The Scourge of God c-2 Read online

  "Ingolf! Move, man, move!"

  Father Ignatius abandoned the sword jammed tight in bone and spurred his horse forward, jerking his war-hammer free where it hung by its thong at his saddlebow. Godfrey's armored shoulder struck the Cutter who'd been about to chop down the dazed-looking man manacled to the yoke, but even in the dimness Ingolf's battered face looked blank and his eyes were haunted pits. The destrier reared and crow-hopped on its hind legs as the cleric slugged it to a desperate halt and wheeled it around.

  Then in the midst of the melee the warrior-priest's eyes went wide. Mary Havel was fighting sword-and-shield against a short one-eyed man Ignatius recognized from descriptions, but that wasn't what made him stare.

  "Lord of Hosts!" he blurted.

  Rudi Mackenzie was coming through the thick of the Cutter press, killing at every second step, eyes showing white all around pupils grown huge, teeth bared in a ululating banshee wail loud even in the clamor of battle. A swordsman staggered back and fell, his pelvis shattered by a kick. Another reeled away with half his face sheared off, hands scrabbling at the impossible wound. An enemy rider struck downward with the horrified desperation of a man finding a scorpion on his chest. Sparks flew in a blue-and-red shower where the Mackenzie's buckler knocked the shete away, and a thrust to the man's armpit sank six inches deep in a snap like a frog's tongue after a dragonfly. That turned into a backhand cut…

  Even given surprise and shock the Cutters were tough fighters; he'd seen that in the battle with the Boise army two days ago, and they'd rallied swiftly tonight. Now they began to give way, a first few blundering away in panic, or lashing their horses heedless into the night, others trying to break contact so that they could flee without taking a blade in the back.

  Ignatius knew why, and his mind stuttered. A man could strike swiftly, or precisely, or very hard; a little more of one meant a little less of the others, and you had to do the best you could of all three at once. The Mackenzie was moving like moonlight on a waterfall despite all the handicaps of darkness and unknown ground, each blow laid like a surgeon's, each landing with the lashing force that clove mail-links and lacquered bullhide… and then topped a man's head like a boiled egg. He'd seen Rudi fight before, and had been impressed, but that had only been a skirmish. Nothing like…

  Like a sighted man among the blind, Ignatius thought numbly. Like some pagan God of war.

  Then the fight was over, the survivors of the Cutter force throwing down their weapons and exploding outward in screeching panic. All but one; the one-eyed man landed a cut on the side of Mary Havel's helmet. A sharp bonk rang, and the woman buckled at the knees. The victor raised his shete to kill.

  Cranng!

  The shete blow skidded off Rudi's longsword. Strong and skilled, Kuttner cut backhanded at the bigger man's neck. The blow stopped halfway, and the longsword was through Kuttner's body just below the breastbone, two feet of blood-slick steel glistening out his back.

  And he smiled, with blood running black between his teeth. And he dropped his weapon and shield and reached out with both hands; they fastened on Rudi's neck and pulled his own body forward along the yard of swordblade until the cross-guard thumped against his ribs.

  "I-see-you," he rasped.

  The voice had nothing to do with the bits of lung he spat out through a laughing mouth. It ground out the words like a mill that minced human bone, and it was gleeful.

  "Raven-Son-of-Bear. I-see-your."

  Rudi lunged backwards, releasing the hilt of his sword, striking upward with hands bunched between Kuttner's arms in a move skilled and quick and hugely strong. He might as well have struck a statue cast in bronze, and for a moment he froze in goggling surprise as a move he knew had to work failed totally. The blood-covered teeth grinned closer and closer, ready to gnaw off his face as the dead man giggled, and he began to scrabble desperately at the unhuman grip.

  Behind Kuttner, Ingolf Vogeler moved at last, with the clumsy intensity of an exhausted ox. Staggering, his eyes showing nothing but blind determination and an even deeper hate, he drove the end of the heavy ashwood yoke across his shoulders into the back of Kuttner's head.

  Thunk.

  Bone crunched, and the walking corpse froze for an instant, but its grip did not loosen. Rudi hammered at wrists and elbows, struck a desperate upward blow with the heel of his hand at the angle of the other man's jaw. Kuttner's head jerked to the side, then turned back at an angle, dangling loose but still grinning. The quick savage strength of Rudi's movements turned slow, a feeble scrabbling as his face turned purple, visible even in the darkness.

  But Mary Havel was already coiling up off the ground, her sword held in the two-handed grip and one foot locked around the Cutter's ankle for leverage. The sharp blade landed behind the man's knee, and cut all the way through to the kneecap. He buckled sideways and fell like a tree, taking Rudi with him.

  And his hands still squeezed. Ignatius half fell out of the saddle, running forward to smash at the obscene shape; so did three or four others, and someone thumped him in the ribs with a blade that would have killed if he hadn't been in armor. He ignored it. They all flailed at the dead man until the body was cut and battered into a bloody mass of meat and bone and organs, but even then the hands kept their grip on Rudi's throat until the tendons were slit and the bones they anchored on splintered.

  A panting silence fell amid the latrine-salt-and-copper odors of violent death, with the sound of someone vomiting in the background and a few cries as the Boise cavalry made sure of the enemy wounded. Ignatius looked around, and saw Edain and Mathilda Arminger kneeling on either side of Rudi's limp form. The woman tore off his padded mail coif and pressed on either side of his larynx with the palms of her hands.

  "It's not crushed!" she cried, a little shrill with relief.

  The Mackenzie coughed, and his eyelids fluttered open. Then he coughed again, deep and racking. Edain offered him a canteen; Ignatius didn't have time to intervene before Rudi sucked at the water, coughed and snorted it out his nose, spat aside and drank more. The cleric released a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

  Awareness returned to Rudi's blue-green eyes. "We'd best be going," he said hoarsely. "It's not a spot that seems pleasant to linger in, so."

  Rudi and his companions made camp ten miles southward, in a place where two brick walls of a farmhouse burned out a generation ago still made a corner. That let them have a small sheltered fire that couldn't be seen at a distance; they'd sleep during the day and continue by night. They'd managed to get a fair amount of their gear out of Boise, if not the big Conestoga wagon they'd been carrying it all in. Ignatius tended a pot of stew, salt pork with dried vegetables and beans; the dark close-coupled priest was the best camp cook they had. Horses whickered in the darkness from the picket line, and their smell added to the strong scents of sage and sweat and oil and metal and burning greasewood.

  Rudi finished grinding a nick out of the edge of his sword, ran a swatch of oily sheepskin over the blade, sheathed it and laid the scabbard aside wrapped in the broad belt that also held his dirk. His stomach twisted in hunger at the savory smell from the cookfire, but he winced a little as he accepted a bowl and some biscuits and took his first sip.

  The swelling bruises on his throat made swallowing painful; they made breathing a matter of care, though thank Her of the Healing Hand that they hadn't had to insert a tube or anything of that sort. He ate cautiously, a little at a time. That was one of a symphony of pains and aches, from minor cuts to bone bruises. At that, he'd been lucky and gods-favored. The memory of those troll-strong dead hands on his throat still made an unpleasant sensation crawl over his scrotum and up his belly. It had been seconds away from being too late. If he hadn't decided to put on the coif before the fight…

  Remembering Someone looking through Kuttner's eyes into his was worse yet.

  "My throat's raw," he said, and hid a slight shudder. He turned to Odard instead of dwelling on the eerie otherness of what had happene
d:

  "I didn't see your man Alex," he croaked.

  I can talk. As long as I'm careful.

  The young Baron's eyes usually held a cool reserve. There was no mistaking what was in them now.

  And if Alex could see them, he'd not stop rinning until he hit salt water, and then only so he could swim, Rudi thought.

  "I didn't either, and that's why he's not dead," Odard said grimly. "And if I had him back in the castle at Gervais… I do believe I'd have him flogged to death. Usually having the High Justice is a bit of a bore, but there are times when it can be very satisfying."

  Mathilda had mopped her emptied bowl with a piece of the bannock and was lying with her head on a saddle, apparently reveling in having her war harness off for the first time in three days. She was the same age as Rudi, but right now you could see how the strong bones of her face would look when she aged, and locks of her reddish brown hair clung to her forehead.

  Rudi suppressed an impulse to smooth them back, then decided not to bother and did it. She smiled at him; it died away as she spoke:

  "He laid Odard out with a crossbow butt and held me at the point of the bolt while he surrendered us to the Cutters."

  Rudi shaped a silent whistle. "That is a surprise. I'd have said he was a brave man-and loyal to the House of Liu, too."

  Odard's hand closed reflexively on the hilt of the sword across his lap; he was a little less than a year younger than Rudi, and several inches shorter, with a handsome high-cheeked, snub-nosed face, raven-black hair and slanted blue eyes the brighter for the natural olive-umber hue of his skin. His voice recovered a little of his usual ironic detachment as he went on:

  "He is. Loyal, that is. Unfortunately he's loyal to my mother.. . the Dowager Baroness. And she's been in contact with the Church Universal and Triumphant. Apparently she told him… passwords, codes… to use with them if he thought he had to."

  He looked away slowly. "I told her to stop it. I thought she'd listened. Apparently she didn't, even though I'm of age and Baron now. I'm going to have a little talk with her when we get back."

  " My mother is going to have a little talk with her," Mathilda said. "Sovereigns before vassals, Odard."

  The young nobleman looked alarmed; however furious he was with her, Lady Mary Liu was his mother. She'd conspired with foreigners against the Crown Princess-her man had pointed a crossbow at the Crown Princess-and they both knew that meant arraignment for high treason against the Throne.

  "That… is for you and the Lady Regent to decide, Your Highness," he said. "I… I really can't say anything in her defense, only plead for mercy."

  Rudi was angry enough himself, but he winced a little inwardly at the thought too. Not that Sandra Arminger, Regent of the Portland Protective Association, took any particular pleasure in inflicting pain and death. She just used it as a tool, which was considerably worse, if you were on the receiving end. Policy kept going when a sadist's pleasure in cruelty might be glutted and stop.

  Then her daughter frowned. "Well… the way it was, they had us cornered. We would all have died, probably, if we'd fought. Alex might just have been trying to save your life. And they didn't, well, do anything to us except tie us up."

  Odard shrugged expressively. "I'll still have him flogged to death if I can."

  Rudi ate a biscuit to hide a slight grimace of distaste. Odard Liu wasn't the complete bastard that his father had been. Edward Liu had been – what was the pre-Change word?

  What lots of Norman Arminger's original supporters had been; they'd had a term for it in the old world, not bandit or outlaw as people would say these days, but Ah, sure, and that's it. They said gangster back then. Or gangbanger.

  Odard's mother had been from a Society household-a lot of people who'd been in the Society for Creative Anachronism had ended up as leaders in various places, Arminger himself among them, though only the most ruthless had been able to stomach Matti's father. For that matter, the PPA as a whole wasn't nearly as bad as it had been in Norman Arminger's day, before Rudi's blood-father killed him and died himself in a spectacular duel between their armies at the end of the War of the Eye.

  Better does n 't necessarily mean good, though, Rudi thought. Then he said: "It's a little early to be planning revenge, so. Unless the man presents himself within arm's reach of you. We've more important concerns."

  Mathilda sat up and focused her hazel eyes; there was puzzlement in them now, as well as relief and affection.

  "Yes, we do! What in the name of all the saints happened back there, Rudi? You were weird enough-"

  "The Morrigu was with me," he said matter-of-factly. "I'd have been dead about… seven times, else."

  Matti nodded. "But what about Kuttner? He wasn't just… just berserk, the way you got. That was… what was that?"

  "I'm not altogether sure," Rudi said, his voice still hoarse.

  He touched the bruises on his throat with gingerly caution, the mark of fingers that had squeezed through mail and padded stiffened leather and neck muscles as strong as braided rawhide.

  "But I think," he went on thoughtfully, "I truly think that I was near as no matter throttled to death by a man already dead himself three times over. Both parts of which sentence are a bogglement and enough to make a man run into the trees screaming for his mother, so."

  He grinned at his own joke, you had to show willing and that went twice over when you were in charge, but…

  It would be funny, if only it were funny, he thought. Sad it is that I'm a little old to have Mother kiss my hurts better. Though in this case, it's as a High Priestess and a spellweaver I'd be asking it of her! And even so…

  Juniper Mackenzie could do many remarkable things. Raising dead men wasn't among them, any more than she could change lead into gold or fly by wishing it or throw lightning bolts from her fingertips. Verbal ones, yes, but not the literal split-the-tree type.

  Ignatius looked up from his task. "That was a case of demonic possession, I think," he said calmly, and handed out more filled bowls. "I've never seen anything like it myself, but the old accounts from long before the Change describe very similar things."

  Rudi nodded. Allowing for the different words Christians used to describe it, he thought the soldier-monk was right.

  "The Powers are many, and not all are friendly to humankind," he said, and rubbed his throat again. "As I can now painfully testify!"

  Ingolf Vogeler looked up from where he sat, a blanket around his shoulders.

  "I… I thought Kuttner was just an asshole with an eye for other people's boodlebags," he said, in his Wisconsin rasp. "When I thought he was working for the Bossman of Iowa, when Vogeler's Villains went East on that salvage mission from Des Moines. Then when he turned out to be a spy and a traitor working for the Prophet and killed my people and dragged me off to Corwin, I thought he was your common or garden-variety evil shit. And yah, there was a lot of mystical crap in Corwin, but I cut that eye out of Kuttner's head when I escaped and I thought that proved it was all just a show for the yokels."

  Rudi spoke as gently as his abused larynx allowed: "After what you saw on Nantucket-the Sword-and the message you got there, I'd have been less dismissive of mystical crap, myself, Ingolf."

  The Easterner shivered. "Yah, tell me. I was wrong. When the Cutters had me cornered, Kuttner just… he said a word and made a sign with his hand, and I couldn't move. That's how they took me alive. I couldn't move, couldn't do anything but what he said… It was like some sort of spell."

  Rudi leaned over, gripping the other man by one thick-muscled shoulder and pouring strength through the contact. He could see the Easterner was bothered by the very word, although that was strange. Or maybe not; he wasn't a witch, after all, and Rudi was, even if he was no great spellcaster or loremaster like his mother. He'd seen before that those not of the Old Religion could be spooked by the commonest things sometimes.

  How to hearten him? Well, the truth never hurt:

  "Ingolf, my friend, you did move, des
pite the spell. You smashed in the back of his head with that yoke; and I'd be dead now, if you hadn't. At a guess, he laid an evil geasa on you before you escaped him last year. There are ways of doing that, for good as well as ill, and planting them deep in a man's mind with a word of power to call them out. And working harm that way leaves a man open to… other things; the Threefold Rule, you know."

  Ingolf crooked a smile. "Yah, he got back worse than he gave me, didn't he?"

  He was cored out as a cook does a pepper for stuffing, Rudi thought, and swallowed painfully.

  "The command laid on you could be posthypnotic suggestion," Ignatius said with a scholar's precision; the Shield of St. Benedict were a learned order as well as a militant one. "Not necessarily magic."

  Rudi grinned at him, and quoted a saying of Juniper Mackenzie: "It doesn't stop being magic because you can explain it, Father."

  Ingolf's haunted dark blue eyes met his, and the Easterner touched his mouth and winced a bit before he spoke.

  "You stuck a yard of sword through his brisket, and he didn't stop. Then I crushed in the back of his head, and he still didn't stop. Cry-yiy, that sounds an awful lot like magic to me."

  "And I cut his leg mostly off," Mary Havel said. "That didn't stop him, either. It did make me feel better about his clouting me on the head with a sword earlier, though."

  "It didn't stop him, but it did make him fall over," Ritva pointed out cheerfully. "Which helped everyone else cut him up and smash him and things. Carth mag, sis."

  Which meant useful deed in Elvish. Neither of the twins seemed much put out; at least, they didn't show much of the dread that several of the others did. But then, they were witches, and Initiates; two-thirds of the Dunedain Rangers were, after all. Even if they did call on the Lord and Lady as Manwe and Varda, which he considered an affectation, rather than using more conventional names like Lugh and Brigid.