S. Stirling - Dies The Fire

The younger Larsson threw himself back with a yell, landing and rolling in the roadway and then dodging around a stopped car that stood with its doors open; he came right back through it, diving over the backseat faster than the inexperienced horseman could get his mount around it.

The knife flicked into Havel 's hand and the rabbit stick into the other. The thickset man's horse thundered down on him; he'd never been charged by a man on horseback before, and his stroke with the stick at the rider's knee went wide-fortunately, so did the heavy man's potentially bone-shattering kick with one cup-stirrup-bearing foot. That nearly unseated him, and he clutched at the horn of his saddle.

Havel leapt forward again, trying for a hamstringing blow, and the puukko's edge parted the leather of the leading rein instead. That set the packhorses loose; they went into bucking circles, their hooves a menace to everyone.

The heavy youth with the bow tried to grab the young girl by the chain of her handcuffs with his right hand and drag her up across the saddle in front of him while slinging the bow over his shoulder at the same time; she seized the hand in both of hers and sank her teeth into his wrist.

That made him shriek in pain and start trying to shake her off instead as his horse skittered sideways; and her mother added a series of ear-splitting screams to the confusion as she came up on the other side and began beating her clenched fists on his leg.

Who says the Three Stooges are dead? Havel thought. Christ Jesus, what a cluster-fuck!

Mr. Jailhouse Bob was coming back into the fight; he had a machete out now, from a sheath strapped to his saddle. He also came straight for Havel, ignoring the rest of the milling chaos.

This one has a hard man's instincts, Havel thought, poising lightly on the balls of his feet, weapons ready. OK, he's target number one.

Fortunately Bob's time in stir hadn't included training in the equestrian arts, and he misjudged the speed of his mount. His roundhouse swing passed a foot in front of Havel's face-close enough for him to feel the ugly wind of its passage-and nearly took an ear off his own horse. Havel 's return stroke with the rabbit stick cracked into his arm. The blow was glancing, but it was enough to make him drop the machete. Then he clapped his heels into his horse's flanks and circled out of the fight again, shaking the limb and cursing but looking quickly back and forth to get a sense of the action.

Damn, he really, does think tactically, Havel thought- that was a gift, and not limited to good guys.

The black man made his own contribution; even without reins, he managed to get his horse moving west, probably hoping to draw the rest off from his family. He succeeded; Dan and young Jimmie turned the heads of their horses around and went after him, but Jailhouse Bob was in their path. Instead of trying to pass him the black man turned his horse up the Centennial Trail to the south, disappearing into the steep heights and the tall pines.

"Get the nigger!" Dan cried as he spurred after him.

Jimmie followed, turning in the saddle to loose an arrow that wobbled up at a mortar-shell angle and came down with a shhhrink into the roof of a car. Then he disappeared up the trail, leaving his tattooed elder to face four-to-one odds.

Havel dropped his rabbit stick and scooped up the fallen machete, starting towards the last of the bandits. Eric followed, picking up a few more baseball-weight rocks; behind him the two women were getting the packhorses under control, despite the handcuffs, which argued for considerable skill.

Bob looked at the approaching men with hatred that radiated from him like heat from a banked fire, then turned and followed his companions. Havel let out a long breath and shook his head, fighting down a wave of nausea and light-headedness. It had been a long time since he'd fought in a kill-or-be-killed situation, but it was just as unpleasant as he remembered.

Eric dropped his rocks. "Damn," he said. "I'm better than that with a baseball-I should have hit that fat fuck in the teeth or at least broken his collarbone."

"Not bad for your first real fight," Havel said, punching him in the shoulder. "Which it was, right?"

Eric grinned cautiously and touched his swollen nose and split lip. "Not counting you, Mike, yeah."

Havel nodded. "Only I don't think they had education in mind."

He turned to the women. "Ma'am," he said as the older of the two began to speak. "We need your help if we're going to rescue: your husband?"

She nodded; a woman of about forty, full-figured and with boldly handsome mestizo-Hispanic features, wearing riding jeans with a belt of silver medallions and a blousy white shirt. The teenager nodded too; she was darker, with a mass of frizzy hair, and would be quite pretty when she wasn't bloodied and terrified.

"Will, my husband. I'm Angelica Hutton, and this is our daughter, Luanne," she said; there was a soft Tejano-Spanish accent under a Southwestern twang.

"Mike Havel. Eric Larsson," Havel said shortly; there wasn't much time for social niceties.

"What do you need?" Angelica Hutton said steadily.

"Tools, if you've got them; can't do anything until we bust you loose of those cuffs. And knives-one of them should be the biggest you've got."

There were tools; a jumble in one of the panniers, including a short heavy pry bar and a farrier's hammer. Havel grunted in satisfaction and freed each of the women with a few short clanging blows, the chain of their handcuffs stretched across a roadside boulder.

As he worked, the woman spoke. He caught most of it: ": just attacked us, they came down the road on bikes to where our trucks stopped; we'd been pasturing the horses and we were about to head out ourselves, we hadn't seen anyone else and they just attacked us. Will's gun didn't work, and the pistol: They took our horses and-"

"Any more of them?" Havel asked.

"Not from what they said. I think they'd been in a fight, and they were afraid some Indians were chasing them. They just took what they could grab and made us saddle up the horses and: they were going to:

"

The packsaddles bore her account out, heaped high and packed badly, with a melange of goods and food and gear thrown on higgledy-piggledy. It was probably a very good thing for Angelica Hutton and her daughter that the Aryan Trio had been pressed for time.

Better keep them running, Havel thought, and looked at Eric.

"You can ride?" he said.

"Since I was six. We always had horses."

"Good. Are these saddle-broke?"

"Yes," Angelica said. "We were taking them to an outfitter in Lewiston, and the stallion, they didn't get that one. My husband and I raise and train horses. These two are the slowest of the bunch, though."

Havel nodded crisply: "Look, Mrs. Hutton, get these packsaddles off, and hide your goods up there in that thicket, behind the big rock-you can get up along the side with a little work. I'd advise you to keep extremely quiet and wait. I don't have time to argue. We'll be back when we've done what has to be done, but it could be a couple of days or longer. Are those lashings rawhide?"

They were thin and soft-surfaced.

"Wet them down for me as well, would you please? Put them in water, do that first. And get me those knives."

"Thank you, and los santos go with you," the woman said; she and her daughter got to work with the quick competence of people who'd handled horses and their tack all their lives.

Havel worked as well. He'd spotted suitable red cedar saplings downslope to the north and not far from the edge of the road; the wood wasn't what he'd have chosen with more time, but it worked easily, and he'd been thinking hard about their brush with the three bandits. A few strokes of the machete at their bases felled both the young trees. After trimming the first he had a straight pole five feet long and another a little taller than he was.