Gunpowder Empire

Jeremy didn't think trying to storm Polisso made good sense for the Lietuvans. A

No one in Polisso looked for an all-out assault on the walls. Jeremy certainly didn't. Unlike some other men in Polisso, he didn't claim afterwards that he did, either. Like just about everyone else in town, he was asleep when the attack started.

King Kuzmickas' men chose the middle of a dark, moonless night. Like anything else, that had both advantages and disadvantages. The inky blackness of nights without electric lights let them get close to the wall before the Romans saw them. On the other hand, that same inky blackness made them stumble and trip over their own feet and think they were closer to the wall than they really were. Taking everything into account, a little moonlight might have helped the attack.

When the first horn calls and shouts of alarm rang out from the wall, Jeremy slept through them. He'd had trouble falling asleep, because the Lietuvans were shooting more than usual. Later, he realized they were hiding the racket their advancing soldiers made. But that was later. At the time, all he thought was that there was a devil of a lot of noise.

Along with the gunfire, he heard shouts from the direction of the wall. At first, he couldn't tell through the din what people were shouting. That they were yelling anything at all surprised him. Except for the ca

Then he made out what the soldiers were yelling: “Ladders!”

He knew little about warfare. He didn't want to learn anything more. But one thing seemed plain enough. When some people started shouting, “Ladders!” it was because other people were trying to climb them. The only people who could trying to climb ladders here were King Kuzmickas' Lietuvans.

For a little while, Jeremy thought Kuzmickas had gone out of his mind. Assaulting Polisso couldn't possibly work- could it? Then he heard more shouts on the wall, and not all of them sounded as if they were in neoLatin. If the Lietuvans had got men up on the walls, that could mean only one thing.

Trouble. Big trouble.

Those shouts on the wall raised shouts inside Polisso. More and more people woke up and discovered their city was under attack. By the cries and screams Jeremy heard, a lot of the locals believed Polisso was as good as lost.

At first, he thought they were idiots. Then he realized they might know more about what was going on than he did. He wished that hadn't occurred to him. He would have been a lot happier if he hadn't. Ignorance is bliss, ran through his mind.

“Jeremy?” That was Amanda, out in the hall. “You awake?”

“No, I'm still sound asleep.” He got out of bed. Sleeping in the clothes you also wore during the day had one advantage: you didn't need to get dressed. He opened the door. “How are you?”

“Not so good,” she answered. “What are we going to do?“

Before Jeremy could answer, a herald up the street shouted, “Citizens of Polisso, stay in your homes! Do not give way to fear! Soldiers will keep the invaders out of the city!”

“That's what we'll do,” Jeremy said. “We'll sit tight-for now, anyway.”

“Do you really think the soldiers can drive back the Lietuvans?” Amanda asked. “What do we do if they don't?“

“Well, we can't run, because there's nowhere to run to,” he said. “We can surrender and be slaves-if they don't kill us for the fun of it-or we can fight. I don't see much else. Do you?”

“The basement,” she said. “The subbasement.”

He shook his head. “They aren't set up to live in. Maybe they ought to be, but they aren't. If we were hiding for a few hours from people who would go away, that'd be different. But if the Lietuvans win, they're here to stay. Before too long, we'd have to come out, and they'd have us.”

Soldiers ran by the house, their chainmail clanking. They shouted in neoLatin. They were Romans, then. Jeremy didn't know what he would have done if they'd been shouting in Lietuvan. Panicked, probably.

“I wish we had Dad's pistol,” Amanda said.

“Wish for the moon while you're at it,” Jeremy said. “Can you imagine trying to explain that to the city prefect?“

Amanda only shrugged. “I don't care. I'd rather be alive and free and explaining with a bunch of lies than killed or sold in a slave market somewhere in Lietuva. If Polisso falls, it doesn't matter whether the link with the home timeline comes back afterwards. Nobody would find us.”

Jeremy hadn't thought of that. His sister was right. He wished she weren't. He said, “No guarantee the pistol would save us. If Polisso falls, we couldn't shoot enough Lietuvans to make much difference.” He wasn't sure he could shoot anybody. But if the choice was between killing and dying or being enslaved, he thought he could pull the trigger-not that there was any trigger to pull.

He turned away, hurrying out into the courtyard and then across it. “Where are you going?” Amanda called after him.

“To the storeroom and the kitchen.”

“What for?”

He didn't answer. He was trying not to break his neck in the darkness. When he got into the storeroom, he had to feel around to find what he wanted. It was pitch black in there, and he hadn't brought a lamp. Even in the dark, though, he didn't need long. And he knew where things were in the kitchen even without any light.

“What on earth-?” Amanda said as he went past her and out toward the front door. “What are you doing with the sword and those knives?“

“Putting them where we can grab them in a hurry if we have to,” Jeremy said. “We haven't got a pistol. The sword is the best we can do. And a couple of those carving knives have blades that are almost as long. They're better than nothing.”

He hadn't been sure he could shoot anybody. He was even less sure he could stab somebody. And using a sword or a knife took more skill and practice than using a firearm. He had next to none of those, Amanda even less. In an emergency, though, you did what you could with what you had and hoped for the best. If this didn't count as an emergency, he'd never seen one.

Amanda didn't argue with him. He'd been afraid she would. Instead, she went up the hall herself. She came back with one of the knives, looked at it, started to put it down, and then hung on instead. “Just in case,” she said.

She didn't say in case of what. Jeremy didn't need her to draw him a picture. Women and girls had reasons not to want to be taken as slaves that most men didn't need to worry about. Who could say how much those would matter till the moment came?

Maybe it wouldn't. Jeremy hoped not. Outside, more men in chainmail ran past. Like the last lot of soldiers, these yelled back and forth in neoLatin. With luck, that meant the Romans were getting the upper hand in the fight on the wall.

With luck… “We ought to make a thanks-offering at the temple if the Lietuvans don't get in,” Jeremy said, and Amanda nodded.

Somewhere not far away, a horn blared out a call. Both Jeremy and Amanda's heads whipped toward those notes. Jeremy had heard lots of Roman military horn calls. This didn't sound like any of them. It was wilder and fiercer. And if it wasn't a Roman horn call, it could only be…

“The Lietuvans!” someone down the block cried-a sort of a despairing wail. “The Lietuvans are in the city!”

A volley of musket fire that seemed to come from right up the street proved the man was right. More shouts rang out from most of the houses close by. Those were as full of dread as the first.