S. Stirling - Dies The Fire

"Go!" Havel said.

Pam nodded, leaned out, grabbed the cable and went down it with her shins and boots locked around it in good rappelling form-all that rock climbing hadn't gone to waste. He followed, stepping off into space, grabbing the cable and locking it between hands and feet. It was smooth woven wire, three-quarter-inch, capable of bearing a dozen tons and well greased. He clamped hard, felt heat on the insteps of his feet and palms of his hands as friction heated boots and gloves. As he slid-fell through the darkness, there was one wash of light after another. Narrow slivers of light-lanterns coming on behind the firing slits of the tower. Then he let go and fell the last eight feet, landing crouched and drawing his sword with a hiss of metal on leather.

Pam's sword was already out. The walkway they'd landed on was twelve feet across, and the door into the tower was about the same width and height. It had already swung partly open-outwards-and he squinted against the wash of lantern light from within. Men crowded forward, half-armed, confused.

The Bearkillers' swordmistress danced. Her targe beat aside a spearhead, and then the backsword flicked out in a blurring thrust. There was a gurgling scream, a moment of whirling chaos as a man staggered with blood spurting from a severed jugular; a louder scream as she pierced a thigh beneath a scale-mail shirt, ripping the point free with a twist. Havel stepped in, swerved aside from a clumsy spear thrust, grabbed the wood behind the metal and jerked forward. The wielder came with the weapon, running face-first into the punching brass guard of Havel's sword with a wet crunch that jarred up his arm and back with a gruesome finality. The impact kicked the man's body back into the arms of his comrades.

That left three dying men in the entrance, blocking the others with their thrashing and spreading confusion with their screams. Havel and Pamela set their shoulders to the door and ran it closed in stamping unison, like football forwards at a training bar, desperate with haste. Someone would think to get a crossbow eventually:

Booom, as it rammed home.

Pamela was already down on one knee, knocking home three wedges with a wooden mallet and then sticking the handle through loops at their rear to give them each six twists-Ken Larsson had designed them to screw open and lock rear-facing tines into the wood, and Springs had a functioning machine-shop running off horse-cranked belts.

Havel was faintly conscious of boots hitting the walkway behind him, a shout, the clash of steel.

There were two firing slits on either side of the doorway, and only one of him. He'd just have to be quick:

His sword went point-down in the wood beneath his feet. The aerosol can came out instead, and his lighter in his left hand. A savage smile, despite the need of the moment: he'd gotten in trouble for doing this at school, too, but it had impressed Shirley to no end.

This can was much larger and its contents a lot more volatile.

The mist sprayed across the flame, and turned to flame itself-a four-foot gout of it, through the slit and into the eyes and face of the crossbowman within, then two more to set the edges aflame. A bolt whipped out from the other slit; he leapt across, repeated the trick, heard a scream within just as the can hissed dry.

"Eric's alive!" Signe called, as Pamela and he whirled and snatched up their blades.

Havel spared a glance that way. There was more light- the fire on the tower top was brighter as the timbers of the platform caught, lanterns from the upper stories were being brought to the firing slits, and there was a growing blaze around the ground-level slits he'd torched.

That made the black shape of the hang glider in the moat clear enough, and the form writhing out from beneath it. Two of the sharp-pointed angle irons that braced the wire filling the moat pierced the cloth, but none had speared into Eric Larsson. The face raised to the light was still a mask of blood; it had gone into the barbed wire at speed with only his arms and hands to shelter it: though the goggles had probably saved his eyes.

But the wire saved his life, too, Havel knew-the springy mass of it had acted like a pile of mattresses to cushion the impact.

"Get him out," he said. "Don't get caught up in that stuff!"

Signe nodded, lifted the coil of rope from her shoulder and hooked the grapnel over the railing of the walkway. Then she went over it backward, rappelling down as they had on the cable.

"Slight glitch in the plan," Havel said.

Pamela and he exchanged a glance, then stepped past the grapnel. There was another ten yards of walkway beyond that, then the broad, well-braced fighting platform inside the castle's palisade. Just across from that joining was one of the throwing engines, a metal shape hulking under its tarpaulin; the platform extended into a circle around it, and their intel said it could be quickly traversed three-hundred-sixty degrees.

And running towards them were a dozen men-spearmen with shields, and crossbows following. More men shouted and milled around along the wall, but they'd be getting things in gear soon enough.

"Horatius on the fucking bridge," Havel snarled.

"Except that the Etruscans were too idiotic to stand back and shoot arrows," Pamela said tightly. "You know, this isn't what I had in mind when I went to veterinary college."

Noise was mounting too; shouts, the thud of boots on timber, and the growing crackle of the fire on the top of the tower. The snap of bowstring on bracer was lost in it, and the wet meaty thunk of an arrowhead striking flesh at two hundred feet per second. One of the rearmost cross-bowmen stopped and raised his weapon, then buckled at the knees and collapsed forward. Havel saw the arrow strike the next man, even before the first dropped facedown. An armor scale sparked as the bodkin point struck. And another, and another, working forward from the rear The tower top was forty yards away. The ripple of fire would have done credit to a bolt-action sniper rifle in an expert's hands.

"Angel on our shoulder," Havel said, and then: "Haakkaa paalle!"

Three men survived, the first three in the enemy group, too close to the Bearkillers for even a marksman of Ayl-ward's quality to shoot at safely; he'd transferred his attention to the walkway, sweeping it to left and right. All the attackers were in full-length hauberks, with the big kite-shaped shield of the Protector's forces. Havel was acutely aware that he had a lot more target area to cover, with only his sword and targe to protect himself.

Not to mention Signe and her damned fool of a brother, he thought. You know, things are going to get a lot tougher when people who really know how to shoot bows and use swords get more common.

Then there was no time for thinking. Pamela struck first with that smooth economical motion he envied, utterly without wasted effort; she wasn't faster than he was-he'd never met anyone who was-but she did have a lot more experience with sword work.

And a nasty trick of doing the unexpected. Her long lunge started out as a thrust to the face of the man on the left. He threw up his shield, glaring over the edge and drawing back his double-edged sword for a counterattack. But Pam's right knee bent farther, and her arm darted down and to the right, towards the man in the middle, a little behind his comrades.

Into the top of his foot, carelessly advanced beyond the protection of his shield. Pamela's strike was at the end of the foot-arm-blade extension, and the boot was tough leather; there was a crisp popping sound as the point struck. But two inches of sharp steel punched into a man's instep were more than enough, considering the tendons and small bones and veins, not to mention the nerves. She recovered as if driven by coil springs. The injured man shrieked in a high falsetto and spun in a circle, shedding shield and spear and then toppling to the boards with a clash of armor scales, clutching his crippled foot.