Her bow was between her and the side of the wagon-box. She reached slowly over her shoulder and pulled four arrows out of her quiver; goosefletched shafts of dense Port Orford cedar with horn nocks and wicked bodkin points of hard alloy steel. At this point-blank range she could put them through plate, even, if they hit square on. A flicker of memory told her how little protection the light mail under her jerkin would be, but that faded away. She tucked the arrows between her left forefinger and the riser of the bow. Ready, ready . . .

“Platoooon . . . halt! Right face!”

The guerillas in Boise army gear came to a stop, crash-stamping in unison and turning to face the escort guarding the General-President’s family. A man jumped down from each wagon seat, hitting the quick-release catches in the military harness of the teams and making as if to take them to the troughs.

The Decurion in charge of the detail was wearing sunglasses as well as his helmet with its stiff upright brush of scarlet-dyed hair from a horse’s mane. They were probably for effect, given the way the day was turning overcast.

“What are you Fifteenth Battalion pukes doing here?” he asked, flourishing the swagger stick he wasn’t strictly entitled to. “This is an interdicted spot, so get your weevil-wagons and glue-bait mules and your own sorry Reservist asses out of—”

Nystrup was leading the guerillas playing escort. He didn’t waste time on talking. One hand flashed out and took the platoon-leader by the back of the neck under the flare of his helmet. The other drew and struck with his dagger, driving the point up through the gap in the jawbone and the palate and into the Boise soldier’s brain. The man toppled back

“NOW!” roared Hordle’s bull-bellow.

White fire erupted in Ritva’s mind, like glowing ice. The light sacks flew in every direction from the wagons as they spouted warriors. She came up to one knee in a smooth roll, stripping an arrow out of the bundle she held against her bow and onto the string and throwing arms and shoulders and gut into the draw. The arrow slid through the cutout in the riser as the lead kiss-ring brushed between her lips, and she let the string fall off the fingers. Less than a second and a half had passed, and the arrow drove over a snatched-up shield and into a man’s face with a solid moist crunching whack sound that might come back to her in the night sometime. Again, again, a torrent of whispering death from forty bows—