exaggerating.”
He nodded his head to a sobbing older woman who was sitting in a chair, talking and wiping at her eyes and nose with a handkerchief while two of the police took notes.
Martin went on absently: “Sixty or so from the wagons, and the size of the escort of fake infantry that others mentioned, and the way they overran eighty men of the Sixth so quickly, even with the advantage of surprise. Having surprise is a force multiplier but there are limits.”
“I’ve got the men who tried to rush the staircase, sir. It, ah, didn’t turn out well.”
Another stretcher; the Natpol on it had an arrow in one shoulder, and a bandage around it. The bleeding wasn’t very bad, and it made more sense to get him to a hospital here in the city than to try to extract it in the field. The policeman stopped cursing the enemy and the pain when he saw who was standing over him.
“Report,” Martin said.
“Sir, as soon as they evacuated the ground floor my patrol tried to push up the stairs. It’s a stairwell built around a solid rectangular core and they’re barricading the stairs two times per flight, at least. They’ve got bows and lots of arrows and pila as well. You have to go uphill at them… sir, we tried.”
“Carry on,” Martin said to the stretcher-bearers.
The Natpol officer began an apology. Martin cut off the useless blather with a motion of his hand.
“Your men are lightly equipped and mostly past prime fighting age,” he said. “Don’t waste my time. Now, you got at least one of the staff, that woman there, and she was here all through the attack, correct?”
“Yes sir. But she’s not very coherent. Shock, I think.”
Martin walked over to the witness. “Ma’am,” he said.
Something crept into his voice. Her tears stopped, and she stared at him with her mouth a little open, the pupils of her eyes expanding as they met his.
“How many staircases?” he asked.
“One, Mr. President. There was another one but it was salvaged and the floors sealed. The one we use, it’s over there.”
She pointed. He nodded and went on: “The elevator shaft?”
Another pointing gesture. “It was sealed off.”
“You think there were how many of the terrorists?”
“It seemed like a lot but”-her face went blank for a moment, as if her brain was accessing information without the personality getting in the way-“fifty or sixty or a few more.”
“Some of them were Mormons?”
“Most of them, sir. I think. The ones in American uniforms. They were shouting Arise, ye Saints, I know Mormons do that. It was… it was all so fast, and there was so much noise and then the blood, blood everywhere, and the ladies were screaming and I didn’t know what to do-”
“Thank you.”
He turned to Koburn, the legate of the Sixth, as she began to sob again.
“Get the elevator shaft open.”
“Sir, the cables will be gone, it’ll be bare.”
Wire cable was prime salvage, with a dozen high-priority uses. It was absolutely certain that they would have been stripped from a building inside the city wall decades ago.
“And it would be a deathtrap if they caught on.”
“It might be useful anyway, if they don’t think of it or don’t have enough men to guard against low-probability risks. The stairs are going to be a deathtrap for sure. Do it, the auxiliaries have the gear needed. Fall the men in.”
More and more files of the Sixth had been coming in behind him. Some of them had been roughly shoving things out of the way to clear space, including the bodies of the enemy. Martin walked over to one, a woman, young and dark, and slighter than he’d have thought passable for rough work. The pommel of her sword rested at the base of her throat, with her hands crossed on the hilt and the blade point-down along her body, like the sculpted image of a Crusader on an ancient tomb. The outfit was all matte black, except for the silver tree and stars and crown on the front of a leather jerkin whose rivets showed it was lined with mail; they’d evidently switched to full uniform for this, bravado or some sense of the rules or both. The wound in her side would have killed her, but someone had hurried the process along. Someone with a good eye, a strong wrist and a knowledge of anatomy.
“Dunedain, definitely,” he said, using a toe to point to the symbol.
“The woot-woots who think they’re elves?”
“They think they’re Numenoreans, in fact. Friends of the elves.”
“Ah, the Arrowshirt son of Arrowroot bunch with the invisible companions. Totally fucking insane.”
“It makes as much sense as most myths and they don’t have to come up with an explanation of why they’re not immortal. And consider what they just pulled off right under our noses.”
He turned to the ranked mass filling the great room. “Men of the Sixth Battalion!” he called.
They braced to attention; there was a thunder-crack sound as they all rammed the butts of their pila down on the stone floor.
“My family’s held hostage on the roof, and we can’t assault the roof directly because we can’t use fire support. The only other way up is the staircase and it’s held by fanatical terrorists. Clearing it’s going to be ugly, and I can’t lead you in person, that would be dereliction of duty. I won’t order anyone to go where I’m not going. All volunteers, take a step forward.”
There was a second for men to sense the comrades on either side, and the entire unit paced to the front and snapped to a halt again. Again emotion stirred; it would have been an iron pride, a few months ago. Now it flopped somewhere in the emptiness of his skull, nothing in nothing in nothing, like a dying fish in the vacuum of the Moon.
“And I wish I could come with you.”
That was even true; some part of him wanted very much to die. That was out of the question just now if it could be avoided.
“Attack by files. Rotate every five minutes; the enemy can’t face relays of fresh men. Legate, lead your troops!”
“We’re going to make it,” Ian said.
“I mean, probably! If nothing goes wrong!” he added frantically, as Ritva and several Dunedain spat or made the sign of the Horns or other gestures against ill luck.
The rattle-bang-thump sound of combat was continuous from the doors of the stairwell; they’d barricaded the exit with everything they could find, but the sound of sword-blades and the flat snap of bowstrings sound, the battle cries and the screams of pain… they were all getting closer. Ritva didn’t like to think of what it must be like in there, fighting in the near dark.
And out of the north, a long orca-shape was coming. Still a tiny dot, but unmistakable; in this Fifth Age of the world, what else flew like that?
Well, Windlords and dragons. But we don’t have those. At least not yet, I suppose anything’s possible. I wouldn’t have believed the Sword of the Lady if I hadn’t seen it or what happened on Nantucket if I hadn’t been there.
She pulled a monocular out of its case on her belt and looked. The ship of the air was just as she remembered it, three hundred feet of blunt-pointed teardrop with cruciform stabilizer fins, and an aluminum-truss keel along the bottom anchoring a spiderweb net of light cables that distributed its weight over the great gasbag. The gondola was slung beneath like a stylized Viking longboat sans dragon’s head; it was taut fabric over an aluminum frame as well, with the captain’s post and wheel at the front and a propeller and rudder at the rear. You couldn’t see it from here, but the slender hull held twelve units made from recliner cycles on each side of the central walkway to power the propeller shaft.
That was the power source. Unfortunately it was a rather feeble one, and the stiff wind was far more than it could handle. That was why Lawrence Thurston hadn’t built more of them. Curtis LeMay was extremely useful in a dead calm, and nearly helpless as an ordinary balloon in anything else. Gliders had far lower payload and endurance, but you really could steer them in most weathers.
“One pass,” she said. “And that’s it. They can’t turn back against the wind, just steer a little across it… yes, they’ve spotted our smoke flares.”
