************************* CHAPTER FIVE
"Marc and Torvald," the old veteran tapster ordered with rather disturbing calm, "take a pair of muskets upstairs to the front loft window and keep the front approach swept clear. Target their leaders and any obvious Blackguards officers first. Make every shot count! Brody and Erin, grab another pair of guns and go with them with extra shot and powder and keep the sharpshooters reloaded! They'll charge the door first and if that fails they'll then decide to burn us out. That would be bad, so don't let that happen! Eduard and Mercer, do the same and cover the rear door! Molly and Brecka go with them to reload for them as well. You others, stand ready to guard the doorway when it is breeched. If they break through it'll get ugly and messy in here fast!" The old veteran had been in more than one tight place before and he continued to coolly issue out additional orders to the remaining guards.
The guardsmen and women hastened to their assignments, with most of the rest left downstairs not given any other specific orders took this time to load and prepare for firing all of the remaining collection of assorted battered and mostly obsolete pistols. Another trio of vigiles went to assist Koch in covering the back door, which seemed to possess a sturdier frame and had an iron bar to block it as well.
Upstairs, I could already hear the sounds of regular gunfire, as the best vigiles marksmen focused upon their targets while their assistants reloaded the muskets as swiftly as possible. From the early sound of things and the growing cries of pain and clouds of spent gunpowder, the guardsmen were already having the best of the contest in its early stages.
Now with the sounds of a heavy pole or hunk of timber being used as a battering ram against the weaker front door, I could tell that the old doorframe was unlikely to survive this assault for very long. This problem was not unexpected and the retired vigiles tapster was making his own final preparations.
"When I give the word, unloose the bar!" The old retired sergeant muttered, pounding down the barrel of the weapon with a thick ramrod to force an extra large dose of powder and shot into a rather oversized blunderbuss along with a thumb sized chunk of cotton wadding to hold everything into place. The weapon was an obvious antique, a large heavy arquebus design I'd never seen before, but the old veteran handled the old firearm with familiar skill and not a small amount of obvious affection.
"Ready!" he cried out, and with a sudden tug, the guards at the door quickly withdrew the all-too slender and cracked wooden bar from its mounting bracket. The next crash of the battering ram burst the weakened door fully off of its leather hinges so that it crashed down inside the doorway, leaving the entrance fully open, but the old sergeant was ready.
Stepping forward into the doorway he aimed and fired his massive weapon slowly and precisely, four separate times! It was a repeating weapon, having four distinct barrels that could each be loaded and then in turn rotated into position aligned with the fire chamber. Each thunderous blast cut a swath through the attackers, like a hand-held cannon filled with grapeshot, felling every group of our armored assailants that attempted to charge through the open doorway, each blast creating a larger cloud of lead-filled fire and smoke, and now a growing miasma of blood and flesh that had been vaporized to mist.
Now in a mere matter of moments, the area around the doorway was swept clear and a full dozen of the attacking Blackguard and their hired mercenary soldiers lay fallen in the mouth of the breech, mostly with unspeakably horrible wounds.
Undoubtedly this old repeating weapon was highly illegal and severely religiously proscribed... but that just made it an extra efficient weapon of death and destruction capable of single-handedly repulsing an entire assault, all on its own. Very handy! I decided that a similar sort of model, but with a modern wheellock cocking and firing mechanism would be much more efficient, and worth every piece of gold that the master gunsmith Manuel si'Orly back in Mirabelle would charge me to custom craft it!
Now with the doorway freed of attackers for a moment, it was largely blade work from now on, with the crusty old sergeant taking the position of honor blocking the entrance just inside the door with an equally battered, but undoubtedly razor sharp sword. He was quickly joined on each side by a pair of older senior guardsmen and together they skillfully held the doorway against all comers for longer than anyone could either hope or pray for. The doorway was only wide enough for two attackers to engage this trio of defenders at a time, favoring the defenders.
Some of the vigiles, like the tapster were completely unarmored and even the on-duty patrollers only possessed their padded vests and jackets for protection. Most of the attackers had stout leather, studded or even scaled armor to ward off sword blows, and this was indeed a distinct advantage. Some of the more obvious Blackguards soldiers were even wearing chain shirts or plate breastplates, but even with the benefit of their armored protection, the quickness and skill of the three veteran guardsmen kept the attackers from breaking through and engaging us in force. At least for a long enough time so that the rest of the defenders could complete their own final preparations. They were selling their lives dear in the hopes that the promised vigiles reinforcements might yet soon come.
Sporadic but accurate musket fire from upstairs promptly cut down the opposing enemy gunners, or at least forced them to fire from a range distant enough to be of more threat to their fellows than to our defending vigiles. Closer at hand, my extremely accurate pistols proved lifesavers when a pair of overly brave and ambitious Blackguards officers charged forward to attempt to clear the doorway with the blaze of their own brandished pistols, but through the growing acrid clouds of gunpowder smoke I spotted their advance and was prepared to aim and fire first. Flerrie and several other patrollers fired their own poor quality and much less accurate pistols at need, providing us with enough point defense to keep the desperate odds manageable, and we discharged our guns in turns, give us of us the necessary time to hastily reload.
I fired and reloaded hurriedly and with much concern for the continued heavy odds against us. We'd apparently killed or disabled all of their gunners and none of the remaining attackers had found the courage to provoke our direct attention by trying to retrieve and fire any of the dropped but still loaded pistols now lying in the doorway. A disciplined charge en-mass to seize and fire them at us, to clear out the ranks of our protective gunners, could have been devastating, especially now as our brave front trio of guardians each began to falter and collapse from the weight of their wounds. If the enemy had made a determined effort right then and there, they could have overwhelmed us and forced complete breech of our ranks while our own pistols were unloaded and impotent. Then their majority of numbers likely would have carried the day in a desperate mass hand-to-hand battle inside the inn, with no quarter offered or asked.
Already my own pair of pistols were now too hot to be safely reloaded any further. The barrels shimmering with the heat of being repeated fired as quickly as possible, and I feared that if I poured fresh powder once more into the barrel that it would instantly ignite right into my own face! Flerrie's larger and heavier pistol was smoking hot as well, but she dared to reload the old matchlock yet one more time without respite, daring the weapon to explode prematurely in her hands, but it tolerated this one last abuse. I felt no such further bravado, and with reluctance set down my pistols upon a bar table and drew my sword and prepared myself to step forward to meet the enemy with poisoned steel, rather than accurate lead.
Fresh vigiles defenders strode forward in front of me to hold the doorway fast and secure and some could not hold their guard there for long, falling quickly and adding yet more split blood to the increasingly soaked wooden floors. The press of the attackers, who still greatly outnumbered us, began to tell and we began to give ground... and more sacrifice of patroller heart's blood, but we could tell that the resolve of the mercenary soldiers was now much in question.
