Her blue eyes went wide. "You think-"
"Well, we can produce our own riots, but not bombs, I think," Padway said. "Dammit, he can try and kill me-he's been doing that for fifty years-but this is beyond enough."
Shod hooves clattered on the pavement outside. One of the bodyguards leaned over to speak through the coach's window.
"Excellent boss," he said. "There are rioters behind us. We think it would be best to try and go forward and link up with the soldiers we heard ahead, and then take the Equinoctal Way out to the suburbs. There will be more troops moving into the city."
"As you think best, Hermann," Padway said; he'd commanded armies in his time, but that was forty years ago and more, and he'd never pretended to be a fighting man. He tried to leave that to the professionals.
Tharasamund shook his head. That was a bad mistake; pain thrust needles through his head, and there was a loud metallic ringing noise that made him struggle to clap hands to his ears. The soft heavy resistance to the movement made him realize that he was lying under several mangled bodies, and what the sticky substance clotting his eyelashes and running into his mouth was. He retched a little, gained control with gritted teeth and a massive effort of will, and pushed the body off. Half-blinded, he groped frantically for a water bottle and splashed the contents across his face while he rubbed at his eyelids. The blood wasn't quite dried, and the flies weren't all that bad yet; that meant he hadn't been out long. A public fountain had broken in the blast, and water was puddling up against the dam of dead horses and men and wrecked equipment across the road.
As he'd expected, what he saw when he could see properly was very bad. Nobody looked alive-most of the bodies weren't even intact, and if one of the field guns hadn't taken some of the blast when both limbers went off, he wouldn't be either. Nobody but the dead were here-a tangle of the mob around where the last of his soldiers had fallen. All the intact weapons were gone, of course, except for his sword and revolver; he'd probably looked too thoroughly like a mangled corpse to be worth searching for men in a hurry. The fronts of the shops on either side were smashed in by the explosion and by looters completing the work; a civilian lay half in and half out of one window, very thoroughly dead.
"Probably the shopkeeper," Tharasamund muttered grimly, his own voice sounding muffled and strange. The pain and the ringing in his ears were a little better, but probably he'd never have quite the keenness of hearing again.
That was another score to settle, along with the cold rage at the killing of his men. He staggered over to the fountain and washed as best he could; that brought him nearer to consciousness. The first thing to do-
He hardly heard the coach clatter up, but the sight brought him out into the roadway, waving his sword. That brought half a dozen pistols in the hands of the mounted guards on him, and a shotgun from the man beside the driver. The men were in civil dress, country gentleman's Gothic style, but they were a mixed lot. Soldiers or ex-soldiers, he'd swear; from the look of the coach, some great lord's personal retainers. None of them looked very upset at the carnage that was painting the coach's wheels and the hooves of their horses red… best be a little careful.
"Tharasamund, Captain in the Kunglike-hird, the Royal Guard," he snapped, sheathing the blade. "I need transport, and I call on you to assist me in the Emperor's name."
"Straight-leg, we don't stop for anyone," the chief guard said-he had a long tow-colored mane, a thick bull-neck, and an equally thick growling accent in his Latin: Saxon, at a guess. "The only thing I want to hear from you is how to get our lord to someplace safe."
Tharasamund looked around. He could hear distant shouting and screams and the crackle of gunfire. That meant they were loud. And he could see columns of smoke, too. It might be an hour-or four or five-before enough troops marched in from the barracks outside town, between the built-up area and the royal palace, to restore order. Someone had screwed up royally; he'd be surprised if there wasn't a new urban prefect soon.
Not that that will be much consolation to the dead, he added to himself.
He was opening his mouth to argue again-he had to get back to regimental HQ, to report this monumental ratfuck, and get some orders-when a young woman leaned out of the half-open carriage door.
Not just any young woman. Her gown and jewels were rich in an exquisitely restrained court fashion, but that face would have stopped him cold if she were naked-especially if she were naked. His gesture turned into a sweeping bow.
Wait a minute. They said their lord, not their lady.
The girl's eyes widened at the sight ahead, and she gulped. Then she fought down nausea-he felt a rush of approval even in the press of emergency-and looked at him. There was a faint feeling like an electric-telegraph spark as their eyes met, gray gazing into blue, and then she was looking over her shoulder.
"Grandfather," she said, in pure upper-class Latin. "There's been a disaster here."
"There's been an attack on Imperial troops here," Tharasamund said firmly, pitching his voice to carry into the interior of the vehicle. "I must insist, my lord-"
It seemed to be a day for shocks. The man who leaned out in turn, bracing himself with a grimace, certainly looked like a grandfather. Possibly God's grandfather, from the wrinkles; he'd never seen anyone older and still alive. The pouched eyes behind the lenses and big beak nose were disconcertingly shrewd. It was a face Tharasamund had seen before, when his unit was on court duty; anyone who saw magazines and engravings and photographs would have recognized it as well, these past two generations and more.
Martinus of Padua. Quaestor to three Emperors of the West; king-maker, sorcerer or saint, devil or angel-some pagans thought him a god-and next to Urias II, the most powerful man in the world. Possibly more powerful. Emperors came and went, but the man from Padua had been making things happen since Tharasamund's grandfather was a stripling riding to his first war, when the Greeks invaded Italy in Thiudahad's day.
Tharasamund saluted and made a deep bow. "My apologies, my lord. I am at your disposal." He managed a smile, a gentleman's refusal to be disconcerted by events. "And at yours, my lady."
"Jorith Hermansdaughter, noble Captain," she said, a little faintly but with courtly politeness. A princess, then, and the old man's granddaughter.
This definitely took precedence over his own troubles…
Ouch, Padway thought, pushing his glasses back up his nose and giving thanks, for once, for the increasing short-sightedness of old age. He'd seen worse, but not very often.
"Captain, pleased to see you," he said. "What happened here?"
"My lord," the young man said crisply. He looked suitably heroic in a battered way, but it was a pleasure to hear the firm intelligence in his voice. "A detachment of my company was ordered by General Winnithar of the Capital City garrison command to suppress rioters in aid to the civil power. We were doing so when a bomb thrower dropped a grenade into the ammunition limber. I suspect the man was a foreign agent-the whole thing was too smooth for accident."
As he spoke, another explosion echoed over the city. Padway nodded, looking like an ancient and highly intelligent owl.
"Doubtless you're right, Captain. Do you think the Equinoctal Way will be clear?"
Tharasamund made a visible effort. "It's as good a chance as any, my lord," he said. "It's broad-rioters generally stick to the old town. And it's the best way to get to the garrison barracks quickly."
Broad and open to light, air and artillery, Padway thought-a joke about the way Napoleon III had rebuilt Paris, and part of his own thoughts over the years planning the expansion of Florence.