Dies the Fire (84 page)

And running towards them were a dozen men—spearmen with shields, and crossbows following. More men shouted and milled around along the wall, but they'd be getting things in gear soon enough.

“Horatius on the fucking bridge,” Havel snarled.

“Except that the Etruscans were too idiotic to stand back and shoot arrows,” Pamela said tightly. “You know, this isn't what I had in mind when I went to veterinary college.”

Noise was mounting too; shouts, the thud of boots on timber, and the growing crackle of the fire on the top of the tower. The
snap
of bowstring on bracer was lost in it, and the wet meaty thunk of an arrowhead striking flesh at two hundred feet per second. One of the rearmost crossbowmen stopped and raised his weapon, then buckled at the knees and collapsed forward. Havel
saw
the arrow strike the next man, even before the first dropped facedown. An armor scale sparked as the bodkin point struck. And another, and another, working forward from the rear—

The tower top was forty yards away. The ripple of fire would have done credit to a bolt-action sniper rifle in an expert's hands.

“Angel on our shoulder,” Havel said, and then: “
Haakkaa paalle!
”

Three men survived, the first three in the enemy group, too close to the Bearkillers for even a marksman of Aylward's quality to shoot at safely; he'd transferred his attention to the walkway, sweeping it to left and right. All the attackers were in full-length hauberks, with the big kite-shaped shield of the Protector's forces. Havel was acutely aware that he had a lot more target area to cover, with only his sword and targe to protect himself.

Not to mention Signe and her damned fool of a brother,
he thought.
You know, things are going to get a lot tougher when people who really know how to shoot bows and use swords get more common.

Then there was no time for thinking. Pamela struck first with that smooth economical motion he envied, utterly without wasted effort; she wasn't faster than he was—he'd never met anyone who was—but she did have a lot more experience with sword work.

And a nasty trick of doing the unexpected. Her long lunge started out as a thrust to the face of the man on the left. He threw up his shield, glaring over the edge and drawing back his double-edged sword for a counterattack. But Pam's right knee bent farther, and her arm darted down and to the right, towards the man in the middle, a little behind his comrades.

Into the top of his foot, carelessly advanced beyond the protection of his shield. Pamela's strike was at the end of the foot-arm-blade extension, and the boot was tough leather; there was a crisp popping sound as the point struck. But two inches of sharp steel punched into a man's instep were more than enough, considering the tendons and small bones and veins, not to mention the nerves. She recovered as if driven by coil springs. The injured man shrieked in a high falsetto and spun in a circle, shedding shield and spear and then toppling to the boards with a clash of armor scales, clutching his crippled foot.

The man facing Havel stumbled backward and threw his spear. The weapon wasn't designed for it, but surprise nearly made it work; Havel felt the edge sting his skin right above the kidney as he dodged. The spearman fumbled for his sword and got it out, staring wide-eyed past a shock of black hair—he'd forgotten or lost his helmet. Havel feinted low to draw shield and attention, then attacked with a running step, backsword flashing in a looping circle.

“
Haakkaa paalle!
” he screamed, as foot and arm and blade moved together.

Underneath it came a sickening
crack
of cloven bone that jarred back into his arm and shoulder, like the feeling of hitting a post at practice, except that this time the blade went right on in a broad follow-through. The Protector's trooper stumbled backward with a giant slice taken out of the top and side of his skull; brain and membrane glistened pink-white and bloody in the firelight. Weirdly, the man didn't fall at once; instead he turned and took three weaving steps, shrieking like a machine in torment with each one, before he went over the side of the walkway and into the barbed wire of the moat.

Well, shit,
Havel thought.
Ouch.

His eyes were darting about. Aylward came sliding down the cable; he'd probably fired off all eighty shafts, and the tower top showed another reason. The fire up there had spread to the bone-dry pine timbers; melted asphalt was probably dripping down into Sergeant Harvey's ready room . . . or catching fire and falling as little burning drops. The tower looked like a candle now, with a broad teardrop of fire reaching into the night.

“You two take the ballista,” Havel snapped. “Move!”

They ran past him. Havel ran as well, to the spot where Signe's grapnel stood in the wood of the walkway. When he looked down, she waved up at him; the loop at the other end of the rope was under Eric's armpits.

Guts,
he thought, as she signaled.
She's been wading in barbed wire; has to feel like a pincushion.

Havel heard a sullen
boom
as he braced a foot against the railing and started to haul hand over hand, slow and steady. Someone inside the tower was trying to break down the door out onto the walkway; they should be able to do that eventually, smashing the hinges if nothing else. The growing bellow of the fire over their heads would add motivation; the only other exit was the staircase down into the courtyard of the castle's bailey.

Ken and Pamela and Aaron Rothman had given him a rundown on various tyrants of history while they discussed Arminger.

Stalin had put it very succinctly:
It takes a brave man
not
to be a hero in my army.

Weight came on the rope—Eric weighed in at around two hundred pounds. Havel couldn't haul quickly; Signe had to free her brother barb by barb as he came clear. She'd already snaggled away hanks of Eric's longish hair that had caught in the dense tangle of wire. Havel had to keep a steady tension so Eric wouldn't drop back into the embrace of the barbs.

After a while Eric could help her, but it still took minutes that stretched like days, and the
boom . . . boom . . .
of the ram beating to free the tower door was like the thudding of some great beast's heart. Seconds ticked by, counting out the balance of life and death, but you didn't save time by rushing.

“
Got
it,” Havel snarled, as the younger man's boots cleared the wire.

“Sorry—” Eric began, as his bloody face came over the railing; blood leaked out from beneath his gloves as well, but he chinned himself and rolled over to the walkway planking.

“
Shut
up,” Havel said. “Let's get her out.”

Signe waved as Havel came to the edge of the walkway; she'd managed to crawl onto the surface of the wing, but that didn't help as much as it would have if the hang-glider had landed closer to the walkway. They couldn't just snatch her up; there was too much lateral distance.

Boom
-crack!

This time a crunching sound ran under the battering; the men in the tower were going to knock the door free soon.

Havel and Eric couldn't wait for her to unhook each barb when she hit the wire, either. They'd have to rip her free by main strength and hope that most of what tore was cloth rather than flesh.

“Get ready!” Havel called, tossing the rope. “We can't take this slow!” Signe rigged the loop under her arms and crouched on the fabric of the hang-glider's wing.

She leapt as the rope came taut and pulled up her legs in a tight tuck, and the two men hauled the line in hand over hand as fast as they could.

The lower half of her body still sagged into the barbs. Both of them heaved at the rope again, pulling her free despite the half-stifled scream as the metal hooks had their way with cloth and flesh. Once more, and she was right beneath the walkway, and from there it was a straight lift. He let Eric take the weight on the rope and leaned down, caught her by the back of her harness and heaved her straight over the railing with six inches to spare.

“Mike!”
Eric cried.

The rending crash of breaking timber came a second before a flood of lantern light. And from behind him, Aylward's cry of:

Havel launched himself forward with Signe still in one arm, taking her twin behind the knees with the other; neither of the Larsson twins had his conditioned reflexes—they'd seen a lot of fighting these past eight months, but none of it was
that
sort. All three of them thumped down on the timbers; Eric screamed a curse as his abused flesh struck, and Signe moaned.

Ahead of them the Protector's men were in the doorway. Ready this time, conical helmets and mailcoats and big kite-shaped shields up, the first rank had their swords out, and the one behind spears ready, hefted to stab overhand.

Behind the three Bearkillers, something mechanical sounded, a clicking, ratcheting sound. Then:

The shot from the ballista went overhead in a rush of flame, with a sound like wind whipping through burning pines and a stench of burning fuel; it was a glass fisherman's float filled with a mixture of gasoline, soap flakes and benzene, and wrapped in gas-soaked cloth.

Score another one for Ms. Strang,
he thought.
They
can
throw weights as well as javelins.

The missile struck the line of shields hard enough to knock a man over backward, and the one behind him too. It also shattered; gobbets flew, caught fire from the coating of burning cloth, clung and burned. Men screamed as the liquid flame splashed into their faces or ran beneath their armor; their formation broke apart like the glass of the missile.

Another globe of fire flew overhead. This one went directly into the garrison hall and armory that occupied the bottom story of the tower, shattering on the floor and spattering across bedding, furniture and support timbers.

“Start crawling!” Havel said, and did so.

Aylward had the ballista pivoted at right angles to the wall now, and he was lobbing incendiary missiles at the main gatehouse.

It was then that the crossbowmen in the second level of the tower started firing down at the three black-clad figures crawling away from them along the walkway. A bolt slammed into the thick planks before Havel's face, the heavy dart quivering for an instant like a malignant wasp stinger. More were shooting from the walkway on either side of the ballista, their shafts going overhead with vicious
whickt
sounds.

If you surprised someone and knocked them back on their heels, got them running in circles, you could use their confusion as a force multiplier. The trouble was that when they got their shit together, numbers started counting again. In a plain stand-up fight, they counted for a great deal.

Another crossbow bolt struck in the wood ahead of him, this time a bare inch from his outstretched fingers.

Juniper Mackenzie had lived in the Willamette all her life. Autumn was her favorite season there, and it was a relief to find that the Change at least hadn't changed that. Winter she liked hardly less, and the two seasons were in balance as she led the war-levy of the Mackenzies northward.

The greens were still more vivid once the rains started, and the leaves still turned bronze and old gold against the darker, unchanging firs, streaking the lower parts of the hills until they flew away like coins, or wishes fading into memory. Fallen leaves still gave their damp musty smell, and the air had a wet coolness that would endure the long months to come, when the gray clouds marched in from the sea and rain would drizzle down day after day.

Today the sky was bright, dazzling afternoon light slanting through white foaming canyons of cloud, gilding stubblefields and bringing out the different shades of green in firs and grass, of brown in turned earth and bare-limbed fruit trees.

Mind you, some things
are
different,
she thought wryly.

Forty on horseback followed on either side of the road, the yellow yew staves of their longbows slanted over their shoulders, and the baggage wagons and ambulance were on the pavement behind her. Wheels hissed on wet asphalt; hooves clattered or made a duller rumbling crunch on the graveled verges. This stretch had been cleared of dead cars and trucks some time ago, but it was best to keep hoof off hard pavement as much as you could. She waved to a party working the fields as the buggy trotted northeastward towards the beginning of the hills.