Read Online The Last President by John Barnes - Free Book Online

small force flung themselves prone in the firing pit and wriggled forward to the mounded dirt at the front. Several Daybreaker bowmen were over the fence and shooting, and more were climbing in over their dead.
    She drew her black-powder revolver, leveled it on crossed wrists, and brought down two bowmen on four shots.
Homing missiles were a lot easier.
Beside her, little Jebby was working her crossbow with grim efficiency.
Okay, kid, from now on you can kill with the grown-ups.
    â€œSquad Ten, hold this pit and keep up firing,” Highbotham’s voice was as unnaturally clear and calm as a language lesson. “Squad Nine! Squad Eleven! We’re going down there to bring our people in. Stick together. Nobody leaves early and nobody gets left. On my call, three, two, one,
now
.” She jumped, and felt them jump beside her.
    With her revolver emptied and no time to reload, she pulled the cutlass from her scabbard. An old martial arts freak named Bobby had taught her the
dhao
, which was similar; she hoped—
    On her right.
    Raising an ax over his head.
    Her hands were already moving in the bamboo cut. The blade tip bit into his neck and broke through his collarbone; he fell over backward, almost dragging her cutlass out of her hand. She glanced back, saw a man behind her raising a poleax to strike Jebby, and her cutlass turned in her hand as it passed low across her front, flew back past her thigh, and struck upward into the man’s lower ribs faster than she could think any of those words, jarring against her hand as if she’d hit a sandbag with a mallet. He froze and stared. Her blade continued up and around, the tip parting shirt and skin all the way to his shoulder, rose past his head, and came back in a neck-high slash that cut his windpipe and carotids. It felt like parting a rope.
    Staying with her blade, she faced forward again, and seeing the way clear, advanced to Henry in two big leaps. Her cutlass beat down an enemy spear tip on her flank; in a two-handed grip, she let the cutlass ride up beside her body, then whipped it full force down across the man’s skull. She wrenched her sword clear of his head and whirled toward something moving in the corner of her eye.
    The man raising a hatchet was being pushed over backwards by Jebby’s spear in his throat. Highbotham swept his foot, stepped forward, and chopped between his eyes. Her wrists ached; those had been some forceful shocks.
    Henry was at her feet, Jebby at her side, the rest of her squads and the survivors from Henry’s Squad Three in a cluster around her. Looking down the slope, she saw the last tribal bowmen fleeing toward the wall. As a space opened between friend and foe, crossbow bolts whizzed after the few surviving raiders, bringing several down.
    Henry better live. I owe him props on the crossbows. They were his idea, from that Nantucket book he was always talking about.
Is
always talking ab
out.
    Highbotham ordered, “Crossbowmen, cover us, everyone else, carry the wounded, back to the center pit. Two runners!”
    Two survivors from Henry’s team stepped forward. “You, go to Squads One and Two. You, Four and Five. Let Gilead know he’s in command now, and Squad Ten will hold the center pit. Bartie commands Squad Ten and he’s Gilead’s second in command. Tell them this is an order: No one is to rush the fence or try to carry the attack beyond it. Hold
this
side of the fence till the town militia relieves us. Do not charge into the enemy like some crazy-ass hero. Repeat that.”
    They did,
crazy-ass hero
and all. She nodded, and the runners were off across the thick lawn.
    â€œMy fault,” Henry said, as two boys lifted him from the ground at her feet. “Bombs didn’t—”
    â€œRest,” she said. “And your crossbows are
great
.” A few more steps brought them back to the center firing pit. “Anyone left from Squad