Naked Empire

Richard checked that the men with the heavy gates were coming; then he ran around the sleeping house to the second building. Jennsen, following close behind, handed him an arrow, the flames around its head wrapped in oil-soaked cloth making a whooshing sound as she ran.

One of his men pulled the torch from the stand outside the building where the guard Richard killed had been patrolling. Richard leaned in the doorway only to see a big man charging at him out of the dark interior.

Richard pressed his back against the doorjamb and kicked the man squarely in the chest, driving him back.

Richard drew the bowstring back and shot the flaming arrow off into the interior. As it lit the interior in its flight through the building, he could see that some of the men had been awakened and were getting up.

Turning to take the second flaming arrow from Jennsen, he saw smoke pouring up from the first building. As soon as he drew string to cheek and loosed the second arrow, he leaned away and men heaved the torches in.

One torch fell back out of the doorway. It had bounced off the chest of a man rushing for the doorway to see what was happening. The pitch from the torch caught his greasy beard afire. He let out a bloodcurdling scream.

Richard kicked him back inside. In an instant, men by the dozens were racing for the door, not only to escape the burning building, but to meet the attack. Richard saw the flash of weapons being drawn.

He sprang back from the doorway as the men carrying the heavy section of gate rushed in. They turned the gate sideways and rammed it in under the eaves, but before they could bring the bottom down to wedge it against the ground, the weight of bellowing men inside crashed into the section of gate and drove it back. The men carrying it fell back, the weight knocking them from their feet, the gate landing atop them.

Suddenly, men were pouring from the doorway. Richard's men were ready and fell on them, driving the wooden weapons into their soft underbellies and snapping the handles off as man after man spilled out of the doorway.

Standing to the side of the door, others used their maces to bash in the skulls of soldiers who emerged. When one soldier came out with his sword raised, the man to the side clubbed his arm as another rushed in and drove a wooden stake in up under his ribs. The more men who fell at the doorway, the more those trying to get out were slowed and could be dispatched.

The soldiers were so stunned to see these people fighting that in some cases they fought back only ineffectually. As a soldier leaped over the bodies in the doorway and lifted a sword, a man jumped on his back and seized his arm while another stabbed him. Another, crying orders, charged Jennsen, only to have the bolt of a crossbow fired into his face. A few soldiers escaped the burning building and managed to slip past Richard's men only to meet Cara's Agiel. Their screams, worse than the cries of men on fire, briefly brought the gaze of every man, from both sides of the battle.

Fallen knives and swords were scooped up by the men of the town and turned on the men from the Imperial Order. Richard fired an arrow into the center of the chest of a man emerging from the smoke that rolled out of the doorway. As he was falling, a second arrow felled the man behind him. As more men rushed out, they fell over those piled around the doorway and were hacked to death with commandeered axes or stabbed with confiscated swords.

Since they could emerge only one at a time, the soldiers couldn't mount a coordinated attack, but those waiting could.

As Richard's men fought back those struggling to get out of the doorway of the burning building, other men rushed to help lift the gate so those under it could get up and get control of it. Once the gate was lifted, the men swung it around and, with a cry of joint effort, ran with it toward the building. They drove the top up under the eaves, first, but when they brought the bottom edge down, the bodies piled in the doorway prevented them from getting the bottom down so they could wedge it in place.

Richard called out orders. Some of his men rushed in and seized an arm or a leg of a dead man and dragged the body aside so the others could finally bring the bottom of the gate down against the building to close off the opening.

One man from inside squeezed through just before they had the gate in place. The weight of the door pinned him against the building. Owen leaned in and with a sword he'd picked up decisively stabbed the man through the throat.