The High King of Montival

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

DOMINION OF DRUMHELLER

(FORMERLY PROVINCE OF ALBERTA)

JUNE 2, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

“I feel like a bug on a plate,” Ritva Havelmuttered. She pushed steadily at the pedals and looked out the windows at the landscape of the big-sky country, with the rush of the wind thuttering under the rattle and whine of the wheels and gears. This railcar held three rows of three operators pumping away with their feet, but apart from the motive power it didn’t have much in common with the makeshifts the questers had cobbled together back in Norrheim. The streamlined sheath was made mostly of salvaged aluminum with some modern laminated ash in the frame, and the operators all lay back to pedal in recliner seats padded with sheepskins. Windows all around were from pre-Change automobiles, complete with the cranks for raising and lowering.

She opened one a little more, letting the warm air play over her sweaty face. It was worth the tiny bit of extra drag. The prairie wasn’t entirely flat anymore; this part had a gentle roll to it, and there was the slightest almost-seen trace of blue-white along the western horizon, just starting to hint at mountains. The grass was about calf-high and still bronze-green as spring faded towards summer, starred with pink shooting star and windflower, the blue of larkspur and beard-tongue, white fairy bells, yellow balsamroot, until parts of it were like a glowing carpet in Stardell Hall. The odd tree was usually an aspen, except where a shallow draw wound eastward and brought water closer to the surface to support cottonwoods and wolf willow. The dry thundery-ozone smell of a high-plains summer day was a clean, welcome contrast to the slightly rancid canola-oil lubricant and the inevitable sweat and metal inside the cab.

They were making a steady twenty miles an hour for hour after hour, and could have done better save for the limitations of the main party plodding along behind them at the pace horses on a treadmill could achieve, which was quicker than they could do with their hooves on the ground but less than humans pushing pedals. Even at that almost supernatural speed, well over a hundred miles each and every day, the endless grasslands seemed to crawl by.

“I’m a bug on a plate and soon the fork’s going to come down on me,” she went on, quoting her half brother.

It was even worse coming east on horseback, of course; that didn’t just seem to take forever, it nearly did. Months and months. And I miss the way Mary and I did everything together before she got married. I miss all of them, being off on my own like this. I even miss Hrolf. Was I stupid to break up with him? No, that was the right thing to do. Spending my life with him. . the thought just didn’t appeal, and he wanted that, but it’s getting. . Oh, by Manwe, I’m not even twenty-three yet! Plenty of time, provided I don’t get killed. I’m just envious of Mary for getting a good one.

“Fork, or flyswatter,” she added.

Her escorts were native plainsmen and had grown up in places more or less like this; she could sense their incomprehension at her feeling of being lost in all this space. The trooper beside her did say:

“Yeah, I get the same feeling sometimes. I’m from up north near Rycroft in the Peace River country, myself. Way north, right up to our frontier with the Dene tribes. It’s hills and woods there as well as prairies, and there’s the river and lakes, and then there’s the forests on the border that go north forever. But it’s not so fine and warm as this, eh?”

Constable Ian Kovalevsky seemed to be a nice enough young man, around her age but seeming a little younger. His intentions were obvious; but then men were like that, and occasionally it was pleasant or only mildly irritating. And he looked quite dashing in his mail-lined red serge jacket, midnight blue breeches with yellow stripes down the seams and high brown boots; he had close-cropped ash-blond hair, slightly tilted gray eyes and a snub nose.

“You redcoats seem to do most of the same things here we Dunedain do in Montival,” she said.

The Dunedain didn’t have much contact with the Dominions. The only route that didn’t go through the PPA territories-where memories of the War of the Eye ensured that Rangers were grudgingly tolerated at best-went through the United States of Boise. Which hadn’t been friendly even before the war; and farther east was Corwin. She’d been mildly surprised to find that though Minnedosa, Moose Jaw and Drumheller were all independent they also all helped support this autonomous warrior band whose mark was the red serge coat, and let it operate throughout their lands.

Well, that’s one of the great things about traveling-you see strange lands and their ways and customs. Otherwise we’ d have stayed in Larsdalen and gotten on the A-list and married other A-listers and grown roots like turnips. A trip to Corvallis for some shopping would be a big deal we’ d hash over for weeks. Shudder!

He nodded. “Well, we keep the peace, help out isolated settlements, track down robbers. And fight when we have to. It’s worthwhile work. And it gets you out of the hoose-”

He pronounced the word as if it rhymed with moose.

“-oot and aboot, all over, and people are mostly glad to see you. And the Force has its own ranches to raise our horses, and salvage operations and workshops to make our gear, so we do some of that work too.”

A snort came from behind her, where the corporal in charge of the detachment sat at his own pedals. The common troopers were called constables, which sounded a bit odd to a Montivallan ear. That was a title of rank in the Association territories, and a rather exalted one; the commander of the PPA’s armies was a Grand Constable.

“And you don’t have to spend the summers pushing a plow on your daddy’s farm and the winters freezing your ass off and worrying about the Dene, Kovalevsky,” the noncom said.

“I ran a trapline in winter,” the constable said mildly, and added: “Corporal.”

A thought occurred to her. “This land here is warm?”

It certainly was right now, but she remembered winters in the high plains around Bend, east of the Cascades. This was much farther north and a lot farther from the moderating influence of the ocean. .

“Well, it’s warmer than the Peace River! In winter, particularly. They get these Chinook winds and it can melt all the snow even in February; it’s lousy country for cross-country skiing here. Anyway, things get a lot less flat just a little way west. We’re nearly into the foothills. That’s very pretty country.”

“It’ll be a change,” she said. “I like mountains to look at but they’re a bit of a pain when you’re in a hurry.”

More miles flowed by, with only an occasional rough patch to rattle their teeth; once a pack of wolves, or mostly-wolves from the floppy ears and parti-colored coats of a few, looked up from their feast on something that might have been alpaca or antelope. Then they dipped their heads again to rip at the carcass. The Drumhellers had kept up their rail net, more or less, at least to the point of patching and filling now and then, but-

“Not much through traffic?” she asked.

“We cleared the line a while ago,” the corporal said. “Emergency Powers Act. Usually there’s a fair bit on this stretch-coal from Lethbridge or Crowsnest, wool going north, timber and flax and salvage goods coming south and east, that sort of thing. All horse-drawn except for the mails, and some passengers who can afford pedal-carts.”

An hour later they slowed to let a herd of buffalo cross ahead of them, several thousand head with the light brown calves running among their massive, darkly shaggy elders, and a little after that a herd of mustangs paced the car for a while, their manes and tails flying. Very occasionally they passed herds of cattle or beefalo, sheep or llamas, with a party of mounted cowboys riding guard and a chuck wagon following along behind each band.

Then the evidence of men grew stronger; a brace of canvas-tilt wagons and a party of horsemen rattling down a dirt track and waving their Stetsons in greeting, a quartet of mowing machines cutting wild hay, watering-points with their tall windmills spinning to pump from the well beneath. Then a small dam across a stream, and a long narrow stretch of irrigated land planted to wheat and alfalfa, truck and orchards, with trees around the little lake that watered it. A ruined, burnt-out house and barns stood near the shore, long abandoned and stripped of anything useful down to the chimney bricks, though the extensive corrals were still in use. Much closer to the tracks and just north of them was a complex of modern rammed-earth buildings on a low rise-

A low rise being the only type of rise they have around here, she thought sardonically.

It was big for a village but too small for a town, and surrounded by a wall, not very high but thick and of the same hard material, topped with a timber fighting platform and with towers at its corners and beside the south-facing gate. The blocky rammed-earth structures were two stories high on fieldstone footings, and the whitewash that covered them glowed in the sun against the red-brown tile of their low-pitched roofs. Smoke rose from the chimneys there, and a bell began to ring as the railcar came into sight; a flashing glint from the gatehouse was probably a mounted telescope. Outside the wall and south of the gatehouse was a long low warehouse right by the rails.

She recognized the bulky angular look of the pise de terre construction, damp earth hammered down in layers between temporary timber forms that were then moved on to let the mixture cure to a consistency like coarse friable rock. It was popular in the drier interior parts of Montival too, cheap and easy to make since it didn’t need expensive materials or much skilled labor, fireproof, lasting forever if well maintained, and excellent insulation against the heat of summer, the cold of winter, and the arrows of neighbors. Also familiar was a flag flying from a staff on one corner tower; not the actual design but the practice of using the cattle brand as a house banner in ranching country, rather the way nobles of the Association used their coats of arms.

“That’s the Anchor Bar Seven ranch headquarters,” the corporal said. “We’ve been on their land for three hours now. The flag’s not at half-mast, either; Old Man McGillvery must still be hanging on.”

Evidently headquarters was the local term for homeplace; she’d noticed that the dialect here was crisper and more formal-sounding than the ranchland speech of eastern Montival, more like what they spoke in Corvallis but with a subtly odd elongation of the vowels and occasional strange bits of vocabulary. A rustling of paper from behind her showed he was consulting a map.

“The ranch-house there got burned out not long after the Change-people from Calgary-but they drove some of ’em off and set the rest to rebuilding it the way you see.”

“It looks like they expected more trouble. That’s more protection than most ranchers’ homeplaces have in Montival.”

She could hear his shrug before he continued: “Those were hard times, ma’am. We had a couple of big cities, too big to survive, and no mountains between them and the rest of us.”

And he’s old enough to remember some of it-nearly forty but not quite, I’d say, about Aunt Astrid’s age give or take. He’d have been in his early teens. Things weren’t nearly as bad here as in some places, but bad enough.

“We’re not all that far from the old U.S. border with Montana here either,” he continued. “There’s been a trickle of refugees from the Cutters for nearly twenty years; some good people, but some not, and some just desperate. And we’ve had some pretty big skirmishes with the Prophet’s loonies. Not real war before now, but there’ve been raids.”

“And the odd bunch of horse-thieves from the Sioux territories,” Ian observed.

“Nothing serious; they just think stealing horses is a fun rough sport, like we do hockey.”

“Serious enough if they lift your hair while they’re lifting your stock, Corporal.”

“And that’s why we hang them by the neck if we catch them at it, Kovalevsky.”

“Hell, Corporal, you’ve got a really hard-nosed attitude to a roughing penalty.”

Everyone laughed, and the corporal went on to her: “Do you want to stop here for the day, ma’am?”

Ritva sighed and looked upward in thought, tempted. The ranch was a major one, and the homeplace would have a lot of free space kept for riders who slept out with the herds except in the cold season. It would probably be a chance to eat decent food and sleep in a bed, and certainly one to do minor repairs and have a bath or at least a shower.

And to get my sore butt out of these seats.

Riding hurt too eventually-there was an old joke about a book entitled Twenty Years in the Saddle, by Major Assburns-but she was used to that, having ridden at least a little nearly every day since she was four. They’d come over a thousand miles in a week and it was beginning to feel as if she’d bounced all that way with her coccyx dragging on the deteriorating roadbed of the railroads of three bossmandoms and as many Dominions. The temptation didn’t last long. From the sun it was about an hour past noon, and the letters from home piled up at the railhead had all sounded anxious in the extreme, if you knew how to read between the lines. Mathilda’s had made her go white, when she decoded them.

Far too early to stop and no time to waste now that we don’t have to coddle the horses as much, she thought. Granted when you’re going across a continent you have to remember more haste less speed, but we can’t dawdle even one day. She went on aloud:

“Just for a few minutes to exchange news. We should get in at least another three or four hours today and that’s sixty or seventy miles.”

“You’re the boss-lady,” the corporal said; his superiors were cooperating nicely and the redcoat Force evidently had splendid discipline. “Pity. They do some really good ribs with red sauce here. Squad. . rest easy!”

The railcar was on a barely perceptible upward slope. It coasted to a halt just before the long warehouse-style structure that flanked the right-of-way, and the noncom threw the brake lever to keep them from sliding backward. Silence swept in and the endless space stretched to the world’s edges. The wind’s sough around the car was the loudest sound, that and the endless hshshshshshshshs of the rippling grass and the ringing bell from the ranch. They all popped their doors and got out to stretch; Ritva joined in the knee bends and twists, then got her sheathed sword out of the rack and slid it back into the frog on her belt with a habit as automatic as breathing. It wasn’t much cooler, but the fresh wind made her feel as if it was.

Almost as soon as they stopped, a party rode out of the homeplace gates and along the rutted dirt road that led from there to the railway. There were fourteen saddles followed by a light two-wheel cart pulled by a single horse, and her brows rose a little as she examined the riders, especially the ten who looked like soldiers. Part of their equipment was just cowboy working gear-lariats, belt-knives, curved swords, round shields blazoned with the Anchor Bar Seven’s brand, quivers and recurve bows. But the warriors in the party were in mail hauberks as well, knee-length and split to the waist before and behind rather than the lighter, shorter versions common in ranch country, and helmets with horse-tail plumes, and steel forearm guards. They also all carried real lances at rest in tubular scabbards behind their right elbows, ten-foot weapons with pennants attached below the point. Their horses were a bit taller than the common quarter horse pattern as well.

“Is that gear usual?” she said.

Ian Kovalevsky spoke helpfully: “It’s what the Force uses for a stand-up fight. Most of the Ranchers train some of their men to use it as well.”

The corporal was grimmer: “Getting it out between maneuvers means the McGillverys are expecting trouble, taking men away from the herds this time of year. It’s when they put the stock out towards the edges of the property, now that calving and lambing and branding and shearing are over. And you can’t push cows in that stuff; it’s too heavy.”

The Rancher was a lean, fit-looking man in his thirties, black-haired and clean-shaven, with bright blue eyes and the ageless weathered and lined face born of a life outdoors in dry harsh summers and winters harder yet. The somewhat younger woman beside him with the auburn braids and the lovely palomino horse was probably his wife, to judge by the family resemblance in the boy and girl in their early teens riding behind. All four were in costly copper-riveted blue denim jeans, even more expensive cotton shirts and printed silk neckerchiefs, with broad Stetsons on their heads. The lancers spread out, mostly facing south.

“Damn it, Dudley,” the man began as he dismounted, then noticed her.

His horse stood stock-still, as if the dropped reins were tied to a post, and so did those of the others; he looked her over, evidently not recognizing the crowned tree and seven stars on her green jerkin.

“Ah. .”

The noncom made an introductory gesture. “Ma’am, this is Avery McGillvery of the Anchor Bar Seven ranch, Captain in the South Alberta Light Horse Regiment, Member of the Legislative Assembly and Justice of the Peace. Mrs. Naomi McGillvery. . Dirk and Amy McGillvery, their eldest. Sir, we’re escort for, ah, the lady here-”

Ritva removed her hat-it was a peaked Montero, the type Robin Hood was usually shown wearing, and had a peacock feather tucked into the band-and bowed slightly with her right hand on her heart and her left on the hilt of her longsword.

“Mae govannen, brannon, hiril,” she said. “Well-met, lord, lady. May a star shine on the hour of our meeting. I’m Ritva Havel, a roquen of the Dunedain Rangers.”

Since Aunt Astrid just promoted us from ohtar by long-distance mail. Well deserved, if I do say so myself. It’s nice the Dominions are being so cooperative.

“Roquen means ‘knight.’ I’m from Montival in the far west. No, I’m not an Associate of the PPA, either. It’s a long story. We Dunedain fought the PPA as well in the old days.”

And I know Drumheller had a nasty little indecisive war over the Peace River country with the Association before they split it between them, so I’d better make that clear. My, how the Armingers managed to make enemies! Matti isn’t like that, but it’s going to give her problems all her life.

She smiled benevolently and shook hands as the Rancher and his family struggled to take that in; or rather the parents did, and the children looked intrigued. There had probably been rumors about the Dunedain here at least, but news took strange forms when it traveled far. Then she handed over her letters of introduction; from the governments of Iowa, Fargo, and Marshall, and from the Dominions as well. They had an impressive set of signatures and seals, and the border-lord gave her a brief nod as he returned them.

The “all possible assistance” they asked for carried an unspoken corollary: don’t ask questions, and he didn’t.

“Please, don’t let me interrupt,” she completed. “Since I’m just passing through.”

The commander of her escort cleared his throat. “How’s the old man, sir?”

A flicker of pain passed across the Rancher’s face.

“He’s failing,” he said, and nodded brusquely as the newcomers all murmured condolences. “Another stroke, Doctor Nirasha thinks. Well, seventy-five’s old, and that’s all there is to it.”

“Sorry to hear that, sir. He helped this area through the Change very well indeed. Any unusual activity along the border?”

“No,” the master of the Anchor Bar Seven said slowly. “Not a solitary peep.”

“Ah,” the corporal said noncommittally.

The Rancher nodded unhappily, showing he wasn’t a novice either, then went on more briskly:

“All right, Dudley, where’s my coal? It’s a week overdue, and we’re about to start burning cowflops and buffalo chips like a bunch of Cutter savages in Montana! Not that the blacksmith is going to get much use out of those.”

“And I had some sheet music on order from Lethbridge, Corporal Dudley,” the young girl said.

Her mother gave her a quelling look before she added: “And the spring shipment of linens and. . well, what’s happening? Do we have to go back to doing everything ourselves?”

The noncom cleared his throat. “Priority traffic on the line, Mr. McGillvery, Mrs. McGillvery.”

“War,” the Rancher said, with something not quite a sigh. “It’s really going to happen, eh? I always thought we’d have to do something about the Prophet eventually. Premier Mah did send down a Warning notice to all the local spreads, which is why I have some of my men on active duty. They mean it this time? I always thought Emily spooked too easily. That’s why I didn’t vote for her.”

“I don’t think she does, and I did vote for her,” his wife said forthrightly.

“The Commissioner and the Commander of K Division are pretty sure, sir, and I understand Premier Mah concurs. And Premier Szakacs and Premier Wuthrich back east too. The Yanks are serious about settling Corwin once and for all and we’re going to help.”

“God knows they’ve given us reason over the years.”

“That they have, sir. Incidentally, A and B troops of the Force are moving into this area sometime soon to screen the border while we mobilize. Moose Jaw and Minnedosa are calling up the first-line battalions of their militia regiments too. It’ll take them longer than it will Drumheller, of course.”

The man looked grim, his wife anxious, and the children a little excited.

“I’ve stepped up our patrols, and pulled in some of the line camps,” he said. “Damn, but that’s going to waste grazing. Not that we’re short, but there’s the principle of the thing. Live like you’ll die tomorrow, but manage your grass like you’ll live forever.”

Then his glance turned pawky. “And meanwhile we’re short on everything we don’t make ourselves, so do the right thing, Dudley, and get me that coal. If there’s going to be trouble, I’ll need it more than ever.”

“Sir, I’m sorry, but the Force is in charge of setting priorities and the line’s been cleared for military traffic. As a matter of fact, there’s a big contingent of the foreign troops coming through right behind us.”

“Yanks?” the Rancher asked.

Ritva cut in: “Some of them, but they’re led by my brother, Artos. Artos the First, High King of Montival. And they’ll be buying supplies. With Iowa’s money, good coined gold.”

That brought a sudden silence, and when the Rancher started arguing again it was in a much less sulky mood. While they spoke the two women who’d been driving the light cart pulled up and got out a picnic lunch that included beer, fresh bread, the promised barbecued beef ribs and an actual green salad with lettuce and tomatoes and spring onions and celery and radishes dressed with oil and vinegar. Ritva felt her stomach growling at the sight and smell; it seemed to remember far too much trail food, and winter fare at that. She chatted with the children as she ate; they had both read the Histories, though they’d thought them mere tales.

Ritva spoke regretfully as the railcar pulled out:

“They seem like very nice people, and extremely hospitable.”

Corporal Dudley grunted. “Nice enough, ma’am. Avery McGillvery’s no fool, but he gets to acting like a bit of a little tin god sometimes, the way a lot of the big Ranchers do down here in Palliser’s Triangle. He doesn’t meet anyone who can tell him ‘no’ from one month to the next, except his wife, and he starts thinking the Force is just another set of his ranch hands.”

“He’s right about part of it, though, Corporal,” Ian said. “They do carry a lot of the national-security weight down here. This is the dangerous border, now that the knights-and-castle freaks-sorry, ma’am-”

“No sorry needed, Ian. My father died fighting the Association. He killed Norman Arminger, in fact.”

“Oh, sorry about that, ah. . well, now that the PPA have learned to keep on their side of the old BC border.”

“Which is why the Anchor Bar Seven and the other border ranches get tax exemptions and subsidies on their military equipment,” his corporal said.

The map crackled again: “And why we spend so much time around here, too. Let’s see, it’s about sixty miles to Bone Creek. That’s the last place with enough good water before we turn north for Crowsnest Pass. We can make it by about four and scout it out, and the main body will be in by sundown.”

Ritva nodded; they were making a loop southward before they approached the pass. Threading the steep route through the mountains would be the difficult part; once they were over the Rockies they’d be in the Okanogan country, Association territory and part of Montival now.

Say what you like about the Spider of the Silver Tower and Lady Death, and Count Renfrew for that matter, they’ll have everything organized to rush us south fast. By the Valar and Maiar, it will be good to see Montival again!

The ground grew more rolling, and the railroad crossed a few gullies or small rivers. Sometimes that was on the pre-Change embankments or bridges. Once or twice it was on more recently built and more flimsy timber trestles that made them sway and rattle alarmingly as the railcar shot across.

Something teased at her as they slowed down to take one of those. Nothing she could have put a name to, nothing heard, something felt. They were the advance party, after all.

Who scouts for the scouts? she thought.

Her father had used an expression, Polish Mine Detector, for the people he put on point-she could just barely remember him laughing about it when he’d come back from that duty himself, and not understanding at the time.

And. . All right, Aunt Astrid, Uncle Alleyne and Aunt Eilir and Uncle John, a Ranger is supposed to pay attention to everything. What is it that’s nagging at me? Relax, take deep breaths, feel your legs moving, empty your mind. .

“Do the birds usually shut up this time of day around here?” she asked suddenly.

Until a few minutes ago there had been yellow-breasted meadow-larks chattering and singing, bluebirds swooping after grasshoppers, and dozens more. Even the occasional red-tailed hawk or falcon or eagle only made them scatter for a little while. Also there had been more than a few prairie dogs, waddling about or sitting in the entrances of their burrows going eeek-eeek-eeek at the passing humans and their machinery. Now there was silence save for the ticking of insects.

“No, they don’t,” Corporal Dudley said suddenly, throwing her a respectful look. Then: “Squad, rest easy!”

The vehicle coasted to a halt. “I think it’s maybe too quiet,” Ritva murmured, and suppressed an inappropriate giggle as most of the redcoats nodded solemnly.

There were hatches on the roof of the railcar. She opened the one above her seat and got out her binoculars, and so did Corporal Dudley. There was nothing but the rolling swells of the prairie, though through the glasses the Rockies were definitely visible now.

“No game, either,” she said. “Nothing moving but the bugs and those ravens over by that ravine.”

Minutes ticked by. Kovalevsky jittered a little, but he was the youngest of his band; the others had stayed quiet after checking their fighting gear. Ritva smiled and glanced down at him, then quoted a training mantra of John Hordle’s:

“Who dares, wins. Who gets the wind up and buggers about like a headless pillock, loses. Know when to wait, know when to kick them in the goolies, and you’ll be the one telling lies over your beer.”

Corporal Dudley looked at her again. “You really aren’t just somebody’s relative, are you, ma’am?”

“No,” Ritva said flatly. “No, I’m not.”

Normally she’d have embroidered on the theme, but the sense of something wrong was building instead of fading. From the way his head swiveled back and forth with the binoculars, so was the corporal’s.

“I think we should turn the railcar around,” Ritva said after a longer wait. “Just in case.”

“My thought exact-”

The first horsemen came out of the ravine ahead of them before the word ended; evidently they’d decided that their prey wasn’t going to walk into the parlor. Corporal Dudley shifted in mid-syllable.

“-squad reverse railcar!”

The eight scarlet-clad men and one woman in gray-green flung themselves out of the vehicle and at the handgrips built into its sides. Ritva grunted as the weight came on her arms and back and the corrugated metal bit into her palms; there was a trick to throwing your whole body into an effort like this, like drawing a bow. The same lightweight construction that made the railcar fast also made it possible to lift, if you worked carefully and in coordination. They did, feet churning to avoid tripping on the rusty rail or splintered, obtruding ties where gravel had washed away.

Clung.

The flanged wheels came down on the pitted steel of the rails again.

“Hup!”

The redcoats threw their shoulders against the open doors of the car and pushed to get it going; a fractional second later so did she. It was a good idea, overcoming the inertia faster than they could have by pedaling alone. In a few seconds they were moving it at a pounding run.

“Middle seats in. . now!” the corporal barked. “Outer seats in. . now!”

She hadn’t practiced this maneuver the way the men of the Force had, but she was a Ranger, and she’d spent endless hours climbing and tumbling and doing gymnastics. Her body thumped down in the left front seat beside Constable Kovalevsky about the same time as the others, though it took her an instant longer to get the soles of her elf-boots on the pedals. They were all pumping hard in unison, and then the corporal’s voice barked as speed built:

“Shift gears. . now. And shift gears. . now. And shift gears. . now!”

The sound of the wheels built to a thrumming whine, interspersed by the clickity-clack as they crossed the joints. Her eyes went to the mirror outside the window.

The helpful little objects in the rearview mirror are closer than they appear printed on the convex surface was deeply unwelcome, because the onrushing horsemen were far, far closer than was comfortable in any case. More and more of them were pouring up out of the ravine as she watched as well, laboring over the steep lip or traveling north and south for shallower exits, then crowding back until they formed a reverse crescent behind the railcar. Was it her imagination, or could she already feel the earth shaking beneath the impact of hundreds of hooves?

“A thousand yards and gaining,” she said.

Corporal Dudley grunted agreement; he had a mirror too. “The lightest men on the fastest horses,” he said. “They’re getting strung out.”

She hadn’t had time to be afraid before; you didn’t, when you were scrambling to meet an emergency, or fighting. Now she was just running away, and she found her breath coming faster than the exertion would justify. She slowed it by a practiced effort of will; if you made yourself act brave, you were. That was what being brave meant. She’d met a few people-all of them men, which didn’t surprise her-who really didn’t feel fear. Every single one had been a dangerous lunatic, useful mainly to stop spears or arrows which might otherwise have hit a real human being.

Hrolf Homersson, for example, she thought snidely.

“Still gaining,” she said, in a dry matter-of-fact tone.

“They will for a while,” Dudley said in a bass version of the same tone, and she nodded.

A horse could gallop at over thirty-five miles an hour for about as long as a man could run at top speed, allowing for condition and feeding. A quarter horse could hit fifty or a little more for very short sprints. Bicycles had far more endurance but they weren’t as fast in a dash, though the lower rolling friction on steel and the low-drag housing of the railcar and the fact that they were going slightly downhill helped; this was a courier and mail vehicle and built for speed.

We’ll either get to the Anchor Bar Seven homeplace before they catch up with us, or we won’t. .

There wasn’t any point in talking; they needed all their wind. The harsh sound of their deep breathing dominated the interior. Her eyes flicked to the speedometer, which thankfully was in miles and not the other system they sometimes used here. Thirty-two miles per hour and rising slightly, as fast as she’d ever gone for any length of time except in a glider. A trestle went by rattling beneath them, and she managed a wheeze of excitement as she looked in the mirror and saw the horsemen check as they guided their horses into the dry creek-bed it spanned and then up again. That slowed them, but less than trying to pick their way over the ties. Then she cursed silently as the rails stretched into a long shallow curve ahead; the pursuers cut across the cord and regained the lost ground. Eight hundred yards now between them and the foremost spray, with the rest stretching back to the original hiding place.

“Christ, there’s hundreds of them. Maybe thousands,” Corporal Dudley said.

“That’s why. . the birds and animals. . were so quiet,” she said, timing the words to her breath. “They hid very well. . but there were so many of them. . it spooked the wildlife.”

No more talk for a while. She caught glances going up to the ceiling; their shields were all in racks there, forming a second roof beneath the outer shell of the vehicle. The Force used one much like the Dunedain model she carried, a shallow convex disk about a yard across, made of birch plywood covered in bullhide and then with thin sheet steel. It was much better protection than the body of the railcar, but there were gaps between the shields.

Corporal Dudley began to turn the crank of a siren mounted beside him; its horn was flush with the exterior of the car. The sound built, an earsplitting rising-falling wail that drove into the ears like ice picks. The homeplace would hear that long before they arrived. Workers outside the walls would hear it and head home too, or ride for safety if they couldn’t. Ritva looked at the speedometer again; thirty-five miles an hour, more than a horse could maintain for any distance but less than it could do in a flat-out rush. The interior of the railcar was thick with panting and rank sweat; it ran stinging into her eyes. Then she glanced back to the mirror, and bit back a curse.

Four hundred yards.

That large a group was bound to have some very light men-no women, not in a Cutter war band-riding without anything but their clothes and weapons on very fast horses. As she watched, one of them stood in the stirrups and bent his recurve, aiming high for a long-distance shot.

“In your dreams, maybe, fool,” the corporal hissed. “It’s a bow, not a catapult.”

The arrow disappeared from the mirror’s view, but her mind’s eye could see it, arching up, hesitating at the peak, turning and rushing downward. A little bit of trivia from an early lesson back at Larsdalen came to her, from the schooldays before she and Mary got bored and exasperated past bearing with Mother and moved out to Mithrilwood to become Rangers. It might even be from before Father died in his duel with Norman Arminger at the end of the War of the Eye; the facts came with a feeling of sleepy boredom and warmth and the smell of chalk.

An arrow shot upward at forty-five degrees hit the ground going at seventy percent of its initial speed. Some part of her mind did a quick calculation:

Say two hundred feet per second when it leaves the string, so that’s a hundred and forty feet per second when it hits you and does nasty things.

The shaft reappeared as a blurred streak across the mirror for a fractional second, and then again quivering in the dirt as it fell away behind the speeding vehicle. The man who’d shot it had lost some ground while he did; now he was hunched forward in the saddle, beating his horse on the rump with the bow stave and probably screaming curses. They wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Twenty, twenty-five minutes since we sprung their ambush-they can’t keep this up much longer. Their horses must be foaming out their lungs, she thought. We’ll be in sight and hearing of the ranch in about another seven minutes. Or I’ll be dead.

Being captured would be worse, of course. Even with ordinary bandits, and infinitely more so with Cutters, but there were ways to avoid being taken alive. Usually. If you didn’t lose your nerve. There were ways to stop yourself thinking, too: she used one, focusing tightly on the feel of the burning muscles in her legs, push and push and push-

The pursuers were much closer now, a long dark column rising and falling with the roll of the land behind them; even over the wail of the siren the dull rumble of the hooves was loud. Three hundred yards, extreme effective range for longbowmen in still air. Most saddle bows didn’t shoot quite as far. Closer, closer. .

This time a dozen of them rose in the saddle at the same time, probably to someone’s order or signal. The tiny figures in the mirror seemed to writhe in unison, drawing long and then jerking backward as recoil made them sway. The Change had changed a good many things, but not the equal and opposite reaction when you threw something away fast and hard.

“For what we are about to receive-” Corporal Dudley began.

A rising whistle even through the whine of gears and the song of steel on steel from the wheels beneath them. The sound of arrows striking in dirt or railroad ties or banging off the rails was lost, but not the shink-thack! of one punching through the thin sheet aluminum of the roof and hammering into the more resistant surface of a shield.

“-may the Lord make us truly thankful shit!”

Ritva craned her neck around as far as she could without interrupting the rhythm of her feet on the pedals. A sharp-pointed bodkin head stood out three inches from the felt on the inner surface of the shield over Dudley’s head, just where it would have gone through his forearm if he’d had it in the loops. That was one of the many unpleasant things about being shot at with arrows from powerful war-bows; they were very hard to stop short of your own precious irreplaceable body. The light mail lining the redcoats’ jackets or her green leather tunic was fair protection against cuts and of some use against stabs, but it was only marginally better than cloth when it came to a hard-driven arrow with an armor-piercing head.

The railcar swayed with its speed. She tore her eyes away from the mirror, since there was literally nothing she could do about that. The buildings of the Anchor Bar Seven homeplace and their protective wall were visible now, dot-tiny in the distance but growing; they’d certainly have heard the siren, and everyone outside the walls would be running pell-mell for the gates, if they had a good emergency drill. Her impression of Avery McGillvery was that they’d have one, and practice it frequently.

“All right, squad!” Corporal Dudley bellowed. “We were tasked with getting the lady through, so she’s the mission priority. She goes out first and the rest of us follow, and if she’s wounded she gets carried but you leave anyone else-no, don’t argue, ma’am. Get ready-shit!”

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-

Even that didn’t make her pause in her sprint, and then she realized that it had a gate, just not one with the usual outward-swinging twin doors. Instead the whole thing slid out of a slit in one side of the wall along a strip of metal laid in the roadway, and then into a matching opening on the other side. It was something new to her, but it certainly looked strong.

Best of all, it’s still open for us! she thought.

Dry air sobbed into aching lungs and the ground shocked up through foot and ankle and shin. The Rancher would have been justified in closing it; after all, his first responsibility was to his own. That wasn’t just a fort held by a garrison, it was where his family and those of his followers lived, including their children. It was home.

Behind them there was a series of hard thud sounds as lances struck home in bodies, a sudden burring roar, the hard cracking sound of blades on shields, the discordant ringing of steel on steel, and the screams of men and horses in rage and pain. The little party from the ranch was grossly outnumbered by the Cutter force as a whole, but not by the vanguard directly behind the fugitives. And their horses were fresh and their ranks compact. The noise faded quickly, and hooves sounded behind her as the Anchor Bar Seven men turned and raced for home. They’d knocked the pursuers back on their heels, at least.

“Grab on!” a man yelled, as a horse came level with her.

Her right hand snatched at the stirrup leather and closed on it. The quarter horse’s acceleration almost snatched it away again, but she held on and used the horse’s momentum to add to her own, bounding along faster than she could have run herself. The squat towers flanking the gate were close now; something went tung on one of them, and a four-foot dart flashed by just over her head and a horse screamed briefly, louder than any human but just as piteous. Two arrows hit her shield from behind, tak! tak!, like blows with a hammer, but the points didn’t go through and strike her jerkin. The other horsemen were all around her, and redcoats among them running as she was.

Then right ahead of her Ian Kovalevsky gave a cry and loosed the stirrup leather he held and fell, an arrow pinning his coattail to his trousers and another through his upper shoulder. Ritva let go too, throwing herself forward so quickly that she caught him before he’d finished hitting the ground. A deep-knee squat and his body was over her back in a fireman’s carry, and she wheezed upright. He wasn’t a big man, no taller than her five-nine, but he was heavy, thirty pounds more than her at least. She blanked her mind and pushed, and she was running forward with horses buffeting her on all sides and a series of faint screams in her ears from the wounded man she carried. Then just in the gateway something hit her in the leg.

She sprawled, pulling at the redcoat across her back so he wouldn’t land wrong and drive the arrows deeper. She stared downward numbly; there was an arrow in her, through her left calf, and blood leaking from where it transfixed her boot. Then the pain started, and she ground her teeth and gave a muted sound like a teakettle boiling. More horses trampled around her, and then someone grabbed her under the arms to pull her backward; the press of bodies and men and horses was blocking the gate, and unless it was cleared the enemy would get in. The pull dragged the flight-feathers of the arrow against the ground, working it in the wound, and she screamed in earnest then.

Others were screaming, men screaming but not in pain. Raw terror, somehow harder to listen to. She looked up and saw the long blackened muzzle of a steel tube protruding from a horizontal slit in the right gate-tower, and behind it the flicker of movement as men heaved at a pivot-pump. That shocked her into silence despite the agony, as the amber stream of liquid arched out to play over the dense-packed mass of men and horses where the Cutters had halted. They shrieked as the stream splashed into their bearded faces; she could smell the sharp kitchen-and-laboratory scent of canola and coal-oil and wood alcohol mixed with quicklime and powdered aluminum and dissolved rubber.

Her eyes met one man’s, as blue as hers, wide and staring as napalm dripped from his face in thick liquid strings. Then the flame began, running down the arching stream in a flicker of blue and crimson almost too fast to see, and the whole area it had soaked went up with a WHUMP and a pillow of hot air struck her, making her skin prickle and the little hairs in her nose start to shrivel. The gate swung across the scene before she could force her staring eyes to close, sliding home with a rumble and chunk and a clunking sound that was some sort of locking mechanism going in.

Even with the solid metal-shod baulk in the way, the screams were loud, for a single instant. Two middle-aged women in shapeless pants and shirts with red-cross armbands added dragged Kovalevsky facedown onto a stretcher, grabbed it and bore it away at a staggering run. Two more started to reach for her.

“No!” Ritva said, then managed a firmer “No!”

She pulled her holdout knife out of her right boot, took a deep breath, gripped the arrow by the fletching and cut.

“Naeg!” she swore with a yelp.

The pain was like white fire, icy and burning at the same time, shooting up her leg towards her groin and almost making her bladder release. Whoever had fashioned the arrow had used nicely seasoned red ash, and it was dry and tough. Doggedly she cut the fletching side, gripped the part behind the head, took a deep breath and screamed as she pulled it out:

“Naeg! Rhaich! Naeg-naeg-naeg! Ai, ai!”

Her breath came faster as she pulled off the boot and tight-bandaged it, and gummy saliva filled her mouth until she spat to clear it. Corporal Dudley put a hand under her arm as she fumbled the knife back into the sheath.

“Let’s get you to the infirmary, ma’am,” he said, half-shouting through the racket. A hesitation. “That was a brave thing to do for Kovalevsky. You shouldn’t have done it, but it was brave.”

“To Morgoth with the infirmary. Get me up on the wall!”

She stood and put weight on the leg. It wasn’t as bad as she expected, only enough to make her break out in a muck-sweat, cold and gelid. At his look she snapped hoarsely:

“I can’t run away and I can’t dance a lavolta, but I can still stand and fight-and if we don’t hold the wall, we’re all going to die anyway. I’d rather die fighting.”

“Point.”

“Get me up there.”

“Let’s go.”

He put her left arm over his shoulders and they moved a little like a three-legged race at a Bearkiller Gunpowder Day celebration. Everyone in the little settlement was pouring from the houses and the clear space inside the walls up onto the fighting platform, or at least everyone of either sex over the age of thirteen who didn’t have some absolute duty elsewhere; all of them were carrying weapons, and many were struggling into bits and pieces of gear, helmets or mail shirts. The stairs were an integral part of the thick rammed-earth walls, the risers surfaced with planks but without rails or guards, and fairly narrow. Ritva and Corporal Dudley toiled up one with the four surviving unwounded or walking-wounded redcoats running interference for them.

The hoarding atop the wall had a thick sloping roof facing outward, a chest-high solid timber wall with slits for firing arrows, and it overhung the wall by about a yard so that trapdoors could be opened and things dropped or thrown directly down. It was the same principle that castles and city walls in Montival used, except that even with the ditch this wall wasn’t nearly as high. There were piles of rocks, racks of spears, and quivers of arrows and crossbow bolts ready for use. People were going around with burning splits to light gas-fed jets for heating pots of boiling water and oil; evidently the Anchor Bar Seven homeplace had a methane-digester system.

Ritva propped herself against the parapet and looked out, carefully avoiding the hideous knot of dead and not-quite-dead men and animals in front of the gates, although she couldn’t help smelling the greasy black smoke that poured off it. The Cutters were still arriving, and her eyes went wide at the numbers. A catapult cut loose from a tower, and a twelve-pound ball of cast iron snapped out. The targets were far enough away to dodge it, but some of them shook their fists or weapons-probably cursing the impious device, since their faith abominated the complex gearing involved.

“Couple of thousand,” Corporal Dudley said. “Ma’am, they take you really seriously, don’t they?”

He sounded more admiring than not. “It’s my big brother they’re really after,” she said. “And yes, they do take him very seriously indeed.”

“I guess we didn’t travel faster than the news after all.”

The alarm bell stopped; she was suddenly conscious of it because of its absence. Ritva looked over her shoulder and saw that it hung in the tower of a squat-looking church. . not that there was much alternative to “squat” when you used pise as building material. Instead a column of bright red smoke rose from the same square height, shooting into the air and bending gently eastward with the prevailing wind. The sky was still clear and blue-she blinked a little to realize it was only about three in the afternoon-and it would be visible for a long way.

“Like the beacons from Nardol to Din in the Histories,” she murmured to herself.

“It’s a long way to the next ranch,” the redcoat said. “They were big around here even before the Change because it’s dry, and the ones that survived took over the land of those that didn’t. Old Man Keith McGillvery was Rancher here then. . manager, at least, and nobody was going to go to Toronto to look up the stockholders when he claimed the property.”

Ritva nodded absently; she was watching the Cutters swarming around the warehouse and the corrals down by the little lake the dam made.

I’ve actually been to Toronto and I don’t think anyone’s going to be showing up with a title deed, she thought mordantly. Except ghosts. Though right now it wouldn’t be worth much anyway.

Avery McGillvery himself came by, in war-gear with some of his armored retainers in tow; he and his wife greeted people by name, she smiling and nodding and he slapping backs cheerfully and telling them how they’d slaughter the invaders under the wall. He gave Ritva a quick nod as well as he went by, and she put her hand to her heart and bowed slightly. Corporal Dudley saluted.

He’s doing this as a lord should, she thought. Keeping his people in good heart by example. His father must have known the way of it, to have come through the Change so well.

The idea that someone could own land without being there to hold and defend it was another pre-Change mystery; maybe Dudley was old enough to understand it, but she wasn’t, not really, not down in the heart. Then she noticed the roof of the warehouse by the railway collapse in a cloud of dust, with dozens of lariats strung to saddle horns pulling at it.

“They’re making ladders,” she said, as she unclipped the helmet from her shield, stuffed her hat into a pocket and set it on her head. “Tearing out the beams and boards for it there, and from those corrals. And fascines to throw in the ditch, and some mantlets.”

“Jesus, you’re right, ma’am. They’re going to assault. Oh, that’s going to cost them quite a butcher’s bill.”

They glanced at each other: But not as much as it’ll cost us, went unspoken between them.

Counting the redcoats, and one walking-wounded Ritva Havel, the Anchor Bar Seven had perhaps a hundred and fifty fighters to man the walls, and too many of them for comfort were teenagers just big enough to work the crank of a crossbow, or women.

That wasn’t necessarily bad; she considered herself well above average as fighters went, and she’d killed enough men to prove it. On the other hand she was also about five inches taller and thirty pounds heavier than the average woman, nearly all of the weight flat straplike muscle. That made her as tall as most men and stronger than some. Also she was very fast indeed, plus she and Mary had been brought up in the households of warrior nobles with the very best training provided from toddlerhood on. The women she saw on the wall here looked like they were housewives and weavers and cheesemakers and such mostly; doubtless brave when fighting for their homes and families, but only sketchily trained in their off-hours and smaller, weaker and lighter than virtually any Cutter they’d face.

Probably a lot of the menfolk were out with the herds where they could do little good, and had been too far away to get back in time. Coming back now would just mean throwing themselves away against that horde, though they probably would anyway.

This is a. . a very, very unpleasant situation. We really must find a way to say we are so fucked in the Noble Tongue.

“The wall will be a big advantage,” she said, and Corporal Dudley nodded.

She could read his thought: True as far as it goes.

More and more of the Cutters were dismounting, sending their horses to the rear and loading themselves down with extra quivers and bundles of arrows. Pack beasts with more stood behind, and other groups had long ladders knocked together out of beams with fence boards nailed or lashed across them. Ritva put weight on her wounded leg, and hissed as she fastened the chin-cup of her open-face sallet helm. The calf would bear her weight, but only if she didn’t have to use it much or for long.

“The leg works, sorta. Though we Rangers usually prefer sneaking around to this sort of fighting,” she added.

“So do I,” the corporal said dryly. “If you mean prefer it to being trapped and vastly outnumbered.”

“Don’t think of it as being outnumbered,” she said, forcing a smile and ignoring the dryness of her mouth. “Think of it-”

“-as having a very target-rich environment, yes, ma’am, we tell that one too.”

He passed her a dipper of water from one of the pottery jugs that hung at intervals; it was cool with evaporation through the coarse earthenware. She drank gratefully, handed it back with a nod of thanks and spoke aloud:

“Could someone get me a bow?” she asked. “Medium weight. Heavy side of medium.”

The word ran along the parapet, and the weapon was passed down. It was a common-or-garden four-foot recurve, an imitation of pre-Change hunting weapons but with a heavier draw. Honestly made, a sandwich glued together of sinew, a central layer of yew wood and springy horn; the riser was of mountain maple with a fitted handgrip and arrow-rest through the center. She drew it experimentally, into the full deep C-shape; heavy for her, ninety to a hundred pounds, but not impossible. Then she took a seven-foot spear out of a rack and propped it nearby point down beside her shield against the timber rampart; she wanted a weapon with a bit of reach, at least to start with.

There was a pause, most of an hour; she spent the time reciting training mantras and whistling softly and remembering things and trying to ignore her leg. Leaning against the parapet she even managed to doze for a few minutes, though she jerked awake again immediately from a dream of wolverines tearing at her calf. The Cutters were closer then, and starting to look more organized.

I wonder what our section of the Halls of Mandos is like? she thought. Do we just wait there to come back, or what? That sounds boring, unless it’s just a kenning for the rest of the Summerlands. The Histories aren’t clear except that we’re Sundered from the elves, but then, I’ve never met any elves so that’s no hardship, really. Are there sort of news bulletins, so you can find out how things turned out back here? Or scrying crystals, like a palantir?

Then the enemy started to move forward. They were chanting too, the onomatopoeic war cry of the CUT, starting as a rumble and then growing into a growling blurred chorus as they lashed themselves into a frenzy:

“Cut. . Cut. . Cut! Cut! Cut! CUT! CUT!”

“I don’t think they’ll stop,” Corporal Dudley said quietly. “There aren’t enough of us to kill enough of them to sicken the rest.”

His men were bunched around them. A little down the rampart a girl three or four years younger than Ritva was whimpering slightly without being conscious of it, but she was also propping up a heavy crossbow, ready to shoot through a firing-slit. A younger brother with the same carroty hair and freckles was struggling behind her to load another, doggedly working the lever to cock it ready to hand forward.

“CUT! CUT! CUT!”

The enemy began to run forward to get through the killing ground, masses of them, their leather and undyed wool dark against the tawny green grass but their faces showing lighter under helmets or hats. Here and there a mail shirt showed gray and gleaming with oil, or more often a breastplate of molded hide with steel strips riveted on, but most had only their leather jackets and shields.

“Attacking all ’round,” Corporal Dudley said. “So we can’t shift men to meet them.”

Every catapult cut loose, six of them, one for each tower, with a series of heavy tung sounds. This time the round shot couldn’t miss; the figures were still doll-tiny, but her mind sketched in what happened when the hard, hard metal hit and bounced and twisted through the ranks. Again and again as fast as the crews could cock and load, they were aiming for the mantlets, improvised shields on wheels taken from farm carts. Those were covering the men with the ladders and fascines.

Then the artillery crews switched to clay pots full of napalm that wobbled as they flew and trailed black smoke from the sheaths of burning rag rope wound around them. Bright streaks of yellow flame blossomed where they struck. One hit a mantlet and sprayed through every gap in the crude carpentry, and men ran out from behind it with their clothes and hair on fire, rolling screaming on the ground in a futile attempt to put out the clinging death. A few of their comrades paused to give them the mercy-stroke.

“Shoot!” someone shouted on the wall; she thought it was the Rancher, Avery McGillvery.

The extra height meant they had the range on the attackers, and everyone cut loose; the hard snap of bowstrings mingling with the deeper note of crossbows. Some part of her that wasn’t focused to a single diamond point of concentration on drawing and shooting until her shoulders burned noted that they were splitting around the approaches to the gate. Even that mass of savage faith wasn’t going to face the flamethrower’s arc again. Probably some of them were thinking of what they’d do to the crew of it when they got their hands on them.

“Look-” someone began to shout, as snarling horn-signals went through the Cutter force.

Half the onrushing horde stopped, alternate blocks-or clumps, for they were in no formal order, but close enough. Afternoon sunlight sparkled along their ranks as they raised their bows, blinking off the points of the arrows like starlight glimmering on the sea. An odd whispery creaking sounded, the noise of many, many powerful composite bows being drawn to the ear by as many brawny arms.

“-out!” the cry finished, and nearly everyone ducked away from the firing-slits.

The shout was almost drowned by the whistling rush of air. Ritva turned with her left shoulder against the thick planks and forced herself not to close her eyes in a futile attempt to deny what was rushing at her. This was worthy of a Mackenzie arrowstorm; bowmen could pack together much closer on foot than as mounted archers. Seconds after the strings snapped out their unmusical note the first shafts hit the wood of the fighting platform. Then the mass arrived, a drumming roar like massive hail on a roof, going on and on, more flicking through the fighting slits and down into the settlement. Trying to shoot back at once would have been suicide.

“This is what my father called trying to fight projectiles with targets!” she shouted, and thought Corporal Dudley grinned even then.

Thunk as they sank into the timbers or the thick planks and she could feel it through her shoulder like a trembling vibration over and over again. Pock for the ones that fell a little short and hit the pise wall beneath her feet, some sticking and others bouncing off with little divots of the rocklike material knocked free. Hssss as hundreds more went by overhead, arching down into the space inside the wall, and more and more cracking on the tile roof or arching over it.

Cries of pain came as the unlucky or incautious fell; one white-bearded man not too far away staggered backward with an arrow through his face and fell over the rail and down the inside of the wall. Then the storm slackened as the attackers fired individually rather than in massed volleys; those were rancher levies out there for the most part, not professionals.

Haven’t seen the Sword of the Prophet, she thought; their reddish-brown armor was unmistakable. Don’t miss them, but that means they’re probably all out west trying to kill my family.

Ritva took a deep breath and stepped to the arrow-slit and shot and shot and shot, then ducked back. Beside her the girl with the red braids was shooting too, handing her crossbow behind her, taking the next from her brother, squinting down the sights and wincing as the butt thumped against her shoulder.

“Here, Anne!” he cried, just barely audible through the surf-roar of noise, shrill and high. “Get ’em, Annie, get ’em!”

Another shout ran around the parapet: “Shoot the storming parties! Leave the archers, shoot the ones coming at us!”

Good advice, she thought, and shot three times again.

An arrow came through the slit and just missed her as she ducked back, close enough that she could feel the wind of its passage on the sweat-wet skin just below her ear. Men fell out there, many, she needn’t pick individual targets, just shoot into the brown. They had their shields up, but at this range they likely wouldn’t stop an arrow; some of them were holding up improvised siege shields made of planks from the fences and buildings. One of those fell as she shot, a man taking an arrow through the toes and staggering aside hopping; two more hit him and he fell limply. Ladders and fascines dropped, then came on again as hale men snatched them up and rushed forward with the others over the bodies of their dead and wounded. The catapults were shooting steady as metronomes, blasting tracks through the dense mass of men.

Then the storm of arrow fire lifted; the attackers were getting close enough that they endangered their own men. They were at the ditch, throwing the bundles of brushwood and bales of hay into it. Others butted the long poles that had been warehouse or barn rafters and let them topple forward. Hundreds of knotted lariats snaked towards the parapet, each topped with a barbed steel hook. Defenders hacked or pried at them, and used spearpoints or forked poles to push at the ladders. Many fell back, but myriad hands raised them again. Ritva leaned over the edge for a second and shot directly down at no more than five yards distance.

Two women near her walked forward with a big jar held between them, cloth wrapped around the handles. The contents smoked and seethed; a third woman unbolted and lifted a trapdoor. The first pair lifted and poured in careful unison. The boiling tallow poured in a translucent torrent, and war cries turned to shrieks below. Others were doing the same, or lifting the traps and throwing javelins and rocks downward.

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.