Arakasi glanced at the splinted arm and nodded. ‘Of course it hurts.’ He looked out the door. ‘Morning is almost here. If they are to come one last time, it will be soon.’
Kevin heaved himself to his feet. He would have dropped his sword, could he have done so without cutting his ankles. Bone-tired, and shivering from stress, he crossed unsteadily to where Mara knelt, comforting Hoppara’s wounded Force Commander. She looked up at Kevin’s approach. She looked painfully thin by the light of the one lamp left burning, her eyes too large in her pale face, and one of her hands was scraped raw across the knuckles. ‘Are you all right?’ Kevin asked.
She nodded absently as she struggled against weariness to rise. ‘So much . . . waste,’ she said at last.
Somehow Kevin mustered the will to hold out aliand and pull her to her feet. ‘Don’t let the others hear you, my love. They’ll drum you out of the council for un-Tsurani attitudes.’
Mara was too beaten to manage even the ghost of a smile.
‘You’re not safe in here,’ he added. ‘We’ll get one of the servants to bring Hoppara’s officer along.’
Mara shook her head. ‘Too late.’ She buried her face in the sweaty hollow of her lover’s neck.
Kevin looked down and saw that the Xacatecas Force Commander had ceased to breathe. The quiet strength and leadership that had kept men on the march through the burning sands of Tsubar were only a memory now. ‘Gods, he was a grand soldier.’
Kevin guided his Lady back to the small room that had proven the most defensible. There Lujan, two warriors, and Mara’s remaining house staff were trying to clear away bodies. Those loyal soldiers who had fallen were carried to another bedroom, waiting a time for honourable cremation, while the black-armoured corpses were kicked or rolled through the outer screen into a heap in the garden.
Mara leaned into Kevin. ‘I don’t think I shall ever get the stink of this room out of my nose.’
Clumsy with weariness, Kevin stroked her hair. ‘The reek of a battlefield is not easily forgotten.’
A crash from the outer doorway echoed through the apartment. ‘Lashima, they won’t stop,’ cried Hoppara in a note of desperation. Lord Iliando stood hunched over his sword, wheezing painfully, while Lujan signalled two soldiers to take position close to their Lady. Then the Acoma Force Commander shouldered into the corridor, Kevin hard on his heels. There were no longer enough able-bodied defenders for him to hang back beside Mara. As he stepped into the gloom of the hallway, a voice soft as velvet touched his ears.
‘Don’t worry for her. Just fight as you can, Kevin of Zun.’ The barbarian managed a nod over his shoulder at the still presence of Arakasi; then a pair of black soldiers were bursting through the makeshift barricade Xacatecas men had raised in the hall. Kevin charged, while to one side more enemies shoved at the debris that blocked an adjoining doorway.
A man could not think, but only react by reflex; Kevin lashed out, feeling the jar as his metal blade sliced into the arm of an enemy. Another foe took his place. The pressure of attack did not ease. Slash, backstep, slash again – Kevin moved by ingrained instinct. He was aware of Lujan at his side, and somebody else shouting curses in monotone. Then the warriors at the side door smashed through the rubble, and defenders started dying. Somebody went down under Kevin’s feet, and he stumbled, caught from a tumble by the blood-slippery hands of a Bontura warrior. He could only nod swift thanks, for another assailant was upon him. Crazily he wondered where in the Empire anyone had found so many sets of black armour. Or had somebody just lacquered over house colours to loose such an army against them?
The attackers stormed into the first chamber as the defenders flagged. Numbers prevailed. Lujan and his last survivors were driven back, and back. And yet they were not beaten. The Tsurani possessed mulish courage, and they gave no ground freely in retreat.