The rocks slowed for a moment. "And they're probably more than half mad by now," Pamela panted, ducking low. She took a quick sip of water and carefully recorked her canteen. "Wanting to die on some level."
"Then they could obligingly try to slug it out toe-to-toe," Havel said, knocking a jagged four-pound lump of basalt out of the air with his shield, and feeling the weight all the way down his back. "We'd have killed them all if they'd kept on doing that."
"I said they were crazy, not stupid," Pamela said.
Well, if nobody turns up soon, we're toast. In fact, we're dinner, Havel thought.
"Here they come," he said a second later.
This time they were doing it smarter; half throwing rocks, the other half scuttling forward. Far too many:
They must have been recruiting among the people they attacked, Havel thought. Those who refused to turn cannibal going into the stewpot.
He saw the faces and the eyes now that they were closer; there was little human left in them. Animals, but cunning ones.
And Pam's right too.
"Dinner's going to be expensive," he snarled. "Haakkaa paalle!"
Eric shot his last four arrows, and put two more of the enemy out of action. Then they were close, three in front of Havel with blades, more behind carrying stones-one woman in the tattered remains of a business outfit clasping a rock the size of her head, ready to sling it into him at close range.
Not good.
He stepped forward, the downward slope giving added force to the cut. The backsword blurred down and caught the axman at the join of neck and shoulder, and the eyes in the dirt-smeared face went wide. Shock vibrated up his arm as bone parted with a greenstick snap.
He wrenched at the steel with desperate haste, beating aside a spearhead with his shield; the blade was fastened immovably by the dead man's convulsion and the sagging weight tore the braided-leather grip out of his hand.
The time lost let a man with a hatchet too close. He dodged and the spearhead from the other side went by his face; the hatchet skimmed off his shoulder, rattling along the rings of his armor. The hatchetman stepped in, trying to grapple, and Havel lashed out with his steel-clad forearm.
The vambrace took his enemy in the face. Bone crumbled. He snapped the puukko into his hand and struck as he stepped in towards the spearman, the vicious edge grating on bone as he slashed it down the haft of the spear, trying to ward off a third attacker with his shield :
"You didn't come!" the woman with the big rock screamed. "You left us!"
Whatever the hell that meant, she was entirely too close, raising the rock in both hands, and he couldn't dodge-not in time. Two of the cannibals were swarming over Eric, one grabbing his hair to pull his head back while the other hacked clumsily with a bread-knife:
Then the one with the rock looked down at the point of the sword that had appeared through her chest, dropped the big stone on her own head and collapsed forward.
Signe stood there instead, revealed like a window when the shade rattled up, leaning forward in a perfect stepping lunge, her eyes going wider and wider as she looked down at the results. Havel took a pace back and clubbed the cannibal about to stab Eric in the throat with the metal-shod edge of his shield; it clunked into the man's neck and dropped him limp on the rocky ground.
The other turned to run, and had just time to scream when he saw the line of blades coming up the ridge. One scream, before Eric's fist closed on his ankle and dragged him back towards the knife.
Havel took the time to draw three heaving breaths, straining to pull air that felt like heated vacuum into his lungs, then stepped forward to plant a foot and wrench his sword free of the body of the cannibal he'd killed.
"Thanks," he said to Signe.
"You're-" She bit back a heave. "You're welcome."
Relief was like a trickle of cool air under his gambeson.
The A-list of the Bearkillers swarmed up onto the ridge as the cannibals fled.
Then they sheathed their swords and unlimbered their bows.
"You're late for the party," he said to Will.
The Texan shot; a shriek of pain followed right on the heels of the bow-string's slap against his vambrace.
"But not for the cleanup chores," Will said.
"Well, I think we can assume he's innocent," Havel said.
The man lying in a cage of barbed wire stank; he was also skeletally thin, and his left foot was missing, crudely bandaged with the remnants of a T-shirt. Enormous brown eyes looked out of a stubbled hawk-nosed face. Havel mentally subtracted twenty years and put him in his thirties.
"I should hope so," the prisoner croaked. "Do I look like I've been eating well?" He waved the stump. "I've been contributing to the pot. Aaron Rothman's the name."
"Mike Havel," Havel said. Then: "Get him out of there."
Two of the Bearkillers went in with a stretcher. Pam knelt beside it and soaked the bandage with her canteen, edging up one end of it. When she saw what lay beneath she swore and reached into her bag for a hypodermic.
"You're a doctor too?" Rothman said. "As well as the Amazon thing?"
"Vet, actually," Pam replied. "Too? You are a doctor? Medical variety?"
"GP," he confirmed and weakly held up a hand. "That's the only reason they didn't kill me, dearie, when I wouldn't: join up."
"Thank goodness," she said. "I've got to pull you through, then. We really need a doc."
The wounded man looked around at the mail-and-leather clad Bearkillers, and at Howie Reines and Running Horse standing in horrified silence as the grim work of cleanup went on.
"Oh, I was so hoping this was all over," he sighed. "If only you'd come in helicopters!"
"It isn't over," Havel said grimly, as Pamela cleaned and rebandaged the gruesome wound. Red streaks went from it up the wasted calf. "In fact, it's probably just starting."
Rothman sighed. "It could be worse. I used to live in New York."
Havel looked around; there were half a dozen living captives, huddled under the Bearkiller blades. And about the same number of liberated prisoners getting help, counting Rothman and the girl who'd been screaming when he arrived-she huddled in a patch of shade, a blanket clutched around her shoulders and her eyes squeezed shut. A couple of young children, too-as far as he was concerned they were all prisoners, no questions asked.
"So, any of these innocent too?" Havel said, going down on one knee and putting an arm behind the doctor's shoulders, lifting him to a better vantage point on the presumptive cannibals.
The weight was featherlight. Rothman fumbled at his breast pocket-he was in the remains of slacks and shirt with pocket protector-and brought out a pair of glasses. He peered through them, and smiled with cracked and bleeding lips. It wasn't a particularly pleasant expression, and Havel didn't blame him one bit.
"Not a one, barring the children," he said. "And I'll testify to that in court."
"That won't be necessary, Dr. Rothman," Havel said, lowering him gently back to the stretcher. "Things have gotten a little more: informal, since the Change."
He looked up. There was a cottonwood growing out of the cliffside, dead and bleached but still strong; a convenient limb stretched out about ten feet up.
"Will!" he called. The Texan looked up; Havel jerked a thumb at the limb. "Get some ropes ready, would you? Three at a time ought to do."
"I can't! I'm sorry, so sorry!"
They were on a low hillside above the camp, which was the only way you could get any privacy. Havel drew his hands backward as Signe fumbled to refasten her clothes. His long fingers knotted on his knees in the cool sage-smelling darkness; herbs and long grass crackled under the blanket, adding a bruised spicy smell to the night.
"OK!" Havel said, turning his back a bit while zippers and snaps fastened. "Look, it's OK!"
No it isn't, he thought, and his voice probably gave his words the lie.
"I'm sorry. I thought I could-look, let's try-"