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

the sharp reports of a large-caliber pistol. That’s gotta be Boudreaux, some unseen Troubler cried. Fall back.

Troy smiled. Willa McClure, the kid he had left on the other side of Broadway Avenue, had done her job, keeping the Troublers in the quad. He fired toward the voice. Someone grunted and fell. The flat crack of a rifle to his left. A Troubler hacked and coughed and started to sputter, like someone gargling heavy syrup.

Get the hell away from the street, said a woman Troy could not see. Hobbes must be over yonder.

They’ve got us on three sides, a man responded. Should we break into one of these goddam buildins or what? Where do we go?

Thataway, said the woman. Troy’s comin, and I don’t plan on waitin here until he shoves his shotgun up my ass.

Troy raised the shotgun and fired into the smoke, both barrels, but if he hit anyone, they kept quiet. He pressed forward as he reloaded, squinting against the smoke and gunpowder, stumbling over holes gouged in the grounds until he reached the back wall of Bobet Hall. Then he turned right and headed toward Broadway.

I hope Willa don’t shoot me. Still, better to take my chances there than on Calhoun. Ernie’s got worse eyesight and a bigger gun.

At the building’s corner, a middle-aged Troubler crouched, trembling, a shotgun clutched in his dirty hands. He wore sweat- and mud-stained breeches and a ragged roughspun shirt. His eyes were closed, his lips moving. Troy crept up and shot him in the back of the head with the .357. The man slumped over, hindquarters in the air, blood and brains caking the brick. Troy stepped over the body and trotted toward St. Charles, leaving the Troubler’s shotgun behind. He had no free hand to carry it.

Eight Troublers huddled up ahead. They spotted him and ran. Half of them broke south beyond Marquette Hall, heading for the horseshoe driveway and into the killing box. Boudreaux had hidden in the old Holy Name of Jesus Church, while Hobbes and his .30-06 lay somewhere in Thomas Hall. As soon as the Troublers entered the horseshoe, both deputies opened up, Boudreaux’s shotgun blasting low peals of thunder, Hobbes’s big rifle cracking. They fired three or four times each. All four Troublers skittered on the pavement, dead or dying.

Troy pursued the other four, one of them a woman. They had nearly reached St. Charles when someone in the brush across the street shot three times, and the male Troublers fell onto their faces. The woman ran ten more feet before she realized what had happened and stopped, her hands in the air.

Santonio Ford stepped out of the tree line, his long dreadlocks flowing behind him, his rifle pointed at the woman’s head. Troy raised a hand. Ford nodded.

As Troy approached, the Troubler spat at Ford. You’re a goddam ass licker, she said. Hope you enjoy them chains around your neck.

Ford watched her, impassive.

Troy kicked her in the back of her right knee. She grunted and fell, but she did not cry out. Her black hair hung in grungy strips, streaks of gray at her temples. Her green eyes blazed like twin emeralds in her ruddy face. Her lower lip was split open and bleeding, and when she smiled, her teeth shone bright red. She looked no more than five and a half feet, barely 120 pounds. And yet this woman had caused more trouble in the New Orleans principality than any other single person in the history of the Bright Crusade.

She spat blood onto Troy’s boot and sneered. And look here. If it ain’t the ass hisself.

Troy struck her in the head with his shotgun’s stock. She fell over, unconscious, her left eyebrow split open, blood pooling beneath her.

Pleased to meet you, he said. Then he looked at Ford. Good shootin.

Ford began reloading his rifle with ammunition from the poke he carried over his shoulder. Thanks. Doubt I could have got all eight. You herded them other four thataway like cattle.

Cattle are smarter than this bunch.

Boudreaux stepped out of the church just as Willa McClure appeared, the Rottweiler that followed her everywhere at her heel. Her short blond hair looked as if she had cut it herself with a dull knife. Always clad in a hodgepodge wardrobe of whatever she could find, most often deerskin trousers and busted boots and roughspun or animal-skin shirts originally cut for some boy who apprenticed in a physical trade, usually as dirty as a swamp dweller and as ready to punch you in the privates as shake your hand, McClure now looked impassive, even bored.

Across the horseshoe driveway, Hobbes ambled toward them, rifle resting on his shoulder. Somewhere behind Hobbes, Ernie Tetweiller was almost certainly climbing down from whatever rooftop he had chosen. Hopefully, the old man would not fall and break his hip, or worse.

McClure walked up and stood over the woman. This her?

I’m pretty sure, yeah, said Troy.

She’s got a nice ass, if you like em flat. Which I don’t.

Willa.

Sorry, McClure said. She did not sound sincere.

Your information was good.

Course it was.

McClure always came through. She might have been only twelve, give or take a year, but she knew how to get and use information better than most adults. Troy clapped the kid on the shoulder as Hobbes joined them. In the distance, Tetweiller limped their way, favoring his right leg, as always.

Gordon Boudreaux, the youngest deputy, reached the group as Hobbes spat on the woman’s head. Rest of em are dead, he said. Gotta say she don’t look like much. Sure it’s her?

Troy wiped sweat from his brow. It’s Stransky, all right. I ain’t never seen her before, but I heard her voice once, that time they tried to set fire to the Quarter. Still, don’t you boys go thinkin the Troublers are done. Born fighters don’t never stop.

He tried to sound firm and assured, but his traitor heart sang like the heavenly choirs themselves. They had smashed a major pocket of the resistance, and