Chapter 7

Our first encounter with the Grayly troops happened before we reached the entrance to the mansion. We were charged by about 25 men armed with swords and shields. That would have been plenty to overrun us if we had not had our shotguns. However, we acted quickly and decisively as we poured buckshot into the charging troops.

They had never faced massed shotgun fire like that and did not know what to do. Obviously, the only thing you can do is run like hell, but they just came at us. We wound up emptying two of the box magazines and were well into the third one before we wiped out the last man. That was more resistance than we had expected, but we realized later that ignorance could be a great stimulus in battle.

Anyway, we ran through the door and paused to recharge our box magazines. I had to send a silent thank you to the developers of that little accessory. We would have been overcome if we had not had a way to reload so fast. That prompted a stray thought about reloading the revolvers, but I had no time to dwell on that at the moment.

We were in a kind of reception area just inside the mansion, what would be called a giant "mud room" back in Virginia on Earth. There were four doors exiting to various parts of the building, and we had to decide where to go first. From our previous times inside the mansion, we knew where two of the doors went, but the other two were virtually a complete mystery. One probably headed for the cellars, but which one. It occurred to me that the most likely place to hold the king in captivity was underground, so we headed that way.

We carefully opened each door of the two doors and looked inside. Ah, one led to some stairs going down and the other led to stairs going up. We left both doors standing wide open and took the stairs headed down. The cellar appeared to be divided by a single wall with a single door opening to the other side. The side we were on appeared to be a vast storage area loaded with boxes and bales of many things, none of use to us at the moment.

There was light down here, though it was dim, and we could see for hundreds of feet in two directions. That was the general storage area. The other two directions were blocked by the wall we just came through and the long wall bisecting the cellar. The door through that wall was our obvious next move, so we crossed to it. Dammit, the door was locked!

The door opened by swinging the other way, and the only thing on our side was a doorknob and a keyhole. None of us had any experience trying to pick locks, so this was going to be a brute force entry. I gave the lock two blasts from my shotgun and then threw my shoulder against the door. The whole thing crumbled away under my impact, and I tumbled into the room with my wives right behind me.

It was a good thing they were there because we were rushed by half a dozen men with drawn swords. The women blew the charging swordsmen into next week with their shotguns and gave me a chance to recover from my tumble. At the moment, my shoulder did not even hurt from my impact with the door, but that would change when I came down from my combat high.

When I had a chance to look around, I found that we were in the wine cellar, and one of the storage chambers made of steel rods was being used as a cell for the king and queen. Inside the cell was a man holding a knife to the king's throat. He said, "Get out and the king will live for now. Come any closer and he dies!"

Well, there was only one answer for that. I shifted my shotgun to my left hand and called to my wives to lead the way out of the wine cellar. They went out the door, and I was a few steps behind them. As I turned, I saw the man with the knife threatening the king relax, and that was what I was waiting for. Before the knife wielder realized what was happening, I whirled back around to face him. As I moved, I drew my revolver and put a bullet through the shoulder of the hand holding the knife.

The knife went flying away from the wounded man, and the queen stooped to pick it up. That gave me a clear second shot, and I put a bullet through the head of the wounded man. He fell, and the king jumped toward the door to the cell. The door was not locked, so he pushed it open. The king turned to help the queen, but she was walking in the slight stoop of the knife fighter as if she were ready to attack any enemy who got close enough.

He turned back to the door and ushered the queen out of the cell with a flourish. He turned to me and said, "Ah, Hank, I knew that you would find a way to rescue us. I kept telling Emily here not to worry, that you would be along as soon as you had a free moment." We all laughed in relief at that light remark. It went a long way toward relieving the tension that all of us were feeling at that moment.

I asked about the other people in the entourage, and the king said that they had been all killed when He and the queen had been put in the cell. He was as pissed off at that as I was, and picked up a sword that was lying on the floor. I knew that there would be no way that he would be passive during our escape, so I gave him my other revolver to use while we ran for our flier.

On our way out, we were sure to be attacked by as many troops as Grayly could muster, so Anslee gave one of her pistols to the queen. Now that we all had a firearm, it was time for us to leave. I planned to order a massive air attack on the Grayly mansion as soon as we returned to the palace.

We headed back for the mud room and made it to the top of the stairs when we encountered men with guns. These were all the conventional single-shot pistols that knights habitually carried, and they were no match for our repeating shotguns and revolvers. The king and queen contributed significantly to our escape, but it was the shotguns that made it possible for us to escape without any wounds of our own.

The final surprise was when we got to our flier. We found Grayly's two daughters hiding there and begging the king to provide them with sanctuary. They claimed that they had no part in Grayly's treason and just wanted to escape from him. The king granted them temporary asylum, but refused to make it last beyond the time when we reached the palace. The two women had no choice and accepted the king's terms.

We hurried aboard, and Anslee did her usual excellent piloting job of getting us off the ground and away before we could take any more antiaircraft fire. Anslee pushed our flier as hard as it would go, and we reached the palace in less than five hours. Of course, Anslee had some relief at piloting during that time, but she was the one responsible for getting us safely home.

We were all so tired that we went to bed shortly after we reached the palace. I did order the air attack on Sir Grayly's estate before I went to sleep, but there certainly was no sex among us before we all were asleep. On the other hand, that was not the situation when we woke up. As it happened, Sinola insisted that was the occasion when she was knocked up.

Sinola told me a few days later that she was knocked up, and she apologized because the fetus was that of a girl. I think that I convinced her not to worry about it because I wanted a daughter. Sinola seemed to be very happy at that statement. As far as I was concerned, it was true, and nothing more needed to be said on the subject.

The king was his usual generous self, and presented me with an estate of my own. By the grace of the Fates and my good luck, an estate next door to Sir Jorst's had become available through the king. The effective result was that I now had one of the largest estates in all of Horurie because I would inherit Jorst's estate when he died.

My wives were all agog over the new addition to my holdings, but they did not want to move away from the builtin babysitter that grandmother made. Therefore, we did not move, but I did have to start managing the new estate. That was not a problem because there was already a management hierarchy in place from the time it was owned by the king, and I simply kept them on. The only real difference in the operation was that the profits from the estate moved from the king's coffers to mine. I didn't need the money, but it was nice that it was there in case of a sudden need.