The Scourge of God

CHAPTER NINETEEN

PRAIRIE, WESTERN SOUTH DAKOTA

JUNE 11, CY24/2022 AD

He dreamed of drums; drums that beat softly in the distance, and they woke him. His head had slipped from the blanket rolled around spare clothing that was his pillow, and his ear was pressed to the ground.

Hooves, he realized. Many.

He coiled erect, the night air cool on his naked skin and his sheathed sword in his right hand, his left on the long leather-and-wire wrapping of the hilt. A shape moved in the darkness, and he drew a handspan of the sword, moonlight and starlight glittering on the honed edge and the intricate damascene patterns in the steel.

"It's me," Red Leaf said. "Someone's coming from the hocoka, fast and at the wrong time."

Rudi sniffed the scents-dew, the stale ash odor of banked campfires. Then he cocked an eye at the heavens; no moon, and the stars had moved to "Three-quarters of an hour to dawn," he said. "You're right; they must have left not long after midnight."

Traveling in the dark is somewhat dangerous, even if you know the ground. They wouldn't have done it unless it was an emergency.

Ingolf was already awake when he began nudging his foot; Mary turned over and opened her eye as well. The others woke silently, except for a slight groan from Odard. They rose and dressed quickly and quietly, putting on the light war gear they'd brought with them, swords and bows, helmets and shields. By the time they were finished and had tied up their bedrolls Rick Three Bears had their horses and remounts cut out of the herd.

The whole Sioux party were awake and ready not long after, moving their wagons into a circle, the warriors ready to fight and the youngsters and women within-not that they weren't armed as well, and prepared to do whatever they had to. Even then, Rudi was a little impressed.

I wouldn't like to have to fight these people, he thought. Doubly so not on their own ground. It would be like trying to hit a ghost with a club-and sure, you'd have to grow eyes in the back of your head, too.

One of the perimeter scouts came trotting in on foot-it was hard to be inconspicuous on horseback, even for the lords of the High Plains.

"Horseman and a cart, itancan," he said.

"There's more behind them, by a couple of miles," Red Leaf said grimly. "Big party."

"I'm sorry if we've brought this on you," Mathilda said steadily.

Red Leaf made a single fierce gesture. "It's our land! Nobody comes on Lakota land without our leave, and nobody attacks our guests on our land!"

There was an answering growl from the crowd of his people. He pointed to six, all young and slight-built, and spoke rapidly in a mixture of English and Lakota

"You get going," he said at the end. "Tell 'em we need everyone, and fast, and to pass it on."

Then he turned to Rudi. "That'll bring a couple of thousand of our zuya wicasa here, but that'll take a while. You'd better get going."

Rudi winced slightly; that meant abandoning their extra gear. But needs must…

The sound of hooves and wheels came out of the darkness; the sky was just beginning to pale eastward, but the western horizon was still purple-black.

"It's me, Father Ignatius!" the priest's voice called.

He pulled up the two-wheeled mule cart; his horse was tethered to the rear of it, with the stirrups looped up over the saddlehorn.

"Two hundred of the Sword of the Prophet are approaching, according to the scouts around your hocoka," he said succinctly. "They're looking for Rudi and the rest of us."

"Right," Red Leaf said. He turned to Rudi, then pointed: "See that star? Keep it directly ahead of you until full daylight, then turn north and you'll hit the Black Hills. That's better than heading straight east-flat as a plate thataway."

Then he hesitated. "And the big herd is in that direction too; the one we hunted yesterday has probably joined it. It'll be moving north, pretty well, this time of year. Get across in front of it and it'll cover your tracks. Then you can turn north while they're trying to find you."

"How long would that take?"

Red Leaf smiled, or at least showed his teeth. "That's the main southern herd. How long does it take a quarter million of the Buffalo People to go by? And what's left of a trail after they've crossed it?"

"Right," Rudi said. He swung up onto Epona's back and leaned down to shake hands. "Lord and Lady bless you and yours, my friend."

"Wakantanka walk with you, Rudi Mackenzie, and all of you."

"I'd have liked to spend a summer hunting with your folk, and seen the Sun Dance. Maybe someday I can, and you and Rick can come to Dun Juniper for the Lughnasadh festival."

Red Leaf spoke a phrase in Lakota, then translated, first literally, and then the meaning: " On the hillside. Someday, maybe."

Then he looked around for his son: "Rick, you go along until they're on their way-"

The young man looked a little mutinous at leaving when a fight might be coming.

"You forget what you owe Rudi?" his father asked. "Hokahe!"

The troopers of the Sword rode in disciplined silence despite the disconcerting vastness of the morning prairie and the subliminal knowledge of what the Sioux preferred to do to trespassers. Most of them were from mountain-and-valley country, only a few from the Hi-Line of central Montana, and they felt helplessly exposed here where the horizon merged into the slowly lightening sky.

Major Graber ignored the sensation, and the pain in his left arm, with equal indifference; he kept in mind that it would weaken his shield work and that he couldn't use his bow properly, and he would adjust his actions accordingly. He was here to command anyway, not fight with his own hands if avoidable.

And there was nothing wrong with his nose. The abattoir reek of death mingled with an ever-stronger hint of smoke, and of cooking meat. Drying-smoking racks… and yes, there was a plume silhouetted against the lighter eastern sky. He squinted into the sunrise that edged a few clouds there with crimson and faded to pink and then green and blue above, as the last stars guttered out behind him.

The smell and clutter as they rode through the Sioux hunting camp offended him, but…

What can you expect from savages who know not the Dictations? he thought, remembering the ordered neatness of Corwin with pleasure.

The new Seeker had arrived from the capital with reinforcements when they returned to the Bar Q ranch. That had been very fortunate..

Then he glanced quickly aside at the Seeker. The man had arrived before any message could have gotten to Corwin that he'd found the trail again. All they would have known from his dispatches there was that High Seeker Twain was killed in the Teton foothills last fall, and that he intended to work through the mountains and resume the search in the spring. Even that would have been lucky… and there was no possible way the Hierarchy could have known how his own first foray across the border had ended.

But the Seeker had been there at the ranch, waiting-with troops who must have left weeks ago to make it through the wilderness and the passes.

Graber swallowed. The Ascending Hierarchy commands all power, he thought. Doubtless he commands the Seventh Ray. That is an amethyst on his wristband.

His own service was with the Fourth Ray, as the diamond on his personal amulet showed; that was under the Master Serapis Bey, and hence largely physical. The Seeker might even be an adept of Djwal Khul, who ruled communications of all sorts.

Dalan is different from most Seekers I've seen. Usually they were thin or gaunt; this one was stocky-muscular. But the eyes are the same.

He wrenched his mind back to the present, despite the thin film of sweat on his forehead. His was to obey. That he didn't like Seekers was between him and his conscience and the long wrestling with the emanations of the Nephilim that any soul must undergo.

There were no Sioux working around the drying racks, though the low fires under them still smoldered. A dozen wagons had been drawn up in a circle on a nearby rise, and between them he could see spears and the twinkle of arrowheads. That would be the noncombatants-not that they wouldn't fight if need be, of course. A good sixty Sioux warriors were drawn up a little way off, armed with bows and shetes and hunting-lances. Few of them had any body-armor beyond shields and steel caps, but they would fight like cougars, as he knew from painful experience.

Graber swung his fist aloft, and the formation halted, spreading out into a two-deep staggered line, bows in hand and the butts of the lances in the scabbards. Seeker Dalan spoke:

"They are not here. Close, but not here."

"Can you be more precise, honored Seeker?"

The square face with the flat black eyes turned back and forth, frowning. "No. I am… resisted. A shadow is drawn."

He put his hands to the sides of his head; the sleeves of the robe of dried bloodred he wore fell back, showing arms encased in black leather guards striped with narrow steel splints.

"A woman? Or is it a buffalo? And a raven… the blockage is not so complete as when they were in the Valley of the Sun, but you must rely on the physical. For now."

He felt relief at that, and reined out towards the mounted Indians. The Seeker followed; he had to admit the man was fearless, not like many of the red-robed ecclesiastical bureaucrats Corwin bred, who always put him in mind of the maggots that had writhed in a dead raccoon he'd found under the floorboards of his home two summers ago.

A man rode down to meet them, though he stopped well within bowshot of his own position.

"Hau kola," Graber said, raising his right hand in the peace gesture as he drew rein.

The Indian was a dark middle-aged man, muscular and heavy-featured, with a little gray in his braids; a full-blood from his looks. He wore a steel helmet with bison horns and fur, and a fox pelt over his colorful war-shirt. There were scalp-locks down the seams of the arms, more than was comfortable to contemplate; he'd have fought in the long indecisive struggle between the Church and his nation.

He didn't return the gesture, or speak at all.

Bad, Graber knew. But, then, I expected that.

"We're here after some fugitives, itancan Red Leaf," Graber said, guessing at his rank and remembering the briefing files. "Under the Treaty of Newcastle, the Lakota tunwan agreed not to harbor refugees from our territory or to hinder our recapture of such criminals."

The black eyes were chill as they rested on him. "Under the Treaty of Newcastle, the Church Universal and Triumphant agreed to recognize our sovereignty. Last time I looked, sovereign nations didn't have to let other countries send troops onto their soil uninvited. You invade us, the war starts up again-and from what I hear, you folks are busy out West."

Damn those rebels to the Void! Graber thought.

"These criminals are under the personal ban of the Prophet," Graber said softly.

"Remind me why I should care what the Crackpot of Corwin thinks."

Graber felt himself flush at the blasphemy; rage came off the Seeker like heat from a closed stove in winter.

"You deny that there were fugitives here?" Graber said, his voice still flatly unemotional.

"Nobody here but my relatives," the Indian said, baring his teeth.

"He speaks truth, but with intent to deceive," Seeker Dalan said. Then: "There! There!"

He pointed north and east. The impassive face of the Sioux didn't move… but Graber was experienced at reading men's eyes. Their lips lied, speaking or smiling, but the pupils never.

"We will pursue," he said. To Red Leaf: "Don't get in our way, and none of your people need be hurt."

The Sioux leader raised his hand, and his folk began to draw their bows. Graber smiled thinly, and raised his own left hand-despite the savage twinge of pain that shot into the joint. The long formation broke into motion again, advancing and reaching over their shoulders for arrows in a sinuous unison like a tiger uncoiling from sleep.

"I have two hundred men, itancan," he said. "We outnumber you four to one, and my men are in full armor. If you fight me at close quarters like this, I will lose perhaps twenty dead, including any too seriously wounded to ride. We will kill you all, and it will take less than ten minutes. Then we kill all the women and children in this hunting camp. Then we will proceed on our mission."

"None of you would leave Lakota territory alive!"

"Words cannot express how much I do not care, as long as my mission is fulfilled," Graber said flatly. "Or as long as I die in the pursuit of it."

A boast would have rung false; the Indian was no fool. Graber's eyes never left his. After a moment, the Sword commander nodded curtly and reined his horse around.

It will take them some time to assemble a war-party that outnumbers us sufficiently. We have that long.

He remembered blue-gray eyes looking into his, and a pleasant lilting voice speaking:

It is easy to kill. Any fool can do it.

"Shite," Rudi said in exasperation.

Maybe it wasn't a good idea to stop long enough to put the gear on pack-saddles, he thought. But if we'd kept the cart, they'd be a lot closer. And we're going to need that equipment, later.

The sun was well up now; his binoculars showed the wink of its light on lance-heads southeastward. Far too many of them and far too regular to be Sioux; and besides, the Lakota didn't use nine-foot lances or russet-colored armor, as far as he knew.

But the Sword of the Prophet do, the creatures.

Ritva rode towards them and reined in, pointing eastward in the direction she'd come. "The buffalo are there, Rudi. You would not believe how many. But…"

"But?"

"They're moving north, and picking up speed. It looks like something spooked them. We'd better hurry if we want to get across the front of them-if we don't, we'll have to wait on this side. It is definitely impossible to get through that herd while they're moving."

"Shite," Rudi swore again, this time with more feeling.

He couldn't see them yet, but he thought there was a haze of dust in that direction. And even when the ground looked as tabletop flat as it did here, he'd learned that distances were deceptive-the slightest roll or fall of the ground could hide anything shorter than a hill even if it was only a few miles off.

"No," Three Bears said. "It's good. If we can get across the herd before the Cutters catch up, I mean. It'll take hours-maybe a whole day-for them to pass. If we're on the other side, we might as well have mountains in between."

Ritva nodded vigorously.

"Then go," Rudi said. "Ingolf, you and Mary take lead. Three Bears and I will bring up the rear; we're the best mounted archers. Now."

The Easterner nodded grimly and legged his horse up to a hand gallop.

Rudi wished briefly that he had time to switch to Epona, but he'd been riding one of the remounts to spare her. It was a good beast, but not quite fifteen hands-and even riding in kilt and shirt, he was a little heavy for it. It was sweating already, the musky scent strong under the dust and crushed grass of their passage. Usually being six-two and built like a cougar was an advantage, but sometimes…

Three Bears cut out two more for them as the remount herd went by, with Edain and Virginia and Fred driving them forward. The pack-saddles some of them carried had only about half a rider's weight and wouldn't slow them much.

Ahead, Ingolf signaled and the travelers turned sharply east of north, moving in a compact mass with the remuda of remounts in the middle. Rudi shifted his balance forward, and the well-trained animal stretched its legs, head beating up and down as if to set the pace. He looked over his shoulder, and the enemy were visible to the naked eye; as he watched the ant-tiny dots seemed to swarm, and then some of them were pulling out ahead of the others.

"How many do you make it?" Rudi called over the rising rumble of the hoofbeats, as a covey of quail burst from the grass ahead of him; he gentled the horse instinctively as it started.

"Ten or fifteen pulling away from the others," Three Bears said, nodding at Rudi with his brown braids flying in the wind of their passage.

They'd both had the same thought: the Cutters knew they couldn't catch the smaller, better-mounted group all at once. Two hundred mounted men could only proceed at the speed of the slowest mounts, and in a group that size there would always be some slugs, especially if they'd been taking horses where they could get them. So they'd sent their best riders and beasts on ahead, to push their quarry into tiring their horses.

"It's going to be close!" Rudi shouted back.

The Indian grinned; he was a young man, after all, younger than the Mackenzie, and of a warrior people. Then he turned in the saddle and shook his bow in the air.

"Kye-eee-kye!" he screamed. "Hoo'hay, hoo'hay! The sun shines on the hawk and on the quarry!"

Rudi bared his teeth too; he wasn't an oldster yet, either, and the Clan wasn't shy of a fight, and it was a bright summer's day with a good horse beneath him. His spirits lifted, seeming to fly with the long stride of the valiant mount between his legs. He added the saw-edged wailing ululation that Mackenzies took into battle.

Then he settled down to coaxing as much speed as he could out of the horse, short of the all-out dash that would set its lungs foaming out. The Cutters were pushing theirs to the uttermost; they could fall back and let others take up the sprint if they had to. And the buffalo herd was just coming into sight eastward.

"Cernunnos!" he blurted as it did.

There's miles of the things!

He could hear them, even miles away and on a galloping horse, a fast drumming rumble that struck at his face and chest. Too far to see individual animals, even ones as big as buffalo, but the great black-gray mass seemed to undulate, like waves on the sea. The forefront of the herd was a spray of dots; as they got a little closer he could see that they were the big ton-weight herd bulls, their massive heads down and the great shaggy humps rising and falling. At rest or walking they would look clumsy and slow, but now they were moving as fast as a horse could, or a little faster, their mouths open and lines of white foam falling from their tongues, everything lost but the need to flee.

"Going to be close!" Three Bears said again.

Rudi looked behind, over the head of the remount on its leading rein. The foremost Cutters were much closer now, and foam was slobbering from their horses' mouths and clotting on their forequarters. Probably none of the Corwinites was Rudi's size or weight, but they all had their war-harness on, which more or less equalized things. As he watched one of the ones at the rear fell away, his horse shaking its head and stumbling. The three in the lead rose in the stirrups and drew. Their upper bodies hardly seemed to move at all as their horses galloped…

"Uh-oh!" Three Bears called.

"I know what Uh-oh means!" Rudi replied.

"It means we're fucked!"

They both hunched down in the saddle. Wearing helms and with their round shields slung over their backs, they presented a minimum target. His back crawled a little as he waited for the whipppt of arrows.

And since that fight after Picabo, I've been just a little more nervous of that sound.

It came, but faintly. He looked around; the last shaft hit the ground as he watched, about ten yards behind them. Rudi clamped his thighs on the saddle and twisted, bringing up the bow. The recurve was a masterpiece from the best bowyer in Bend, and the long muscles of his arm coiled as he drew to the ear. Then loose, and the snap of the string on his bracer, the slam of the recoil, the shaft seeming to slow as it arched out at the doll-tiny shape of the pursuers.

Three Bears whooped as one of them ducked, and his horse took a half-step sideways in a puff of dust as an arrow landed between him and the Mackenzie. They fell back a little as Rudi sprayed three more shafts towards them as fast as he could draw, but hitting a moving target from a horse at better than two hundred yards was more a matter of luck than skill.

"Cernunnos!" Rudi grunted again as he looked forward.

The herd was much closer, and closing fast; the beasts were running straight north, and the travelers were angling to cut across their front. That might be possible; Ingolf and Mary were already past the first of them. The noise was much louder now, and the dust-cloud turned the morning sun into a swollen red orb. Looking back southward they stretched to the end of sight-and you could see a long way on the plains; it was as if a carpet of running bison extended from here to the other end of the world. The angle gave him a view across the front of the herd, where the mass frayed out into individuals, and it was half a mile to the other side.

The noise was stunning, and growing with every stride, building to a roar like all the waterfalls in the world, the sound of a million hooves hitting the soil as a quarter-million buffalo stampeded in blind fear and fury. He could smell them too, dung and piss and the hard dry stink of their bodies, like oxen working in the sun but wilder, and the rank exhalations of their panting breath. It took an effort of the will to keep angling towards them; his gut was convinced that it was insanity, that they could pound down mountains and turn him into a paste mixed inextricably with the flesh of his horse.

Whipppt!

An arrow went by, not ten feet to his left, and then three more followed it; the last was uncomfortably close to his horse's haunches. He turned and shot again himself, and one of the pursuers went down in a tumble of man and horse-he must have hit the mount.

"Sorry, brother horse!" he called, and then whooped laughter as the Cutter staggered to his feet only to topple face-first on the grass.

This is immortality! he exulted. I'm immortal because I could die in the next second!

Three Bears shot too; he rode twenty-five or thirty pounds lighter than Rudi and his horse was pulling ahead, turning across the front of the herd.

Thock!

The arrow hit Rudi's shield with an impact like a blow from a club; there was no pain beyond that, and a quick glance showed it standing in the bullhide like a weed sprouting from dirt. The narrow point showed just under his armpit, dimpling through the felt glued to the inside of the shield.

Rudi twisted and shot again. That let him see the Cutter shaft hit his horse just behind the saddle, as well as hear the wet sharp slap of it. He kicked his feet free of the stirrups instantly, dropping the bow and planting both hands on the saddlehorn as he swung his body over and down, hitting the ground running as the horse fell over on its side.

Momentum was too much for him; he went down head over heels, but an acrobat's training gave him a little control as the hard ground battered at his body and snapped the leather strap that kept the shield on his back. It went flying as he tumbled; the arrows scattered from his quiver in a spray like oracle sticks tossed for a divination and his sword hilt hit him under the armpit with a thump that sent agony running through the arm and down his torso. Then he was on his feet again, long legs pumping.

The remount's leading rein had snapped as his horse fell; it was slowing down as he vaulted onto its back, bare except for the saddle-blanket left on. That made it rear and bolt…

Too late!

A single glance to his right showed that the head of the dense-packed buffalo herd was past him; where Three Bears was he couldn't say. All that existed eastward was a wall of flesh, rising and falling as it ran; his horse was doing its valiant best, but it was sliding backwards along that rampart of hair and horns and mad rolling eyes. The Cutters gave a shout of triumph as they closed in, casing their bows and tossing their lances up into the overarm stabbing grip. They'd be within range in seconds. They didn't even have to kill him themselves-just keeping him in play until the rest of them came up would do nicely.

Do me, nicely, Rudi thought.

There was only one thing to do, save that it was utterly mad. Rudi wrenched at the reins, forcing the unwilling horse closer to the buffalo. A Cutter trooper was almost within killing range now, raising his lance over his head, his face a mask of effort as mindless as the glazed eyes of his horse. The six-inch head of the lance glittered through the dust, light breaking off the honed edges and needle point.

Rudi gathered his long legs beneath him against the back of the horse, waited until the next heave of the mount's back was rising beneath him, and leapt.

For a moment he was soaring through the air, and he could see the goggling of the Cutter's eyes as his thrust cut empty space. Then he landed and his hands gripped the hair on a buffalo's hump, closing with convulsive strength. His feet dragged painfully; he bent his knees and drove them down in the trick-rider's leap, matched with the thrust of his arms.

He bounced up out of the dust, and then he was astride the buffalo's back behind the hump, looking leftward as the Cutter troopers rode not ten yards away, lances poised and utter disbelief on their faces.

And none of them can shoot at me, unless they're left-handed, he thought, fighting down a crow of laughter-a mounted archer could only shoot forward and back and to the left.

He rode with his knees braced high up to keep them from being crushed between his buffalo and the one to the right, leaning forward with the curly mass of the hump inches before his face. If it had been at rest the beast would have bucked him off or crushed him by rolling, and then stomped and gored him in short order. Now it virtually ignored him, intent only on the blind flight that was carrying it northward nearly as fast as a railcar with half a dozen men pedaling madly. The musky smell of it filled his nostrils; he turned his head left and grinned at the Cutters as they ever-so-gradually began to slip behind.

Somewhere deep within his mind a voice wailed, What next?

Right now in this instant of time he was thoroughly enjoying the look on their faces, the lances held as if they simply could not believe they were to be denied that first deep, soul-satisfying stab. And Major Graber had the expression of a man with an insect dancing on his ear-drum and no way to get at it.

Then one of the troopers gave a cry of raw frustration loud enough to be heard even through the thunder of the bison stampede and threw his lance. The weapon wasn't made or balanced for casting, but it landed point-first in the rump of the buffalo bearing Rudi anyway. He pulled his feet up even as the forequarters started to go down and jumped, letting the motion of its body fling him skyward.

No good landings in sight, he thought, a crazed memory of piloting a glider into a wheat field near Portland running through his mind's eye.

The buffalo he'd left tripped, and the one behind it rammed helplessly into the prone shape kicking on the ground. Seconds later half a dozen of the beasts were piled in a heaving mound ten feet high, and the stream behind parted on either side of it. Rudi landed with an impact that half winded him; for a moment he was half across the next buffalo, slipping as its pounding motion threw his body down the slick right side, wet with foam from its lungs and slimy with the mud it had made of the dust in the animal's thin summer coat. He locked his hands in the thicker hair on its hump, and then nearly fell as a patch came off in his hands where it was still shedding.

"Dagda's dick!" he swore, the world lurching down towards the pounding hooves.

His feet struck the ground. He ran as he would by a horse when he was doing tricks, bounding, touching down only once every six feet, working his hands into the curls of coarse hair. They cut at his fingers like wire, even through the hard callus, and he made himself relax the death grip a little; he would need all the strength of his hands, if he lived more than a few seconds longer.

Then the animal bawled with a different note than its panting fear. An arrow had struck it not far from where his hands gripped, slanting downward into the hump. He risked a quick backwards look; the Cutters were just barely visible through the dust, and they'd fallen back twenty or thirty yards-enough that they could shoot forward and have some chance of hitting him, if they were very good shots and rode like centaurs.

"The which they do," he snarled.

Blood was leaking down towards his hands. He let his feet hit the ground again, pushing up off the buffalo's hump as he leapt like a high jumper in the Lughnasadh games. To the Cutters it must have appeared as if he'd popped up out of the dust like a man on a trampoline.

This time the soles of his moccasins came down on a buffalo's back, the surface heaving beneath him like an earthquake. He crouched in the same motion and sprang again before the checked leather of his footwear could slip against the slick hide, and landed two beasts over. He let his feet slide apart and came down on his buttocks astride the bison, hands once more sunk in the thick hair on the animal's neck; it stuttered in its stride and crab-jinked, bruising his leg against the beast beside it, but not quite hard enough to do more than set up a ripple in the great flow of animal flesh.

That gave him an instant's time to look back. Graber had managed to get his horse almost level with Rudi, and the lance was in his hand. But thirty feet separated them, an impossible cast with something not meant to be thrown, and with the awkward positioning. Rudi raised his own hand. Instead of throwing the spear the officer of the Sword raised his weapon in what was almost a salute, then turned his horse away to the west.

Leaving me to the tender mercies of tatonka, Rudi thought.

Escaping from the Sword had been one thing. Escaping from the escape was likely to be more difficult…

Because I ca n 't get off while they're running, but when they stop running, they'll notice I'm here and kill me, he thought.

The dust was thick in his mouth, even though he wasn't far from the front of the herd; he coughed and spat, coughed and spat, blinking eyes that felt as if ground glass had been rubbed under the lids. Ahead of him the rumps of bison rose and fell, rose and fell, looking absurdly tiny compared to the huge hairy shoulders, but shoving the massive bodies forward with graceless efficiency. And looming up through the dust, a rock-twelve feet of jagged gneiss, one of the bones of the earth that sometimes stuck through the thin skin of the high-plains soil.

Rudi's buffalo was headed straight for it. I'll pour out a bottle of whiskey for you, Coyote Old Man, he thought, raising his legs until they were along the buffalo's back. Just no more of your jokes, now, you hear?

He turned his feet in, frantically trying to dig in with the toes. Then the world shook with a whump as the buffalo struck the rock and staggered sideways; another as it rammed into the animal on that side, which promptly tried to hook its horn into whatever had hurt it. Rudi could feel his stones trying to crawl up into his belly now; the beast he rode was staggering, and there was nothing he could do…

A horse loomed out of the dust, pacing the buffalo; he realized it must have been in the lee of the rock, where the stampede parted around it.

Rick Three Bears rode it, leaning low over the neck as he urged it up to speed, death closing in all around and on his heels.

"Hey, Strong Raven!" he screamed, just barely audible through the cataclysmic noise of a million hooves, his streaming braids framing a wild grin. "Room for two on Big Dog here!"

Rudi waved back the circle of faces as he staggered forward and then collapsed to his knees. A hand held a canteen in front of his face; he drank, spat, coughed, drank more and coughed again convulsively, dust-colored water shooting out of his nose. His stomach heaved with a sick dropping sensation, and he swallowed acid at the back of his throat. When he raised the canteen again, his hand shook so badly that the horn mouth rattled against his teeth.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Ground and center.

He struggled and controlled his diaphragm. Behind him Three Bears was talking:

"Jesus Christ, I've never seen anything like it-we'll have to rename him Rides Mad Buffalo-"

"Rudi, Rudi, are you all right?"

That was Mathilda's voice; he could feel her hands on his shoulders. He concentrated, and her face came into focus, the big hazel eyes soft with concern.

"Anamchara," he croaked, and fell forward into her embrace.

"Are you all right?" she asked, her hands stroking his hair.

Another shuddering breath, and he felt a little control come back. "Apart from feeling like I'm going to puke, the which would be no return at all to you for your care of me, I think I am," he said.

Amazingly, it seemed to be true; he felt stiff and bruised, and he'd be sore as a graze tomorrow-and he had more than a few of those-but nothing was damaged.

Mathilda rose, helping him up. He stood, panting, and took a real drink of the water, giving her a squeeze around the shoulders with his left arm. He held his right out to the itancan 's son, and they gripped forearm to forearm.

"We're even," he said to Three Bears. "In fact, I'm in your debt."

The dark face was flushed now too; the memory of those moments was coming out, and it was harder to bear than the doing had been.

"Shit, they were only going to kill us, not eat us like the lions!" Rick said, his own voice a little shaky. "Brother," he added.

Rudi nodded gravely. "You'll be wanting to get back to your father and family, brother," he said. "But I'm thinking we'll be meeting again."

"Yeah, and we'll be fighting Cutters together again," Three Bears said.

Then he looked west. Half a mile away the herd was still streaming by. "I'll head back when the Buffalo People get out of the way!"