The fingers tensed, nails biting into his skin. He felt a surge of strength, the smell of coppery sorcery filling his nostrils. His muscles bent and flexed, bones threatening to snap from the strain, and then a sudden crack and the release of tension as he surged upward. His momentum took him up and through the trapdoor, where he took several steps and collapsed on the cool stone floor of what appeared to be a large pantry full of beer kegs and sacks of grain.
He lay there, hand on his chest, as the Mad Lancers swarmed up the stairs to fill the pantry. His head pounded, his muscles on fire, and he heard Ibana distantly as she snapped orders. “Jackal, take these eight and open the front gates. If you survive that, head up and clear the towers. You four, see what you can do about the docks. The rest of you are with me and Ben.”
Styke rolled over onto his back and gasped. Ka-poel crouched above him, her head tilted quizzically.
“That really hurt,” he told her between breaths.
She touched her fingers gently to his forehead, then tapped a fingernail against his ribs. The pain was suddenly gone, the fire diminished. She tapped his ribs again and made two fists in front of his eyes, then pulled them apart.
“I broke a rib?”
She nodded.
He prodded the area gingerly, but felt no pain. “Did you heal it?”
She shook her head.
Styke climbed to his feet, expecting the lances of pain at any moment, but they never came. “What did you do? Block the pain?”
Ka-poel pursed her lips and wiggled one hand back and forth. More or less.
“This is going to a hurt later, isn’t it?”
She grinned wickedly.
“Pit.” Styke stumbled to Ibana’s side. “Where are we going?”
“Up, I assume,” she answered, looking him up and down. “Pit, Ben. You just snapped an eight-inch beam of ironwood.”
“A few other things, too. Come on, we have to find Lindet. Then I’m going to kill whoever is in command here.”
“With ten men? I sent everyone else to try and open the gate. If Lindet is still alive, she’ll be with Dvory. And he’ll have his whole bodyguard with him. We need an army, Ben.”
Styke unwrapped the wax cloth protecting his carbine from the water, then hefted his knife. He could still feel that pain deep in his chest, but it was a light buzz beneath Ka-poel’s sorcery. His brain was on fire, his blood pumping. He felt like he was in his prime again, light on his toes and ready to grind stone with his hands. “We don’t need an army. We’re the Mad Lancers.”
Styke caught a bayonet thrust on his carbine, turning the blade so that it scraped across the stone of the stairwell, and reached over to drive his boz knife through the eye of the Dynize soldier attempting to hold the hall. He lifted the spasming body and thrust it up the stairs ahead of him, using it as a shield as musket blasts made his ears ring. He reached the top of the stairwell and jerked his knife out of the soldier’s skull, whipping it around to cut the throat of another as he passed and emerged into the great hall of the citadel keep.
Soldiers filled the great hall, turning bayoneted rifles and muskets on Styke as he entered the room. There were forty or fifty of them, a mix of Dynize with their morion helms and breastplates, and Fatrastan turncoats in their yellow jackets. Styke spotted Dvory at the far end of the great hall, and their eyes locked for a split second.
Dvory’s face turned white.
“You didn’t bring enough men,” Styke shouted over the blasts of musket fire. A bullet slammed into his shoulder, jerking him back a half step and setting a fire of pain across an old wound. He ignored it, flipping his carbine over his shoulder and surging forward with his knife, carving into the Dynize.
His lancers flooded out of the stairwell behind him. They were down to eight now, after having to fight out of the kitchens and through the halls. Most of them bled from multiple wounds, clothes and faces soaked in blood, but the enemy fell back before them as if staring into the teeth of a thousand riflemen.
Styke sidestepped a bayonet thrust, feeling the sharp rasp of the blade across his ribs, and jerked the owner by the lapel onto his knife. He threw the body to one side and slashed, blinding a Fatrastan turncoat and leaving him to fall beneath Ibana’s sword.
To one side, Ka-poel slid through the fighting like a snake in a den of rats. She stepped around bayonets and between gunshots, her machete in one hand and a long needle in the other. She thrust and sliced, and the men she killed didn’t even seem to notice her until their blood splashed her black greatcoat.
“Dvory! Where is your army now, Dvory?” Styke’s knife hand was slick with gore. He disemboweled a Fatrastan, then slid his knife beneath the breastplate of a Dynize and left the woman gurgling in her own blood. A pistol went off just over his right shoulder, and he felt the bullet take off his earlobe. He turned, skipping toward the owner of the pistol and cutting his throat, before returning to his march toward the traitor.
Dvory stood proud in his spot at the end of the great hall. His fingers gripped his sword with white-knuckled intensity, and he stared at Styke like a man staring down a charging boar. Styke wondered briefly if this was a trap—if Dvory had enough guts to fight him—before remembering that before all this the bastard had been a Mad Lancer. He had the guts.
Suddenly Styke was through the press of bodies, stumbling into the open. He took a deep breath, a growl in his throat, and felt the pain of a thousand tiny wounds. His jacket was soaked with blood and cut to ribbons, and rivulets of blood streamed down his neck. He licked his lips, relishing the pain, breathing in the stench of death, powder smoke, and sweat. He ignored the carnage of the battle still raging around him and took a step toward Dvory—only they existed now, and only one of them would leave this room alive.
Dvory shook his head. “You’re a wreck, Ben. I’ve never seen you bloodier.”
Styke hesitated. Dvory was too composed. He gripped his sword, his face was ashen, but he stared at Styke as if he expected to leave here alive. “You think I should change sides?” Styke asked.
“I think you should,” Dvory answered. His sword remained in its sheath as Styke stepped closer and closer. “It’s worked out for me so far.” Dvory’s pallor deepened, and a sheen of sweat appeared on his brow.
Styke glanced behind him. Only a few of his lancers remained standing. Ka-poel crouched over a wounded Dynize, fingers working the air before the man suddenly leapt to his feet with jerky motions and attacked his companions. Styke took another sidelong step, uncertain. Something was wrong here. “How has it worked out?” he asked.
Dvory attempted a smile. Styke could see now that his lips trembled. They moved, slowly, and Styke thought he heard a whisper. His hair stood on end as he realized that the coppery smell in the room was not all Ka-poel’s sorcery. It belonged to someone else, another bone-eye.
“Where’s Lindet?” Styke demanded.
“Here,” a voice responded.
Styke skipped to the side, turning the blade of his knife just in time to catch the thrust from a short, powerful man wearing black leathery armor. As he deflected the thrust, he snatched the carbine from his shoulder and smashed it across the side of the man’s face, snapping the butt just below the trigger. The man staggered to one side, shook his head, and righted himself.
A dragonman. And not just any, Styke realized as three more figures emerged from a hidden door to Dvory’s right. The dragonmen he’d faced outside Granalia. Ji-Orz held Lindet by the back of the neck easily, his hand cocked as if ready to snap her spine with a flexed muscle. Lindet herself wore the same jacket and skirt that he’d spotted her in disembarking her ship. There were bruises on her face, but she looked no worse for wear. She lifted her chin toward Styke, as if unconcerned by the dragonmen around her.
The dragonman who’d attempted to blindside Styke took a step back, reassessing him, and licked his lips.
“Drop the knife or she dies,” Dvory said, gesturing to Lindet.