"Martyred Avatars bleeding wounds!" he screamed, riding out in front of the straggling line. "Everyone with a fucking rifle, get ready to shoot!"
He sheathed his sword and pulled out his own carbine, thumbing back the hammer. He also heeled his dog behind the firing line; no way was he going to have his ass out in front of this lot when they pulled their triggers.
"Wait for the word of command. Set your sights, set your sights!"
A rifle could kill at a thousand meters, but only if you estimated the range right-the natural trajectory of the bullet was above head-height past about three hundred, so you had to elevate the muzzle and drop the bullet down on your target. That was why some commanders preferred to wait until two-fifty meters or less; Carstens did himself, unless he were facing one of the huge densely-packed Stalwart columns where a bullet that missed one man would hit another. Here-
Shots banged out along the line. "Hold your fucking fire," he screamed again. At nine hundred meters distance the Civil Government line was utterly undamaged. A shouted order, and the enemy all went to ground, first to one knee and then prone. Carstens felt his testicles drawing up. He'd been in this position before from the other side, facing Stalwart warbands with greater numbers but no distance weapons. The enemy rifles could be loaded while a man was flat on his belly, while his rifle-muskets had to have the shot rammed down their muzzles.
As if to punctuate his thought, a volley crashed out from the enemy, BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM as the platoons fired in unison. Greasy off-white smoke curled up from their positions, then drifted away in the scudding breeze. Something went whirrr-brack past his ear. Dogs and men screamed in pain and shock, mostly among those still mounted, but a few in the firing-line as well.
"Fire!"
An unnecessary order, and a ragged stutter sent demon-scented fog back into his face. His men had barely grounded their muskets and reached for a paper cartridge when the next enemy volley came. Another after they'd bitten open the cartridges and poured powder and minie bullet down the barrels; a third as they pulled out their ramrods. Just then a dull POUMPF came from the enemy field-gun, fifteen hundred meters back and well out of small-arms range. A tearing whistle and a crack of dirty smoke in mid-air, not twenty meters ahead of his riflemen; half a dozen were scythed down by the shrapnel. Then the Brigade warriors were capping their weapons and firing again-he ground his teeth as he saw a few ramrods go flying out toward the enemy-and beginning the cumbersome task of loading once more. Three more enemy volleys cut into his makeshift command; he could see men looking nervously backward out of the corners of his eyes.
He wasn't particularly worried about that, though. Raw courage was not the quality in short supply here today, and he'd also loudly ordered his lancers to ride down any man who fled without permission.
"Remember it's your families we protect," he called, keeping his voice calm. "One more volley and we'll-"
POUMPF. This time the tearing-canvas sound went right overhead, and the shell went crack sixty meters behind him. Dogs reared, then whimpered as their riders sawed on reins that connected to levers on the bridles, pressing steel bars against the animals' heads.
One under, one over, and I know what comes next, Carstens thought. His head whipped from side to side; the dust-columns weren't closing in as fast as he'd feared, and neither was the one behind the enemy vanguard. That heartened him, since it was the first mistake the civvies had made.
"— one more volley and we'll give them the steel."
He touched toes to Jo's forelegs, signaling her to stock-stillness, and fired his own rifled carbine. More as a gesture than anything else, but it made him feel better. A little.
"Everybody mount up," he called, riding out in front again. Enemy bullets pocked the earth around him.
POUMPF-crack. This time the shell burst right over the position he'd been in a few minutes before. Shrapnel skeened off body armor and tore into flesh; pistol-shots followed as injured dogs were put down. The wounded men probably wished they rated the same mercy, but needs must. Jo hunched her back slightly and laid her ears down at the sounds of pain.
"Easy, girl, easy," he said. He drew a revolver in one hand and his basket-hiked broadsword in the other. No sense in getting too subtle, just get out in front and wave them forward. "Charge!" he shouted, and the ancient Brigade warcry: "Upyarz!"
His legs clamped on the barrel of his dog. Jo howled and leaped forward off her hindquarters, building to a flexing gallop. From the chorus of shrieks behind him, human and canine, most of the scratch force were following. The grisuh dragoons rose and fired a volley standing; then half of them turned and trotted back to their dogs. Another volley, and they were all mounted and wheeling away. Behind them the gunners were adjusting their weapon, and a shell raced by to throw up a poplar-tall column of black dirt with a spark at the center. Men and dogs and parts of both pinwheeled away from it. The gun crew fired a final round of canister that cut a wedge out of the Brigade line as cleanly as a knife. The Civil Government troops were trotting to the rear now, heeling their mounts into a canter and then a gallop with the same fluid unison that had disturbed him before. The gunners snatched up the trail of their fieldpiece as it recoiled, running it back onto the caisson and jumping aboard as the team-master switched his mount into motion.
"Shit," Carstens said again. Lanceheads were bristling down on either side of him, but the enemy had had plenty of warning, and their dogs were fresher and less heavily burdened. The distance closed to a hundred meters, still beyond mounted pistol shot-and several of the blue-coated, dark-faced troopers turned in their saddles to pump fists at the Brigade troops with an unmistakable single finger raised. Then the gap began to grow again, with increasing speed. The fieldgun was a little slower, but it had had an extra half-kilometer of distance to start with.
He looked left and right, standing in the stirrups. Yes. Those tell-tale dust-clouds were closing in, moving fast past him on either side. He could catch the first winks of sunlight on metal from both directions. Plus the men he was chasing were retreating toward a force of unknown size.
"Halt, halt!" he shouted. The fan Morton house-troopers halted as the family pennant did, beside Carstens. . but big chunks of the motley host kept right on pursuing.
"Tommins, Smut, Villard," Carstens snapped to his under-officers. "Stop 'em, and fast."
He spurred his dog out ahead of the closest pack, curving in front of them and waving his sword in their faces. That made some of them pull up, at least.
"Ni, ni!" a Squadron refugee-mercenary shouted in their thick guttural dialect of Namerique. "No! The cowards flee!"
The man was literally frothing into his beard; Carstens wasted no time. The point of his broadsword punched into the man's stomach through the stiff leather and doubled him over with an ooff of surprise. His dog started to snap in defense of its master, but Jo already had her jaws around its muzzle; it whined and licked hers in surrender as the Squadrone fell to the ground vomiting blood.
Carstens felt no regret; you had to stop a rout before it got started, and a rout forward was just as bad as one going to the rear. No wonder they lost, he thought of the Squadron. Although the mindset was not unknown among the Brigade, either. He'd just had too much experience to keep up that sort of illusion.
"How many have we?" he asked his second-in-command, when they had the band mostly turned around and trotting to the rear.
"Seven hundred, maybe fifty more," the man said. "Fifty dead 'r down, and two hundred kept after the civvies."
Carstens grunted, grunted again when rifle fire broke out anew over the rise a kilometer to their rear where the pursuit had gone. What the incurably reckless had thought was a pursuit, at least. More rifle fire than before, much more, twice as many guns. "We won't be seeing them again," he said.
"Nohow," the other man agreed. "But the civvies will be up our ass again in half an hour."
Carsten pushed back his visor and looked northeast and southwest. Then he blinked dust o
ut of his eyes and unlimbered the telescope again, on one flanking force and then the other.
"Suckered, by the Spirit!" he said.
At a soundless question, he went on: "Fucking grisuh were dragging bush to make more dust-look, there's troops there, but not anything like what they seemed. Eh bi gawdammit! Now they've dropped it and they're making speed, see the difference in the dust-plume? I thought they were co-ordinating too slow."
The Civil Government company had been dangled out like a chunk of meat in front of a carnosauroid, and now a much bigger set of jaws were closing on the outstretched head. On his whole force, if he hadn't pulled back.
"We still delayed them," his second said.
Faint thunder rolled from a dear sky. Coming from the southeast, down the road toward the bridge. Field guns; Carstens' trained ear counted the tubes, separating the sound from the echoes.
"Four guns," he said hollowly. Men were shouting and calling questions to each other all along the rough column. The alarm turned to panic as a burbling joined the deeper sound of the cannon. Massed rifles volleying.
"Bastards are ahead of us," the second-in-command said. His voice was calm, the information had sunk in but not the impact. "At the bridge, waiting at the bridge."
"Hang on, Sylvie!"
The Brigade warriors rocked into a gallop behind him.
* * *
"Well done, Major Bellamy," Raj Whitehall said, clapping him on the back. He raised his voice slightly. "Very well done, you and your men."
The headquarters company of the 2nd Cruisers raised a roaring shout at that, Bellamy's name and Raj's own, crying them hail.
"And you too, Gerrin," Raj went on, as the three senior officers and their bannermen turned to ride down the length of the refugee column.
One or two of the wagons were burning-that always seemed to happen, somehow-but most were in place, looking slightly forlorn with their former owners sitting beside them with their hands clasped behind their necks under guard. Or off digging hasty mass graves for the tumbled bodies, stacking captured weapons, the usual after-battle chores. The smoke smelled of things that should not burn, singed hair and cloth.
"It was young Bellamy's plan," Gerrin said. "And a damned sound one, too." He nodded to where a priest-doctor and his assistants were setting up, with a row of stretchers beside them. As they watched, the first trooper was lifted to the folding operating table. "Not many for the butcher's block, this time."
Ludwig flushed with pleasure and grinned. "The 5th carried off the difficult part, drawing away their rearguard," he said. "My boys just had to stand in the gully and shoot over the edge when they tried to rush the bridge."
A dispatch rider pulled up in a spray of gravel, his dog's tongue hanging loose. He wore the checkered neckcloth of the 5th Descott over his mouth as a shield against the dust. When he pulled it down the lower part of his face was light-brown to the caked yellow-brown of his forehead.
"Ser!" he saluted.
Staenbridge took the papers, opened them at Raj's nod. "Ah, good" he said. "From Bartin. Perino and Sala are secured. A few minor skirmishes; terms of surrender, hostages, supplies on the way-the usual."
He flipped to the other papers. "And the same from Ehwardo, Peydro and Hadolfo," he said, listing the other flying-column commanders. "The cities of Ronauk and Fontein opened their gates and tried to throw a party for the troops. Jorg back at base reports civilian and Brigaderos landowners coming in by the dozens to offer submission."
They were coming up to the head of the refugee column; the smell of powdersmoke still hung here, and of death. Flies swarmed in black mats, drawn by the rotting blood and meat already giving the hot day a sickly odor; hissing packs of waist-high bipedal scavenger sauroids waited at the edge of sight for living men to depart, their motions darting and impatient. Leathery wings soared overhead, spiralling up the thermals, and the ravens were perched on wagons. An occasional crack came as riflemen finished off wounded dogs, or Brigade warriors too badly hurt to be worth the slave-traders' while. Nearly to the front of the column was a huge tangle of dead men and mounts, with lances and broken weapons jutting up from the pile. Near the center was a man in three-quarter armor, lying with his sword in hand and his drying eyes peering up at the noonday sun. Lead had splashed across his breastplate, and blood from the three ragged holes that finally punched through the steel.
That armor really did seem to offer some protection, at extreme range and against glancing shots. Raj reflected it was just as well he'd ordered brass-tipped hardpoint rounds for this campaign as well as the usual hollowpoint expanding bullets. Generally those were sauroid-hunting ammunition, but they'd serve very well.
"They died fairly hard, here," he said. "What's your appraisal, messers?"
Bellamy shrugged. "Up at the bridge they charged us and we shot them," he said. "When they ran away, we chased them and shot them." He waved a hand at the scattered clumps of Brigaderos dead out over the fields. The ones away from the convoy were already seething with winged and scaled feasters.
Gerrin ran a thoughtful finger over his lips. "Rather better at my end," he said. "Those rifle-muskets of theirs do carry. And their unit articulation was much better than the Squadrones-particularly considering this was a thrown-together job lot of landowners' household troops. Some of the individual units worked quite well; they all stood fire, and some of them even managed a retreat when it seemed called for. Which is why I didn't get the whole of their rearguard."
He paused. "That was this fellow, I think," he said, nodding at the armored corpse and the banner that lay across his legs. "From the way they acted, I'd say their usual tactic was to push their dragoons forward to pin you with fire and hit you in the flank with the cuirassiers. I wouldn't like to take a charge of those lancers while I was in the saddle, my oath, no. The damned things are three meters long. And that heavy cavalry would be a nasty piece of work in a melee. They didn't have enough drilled troops to do it here, but I doubt we'll have as easy a time in the west."
Raj nodded. "That's about what I thought," he said. "Remember the old saying: a charging Brigadero would knock down the walls of Al Kebir." A little of the animation died out of Bellamy's face.
"Still, a good day's work," Raj said judiciously. "Ludwig, I'm leaving you this sector; push some patrols down the road, and find out how much of a perimeter whoever-it-is in Port Wager is trying to hold. I doubt he'll even try to hold the city. We've taken the island in less than four days; these here were the only ones we'd have had to worry about, and they make a good negative example to contrast with those who surrendered in time."
Some of the Scout Troop were living up to their informal name; the loot in the bulk of the column was being tallied for later distribution, but several of the Forty Thieves were slitting pouches and pulling rings off fingers-or cutting off the fingers, and ears with rings in them-as they moved among the enemy dead. Men riding to what they think is sanctuary will take all their ready cash with them. One big Scout was ignoring the dead. Every time he came to a man still breathing he took him by the chin and the back of the head and twisted sharply. The sound was a tooth-grating crunch.
Several other troopers surrounded a carriage at the very front of the column; beyond it was only the drift of enemy dead where they'd charged for the stone-built bridge, and gunners policing up their shell casings. Those around the coach were a mixed group from the 5th Descott and the 2nd Cruisers. Dead wolfhounds lay in the traces, and a cavalryman was sitting at some distance having a gunshot wound in one shoulder bandaged. Another jumped up to the running board and ripped open the door, then tumbled backward with a yell as the pointed ferrule of a parasol nearly gouged out his eye.
"Scramento," the man yelled, clapping a hand to the bleeding trough in his face.
His comrades laughed and hooted. "Hole for the pihkador, Halfonz!" one of them cried, slapping his thigh. "Lucky fer ye t'hoor didn't hev anither derringer."
A huge 2nd Cruiser trooper batted the para
sol aside with one hand and reached in with the other to pitch the wielder out; she was a tall buxom woman in her thirties, richly dressed in layers of filmy silk. A teenager followed her, shrieking like a rabbit as the big soldier's strength tore loose her frantic grip on the carriage and set it rocking.
He looked inside, holding the girl three-quarters off the ground despite her thrashing. "Ni mor cunne," he grunted in Namerique. "Kinner iz."
"Ci, just kids," a Descotter said, and slammed the door shut again.
The older woman was hammering at the Cruiser with two-handed strokes of her umbrella. The man she had nearly blinded came up behind her and ripped her gown down to the waist, pinning her arms and exposing her breasts, then kicked her feet from under her.
"Hold 'er legs, ye dickheads," he said irritably. Two did, spreading them wide and back as he tossed up her skirts and ripped off the linen underdrawers. Blood from his face wound spattered her breasts as he knelt, but she did not begin to scream until her daughter was thrown down beside her.
Raj heeled Horace to one side with a slight grimace of distaste. War was war, and soldiers soldiers. He'd had men hung for murder and rape in friendly territory, or towards enemies who'd surrendered on terms-crucified men for plundering a farm on Civil Government territory, once. Very bad for discipline to let anything like that go by. The sullen resentment he'd meet if he tried to deprive men of their customary privileges towards those who hadn't surrendered on terms would be even worse for order and morale. Besides which, of course, all the prisoners in this convoy were going to the slave markets-to domestic service or a textile mill if they were very lucky, more probably to die in the mines or building Governor Barholm's grandiose new temples, dams, railroads and irrigation canals.
"Shall I send everything back to base, then?" Staenbridge said, waving a hand toward the convoy.
"No," Raj said. "We'll be moving to someplace with a harbor soon. Just take them back a village or two, somewhere with good water; we'll pass you by and pick you up with the baggage train. And it'll be a good object lesson for the district."
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