David Weber - The Road to Hell

More arbalest quarrels slammed into the brig’s walls. One came sizzling in through a window and he heard a Sharonian-it sounded like Velvelig-shouting for the prisoners to go flat. The spellware Harnak had activated was still up, translating the Sharonian words into Andaran, and Ulthar darted a look over his shoulder.

“Stay down!” he barked. “And stay out of the windows’ line of fire as much as you can!”

“And what about the cell window if they get around behind you?” Namir Velvelig shot back in a preposterously calm voice, and Ulthar’s jaw tightened. He hadn’t thought about that!

He looked back through the window in the door and swore again, even more inventively, as he saw three or four men disappearing around the brig’s solid northern wall.

“Shit,” he said, and grabbed the massive key ring off its hook beside the desk.

“I know all of you are pissed off, and you’ve got a right,” he said quickly, fumbling through the keys to find the one he needed. “If I leave you in that cell, you’re going to be sitting ducks for whoever’s coming at us. But if I let you out and you screw with us in the next few minutes, all of us are likely to get killed.”

The Sharonian officer bared his teeth in an expression with only a passing resemblance to a smile.

“Hell of a choice, isn’t it?” he asked. Their eyes locked for just a moment, then Velvelig shrugged. “All right. Let us out and you’ll have our parole at least until the fighting’s settled. Good enough?”

“Good enough,” Ulthar replied, hoping to Seiknora he wasn’t about to make the worst mistake of his life.

He shoved the key into the lock, turned it, swung the door wide, and stood to one side as Velvelig and his subordinates flowed out of the cell in a tide which somehow kept from jamming solid in the opening. It took them several seconds, and while they were doing that, Ulthar snatched up one of the arbalests the original guard detail no longer needed. As soon as the Sharonians were out of the cell-the last four of them supporting a staggering Golvar Silkash and carrying Tobis Makree bodily-Ulthar charged into it.

Before he could reach the window, an arbalest bolt hissed past him. He swerved, dodging the follow-up, then shouldered his newly acquired weapon and squeezed the trigger.

The cell’s window was higher above ground level than above the level of the cell floor, and someone cursed loudly as the return fire came close enough to clip a lock of his hair. Whoever it was dropped down below the window sill for cover, and Ulthar plastered his back against the interior wall to one side of the opening and worked the cocking lever.

“ Shit! ” someone grunted, and he looked up to see young Yanthas clutching at the arbalest bolt which had suddenly appeared in his left shoulder.

“Idiot!” Hyndahr barked. “ Told you to keep your stupid head down!”

The demoted sword had been Charlie Company’s senior hand-to-hand and swordsmanship instructor, but he’d been a marksmanship instructor in his time, as well, and Ulthar heard a shrill scream from outside the brig as he sighted quickly and then fired. Hyndahr, at least, was obviously out of stun bolts, the fifty thought grimly.

Someone moved closer at hand, and his eyes narrowed as he saw Velvelig shoving his way back into the cell carrying another of the original guards’ arbalests. Ulthar was none too happy to see the weapon in Sharonian hands, but he wasn’t exactly in a position to be choosy. He started to offer some quick instruction, then shut his mouth firmly as Velvelig pulled the cocking lever and nocked a quarrel as expertly as if he’d been using an arbalest all his life.

His surprise must have shown, because the Sharonian grinned at him again, much more warmly this time.

“Couldn’t afford a decent rifle when I was growing up back home,” he said. “Nice piece, though. Cocks really easily, doesn’t it? More of that ‘magic’ of yours, is it?”

Ulthar started to answer, then paused as the Sharonian whipped around and sent the steel-headed bolt back out through the window. An explosive grunt answered his shot, and he jerked back to press his back to the wall on the opposite side of the window.

“Your turn next,” he said as he pulled the cocking lever again.

“Fire in the hole!” someone else shouted, and Ulthar looked back just in time to see Sarkhol Gersmyn snatch up the grenade someone had gotten through the window. The wiry garthan ’s arm whipped forward, throwing it back the way it had come, but its spell activated just as it cleared the window. The outer wall absorbed most of the fireball’s fury, but enough of it blew back through the window to sear the Scout’s hand to the bone.

He went down, clutching his wrist, jaw muscles standing out like iron as he bit down on a scream of agony, and Company-Captain Silkash shoved himself shakily to his feet. He staggered across to Gersmyn and grabbed the Arcanan’s arm, forcing it straight so that he could peer at it through his swollen, blackened eyes. The Sharonian surgeon’s own hands were already bloody, Ulthar realized, and another Sharonian, one of Velvelig’s senior noncoms, knelt beside Yanthas, putting pressure on the improvised dressing which had somehow appeared.

“We have to keep them out of throwing range of the windows!” he shouted. “If they get another of those things in here we’re all cooked!”

* * *

“Mother Jambakol!”

Lerso Jathyr watched the grenade detonate outside the brig and wondered how the hells the bastards in there had managed to get it back through the window in time. They hadn’t gotten it clear by much, but close didn’t count when there was a solid wall between the grenade and its intended target. Worse, he only had three of them left. Of course, he wouldn’t have had any of them, if Bersal Darnaiyr, one of his more idiotic troopers, hadn’t tucked them away under his bunk in violation of about five dozen regulations “just in case I needed them.”

Well, maybe not that much of an idiot, at that , the javelin thought. Under the circumstances, at least! And at least he hadn’t squirreled away any dragon charges to keep ’em company.

In the meantime, he’d already lost three of 3rd Squad’s twelve men, and he had no idea how many opponents they faced inside the brig. Or, for that matter, when somebody else might come running up their backsides.

“All right,” he said, raising his voice just enough for the five men on this side of the brig to hear him. “We’ve got to get close enough to pop another one in on them. Darnaiyr, toss one of them to Tymkara! His arm’s at least as good as yours. Lets see if we can’t get both of you close enough to give the bastards two of them to deal with.”

* * *

Keraik Nourm left Briahk to secure the stunned, disoriented members of Brys Varkan’s platoon. The commander of fifty was as singed looking as anyone, but he’d recovered enough to curse Nourm up one side and down the other. He was just getting around to all of the capital offenses the sword had already committed while one of Briahk’s troopers used a binding spell to immobilize him, but Nourm had other things to worry about at the moment. He and Brysyl Vahrtanak, Briahk’s squad shield, were already headed for the second barracks and Fifty Yankaro’s men. If Yankaro’s platoon got loose with weapons in hand-

He slid to a halt as Traymahr Sahnger shoved his head out one of the windows.

“We’ve got this!” Sahnger shouted.

“You sure?” Nourm shouted back, raising his voice to carry above the still clanging bell. Sahnger was supposed to be sitting on the unicorn stables, but under the circumstances, the sword was disinclined to pick any nits about it. “One of Varkan’s squads got out the back way.”