The Protector's War Page 14

  Trying to question them would be useless—even if they knew how many were on their tracks, they'd been beaten into mindlessness by fear and exhaustion. It would take hours to get anything coherent. Eilir fought down another surge of anger; one of the children was the same age as her brother Rudi, and they were being hunted with dogs. They cowered at the sight of a sword or bow.

  She needed control now. Breathe in. Suck it down into the diaphragm, then let it slowly out to carry away rage and fear and worry. Breathe out. Ground and center, ground and center. The metallic taste in her mouth lessened, and the fluttering under her diaphragm. The buckskin that covered the grip of her longbow drank sweat and stayed steady under her palm.

  "Go! Run!" Astrid snapped, and the refugees did, faster than they had, a little hope lending strength to their legs.

  "Here come the dogs," she went on, with a tightening of her lips.

  The animals were almost as invisible as the pigs had been, and more so than the tiger; just a massive waving in the grass, a glimpse of whiplike tails lashing in the pleasure of the hunt, and tan-and-white patched hides. Occasionally a floppy-eared head came up…

  But not all were hounds. Five were huge mastiffs, shaggy gray-furred creatures heavy as men, with long legs and great square heads like barrels—barrels that split open to show wet, yellow teeth like knives. Mastiffs were sight hunters, and these had been trained to follow human prey—to follow and to kill. Now they charged, like hairy orcas rising out of the chest-high sea of grass at every bound.

  "Shoot!" Astrid snarled.

  She loosed first, having a better vantage point from the saddle. A mastiffs leap turned from a thing of grace to a broken cartwheel, and the young woman reached back over her shoulder for another shaft.

  But the dogs were fast. Eilir waited until hers was close, then drew as Sam Aylward had taught her—throwing the left arm forward and matching it with a twist of gut and torso that put all the muscle of her body into the effort as well. She needed that; the stave had been made with Sam's own hands, a birthday present a year ago. It was tillered for her full growth—a war bow and not a hunting tool—with a draw just under eighty pounds. She'd punched shafts through chain mail with it on the practice field.

  A smooth breath out as she drew, until the triangular broadhead she'd filed from a stainless-steel spoon touched the riser's arrow shelf, and the kiss ring on the string brushed her upper lip at precisely the right spot.

  Hold the draw, until the unseen line met the next leap…

  The bow surged a bit as the string snapped against her bracer, but Aylward's bows had little hand shock. The arrow was a flash, a blurred sweet streak that had to meet the white triangle at the base of the mastiff's throat fifty yards away…

  Got him! she thought with cold glee, as the big animal somersaulted backward and disappeared. You're not going to tear open any more kids, you son of a bitch.

  She was already wheeling and setting another shaft. Kevin had brought his beast down too, a clean hit slantwise from the left shoulder and out at the right hindquarter, the arrow speeding off into the grass after razoring a path through heart and lungs and guts. The mastiff twitched and fell, an almost comical look of surprise in its eyes. Donnal had taken the fourth but didn't have time for another shot. Instead he went diving forward under the fifth big mastiffs leap, as it spread its paws to knock him down and open his throat to the killing grip. It landed ten feet behind him and had barely started to spin in place when three more arrows struck it—Reuben's first, through the neck, Astrid's into the body behind the shoulder and Eilir's smashing home in the spine above its hind legs. That dropped the animal limp as a sack of flour.

  Eilir blinked, suddenly conscious of the sweat running down from the foam-rubber padding of her helmet and into her eyes, and the dryness of her mouth.

  "Here they come," Astrid said. "I can see riders, and hear them—there goes that stupid trumpet again."

  Down! Eilir signed.

  "Good idea," Astrid replied. "Look, everyone, we've got to give those people all the time possible—and hope the Mackenzie gets here quick, too. I'm going to try talking. Reuben, you stay back there unless I call you. You may have to cover our retreat."

  The three Mackenzies dropped to one knee. That put their heads well below the feral growth in the open field; it also nerve-rackingly cut off Eilir's vision of what was happening. Astrid let her right hand fall down by her side, and signed in an abbreviated warrior version of the visual language that they'd worked out for situations like this.

  Three riders. Servants make dogs quiet… More. Boss-man. Two men-at-arms. Four mounted crossbowmen.

  Uh-oh, Eilir thought. Two-to-one is long odds if it comes to a fight! Then, brief and heartfelt along with the Invoking gesture: Dread Lord, Master of the shining blade; Dark Lady, raven-winged and strong, Chooser of the Slain, be with Your people now. Grant us luck and victory. So mote it be!

  Astrid waited, her face calm under the raven-crested helm. Eilir could see her cock her head slightly, listening, then stand in the stirrups to shout back:

  "Only the two of you, if you want to parlay! You're on Mackenzie land!"

  Her hand went on: They come. Bossman, one man-at-arms. Wait…

  The old field was four hundred yards wide; it would be a while before riders could see the crouching archers. Eilir used the opportunity to switch off the broadhead shaft for one with an armor-piercing bodkin point, an arrowhead made like a miniature metalworker's punch. Those had a pip on the nock, so you could tell the type by feel.

  Up.

  They rose smoothly, shafts nocked and fingers on the strings, but with the arrowheads pointed down. That didn't matter much, except as a symbol—they could all draw, aim and shoot in under three seconds.

  Eilir noted that the two riders only checked for an instant, not long enough to make their horses do anything but miss a half stride; her eyes went first to the tiny figures of the crossbowmen. None of them had snuck off to work his way around the flank, and none had dismounted so that they could use their weapons better. Possibly they were being honest; more probably, they hadn't been told what to do if the situation altered, and weren't going to chance acting on their own. That was the Protectorate for you.

  The two riding forward…

  One was huge. Not far short of seven feet and broad enough to look squat, the bulk heightened by a long hauberk of stainless-steel washers riveted onto leather backing, with steel-splint protection on his forearms and shins and fnetal-backed gloves. His helmet was bullet-shaped, only a T-slit in front to show glimpses of crude thick features, and it had a tall plume of black-dyed ostrich feathers waving from its point. A greatsword was slung over his back, the genuine article with a two-foot hilt, a big ball pommel and a four-foot blade as broad as Eilir's palm; a war hammer was thonged to his right wrist and rested across his saddlehorn, a forged steel shaft a yard long with a serrated head. His horse was in proportion, a German warmblood that must weigh in near a ton, eighteen hands high if it was an inch but long-legged and probably fairly agile, of a type used for dressage before the Change. It was an entire stallion with a savage barbed bit in its mouth.

  Uh-oh, she thought. I think I remember him. In jeans and a T-shirt, that time. The night the Change happened, when we were in Corvallis and the 747 crashed. Which means the little guy has to be…

  The bossman was different, a slender man of average height in civilian garb: a jacket of embroidered yellow silk, black trousers and boots and a broad-brimmed hat with a curling feather at the side. He had the Protector's sigil on his shoulder—a red cat-pupiled eye on a black background—and another device over his chest, in a circle like a Japanese mon, but the symbol was a Chinese ideograph. The sword at his side was a Chinese type as well, a curved dao, heavier towards the tip of the broad blade. He halted his mount—an excellent quarter-horse gelding—and leaned his hands on the horn of his saddle. His features were thin, and might have been handsome except for the crooked teeth that hi
s slight smile showed. There was a scattering of acne scars across his nose and high cheekbones, and his slanted eyes were an incongruous blue as bright as Astrid's.

  Yup, that's Eddie Liu. Gangbanger, thief, murderer, rapist and general scumbag, she thought. What a pity we can't just kill him now, except that it'd start the war early and Mom wouldn't like that at all.

  He'd come up in the world, since that evening in Corvallis. Now everyone knew him as Marchwarden Liu, overseer of all the Protectorate's southern flank, and Baron

  Gervais—lord of that town and the surrounding countryside. The Protector's hatchetman on this border, and a close confidant, which said all you had to know. A rat to Protector Arminger's hyena; and it was a little surprising he was here himself—unless he just thought chasing people with killer dogs was great sport, something entirely possible.

  "Parlay," he said.

  He raised an empty hand and then waved over his shoulder. The crossbowmen raised their weapons, showing them unspanned, and slung them over their shoulders on the carrying straps. Scowling, Astrid made a gesture and dropped her shaft back into the quiver. Eilir and the other Mackenzies did too; that added a full second to their response time, but you had to abide by the formalities.

  "There, now we can talk like civilized people. Hey, it's Astrid 'the Elf Larsson, ain't it?" he said genially, with a nasal, east coast, big-city accent. "Or is it a hobbit these days?"

  "Numenorean, actually… this week," Astrid answered calmly.

  You go, girl! Eilir thought.

  Astrid continued: "Could I ask you what you're doing on Mackenzie land, Baron Liu?"

  "My charter from the Portland Protective Association says this is part of the Southmark," he said. "Part of the Barony of Gervais, at that. So I can do what I damn well like on it."

  "We say differently."

  "Yeah, I sorta thought so," Liu said. "We can talk about exactly where the border is later. Maybe with your brother-in-law, or the dummy's old lady. Right now I'm looking for some people who owe me. They skipped out on the vig. Bad for business."

  "You're not going to find them," Astrid said. "I suggest you turn around and ride away. We Bearkillers have sort of severe penalties for enslavement and the Mackenzies are even more hung up about it."

  "Hey, who's talking that slavery shit? They can split as soon as they work off the debt to me—or whoever I sell the debt to, sort of like a mortgage, right? Society would fall apart if people didn't pay their debts."

  Astrid spat into the long grass.

  Liu chuckled. "Hey, what's with the attitude? Here I am, doing my—as the Lord Protector says—'civic duty,' peaceable as anything, and you come on my land, hang with escaping criminals, steal my property, and then you go and kill my dogs. I liked those dogs."

  "And I bet Mago there raised that snake from an egg," Astrid said dryly.

  Eilir gave a silent chuckle; she'd watched that tape with her mother before the Change. To her surprise, Liu smiled in recognition as well; it was a disconcerting, and very unwelcome, momentary link. She flushed, and let her fingers move, suggesting in Sign what the baron could go do with his pet troll or vice versa.

  Another surprise. Liu raised an eyebrow and chuckled, obviously understanding what she'd signed.

  "Nah," he said. "Mack and I are just good friends." Eilir scowled, conscious of having lost points. "I've heard about you and blondie here. You found the Ring of Power in her Crack of Doom yet, or are you still having fun looking?"

  The giant's shoulders shook; he boomed out a laugh as Astrid bridled and Eilir scowled harder. Liu went on: "We met before, didn't we? Back around the Change, you and your momma."

  Yes, Eilir thought. You were robbing a jewelry store and attacking a cop under cover of the big fire where the 747 crashed.

  She signed: We beat you and your friends up and chased you all off, as I recall. I always wondered how a nice town like Corvallis had festering boils like you and Big and Stupid there on its butt. *

  "We were just passing through, sort of doing some business with a few of the students there. I do remember Chico, though. He was a friend of mine."

  Eilir winced—inwardly, this time—at the memory of her mother standing incredulous in the flame-shot darkness, the hickory ax handle in her hand and the dead ganger at her feet.

  Liu's mocking eyes slid back to Astrid. He looked her up and down and his gaze settled on her helmet. "Did you notice you've got your head up a crow's ass?"

  "Better that than up my own, like you, Baron Liu," Astrid said sweetly, and the Protectorate noble's composure showed a crack or two, letting the banked hatred and bloodlust show just a little.

  "Yeah, it's been fun chatting, but I've got a debt to collect, so take your girlie-toy soldiers in their miniskirts and get the fuck out of my way. Please. Wouldn't want some of you cuties to get hurt."

  Eilir looked at the crossbowmen again; they couldn't get into any fight in time. Her gaze went back to the hulking armored figure sitting his horse in stolid silence. Mack—he'd been named for the truck before the Change, she heard—was another matter. He was only fifteen feet away, and if he managed to get among them at arm's length before they shot him down it would be like trying to fight a tiger with your fists. He wasn't just three-hundred-odd pounds of armored muscle; unless rumor lied he was fast with it, and skilled. Liu used him like an elephant-sized Doberman on a choke chain, ready to be loosed at any target, as well as personal insurance. That hauberk was a problem as well, the washers were nearly a quarter inch thick and as likely as not to shed even a bodkin point. Getting a shaft through the T-slit of the barbut helm was…

  You'd have to be dead lucky, as Sam would say. And how I wish he was here!

  The giant moved in anticipation, his armored fingers clenching on the grip of the war hammer. Liu smiled a nasty smile. He wasn't wearing armor, unless there was light mail in the lining of his jacket, but Eilir had learned even before the Change that, myth to the contrary, bullies were not necessarily cowards. Arminger's protege's most certainly weren't; he tested them thoroughly first. The tales of those testings were gruesome. Of course, they also tended to have a lively sense of self-interest…

  "That isn't a parlay, Liu. That's a threat." Astrid smiled again. "Check," she said, and pursed her lips in a way that told Eilir she was whistling.

  Hooves thudded on the soft ground of the woodlot, like muffled taps on the soles of her feet. In the instant that Liu and his bodyguard were distracted by Reuben's exit from the woods all four of the other Rangers whipped their hands to their quivers and set arrows to string. The distant crossbowmen had orders for that; she could hear their shouts as they spanned their weapons, dropping the hooks over the strings and winding the cranks.

  Reuben changed the odds considerably; he wasn't nearly a match for Mack, but he was a big young man, a trained A-list fighter of the Bearkiller outfit, fully armored and with a ten-foot lance in his fist. And while Mack's washers might turn one hastily aimed shaft, four wasn't nearly as good a bet.

  Uh-oh, Eilir thought. Liu isn't looking as defeated as he should. And it isn't just his crossbowmen coming up—

  "Check and mate," he said.

  His eyes went to the woods behind them and then went wide—nearly bulged—in surprise. Whatever he'd expected there, it wasn't what he saw. Eilir took a step back and to the side, so she could keep her aim clear and dart a glance behind. There were a lot of figures moving there, all of them in kilts. One carried a bundle of Protectorate-model crossbows, raising them mutely into view and then dropping them. Another prodded four men forward; they were stripped to their ragged underwear, and all were wounded; one was on an improvised travois of poles and had a seeping bandage across his belly. The Mackenzies waited with their bows up, a shaft to the cord and ready to draw, except for Juniper Mackenzie.

  She came mounted, the crescent moon on the brow of her helmet, and a white compressed look about her mouth that her daughter recognized—the look she had when duty drove her to som
ething distasteful.

  Such as ambushing ambushers in the woods, Eilir thought, and fought down a silent giggle of relief. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Astrid blow out her cheeks for a moment in a gesture that made her look younger and less stern-warrior-elvish.

  Liu's narrow blue eyes swept back and forth, obviously calculating odds, which weren't good. Four archers were a serious risk. Twenty-four longbows shooting every five seconds weren't just a risk; they were an arrowstorm in the making. Sam Aylward stepped up beside Juniper's stirrup, his war bow in his hands and his face mild and calm.

  "Baron Liu," he said courteously, inclining his head slightly. "My lord, I hear your man there is very strong. Is he strong enough to live with a dozen arrows through his chest, do you think?"

  He politely didn't mention what the same shafts would do to the man in the cloth coat. Juniper rode out, stopping to Eilir's right—careful not to mask her shot. Behind Liu the other man-at-arms and the crossbowmen were coming up, close enough to see faces. They'd been busy, loading short heavy bolts into the arrow grooves when they'd bent the thick spring-steel bows back and hung the spanning cranks at their waists. Now they slowed and faltered, as they saw who awaited them.

  "Go," Juniper said. "Take your men, leave our land, and go."

  Her eyes were fixed on Liu, and Eilir gulped slightly at the look in them. The Lord and Lady had ten thousand thousand aspects, and meeting some of them was… stressful. Liu felt it too, but he snarled with the courage of a cornered rat, and Mack raised his iron club. It was the crossbowmen behind who looked most rattled; some of them were clutching crucifixes or muttering prayers as they realized who it was they faced.

  Juniper Mackenzie.

  The Witch Queen.

  "Go," Juniper said, and stood slightly in the stirrups, her eyes unmoving, hands raised upright and palms out, arms making a V, face pale as milk.