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

good, Royster said, wincing. For a while, no one spoke. Royster rested his good hand on Benn’s shoulder and prayed.

I hate this town, Clemens said to no one in particular.

All right, Royster wheezed, looking them over. I want the four of you in town. Take no troops. You will find plenty of Crusaders willing to kill or die for you along the way. Your mission is to reach the lake. Blow the charges.

Benn’s eyes widened. Do we allow our personnel to retreat, sir, and trail the fuse behind them, as we planned?

Royster groaned. Could no one think but him?

If such can be done, yes, he said. If they must choose between saving their own lives and doing God’s work, their path should be clear. Either way, I want these streets flooded within the hour. Send any laggards to meet the Lord ahead of us.

Babb looked as if he had seen his mother naked. You’d let the Lord’s own die with the heretics?

Benn cleared his throat. I understand your sentiment, Mister Royster, but—

Do not argue with me, Royster said. He leaned forward, his shoulder wound dribbling onto the ground and Benn’s boots. We find our whole purpose here at hazard. If the Lord requires our lives today, we shall give them, and gladly. Go.

Benn, Clemens, Ford, and Long ran to catch their horses, leaving Royster and Babb alone. Benn kept looking over his shoulder, eyes bugging. The gunfire and explosions and death cries continued unabated, contrapuntal music from hell. Babb cringed every time someone fired, which, given the frequency, made him look like the victim of a nervous disorder.

Royster must have fainted, for he found himself sitting, his head spinning, his vision unfocused. His ears seemed to have been stuffed with cotton. Whatever energy he had found when barking his orders had departed. Babb had wandered off. He sat in the dirt some yards away, ministering to a dying man with a crushed skull. But Gordon Boudreaux knelt beside Royster, and Aaron Listerall loomed over him, calm and expressionless.

Perhaps I should have made him a deputy. Even Mister Benn begins to doubt.

Boudreaux did not bother to bow. Aaron Listerall, sergeant at arms from the D.C. principality, the deputy said.

Royster tried to swallow, his throat a sheet of sandpaper. Gentlemen. The godless have halted our work. We must remedy the situation.

Listerall was six feet tall and a solid two hundred pounds. He wore long blond hair and a bushy, uncombed beard, a sweat-stained hat, a leather jerkin, knee-high boots, a sidearm, and a knife big enough to gut a bull. These aren’t ragtag guerillas, he said. They’re well armed and strategically situated. If we go after the segment, they’ll cut us to shreds.

Royster looked at Listerall until the man took off his hat and mopped his brow with the back of his hand, studying the gap, the bullets whining through it, the arrows, the fire. A Crusader plummeted, screaming, from the wall, three arrows buried in her chest. She landed on her back, dust pluming about her and blood erupting from her mouth and burst skull.

If we can’t keep them out, Royster said, they’ll kill us anyway.

Listerall nodded. I’ll ready the men.

He moved away, sending runners to reposition the best shooters on the wall. He led the rest of the nearby Crusaders, between forty and fifty in all, to the gap. Listerall looked back at Royster one last time and raised his arm. When he let it fall, his guards boiled out of the gap, screaming at the tops of their lungs and leaping over their fellows who had already fallen dead or dying from the Troublers’ initial volley.

34

Flames licked the wall’s summit in half a dozen places. Crusaders smothered the fire with dirt hauled up in hats, with their drinking water. One man trying to use his own urine took an arrow in the throat. Listerall’s group watched all this with their backs against the last segment. On the other side, he knew, a cluster of Troublers waited for them to make their move. The rest of the Conspirators had taken cover in the tree line, behind lone bushes and rocks and the piles of dirt and debris thrown up during construction, behind overturned Crusade wagons, behind their own horses. The Crusaders on the wall fired six-guns and revolvers and shotguns and hunting rifles and arrows and sniper rifles. Some used slingshots. Some threw grenades. Others pitched glass bottles full of oil with a flaming rag stuffed in the neck. Foliage and vehicles and people burned. Horses screamed. Blood spotted the ground.

Listerall directed most of his people to take up the abandoned ropes and shattered chains. As they made ready, he gathered his remaining seven men and five women.

Circle around this thing and clean out the Troublers on the other side, he said.

If we do, said a man carrying a shotgun and a machete, the heretics in the trees will cut us to pieces.

Yes, said a woman with brown eyes and a pistol. She stood less than five feet tall and might have weighed ninety pounds. We’re all going to die. Why did we come out here?

Others in the group nodded and muttered among themselves. They kept glancing back at the wall, likely calculating their odds if they ran.

Listerall had his six-gun in hand. Now he cocked it and jammed its barrel against the woman’s forehead. She gasped and moved backward. He moved with her. We’re out here because Mister Royster ordered it, he said, looking at her but talking to them all. And if you don’t get moving right now, I’ll kill you myself.

She shook with fear, but she held his gaze. I didn’t know we were so expendable.

He laughed. Of course we are. Or they wouldn’t have sent us. Now choose.

Shotgun-and-Machete stepped forward, staring at Listerall with distaste. We’ll move. Sir.

The others muttered and glared, but they filed to one end of the segment, waiting. When Listerall nodded, they charged around the corner,