Edain grunted thoughtfully. Rudi could read his thought: fierce men, fearless and deadly on their own ground, but lightly armed and not trained for a stand-up fight. ?And as many again from those ships, the Moorish pirates. They look well armed and most malignantly expert in their trade, the grievous sadness and pitiful misfortune of it, ochone.? ?Two hundred inside the wall, less any they?ve lost, from what our friends of this land say,? Edain said.?Counting every booger and arsewipe, as me da would put it.? ?And just thirty-six of us here,? Rudi said.?Call it two hundred, two hundred and thirty on either side.?

He cased the binoculars and tapped his knuckles thoughtfully on his chin for an instant. ?This is going to require the most careful timing,? he said. ?We?re enough to pull it off… but only just, do y?see.? ?With luck, and the Lugh?s own favor.?

They slid down the tree, dropping from branch to branch and springing the last ten feet or so. His companions gathered around him. ?It can be done,? Rudi said.?To boil it down, we wait until they?re all engaged, then attack them from the rear. But it?s possible only if we have some advantage of surprise. Take them at just the right moment, and it will work. Otherwise, bloody failure. The problem there is that the Cutter magus has what I?d be calling a most unpleasant habit; he knows things he should not. Not with just his five senses.?

Thorlind was gray-faced but determined.?He will not.? ?Not this time,? Heidhveig said.?I can… feel him. Like putting down your hand and having it push into a rotten corpse seething with maggots. He?s very strong. But we can blind him. For a little while.? ?A little while is all we?ll need. We must also take out their sentries, as many as possible. Delay the alarm as long as we can.? ?When will you attack?? Thorlind said. ?Not until they?ve made their breach in the wall. Not until they?ve launched their attack, and are fighting in the town itself, tangled up amongst the buildings with no way to run.?

Thorlind?s face was grim, and Heidhveig?s like an age-worn stone. ?So long?? she said.?You must wait until they?ve entered our home?? ?Yes,? he said with calm firmness.?We aren?t enough to count on driving them off if we attack sooner. A blow struck when your enemy?s off-balance is the one that knocks him down so that you can put the boot into him. And even if we did put them to flight earlier… we would not reap and savage them as we must. Pushing an enemy back isn?t enough, nor even making them run; too much chance of their returning the favor, manyfold, some other day. I want to catch them between my hammer and the anvil of the town and crush them. And the price of that must be paid, for it is the price of victory.? ?Paid by my people,? Thorlind said.

Rudi met her eyes and nodded.?For the most part, yes. The cost of defeat would be much higher.?

Heidhveig gathered her bearskin robe around her shoulders.?I?m glad I don?t have to make decisions like that,? she said softly. ?And I?d be glad never to make them either,? Rudi said.?But if I?m to make them, make them I will, and properly.?

He raised his head from the map.?Ingolf, you?re in charge of the main body; Father Ignatius, you?re second in command.?

Then his finger went over the parchment.?As for their sentries. .. Mary and Ritva, you take the ones here. Edain, Asgerd, here. Fred and Virginia, here. Matti and I will see to the removal of the ones here in the center, and them causing such a blockage and obstruction, the spalpeens.?

That was a legitimate use of his own talents; he was much more likely to succeed than anyone else they had.

I?m a general with an army of about platoon size, right now. And one with a round half score of followers fit for the command. ?Ingolf, you come forward with the main body, and we?ll rejoin as you do. Then we cross the open ground and hit them before they can disengage. Keep ranks; no quarter until I command, or they all throw down their arms. Lady Heidhveig, Lady Thorlind, you?ll remain here. Is everyone clear? Then let?s go.?

The enemy sentries should be here, Rudi thought, twenty minutes later, baffled. They had perches in the trees.

Instead everything looked just as it had; the last fringe of pines, towering over hummocky ground covered in thick soft snow… and no sentries waiting concealed in their branches, as Edain and the others had reported.

That snow exploded upward right at his feet. A man came after it, the long knife in his hand flashing upward. The point struck him in the pit of the stomach, and breath gusted out of him with a grunting uffff!

Shock and fear happened, but distantly; as distantly as pain. Will forced air back into his lungs in a whooping gasp. He could see his own shock reflected in the other man?s dark face, exaggerated by the bar of white paint across his eyes, as the knife tip stopped on a plate of the brigandine beneath the Mackenzie?s parka. The knife kept prodding, reflexively, as if the man couldn?t believe it hadn?t sunk hilt-deep and ripped upward. ?Merd?!? the Bekwa blurted.

Rudi snarled, an utterly unconsidered guttural sound that sprang from the back of his throat. His long-fingered hands flashed out, weaponless, and clamped on the man?s chin and the back of his head, twisted and pushed in one sharp ninety-degree turn to the left. There was a brief fibrous resistance and a sharp sound like green willow sticks breaking. He released the body instantly, and it fell limp as a banker?s charity as Rudi whirled.

His sword hissed out, but the knee-deep snow leached agility. Two men had come out of the same sort of deep hide as his attacker, snow allowed to drift over loosely woven spruce branches. Rudi?s mind calculated without prompting, and his arm swept forward in a smooth arc. The long hilt left his fingers with a feeling of inevitability like the sensation when you leap from a height into water. The yard-long blade turned twice in a blurring twinkle.

Thunk.

A heavy wet sound with a crackling beneath it, incongruous somehow in the cold air. The Bekwa who?d been about to stab at Mathilda?s back looked down, goggling at two feet of longsword sticking out from his chest just below the breastbone. Blood steamed on the steel, and as it leaked out of his mouth and nose. Rudi stalked forward as the third man attacked Mathilda; she had her kite-shaped shield up, and the smooth curved visor of her sallet down. The long parka concealed her coat of titanium-alloy mail, but not the vambraces or greaves or gauntlets, and the metal had a gray glint in the bleak morning sunlight.

The Bekwa was bulky in his furs, but no taller than she, with a four-foot spear tipped with a spike of ground-down steel strip in his right hand and a knife in his left. Snow fountained out from under his feet, the moccasins throwing up trails like arcs of powdered diamond. The same snow was more than knee-deep on Mathilda; she waited in the perfect knightly form her instructors had taught, left foot forward and sword ready over her head. He could see d?Ath?s instruction in it.

The savage came in with desperate speed. He leapt the last few feet, just as Rudi reached his dead comrade and wrenched his longsword free; the hilt and blade stood up like a mast from a ship. Then he was close enough to hear Mathilda grunt as the weight of the Bekwa struck her shield, the point of the spear grating across her helmet as she flicked her face and the vision-slit away. But she was already crouched and ready for the impact; the broad curved surface of the shield turned the swift thrust of the knife. The man reeled back, and her sword moved in an economical over-hand chop that ended with a crack of steel in bone, then a low stab under the ribs. He sat down, staring at the nearly severed forearm that jetted blood onto the snow, clutched it to his chest and sank backward to die.

There was only the panting of their breath in the cold silence, and a murmur of something like melleur place from the wounded savage. The face beneath the crude paint was young, thin with bad feeding and rather sad as the ferocity leached out of it. His eyes wandered for a moment, blinking and glazing with a look Rudi recognized; blood loss starving the brain. The Dread Lord?s wing had passed over his face, and it would be only seconds now. ?Maman?? he whispered.