The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle) by M. Edward McNally, mimulux Page A

in an expanding pool of his own blood did not look like a threat. The shooter passed by Zeb to level his weapon at someone else down in the hole.
    Before the powder in the pan hissed Zeb drew up one leg and kicked the fellow in the knee, or at least pushed against it with the bottom of his foot. It was enough and the man staggered as his gun discharged in a welter of white smoke, the ball passing harmlessly sideways. The fellow growled, baring teeth starkly white against the mud coating his face for concealment in the night. He dropped the gun and pulled a long dirk from his belt. Zeb had the man’s full attention now, and he uttered the first and likely last Daulic phrase that came to mind.
    “ Biera ephso vus tatte. Ven otre .”
    Beer, if you have it. Wine otherwise.
    The fellow raised an eyebrow, but also his blade. Zeb closed his eyes and heard a piercing impact, though he felt nothing. He opened one eye and saw the Daulman stumbling backwards with a crossbow bolt buried in his forehead. The man toppled off the barricade and down into the ravine.
    The Axes were there, boiling angrily out of the hole to fall on the Dauls with shouts and hacks. Handguns were fired but there was no time to reload, and dirks fared poorly against the double-headed battleaxes favored by Rierden’s men. There was scuffle and clash during which Zeb laid prostrate and bled, managing to do no more then slowly move his left arm across his chest to grip his right hard above the ruined elbow. Even the slight motion of his arm against the ground sent a new wave of blaring pain over him, swimming the sky and making air hiss out between his teeth like a kettle.
    After moments that seemed much longer, Zeb’s leftenant appeared over him. He shouted for a tourniquet, then knelt and clamped both hands around Zeb’s arm.
    “ It could be worse,” the Leftenant said. Zeb looked at him with the one eye he still had open.
    “ How do you figure, sir?”
    “ Well…they could have shot me .”
    An Axman, Mollka by name, appeared with a torn strip of tent cloth and set about tying it tight around Zeb’s upper arm just under the shoulder. Despite the Leftenant holding the arm as steady as he could, the grinding of pulverized bone elicited a choking groan and Zeb’s heels scraped against the ground.
    “ Molly,” Zeb said. “After they cut my arm off, I am going to beat you with it. Soundly, sir.”
    Mollka grinned as he worked. “I doubt it not, laddy.”
    “ Five!” another Axman shouted from nearby. “Not but five of them! What by the Ennead was the point of that?”
    “ Only five stayed and fought,” the Leftenant said. “Another half-dozen ran off toward the manor.” He exchanged a nod with Mollka, gently released Zeb’s arm and patted his left shoulder. The Leftenant stood up and along with the men looked in the direction of the manor house. Zeb found that by turning his head sideways and looking along the ground between their legs he could just see the place himself.
    The once grand stone house of some Larbonnese noble had suffered under the siege almost as much as had the surrounding yard. Glass and shutters were gone but the windows had been covered with canvas to obscure what was being done under the gabled roof from the view of the Daulic works across the ravine. That had been obvious anyway, from the noise. Over the last week since the arrival of an Ayzant artillery battalion on the ridge top, the brawny men had been tearing out interior walls and floors, tossing mortar and refuse out to turn the whole building into a hollow shell. Then three days ago, after dark and with no torchlight, straining mule teams had arrived bearing on two great wagons two long, dark shapes under sailcloth, which were in turn muscled within the house through holes bashed in the back wall. Night before last, the sweating artillerymen had borne heavy chests up the ridge and inside, and finally last night they had come rolling barrel after barrel.
    Now with at