The gunship’s attack had been a signal to come at the house from both sides. These weren’t mercs: he could tell by the way they used their weapons, their inept understanding of cover. They were Sentinels. Mercs wouldn’t run at a defended position with such abandon. They weren’t suicidal.
Silo and Malvery dropped one, two, three of them. But they kept coming.
Malvery’s shotgun ran dry. He tossed it to the floor, pulled out a stick of dynamite, and struck a match off the wall. Silo covered him till the fuse was lit, and then he lobbed it out through the window.
Some of the oncoming Awakeners saw it coming, tried to check their charge. Their companions crashed into the back of them, sending them stumbling forward in a tangle. The dynamite went off and sent them twisting and rolling away, living men turned to limp corpses.
Silo had ducked down to avoid the explosion; now he popped back up again and levelled his shotgun. It was seized by an Awakener who’d slipped close to the window along the wall. One hand on his shotgun barrel, the Awakener aimed a pistol at his face. Silo pulled his head aside, yanking his shotgun as he did so. It was enough to tug the Awakener off balance. The pistol went off by his ear, loud enough that it was like a punch, but the bullet missed.
Silo struggled with the Awakener, fighting to free his shotgun. The other man was strong, face weathered and teeth gritted beneath his furred hood. He was trying to get his arm through the window, get a good point-blank shot at Silo, but Silo was too close now. He was peripherally aware of Malvery frantically jamming another shell in his shotgun, but the doctor wouldn’t be able to help him in time. So Silo lunged instead, shoving forward, using his weight. It took the Awakener by surprise. He swung the butt of the shotgun and caught the man a glancing blow on the jaw.
The Awakener staggered back from the window, but somehow he held on to the shotgun, bloody-mouthed and furious. The increased distance gave him space to aim his pistol, but then Malvery’s shotgun boomed, and that ended it.
Suddenly the courtyard cobbles were being smashed, and men were smashed with them, limbs blasted into bloody smears on the snow as Grudge rained down autocannon fire from above. Silo didn’t know what had taken him so long — perhaps they’d pinned him down once he’d revealed his position by firing at the gunship — but he was here now, and just in time. The Awakeners had been moments from overwhelming them at the windows; now they scattered and ran for their lives, knowing it was hopeless. Even the faithful had their limits.
Silo shot off the last of his rounds to discourage anyone who thought trying to climb inside would be the best way of escaping the death from above. The Awakeners on the south side had been driven back, but there was no respite for him. Seeing that the courtyard was safely covered, he scooped up a handful of shells and ran through to the other room.
He vaulted the bed and skidded into cover next to Ashua as a flurry of bullets clawed up the wall. Blinking brick dust from his eye, he reloaded and added his gun to Ashua’s. The Awakeners were pouring from the trees now. The short slope of clear ground that led down from the snowy forest was littered with the dead, but it didn’t deter the men behind.
They don’t care ’bout their losses. Just keep comin’ and comin’. They need us dead, and damn if it don’t look like they gonna get their wish.
There was a fevered look in Ashua’s eye, the dangerous gleam of someone backed into a corner. Harkins was frightened too, but he held his post at the window. Both of them knew this was a last stand. Both of them had decided to go down fighting.
An Awakener came skidding down the slope and lobbed a stick of dynamite at the windows. His aim was off: it hit the wall, bounced back, fell in the snow. Two of his companions tried to scramble away from it, but not fast enough.
There was a cry from Harkins. Silo saw him spin away from the window. His pilot’s cap was gone; there was blood all over half his face. He staggered back and collapsed.
‘Doc!’ he shouted, as he crawled on his hands and knees under the windows.
‘Busy here!’ Malvery replied, and Silo heard Grudge’s autocannon start up again. The Awakeners had regrouped and were coming back through the courtyard, autocannon or not.
Harkins’ eyes were closed, and he wasn’t moving. Silo didn’t have time for more than a cursory glance at him. Men and women fell in battle all the time; Silo had seen more than his share of that. He’d grieve later, if he had to.
He took up Harkins’ position by the window. Men rushed at him and he fired, primed his weapon, fired again. His movements became automatic, his enemies faceless, reduced from living, breathing people to simple threats that had to be removed. He fought as if in a dream. Sounds were dulled; he was deaf in one ear from the pistol shot. His body was at once incredibly tired and yet vital and strong. He killed and dodged and killed, and there was nothing but this moment, this fight. Nothing before or after. Only this.
Caught in that state, he was slow to recognise the dark shape that appeared among the trees at the top of the slope. It was only when she roared that he recognised Bess.
The sound of her shook the windowsills and rattled the pipes. She ploughed into the Awakeners from behind, swinging her great arms in all directions. The naked trees were smashed to matchwood. Men were swatted aside, crashing into trunks with bone-breaking force. She was like some mythical ogress, a force out of the primal dark come to life.
The Awakeners dissolved into confusion at the sight of her. Some of them scattered to the sides: some came on towards the windows, driven by fear of the beast in the trees.
Ashua fired dry, and was reloading when an Awakener lunged at her through the window. He tried to cram his rifle through to get a close-range shot, but got himself tangled up with her instead. Silo swung his shotgun around, but he couldn’t fire without hitting Ashua. Instead he scooped up Harkins’ pistol and tossed it through the air. Ashua caught it deftly in her left hand, jammed it in the Awakener’s throat and pulled the trigger.
The Awakener pawed at her, gargling. She wrenched the rifle from his hand, put her boot in his chest and kicked him back out into the snow. Now with two weapons, she looked for a new target; but then her eyes widened, and she threw herself behind the bed. Silo turned back to the window in time to see Bess, who’d uprooted a tree, fling it down the slope towards them. He dived out of the way just before it hit the wall with an almighty boom, cracking the wall and crushing several Awakeners between the tree and the house.
‘Fall back! Fall back!’ he heard from outside, as he hunkered amid the falling dust from the ceiling, breathing hard. Caught between the guns in the house and the monster behind them, the Awakeners abandoned the assault at last. He heard them running, some of them screaming louder than the wounded left behind. Bess ran after them, bellowing.
Ashua got shakily to her feet. She climbed back over the bed and stared at the tree that now lay against the windows. An arm hung limply over the sill, its owner mangled just out of sight. She looked over at Silo, a crazed kind of disbelief on her face. ‘The Cap’n came through,’ she said.
‘Don’t he always?’ Silo said. He got to his feet. ‘You did good.’
A little smile touched the edge of her mouth. Then she saw Harkins, and it faded.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Stay here. You see anythin’, yell.’
He went into the front room, where Malvery was lying against the wall, chest heaving, exhausted. The room stank of cordite. The quiet beyond the windows told Silo that the call for retreat had already spread to the courtyard, and that everywhere the Awakeners were routed.