Then the doors to the kitchens burst open, and her throat squeezed shut at the shock, even when she'd been expecting it.
"Lacho Calad! Drego Morn!" rang out, and a stunning bull-bellow of: " Every one of you buggers freeze and nobody'll get 'urt!"
The three Dunedain leaders made a beeline for the Bossman and his family, a half dozen more at their heels; they didn't use their swords to kill, but battering shields and the flats of the blades scattered men and women out of their way in a chorus of screams and groans. More Rangers pushed the musicians off their dais and covered the ballroom with drawn bows.
A third party ran to the outside doors and slammed them closed, shooting the bar home in the wrought-steel brackets that looked merely decorative until you realized that they were as thick as a man's wrist. The Bossman's house wasn't exactly a fortress, but those doors were made of heavy oak beam and plank, strapped with iron as useful as it was ornamental, and the hinges were on the inside. The windows were small, high in the exterior walls, and barred by steel grillwork. The Rangers had stout padlocks and chains to fasten the bar in place; nobody was going to open that door soon without sledges and bolt cutters.
The screams and babbling rose to a crescendo; most of the men present were drunk, a fair percentage of the women were too, and nobody had time to think or adjust to the sudden shocking violence. The guards around the perimeter of the room were sober, and they were armored and armed with shetes and glaives, but the Bossman was in the center of the room and they weren't, and it took them crucial seconds to switch their mental settings from ceremonial guard to muscle squad.
There were metal bangles at BD's studded belt. She pulled one of them free, and her wrist did a quick snap-flick-and-roll; that put the blade of the balisong butterfly knife out and the handle that had concealed it in her hand. Two steps took her to Estrellita Peters' side; she threw one arm around the smaller woman to pinion both of hers, and set the knife blade to her throat.
" Don't do anything foolish," she snarled.
Suddenly anyone looking would know why she'd been called La Loba in one of Mexico City's tougher schools forty years ago.
The Bossman's wife jerked very slightly, and a trickle of blood ran down the smooth olive skin of her throat; the scent of the rose-essence perfume she wore was strong this close. Her eyes rolled down towards the knife hand with a reflex like a startled horse, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with her wits, and she froze into immobility.
Her sons noticed almost immediately; their hands went to the silver-hilted daggers they wore, but the elder one, the one with the swordsman's build, stopped and shot out his right hand to his brother's wrist instead.
"Be still, Jorge! She might hurt Mama!"
Carl Peters himself took a little longer to wrench himself out of the initial bewilderment. His hand went to the well-worn hilt of his shete, but then stopped again for an instant as he saw the glitter of the little knife at his wife's throat.
"Kill her, querido! " Estrellita gasped. "She won't dare hurt me!"
"Try it and she bleeds out," BD rasped, the skin between her shoulder blades itching; she made the knife dimple the skin again. "Better her than a thousand boys dead and a city burning."
In the seconds he needed to decide to draw his sword anyway Astrid and the others were there, and they made a shield wall around the ruler's family and two points were at his throat.
"Rangers!" Peters blurted, taking in the tree-and-stars blazons on their leather-covered mail-shirts. "God, what are you bastards doing here?"
"Nobody expects the Elvish Inquisition," Hordle said goodnaturedly… but his sword was four feet long, and he was holding it as effortlessly as if it were a yardstick.
"We're not going to harm you, my lord," Alleyne Loring said smoothly; the cultured tones conveyed sincerity… and the rock-steady point of the longsword did as well. "Your memory as a martyr would be a formidable threat. We just need to take you away for a bit of quiet negotiation."
As he spoke several of the Rangers grabbed the Peters family and trussed their wrists behind their backs. BD stepped back with a wheeze of relief… which turned to a yelp of agony as Estrellita Peters brought her narrow heel down on the instep of her foot, hard, the instant the steel wasn't touching the skin over her jugular.
"Toma! Cabrona!" she snarled.
The whole sword-edged circle of captors and captives began to move smoothly back towards the exit to the kitchens; the guests were mostly unarmed, and goggling with surprise anyway.
We're going to do it! BD thought as she hobbled along. The Kindly Ones be praised.
Then she made a propitiatory gesture with the fingers of her right hand to avoid the jealousy of the Fates. The Registered Refugee Regiment guardsmen had forced themselves through the crowd; there were a dozen of them clumped together in a bristle of glaives. BD saw horror warring with anger on their faces, but Peters had himself well in hand by now. Someone was beating on the door from the outside, and then it began to boom as someone quick-thinking organized a battering ram out of a stone bench. A few more of the guardsmen began beating at the chains with their glaives as the Dunedain there retreated to join the others.
Peters is going to tell them to stop. Apollo, but I'm glad of that! Those points look way too sharp.
The Bossman gave the Dunedain a wry look and raised his voice. "Well, boys-" he began to say to his men.
"Kill," Sethaz said.
BD gave an involuntary moan; the single word was not loud, but it seemed to vibrate in the little bones of her inner ear, running out along veins and nerves like a dry hot wind that made every sinew in her body creak. A guardsman leveled his glaive and lunged. Alleyne smashed the heavy blade of the weapon upward with his shield, but the other man turned it and caught the rim with the hook on the reverse, dragging it down so his mates could stab across it. Spears poised amid obscene curses; Peters shook his head in startled futility. Alleyne killed the man who held his shield with a single snapping lunge to the throat, withdrawing the longsword with a cruel professional twist.
The crowd had stood gaping as the black-clad Rangers swarmed in. Now they roared as the guardsman twisted, blood spraying ten paces from his slashed-open neck. Roared and surged forward; the first fell to the sweep of John Hordle's sword, three men spinning away, a hand flying loose, another slashed open across the chest, the last screaming through a split jaw. The four-foot blade looped up and poised, but the snarls of the ones beyond were bestially unafraid, teeth red with the spattered blood. The salt-iron stink of it mingled with the food and spilled drink until her stomach clenched and nearly climbed up her throat.
"Back to the doors!" Astrid called, in a voice like a trumpet. "Quickly!"
The Dunedain bows began to snap; the archers were backing up themselves, shooting as fast as they could draw shafts from their quivers and loose. A guardsman went down with an arrow through his face; there was a tunk! as another punched through a breastplate. The glaive clattered on the floor as its wielder went down on all fours, coughing out blood and bits of lung. The green-uniformed Boise men had closed in around their President in a flicker of blades; then he shouldered his way through with his saber out and led them to the attack, a reckless white smile splitting his brown face.
BD ducked behind one of the Rangers. The man fell an instant later when Thurston's curved sword bit through the mail beneath his jerkin, cutting the great muscle of the shoulder and breaking the bone with a greenstick snap that made her feel as if someone had run a copper pick along all the surfaces of her teeth painfully hard. Alleyne Loring stepped into the gap, and they were at each other in a rage of steel.