Carnigan deflected the sword of the first raider to reach the gap with the shield on his left arm and, with the same twisting motion, brought the battle axe down onto a shoulder at the base of the swordsman’s neck. A shower of blood sprayed six feet and washed over Yozef. Within seconds, a melee engulfed the entire forty-foot section of barricade—defenders fighting for their lives against the wave of raiders.
Several raiders leaped over lower spots in the barricade to land in the midst of Keelanders. The raiders died quickly, though not before hewing down men and women.
The most desperate action centered at the gap. The tip of the raider assault followed their fallen leader. All that stopped them was that the gap was too small for the number of raiders wanting to hit it at the same time. A flurry of swords, axes, and spears held the gap long enough for defenders to flow in that direction.
A man next to Carnigan went down, a slash across his sword arm causing him to drop his weapon, and a second raider stabbed him in the belly. A white-haired man rushed to fill the place of the fallen man but went down himself from a pistol shot.
Another pistol shot glanced off Carnigan’s old shield, briefly staggering him. The deflected ball smacked into Yozef’s leg. He cried out but was too terrified to check for a wound. Carnigan stepped forward again, a new dent in his shield, as more raiders pushed forward.
Yozef was barely conscious of glancing down the line and seeing islanders fend off raiders who tried to climb over the barricade. Here and there, vicious exchanges started and ended within seconds. The brutal fact was that a blade fight with minimal protection tended to be short, one opponent or the other going down quickly. For the raiders, if they dispatched one islander, another took his place. If an old man fell, a teenage boy or girl was there with a spear, a sword, or even a pitchfork to stick any raider occupied with a defender.
Denes yelled, fending off raiders and yelling instructions at the same time. Not having the brute power of Carnigan, he made up for it with speed and form. His sword never stopped slashing, warding off other blades, and stabbing. Raider bodies mounded in front of the gap.
Yozef edged away from the barricade, though he never remembered moving from where he was crouching. Carnigan fended off several raiders by swinging his axe in mighty swaths. No raider was willing to come too close, but neither was the axe wielder able to concentrate on any one attacker. One raider slipped to one side of Carnigan, when a woman who had rushed to fill a space vacated by a wounded man went down from a spear. Carnigan could not turn to face the threat to his side, fully occupied with those to his front. The raider raised his sword to slash at Carnigan, and, without thinking, Yozef lunged forward and stabbed at the raider. His spear-point hit the raider’s leather armor just under the armpit and buried the blade into exposed, vulnerable flesh. The raider screamed and dropped his sword, blood streaming down his side, and turned a shocked face toward Yozef. Their eyes locked. Yozef stood frozen. Another defender slashed at the wounded raider, opening the side of his neck and severing an artery. The raider fell without a sound.
Seeing the raider he’d stabbed fall jolted Yozef. He had no idea how to handle any weapon, but he could stab with the spear he held in a death grip. He made no attempt to face a raider on his own, but two more times he came to the aid of defenders in trouble with raiders. His stab attempts did no damage, but both times it forced the man to divert effort to avoid Yozef’s feeble efforts, and the other defenders made good the distraction.
There was no time to reload firearms. After the initial volleys, it was all steel against steel, and steel into flesh. Underneath the yells of defiance, the screams of the wounded, and the clashes of metal, there was the scything of blades through air in their search for blood. Ssst . . . Sst … SSST . . . Ssssst . . . the sound and intensity varying with a blade’s shape and size and changing tone when metal found flesh or other metal. Somehow Yozef heard every Ssst, and every one seemed aimed at him.
What saved the defenders from being overwhelmed was the raiders initially charging a single point in the barricade. They were in one another’s way, instead of bringing all of their men to bear on the villagers at the same instance. By the time the raiders spread outward on both sides of the gap to climb the barricade, it had given the defenders farther away time to run to the points of attack.
The fighting was vicious but brief. Raiders died in front of the barricade, on it as they tried to climb over, or amid villagers on the other side. Of the 175 raiders who followed Omir Abulli’s order to charge into the gate, 153 entered the courtyard. Of these, 45 fell dead or were wounded in the first volley and 13 in the second. The remaining 95 raiders rallied to Abulli’s call and charged the barricade section in front of the cathedral.
The entire Battle of St. Sidryn’s, as it came to be named, took fewer than five minutes, from the instant the first raider entered the courtyard until the last of the surviving raiders fled back through the gate. Later, Yozef recollected that the battle had lasted hours.
The villagers and the abbey staff stared, stunned, at the courtyard. Bodies carpeted the blood-covered cobblestone. A few portions of the barricade had fallen or been pulled down, mostly the side facing the gate and including the gap. Bodies of both raiders and defenders lay inside the barricade in several places. No raider was standing, but many were wounded and unable to flee with their comrades. The disbelief that they’d survived held the villagers for almost a minute, then the moans and screams of the wounded from both sides brought them back from wherever their minds had gone. A roar of hatred swelled, and the defenders poured over the barricades to finish those who had intended to destroy their world.
Yozef saw one raider sitting on the ground, one leg nearly severed at the knee, wildly swinging his sword to ward off three women with spears and a pitchfork. They didn’t kill him immediately, but danced around him and kept him trying to watch all three, pulling their stabs enough for the blades or prongs to pierce flesh but not deep enough to be fatal. Finally, either from loss of blood or fatalism, he gave up and dropped his sword. One young woman Yozef recognized as part of the decoy group, still bare from the waist up, stood in front of the raider, shook her breasts at him, and yelled, “Take a look, you asshole! These are the last tits you’ll ever see!” and drove her spear into his throat.
Most raiders were dispatched quickly. The islanders weren’t interested in prisoners.
Yozef turned to Denes. “Denes, we need a few prisoners to question.” Denes looked at him but didn’t respond.
“Denes! Prisoners can tell you who these people are, where they come from, and how many more there might be!”
Denes’s eyes focused on Yozef’s for the first time, as his mind processed what Yozef had said. He then strode out into the courtyard and yelled out something. Whatever he said, two of the men stood guard over a small knot of wounded raiders, while the rest were dispatched to whatever god or afterlife they believed in.
Yozef’s legs gave out, and he dropped to the ground, before he realized it was covered with blood. He jumped back to his feet, looking down at himself. His arms were covered in dirt, sweat, and drying blood from the raider Carnigan had axed. Yozef felt his pants wet. He looked down. He had peed himself. Carnigan walked over to Yozef, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and marched him over to a water trough.
“Happens to many the first time,” he grunted, just before dunking Yozef completely into the water. Then he jerked Yozef back, stood him upright, and left him there. Yozef was now wet everywhere, evidence of his weak bladder obscured.
The St. Sidryn’s medicants dropped their weapons, for all able bodies had been part of the defense, picked up their medical bags, and began tending the wounded. Considering the number of defender bodies, the casualties of the defenders were relatively few. That fact was of little consolation to those few. The dead themselves no longer cared, but their families either knew or would soon know. Injuries varied from abrasions and bruises that would heal on their own to wounds that required staunching and stitching, to a few truly hideous wounds. One man was missing half of his lower jaw. Several had deep slashes that might have reached internal organs. A man missing an arm below the elbow moaned, as medicants carried him inside. And others. Yozef wandered around, thinking to himself that he wanted to help, but mainly just moving and doing something, instead of thinking and recollecting what had just happened and how close he’d come to dying.