The Thousand Names

by Django Wexler

  “We’re going to have guests,” she told them. “There’s a Khandarai detachment not far from here. Four companies, unless our friend with the black eye was telling stories. We’ve got maybe twenty minutes before they arrive.”

  There were a few groans from the men near enough to hear. Winter turned to Bobby.

  “How long until the boats get back?”

  “It took us nearly an hour to cross, sir.” The boy seemed perfectly composed, in spite of the bad news. “It’ll probably take the big barges a little longer. Plus they may take some time to get things arranged on the other side. Call it three hours total.”

  “Captain d’Ivoire will have everything ready the moment they touch bank.” That was partly for the soldiers’ benefit, but it was also the truth, or so Winter devoutly hoped. She had a lot of faith in Captain d’Ivoire. “So we’ve got to keep them off the quay for a few hours.”

  The three corporals nodded. Winter was a little surprised at the lack of protests. She felt as though, in their place, she would have said something like, “That’s impossible!” or “We’ll all be killed!” Even the rankers seemed more confident than she was. She took a long breath and tried to think.

  “Right,” she said eventually. “Break into teams of three. Each team takes a hut. One man shooting, two loading. If you haven’t got a convenient doorway, knock a hole in the wall. I’ll take the first shot myself, so hold fire until you hear it.” She raised her voice. “Everyone got that?”

  There was a ragged chorus of assent. Winter turned to the three corporals. “Folsom, Graff, get the teams set up around the center of the village. Bobby, you’re with me in case I need a runner.”

  “Yessir!” The boy’s eyes were bright. He’s looking forward to this. How can he be looking forward to it?

  “I don’t mean to contradict you, sir,” Graff said in a low tone, “but what if they don’t come in dumb? If I was in charge out there, I’d break out some men to search the houses. If it comes to hand-to-hand, they’ll swamp us.”

  Winter risked a smile. “That’s because you’re not an educated man, Corporal. Did any of your old commanders do things strictly by the tactics manual?”

  He scratched a bearded cheek. “No. At least not for long.”

  “These Auxiliaries were trained to be model Vordanai soldiers. I should know; we used to have to train them.”

  “So?”

  “So they really believe in that tactics manual.”

  • • •

  Either the Khandarai had taken longer than Winter had expected to get organized, or else the twenty minutes had merely felt like hours. She hoped it was the former.

  She and Bobby were crouched in one of the little clay huts. It was nearly empty inside, the inhabitants having carried away everything they could when they left. The only evidence of the occupant’s profession was a pile of half-mended net lying against the wall. The building was a simple dirt-floored affair, with a ring of stones in the center for a fire and a single doorway. It now also boasted an impromptu window—a few minutes’ work with bayonets had been enough to carve a head-sized hole through the soft clay. It was through this hole that Bobby was keeping watch to the northeast, the direction from which the prisoner had said the Khandarai would come.

  When the boy waved her over, Winter’s tension ratcheted up another notch. She’d been halfway hoping the Auxie had been lying, out of bravado or a desire to frighten her off. Apparently not. Leaning out the doorway, she could see men in the distance, marching across the sodden fields. They were in close order, as though on parade, a wall of brown uniforms and glittering weapons.

  At least she couldn’t see any guns. That would have spelled the end of any chance of effective resistance—these clay walls would offer little protection from cannonballs, and the Auxiliaries would be happy to blast the huts to pieces and march in over the ruins. As it is . . .

  She watched for a few tense minutes. Bobby, at the loophole, had a better view than Winter.

  “They’re doing something,” he said. “Changing formation, or—”

  “Breaking off.” Winter saw it, too. “Damn. They’ll send part of the force in and keep the rest as a reserve.”

  “Should we change the plan?”

  “No time now. Just don’t shoot until I tell you.”

  While one group of men stood, staid as cows, out in the fields, the advance force closed in. Winter guessed there were two companies—two hundred forty men, give or take—in a neat column on a half-company front. The leading men passed between the outermost pair of huts, stepping in unison to the steady beat of their drums. She could see a lieutenant in front of the first rank, his drawn sword in his hand.

  Winter sent up a silent prayer that her men would remember their instructions, and have the stomach to sit on their hands until the Khandarai got closer. Surprise was a precious thing, and they would get only one chance at it. Though with another two companies in reserve . . . She shook off the thought.

  Apparently the Almighty was listening. No shots echoed through the village as the Auxiliaries advanced, neat tan boots spattered with mud. The head of the column was nearly level with her hut now, which was most of the way to the waterfront. The rear was just entering the village.

  “Think you can hit that lieutenant?” Winter said.

  The boy frowned. “That seems a little unsporting, sir.”

  “Sporting is for handball. Drop him.”

  The boy nodded and bent to one knee, resting the barrel of his musket on the edge of the loophole. The man Winter had so casually marked for death was barely ten yards away, still oblivious, conducting the march with his shiny sword as if he were in review in front of the palace.

  The crack of the musket was magnified in the tiny interior of the hut until it sounded like a mountain shattering. Smoke boiled up from the barrel and the lock of Bobby’s weapon, obscuring the view through the loophole, but watching from the doorway Winter could see the lieutenant spin and fall.

  Almost immediately, shots cracked from all over the village, puffs of smoke rising from doorways and loopholes. The tight column was a difficult target to miss, and a chorus of screams and shouts from the Khandarai attested to the effect of the fire. Bobby grabbed Winter’s musket, loaded beforehand, and returned to the loophole. Winter watched a moment longer from the doorway.

  As she’d hoped, the ground-in discipline of the Auxiliaries held them in position while their officers tried to make sense of what was happening. With the lieutenant down, some poor sergeant would be shouting orders. In the meantime, the column had halted, the men standing impassively in the face of balls that whistled by or stung like hornets.

  That won’t last, though. Discipline or not, no soldiers would stand and be slaughtered without replying. The tight ranks of the Khandarai started to break up, individuals or pairs dropping to one knee or turning to find their tormentors. Muskets started to sound from the column, and the zip and whine of balls was soon accompanied by the pock-pock-pock of shots hitting clay.

  Winter ducked inside, grabbed Bobby’s fired musket, and started to reload it. Bobby, having fired his second shot, hit the ground beside her to work on the other weapon. Outside, the fusillade continued. Winter had little doubt the Auxiliaries were getting the worst of it. It would be easy enough to see where the ambushers were firing from, as each loophole and doorway was marked by a cloud of powder smoke. Scoring a hit on the fleeting shapes beyond was another matter.

  If they had any sense, they’d have run for it the minute we opened fire. Discipline and the tactics manual triumphed over sense, however. Winter fell into the simple routine—bite the cartridge open, pour in the powder, spit the ball down, and ram the whole thing home. Prime the pan, hand the musket to Bobby, accept a just-fired weapon in return. The barrels grew hotter with each firing, until they scorched her skin when she touched them, but she kept on. Shots hit the house in a steady rain. One or two even broke through the clay. Winter watched, fascinated, as a musket b
all smashed through six inches above Bobby’s head, caromed weakly off the opposite wall, and rolled to a stop at her feet like a flattened marble.

  And then there wasn’t another musket to load. The firing died away in fits and starts, but after a minute or so of silence, Winter risked a look out the doorway while Bobby stood vigil at the loophole with a loaded weapon.

  The field of battle—if it could be called a battle—was empty except for corpses and a few wounded men, the latter beginning to raise piteous cries. It was hard to get a good sense through the smoke, but there seemed to be a great many corpses, for the most part lying in the neat rows in which they’d stood. Winter emerged from the hut and cupped her hands over her mouth.

  “I’m coming out!” she shouted. “Everyone hold fire!”

  She could hear a ragged chorus of laughter from the closest buildings. Bobby hurried to fall in behind her, still carrying his weapon, and Winter walked out into the center of the field. Smoke lay as dense as a blanket, drifting only sluggishly in the calm air. The smell of it assaulted her nostrils, an acrid, salty tang with an occasional undercurrent of blood or offal. There was no sign of any upright Khandarai.

  Winter turned sharply when a pair of figures loomed through the smoke, but it was only Graff and Folsom. The rest of the company was beginning to emerge. As the realization of what they’d done sank in, here and there they sent up a ragged cheer.

  Graff looked over the field of corpses with professional satisfaction. “They won’t forget that in a hurry,” he said. “Those that got away, anyhow.”

  Winter gave a weary nod. All the Auxiliaries she could see were either dead or obviously nearly so. The retreating Khandarai had taken the more lightly wounded with them, for which she was grateful. The Colonials could hardly have spared the time to care for them.

  “Right,” she said, more or less to herself. Then again. “Right. We’ve probably got a little while before they figure things out. Folsom, collect all our people and find out what we lost. Graff, take a detail and go over the field. The Auxies use the same muskets we do, so gather them all up, along with all the ammunition you can find. If there’s anyone out there who looks like they might make it, bring them along. Once that’s done, back to the river.”

  “We’re not staying here?” Graff said. “We bloodied their noses—no reason why we can’t do it again.”

  “We can’t do it again because they’ll be ready for us,” Winter said. “Someone out there isn’t an utter fool. They won’t come in dumb next time. Either they’ll break out and come at us in loose order, like they should have in the first place, or else they’ll skirt the village entirely and go straight for the boats.” She thought for a moment. “More likely the latter. So we fall back to the quay.”

  “If you don’t mind my saying,” Graff said quietly, “is that a good idea? We’ll have no cover at all. The lads are willing, but we won’t last if we have to go volley for volley with four companies.”

  Winter nodded. “Bobby, you’re with me. We’re going to see what we can do about that.”

  • • •

  “Pull!” Folsom shouted, his deep voice echoing off the barges. “Wait, two, three, pull!”

  He demonstrated with a massive effort on his own part, muscles standing out in his arms like corded ropes. Two dozen men behind him added their strength to the line, and the barge groaned and jolted another foot up onto the quay. The rear end was out of the water now, dripping brown mud into the river.

  Winter stood with the casualties at the far end of the stone pier. There had been four of these: one ranker who’d taken an unlucky shot through a doorway and lost the top of his head, two men wounded by balls that had punched through their protective walls, and an unfortunate recruit who’d accidentally double-loaded his weapon after failing to notice a misfire. Packed with twice the normal load of powder, the musket had exploded, leaving the side of his face a lacerated ruin.

  The dead man was covered by a tarp, while Graff did his best for the three wounded. They hadn’t done a precise count of the Khandarai dead, but Winter guessed there’d been more than eighty, plus however many they’d dragged away. For fifty men against two hundred, that was no poor result, militarily speaking, but standing beside the boy with the torn face Winter couldn’t help but feel like a failure.

  She focused on the river instead. The sun was well up by now, and the morning haze had burned away, but if there were barges on their way back across Winter couldn’t see them. Bobby, standing at her shoulder, correctly interpreted her thoughts.

  “It’ll be at least another hour, sir,” the boy said.

  Winter nodded and looked away. Her gaze fell on the man who’d taken a ball in the arm. Graff had torn his shirt off and wrapped it round the wound as a makeshift bandage, winding a scrap of wood in the linen to keep it tight. Bobby, following Winter’s eyes, gave a little shudder.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Winter said. A flying splinter of clay had given the boy a cut on the shoulder. Winter hadn’t noticed the damp patch on his uniform until after the fighting was over.

  “It’s nothing, sir. Honestly.”

  Graff stood and came over to them. “Perkins will be all right, but Zeitman will probably lose the arm once we get him back to the cutters. Finn—” He glanced at the boy with the mutilated face. “That needs cleaning out, but he screams if I so much as touch him. He needs a proper surgeon.”

  “You’ve done what you could,” Winter said. “Go take over loading detail.” The weapons they’d gleaned from the Auxiliaries lay in neat rows on the quay, all bright wax and polish. A group of Colonials was methodically cleaning the barrels and loading them, one after another, from a pile of captured ammunition.

  There was a great crash from farther up the pier as Folsom’s team flipped the barge end over end, so that its flat, dripping bottom was exposed to the sky. Resting lengthwise, it overhung the quay by a few feet on either end. She’d chosen one that was four or five feet high and made of sturdy-looking wood. The sides would probably stop a ball, at least at long range, and it would take a few moments for any attacker who wanted to use his bayonet to scramble over. Combined with the boats tied to the dock on all sides, it would provide a reasonable degree of shelter from fire from the shore. It was the best she could hope for under the circumstances.

  Finn touched his face where the metal shards had torn it and gave a little screech. Bobby jumped visibly. Winter laid a hand on his shoulder and conducted him away from the impromptu hospital, back toward the barricade.

  “Sir?” Bobby’s voice was hesitant. “I don’t mean to be . . . that is . . . can I ask you a favor?”

  “A favor?”

  Bobby stopped. His voice was low enough that only Winter could hear. “If I ever get—hit, you know, and—”

  “Stop,” Winter said. “Everyone knows that talking like that is the next best thing to asking for it. The Lord Above loves irony.”

  Bobby winced. “Sorry, sir. But this is important. If—you know—can you promise me something?”

  “Maybe,” Winter said.

  “Don’t let them take me to a cutter,” Bobby said urgently. “Please. Take care of me yourself.”

  “I’m not much of a surgeon.”

  “Then . . . Graff, or someone you trust. But no cutters.” He looked up at Winter, and his soft face was full of desperation. “Please?”

  Winter would usually have given her word at once, and then broken it just as easily when the need arose. A lot of soldiers had that sort of feeling about surgeons. It was only natural, if you’d spent any time in a hospital or watched the men hobble out short an arm or a leg. Winter wasn’t fond of the medical men herself. But when it really came down to it, she suspected she’d rather live as a cripple than die a slow, agonizing death from a festering wound.

  Under ordinary circumstances, she would have put this down to pre-battle jitters, the sort of thing Bobby would forget about tomorrow morning. But there was something disturbingly
sincere in the corporal’s eyes, so Winter chose her words carefully.

  “Graff isn’t a surgeon, either.” She watched the boy’s expression. “Let’s be clear about this. If it’s a choice between going to the cutter or into the ground—”

  “I’d rather die,” Bobby said immediately. “Promise me.”

  After a moment of hesitation, Winter nodded. “I promise, then. But you’d better not get yourself hurt, or I’ll have a hell of a time explaining myself to Folsom and Graff afterward.”

  Bobby gave a weak chuckle. Winter tried to think of a way to dispel the grim mood that had descended, but was spared the necessity. There was a shot from the barricade, and a cry of “Auxies!” The quay was suddenly a chaos of rushing men. Winter heard Folsom’s voice rising above the din, shouting soldiers into line.

  She patted Bobby’s shoulder again and pushed her way forward, until she was up against the sloping wall of the upside-down boat. It rose slightly toward the center, forming a shallow keel, but the top was still flat enough to see over. She saw Graff upbraiding a man carrying a smoking musket.

  The situation wasn’t as bad as she’d feared, then. Looking up the quay, between the wall of boats on each side and into the village, she couldn’t see any obvious sign of the enemy. She pulled Graff away and asked for a report.

  “Sorry about that, sir. He shouldn’t have fired.”

  “False alarm?” Winter said hopefully. Every minute the Auxiliaries delayed was a minute less they’d have to wait for reinforcements.

  “They were there, right enough, but only a couple. I saw three men, but there may have been a few more. Back amidst the houses, sort of skulking, like. Ferstein took a potshot and they all started running.”

  “Scouts, then.” Winter chewed her lip. “He knows we’re not in the village, and that we’re barricaded in here. Maybe he doesn’t know that we’re waiting for the rest of the regiment to cross. Could be he’s waiting for reinforcements of his own.”