“Ready . . .”
He unclipped his own staff-sling and put a grenade in the pouch, the fuse hanging free. The other four slingers imitated him, spreading out so that their weapons wouldn’t foul each other.
“Target is formation of troops,” he said again, feeling a mild distant astonishment that his voice was firm and calm.
“Light.”
The lighter went from man to man, touching his coil of quickmatch to the fuses. The fuses sputtered and bled blue smoke, but they were more reliable than the first they’d tried.
“Cast.”
He whipped the staff around his head with both hands and loosed at the quiet tone in his inner ear that was Center’s judgement of the aimpoint. All he had to do was get the staff moving in the right plane. The cord flew free, and the grenades arched out. His headed towards the noncom commanding the blocking force, and exploded precisely at chest level. The others were within a second and a half of it, and only one shattered on the ground before it burst. That produced an effect he hadn’t seen before, a sort of exploding fiery mist up to waist height.
The front rank of the mob was as panicked as the surviving soldiers; those were running—or limping or crawling—away from the blasts as fast as they could. The front rank of the mob couldn’t run, although some tried to, turning and pushing at the solid mass of humanity behind them. Some of them were knocked over and trampled as the packed throng went forward, joining the City Companies soldiers as stains on the pavement. He saw a few of the more thoughtful picking up shields, helmets and assegais as they passed the bodies.
Adrian turned and looked at his slingers; they were grinning, laughing, slapping each other on the back. One was dancing the kodax, prancing and snapping his fingers.
“Shut up!” he said, his voice the crack of a whip. They did, falling silent and shuffling their feet, the mounted ones looking down at their saddlehorns. “Now we’ve seen what our weapons can do. Let’s get moving.”
* * *
“Sir, if you go, I’ll follow you. I can’t say how many of the men will, though.”
Esmond looked at Jusha. His second-in-command was a grizzled middle-aged man, shorter than his commander but thicker through the shoulders, with a seaman’s rolling gate and a scar that drew his upper lip off one yellowed dogtooth.
Esmond nodded silently, then looked back at the Redvers townhouse across the road. There were City Companies men outside the front entrance, blocking the street both ways, and the scouts said there were another hundred around the rear walls and wagon entrance. Magistrate’s guards, too; not real soldiers—even the City Companies weren’t real soldiers, though there were plenty of paid-off veterans in their ranks—but still armed men. Say two hundred, two hundred and fifty in all, he thought. More than half of them inside, and the place was designed to be held against attack. It was all blank exterior wall, three stories high here and ten feet even where it surrounded nothing but interior courtyard-garden. The narrow windows on the third floor here would serve the purpose of a fort’s arrow slits quite well.
Esmond swallowed salt sweat. “Here’s what we’ll do,” he said. “It’d be suicide just trying to storm the place—too many of them, they’ve got the position. So we’ll tie them down with a diversionary attack; grenades first. Then I’ll go in with a satchel of grenades, and toss them against the door.”
That was set back into the wall facing the street, making a little alcove.
“One will be lit. You’ve seen what the stuff can do. Then when the door’s blown in, we throw more grenades through and go in on their heels—by the ashy banks of hell, man, it’ll be like spearing stunned fish.”
Jusha looked at him. “Hope you can get something from her that you can’t buy for half an arnket any day,” he sighed. “All right, sir; we ate your salt and took your weapons. Let’s get ready.”
* * *
“Didn’t work, did it, brother?” Adrian said.
“No. What’s wrong with the bloody things?” Esmond said, glaring across the street.