After spending half a hundredbeat or so looking back and forth in confusion, the trooper Storm had put in charge —Burley, his name was insofar as he had a name— breathed in a great, heaving breath of air and firmed his shoulders. Roight, then, he thought, and began shouting orders to those already engaged in the frenetic setting up of defenses.

The first thing he did was have them move their fortress of boxes and bags, for they’d been setting it up in the center of the room like dunderheads. “Over beneath the stair,” he bellowed. “We’ll want the stone of the hearth to our backs and more cover than a few crates. And we’ll no’ be wantin’ t’be dead in front of the doorway.”

As the lot of them scowled over at him, he shot them an eye. They’d chosen this in pointing him out to their leader, so they’d bloody well listen when he gave them orders. They began to shift the barricade.

“Stack the fireplace full,” he ordered one trooper. “Be sure t’block the flue. OI don’t want ‘em throwin’ aught down the chimney t’befowl the place.

“You!” he ordered the garrulous trooper with the half ear. “Small Teesh! pick yer two. OI’ll want yer here at the front of th’ barricade fer t’take the first shot.”

He hadn’t been in the room when the Tairn had been told who the best shots were, but after three years and more in the troop, well he knew who could and who couldn’t.

“You,” he pointed to the next and repeated the command. “Bosh. Behoind this lump and his three. Yer’ll stand and foir after they discharge and drop t’take up their lances.”

“You,” he pointed to the next. “Zhettesh. Besoide these others t’their roight, and angled out, so’s t’ have a clear field o’foir.”

Going through, he set up eight teams leaders without stopping the work of fortification the lot of the troopers were engaged in. The tall trooper with the extra matchlocks, he set on the landing of the stairs between floors, for to see over the heads of the others.

“You sharpshooters,” he hollered into the bedlam of activity. Ye’re numbered as OI've called yer. One through eight. The greenies, will be one through eight numbered as they come through the doors, aye?”

He received a chorus of ayes before he continued. “Do not foire until OI gives yer call!” he warned. “And when OI call, it’ll be Team whatever, target whatever, aye?”

Another chorus of ayes. He’d been with them long enough, and the lot of them had seen enough of scuffles together for them to understand what he was telling them.

Turning to the balcony where the Little Birds were setting themselves up behind their own barricade, he called out, “you ladies need me t’call yer targets?”

“No,” Thrush Dancing called back. “We understand what we need to do. We will aid where needed and shift aim as needed.”

“Aye!” he laughed, a grin on his lumpy, potato-nosed face. “Sure and yer will, OI’m confident.”

“Where’s Big Teesh?” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

“Back hear, ye great gaboon!” came an answering bellow from the kitchen. “Finishin’ up the blockin’ of the back door!”

“Well finish and get yer worthless carcass up here on th’ double!

“Take up that last spare matchlock,” he ordered when Big Teesh appeared a moment or two later. “And hie yerself down behint the bar, down back o’ the wine barrels. Wait ye and be qoiet as a mouse until yer needed.”

“And when will that be?” Big Teesh wondered, a frown on his great face.

“When they come bustin’ through th’ soide door loike Oi know they will,” Burley told him. “Sure as mornin’ follers noight, they’ll bust through. When they do, yer lets them on by. When the lot have come in, give ‘em a coupla balls ter th’ back o’ their shaggy green melons.

“But moind, yer, keep yer head down lest one o’ these dead oiyes behoind me puts one in yer by accident. And have a care where yer own shot travels, Aye?”

Big Teesh gave the others a frown, but turned towards the bar. “Aye,” he grumbled.

Just then, the dealicus, who’d forted itself up in its living quarters above the kitchen came roaring out of its rooms. “There’s sommat on the roof!” it cried. “They’re coming over the roof!”

“Can they get through?” the trooper demanded, turning to face it.

“‘Tis a bleedin’ roof!” the dealicus screeched. “This isn’t a bloody fortress, it’s a bloody inn! Of course they can get through!”

“Then hoide!” he ordered. “You,” and he pointed to the tall trooper on the landing. “Scheel. Up yer go! Top o’ the stairs. Aught comes through that door ain’t our host, deal with it.”

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“But the Tairn—”

“Aye, and he told me t’ handle it, didn’t he? Any creepy crawlie comes in through the front, OI’ll handle it. You and the beasties watch the ladies.”

That was bad news, the roof. Any number of them could be up there, up to who knew what. He wasn’t altogether sure why they hadn’t just thrown torches and burned the whole of the inn to the ground already for to flush the party out into the street. They might yet.

“Remember, you lot,” he called as everyone settle at their stations. “The dalla said noine. There may be more, whether it be because the bowsers canno’ count or they missed a few. Don’t let yerselves grow careless when yer feels they’ve all been dealt with.”

They’d been in position for less than a hundredbeat when the front door came crashing in, battered aside by a hurtling green mass of hair and muscle. A pair of ogres out in the street had hurled one of their fellows bodily through the heavy wooden portal. The barricade held just long enough to slow the flying monster and foul its aim.

“Team one—”

Small Teesh blew a hole down through the top of the ogre’s head.

“—target two!” Burley shifted the team’s mark on the fly.

Two more shots rang out, filling the room with acrid smoke and the second ogre with lead. Even as the body crumpled lifeless with a pair of musket balls and two arrows in it, the creature’s companion was coming through the door behind it, clamoring over the collapsing body and the jumble of debris blocking its way.

“Team two, target three! Burley called. ”

A full three shot volley rang out while the echo of Small Teesh’s shot was still reverberating through the common room, felling the third ogre in its tracks.

“Team two, drop down, Burley ordered. Team three, shift behi—”

The side door crashed in.

“Team foive, target one!” Burley called, still pointing his right hand towards the front door and its growing pile of green bodies.

Six more muskets spoke together as team three caught sight of their target out in the street and team five let the first ogre coming in through the shattered side door have a dose of Turaleean lead.

“Team six, target two!” Burley ordered as he caught the fourth, mortally wounded ogre from the initial assault staggering forward out the corner of his eye. It was raising its axe for a throw when the flurry of egret fletched arrows sprouting from the ruins of its face finally brought it down.

As the troopers of team five dropped to their knees and took up their lances, those behind them in team six rose and fired. The second ogre through the side door staggered, but kept on, sprouting first one and then two pairs of egret fletched arrows in its chest. Even as it roared and steadied itself to charge, a musket ball slammed through the back of its head and it fell face down onto the bloody planks of the floor.

“Team four, be ready to the front!” Burley called, a feeling taking him.

A fifth ogre leapt through the front door, no doubt thinking the way clear now that the man children were distracted even as a third ogre popped through the side door and took a mighty horizontal swing at Big Teesh. Team four fired without prompting, the little birds finishing that monster as well.

Big Teesh, meanwhile, dropped his matchlock, grabbed hold of a shelf behind the bar and levered himself floorward faster than gravity could have managed. The axe whistled across his back close enough to squall along his back plate.

The ogre was still struggling to bring its axe back for another swing when a pair of arrows sprouted from its left ear. The great, green head flinched and turned to locate the source of this new attack. From the floor, Big Teesh rolled to his knees, the spare matchlock in his hands.

The ogre, realizing its peril, turned back, but Teesh blew a great huff of breath onto the match, bringing it alight, rammed the weapon’s muzzle up into the hollow of the ogre’s throat, and touched the shot off, blowing the top of the brute’s head clean off and sending its body flopping over backwards.

Eight, Burley had time to think. Where’ll—

The door to the dealicus’ quarters burst open, disgorging two more ogres so quickly they might have been stuck together, and already moving at a dead run. They must have crashed down through the roof under cover of the gunfire.

Trooper Scheel put a ball into the face of the first ogre at arm’s reach, but didn’t have time to do anything else before it was upon him, tearing through his middle with its last breath.

Its companion, ichor gushing out its neck from the ball that had passed clear through the first ogre’s head, and from the wounds of a pair of arrows buried in its throat, continued its charge as both wolves sprang at it.

The little birds sent the last of their egret fletched arrows into its body, dropped their bows and drew swords, prayers on their lips, for they did not expect to survive this.

The ogre staggered on, batting at the wolves gnawing at its groin, and raising its axe overhead to chop the big grey in half, ignoring the open door to its right as it passed.

The ball of fire from within that room ripped away its head and half its upper torso, flinging the smoking remains of the monster through the railing and down onto the common room floor, nearly taking both weres with it.

There came a clatter from within the kitchen, and then silence.

The wizard staggered from the room in which he’d been treating the corporal, his face ash grey and twisted in agony. Smoke was rising from his scorched hands. Having been roused from his trance by the sound of gunfire, he’d opened his eyes and turned to see a roaring ogre passing his doorway with an axe upraised. Instinctively, he’d shot a bolt of power at it without thinking to raise any sort of wards to prevent injury to himself in the casting.

That’s ten, Burley thought. And more than were expected. So why don’t OI think this is over?

He stepped quietly down the stairs and made his way through the barricades, matchlock at the ready. “Reload lads, now there’s toime,” he said quietly as he passed through the men at the lead barricade. From the moment of the first incursion, his heart hadn’t had the time for a hundred beats.

Easing himself up to the edge of the kitchen door, motioning to the men of teams seven and eight to be on the ready while fervently hoping none of them slipped up and shot him instead of any invading monsters, he leaned aside and gave the door a good, solid kick. Nothing.

The kitchen was quite the mess. The rear door had been bashed in alright, and the iron gate outside torn from its hinges. But both room and garden were empty.

Turning back inside, he breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Alroight, lads,” he called as he cleared the door into the common room. “Looks loike the last of ‘em’s legged it. Mayhap it took ‘em sa long t’break through both gate and door they missed the party and decoided mayhap they didn’t want any o’ what we were servin’.”

All eyes sought the doorway as The Tairn stumbled over the bodies there, broken sword clutched on one hand, empty pistol in the other, drenched in blood, clothing tattered beyond recognition.

“And your day?” Belius asked him quietly from the balcony.