away from it, covering his eyes.
'I see you in there. Come on out.'
There was something familiar about the harsh voice, but it was
not until its owner said, 'Put your hands where I can see them,' that
Silk recognized it as Sergeant Sand's.
Sitting the white stallion in the middle of Fisc Street, Maytera Mint
surveyed the advancing ranks. Every one of those soldiers would be
worth three of her best, but they were few. Hearteningly few, and
the troopers from Trivigaunte had come. Just a few hundred now,
but thousands more were on the way.
'Fire and fall back,' she called softly, adding under her breath,
'Gracious Echidna, grant that I be heard by our people but not by
those soldiers.' Then, a trifle louder, 'Not too quickly. But not too
slowly, either. This isn't the time to impress me. Don't get yourselves
killed.'
The first level metal rank was practically within slug-gun range.
She wheeled her stallion and cantered off, hearing the firing break
out behind her, the _whiz...bang!_ of missiles and the dull booming
of slug guns.
Someone cried out.
I told them to, she reminded herself. I emphasized it in the briefing.
Yet she knew the wound had been real. She reined in the stallion
and turned to look again: behind the soldiers, Rook's blocking force
was straggling into position. Too early, she thought. Far too early.
You never appreciated men like Bison and the captain--men who
helped you make plans and carried them out--until you got
something like this.
One long cable had been looped around each pillar of the Corn
Exchange; it was not taut yet, nor should it have been. She risked a
glance up at the towering facade, another at Wool and his bullock
men, motionless in the shadows half a street away. He and they
stood ready beside their animals, waiting for her signal.
The bullock men trusted her. So did the ragged men and women
who were shooting and retreating as she had taught them. Shooting
and dying, because they had trusted a weak woman--trusted her
because Brocket had taught her to ride when she was a child.
She clapped heels to the stallion's sides. He had been used long
and hard yesterday, yet he surged forward, a foaming wave of
strength. Patera Silk's azoth was in her hand; she thumbed the
demon.
Seeing its terrible blade split the sky, Wool's bullock men
prodded their animals. The cable tightened, a slithering monster of
steel and silence, Echidna's greatest serpent.
The soldiers halted and faced about at a loud command, their
officer having seen Rook's force and detected the trap. They would
have to attack in earnest now, but her own voice (she told herself)
was incapable of launching troops against the enemy. Her voice
would not inspire anyone, so her person must. She neck-reined the
stallion, and the silver trumpet that was her voice in fact echoed
from every wall.
Five chains away, the blade of the azoth wrecked a fusion
generator, and the soldier whose heart it had been died.
Forward! Past her own disorderly line. Another soldier down,
and another! Forward!
The stallion stumbled, crying out like a man in pain.
A half-dozen soldiers dashed forward. The stallion fell, too weak
to stand; it seemed to her that the street itself had struck her, casting
all its clods and ridges at her at once. Steel hands laid hold of her,
and bios wrestled with chems in a desperate foolish fight. A woman
three times her size swung a wrecking bar. The soldier she struck,
struck her with the butt of his slug gun; she fell backward and did
not rise.
Maytera Mint struggled in a soldier's grasp. The azoth was gone--
No! Was under her shoe. He lifted her, his arms clamping her like
tongs; she stamped on the azoth with all her strength, and its lancing
point sheared off his foot. Smoking black fluid spurted from the
stump of his leg, slippery as so much grease. They fell, and his grip
weakened.
She tore herself away, stooping for the azoth, and ran, nearly
falling again, pursued with terrifying speed until the facade of the
Corn Exchange frowned above her and she whirled to cut down a
soldier whose blazing, arcing halves tumbled at her feet. 'Run! Run!
Save yourselves!'
Her people streamed past in full flight, though to her, her voice
was a powerless wail.
'Hierax, accept my spirit.' The azoth blade struck the first pillar,
and it shattered like glass. Another, and the facade seemed to hang
in air, an ominous cloud of grimy brick.
A soldier leveled his slug gun, firing an instant before her blade
split his skullplate. She felt the slug tear her habit, smelled the
powder smoke, and fled, slashing wildly at a third pillar without
breaking stride--stopped and turned back, hot tears streaming.
'You gods, for _twenty years!_ Now let me go!'
The weightless, endless blade came up. The weightless, endless
blade came down. And the facade of the Corn Exchange was
coming down too, falling like a picture, nearly whole and almost
maintaining its graceless design as it fell, its stone sills falling neither
faster nor slower than its tons of brick and timber. Her right hand,
still clutching the azoth, had begun the sign of addition when Rock
grabbed her from behind and dashed away with her.
Chapter 10 -- Calde Silk
