Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,79
surely approach, while Renard had appeared from below.
“Coming up…from behind!” he gasped at them, doubling over with hands on knees. “Don't know how, but…they found one of the secret entrances! They're just minutes behind me!”
Immediately, swearing up a storm, the gathered Finders shoved furniture a few paces over, slipping around to the other side. They'd show the damn Guard, though! Bloody lawmen expected to take them by surprise; well, they were going to walk right into a wall of lead instead.
Renard made his way to the opposite side of the room, taking up position beside the door they had been watching.
The door from which, of course, the Guard would actually be coming. Yes, Renard had led them in through one of the hidden passages; just not the one he'd implied.
Rapier loose in its scabbard, a flintlock in each hand, Renard stared at the backs of men and women who really should not have thrown their lot in with Lisette, and waited for the firing to start.
“We're going to have to go room by room,” Paschal ordered, however reluctantly. He bitterly begrudged the time it would take, but this had to be done right.
He just hadn't expected the hallway to have this bloody many doors! They mocked him in the flickering lanternlight, teeth in an insufferably smug grin.
“Teams of four. Two in, clearing the room, two in the hall as backup. Nobody does anything alone, and no enemy contact is too minor; you run into someone or find something important, you call out. Immediately.”
All standard procedure for an operation of this sort, but the major wasn't about to let his people get sloppy. Not with this.
“Colliers! D'Ilse! Reno! You're with me!” He didn't bother to check as he began his march down the long corridor. He knew they'd fall in.
The entire passage echoed with the clatter of heavy boots kicking open doors, of orders shouted, of desks turned out and papers examined. Only on occasion did those sounds include any hint of violence, and when they did, it appeared little more than a few quick shots. The bulk of these rooms, clearly, were empty, and the inhabitants of those that weren't had, more often than not, wisely chosen surrender over resistance.
For all that it was going well, Paschal frowned. The problem with being this methodical was that it would take forever just to reach the far end of the hall. If anyone waited farther on, they'd have plenty of time to set up a proper ambush or escape in the chaos.
“We're starting at the other end,” he announced to the trio on his heels. “We'll move back this way and meet up with everyone in the middle.”
From there, for a brief while, it become routine. Kick in the door; dash inside, eyes and bash-bangs tracking quickly across every corner, digging through every shadow; a minute of more intense searching, to ensure nobody hid behind the furniture and no blatant dangers or evidence lay scattered openly; and on to the next room. Paschal and d'Ilse inside now; Colliers and Reno inside the next, while they waited in the hall; then Paschal and d'Ilse again. Familiar, efficient as clockwork.
And with the familiarity of repetition, even the most professional of guards could grow, however slightly, inattentive.
Paschal was already sweeping into the darkened room, slipping aside to clear the doorway, when the room flickered and barked with the sound of a single shot. Constable d'Ilse cried out from behind him; no way to tell how bad it was, though the fact that she kept up a string of muttered expletives was proof enough, at least, that the wound hadn't been lethal. The others should come bursting in, drawn by the sound of trouble, but the major had no attention for them, either.
No, his focus fixed entirely on the brass barrel of his flintlock, and the enemy—crouching low by a door in the far wall—at the end of it.
He returned fire, the thunder even more deafening than before, and then the enemy was lying by the door in the far wall. Except for small bits of his shoulder, which were splattered across it.
The injured man screamed; the injured woman cursed a bit more before subsiding into the raspy breathing of suppressed agony. Colliers knelt beside her, treating the wound as best he could, while Reno moved quickly to secure the prisoner—not that he was apt to go anywhere any time soon.
Which left Paschal to check that far door. None of the other offices he'd seen in