"Right, then." Edain grunted, taking stance in the ar cher's T, feet at right angles. "Twenty yards, clout shots."
After struggling with the unfamiliar recurves on horseback, some straightforward shooting Mackenzie style would be a pleasure… almost. And he could hit a squirrel's head to spare the flesh and hide, nine times out of ten, at this range. The yew stave bent in a smooth flexing motion. Not much armor to worry about either; most of them didn't even have a boiled-leather breast plate. He could as well have been using hunting broad-heads as bodkin points.
Snap.
A horseman looked down in astonishment at the gray goose fletching that stood against his breastbone, and toppled forward.
Snap.
Another screamed as a shaft pinned his thigh to the saddle and punched on through that into the horse's body, breaking a rib along the way. The wounded animal turned and went bucking off across the plain, tossing the man like a rag doll in an ill-natured child's hands until he fell and let out all his blood onto the thirsty gray soil through the severed femoral artery.
A Rover with a metal strapped leather cap spurred at him. Edain pivoted on his left heel as he drew.
Snap.
The clothyard arrow banged off the helm, turned by the acute angle at which it met the piece of old highway sign laced to the bullhide. The head left only a bright streak in the metal, but a shaft driven by a hundred and fifteen pounds of draw weight hit hard. The rider dropped shield and shete and sat dazed for a moment. Then he screamed-briefly-as Garbh lifted off the ground, her jaws wide. They closed on his face as the bodies went down in a thrashing tangle. He tried to tear the big half mastiff bitch loose with frenzied strength, and did, but a lot of the face came with her.
Nock… draw… aim… loose…
Snap. Snap. Snap The attack was blunted before his quiver was half empty. Someone behind the scrimmage around the overturned wagon shouted an order in an unfamiliar accent and waved a pole with two horsetails sprouting from either side at the top. The Rovers who could turned their mounts and galloped off northward. Some of them shot backward as they went; none of the fighters in the laager seemed inclined to reply. They lifted the wagon back onto its wheels and shoved it into place instead, and then slumped or saw to their wounded or drank wearily from canteens, too tired even to wonder at the pair who'd turned up here in the back end of beyond and in the middle of their battle.
"Not many of them left here," Alex murmured to the young Mackenzie.
He thumbed another bolt into the firing groove of his crossbow and held the weapon business-end up. Edain nodded, a quick slight jerk of the head.
"Heel!" he called.
The bitch slunk to take station behind him, still growling low and bristling, licking at shaggy jaws that dripped red. There looked to be about a dozen still on their feet within the laager, but many of them had bandages showing blood. More wounded were lying on blankets, with a medico of some sort working on them and a couple of walking wounded as helpers. Edain winced a little as a man shrieked for his mother and bucked against the hands holding him down while the arrow spoon went in after a barbed head-either they didn't have morphine or they were out of it.
A round dozen more lay with blankets over their faces. A few near where the breakthrough had happened weren't covered yet. Aylward's son gulped quickly and looked away, then made himself look again. Back when he'd been about ten he'd gotten a close up view of a man who'd tripped while drunk and fallen face first into the business part of a threshing machine, and that had given him nightmares for years. These were worse. At least back at Tillamook there'd been other people to clean up afterwards.
The older man he'd seen first came up, with the girl. He wasn't as old as Sam Aylward's sixty-plus, as Edain had thought at first; a closer look put him at a very, very tired forty. There weren't many people around as old as Edain's father. Which meant this one had been about Edain's own age at the Change. That was an odd thought.
And when I am his age, will anyone be left who can remember the old world the way Dad does? That's odder still, when you think about it. Though I'd rather think about that than what a man looks like with his ribs showing like a rack of lamb at butchering time.
The stranger seemed to be waiting for someone to speak, but Alex Vinton preferred to stay in the background when he could. The archer shrugged, returned the arrow on his string to the quiver, and extended his hand.
"Edain Aylward Mackenzie, of Dun Fairfax and the Clan Mackenzie," he said formally, and touched the wolf tail that hung from the back of his helmet: "My sept is Wolf."
The man's hand was strong and callused, by work more than the sword. He blinked at Edain's clothes. The younger man had learned what outlanders thought, and went on with a slight sigh.
"This is a kilt -" he began.
The girl flashed a smile. "We know what kilts are," she said. "We just haven't seen anyone wearing them in a while."
He nodded at her, pleased, and touched the horns and-moon emblem on the breast of his brigandine. "This is the Mackenzie sigil."
The other man collected himself. "I'm Bishop Jo seph Nystrup, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, and the Republic of New Deseret. This is my daughter Rebecca. Many thanks to you, strangers. They'd have broken in that time if not for you and your friend. But I'm afraid you've leapt onto the deck of a sinking ship here."
"You're the ones who are after buying horses from Rancher Brown, eh?" Edain said, glancing at Rebecca.
Even then, he was tempted to try a smile; she was about his age, with blue eyes and a thick yellow braid down her back and a comely snub-nosed face with a dusting of freckles across her nose and cheekbones. The haunted look in her eyes stopped him, and he nodded grave thanks to her instead.
"Yes. Are you one of his men?" Nystrup answered eagerly.
"I'm from farther west, but my friends and I are traveling with his son. We're thirty strong altogether."
"Do they know about these Rovers?" the man asked anxiously.
He wasn't like any bishop that Edain had seen be fore-for one thing, he was in denim overalls-but he supposed customs would be different this far from home. The Mackenzie smiled grimly.
"Oh, they know," he said. "And if you'll look north, you should be seeing Rancher Brown's men the now."
They did, scrambling up on the bed of one of the wag ons and looking through the singed and tattered canvas of the tilt. The Rovers were mostly gathered around the well to the northward, about a double bowshot away, with a few little clumps sitting their horses around the laager at a respectful distance but ready to dart in.
Suddenly the main knot of them boiled like a kicked-over ant heap. With his binoculars he could see-just-how many of them were pointing a little west of north. He swung his gaze that way and saw the plume of dust.
With a grin, Edain handed the field glasses to the bishop. Garbh jumped up beside them and barked at the distant figures, a woof with a bit of a growl in it; the doggy equivalent of: We sure showed them, didn't we, boss?
The older man fumbled a little with the focusing screw and then exclaimed, "Those are Rancher Brown's men?" Edain nodded, and the man from New Deseret went on: "There must be more of them than we thought! Perhaps enough to destroy these agents of the Adversary!"
"Not so many in that lot right there," Edain said with a grin. "But that's not the only arrow in the quiver."
Which reminded him he'd shot off a dozen from his. Reluctantly, he jumped down and began collecting them. Many of them were still in bodies, and he'd never pulled a shaft out of a man's gut before.
I've tweaked their nose, Chief, he thought. Now it's time you kicked them in the arse, eh?