By Heresies Distressed (74 page)

But with a numerical advantage of more than six-to-one, they could
afford
casualties.

“Watch the flanks!” Hahskyn shouted as the first charging figures loomed up dimly through the stormy darkness. Then a sudden, livid flash of blue-white lightning painted the darkness purple and showed him the mass of men hurtling towards him . . . just as the oncoming Temple Loyalists hit the lumps of stone Seahamper had scattered across the approaches to the guesthouse.

The Guard lieutenant's lips skinned back from his teeth as men went down, some of them screaming with the pain of shattered ankles, and their companions' headlong charge faltered. The surprise didn't even come close to
stopping
them, but it broke them up, left holes in their ranks, and slowed their momentum significantly.

The first of them reached the Guard's position behind the arc of wagons and agricultural equipment protecting the guesthouse's only door. They flung themselves up and over the obstacle, only to find the deadly bayonets waiting on the other side. Sharp-edged steel punched into soft flesh, opening bellies and chests, slashing throats, and men shrieked in agony as blood splashed and steamed in the pounding rain.

The bayonet drill of the Imperial Guard had been developed by Major Clareyk and Captain Athrawes. It recognized not only a rifle's reach advantage over a sword, but also the fact that a rifle was shorter and handier than a spear or pike. That it could be used to parry or block, as well as to attack . . . and that it could kill or cripple with
either
end.

The men attacking Hahskyn's guardsmen had never confronted anything like it. They'd expected the rain to neutralize the guardsmen's rifle fire, and so it had. What they
hadn't
expected was the sheer lethality of bayonet-equipped rifles in the hands of men who knew exactly what they were doing with them.

Mytrahn Daivys' eyes widened as the first dozen of his men tumbled back from the improvised barricade, writhing in agony or already dead. It was impossible for him to actually see what was happening, but it was obvious that the Guard's bayonets were even more effective than he'd feared they might be.

The remnants of his front ranks drew back, and he swore as they pulled away from the piled wagons and carts. He understood their shock, but giving the defenders time to recover from the initial onslaught was the worst thing they could possibly have done.

“Hit them!” he bellowed.
“Hit them!”

Lieutenant Hahskyn felt a surge of hope as the attackers recoiled. He knew it was irrational, given the number of men out there, but it was obvious they'd been unprepared for the savagery of their reception. They drew back—not quite milling uncertainly, but clearly hesitant to engage again.

Then he heard a single raised voice.

“
Hit them!
” it shouted, harsh with command, and the mass of men snarled as it came on once more.

Daivys' men surged back towards the guesthouse. Between broken ankles and bayonets, they'd lost a quarter of their strength in the first attempt, but there were still more than twice as many of them as there were of Haskyn's guardsmen, and this time they had a better idea of what they were up against. There'd never been any lack of courage or determination on their part. It was the surprise which had set them back on their heels, and this time, they weren't surprised.

They came on, shouting their hatred, hurling themselves into the Guard's teeth, and suddenly still more attackers were slamming in from either side as Lahrak and Abylyn brought their men into the assault. The guardsmen on the flanks turned to face their new enemies, but this time there were simply too many of them. Sheer weight of bodies carried them forward and over the barricade.

The guardsmen's discipline and training held them together, pairs of men fighting as teams, trying to cover one another, but the melee enveloped them, and madness reigned. Discipline and training could accomplish only so much, even with all the courage in the world behind it, and the teamwork which had spelled possible survival came apart, overwhelmed by numbers and chaos. The night disintegrated into madly swirling knots of individual combat, and there were too few guardsmen to win that kind of fight.

The Imperial Guard died hard . . . but it died.

Sharleyan Ahrmahk thrust the rifle barrel through the loophole Seahamper had cut and squeezed the trigger.

The brutal recoil of the big-bore, black powder rifle hammered her slender shoulder unmercifully. She felt as if a horse had just kicked her in the collarbone, but she turned and half-threw the fired weapon to Daishyn Tayso, then snatched up the last one from the rank standing against the wall. Most of the gunsmoke had stayed outside, but the smoke from the priming pan hovered and swirled, rising towards the bedchamber's ceiling to join the cloud already hanging there.

Someone hammered at the outside of the shutter. And a cluster of arbalest bolts hissed
through
the shutter. One of them snarled past Sharleyan's head, missing her by inches before it buried itself in the bedchamber door, and she thrust the rifle's muzzle through the loophole almost blindly and squeezed the trigger again.

Agony shrieked in the night like a tortured horse, the hammering on the shutter ceased, and she dodged to one side, reaching for the first of the waiting pistols, as yet another bolt splintered its way through the disintegrating shutters and sizzled past her.

Edwyrd Seahamper fell back, fighting desperately. Somehow, Bryndyn Tyrnyr managed to stay with him, covering his left flank, as they cut their way through the wild, rain- and thunder-lashed madness, trying frantically to stay between the attackers and the guesthouse door. Behind them, they heard the whip-crack sounds of gunfire, and fresh desperation slammed through Seahamper as he realized what that meant.

His mind captured fragments of memory. Lieutenant Hahskyn, bayoneting one foe, his rifle spinning in his hands as its butt crushed another man's skull, and then the sword driving in under his arm, through the opening in the side of his cuirass, and the lieutenant going down. Another guardsman fighting desperately against two opponents, somehow holding both of them at bay, until a third took him from behind and cut his throat. A sword opened a bleeding gash on Seahamper's own cheek, another hammered the breastplate of his cuirass, a third glanced off his helmet, and somehow he and Tyrnyr were still on their feet, still falling back to where the pistol shots cracked behind them.

They reached the guesthouse door, and Tyrnyr shouldered Seahamper behind him as a fresh rush surged towards them. Seahamper staggered backward, half-falling through the doorway, and his heart twisted as two swords cut Tyrnyr down before he could follow.

There was no time to feel grief. There was only the desperate need to somehow protect the empress he'd guarded since she was a little girl. The young woman he'd helped to raise, and the monarch he'd proudly sworn to serve. The Temple Loyalists could come at him only down the hallway now, and he bellowed his own hatred as he met them with his red-running bayonet. Hot blood turned the stone floor slick underfoot, and bone crunched as one of the Temple Loyalists slipped and sprawled full length and he drove the butt of his rifle savagely downward onto the fallen man's neck. His world consisted solely of that hallway, of the men storming forward along it, of the growing, terrible ache of his arms and the stink of blood.

Thunder bellowed explosively, louder than ever, shaking the entire guesthouse, but it was a distant thing, unreal and unimportant.

And because it was, he never realized that
this
thunder came not from the west, but from the
east
.