"They're still holding out," he said, licking his lips and then spitting to get the bitter-sour taste of alkali out of his mouth.
"As your master said they would," Alex Vinton replied.
Edain scowled at him. "I'm a Mackenzie. We don't have masters. Rudi's my Chief. And my father was first armsman of the Clan for sixteen years."
He glared, leaving the as opposed to body servant and bum-kisser to the by blow of some gangbanger-turned-lord unspoken… for now.
"No offense, no offense," the older man said soothingly. "Let's get on with our work."
The two lay behind a greasewood brush atop the ridge behind the ruins of Whitehorse Ranch; the sun was half way down the sky towards the west, still baking spicy medicinal smells out of the herbs and bushes. Edain cau tiously raised the precious pair of field glasses he'd inherited from his father, making sure they wouldn't catch sunlight and betray the position.
The Rovers were prowling in closer to the wagon fort; he saw fire-arrows flick out and stand in the tilts of the prairie schooners. Ordinary arrows snapped at the men who stood to throw buckets of water at the spots where the burning ones hit. A dozen Rovers rode in close, and there was a scrimmage along the northern edge of the laager, figures doll-tiny even through the glasses.
"They're something determined," Edain said thoughtfully. "Both sides."
"Your first battle?" the man from the Protectorate asked.
"No," Edain replied shortly. "Second, more like-one real fight, some skirmishes." Then he went on: "Look!
Half of the Rovers are drawing off to that well north of here to water their horses. Let's go!"
They headed downslope; their own mounts were hidden in a short ravine at the rear of this hill. Garbh paced beside him, silent but bristling all over, lips peeled back from her long yellow teeth. He tried to walk as quietly as he could, but rock rattled and slid as they went crouching down the juniper-strewn slope.
"Uh-oh!" Edain said. "It was a feint- run!"
They were approaching the south side of the improvised fort, a section of crumbling mud brick wall flanked by wagons on either side. He was still just high enough on the hillside to see the forty or so Rovers who'd ridden out towards the well suddenly turn their horses as one, an eerily uniform motion, like a flock of birds wheeling. They broke into a gallop back towards the north side of the laager, screaming like a grindstone on metal as they came, and shooting as fast as they could draw bow.
A bellowing war cry rose to meet them from within the encampment: " Come, ye Saints! "
Edain could see men rushing to that side of the laager. He could also see that they weren't all going in that direction, and someone who'd stayed behind on the south side was leveling a crossbow at him.
"Friends!" he shouted. "We're friends… oh, sod all!"
The last came as he threw himself flat, to the tunng of a crossbow shot and the shunk of a bolt hammering into the dirt far too close to his nose. Someone hadn't believed him.
On the ground he could also feel hooves hammer ing, the vibration coming up through the palm of his right hand; and they were also far too close. Garbh spun around, snarling like ripping canvas. Edain did too, com ing up to one knee, feeling the gritty soil bite at his bare kneecap above the knit stocking. Two mounted Rovers were coming at them, less than a hundred yards away-the ones he'd seen at the well. One had a javelin in his hand, cocked back to throw; the other was raising his bow. The points of spear and arrow looked uncomfortably sharp, and all aimed at him.
And they weren't just targets; they were men he'd heard talking and joking and concerned about their children…
Suddenly he was calm as his right hand went back for an arrow; somewhere far away he knew his blood was racing and his bladder felt too full, but it didn't matter.
Nock shaft, he heard his father's voice say. Tilt the bow so the tip doesn't catch on the ground when you're kneeling… Don't look at the arrow, just where it's going to hit…
The string went snap against his bracer. The arrow flashed out, flying almost level with the short range and heavy draw, just at the instant the other man loosed as well. The blond young horse archer threw his arms up and pitched over the back of his rough-coated pony as the arrow went through his chest without stopping, leav ing a double splash of red along the way. In the same instant something punched Edain in the pit of the belly, hard enough to knock most of the wind out of him.
"Ooof!"
He looked down. A broken arrow was on the ground, still moving, the point curled back on itself where it had slammed into his brigandine. He wheezed and struggled to get air into his lungs.
Tunnng.
Another crossbow-Alex's, this time-and it missed; the javelin man was already ducking in the saddle and the bolt went whhhpptt through the space he'd occupied an instant before. Then it was the young Mackenzie's turn to dodge-aside, in a dive that left him rolling as the pony flashed by and the throwing spear buried its head in the dirt where he'd been.
He came erect again in time to see a bolt from the laager hit the surviving Rover's horse just behind the shoulder. That was either fantastically good shooting, or the Hunter's own luck; the horse took three steps and dropped limp as a wet rag hitting the floor on washing day. The bearded rider who'd wanted blankets for his children and a cookpot for his wife shot forward, landed on shoulder and neck in an audible snap of bone, and rolled until he lay still jerking and twitching in a cloud of dust. That sank around his body as his heels drummed on the ground.
"Come on, friends!" someone yelled from the laager. "Come on!"
"We're coming, so don't bloody well be shootin' at us this time!" Edain shouted back.
He ran, the bow pumping in his left hand and his kilt swirling about his knees. Alex ran beside him, trying to work the lever in the forestock that cocked his crossbow at the same time. Garbh dashed ahead, then cleared the bed of the wagon ahead with a long smooth leap, like some hairy salmon migrating upstream past an obstacle. Edain and his companion followed her with a scramble nearly as swift if considerably less graceful.
Two men confronted him-no, one a girl a bit younger than he was, in an impractical-looking denim dress that reached to her calves and a headscarf under a straw hat, but holding a businesslike crossbow in her arms. The man was older, with an odd-looking fringe of beard about his jaw but his cheeks and upper lip shaved. He wore a pot-shaped helm and held a glaive-a giant knife on a six-foot pole; the blade glistened with a liquid coat ing of bright red, and there was more spattered across his bib overalls.
"You're a man!" the girl blurted, staring at Edain's kilt and then his still mostly beardless face.
"And you're not," he snapped, suddenly conscious of how dry his mouth was.
"Thank you, strangers-" the man began.
Garbh snarled again, and they all looked up in dismay. The wagon laager was roughly oval in shape with its long axis running east-west. The northern face was only twenty yards away, and it suddenly changed shape. The Rovers had managed to get half a dozen lariats around one of the wagons there and then backed their horses together to drag it out of position.
It swiveled away and then fell over on its side, like an opened door; two-score of mounted warriors boiled through. The defenders tried to stand them off with pikes and glaives and short chopping swords, but there weren't enough of them, not nearly enough, and everything was dissolving into a mass of rearing horses and shouting screaming men who stabbed and slashed and clouted at one another. He could see a Rover dodge under a thrust from a pike shaft, then lean far over in the saddle and swing a light ax with dreadful skill in an arc that took off the pikeman's hand at the wrist. The hard tock of steel in bone came through the roaring brabble of the fight.