“One,” squeaked Gorst.

Vick gave the door a last parting shove then scrambled back, clawing her bloody mace up from the floor.

“Two.”

The bracket dropped free of the frame and bounced away, the pieces of broken spear tumbling, Gorst’s boots sliding as he was forced back.

“Three!”

And he jumped clear, sweeping out his long steel. Between the half-light and the panic, Vick wasn’t sure how many burst through into the chain room. Too many. They were shouting. She’d no idea what, over her own quick breath. Just swearing, maybe. Just mindless shrieking, maybe. She might’ve been shrieking herself.

One came tottering bent over, almost falling from the pressure behind. Gorst’s long steel hacked into the back of his head in a spray of blood. Another got the short steel through his guts and floundered about, screeching, tangled up with his own halberd. Another came with a shield up, barrelled into Gorst and managed to shove him away from the door.

Which is how one could come straight at Vick, screaming at the top of his voice. She caught a glimpse of him as he pounded through a shaft of light, lips curled back, a smear of Burner’s red paint across his cheek.

Then her mace crunched into his mouth, bits of tooth flying. His head snapped up, his roar turned to a squawk. She tried to swing again but he blundered into her, so the mace missed his head and thumped weakly against his back. She stumbled, caught her heel on a fallen body and went over on her arse. With a kind of wounded bellow, the Burner she’d hit in the mouth flopped towards the nearest windlass, drooling blood.

“Fuck!” Vick scrambled up, rearing over him, swinging the mace with both hands. She smashed in the back of his head, but his hands were already around the lever. Now he sagged onto it, a dead weight.

There was a heavy clunk. Gears whirred as the portcullis began to drop in its frame, its cross-hatched shadow shifting on the wall.

There was a clatter as Gorst dropped his steels and caught the windlass. It dragged him along for a moment, but he twisted, teeth clenched, got his shoulder against one handle and braced himself, trembling, growling, having to strain with all his strength to hold it up. For an instant, everything was oddly still.

Then someone stepped through the door behind him. Corporal Smiler, and by no means smiling. He saw Gorst, he saw all the dead Burners, plus one still screaming, crawling, screaming as he tried to hold his guts in. He heaved up an outsized axe, the one he must’ve been using on the door, its blade near scraping the ceiling, ready to split Gorst’s skull in half.

He gave a surprised ooof as Vick charged into him, drove him crashing into the wall, the axe bouncing off her back and onto the floor. She went at him with everything she had. Tried for his balls with a clumsy jab of the mace but only hit his hip, dug her other fist into his stomach but barely got a wheeze from him. She straightened up so she could swing at his throat.