Harr was one step below him at the top of the stairs, facing the gate that opened into the high quarter.

The rest of the squad stood on the steps below that, and behind them the second group stretched down toward the plaza.

The air at the high quarter entrance was still, carrying the built-up smell of days of shut stone and no trade moving through it.

"All three entries are in position," Godric said from his right.

Beorn looked at Harr. "Give it a breath once you’re through. Let the volley smoke clear before you push the first building."

Harr nodded, then looked back at the gate. "And if they’ve built something in the passage behind it."

"Then the smoke covers your advance," Beorn said. "Move."

Harr went through the gate at a walk that turned into a run by the second stride, his squad filing after him in good order.

Three seconds, and the entry was established.

Then, from inside the high quarter, the first volley of bolts cracked against stone, but wrong, because the bolts came before Harr’s squad would have had time to fire.

That meant the defenders had seen the militia forming below and had not waited.

Beorn looked toward the side streets. "If they took the initiative, the side streets are left without a strong blockade."

He thought for two seconds, watching the gate line push forward.

"Runner. Both side street entries, go now. Do not wait."

Godric was already turning.

He took a runner from the group on the steps and gave the message in four words.

The runner was moving before Godric had finished the sentence.

From inside the gate came a second volley from Harr’s squad, then the sharp close sounds of contact in a narrow passage.

Beorn listened, reading the volume and the rhythm.

The contact was not sustained.

The gate line had passed the first position and was driving forward.

He went through the gate himself, with the two militia soldiers assigned to him on either side and Aestrith behind his left shoulder.

Inside the passage lay one man down and one man who had taken a shot through the upper arm and was still standing, back against the wall, sword in his working hand.

A militia soldier from Harr’s squad was already engaging him.

Beorn observed both facts and kept walking.

"Harr."

His voice went to the front of the group, where Harr was pushing toward the first interior building’s door.

Harr looked back.

Beorn pointed toward the building. "Take the gate line through the first building and hold at the second street. Do not go farther until I say."

"Understood," Harr said.

He went through the building’s door without stopping.

From the left, somewhere out in the high quarter’s side streets, came the clear crack of the side entry squads opening fire.

Both of them fired close enough together that the second was almost an echo of the first.

From the right and ahead, the main road engagement had started, but the interval between shots was shorter, the pushes coming faster.

That meant they were meeting real resistance and burning through their charges against a well-defended position.

He stopped at the first intersection inside the high quarter and looked both ways.

Aestrith stopped beside him.

One of the militia soldiers moved slightly ahead by instinct, checking the right turn.

Beorn let him.

"What now," Aestrith said.

"I’m thinking," he said.

There was an alley that went from this intersection across to the inner side of the main avenue.

He knew the quarter’s layout from his memory.

The alley was narrow, forty feet, and it would put him at the back of whatever position the main avenue defenders were using.

He looked at the two soldiers assigned to him.

"We are going through that alley to hit the main avenue position from behind. You stay close and you do not fire until I have."

He paused.

"If it goes badly in there, your job is to get back to Godric, not to help me. Clear?"

One of them, a broad-shouldered man with a beard that had not seen attention in a week, said, "Clear, my lord."

"Good."

He turned to Aestrith. "Watch the upper floors."

She said nothing, which meant she already was.

The alley was barely wide enough for two abreast, with stone walls on both sides and the smell of damp that did not get enough sun.

His boot found a loose cobblestone, and he shifted his weight automatically without slowing.

At the far end, the passage opened onto the inner side of the main avenue.

He stopped at the edge and looked.

The main barricade was thirty feet away with its back to him. It was made of furniture, two crates, and a merchant’s display stand laid on its side.

Five men stood behind it, all turned toward the residential district line where the militia was driving them back.

One crossbowman had his weapon raised and tracking.

One man was reloading, his ramrod working down the barrel in short controlled movements, his attention completely on the task in front of him.

He looked back at the two soldiers and raised one finger, himself, then pointed at the man reloading.

They both understood what he meant.

He raised two fingers and pointed at the nearest barricade man, which was the soldier with the beard.

The soldier nodded.

He stepped out of the alley, brought the pistol up, and fired.

The ball went through the right side of the man’s chest between the ribs, through the lower lobe of the lung, and out through his back.

The man bent forward over the crate, his hands finding the edge of it, the half-loaded crossbow sliding off and striking the cobblestones below.

He stayed bent over the crate with his hands pressed against it and his chest doing something that was not breathing.

The flanking shot from behind turned two of the five defenders.

In that same second both of those men had their backs to the main avenue and the militia at the front rushed over the barricade.

Beorn stepped back into the alley mouth and started the reload, powder down the barrel, patch and ball, ramrod, prime the pan.

His hands moved without his attention, because they had done this enough times that the memory lived in his fingers.

He listened to what was happening at the barricade while he reloaded.

Two shots from the militia front, the close sound of blades meeting, one voice saying something in a volume he didn’t catch.

Then less. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Then a quiet of a different kind.

When he came back out, the barricade was done.

The militia from the main avenue was crossing into the interior of the high quarter, and the squad leader, a lean man with a cut above his right eye from something that had grazed him on the line, came directly to Beorn.

"We took three wounded coming through," the squad leader said. "None down."

"How many did we bring down?" Beorn said.

"Four on the barricade. One ran into the quarter."

"Direction."

"Toward the center."

That was expected.

They were consolidating toward Coss instead of breaking outward.

He looked at the squad leader. "You maintain this entrance and push to the first building only. Do not go farther until Godric tells you."

The squad leader confirmed it.

Aestrith was beside him.

"Window," she said. "Above where the barricade stood. Second floor. It was open when we came through the alley."

He looked up.

The window was shut now.

He measured the building’s door, three feet to the right of where the barricade had stood.

"How many men do I have to clear that building?" he said to Godric.

"Not without pulling from the front," Godric said.

"Then we mark it."

He looked at the squad leader. "That building’s door is on your right. Nobody goes in it until it has been specifically cleared. Anyone who moves through this section needs to know it has not been cleared."

"Understood," the squad leader said.

The runner from the side street entry arrived while Beorn was still at the barricade.

Godric took it and delivered it without comment.

Three of their men dead, one militia soldier with a forearm broken by an axe blow on a staircase, the squad holding position at the second intersection as ordered.

"Tell them to maintain their position," Beorn said. "I’ll send word when the main avenue force has matched their position."

He turned toward the interior of the high quarter.

The first street was cleared on all three entry points.

The sounds from deeper in the quarter were not the sounds of organized defense. They were the sounds of a force that had pulled back rather than broken.

They had chosen somewhere they could defend better

Two streets farther.

That was where the addresses clustered.