The Sword of the Lady

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE NORTH WOODS (FORMERLY NORTHEASTERN WISCONSIN) OCTOBER 14,

CHANGE YEAR 24/2022 AD

'You are sure the weather will be bad, Master Dalan'' Major Graber of the Sword of the Prophet asked.

The High Seeker smiled. The snow here was falling straight and thick, cutting visibility to a gray blur in the dim sunlight of a winter's afternoon. It gave the air an odd muffled quality, as if everything had been wrapped with thick soft cloths. 'Yes,' he said.'The butterfly has beaten its wings. That thunderclap echoes across continents.'

Graber nodded. I do not know what that means, and I do not wish to know. 'Hail Maitreya!' he said aloud.

The rolling land here was not totally unlike his home; no high mountains, of course, or any open range, but endless conifers a little like the foothill forests. The cold and snowfall didn't bother a man reared in the Bitterroot country and the Valley of Paradise; he had a good buffalo-hide robe over his armor and gambeson, thick wool trousers, and for the rest the Sword of the Prophet were trained to welcome hardship. A true man transcended the material with the stuff of his atman.

There had been a village here before the Sword of the Prophet came. Of sorts, patched-up pre-Change houses and sheds built of salvage and scraps of timber; and they had kept most of the buildings that still had roofs intact, so there was shelter and to spare for his men and even for the horses, and food enough for both if they were careful- he didn't need to keep seed grain for next year, unlike the former inhabitants. Not enough for the two hundred or so savages who'd drifted in over the past week, but they'd brought their own supplies. Their low domed brushwood shelters stretched in little dribs and drabs through the snowy woods, avoiding the open spaces that had been tilled ground and pasture.

He scowled a little as a scream came from one of their camps. The men of the Sword hadn't killed all the original dwellers, but the newcomers were seeing to that. He'd ever hesitated to do what was necessary, but he didn't do it for sport. 'The storms will continue,' Dalan said.'And it will be very cold, much colder than usual for this time of year. Air will flow south from the Pole.' 'Good, High Seeker,' Graber said.'But they are still likely to bypass us unless we can get the savages-' 'The Bekwa, most of them are called. Those clans have been drifting in here from the east, in the last few years. And there are some of the local clans here now too.' 'Get the Bekwa in order, so that we can use them to scout. Surely they are not servants of the Ascending Hierarchy'' 'Some of them are. The missions have reached very far. But the Masters are ever-watchful for all of us, you realize.' 'Of course, High Seeker.' That was standard doctrine-all religions had hints of the Truth.'I can't even speak their absurd language, though. And what English they know is hardly better.' 'I can speak their language. In more ways than one. Come.'

Graber followed him; he made a small gesture with his right hand to keep any of the men from trailing along, thinking his full armor and the fact that he could call on his troops enough. He didn't fear the Bekwa, anymore than he would so many rabid dogs-but he wouldn't take chances with a pack of rabid dogs, either. Since he had to work with them, showing fear would be the worst mistake of all. The buildings quickly dropped out of sight in the silent, steady downfall of the snow. There were dogs, not mad but vicious enough; they ran barking and snarling at the two Westerners, until Graber thought he would have to draw his shete and beat them aside with the flat.

Then they stopped, staring at Dalan; their bristling fur fell flat. Some whimpered and fled with their tails tucked between their legs. Others fawned on the High Seeker, scattering only when he kicked one. They walked between the shelters of the savages then. Smoke lay in a haze, trickling from cooking fires under little thatched covers, or through holes in the tops of the shelters. It had a bitter tinge, and even in the cold there was a stink that made him wrinkle his nose. The warriors squatted and watched from the entrances of the huts, or from cruder lean-tos, following the two outsiders in silence. Some were Injun; others looked like white men. They all had something of the same feral menace, eyes staring from under falls of tangled or braided hair.

Not quite complete savages, he thought. Not like the Eaters we saw in Illinois closer to the dead cities. They should be useful, if they don't kill and roast us all.

What wool clothing they had was tattered enough, probably looted, but they had well-tanned leather gear of their own making, and their weapons-hatchets, knives, spears, short recurve bows-were reasonably well fashioned when they weren't salvage. Nor did they look so starved and rickety… though some of them grinned at him with blackened teeth filed to points. After a few minutes they passed out of the encampment, and then came to a circle of the domed huts set about with poles bearing the standards of the tribes gathered here-one had the rayed Sun of the CUT; others included the withered worm-eaten head of a wolf, and several skulls. 'Watch here,' Dalan said to the Sword officer.'This struggle will not be on the gross physical plane… but I may need protection.'

Struggle' Graber thought.

His only outward reply was an inclination of the head. Slowly, men came out of the huts; men and a pair of women. Graber scowled at them-they were wearing trousers-but much service among unbelievers had hardened him to the sight of things forbidden. To be honest, the CUT hadn't yet managed to purge even the homeland of such wickedness. Some of the newcomers looked hostile; one or two bowed to Master Dalan in fellowship. All were oddly dressed, with strings of beads, clusters of feathers, the feet of eagles, gear more arcane, or the tanned heads of animals worn as caps.

Several produced small drums and began to beat them with bone hammers, the sound falling flat and distanced among the snow: dum-dumdum, dum-dum- dum…

There were a dozen of them in all. They began to dance, a swaying shuffling circle, in and out and around, through the screen of drifting flakes. He blinked as Dalan joined them, turning in place in the center with his arms stretched skyward.

Shamans, the Sword commander realized. They're making magic.

He shuddered; that was unclean, by the CUT's teaching. Master Dalan must have dispensation from the Prophet himself-of course, what the adepts among the Seekers did wasn't magic, strictly speaking; it was powers conferred by the Secret Masters. The dance grew wilder, feet stamping and leaping. Then slower, barely moving at all. At last all squatted and knelt, the circle facing inward towards Dalan. Graber realized with a start that his heartbeat was running in time with the drums, and with a wrenching effort of will that made the sweat run down his flanks and his belly twist with nausea he forced himself to break that rhythm.

Hail Serapis Bey! he told himself, chanting the mantra inwardly as he'd been taught in the House, until calm gradually returned. Hail Serapis Bey! The Fourth Ray is with me. Hail Serapis Bey!

When he could focus on the world again he almost started and drew his shete; there were men around him, wrapped in bulky fur coats against the growing cold and the endless snow. A little older than the other Bekwa warriors, and better dressed, all with weapons in their hands.

War chiefs, he thought, noting the array of scars-from the look of them, fighting infection wasn't among their skills. Waiting for.. whatever Dalan is doing.

Some of the chiefs had torches with them, soaked with pine resin. The flames shed a ruddy tinge over the motionless circle, hissing as snowflakes fell into them. The drumbeat stilled at last. One of the drummers seemed to yawn… until the gape grew impossibly wide. A whining sound came from the gaping mouth, and an instant later blood sprayed out; and ran from nose and ears and eyes as well, like black tears. Another of the shamans jerked forward and then slumped with a limpness that Graber knew well-it was the sort that a man showed when he'd had his spine cut, or an arrow through the eye into the brain. Dalan held out his arms, as if embracing the shamans. 'I… see… you,' he said.

The shamans blinked. It took an instant before Graber realized that they'd done it in unison, and even then he could not be sure. When they spoke it was a rustling whisper, in a synchronicity as complete as a Temple choir: 'I… see… you.'

They rose. When they had sat it had been one by one; now they came to their feet like drilled soldiers. They turned to face the war chiefs, and blinked once more… at the same instant, every pair of eyes obscured and then open. And something looked out from behind those eyes, those faces blank and fixed as if they were formed from dough. 'Guerr!' they cried in unison.

Dalan threw his hands skyward in triumph. 'War!' he shouted. 'Guerr di' Dyu!' 'God says war!'

Dalan staggered towards him, face blazing with exultation.'They will fight, Major,' he said. 'Good. Though even so… it's a big country.' 'More than them, Major. More things than the tribesmen will make war.' 'Now, this is something of a sport!' Rudi Mackenzie said.'And a very good way to travel in a hurry, so.'

He let his skis plow to a stop with the points angled in, and stabbed his poles into the snow. He'd skied before he came east, but only downhill; mostly at Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood, a Portlander Crown preserve kept for hunting and sport under forest law. That was a fine swooping wonder he'd seldom tired of when the Regent's Court paid a visit during his annual stays in the north. This type of skiing-cross-country, they called it, which was more sensible than most names-was almost as enjoyable, and new to him. The snow didn't lie long enough in the Willamette lowlands to make it practical and the mountains weren't flat enough.

This gear was different, too; the skis were longer and more narrow, with an arch under the foot, and a fish-scale pattern pointing backward in that section to give you a grip when you pushed off. And the foot wasn't fastened hard to it either, just a loop for the toe and a band.

Ingolf Vogeler came up the low slope with a skating motion and slid to a halt beside him under the shelter of a stretch of white pine. He pushed the goggles up on his face and blinked into the wind that was-again-starting to flick snow at them. It came harder and harder out of the northeast, out of the darkness growing there as the short day died. The cold with it was bitter, the sort that would turn the tip of your nose numb before you noticed it. They'd had a few cases of mild frostbite already, and only stringent checks and careful training had kept the party from worse.

Both men wore loose parkas with quilted linings and hoods trimmed in wolf fur; beneath them were what the Richlanders called long johns against the skin, scratchy and itchy but blessedly warm, double-thickness pants, knit socks and flannel shirts, sweaters and balaclavas that covered all of their faces but the eyes.

Sure, and the brigandine and its padding are lost in the swaddling of it all! Rudi thought.

With all that and the warmth of effort he was merely a little chilly, but the temperature was dropping fast from the hard cold of day to something that frightened him a little. It was four hours past noon, or a little more, and getting dark even without the thickening clouds. The stretching boughs above them swayed back and forth with a whirring, soughing moan. 'Well, at least none of our bunch are falling over regular anymore,' Ingolf said.'We're actually starting to make decent time.'

They both looked down at the line of sleds toiling northward over the riverside roadway. The river there wasn't exactly small, but the humped white expanse of ice was already halfway out from each shore, leaving only a narrowing strip of dark moving water in the middle. Slushy lumps of snow-ice floated in it.

Four of the sleds were pulled by a double hitch of horses each, and even with the burden of walking through snow it was less draught-power than pulling a similar weight on summer roads would require. A smaller sleigh hissed ahead with eight pairs of dogs drawing it, something Rudi hadn't seen before. Pierre Walks Quiet managed that, breaking trail with a skill that could have left the rest behind any time he chose. He rode the rear of the sled half the time, then ran tirelessly beside it for a space. His voice was a barking yelp as he commanded the dogs, and they obeyed it like extensions of his will.

The party had slimmed down to a manageable thirty-odd, now; the Readstown forester, the ten questers, and the rest the pick of the Southside Freedom Fighters. Most of them were between the vehicles, gliding forward with the swooping push their hosts in Ingolf's birthplace had taught them. As if to give Ingolf the lie, one of them tangled his skis and pitched sideways; it was just barely visible a quarter-mile away, with the snow thickening between them by the minute. Two of his fellows stopped on either side and heaved him upright, dusting off the snow in a process that was half an exasperated drubbing as well. 'Surprised they all learned how to handle skis this quickly,' Ingolf said, unconcerned.

Rudi shrugged.'We're all in hard condition and supple,' he said; every physical skill you learned made the next one easier.'And there's nothing else to do, sunrise to sunset!'

Though even he had ached a bit the first few days. This way of travel used every muscle you had, and not in quite the same way as anything else. 'It's easy enough to learn passably, though I'd be saying it's a while before we'll all do it really well.'

He could tell that Ingolf grinned under the knit mask; bits of icicle condensed from his breath broke off the pale gray of the wool. 'Not as good at it as I once was myself, you betcha,' he said. 'Ah,' Rudi said with mock consideration.'And you're an old man of thirty the now. Suffering from newlywed's exhaustion, I shouldn't wonder, too, eh''

Ingolf threw a mock punch at Rudi's head, and the Mackenzie rolled his head aside. He was feeling fairly good himself. They were up to about twice easy walking speed now, making up to forty miles a day and looking to do better; if they could keep that up, they'd reach the eastern ocean fast. There was an edge in the other man's voice, though. 'Something the matter'' Rudi said.

Ingolf rubbed at his eyes with the palm of his right glove, squinting into the rising weather. 'This isn't even November yet, not quite, and it's feeling more like February. Yah hey, we got weather here in wintertime, but this is earlier than I can ever remember it. Not so much the snow; that can happen, in a bad year. It's the cold. We shouldn't be getting ice yet, not real river-and-lake ice. That's earlier than Pierre Walks Quiet can remember, and he was pushing fifty when the Change came. And lived up here in the North Country all his life till then. He was a guide, too. Spent most of his time in the woods, knew every trick the winter could throw.' 'Good luck for us, then, traveling so,' Rudi said.'Some of the small rivers are already frozen solid.' He nodded downslope:'That'll be solid enough to bear weight in a week. I expected it to take longer, that I did.' 'Uff da, so did I! We wanted cold and snow, yah hey, but… too much is worse than not enough!'

Rudi nodded.'A man can die of thirst, or drown,' he agreed.

Then he pulled his goggles down, and they swooped off towards the others; it wasn't steep enough to glide by gravity alone, but they could build up to something faster than a man could easily run. The rhythm was becoming as natural as walking, after the better part of two weeks; push — with-one-foot, slide with the other, then switch, always remembering the poles-though you could do it without them if you had to. Ingolf still had to hold back a little to let Rudi keep up; his boyhood was returning to him, and with it a skill that wasted no energy at all. The extra speed drove fingers of cold through every possible crevice in Rudi's armor of cloth and leather and fur, tiny little daggers that only the heat his body generated could hold at bay. 'Hungry!' he said, though they'd eaten well at lunchtime.

Ingolf laughed, pacing it to his breath.'Nothing in the whole world like a trek on skis to give a man an appetite! You go fast, but you have to pay for it.'

The sandy plains they'd crossed lately had been going back to scrub woods, with farms and villages here and there like oases; most had been willing enough to swap a little, with harvest close past. Now it had been days since the last sign of human beings, and they were starting to come into real forest; white and red pine, darker green hemlocks, bare-limbed maple and beech and birch and oak. The ground was still flattish but with occasional low hills, and here and there a granite boulder. One loomed ahead, like a red and pink and speckled egg under a cap of white. They swung left and right around it, and came up alongside the dogsled. 'Pete!' Ingolf shouted.'Hold up!'

The old Anishinabe called to his team and rested his mittens on the twin handles of his sled; the dogs laid themselves down, noses tucked under tails, and in seconds their pale fur looked like lumps in the snow. He turned before he pulled down the knit mask that covered most of his face; the wrinkled lips were drawn thin, and his eyes a little sunken. He was nearly seventy now, and though he had the endurance of a fit man a generation younger… that still made him the equivalent of middle-aged among a band whose next eldest were not quite thirty. 'I don't like the smell of this merde,' the Indian said, nodding his head backward into the building wail.'It's not right, not this early; snow, yah, but not this cold all the time. I think this one's going to be worse. Goin' get cold, too much, you bet. We better look for some place to hole up, and fast.'

Rudi nodded; when three experienced men all had the same bad feeling, you were well advised to listen. At need the sleds and dome-tents would take them through even a very bad blow, but he'd prefer something stouter to break the force of the wind if it was available. 'The twins should be reporting in soon,' he said.'Matti! Pass the word that we'll be camping.'

His half sisters did come in with the wind behind them, but in the interim the storm built from nasty to a low howl through the pines. Rudi felt an impulse to hunch as he faced into it; instead he just leaned a little. When the two Rangers came in sight, they were only twenty yards away. 'Old farmhouse, sheds and barns,' Ritva said, slapping snow off her ermine-trimmed hood and white face mask and pointing behind herself. 'The farmhouse is down,' Mary continued.'Looks like it was abandoned before the Change and collapsed a couple of years ago. Lots of nice dry wood.' 'One barn is still mostly up,' Ritva continued.'We didn't check inside, but the roof's on. It's one of those potato barns. No tracks we could see, but that doesn't mean much in this. It's about a mile; up past that low rocky hill, right on an old laneway through some hemlocks.' 'Good!' Rudi said.

They'd seen many of the potato barns in the sandy district behind them; they were three-quarters sunken in the earth to insulate the root crop for storage over winter. That would make it relatively snug. He thought for a moment, then: 'Matti, get the train moving. Fred, Virginia, rearguard. Ignatius, you're point for the train with Jake. Mary, Ritva, Ingolf, Edain with me; we'll break trail.' 'Me too,' Pierre Walks Quiet said. 'All right. Let's be going. Faster we're settled in, the faster we can cook supper!'

The wind was hard enough to make skiing into it a chore now, even with pine and birch closing in around them; he was glad of the dogsled to hang on to sometimes, and they all gave a little collective grunt of relief as they came into the shelter of the hill. The laneway was probably a farm track by origin, invisible dirt taking off from equally invisible broken pavement in the growing white mist. Half the snow was fresh, slanting down from the low clouds, and half whipped off the ground by the snarling wind, hiding his own legs when he looked down. When they came through the hemlocks the impact was enough to snatch his breath away; even Garbh hesitated a little before bounding forward at Edain's side, rising and falling in fresh spurts of snow.

It got a little better when they reached the tumbled ruins; someone had planted windbreaks long ago, sugar maples mostly, and beeches. They were bare now, but they were big, towering eighty feet or better, and there were a lot of them with trunks nearly as thick as a man. The farmhouse had been substantial, and old-its remains didn't have the matchstick look that structures from just before the Change displayed when they went down.

Now it was a pile of board and beam slumped into its cellar, and so were most of the outbuildings; a silo had broken off and left jagged teeth standing upright like a shattered tooth. Nearby the rusted hulk of some machine of the ancient world-the type called tractor — stood forlorn, half buried. The potato barn was a low long rectangle, roofed in curved sheet metal and with ventilators rising from the top like pipes crowned with pointed conical hats. 'Seems perfect,' he said-or rather, shouted.'Let's take a look.'

They did; the boards of the building's sides were mostly intact, and the glass in a couple of windows unsmashed. The entrance was double doors, sagging open, down a ramp that must have been for the passage of wagons. They approached, then kicked out of their skis and set those upright in the snow. It was nearly knee-deep on the humans when they put their feet down.

Garbh stopped just outside the entranceway, and even over the wind's keening he could hear the ratcheting menace of her snarl. Edain and he shouted as one: 'Watch out!'

Warrior's reflex overrode surprise; he could feel it happening, like a surge of fire through the cold sluggishness of his body. A great dark shape came out of the doors like something shot from a catapult; he could hear the dogsled team going wild in their traces. Garbh leapt for a throat and was batted aside like a rag doll, turning head-over-heels with a whining yelp of surprise. The bear had to rear on its hind legs to do that, though, roaring in gape-jawed rage. That gave Edain his single chance. The longbow spat an arrow, and the roar turned to a coughing gurgle for a moment as the cloth yard shaft transfixed the thick neck.

Rudi had his sword out now, in the two-handed grip; not what he'd have chosen to fight an animal three times his weight, quick as a cat and stronger than a team of plow oxen, but it was a great deal better than nothing or a knife if you didn't have a hunting spear to hand. The bruin hesitated only an instant, and then it was on him. Like a wall of dark fur it reared, and the paws swung like living maces fit to snap necks and spatter brains.

Whippt.

The claws passed half an inch from his face as he drove in and ducked; some part of him cursed the snow for hampering his feet. He twisted and hewed, and the yard of sharp steel raked a great forearm open to the bone and skidded off that. Blood spattered at him, striking his goggles, blinding him. He threw himself backward frantically, landing on his back in snow that hampered and clung as he tore them off. Only an instant, but the bear was looming over him like the shadow of incarnate Death, ready to fall in an avalanche of teeth and claws. Rudi snarled back at it, coming up to one knee and tensing for the last effort.

A chain snaked out of the night and whipped around the bear's forepaw. The sickle-blade at the end sank in as Mary set her feet and pulled. The bear's stroke was thrown off, but at the end of her fighting iron the hundred and fifty-odd pounds of Dunedain woman and her gear traced an arc through the gathering darkness almost as spectacular as Garbh's a moment earlier. She'd wrapped the end around her waist for leverage, and now it worked the other way.

There was a wail of:'Oh, rrrrrrhaich!' and a thump. 'Firo, pen u-celeg!' Ritva screamed, and loosed an arrow from her recurve.'Firo, brog!'

There was a wet thunk as it hammered into the beast's hip bone.

That wasn't going to fulfill the cry of:'Die, foul beast! Die, bear!' But it would help.

Rudi surged up while it was distracted, his whole body twisting into the two-handed drawing slash across its belly. Impact shocked up his wrists and arms, more like hitting an oak pell than a man. Fur and thick hide and fat and muscle parted under the desperate power of the blow, and intestines spilled out like writhing pink eels as he followed through. Something hit him, stunning-hard, and sent him through the air; he tasted blood and felt his face tingle and stars shoot through his vision.

Rudi rolled through the snow, blinded by it. Someone landed across him as he did-Ingolf, he realized, as he heard the flat vowels of his curses. They struggled to get up without cutting each other open on longsword or shete, and then an arrow hissed between their heads. 'Be sodding careful!' he bellowed.

Back on his feet he could barely see the beast through the horizontal wail of the snow, though its moaning bellow was loud. Pierre Walks Quiet had an actual hunting spear with him, lashed to the dogsled. Now he'd gotten it free, and he dashed in and thrust. The long point went home in the bear's chest, but it charged even with its staggering feet tripping in its own guts. He ran backward through the snow, half falling, until the butt-cap of the spear rang on the side of the buried tractor. The machine rocked backward, but the impact drove the weapon deep into the charging animal as well.

Rudi and Ingolf hobbled forward. Edain was already there; even Garbh was, limping but game. Her master shot twice, Ritva once, and then Rudi and Ingolf each slammed the edge of their long blades into its spine.

The bear sank forward; Pete's thin form wriggled out from beneath it, the arms and chest of his parka wet with its blood and fluids. The animal gave a last whimper, pawed at its neck, and went limp. 'Back! Let Brother Bear die!' Rudi snapped.'Is everyone all right' Sound off!'

His folk did. Ritva returned with Mary's arm over her shoulder; the one-eyed Ranger staggered over to Ingolf. 'Are you all right, honey' Bar melindo,' he added. 'I'm… just… thumped…' she wheezed, half collapsing against him.'Nothing… broken.'

She grinned, though a little painfully.'I feel like I've been hit by a bear!'

Rudi wiped the blood from his sword, feeling his pulse slow and the sweat that soaked his underclothing turn gelid. Controlling his breathing turned it deep and slow and took the tremor out of his hands. There were knocks that would be painful bruises, but that was no novelty. 'Now, that was more like a matter of excitement, anxiety and dread than I prefer before dinner!' he said lightly.

He bent to touch the bear's blood to his forehead and murmur the rite of passing; it had been a brave beast, and deserved honor. 'Why did it go for us'' Pierre Walks Quiet said.'They usually don't, unless they're real hungry, or you push them into a corner, or it's a mother with cubs. We hadn't gone in to its den… and it's early for a bear to den up for the winter, even with the weather like this.'

Ingolf bent to examine it; snow was collecting on its open eyes and on its mouth and nostrils, which meant it wasn't going to get up again. He spoke thoughtfully, if you could when you had to shout: 'It wasn't mean-sick either. Big healthy four-year-old male, I'd say. And see, nice und fat for winter. That makes them more peaceable, most times.'

Mary nodded, shrugged, and then winced a little.'Bears are unpredictable,' she said.'Even black bears.'

Rudi went on:'I don't know. Perhaps we should have a rite for the Father of Bears. I do know one thing, though.' 'What'' Edain said.

He was looking around for a place to haul the carcass up to drain, and testing the edge of his knife.

Rudi grinned.'I know what we'll be havin' for dinner!'

Epona whickered at him, raising her head from a heap of feed pellets made of compressed alfalfa and cracked oats and sugar-beet molasses. Rudi whickered back in the horse-tongue; a sound that meant, Yes, I'm here, relax, as near as he could tell. The smell of bear was not calculated to make horses easy, even one as brave as Epona. Nor that of blood. 'Oft evil will will evil mar,' Mary muttered, leaning back against Ingolf's chest.

She was a little tiddly with the applejack they'd brought from Readstown. They had fires down the length of the potato barn, and it had heated up to the point where you were reasonably comfortable without your parka-provided you kept everything else on. The body heat of the people and that from the horses down near the entrance helped, and the quick patches they'd made on holes in the walls, and the way the snow was piling up outside. It made good insulation.

Bear meat roasted over the coals, sending up little fragrant spurts as drops of fat fell from the richly marbled flesh; a slight blue haze hung under the ceiling, until it drifted out the unblocked ventilators. The air smelled of cooking, and the dryish earth beneath them with its residues of old crops long rotted away to nothing, and less nameable things. They'd found human bones here too, but very old, and much scattered by small scavengers except for the skulls. He'd judged them to be a man, a woman and a young child by the size, and victims of the Change. You still found the like anywhere protected from quick decay, and not near living settlements.

There had been a message in shaky hand scratched on the wall: Two weeks out of Green Bay. We're all sick. I think from bad water. Please, God, someone, help us.

I hope they've found peace in the Summerlands, Rudi thought. And better luck next time.

They'd buried what remained. Father Ignatius had said the words and planted a cross, it being most likely that they were Christians. 'I said, oft evil will will evil mar,' Mary repeated a little louder.

Her half brother raised a brow, sitting cross-legged with the small of his back against his rolled sleeping bag, gnawing mouthfuls off a rib; it was good if a little strong tasting, and much like pork.

Much like wild boar, he thought. Gamy but not too much so.

The rich taste of the meat and crisp fat filled his mouth pleasantly; the bear had been eating beechnuts and roots and berries that gave its flesh an aromatic tang. Garbh was lying on her back near Edain in an ecstatic daze, her belly rounded out to tautness and her tongue dangling over her fangs. 'And what would you be meanin' by that cryptic remark'' he asked Mary, a teasing light in his eyes.'And yes, I realize it's from the Histories. You needn't give chapter and verse.'

Then he took a bite of roast potato-they'd traded for some spuds several days ago at the last farmstead they passed-and a sip of hot spruce-tip tea. 'I mean that loathsome morn-curuni, that black wizard in the red robe,' she said owlishly.'Sending us storms like Saruman did to the Fellowship on Caradhras.'

Ingolf looked over her head-she was leaning back against his chest with his thick arms wrapped around her-and said: 'Yah hey, that's more sensible than I'd like to admit,' he said reluctantly. 'And maybe the bear,' Ritva said thoughtfully.'That would be canonical, too. Well, nearly. Sending wargs and crebain was.' 'Same thing,' Mary said. 'Is not.' 'Is! Well, yes, it was a clean bear. Anyway, the storms made it easier for us to move by ski and sled earlier, and now this bear has helped with our food supplies; so the evil will is marring evil. Pass me another skewer of the liver, would you'' 'Bad medicine, either way,' Pierre Walks Quiet said.

He took some of the meat between his teeth, sliced it off near his lips with his curved skinning knife, then went on after he'd chewed and swallowed: 'I'm not happy about this place.' Just then the whole metal roof of it, that had survived a quarter-century of winters since the Change, thuttered as if the wind outside would rip it off. The sound had been growing more muffled as the snow built up; now it came louder again, and the south wall creaked a bit as much of the load above fell there with a muffled grumbling like distant thunder. One of the horses threw up its head and tried to pull its tether free. Epona mooched over to the gelding and shoved at it until it subsided, then stood leaning her head on its withers reassuringly.

Virginia Kane shuddered.'You mean, that bear was… was sent to get us' Like some sort of hex''

She made a sign against sorcery that Rudi had seen used among the Lakota. Fred Thurston waited a moment and signed the Hammer with his fist, a bit self-consciously, as if reminding himself. 'Father Ignatius'' Mathilda said from beside Rudi.

His hand rubbed her back companionably; she was sitting with her sleeping bag around her shoulders like a blanket, and her arms wrapped around her knees. 'It's a matter of dispute how much actual power the Adversary can give those who serve him,' the monk said soberly.'And why God permits it.'

He finished wiping down his sword with an oily rag and sheathed it before winding the belt around the scabbard and setting it aside… where he could draw instantly. Then he gazed into the fire for a moment before signing himself and going on: 'I think the empirical evidence indicates that the answer to the first question is quite a bit, in this case. As for the other, He moves in mysterious ways, to make even evil serve His plan in the end. We can pray for protection, and the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints.' 'Please do!' Rudi said, and heaved himself upright.'The expedition,' he added to Matti as she looked a question at him.

That was Portlander dialect for need to piss. He did make use of the area where they'd dug a pit and screened off with sections of board; that privacy was a luxury, of course. They'd put it by the entrance, on the other side of the horses, which meant he had to spend a few minutes with Epona as well, resting his head on her neck while she nibbled at his hair. The strong earthy-grassy smell of her was reassuring; he'd spend a lot of time as a boy with her, just drifting about and thinking in the meadows below Dun Juniper. That had been perfectly safe; for him, at least, if not for anyone or anything that tried to harm him while she was there.

The doors had been roughly repaired and strongly braced, but they rattled and sent sprays of snow and cold at him through the slits and gaps and the blanket-covered gap where sentries went in and out.

The sleds were arranged to shelter the ramp and tightly lashed together; the dogs were staked out on a line, sleeping easily beneath the snow but ready to wake at clues a human could never sense. Most of the gear was inside, along with as much firewood as all thirty-odd of them had been able to drag before the weather got too thick. On the other side of the entranceway to the building was a dark nook where they'd put the head of the bear, and buried the rent hide and such of the body as hadn't gone to feed the folk or the sled dogs. Though Edain had kept the claws, to give to friends of his whose sept totem was Bear, when he got home.

Rudi paused there on his way back and made reverence, clapping his palms twice and then pressing them together with his thumbs on his chin and fingers touching brow as he bowed from the waist. For a long moment he went down on one knee and stared into the dead eyes; shadows from the fires made them seem almost alive, coals in a mask of snarling ferocity.

Then he spoke softly:'Horned Lord of the Beasts, witness that we killed from need, not wantonness; to protect ourselves and for food. This we do knowing that for us also the Hour of the Huntsman will come; for Earth must be fed and our bodies are but borrowed from Her for a little while. Brother Bear, fellow warrior, we praise the brave fight you made, and we thank you for your gift of life. Go in peace to the honey-meads beyond the Western Gate, where no evil comes and all hurts are healed. Speak well of us to the Guardians, and be reborn through Her who is Mother-of-All.'

He thought for a moment, then drew the Invoking Pentacle and continued:'And You strong spirit of the forest, Father of Bears, if wrong was done to Your child, know that we are guiltless of it. We have given Your son his honor and seemly rites. My blood father was called the Bear Lord, and though my totem is Raven, we are kin, You and I. Let Your just wrath fall on those who broke the laws laid on humankind in their dealings with the other kindreds. So mote it be!'

When he came back to the main fire the frozen blueberry turnovers were ready and sending out a toasty-sweet smell. He bit into one, relishing the buttery taste of the envelope and the tang of the filling. It took several before he felt replete, despite pounds of bears' flesh and potatoes and hard twice-baked rye bread. He'd always been a hearty eater; he was a big man, and his lean height was active beyond the common run even when he didn't have to be, but this style of winter voyaging and the demands it made were something new to him. 'Wendigo weather,' Pierre Walks Quiet said, after they'd all spent a little time in song and tale-telling.'The colder it is, the more they walk.'

Rudi nodded. It made sense that a spirit of hunger would grow stronger in this season when the body's demands were so great.

They'd agreed that the ones who'd fought the bear would be spared guard-watch duty for the night; the sled dogs helped with that, too. Sleeping out in the snow was no hardship for them, though they preferred a spot by the fire when they could get it. Matti finished her evening devotions, slipped off her boots and eeled into her sleeping bag. Rudi did the same, making sure his boots and sword belt were ready to hand. She cuddled against his back, a pleasant solidity even through the double thickness of bags and clothes. 'Nice,' she murmured sleepily. 'That it is,' he replied.

And I'm being entirely truthful the now, which shows just how tired I am, mo chroi!

The fire died down, skillfully banked. He let himself fall into the soft dark…

… and the cave was deep and darker still. Red eyes moved within it, and a gathering wrath that prickled his skin like a summer thunderstorm, and a rank harsh scent and carnivore breath. An earthquake-deep growl spoke to him. A black wet nose explored his face; it was his own height or more, a bear but not quite a bear, longer-limbed and shorter of face and much, much larger than any he knew. The hairy bulk pushed past him, and he heard its feet falling heavy on the rocky floor…

He woke with a little start. Something told him it was hours later, deep night, the hours when the blood ran sluggish. The dream faded, becoming fragments that spun into drowsy nothingness. Somewhere a little ways away a woman's voice spoke, gasping softly: 'Garo nin, bar melindo, garo nin!'

Rudi grinned in the dark. Somehow he didn't think the Histories included quite that use of the Elvish words for have me, darling! but he supposed it marked it as a living language once more. And you couldn't begrudge newlyweds.

Let them have what pleasure they can. I suspect this is going to be a grim journey, and no mistake.

Major Graber looked down grimly at the rent and bloody carcass of the Bekwa sentry. Teeth grinned back at him where the face had been stripped away, and even in the cold there was a slight rusty-iron smell of death, and something musky beneath it. 'Tiger or bear,' he said.'Possibly a catamount. Not much eaten.'

Though there was a great deal spattered, bits of flesh and hair up ten or twelve feet on the neighboring red spruces. One of his lieutenants bent over a patch of snow, fingers moving with steady delicacy. More was sifting down, but you could separate layers if you were skillful. 'Bear, Major,' he said. 'That's the third one this week,' Graber said.'It's delaying us. We're not going to catch them at this rate. Especially if it keeps snowing.'

He glared at the High Seeker for an instant, before self-control reasserted itself. The Bekwa dogsleds were far faster than he'd thought they would be, but snowshoes just weren't as good as skis when you tried to make speed, and their scavenged horses were losing what condition they'd had. Soon they'd have to start eating them, which would slow them further.

Dalan looked at him, then up at the low clouds, then to the north and east. Two of the savages' shamans were behind him. Their movements followed his exactly, as if they and his shadow were all linked by invisible cords. One of them was weeping from an expressionless face, tears freezing on the skin. 'We can gain on them if we go that way,' he said, and pointed.'We cut the cord of their arc. And… if we miss them there, another Seeker was sent this way last year. He will await us with supplies and help. On the river the ancients called Lawrence, near the ruined city of Royal Mount.'

Graber nodded; he was well schooled in mathematics, which were one of the languages of the Ascended Masters, and useful besides, and in maps. 'As you command, High Seeker,' he said.

The wind howled counterpoint as he gave his orders. He shivered a little; not with the cold, but with the gray sameness of it. Had there ever been anything but pursuit and fight and endless trudging' Had he ever ridden in the flower fields of spring, with the wind blowing keen pine-scented sweetness from the slopes of the Tetons' Or sat of an evening after dinner and watched his son take his first steps, laughing as he waved chubby arms'

No weakness! he told himself sternly. The Prophet gave you this task himself, and you knew death in a foreign land was the most likely outcome. 'Bad, Chief,' Edain said succinctly.'They got hit less than a week ago, I'd say. More than a day. Hard to tell closer, in this icebox of a land.'

Rudi looked over the little steading. Four or five families had dwelt there, in two long houses. They'd had a fishing boat for use on the northernmost of the great inland seas. That stretched northwards, frozen now, towards a little rocky islet half a mile away. The only remarkable thing in sight was the bow of a broken ship of the ancient world, towering in crumbling rust-eaten majesty where some storm had driven it on the rocks and broken its back.

The shore bore some scratched-out fields in the rocky earth, with low pine and birch and aspen elsewhere. Shaggy stretches of bush marked ground which would be bog in the warm season, rich in berries and grass. The dwellers had probably hunted a good deal-the travelers had taken several deer they found in a winter yard not long ago themselves-and mined the wreck for metal to work up and trade elsewhere. A modest rectangular barn hinted at livestock, and a substantial smithy near it had two fieldstone chimneys. From the look of things he'd have guessed that the whole had been put up after the Change, but mostly of old-world materials salvaged from nearby.

There was no smell of woodsmoke, and the cold was bitter. It had more moisture in it than usual, too, and that made it cut harder and sap the strength more. 'All dead,' Pete said, and spat.'I knew these people here. They were clean. My folks lived a bit east and south, and we traded with 'em. Whoever hit here, they call the Wendigo to themselves on purpose.'

Edain nodded.'Parts of them are… gone. Like it was a rite.'

He looked indignant at that, at the profanation of sacred things as much as the cruelty. 'They're pinned to the walls, what's left of them. It went hard for them, even the little ones.'

The younger Mackenzie spat, to show what an honorable warrior thought of such dealings. He also held out a broken bit of arrow, just enough to show the black fletching and neatly made horn nock. 'This was in one of the bodies outside, where they tried to fight.'

Rudi rolled it between his fingers, then made a gesture that brought the core of his questers gathered around him. 'Any fodder left'' he asked. 'No grain,' Edain said.'That was cleared out-oats and rye, it was, from the few kernels left, and spuds. Plenty of hay still, to be sure. No clover in it, looks like marsh grass, but lots of it and well cured.' 'Good. We'll let the horses gorge; and we'll have shelter.'

Edain shook his head violently.'I'll not be sleeping under that roof, Chief.'

Rudi smiled mirthlessly.'I wouldn't either. No, the houses we'll burn, to make Earth clean of it. The barn will do for us and our beasts as well.' 'That'll draw them,' Ritva warned.'It'll tell them exactly where we are.' 'Sister of mine, I'm counting on it. Pete, what's the ice like out there'' 'Thicker than it should be. More like Christmas, or even Janvier, maybe. But it's spotty and don't go too far out. Still too thin to carry any weight in some places, foot or better thick in others, so you could drive a sled or even ride horses over it.'

Ingolf nodded.'Some places hard as rock, and then you hear a crackle. Seemed to me it's thicker eastwards. Piled up by the current, maybe. Snow's wind-packed on the surface, not too deep except drifts here and there. Like Pete says, it's way, way ahead of time.'

Rudi looked out over the lake, out to where white ice faded into the white-gray sky without a perceptible horizon. The surface wasn't table smooth, as he'd imagined it would be; it was more as if waves themselves had frozen, with lumps like congealed porridge here and there, and it was covered with hard-packed snow driven by the wind into rippled patterns. The rocky islet was visible on the edge of sight, topped by a few twisted pines; only the shipwreck made it easy to spot now. Wisps of snow or ice crystal scudded over the surface, gusting up man-high now and then, ankle deep most of the time.

He thought for a moment longer, then held up the stub of arrow:'I think this was done by our un-friends,' he said.'Not just the Sword of the Prophet-say what you like of the Cutters, they aren't Eaters. They've picked up local allies, such as our friend Walks Quiet warned they might have.'

Everyone nodded. The Indian's hand fell unconsciously to the hilt of his bowie knife with its beaded sheath. 'And it's also my thought that they've gotten ahead of us and are planning on an ambush, the creatures.'

Jake sunna Jake grunted.'Bad,' he said succinctly.'Don't like trap-inside.' Then he grinned.'Like when you and the Archer see us first, eh, Rudi-man''

Everyone nodded. Fred said thoughtfully: 'Dad always said that you should force a fight when the enemy's got the jump on you and can make you give battle anyway. Force it on your own terms.'

Victoria pursed her lips thoughtfully.' My Dad always said if you know it's a trap, it's still a trap-for the other guy. You can bust it from the inside. He wrecked the Cutters good a couple of times that way,'fore they wore us Powder River folks down.'

Rudi nodded respectfully.'That's my thought exactly. The enemy will outnumber us, so we need to seize advantage. This will require careful scouting, but we have that heavy little surprise in the last sled of the four-'

The pillar of smoke on the horizon turned to a tiny thread as Major Graber lowered his binoculars. 'That is the hamlet the Bekwa destroyed,' he said, his voice freighted with disgust.'Allowing that was… unwise. Bad tactics.' 'They are savages,' Dalan said, with a shrug.'Besides, it matters little what happens to the bodies of the soulless. They are as animals anyway.'

Graber grunted noncommittally. That was perilously close to making apologies for abomination; the Dictations were clear that the form of humanity was sacred, even among the merely physical who lacked true men's atman and who it was fully lawful to kill. In any case… 'It gave us away,' he said.

What was that ancient saying' Worse than a crime, a mistake. 'We cannot wait for them, then, if they are likely to be too wary,' Dalan said.'There are less than forty of them in all. Your troopers of the Sword of the Prophet alone outnumber them, and we have more than a hundred of the Bekwa and their allies.'

Reluctantly, Graber nodded.

I do not like to give battle when an enemy invites it, he thought. Even when I have the advantage of numbers. Especially with this enemy. Still, we do have the numbers, and there are no extraneous factors here. It's a flat plain, in effect; hell for quartermasters, but a tactician's paradise. I need only hit them with a hammer heavier than any they can lift.

A brief brightness: And then… home' 'They're coming in straight from the east,' Ritva panted.'About forty mounted men, the rest on foot.' 'How many of those'' 'Better than one hundred of them, less than two.' 'Ready, then,' Rudi said; he ignored the arrow standing in the cantle of her saddle, as did she.'Fall in.'

Now, let's either all get killed, or do something I'd be calling truly spectacular, he thought with a taut grin. Lady Morrigu, cover me with Your wings. Lugh of the Many Skills, be with me now!

The little island and its wreck were not far to their rear; the shore was a line of gray and dark green off to the left. It had begun to snow again, a slow light drift of large fluffy flakes. He suppressed an impulse to catch one on his tongue, as he'd liked to do as a child. He'd been praying for a little extra snow, not too much, just enough to cover everything better than careful brushwork could do. And there were worse things to do than catch a snowflake, on what might be your last day in this turn of the Wheel of Life…

Instead he looked behind himself and made sure that the guide marks were plainly visible but inconspicuous; he'd made himself unpopular by taking everyone through it over and over again. Even though they'd all known that more likely than not the plan would go south, or change unpredictably. A few crows went by overhead from the shore woods to the island, or perhaps ravens. Somehow they always knew when men were about to lay a feast for them. 'Forward, my friends,' he said quietly.'The Lord and Lady keep Their hand over you.'

The seven of them sent their horses to the east; besides Rudi, there were Ignatius, Odard, Fred, Victoria and the twins. Most of the rest of their party were spread out on the rear slope of a long low dune, standing in scooped-out firing positions that left only head and shoulders visible, with spare arrows sticking in the hard snow point down by their hands. It all looked like the best possible disposition of an inferior force.

The dune disappeared quickly behind them; it was hard to see features in this world of white-on-white. His mount's coal silk blackness was the most vivid thing in sight.

Like being inside that snow globe of mother's, he thought. But one the size of the world.

Epona was feeling better after a couple of days with all the hay she could stuff down, as well as their hoarded feed pellets. Her knees came up proudly as she advanced at a canter, throwing little rooster tails of light snow up and forward as she paced; it would have glittered if the sun had been out. The older layer beneath creaked and gritted under the ironshod hooves of their warhorses; now and then it creaked a little more with a different, brittle note, that put his teeth on edge like biting down on copper foil.

Epona weighed a bit over a half ton. Add in him, his weapons and armor, and the war-saddle-they'd left off the steel-faced horse-barding today-and it was a third again more. All of that came down on those dancing hooves she seemed to place so lightly and delicately, but he'd seen them punch through a prone man as if he were made of wrapping paper. The water beneath him wasn't far away, it was extremely deep and very, very cold, and in this gear he'd sink like a rock… only rocks didn't need to breathe air.

And to be sure, I do. Drowning was supposed to be a comparatively painless way to die, but so stuffy… Yet a man lives just as long as he lives, and not a day more, he reminded himself.

The snow picked up a little more, but not enough to be called a storm; he was becoming a judge of those, in this land and in this fimbul winter of a season. After a moment he saw a line of black dots ahead. In another, they were men, tiny but distant. He unshipped his binoculars and adjusted the focusing screw with his thumb. 'Ah, as I thought,' he said. 'Your Majesty'' Ignatius said. 'They replaced their horses coming north from wherever they beached their ship on the Ohio, but what they've got are crowbait and badly trained, a lot like the ones I suffered with bringing back Ingolf's wagons. And they've lost more condition than ours, besides starting lower.' 'Good,' the warrior-priest said.'We can control the distance of our engagement.' 'Exactly. For a while, at least.'

The fringe of troopers of the Sword of the Prophet were in a formation more ragged than any he'd seen them using before. He nodded again and recased his field glasses. Horse soldiers were only half of what made up a troop of cavalry of any sort. The other half was the horse, and its training and condition were every bit as important as the rider's. 'Bows!' he said.

They all pulled out their saddle recurves and set arrows to the string. All his companions save Edain were good horse-archers; Virginia was among the best he'd ever met, though she didn't draw a very heavy stave. The troopers of the Sword were fine shots too… but to use bow and arrow well from a horse's back you needed one you could guide with knees and balance alone.

And I'm counting on that. Otherwise I'd not have dared take us within range of better than twenty bows. Other things being equal, numbers count… except to be sure when things aren't equal and hence they don't.

Closer now. He could see one of the Cutters belaboring his mount with a quirt; it turned its neck and tried to bite him on the knee, before he popped it on the nose. That was a sensitive spot for a horse; then it bolted back the way they'd come with the trooper sawing at the reins. Rudi smiled the special smile of a man seeing an enemy's discomfiture, but there were still an unpleasant lot of the Cutters. Closer, three hundred yards, a little less… 'Now!'

He stood in the stirrups and drew. The recurve bent into a deep C-shape as he drew to the ear. He let the string fall off his gloved fingers, and the rest of his band did likewise. Arrows arched out from the enemy, seemed to rise slowly and then come faster and faster as they went chunk into the hard-packed snow and the ice below, or whipppt as they flew past.

A Cutter toppled from the saddle, and another; he thought several more were wounded despite their armor. Closer still… 'Retreat!' he called.

They turned their mounts; there was a crunch as Epona turned, and black water leaked out of star-shaped cracks where her left rear had pivoted. He ignored it and shot again, Parthian-style, backward. 'Keep it at this range!' he said, as the group spread out into a line.

Bang.

A shaft struck the long triangular shield slung over his back. The heavy bit of knight's gear turned it, though he felt like he'd been hit with a diffuse hammer. Another shot of his own arched up into the pale gray haze above at forty-five degrees, and an enemy horseman ducked as it went just over his spiked helmet. The companions were rocking along at a slow canter, instinctively focusing their arrows on any of the Cutters who came out of the pack, slowing when the enemy did to keep in touch with the dun mass of Bekwa on foot who swarmed along to their northwards.

Victoria sped a shaft to the east over her horse's rump and whooped:'Yippie-kye-ey! Hoo'ay! We got the sweet spot, you motherfuckers!'

Fred shot next, with that grim businesslike air his father's realm of Boise taught, then Odard and Ignatius, then the twins and Rudi together. They were all shooting as fast as they could get a good target, but at nearly two hundred yards from a moving horse against moving targets that was guess and luck as much as skill. One more hit

… no, two. Excellent practice at this range and with the snow and white background making it hard to judge distance, and the pursuer's shafts were all over the map. Sooner or later they'd make damaging hits by sheer volume and chance, though.

And I had a perfectly good excuse for keeping Matti out of this one. Even she thought so. Sweet Brigid, but that makes me worry less! Except about winning, the which we need for any of us to survive.

It was almost a surprise when Epona snorted, and he noticed they were about back where they'd started. They crested the low dune they'd built and pulled up. A Southsider dashed over with bundles of arrows for their quivers, and then they were waiting with only their heads and shoulders showing over the crest. A few last enemy arrows dropped near them, and then the Sword troopers reined in to a barked command-some of them with considerable difficulty; those must have been the ones with the most recently stolen horses.

Rudi pulled back another arrow; closer this time, say eighty yards, just raise the point so.

Whihhht.

The shaft flew out in a sweet shallow curve that had a rightness to it. A man threw up his hands to claw at his face and slid backward over the crupper of his saddle. The horse bolted towards shore at a hammering gallop. Halfway there it went through the ice in a billowing gout of water and sheets of broken crystal levering up in angular patterns. A terrible shrill scream rose as it went under the surface and came up again to paw at the edge with its forehooves. That broke off more; it floundered again, and the current swept it below the surface for good and all. 'Bad for the poor beast, but good for us,' Rudi said.'Let them watch us carefully for the safest routes! And abandon all thought of swinging around our flank.'

A trumpet sounded, and the Sword men drew out of easy range. He didn't envy their commander even the obvious chance he had of charging straight into the teeth of seven good bows whose wielders had cover. 'Now he'll try sending in his footmen,' he judged, and looked over to his left, northward.

Pierre Walks Quiet and Edain were there, with Jake and most of the Southsiders; call it twenty-eight bows. He waited, enduring the growing cold that seeped in under his armor and gambeson, working his fingers now and then to keep them from stiffening in his gloves. The Cutters' savage allies grew from a dun mass to something larger, until he could see their standards of skull and horns and rayed sun, see them leap and brandish their weapons, hear the yelping nasal war cries: 'Jemesowiens!'

Whatever that meant; and raw shrieks of hatred and menace. They walked forward, gradually building up speed, snow misting up around their feet, looming larger and larger through the gray-white landscape. 'They'll hit a full run just at maximum bow range,' Ingolf said meditatively.'That's smarter than any Eaters I ever ran into. They're going to eat their losses and charge home. Glad I never came this far north.' 'Three hundred fifty yards,' Fred muttered.

He didn't have to estimate it, though he was good at that; they'd marked the range inconspicuously. The Cutters began to move again too, walking their horses so they could shoot more effectively. 'Three hundred. Two seventy-five. Two fifty…'

The savages were moving at full pelt now, a mass six or seven deep and broad enough to overlap the archers on both sides. 'Now!' Rudi muttered to himself.

He wasn't giving the order; Edain could do that just as well. In the same instant Rudi heard him shout: 'Let the gray geese fly-wholly together- shoot!'

Snap.

The arrows rose in a cloud; then again, and again. The heads didn't sparkle on this sunless day, but the honed metal had a cold glitter. And from the island Tunnnggg. 'Pump! Pump!' Mathilda Arminger shouted.

The vast wreck's bow loomed over them, looking tattered by decay and men's tools, a stretch of letters just visible:- mund Fitz -

The two Southsiders worked their cranks, grinning through their frizzy beards, dark faces running with sweat even in the hard chill. This Richlander-made engine was worked with mechanical cocking devices through high-aspect geared winches and bicycle-chain sprocket drives, rather than the hydraulic bottle jacks the Association armies used for their murder-machines. There wasn't much difference in the speed with which it compressed the sets of heavy truck coil springs that powered the throwing arms; whoever had made the design had known their business.

Click, a heavy soft sound as the trigger mechanism engaged.

Mathilda slapped the bundle of darts down in the throwing trough. They were eight inches from base to point, heavy elongated steel pyramids drawn out into fins at the rear, all bound together with a wicker band carefully weakened to last just long enough. She craned her neck to see over the line of bowmen a hundred yards away, spun the elevating wheel to the next spot, and shouted: 'Clear!'

The two crewmen jumped aside, and she jerked the lanyard.

Tunnnggg the second time, ten seconds after the first. 'Pump! Pump!'

Twenty-four darts arched out eastwards and up, towards the massed enemy, spreading as they reached the top of their trajectory and plunged downward. The savages looked up and screamed. The results of the first round, and the continuous rain of arrows, were all about them.

Click. 'Clear!'

She spun the traversing wheel and turned the trough towards the block of troopers from the Sword of the Prophet; they were better disciplined, and hence more tightly bunched… and their horses were bigger targets. A firm jerk on the lanyard…

Tunnnggg. 'By God, I think we could break them!' Odard shouted.'With that scorpion. Face Gervais, face death!' 'No. We might be able to knock them back a bit, but they'd just go around. Shoot!'

Rudi drew and loosed; he was sweating again now. Drawing a hundred-and-twenty-pound saddle bow was as much heavy labor as throwing sacks of grain onto a wagon, with all the muscles of your torso and gut working. The savages were wavering-the scorpion could throw six times a minute, and that meant a hundred and forty-four of those deadly little darts, and as many arrows again from Edain and his band. A volley of the darts slashed into the Sword troopers as he watched, and horses exploded outward in pain and panic, bugling shrilly. 'They'll come at us now!' he said.'Wait… wait…'

The enemy trumpet screamed charge. The Cutters cased their bows, drew shetes or leveled their lances, booted their skinny garrons into motion. Rudi shot, again, again-the range was closing, and nobody was shooting back right now. 'The which is a great aid to concentration. Wait… Wait…'

Even a bad horse could cover ground very fast indeed. 'Now!'

Every one of them wheeled their mounts and set them going. Rudi focused on the markers; left and then straight and then right and straight — Epona's great muscles bunched beneath him, her body an extension of his own as it had been since his boyhood, as if their thoughts meshed through the same fire of nerve and balance. The seventeen-hand warmblood danced.

He heard a sudden scream to his right. Mary's horse had broken through; she catapulted out of the saddle, landed rolling and spraying arrows from her quiver. 'Rochael!' she shrieked.

The dappled Arab mare's forehooves hammered at the broken, floating ice before her. Mary started to run back to help her, but Ingolf swung inward on her blind side. He leaned out of the saddle with skill that made Rudi blink and snatched with a huge and desperate strength at his wife's quiver, throwing her across the saddle in front of him. Boy's rear hooves slipped and the surface cracked beneath them, but he scrambled free and onto the unweakened section of the ice. Tears ran down Mary's face as she slipped free, but she reached over her shoulder for one of the remaining arrows. 'Clear!' Mathilda shouted.

Tunnnggg. 'Pump! Pump!'

Round shot this time, the six-pound cast-iron sphere arching up like a blurred black dot. It landed behind the oncoming figures that marked Edain and his archers… right among the pursuers. Water gouted skyward, and men slid down tilting slabs of ice. Suspiciously regular slabs in part, where they'd patiently drilled holes to be covered with snow. More and more of the weakened ice broke, away from the jagged paths the retreating archers trod, carefully calculated to look like panic-stricken men dashing about witless. The forest-runners' shrieks turned from triumphant to terrified in an instant.

She could see a war chief with bars painted across his face throw his arms out in a frantic halt! gesture, but it was too late. Three men tumbled into him, and they all rolled together towards a stretch of black water where ice bobbed and men thrashed. To their left the horse soldiers of Corwin were in a worse state; a galloping horse couldn't stop quickly. One went right into the spot where Mary's horse had broken through, and the slim mare started to climb it, hammering the rider under her hooves. Another went through, and another.

Click. 'Clear!'

Tunngggg.

A lumpy, gritty stuff was packed around the frame of the scorpion. Thermite ignited easily, and they wouldn't be leaving the engine intact. 'Pump! Pump!' 'She's just limping!' Mary said, joy shining in her one eye as she looked back at her Rochael. 'Mary,' Ingolf said, a little reproof in the tone.

Rudi frowned at them, and Mary dropped her eyes as his flicked to the limp burdens the other horses bore. Pierre Walks Quiet's face had fallen in on itself a little in death; the stiff red ice on his parka hid the wound that had killed him in five seconds of startled agony. Jake sunna Jake simply looked surprised, his hands still clutching at the stump of the javelin that had taken him in the throat. Bodies stiffened quickly in this cold. 'Pierre Walks Quiet was your friend, Ingolf,' Rudi said.'What words would have pleased him'' 'Pete wasn't Catholic… or anything, that I knew of,' Ingolf said.'Said he could talk to God out in the woods with the animals, better than in any church. I don't think he'd mind anyone he liked saying words over him, though.' 'Now he walks beneath the forever trees,' Rudi said quietly.

Ingolf nodded, lost in his own thoughts. Rudi looked at Jake's body.

What will I tell his woman' he thought. Or how explain to his children what their father was'

He helped the others bear them into the barn; Father Ignatius murmured the service for the dead beneath his breath. There was still a heap of loose hay; the bodies were laid in it, a faint scent of summers past rising amid the iron smell of blood. 'Ingolf'' Rudi asked.

The big Richlander swallowed, then spoke:'I knew Pete… Pierre Walks Quiet all my life, from the Change. It's hard to realize the old man's dead. He was like… like one of the manitou he used to tell me about. Taught me two-thirds of what I know about woodcraft and beasts and I wouldn't have learned the rest without the start he gave me. Taught me to love it, too. Good-bye, Pete. Damn and hell, I'll miss you.'

He turned aside, as his voice went thick. Rudi nodded and stepped forward. 'I knew Jake sunna Jake for a far shorter time, but in that time we fought side by side, and saved each other's lives. He was called a savage, but I never saw him kill without need, or heard of it. He was untaught, but he learned more quickly than many I've met who are called great scholars. He saw the beauty in the world the Lord and Lady have given us, though nobody had given him the words to tell of what his heart said. And everything he did, he did first for his people. There were the seeds of greatness in this man, and now all that he might have done and been is sacrificed for us, his friends. Let us remember him, and be worthy of it!'

Rudi's voice rose:'Lords of the Watchtowers of the West, ye Lords of Death and Resurrection. We light the torch for Jake sunna Jake, brave warrior who fell for his kin and friends, face to the foe; and for Pierre Walks Quiet of the Anishinabe folk, who left comfort and safety to aid in the world's need. Aradia and Cernnunos, accept Jake's spirit in the Land of Youth. Manitou, bring Pierre's spirit to the council fires of his people in their long home-'

The fire flared up, and they retreated through the doors; the barn was tinder-dry wood and beam, and it would go up like kindling. Already the fire was beginning to roar. Rudi paused for a moment to lay his hands on the shoulders of Tuk and Samul, Jake's half brothers. 'He's a good one, us'n bro Jake,' Tuk whispered, his hands tight on his bow.'Done good for Southside.'

Rudi nodded.'He was a man I was proud to call brother-in-arms,' he said soberly.'I will help raise his children as my own. Dun Jake will bear his name. Now let's go! Mounted until we're well clear, then back to skis; the horses can't keep going fast with burdens in this.'

Ingolf swung into the saddle and drew in beside Rudi.'Think we should have tried to finish them off'' he said.

Rudi shook his head, looking out through the thickening snow.'Too risky. There were still more of them, if they rallied. Now their spirits will be… dampened, I think.'

Major Graber looked down at the body of the High Seeker. The shaven-skulled face was blue with cold, and a slow trickle of water oozed out of its mouth, glittering in the torchlight that drove back the night a little. Snow hissed into the burning wood. Somewhere a man sobbed and then shrieked as their surviving field medic went to work. 'We could try resuscitation,' his lieutenant said. 'After more than an hour in this water' No, the Ascended Masters have welcomed his lifestream-'

High Seeker Dalan opened his eyes with a jerk, as if they were pulled up by fishhooks. Then turned his head to vomit out a stream of water. His breath rasped in, then out, and then he coughed-a curiously mechanical sound, like a forbidden engine was working in some mill of the unbelievers. 'I-see-you,' he said, and smiled.