Helga moved herself; sideways, to where a tall fretted-brass brazier sent a coil of incense upwards. She gripped it by the base and heaved, toppling the man-high structure against the wall. Glowing embers scattered into gauzy hangings, and flames began to lick upward.
"Fire!" she screamed in Islander. "Fire!"
A guardsman had been approaching, blade in hand. He looked aside-no sailor or town dweller but had a healthy dread of uncontrolled flame-and when he looked back he met the second brazier full in the face as she swung it two-handed. Brass met flesh and bone with a loud thock. Helga scooped up the falling sword; it was a different shape from the ones she was used to, and too heavy, but that didn't stop her short efficient jab up under his chin.
"Come on," she shouted to Keffrine, and grabbed her by one hand. Trailing the sobbing girl, she bolted for the exit to the basement storerooms.
* * *
"Keep the men well in hand," Adrian said.
Screams were coming from the room at the head of the stairs. Women's screams, but also men's shouts, and the distinctive, unpleasant sound of steel driving into flesh.
"Let's go!"
The noises ahead were loud enough that it was several heartbeats before anyone noticed the enemy surging up through the passageway. Adrian had time to check his rush a step in sheer astonishment at the sight before him; a room floridly overdecorated even by Islander standards, full of running, screaming women-dying women-and soldiers in black-lacquered armor trying to butcher them all. Dozens down on the floor, wounded or dead; a nauseating mixture of smells: perfume, flowers, blood, shit. .
And right in front of him, one of the women fighting a pair of soldiers. An auburn-haired woman, one he'd swear was Confed-born, not an Islander. Not doing badly at all, either-
She beat aside a thrust, both hands on the hilt of the long saber. The other soldier lunged as well, at a smaller blond woman by the first one's side, and the point of his blade slammed out her back. The redhead screamed and slashed him across the face, blood and a spark where the blade grated off the nasal bar of the killer's helmet.
"Get the hell out of the way-sir!" someone shouted in Adrian's ear.
Men poured past him. He leapt forward himself, batted the saber of the man fighting the redhead aside and lunged with his own basket-hilted, Emerald-style sword. The black-armored man vanished in the melee; a second later Adrian saw him toppling into the fountain pool in the center of the room with a javelin through his neck. The fighting was brief, three mercenaries against an Islander here, four there-overwhelming numbers. The screaming didn't stop, and now he saw his own men chasing the women. They obviously didn't have butchery on their minds, but-
"You!" he said. One had grabbed the auburn-haired woman-girl-from behind, hands over her breasts. "You! Release that woman!"
"Wait yer turn-" the mercenary began.
Get them in hand now, or you never will, Raj said.
"Right."
Adrian took two steps forward and smashed the hilt of his sword into the would-be rapist's face. Bone crumbled under the blow, with a tooth-grating yielding feeling. He had time to see the woman's face go slack with surprise, and then he tossed her his sword to clear his hand.
He hooked a grenade out of his pouch, the ceramic cool and pebbly under his fingers. His other hand whipped the slowmatch from its covered metal holder on his belt, twirled it to make the lit end glow brightly, touched off the fuse. He waited three seconds, and then tossed it gently underhand into the pool.
THUDUMP.
Water-and bits of the dead man dangling over the fountain-sprayed through the room. The water prevented the fragments from being deadly. . or not very deadly.
Silence fell in the echoing aftermath of the explosion. Adrian held the slowmatch next to the fuse of another grenade.
"If discipline is not restored immediately," he said, half-surprised at the calmness of his own voice under the enormous reined-in tension, "I am going to light this grenade and drop it in the pouch."
"We'd all be killed!" one of the Sea Strikers wailed.
"That's the idea." Adrian nodded. "We have a battle to fight, and it's that way. Anyone have a problem with that?"
"No, sir."
There was a general chorus of agreement, and men who'd seized women released them, forming up and heading for the doors.
"Simun."
The little mercenary came up, limping and pressing the tail of his tunic against a slash wound along one thigh-a vulnerable point in light-infantry armor, protected only by the studded leather strips of the military kilt.
"Simun, get some of the walking wounded together. Police this area, get the surgeon working. . oh, he is."
The man had half a dozen of the more seriously wounded lying on improvised pallets, and twice that number of the hareem's occupants. Some of the hale ones were tearing up sheets to help him.
"Anyway, keep things under control."
Simun nodded. "Good choice, sor," he said. "Cut like this, Gellerix 'erself couldn't tempt me."
"I'll be with the unit," Adrian went on. "See you when it's over."
"I'm coming too."
Adrian looked around, startled, and met level green eyes. The auburn-haired girl offered him his sword; she'd taken a similar weapon from one of the dead, and a small buckler. The filmy hareem costume was plastered to her, mostly with blood, and there were smudges of it across her face where she'd bound back the russet-colored hair with a strip of cloth.
"Miss-"
"Fuck that," she said. She was speaking Emerald, with a slight Confed accent-upper-class Confed, he realized. "I'm a. . soldier's daughter, and I've been here an Almighty Allfather-cursed year, and I'm going to kill some of these Islander bastards."
"Soldier's daughter?" Adrian said.
"Name's Helga. My father. . fought with Justiciar Demansk's armies."
Things clicked behind Adrian's upraised eyebrows. She's really not bad with a sword, Raj mentioned.
That meant she wasn't what she'd implied, the daughter of some long-service Confed trooper. Women of that class didn't train with the sword-certainly not in the classic Emerald style. Some rich young women did; it had been quite the craze for the last couple of years, much to the scandal of the conservative nobility. A few had even appeared in the Vanbert Games, first-blood matches, until a reforming Justiciar had outlawed the practice. Noblewoman, he thought.
observe, Center said.
A grid formed over her face, countour lines sprang out. Justiciar Demansk's face appeared beside it, and arrows sprang out to mark points of resemblance.
allowing for gender, probability of close genetic relationship is 97 %, ±1, Center said. as near unity as a hasty analysis permits.
And Demansk. . one of his daughters was taken in a pirate raid, and not ransomed, Adrian thought. Demansk had several sons, but that was the only daughter he'd ever heard of. .
The analysis had taken half a dozen seconds. "All right, Miss Helga," he said crisply. "You may rest assured of my protection." The courtly phrase seemed oddly out of place in this room of gilding and blood. "But keep close to me and don't get in the way."
"I won't," she said. The sword moved easily in her hand; it was the standard Emerald style, single-edged and with a handguard of bronze strips. "This may get in some other people's way, though."