There near me is Thrushchurl scrambling like a stick insect; he disappears with a few powerful strides. He looks unreal. There’s an apron of mottled white and black stone flakes emerging from some bracken near me; that means a trail or dry streambed begins there—I’m right. I push through the brush and climb away from the noise. As though a voice called to me from it I glance up and see a shallow depression lined with stones: a good hiding place. I hide there. I keep my back to the rock and huddle there, feeling chill and watery inside. But the noise from below forces me to turn on my knees and look down. The grenadiers rush out from cover, heading for the slope and suddenly the blackbirds drop down on them in two flying ranks catching them in a dip in the ground. The grenadiers draw their pistols and fire. Wacagan swirl around the rim of the dip mowing them down, and Saskia streaks out from the walls like a comet—

She’s not fast enough—the grenadiers are blasted to bits in the bottom of the dip. Saskia flashes in among the ranks of Wacagan now and even from here and through the shooting I hear her voice—she catches three of them from behind firing her pistol as she comes and weaves in among them hacking wildly, using her sword like a meat cleaver. Some fire at her but the others are startled back—she drives her knee into the chest of one who levels his rifle at her pinning him instantly to the ground she takes her sword in both hands and stabs his face again and again, leaves his body gun drawn again firing at the others who curve around her, charging them—one raises an arm in fear and she hacks it off, another she seizes by the uniform and chops at randomly across the chest and shoulder.

A Yeseg fires at her and she spins to the side—she is getting up again, the Yeseg who shot fell backwards onto her backside when the gun went off and is getting to her feet again. Saskia, without straightening up entirely, veers on her lightened feet toward the Yeseg woman Saskia strikes her in the chest with the hilt sending her sprawling, flailing out her arms for her rifle. Another soldier fires at Saskia and she turns and shoots him—I see her pistol jump again and again in her hand—the soldier falls like a sack of meal—Saskia turns to the woman on the ground who has her rifle and flips onto her back to fire it—Saskia kicks her in the face so hard her head snaps back the crown striking the ground. Saskia kicks her in the abdomen twice more and Saskia slashes her throat.

One of the grenadiers pulls himself out from beneath the bodies of his comrades and runs back—coming this way.