"Yeah?"
She slapped the heel of her palm on her forehead. "That's what I was trying to remember! Dad told me about it ages ago, when we were kids and he was reading us those old squarehead stories." At his glance she went on: "It's what Grettir means in Old Norse. Crusher. You know how those Viking guys all had nicknames, Iron Fist or Blood Wolf or Skullsplitter or whatnot? There was a saga hero named Crusher-Starkad, Starkad Grettir."
"Big chuckle, ha, ha, a bandit with some education," Havel said. "He's probably going to try to get us to surrender, which gives us an opportunity. Kendricks! Ready!"
The apprentice threw back the tarpaulin that covered the back of the two-wheeled cart; below was a complicated piece of machinery, most of which consisted of coil springs from the suspensions of heavy trucks, all screwed down tight. In the middle of it all sat a rocket-shaped projectile. Kendricks flicked open the top of his lighter, an old-style model with a wick, alcohol reservoir and little steel wheel that ground against a flint. A quick motion of his thumb, and a pale blue flame topped it.
"Wait for it," Havel said without looking around. "Wait for it: "
His right hand went over his shoulder for an arrow.
Crusher's men were behind them, spread across the road, and getting closer to the right; Bailey himself was only fifty yards away ahead and northward, rising in the stirrups to cup his hands around his mouth and shout across the milling horses.
"Now!"
Kendricks touched his lighter to the stub of fuse on the side of the finned dart and then jerked a lever. There was a huge metallic crunnng – WHUNNNG! as the springs uncoiled, and the dart vanished skyward in a streak too fast for the eye to follow. At the top of its trajectory two seconds later there was a muffled jump as the little parachute deployed, and orange smoke billowed out a thousand feet above the surface of the Willamette.
Explosives didn't explode anymore. Lower-speed combustion, for example the type in a smoke flare, still worked like a treat.
Crusher Bailey had no leisure to watch. Even as the apprentice worked the machinery Ken Larsson had made, Larsson's daughter and Mike Havel drew their recurve bows to the ear. Horn and sinew and the thin sandwich of yew wood between them creaked as the curved staves bent into smooth C-shapes, and the long shafts slid backward through the arrow rests. Havel 's bow drew at a hundred and ten pounds, and he'd worked with its like most days since the Change; Signe's was lighter, but she was an even better shot.
Whap-whap, as the strings slapped the inside of their left forearms; the chain mail and leather absorbed most of. the force, but not as well as the metal bracers he was accustomed to; they'd have bruises, if they survived the day. The broadheads twinkled as they blurred downrange, the curve of the fletching twirling them like rifle bullets. They covered the fifty yards to the bandit chief in less than a second.
Bailey had excellent reflexes, and he was moving even as the two Bearkillers raised their bows. He threw himself flat on his horse's mane as Signe's shaft went through the space his chest had occupied an instant before. Then he screamed, as Havel 's sliced across the outside of his left thigh; screamed and threw himself out of the saddle and onto the ground. The man behind him jerked as Signe's arrow went through the space where Crusher had been and thumped into the center of his chest, smashed through the shirt of braided rawhide, through his breastbone and into his spine. Then he slid boneless out of the saddle-a shaft thrown by these heavy recurves would cut the best chain mail like cloth at close range, and it ignored anything less.
Plenty of people carried saddle bows these days, but not many had that sort of eye-punching accuracy from horseback, or could drive a shaft so hard. That required constant practice.
Shit. I wanted Crusher.
The highbinder was lying in the long grass, hidden from Havel by the same horse herd that prevented his men from charging right in, and he was screaming orders.
As the two adults shot, Hendricks had been busy too: he snatched up his bow with one hand, and flicked the carriage whip across the cart horse's back with the other.
"Make for the ruins!" Havel shouted.
The boy did just that, yelling and whacking the beast across the rump; the cart drove off the road, one wheel bouncing high and nearly throwing it over, then heaving and jouncing through the meadow. Havel turned his horse with thighs and balance and shot again, at the bandits who'd swung onto the road south of the ruins. A man screamed and began hopping around, waving an arm with an arrow through it, but things came back at the two Bear-killers as well-the unpleasant whhht of a crossbow bolt, and the whickering whissst-whissst of arrows. Most of the bandits carried blades or polearms, but at least half a dozen had missile weapons as well.
"Go!" Havel shouted, and leaned forward as he clamped his legs to Charger's sides.
Signe followed suit. The superbly trained warhorses broke into a gallop from a standing start, leaping the roadside ditch and breasting the tall grass in the field beyond. Havel turned in the saddle and shot three more times in the thirty seconds it took to reach the ruined building; two misses, and one hit a horse in the shoulder. The beast screamed, a huge hurt sound of bewildered, uncomprehending pain; that was one of the manifold evils the Change had brought back into the world-Humvees didn't shriek in agony when they got shot up.
They pulled up their mounts and got out of the saddles in a hurry. Signe slid to the ground like a seal down a wet rock, or like someone who'd been riding for fun since she was six. An instant later she had the two horses inside the gutted building; their eyes rolled and they snorted at the slippery linoleum under the layer of debris and dirt and sprouting weeds beneath their hooves, but they obeyed. Hendricks snatched things out of the cart and dove after her. Havel turned, saw the bandits trying to push their way through the crowd of horses from three directions, deliberately set himself in the archer's T.
The arrows punched out in a steady rhythm, whickering away in smooth shallow arcs blurred with motion; the bright midmorning sun glinted on their sharp-edged heads.
Snap.
A mounted man took one in the shoulder and started to shriek; he slid out of the saddle, then clutched at it as his feet touched the ground-if he went down here, a large herd of horses would walk all over him.
Snap.
The next shaft sank up to its fletchings in that horse's neck. The beast bugled in a gurgle that sprayed blood out of its mouth and nostrils, glittering drops flying into the air, and half bucked, half staggered away. The wounded man dropped flat as his support was torn away, and then screamed again as the dancing hooves of the panicked horses came down on him-each with a thousand pounds behind it.
The scream was brief, and Havel bared his teeth in a snarl of satisfaction.
I don't enjoy killing people, he thought. Really, I don't. Correction. I do enjoy killing bandits. People had done what they had to do to get through the Dying Time, but nowadays there was plenty of honest work to hand. Crusher's men were jackals who attacked the weak and robbed, raped and killed because they liked it. Hanging's too good for these scum.
None of the bandits he could see were more than a hundred and fifty yards away, and at that range the hornbow was about as effective as his old Remington 700.
Snap.
A bandit staggered into view; he'd been bumped by one of the horses he pushed aside to get to the west side of the road. That put him less than fifty yards away. The arrow struck just above the bridge of his nose, and he pitched backward.
The mounted outlaws had all dismounted in a hurry. That gave them a little cover behind the horse herd, but the horses protected the disguised Bearkillers for a little while too. A glimpse of movement to the south, and he pivoted smoothly on his heel, drew and shot.
Snap.
This time he was close enough to hear the wet thick smack as the point struck; the bandit was bent over as he ran for cover, and the steel lashed into him just below the floating rib on his right side. It hammered down and through, burying itself in his pelvis. He dropped sprattling to the pavement, screaming for his mother and letting his longbow skid into the ditch.