Chapter 8

The next room I entered was the kitchen, but I did not find anyone there, so I was able to advance directly to the next room. This was a dinning room which was also empty, so I crossed the corridor to what my map display said was an apartment. Surely, I would find someone interesting there.

The door was closed, but I did not attach any special significance to that. I stood out of the line of the open door, twisted the knob, and threw it open. Dammit, I almost threw my life away when I looked in, for I saw my dear wife Anslee tied to a chair. She was gagged because she was the bait for a trap I almost stumbled into.

Two men were standing beside her, one on each side, and they had their sabers drawn and waiting for me to charge. I don’t know which of the gods of good fortune or luck were responsible, but I was able to keep from making a cardinal and probably fatal error. Just as I was about to dash into the room, I happened to catch out of the corner of my eye the sight of two men standing with readied swords on either side of the door waiting for me to rush into the room.

I put on my brakes and paused long enough to carefully aim a shot at one of the men standing next to my wife. I shot him in the middle of his chest and turned to the other guard next to her. Him I shot at, but only caught him in the shoulder, but the shot was enough to spin him around and to make his saber fly across the room. I did not see where it came to rest, but I did hear a groan of pain from another man who was out of sight.

Dammit, the room was loaded with soldiers just waiting for me. The two men in the room whom I had shot were out of the fight, but I still had an unknown number of foes waiting and hoping for me to enter the room. Well, there was no way I was not going into that room, but I had to consider the best way to do it.

I could dive through the door and hope that my speed would obviate the two guards at the door, but I had no idea what else I would be facing once I did enter the room. As far as I could tell from just looking around for a moment, the wall containing the door I was facing was of simple wood construction; therefore, I might be able to put a bullet through the wall. Even if the bullet was slowed too much to do any real damage, it might be impressive enough to make the two guards move back away from the door.

No sooner thought than done. I put my pistol muzzle as close to the wall as I thought was safe and fired a bullet through the wall at the place I figured that the guard had to be standing. I heard a shout of pain, and that was all the encouragement that I needed. I put a bullet through the other wall and achieved a similar result.

I had five shots left in my revolver, and I hoped that these would be enough to let me establish myself within the apartment. I did switch hands and hold my saber with my right hand and my pistol with my left. This did make a slight cut in the accuracy of my shooting, but it gave a tremendous boost to the strength and accuracy of my sword cuts and thrusts. I hoped to be able to don my shield when I ran out of bullets, but that would have to wait on developments.

Only moments after I had fired the two shots through the wall, I dashed into the apartment. This time I was fully upright because of the necessity of having complete control of my sword. In passing, I saw the two guards from the door lying on the floor in pools of blood, but I could not tell if they were actually dead yet. Once in the room, I ran to my wife and cut her loose. She pulled off her gag and said, “My dear Husband, I knew that you would come for me.” That was all she said as she picked up a saber and shield from the floor and took a defensive stance beside me.

By this time, four men had charged at us, and we had no more time to talk. This was the first time that I had seen my wife use a sword and shield in an actual fight, and I was highly impressed. She was as good as me; her only problem was that she was not as strong as me. Since there were only four more men for us to fight, I took the easy way out and simply shot them. This was no time for fighting “fair!”

The first thing I did was to swap cylinders in my revolver. Next, I kissed my wife and told her how glad I was to find her safe. We equipped her with a full set of armament, except that she did not bother with a pistol. She did not know where her mother was being held nor where to find Neatty, so we would have to search for them. We went back to the door, and I sneaked a look out. I used a piece of a mirror that I broke to look without exposing any more of my precious hide than was absolutely necessary.

At the moment, the corridor was empty. We stepped out, and, just at that moment, a detachment of soldiers ran into the corridor from the stairs at the far end of the corridor. They charged at us, but I started shooting before they could get very far. There were still half a dozen charging at us by the time I had emptied my cylinder, so I switched to the shotgun load and fired that. I guess that I have to say that my luck was still holding because I managed to knock down four of the charging soldiers before they got within sword-fighting distance.

Anslee took on one, and I took on the other. Her skill was such that she did not need any longer to dispatch her foe than did I, and we cleaned our swords and looked for our next opponents. None were visible in the hall, so we looked to the door of the opposite apartment. I reloaded my pistol and threw open the door to the apartment. There was Anslee’s mother tied to a chair much as she had been, but the guards were not taking seriously their charge to guard her.

I killed four of the guards with my pistol before we entered the room. As best as we could tell, those were the only four enemies in the room. Anslee ran to cut her mother loose, and let me tell you, that was one pissed off woman. She jerked up a sword and shield and declared that she was going to join us in the fight. I looked at Anslee, and she nodded to me, so I put up no argument.

My mother-in-law, Lady Hipselburn, told us that she had last seen Neatty in the next apartment, so that was the logical place for us to look for him. The corridor was too narrow for three people to fight effectively side by side, so I asked her to guard our backs when we went back out of the room.