There was a knock at the door. He finally put the letter down.
He was not sure who he expected, but Janos Outwright was not the man. The portly little moustachioed Beetle, in pristine uniform with his own wheel of pikes and snapbows proudly displayed, beamed at Stenwold with his usual self-importance. There were two more of Outwright’s Pike and Shot standing behind him.
‘What’s happened?’ Stenwold demanded.
‘Nothing yet, apparently,’ Janos said pleasantly, although the crash and crump of the bombs nearly swallowed up his words. ‘Can we come in?’
When he had got under cover, with his men, and when Stenwold grudgingly found some mediocre wine for them, Janos deigned to explain further. ‘All very baffling, but there was rumour that the Empire was going to take a poke at some of the great and good, with you as top of the list. Soon as word came, I decided that you merited the finest in guardianship, so here I am.’
‘Word from where?’
‘Some student,’ Janos said airily and then, just as Stenwold was preparing a brusque reply, ‘that Wasp one, apparently, though I didn’t hear it direct from him.’
‘The…?’ Stenwold tried to summon the Wasp youth’s name to mind, but couldn’t. ‘Where is he?’
‘Running around warning people, like I said.’ Janos sipped his wine and made a great show of appreciation. ‘You can arrest him tomorrow for it, if you want. Everything seems a bit busy tonight for that sort of thing.’ He waggled his eyebrows, as though the detonations so close by outside were just high spirits.
Stenwold did not even hear the next knock, but Janos plainly did. He went strolling over to the door as though he owned the place.
They shot him dead right on Stenwold’s doorstep, a snapbow bolt making a ruin of his throat above his gleaming breastplate and scarring the wall beyond, barely slowed. Then they were shouldering in: a half-dozen burly Beetle men, armoured piece-meal with leather and canvas and chitin plate, with knives and swords and two snapbows leading the charge.
Janos saved Stenwold’s life even so — both by being the man to answer the door and by bringing two Merchant Company regulars along with him. They were caught off guard, by surprise, and yet both managed to get a shot off, killing a snapbowman and a swordsman, and wounding one of the men behind as the bolt passed right through his comrade.
Then it was blade work. One of the soldiers got his sword clear, receiving a couple of strikes that his mail fended off. The second Merchant Company man had barely dropped his discharged snapbow when a dagger was rammed into his groin and he collapsed.
Stenwold had no weapons on him. Shouting for the sole remaining defender to hold, somehow, he rushed for the stairs. A snapbow bolt ploughed past his head into the wall, an opportunistic shot spoiled by the jostle of the melee inside the doorway.
Stenwold usually wore his sword, but not in his own house, and he had left it by the door — as unattainable now as if he had dropped it in the street. Upstairs, though, he had the collected works of a life lived at war with the Empire, if he only had time to deploy them.
There was a choking cry from below, and he guessed that the sole remaining soldier had fallen to superior numbers. Stenwold threw himself into his bedroom, flipping open a drawer of his bedside cabinet, and then hurled himself over the bed, clutching for what was mounted on the wall there. He heard feet thundering up the stairs.
The weight of the piercer fell into his hands, and he checked the weapon every tenday, keeping the monstrous instrument charged and loaded. It had saved his life more than once, a firepowder-charged bolt-thrower with four arm’s-length spears in its barrels.
Then the attackers were spilling in, or that was how he read the situation as he pulled the trigger. The first man had time to skid off his feet, falling flat on his back, and the third was still partway up the stairs, recharging his snapbow, so the luckless second man took three of the four bolts dead on, enough to render the bulk of him unrecognizable as human.
The piercer was useless now, and Stenwold leapt for the drawer even as the first man was lunging for him. A shortsword gashed his arm and then he had the little two-barrel snapbow out and tried to bring it to bear. For a moment he and the killer wrestled, each trying to wrench the weapon out of the other’s hand, Then there was a shout, and Stenwold’s opponent flung himself backwards. The snapbowman in the doorway had his weapon loaded and was frantically charging it.
Stenwold loosed, taking the swordsman in the chest with one barrel, not a tactical decision so much as sheer reflex. He had no time to take the other man, for there was a sizzling flash — a sound and sight odious and familiar to Stenwold from twenty years of personal war.
The third man’s snapbow discharged, the snap sounding a moment after the flare, but the wielder was already falling forwards, punched from behind, his weapon’s mouth jerking up. Stenwold felt a searing claw rake the side of his face, shooting pain through his head, but he was still standing afterwards, his right ear torn so that he could not tell what of the thunder came from outside, and what from within his head.
A Wasp appeared at the door and Stenwold made a strangled sound and jabbed the little snapbow forwards, There was a flicker of wings as the new arrival fell back, dragging the door closed after him, the bolt holing the wood effortlessly.
Trying to work out what was real, Stenwold stood in his own bedroom, three men in various extremities of death decorating his floor, his own blood flowing freely down the side of his neck and pooling at his collar. His hands, those past masters of necessity, found fresh bolts in the drawer, reloading and recharging the snapbow even as his mind reeled.
From downstairs, an uncertain voice called up, ‘Master Maker?’ He felt he should recognize it, but no name sprang to mind.
Stenwold took the bedside cabinet and moved it over to the door, kicking the dead snapbowman clear of its opening arc. His head was still ringing, and the house itself rang, too, the bombardment continuous and close. For a moment Stenwold balanced himself, one foot on the cabinet, a hand on the door, before flinging the door wide and kicking the cabinet out as hard as he could. He heard it reach the stairs, with surprised oaths from below.
Then he went after it, standing at the balcony rail with his snapbow levelled. ‘Weapons down!’ he yelled, murder in his voice,
There was a Beetle youth below him, also the Wasp, both with their hands held in sight, the Wasps’ clenched into fists. They wore some sort of Company sash, and the Beetle looked like a student. They both looked like students.
Eujen Leadswell and Averic, his errant memory recalled, and further reminded him that the snapbowman dead behind him had the charring of a Wasp sting in his back. There was a short-sword at Eujen’s feet that had blood on it, too, and that other body at the foot of the stairs had presumably supplied the blood.
For a moment Stenwold simply stood there, trapped in the moment, weapon levelled and listening to the sound of his city being destroyed, until chains of logic fell into place, and he jammed the snapbow in his belt.
Nine dead men downstairs, and Stenwold was shaken now to think how he might have been one more. Step by step, he stomped his way down the stairs. ‘What’s going on? Why are you here?’ he demanded. He could not find it within himself to thank them — not these two.
They exchanged nervous glances, guilty almost. He felt the screw turn within him at the unfairness, given what they had done, but he could not stoop. He found his pride would not let him.
Some consensus was reached, and Eujen spoke first. ‘Master Maker, Averic was approached by Imperial agents who tried to recruit him. They had a list of victims to kill tonight. We have passed on details, best guesses as to targets. But you were surely top of the list. We tried to get here sooner. The streets…’ By the end of his speech he had recognized the corpse of Janos Outwright and was staring at it in horrified fascination.