He nodded. "But most men, even ones a bit shorter or lighter, are going to have stronger grips, and more muscle on their arms and shoulders. Speed matters, reach matters, skill and attitude matter a lot, but raw strength does too in any sort of close combat, especially hand-to-hand."
"So what do I do?" she said tightly.
"Don't arm wrestle 'em and don't get into pushing matches. Your brother has reach and weight on me; he's nearly as strong as I am and he'll be stronger when he's a couple of years older. I could still whup his ass one-on-one-in fact, I did. Take the same grip on your knife as I did and come at me; give it everything you've got."
She did-and stabbed a lot faster than he had, as well. He let her wrist smack into his right hand, and squeezed tightly enough to lock them together. Then he let her shove him back; she was strong for her size, especially in the legs.
As they neared the tree, he snapped his torso around and push-pulled on the hand that held the wooden knife, body-checking her as her own momentum drove her towards him. Then he bunched his knuckles into a ridge and punched her-lightly-right under the short ribs while she staggered off-balance.
"Oooff!" she said; but she made a recovery, coming up to guard position again.
"See, what I did there was redirect you instead of pushing back. That takes strength, but not as much as the other guy's. You just have to be strong enough. See the point?"
"Yes," she said slowly, nodding. "I think I do, Mike. You mean a woman needs a different fighting style?"
"Right; a woman, or a smaller man. I'll have Will do up some weights for you-and Luanne, we need to get her in on this too, and Astrid-and between that and the way we're traveling and chores, you can maximize your upper-body strength pretty quick, since you're already fit. Meanwhile, we'll work on the skill, speed and attitude. You'll practice with Eric, too, and Will. Will's got a lot of valuable brawling experience, I think."
He went over to the hanging deer carcass. "I used to use a pig carcass for this, back on my folks' place when I was a kid. They're better, because they're more like a man in size and where the organs are, but this'll do. Doesn't matter if we mess it up, since it's going into the stewpot. Go round the other side and hold on-hold it steady-put your shoulder to it."
He drew his puukko and took a deep breath. Then he attacked, stabbing in a blur of motion, the carcass jerking to the force of the impacts. The steel made a wet smacking sound as it clove the dead flesh, ten strikes in half as many seconds.
When he stopped, Signe's face had gone white again, shocked by the speed and power of the blows she felt thudding through the body of the deer. She swallowed and pressed her hands together for a moment before straightening up.
Havel nodded approval. "That's how you win a knife fight; you don't let it get started. Take him by surprise, from the back, or just get all over him before he can get set and kill the fucker before he realizes he's dying. OK, get your knife out and I'll hold the carcass."
He did, switching positions, although he gripped it at arm's length as she drew the bandit's long blade.
"We'll start slow. You've got to get real precise control on where the point and edge go, and get used to the feel of it hitting meat, and feel why it's a bad idea to turn it on a bone. He who hesitates is bossed, remember."
Excellent focus, he thought, twenty minutes later.
She was streaming sweat, and there were shreds of deer-flesh on her knife-hand and spattered across other bits of her, but she was boring in without flinching, eyes narrowed and seeing nothing else.
"Jesus!" he shouted, leaping backward.
Signe half stumbled as the deer carcass swayed unexpectedly, but pivoted with fluid balance and drove the long knife home, grunting with effort as it sliced into flesh.
Only then did she turn to see what had startled him. A drumroll thunder of hooves announced Astrid's arrival once more, but there was a hoarse bellowing snarl underneath it.
The bear behind the horse was traveling very nearly as fast, its mouth open and foam blowing from it; an arrow twitching in the hump over its shoulders showed why.
It was a black, not a grizzly, but the point was moot-it was also a very large boar bear, four hundred pounds if it was an ounce, and moving at thirty miles an hour. Astrid turned in the saddle as her horse pounded by in a tearaway gallop, drawing her bow again and firing directly over its tail in what an earlier age had called the Parthian shot.
"No!" Havel shouted futilely.
Well, now I know how a horsey teenage girl snaps from combat stress. She goddamn well tries to shoot a bear!
Havel had hunted bear; he knew the vitality and sheer stubborn meanness of a wounded bruin. By some miracle, the arrow even hit-a shallow slant into the beast's rump, leaving head and feathers exposed. It halted and spun with explosive speed, throwing up a cloud of earth clods and twigs and duff, snapping for the thing that had bitten it on the backside; that let Astrid's horse open the distance between them.
Unfortunately, it also pointed the bear directly at Havel. It hesitated for an instant, as he stood motionless; then its eyes caught the sway of the mule-deer carcass, and the glint of afternoon sun on Signe's knife.
It went up on its hind legs for an instant, narrow head swaying back and forth as it gave a bawling roar and estimated distances with its little piggy eyes. Then it dropped to all fours again and came for him, as fast as a galloping horse.
"I don't fucking believe this!" he cried, and then, much louder: "Spear, spear, where's the goddamned spear?"
Chapter Eleven
T here was a hypnotic quality to riding the disk harrow, Juniper decided. The horses leaning into the traces ahead, their shadows falling before them, the shining disks sinking into the turned earth behind the plows and leaving a smooth seedbed behind:
"Goddamn it!" Dennis called from her left. "Whoa, you brainless lumps of walking hamburger! Whoa!"
His single-furrow walking plow had jammed up with bits of tangled sod again; it was one of the half-dozen copies they'd made of the museum's original. And it was scraping along on top of the turf rather than cutting it, the handles jarring at his hands. Dennis leaned back, pulling at the reins knotted around his waist; Dorothy Rose, who was walking and leading the horses, added her mite to the effort, and the team stopped.
Then they looked over their shoulders. Horses didn't have very expressive faces, but she would have sworn both of these were radiating indignation-at the unfamiliar task, and at the sheer ignorant incompetence behind the reins.
"Easy, Dennie," she said soothingly. "Remember, bo le bata is capall le ceansact; a stick for a cow, but a kind word for a horse."
"I'd like to use a goddamned log on these beasts," he said, but shrugged and smiled.
Of them all, only Juniper had any real experience at driving a horse team, and that only with a wagon; she did know how surprisingly fragile the big beasts were, though. She looked up at the sun and estimated the time since the last break:
"Whoa!" she called to her own team. Then: "All right, all teams take five! Rest and water the horses!"
She hauled on the reins, wincing as they slid over fresh blisters beneath her gloves. When they'd stopped she wiped a sopping sleeve over her face, tender with sunburn despite the broad-brimmed hat and bandana-the early-April day was bright and warm. Damp reddish brown earth was soft under her feet as she jumped down. It had a scent at once sweetly green and meaty, a compound of cut grass and damp dirt and severed roots and the crushed camas flowers that starred it. That made a pleasant contrast to the smell of her own sweat, and of Cagney and Lacey's.
"Goddamn it, why does this thing keep jamming?" Dennis said. "It's not just the copies Chuck and I made, the original does it too."
There was an edge of frustration to the point of tears in his voice. He knelt and began pulling at lumps between the coulter knife that cut the furrow and the moldboard that turned it over.