The Reformer

'Oh, Maiden shield us, the place is on fire,' Adrian blurted.

'Well, what did you expect?' Esmond said harshly. 'Let's go.'

'Wait.' Adrian ripped a strip of cloth off the bottom of his tunic and dipped it in the water of the ornamental pool before tying it around his nose.

'Good idea,' Esmond said, following suit along with the rest. 'Half of you hand over your grenades and follow us,' he went on to the men. 'The rest of you, keep a sharp lookout on the street for enemy reinforcements.'

The water smelled rankly bad, but it was welcome as they forced their way up into the furnace heat of the second story. The fire had started along the streetfront, and the doors in that direction were belching gouts of fire. It was running fast into the northwest corner of the building, though, running along the tinder-dry cedar rafters and the laths of the plasterwork that made up most of the big house's interior partitions. And the paint in the murals, that's linseed oil, Adrian reminded himself. And the tapestries. . Maiden shield us!

They crouched and went down the connecting corridor around the central courtyard, towards the suite of Redvers' wife, where her personal servants would be. Halfway down it was an improvised barricade of furniture, with the gasping, coughing forms of half a dozen City Company troopers behind it.

'We can-' he began. His brother ignored him.

'Nanya!' he shouted, like a battle cry, and leapt.

Adrian followed, sword in one sweating hand and buckler in the other. This isn't my proper work- he thought.

His brother struck. Adrian's eyes went wide; he felt Raj's surprise at the back of his mind as well. The sword moved, blurring with its speed, and a spray of red droplets followed it in an arching spatter across the pale stucco of the walls. A man screamed, looking at the stump of an arm taken off at the elbow. Another slammed backward as the edge of Adrian's sword ploughed into his forehead and then fell in a spastic quivering heap. As he wrenched the weapon free, Esmond kicked another in the crotch, then broke his bent-over neck with a downward blow of the shield rim. Adrian struck at a man backing away with his face slack in horror and the assegai loose in his hand. The City Companies trooper wailed and fled, clutching a gashed forearm. He looked up to see Esmond driving the remaining two Confeds before him down the corridor. As he watched, one went over backward at a slam from Esmond's brass-faced shield. Esmond leapt high, came down on the man's ribcage with both heels, managed to spring free in time to turn a final assegai thrust with his shield. Then the sword sprang out like a kermitoid's licking tongue. The Confed gaped down at the blade through his torso, then slid backward as his face went slack.

'Nanya!' Esmond screamed again, and dashed forward.

Adrian followed, stopping only long enough to snatch up a canteen and rip a piece of cloth free. He wet it and held it across his mouth and nose as Esmond ran through gathering smoke and heat towards the family quarters. The door there was locked. Esmond's sword went straight into it; the steel snapped as he twisted, but so did the mechanism of the lock.

Adrian was close behind. He saw what his brother did, as the door swung back in a belch of flame that singed their eyebrows. The women were huddled in the center of the room, clutching each other, some of them still conscious. They had time to see the men in the doorway before a flaming beam and mass of plaster fell across them.

'Nanya!' Esmond screamed a last time, foam on his lips.

Adrian had to hit him three times across the back of the head with his shield rim before Esmond slumped; then he put his hands under his brother's arms and dragged him backward, cold with fear that he'd struck too hard.

But he'd had to hit him. Nothing but unconsciousness was going to stop Esmond from plunging into that room, and the very gods themselves couldn't bring him alive out of it.

FOUR

Dust. Whenever Adrian remembered the retreat to the west, it was the dust that came back, the acrid taste of it in his mouth and clogging his nose. After a while he got the knack of sleeping while he rode, nodding along in a half-doze. Shouting woke him.

He rubbed a hand over his face, smearing reddish dust and sweat. Esmond was standing in the stirrups, looking forward.

'Messenger just came in,' he said, with a little more life in his voice than there had been over the past week. There was still something missing from it. .

Youth, lad, Raj said. That comes to us all. He's just had it removed faster and more painfully than most.

'And there go the cavalry,' Esmond went on.

The velipadsmen were riding at the head of the column, where they could spread out to screen the infantry. Adrian blinked gummy eyes as he watched them fan out into the low rolling hills ahead; they were Southron barbarians, mostly, mercenaries serving for pay and adventure under Confed officers. Screen . . he thought, watching their velipads trot into the ripe standing wheat like boats breasting a sea of living bronze-Damn, I'm thinking in hexameter-if the cavalry were being sent out to screen the main force, then the Emerald light infantry would too.

One of Audsley's tribunes rode up, fingers plucking nervously at the crimson sash that circled his muscled cuirass.

'Deploy,' he said, pointing westward with his staff of office. 'The enemy is approaching from the west in strength. No more than three miles distant.'

'Three miles?' Esmond said sharply. 'To their cavalry screen, or to their main body? How many? Who commands?'

The legate looked down his well-bred nose; he was about their age, a young spark of the nobility following his patron to war, and unused to such a tone from a mere Emerald mercenary.

'Justiciar Demansk commands,' he drawled. 'But that needn't concern you, Emerald; you won't be treating with him yourself, you know.'

He reined his velipad about and clapped heels to it. Esmond snorted. 'If Justiciar Demansk was ever involved in this-and I beg leave to doubt-he's certainly going to prove his loyalty to the State now. With our blood and bones.'

probability 97 %, ±2, Center said helpfully in the back of Adrian's mind. probability approaches unity as closely as stochastic analysis permits.

I could die here, he knew sharply. Suddenly he could see and smell and feel more vividly than ever in his life; the smell of trampled barley and dust, the heavy shamble of a half-armed Audsley 'volunteer' a hundred paces back, the song of a shrikewing. .

probability 52 %, ±3, Center said. as you were warned.

'All men are initiates of the mysteries of death,' he whispered.

'Death, hell,' Esmond said, grinning through sweat-caked dust. He raised himself in the stirrups and called to his men: 'Those poor sorry ignorant bastards are going to be doing the dying, aren't they, lads?'

The men cheered him. 'Deploy, and remember the training! They've got nothing like our thunderbolts-or our guts. Deploy!'

Justiciar Demansk grunted as he looked up from the folding map table set on the little ridge. Trampled barley stems were glassy and a little slippery under his hobnailed sandals, and he was sweating under the bronze back- and-breast that tradition mandated for a general officer.

'Here they come, the fools,' he muttered.

Audsley had been a competent commander once; how could he have gotten himself into this position? Good Confed troopers are going to die because Audsley and his friends can't pay their debts, he thought. Meanwhile the Islanders raid the coasts and the barbarians stir in the