How Firm a Foundation (91 page)

Damn it, Father Saimyn and Bahzkai had other
groups poised and ready for that part of the operation, and they were
doing
it. The smoke and screams—and bodies—were proof enough of that!
He
was supposed to be making certain Stohnar and his accursed minions didn’t manage to escape. The last thing they needed was for those bastards to get away to someplace like Charis and try to foment trouble back here on the mainland from their safe, comfortable
exile!

“They can have all the slack they want once we’ve got Stohnar and his Council in the bag!” he snapped now, glaring at Kaillyt. “Are they here to do God’s will, or simply to steal anything they can’t burn?!”

The question came out with deliberate, sneering contempt, and Kaillyt’s eyes flashed with anger. Which was exactly what Sahdlyr had wanted.

“We’re not just a bunch of thieves!” he
shot back furiously.

“No?” Sahdlyr matched him glare for glare for a moment, then allowed his own expression to soften … slightly. “I don’t think you are,” he said, “but that’s what we’re
acting
like, and we’ve got more important things to do!” He held the other man’s eyes for another heartbeat, then hardened his voice again. “So let’s get them moving again, shall we?”

Kaillyt looked around,
as if truly seeing the confusion and the chaos for the first time. Then he gave himself a visible shake and looked back at Sahdlyr.

“Yes, Sir!” His sword flipped up in salute. “I’ll do that little thing.”

He turned away and started bellowing orders at their smaller unit commanders, and Sahdlyr nodded in satisfaction.

*   *   *

“Langhorne!” Greyghor Stohnar muttered, standing on the balcony
of one of the Lord Protector’s Palace’s ornate towers.

The official seat of the Republic’s government had never been designed as a serious fortification. Its defense was the Siddarmarkian Army and its pikemen, not stone and mortar. Now, as he watched smoke rising over the city—and not just over the Charisian Quarter, any longer—he found himself wishing its architects had given just a little more
attention to stopping blood-maddened street mobs short of the Chamber of the Senate and the Hall of Records.

And don’t forget about short of your own hide, Greyghor,
he reminded himself grimly.

“Where the hell are they all
coming
from?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” Henrai Maidyn admitted. The Chancellor pointed out across the city at the scores of smoke columns rising from the Charisian Quarter.
“I didn’t think they had enough manpower to do that
and
come after the Palace.” He shook his head, and his expression was grim.

Stohnar nodded. Part of him wanted to lash out at Maidyn and point out that it had been his
job
to determine what was actually coming, but it would have been pointless. It would have been unfair, too, for that matter. The Chancellor had brought Stohnar regular reports,
and the Lord Protector had agreed with his conclusions. Only it appeared they’d both been wrong.

“We should have detailed more troops to protect the Palace,” Maidyn continued. “It’s my fault. I’m the one who—”

“It’s not ‘your fault,’ Henrai,” Stohnar interrupted. “I agreed with you and Samyl that we had to give priority to protecting the Quarter.” He laughed harshly. “Not that it appears we’re
doing a lot of good over
there,
either!”

“Where the hell is Daryus?” Maidyn demanded, wheeling to glare towards the north. “What the hell is taking him so
long
?”

“Probably more of
that,
” Stohnar replied, gesturing disgustedly at the burning tenements of the Charisian Quarter. “Or more crap like it.” He shrugged angrily. “I was wrong not to go ahead and muster the Regulars right here in the city
and the hell with keeping them out at Raimyr.”

“Without a better indication the wyvern was about to take flight, you couldn’t risk warning—”

“Spare me the excuses,” Stohnar said wearily.

Unlike Maidyn, the Lord Protector had risen to regimental command before he left the Army, returned to his native Siddar City, and entered politics. He should have remembered, he told herself. Whatever the
arguments in favor of making certain Clyntahn was clearly guilty of the first move, he should have paid more attention to Daryus Parkair’s argument that it was even more important they hang on to the capital in the first place. They could always argue over who’d started what later—assuming they survived to do the arguing—the Seneschal had observed acidly. And nobody who was inclined to believe Clyntahn
in the first place would be impressed by any claims the Republic was an innocent victim of the Grand Inquisitor’s lust for vengeance, no matter how truthful they were.

And I shouldn’t have detailed so many of the troops we do have in the city to protect the Quarter,
he told himself even more grimly. He hated to even think thoughts like that, yet there was a cold, bitter edge of truth to it.
You wanted to prevent massacres? Well, holding on to the damned
capital
would have helped a lot in that little endeavor! Instead, you parceled your troops out in tenth-mark packets trying to protect the Charisians, and look at it! Accomplished one hell of a lot, didn’t you? Now you’re going to lose
both
of them!

He forced himself to straighten his shoulders as he looked down into Constitution
Square at the single regiment of pikemen deployed to cover the approaches to the Palace. There weren’t enough of them to cover all the entrances into the square, so they’d been stationed along the huge plaza’s eastern edge to protect the enormous arched gate through the Palace’s ornamental outer wall. The wall would probably help some, but that regiment simply wasn’t big enough to cover its entire
length, and then there was that damned, wide-open gate. If enough rioters came storming across the square—

It’s not as bad as you think it is, Greyghor
, he told himself harshly.
You don’t have a single reliable report about what’s going on out there. Daryus could be a lot closer than you think he is, and all that smoke is bound to make the situation in the Quarter look worse than it really is.
And however many men they may have in the streets, most of the population’s staying home and keeping its head down. It’s not like the entire damned city is really up in arms, so if you can just hang on long enough for Daryus to get here
.…

*   *   *

Byrk Raimahn looked back and swore with bitter, savage venom. They’d been lucky so far, but their luck had just run out.

The outriders of the mob
had spotted the small band of refugees he and his grandfather had collected on their flight towards the docks. Part of him had never wanted to slow down for a moment, but he’d been unable to harden his heart enough to ignore the tattered drifts of terrified people—more often than not women or children—who’d clustered around them. He suspected they’d been drawn by his grandparents’ well-to-do appearance
and the general aura of composure and command they couldn’t help projecting even in the middle of a murderous riot. But perhaps it had simply been the fact that the Raimahns were obviously
going
somewhere, not simply fleeing. It certainly couldn’t have been because of how well armed and numerous they were!

He’d realized immediately that the larger their group got, the slower it would become …
and the more likely it would be to attract the human slash lizards rampaging through the streets. But his grandparents would never have forgiven him for trying to shake off those terrified fugitives, and another part of him had been glad it was so. He knew he would never have forgiven
himself
later … not that it seemed he was likely to have the opportunity to worry about that after all.

He looked
around quickly. There were perhaps a half-dozen other men his age or a few years older in their group. Fathers, most of them, he thought sickly, seeing how their wives and children clung to them. Another three or four were somewhere between them and his grandfather’s age. That was it, and there had to be at least a hundred men in the mob spilling into the avenue behind them.

He stood for just
a moment, then turned to his grandfather.

“Give me your sword,” he said.

Claitahn Raimahn’s hand fell to the hilt of the old-fashioned cutlass at his side. The one he’d carried as a young man on long-ago galleon decks—twin to the one hanging from the baldric slung over his grandson’s shoulder.

“Why?” he demanded, and managed a strained smile. “Looks like I’m going to
need
it in a minute or
so!”

“No, you’re not,” Byrk said flatly. “You’re going to take Grandmother—and all the rest of these women and children—to Harbor Hill Court. Number
Seven
, Harbor Hill Court.” Claitahn’s eyes widened as he recognized Aivah Pahrsahn’s address. “There are … arrangements to protect them there.” Byrk stared into his grandfather’s eyes. “And you’re going to get them there, Grandfather. I’m depending
on you for that.”

“Byrk, I can’t—” Claitahn’s voice was stricken, but there was no time for that, and Byrk reached out and drew the older man’s cutlass from its scabbard.

“I love you, Grandfather,” he said softly. “Now go!”

Claitahn stared at him for a moment longer, then dragged in a ragged breath and turned to his weeping wife.

“Come with me,” his voice frayed around the edges. “He’s … he’s
right.”

Behind him, Byrk was looking at the other men in their small group.

“Who’s with me?” he demanded. Two of the men about his own age looked away, their expressions shamed. They refused to meet his eyes, and he ignored them, looking at the others.

“I am,” a roughly dressed fellow in his forties said, hefting a truncheon he’d picked up somewhere along the way. He spat on the paving. “Legs’re
getting tired, anyway!”

Someone actually managed a laugh, and the others looked at Byrk with frightened, determined faces.

“Here,” he offered his grandfather’s cutlass to a stocky, roughly dressed man carrying a badly cracked baseball bat crusted with blood. There was more dried blood on the fellow’s tunic, although it was obvious none of it was his. Byrk had no idea whether or not the other
man had a clue about how to use a sword, but he was obviously determined enough to make a good try.

The man looked at his bat. He hesitated for a moment, then grimaced.

“Thanks.” He dropped the bat and took the cutlass, and Byrk’s eyebrows rose as he took two or three practiced cuts, obviously getting the weapon’s feel. “Militiaman back home,” he explained.

“Good. Glad to meet you, by the way.
Byrk Raimahn.” Byrk tapped his chest, and the other man snorted.

“Sailys, Sailys Trahskhat,” he said, then glanced down the street, where the mob had clearly finished coalescing and was beginning to flow towards them. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise.” Byrk drew a deep breath and looked around at his small band. “It’s pretty simple,” he told them. “We slow them down, right?”

“Right,” the fellow
with the truncheon said with a grim smile. “And we take as many of the bastards with us as we can!”

The others snarled in agreement and drew into a tighter knot around Byrk in the center of the street.

Byrk’s heart thundered and his hands felt sweaty. Despite all the songs, he’d never really believed battle and killing were glorious, and the truth was that he wanted nothing in this world so
much as to run away. Well, either run away or throw up, he thought. But he couldn’t … and, he realized, he wouldn’t have if he could have.

Something else rose up inside him to join the terror and the determination. Something hot and angry and bitter tasting that seemed to quiver in his limbs. There were a lot of things he’d intended to do in his life, and regret flowed through him as he realized
he wasn’t going to get them done after all, yet that savage eagerness to get
on
with it was stronger still.

“Wait for it,” he heard a stranger saying with his own calm voice as the front of the mob accelerated towards them. “Let
them
come to
us
. And stay together as long as we can.”

“Die hard,” the truncheon-armed man growled. “Die
hard,
boys!”

The mob swept towards them, baying its blood hunger,
and the tiny knot of Charisians settled even more solidly in place. Byrk watched the Siddarmarkians moving from a walk into a trot, and from a trot into a run, and—

“Fire!”
another voice shouted suddenly, and the mob’s howls of fury turned into sudden shrieks of terror as something exploded deafeningly behind Byrk and twenty-five rifled muskets poured fire into them. Men went down, screaming
and twisting on the pavement, blood erupting, as the heavy bullets plowed furrows through them.

“Second rank—
fire!
” the same voice shouted, and more thunder erupted. Byrk spun towards the sound and saw a double line of men in civilian dress—one kneeling; the other standing—all armed with bayoneted rifles. Smoke spewed from the standing line’s weapons, and more of the mob went down. The musketeers
were still outnumbered at least three or four to one, but that commanding voice never hesitated.

“At the charge, boys!”
it shouted, and the musketeers howled—howled the terrifying war cry of the Charisian Marines—as they lunged forward in a compact, deadly mass behind their bayonets.

The mob was too tightly packed to evade them, and the hungry, hating shouts which had whipped it along only seconds
before turned into screams of panic as it disintegrated into individual terrified men desperately trying to get out of the way of those lethal, glittering bayonets.

Bayonets that ran red moments later.

“Well, Byrk?” the voice of command shouted. “Going to just stand there all day?” Byrk looked at the man who’d shouted, and Raif Ahlaixsyn grinned fiercely at him, then pointed at the fleeing mob
with his ornately chased, blood-dripping rapier. “Get a move on, man!”