Whatever that meant; and raw shrieks of hatred and menace. They walked forward, gradually building up speed, snow misting up around their feet, looming larger and larger through the gray-white landscape. ?They?ll hit a full run just at maximum bow range,? Ingolf said meditatively.?That?s smarter than any Eaters I ever ran into. They?re going to eat their losses and charge home. Glad I never came this far north.? ?Three hundred fifty yards,? Fred muttered.
He didn?t have to estimate it, though he was good at that; they?d marked the range inconspicuously. The Cutters began to move again too, walking their horses so they could shoot more effectively. ?Three hundred. Two seventy-five. Two fifty…?
The savages were moving at full pelt now, a mass six or seven deep and broad enough to overlap the archers on both sides. ?Now!? Rudi muttered to himself.
He wasn?t giving the order; Edain could do that just as well. In the same instant Rudi heard him shout: ?Let the gray geese fly-wholly together- shoot!?
Snap.
The arrows rose in a cloud; then again, and again. The heads didn?t sparkle on this sunless day, but the honed metal had a cold glitter. And from the island Tunnnggg. ?Pump! Pump!? Mathilda Arminger shouted.
The vast wreck?s bow loomed over them, looking tattered by decay and men?s tools, a stretch of letters just visible:- mund Fitz -
The two Southsiders worked their cranks, grinning through their frizzy beards, dark faces running with sweat even in the hard chill. This Richlander-made engine was worked with mechanical cocking devices through high-aspect geared winches and bicycle-chain sprocket drives, rather than the hydraulic bottle jacks the Association armies used for their murder-machines. There wasn?t much difference in the speed with which it compressed the sets of heavy truck coil springs that powered the throwing arms; whoever had made the design had known their business.
Click, a heavy soft sound as the trigger mechanism engaged.
Mathilda slapped the bundle of darts down in the throwing trough. They were eight inches from base to point, heavy elongated steel pyramids drawn out into fins at the rear, all bound together with a wicker band carefully weakened to last just long enough. She craned her neck to see over the line of bowmen a hundred yards away, spun the elevating wheel to the next spot, and shouted: ?Clear!?
The two crewmen jumped aside, and she jerked the lanyard.
Tunnnggg the second time, ten seconds after the first. ?Pump! Pump!?
Twenty-four darts arched out eastwards and up, towards the massed enemy, spreading as they reached the top of their trajectory and plunged downward. The savages looked up and screamed. The results of the first round, and the continuous rain of arrows, were all about them.
Click. ?Clear!?
She spun the traversing wheel and turned the trough towards the block of troopers from the Sword of the Prophet; they were better disciplined, and hence more tightly bunched… and their horses were bigger targets. A firm jerk on the lanyard…
Tunnnggg. ?By God, I think we could break them!? Odard shouted.?With that scorpion. Face Gervais, face death!? ?No. We might be able to knock them back a bit, but they?d just go around. Shoot!?
Rudi drew and loosed; he was sweating again now. Drawing a hundred-and-twenty-pound saddle bow was as much heavy labor as throwing sacks of grain onto a wagon, with all the muscles of your torso and gut working. The savages were wavering-the scorpion could throw six times a minute, and that meant a hundred and forty-four of those deadly little darts, and as many arrows again from Edain and his band. A volley of the darts slashed into the Sword troopers as he watched, and horses exploded outward in pain and panic, bugling shrilly. ?They?ll come at us now!? he said.?Wait… wait…?
The enemy trumpet screamed charge. The Cutters cased their bows, drew shetes or leveled their lances, booted their skinny garrons into motion. Rudi shot, again, again-the range was closing, and nobody was shooting back right now. ?The which is a great aid to concentration. Wait… Wait…?
Even a bad horse could cover ground very fast indeed. ?Now!?
Every one of them wheeled their mounts and set them going. Rudi focused on the markers; left and then straight and then right and straight -Epona?s great muscles bunched beneath him, her body an extension of his own as it had been since his boyhood, as if their thoughts meshed through the same fire of nerve and balance. The seventeen-hand warmblood danced.
He heard a sudden scream to his right. Mary?s horse had broken through; she catapulted out of the saddle, landed rolling and spraying arrows from her quiver. ?Rochael!? she shrieked.
The dappled Arab mare?s forehooves hammered at the broken, floating ice before her. Mary started to run back to help her, but Ingolf swung inward on her blind side. He leaned out of the saddle with skill that made Rudi blink and snatched with a huge and desperate strength at his wife?s quiver, throwing her across the saddle in front of him. Boy?s rear hooves slipped and the surface cracked beneath them, but he scrambled free and onto the unweakened section of the ice. Tears ran down Mary?s face as she slipped free, but she reached over her shoulder for one of the remaining arrows. ?Clear!? Mathilda shouted.
Tunnnggg. ?Pump! Pump!?
Round shot this time, the six-pound cast-iron sphere arching up like a blurred black dot. It landed behind the oncoming figures that marked Edain and his archers… right among the pursuers. Water gouted skyward, and men slid down tilting slabs of ice. Suspiciously regular slabs in part, where they?d patiently drilled holes to be covered with snow. More and more of the weakened ice broke, away from the jagged paths the retreating archers trod, carefully calculated to look like panic-stricken men dashing about witless. The forest-runners? shrieks turned from triumphant to terrified in an instant.
She could see a war chief with bars painted across his face throw his arms out in a frantic halt! gesture, but it was too late. Three men tumbled into him, and they all rolled together towards a stretch of black water where ice bobbed and men thrashed. To their left the horse soldiers of Corwin were in a worse state; a galloping horse couldn?t stop quickly. One went right into the spot where Mary?s horse had broken through, and the slim mare started to climb it, hammering the rider under her hooves. Another went through, and another.
Click. ?Clear!?
Tunngggg.
A lumpy, gritty stuff was packed around the frame of the scorpion. Thermite ignited easily, and they wouldn?t be leaving the engine intact. ?Pump! Pump!? ?She?s just limping!? Mary said, joy shining in her one eye as she looked back at her Rochael. ?Mary,? Ingolf said, a little reproof in the tone.
Rudi frowned at them, and Mary dropped her eyes as his flicked to the limp burdens the other horses bore. Pierre Walks Quiet?s face had fallen in on itself a little in death; the stiff red ice on his parka hid the wound that had killed him in five seconds of startled agony. Jake sunna Jake simply looked surprised, his hands still clutching at the stump of the javelin that had taken him in the throat. Bodies stiffened quickly in this cold. ?Pierre Walks Quiet was your friend, Ingolf,? Rudi said.?What words would have pleased him?? ?Pete wasn?t Catholic… or anything, that I knew of,? Ingolf said.?Said he could talk to God out in the woods with the animals, better than in any church. I don?t think he?d mind anyone he liked saying words over him, though.? ?Now he walks beneath the forever trees,? Rudi said quietly.
Ingolf nodded, lost in his own thoughts. Rudi looked at Jake?s body.
What will I tell his woman? he thought. Or how explain to his children what their father was?
He helped the others bear them into the barn; Father Ignatius murmured the service for the dead beneath his breath. There was still a heap of loose hay; the bodies were laid in it, a faint scent of summers past rising amid the iron smell of blood. ?Ingolf?? Rudi asked.