He closed his right eye and looked with his good one.
The whole area blazed with the green-yellow light of a recent devisement. He was surprised by its intensity. And inconvenienced; it would be difficult to pick out any lesser glows in that wash of light. He opened his other eye and the glow faded.
As he waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, it happened.
Jean-Pierre’s voice: “Angus Powrie!”
Gunshots, four in quick succession.
Men shouted. Some dropped to the ground. Others ran blindly.
Doc almost cursed. On the hilltop, his friends’ few guns faced their twenty. This was not going to be good.
More gunshots. Doc heard an autogun open up. Maybe it was Alastair’s. Regardless, he had to do something before Duncan’s men realized just what an advantage they had.
He aimed at the pile of metal drums and fired three quick shots, then ducked back behind his cabinet.
More shouting: “This side, too! They’re all around us!”
Another autogun began chattering. Doc felt blows as his cabinet was hammered.
He spun in place, dragging a toe, making the crudest possible circle to stand within. He concentrated and made the sound of gunfire fade away.
“Great Smith,” he said. “I will give you lives in combat.” The ancient, wicked promise made him quail inside, but he had nothing else to sacrifice. “Give me a spark from your anvil. Give me a wind from your bellows. Give me a blow from your hammer. I have faithfully served the gods. I will keep faith with you!”
He focused on the promise, imagined it as a living thing, a demon that must be stroked and fed, and felt his power grow within him.
More blows against his back. Shouting, dim and distant; he tried to keep it at bay.
A raging, roaring pride swelled inside him. It snapped him upright, stretched him to the limits of his limbs. He heard his own roar mingle with the shouts of his enemies. The pride within him longed to see those men smashed flat as by the broad head of a hammer, their bones crushed, their blood soaking the earth.
He stepped around the cabinet and flung the power he felt in his hand.
Fire leaped from his palm. It was no larger than his fist, but it unerringly flew to the liquid leaking from the drums he’d fired upon.
The pool of fuel caught fire and began burning brightly. Now he heard the cries of the men, loud and close in his ears, and he exulted in their fear. There was more gunfire but he felt no pain.
He made a sweeping gesture, a circle in the air, and wind tore across the hilltop, rocking the cabinets. The fire flamed up into incandescence under the pile of drums.
The blow. He balled his hand into a fist and struck his left palm with it—and felt the last of the power leap from him.
The drums blew with a shattering roar of anger. Doc saw a new column of light leap up into the sky, but this was fire, violently propelling warped and ruined metal drums into the air before it. Light and heat washed over him, knocking men down where they stood or ran, sending some of the cabinets tumbling down the hill.
The explosion blew Doc off his feet. He felt the hard earth of the hill slap his back, driving the wind out of him. There was no pain.
Burning wood and metal rained down around him. He lay where he’d fallen, all the strength gone from him, and impatiently waited to regain control of his limbs.
He’d promised lives. He had to take them . . . or the god would be angry with him. He groped around, found the butt of his gun, and opened his mind to the flood of greed for life and blood he could feel waiting beyond it.
Harris saw the bright light from beyond the cabinet ahead, heard the blow of the explosion. The wooden block leaned over toward him, toppled, and began bouncing end-over-end at him.
He rolled sideways, sliding down the slope, scraping cloth and flesh off elbows, knees, ribs. The cabinet smashed to pieces behind him.
The towering column of flame illuminated the hilltop, the slope, the treetops dozens of yards away. He saw three men—Jean-Pierre, Angus Powrie, and a skeletally thin man he did not recognize—grappling together, Jean-Pierre on Powrie’s back, the redcap reaching around for him, the third man bound and caught up among them. They rolled out of sight over the crest of the hill further ahead.
The flash illuminated the lorries; Gaby and Joseph, out of sight between the rearmost two, looked up to see the gold-and-orange mushroom cloud climbing skyward.
“Oh, God.”
“They’ll be coming, Gabriela.” Joseph turned to look toward the forest verge. “Be ready. Wherever you watch, I will watch the other way.”
She didn’t answer. She stared up at the flaming hilltop a long moment more, then worked the rifle’s bolt to chamber a round. She propped the rifle on the lorry’s fender and aimed up the hill.
Alastair stood behind one of the cabinets that remained stubbornly upright. He leaned out to the left, fired off a blind burst, then moved over to lean out right. This time he aimed, targeting a man whose back burned as he ran; a quick burst and that target was down, burning but unmoving.
“Beldon Royal Guard!” he shouted, a deep, commanding bellow unlike his true voice. “You’re all prisoners of the Crown! First Unit, move up! Sixth Unit, move up!” He changed to a shrill tone: “Aye aye! Marksmen, target and fire at will!” Another voice, thick with the accent of Neckerdam: “Royals! Let’s get out of here! Run—!” He punctuated his last shout by leaning and firing again, and cut off his own command with a scream of pain.
He had no more vocal ability than any man on the street, but maybe, may it please the gods, with bullets whistling, fires burning, and men screaming, the enemy would believe it all. He leaned out again and swept a burst across the silhouettes he saw moving before him.
Gaby saw the first two men running down the hill toward the trucks. She held her breath, aimed slow and sure as Jean-Pierre had taught her, put one man’s chest in her sights, and squeezed the trigger.
The man’s knee bent the wrong way when his weight came down on it. She heard his scream, saw him fall and roll a few yards, and suddenly she felt like puking into the grass.
Instead, she ejected the cartridge and chambered another one.
The second man continued down the hill. Him she missed; her bullet kicked up dirt a yard below him. He skidded to a halt, turned, and began racing back up the hill. His companion crawled slowly after him.
“Left,” Joseph said. “Toward the roadway.”
She shot the bolt, then aimed across the broad hood of the lorry and fired again.
Harris raced after Angus and Jean-Pierre, and was on them almost before he knew it.
Jean-Pierre lay in a pool of something white and revolting—his own vomit. The other man, old, thin, bespectacled, lay with his hands and feet bound; he stared imploringly at Harris.
Angus Powrie stood over the two of them. Blood ran down his left shoulder. He carried a double-barreled shotgun and pointed it at Jean-Pierre’s face. His face, illuminated by fire from the hill, wore a smile so cold and hard Harris would have sworn it was cut from ice.
Harris skidded to a stop only half-a-dozen steps from them and took aim at Angus. “Drop it,” he said. “Or I’ll kill you.” His words were punctuated by gunfire from the hilltop.
Angus didn’t look at him. He continued to smile down at Jean-Pierre. “Smooth action on this trigger,” he said. “Kill me, and the baby prince dies. Throw your own gun away and he won’t.”
Harris saw Jean-Pierre shaking his head. The prince was folded over like a piece of paper; Angus had to have hit him in the balls.
“I don’t believe you,” Harris said.