Kevin felled a black warrior. Behind, an exhausted Lord of the Xacatecas helped the Lord of the Bontura into the second chamber. The heavier man was battling for air, and one leg appeared to be dragging. Kevin felt desperation close around his chest. But the ugly, fearful vision of Mara with a sword through her heart hardened his resolve to keep going. He spun, raised his sword, and attacked with reborn fury. The interval gained the two Lords enough time to make their escape. Another pair of live bodies between Mara and death, thought Kevin with callous practicality. He almost laughed as he recalled Arakasi’s words of encouragement. His sword rose and fell, parried and thrust. The fury was gone now; only the pain of exhaustion remained. Then his shoulder slammed against a door jamb, and his clumsy misjudgment cost. An enemy sword scored his ribs. He hacked it away, metal hammering brittle laminate. The black warrior’s sword shattered at the grip. Kevin shoved steel into the man’s stark, surprised face, then stumbled over a body and landed on one knee inside the door.
Too slowly, Kevin recovered. A black soldier leaped behind him, turning a backhanded blow upon the barbarian’s unarmoured back. Pain burned his skin, but a fast parry from Lujan cracked the sword away. Kevin whirled and delivered a heavy-handed thrust to the stomach. The enemy folded.
Beyond stood Arakasi, a sword clutched in his left hand as a boy might threaten with a club. ‘Are you all right?’
Kevin gasped. ‘Hurts like hell, but I’ll live.’ Against a pearl-grey light that filtered through gaping screens, he saw black warriors massed for a charge down the corridor. He bit back another crazy laugh. ‘Did I say live?’
Behind, grunts of effort from Lujan and the bang and hammer of swords sounded warning; once again foes had breached the wall between Mara’s quarters and the next-door apartment. Kevin muttered, ‘Guard this door!’ and raced to reach Mara’s location. There two Acoma soldiers stood at bay, their mistress behind them, while a half-dozen dark warriors pressed to overwhelm them.
Hoarsely Kevin shouted, ‘You bastards!’ He threw himself against the rearmost. The men he struck carried forward into those ahead. Legs tangled, and sword arms flailed, and the whole mass tumbled to the floor. Kevin slid and rolled on the slick floor, forcing fatigued muscles to respond one more time, and one more time again. He came up sword foremost and staggered a step. Three foes yet survived the sally. Kevin hamstrung the nearest. Another he hacked across the back of the neck, and the blow carried barely enough force to wound. As the two Acoma soldiers rallied to kill the last attackers, Mara cried out, ‘Kevin! Behind you!’
Kevin spun, peripherally aware that the hamstrung man had a knife. That one he had to leave to fate, because a sword sang down at his head. He jerked right, caught a foot upon the outflung leg of a dead man, and crashed hard into the corpse. The attacker’s sword carved a glancing line along his upper left arm. Howling with anger at the pain, Kevin twisted. His blade caught the dark warrior just above the groin. He shook blood out of his eyes. One of the Acoma soldiers jumped to his side, a foot raised in a thrust against the dying man’s shield. The enemy crashed back, thrashing, into the narrow hallway, hampering another dark warrior behind him.
Kevin gasped a searing breath. ‘Gods! There’s more of them!’ He struggled to stand against a terrible, ringing noise. Trumpets, he realized dully. His back was aflame and his left arm dangled. Wetness dripped off his fingers. Still he staggered upright and dragged after the first Acoma soldier toward the outer door. At his back one last man waited, sword poised in protection before Mara. Kevin managed a lopsided smile of farewell before he stumbled into the hall. The end was upon them. Lujan, Arakasi, Hoppari, Bontura — all were nowhere to be found, though sounds of struggle issued from the second bedchamber. Without outside help, their numbers were too depleted for them to survive.
As he reached the last doorway, Kevin sighted two soldiers in black armour fleeing out of the hole in the wall toward the garden. Their rush struck him as funny, but tears came instead of laughter. Again a trumpet sounded, louder.
Then the apartment was silent, save for the groan of a wounded warrior and, from somewhere, the laboured wheeze of the Lord of the Bontura. Lujan stumbled out of a doorway, his helm gone and blood streaming down his face from a scalp wound. He gave a silly grin at Kevin and rocked to an exhausted halt. ‘The Emperor! He’s here! Those trumpets are the garrison of the palace. The Imperial Whites have returned!’
Kevin collapsed where he stood, and only the wall that banged his shoulder prevented him from hitting the floor. Lujan sank down beside him. A nasty cut on his temple bled freely, and his armour was hacked to scraps. Kevin un-cramped his fingers from his sword, groped after a shredded cushion, and used that to staunch the flow of blood. Hoppara stumbled out of the bedchamber door, Lord Iliando leaning on his arm. But Kevin had eyes only for Mara. As weary as the rest, she came to kneel by his side and said, ‘The Emperor?’
Before Lujan found his voice, a pair of white-clad warriors marched smartly through the door. One of them demanded loudly, ‘Who claims this place?’
Mara drew herself erect. Her hair in tangles and her robe smudged scarlet, she recovered a Lady’s haughty poise. ‘I, Mara of the Acoma! This is my apartment. The Lords of the Xacatecas and Bontura are my guests.’
If the imperial warrior found anything incongruous in her choice of terms, he made no comment. ‘Lady,’ he addressed her in formal tones, his brows raised as he glanced around at the carnage. ‘My Lords. The Light of Heaven commands all house rulers to attend the High Council at noon.’