A roar broke loose. Loklann led a dash around a last corner. Opposite him he saw the palace, an old building, red-tiled roof and mellow walls and many glass windows. The Stormcloud men were
fighting at the main door. Their dead and wounded from the last attack lay thick.
Loklann took in the situation at a glance. “It wouldn’t occur to those lardheads to send a detachment through some side entrance, would it?” he groaned. “Jonak, take fifteen of our boys and batter in a lesser door and hit the rear of that line. The rest of you help me keep it busy meanwhile.”
He raised his red-spattered ax. “A Canyon!” he yelled. “A Canyon!,’ His followers bellowed behind him and they ran to battle.
The last charge had just reeled away bloody and breathless. Half a dozen Meycans stood in the wide doorway. They were all nobles:
grim men with goatees and waxed mustaches, in formal black, red cloaks wrapped as a shield on their left arms and long slim swords in their right hands. Behind them stood others, ready to take the place of the fallen.
“A Canyon!” shouted Loklann as he rushed.
“Quel Dz’o wela!” cried a tall grizzled Don. A gold chain of office hung around his neck. His blade snaked forth.
Loklann flung up his ax and parried. The Don was fast, riposting with a lunge that ended on the raider’s breast. But hardened six-ply leather turned the point. Loklann’s men crowded on either side, reckless of thrusts, and hewed. He struck the enemy sword, it spun from the owner’s grasp. “Ah, no Don Miwel!” cried a young person beside the calde. The older man snarled and threw out his hands and somehow clamped them on Loklann’s ax. He yanked it away with a troll’s strength. Loklann stared into eyes that said death. Don Miwel raised the ax. Loklann drew his pistol and fired point blank.
As Don Miwel toppled, Loklann caught him, pulled off the gold chain, and threw it around his own neck. Straightening, he met a savage thrust. It glanced off his helmet. He got his ax back, planted his feet firmly, and smote.
The defending line buckled.
Clamor lifted behind Loklann. He turned and saw weapons gleam beyond his own men’s shoulders. With a curse he realized— there had been more people in the palace than these holding the
main door. The rest had sallied out the rear and were now on his back!
A point pierced his thigh. He felt no more than sting, but rage flapped black before his eyes. “Be reborn as the swine you are!” he roared. Half unaware, he thundered loose. Somehow he cleared a space for himself, lurched aside and oversaw the battle.
The newcomers were mostly palace guards, judging from their gaily striped uniforms, pikes and machetes. But there were allies, a dozen men such as Loklann had never seen or heard of. They had the brown skin and black hair of Injuns, but their faces were more like a white man’s; intricate blue designs covered their bodies, which were clad only in wrap-arounds and flower wreaths. They wielded knives and clubs with wicked skill.
Loklann tore his trouser leg open to look at his wound. It wasn’t much. More serious was the beating his men were taking. He saw Mork sunna Brenn rush with uplifted sword at one of the dark strangers, a big man who had added a rich-looking blouse to his skirt. Mork had killed four men at home for certain, in lawful fights, and no one knew how many abroad. The dark man waited, a knife between his teeth, hands hanging loose. As the sword came down, the dark man simply wasn’t there. Grinning around his knife, he chopped at the sword wrist with the edge of a hand. Loklann distinctly heard bones crack. Mork yelled. The foreigner hit him in the Adam’s apple. Mork went to his knees, spat blood, caved in, and was still. Another Sky Man charged, ax aloft. The stranger—somehow—avoided the weapon, caught the moving body on his hip, and helped it along. The Sky Man hit the pavement with his head and did not move again.