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Heasleroad cried out in relief.?Captain Butler! What is going-?
The guardsman looked at him, smiling through the gashes the splinters had cut in his flesh; one eye leaked clear matter down his cheek, ru
He was a man of middling size, but strong and very quick. The longsword blurred down in a silver arc; there was a heavy wet sound, and underneath it a crack of parting bone. ?Haro!? he shouted, and then the war cry of his House:?Face Gervais, face death!?
The head sagged free, held by only a shred of flesh. Blood spurted out into the room, but for one long instant the body?s hands scrabbled beside the severed neck, trying to enlarge the hole through the broken wood. Then it went limp, and other hands pulled it back.
A billhook smashed through; Odard cut again, but this time the blade skidded with a shower of sparks off a sheath of steel wire wound around the wooden shaft behind the business end of the polearm. The weapon jerked back and then probed at him, thrust two-handed with a savage, skillful snap. He skipped back just in time, or a little later than that; the sharp point of the spike touched his breast, and a dark stain spread on the colorful cloth of the jupon. ?Here!? Mathilda cried.
She tossed him a shield; there were two, done up for Anthony Heasleroad?s amusement in the Lidless Eye of the Armingers, with the baton of cadency across one, and the mon symbol of the House of Liu-the Chinese ideograph for Poland, for his father?s mother, silver on red on black on the other. There hadn?t been any reason to make the shields genuine, but there hadn?t been any reason not to, either, and Mathilda had taken full advantage of the Bossman?s expense account.
So these were the real article, elongated triangles four feet from rounded point to curved top, made of plywood and bullhide and covered in thin sheet metal, with the padded loops on the inside parallel to the length. ?Bless your foresight, Matti!? Rudi said.?Flank me-not in plain sight of the door!?
The two Associates took up the stance Portlander men-at-arms used for fighting on foot; left fist at chin height, which put the upper edge of the shield just under the eyes and the point at shin level, and swords over their heads with the hilts forward. Rudi had no protection but the little buckler clipped to the side of his longsword?s sheath. He took that in his hand, some part of him wishing they had all their fighting gear at hand; with a western knight?s head-to-toe panoply the three of them could hold the doorway in turn, and only be badly hurt by accident.
You fight with what you have, when you have to, he thought.
Rudi crouched and duckwalked towards the door, keeping below the level that could be seen through the ruins of the upper panel; it wasn?t easy to stay low when you stood six-two in your stocking feet. The billhook pulled back, and pulled a chunk of the splintered wood free with the curved hook on its rear.
The Bossman of Iowa moved forward, with the shete in his hand. ?Get back, you fool!? Rudi barked.
Even then there was some remote corner of his mind that felt a relief at the frank words, like the bursting of a boil. ?There?s nothing you can do here! Look to your woman and your son!?
Kate Heasleroad added her voice to his; a little to Rudi?s surprise it wasn?t shrill with fear at all. She was in the far corner of the room near the entrance to the nursery corridor, with an upturned table sheltering her and her own body between the edged metal and the path to her child. Her eyes were wide with fear and her fair skin turned milk pale, but it was controlled fear, and she kept them fixed on the doorway to follow the action there. Her husband?s face was crimson, flushed with rage as much as with drink.
So he?s no coward, Rudi thought. What a time to develop the virtues!
Mathilda acted where Rudi couldn?t; she leapt forward just as a bow snapped on the landing outside, and threw herself in front of the Iowan. There was a hard crack as the point punched into her shield. It hit at a slant, penetrating shallowly and giving a malignant whine as vibration damped itself in metal and wood. She hit the Bossman under the short ribs with the pommel of her sword to stun resistance, threw him back with an expert heave of shoulders and legs, and used the motion to whirl herself back out of the line of fire. Only then did she snap the arrowhead off with another blow of the hilt, and the inch or two of shaft that had followed it through the shield. ?Haro, Portland!? she cried in a valkyr shout as she took stance again.?Holy Mary for Portland!?
Two more arrows plowed through the space she?d vacated; they went over Rudi?s head with a vicious whissst of cloven air like angry yellow-jacket wasps, and slammed into the wall to stand quivering. Rudi came off the floor in a long lunge in the instant they blurred past, leg and arm in perfect line and the blade of the longsword lashing out into the hole in the broken door. The point drove home in meat and bone, and a bill clattered through the broken wood to lie spi
Hands gripped the blade of his sword, naked flesh against the metal. He stripped it backward with a wrench, and fingers fell away from the edge of the layer-forged steel. Another bill rammed close, probing for his life as the wielder crowded among the figures thronging the landing. ?Morrigu!? Rudi screamed.
It was half war cry, half desperate appeal. He was used to fighting brave men, but not those who cared for wounds and pain and death no more than so many windup automatons. ? Morrigu! Come to me, Dark Mother! I am the Lady?s Sword!?
The Crow Goddess had sent Raven to him long ago; not in dream and vision, but in the light of common day. He bore the mark of the bird?s flint-hard beak in the small scar between his brows. That pain had been brief. It flared again for an instant. Then what filled him was agony and fire, ecstasy beyond bearing, joy and horror at once. The world vanished and reappeared with jeweled clarity, and he understood . Every beat of his heart linked him to all that was, and he saw those threads.
His dropped the buckler and his hand closed on the bill?s shaft behind the head, wrenched it free, slammed it back so that the butt cap cracked a skull. His sword thrust back and forth like the needle in a treadle-worked sewing machine. There was no rage behind the strokes, only a love that encompassed even the snarling faces behind the weapons that reached for him, a vast piteous determination.
Dark wings beat above his head, their drumbeat the death of suns, the wind of their passage a surge of fire like surf on a shore whose sand was stars. Flames circled a single Eye. The sword moved, and men died; others crowded forward, blades lashing at him and weapons beating at the hinges of the door. Planes of black light shattered. He screamed, and the cry was the soul of grief from the Mother of All at the pain of Her children, a boiling ocean of sorrow and rage. ?Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy,? Ignatius whispered, and crossed himself.
His hands and balance halted the horse before his mind was aware of the need, and calmed the beast?s skittishness at the harsh overwhelming iron stink of blood. The rear entrance to the Emergency Coordinator?s residence had been well guarded; the men wore the mail shirts and coal-scuttle helmets of the State Police, and the door on its massive hinges was panels of solid steel strapped and forge welded and riveted together into something that even a battering ram could only have dented.
The Order of the Shield sent its knight-brothers where they were needed to succor the afflicted and rescue the weak; he had seen terrible things many times in his nearly thirty years of life, and he was just old enough to remember a little of the first year after the Change. This… ?How did they die?? Virginia Kane whispered. ?They killed themselves,? Frederick Thurston said; his voice was shocked into a machine flatness.?Or each other.?