horse continued at a canter. She hit the ground and instantly leapt, twisting, feeling the sleeves of her dress rip. She’d always practiced this with a better cantle, but she’d also practiced on taller horses, and she almost flung herself over the side of the saddle on her way back up. It took a half a moment, but she settled into the saddle, backward. She drew the musket, leveled it, trying to absorb as much of shock of the horse’s cantering in her knees as she could, trying to time how long it would take between trigger pull and musket fire. She aimed at the lead Mirrorman forty paces behind her and pulled the trigger.
She’d aimed perfectly, timed everything right, but the musket didn’t fire. She cocked the flintlock again, checked the mechanism. No flint. It had fallen out, probably during her impressive trick riding. Bollocks!
Karris threw the musket away, reversed her hands, turned her head over her shoulder to make sure she’d be leaping off flat ground, and dismounted. The reverse dismount and remount was actually much harder than the original trick, but she did it perfectly, both feet hitting the ground, pushing off in tandem just as the pull of the horse’s forward motion catapulted her into the air. Except as she was pulled up and forward, half of her horse’s head was torn off by a musket ball and its body dove for the earth. If she’d still been holding the reins, she’d have been flung to earth too. Instead, she became a human cannonball. The force of her jump and the horse’s sudden dive had her twisting like a cat. She was flying, upside down and backward.
Time only for one thought: Roll when you hit.
But when she hit, there was no time for anything at all. Whatever it was, there were multiple levels, and it was mercifully soft—which didn’t stop it from whipping her head and limbs in different directions. When she finally hit ground, she couldn’t move for a few long seconds.
Someone was cursing. She saw feet. She was lying on top of a man, and he was struggling to get out from under her. She must have crashed into the backs of half a dozen soldiers—and taken them all out with her. One man had his leg twisted at a nasty angle. Another turned to look at her, his nose fountaining blood, cursing.
A huge explosion took away whatever he was saying. Perhaps sixty paces away. Everything seemed to freeze for a moment on the battlefield, then things began moving too fast to take them all in at once.
Karris jumped to her feet—and almost collapsed. She was so lightheaded that it took all of her concentration not to fall. She checked herself quickly. There were stinging abrasions on her arms and legs, dress in pathetic shape, but no serious wounds. She touched her eyes. The eye caps were unbroken, of course. And smudged with blood so they were harder to see through. Just perfect.
Now that she was in the midst of the battle, the world narrowed. There were images like little paintings, but no whole. Karris saw a drafter up on the Mother’s Gate—Izem Blue? What was he doing here? He stood, skin fully blue, both arms extended, shooting blue daggers in rapid succession—an absolutely stunning display to work so fast, keeping his will focused, shooting from both hands. He was like a dozen musketeers—three dozen, despite the hazy quality of the morning’s misty sunlight. Everywhere he turned, men went down. He turned toward the Mirrormen, and Karris saw those blue blades shearing off in every direction from the mirror armor, chewing through everyone around the Mirrormen, but sometimes catching a chink or hitting the mirror armor flat enough that a knife punched through.
A body stood in front of Karris, headless, its neck spraying blood in time with the last beats of its heart.
The sound of muskets firing and the roar of blood in her ears melded together, a pulse, life and death twined together.
The Mirrormen surged toward a hole in the wall, perhaps seven paces across. So that was where the explosion had been.
A red drafter—one of King Garadul’s Free—had gone mad. He was cackling, throwing pyre jelly on everyone around him. The men splattered with the stuff were shouting in fear. Someone was begging him to stop.
A man was falling off the shattered edge of the wall, slipping, screaming.
Off to one side atop the wall, the sun gleamed off a man’s copper hair.