“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!”
“Kill the heretics!”
“Death to all traitors!”
“Holy Langhorne and no quarter!”
“Down with tyranny!”
“Kill the bloodsuckers!”
“Kill the Charisian lackeys!”
“God wills it!”
Well, it would’ve been nice if Daryus had made it in time, Greyghor Stohnar thought as the mob began to pour into Constitution Square from the west behind the yammering thunder of its shouted slogans. There were at least five or six thousand of them, he judged with the eye of an ex-military officer who knew what five or six thousand men standing in one place really looked like. There were quite a few men in cassocks and priest’s caps, as well. He couldn’t make out colors very well from this distance, but he was willing to bet most of them were badged with the purple of the Order of Schueler.
He saw pikes and halberds waving here and there, but mostly swords, clubs, some pitchforks… weapons which could be easily concealed or improvised when the moment came. Maybe that was the reason he and Maidyn had underestimated the potential numbers available to Pahtkovair and Airnhart. They’d had their agents focused on looking for stores of heavier, more sophisticated weapons.
Should’ve remembered they can kill you just as dead with a cobblestone as a pike, Greyghor, he told himself. Of course, it is basically a mob, not an army. No telling how good their morale is. They may not have the stomach for it when they come up against formed troops. Then again, he thought as the screaming tide of humanity reoriented itself, coalesced, flowed together, and started across the square, maybe they will.
He glared at that accursed, ornamental gate in the Palace’s outer wall. What he wanted was a massive portcullis, preferably with murder holes and huge cauldrons of boiling oil and naptha waiting for the torch; what he had was nothing at all. It had always been the Republic’s boast that its citizens had access to the center of its government without let or hindrance, which meant there was no gate set into that gleaming, sculpted archway. The damned thing was so wide it took an entire company of pikemen just to cover it, too, and that was an entire company who’d had to be taken off the wall itself.
The mob obviously recognized just how undermanned that wall was, and it seemed to be under at least rudimentary control by its leaders. Its center hung back slightly, threatening the gate arch but keeping its distance while its flanks flowed forward. It was gradual, at first, but the flanking groups moved more and more rapidly, charging for the extreme ends of the wall in an obvious effort to spread the single defending regiment even thinner.
The bastards are coming over it, he told himself, resting one hand on the hilt of the Republic’s Sword of State, hanging from the baldric looped across his right shoulder. That sword had belonged to Lord Protector Ludovyc Urwyn, the Republic’s founder. He’d carried it through a dozen campaigns and at least twenty battles, and despite all the gold and cut gems that had been added to it over the last four centuries, it was still a fighting man’s weapon. If it had been good enough for the Republic’s first Lord Protector, it would be good enough for the Republic’s last Lord Protector when someone pried it from his dead hand.
Best be getting down there, Greyghor. You’ll get a chance to kill more of them at the wall than you will once they’re inside and -
His thoughts broke off as a sudden crashing roll of thunder exploded from the southern edge of the square.
Borys Sahdlyr whipped around in shocked disbelief as the unmistakable sound of a musket volley crunched down on the mob’s baying shouts like an iron boot. Gunsmoke spurted, rising all along the south side of Constitution Square, and for just an instant, the shattering, totally unexpected concussion of at least a couple of hundred muskets seemed to stun the mob into silence.
Then the screams began again, but they were different this time.
Sahdlyr looked around, unable to see over the men packed between him and that wall of smoke. Then he turned and bulled his way through the shocked, motionless bodies around him until he reached the towering bronze equestrian statue of Ludovyc Urwyn. The complex tracery of its elaborate fountains hadn’t been turned off for the winter yet, and he ignored their icy coldness as he hurdled the wall around the catch basin. He splashed through the knee-deep water, then clambered up onto the base of Urwyn’s statue, getting his head high enough to look across the square.
He was only halfway there when the second volley roared out, and he’d just reached the knees of Urwyn’s horse when a third volley exploded.
Impossible! he thought, listening to that thunder of gunfire. We know exactly how many muskets they had in the city arsenals, and they sent all of them to Fort Raimyr! They can’t have that many of the damned things!
But they did, and his blood ran cold as he finally got high enough to see.
