She ducked back into cover. Sporadic return fire was coming their way, but the meadows provided little protection and the defenders had an elevated position. She heard other guns firing along the line of houses which defended the hamlet. Pelaru and Harkins. Malvery’s shotgun boomed from somewhere behind her, echoing through the courtyard, before it was covered up by the drill of rotary cannons.
Jez pulled back to reload. Ashua glanced across the bare living room at her. Her teeth were gritted and her eyes bulged. Her hair had escaped the rubber tube she used as a hairband and was hanging over her face. She looked half crazed.
She caught Ashua’s eye as she snapped the last bullet into the breech and primed the rifle. Ashua looked away quickly. There was something coiled and dangerous about Jez, something that might lash out at any moment. Ashua didn’t want any part of it.
Engines overhead. One of the gunships, moving above the house. The low roar of thrusters filled the room, shaking the pipes. The sound of it overwhelmed her; the size of their opposition seemed suddenly immense.
We’re not going to get out of this, are we?
The thought came treacherously, slipping a blade of doubt between her ribs. If she could have run then, she might have done. If she had a way to escape, she might have taken it. But there was nowhere to go.
The lack of options bolstered her courage. Easier to stand when you were backed against a wall. She shook her head, spat an oath of defiance. All her life, she’d fought to survive. She wouldn’t fold now.
A moment later she was back at the window. The Awakeners had multiplied out there. Some of them were tucked down in the snow, aiming up at the houses. Others ran on, intending to storm the defences by weight of numbers. Jez was making them pay a heavy price. Ashua added her weapon to Jez’s, and took down another two men before ducking away to reload.
‘There’s too many,’ Jez was muttering furiously. She punctuated her words with rifle shots. ‘There’s too-’ Crack ‘-damn-’ Crack ‘-many!’
Suddenly the world turned to noise and chaos, and Ashua flung herself back as bullets smashed along the flank of the building, tearing the windowsill to matchwood, setting the air sparkling with flying shards of glass. She lay back against the wall that separated them from the kitchen, stunned. Jez had crammed herself into the corner of the room, eyes blazing, actually drooling like some damned carnivore in sight of bloody meat. There was a screech of thrusters as the gunship swung out over the meadow. It rotated in the air and lashed another salvo across the row of buildings. Ashua scrambled to get out of the way, but all she could do was press herself down behind a ragged chair. Bullets whined through the room, but it was only a brief scattering before the pilot pulled away to focus attention elsewhere.
Ashua stayed where she was, chest heaving and heart pounding. That was too much. You couldn’t fight that kind of firepower. The Awakeners had gunships on both sides of the houses now, and they were closing in on her location.
‘This is bad,’ she said to herself, in a frightened little-girl voice that she hadn’t heard for a long time. ‘This is really, really bad.’
Footsteps. Running footsteps, racing up the stairs that led into the kitchen. Alarmed, she slid around the wall to the doorway that linked the two rooms. She leaned round the corner and aimed her pistol.
A man in a coat burst into the kitchen, coming fast enough to shock her. She pulled the trigger.
Click.
Pelaru stared at her in amazement, frozen in place. Ashua stared back, wide-eyed. Now she realised: in the confusion of the gunship assault, she hadn’t had time to reload.
The Thacian ran past, dismissing her, heading for Jez. Ashua let out a shaky breath.
Inearly shot him, she thought. What if that had been Malvery?
She pushed herself back against the wall. It was something solid, something she could rely on. She opened the chamber of her revolver and began pushing bullets in, keeping one eye on the whispermonger, who’d crouched down next to Jez.
‘Jez!’ he said. She didn’t seem to be listening. ‘Jez!’ he snapped. She met his gaze. ‘Don’t,’ he said firmly.
‘There’s too many,’ she replied hoarsely.
Ashua snapped the chamber shut and hurried back to her window. The sill was shredded; now there was just a ragged hole, edged with brick and splinters. Snow blew in and settled among the pieces of broken glass. She cast about for a sight of the gunship, but it was lost in the whiteness.
The Awakeners were at the edge of the meadows now. Only a short slope separated them from the houses. She thrust her pistol out and began firing wildly. Two men jerked and collapsed, blood-spatters stark in the snow.
‘Hey! Will someone get back to shooting?’ she shouted.
Pelaru had Jez’s head in his hands and was gazing hard into her eyes. Her teeth were bared; spit dripped from her chin. ‘Control it,’ he said. ‘You’re not invincible. You can’t fight them all. Control it!’
‘Damn it, I need help!’ Ashua yelled. She loosed off another couple of shots, then retreated as a bullet nicked the hood of her coat.
Jez knocked Pelaru’s hands away and shoved him back. He stumbled and tripped over his heels. As she stood there, hunched and savage, the full terror of her swept over Ashua. The Mane inside her had broken the surface. Her aspect changed, and in the dim light of the afternoon she looked like some nightmare phantasm. Then she threw down her rifle and leaped through the window.
‘Jez!’ Pelaru cried. He ran to the window and looked down.
The Awakeners were slow to react, puzzled by the sight of a woman in overalls leaping across the snow towards them. The nearest man barely had time to raise his gun before Jez drove her fist through his belly and out through his spine. She wrenched her arm free and shook him off, spraying a fan of red across the pristine white meadow. Then she lunged for another.
Some backed away or ran, others brought their guns to bear and fired wildly. But Jez was never where the bullets were; she flickered rapidly, fooling the eye. She flurried among them like the snow, and when she passed she left them headless or eviscerated.
Ashua watched, dumbfounded, as the Awakeners tried to keep up with her. One man shot his companion by accident while trying to draw a bead on the daemon on their midst. She fired off the last of her rounds into the back of an Awakener who wasn’t even looking at her any more. All their attention was on Jez: the attack had faltered.
She dropped back to reload again. ‘Hey, you wanna give her some help?’ she said to Pelaru, who was standing by the window. Pelaru gave her a sharp glare. Then he jumped out of the window himself.
‘Not like tha-’ she began, but he was gone. She cursed, reloaded her gun and looked out of the window again. A blast of snowflakes chilled her face and made her blink rapidly. She’d lost sight of Jez, and caught only a glimpse of Pelaru before another squall took him away again. All that was left in their wake were bodies, the dark shapes of dead men punched into the snow, their liquids seeping out of them.
The weather had closed in hard and suddenly, and she was unsure which way the battle was going. She was alone, and felt momentarily lost. Could even Jez and Pelaru turn the tide, or would the Awakeners come back in force again, with only her pistol to oppose them? Silo and Malvery were elsewhere; she had no idea what Harkins was up to. The Cap’n would surely have been back by now if he’d managed to get the Wrath in the sky. So what was she supposed to do now?
Then she heard engines, the gunship coming back, and that decided her. She wasn’t going to stick at her post when everyone else had abandoned theirs. She’d find the others, or find her own way out of this mess.