The Reformer g-4 Page 13

  How do you do that? he asked.

  echolocation, Center answered. your auditory sensors receive much information of which you are not conscious. by calculating the time and angle of sound reflected through and beyond the solid material, i can infer the shapes and relationships of objects.

  Oh. Like most of Center's explanations, that raised more questions than it answered-sound could bounce? Anyway. .

  one ten-pound cask of powder emplaced at the base will clear the obstacle, Center said. possibility of collapse of tunnel ceiling is 27 % ±7.

  "Can't hurt, then," Adrian mused.

  Sure you want to do this, lad? Raj asked. It isn't your proper line of work, really.

  Adrian nodded. My brother is out there, under the walls, he replied firmly, swallowing through the dryness of his mouth and acutely conscious of the smell of wet stone and his own sweat.

  "Simun," he said. "Get someone with a pick up here-two men with picks, and one with a prybar. And a barrel of powder, and-" he consulted his unseen friends "-ten feet of quickmatch. Now!"

  The distant thudding sounds were closer now, louder; like nothing so much as thunder. Beneath it Helga Demansk thought she could hear something far less uncanny than thunder from a clear blue sky; a snarling clamor of voices, and the harsh metal-on-metal sound of battle, with an undertone of the flat banging thumps that blades made on shields. The concubines were kneeling silently in rows according to seniority; several more of the black-armored Director's guardsmen had come in. One of them was pale-faced and had a bandage around his forearm; another was limping. The sunlight crawled past under the dappled shade of the dome, the water splashed in the pool, all infinitely familiar sights gilded with a nearly supernatural film of horror now.

  Another man came in, the metal heel-plates of his military boots loud on tile and marble, muffled where he traversed colorful rugs. He looked at the guard commander standing above the Eldest Sister, swallowed, and gave a jerky nod.

  "It is time," the commander said harshly.

  "It is time," the older woman said calmly. "I shall go first, to show my sisters that there is nothing to fear."

  She raised her chin. The soldier shook his shoulders back and raised the blade; sunlight broke off the bright edge as he took careful aim and swung with a huffing grunt of effort.

  There was a wet cleaving sound. Blood splashed backward over the gilt mosaics of the wall, over young fleecebeasts gamboling in a spring meadow. Keffrine gave a breathless little scream.

  "Time to get moving," Helga muttered to herself, and took one last deep breath.

  * * *

  "All right," Adrian said to the worried arquebusier. "I'm leaving you the twenty best shots, with all the loaded weapons to hand. They should be able to keep up a respectable fire for half an hour or so, and that's all that we'll need."

  The man nodded, saluted, and trotted away back up the stairs. Adrian looked at the other men near him: Simun; Tohmus, the commander of the Sea Striker detachment; the rest of his gunmen, now holding their cutlasses and targets.

  "Everyone!" he said. "Be prepared for a very loud-"

  THACRACK!

  Smoke and debris vomited out of the mouth of the tunnel into the basement of the tower, shrouding its dimness and peppering them all with grit and small fragments of rock.

  Adrian spoke again, his voice tinny in his own ears after the monstrous blow of the explosion in the tunnel's confined space. "Simun, Tohmus, no crowding. I'll go first."

  He plunged in, coughing, waving a futile hand in front of himself. The breeze was strong from the seaward, from the blocked end of the passageway-previously blocked now-smelling of patchouli oil and flowers under the sulfur stink of the powder. The plug was scattered in toe-stubbing chunks for a hundred yards back from where it had spanned the tunnel, bits of it having bounced off the curves in the walls. Beyond it was the chamber Center's eerie sound-vision had shown, but the doors beyond were splinters hanging from twisted hinges. Ahead was a long sloping corridor, then a staircase with sunlight filtering down from above.

  And barrels on either side; one was smashed, and the rich fruity odor of wine filled the confined space. Above the casks hung hams in nets, bunches of herbs, sacks of fruit. .

  "Gellerix's cunt," whispered Simun, beside him. "Anrew, Mattas, you pick six reliable men and guard this, you hear me?" To Adrian: "Sorry, sor-don't want to tempt the lads mor'n's right. And sor? Might be an idea to draw yor sword now."

  Adrian did, gripping the little brass-rimmed buckler with his left hand. He peered around. "Storerooms. ."

  Center strobed one of the lateral corridors giving off the big arch-roofed cellar. There was an ironbound door set into the wall there, with a massive lock-rare and expensive.

  "Simun, put that under guard too-I think it'll bear investigation. We'll keep going straight up," he said, indicating the stairwell.

  * * *

  Keffrine was still sobbing, her eyes squeezed shut and tears leaking out from under them. Helga waited. .

  . . and a dozen women broke and bolted as the soldiers approached the front row. Eldest probably knew they would, ran through her; that was probably why she'd gone first, to spare herself seeing the indignity. The gathering dissolved into a chaos of running women and harassed, determined guardsmen. Blades began to flash, not in the orderly execution planned but in a frenzy, men slashing at figures that ran by or trembled and pled.

  Helga moved herself; sideways, to where a tall fretted-brass brazier sent a coil of incense upwards. She gripped it by the base and heaved, toppling the man-high structure against the wall. Glowing embers scattered into gauzy hangings, and flames began to lick upward.

  "Fire!" she screamed in Islander. "Fire!"

  A guardsman had been approaching, blade in hand. He looked aside-no sailor or town dweller but had a healthy dread of uncontrolled flame-and when he looked back he met the second brazier full in the face as she swung it two-handed. Brass met flesh and bone with a loud thock. Helga scooped up the falling sword; it was a different shape from the ones she was used to, and too heavy, but that didn't stop her short efficient jab up under his chin.

  "Come on," she shouted to Keffrine, and grabbed her by one hand. Trailing the sobbing girl, she bolted for the exit to the basement storerooms.

  * * *

  "Keep the men well in hand," Adrian said.

  Screams were coming from the room at the head of the stairs. Women's screams, but also men's shouts, and the distinctive, unpleasant sound of steel driving into flesh.

  "Let's go!"

  The noises ahead were loud enough that it was several heartbeats before anyone noticed the enemy surging up through the passageway. Adrian had time to check his rush a step in sheer astonishment at the sight before him; a room floridly overdecorated even by Islander standards, full of running, screaming women-dying women-and soldiers in black-lacquered armor trying to butcher them all. Dozens down on the floor, wounded or dead; a nauseating mixture of smells: perfume, flowers, blood, shit. .

  And right in front of him, one of the women fighting a pair of soldiers. An auburn-haired woman, one he'd swear was Confed-born, not an Islander. Not doing badly at all, either-

  She beat aside a thrust, both hands on the hilt of the long saber. The other soldier lunged as well, at a smaller blond woman by the first one's side, and the point of his blade slammed out her back. The redhead screamed and slashed him across the face, blood and a spark where the blade grated off the nasal bar of the killer's helmet.

  "Get the hell out of the way-sir!" someone shouted in Adrian's ear.

  Men poured past him. He leapt forward himself, batted the saber of the man fighting the redhead aside and lunged with his own basket-hilted, Emerald-style sword. The black-armored man vanished in the melee; a second later Adrian saw him toppling into the fountain pool in the center of the room with a javelin through his neck. The fighting was brief, three mercenaries against an Islander here, four there-overwhelming numbers. The screaming didn't
stop, and now he saw his own men chasing the women. They obviously didn't have butchery on their minds, but-

  "You!" he said. One had grabbed the auburn-haired woman-girl-from behind, hands over her breasts. "You! Release that woman!"

  "Wait yer turn-" the mercenary began.

  Get them in hand now, or you never will, Raj said.

  "Right."

  Adrian took two steps forward and smashed the hilt of his sword into the would-be rapist's face. Bone crumbled under the blow, with a tooth-grating yielding feeling. He had time to see the woman's face go slack with surprise, and then he tossed her his sword to clear his hand.

  He hooked a grenade out of his pouch, the ceramic cool and pebbly under his fingers. His other hand whipped the slowmatch from its covered metal holder on his belt, twirled it to make the lit end glow brightly, touched off the fuse. He waited three seconds, and then tossed it gently underhand into the pool.

  THUDUMP.

  Water-and bits of the dead man dangling over the fountain-sprayed through the room. The water prevented the fragments from being deadly. . or not very deadly.

  Silence fell in the echoing aftermath of the explosion. Adrian held the slowmatch next to the fuse of another grenade.

  "If discipline is not restored immediately," he said, half-surprised at the calmness of his own voice under the enormous reined-in tension, "I am going to light this grenade and drop it in the pouch."

  "We'd all be killed!" one of the Sea Strikers wailed.

  "That's the idea." Adrian nodded. "We have a battle to fight, and it's that way. Anyone have a problem with that?"

  "No, sir."

  There was a general chorus of agreement, and men who'd seized women released them, forming up and heading for the doors.

  "Simun."

  The little mercenary came up, limping and pressing the tail of his tunic against a slash wound along one thigh-a vulnerable point in light-infantry armor, protected only by the studded leather strips of the military kilt.

  "Simun, get some of the walking wounded together. Police this area, get the surgeon working. . oh, he is."

  The man had half a dozen of the more seriously wounded lying on improvised pallets, and twice that number of the hareem's occupants. Some of the hale ones were tearing up sheets to help him.

  "Anyway, keep things under control."

  Simun nodded. "Good choice, sor," he said. "Cut like this, Gellerix 'erself couldn't tempt me."

  "I'll be with the unit," Adrian went on. "See you when it's over."

  "I'm coming too."

  Adrian looked around, startled, and met level green eyes. The auburn-haired girl offered him his sword; she'd taken a similar weapon from one of the dead, and a small buckler. The filmy hareem costume was plastered to her, mostly with blood, and there were smudges of it across her face where she'd bound back the russet-colored hair with a strip of cloth.

  "Miss-"

  "Fuck that," she said. She was speaking Emerald, with a slight Confed accent-upper-class Confed, he realized. "I'm a. . soldier's daughter, and I've been here an Almighty Allfather-cursed year, and I'm going to kill some of these Islander bastards."

  "Soldier's daughter?" Adrian said.

  "Name's Helga. My father. . fought with Justiciar Demansk's armies."

  Things clicked behind Adrian's upraised eyebrows. She's really not bad with a sword, Raj mentioned.

  That meant she wasn't what she'd implied, the daughter of some long-service Confed trooper. Women of that class didn't train with the sword-certainly not in the classic Emerald style. Some rich young women did; it had been quite the craze for the last couple of years, much to the scandal of the conservative nobility. A few had even appeared in the Vanbert Games, first-blood matches, until a reforming Justiciar had outlawed the practice. Noblewoman, he thought.

  observe, Center said.

  A grid formed over her face, countour lines sprang out. Justiciar Demansk's face appeared beside it, and arrows sprang out to mark points of resemblance.

  allowing for gender, probability of close genetic relationship is 97 %, ±1, Center said. as near unity as a hasty analysis permits.

  And Demansk. . one of his daughters was taken in a pirate raid, and not ransomed, Adrian thought. Demansk had several sons, but that was the only daughter he'd ever heard of. .

  The analysis had taken half a dozen seconds. "All right, Miss Helga," he said crisply. "You may rest assured of my protection." The courtly phrase seemed oddly out of place in this room of gilding and blood. "But keep close to me and don't get in the way."

  "I won't," she said. The sword moved easily in her hand; it was the standard Emerald style, single-edged and with a handguard of bronze strips. "This may get in some other people's way, though."

  * * *

  "They've stopped retreating, sir," Donnuld Grayn panted.

  "That's obvious," Esmond said, taking a bite out of the skin of the orange in his hand and tossing another to his second-in-command.

  He squeezed the juice into his mouth, pitched the husk aside, and swished his hand in an ornamental fountain before drying it on the skirt of his tunic. The noise of combat grew in the courtyard ahead, and far and faint came the distinctive sound of one of Adrian's grenades. Esmond's grin grew; from the barely-glimpsed tower came another slow, aimed arquebus round. There was a shriek behind him-somewhere on the battlements that he'd bypassed when he took his men straight through the breach in the wall. Amazing what an entire oxcart full of gunpowder run into the ditch in front of the wall would do. The dry moat just focused the hellpowder's power on the stone.

  Little brother's been busy, he thought, taking up his sword and buckler again, and pulling down the helmet he'd pushed up on his forehead. Trickles of tepid sweat ran down from the sponge lining, and the world shrank to a T-shaped slit of brightness. . and he felt alive. Alive in a way he hadn't, except in combat, since Nanya died.

  "Well, what are you lot waiting for?" he said as he came through into the next courtyard.

  The Palace of the Directors of Vase was built to the same general plan as the King's house in Chalice, but it was older-older, and less centrally planned, having grown slowly over centuries. Essentially it was a series of interlocking courtyards, sometimes separated by narrow service alleys, and sometimes as much as three stories tall. Some were elaborate with fountains and mosaics, others workaday storehouses, warehouses, workshops, guard barracks. The one through the arched gate ahead was one of the fancy ones, which was all to the good-the tall fountain in the middle would provide his troops with clean water, once they'd taken it.

  "Keep down, sir," an officer said.

  The men here were, behind the pillars of the arcade that lined the courtyard, moving only in short dashes between points covered by the stone. The movement got thicker as the hundred or so reinforcements he'd brought with him filed in among the stalled assault point element.

  "They've got archers over there," the officer continued. Maklin, that's his name, Esmond thought. He'd made a point of learning all the officers' names, at least. "They're good, and they're not moving for shit."

  Esmond nodded thoughtfully, looking at a couple of bodies out in the open. The black-fletched shafts were driven right through them, scale-reinforced leather corselets or not. From the angle, they'd been hit by men on the second-story balconies fifty yards to the east. Spearheads twinkled among the ground-story columns, ready to receive anyone who'd run the gauntlet of arrowfire across the open space. Many Islander archers used recurved bows, backed with strips from the mouthparts of sea monsters. They had a heavy punch, in expert hands.

  "We need to get them distracted," he said. "Maklin, get twenty-five men down to each end of this arcade." The arches and pillars ran around all four sides of the courtyard. "Have them work towards the enemy, from pillar to pillar. Donnuld, back out and up, onto the second story-give those fucking bowmen something to think about besides sniping. Take a company."

  Esmond waited with a cat's patience while the or
ders were obeyed. His mind and body felt light, tight, strong; it was like the Games, in a way.

  "All right, men," he said when he heard the rising panic in the voices from the second story, across the way. An archer leaned far out to shoot at a man dodging from one pillar to the next; while he aimed and drew, a javelin sank into his back, and the body arched out to fall, thump, in the courtyard below.

  "All right," he said again, raising his voice. "What are you waiting for, the enemy to send you enough arrows to open an archery shop? Follow me!"

  With the last word he was sprinting out, dodging and jinking, as if this were the running-in-armor event at the Games. There are times, he thought, as a bodkin-pointed shaft chipped marble by his right ankle, when straight up the middle is the only way to go.

  With a roar like the sea striking rocks, the troopers behind him surged out of cover on his heels. He kept well ahead of them until they were almost in contact. A volley of thrown spears came at him; he batted one out of the air with his shield as he curved around the fountain. Then he checked his pace, another, and the Strikers struck the line of Islander spears together.

  One slammed forward, aimed for his belly. He swayed aside, his body moving in a single smooth curve, and then punched the boss of his small round shield into the face behind it. Bone crackled; he ignored the wounded man and turned his run into a lunge. The long sword in his right hand slipped into a throat; he twisted and jerked it free against the constriction of spasming muscle. Blood sprayed in an arc like water coming out of a hose as the man turned in a half circle before he fell. A saber slashed at him, motion caught out of the corner of his eye; Esmond swept his shield around in a circle, moving it without putting it in front of his face and blocking his vision. The steel struck and sparked on the studs in the surface of the leather, wrenching painfully at the wrist of his left hand. Esmond stabbed low automatically, stepped forward, beat a spear aside with his sword and let the blade and shaft slide up his sword and punched the man behind it in the face with the guard.

  "To me, Strikers!" he shouted. "Push 'em, push 'em!"