Mia didn’t seem to notice. She grasped Amaranthe’s forearm. “Suan, I’m glad you’re here. I’ve heard much about you.”
Uh oh. Amaranthe hoped there wouldn’t be further tests. At least this wasn’t an old colleague.
One of the men at the door murmured something to the other.
“Perhaps we can share a meal later?” Amaranthe asked. “I’m weary from my weeks of travel. Retta, can you show me to a room before leaving to take these fellows back up?” More precisely, Amaranthe wanted a tour of the Behemoth, a better one than she’d had last time, including the navigation room or engine room or whatever the equivalent was.
“Who are you two?” one of the guards in the first squad asked.
Amaranthe stifled a wince, knowing before she turned that someone was addressing Books and Akstyr.
“Cafron and Vinks,” Books said. “We’re new.”
“New? And you got this assignment? Nobody but Lettodjot’s most trusted men have gotten to come down here. There’s no chance you’d-”
Amaranthe was trying to decide if she should attempt to talk her way out of the situation or simply accept that they’d have to fight when the speaker’s belt unclasped and his trousers descended. In fact, that happened to every man standing in the squads. Still lurking in the shadows, Akstyr had his eyes shut, grinning like a boy pawing open Winterfest gifts.
His distraction wouldn’t startle the guards for long. Amaranthe had to act. She rejected the idea of using Mia for a shield and lunged for the closest of the startled guards instead.
“What happened?” one was blurting, bent over and yanking up his trousers.
“It’s magic, you idiots,” came a yell from the door. “Get them!”
A rifle fired. If Amaranthe hadn’t already been moving, the bullet might have slammed into her chest. As it was, it ricocheted off the hull. Retta and Mia lunged between the control station and the submarine, hiding behind its bulk.
Amaranthe snatched the crossbow off the back of the closest man who was struggling with his trousers, elbowing him in the gut to buy a second to pluck out bolts as well, then jumped behind the nose of the submarine with the other two women. More shots fired from the soldiers, all aimed in her direction. She didn’t know whether to take it personally or assume they weren’t shooting at Books and Akstyr because their own men were in the way. Either way, the submarine and the wall behind her took the brutality for her, though one bullet did ricochet off the control station and bounce into their cove. Retta screamed. She’d been hit. Cursed ancestors, this wasn’t how things were supposed to go.
Amaranthe leaned out and loosed a quarrel toward the doorway. It skipped harmlessly off the wall. The two soldiers had moved. They’d run into the room, each dropping to one knee, rifles pressed into their shoulders. They fired as soon as they saw her.
She ducked behind the submarine again. Metal clashed to her right, near the open hatch. In her peripheral vision, she’d glimpsed the mass of green security uniforms descending on the submarine. Books and Akstyr had retreated inside. Given that only one person could attack at a time through the narrow entryway, they ought to be able to hold their own. Amaranthe on the other hand… Those soldiers were definitely after her.
“Stop drawing their fire,” Retta snarled, her voice thick with pain. She was clenching her shoulder. Blood soaked her blouse and seeped between her fingers.
“Emperor’s warts, I’m sorry,” Amaranthe said, reloading her crossbow. It could hold two quarrels at a time. She’d pay all the money in Sespian’s secret stash for one of those repeating rifles just then. “Where’d your assistant go?”
Retta jerked her head to the left, then winced, doubtlessly wishing she hadn’t. If one followed the control wall to the end, there was a tall narrow door there. It was a good fifty feet away. Mia must have trusted that the soldiers wouldn’t shoot her. Amaranthe didn’t have that luxury. She checked to the right, thinking she might run around the submarine and surprise her attackers by appearing on the other side, but it had been parked too close to the hull. That barrier must have become permeable to allow their entry, but it appeared solid now.
“They’re coming,” Books yelled over the twang of crossbows and the screeches of swords.
Amaranthe dropped to her belly, hoping the soldiers would expect her to pop out at her regular height. Crossbow leading, she stuck her head around the corner.
The soldiers must have been racing toward her and stopped at Books’s shout, for they were closer but on one knee again, prepared to shoot. When they saw her, they had to drop their rifles to adjust for her new position. She fired a bolt and ducked back.
A rifle boomed, the bullet clanging off the hull a hair from where Amaranthe’s eyes had been. The noise rang in her ears like a bell. She didn’t know if she’d struck her target or not. A new round of growling and cursing came from behind her. She was glad Retta didn’t have a weapon; at this point, she must be ready to stick a dagger between Amaranthe’s shoulder blades.
Retta could always shove you out into the soldier’s line of sight, Amaranthe thought.
Another shot fired, the bullet caroming off the wall behind them. Neither Retta nor Amaranthe had been exposing any body parts at which to aim, so Amaranthe guessed it was meant as a distraction. She leaped to her feet, the butt of the crossbow jammed into the pit of her shoulder and stepped back.
As another shot fired, causing Retta to bury her head under her arms, a black form somersaulted around the nose of the submarine. She’d expected someone on his feet to charge their hiding spot, but reacted immediately, lowering her aim.
The soldier unfurled, a throwing knife in his hand. Amaranthe pulled the trigger, then dropped to the floor, hoping to evade the blade. It clattered off the hull above her. She grabbed the knife and scrambled to her feet, ready for a close quarters fight if that was what the soldier wanted. But he’d never risen from the floor. Her quarrel protruded from his neck and he only had time to utter one gurgled word.
“What’d you say?” Amaranthe asked.
He pitched sideways and didn’t move again.
“Bitch,” Retta snarled, one hand clamped to her shoulder again.
“Was that his word or are you cursing me?” Amaranthe didn’t have any more quarrels for the crossbow so she eased back to the nose of the submarine with the throwing knife in one hand and her own dagger in the other.
Retta panted, trying to control the pain. “Both.”
“Let me finish dealing with these men, and we’ll take care of your shoulder.”
Amaranthe peeked around the corner, ready to jerk her head back if she caught sight of anyone aiming at her. There was at least one more soldier and all those green-uniformed guards as well. “Or perhaps not,” she murmured, taking in the carnage littering the floor around the submarine hatch. The black-clad man was dead, a crossbow bolt protruding from one eye. She gulped. Her first wild shot from her belly had done that?
Most of the guards were down as well. That hadn’t been her doing. Two of the men had either fled or made it into the submarine, but the clangs and grunts of battle had faded.
Not lowering her weapons, she eased around the nose of the submarine and headed for the hatch. Half of the guards’ trousers were about their ankles. What had been amusing with the gang thugs on the docks failed to stir her humor now, not when the recipients of the pranks were dead with cut throats or bullets in their backs. Somehow Amaranthe doubted the soldiers had intentionally shot their own allies and suspected Akstyr’s hand had been in that as well.
She couldn’t chastise him though; his tactics had saved them all from being captured. Or worse.
Knowing they might not have much time before reinforcements came, she picked her way to the hatch. Books stood inside, cast-aside rifles on the deck, daggers in his hands, the blades dripping blood onto the threshold. A dead guard lay at his feet, and he was staring at the other bodies, his expression somewhere between shock and horror.