* * *
Keffrine was still sobbing, her eyes squeezed shut and tears leaking out from under them. Helga waited . . .
. . . and a dozen women broke and bolted as the soldiers approached the front row. Eldest probably knew they would, ran through her; that was probably why she’d gone first, to spare herself seeing the indignity. The gathering dissolved into a chaos of running women and harassed, determined guardsmen. Blades began to flash, not in the orderly execution planned but in a frenzy, men slashing at figures that ran by or trembled and pled.
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.