Chapter 234: Before God and Steel

The horse Gal took from the square was a plain bay with no markings. It had been left riderless when the defenses collapsed. He swung into the saddle without hesitation.

Multiple soldiers remained outside the church.

Two druzhina professionals stood at the entrance with spears ready to stop mounted riders. Three townspeople held the corners of the wall with hunting bows. Another three had taken positions along the building.

By the time Gal arrived, more than thirty riders had surrounded the church. More men were still pouring in from the neighboring streets.

The militia at the corners opened fire on the converging riders.

One arrow struck a rider twenty meters to Gal’s left, punching clean through the arm. The shaft burst out the inside in a spray of blood. The rider cursed, clamped the ruined arm against his side, and kept coming.

Nasan and two others answered immediately, sending arrows toward the militia.

Nasan’s shot buried itself in a defender’s chest. The man slammed into the church wall, left a smear of blood across the stone, then slid down in a heap.

The two druzhina at the entrance held their ground.

Their spear points stopped the first rush cold.

That advantage lasted only until riders began spreading around both flanks.

One defender drove his spear into the chest of a horse that pushed too close to the doorway. The point vanished deep into flesh. The animal screamed, stumbled, and crashed onto its side, clogging the entrance with its thrashing body.

Before the druzhina could wrench his weapon free, an arrow struck him from behind and punched through his back.

The remaining exterior defenders disappeared beneath the pressure of the attack.

Two riders suffered wounds in the fighting around the corners. Neither belonged to Gal’s arban.

A rider near the doors studied the heavy timber construction and the iron bands reinforcing the joints.

"That bar’s gonna be a pain. Iron all over the damn thing."

The axemen moved forward.

The gap between the door revealed the bar behind them, a timber reinforced with iron and seated in brackets embedded in the frame on both sides.

The center lacked support.

The axemen spotted the weakness immediately. They drove their blades into the gap and concentrated every strike on the middle. Each blow bit deeper than the last. Wood chips exploded into the air as they worked the axe heads for leverage.

Chaqu watched for a moment.

"Middle. Forget the edges. Frame’s carrying the weight."

One of the axemen shifted his attacks at once.

A militiaman emerged from a shallow alcove west of the entrance. He had flattened himself against the stone and gone unnoticed.

Now he came out with a knife.

The blade slashed across the nearest axeman’s forearm, opening flesh to the muscle before the man could react.

Another rider answered instantly. His saber swept across the back of the militiaman’s neck.

Blood sprayed across the doorstep.

The defender collapsed face-first without a sound.

The axemen went straight back to work.

The bar had already been weakened. The next series of strikes split it with a sharp crack. The door separated by two hand-widths.

A rider slammed his shoulder into the left door.

The damaged timber failed completely.

Both sides swung inward.

"Move! Inside!"

The riders surged through.

Gal dismounted at the threshold and left the horse where it stood.

The stone floor felt different beneath his boots. No give at all, unlike packed earth or grass. He adjusted his footing and moved into the nave.

The church interior stretched from the entrance to the icon screen at the far end.

Columns lined both sides. Candles stood along the walls. Some had been knocked over and extinguished. Others still burned, casting uneven light across stone and blood.

Incense lingered beneath the smoke drifting through the open doorway.

Light entered through narrow upper windows and from the surviving candles.

The defenders had chosen their positions before the fighting reached them.

The choice showed experience.

The men used the columns to control every line of attack. The pillars broke up assaults and denied room for proper saber work.

A rider beside Gal spat on the floor.

"Can’t swing for shit in here. Keep it tight."

He was right.

The church itself dictated how the fight would be fought.

A crossbow bolt shot out from behind the first pillar on the left.

It struck the rider immediately to Gal’s right in the chest, punching through flesh and exiting near the shoulder blade in a burst of blood.

The man hit the stone hard.

The defender was already reloading when two riders closed around the column from opposite sides.

A militiaman positioned between the second and third pillars carried a long-handled axe. He had chosen his ground carefully, keeping a pillar at his back while partially blocking both routes in.

The position denied any clean attack.

For three full exchanges he held off three riders.

The axe worked well in the confined space where sabers could not generate proper force.

A fourth rider eventually found a solution.

Moving through the aisle, he drew and loosed an arrow from the far edge of the nave.

The shaft buried itself beneath the militiaman’s ribs.

The defender staggered but kept fighting, blood pouring down his side. He lasted two more seconds before his arm finally failed him and the axe slipped from his grasp.

Somewhere in the left aisle, Nasan spoke.

"Funny. Candles are still burning."

His voice carried no emotion at all.

He kept moving as he spoke.

Gal pressed forward through the remaining defenders toward the icon screen.

The central door stood closed.

He reached it and shoved through.

A guard waited behind it.

As the door opened, the man drove a short sword toward Gal’s torso from the right. The blade sliced through the cloth of Gal’s coat and scraped across the padded layer beneath.

Not deep enough.

Gal answered instantly.

His saber rose beneath the man’s chin.

The blade entered under the jaw and punched upward through the skull.

The guard collapsed with the sword still clutched in his hand.

The sanctuary beyond was smaller than the nave. The ceiling sat lower. The windows were narrower.

An altar occupied the far end.

Yuri Igorevich stood beside it with four guards positioned between him and the doorway.

His sword was already drawn.

When Gal entered, Yuri was speaking.

His voice carried through the enclosed chamber, formal and composed, showing none of the panic the situation might have justified.

The four guards had survived every fight that morning.

That alone explained why they stood there.

They were the best men Yuri still had.

Yuri Igorevich raised his voice over the battle.

"Za Ryazan!"

The effect was immediate.

The two nearest guards abandoned passive defense and surged forward together.

A rider to Gal’s left took a blade across the forearm and recoiled with blood running from wrist to elbow.

The first guard became trapped between attacks.

Gal pressed from the right while Nasan entered through the icon screen door.

The guard lasted longer than Gal expected.

Before falling back, he managed to drive a spear into the chest of a rider trapped between the doorway and a nearby altar column. The point sank deep.

Only after taking two saber cuts, one across the shoulder and another through the side of the neck, did the guard finally drop to his knees.

The second guard understood confined fighting.

He used a short sword properly, relying on compact thrusts and tight movements instead of wide swings.

One thrust punched through the throat of a rider who crowded too close.

Blood flooded from the wound immediately.

The rider dropped his weapon and collapsed choking.

The guard’s arm remained extended for a fraction too long.

Gal saw the opening.

He stepped around the outside and struck from behind before the man could recover.

The third guard had remained closest to Yuri.

Throughout the fighting he constantly adjusted his position, supporting every part of the defense.

A cut across a rider’s cheekbone deep enough to seal one eye shut with blood.

A spear thrust that forced a man backward from the sanctuary entrance.

A slash across a rider’s forearm that took him out of the fight.

He finally went down when four riders attacked together.

Even then he fell facing them, sword still raised.

The fourth guard fought Gal himself.

He understood distance and controlled it well.

He kept his blade where Gal’s saber had to work around it.

During the first exchange, the guard’s edge scraped across Gal’s left shoulder, scoring the armor and slicing through the cloth beneath.

During the second, the same shoulder took another hit at a slightly different direction, opening a shallow wound through the padding.

By the third exchange, Gal had seen the stance.

He allowed the man to commit high.

Then he answered with a diagonal stroke.

The saber tore him open from armpit to hip.

The guard folded around the wound and crashed to the floor.

The sanctuary belonged to Gal alone now.

Yuri Igorevich stood at the far side of the altar with his sword still raised and his eyes fixed on Gal.

He remained exactly where he had chosen to stand when the fight began.

He had neither broken nor knelt.

Around him lay the four guards who had placed themselves between him and the doorway.

His banner still hung above the church entrance. The battle had moved from the streets into the church itself, yet no one had found the time to tear it down.

Yuri Igorevich looked at Gal and spoke.

In Latin.

His tone remained unhurried.

The words were addressed to God, though they were spoken directly to the man standing before him.

"In manus tuas, domine, commendo spiritum meum."

He did not lower his sword.

"Redemisti me domine, deus veritatis."

Gal did not understand the language.

He understood the meaning.

Yuri Igorevich stood at the altar with his sword raised and his gaze locked on Gal.

Between them stretched the full length of the sanctuary.