Mylz Halcom nodded, but his face was tight. If Lahrak and Abylyn had only seventy men left, then their attack teams had already lost well over half their original strength.
“All right, Mytrahn,” he agreed. “God knows you’re better equipped to manage this sort of thing than I am.”
“You just concentrate on putting in a good word with Him for us, My Lord,” Daivys said. “We’ll take care of the rest.”
Ahndrai Hahskyn had positioned his remaining men as carefully as he could.
He couldn’t disperse them too widely, especially not in the middle of a booming thunderstorm where visibility was measured in feet, not yards. Unit cohesion could vanish effortlessly under those conditions, and the one thing he was certain of was that he and his men were badly outnumbered. He couldn’t afford to let this disintegrate into an uncoordinated melee. Nor could he count on their rifles and pistols to fire in the midst of such a downpour, even assuming they’d been able to see well enough to pick out targets. It was going to come down to cold steel, and that meant making his stand around the guesthouse itself.
He’d considered moving the empress into the main chapter house, but he’d quickly rejected that possibility. First, the chapter house’s apparent defensibility was deceptive. Its walls were relatively thin, it had too many windows and doors, its internal architecture would have divided his guardsmen into isolated detachments, and he didn’t have enough men to cover all the potential access points. Second, he was positive the empress would have refused to endanger the nuns. If not for the first set of considerations, he would have been quite prepared to haul Sharleyan bodily to the safest possible place and take his chances on her displeasure in the event of his own survival. Unfortunately, the guesthouse was the safest possible place . . . such as it was, and what there was of it.
On the limited plus side, the guesthouse stood well away from any of the convent’s walls. Anyone who wanted to attack it would have to cross the manicured grounds, which would provide them with no concealment or cover, although the poor visibility tended to cancel that particular defensive advantage.
During the respite while the other side was obviously reorganizing, Hahskyn and Seahamper did their best to improve their positions. Saint Agtha’s offered little to work with, but the sisters’ three farm wagons and pair of carts had been dragged out of the stables and turned upside down to form a rude strong point covering the guesthouse’s single door, and the walls of an outbuilding near the stableyard had been quickly demolished. The loose stone provided far too little building material for any sort of breastwork, but Seahamper had seen to it that the individual rocks were scattered all around their position. It wasn’t as good as caltrops would have been, but in the darkness, those unexpected, all but invisible lumps of rock were guaranteed to come as unpleasant surprises to charging men.
Now the surviving guardsmen waited. All of them were veterans who could compute the odds against them just as well as Hahskyn or Seahamper. They knew what was going to happen in the end, if there were enough attackers out there to continue the assault, and their faces were grim as they thought about the life of the young woman behind them.
Empress Sharleyan looked up quickly as Edwyrd Seahamper stepped into the plainly furnished, dimly lit guesthouse bedchamber. Water dripped from her personal armsman’s cuirass and helmet, droplets pattering on the stone floor, and she recognized the stark desperation restrained by discipline in his eyes.
“How bad is it, Edwyrd?” she asked quietly.
“About as bad as it could be, Your Majesty.” His expression was grim. “I’m pretty sure Captain Gairaht must be dead.” Sharleyan winced in pain, but not in surprise, and he continued unflinchingly. “Lieutenant Hahskyn’s in command now, but we’re down to twenty-five men, and we don’t know how many we’re up against or how badly we may have hurt them. It’s obvious they knew how many of us there were, though. If they keep coming, it’ll be because they believe they’ve got the strength to win.”
She nodded, her face tight with fear, and he reached out to take her hand in both of his.
“I don’t know if we can stop them.” His voice was harsh, sawtoothed with intensely personal worry, as he made himself admit the thing he feared most in all the world. “If we can’t—”
He broke off, jaw clenching, and she squeezed his hand.
“If you can’t,” she told him, “it will only be because no mortal man could have. I know that, Edwyrd. I’ve never doubted it.”
His mouth tightened further, and he drew a deep breath.
“We don’t know what it is they want, Your Majesty—not for certain. Oh, we know they want you, but they may well want you alive, not dead.”
“Do you really think that, Edwyrd?” she asked gently. “Or are you just trying to reassure me?”
“I think it really is possible,” he told her levelly, letting her see the truth in his eyes. “Even likely. They haven’t tried talking to us yet, so there’s no way to know what they want, but I can think of a lot of ways you’d be most valuable to someone alive.”
“Ways they could use me against Cayleb or Charis or Chisholm, you mean.”
“Maybe, but even if they could, you’d still be alive, Your Majesty.”
“At that high a cost?” She shook her head. “I’ve known since the day I took the throne that a queen—or an empress—is as mortal as anyone else, Edwyrd. I’ve tried to live as a queen, and as someone who had no need to fear when the time came to face God. And a queen—or an empress—has a final duty to her subjects. I won’t let myself be used against all that I love or the people I’m responsible for.”
“Your Majesty—” he began, his voice starkly appealing, but she shook her head again.
“No, Edwyrd. How long have you known me? Do you truly think I would want to live at the cost of the sort of damage someone could use me to inflict on all the people who have trusted Cayleb and me?”
He gazed deep into her eyes and saw the truth, the determination. And the fear. There was no fatalism, no eagerness to embrace death, but neither was there panic. She wanted to live as desperately as he wanted her to, yet she meant exactly what she’d just said, and in that moment, despite his raw anguish over what was about to happen, he felt more pride in her than he’d ever felt before.
He reached up and touched the side of her face with one hand. He hadn’t touched her that way since she’d been a child, weeping with pain after a tumble from her horse had dislocated her shoulder, and she smiled in memory, despite her fear, as she pressed her cheek against his palm.
“Your Majesty—” He had to pause and clear his throat. “Sharleyan, if I don’t have the chance to tell you this later, it’s been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your armsman. And . . . your father would be very proud of you.”
She squeezed his other hand more tightly, eyes bright with tears, and he drew a deep breath.
“It’s raining too hard for anyone to fire a rifle or a pistol out there, Your Majesty,” he said more briskly. “It’s going to be bayonets and cold steel, but we’ve got nine extra rifles and an entire stack of pistols.” He didn’t have to explain why the rifles were “extra,” and she nodded in grim understanding. “They may not fire outside,” he continued, stepping over to the bedchamber’s single window and using his mailed elbow to sweep every pane of expensive glass out of its frame, “but they’ll fire just fine inside.”
He leaned out to close the shutters, drew his dagger and cut a loophole in them, then turned back to her.
“It won’t stop a bullet or an arbalest bolt, Your Majesty, but it’ll give you at least some concealment, and Daishyn Tayso’s taken a leg wound. He’s too unsteady to be much use outside, so I’m sending him in here to give you someone to reload.”
“Someone to reload for me, instead of the other way around?” she asked with a faint gleam of humor, despite her fear, and he snorted.
“Your Majesty, your uncle may not think it’s a fitting hobby for a queen, but eve
ry man in your detachment knows you’re a better shot than almost any of them are. And, frankly, just now, I don’t really care what your uncle may think about it.”
“Edwyrd is right about that, Your Majesty,” Father Carlsyn said. “And I wish now that I’d learned to shoot one of these things. Unfortunately, I didn’t, but if Daishyn shows me how, I’m sure I can at least learn how to help him load them for you.”
Raiyz’s expression was strained, but he managed a crooked smile when she looked at him. Seahamper smiled back at him in approval, then looked around the bedchamber one last time before he stepped back.
“I’ll get Daishyn in here with the rifles and pistols, Your Majesty.”
“Thank you, Edwyrd.” She followed him to the door, then leaned close, rising on her toes, and kissed his bearded cheek. “I love you,” she said softly.
“I know, Your Majesty.” He touched her face once more. “I know.”
“All right,” Mytrahn Daivys said to Nailys Lahrak and Charlz Abylyn. “We’re all ready?”
The other two team leaders nodded. It had taken longer to get their men reorganized than they’d expected. On the other hand, the convent’s isolation meant they had all night, and they might as well take the time to do it right. No doubt the guardsmen on the other side of the convent wall had been doing the same thing, and none of them were particularly happy about that thought, but there was only a limited amount Sharleyan’s bodyguards could do.
Lahrak and Abylyn had redistributed their remaining men to give each of them slightly less than half the strength with which they’d begun the night. Daivys’ so far unscathed team was still at full strength, which gave the Temple Loyalists a total of just over a hundred and fifty men.
“They’ve had time to recover from the surprise and get themselves organized again,” Daivys continued. “They aren’t going to go down easy. Be sure your men understand that.”
Lahrak and Abylyn nodded again, although Abylyn’s eyes flickered with a touch of what might have been resentment. He didn’t need Daivys telling him what his own men had already discovered the hard way.
Daivys saw the other man’s expression and started to say something else, then changed his mind. After all, if that was what Abylyn was thinking, he had a point.
“All right,” he said again, instead, and smiled grimly as he pointed at the oilskin-wrapped powder charge fastened to the locked main gates. “I’m pretty sure you’ll both hear the signal to attack.”
Ahndrai Hahskyn’s head came up as a sudden thunder crack and blinding flash that owed nothing to the thunderstorm exploded in the darkness.
“Stand to!” he shouted, and his remaining men tightened in readiness.
Daivys’ men charged through the shattered gates with a snarl. They streamed through the rain towards the guesthouse, making no effort to approach stealthily. The entire reason he’d used gunpowder to open the gate instead of simply clambering over the wall had been to fix the guardsmen’s attention as firmly on his attack as he could. He wanted Sharleyan’s protectors looking his way when Lahrak and Abylyn—who had climbed over the wall—hit them unexpectedly from the sides.
Daivys himself was one of the first through the gate. A quarter of his eighty-five men carried arbalests, although the chance of their actually getting to use them in a fight like this one was going to be was remote. All of the Temple Loyalists carried swords, as well, but the truth was—as Daivys was well aware—that the majority of the attackers were only mediocre swordsmen, at best. Some of them, like Daivys himself, were probably as good as any Imperial Guardsman; most had only limited military experience, and he found himself wishing he’d armed the lot of them with halberds or pikes—even lizard spears!
Getting this many men into position to attack the convent without anyone noticing had been difficult enough, even using weapons which could be easily hidden in the sort of agricultural wagons that wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows in such a lightly inhabited area. Trying to do the same thing with ten- or twelve-foot pikes would have been far more difficult. He’d known and accepted that from the very beginning, but he hadn’t counted on how great an advantage the length of the Guard’s rifles was going to give them. Whatever Lahrak and Abylyn might think, he knew they were going to take more casualties—probably heavy ones—before this night was over.
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 toget
her, 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.