She clutched her improvised weapons, her hands somehow remaining steady, but she wished she dared hide her head in her arms, to block out the horrible sounds from above.

She wanted to scream, or weep, or both. Her throat ached; her stomach was in knots. Why did I ever think those tales of fighting were exciting? Blessed Trine, what’s going on up there? Are we winning, or losing?

How could we be winning? No one up there is armed....

Wendar didn’t even twitch. All of his concentration was focused on the staircase—he stared up at the flickering light at the top of the stairs, going alternately white and red with rage. Kero wished she knew what he was listening for.

If this wasn’t hell, it was close enough.

• * *

It seemed like an eternity later that the sounds of fighting stopped—there was a moment of terrible silence, then the wailing began.

“That’s it,” Wendar said, and vaulted over the barricade. This time no one tried to stop him.

Kero couldn’t help herself; she followed at his heels. Her skirt caught on the leg of the table as she scrambled over it. She stumbled into the wall, and jerked it loose, tearing a rent as long as her arm in it.

Wendar was already out of sight and she scrambled on hands and knees up the turnip-slimed stairs, pulling herself erect just short of the top, and discovering with dull surprise that she was still holding the knife and pot lid.

She peered out cautiously around the edge of the door frame, and her heart stopped.

Blade and lid dropped from her benumbed hands and clattered down the stairs behind her as she stumbled forward into a scene beyond her worst nightmares.

Someone grabbed her wrist as she staggered past.

Wendar, she realized after a moment. The Seneschal pulled her roughly down beside him, where he knelt at the side of a man so battered and blood-covered she didn’t recognize him. Then he moaned and opened his eyes, and she knew—

Dent. Agnira bless!

She’d helped to bind wounds many times before, some of them as bad as any of these, when hunters ran afoul of wolf or boar—her hands knew what to do, and they did it, while her mind spun in little aimless circles until she was dizzy. The blood—there was just so much of it....

Dent died under her hands, but there were others, too many others; she moved from one to the next like a sleepwalker, binding their wounds, sometimes with strips from her ripped skirts, sometimes with whatever else came to hand. Some, like Dent, died as she tried to save them. The others, the lucky ones, often fainted or were already unconscious by the time she found them.

The less fortunate screamed their agony until their throats were so raw they couldn’t even whisper.

The hall was a blood-spattered shambles, furniture overturned, food trampled underfoot—and everywhere the women, some huddled in on themselves, were unable to speak, eyes wide and blank with shock; others shrieking, wailing, or sobbing silently beside their dead and wounded.