A body stood in front of Karris, headless, its neck spraying blood in time with the last beats of its heart.
The sound of muskets firing and the roar of blood in her ears melded together, a pulse, life and death twined together.
The Mirrormen surged toward a hole in the wall, perhaps seven paces across. So that was where the explosion had been.
A red drafter—one of King Garadul’s Free—had gone mad. He was cackling, throwing pyre jelly on everyone around him. The men splattered with the stuff were shouting in fear. Someone was begging him to stop.
A man was falling off the shattered edge of the wall, slipping, screaming.
Off to one side atop the wall, the sun gleamed off a man’s copper hair. Karris’s eyes locked on him. Gavin! He leaned close to another man, issued an order. Corvan Danavis. So the man really was a general. And he was here? Gavin clapped the man on the shoulder, and they parted.
Karris turned, remembering the pursuing Mirrormen, perhaps too late.
The leader was twenty paces back, horse surging through the lines, shouting at men to move aside, sword drawn. He was alone, his men cut off behind him by a sudden sideways surge in the line, but he was too close. Karris was unarmed and still wobbly on her feet.
Ten paces away, her pursuer seemed to jump in his saddle. Karris could see the whole front of his body, so he hadn’t been shot from the wall, but nonetheless, he tumbled out of his saddle.
Someone had killed the man from behind. What the hell? Karris looked behind the man.
Kip.
Kip? The young man was riding at a full gallop behind the Mirrormen, following the path they’d pushed open through the ranks of soldiers. But he didn’t have a musket.
Instead, he was carrying a big green ball, larger than his own head. His skin was green, and he had a wild look in his eyes—and he looked like he was going to tumble out of the saddle at any moment.
Not seeming to care that he was guiding his horse directly into other horses, Kip drew the green globe backward like he was throwing a ball—classic tyro misperception, they always thought that because a ball had mass, you had to muscle it. Kip’s arm came forward, and then with an audible pop he shot the green globe out at the Mirrormen.
It caught one in the side of his mirrored helmet. The mirror armor sheared luxin easily, but it still had to deal with the momentum of what was hitting it. A breastplate might withstand a bullet, but the man inside was still going to have some broken ribs. Here, the man’s head snapped to the side, blasting him out of the saddle, and the green globe ricocheted off, hitting another Mirrorman’s shoulder and not quite dismounting him, then caromed into a third Mirrorman’s horse, catching the animal on the side of its head and knocking it off its feet.
The force of the shot blew Kip out of his own saddle, almost halting all of his forward motion. His horse shied, trying not to collide with the others at the last second, but they had been startled by riders falling and a giant green ball flying past their heads, and one dodged directly into its new path. Animal collided with animal at great speed, crunching a Mirrorman’s leg that was trapped between them.
Both horses went down, but Karris was more concerned about Kip. She lost sight of him when he fell. Soldiers were still a river, pressing past the Mirrormen, not knowing or caring much what this fight was about. They just wanted to get out of the shadow of these deadly walls and into the city.
Karris snatched a sword off the ground and ducked through the crowd. Three riders had wheeled around and were pushing toward a spot farther back. She couldn’t get there in time.
One was drawing his musket from the saddle sheath to kill her when his head exploded in a burst of yellow light and pink mist. Karris was sure this time the shot hadn’t come from the wall. It had to have come from the opposite direction—from the hill? And what the hell could have done that? An explosive musket ball?
She was still too far away. She saw two Mirrormen pulling muskets out, aiming down.
Twin green spears—pillars, almost, they were so thick—erupted from the ground where the riders were pointing and impaled them. The first one was hit square in the chest. Green light fractured out in a spray as the mirrored breastplate held for a moment, and then burst—and still the green spear shot up, lifting the Mirrorman up into the air. The other man was no more lucky. That spear hit the top of his breastplate, again shearing some luxin away into a flash of green light. Then the spear rode up, catching him under the chin and going into his head, ripping his helmet off his ruined head like a child popping the head off a dandelion.
Each was lifted several paces into the air before the green luxin spears cracked and dropped them to the ground and dissolved to nothing.