S. Stirling - The Given Sacrifice

It was hard to see the rider’s expression in the dimness of the flickering pine-knot torch, but Cole thought he could see the eyes widen.

“All enemy prisoners are to be turned over to the Church Universal and Triumphant-the blessings of the Ascended Masters be upon Its Prophet and the Seekers,” the plainsman said. “I’ll take this one now.”

Alyssa tensed. Cole saluted. “As you say, sir.”

He reached for Alyssa’s handcuffs as she backed away. “On three,” he said very softly.

“One-”

He grabbed the chain and heaved, links biting into his palm; she pulled backward and kicked him realistically in the shins-which hurt.

“Oww Goddamn two-”

“Three.”

He released the chain, staggering backward himself as if her tug and kick had shocked his grip free. Alyssa dropped flat and rolled under the torch-bearer’s horse.

“Catch her, sir!” Cole shouted.

As he’d hoped, the bowman in the mail shirt took his eyes off Cole. What wasn’t in the half-formed plan was that the other man dropped his torch and swept out his shete, the broad-tipped blade glinting along its honed edge as he leaned far over with a born rider’s casual skill and prepared to swipe at the slight figure on the pavement. Those things could leave a drawing cut a yard long and inches deep on an unarmored body.

“Shit!” Cole cursed.

He’d been unlimbering his crossbow since the instant the horse-archer turned his attention to Alyssa, and contrary to regs he’d been carrying it cocked and with a bolt in the groove in town. Instead of shooting the man in the mail shirt, he whipped it up to aim at the swordsman.

“Shit!” he said again, a strangled scream this time.

Alyssa had rolled out the other side of the horse, and as she bounced back to her feet her hand went to her collar and then whipped down the horse’s haunch. The animal gave an equine shriek of indignant hurt and went into a bucking, leaping twist; the punch dagger was razor-sharp, and had parted the beast’s hide in a slash that was shallow but twenty inches long.

There was no time to readjust. The crossbow went tung-snap in the darkened street, and the bolt tore through the steerhide armor over the man’s shoulder and gouged a groove through his deltoid. That was actually very good shooting even at pointblank, in the dark and at a twisting, jerking target. Unfortunately it was the left shoulder, and the man got his horse back under control almost immediately. He also didn’t seem to be the sort of guy whose concentration could be broken by a little pain.

The first one was already turning his attention back to Cole, standing in the stirrups and drawing the arrow back against the resistance of the thick composite bow. That was exactly the right decision tactically, since Cole was obviously the real threat. It would have been much nicer if the man had been stupid.

Cole dropped the crossbow-which was a hell of a way to treat a fine weapon, but needs must-and flicked out his gladius. He bounded forward in the same movement, jumping side-to-side as he advanced, to get to close quarters and crowd the horseman too closely to let him shoot.

Or shout for his buddies, for Christ’s sake, he thought desperately . If I can land a cut on that horse-

Unfortunately the man in the mail shirt was an even more superb horseman than his follower, and his horse was just as well trained; the pair operated like parts of the same organism. It skittered right back crabwise to a shift in the rider’s balance, backing up about as fast as Cole was advancing, and the man drew his bow to the ear. The pile-shaped point caught a last flicker of red light from the torch guttering out on the patched asphalt.

The other one had his horse in hand too, though its ears were back and its eyes rolling in a bite-and-stomp fit of temper, and he was boring in on the dodging form of Alyssa with a yard of edged metal in his hand, as opposed to her three inches of holdout knife. Unfortunately he wasn’t stupid enough to get in the archer’s line of fire despite the way she immediately tried to draw him into it.

Shit, isn’t this where I came in? Cole thought desperately as the horse-archer prepared to skewer his brisket. Only I’d rather have Old Eph, there was only one of him and the big hairy fucker couldn’t shoot me!

• • •

I’m officially colonel of the First Readstown Volunteer Cavalry, and here I am sneaking around in the dark again, Ingolf Vogeler thought.

He’d always thought of himself as primarily a horse-soldier, which was how he’d spent the first four years after leaving Readstown at the age of nineteen. He’d joined the volunteers heading northwest from the Free Republic of Richland-what had once been southwestern Wisconsin-to Marshal and Fargo for the Sioux War because he’d quarreled with his elder brother and it was an honorable way to run away from home. He’d stuck all through the miseries of the Red River campaign, and then ridden with Icepick Olson’s band into the outright epic horrors of the Badlands Raid, mostly because he was too stubborn, or looking back on it too pig-ignorant, to quit. The learning curve had been steep, if you survived.

After the war petered out in mutual exhaustion he’d led what was left of the cavalry company he’d ended up commanding into salvage work, eventually into the high-return and insanely risky long-range branch, all the way to the dead cities of the Atlantic coast where the cannibal bands were only the worst danger.

But Icepick had been a scout-and-slash specialist, anyone doing that against the Lakota had to be good at it, and salvage work deep into the death zones didn’t involve many boot-to-boot charges or even the formal minuet of a horse-archery duel. Hence he’d often ended up in this sort of situation, paddling across a river with slow strokes and a crawling awareness that someone might be about to hit him with anything from a handy rock in their hand to a twenty-four-pound glass globe shot from a catapult, full of napalm and wrapped in burning cord. Luckily it wasn’t a very wide river, less than a quarter bowshot, about the size of the Kickapoo on whose banks he’d played as a boy.

It sure doesn’t get any more fun, though, he thought mordantly.

Those long rustling barefoot summer evenings by the water seemed a very long time ago, listening to the bullfrogs and watching the first stars come out.

Christ, the things I do!

The rubber raft bumped softly into the mud of the eastern bank and stopped as they all pushed their paddles down into the muck for a moment; the city wall of Boise was about one bowshot away, a looming black presence against the bright stars. The man at the tip of the blunt wedge of the bows went overside with hardly a splash or sound of boots in wet soil, which was very respectable considering that John Hordle was a three-hundred-plus-pound slab of Anglo-Saxon beef halfway between six and seven feet tall, none of it fat despite a legendary consumption of food and beer.

Not slowing down any that I’ve noticed, either, Ingolf though. Despite the way that red mop’s got some gray in it.

The older man heaved the inflatable boat and its dozen occupants forward and held it steady with the casual grip of one great red-furred paw until he was certain they hadn’t run into a welcoming committee. Which was all comforting to Ingolf, who was thirty-something and beginning to feel that while he could still do nearly everything he’d been able to do ten years ago, it took longer and cost more and sometimes he just plain didn’t want to anymore. Hordle had to be around fifty; he’d been a young soldier over in England at the time of the Change, in something called the SAS, arriving in Montival-to-be years later by a series of wild accidents.