By Heresies Distressed (70 page)

He listened intently and heard nothing but the grumble of more thunder from the west and the sound of pre-storm wind, sighing through the trees about him.

Good
, he thought, and carefully and quietly re-spanned the arbalest.

Edwyrd Seahamper glanced up at the sky with a frown as full darkness settled over Saint Agtha's. The convent's grounds were dimly illuminated by the candlelight spilling out of various windows, and the convent chapel's stained-glass glowed warmly. The windows' patterns were simple, as became a convent dedicated to a saint who'd embraced a life of asceticism and vows of poverty and service, but the colors were richly vibrant.

And they won't do a thing for my nightvision
, he thought grumpily.

There was just enough light to make the shadows even more impenetrable, and that was going to grow still worse, unless he missed his guess, once the rain began to fall in earnest.

Of course, I'll be able to see just
fine
during the lightning flashes
.

His frown turned into a grimace at that particular thought. Contemplating the effect rain was going to have on little things like mail hauberks, cuirasses, sword blades, pistols, rifle barrels and bayonets, and anything else made of steel didn't make him feel significantly better, somehow. Still, he'd been rained on before, and he'd never shrunk yet.

He shrugged that concern aside and returned to the thought which had occasioned his frown in the first place.

Captain Gairaht should have been back half an hour ago. The captain was an energetic man who was disinclined to waste time. By now, he'd had time to hike clear round the convent twice, but there was no sign of him.

He probably found someone he thought needed a little . . . counseling
, Seahamper thought.
God help anyone he thinks is slacking off on
this
detail! On the other hand, who'd be stupid enough to do that in the first place?

His frown returned, deeper than before, and he glanced at Sergeant Tyrnyr. Tyrnyr, another Chisholmian, had been with the empress for the last eight years, which had made him the logical man to share Seahamper's watch here at the guesthouse door.

“I wonder what's keeping the Captain?” Seahamper wondered out loud.

“I was just thinking the same thing,” Tyrnyr replied.

“It's probably nothing, but it's not like him,” Seahamper continued. “Trot over to the main gate, Bryndyn. See if he's over there.”

“If he isn't?”

“Then make a circuit yourself. No, wait. If they haven't seen him, ask the Lieutenant to send one of the others around the circuit looking for him while
you
come back here.”

“Got it,” Tyrnyr acknowledged laconically, and went jogging off across the convent's manicured grass.

The man crouched in the meadow just beyond the orchard came slowly upright once full darkness had fallen. Nailys Lahrak's face had been blackened, and his dark clothing blended seamlessly into the night about him. No one could possibly have seen him from more than a very few yards away. In fact, Lahrak himself couldn't see the other men out here under his command. Not that he was worried about them; he didn't
have
to see them to know where they were, given how often they'd rehearsed this particular task.

There'd been no way to predict with certainty where the empress' bodyguards would bivouac, but Lahrak was an experienced hunter and woodsman who'd grown up less than four miles from Saint Agtha's, and he was intimately familiar with the convent's grounds. He'd known it would be impossible for the abbess to house them inside the convent proper, and this had been by far the most logical place for them to pitch their tents
outside
its wall. There'd been two other possibilities, and they'd rehearsed attacks on those locations, as well, yet he'd been confident in his own mind that this would be the one that actually got carried out.

Now he took a small object from his pocket and raised it to his lips. A moment later, the plaintive, whistling call of a gray-horned wyvern floated through the night. The nocturnal hunter called three times, and somewhere in the windy darkness, another gray-horn replied.

Captain Gairaht had posted sentries around his bivouac area, as well as around the convent itself, and those sentries hadn't been chosen for their lack of vigilance. They stood their posts alertly, yet they would have been more than human if they'd actually
expected
an attack. Especially an attack on their own encampment, rather than a direct strike at the empress. Their planning and training included the notion that the first move in an attack might be to neutralize their reserve force, but few of them had truly anticipated that level of sophistication or planning out of the sort of lunatics likely to launch a direct assault on Sharleyan or Cayleb.

Unfortunately, they weren't dealing with lunatics . . . only fanatics.

The sentries scanned the night around them attentively, yet they saw nothing. The men creeping steadily towards them through the darkness were effectively invisible, but they'd carefully located their own targets before darkness fell. They knew exactly where to find the sentries, and the guardsmen were backlit, however faintly, by their fellows' cooking fires.

For some minutes after the night-hunting wyverns had called to one another, nothing else happened. Then, abruptly, quite a lot of things happened almost simultaneously.

The sudden whip-crack of a firing rifle split the night.

The sentry who'd seen his attacker at the last moment not only managed to get off his shot but hit the other man squarely in the chest. Unfortunately, the accuracy of his single shot didn't do a thing to the other two Temple Loyalists detailed to neutralize his position.

“Post Three!
Post Thr—!
” he shouted, identifying his post, but before he could complete the announcement, the other two were upon him. His rifle blocked the slash of the first man's sword, and a quick, savage riposte with the rifle butt knocked the attacker back on his heels, winning him just enough time to thrust with his bayonet at the other man. The second Temple Loyalist tried to twist aside, but he couldn't completely avoid the bayonet, and he groaned in anguish as the bitter steel slammed between his ribs.

He went down, yet even as the guardsman started to recover his bayonet, the swordsman whose first attack he'd deflected drove two feet of steel through his own throat.

None of the other sentries even saw their attackers. Two of them were turning towards the blinding muzzle flash of the first guardsman's rifle when their own assailants flowed over them; the other six were already too busy dying to even register that single shot.

Shouts of alarm came from the bivouac area, and someone began barking harsh-voiced orders as armsmen scrambled out of their tents, dropped eating utensils, sprang to their feet, and snatched for weapons. The men of the Imperial Guard responded quickly, almost instantly, with the discipline of unceasing training and hard-won experience. Yet for all the quickness with which they reacted, they were too slow. They were still scrambling for their mental balance, fighting past the stunned shock of complete surprise, when twice their own number of armed, disciplined assailants swarmed into their encampment.

Only a handful of the off-duty guardsmen were armored, and all of them were scattered about the bivouac area, where they'd been engaged in the routine, homey tasks of tending to their equipment, finishing their suppers, and preparing to get some rest before it was their turn to take over the duty watch. The Temple Loyalists were concentrated, moving in purposeful teams, and they went through the camp like a hurricane.

Men cursed, grunted, and cried out as weapons struck, and those of the guardsmen who'd managed to grab their own weapons fought back desperately. Men screamed as steel bit deep, or as the rifle butts of guardsmen who hadn't had time to load crushed flesh and bone. The night was hideous with the sounds of men slaughtering one another, and then, as abruptly as it had begun, it was over.

The meadow was littered with bodies, most of them in the livery of the Empire of Charis. Thirty-five of Sharleyan's bodyguards had been brutally eliminated at the cost of four dead and six wounded Temple Loyalists.

“
Langhorne!
”

Sergeant Seahamper's face went white at the sudden explosion of carnage beyond the convent's wall. Despite his niggling concern over Captain Gairaht's tardiness, he'd no more expected an attack like this than anyone else. But Edwyrd Seahamper hadn't been his monarch's personal armsman for so many years for nothing.

“Rally!” he heard his own voice shouting.
“Rally!”

Other voices shouted back . . . but not as many of them as he should have heard.