves turned black with sunset. The faint sweet scent of it became stronger with crushed stems and petals; as the sun dropped lower behind him he could see the tops of the plants swaying in little jerks in half a dozen spots. Once… a moment?s stillness… twice.. . again… another pause…

  And there?s no wind, Rudi thought grimly, as his mouth went dry.

  He was only twenty-three, but he?d seen enough violent death to know how easily it could happen to him-know in body and blood, as well as his head. He kept his breaths long and deep and slow to help loosen the tightness in gut and crotch and slow the pounding of blood that were the instinctive response to a sudden deadly threat. Half of transcending fear was making the flesh serve the spirit?s need, instead of letting it command you. And breathing deep could give you a little extra endurance at need. Not much, but every bit counted at the narrow passage. His eyes stayed fixed on the vegetation, and the off-and-on course of the small betraying motions.

  Men crawling on their bellies then, moving a bit at a time and pausing in between. Men or wolves or wild dogs, they all know that trick, but I?d be betting the first.

  Here in the Wild Lands men would most likely attack him on sight, and they?d likely be faster than he afoot, over ground they knew. He glanced over to where Edain waited, a movement of eyes more than head, and got a very slight nod.

  That meant both agreement that they were undetected so far and waiting on you, Chief. Here and now that was both a burden and a comfort; the call was his, but you couldn?t ask for a better man than Edain to have your back for all he was just turned twenty. Rudi moved his right-hand fingers, thumb to each as if counting on them, then turned it palm-up and lifted it a bit, a combination of gestures that meant how many? in Clan war-Sign. Edain?s answer was a tiny shrug; he didn?t have any real idea either.

  So… no less than six, possibly about thirty if they?re very good. And they haven?t seen us yet. It?s someone else who?s the expected guest at the feast, and them laying the table and knocking out the bung of the barrel of red salt ale. Someone coming by the track down there along the river; the position they?re in will be invisible from down by the water?s edge.

  The ambush was being set with real skill; he doubted most Mackenzie warriors could have done it better, or even Dunedain Rangers. He kept his breathing slow and quiet and deep, and his body motionless with a silent wariness that was coiled rather than stiff, ready to explode off the ground if he must. Nothing moved but his eyes, and he flicked them back and forth; a steady fixed gaze was oddly noticeable to the one you were staring at, like brushing a feather over the nape of the neck.

  If it was only six or so savages then he and Edain could probably handle them, not taking into account whoever they were planning on ambushing. The two Mackenzies would have the advantage of surprise, height, good purpose-made armor and weapons rather than crude makeshifts, and skills none of the wild-men could match.

  But there?s also the matter of the rights and wrongs of the thing, so.

  The ones walking into this ambush might be men of deep-dyed wickedness for all he knew, and meeting their fate; this wasn?t his territory, and he wasn?t one to draw the blade on strangers lightly.

  On the other hand, I need friends here-or at least allies. I?ve no time to spare; the lives of my friends depend on it. And at seventh and last, fights are usually about us and them, not rights and wrongs. Needs must when the Fates drive.

  Half in prayer: And if this deed must return on the doer, let it fall on me; it?s my decision, and Edain but follows his chieftain. This is a burden I took up with the sword.

  A warrior?s cold appraisal took over. They could certainly shoot at least three or four each before the enemy came close enough for handstrokes, perhaps more if there were many targets. If it was thirty of them… that was a different matter altogether.

  There was a certain brute simplicity to the arithmetic of war. Thirty men weren?t fifteen times stronger than two.

  More like forty or fifty times stronger, he thought unhappily. The advantage grows as the square of the difference, other things being equal.

  Nor was there any absolute certainty of safety whatever when men fought to kill. Sheer luck was involved; if your eye was in the place where a random arrow wanted to go, then it was off to the Summerlands willy nilly. He hadn?t come all the way from the Willamette in Oregon to die in a little skirmish two-thirds of the way to his goal. Too much depended on him.

  Their horses were behind and above them, in the strip of fire-scarred brushy woods where the open prairie met the valley, all loose-tethered, except his mare Epona who was guarding them. He made a low chittering sound
between his teeth, something that melded into the natural buzz and twitter and creak of the wilds. That would keep her quiet, even if she scented another horse or heard it neigh. The problem was that it wouldn?t mean anything to Edain?s horse or the pack beast, who were…

  Not more than average bright, even for horses. I love horses but Epona aside…

  He was glad he?d done so a minute later, when the dull thud-and-clop of hooves sounded on the broken asphalt and dirt of the roadway that followed the Illinois River below. Four men rode into sight, with as manymore packhorses on leading reins-there were bundles over their backs, and from the look of them and the trail of flies those held butchered game carcasses strapped up in the hides. Between them and Rudi the brush moved again, and he thought he caught the glint of edged metal through the gloaming of the summer evening. Someone was being a little overeager, or had forgotten to dip the blade of his spear in mud.

  Ambush, sure and I had the right of it, Rudi thought. They?re concentrating on the road down there, and with the sun at their backs to blind anyone looking their way. The which means they can?t see me and Edain easily either, of course.

  From what he?d heard in Iowa the only dwellers here were vicious savages, descendants of city folk who?d lived through the first Change years by eating each other, worse and worse as you went farther east. That had been Ingolf?s opinion too, and Ingolf Vogeler had made his living off salvage expeditions into the dead cities for many years. Journeying halfway across the continent with him had taught Rudi that the man from Wisconsin was usually a good judge.

  On the other hand, Edain and I cannot haul all those wagons of treasure to the Mississippi alone, Rudi mused. From the way things have gone this past week, we can?t even get close to them without help from the folk hereabouts.

  He ducked lower and thoughtfully picked up his sallet helm and set it on his head, with the visor slid up along the low steel dome and locked in place and the sponge and felt lining pressing firmly around brow and temples and the back of his skull. Then he reached over his shoulder to his quiver for a shaft to set on his string. Edain did the same with his open-faced helmet, nocked one arrow and eased out three more from his quiver, holding them between one finger and his bow, a trick for rapid shooting. If they were careful there was little chance the ambushers would notice, and it was well to be ready. Also the dull matt-green surface of the steel was less conspicuous than the raw metallic brightness of his shoulder-length red-blond mane, or even the sun-streaked oak brown of Edain?s curly mop.

  And haul those wagons to Iowa I must, since that is the price demanded to release Matti. And Ingolf and all my friends and kin by that…

  Right now he had to keep his mind cool. Thinking mad tyrant of Anthony Heasleroad would just make him rage, though the very Gods knew it was accurate.

  … by that… eccentric gentleman… the Bossman of Iowa. Will there ever be a chance with less risk? Even trying to back away might spook the ones hiding there. And what better, quicker introduction to the men they mean to kill than a rescue? If I must work with cannibals or the children of such, I will.

  After all, if you got too choosey about people?s ancestors…

  Were the Gael not once headhunters who burned men alive as sacrifices? Did the English not come to these lands with fire and massacre? And was not my anamchara Matti?s father a monster to turn a man?s stomach, sure?

  Decision jelled. With his free hand he reached down and picked up a clod of soil, touching it to his lips in silent prayer for an instant: Earth must be fed. To take life was to accept your own death?s part in the world, and the gesture acknowledged it. Edain copied the motion, and they both set their fingers to the strings of their longbows.

  The horsemen riding unaware into the trap down the road below were stripped to the waist in the muggy heat, regardless of the mosquitoes that were beginning to whine. Even at a hundred yards and through the gloaming he could see that three of them carried long spears tipped with ground-down butcher knives, and they all had a clutch of javelins slung over their backs as well in something like a big quiver. Then the still air shifted and a little breeze cuffed at leaf and twig around him, cooling the sweat that stuck strands of his hair to the back of his neck beneath the flare of the helm. The horses tossed their heads at the scent of their own kind; one nickered, and was answered by an equine snort from behind the two Mackenzies.

  Rudi came smoothly to his feet, as swiftly as if he and the animal had practiced the signal together. ?Ambush!? he shouted, his trained voice throwing the sound from deep in his chest.?Trap! In the brush above you!?

  The scrub exploded with armed men, screams and ragged figures and the ugly sheen of spearheads; manymore than he?d thought there would be, but it was too late to undo his decision. They wavered for a moment, caught between the foemen they had expected to take unawares and the strangers above them.

  Closer to thirty than to six of them. More like forty, the Dagda club them dead! went through him in a flickering instant. I do hope the men they wanted to kill can take some of the weight! ?Morrigu!? Rudi screamed, to rivet their attention.?Morrigu!?

  He called on the Crow Goddess as he drew and shot, for She was the one whose feathered host fed on the fruits of battle, the Dark Mother who had sent Raven to claim him in the nemed while he was still a child. Edain simply howled, the cry of the Wolf that was his sept totem, and then their voices rose together in the racking banshee shriek of the Clan?s battle-yell.

  One of the ambushers had a short stiff bow of some sort ready, and he had the presence of mind to turn and aim at the tall figure on the slope above. Rudi had already started to draw Mackenzie-style past the angle of his jaw as he called the warning, shoulders and gut and hips as much as arms in the force that bent the great stave of yellow yew-wood, but Edain was a fractional second ahead of him.

  The cloth yard shaft snapped out as he let the string roll off his fingertips and lash at the bracer on his left forearm. The range was short, and his war-bow drew well over a hundred pounds. The arrow was a blurred streak in the dimness and then a crack of parting bone before the enemy archer flipped backward with the gray-goose fletching standing up like a brutal exclamation point from his face. Edain?s shaft hadn?t missed either; it went through the man?s torso in a double splash, breaking ribs going in and coming out, then struck the next man behind in the stomach and stayed there. Rudi?s hand flicked to the quiver again and again, nock-draw-aim-loose in the deadly fast ripple Mackenzies were taught from childhood, three seconds for an arrow. They were both shooting wherever a telltale shape or motion betrayed the obvious threat of an enemy archer.

  Some sort of leader grabbed ambushers and pushed them towards the pair of clansmen as he yelped an order in a yammering dialect. It cut off in a gurgling scream as Edain shifted aim and sent an arrow through his throat. A score of the wild-men came uphill at the Mackenzies in a bounding rush, while as manymore boiled down towards the river; they must have thought there were more than two new foemen, fooled by shock and the eye-watering brightness that lingered behind him and the shower of cloth yard arrows stabbing down at them. ?Left, mine!? Rudi called sharply as the foe came on in a yelling mob, then spread out into a rough line.

  The enemy must have had some concept of archery; they knew that they had to get across the killing ground as fast as they might. They had no idea at all of what the west-country longbow could do in skilled hands, from the way they came straight on regardless with their shields up instead of dodging to and fro as they charged. And they were about to learn.

  Snap. Snap.

  The waxed linen of the bowstrings struck their leather bracers with a light whapping sound, and the arrows blurred out with a whirrrt of cloven air. A man dropped from each end of the attackers? rough formation, with the flat punching smack of arrowheads striking flesh loud enough to hear.

  Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap.

  Four more men died in eight seconds, three instantly and one screaming and thrashing as a cedarwood shaft hammered through sh
ield and arm and chest before it lodged in his spine. Then the rest were upon him, snarling shouting hairy faces vaguely seen as they labored up the hillside as if from a well of darkness, weapons reaching for his life. He tossed aside the bow and swept out his longsword in a hiss of steel on greased wood and leather. The other hand stripped the little buckler from its clip on the scabbard.

  He was the second-ranked archer in the Clan Mackenzie, who were a people of the bow. But Rudi had never met his own equal with the sword since he got his full growth, not anywhere in his travels. Not yet. Everything slowed, sound burring deeper, vision fading except for faces, hands, weapons; he felt light and easy, his motions flowing like water over rocks in a mountain torrent.

  I?m dead if I let them get around me and settle themselves, he knew. And I must keep their eyes on me and away from Edain. He has my back.

  Existence was a dance through the purple dusk, lines precise as those scribed with compass and surveyor?s strings linking blade to target. It was riastrad, the battle-madness of the warrior Goddess whose scythe reaped men. He charged, shrieking, clearing the bush ahead of him with a long lunging stride; a yard of layer-forged steel in his fist and the eerie keening scream of the Mackenzies on his lips. A rust-pitted spearhead ground down from one blade of a pair of garden shears went over his right shoulder as he ducked beneath a thrust, and he struck with the buckler as it did.

  The soup-plate shape of the metal shield cracked into a face covered in a black beard that crawled with lice, hard enough to make bone crumble and throw the wild-man backward to roll downslope in a tangle of limbs. With the weight of his armor added in there were better than two hundred pounds behind the blow, and the man wouldn?t be getting up again. The twinge from the old wound in his right shoulder was distant, unimportant except to remind him of how the infected arrow had weakened it a little.