Quillifer

by Walter Jon Williams

  Being unused to the weapon, I was slow in reloading, and the other handgunners fired their second shots before me, and as they loaded again, they laughed and catcalled our targets, who crewed such mighty bronze weapons yet could not reply. The rebel gunners ran back and forth, shouting and conferring, and then I saw frantic gunners driving the quoins beneath the breeches of their guns, to push the barrels low to fire at us.

  “One more shot!” I called. “Then back to the hedge!”

  I fired my final shot and so far as I could tell did no execution, and then I set an example by moving away from the enemy, trotting backward while still facing the rebels, and as the others took their shots, they followed. Certainly, it was time to retire, as I saw the gunners driving into their long barrels the canvas bags of hailshot.

  Once the whole mass began to retire, I turned and ran, waving my caliver overhead as a signal, and we all ran back whooping, and had overleaped the dead and were at the hedge before the first shots came after us, the hailshot making wild, wailing cries in the air. Hailshot is any kind of small iron stuff, musquet balls, small iron balls such as are fired by falconets, nails, wire, or simply odd pieces of iron cut up or broken, then stuffed in canvas bags. The sound this odd iron makes as it tumbles through the air is eerie, and it raised the hairs on my arms; but at this range, none of us were hurt, and we leaped laughing back into the sunken road, almost drunk with our adventure.

  All this time Lipton’s battery continued firing, the shot plunging among the enemy guns, and so we had bought him time, and had done harm to the batteries that would oppress him.

  As for myself, I felt my heart afire in my chest, and my mind was alive to the possibilities inherent in the game of rock-paper-scissors. I wished I’d had the horsemen instead of the handgunners, for with a charge of our demilances I could have killed them all.

  The rebel guns continued to fire at us, the weird, wailing hailshot clipping the leaves overhead. I felt in my exuberance that I was not done making mischief—I thanked the coronels who had let me use their men, and I joined Lord Utterback on the right. I reported to Utterback of my adventure, and told him what I intended to do next.

  “Do you think that would prosper?” said he. “Well, go ahead.”

  Frere’s dragoons were for the most part dismounted and in and around the east-west Peckside road, near the crossroads, ready with their bell-mouthed pistols to fire again into the flank of any attacker. Frere came with me as I took one company creeping down the road to the east, and we ended up right on the flank of the artillery line.

  The enemy guns were still flailing the hedge with hailshot, and my heart lifted at the knowledge that they were not aware of their danger. “You lead this one company forward,” Frere told me, “and I will have the other ready to support you.”

  As I and the first company bludgeoned our way through the thick-pleached blackthorn. I received more slashes on my face, and thorns even pierced the thick suede of my buff coat. I mopped away drops of blood from my cheeks, drew my sword, and led the dragoons, trotting in their heavy cavalry boots, across three hundred yards of ground toward the nearest battery.

  We sped the distance so swiftly that we seemed to have taken wing, and suddenly we were there, the crew of the nearest culverin grouped around each to his task, the crew only beginning to become aware of us as the first fire from the dragons caught them. Some gunners fell, and other gunners stared at us in horror. Besides their inaccurate pistols, the dragoons were also armed with a miscellany of other weapons, hangers and bilbos, hammers and cuttles, and so without reloading, the dragoons drew these and ran at the enemy.

  The surviving crew of the first gun broke and ran, and I dashed after them, and was then surprised to discover an enemy who had no intention of running. Instead, the gunner—a small, slight man my own age—had drawn his short sword and faced me with terror and determination warring for control of his features. I felt an alarm clatter in my blood.

  I was running and could scarce slow down before I encountered him. I hacked at the sword that thrust at me and knocked it aside, and then I drove my armored chest straight at him. I was bigger, and stronger, and the armor added weight—there was an impact, and I knocked the man sprawling. I made a cut at him as I ran past, but I don’t think I hit him. I imagine one of the dragoons behind me finished him off.

  I ran on, slashing at the backs of the flying gunners, but as I ran, I tried my hardest to keep my wits. I was all too aware that we were outnumbered—my company, counting its casualties and without its horse-holders, numbered about forty, and the full complement of the battery was nearly a hundred. But we were in a group, and they were scattered among their guns and completely surprised, and so we overwhelmed them.

  But I was also aware that an entire army was standing just a few hundred yards to the east of us, and that they would react once they perceived my small party through the drifting smoke. And so I kept an ear cocked for the sound of hooves, or trumpet calls, or drums, for once Clayborne’s army began to move, we would have scant time to find safety.

  While I listened, we overran the battery completely, cutting down anyone who tried to resist, and then ran in for the next set of guns, and now there was a pack of men in front of us, armed with short swords and their gunners’ gear, the ladles and rammers and handspikes they used in their craft. I slowed in my career to allow the dragoons a chance to catch up with me, so that we could attack in a mass. I took a few seconds to catch my breath, during which those who had not yet discharged their dragons took good aim and shot. Gunsmoke stained the air, men fell, and then I cried the dragoons on.

  I ran right at center of the enemy, and I found myself facing a swordsman who stood in a balanced posture, knees flexed, his right arm before him cocked at an angle to direct his point at my breast, the left hand propped on his hip—the very posture that Lance-pesade Stringway had sought to instill in me during our long hours of practice. And I knew, from the ease and confidence of the man’s posture, and the impassivity of his features, that he was a far greater master of defense than I. And I knew as well, from the powder-stained white sash over one shoulder, that he was captain of the battery, and that his defeat might well dishearten his crews.

  I slowed that I might not impale myself on his point, and brushed his sword aside as I came on. He retreated, back leg first, front leg after, and his blade came into line again in just the manner that Lance-pesade Stringway had recommended. Then I ducked as one of his gunners swung a rammer at my head, then took a step back to slice that gunner’s arm to the elbow. The captain shuffled forward to thrust at me, and I beat his sword aside again and foined at him, then had to jump clear at a lightning riposte aimed at my throat. My heart leaped, but my enemy had in the next instant to parry a tompion that one of the dragoons had thrown at him, and before he could bring the sword back into line, I seized the enemy blade in my gauntleted hand, and stepped in to smash him in the face with the basket hilt of my sword. The impact went all the way to my shoulder. As he staggered, I hacked him in the head with all my strength, which brought him down dead or dying—for this was not a fencing match, but earnest combat, with fights broiling up all around us, and I using my sword as a bludgeon rather than a weapon of art. The enemy captain’s tactics were too dainty for this field.

  When their captain fell, the gunners ran, and we cut half of them down as they turned. I plodded after, for my wind was gone and I could no longer keep up such a racking pace; and it was well that I did, for soon I saw that the enemy had turned one of their culverins about, and were crowing it around with handspikes to lay it on us. I saw the gun-captain with his linstock and match hovering over the touch-hole, and I saw an intent look blaze up in his face.

  “ ’Ware the gun!” I shouted, and darted as fast as I could to the side while ducking my head so that the bill of my helmet should cover my face. The gun roared—spat in my eye, it seemed—and I was punched in the left shoulder while the eerie wail of hailshot fouled the air. Two esca
ping gunners in front of me blazed up in showers of scarlet, killed by their own side.

  We were too close, and the hailshot had not the room to disperse.

  “Charge!” I called. “Charge, charge, charge!” I ran for the battery before they could reload, and the dragoons followed and slashed the gunners down.

  But then my half-deafened ears heard a trumpet call, and I looked eastward to see plumes bobbing as cavalry advanced through the thinning gunsmoke.

  “Retreat! Retreat! Follow me!”

  Two of the dragoons had been wounded by the hailshot, and their fellows picked them up and helped them from the field. Frere and the other dragoons were by now too far away, and so I led the dragoons directly toward the hedge, two hundred and fifty long yards away.

  We ran. Even the wounded ran. I had been out of breath in the enemy battery, exhausted with chasing down the fleeing enemy, but when the air began to rumble with the sound of approaching horses, my weariness vanished, and I felt uplifted as if by great invisible wings. The hedge grew nearer, the hoofbeats louder, and I ran all the faster. Handgunners in the hedge fired, mostly on the flanks where we were not in the way. I dared to cast a look over my shoulder, and I saw a demilance right behind me, a towering figure in armor with his straight sword aimed at my vitals. I dodged first to the right, and then to the left, so that his horse’s own neck would be in the way of the rebel’s blade, and the rider would have to shift his sword up for a backhand cut. I did not give him the time, for as I ran, I flung out my own backhand to slash his horse in the mouth. The horse shrieked and turned away to the right, confirming all my prejudices against horses, and the horseman lost his seat and slid down his mount’s flank to strike the turf with a great clatter.

  I wished I’d had time to finish him off, for I found his attempt to kill me a great offense. Instead, I just ran the faster, the hedge ahead of me blossoming with gunsmoke as the handgunners picked their targets. Bullets whirred past me, and behind I heard the cries of wounded men and injured horses. Then I was leaping over the enemy corpses stretched before the hedge, and the blackthorn whipped my face as I leaped into the sunken road.

  “Lovely work, my beautiful assassins!” cried Coronel Fludd. “Pilgrim save us, but you have dealt a great knock to those soulless mechanicals!”

  My knees were suddenly weak, and I leaned against the far wall of the road as the dragoons tumbled into the road around me. My heart felt as if it would burst, and my chest heaved inside my unfeeling cuirass. On the far side of the hedge I could hear and glimpse the cavalry reining up, in wrath and confusion. They milled about for a time, firing their pistols at us while the handgunners pot-shotted them, until in frustration they withdrew, leaving a score of their number lying on the field.

  “My braves, that was a thing of glory!” rejoiced Fludd. “Never again will I view the dragoons as an ungainly chimera, neither one thing nor ’t’other, but instead will clasp them by the neck and call them ‘brother.’ ”

  We had lost not a man, though some suffered wounds. After I recovered my strength, I led them down the sunken road to the crossroads, where Lord Utterback waited with Captain Frere. I returned to Frere his men, and praised them all as heroes.

  “Are you hurt?” Lord Utterback asked me.

  I’d had so much to occupy my attention that this question had not yet occurred to me, but upon inspection, I proved to be largely intact. There was a sharp pain in my left shoulder when I tried to move my arm, and my face seemed somehow constrained, as if someone had stitched up bits of my flesh that did not quite belong together.

  “I seem sound enough, my lord,” I reported.

  “Your face is bleeding,” said Utterback. I touched my face gingerly, and my gloved fingers came back scarlet. “Here,” said Utterback, and very courteously handed me a handkerchief.

  I dabbed at my face. “You look quite the old soldier now,” Utterback said. “Bleeding, streaked with powder, and battered armor and helm.”

  It would seem churlish to point out that my face had been cut by the hedge, not by the enemy. Now that the high excitement was over, I had begun to feel battered indeed. My entire body ached. Captain Frere fingered the dent in my cuirass. “You should go to the armorers,” he said. “Have this beaten out.”

  I looked at the dent and realized that the bent metal was digging into my left shoulder and restricting movement. I looked up at Lord Utterback.

  “Can you spare me for the while, my lord?”

  Frere spoke first. “It will be some while before there is fighting. He may as well go.”

  Lord Utterback gave permission, and I wearily climbed atop my horse and rode to the rear, where the armorers and farriers had set up their anvils. I was delighted to relieve myself of the weight of the cuirass, and I threw off as well the buff coat and doublet and stood in my shirtsleeves to let the mountain breeze dry off the clammy sweat that had soaked my linen. The armorers had broached a cask of barley wine which they were willing to share, and while I waited I drank at least three pints, and so spirited and high-fettled was my constitution at that moment that I felt no intoxication at all.

  The repair did not take long, and so I reluctantly dragged on the buff coat and let the armorers strap the cuirass over it, and then returned to the war. I stopped along the way at Lord Utterback’s camp by the stone huts, and devoured another pâté, scooping it up with hard bread and wishing I’d had more barley wine to accompany it.

  During this entire time, the guns continued their work. I had overrun only two of the rebels’ five batteries, and the rest had continued their duel with Lipton uninterrupted, if a bit shorthanded after my attack with the handgunners. I had been unable to damage the guns or other gear of the batteries I had captured, and they had been reoccupied as soon as we’d been forced to withdraw. Eventually, all five batteries were back in operation, though only a few guns were firing from the batteries that I had taken, and their fire was slow. Lipton seemed to have dismounted a couple of enemy guns, but their crews were detailed elsewhere, and the fire kept up uninterrupted.

  Despite the damage I had done to the enemy, the numbers told. Lipton fought on until a dozen of his men were killed and one of his guns was dismounted, but then he withdrew, and he carried his flag from the field to make it clear to all that he had abandoned his battery. Enemy jeers wafted up from the field, and the gun barrels were lowered to begin firing into our men behind the hedge.

  At this point I rode down to rejoin Lord Utterback, thinking I might be needed. He looked at me as I rode up. “We are about to have some pounding, I fear.”

  “The men in the road will be safe,” I said. “But the pikemen standing behind may suffer.”

  “I fear so.”

  His fears were proved at that instant, as one of the enemy’s batteries opened their fire, and I saw a ball plow through one of Bell’s companies on our left, bodies and pikes flying. It struck me as a purposeless sacrifice, and I turned to Utterback.

  “Why should they stand and receive the enemy’s fire to no purpose? May we not have them lie down?”

  Lord Utterback seemed surprised by the question. “It is not the custom,” he said. “Our men take heart when they can see the enemy.”

  “They can see nothing, standing behind the hedge. They only know they are being killed by something they cannot fight.”

  Lord Utterback considered the matter, then flapped a hand. “The men may lie down.”

  I rode to each regiment in turn to give the order. In this I met some resistance, as many of the men—and all of the officers—considered it best to stand in the face of peril and bid defiance to the enemy. But the shot, howling through the air and beating down the hedge, made them reconsider, and in time the entire line was stretched upon the turf, and the reserve companies as well. I also bade the bands to play, as a way to keep the soldiers’ minds from descending too far into a contemplation of their own mortality, and I told the standard-bearers and their escorts, who could not lie down without neglect
ing their duty, to march about, so as not to become stationary targets.

  After seeing the order obeyed, I rode up to Lipton’s abandoned battery, where I could see the whole field, and found there the captain himself with a few men, quietly loading the demiculverins one by one and training them down on the field. “ ’Twill save a few minutes when we return,” he said.

  “You are a practical fellow,” I said.

  “And so you are, sure. With my glass I saw you leading those attacks. It was fine work, and you saved many of my men.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said. I smiled. “Rock-paper-scissors.”

  He gave a weary laugh. “Never before has anyone listened to, let alone profited by, my ramblings.”

  I looked down at the field, the guns firing out of a pall of their own smoke, the iron shot bounding over the field, lofting higher than a man. “If you can ramble us out of this fight,” I said, “I will buy you another bottle of claret.”

  The rebel artillery continued their barrage, the shot bashing its way through the hedge and for the most part flying far over the heads of the soldiers. The hedge suffered, but little blood was spilled. Deep in the pall of gunsmoke I could see movement, and deployed my cardboard telescope—I saw that the cavalry supporting the guns was being withdrawn, and their place taken by solid blocks of foot soldiers. The same regiments, I thought, that had attacked the line last time.

  We were well into the afternoon when the guns fell silent—not all at once, but slowly, as they exhausted their ready ammunition. There was silence, and then the foot broke their formations and began to filter forward through the guns, to re-form on the other side.

  It was worth informing Lord Utterback of this, so I spurred down the scales, and as I rode, Lipton called his men to the guns and opened fire, his shot plunging down into the thick hedges of forming pikes, creating bloody ripples in the swelling sea of enemy bodies. I found Lord Utterback aware of the enemy movement, and he bade me tell the soldiers to rise and prepare to repel a charge. This I did, riding down the line, but the regimental commanders had seen the enemy preparing to come on and had anticipated me.