“You people are crap for a good plan,” John said over his shoulder as a spent arrow whistled past him along the floor of the bridge.
Tilda swore and pushed past Zeb, running all-out for the house. He turned and followed her, ring mail jingling, but she easily outpaced him and flew through the front door where Heggenauer, Claudja, and Phin Phoarty were dragging over anything that might make a barricade. Amatesu had paused and was looking out the door toward the bridge with her mouth tight in a deep frown. Nesha-tari sat on the bottom of the stairs, looking tired and haggard and with perspiration standing on her brow, but she squeezed aside as Tilda pounded up the stairs to the second floor, ran to the front of the house, and threw open the shutters of a window facing the bridge.
The hobgoblins were still advancing carefully, four or five among the fifty shooting bows at the centurion and the samurai crouched in the center of the bridge behind John’s tower shield. Tilda drew her own bow to its fullest pull until her arm shook, composite layers of bone and horn creaking, and released a shot that made the string hum. The yellow-fletched arrow arced high through the gray sky, but struck in the ditch just short of the mass of hobgoblins. As though it had been a signal, a dozen of the largest hobs encased in heavy splint mail broke from the group and pounded at the bridge, hurling hand axes before they raised spiked morning stars.
John and Shikashe did not wait to receive them. The ex-legionnaire rose and charged behind his shield as the hobgoblins hit the bridge, stumbling and banging into each other as the twelve of them tried to fill the space that could barely accommodate two abreast. Deskata plowed into them and Shikashe rose behind him, his two swords flashing in the gray light.
Zeb had made it upstairs and he stumbled to the window next to Tilda’s. The two of them stared, just watching. Steel rang on steel as the hobgoblins closed into a dense mass, but John held the end of the bridge with his Legion short sword darting around either side of his tower shield like the tongue of a snake, sending hobgoblins reeling away to tangle with their fellows. Shikashe cleared room with a flashing slash that sent a helmet spinning into the air with a head still in it, and continued to hack and stab around John’s shoulders with both of his white- bladed swords humming in the air.
“Ayon’s flaming arse.” Zeb blasphemed. “Those two are going to run out of hobgoblins.”
The wild melee held at the front of the bridge, but the hobgoblins were not entirely stupid. Tilda saw several from the back of the pack break off and drop out of sight into the ditch the bridge spanned. If they got up the other side they would be behind John and Shikashe.
Tilda cupped her hands to her mouth and screamed, “Watch the flanks!” though she knew there was no chance of being heard. “I’m going back,” she yelled at Zeb and turned to do so, but she ran headlong into Nesha- tari at the doorway. The woman frowned at her, brown hair hanging lankly over her bright blue eyes. She moved Tilda aside and went to the window, leaning her forearms on the sill. Blue light started to spark between her hands, but it was sputtering. Nesha-tari closed her eyes and drew in a long breath through her open mouth. The air started to sizzle as the light in her hands rose in intensity.
The first three hobgoblins to scramble up the near side of the ditch ran into lightning that held them kicking and jerking until their smoking bodies toppled backwards.
Nesha-tari blew a strand of hair out of her face and walked off muttering, shaking her hands in front of her as though she had handled something hot. Tilda raised an eyebrow at Zeb.
“She said she needs a nap,” Zeb translated.
“Archers!” John yelled from outside, and Tilda and Zeb filled the windows.
The renewed threat of lightning had caused the hobgoblins to scramble back, letting John and Shikashe break-off the combat. The two were off the bridge already and running for the front door. A hobgoblin arrow protruded from the square sode of the samurai’s shoulder armor, and John’s shield looked like it had been dragged behind a horse for a hundred miles. The hobgoblins were starting after them but their end of the bridge was so clogged with dead and wounded they were getting a slow start.
When Shikashe and John were safely inside downstairs Tilda glanced over at Zeb, and found he was already looking at her. He was kneeling with his crossbow on the windowsill, and gave her a tentative smile.
“Are you mad at me?” he asked.
Tilda looked away down the length of an arrow shaft. The hobgoblins were creeping across the bridge, plainly nervous to approach the house and the open windows as they did not know Nesha-tari had gone back downstairs.
“That was cheap of you,” Tilda said.
“Yes,” Zeb nodded. “I’m just stunned it worked.”
“So am I,” Tilda said, for she was.
A score or so of hobgoblins reached the near side of the bridge and started to fan out, warily watching the house. Zeb’s crossbow twanged loudly, startling Tilda. He swore as the bolt sailed off into the air and missed the nearest hobgoblin by a good hundred feet, though it did have the range to reach them.
“What the hell was that?” Tilda asked.
“Warning shot,” Zeb muttered, rolling to the side of the window to put a foot in his bow stirrup and draw back the hand crank.
“Does that happen to you a lot?”
“What?” Zeb slipped a bolt into the groove and retook his place at the window.
The hobgoblins were gathering on this side of the bridge but did not yet seem very enthused about making another charge. Tilda relaxed her bow for the moment and moved to the side of the window.
“Shooting prematurely,” Tilda said.
Zeb sighted down the shaft of the reloaded crossbow out his own window, but blinked his eyes. The side of his mouth twitched.
“Flash in the pan, but no discharge?” Tilda asked.
“The hobs are forming up,” Zeb said, but even that fact didn’t push the grin off his face. Tilda was aware of a silly grin on her own, and she thought she might be getting hysterical. She leaned back around the window to watch the hobgoblins that were bent on killing her starting to move closer, and yet she still had to bite her tongue to keep from giggling.
A hob sounded a deep horn and the lot of them charged as a body, yelling, and that did the trick. Zeb shot and actually hit one, then fumbled around reloading. Tilda shot rapidly and with effect, though the arrows in the quiver on her back were dwindling. The hobgoblin archers did not bother to try and shoot back as they came at a run, but when the group was close enough those in the second rank started hurling hand axes up at the windows. Most clattered against the stone walls though a couple stuck in the open shutters with fat sounds of impact that were no laughing matter. Tilda and Zeb stood beside the windows as they reloaded and only darted out to shoot down, as there was no need to aim into the mass of hobgoblins as they fought to squeeze through the front door.
The sounds of combat rolled up the stairs as well as from outside, and Claudja abruptly appeared on the stairs. “Tilda!” she shouted. “Dugan…I mean Deskata, whoever! He wants you downstairs!”
Tilda looked at Zeb, who had just reloaded. A tumbling hand axe whipped in through his window and embedded in a ceiling beam.
“You all right here?” she asked.
Zeb held his crossbow in front of the window and shot down without looking.
“Fine,” he said, reloading again. Tilda ducked and ran to Claudja, who turned and ran for the back of the house rather than down the stairs, where Tilda saw Phinneas waiting as she passed. He had his satchel clutched to his chest, and he shrugged at her.
“I’ve been detailed to relay orders,” he said, sounding a trifle sheepish.
Someone had told Claudja where the back stairs were located for the Duchess ran straight to them and descended two at a time, with Tilda right behind her. They reached the first floor kitchen, where the backdoor was open. The Duchess pointed outside where Tilda knew there was a barren yard surrounded by a tall stone fence.
“The gate of the yard is locked,” Claudja breathed. “Deskata wants it open so we can retreat that way when the hobgoblins push inside.”
“What about Zeb?” Tilda asked.
“Phin will bring him down the back stairs before the others yield the front room. They mean to kill more
