David Weber - How firm a foundation

Somehow, he didn’t feel lucky today.

“Ooooh! What’s he gonna do with the big bad baseball bat?” the sword-armed man taunted in a high-pitched falsetto. He raised his own weapon, smoky light gleaming on its point. “Come on, baseball man! Show us what you’ve got.”

“Sailys?” Myrahm’s voice was frightened, and he heard his younger children weeping in terror. But he never took his eyes from the men in front of him.

“Now!” the swordsman shouted, and the hunting pack charged.

Sailys Trahskhat had a lifetime professional batting average of. 302. He’d always been a strong man, but not especially fast, so he’d been forced to hit for power rather than rely on speed on the bases. Over the years, he’d developed rather amazing bat speed, and the longshoreman with the drawn knife made the mistake of getting a little in front of the others.

The same bat which had hit twenty-three home runs in Sailys Trahskhat’s last season with the Tellesberg Krakens hit him squarely in the forehead with a terrible crunching, crushing, squashing sound. He didn’t even scream; he simply flew backward, knife spinning away through the air, blood spraying from his shattered forehead, and Trahskhat stepped to his left.

The baseball bat slashed over and around in a flat, vicious figure-eight. The other longshoreman saw it coming. His eyes flared with sudden panic as his right hand fumbled frantically at the hilt of his knife and the other arm rose to fend off the blow. But he was too slow, and the panic in his eyes disappeared as they went unfocused and forever blank as the end of the bat caved in his right temple with contemptuous ease.

That quickly, that suddenly, Trahskhat found himself facing only one opponent, and the swordsman looked down at the two corpses sprawled untidily in the street. His eyes darted back up to Trahskhat and the blood-dripping bat poised in the big Charisian’s powerful hands, and Trahskhat smiled at him.

“That’s what I’m going to do with the big bad baseball bat, you bastard, ” he said, all the resentment and anger he’d felt since coming to Siddar City roaring up inside him with his terror for his family’s safety. “You want a piece of me? A piece of my family? You bring it on, goddamn you! You bring it on! ”

The swordsman stared at him, then stepped back, retreating. But it was only a feint. The instant Trahskhat’s bat started to dip, the man threw himself forward again.

Yet he wasn’t the only one who’d been capable of feinting. As he came forward, the bat which had been waiting the entire time came up again, arcing from below belt level, catching his sword on the flat of the blade and flinging it to one side, then crunching into the underside of his jaw. The swordsman screamed, teeth and blood flying. He dropped the sword, clutching at his shattered face with both hands as he stumbled the rest of the way forward, and Trahskhat stepped out of his path. The man lurched, starting to go to his knees, and that terrible baseball bat slammed into the back of his skull like the Rakurai of Langhorne.

He hit the pavement in a puddle of blood, and Trahskhat looked down at him, breathing hard.

“Threaten my family, will you?” he hissed, and kicked the dead man in the ribs. Then he looked at his wife and children. “Are you all right?” he demanded.

Myrahm nodded mutely, her eyes huge, shaking with terror and reaction. Mahrtyn, he saw, had already pounced on the knife his first victim had lost, and if the foot of steel shook in his hand, his eyes were grim and determined. Those eyes were shocked by what they’d just seen, but they met his father’s levelly, and Trahskhat’s heart filled with pride.

And then young Pawal, still clinging to his mother’s skirt with one hand, pointed with the other.

“Daddy,” he said, seven-year-old voice quivering with fear and yet reaching for some comforting familiarity in a world which had gone insane. “Daddy, you broke your bat!”

“Come on!” Major Borys Sahdlyr barked. “We’re behind schedule already!”

“So what?” Kail Kaillyt shot back. He waved his sword at the smoke belching from burning shops and tenements, the motionless bodies littering the streets and sidewalks, and laughed drunkenly. “This is the most fun we’ve had in years! Give the lads a little slack!”

Sahdlyr glared at him, but Kaillyt only looked back at him unrepentantly. The major’s second-in-command was intoxicated with violence and the release of long-held hatred, and in some ways that was worse than anything wine or whiskey might have produced.

Damn Father Saimyn! Sahdlyr thought bitterly, even though he knew he shouldn’t. But still…

He made himself draw a deep breath of smoky air. As one of the handful of Inquisition Guardsmen who’d been smuggled into Siddar City as part of the planning for the Sword of Schueler, Sahdlyr had done his best to instill some sort of discipline into the volunteers Father Saimyn and Laiyan Bahzkai were recruiting. Unfortunately, his superiors had been too enthralled by Father Saimyn’s reports to listen to his own warnings that the loyal sons of Mother Church were far more enthusiastic than organized… or experienced. It was one thing to smuggle in weapons; it was quite another to train civilians in their use. Even people like Kaillyt, who’d served as a member of the Capital Militia, had strictly limited training compared to their regular army counterparts.

Nor had it been possible for Sahdlyr to rectify those shortcomings. Actually training any large body of men required space and time, and it wasn’t something which could be done in secret in the middle of a Shan-wei-damned city. He’d done his best, but the unfortunate truth was that he’d been largely restricted to lecturing Father Saimyn’s “officers” on theory, and that was no substitute for hands-on time working with their weapons and their troops. He’d deeply envied his fellows who’d been sent to less citified parts of the operation. Scattered around the estates of Temple Loyalists in the Republic’s central and western provinces, where farmers, foresters, miners, and rural craftsmen already resented the wealth of the eastern provinces’ urban populations, they’d been able to actually drill the men they were responsible for leading. They’d been able to put them together and train them as units, accustomed to taking orders and obeying them.

Sahdlyr had warned Father Saimyn-and even Father Zohannes-that without the same opportunity, he and his subordinate commanders were unlikely to retain control of their units here in the capital when the day finally came. It wasn’t the men’s motivation he mistrusted. It wasn’t even their willingness to take orders; it was their… reliability. They’d never been given the chance to acquire the habit of obeying their officers when the violence actually began.

But had Father Saimyn listened? Of course he hadn’t! And neither had Father Zohannes. Or Sahdlyr was confident neither of them had allowed it to color any of their reports to Archbishop Wyllym or the Grand Inquisitor, at any rate. And Father Saimyn was probablyprobably -right that it wasn’t going to matter in the end.

It had become apparent over the last few five-days that the government had started to realize, at least dimly, that trouble was brewing. They obviously hadn’t guessed how deep their danger truly was, however, or they’d have taken more precautions. True, Daryus Parkair’s decision to empty most of the Capital Militia’s arsenals and send the weapons to be held under guard at Fort Raimyr, the main Army base north of the city, had deprived the insurgents of arms Father Saimyn had assumed would be available. But Fort Raimyr was fifteen miles from the capital and the Army was understrength at the moment. Despite a few belated troop movements, there couldn’t be more than five thousand men stationed at Raimyr, and they were peacetime soldiers with a peacetime mentality. They’d need time to get themselves organized and move, and they’d be badly outnumbered if even two-thirds of the men Father Saimyn had promised would join the insurgency actually turned up.