by David Weber
The alert trooper who’d thought he’d heard something was a quick-witted fellow. He didn’t waste time trying to get to his horse; he simply turned and bolted into the darkness. That took him directly away from the two Marines who’d been detailed to cover the horses. Unhappily for him, it took him directly into the path of Sergeant Edvarhd Wystahn. Still, he made out better than his fellows, although he might be forgiven for not realizing that immediately as Wystahn’s rifle butt slammed into the pit of his belly. The cavalryman folded up with an agonized, wheezing gasp, and the sergeant struck him again—this time a scientific blow across the back of his neck that didn’t quite pulverize any vertebrae.
“Good work,” Wystahn told the other members of his squad softly as they filtered out of the darkness around him and the single, unconscious survivor of the cavalry picket.
Unlike the majority of the men of Brigadier Clareyk’s Third Brigade, Wystahn and his men wore single-piece garments of mottled green and brown, rather than the traditional light blue breeches and dark blue tunics of the Royal Charisian Marines. Their rifles were also shorter than the standard weapon, with browned barrels, and the brims of their traditional, broad-brimmed black hats were sharply rolled on the right side.
Their distinctive garb marked them as scout-snipers. None of them were aware that the inspiration for their organization had come from a chance remark Seijin Merlin had dropped in conversation with Brigadier Clareyk when he’d been only a major. What they were aware of was that they’d been selected and trained specifically as a small, elite force to be attached to standard Marine formations. They were intended for missions exactly like the one they’d just carried out, and their function once combat was joined was to serve as covering skirmishers in the early stages and to specifically target any officer they could identify on the other side. Quite a few of them had enjoyed previous careers as hunters or, in some cases, poachers, and they’d developed a distinctive swagger which was guaranteed to . . . irk any other Marine whose path they happened to cross in a tavern or bordello. Many of them, as a consequence, had come to know the shore patrol quite well.
This was the first time they’d actually been used in the field, of course. Sergeant Wystahn was well aware that he, his men, and the entire scout-sniper concept were on trial. Although it might not have occurred to him to describe it in precisely those terms, he was determined that they were going to prove themselves, and so far, he had nothing to chew anyone out for.
So far.
“Zhak, go back and tell the Lieutenant where we are. Tell him the last picket on the list’s gone. The rest of us’ll wait here.”
“Aye, Sarge.”
The indicated Marine nodded, then went loping off into the darkness. “The rest of you take position,” Wystahn continued, and the others filtered out to form a loose perimeter around the former picket’s position.
Wystahn watched them critically, then grunted in satisfaction and squatted to check on the surviving Corisandian’s condition.
. X .
Haryl’s Crossing,
Barony of Dairwyn,
League of Corisande
Sir Koryn Gahrvai made himself look patient as he waited for the early dawn light to creep back into the world. He could smell rain, but it didn’t feel very imminent, and its approach suggested that the day might at least be a little cooler than yesterday had been. That would be nice, although if things went as he’d planned, today would be hot enough to satisfy anyone.
There, he thought, watching the first hint of salmon and gold creep across the eastern horizon. It won’t be much longer now.
He’d left his headquarters at the planter’s house and ridden forward to keep a personal eye on things, but he hadn’t gone beyond the town itself. Tempting though it was, he knew he had no business with his most forward formations. Nothing they might gain from his presence in terms of improved morale or steadiness would be worth the possibility that he might be taken out of action . . . or the much greater probability that he would find himself bogged down in some purely local situation when he ought to be supervising the overall battle.
After considering carefully, he’d chosen the steeple of Haryl’s Crossing’s biggest church as his forward command post. It would give him the best view over the greatest area, it offered good height for the semaphore mast his engineers had rigged overnight, and it was a prominent enough landmark (especially now that it had the mast stuck on top of it) that couriers trying to locate him with messages from his subordinate commanders shouldn’t find their task difficult. Now he yawned, cradling a cup of hot chocolate in both hands, while the sky gradually brightened and details began to emerge from the darkness.
He was glad he’d made his decision to get the troops into position yesterday. Either Windshare’s scouts had misreported the Charisian column’s position earlier in the day, or else the Charisians had picked up the pace considerably yesterday afternoon. He was inclined to believe it was probably a combination of the two. Estimating the enemy’s position accurately in such heavily overgrown terrain would have been difficult at the best of times, and he would have liked to ascribe the Charisians’ unanticipatedly early arrival solely to a perfectly natural mistake on the cavalry’s part. But he didn’t think it was that simple, and he wondered if the Charisians might somehow have caught wind of his own presence at Haryl’s Crossing. He didn’t see how they could have gotten any of their own scouts close enough for that without even being detected, but it was always possible one of the locals had provided information to the other side, whether involuntarily or in return for payment.
He sipped chocolate, savoring the rich flavor, and fresh energy seemed to trickle through his veins. It shouldn’t be much longer now. . . .
There. Those were the standards of his farthest forward battalions. He still didn’t have as many muskets, flintlock or matchlock, as he would have preferred. Worse, according to his own cavalry scouts’ reports, every single one of the Charisians they’d seen so far appeared to be armed with a flintlock musket, whereas a third of his own men were still armed with pikes. Fortunately, he had a lot more men than the Charisians did, and while he might be weaker, proportionately, in firepower, the difference in total manpower meant he actually had more of them, absolutely. And whatever the relative numbers of firearms might be, those pikes were going to be a nasty handful if the infantry formations ever managed to close.
The light was still too poor for him to use his spyglass, but he squinted his eyes, peering eastward to where the shadows of the tangled woodland continued to conceal the single Charisian battalion which had encamped just this side of them. They ought to be about—
Gahrvai’s eyes widened in sudden astonishment. Surely it was only a trick of the light!
He set his chocolate cup aside, and stepped closer to the open side of the belfry. He was conscious of the cool breeze, the awakening twitter of birds and gentle whistling of wyverns, and the dew-slick, man-sized bell, hanging just behind him like some watching presence. And he was also conscious of the handful of staff officers and aides in the belfry with him. That was the reason he forced his expression to remain calm, kept his hands still as they rested on the waist-high safety railing. The light continued to improve, and his eyes tried to water with the intensity of his gaze.
“Sir!” one of his aides blurted suddenly. “I thought—”
“I see it, Lieutenant,” Gahrvai said, and he was pleased—and more than a little surprised—by how calmly he managed to speak.
The evening before, a single battalion of Charisian infantry had been bivouacked in a restricted arc whose broad side had been centered on the highway where it emerged from the tangled wilderness. Now, somehow, that battalion had advanced at least a full mile without any of his cavalry pickets having spotted a thing. Worse, the battalion had been substantially reinforced. His scouts had estimated the Charisian column at a maximum of five or six thousand men. Assuming that the higher number was accurate, it looked as if at least two-thirds
of the enemy’s total strength had somehow managed to magically appear in front of his own men.
His jaw clenched as he attempted to estimate frontages and strengths. In close formation, each infantryman covered a frontage of approximately one yard. In open formation, that frontage doubled. So a four hundred–man battalion in close formation, with three companies up in a double line and the fourth in reserve, covered a front of around a hundred and fifty yards. In a three-deep line, their frontage shrank to only a hundred yards. The scouting reports suggested that the Charisian battalions were larger than his own, probably about five hundred men, instead of four hundred. Assuming each of them retained one company as a reserve, that meant each of their battalions should cover about two hundred yards in close formation, dropping to only a hundred and thirty if they went to a triple line. Which seemed. . . .
The light was significantly stronger than it had been, and he raised his spyglass, then frowned. Details were still hard to make out at this distance, even with the glass, but one thing was obvious; they weren’t in close formation at all. Instead, they were in a peculiar, almost staggered open formation.
What the hell are they up to? he fretted. If it ever comes to a general melee, we’ll go through them like shit through a wyvern even without a single pike! So why . . . ?
Then he realized. That formation wasn’t intended for hand-to-hand combat at all. His own flintlock muskets could fire much more rapidly than the old-style matchlocks. He’d already assumed the Charisians had to be able to fire at least as rapidly as his own flintlocks, and that formation was obviously optimized to allow the greatest number of muskets to fire at any given moment. It wasn’t a melee formation at all; it was one which had been specifically designed around the rate of fire of the new weapons.
Which ours haven’t been, he thought grimly. That’s going to be . . . painful.
The fact that the Charisians had managed to get so many more muskets forward and out of the constricted woodland behind them was also worrisome, although now that the surprise was beginning to ebb, that particular discovery bothered him less. The object had been to draw the enemy forward, after all. The fact that the Charisians had obliged him should scarcely have been a matter for concern.
Except that they did it on their own terms, not mine. And except for the fact that Alyk had cavalry pickets out there expressly to warn us if they tried something like this. Not only that, but those bastards’ front is on this side of where some of those pickets were posted. So they didn’t just keep Alyk’s troopers from spotting them; somehow, they took out every single picket without anyone’s firing a single shot or a single man getting away to warn us. Now that’s . . . bothersome.
“How did they manage that, Sir?” the same aide muttered behind him, and Gahrvai shrugged.
“I don’t have the foggiest idea, Lieutenant,” he admitted. “And just between you and me, the fact that they did manage it without our catching even a sniff of what they were up to bothers me. On the other hand, all they’ve really accomplished is to shove their heads deeper into the noose for us. Not only that, but they’re a good thousand or fifteen hundred yards this side of the woods. If Earl Windshare’s cavalry can get into that gap, cut them off from retreat . . .”
The lieutenant was nodding now, his eyes intent, and Gahrvai discovered that the youngster’s response actually made him feel a bit better, too. If the lieutenant thought what he was saying made sense, it probably did. Even better, other people might be thinking the same thoughts instead of worrying about how the hell the Charisians had managed to magically move that many men that far forward without anyone happening to notice.
That thought was still percolating through the back of his mind when he heard the faint, distant call of bugles.
They weren’t his bugles, and as he watched, the Charisian formation shivered, then stirred into motion.
“Now that’s an unpleasant sight, isn’t it?” Brigadier Kynt Clareyk murmured to himself.
He and his staff had attached themselves to Colonel Zhanstyn’s headquarters group. Each of the two Charisian brigades had three of its battalions up in line, with the fourth battalion in reserve, and Zhanstyn’s ⅓rd Battalion formed the center of Third Brigade’s line on the Charisian left.
At the moment, Clareyk had paused on a slight knoll, peering through his own spyglass over the heads of his advancing riflemen at the Corisandian formation waiting for them.
The Corisandian lines were far denser than his own—deeper, bristling with pikeheads. That tighter frontage and greater depth were going to provide them with much greater shock value if it came to a melee, but that possible advantage had been obtained by decreasing each Corisandian battalion’s maximum firepower. Or, rather, by decreasing it in comparison with the Charisian battalions. It looked as if Clareyk might be about to find out whether or not his theories about firepower trumping shock power were going to turn out to have been accurate after all.
Something fitting about that, he mused as he swung his spyglass steadily, sweeping across the front of the enemy’s position. It’s only fair that the fellow who thought he was so clever when he worked it all out should get to test his own concepts under fire, as it were. Odd. Somehow I don’t really find myself looking forward to the opportunity.
“I make it about eight or nine thousand men, Sir,” a voice said quietly at his elbow, and he turned his head, quirking one eyebrow at Major Bryahn Lahftyn, his senior staff officer. “In their main formation, I mean,” Lahftyn added.
“Ah, yes. In their main formation,” Clareyk said dryly.
“Well, yes, Sir.” Lahftyn looked rather uncomfortable for a moment, then saw the glint of humor in his brigadier’s eye.
“Somehow,” Clareyk said, “the odds didn’t seem so bad until just now.” He grinned crookedly. “I’ve just discovered that seeing all of those fellows standing over there sort of takes the concept of ‘outnumbered’ out of the merely intellectual category.”
“It does do that, Sir,” Lahftyn agreed. “And look over there, in the center of their line.”
Clareyk gazed in the indicated direction, and his mouth tightened ever so slightly.
The terrain between the tangled wilderness through which they’d marched and the river, some six or seven miles farther west, consisted primarily of cotton silk fields, cropland, and pastures, with belts of orchards closer to the town nestled around the stone bridge. There were scattered sections of woodlot out there, as well, although none of them seemed as choked with wire vine as the wilderness they’d slogged through to get here. At least some of the pastures were separated by carefully trained hedges of wire vine, and there were several stone walls, as well. Fortunately, the walls were obviously intended as property markers rather than significant obstacles, and very few of them rose much higher than midthigh.
Overall, it was as close to ideal terrain as he was likely to find. It did slope steadily uphill towards the feet of the Dark Hill Mountains. In fact, the foothills on the far side of the river were actually closer to low bluffs, he thought, and he had no doubt they were solidly manned by the additional troops the Corisandian commander had declined to cram into his relatively limited battlefield. The river was too broad for smoothbore muskets atop those bluffs to dominate the lower, flatter eastern bank, although it would be quite a different matter for field artillery, even the carronade-style artillery the Corisandians had developed. Aside from that, though, the ground in front of him was close to perfectly fitted to his own tactical needs, while the denser, deeper Corisandian formations were going to find the relatively minor terrain obstacles much more hampering than his own men would.
Unfortunately, the reason it was ideal for his riflemen was because the Corisandians had been seeking exactly the same sort of clear fire zones for their artillery, and they’d placed no fewer than thirty or forty field pieces at the center of their own front. That was what Lahftyn had spotted, and Clareyk’s mouth tightened a bit more as he contemplated what those guns would do
to his own battalions if they got the chance.
We’ll just have to see that they don’t get the chance, won’t we, Kynt?
“Signal Major Bryndyn,” he said. “I want our field guns and Lieutenant Hahthym deployed in the center. Tell him he’s not to come within five hundred yards of their pieces with his own guns.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Lahftyn scribbled busily in his notebook, then read back the brief message. Clareyk listened, then nodded in satisfaction, and the youthful major went jogging across to the heliograph which shared the top of their knoll. The signalman manning the device read over the major’s note, trained his sight on the mounted officers clustered around the twelve-pounder field guns and their draft dragons, and reached for the lever on the heliograph’s side. A moment later, the shutters began to clatter as he flashed the instructions in coded flickers of mirrored sunlight.
Lahftyn waited until Major Bryndyn’s acknowledgment had been received. As it happened, there wasn’t yet enough light on Bryndyn’s position for him to use his own heliograph, but his signal party displayed the single green flag which indicated a message had been received and understood. It wasn’t as good as having the text of the message repeated back to be sure it wasn’t garbled, but if Bryndyn had been in any doubt about what he was supposed to do, his signalers would have displayed the red flag which requested that the message be repeated.
“Message acknowledged, Sir,” Lahftyn announced as he rejoined Clareyk.
“Thank you, Bryahn. I saw the flag myself.”
Lahftyn nodded, and then he and his brigadier stood side-by-side, watching as four thousand Charisians marched steadily towards well over ten thousand Corisandians.
“Sir, they’re marching straight towards us!”
The young lieutenant—he couldn’t be much over nineteen, Gahrvai thought—sounded aggrieved, almost indignant. And he also sounded puzzled. Which, Gahrvai decided, could have been said of the lieutenant’s commander, as well.
