Fragments of rock blew in a horizontal column inside the perimeter. A chunk the size of a hen’s egg hit Ryan on the right side of his rib cage, bringing a sharp dart of pain. A few gobs of torn, blood-slick flesh thudded to the ground, and a red mist mingled with the dust and smoke. A shout of rage, terror and despair rang out among the defenders.
The air was still shivering with the vibrations of the explosion when the Red Cadre boiled out of the gorge in a shouting, shooting mass.
The wall hadn’t collapsed under the concussive force of the gren as Hatcher had evidently hoped. The men leading the charge hesitated, slowing their pace. The marauders behind them kept coming, throwing the first wave headlong against the rock barricades.
Men fell, were dashed against the jagged bulwark, and screams of pain replaced the war yells.
In an instant the Amican defenses were a writhing welter of shrieks, kicks and thrashing bodies. The men in the rear had to pick their way over their fallen and broken-limbed comrades as they swept forward. The defenders fired, the blended gunshots giving rise to a loud thunderclap.
The bullet-slashed pirates dropped atop their dead or crippled brothers, but more appeared to clamber over the red shambles of flesh and bone. Like a tide, the howling horde flooded over the half-toppled battlements.
The Amicans met the Cadre with knives, tomahawks and clubbing blaster stocks. Along the line of stone was screaming, bloody chaos. Hatchets chopped, knives broke on rock, skulls were split with blaster butts.
The Amicans fought with the fury of desperation. They hacked, slashed, bludgeoned and died.
Ryan, half-blinded by dust and black-powder smoke, glimpsed Micah go down with a tomahawk buried in the crown of his head. He saw one of the Cadre rush toward Mildred, who had her back turned, and he fired his blaster point-blank. The marauder flopped facedown, a geyser of scarlet pumping from a cavity in the side of his head.
A rush of bodies knocked Ryan sprawling, and a knife blade thrust for his throat. He wrenched himself aside and heard the blade break against the rocky ground. He fired the SIG-Sauer into the bearded face snarling over him, and the eyes and nose dissolved in a bloody smear. Elbowing aside the corpse, he leaped to his feet, working the trigger, the blaster bucking in his fist.
It was J.B.’s Uzi that tipped the scales. The diminutive Armorer squeezed off 3-round burst after 3-round burst, and at that range he didn’t miss a single target, nor did any of the targets survive the pounding hail of 9 mm stingers.
Responding to a bleating note from the bugle, the Cadre engaged in a slow, stubborn retreat, climbing over the barricade and backing away toward the gorge. Their covering fire was ragged and sporadic.
No one cheered the rout. There were too many dead and too many wounded inside the fortifications. Ryan went to Krysty, who was bleeding from a wound in her right arm. He didn’t have the opportunity to check on the rest of his friendsMose Autry forced himself through the dust and smoke and came to his side. His lower torso was sodden with blood, and he held a scarf over the knife slash across his belly.
His upper lip was split, and through clenched, red-filmed teeth, he said, “We’re done. It’s over. Almost no ammunition left, dead and wounded everywhere. All Hatcher has to do is fire one more gren.”
Ryan looked toward the cleft. He saw no movement, but he knew the narrow gorge was clogged with the survivors of the last assault and the walking wounded.
Then Hatcher’s voice rolled out from within the pass. “Listen to me, you dumb shits. Listen to reason! There’s no escape. I have more men than you can ever kill!”
“Bullshit,” J.B. muttered, his face streaked with soot and dirt. “I bet he’s out of grens, or down to his last one.”
“I can blow you out of there, but let’s end this now!”
No one responded to Hatcher’s words.
“The outlander, Cawdor, knows what I want! All he has to do is give it to me, and this is over. You have my word!”