BLOOD IN THE WATER
Dalla may have survived the gunship attack, but there's still a whole city between the northerners and Sanjay. If those within the walls have anything to say about it, the streets will run red with northern blood. -LS
...
By the time the others land with the battering rams, Dalla, her crew, and everyone else who survived the wreck is flat against the wall thanking the salt gods that the cannons can't shoot straight down.
Marlon takes his place against the wall next to her while the engineers work on the battering ram.
"Are you alright?"
"I'll be better once we get past these cannons." Dalla looks up the wall to check for the thousandth time that nothing's falling to crush them. The battering ram slams into the gate and she hears the echoes of another where her uncle and Ephraim Harkon are at the second breach point.
From a few men over, Glover Harkon scans the sky. "Cannons will be the least of our worries if the gunships come back."
"We were only target practice," Marlon replies. "Their main focus is the rebels in the Highlands."
"Target practice," Elinor spits, her anger burning brighter than her hair. "Should've guessed. That's all we've ever been to them."
The gate groans after a blow from the battering ram. Dalla readjusts her grip on her blaster. "We're about to be a lot more than lines in the landscape."
Elinor doesn't answer; she just simmers with silent rage and stares through the gate, straight to the Rash bannermen who must be waiting on the other side.
"Get away from the entrance once you're in!" Marlon orders. "Give the others space to enter."
"Aye, m'Lord!"
The command comes not a moment too soon. The battering ram knocks the gate doors aside, and the northerners pour into Iziz.
…
It's just as they suspected: the Rash bannermen are waiting for them.
The northerners return fire as soon as they break through the gate and One-Eye shoves the battering ram into their line, effectively clearing a path for them to get further into the city and to find cover. He and Dalla race down it like bullets through a slugthrower with fighting men streaming behind them to hold their new route while the first through take care of the rest.
"Which way?" Marlon asks when he and the Harkons catch up to them.
For a second Dalla's mental map of Iziz flies out of her head and she has to look for the palace's towers to orient herself. "Five blocks straight ahead until the next turn."
"Straight ahead!" Marlon repeats and leads the charge.
At first glance, five blocks straight ahead is easy. When Rash's men pour out of the alleys, it becomes much harder. The streets of Iziz aren't narrow, but with so many people they may as well be sieging a packed cantina, all of them packed too close together for blasters.
Steela would be sweating blood, but for Dalla it's a godsend. She's had a knife in her hand since she could walk, this she knows her way around. It makes more sense than blasters, she thinks while one of the bannermen charges toward her. People are filled with water. You just have to find the right place -
The soldier swings his blade at her head and Dalla leans back to keep it from slicing her face open. He swings again and she ducks, giving her a perfect view of her target. She slashes the inside of the soldier's thigh. There's no question she hit the artery.
Dalla kicks him and he staggers backward, hands clamped over the spurting wound. There's no need to finish him off; he's panicking and only aggravating the bleeding with his squirming. He'll be too weak to do anything in seconds.
Behind her, One-Eye drives his shoulder into his opponent's chest. The other man's face twists with satisfaction and before anyone can shout a warning, he grabs One-Eye and stabs him in the chest.
One-Eye roars and throws his opponent off him, slashing wildly while he collapses. Dalla races over and attacks in kind.
One-Eye's attacker parries her strike and grazes her arm. A centimeter deeper and Dalla would be in the same boat as the guy whose femoral artery she just slashed, but as it is it's more like she banged her arm on a sharp corner. While his knife hand is still up she grabs the front of his shirt and stabs blindly. The first strike is shallow, the blade stopped by something the same time she feels her opponent's blade come dangerously close to her once again. Her second strike hits home.
Dalla lets go of him and turns her attention to her first mate lying next to him. "One-Eye?!"
It's too late. In the light of the salt gods, One-Eye.
There isn't time to even say the words aloud. Dalla races down the street with the rest of their men.
…
The siege starts going to Dxun when they approach the militia guardhouse. With the soldiers gone the Rash bannermen turned it into their command center, and using it as cover the street below has turned into a gauntlet.
Dalla squishes behind a merchant's stall with her father and Elinor and asks "Any ideas?"
"Working on it," Marlon ducks to avoid a blaster bolt ringing over their heads.
Elinor swears. "They'll line the streets with us before you come up with any ideas."
"What else can we do?" Dalla gives her a hard look.
"There are more of us than there are of them. We charge them, and we're sure to get through."
"Elinor, they have the high ground. Scores will die." Marlon tells her.
"Aye, they will. But we know that. You know men will die when you siege a city." Her chin wobbles. "You know little girls die when you threaten a king."
Dalla's stomach knots. "We couldn't -"
"You know that, and I know we don't have time to think of a new idea." She cocks her blaster. "Come with me or don't. I have a snake to kill."
And with that, Elinor gets to her feet and charges into the gauntlet.
"Elinor!" Marlon shouts and shoves past Dalla to drag her back under cover. He's only made it about twenty feet when a spray of blasterfire comes from the building and engulfs Elinor. Not half a second later another shot hits Marlon's leg and he collapses.
Glover Harkon's scream sounds more animal than human.
"Father!" Dalla shrieks.
Her voice gets lost in the rising din. For the fighting men who couldn't hear Marlon and Elinor's argument, their Liege Lord's charge is enough of an order to move forward. Dalla's loudest bellow might as well be a whisper in the roar.
If she doesn't get Marlon out of the way now, he's going to be trampled. The men in the building redirect their fire to the charging northerners and Dalla seizes her chance. She scrambles out of cover, grabs Marlon under the shoulders, and drags him with all her might.
She drops him as soon as they're out of the way. "Father, how bad is it?"
"Not bad," Marlon lies through gritted teeth. "Blaster bolts cauterize, so I don't have to worry about - careful!"
Dalla takes her hands from her father's leg. She's not a healer, but she knows he needs bacta and he needs it now.
The only place they're going to get bacta is the medcenter, three blocks away. She can't drag Marlon that far without aggravating the wound and him bleeding out. There's no way she can carry him on her own.
Dalla grabs the first northern soldier she can catch hold of: a twentysomething man wearing Kretash armor. "Help me with him!" She orders.
The soldier looks past her to Marlon and nods. They each sling one of Marlon's arms around their shoulders, grab a leg, and rush for the medcenter.
…
Basic medical fact: people are heavy, especially when they become deadweight. Dalla and the Kretash man are no slouches, but when Marlon passes out one and a half blocks in they're huffing and puffing.
"How much farther?" The sailor puffs.
"We're halfway there," Dalla gasps. She had no idea her father was this heavy, and she's not even carrying all his weight. "Do you see anyone?"
He has to pant a few times before he answers her. "No."
That has to be the only plus of the carnage raging a few streets over. Everyone's too busy to notice them. "Father, hold on."
"Can see the emergency bay," the sailor pants. "Chaos."
They should have known. They've come in on the heels of a riot, of course the emergency bay's chaos. "Just shove."
By the time they get through the doors their arms and legs feel like cooked noodles. They sling Marlon onto the first available stretcher and the sailor goes to get the nurse while Dalla snags a medical droid.
"His name is Marlon Blackwell. He's been shot in the leg," she babbles once they manage to find a droid and wheel Marlon over to it.
The droid extends a sensor and scans Marlon head to toe. "The cauterization is holding. We will take him to a ward to be stabilized and await a bacta tank," it says. "Please proceed to the nurses' station to complete the flimsiwork and then to the waiting room."
The Kretash sailor collapses onto a bench to catch his breath. If he feels anything like Dalla does, he deserves to. "Thank you," she says, leaning on the counter of the nurses' station to rest her legs. "I would never have been able to get him here by myself. You sail with my uncle, don't you? I didn't catch your name."
"Colin, m'lady." He nods deferentially, as if asking her permission. "I'm going back out in a minute," he replies. "I've still got family - I don't know if they made it through the charge."
"I pray you find them swiftly and safely." If she had the time or the brainspace to pray at the moment, she would. Dalla grabs the flimsiwork and stylus from the nurse and starts scribbling in Marlon's information. As soon as this is done, she's going back out too though not with this sailor to find his family. The medcenter's farther away from the northerners' rendezvous point, but there's another target that's closer, something she can get to before everyone else. Something that needs to be scouted if they have a hope of breaching it.
She hands the flimsiwork back to the nurse and maps out the quickest route from the medcenter to the royal palace.
…
Just as One-Eye reappeared from Catch and Release, Colin the cabin boy is indeed the same Colin who helped carry Marlon.