Ritva shot once more and then dropped the bow and stooped for her shield. As she rose she saw a face appear over the parapet, grinning in a rictus around the knife held in his teeth; a steel hook was deep-sunk in the timber to hold the rope he climbed. The women with the pot took a step and jerked the ceramic container forward. A double cupful of hot tallow was left in the bottom; the Cutter had just enough time to jerk a hand up before his eyes and begin to fall backward before it hit.
“Thanks!” she shouted, though they probably couldn’t hear her.
Then she snatched up the spear and shrieked the Dunedain war cry:
“Lacho Calad! Drego Morn!”
She thrust through the firing slit, stabbing blind towards where the rope must be hanging. The point met something solid but soft; there was a bubbling shriek that faded away as the weight jerked off the point. Then she tried to pry the rope hook out of the timber, jamming the point beneath it and working back with all her weight and both hands. It started to yield, and then something hit her very hard in the shoulder. She staggered and then started to fall as her injured leg buckled. A light flashed in the corner of her eye.
Blackness.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DOMINION OF DRUMHELLER
(FORMERLY PROVINCE OF ALBERTA)
JUNE 2, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
Artos looked through a slit to the car ahead of him and grinned. Garbh was sitting on the roof of it, her mouth open and her tongue and ears flapping and fur rippling in the breeze of their passage, a look of exultant pleasure on her face and her tail beating hard on the curved plywood.
Edain followed his gaze and grinned. “Looks happy,” he said.
“Looks like a thirsty man on a hot day who’s just for the first time discovered there’s such a thing as beer in the world, drawn cool from a jug kept hanging in a well,” Artos said.
The horses were considerably less happy about their mode of travel, particularly Epona, which was why she was here with a whole car to herself. She crowded against him again; it was for reassurance, not with any intent to harm. . but when a seventeen-hand, twelve-hundred-pound animal pressed up against you, with an unyielding surface waiting behind, harm could result.
“Stop that!” he scolded, slapping her on the shoulder. “You great pouting baby of a creature, mind your manners! You’re a middle-aged horse and a mother, for Her sake!”
She sighed-it was a sound in proportion to her deep chest-and turned her neck to nuzzle him, her grassy-musky smell as familiar as the straw-horse-piss-and-dung scent of the bedding beneath them. That was part of the fabric of life from his earliest memories.
Make it stop and let me out! was as plain as words in her nicker.
He stroked her nose and made soothing noises, reflecting that he’d never been in a traveling stable before either, but that it was probably much harder for her. It might have been better if the compartment was completely dark, cutting off a view of the countryside passing by as fast as Epona could have covered it at a round canter, but you could see the prairie through the boards that made the walls.
Each of the trains in the convoy that bore his force had four cars; the forward hippomotive where eight horses walked on inclined treadmills to drive the wheels through gearing; two more each holding eight resting horses-each was big enough to take about forty men, at a crowded pinch-and a fourth bearing copious spare parts for the temperamental mechanism and fodder for the animals. It was a very fast way to transport horses, since with teams spelling each other you could average a hundred and forty or fifty miles a day even allowing for the frequent infuriating breakdowns. That was five times what horses could do on their hooves for any length of time.
Unfortunately it really wasn’t a practical method to transport anything but horses given the coddling the mechanisms needed; the beasts were slower but much more efficient pulling cargo along the rails on their own feet. His troops were pedaling along themselves, and having no problem keeping pace with the horse-powered vehicles. The whole thing depended on having water and fodder available at close intervals too, since the horses were mostly hauling horses.
Artos felt the fabric of the wagon jerk a little. He looked around; it was Mathilda, with a worried frown on her face. She’d dropped off one of the cars ahead, and jumped up to snatch the handholds.
“The Canuk commander wants you to see something, Rudi,” she said through the boards. “I don’t think it’s good news.”
“Is it ever?” he sighed. “I’ve been feeling. . prickly myself. As if lines of might-be were gathering here.”
He could feel the hippomotive slow; a set of whistle signals spread down the long awkward chain that stretched for miles across the prairie. Epona snorted and stamped in approval, assuming this meant a break to drink and graze and roll. The train of cars lurched and then ground to a halt as the brakemen threw their wheels with a squeal of steel on steel. Artos and Edain opened the door just enough to let themselves out, ignored the great black horse’s indignation and trotted forward through the rustling prairie grass.
The human-pedaled railcars were stopped nose-to-tail ahead of this, the first of the hippomotives; their doors were open and men peering out curiously, but discipline held them within. His staff-which was to say his friends-were waiting for him, along with the commander of the redcoat escort.
“There,” Inspector James Rollins said. He was about Ingolf’s age and height, and similarly brown-bearded and blue-eyed, but slimmer. “It’s gotten higher since I called the halt.”
He took the offered binoculars and looked. The plume of smoke was distant, but it was visibly rising. And it was absolutely red, in a way normal smoke rarely was, probably with something added to the fire to make the message clearer.
“That’s the Anchor Bar Seven Ranch, all right,” Rollins said. “And that’s the under attack by superior force, help urgent signal. It’s a strong Ranch headquarters-”
By which he means fort or stronghold or castle, I would say, Artos thought absently. He’d seen enough of them in this trip.
“-one of the strongest southern ranches, with a well-trained militia company. And the McGillverys don’t scream at the sight of a mouse. They wouldn’t use that just because of a minor border raid.”
Artos tapped a thumb on his chin, an old habit with him. His right palm caressed the hilt of the Sword, a new one.
“Could the Cutters have sent an army over the frontier without your knowing it? It’s not far, no more than three days’ ride, and unfortunately they’re probably aware of your impending declaration of war against them, the black sorrow and misfortune.”
Rollins shook his head. “Not an army. A big raiding party, possibly, especially if they didn’t really plan on getting most of it back; a thousand to two thousand men, absolute tops. The smoke will be visible to riders on every neighboring property, and they’ll have the news to the militia HQ and the Force soon.”
“Reinforcements to this ranch?’
Rollins nodded. “And blocking forces to the border. We’ve had raids before, it’s often more effective to try and catch them as they retreat with the stock they lift.”
“But this is not just a raid,” Artos said gently. “It’s a war, and they’re here to kill, not to steal cattle merely. They’re after me; and failing that, destroying this ranch would tear a hole in your southern boundary that could not quickly be put right.”