David Weber - How firm a foundation

He’d realized immediately that the larger their group got, the slower it would become… and the more likely it would be to attract the human slash lizards rampaging through the streets. But his grandparents would never have forgiven him for trying to shake off those terrified fugitives, and another part of him had been glad it was so. He knew he would never have forgiven himself later… not that it seemed he was likely to have the opportunity to worry about that after all.

He looked around quickly. There were perhaps a half-dozen other men his age or a few years older in their group. Fathers, most of them, he thought sickly, seeing how their wives and children clung to them. Another three or four were somewhere between them and his grandfather’s age. That was it, and there had to be at least a hundred men in the mob spilling into the avenue behind them.

He stood for just a moment, then turned to his grandfather.

“Give me your sword,” he said.

Claitahn Raimahn’s hand fell to the hilt of the old-fashioned cutlass at his side. The one he’d carried as a young man on long-ago galleon decks-twin to the one hanging from the baldric slung over his grandson’s shoulder.

“Why?” he demanded, and managed a strained smile. “Looks like I’m going to need it in a minute or so!”

“No, you’re not,” Byrk said flatly. “You’re going to take Grandmother-and all the rest of these women and children-to Harbor Hill Court. Number Seven, Harbor Hill Court.” Claitahn’s eyes widened as he recognized Aivah Pahrsahn’s address. “There are… arrangements to protect them there.” Byrk stared into his grandfather’s eyes. “And you’re going to get them there, Grandfather. I’m depending on you for that.”

“Byrk, I can’t-” Claitahn’s voice was stricken, but there was no time for that, and Byrk reached out and drew the older man’s cutlass from its scabbard.

“I love you, Grandfather,” he said softly. “Now go!”

Claitahn stared at him for a moment longer, then dragged in a ragged breath and turned to his weeping wife.

“Come with me,” his voice frayed around the edges. “He’s… he’s right.”

Behind him, Byrk was looking at the other men in their small group.

“Who’s with me?” he demanded. Two of the men about his own age looked away, their expressions shamed. They refused to meet his eyes, and he ignored them, looking at the others.

“I am,” a roughly dressed fellow in his forties said, hefting a truncheon he’d picked up somewhere along the way. He spat on the paving. “Legs’re getting tired, anyway!”

Someone actually managed a laugh, and the others looked at Byrk with frightened, determined faces.

“Here,” he offered his grandfather’s cutlass to a stocky, roughly dressed man carrying a badly cracked baseball bat crusted with blood. There was more dried blood on the fellow’s tunic, although it was obvious none of it was his. Byrk had no idea whether or not the other man had a clue about how to use a sword, but he was obviously determined enough to make a good try.

The man looked at his bat. He hesitated for a moment, then grimaced.

“Thanks.” He dropped the bat and took the cutlass, and Byrk’s eyebrows rose as he took two or three practiced cuts, obviously getting the weapon’s feel. “Militiaman back home,” he explained.

“Good. Glad to meet you, by the way. Byrk Raimahn.” Byrk tapped his chest, and the other man snorted.

“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.