Inside the mess the orckin had no more than sat down before a kingsman said, "Look at all them pigfuckers."

  Orc sprang from the bench setting his stitches on fire. Before he could pick out which of the soldiers had uttered it the first concussions of cannonfire shivered the walls. This brought his kin to their feet and they shambled back outside. A footman rose with his dinner knife held low beside him and followed after. His comrades stopped eating and watched him go. Under the tables some of them reached for pistols and sabers.

  Tulula and the greenskin were the first through the door. Orc came after them and he heard the high pitched whistle of another shot tunneling through the air and he stepped back slightly when it slammed the parapet and shattered mortar and avulsed limbs which rained forth from the instantaneous cloud of dust and smoke.

  "We should've spiked the gun," he said.

  Tulula turned to him and he noticed her look past and her eyes widen. He saw the footman and he saw the blade pass into the back of a brownskin called Bok standing in the threshold. Bok reeled forward. Tulula drew her handax and swung it overhand and sank its head through the middle of the footman's face. He fell dead through the door with blood draining out his ears. When Bok faded to sit on the kickboard Orc could see the ivory handle of the knife sticking straight out between his shoulderblades.

  Inside the soldiers had already advanced upon the orckin and there raised a constant roar of gunfire. The greenskin was clawing at a fusilier and Tulula had shoved her way back inside and had drawn her second ax and she severed a kingsman's wrist with it so that the hand fell to the floor still grasping a pistol. Stark red blood spouted from the wound and the man held it up to his face in horror. Orc lifted Bok to stand and they stepped over the corpse of a pistoleer. Inside the mess an uninterrupted calamity of flashing smoke and discharged arms and guttural howls and somedozen kinsgmen were sprawled about in every manner, cut up and into pieces among the splintered tables and broken chairs with the orckin panting and bleeding yet still standing. Gouges had been shot out of the ceiling joists. A haze thickened as if boiled up out of their aggregate rage. Out of the murk a saber and a man attached took a pass at Orc but he ducked under the swing and like a coiled spring he flew upward into the man's chin with the point of his blade leading the way. With such power the blade passed through the man's jaw and out his mouth and through a nostril and it sunk into a pinewood crossbeam with the man hanging there from the hilt of the blade. Tulula stepped forward and placed the barrel of a pistol against the man's chest and fired. Orc freed the blade and let the man fall.

  What soldiers were left now legged toward the door but the way was littered with bodies and slick with blood. One by one they exited hollering and one by one their screams were cut short. As Orc got back to the door with a discharged pistol in hand he came face to face with Mym on her way in, her alpenstock bare and grisly.

  "Oy," she called, "The rest are comin!"

  "Ours or theirs?" said Orc.

  "Theirs."

  The orckin slid about the bloodslicked floor stopping to scalp a man or two on their way out. A west wind was galing up and black coalsmoke out of the vents buffeted through the battlements on the western wall where kingsmen now repelled upraised ladders cobbled together out of bone and sinew with risen riding their tops and from the great hall rose the unmistakable report of the carbines at work. Mym took off toward the gatehouse and Orc chased after.

  A cadre of mounted knights trotted out of the pine grove along the eastern wall and turned toward the gatehouse as if for a forthcoming sally. They each wore a steel cuirass fastened with leather straps and silver buckles and they wore closefaced helms with horsehair plumes and they carried lances in the stirrups twice the height of a man and pistols holstered upon their breastplates and their horses were well fed and brushed down and they highstepped across the yard at a canter, all of them formerly the armiger's bodyguard, now the shock cavalry of the baron. Mym slowed and looked back at Orc. The tribune of the knights had sawed up on his reins at the sight of the bloody orckin. An instant later the orcs and greenskin and dwarf were among them. Men discarded their lances or else died holding them. The horses shrieked and reared and a number of the knights were tossed from their mounts and were clubbed in the head or stabbed in the gap between helm and cuirass. Those still ahorse pulled back and drew their pistols. The orckin came at them again.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  The tribune rose from where he'd fallen and he brandished his pistol in his gauntlet. Orc kicked him in the face and stabbed him in the eyeslit as the pistol fired skyward. A sentry on the walls who had witnessed the mutiny was running to the gatehouse and Mym dropped to a knee and shot him through the head. In a sunbeam coming through the battlements the men lay about the yard and the valorous knights who had been cut off of their horses in their lustrous metal skins were cudgeled to death or else had their helms torn from their heads and were scalped alive.

  Some risen now surmounted the west wall and vaulted through the battlements and a panic spread among the salvagers and the pilferers about the yard. With their bundles in their arms they spun this way and that as if searching for some escape. Elsewhere soldiers mustered and climbed the stairs to the beset defenders. Figures poured out of the great hall and an uproar bawled after them and Orc looked thither and then toward the gatehouse and its closed portcullis.

  "Let's go," called Mym.

  "It's shut."

  "Aye and its us who’ve got te open it."

  Orc ran after the dwarf and the orckin followed. As they came to the archway rifleshot pocked the stone and geysered the ground. Bok was shot clean through his center back and he fell forward with the knife handle still sticking out of him. They came to the bottom of the gatehouse stair. Spearman bristled at its top. Bowman loosed down upon them from the roof and from the loops in the gatehouse towers. An arrow gashed down Tulula’s back and she screamed. The orckin fell back from the stair and flattened themselves against the gatehouse. At any moment the soldiers on the western wall would clear away the assaulting risen and turn around and see the stranded orckin and they would shoot them to pieces. Through the sulphuric smoke that hung across the grounds Orc saw the baron and his staff emerging from the great hall.

  “What doin Orc?” called Ogre.

  Orc turned and saw the pale monster skipping along the southern wall with Booky cradled in their arms and the bouncing headsack in her lap.

  “About time,” said Orc.

  “Sorry,” said Booky. “We got caught up dicing with the locals.” She cackled. “Looks like y’all was too.”

  “Ogre,” said Orc.

  Ogre placed Booky upon the ground and then reached up and grabbed a spearman off of the wall and casually smashed him against the stoneworks and pitched him away.

  “Ogre!”

  “Yah?”

  “Open the portcullis.”

  “Open wut?”

  “The gate. Open the gate.”

  “Okee dokee.”

  Ogre waddled around the leering orckin and into the archway.

  Mym nodded at the baron and the ten, twelve men flanking him each wielding a carbine. “Here comes the dipshit.”

  “Cover them.”

  Mym lowered herself to sit with her back against the gatehouse wall and monopodded the barrel of her carbine upon a bent knee. As she set to work Orc ducked over to Ogre. They’d slung their hands under the portcullis grate and their hamstrings and calves and back all bunched as they sought to lift it. Counterfire sprayed around them with several of the slugs passing into Ogre’s fatty hide.

  “Owww,” they groaned.

  “Keep on,” shouted Orc. He ran up beside them and gripped a crossbar and heaved with everything he had. The portcullis trembled and clanked in its track but it did not rise. Other of the orckin came up and together they broke their backs upon the gate. The greenskin tried levering it up with the haft of a discarded spear and this shattered under the load. Ogre was hit again and it must have gone into his lungs for the wound bubbled and wheezed with the rapidity of his breath as he heaved and hurled himself upon the portcullis.

  “Get that dwarf up here,” called Tulula.

  Orc couldn’t see Mym but he could hear her potted shots and the scattered replies from the great hall. “Mym!” he called.

  The gunfire kept on.

  “Mym!”

  The slug of a carbine clanged off of a crossbar and the ricochet severed the strap of his satchel. Spearmen were now cutting into the battered orckin and he saw Tulula fall. There was no way out. He turned to fight and he drew his blade and over its resonance he heard a familiar laughter.

  On the other side of the portcullis stood the longhorn with his gilded horntips and his flattoothed smile. Arms crossed and one hoof propped against the side of the archway as if he’d been waiting there all along. He uncrossed his arms and one hand gripped the grate like a prisoner in his cell and the other held the sunbleached skull of a man. “Again you wish to be free of your prison,” he said.

  “Open it,” said Orc.

  The longhorn clanged the crown of the skull against the grate. “Accompany me to the queen.”

  Orc heard Ogre cry out again. He heard the greenskin snarling and Booky had begun to jabber with fear. He deadeye looked at the longhorn and nodded.

  With one hand the longhorn hoisted the portcullis. As he stretched upward the cut Orc had slashed across his belly all those weeks ago grinned open. There was a clacking from the gatehouse as the barrier ran up over the stepped pawls. Ogre held it overhead and the longhorn wedged the skull into its track with a clap from his maul and then he gestured toward the tundra with both hands as if inviting the rest of them out for a walk. Booky and the greenskin and the orckin passed under. Tulula was there emptyhanded and bleeding everywhere. Mym too with the carbine smoking from the chamber. Finally Orc was through and as Ogre let go the pursuing spearmen dug in their heels and slipped and skidded under the archway as if the portcullis would slam down in an instant. Yet the skull held it in place, gaped open. The ragged band of orckin fled south and east and were lost among the billowing vents. The horde of the risen saw the opening and they swarmed toward it.