Guelf nodded. “Brandon! Take three men for stretcher duty. Take Chezzy and… and… Terry, Terry’s body, back to the rail head. Evacuate all nonessential personnel, now. Charlmain! Get those drums unloaded all over the bridge, spill the oil, now!”
The flat tung of the scorpion twanged again and everybody threw themselves flat. This one was properly anchored, which meant they could reload it quickly. The bolt went overhead with a tooth-grating wheep and then a whunk of impact as it buried half its length in the soil. They worked, using the mantlets as best they could to shield themselves. Another bolt hit one, and half the shaft stood through it; a man stumbled back swearing as the sharp three-sided head stopped a handsbreadth from his face, then dropped flat with a yell as crossbowmen volleyed at his suddenly exposed form.
Beyond the walls a slowly growing brabble sounded; pounding feet, equipment clanging and thumping against other men or walls and stairs, shouts loud enough to be almost comprehensible. That meant hundreds of men at least, massing in the open space just inside the walls. When there were enough of them the gates would spring open.
“They’re getting ready to sortie,” he muttered to himself.
And there’s nothing much we can do but wait for it, and hope those Stavarov men get here the way Ruffin promised.
He looked up and was shocked to see the morning was gone and the sun was in the west. A squire handed him a couple of hardtack biscuits and a lump of rock-hard cheese strong enough to make you feel that it was biting you, and the sight brought on a sudden raw hunger that had nothing to do with taste and everything with fuel. He worried at both, and drank from a canteen of Umatilla water cut one-to-five with bad brandy to kill the bugs.
Then the banners of House Stavarov, a glitter of lance-points and footmen trotting behind; just far enough away to see clearly, as they reined in beside the flag of House Odell. He breathed out in relief-they might not be enough, but he certainly didn’t have enough without them.
“Pile it all up!” he shouted. “The tents, the food, tear down those corrugated-iron sheds. There, there, there! We’ll stop them in these ruined streets just north of here!”
The stink of blood, sweat, spoiling food, dust, oils and distillates was compounded by the filth three hundred men could void in a single day of hard and ceaseless work.
Go ahead and shit, pee, spit and foul the nest. We’ll either lie in our filth with the coming of dark, or leave them lying in it.
The last pedal cars were already pulling up on the rail line to the west, ready to take them out. Viscount Chenoweth, Thierry and Guelf met at the railhead; it was close to sundown.
“Are we ’bout ready?” Chenoweth asked.
“Yes.” Guelf answered shortly. Then, seeing anger begin to darken the other’s eyes, apologized. “Too long a day and too much sun, my lord. What’s the plan, now?”
To his relief, Chenoweth nodded an acceptance for the implied apology. “They’re going to launch an attack soon; it must have taken this long to get enough troops up from the main battle south of town. Thierry’s specialists will fire the Highway 84 bridge the moment they do, then double-time over to the Westgate Bridge and fire it with incendiary bolts from the prearranged positions. It’s thick with the HD40 now. We’ll all converge on the railcars.”
Constantine Stavarov’s face fell. “Well, fuck your mother, don’t I get to fight?”
“Yes, you do, Sir Constantine,” the Viscount said patiently. “You have to hit the head of their column when they come out of the city and across the bridge. Hold them. Then I hit them. Then Sir Guelf hits them in the flank. Then you withdraw, we withdraw, and we spring our little surprise on them when they’re nicely stalled just where we want them. Understand, my lord?”
“Da, da. They come out and I charge them down this street here.”
The heir to Odell sighed. “Exactly. My lords, Sir Constantine and his people will hold until we get there and then take the first pedal cars off. Most of Thierry’s specialists will follow in the next two cars. They won’t need their reloading crews and the machines will be laid in advance.”
Guelf nodded, frowning as he looked for his squires. Brandon and Charlmain were… back by the rails, arguing? He strode back, a blistering rebuke behind his teeth. They were confronting a child of eleven. Odo Reddings, his wife’s youngest brother and his youngest page.
“God’s teeth, Odo! I sent you back to Hermiston with orders to accompany the wounded into Portland, hours ago! This is no place for a page!”
Odo looked up at his lord, his defiant, angry attitude towards the squires crumbling. “I missed the train, sir. Do I take the one with the Chehalis menie?”
God, of course not! One of Constantine’s knights, I know his reputation. I can’t tell them Odo hid from his brother’s dead body, but I’m sure that was it! Damn! I didn’t think of that!
“Brandon, detail someone to get this brat on the train with you-”
“And what is going on here?”
At the angry voice, Guelf turned, baring his teeth at Thierry. “A little bit of a snaggle. My page is still here!”
“Get your men into position, Mortimer. I’m going up.”
Guelf nodded, his cheeks burning with embarrassment. And Odo’s butt is going to burn!
“Brandon, Charlmain; back to your position. Sir Thierry, the padre will be at your orders. I’ll see you at the rendezvous.”
Guelf and his squires double-timed it to the formation point in the tangle of dead streets. As Guelf strode up the line, checking his men’s readiness, he saw many reach for their scapular or the saint’s medal they wore around their necks, murmur a brief prayer and tuck it back.
With a sour smile, he did the same. The plain gold disk dangling on a fine gold chain around his neck was set with a small piece of jasper. Unless somebody took it in hand and looked at it, they wouldn’t realize his old St. Valentine medal was gone, nor what the new one signified.
The Ascended masters are real. So is their power.
Then a shout of: “Here they come!”
He skipped backward a few steps to get a line of sight. The city gates were open, and at least two hundred men were quickstepping out with more behind; the assault party was Pendleton city militia from the looks, wildly mismatched armor but long pikes, coming straight down the road to the bridge and heading equally straight for Constantine’s banner. His position would be invisible to them… hopefully until too late.
“Face forward, all of you. When the signal comes we’re going to run down this street, turn right-that’s right, everyone-into the cross street and hit, in a wedge, splitting the join between the Chehalis men and the enemy. I want you all to think that you’re wild Celts! Like the McClintock woodsrunners from the far south, fangs out and hair on fire. We have to hit them like a sledgehammer; it’s our asses if we don’t. Charlmain, you’re there! Brandon, there!”
He took his place at the head of the lines, spearmen and men-at-arms with their shields forward, the lighter-armed crossbowmen on the flanks.
“Nobody look back! Everybody, eyes front! You’ll follow me!”
He turned his head over his right shoulder, waiting for the flash of red, stamping his feet rhythmically and hearing the whole menie take it up as they jogged in place. Just a few feet forward was the entrance to the north-south alley they had numbered two. He could hear the fight struggling back and forth, like the sound of sea surf in storm as a bristle of long Pendleton pikes slammed up against the County Chehalis men-at-arms and spearmen. Chenoweth was at the other end, though he couldn’t see him. Thierry’s flag signal would synchronize the attack.
Thierry’s squire swung the red flag from his position on top of the post and Guelf lifted his sword and knocked down his visor. The world shrank to a bright slit, and he put his left fist four inches below his chin. The shield covered him from face to knee, and he tucked his shoulder into it, making his armored body into a battering ram. Then he filled his lungs and screamed the order:
&n
bsp; “With me, forward. ”
Everyone stepped off together, synchronized by their stamping unison. He moved at a trot, building momentum and speed as his menie came behind him in a thick wedge of muscle and bone and steel and wood and leather, a harsh stink of sweat and oiled metal like a wave moving with them, a crashing rhythm of hobnailed boots and clattering steel. Voices echoed, muffled by the visors and booming from the curved inner surfaces of the big kite-shaped shields:
“Forward for Portland! Haro! Face Gervais, face Death! St. Valentine protect us! Haro! ”
Ahead the clatter and thump of close-quarter combat, the unmusical crash of steel on steel, like scrap falling on a stone floor. The grunting and panting of the heaving shoving match, shield against point or shield, men crushed forward by the weight at their backs and forced into the enemy ahead. Shocked screams of pain as steel bit home, shrieks of animal rage and fear, the patterned bellow of war shouts from the men of County Odell:
“Dismas, Dismas, Saint Dismas protect! Odell, Odell, Odell! Haro! Haro!”
They hit the enemy force locked with the Odell and Chehalis men, and the sound turned shrill as they realized they were being flanked and the crossbow volleys struck home. He rammed his shield into a pikeman’s unguarded right side with an impact that knocked into all his joints and the small of his back, smashed him off his feet and into the press of stamping boots below and thrust over and down into a man’s neck above the breastplate. The points of spears and gisarmes slammed past him from behind, thudding home in faces and guts or screeching off armor with tooth-grating tortured squeals.
Odell’s oliphants were sounding retreat. Guelf kept his head moving as he fought; you had no peripheral vision with a visor down, but he could feel the Pendleton men crumbling. He could also see Constantine Stavarov, shieldless, his visor knocked away, with blood spattered across his flushed high-cheeked, snub-nosed face and the white showing all around his eyes as he swung a two-handed war hammer with a thick spike on the other side in a blur of smashing, stabbing motion.
He was either laughing or just giving a bestial roar of joy, mouth like a red-and-white cavern. It was impossible to hear him in the tumult, but it was utterly obvious he wasn’t going to obey any trumpet-call to retreat and probably hadn’t even heard it. Two of his squires grabbed him neatly in what was obviously a rehearsed maneuver, each throwing an arm about him to pin his arms to his sides, pushing their shields forward to guard all three as they backed up with their lord’s feet almost off the ground as he screamed and struggled wildly.
Stavarov’s menie turned and ran west, to the waiting railcars and retreat. Viscount Chenoweth’s men and Guelf’s plugged the hole at the intersection, holding the enemy at bay while Thierry’s siege engineers and artillerists worked behind them in a ratcheting clack and clatter of machinery.
Smoke billowed upward as the bridge was fired, black and oily and rank with a scent of burning petroleum seldom smelled these days. The Pendleton men crumbled away, but behind them were ranks of oval hemispherical shields like sections of tower wall, each marked alike with an eagle and thunderbolts. The grim faces behind the low domed helmets and faceguards looked completely unfazed by being cut off from reinforcements by the fire. They moved in a unison like the bristle of a porcupine’s quills around an eagle standard, and the points of long javelins cocked backward with a ripple on brawny thick-muscled arms.
“Ware spears! Up shields!” Guelf shouted, and he wasn’t the only one.
The kite shields came up and the crossbowmen ducked and grabbed for their small steel bucklers. From the other side, a steady unhurried bellow of:
“Pila… ready… front rank… throw. Second rank… throw. Third rank… throw. ”
A whistle of six-foot throwing spears at fewer than ten yards distance. Guelf grunted and took a step back as two hammered into his shield, then cursed and threw it aside as the long soft-iron shanks bent, making the defense useless. He tossed his long sword up, settling it in the two-handed grip and working his fingers in the armored gauntlets. The setting sun cast long shadows, and the rusty patchwork of the sheet metal building beside him reflected the red rays. Guelf felt squeezed like grapes in a press as the close quarters caused the sound to echo and re-echo up and down the hot, airless, man-made canyons.
“Charge!” the enemy commander shouted, and the blatting tubae echoed it.
The eagle standard moved forward, carried by a man with a lion’s-skin headdress over his helmet.
“Hooh-RAH! Hooh-rah!” chanted the Boise infantry, pushing forward, their short swords flickering out from the wall of shields. “USA! USA!”
“CUT! CUT! CUT!” came the eerie scream of the Church Universal and Triumphant’s men, somewhere not far distant.
Guelf wondered if any red-robed Seekers were with them, but he was too busy flexing with his line. Swaying aside from the glaive that poked over his shoulder at the shield in front of him, the hook catching it and pulling it down. Delivering a sweeping overarm cut onto a low-crowned helmet with all his strength, and feeling something snap. The man in hoop armor fell, and the one behind him stepped forward into his position with stolid speed. No time to really think through the implications.
Like two turtles, he thought as the lines drew apart for a few seconds, breathing hard.
The dust, the smell of blood, voided bowels and urine rasped at his throat, and the burning oil made him cough. He panted, mouth hanging open, ignoring the taste on his tongue. In front of him he could see a Boise sergeant rallying his men for the next push, more confident as the PPA ranks moved back. They flexed, swords poked out, pole arms reached over the shields; individuals pushed harder, probed for openings. Guelf grinned savagely as he lifted his sword overhand. The late sun was in the enemy’s eyes and he stabbed at a face. Chenoweth was by his side as they worked in tandem to hold the plug until Thierry’s men had done their work. He watched for the swath of whitewash on a wall by the side of the road that marked the prearranged spot. The Boise men paused to regroup, wounded dragged back and fresh men stepping forward, new pila handed forward too.
Five, four, three… wait for it, two, one…
The oliphants screamed. “Back!” he shouted.
The Gervais men skipped backward, shields up but moving fast; then in one fluid motion the PPA men threw themselves down; the front rank holding up their shields as they went to one knee.
The Boise men drew back, paused, and in the instant, were lost. All the siege machinery that would be abandoned had been pre-sighted on this spot; behind each crouched a gunner with a lanyard in his hand. They jerked the cords in unison, and the murder-machines flung their loads in a chorus like the harps of tone-deaf demons. Cast-iron round shot, darts, incendiaries lashed down on the small crowd of warriors. Men screamed as napalm ran down their shields and under their armor in splashes of clinging fire. Shields cracked under the round shot and legs snapped like twigs as the twelve-pound balls bounced and spun. At this range four-foot darts nailed men together through armor and shields both.
Guelf stood, his balls crawling up inside as he saw what remained of the enemy rank; smoke and flame billowed up behind them. Even if the asphalt of the surface didn’t catch, it would be a while before anyone could cross that bridge.
It only takes one dart thrower… he thought.
“Back, retreat!” he shouted, and the oliphants echoed it. He stooped and snatched up an intact shield someone had dropped. “Back! This place is rigged to burn. Fast, fast!”
The men turned and trotted away; some of them had the arms of wounded comrades over their shoulders, and others were making rough carrying seats from two pairs of crossed hands. One giant even had an armored form slung across his back. The knights and squires were last, backing in a controlled rush and trusting to their fuller armor to shield their subordinates.
Chenoweth’s eyes flicked back and forth over the broken bodies they left behind. Guelf was doing the same. Stopping to pick up the dead was out of the question;
even the wounded weren’t always possible. If they could recognize the fallen, it made it easier later to compile the lists of the dead.
Then they were out, running, running for their lives to the rail bridge, 84 to the left and Westbridge dead ahead, engulfed in flames. The warehouses behind them burst open like an overripe watermelon dropped off a castle’s battlements, the stacked incendiaries collapsing as the thermite charges ruptured their glass walls. A wave of liquid fire poured out of the ruined buildings, running knee-high like surf on a beach.
The screams of the enemy rose to a peak and then died as the fire ripped the air out of the narrow alley. Men fled burning; even Boise’s discipline couldn’t take this.
Guelf leapt aboard the first of his contingent’s pedal cars, ignoring the Odell brothers doing likewise ahead of him.
“Push, damn you!” Guelf screamed. “Half push, half pedal!”
His men threw their weapons and shields on the cars; some clambered aboard and threw themselves into the recliner seats, booted feet searching for the pedals. The rest rammed their shoulders into the sides, so enthusiastically that Guelf had to grab for a support as his car almost came off the tracks. It began to rock forward with the rough, irregular neglected bed giving it a sickening side-to-side motion as it gathered speed. He and a few others went around the edge, bending and straining to get the now-trotting groundlings up and onto the surface.
“Pull your arms and legs in, don’t get in the way of the men pedaling!”
“Too close!”
More stacks of incendiary shot and barrels of the noxious stuff were going up in the warehouses to either side. The wave of heat washed over them. Men covered their faces and held their breaths and pedaled even while they coughed and retched. The heat seared the membranes of their noses and throats, and hoarse screams sounded. Fortunately the only way to panic was to pedal harder.
Guelf felt dizziness edging his vision with gray, sparks and black spots dancing before his eyes. He drew a cautious breath in and then another. Hot, but not hot enough to burn his lungs. Around him men were fainting or breathing cautiously through wet cloths that lay over the train.
The Tears of the Sun tc-5 Page 5
