“Relax, lads,” I said. “I’m only half Troll.”
Behind me, glass broke. Someone shouted a curse and someone else answered with another. The sound of many running feet drew closer, and a vagrant breeze brought the scent of new smoke wafting across my back.
More glass windows shattered. More feet pounded.
The mob was maybe half a block from the makeshift barricade.
I lowered my hands.
“You, you, and you,” I bellowed in my best imitation of a sergeant’s tone. “Pick out the ringleader. Take him out before he can take cover. You, on the left. Round up another twenty archers. Tell them to take out the ones with torches.”
Men froze.
“I am Captain Markhat, commissioned by the Corpsemaster himself. Disobeying my order is disobeying his.”
A brick hit the ground and shattered so close bits of it pelted my ass.
“Archers. Loose.”
I turned my back on two dozen anxious bowmen.
It could have gone half a dozen ways. But in the end, the ancient military maxim that stated the loudest voice is the one obeyed, held sway. Flights of arrows hissed over my head and full into the approaching mob.
The ringleader fell-torch in hand, two arrows in his chest and another in his gut. His lieutenants scattered, trying to dart back into the ranks, and half of them fell with shafts in their backs.
The mob raged. Smoke billowed up behind them, and a great gout of flame rose up as an aged wooden storefront exploded into a sudden inferno.
Caught between fire and the barricade, the mob panicked and surged ahead, heedless of the sleet of new black arrows.
Coming directly at me.
I dove beneath a cab, managed to wrestle the hand cannon out of my wet waistband, and emptied the thing with small barks of thunder in the space of two breaths.
Men fell. More charged ahead. Two dove beneath my cab, and I kicked them in their faces with my stolen shoes.
An old familiar chaos broke out, all along the barricade. Men lunged and fought and screamed and died. Swords rose and fell when there was no more room for arrows. Some generous soul stuck an Army shortblade in my hand and I flailed and stabbed with all the rest, a wordless cry on my lips, a fresh new horror in my heart.
The fire rose up and up, a hungry ancient god relishing its sacrifice of blood. Smoke filled the air, rendering our enemies mere shadows and our allies more of the same. Screams gave way to coughs, and coughs to wheezing, labored breaths, and when it was done, it was done because no one could see and no one could breathe.
I stumbled away with the rest. The man who clung gasping to my shoulder might have been a Watchmen or a looter. It no longer mattered.
The mob scattered, broken and beaten. The fire jumped the street when a building collapsed across it. We managed to extinguish the blaze it touched off by attaching chains to the porch of the burning building and hauling it into the street.
After that, we all just stood and coughed and watched whole neighborhoods burn.
But the smokes and the fires never crossed Destride.
I was laid out flat in the back of a wagon when a kid with a bloody nose and a familiar voice trotted up.
“Captain,” he said. “I didn’t know.”
“So I checked out after all.”
“The Corpsemaster sends his personal thanks.” The kid eyed me as though I might spit flames any second. “Sir.”
“Get me a horse, kid.”
“Sir?”
“A horse. Four legs? Bad tempers? Craps in the street? A horse.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh. And a wet rag. Need to clean up a bit.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Scoot.”
He scooted. I lay back and coughed.
I counted columns of smoke. Fourteen big ones. An hour ago, there’d been eighteen. Maybe the ruckus was winding down.
Or maybe the fires were just running out of fuel.
The kid returned. He led a big, black mare with a fancy black saddle. Her flanks weren’t sweaty and her eyes weren’t wild despite the smoke.
“Good choice. I’ll see she’s returned.”
A bowman came trotting up with a washbasin, a plain brown jacket, and a fresh pair of new leather boots.
“If those are for me I’m putting you in for a promotion, kid.”
He grinned. I washed, found the boots were a close enough fit for a trip across town, and left the barricade in charge of a lieutenant named Jeffrey who might be old enough to shave by spring.
On the whole, I think I prefer fighting Trolls.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Darla’s dress shop was empty, locked and shuttered. So were all the shops on the street. A band of wary shop keeps, whose average age veered perilously close to codger-hood, patrolled the sidewalks, gripping their collection of push brooms and fireplace-pokers with as much well fed menace as they could muster.
They asked about fires and looting. I told them what I’d seen, and shared my cautious optimism that Destride had been the turning point. I advised them to take to their heels if a real mob showed on their street.
They shook their brooms and vowed mayhem on miscreants far and wide.
I wished them luck and turned my mount for Darla’s house. I had the street mostly to myself. If cabs were still running they weren’t doing it in my part of town. I did meet little bands of pedestrians, cases and bags in their hands, who were determined to flee to somewhere even if they had no idea where that somewhere might be found.
I sent the ones that would listen home. Getting out of town was now far more dangerous than finding a sturdy door and placing oneself behind it.
Which is where I found Darla.
I charged onto her quiet little street. It still smelled of flowers and not smoke. Her neighbors had shuttered their windows and closed their doors, but no windows were broken, and no doors had been knocked open.
I tied the mare to Darla’s white picket fence and ran up the stairs.
Laughter sounded inside. Men’s laughter, and Mary’s voice and more laughter.
I tried the door. It was locked. At the sound of my rattling the knob, though, booted feet came running, and in an instant I was staring down the shaft of a well-maintained Army crossbow.
“Darling.”
Darla pushed the crossbow carefully aside and caught me up in a fierce hug.
“What the Hell are you three doing indoors?”
I was eyeing the soldiers I’d assigned to guard Darla. They responded with a trio of explanations, two of them hampered in their efforts by the copious amounts of apple pie in their guilty mouths.
“They been outside all night an’ all day,” snapped Mary, who appeared in the kitchen doorway, hands on her hips. “Ye never said anything about starving them to death, now did ye?”
“Outside.” I glared. “Now.”
They swallowed hard and left without a word.
Darla eyed me with that all-knowing gaze of hers.
“Mary, is there any cider left?”
Mary snorted an affirmative and vanished.
Darla kissed me. Why, I don’t know, because my swim in the Brown and subsequent street-brawl had left me less than kissable. But she did, and I’m a wise enough man not to argue.
“Carris?”
“Alive.” I was suddenly tired. No, not tired-exhausted. Beyond exhausted.
“Sit. Those aren’t your boots.”
“I left mine guarding the Regent,” I said. “My jacket is now Minister of Education.”
I sat. She pulled a chair up facing mine and sat, her hands in mine.
“Tell me.”
I told. Mary arrived with a cup of hot apple cider and a frown about the time I finished.
“I told that band of old fools to stay off the streets,” she muttered.
I sipped cider and nodded.
“So Mr. Fields lied, and Carris is heading south. I assume you’re going after him?”
I sighed.
“Maybe. Maybe not. If there’s a boat left in Rannit, I might just put Tamar on it. South’s be a good place to be, when the war starts.”