Troll spun through the open doorway, dragged by the inertia of the heavy hammer. Saunderson stepped back. "Yeeeeeeee!" Troll screamed. He hit something out of Mark's sight with a crash like another noise bomb.
The woman standing on the stairs behind Saunderson screamed also. That was a pretty common reaction for women meeting Troll for the first time, but this one had more reason than most.
"Mr. Ardis Saunderson?" Yerby boomed. "I hereby arrest you as a traitor to the citizens of Greenwood! George, hold him while we ferret out other miscreants."
Amy had waited for Desiree to set the airship down properly before she followed the armed Woodsrunners, but she was now on the ground recording events. At the moment the way Yerby stood like a stork on one leg rather spoiled what would otherwise have been an impressive scene.
"You have no authority whatever, you villain!" Saunderson cried.
George, one of Yerby's loggers, snatched the magistrate out of the way enthusiastically. Yerby skipped by them, using the toe only of his right foot. Mark, Amy, and half a dozen Woodsrunners jogged along behind.
The house's interior partitions weren't as sturdy as its outside walls. Troll lay in the wreckage of an imported sideboard and the dishes it had held. He still gripped the handle of his sledge. The twenty-pound head had knocked a huge hole into the kitchen. The dent beneath the hole was from Troll's head, judging from the paint sticking to his bare scalp.
The woman threw herself at Yerby, screaming and clawing. He grabbed her wrists and tossed her to another of the men, saying, "Take her outside, Elmont, and mind she don't blood you!"
"Mama!" cried a three-year-old child who appeared at the stairhead. He put his hands over his eyes, though he was still peering through the gaps between his fingers.
Child and mother wailed together. "I'll get him!" Mark said, glad of the excuse to drop the gun that made him feel so uncomfortable. "He's all right!"
He swept the boy into his arms and stood aside so that three Woodsrunners-man, wife, and a boy who couldn't be more than twelve-could thunder past. In the room below, Yerby plucked a Zenith flag from the wall and tossed it through the front door to be collected. There were two holoviews of New Paris, the Civil Affairs Building and the statue of the first Protector in the central park. They followed the flag.
Mark walked outside, carrying the child. Elmont held Saunderson's wife while a woman bound her.
"No," said Mark. "Not her." He gave the child to Mrs. Saunderson. Mother and son wrapped their arms around one another. They continued to cry, but not quite so noisily.
The first light spikes were burning low; drops of blazing wax dribbled down the support rods. Woodsrunners lit replacements. The airships carried enough spikes to illuminate the park until dawn if necessary.
Mark found he was standing beside Amy. He hadn't consciously worked through the crowd to find her; or maybe he had. She recorded the scene in twenty-second takes, focusing on a face or an incident that gave meaning to what was chaos if you tried to view the whole thing at once. Her expression was set, withdrawn.
The villagers had been dragged from their beds and tied. Most were half naked. The night wasn't dangerously cold, but they were at a terrible psychological disadvantage compared to their captors.
Torchlit Woodsrunners walked in and out of the houses, emptying them of weapons and anything associated with Zenith. A father and son staggered from a house on the square, almost hidden behind the pile of clothing they carried.
"Hey!" Yerby cried from the Saundersons' doorway. Most people turned to look at him, but the pair with the garments continued to sidle toward an airship.
"Cooch Jezreal?" Yerby said. "You'll stop now or you'll wish you had! What's that you're carrying?"
The men halted. The father peeked from behind a mound of lace and velvet. "Aw, Yerby," he said. "You know my wife-"
"I know how to deal with a damned thief when I find one, Jezreal!" Yerby said. "We're the instruments of justice, not a gang of brigands."
The Jezreals obviously had a notion of how Yerby would deal with a thief. They hunched back to the house they'd come from, moving rather faster than before.
Yerby walked into the park. Zenith paraphernalia was heaped in one corner. The cowed villagers stood beside it, more threatened than guarded by the crowd of militiamen.
Yerby held a sealed and embossed document in his left hand. He waved it under the magistrate's nose and said, "Ardis Saunderson, you're charged with being the agent of a foreign power, the Protector of Zenith. This very paper convicts you! How do you plead?"
Saunderson stood as straight as he could with his arms tied behind his back. "I am a magistrate appointed by the Protector of Zenith," he said in a clear voice. "You have my commission there, yes. The only thing I'll plead with you, Yerby Bannock, is that you spare my family and neighbors. They have no part in any actions I've taken in discharge of my duties."
Light from the illuminating spikes pulsed across Saunderson's face. He blinked. "It's the smoke!" he cried. "It's only the smoke!" There were tears on his cheeks.
The child was whimpering in his mother's arms. Mrs. Saunderson watched Yerby in silent terror, looking like a rabbit in the headlights.
Yerby wrenched a half-burned spike out of the ground, ignoring the occasional flaming droplet. He tossed it onto the pile of everything the villagers had brought with the name or a view of Zenith on it. Thick smoke rose as fire twisted down through frames and fabrics. Even metal burned at the touch of the spike's thermite core, throwing flickers of ghostly color over the conflagration.
Yerby hurled the magistrate's commission onto the fire. "Citizens of Greenwood!" he roared. "Do you find this man guilty of treason?"
"Guilty!" shouted the flame-shot night. Deep in the chorus were other shouts: "Hang 'em!" and "Burn them all alive!"
Mark shivered. His eyes stared straight ahead. His hand gripped Amy's. "They attacked us," he whispered. "They might have killed us all."
"That was them," Amy said. She'd stopped recording, but now she raised the camera again. "This is us."
"Ardis Saunderson!" Yerby said. He took an unlit spike from Dagmar Wately. "You stand convicted before the court of your fellow-citizens. I sentence you to have your house burned and all your possessions with it!"
Yerby turned and jerked down the igniter tape. As the illuminating spike sputtered to life, he spun it twice above his head and flung it onto Saunderson's roof. The device rolled halfway down the moderate slope before heat softened the dense plastic roof plates. Tendrils of the molten surface gummed the spike to a halt. Sparks and the paraffin's yellow softness began to raise the plastic into low, smoky flames. They were the color of drying blood.
The other villagers had moved as far from Saunderson as the Woodsrunners let them. Most of the dozen children were crying. A man sobbed in abject terror. Another man, perhaps his brother from their similarity of features, watched him with mingled distaste and concern.
Saunderson's wife knelt, crooning to the child with her head bowed so that she didn't have to look at the house. The magistrate moved closer to them. He stood with his feet planted firmly, watching the red flames creep across his roof like gangrene on an injured limb.
Yerby looked from Saunderson to his wife and son. "Ah, Christ almighty and His holy saints!" he said. He gestured to Mark and Amy. "You two-come cast me loose, fool that I am!"
Yerby shouldered his way through the crowd. By staying close, Mark and Amy were able to follow. Mark didn't have the slightest idea of what the frontiersman intended.
Woodsrunners passed around bottles, some of which resembled those the Blind Cove flyers had cascaded onto the dirigible the day before. Mark had the feeling that Yerby and the rest of the settlers considered liquor as much a necessity of life as air, so prohibitions on looting didn't apply.