Hope he doesn't manage to shoot me in the back by accident, she thought.
At the next pillar a Marine fired his Werder, then ducked back, thumbed a fresh round from his bandolier down the grooved ramp of the block and into the breech, thumbed back the cocking lever in its semicircular groove, leaned around the pillar, and fired again. There was less black-powder smoke than in an ordinary firefight, with the fine drizzle washing it out of the air.
"Covering fire!" Alston called to the Marine officer. "We've got to get to that tower room before someone destroys their files."
"Hell with that!" he called back. "You need the barracks suppressed to get across the courtyard, ma'am." Louder: "Everyone, load a tit." That meant filling the strip of six loops on the left breast of the uniforms. Hands transferred shells. "Everyone ready… rapid fire, independent… fire!"
The Werders cracked faster, mad-minute speed; trained shooters could manage a round every three seconds this way, and aim them, too. Spurts of damp adobe pocked out all around the windows in the barracks opposite as the bullets struck. More shots were going through the windows, and the enemy fire died down as Tartessians ducked. A pair of Marines dashed around the perimeter of the courtyard as their squadmates fired, threw themselves flat, leopard-crawled the last few yards. Grenades flew out of their hands, through the windows. Seconds later fire and shattered sun-dried brick gouted back out and the Marines all charged forward. All but the squad assigned to her.
"This way!" she shouted, drew the katana, and went out across the courtyard's wet stone pavement, cutting diagonally toward the rear.
Granite rutched under her boots, flickering liquidly in the flashes of light; her sword gleamed as well. A quick glance aside showed her Swindapa's face; the same high-cheeked oval as always, but unrecongnizable with the blue eyes in a wide fixed glare and teeth bared.
Nearly to the stairs, a spiral of wooden planks around a post inside the ten-foot square of the tower's base. Men bursting out of a side door, out into the wet, probably trying to get away out the front gate. No time, and two had leveled their rifles at her from only five yards distance.
A shot cracked, the bullet whining dangerously off stone near her feet. The other ended in a damp fizzle as the hammer cracked the frizzen back and sparks showered into damp priming powder. The man came on without missing a beat, lunging behind the bayonet. Half a lifetime of relentless drill and the experience of far too many real post-Event encounters snapped Marian's katana from jodan up into a sweeping parry. Steel banged on wood, and the bayonet went up over her right shoulder; her left punched into the Tartessian's chest, knocking him back on his heels. Her wrists turned, hands sliding on the long hilt in small, swift, precise movements. The superb shihozume-forged blade swung back until the point nearly touched her left buttock, then forward with the falling stamp of her right foot. The sword flashed through an arc, all the whipping strength of arms and shoulders and gut, hips and thighs behind it.
Tense the wrists just before impact, thumping strike of sharp metal into meat and bone, rip the cut through and across, and follow through until the blade is parallel to the ground.
"Disssaaaaa!" she shrieked.
What had been a man flopped at her feet, neck half-severed and a great diagonal slash opening the front of his body, letting the pink-purple intestines fall free in a sharp stink of acid stomach juices and half-digested food. The Tartessian behind saw her face clearly through some freak of sight, screamed, and threw away his weapon, turned and ran facefirst into the wall and then cowered, dazed, with his arms wrapped around his head.
Well, I guess there is some use to this "living legend" shit, then, she thought bleakly, vaulting over the prostrate form of the one she'd killed. Four more enemy soldiers tumbled backward through the entranceway of the tower and slammed the door behind them.
Marian and Swindapa plastered themselves to either side of the tower entrance for a brief second. Marian looked across the doorway into her partner's face; they were both panting with the exertion of close combat.
She gasped air back into her lungs, forced the quivering out of hands and arms and shoulders, then caught the eye of the Marine squad's noncom, jerked a thumb at the door to the stairwell, and raised three fingers for an instant.
Aloud, to Swindapa: "If I'm the supreme commander, why do I always end up drawing point duty in an assault commando?"
"Maybe you're punishing yourself," Swindapa replied, her teeth showing in a brief grin. "What's the word, guilt? Next time, remember you're punishing me, too, and I wasn't raised to do this guilt thing. It's even stupider than monogamy and a lot less fun!"
"One…"
"Two…"
"Three!" they shouted together.
Baaaamm. Six rifles blasted holes through the pine planks, knocking splintered holes. Two rounds came back through the boards… probably all the reloading the enemy had had time to do. The two women hit the door with their shoulders and burst into the room. Marian ducked and flicked her blade to the left as a rifle butt went by. It brushed across the inch-long wool on the back of her head; she pivoted and cut horizontally, uncoiling like a twisted spring. A spray of blood followed the steel as it ripped across the soldier's belly, swept upward into chodan, snapped down in the pear-splitter. There was a thump of steel in wood as the next man blocked the cut with the stock of his rifle. Marian snap-kicked him in the groin, rammed her knee up to meet his descending face, jerked the sword free, and lunged over his back in a two-handed thrust as he crawled away…
It was too dark, cramped, chaotic for the Marines behind them to fire. For the space of twenty seconds the room was full of the deadly whirling flicker of their swords, clash and clang and clatter of metal on metal and on wood, the shrieking of amp;/a-calls and the shocked screams of pain beyond what human flesh could imagine. Parry and strike by instinct and reflex with nothing clearly seen and wounded men writhing on the ground beneath…
Then the last Tartessians were backing up the stairs; Marian and Swindapa pressed them hard, lest they have time to reload or think up some other devilment. Bayonets stabbed down, swords licked out as the enemy climbed backward. Crash and clang… At last the stair came to a landing.
"Down!" someone shouted behind them.
They dropped forward, driving their opponents that last step back with thrusts at their feet. A wobbling cast-iron egg flew over their heads, rebounded off the outer wall, dropped behind the green-clad soldiers. Marian could distinctly hear the ckkkk-ching! as the spoon flew free of the grenade and clattered away. Badammpp, and a wash of heat in the damp still air of the stairwell. Up again, over the bodies-ignore them, the sight will come back too soon whether you want to remember or not, the way blood spattered in fans and arcs across the whitewashed earth-brick walls, the reflex quivering of a heel beating a tattoo on the floor-and through the door. The top of the tower was a suite, a bedroom below and an office above. The bedroom was empty, but they went up the stairs cautiously. The office above was still brightly lit by a kerosene lamp.