Free Warlords race for power while the final battle looms! (Swords Versus Tanks Book 4) by M Harold Page Page B

guards.
    Before they could react, Jasmine chambered another round and fired. Pellets belched from the wide muzzle. The smoke cleared. One of Hamilton's people remained standing. Jasmine chambered another round, but the Security Worker vomited blood then collapsed over her boss's corpse.
    Ibis-Bear whimpered and rocked backwards and forwards in her chair. Not really a soldier either.
    Woodsman spat out what looked like a chunk of scalp. "So much for the little shit." He drew his sleeve across his face wiping away the worst of the blood. Next to him, Hamilton's corpse voided its bowels. "But what about his cronies?"
    From beyond the stained glass windows came the rattle of automatic weapons.
    "The veterans are… arresting them even as we-"
    An explosion rattled the stained glass windows.
    "-speak."
    Woodsman looked at her appraisingly. "You know if you fuck this up, the Committee will have you shot." He made a grunting sound that might have been a laugh. "Shit! If that Elitist bastard Lowenstein can't fix the Gate, I'll shoot you myself."
    Jasmine shouldered her Stormgun, put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. Her bodyguards poured into the chamber. "Clean up the mess," she ordered. "And escort General Ibis-Bear to her quarters, she's unwell."
    "Let's find a beer." Jasmine patted the Infantry General on the arm and ushered him towards the door. "I'm not going to fuck up, so if the natives want to beat me, they'll need a better commander than Emperor Sigismund – great strategist, mediocre general."
    "Can they find a better one?"
    Jasmine laughed. "Read your history books, Woodsman. The Emperor lost his Grand Marshal five years ago. In our original history, he only managed to defeat Clifford the Foul by bribing the Redmains with the Duchy of Brandistock — a hell of a bribe."
    "So?"
    "So there was nobody alive he could trust to command the Imperial Host," said Jasmine. "We may have changed history, but not that fact. The Emperor can field an army, but there is nobody competent to lead it."

 
    CHAPTER TWELVE
     
    Ranulph’s palfrey stamped and flicked back her ears. He patted the horse’s neck. "Easy girl." She wasn't trained for this.
    Breastplates gleaming in the frigid dawn, the Imperial Landmarchers strode across Middleburgh's frosty tournament ground, shrouded in smoking breath like one of Jasmine’s war machines.
    As they passed the fenced off lists where a decade ago, Ranulph and Ragnar had fought to a draw, the Colonel bellowed, "Square!" A thousand bass voices echoed his command. The Landmarcher Regiment shook out into a hollow square. Fifteen-foot pikes toppled into place. The formation sprouted a fringe of deadly spines. In the centre marched the red robed Friars of the Imperial Order of St Maximilian.
    "My Court Philosophers call this the New Warfare," said Emperor Sigismund. His gaze fixed Ranulph. "They say the days of Chivalry are at an end."
    Ranulph thought of Jasmine. "Then, Your Magnificence, they are wrong."
    Lady Maud shot him a warning glance. The Emperor's features, however, wrinkled into a sly smile. "Will you prove it on their bodies, Dacre? Is the sword mightier than the pen? It would be, I think, an interesting experiment." He gave a bark of laughter, and the party of notables joined in.
    Ranulph grinned to acknowledge the joke made by the most powerful man in the West.
    Another command and the square seemed to pulsate like a feeding sea urchin. One rank after another swung its pikes up and back into the centre so that the Maximilianites could bless the heads without risking the arrow-charm pendant each soldier carried on his chest. A similar drill existed for the guns of the Imperial Siege Train. From time-to-time, a priest would preach that the Emperor had corrupted his church, and that the red-robed Friars were heretics. But, everybody had to admit that the Landmarcher regiments were cheap and quick to equip, and deadly against traditionally armed chivalric retinues.
    "Knighthood may