Which meant forty or fifty men each.
“-with a good screen out. A remuda of a couple of hundred horses bringing up the rear. A reconnaissance in strength, the lead element of a powerful raiding party out to disrupt your harvest and seize or destroy what they can, or both. Likely both. And they’re definitely turning east towards that valley, so it looks as if they’re going to go for the sheep. Confirmed by Rick Three Bears.”
Ingolf grinned. “He adds that they’re well mounted. Those horses are plain wasted on white-eyes, quote unquote.”
De Grimmond looked encouraged. And also, Ingolf thought, the tiniest bit uncertain. That was natural; he knew Ingolf and his Richlanders and the Dunedain only by reputation, and the Lakota contingent led by Three Bears barely even by legend. The leather-clad man who’d come in behind Mark Vogeler spoke.
“My lord, I can confirm that.”
De Grimmond nodded. “Go on. Tom Yallup, isn’t it? You saw it?”
The man was a Yakima, from a tribe farther west who’d lost heavily in the Change and then in the long brutal wars between the Free Cities of the Yakima League and the Association; they’d ended up tributary to the PPA on what was left of their land. The tribute included horses, and in time of war scouts. Both had a high reputation.
“Tom Yallup, that’s me, my lord,” the man said, looking pleased at being recognized. “Yeah, I saw it. Their commander had this sideways red crest on his helmet.”
“Definitely Boise,” de Grimmond said. “A Centurion’s crest. Old General Thurston had an odd obsession with Ancient Rome and his son’s worse.”
Ingolf coughed frantically. “Sorry,” he gasped. “Swallowed wrong.”
The Indian scout went on, shaking his head ruefully: “It was hard keeping up. Those Rangers, they’re like ghosts. Real smooth scouting, real smooth, they’ve got an eye for the way the land lies. And the Lakota… they’re some serious ’skins, my lord.”
“Right. Let’s proceed, then.”
Ingolf nodded. “We come in behind them; my Richlanders first, to hit their rearguard, and the Sioux behind as reserve, to make sure none of them escape. The enemy will try to disengage and break contact when they realize they’re outnumbered, the valley side on the south isn’t impassable for mounted men and they’ll think they can get around us that way, hit us on the flank or escape and get back to their main body. You ram into them right then when they’re not expecting it and the impact ought to break them. And, my lord, the High King instructed me to say that he wants prisoners, if they’re willing to surrender. Particularly if they’re US of Boise men.”
De Grimmond nodded. “It’s in accordance with the laws of chivalry anyway,” he said. “But thank you for the reminder, Lord Vogeler; it’ll help keep that in my vassals’ minds. God go with you.”
“Good luck to you too, Lord de Grimmond.”
“It is a good day to die,” Rick Mat’o Yamni-Three Bears-said solemnly, in a deep sonorous voice, with a broad gesture of one hand.
Rick was a young man, about Rudi Mackenzie’s age, with a hawk-nosed high-cheeked face and a complexion a little darker than a deep tan; his furbound braids were a very dark brown, and there were green flecks in his dark eyes. His mother’s name was Fox Woman, from the color of her hair; she’d been one of the many volunteers who’d ended up joining the Lakota nation, as it re-emerged from the Change. By now the Seven Council Fires dominated much of the northern High Plains; since last May they’d also been formally part of Montival, in exchange for complete internal autonomy and a pledge of help in defending their borders.
Rick’s father John Whapa Sa, Red Leaf, had negotiated it. He’d also sent his son and three hundred warriors along when Rudi came home to Montival, as a symbol.
“It is a day when the sun shines on the Hawk and on the quarry,” Rick went on, raising both hands in a hieratic gesture. “We shall take many horses, many scalps!”
Three Bears had white and black bars painted across his face, the eagle feathers that marked his deeds in his braids, and his steel helmet was topped by buffalo hair and horns. There was an ornamental vest of white bone tubes across his entirely functional shirt of riveted mail, and a string of perfectly genuine tufts of scalp-hair down the leather seams of his buffalocalf breeches. Tom Yallup was staring at him and his followers-some of whom were in full fig of eagle-feather bonnet-with a look halfway between fascination and suspicion.
Suddenly Rick grinned at him and burst into laughter, leaning his hands on the pommel of his saddle.
“Nah, I’m just fuckin’ with your head, dude.”
He turned to Ingolf. “OK, cousin, give us until”-his arm pointed accurately to where the sun would be at about three-“to get into position and start playing Cowboys and Indians. We want to make sure we get ’em all. Otherwise we’re blown and whoever’s following on will know where we are.”
“Right,” Ingolf said. “That would be a bad thing. Hey, tahunsa, remember we’re supposed to take ’em alive if we can.”
“Sure thing, Iron Bear,” he said, which was mildly impolite; his people didn’t use personal names when it could be avoided. “ Shee! How could you possibly think we’d do anything else? Gentle as kittens, that’s us.”
Then he stood in the stirrups and waved his bow overhead. “ Hokahe! Let’s go, Lakota!”
The Sioux poured away in a torrent, their horses moving like a wave of flowing water up the slope to the west and disappearing as if they were the passing of a dream.
Mary Vogeler, nee Havel, laughed beside him. “What do you think the odds are they’ll take any prisoners?”
“Fucking zip, honey,” he said. “But they’ll collect every single horse, you betcha.”
“Ah… Colonel… Iron Bear?” the Yakima scout asked.
Mary answered him. “We spent some time with the Oglala last year. A good deal happened. I’m Zintkazawin, for example. Yellow Bird.”
She touched the wheat-blond hair that rested in a tight, complex fighting braid at the back of her neck below her light helmet; the ribbon that ran through it helped secure the patch over her missing eye. The other was a bright cornflower blue, in a face that was smoothly regular in a chiseled Nordic way.
“Rudi… High King Artos… is Strong Raven. It’s a considerable honor to be taken in by the Lakota,” she added sincerely.
Tom Yallup looked after the Sioux war party. “They really are some serious ’skins,” he said again.
“Tell me,” Ingolf said. “I spent the first four years after I left home fighting them, and I never, ever want to have to do that again. It’s a lot more fun having them on my side.”
He turned and beckoned. Major Will Kohler came up beside him and drew rein.
“Yah hey, Colonel?” he said, in a heavier version of Ingolf’s rasping, singsong Richlander accent.
“Let’s get our Cheeseheads ready,” he said. “We’ll be moving out in about twenty minutes.”
There were still three hundred and sixty of the First Richland Volunteer Cavalry alive and fit for duty, after the long trip from the Kickapoo through the Midwest and the Dominions with Rudi and the rest of them. Their round shields were painted brown, with an orange wedge, the national colors of the Free Republic of Richland.
Like the Sioux contingent they were a symbol, in this case of the alliance against the Prophet between Montival and the League of Des Moines that encompassed the Midwest realms and their various Bossmen. They were also all volunteers, wild young men of the Farmer and Sheriff classes for the most part. Major Kohler had been the chief arms instructor for the Vogeler family Sheriffdom in Readstown; he was the oldest man in the regiment at forty, and he was a big part of why they’d shaken down very well. The other was the educational value of hard experience.
Educational for the ones that lived, Ingolf thought grimly. There were four hundred thirty of them when we left. But they’re not complaining.
Instead they were finishing off baiting the horses, feeding them cracked barley from nose bags. These were fairly tall beasts, not as muscular as the destriers, but not cow ponies either. More like what they called coursers here, and they benefited from some grain before really hard work. Then each squadron led theirs away from the water hole and put on their tack. If you could, you always rested your horses and unsaddled whenever possible, letting them roll and graze; every moment of that added to their endurance and speed when you desperately needed it. Horses were curiously fragile beasts, despite their size and strength. Dead ones had littered the trail of every big army he’d ever seen.
The orders were passed, blankets and saddles went on quickly, and each squadron mustered under its banner. Ingolf looked them over with a pang. They were him, minus a decade in most cases, big fair muscular
