Lord of Order by Brett Riley (the reading list book TXT) 📕

So what now, Madam Lord?

Long shook her head. Uh-uh. Lords serve until they die or resign. You ain’t done either. I reckon even Stransky will follow you after what we did here today.

Troy considered the scene. Butchery on a scale the likes of which he had only read about. Pavement flowing with human fluid and tissue, the urine and feces of dead horses, corpses reeking in the sun. Weapons in every living hand, clasped in most dead ones. The stick-figure men, the scarecrow women, the emaciated children.

What exactly did we do?

We need to find Royster and finish this, he said. For New Orleans.

Long nodded. She patted him on his bad knee. He grimaced. Then she rose and went to find the leaders of the ragged force walking the bridge. The niceties—the mourning, the services, the prayers, the condolences—could wait.

Twenty minutes later, Troy sat a spotted brown on a cracked saddle. The mount seemed strong enough, but it did not know him, and he did not know it. It might have thrown its last rider as soon as the first shot was fired. But he had no time to hunt for a familiar horse. The levees and canals had been secured. The explosives caches were being disassembled under the direct supervision of Long’s experts. Survivors of Dwyer’s army were fleeing toward Royster’s position as if it were a sanctuary instead of a killing box.

No one could rest until the city was secure.

Troy’s lieutenants sat their own horses nearby—Long, Ford, Hobbes, Tetweiller. So did Lynn Stransky, her black hair like seaweed undulating in the tides. Jones’s right side was sticky with dried blood. Derosier and Baptiste rode beside him, streaked with soot.

If we’re all Troublers now, we sure look the part.

Hobbes trotted over and leaned in close, whispering. Reckon you could hang back. Look like you’re about to fall outta that saddle.

Troy shook his head. This ain’t the time, not with all these Troublers watchin. What we do now will set the tone for what happens afterward.

Stubborn as a mule, you and Santonio both. What else you want done before we head over yonder?

Send somebody to contact all the ordnance details. Remind em to watch their backs in case some Crusaders decide to stop runnin.

What about our own folks who think we’re doin wrong?

They can live here in peace and disagree with us, or they can go. Their choice. Don’t hurt nobody unless they try to hurt you.

Hobbes nodded and turned his horse, ambling toward a gaggle of men and women hauling and stacking the dead. As he gave the troops their orders and the ragged survivors trudged down the bridge, Troy gestured for everyone to follow him. Stransky grinned and winked.

50

Royster dreamed of lying in his own bed, the window open, a breeze kissing his bare skin. His warm feather mattress enveloped him. The pillow felt cool and soft. He smelled freshly baked bread, likely from that corner stand he loved, the baguettes crusty and crunchy, the insides so gossamer you could practically see through them. His stomach rumbled. What he would not give for a plate of bread and smoked fish and hash browns. But when he sat up, his shoulder was black with blood, which stained the white sheets deep crimson. Pain struck him like a sledgehammer.

He awoke on the wall, his shoulder screaming.

The sun shone in the cloudless sky like God’s own eye. Royster hacked up phlegm shot through with red tendrils. His throat felt parched. He opened his mouth to speak but only coughed. Boudreaux knelt and helped him drink from his canteen.

Many thanks, Royster said when he could find his voice. What is our situation?

Boudreaux laughed without humor. Not good.

He helped Royster stand. Around them, the sixty or seventy Crusaders still alive on the wall looked as frightened and timid as church mice. They were raising their hands in surrender, weapons at their feet. Below, a horde of Troublers watched them, weapons drawn. The leader, a blood-soaked giant with a ruined face, grinned through broken teeth.

We are lost.

From the city, the sounds of stamping feet, horses’ hooves, the clatter of metal against metal—not just the usual din, but growing closer, louder, by the moment. Royster stared, his shoulder forgotten.

Minutes later, gaggles of Crusaders came into view, some mounted, most running. They looked over their shoulders as if certain that all the devils that ever were had risen out of perdition. And, Royster knew, such was not far from the truth.

51

When Royster had sent him into the city for reinforcements, Boudreaux had seen bodies piled like raked leaves. When he had come across scattered outlanders or loyalist New Orleanians, he had asked them to follow him. Some did. Others ran—where to, he could not say. But as time passed and ever more desperate stragglers appeared, he had known. Royster’s lost the levees, he had thought as he led his company back to the wall.

Now another flock of shocked and ragged Crusaders boiled up the street, mimicking his earlier flight. They seemed not to mark the presence of the Troublers on the ground, who stepped aside and let them dash up the ladders and duck behind the wall’s ramparts without incident.

As they came, Royster stood panting and wincing next to Boudreaux. Jerold Babb quivered nearby, eyes closed, praying aloud for their deliverance. Melton and Glau squatted like frogs.

And now came the rebel throng, a dark shadow stretching back and back into the city. What might he have done if he had been standing with Troy and seen such a sight? He would have drawn his guns and shot until the barrels melted, until the enemy cut him down, until Troy himself announced the victory or the surrender. Sometimes, when their posses had pursued Troublers into the bayous, Boudreaux had envisioned such a possibility, the Crusaders trapped on some hillock, surrounded, outgunned. Instead, it had come to pass in his