“Down from the wall! Kila, get the men down into the courtyard!”
Sergeant Gorchov answered with a roar, swinging his sword with such violence that he decapitated a red-?eye entirely in a spray of gore. Winter spoke urgently into Dobraev’s ear, and the lieutenant shouted more instructions. The Beast had concentrated its attacks around the gate, where the defenders were heavily engaged, but the men farther along the wall were free to move. They came down the stairs at a run and lined up in the courtyard, muskets ready. At the lieutenant’s signal, the Haeta and Gorchov’s few remaining soldiers pulled back, ceding the wall to the red-?eyes. As soon as they were clear, the Murnskai opened fire, pinning the red-?eyes to their newly won position with a withering volley of musketry.
Answering shots came from the top of the wall, the few survivors using piles of the dead and dying for cover. That was more than the defenders had down in the yard, and Winter waved them back, in among the shacks and lean-?tos. In the shadow of one of these insubstantial buildings, she caught her breath. The Murnskai found cover and returned fire, and musket balls thocked into earth and wood all around her.
A bloodied Gorchov staggered over to her and Dobraev and grabbed the lieutenant by the arm. Dobraev stared at him.
“Kila. Kila! Are you all right?” he said.
“I’m fine,” Gorchov snarled. “Most of the blood is Vasil’s, brave little fool. Who are these monsters? I saw a girl of twelve throw herself onto a soldier’s bayonet so an old man could dash his brains out with a footstool!”
“They’re mad,” Winter said. “I told you. They don’t value their lives, and they don’t feel pain.”
“Demons,” Gorchov muttered.
“There’s no such thing as demons, Kila,” Dobraev said. “They die the same as men.” He straightened up. “We can pull back to the keep.”
“No,” Winter said. “You’re not listening. We can’t hold them off. They’re not going to give up. They’ll keep coming until we run out of ammunition, if nothing else works. We have to get out of here.”
“The ships,” Gorchov said. “Kollowrath stripped the sails and oars.”
“I sent Abraham and Alex to get help from the refugees,” Winter said.
“It’ll take too long,” Dobraev said. “Once they get the gate open, they’ll swamp us.”
“We fall back,” Winter said. “A fighting withdrawal.” She gestured at the cluttered yard. “One shack at a time.”
“There’s still too many,” Gorchov said. “We’re down to fifty men, plus your... warriors.” He eyed the Haeta.
“I may be able to help with that,” Abraham said. Winter turned, surprised, and saw him trotting over with at least two dozen men behind him, old Fyotyr in the lead. The newcomers were all refugees, dressed raggedly, and most had only clubs and knives for weapons, but they shouted their enthusiasm.
“What about the ships?” Winter said.
“We found some sailors. Alex is keeping watch,” Abraham said. “When they saw what was happening—”
“We want to fight,” Fyotyr said. “If I am to die today, better to die like a man than huddling like a sheep.”
“Some of the women wanted to fight, too,” Abraham said quietly. “The men wouldn’t let them.”
“There are spare muskets and ammunition in the keep’s armory,” Dobraev said. “They can help run it forward.”
“Tell them,” Winter said, and added in Vordanai, “And if any of them decide they want to use those muskets themselves, I’m certainly not going to stop them.”
*
It took thirty minutes before the ships were pronounced ready for the swollen, fast-?flowing river, thirty minutes purchased in blood, step-by-step. As Dobraev had predicted, the red-?eyes soon got the gate open, despite concentrated fire from the Murnskai musketeers that left dozens dead in the gateway. Once they did, a tide of them flowed in from outside the fortress, and the musketry got considerably less one-?sided. The Murnskai were forced back through the camp, giving ground as the red-?eyes assembled and charged, a line of powder smoke marking the front.
Without the refugees, the fight would have been hopeless. The civilians picked up the muskets that fell from dead soldiers, providing fresh bodies for Dobraev to throw into the line. Now that he had the right idea, he was skilled enough that Winter left him on his own, sticking close to the Haeta. She and Vess led them wherever the red-?eyes threatened to break through, blunting their attacks long enough for the line to pull back. The price they paid was terrible, the girls whom Winter had come to know falling one after another, cut down by musket-?fire or gutted with bayonets.
They were fighting around the base of the Keep when word finally came. The stone walls provided cover for musketeers who fired weapons reloaded by refugee women huddled in its lee. A refugee girl grabbed Winter’s arm to get her attention.
“Alex says the boats are ready!” she shouted, almost inaudible above the battle racket. “She says to come now; the sailors don’t want to wait!”
Winter locked eyes with Vess, who waited nearby with a dozen surviving, blood-?stained Haeta. “Go board,” she said. “Don’t let them leave without the rest of us.”
Vess grinned savagely and pointed with her spear, and they took off at a run. Winter found Dobraev and shouted the news in his ear. The defenders disengaged, gradually at first, a few men turning to fire to keep the red-?eyes at bay while the rest hurried ahead of them. When the Beast realized what was happening, its creatures surged forward, ignoring musketry and opposition, ignoring wounds, ignoring everything.
“Run!” Winter screamed. “Now!”
They ran, dodging through the camp, all organized resistance gone. A soldier tripped over a tent line and vanished, trampled by the horde of red-?eyes. There was scarcely any firing now, just a mad scramble to escape. Winter thought her heart would burst, her lungs sawing at the air, Dobraev leaping nimbly over a broken crate just ahead of her.
Then there were no more shacks, and the stone pier was in view. The two ships, packed from bow to stern with a dense mass of humanity, rode dangerously low in the water. They’d pulled away from the pier, held in place by only a few straining lines, with cargo nets dangling from their sides into the rushing water. The soldiers were throwing away their muskets and jumping, swimming out to get a hold on the nets and haul themselves up.