by David Weber
Sergeant Seahamper’s face went white at the sudden explosion of carnage beyond the convent’s wall. Despite his niggling concern over Captain Gairaht’s tardiness, he’d no more expected an attack like this than anyone else. But Edwyrd Seahamper hadn’t been his monarch’s personal armsman for so many years for nothing.
“Rally!” he heard his own voice shouting. “Rally!”
Other voices shouted back . . . but not as many of them as he should have heard.
The other groups of attackers had gotten as close as they could to the duty sentries, yet they’d dared not get too close until the bivouac had been attacked. They’d waited, straining at the leash of discipline and their orders, until the abrupt sound of that single rifle shot launched them at the guardsmen they’d been able to locate.
Half a dozen arbalest strings snapped, but this time, the darkness was the guardsmen’s friend and, despite the short range, most of the bolts missed their targets. Not all of them did, but the sentries, unlike their comrades in the encampment, had anticipated that any attack on the empress would begin with an effort to neutralize them. That was why they’d chosen their positions so carefully.
Despite the intensity with which the Temple Loyalists had observed the convent since Sharleyan’s arrival, they’d been unable to locate all of the guard posts outside the wall. The moving sentries had been relatively easy to spot as they paced back and forth, but the others were another matter. Under the circumstances, the attackers had no choice but to rely on their superior numbers and the fact that they knew approximately where any guards had to be stationed, even if they didn’t know their exact locations. And unlike the sentries, they’d known the attack was coming. When the rifle shot split the night, they were poised and ready, and the night outside Saint Agtha’s erupted in small, ugly knots of violence as they tried to rush the gates.
They failed.
Even taken by surprise, the men charged with protecting Empress Sharleyan struck back hard. Although the Imperial Guard had adopted the rifle as its primary weapon, its men knew better than to give away their positions by firing. Instead, they demonstrated to their enemies just how lethally effective a bayonet could be. The Guard was equipped with the same weapon as the Marine scout-snipers, with the same fourteen-inch bayonets, and they used the reach advantage of their weapons’ length ruthlessly.
Temple Loyalists screamed as guardsmen appeared abruptly before or behind them and they suddenly found themselves transfixed by knife-edged blades of tempered steel. Unlike the surprised guardsmen in the encampment, the sentries formed coordinated teams, operating with the smoothness of long training and familiarity, and the initial assault on the main gate and on the smaller gate in the western wall failed.
The one on the northern gate was another matter. The heavy woodland had allowed the Temple Loyalists detailed for that attack to get much closer before darkness fell. They had a clearer idea of where their enemies were located, and they charged furiously, prepared to accept their own losses if they could close quickly with the guardsmen.
They succeeded . . . almost.
All eight sentries on the northern wall died, but eleven more Temple Loyalists died with them. And before the sergeant commanding the detachment went down, he turned and threw the gate key over the wall. The senior surviving attacker screamed in frustration as he realized the stout iron gate was locked, but he wasted no time trying to batter his way through it. Instead, he and his remaining men turned and ran towards the western gate.
The ten-man reserve Captain Gairaht had posted just outside the convent chapter house reacted almost instantly to Seahamper’s shout. They knew the drill for responding to a surprise attack as well as the sergeant did, and they closed in around the guesthouse in automatic reaction. It was their job to ensure the empress’ safety first, rather than allowing themselves to be diverted into racing towards apparent threats which might well turn out to be diversions. Once the center was secure, they could move to reinforce the perimeter.
The eight men on the western gate killed eighteen Temple Loyalists at the cost of five of their own. The sergeant commanding the detail and one of his two surviving troopers were both wounded, but they managed to retreat through the gate and lock it behind them before the surviving attackers could get themselves reorganized for another attempt. The three guardsmen fell back to join the reserve around the guesthouse, even as rifle fire began to crackle at the main gate.
Lieutenant Hahskyn had been waiting for Captain Gairaht with increasing impatience. He, too, had begun wondering what could have been keeping Gairaht, even before Tyrnyr arrived at the main gate with Seahamper’s message, but he’d no more suspected his commanding officer might already be dead than Seahamper had.
That didn’t keep him from reacting quickly. He’d recognized the sound of the initial rifle shot even before he heard Seahamper shouting the alarm, and he and his men knew precisely what to do.
Just as the reserve’s initial responsibility was to surround the empress and be certain she was secure, the perimeter teams’ responsibility was to hold their positions at least until the situation had clarified. The ten men of Lieutenant Hahskyn’s detachment didn’t need him to tell them that.
They didn’t need him to tell them how to do it, either, because he and Gairaht had walked the entire perimeter together immediately after their arrival. They’d discussed contingency plans for each position and briefed their men on exactly what they were supposed to do under each of those plans, and now the men on the gate put that briefing into action.
Unlike the Guard’s other positions, the approach to the convent’s main gate was relatively well illuminated, and Hahskyn had positioned additional lanterns farther down the approach lane, along both sides, to extend the reach of the existing lighting. Because of that, the Temple Loyalists assigned to seize the gate had found it impossible to work their way as close as their fellows had managed to do at the other gates. They had farther to go, which gave the guardsmen more time to realize what was happening, and when they charged, they met the accurate fire of ten rifles at point-blank range.
A third of them went down, thrashing and screaming. The others continued their charge, but the sudden carnage in their own ranks had half-stunned them and shattered their formation. This time, it was the guardsmen who met the shock of combat unshaken, and their white-hot fury and the reach of their weapons proved decisive. Only one of them was lightly wounded, and the handful of surviving Temple Loyalists fell back, leaving the approach to the gate carpeted with the bodies of their fellows.
“Sergeant Tyrnyr!” Hahskyn snapped while the gate detachment reloaded quickly. “Get back to Sergeant Seahamper and make sure the Empress is safe!”
“Yes, Sir!”
The sergeant dashed towards the guesthouse, and Hahskyn turned to his senior noncom.
“Check the other gates!” he said. “Then report back here.”
“Yes, Sir!” The second sergeant saluted quickly and disappeared into the darkness, and Hahskyn looked at the remaining members of his detachment.
“All right, boys,” he said grimly, “I don’t know who these bastards are, but there’s Shan-wei’s own lot of them. Fall back behind the gate.”
Faces tightened as his men realized what he was saying. They and the other perimeter guards were supposed to be the reaction force, the ones who counterattacked once the situation had been stabilized. Closing and locking the gate behind them was an explicit admission that they were too outnumbered to consider taking the fight to the other side.
“Shan-wei take it!”
Charlz Abylyn swore viciously as he surveyed the bodies sprawled outside the convent’s main gate. The carefully worked out plan had visualized getting inside in the first rush, where the Temple Loyalists could get to grips with the entire strength of Sharleyan’s bodyguards while the guardsmen were still stunned by the sudden surprise attack. The last thing they’d needed was to allow troops of the Imperial Guard’s caliber to recover from their initial shock and
confusion!
Unlike some of his fellows, Abylyn had always had his reservations about the likelihood of successfully rushing the gates, yet even at his most pessimistic, he hadn’t anticipated the carnage Lieutenant Hahskyn’s men had wreaked. He didn’t know how well the attacks on the other gates had gone, although it was obvious they hadn’t broken through, nor did he know—yet—how well the attack on the bivouac area had gone. If the other prongs of the assault had taken casualties as heavy as his, however . . .
He looked up as a runner dashed up to his position. He recognized the newcomer as one of Nailys Lahrak’s men, although he didn’t know his name.
“Well?” he asked sharply.
“Their camp’s gone,” the runner panted, his expression fierce with triumph in the dim glow spilling from the gateway’s distant lanterns. “All of them—dead!”
Abylyn grunted in satisfaction. Although he didn’t share the other man’s obvious pleasure at the death of men who were only doing their duty, however mistaken their loyalties might have been, at least he could be confident the other half of the empress’ bodyguards weren’t going to come swarming up his backside while he dealt with the ones in front of him.
“Where’s Nailys?”
“On his way.” The runner’s breathing was beginning to steady down, and he wiped sweat from his forehead. “We lost a few men of our own, and he’s reorganizing. He’ll be here shortly.”
“That’s good,” Abylyn said sourly, and waved one hand at the locked gates. “As you can see, we lost more than ‘a few men.’ I haven’t heard anything from the other gates yet, but it’s pretty damned obvious they didn’t break through, either. It looks like we’re going to have to do it the hard way, after all.”
The runner’s face tightened as he followed Abylyn’s gesture and the sprawled bodies of his fellow Temple Loyalists finally registered.
“God damn them!” the man hissed venomously.
“Whatever else we may think of them, they’re doing their duty as they understand it, and they’ll do it well,” Abylyn said sharply. The runner looked at him, and Abylyn shook his head. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking anything else. Not unless you really want to die out here tonight.”
“Edwyrd!”
Sergeant Seahamper turned towards the soprano voice. Empress Sharleyan stood in the guesthouse door, fully dressed, her expression strained, with Carlsyn Raiyz at her side, and he stepped quickly towards her.
“I don’t know yet, Your Majesty,” he said, answering the unspoken question in her eyes, and his voice was grim. “We don’t know anything yet, but I’d just sent Bryndyn off to the main gate to find out if anyone had seen Captain Gairaht when all hell broke loose. From the sound of things, there have to be a lot of them. I think they hit the bivouac first . . . and I don’t hear any more sounds of fighting from there.”
The skin around her eyes tightened, but she didn’t flinch, and he felt a surge of pride in her.
“I think we must have held at the gates, or they’d already be here,” he continued, offering her the unvarnished truth, “but there’s no way we have enough manpower to keep them from getting over the wall somewhere if there are enough of them. I expect to see Lieutenant Hahskyn shortly. In the meantime, please stay inside. And blow out as many of your candles as you can. I don’t know for certain that there aren’t marksmen already out there on the grounds somewhere, and I’d rather not give them lighted windows to silhouette targets for them.”
Thunder crashed louder, rapidly approaching from the west, and the first, sudden sheets of a Charisian deluge pummeled down from the heavens. Charlz Abylyn heard someone swearing in disgust, but he himself breathed a quiet prayer of thanks as he recognized the divine intervention on their behalf. The rain was bound to soak the priming of the Guard’s rifles, and as far as he was concerned, that was one of the best things that could possibly happen.
“Thank Langhorne for the rain!” someone else bawled into his ear over the sudden tumult of rain and wind, as if to confirm his own thoughts. He turned his head and saw Nailys Lahrak.
“Amen,” Abylyn said fervently, then leaned closer to the other man. “Your runner said you took the camp?”
“A clean sweep.” Lahrak showed his teeth. “We’ve confirmed the body count. And as nearly as I can tell, only three or four of them managed to get inside on the other two gates.”
“And how many did we lose?”
“I’m not sure,” Lahrak replied, his voice harsher. “Not counting yours here, more than twenty, less than forty, I think. I’ll know better in a few minutes; we’re still coming in and getting sorted out.”
Their eyes met. They’d anticipated losses of their own, and they and their men were prepared to pay whatever price was demanded of them, but losses that heavy this early were more than merely painful.
“Mytrahn will be here with his people shortly,” Abylyn said.
“I don’t like waiting, giving them time to get set in there,” Lahrak objected.
“I don’t, either, but we’ve already lost almost as many men as they have, and if we’re going to have to go over the wall, I want enough people on our side to be damned sure we can spread them too thin to stop us when we do. And we’re going to need all the swords we can get once we get to the other side, too.”
Lahrak’s expression was sour, but he grunted in unhappy agreement.
“In that case,” he said, “let’s get our people reorganized while we wait.”
Edwyrd Seahamper completed his nose count as torrents of rain lashed the convent’s grounds. He’d sent a runner to the abbess, warning her to take the sisters to the chapel and keep them there, out of harm’s way. He wished he could have provided them with better security than that, but he was spread far too thinly to even think about that.
“I make it thirteen, plus the two wounded,” he said to Bryndyn Tyrnyr, who’d returned from the main gate.
“Plus the ten with the Lieutenant,” Tyrnyr agreed.
“So, twenty-six.”
“Twenty-five,” Tyrnyr corrected flatly. “Zhorj isn’t going to make it. He’s coughing up blood.”
Seahamper swore softly. Sergeant Zhorj Symyn was the Charisian-born guardsman who had commanded the picket on the west gate. He’d not only held it long enough to get his surviving men back to the guesthouse, but he’d managed to bring all of the picket’s rifles, as well. Yet Seahamper couldn’t afford to dwell on the knowledge that another good man was dying. He couldn’t even take the time to go tell a man who’d become his friend goodbye.
“Twenty-five, then,” he said harshly, and the two guardsmen looked at one another grim-faced. That was less than a third of their original strength, and they had no illusions about what had happened to any of their unaccounted for fellows.
“I think we need the Lieutenant here,” Seahamper said. “Why don’t you go and—”
“Why don’t you stay right where you are, instead?” another voice interrupted, and Seahamper looked up to see Lieutenant Hahskyn. Rain streamed from the rim of the officer’s helmet, and the other guardsmen with him were equally sodden-looking, but Seahamper had never seen a more welcome sight.
“Good to see you, Lieutenant,” he said with commendable understatement, and Hahskyn smiled grimly.
“Sergeant, if you think anything about this situation is ‘good,’ you and I need to have a little talk,” the Charisian said.
“I meant relatively good, Sir.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” Hahskyn’s smile broadened fleetingly, then vanished. “The Empress?”
“Inside.” Seahamper twitched his head at the small guesthouse.
“She knows what’s happening?”
“As well as any of us do, Sir.”
“It isn’t good, Edwyrd,” Hahskyn said more quietly, his voice barely carrying to the sergeant through the sound of wind and rain. “I don’t think they’ve given up just because we managed to bloody their nose at the gates. I think they’re reorganizing, maybe
rethinking, but they aren’t going to just turn around and walk away. Not unless we managed to hurt them one hell of a lot worse than I think we did.”
“No, Sir,” Seahamper agreed harshly.
“I thought about sending a runner to Captain Hywyt,” the lieutenant said even more quietly. His eyes met Seahamper’s. “I didn’t.”
Seahamper nodded, his face bleak. The odds would have been against any runner’s making it through the attackers who’d undoubtedly surrounded the convent. And even if someone could have accomplished that miracle, whatever was going to happen would undoubtedly be over and done before he could cover the eleven miles to the galleon anchored in the small port which served Saint Agtha’s and bring back a relief force.
“All right, Sergeant.” Hahskyn inhaled deeply. “I’ll take charge of the outer perimeter. You’ve got the inner perimeter. And watch yourself, Edwyrd. If it all comes apart on us, you’re the one she’s going to be looking for, the one she’s most likely to listen to.”
He looked deep into Seahamper’s eyes, his own eyes bleak.
“Keep her alive,” he said. “Whatever you have to do, keep her alive.”
“It’s a good thing you insisted on more men, My Lord,” Mytrahn Daivys told Bishop Mylz grimly.
The bishop and Father Ahlvyn had arrived some minutes after Daivys himself, and they were as thoroughly soaked as any of the others. The bishop’s teeth chattered lightly as the rain and wind chilled him, and his expression was strained as the gateway lanterns and occasional lightning flashes showed him the bodies of Abylyn’s dead sprawled motionless in the rain. The sight chilled his heart far more thoroughly than the storm chilled his flesh.
Stop that, Mylz! he told himself. You knew what it was going to be like before you ever set your hand to it. And no one promised you that doing God’s will would be easy or cheap.
“What happens next?” he asked out loud.
“Nailys and Charlz are about done sorting out their men,” Daivys told him. “They’re down to only about seventy between them, but my people are still intact. We’ll take the lead.”
