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

least a half-dozen Daulmen already inside the building, a stream of swarthy artillerymen could be seen fleeing out the back and away with all haste, red cloth trousers flashing.
    “ They’re going to fire the powder kegs,” someone said, and the Leftenant sighed.
    “ This is going to be very loud.”
    “ Does anyone feel up to carrying me down into the hole?” Zeb asked.
    Across the distance came the dull bang of a handgun and the men all flinched, but it was followed only by shouting and the clash of arms, echoing from the hollowed-out cavern of the manor. There was a clear, pained scream.
    “ The redlegs have all cleared out,” someone said. “Who is it at that?”
    “ Maybe the Daulies are fighting over who gets to light the fuse.”
    Men fingered their axes and crossbows, but no one felt like rushing toward a building that might ignite explosively at any instant. It seemed to have gone quiet over there anyway. A minute passed that seemed much longer.
    “ Who’s this, then?” someone said.
    The men watched a figure exit the manor and approach but from his position Zeb could not see who came, and he was becoming too lightheaded to ask. The voices of his companions were making little sense to him.
    “ Is that a Destroyer?”
    “ No, they wear black plate with spikes.”
    “ That is part of a helmet, right? Not your man’s face?”
    “ What’s with the birds?”
    “ Good gods, is that a woman behind him?”
    “ That’s a Farthest Westerner, else I’m an elf.”
    The Leftenant stepped to the front of the band, the others moving aside for him. Zeb saw the subject of speculation arrive, and was himself perplexed.
    In addition to too many wounds and more than enough battle, Zeb had seen a great deal of armor over his military career. Leather cuirbolli, plate and chain, banded and splint. Scale and studded. Spiked and hobnailed and bronzed. But he had never seen anything quite like that adorning the man who stepped up to face the Leftenant.
    It was beautiful, in its way, and altogether more complicated than seemed strictly necessary. It was composed of angular pieces, light blue to a dark gray and laced together with reddish cord, oversized at the joints to turn aside any thrusting or cutting blade. It covered the fellow almost from head to toe. Decorating the chest, arms, and legs were single rows of stylized images of white birds, little herons or cranes with wings that seemed to flutter as the man strode forward. At his waist were two sheathed swords, black pommels with matching diamond-pattern designs, one sword much longer than the other. On his head was a great helm with long neck guards extending around a banded steel dome, framing a leather half-mask of grinning lips and a pronounced, hooked nose, above which the man’s own dark eyes were set deeply beneath his brow, and at a slight tilt. They flashed about at the Axmen before settling on the Leftenant in their fore. The stranger stopped and undid the cords at one side of his half-mask, dropping it to hang free from his helmet and revealing a full face of olive complexion and indeterminate age, with a hard line of mouth framed by a long, wispy black mustache. He spoke with a thick accent.
    “ Zay-bu-ron Baj-an-if.”
    Zeb would have winced had he not been doing so already. A few of his fellows glanced at him, but at least none of them actually turned around and pointed.
    “ Pardon me?” the Leftenant asked.
    Everyone’s attention was on the swordsman, though the fellow was not alone. Two more people had followed him from the manor and now reached the cluster of men, one a frowning Ayzant in the silver armor of a Kingsman and the spiked helmet of a sergeant, carrying a large mace. The other now drew many stares from the Axmen who had been staring only at each other for weeks.
    She was a woman and pretty, though she could have been far more so. She was as Far Western as the swordsman with fine narrow features and eyes at a graceful tilt under thin,