Olem flung himself between the greater part of the crowd and Tamas. He fired a pistol and then drew his sword, cutting down three of the royalists in as many blinks of the eye. Tamas yanked his sword out and bellowed, “To me! Men of the seventh brigade, to me!”
Soldiers caught unawares were cut down. The hall was too crowded with the royalists, their trap sprung. But they weren’t expecting three powder mages or Olem’s trained ferocity.
“Back to the stairs, sir,” Olem yelled. “Up to the next floor!”
They cut their way toward the stairs in a fighting retreat. The royalists attacked en masse, trying to gain the advantage through numbers. Tamas stepped up beside Olem to hold them back while Vlora and Taniel fired their pistols from behind them. The staircase was soon full of the thick smoke from spent powder. Tamas breathed it in and savored it.
Gray-and-white uniforms emerged from the hall. Hielmen—what was left of Manhouch’s personal guard. There were twelve of them. They carried the best air rifles with bayonets fixed and charged forward without hesitation. These were not simple royalists. They were trained killers, notches even above Tamas’s best soldiers. They would not waver or retreat until they were dead.
The Hielmen carried air rifles, but the rest of the rabble did not. Tamas felt Vlora ignite a powder horn, and a man nearest the Hielmen exploded, showering the lot of them with gore and knocking two flat. Tamas reached out with his senses and ignited the powder in a man’s unshot musket. The unexpected blast blew the face off the woman next to him.
They made it up the stairs to the third floor, the Hielmen dogging their heels. They started up for the fourth floor when the popping sound of air rifles filled the air. It was a sound to chill a Marked’s blood, for a Marked knew that shot was meant for him.
Vlora stumbled on the stairs and fell. Taniel, farther up the stairs, leapt to her in an instant, sliding the ring bayonet over the end of his rifle and meeting the Hielmen’s charge with a silent snarl. His bayonet sliced a Hielman’s neck with the quick, easy motion of a trained butcher. He dodged to one side of a bayonet thrust and grappled with another Hielman. The man was a hand taller than him and at least three stone more. Taniel brought up the butt of his rifle in a blow savage enough to put the Hielman’s nose into his brain. The soldier dropped without a sound. Tamas felt a thrill watching his son fight. Taniel Two-Shot he might be, but he had the brutal hand-to-hand skills of an infantryman.
Taniel swung toward the four remaining Hielmen, ready to charge.
“Taniel!” Tamas barked, “Fall back!” He picked Vlora up. Deep in a powder trance, her body seemed to weigh nothing at all. She gritted her teeth against the pain. “Did it hit a bone?” Tamas asked.
She shook her head.
Tamas heard a pop and felt the bullet graze his left shoulder, missing Vlora’s head by inches. Tamas turned around only to look down the length of an air rifle, the bayonet coming toward his gut fast.
He transferred Vlora’s weight to one arm and drew his pistol and shot from the hip, dropping the Hielman dead from a bullet through the eye.
By the time Tamas reached the fifth floor, the last few Hielmen lay dead on the stairs. Tamas and his men assessed their wounds. Olem had a number of new cuts—they’d need stitching, but nothing more. Vlora’s shot had glanced off her thigh. She could handle pressure on it, so the bullet had not shattered the bone, and she’d be fine. Taniel had not been touched. His face was twisted in a savage grimace as he wiped gore from the end of his bayoneted rifle. At some point Ka-peol had joined them. The red-haired girl smelled of sulfur, and her hands were black. She wiped her hands on her buckskins and smiled at Tamas when she saw him looking.
Pistol shots and the sound of steel on steel faded on the floor below. Tamas took a few deep breaths, listening to Vlora’s heart beat. They both leaned against the wall, her head on his shoulder. He stepped away from her.
Footsteps echoed on the stairs below them. A moment later Sabon appeared. He had powder marks on the cuff of his jacket and a shallow sword gash along one arm. He