The person at the front of the pack was a very tall, yet thin woman wearing a black dress and kerchief. She walking erect with a long walking-stick to keep her from tripping on debris. As soon as sh spotted them, she stopped the whole group.

"You men had better hurry if you wish to join the fighting," the woman told them, "for there may soon be nothing left to fight for." The refugees trailing behind her were all children, the elderly or the infirm, Alannah"s captors noted.

"Fighting?" Rosemary blurted in surprise from her seat on the wagon. "You can"t mean that Port Lira is trying to fight back? Against that?"

The woman raised her chin defiantly, even as a thunderous concussion shook the ground. "No my child, Port Lira has been evacuated. However those bastardos will find themselves facing five-thousand rifles at least, should they try to climb up and over the rubble!"

"The fools!" Eraldo muttered under his breath, continuing onward towards the hideout once again. "They won"t stand a chance using old-fashioned bolt-action rifles against the new repeating-rifles and machine guns. All they"re going to succeed in doing is slowing down the process of surrender, and making our escape more difficult."

"What do you mean?" Rosemary demanded.

"I had hoped that the people here would just give up and surrender, if they did that all at once it would ensure mass confusion," he admitted. "Enough confusion to enable us to make our way down to the docks and steal a boat. That is still our best chance we have is to steal a boat and leave here."

"What about Alannah?" Rosemary complained. "Doesn"t this mean we can now get rid of her?"

"No, it doesn"t," Eraldo said shortly.

"And why not? What if someone sees her?"

He shrugged. "At the moment, that shouldn't present too much of a problem. Once we reach the area where the fighting is, everyone will be far too busy with the business at hand to take the time to even notice her presence."

"That is possibly true," Rosemary admitted. "No one from Port Lira will knows who she is or what she looks like, so they will not think to ask questions."

"Can you handle a gun?" Eraldo asked Rosemary, his expression faintly mocking.

Giving her head a haughty toss, Rosemary rejoined, "Every last woman and child on La lengua demonios learns to handle firearms from the cradle. And the rapier, too." To emphasise her point, she picked up her rifle, sighted and fired in one motion, neatly clipping off the end of a branch high overhead, sending it and its leaves fluttering down about them.




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