"Yes!" Red Leaf said, as the crumpled form suddenly lashed out with a knife. Then: "Damn, it didn't work! But you tried, Black Elk!"
The cowboy skipped backwards, then stabbed with his shete. He left it standing in the body as he bent; there was a flash of knife blade, and then the man stood again, dripping scalp in one hand and knife in the other, shaking them aloft and screaming his triumph.
Mathilda swore and reined out, sliding the knight's shield from her back.
Red Leaf spurred ahead of her. "No!" he said. "If you interfere, they'll do a massed charge. We want to spin this out!"
Rudi nodded grimly. The whole thing made a certain sense; battle customs often did. Not every fight was to the last man man standing. This was something halfway between a tournament and an all-out fight to the death. The winner stripped Black Elk's body of weapons and grabbed the reins of his horse, riding back with his trophies and his loot.
Both war-bands had slowed down to a trot, halting altogether during the duels; the horns of the Cutters' crescent were level with the forward part of the Sioux formation. By tacit agreement they went no farther, as long as the Indians didn't refuse the challenge.
"It's our turn," Red Leaf said, looking down the line of his men. Every one of them raised his voice, asking for the honor…
He waved to one. "Go for it, Jimmy."
Jimmy was slender, dark, and looked young, probably younger than he was, and he was naked to the waist except for the kit-fox pelt that marked his membership in that warrior society.
Hmmm, Rudi thought. He also looks quick as a weasel.
The young warrior nodded soberly at the chief's call, sliding his round shield onto his left arm and taking a two-foot stick from his belt, one with a feather at the end.
"He's toast, itancan," he replied, and rode back along the Sioux column with a whoop.
"Challenger gets choice of weapons," Red Leaf said. "Sorta."
A cowboy spurred out to meet Jimmy. He had a metal-strapped leather breastplate, and a helmet like a steel bowl topped with a horsetail that bobbed and fluttered with the motion of his gallop; there was a letter Q with a diagonal slash through it in white on the dark brown bullhide of his shield. He cased his bow and drew his shete, which showed what Red Leaf had meant by sorta; evidently no bows were used if the challenger started with an impact weapon.
The two horsemen met in the field between the war-bands. Rudi didn't think the life and death of brave men should be just a show.. . but he was a warrior by trade, and it was frustrating not to be able to see the details. The men came together with the combined speeds of their horses, screaming their war cries, and there was a tangle as the Cutter's blade chopped down. Rudi's breath caught for an instant as the shete flashed… and then Jimmy was past, shaking his stick in the air and whooping, and the Powder River man was reeling backwards in the heavy Western saddle, pawing at his face with both hands.
A groan that was half growl went up from the ranch-hands and their patron; the Sioux gave a high shrill cheer-one that contained the banshee Mackenzie shriek, and shouts of Haro!, Richland!, Lacho Calad, Drego Morn! and USA! as well as Father Ignatius' more restrained Good!
Red Leaf grinned like a wolf. "They're about to find out Jimmy's other name."
"Which is?" Rudi said, his eyes still glued to the two small figures.
" Many Coups. In the old days sometimes they'd just whack someone with a coup stick and leave them to swallow the humiliation, but we're more practical now."
Jimmy Many Coups brought his pony around in a tight circle, dust spurting up from under its hooves. He ducked under a wild swing of the cowboy's weapon-Rudi guessed that the first stroke had been a blinding slash across the eyes-and struck again. The shete pinwheeled away from a broken hand, and the stick jabbed. The cowboy fell. This time it was the Sioux who screamed triumph and led his enemy's horse back with the captured weapons across its saddle, waving the fresh scalp to an admiring chorus from the other Sioux:
"Ohitike!"
"You rock, Jim!"
"Ohan, Many Coups!"
"Dude! That so does not suck!"
The deadly game continued as the sun crept past noon. Father Ignatius punched his opponent neatly out of the saddle with his heavy lance, then dismounted to offer the dying man absolution. Which, to the visible fury of the Sword of the Prophet, he accepted. Rudi nodded to himself; not all the folk the CUT had overrun really accepted its teachings. The Sword troopers kept to their solid disciplined block, but an hour later the Sioux had lost five men and their opponents seven.
Then:
"I'll take this one," Rudi said. Because honor demands it, he thought. We can't let our hosts do all the fighting for us.
Epona turned beneath him, so responsive that he didn't need to conciously think of directing her.
"So, so, my fine lady," he whispered, smoothing a hand down her sleek neck.
Sweat ran on it, and she wasn't as young as she'd been… but she wasn't too tired, either. Rudi guided her past the little two-wheeled cart; it had kept up so far, and Edain was driving it, being the worst horseman in the group.
"Show them how a Mackenzie fights, Chief!" he said.
"I'll show them how the Morrigu wards her own," Rudi replied grimly.
He reached for his sallet helm and settled it on his head. The steel dome had a flare of raven feathers in holders at either side; the helm and the smooth semicircular visor were graven with feather patterns inlaid in niello, and the curve of the visor was drawn down in a point over his mouth like a beak. He'd switched his sword to his right hip, but he used that hand to pick up one of the lances in the wagon bed.
It'll do, he thought, hefting it. Better than trying to use my left; I haven't had enough time to get the memory into the muscle there.
He snapped the visor down with the edge of his shield, and the world shrank to a narrow horizontal slit. Then he tensed his thighs and Epona came up to a canter; he halted in the space between the two bands, tossing the lance up and shrieking the Clan's battle-yell. There was a hesitation; the cowboys had already seen that these twelve-foot lances were something entirely again from the light spears some of them used. Even if they didn't recognize the brigandine that armored Rudi's torso, they could see that he had a knight's four-foot shield, plate shin guards and vambraces, and mail-sleeves and mail covering on the outer sides of the leather breeches he'd pulled on beneath his kilt. Fighting a steel tower on a tall horse was simply outside their experience…
After a few moments one pulled out of the slow-moving crescent mass, coming forward at a hard gallop. The Rancher's man left his round shield over his back and his shete at his belt, but he didn't use his bow either-evidently he was going to stick to the rules that far. Instead he unlimbered the coiled lariat from his saddlebow and held it out to one side, spinning the lasso vertically as his horse rocked up to a gallop.
"Well, friend, at least you're being different!" Rudi called.
Epona drifted forward, her long legs moving in an easy canter. Rudi kept the lance sloped up as long as he could; it protected his head from a cast of the rope. Only in the last fifty yards did he bring it down and clamp his thighs tight against the saddle and brace his feet. Both war-parties roared as the horses headed towards each other at full tilt, their combined speed closing at seventy miles an hour. Rudi could see the taut grin on the cowboy's red-bearded face, and the flexing of his greasy leather coat as his right arm moved in wider and wider circles. The foot-long lance-head pointed at his chest didn't seem to bother him at all.