He turned, smiling, to walk towards the last group, towards her.

She lurched to her feet. She sighted down the pistol. She squeezed the trigger. Gunpowder exploded, a handspan from her face. She dropped behind the shelter of the half‑wall.

Chaos. The startled attackers promptly wasted their shots and time. Lead balls thunked where Clement’s gunflash had been. Doors crashed open. Crouching soldiers ran past.

The soldiers in the tack room raced out to block the exit.

“To me!” cried a hoarse, shocked voice in the courtyard.

“Fire at will,” said Clement quietly.

The signal‑man began to pipe upon his whistle.

The positioned soldiers opened fire.

Clement could see a little now: the glow of spirit lamps being lit, the movement of the reloaders’ quick hands, the rhythmic rising and ducking of the soldiers.

She put her eye again to the peephole. Explosive flares along the half‑wall wildly lit a chaotic scene. Struggling, jerking shadows. Bodies. Shouts of anger. Shouts of terror. Screams of pain. Gunfire’s echoing racket.

She could see that the invaders were no longer returning fire, which meant they had used all their shots. Not enough discipline,she thought. Too late to learn it now.

The struggle now focused on the exit passage.

Even if the invaders broke through the bottleneck of soldiers, they would find the gate chained closed again.

“Hold fire,” said Clement.

The signal‑man changed his tune. The guns gradually fell silent.

“Sabers only. Attack,” said Clement.

And then she ran, with him cheerfully piping the signals behind her. She ran for the entry to the slaughterhouse stink of the courtyard, as the reloaders unshielded their lamps and put them atop the half wall, so the gunflash‑blinded pistoliers could see to fight.

She ran, and with her saber’s hilt dealt a ringing blow to the helm of a soldier who was about to strike open the neck of a fallen man. “Mine!” she screamed into the soldier’s startled face. “Go forward!”

She had to trust her rivets to protect herself, and her prisoner, from accidental attack: polished, light‑reflecting brass that studded the front and back of her leather armor, and marked her as a fellow soldier even in the hazy light, the rising dust, the spray of blood. The wounded man thrashed and shouted, struggling to rise. His beard was fouled with straw. His eyes … she could not quite endure them. The purity of his rage.

Her shot had blown out the back of his thigh. Inside the ugly wound, she saw broken bone. She wrestled him down, knelt on his back to hold him. Shouted hoarsely for a medic.

The signal‑man piped on. No one responded to her shout, a single hoarse cry in a roar of shouts. People ran past her, tripping on her prisoner’s sprawled limbs. “Soldier!” she shouted at each one, futilely. “Get the medic!”

Impossible to know how the battle was going, but easy to predict the outcome. A tangle of struggling, shouting shadows in the arched Passageway. A dozen or more bodies, dead and dying, scattered. A few soldiers now, somewhat dazed in the aftermath, dispatching anyone who still moved.

“Medic!” Clement shouted.

Finally, a man rushed up to her, with a pale boy bearing a lantern. “Lieutenant‑General? What is your hurt?”

“This prisoner. He must live.”

The medic took one look. “His leg must come off, then.” The boy was tottering. The medic snatched the lantern from him.

“Give me the light.” The prisoner’s thrashing was losing its strength, so Clement could hold the lantern reasonably steady while the medic put hands into the wound, and pinched shut a spurting artery.

“It may be too late,” he commented.

The boy crumpled.

Someone was shouting for her.

“Here!” she answered. It took a few more shouts before Captain Herme found her. Meanwhile, she noticed the soldiers coming out of the arched passageway, noticed the rising silence.

“It’s over,” Herme said, unnecessarily.

“Get that kid out of the way, will you?”

A soldier picked up the boy and took him away. Others took control of the injured prisoner, so Clement could stand up. Something hurt. Her ribs. Willis must have gotten in a good punch. She stood by the medic. “Don’t amputate yet. But get his bleeding stopped.”

“There’s wounded soldiers,” said the sergeant.

“Unless the wounds are life threatening, they’ll have to wait.”

In the dining hall, the wounded gathered, limp or giddy, attended by their comrades. The medic put his cauterizing irons on the fire. The lantern‑boy vomited helplessly in the corner. Clement checked the waiting soldiers, and found no life‑threatening wounds. The rebels guns had used up their shots before they had targets to shoot at; their daggers had rarely penetrated armor. Death‑and‑Life had been cornered, helpless, so overwhelmed they’d hardly been able to fight back.

She went out again to the courtyard. Soldiers worked in pairs to carry the bodies away.

As she walked down the arched passageway to the gate, she lifted her lantern. Blood smeared the wall and puddled the cobblestones. She stepped carefully. The smell made her stomach churn.

She went through the gate, which now hung ajar. The chain with which the soldiers had secured it dangled. The original padlock, its hasp filed open, lay tossed upon the stones. Outside, the snow was churned up, pink with blood. She followed the trail toward the sound of soldier’s cursing.

“By gods, I thought I was skewered.”

“Isn’t that one dead yet?”

“Hell, this is dirty work!”

They fell silent at the sight of her. In solitary silence she viewed the bodies piled in the snow. A boy. A woman older than she. A man with his guts trailing. Not much blood now, just a discarded pile of flaccid gray flesh. The soldiers’ pockets bulged with pilferage.

She turned away. Behind her, she heard the voices start again.

“It’s fucking cold!”

“Haven’t we got them all yet?”

“What did the lieutenant‑general want?”

“Did you hear she’s making the medic treat the prisoner first?”

She could hardly lift her feet, she was so tired. The stars shimmered coldly overhead. Her breath puffed out, obscuring her vision.

She was walking away from the garrison.

She could not stop herself.

Her boots caught in deep snow. She fell. She lay.

Her lantern had gone out.

Under guard, the prisoner lay raving, tied spread‑eagle to a table. His leg, roughly splinted, smelled like charred meat. His cut‑open clothing trailed from him in bloody, unraveling rags.

Clement said to the guards, “Go eat something.” She pulled up a chair, and sat, and crossed her legs. She had forced herself to swallow a sweetened corncake, but her stomach still churned. “Willis,” she said quietly in Shaftalese, “Stop your ranting. There’s no audience anymore–just you and me.”

He fell silent–with surprise?–and gave her a scouring, baleful glance. “When the G’deon comes,” he said, “she will take out your heart. She will dissolve your flesh. You will beg her for death. You will beg!”

Clement said, “Yes, I’m rather afraid of that. When can we expect the G’deon to come?”

“When we prove our devotion to her! When we prove that we are willing to serve her unto death!”

“What will it take to prove this?”

He said through pale lips, “The abandonment of mercy.”

Though Clement had managed to get herself back indoors, she remained weak and stunned by the horror of the massacre. Yes. The abandonment of mercy.

What mercy had the Sainnites ever granted?

She shut her eyes. She opened them to find he was looking at her. “Are my people all dead?” he asked.

“Yes, they are.”

Now, his turn to shut his eyes. A furrowed face, much hardened and battered by the bitter weather of this godsforsaken place. His lips moved. Perhaps he said the names of the dead.