The Reformer g-4 Page 7

  "Four throws and a lighter," he said, touching his mount's forelegs. The animal crouched with a blubbering snarl of uneasiness.

  Adrian stepped forward, his men behind him. There was a short bubble of clear space in front of the alleyway, but that wouldn't last when the bulk of the crowd realized what was going on and tried to escape. There were enough of them that anything in their way would end up as another greasy smear on the filthy pavement of the alley.

  "Ready. ."

  He unclipped his own staff-sling and put a grenade in the pouch, the fuse hanging free. The other four slingers imitated him, spreading out so that their weapons wouldn't foul each other.

  "Target is formation of troops," he said again, feeling a mild distant astonishment that his voice was firm and calm.

  "Light."

  The lighter went from man to man, touching his coil of quickmatch to the fuses. The fuses sputtered and bled blue smoke, but they were more reliable than the first they'd tried.

  "Cast."

  He whipped the staff around his head with both hands and loosed at the quiet tone in his inner ear that was Center's judgement of the aimpoint. All he had to do was get the staff moving in the right plane. The cord flew free, and the grenades arched out. His headed towards the noncom commanding the blocking force, and exploded precisely at chest level. The others were within a second and a half of it, and only one shattered on the ground before it burst. That produced an effect he hadn't seen before, a sort of exploding fiery mist up to waist height.

  The front rank of the mob was as panicked as the surviving soldiers; those were running-or limping or crawling-away from the blasts as fast as they could. The front rank of the mob couldn't run, although some tried to, turning and pushing at the solid mass of humanity behind them. Some of them were knocked over and trampled as the packed throng went forward, joining the City Companies soldiers as stains on the pavement. He saw a few of the more thoughtful picking up shields, helmets and assegais as they passed the bodies.

  Adrian turned and looked at his slingers; they were grinning, laughing, slapping each other on the back. One was dancing the kodax, prancing and snapping his fingers.

  "Shut up!" he said, his voice the crack of a whip. They did, falling silent and shuffling their feet, the mounted ones looking down at their saddlehorns. "Now we've seen what our weapons can do. Let's get moving."

  * * *

  "Sir, if you go, I'll follow you. I can't say how many of the men will, though."

  Esmond looked at Jusha. His second-in-command was a grizzled middle-aged man, shorter than his commander but thicker through the shoulders, with a seaman's rolling gate and a scar that drew his upper lip off one yellowed dogtooth.

  Esmond nodded silently, then looked back at the Redvers townhouse across the road. There were City Companies men outside the front entrance, blocking the street both ways, and the scouts said there were another hundred around the rear walls and wagon entrance. Magistrate's guards, too; not real soldiers-even the City Companies weren't real soldiers, though there were plenty of paid-off veterans in their ranks-but still armed men. Say two hundred, two hundred and fifty in all, he thought. More than half of them inside, and the place was designed to be held against attack. It was all blank exterior wall, three stories high here and ten feet even where it surrounded nothing but interior courtyard-garden. The narrow windows on the third floor here would serve the purpose of a fort's arrow slits quite well.

  Esmond swallowed salt sweat. "Here's what we'll do," he said. "It'd be suicide just trying to storm the place-too many of them, they've got the position. So we'll tie them down with a diversionary attack; grenades first. Then I'll go in with a satchel of grenades, and toss them against the door."

  That was set back into the wall facing the street, making a little alcove.

  "One will be lit. You've seen what the stuff can do. Then when the door's blown in, we throw more grenades through and go in on their heels-by the ashy banks of hell, man, it'll be like spearing stunned fish."

  Jusha looked at him. "Hope you can get something from her that you can't buy for half an arnket any day," he sighed. "All right, sir; we ate your salt and took your weapons. Let's get ready."

  * * *

  "Didn't work, did it, brother?" Adrian said.

  "No. What's wrong with the bloody things?" Esmond said, glaring across the street.

  They were crouching behind the stone counter of a soup shop across from the Redvers mansion. Adrian could smell the bean stew still bubbling in the big vats, and the heat of the charcoal fire was almost painful on his knees and belly. Absently he tore a small loaf of bread in half and reached over the greasy marble to dip it in the soup.

  "There's nothing wrong with the grenades," Adrian said. "You just weren't using them properly. The force of an explosion propagates along the line of least resistance."

  Esmond was staring at him with tightly-held anger. "I recognize every one of those words," he said. "But they don't make any sense."

  "The power of the grenades goes where it's easiest. Out into the open air, not into the solid door. You've got to put the explosion in a confined space for it to do much against doors or walls."

  "Oh," Esmond said.

  There were bodies lying in the street in front of the soot-stained walls of the great house; mostly magistrates' guards and men of the City Companies, but a few of Esmond's Emerald mercenaries, too. They'd been killed by darts hurled from the narrow third-story windows. Adrian's jaws worked mechanically as he examined the scene; Center drew diagrams over it in green lines, with notes on distances and trajectories.

  "The street's a long javelin cast, even from a height," he said thoughtfully. "But it's possible for good slingmen. That bronze grill over the main door, that gives into the hallway, doesn't it?"

  "Yes."

  "All right, here's what we do."

  Esmond looked at him again; not angry, but with a sort of wondering curiosity. Uh-oh, Adrian thought. By the Maiden's Spear, I've started sounding like Raj.

  It was comforting to know he had an experienced general living in his head, when it came to things like this. Adrian had read a good deal of history during his time in the Academy of the Grove, but it was Esmond who'd been interested in things military.

  "Jeffa," he went on. "The four best men. Target is the third-story windows; on my command, not before. The next two sections are to lob grenades right over the roof-see if they can land them on the other side of the ridge tree, and let them roll down into the courtyard. Brother, you get your men ready-we won't have much time."

  He waited while the messages were passed down to the clumps of men concealed behind shop windows and planters; this side of the street was a mansion much like the Redvers', but like many wealthy men the owner had let out cubicles along the streetfront for stores. A minute later a hissed word came back.

  "They poured boiling water on my men," Esmond said in a cold tone, his eyes fixed on the enemy. "They're going to regret that." There was an angry red weal down his left arm.

  Good man, your brother, Raj said. He's got a lot to think about, but he isn't forgetting his command.

  "That they are, brother," Adrian said. "They're going to regret it extremely." His voice rose higher. "On the three. . one. . two. . three."

  The slingers dashed out into the street. Javelins and darts arched down from the windows, but they skittered sparking across the paving stones. One or two stuck in the cracks between blocks, humming like malignant wasps. Adrian lit the fuse to his first grenade from a helper's torch, swung. .

  now.

  Hours of practice had connected Center's machine voice to his own fingers. The cast was sideways, up at a slant. The clay jar spun through one of the gaps in the bronze grillwork over the main door of the Redvers mansion, and exploded just before it reached the wooden shutter inside.

  Crack. Then crack. . crack. . crack. . as three more arched into windows on the third story of the facade. The bleeding trunk of a man collapsed
out of one slit opening, trailing tattered arms and a runnel of blood down the smoke-dimmed whitewash. The second gave only screams, but the third added a gout of flame.

  "Must have had a pot of boiling oil over a fire," Adrian muttered. Louder: "Again!"

  More grenades arched out, for the windows, and a dozen or more over the rooftree. His own snapped into the bulged framework of the bronze grill, and blasted a corner of it out in a shower of wood splinters and metal fragments that pinged and whined off the wall and the street. His next went through the gap, and a hollow roar told him it had exploded in the hallway within.

  "Again. . all right, let's go for it!"

  Esmond and scores of his men joined him. They flattened against the wall, but no darts or boiling water or oil cascaded down from the windows above. Adrian lit another grenade and tossed it overhand through the shattered grill; it was one of the red-banded kind, the ones with lead balls packed into the double shell outside the powder. He could feel them slamming into the teak of the door's interior.

  Crossed spears tossed Esmond up. He gripped the stonework edges that had held the grill, looked within.

  "All clear," he said, and swung himself through feetfirst with an athlete's impossible grace. They heard him swear mildly on the other side, as he wrenched at the warped bar, and then the doors were open.

  Adrian looked through and swallowed. Men must have been packed in here pretty densely, when the first grenade came through. More had been trying to drag away the wounded, when that last one he'd thrown had landed among them.

  Esmond stood with blood splashed up to his knees, like a statue of Wodep the War God poised with shield and sword. His face held a stony unconcern.

  "This way," he said, pointing.

  The main staircase to the second floor ran up from the other side of the vestibule courtyard. In ancient times there would have been an open light well over the pool, letting in water for domestic use. Here it was a skylight, and the pool was ornamental. . less so now, since a grenade had evidently landed in it, and the colorful swimmers were pasted across the columns and mosaics. A wounded man had crawled as far as the staircase, and was making a messy time of dying. Black smoke poured down the landing.

  "Oh, Maiden shield us, the place is on fire," Adrian blurted.

  "Well, what did you expect?" Esmond said harshly. "Let's go."

  "Wait." Adrian ripped a strip of cloth off the bottom of his tunic and dipped it in the water of the ornamental pool before tying it around his nose.

  "Good idea," Esmond said, following suit along with the rest. "Half of you hand over your grenades and follow us," he went on to the men. "The rest of you, keep a sharp lookout on the street for enemy reinforcements."

  The water smelled rankly bad, but it was welcome as they forced their way up into the furnace heat of the second story. The fire had started along the streetfront, and the doors in that direction were belching gouts of fire. It was running fast into the northwest corner of the building, though, running along the tinder-dry cedar rafters and the laths of the plasterwork that made up most of the big house's interior partitions. And the paint in the murals, that's linseed oil, Adrian reminded himself. And the tapestries. . Maiden shield us!

  They crouched and went down the connecting corridor around the central courtyard, towards the suite of Redvers' wife, where her personal servants would be. Halfway down it was an improvised barricade of furniture, with the gasping, coughing forms of half a dozen City Company troopers behind it.

  "We can-" he began. His brother ignored him.

  "Nanya!" he shouted, like a battle cry, and leapt.

  Adrian followed, sword in one sweating hand and buckler in the other. This isn't my proper work- he thought.

  His brother struck. Adrian's eyes went wide; he felt Raj's surprise at the back of his mind as well. The sword moved, blurring with its speed, and a spray of red droplets followed it in an arching spatter across the pale stucco of the walls. A man screamed, looking at the stump of an arm taken off at the elbow. Another slammed backward as the edge of Adrian's sword ploughed into his forehead and then fell in a spastic quivering heap. As he wrenched the weapon free, Esmond kicked another in the crotch, then broke his bent-over neck with a downward blow of the shield rim. Adrian struck at a man backing away with his face slack in horror and the assegai loose in his hand. The City Companies trooper wailed and fled, clutching a gashed forearm. He looked up to see Esmond driving the remaining two Confeds before him down the corridor. As he watched, one went over backward at a slam from Esmond's brass-faced shield. Esmond leapt high, came down on the man's ribcage with both heels, managed to spring free in time to turn a final assegai thrust with his shield. Then the sword sprang out like a kermitoid's licking tongue. The Confed gaped down at the blade through his torso, then slid backward as his face went slack.

  "Nanya!" Esmond screamed again, and dashed forward.

  Adrian followed, stopping only long enough to snatch up a canteen and rip a piece of cloth free. He wet it and held it across his mouth and nose as Esmond ran through gathering smoke and heat towards the family quarters. The door there was locked. Esmond's sword went straight into it; the steel snapped as he twisted, but so did the mechanism of the lock.

  Adrian was close behind. He saw what his brother did, as the door swung back in a belch of flame that singed their eyebrows. The women were huddled in the center of the room, clutching each other, some of them still conscious. They had time to see the men in the doorway before a flaming beam and mass of plaster fell across them.

  "Nanya!" Esmond screamed a last time, foam on his lips.

  Adrian had to hit him three times across the back of the head with his shield rim before Esmond slumped; then he put his hands under his brother's arms and dragged him backward, cold with fear that he'd struck too hard.

  But he'd had to hit him. Nothing but unconsciousness was going to stop Esmond from plunging into that room, and the very gods themselves couldn't bring him alive out of it.

  FOUR

  Dust. Whenever Adrian remembered the retreat to the west, it was the dust that came back, the acrid taste of it in his mouth and clogging his nose. After a while he got the knack of sleeping while he rode, nodding along in a half-doze. Shouting woke him.

  He rubbed a hand over his face, smearing reddish dust and sweat. Esmond was standing in the stirrups, looking forward.

  "Messenger just came in," he said, with a little more life in his voice than there had been over the past week. There was still something missing from it. .

  Youth, lad, Raj said. That comes to us all. He's just had it removed faster and more painfully than most.

  "And there go the cavalry," Esmond went on.

  The velipadsmen were riding at the head of the column, where they could spread out to screen the infantry. Adrian blinked gummy eyes as he watched them fan out into the low rolling hills ahead; they were Southron barbarians, mostly, mercenaries serving for pay and adventure under Confed officers. Screen . . he thought, watching their velipads trot into the ripe standing wheat like boats breasting a sea of living bronze-Damn, I'm thinking in hexameter-if the cavalry were being sent out to screen the main force, then the Emerald light infantry would too.

  One of Audsley's tribunes rode up, fingers plucking nervously at the crimson sash that circled his muscled cuirass.

  "Deploy," he said, pointing westward with his staff of office. "The enemy is approaching from the west in strength. No more than three miles distant."

  "Three miles?" Esmond said sharply. "To their cavalry screen, or to their main body? How many? Who commands?"

  The legate looked down his well-bred nose; he was about their age, a young spark of the nobility following his patron to war, and unused to such a tone from a mere Emerald mercenary.

  "Justiciar Demansk commands," he drawled. "But that needn't concern you, Emerald; you won't be treating with him yourself, you know."

  He reined his velipad about and clapped heels to it. Esmond snorted. "If
Justiciar Demansk was ever involved in this-and I beg leave to doubt-he's certainly going to prove his loyalty to the State now. With our blood and bones."

  probability 97 %, ±2, Center said helpfully in the back of Adrian's mind. probability approaches unity as closely as stochastic analysis permits.

  I could die here, he knew sharply. Suddenly he could see and smell and feel more vividly than ever in his life; the smell of trampled barley and dust, the heavy shamble of a half-armed Audsley "volunteer" a hundred paces back, the song of a shrikewing. .

  probability 52 %, ±3, Center said. as you were warned.

  "All men are initiates of the mysteries of death," he whispered.

  "Death, hell," Esmond said, grinning through sweat-caked dust. He raised himself in the stirrups and called to his men: "Those poor sorry ignorant bastards are going to be doing the dying, aren't they, lads?"

  The men cheered him. "Deploy, and remember the training! They've got nothing like our thunderbolts-or our guts. Deploy!"

  Justiciar Demansk grunted as he looked up from the folding map table set on the little ridge. Trampled barley stems were glassy and a little slippery under his hobnailed sandals, and he was sweating under the bronze back-and-breast that tradition mandated for a general officer.

  "Here they come, the fools," he muttered.

  Audsley had been a competent commander once; how could he have gotten himself into this position? Good Confed troopers are going to die because Audsley and his friends can't pay their debts, he thought. Meanwhile the Islanders raid the coasts and the barbarians stir in the southlands. What a waste. Granted that the State was like a knot of vipers these days, all old good ways breaking down, but this. .

  This was a ratfuck waiting to happen, he thought coldly. One day-not too long from now-a strong man was going to have to seize the reins, or everything would melt down as the generals fought over the bones of the Confederation like crabs in a bucket. Either one strong man emerged to end the endless rivalries, or it would go on until the Southrons and the Islanders fought each other to see who picked the bones of civilization. But Audsley is not that man.