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

watched them go for a moment. On the streets, the chained Troublers looked toward the sounds of battle, their faces aglow for the first time in who knew how many months. Hope, or fear?

We could have just shot em right here, Long said. Like fish in a barrel.

No, Ford said. In close quarters, it could go either way.

One of us needs to hunt down whoever’s leadin the fight in the city, in case Gabe and Ernie and Jack are dead. Our people won’t follow Stransky.

I know.

You’re the best hunter I ever knew. You take Benn and Clemens.

Ford saluted as if he had sworn fealty to her and not Gabriel Troy. I wonder if he knows how much that tastes like ashes in my mouth. Or that I’m makin this up as I go. Is that what Gabe’s done all these years?

You be careful, Ford said. Madame Lord. Before she could reply, he galloped off.

Chances are good I’ll never see him again.

She spurred her horse, riding toward the gunfire and the billowing smoke and the misery. They rode past hundreds and thousands of chained and ragged unfortunates—children and grown-ups, filthy and emaciated, the stink of them like something that would draw buzzards, the dead’s legs still shackled to the living’s, fleshy anchors that would pull you to the bottom of the floodwaters as sure as stone. Clusters of Crusaders shifted from foot to foot like puppets whose masters had left them dancing in the wind.

Soon Long turned a corner and waded into hell. Carnage in the streets and yards, on the stoops of buildings, New Orleanians and freed prisoners stabbing Crusaders with knives and improvised spears, shooting them with bows and arrows, blowing them to pieces with grenades and captured firearms, strangling them with the broken chains of bondage. The guards returned fire. Men and women alike with cut throats, torsos split from groin to sternum. Carrion birds picking at spilled entrails. Children crushing skulls with the butts of liberated pistols and hamstringing guards from underneath the very bellies of Crusader horses.

Long pulled her pistols. Some of the guards saw her coming and turned, raising their hands in a cheer. Their fists were still in the air when she shot them, trampled their bodies under her horse’s hooves while the chained Troublers and free natives whooped and fell back to slaughtering like fiends loosed from the pit. Long reloaded and let her horse carry her deeper into the battle. Here and there she stopped to send runners throughout the city, there to urge the locals to rise and unchain the Troublers, to slaughter the outlanders, to save New Orleans.

38

Ford urged Rachel onward. He took side streets and alleys and yards, leaped over hedges and the heads of Troublers who ducked and covered their skulls with their arms. The Crusaders he passed looked frightened half to death. Most of them had probably never fired a shot in anger and had gotten used to dealing with starving dociles in chains. Ford could have shot half of them, but the deputy envoys took priority. And so he rode and dodged and hurdled, shouting and waving people out of his way. Finally, he rounded a corner and found Benn and Clemens only blocks from the lake.

He drew his sidearm and fired into the air, shouting their names.

Benn looked back and said something to Clemens. They reined up and half turned their horses toward him. The animals’ snouts bumped each other as they stamped the road.

Ford grinned. He spurred his horse. They picked up speed.

Realization dawned on Benn’s face. The deputy envoy went for his pistol.

Ford shot him in the stomach.

Benn howled and fell off his horse, his gun clattering to the ground.

Clemens’s horse reared, front hooves pawing the air. Rachel plowed into its exposed belly. The outlander’s mount shrieked, a high-pitched sound that was almost human, and fell backward. Clemens skittered fifteen feet across the pavement. Rachel trampled the downed horse. It screamed again, Rachel’s legs tangling in its own. Ford sawed on the reins, and somehow Rachel stayed upright. He sighted in on Clemens, who was trying to regain his feet, his clothes ripped to tatters and hanging off him like a shroud.

Then a gunshot, and fire ripped across Ford’s ribs. He dropped his pistol and fell. As he landed, he rolled for his gun and grabbed it, his ribs awash in hellfire.

Clemens stood, empty-handed, legs trembling, his face blank and dazed and half covered in road rash. Still, when Benn’s horse fled past him, Clemens grabbed its saddle horn and swung himself onto its back.

Ford sat up on the road and aimed, but a shot careened off the pavement near his feet. Benn was sighting in on him with one hand and holding his leaking gut with the other. Ford fired three shots. Two struck Benn in the upper chest, knocking him backward. The third obliterated his throat, blood-spray fanning over the road like mist from a cataract. Benn dropped his weapon and fell onto his back. His feet twitched, and he clawed at his neck, blood geysering and coating the blacktop.

Ford struggled to stand as Clemens rode toward the lake, swaying in the saddle. Thank God Rachel’s better trained for battle than them Washington horses. She tamped her feet nearby, unspooked. He stumbled over to her, yanked his rifle out of the scabbard, and knelt in the street, sighting in. He fired. Clemens’s horse collapsed on its forelegs and somersaulted twice. The deputy envoy went flying again, flopping across the pavement. Even from the distance, Ford heard something snap like a thick branch. Clemens screamed. The horse crawfished on the road and tried to rise, legs buckling as if it were newly foaled.

Wound’s throwin me off. I aimed for the man.

Ford mounted up and shoved the rifle into its scabbard. He reloaded his pistol and snapped the reins. Rachel broke into a run as his ribs protested. His side was slicked with blood.

Clemens managed to stand