Padway wheezed a chuckle as they hurried into the unfinished building, around the heaps of sand and bricks and timber; it was always nice to meet a man who didn't promise more than he could deliver. The carriage spurred off, making a great show of haste but not moving as fast as it might. He made two mental notes: one to see that the coachman got something, if he made it out of this, and another to put in a good word for Captain Tharasamund. He'd had a lot of experience judging men, and there were never enough good ones around.
The first floor of the building was an echoing vastness smelling of raw brick and new cement, with a concrete slab floor, thin brick walls, and cast-iron pillars holding it all up. A lot of timber was piled about, and a rough staircase led to the second story. Tharasamund and Princess Jorith half-lifted Padway up the stairs and propped him against a pile of sacks of lime mortar; then the Gothic soldier ran to a window, standing beside it and peering out through boards nailed over the unfinished casement.
"Oh, Sathanas take it," he said.
"They didn't follow the coach?" Padway asked.
"Most of them did. Two mounted men are turning in here, and a crowd of what look like ruffians after them. My apologies, sir," he finished, with bitter self-reproach.
"You took a chance. I agreed. If you bet, you lose sometimes."
Tharasamund saw Padway's eyes flick to Jorith's face and then away. His own lips compressed. Damned if I'll let a mob get their hands on a royal princess, he thought. But by all the saints, what can I do about it?
Fighting was the only thing that came to mind. Tharasamund had a healthy opinion of his own abilities in that line, but fighting off what looked like fifty or sixty men wasn't in the realm of the possible, even with a narrow approach and slum scum on the other side.
"Do what you can, then," he said to himself, looking around.
He had six shots in his revolver, and three reloads in his belt pouches…
He heard voices below and set himself. One of the men he'd seen riding came into view, urging his followers on, a short muscular-looking fellow in respectable but drab riding clothes, with a neatly trimmed black beard. The Goth let the long barrel of his revolver drop over his left forearm, squeezed…
Crack. The man toppled backward, screaming, and then screaming that his leg was broken-screaming in Greek. An educated man's dialect, but a native speaker's, as well. There were such folk in the Western Empire-parts of southern Italy and much of Sicily spoke Greek as its first language-but he would have bet his father's lands against a spavined mule that the man had been born not far from Constantinople.
Tharasamund dodged back as someone emptied a pistol at him; probably the other Greek. Whoever he was, the shooter started exhorting his men to attack; "Gothic heretics" and "two hundred gold crowns for their heads-each" seemed to be about equal inducements. It took a while, and he thought he knew the reason when he heard hasty sawing and hammering sounds.
"They're building a mantlet," he said grimly. At the confusion in the young woman's eyes, he went on: "A wooden shield, the sort they used to use in sieges. Wouldn't do them much good against a rifle, but a few layers of thick planks will turn a pistol ball."
Jorith raised her head. "I know I can rely on you, Captain," she said quietly. Tharasamund winced; he knew what she relied on him to do, and he didn't like it.
Well, that's irrelevant, he thought. You'll do it anyway, and make it quick.
Then her eyes went wide. "What's that you're leaning against, Grandfather?" she asked.
"Mortar," Padway said, raising a curious white brow.
"Lime," the girl said. "In the old days, during sieges, didn't-"
"They threw quicklime on men climbing siege ladders," Tharasamund half-whooped, with a strangled shout to keep the rioters and foreign agents below in the dark.
Padway moved himself aside, grinning slightly. Tharasamund moved towards the pile of sacks; Jorith halted him with an upraised hand.
"Wait," she said, and whipped off a gauzy silk scarf. "Those gauntlets will protect your hands, but your face-"
He bowed his head, and she fastened the thin cloth across his face like a mask; with the fabric close to his eyes, he could see out of it well enough. Then he worked, dragging the rough burlap sacks over towards the stairwell, carefully avoiding exposing his body to sight from below.
"Let's see," he muttered. "I'll stack them up here"-he made a pyramid of four, carefully weakening the lacing that held each sack closed at the top-"at the back of the stairwell, so they'll be above and behind anyone coming up the stairs. My lady Jorith? I'm afraid I'll need you to push."
He tried to keep his voice light, but there was a grave knowledge in the way she nodded.
"You up there!" a voice called. "Send us the old man, lay down your weapons, and we'll let you go!"
"And we can believe as much of that as we want to," Tharasamund called back. "No, thank you. Here's our deaclass="underline" if you run now, before the troops come, I won't shoot you in the back."
"You'll be dead before then, you whipworthy barbarian!" the voice snarled. "You and your drab and the sorcerer too! Take them!"
The stairs were steep; Tharasamund had to go down on his belly to reach the upper one without exposing more than his eyes and gun hand. The mantlet-it was a door, with layers of planks nailed across it-came staggering upward. The hale Greek stood behind, firing over his mens' heads to keep the Goth's down; he was half-concealed behind an iron pillar, and had his weapon braced against it.
Tharasamund swallowed against a dry throat and ignored him, ducking up to shoot at the feet of the men carrying the wooden bracer instead. Most of the shots missed. The targets were small and moving, and he had to snap-shoot in an instant, with no careful aiming. At last one hit, and the mantlet wavered and stalled as a man fell backward squalling and clutching at a splintered ankle.
"Now, Jorith!" he shouted.
The girl had lain down behind the sacks, with her slippered feet braced against them. She shoved, and they wavered and toppled forward. Momentum took over, and the sacks tumbled down. Acrid white dust billowed in choking clouds, and Tharasamund reflexively threw an arm across his face, coughing. One of the toughs behind the mantlet looked up and shouted, gesturing frantically-and his comrades followed the pointing arm, which was the worst possible thing they could have done.
Screams sounded sweetly, and strangled curses. The mantlet was thrown aside to crash on the hard cement floor beneath, and men ran-up out of the cloud of alkaline dust, or down and away from it. The Goth grinned behind his protecting face mask as he bounded erect and drew his spatha. A man staggered up the stairs, coughing and wheezing, his eyes already turning to bacon-rind red.
He swung a club. Tharasamund skipped neatly over it and lunged, his point skewering down over the thug's collarbone; muscle clamped on it, and he put a booted foot on the other's chest and pushed him back onto his fellows. More cursing and crashing; then two came forward, with their handkerchiefs held over their mouths. Both had swords, and one even had some idea of what to do with it. For a long minute it was clash and clatter and the flat unmusical rasp of steel on steel, and then the Goth sheered off half a face with a backhand cut.
"Ho, la, St. Wulfias!" he shouted exultantly, then found himself coughing again; some of the dust had gotten through the silk, and his eyes were tearing up as well.