Kushiel's Scion - Jacqueline Carey [312]
For luck.
Mostly, I was thirsty. When Matius passed me a waterskin, I drank deep, as much as I could hold. Lowering it, I remembered the first man I'd killed, the glimpse of the wooden shaft between his gaping jaws. I turned away and vomited up the water I'd drunk, splashing my boots.
"Steady, Imri." Eamonn clapped a hand on my back.
"Sorry." I wiped my mouth with my sleeve.
"I puked, too, my first time." He nodded at the waterskin. "Drink more, you'll need it. It'll stay down this time." I obeyed, and Eamonn raised his voice. "Listen, lads! You did a good job, a damn good job."
" You did, Captain Barbarus!" Baldessare called. "You were so deep into their line, I thought we'd have to send a scouting party to retrieve you!"
Eamonn grinned. "All, we all did! Imriel here killed… how many?"
My stomach lurched and a mixture of bile and water surged into the back of my throat. I swallowed and kept it down. "Only three, I think."
Someone gave a low whistle.
"Three!" Eamonn said cheerfully. "How do you like that, eh, lads? Now we've got ourselves a little game of hare and hounds coming, and I've a mind to make it a merry chase."
Was three a lot? I didn't know and I didn't have time to wonder. The sentries' horns were calling out a warning: Valpetra's men were advancing throughout the city. They hadn't reached us yet, but they were drawing near. On Eamonn's orders, we laid our traps and took up our new positions. The majority of the surviving members of Barbarus lurked in the baths themselves, and a handful took posts behind the columns in the portico.
I was a hare.
There were five of us; Eamonn and me, Matius and two others. We walked slowly to the corner of the street that marked the farthest end of our territory, conserving our energy. There was a jeweler's shop on one side of us, boarded tight against flooding and looting. On the other side was a wineshop and inn. The innkeeper was a conscript, but his family was there. They were assembled atop the roof, along with one of the sentries, recognizable by his crimson gambeson. Eamonn sketched a salute and the sentry nodded in brief acknowledgment.
Although the flood-swept street in the block before us appeared empty, we could hear fighting and shouting elsewhere in the city, accompanied by periodic crashes. Lucca's citizens were hurling objects—furniture, kettles, whatever they had—from the rooftops, raining down missiles upon the invaders. I squinted at the roof of the inn, nudging Eamonn and pointing. There were two empty wine-barrels perched at the edge, grim-faced women poised to roll them over.
"Have to lead 'em close to the eaves," he said. "I don't imagine they'll get much distance with those. Can you do it, Imri? You're probably the fastest."
"I'll try." The barrels made me think of Canis. I wondered if he was still alive.
Eamonn nodded. "Good."
He carried his kite-shaped shield lightly, seemingly untired. He was still bareheaded, rain sparkling on his coppery hair. I wished I'd thought to grab him a helmet from one of the dead, but there hadn't been time. It seemed there was never time in battle, except when there was too much time and nothing to be done.
Like now.
"I hate this." Matius shivered, shifting from foot to foot. "I hate the waiting."
"Be glad you're alive to do it." Eamonn's gaze was fixed on the far end of the street. I was glad he was our commander. I opened my mouth to tell him so, when a sentry's horn blew somewhere in the next block. Our sentry atop the inn echoed the call, loud and piercing. "Here they come, lads!"
Valpetra's men.
There must have been over a hundred of them, driving in a hard wedge. Too many, too many to have come