This time six arrows hit the railcar’s roof: shink-thack! shink-thack! shink-thack! shink-thack! shink-thack! and then one that ended in a nasty wet sound, shink-thwack! as it missed the shields and struck flesh. There was a short, high-pitched shriek. She took a look behind; the man next to the corporal had one through his left arm between elbow and shoulder, and his face was contorted in pain. He was still pedaling, though, and he gasped out:
“Leave it! It’s plugging the hole! Just cut it off on both sides Jesus Christ fuck shitshitshit!”
That’s a brave man, she thought soberly. And he can’t run fast with that. It’s a death sentence.
Another volley, and something hit her hard between the shoulders; there wasn’t any pain or the unmistakable feeling of split flesh, so the back of the seat must have held it. The siding and warehouse were getting closer and closer; now she could see people streaming in the gate of the ranch headquarers, on foot and horseback; and she thought others were forcing their way out.
I certainly hope they are! she thought, and called aloud:
“We should halt just beyond the warehouse building. It’ll give us a little cover for a couple of seconds.”
“Right, we’ll do it that way. Good!”
That accompanied a glance in the mirror. She looked in hers; the foremost Cutters were falling away, their horses shaking their heads and crabbing or just slowing down despite spur and riding crop. One simply keeled over, hopefully pinning and mangling its rider’s leg in the process. Even at this distance she could see how the poor beasts were foaming and heaving; they were being ridden to death. And behind them was the whole mass of the attacking force, coming on at a hand gallop, parting to pass the exhausted front-runners-not quite as fast, but that pace was something a horse could keep up much longer. They’d be within range in ten or fifteen minutes if the railcar kept going, and then there would be hundreds of them shooting. These were plainsmen, born to the saddle and the bow, and the chances of surviving that storm of shafts were somewhere between bloody nothing and bugger-all, as Uncle John would have put it.
What a pity. Just another few hundred yards’ start, and we could have run their horses’ hearts out and pulled away from them and gone straight back to Artos and the rest!
Though there were an uncomfortable number of the Cutters, enough to outweigh the nine-hundred-odd in the main party. The warehouse flashed by, and everyone lifted their feet. There was a screech and rooster-tails of sparks and lurching momentum threw her forward as Corporal Dudley hit the brake and then there was no time for anything but moving.
Dart upright, hit the door latch, and snatch her shield out of the holder above with her right hand on the leather sling strap. Duck her head through that and pull it tight even as she turned and shouldered the door open, with her helmet rattling where it was hooked and strapped to the shield. Left hand stripping the longsword out of the rack, leave the bow and quiver, a bit of a momentary pang because it was a good bow and she was used to shooting it. Feet on the ground-blessed flow of clean air after the stuffy fetor of the car into her lungs and out into her limbs as extra strength-praise to the Valar-and out with her feet on hard ground covered in scrubby grass and brown ruts dried like iron and old cowflops and horse dung. The long low-slung warehouse was to her left, and the track to the gate was ahead of her. The corporal released the brakes again, and the redcoats gave the vehicle one last push, so it coasted off downhill, slow but gathering speed.
Meanwhile she ran. Long strides, arms pumping with the sword scabbard in one hand, shield rattling on her back, making her chest swell with a deep quick rhythm. Not shallow panting, and willing that no stitch should cut into her side.
I’m probably going to die now. This is about the way I always expected it to happen. Better than typhus or a breech birth. Just not so soon, maybe! By the pits of Thangorodrim and the Mace of Morgoth, my story isn’t finished yet! Or maybe it’s Rudi’s story and he’s about to lose his sister which is a terrible tragedy that will show how noble his grief is to everyone hearing the bards singing his epic-
Now she could hear the rumble of the oncoming host. Hear it and feel it through the ground when her bounding feet touched down. And a crashing bark, underneath a growling as of wolves when they closed in after a chase:
“Cut! Cut! Cut!”
Ritva could tell the redcoats were right behind her, a double rank of them-except the wounded man, and she felt a stab of shame that she’d never even learned his name. She’d flashed by him where he was crouched behind a watering-trough/hitching-rail combination, with his sword out and his shield hanging over his useless shoulder and his kettle helmet askew on his head-it looked like a steel version of what her mother had called a lemon-squeezer-getting ready to do what he could to slow down a couple of thousand men.
Run, woman, run. You have to deserve that.
The enemy had checked as the railcar went behind the warehouse, from their perspective, and then coasted out into view again. Someone must have suspected what had happened, but they were moving too fast to stop without a clear sign, and the whole clot at the head of their rush went past the warehouse after the moving target, shooting as fast as they could draw and loose and take the curve without going over. Probably it was superstition as well; their religion hated any but the simplest machinery.
It was the next clump who saw the small figures running down the road towards the gates of the Anchor Bar Seven’s homeplace, and even they couldn’t be absolutely sure that it was the ones they were chasing, instead of a clerk and his helpers caught stacking bales of wool or hides or barrels of tallow in the warehouse when the alarm went off. The ranch’s big bell was ringing frantically, too. A quick glance told her that a clump of fifty or so Cutters had peeled off after them with more behind; they had a standard at their head, a rayed golden sun for the Church Universal and Triumphant, with six horse-tails hanging from a crossbar beneath. Their horses. .
Started out reasonably well but they were ridden hard and put away wet even before they chased us for miles. They’re blown, they won’t be any real use for a day or two. But even a blown horse is faster than a human, until it falls over.
There were men coming out of the ranch gates. About thirty of them, all armed and mounted, some of them in the heavier lancer gear she’d seen earlier. They spread out in two neat ranks and came on at a gallop, shooting over her head-which meant the Cutters would be in range soon, if not already. Then they were past her in spurts of dust and clods of dirt and glimpses of set faces and sabers and honed lanceheads. She certainly wasn’t going to look back now. Arrows began falling around her, but not nearly as many as she’d feared; the enemy were distracted by the counterattack and the gates began to loom ahead. There was a deep dry ditch all around the wall-that was probably where the earth for the structures had come from-and it was filled with sharpened angle-iron and rusty barbed wire, and there was a bridge over it to the gate.
There’s no gate! her mind gibbered. It’s not just open; it’s gone. They must have had it down to repair it-