Several of the defenders tripped as they ran.
One of them was Sherry.
Hickok heard her cry out and spun.
Sherry was on her knees, her left leg twisted under her, her back to the charging troopers.
One of them was almost on her. He was drawing back his M-16 for a lunge with his bayonet when Seiko appeared out of the smoke. He blocked the thrust of the bayonet and countered with his right sai, sinking it to the hilt in the soldier’s chest.
Hickok was already in motion. He reached Sherry’s side and hauled her to her feet. “Come on!” His eyes caught Seiko’s, and in that fleeting instant he conveyed the depth of his gratitude with the expression on his face and the relief in his blue eyes.
Seiko smiled and nodded… and staggered as a bullet penetrated his head from behind, exiting his cranium between the eyes.
“Seiko!” Sherry screamed.
Seiko stiffened and fell.
Hickok, his left arm supporting the woman he loved, spotted a trooper 15 yards off, an M-16 pressed to his left shoulder. The gunman fired his right Python as the M-16 cracked, and Hickok felt his right sleeve tugged by an invisible hand.
The soldier was flung backward to the unyielding turf.
“Let’s go!” Hickok hurried now, forcing his injured left thigh to cooperate with his body.
The troopers had knocked over the corpse wall, and hundreds of them were running pell-mell after the fleeing defenders, bearing due east.
How many yards more? The smoke hid the earthen breastwork from view, but Hickok knew the hastily constructed, breast-high dirt fortification couldn’t be more than ten yards ahead. Hickok had kept the defenders up all night working on the breastwork, digging in shifts, and none of them had slept a wink.
Where the blazes was it?
Bullets were buzzing by overhead.
The smoke abruptly dissipated and there it was, 80 yards in length and 4½ feet in height, covering the ground like a giant reddish-brown snake.
Hickok never slowed. He placed both arms around Sherry and jumped, reaching the top of the breastwork in one bound.
Bullets spattered into the mound of dirt.
The gunman rolled, bearing Sherry with him. They slid over the top and tumbled to the ground on the far side. Hickok rose to his knees, scanning to his right and left.
Spartacus, Ares, and the remaining 138 defenders were ready, their guns in their hands, crouched below the rim of the breastwork.
Hickok glanced over the top of the earthen mound.
Hundreds of soldiers were crammed into the open space between the breastwork and the moat, the nearest ranks only 15 yards away. There was nowhere they could hide, nothing they could use as cover. They were caught in the open, completely unprotected, utterly defenseless.
Now!
“Fire!” Hickok commanded at the top of his lungs.
In unison, the defenders rose up from behind the breastwork and fired.
Their firearms, a mixture of automatics, lever and bolt actions, and shotguns, belched death and thundered annihilation upon the soldiers.
The troopers reacted as if, en masse, they had slammed into an invisible barrier. Many were arrested in mid stride, their green uniforms dotted with bright red holes. The soldiers in the rear, unaware of the devastation in front, pushed forward, preventing the forward ranks from escaping.
The defenders fired and fired and fired.
Their ranks ravaged by the fusillade, the troopers wavered, then broke, fleeing back toward safety, toward the moat and the makeshift bridge.
Hickok tensed, waiting for the coup de grace. If Shane was in position, and if none of the soldiers had spotted him, and if he had emptied the gas cans into the moat as instructed…
The soldiers were clustered on the inner bank, climbing the stairs, and darting across the bridge when the moat went up. A veritable inferno of flame fried them to a crisp, burning the bridge and setting the overhead stairs afire. Cries of suffering and torment filled the air.
Hickok swept the defenders with his gaze. “Charge!” he ordered, and vaulted the breastwork. He closed on the hapless troopers, his Pythons booming, downing two, three, four in swift succession.
Spartacus was at his side every step of the way.
Caught between the flaming moat and the onrushing defenders, the troopers were ruthlessly butchered, game to the last man, resisting with their dying breath. Their bodies were piled in heaps.
The gunfire gradually tapered off as fewer and fewer of the soldiers were able to oppose the defenders.
Hickok stopped, endeavoring to see through the acrid smoke.
Fatigue-covered forms overspread the ground.
“Hickok!” someone roared to his right.
The gunman whirled, his Pythons held at waist level, his fingers on the triggers.
It was Brutus.
The hulking brute was seven yards away, his left hand holding a stout branch and using it as a crutch, while his right held an automatic pistol.
Brutus grinned, knowing he had the gunman, knowing the best the gunfighter could hope was to tie him and even then Hickok was dead.
With a resounding, deafening detonation, the nearby tank exploded, its ammunition and shells ignited by the blaze in the moat.
The concussion knocked both Hickok and Brutus to the earth, a gust of hot air spurting past them.
Hickok rose to his knees first, and he fired both Pythons as Brutus heaved erect, he fired again as Brutus lurched backward, and again as Brutus attempted to lift his pistol.
And then Spartacus was there, appearing beside Brutus out of the smoke, his broadsword grasped in both hands. He swung the blade with all of his might, putting his entire body into a gleaming arc as the broadsword cleaved the air and connected with Brutus’s neck.
Hickok saw Brutus’s head leave his body, soaring upward end over end, trailing a crimson plume. The head seemed to move in slow motion as it attained the apex of its flight and plummeted to the earth, bouncing twice and finally coming to a rest at the gunman’s feet.
“Are you okay?” Sherry asked from the gunman’s right.
Hickok nodded. The gunfire had ended. He stared at the grisly trophy of his victory, fascinated.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Sherry persisted.
Hickok abruptly felt as if every muscle, every bone in his whole body, ached, had been stretched to its limit and far beyond. “I’m fine,” he mumbled.
Ares joined them, exulting in their triumph. “We did it!” he gloated.
“We beat them! We saved the Home!”
Hickok absently gazed at the hundreds of bodies around him, many of them near the moat charred beyond recognition. “Yeah,” he said dryly.
“We did it.”
Ares glanced at Sherry and Spartacus, puzzled. “I don’t get it. What’s the matter with you?” he asked the gunman.
Hickok wearily bolstered his Pythons and looped his left arm under Sherry’s right shoulder. “Nothing,” he replied, leading her off.
“Hey!” Ares called after them. “What do you want us to do? Where are you going?”
Hickok paused and looked back. “I want you to form a detail and clean up this mess. Scout the forest and make sure none of them are left. Allow some of our people to rest. Work them in shifts.”
“But what about you?” Ares inquired.
“I’m going to have the Healers tend to my wife,” Hickok responded, “and then we’re going to enjoy some heavy kissy-wissy in our cabin.”
“Are you serious?” Ares queried.
“I promise I’ll shoot the first son of a bitch who interrupts us,” Hickok vowed. “Is that serious enough for you?”
“Sounds pretty serious to me,” Ares admitted.
Hickok and Sherry strolled off, arm in arm.
Ares glanced at Spartacus. “Now what was that all about?”
“I think Hickok just told you something,” Spartacus said, wiping his bloody broadsword on his left pant leg.