Armoured heroes clash across the centuries! (Swords Versus Tanks Book 1)

by M Harold Page

All around, the terrible guns winnowed Clifford’s men, mowing down the lesser folk, but for the most part missing anybody wealthy enough to own an arrow charm or armour with runes etched into the plates.

  Ranulph smiled grimly. Clearly the Invaders did not understand that they needed to aim properly if they were to hit anybody above the rank of yeoman.

  More explosions, this time on the face of castle walls, destroying yet more of the white render. Ranulph snapped down his visor, sprang to his feet and loped back towards where smoke billowed from the stub of the siege tower. The ironclads weren’t here to break the siege, they were here to take the castle for themselves.

  Behind him, whip-cracks swelled, caught up, smacked the back of his greaves, and knocked his legs out from under him. He twisted as he fell. The packed earth slammed into his shoulder and he caught the reek of straw and manure. He rolled, hefted Steelcutter in his right hand, and pushed off with his left. Bullets punched holes in the dirt just short of his gauntleted fingertips. He snatched back his hand, and hurled himself towards the sheltering smoke.

  More bullets thwacked his backplate. Panting now, he stumbled, recovered in long strides and at last reached the choking clouds. Coughing, tripping on smouldering corpses, he blundered to the edge of the moat.

  Albrecht's face appeared in the breach. He waved an armoured hand. "Come on, you great oaf!"

  Something howled, roared. Chunks of wood and flesh rained down, clattering and thudding on his armour.

  Ranulph drew himself up — ducking would just expose the back of his neck and the tops of his thighs – and strode over rubble causeway.

  Dacre men hauled him over the breach. A cheer went up. Voices clamoured with questions.

  “Rejoice later, gentlemen!” barked Albrecht. “Close the breach!”

  Servants dragged a bale of pitch-soaked straw into breach. Others hauled up barrels and tables, beams salvaged from broken buildings… anything to create a barricade.

  There was a loud report. Plaster rendering fell from the inside of the curtain walls.

  The men around him flinched but Ranulph allowed himself a grim smile. The strange grey war engines might mount powerful cannon, but they obviously did not have priests onboard. The walls would hold for now. The roaring and rattling continued, however.

  “What are the war engines doing?”

  “Harrying Clifford’s army,” said Albrecht. “The odd shot comes our way. I don’t think they have any idea about the runes.”

  Ranulph let himself relax, then found he had to focus on staying upright while friendly hands stripped his helm and sweat-soaked gauntlets. Somebody pressed a flask of small beer to his lips. Limbs shaking now, he surveyed the busy courtyard. The majority of his sally party had come home safe.

  Ranulph accepted a haunch of cold beef and winced. The first three fingers of his right hand were badly bruised. A dozen other injuries clamoured to join the roll call of pain: battered ribs; aching calves; a stabbing sensation in the left ankle; screaming thigh muscles; throbbing temples…

  At least he had all his teeth.

  Albrecht pronounced himself satisfied with the improvised defences and stopped to give Ranulph an armoured hug. He looked up at Ranulph with bright, red-rimmed eyes. "What are they?”

  “Enemies,” said Ranulph.

  The squire waved his sketchpad in Ranulph’s face. “Well they have ruined my composition!"

  Wolfing the meat, Ranulph squinted at Albrecht’s drawing. "A good thing too…" he said between mouthfuls. "You’ve made me look like an-"

  There was a terrible howl.

  Black.

  Stars.

  And Ranulph was on the ground, ears ringing, ribs blazing, coughing dust, spitting grit. The enemy had hit the damaged section of the ramparts, scattering the barricade and bringing down more of the wall.

  Albrecht lay nearby: half-buried by stones, pale hand clutching his sketch book. All the runes in the world would not have been enough to divert that avalanche of masonry.

  Ranulph dragged himself over the rubble. He brushed the blood-matted hair from what was left of his friend’s forehead, and kissed him goodbye. His rolled to his feet and somehow Steelcutter was in his hand.

  He raised his ancestral sword and bellowed, "If they want my castle, they can pay for it in blood!"

  CHAPTER THREE

  Jasmine stood up on Green 01’s conning tower and considered the castle. Despite the earlier shelling, there was still only one hole in the wall. From the way that somebody had filled the moat, she was pretty sure that the breach had already been there when the tanks interrupted the natives’ battle. She frowned. It had all been a bit crazy, but she expected better from the five squadrons of her H.Q. battalion.

  The carnage in the immediate approaches to the breach looked like a madman’s butterfly collection – scattered with colourfully draped steel carapaces, perhaps a dozen of them pinned by arrows the size of pool cues. Her lips quirked. Those pretty, pinnacled wall turrets housed something nasty, but only by the local — medieval — standards.

  And that was the problem. "Fuck it,” she said. “This isn't an alien world. This is a fucking Albrecht painting."

  Marcel's gruff voice echoed up from the driver's hatch. "Parallel evolution, girl."

  "Ha. That’s ‘colonel’ to you, old man. And you don't even know what that means.” Jasmine’s lips quirked. “Besides, how come this looks like Dacre Hill without the slums?"

  The veteran hauled himself out and perched on edge with his back to the castle. "Morphic resonance. Otherwise the Gate would not have worked."

  "Since when did you care about zis..." She mimicked his Saumurian accent. "...technical sheet?"

  "Since my boyfriend started practising his spiels on me."

  "Tom is a real romantic." Jasmine sat down and kicked her boot heels against the armour plate. The other tanks were still buttoned up. Even so, she leaned over so they could talk privately. "Seriously, this is all bullshit. A cover story for fuck-knows-what scheme. Those dead guys are human, not just ‘humanoids’ that look that way."

  Marcel shrugged. "Well, it's either defeat these fake aliens, or let the real aliens back home eat our brains." He turned to slide back into the tank. "Time to play soldiers, little lady."

  With a frown, Jasmine raised her field glasses. How unfair for the Egality to have beaten the Elitists only to face attack from nightmare aliens from the Red Planet. Now this. She needed a holiday, not another campaign.

  Figures moved behind the battlements, all decked out in bright colours and shiny metal like her little brother’s lead miniatures. More metal glinted behind the loopholes… probably archers; a hazard for the Carbineers – when they finally turned up. According to the briefing, a good bow’s maximum range was 200 metres short of the theoretical 500-metre effective range of Egality carbines. However, Egality Carbineers were more used to close-up fighting in the shattered cities of the former Empire than engaging the enemy at any sort of distance.

  Jasmine reached for her headset. "Folks. It really is bigger than a barn door, so let's not miss this time. Ten H.E. rounds each. Fire at will." She clamped her hands to her ears.

  All fifty tanks opened up, 60mm howitzers blasting from alternate sponsons. Green 01 bucked and shimmied under her like an overweight flapper strutting her stuff at a barracks party. Shells hammered into the gleaming white walls, wreathing them in grey smoke. Others screamed over the castle to detonate with dull thumps somewhere in the forest below the crags.

  The guns fell silent. From far away came the crunch-creak of a great tree toppling.

  Jasmine's stomach lurched. The original breach remained. The handful of new hits had merely blackened the wall, blasted away the white render, but not so much as scuffed the masonry.

  Up came her field glasses. The newly exposed stonework looked ordinary enough, except that each block sported what had to be very large mason's marks. They reminded her a bit of the runes she'd seen on rusted Northman swords in Kingha
ven Museum. "The castle is... snubbing us."

  "Something's wrong with the guns and ammo", said Marcel from his hatch.

  "Perhaps this really is an Albrecht painting." Jasmine's voice rose in an unmilitary manner. She laughed nervously. "Any moment now, some picture restorer is going to tut and carefully wipe us away..."

  "Cheer up. If we are trapped inside one of his paintings, maybe you'll get lucky with Sir Ranulph Dacre."

  Jasmine felt herself blush. "You've known me too long. Don't try to distract me!"

  "Hey," said Marcel, as if he hadn't heard her. "If there are knights, then there are Real Princesses as well."

  "Don't they tend to have jealous husbands?" said Jasmine, giving in.

  Marcel twisted in his seat to look up at her. "I thought you liked… having the jealous husbands?"

  "Only when the wife is watching..."

  "If you’re done discussing your individualistic deviances?" General Woodsman nudged his horse closer to the port sponson and dismounted.

  Jasmine laughed. "Sorry General!" She slid off the conning tower and dropped onto the sloping hull between her tank's twin prows. As she edged past Marcel’s open hatch, she said, "About time. There's not much daylight left. Tell Sparky to gather the captains." She clambered down to the mud, rounded the two-metre high port track, and held out her hand. "Good to see you, General Woodsman."

  The tall general just glared down at her, making full use of their difference in height. "Technocracy is just another word for Crypto-Elitism." His horse stomped and shuffled.

  Jasmine withdrew her hand. “Technocracy?”

  “I find it an interesting coincidence,” said General Woodsman, “that my support companies have been lost in transport and that, when I finally stopped waiting and led my people through the Gate, I found you here ahead of me with your tanks. Congratulations on your glorious victory for the powers of technology.”

  Jasmine shrugged. “Nothing to do with me, and — ” She gestured at the castle “ — you’ll note that Objective 1 hasn’t fallen yet. There appears to be something wrong with our guns.”

  General Woodsman waved a shabby arm at the tanks. "Lay down covering fire like proper mobile artillery, 'Colonel', and the sturdy Carbineers of the Egality will take the Proto-Elitist stronghold without the need for help from the Post Office."

  Jasmine's lips tried to twitch into a smile. "Sorry. The Field Marshal attached you to us, not the other way around. Besides, the native archers will slaughter your people."

  The general grunted.

  “So, General, may I present my captains?” Jasmine ushered forward the four captains of her H.Q. Battalion. They gathered in between her tank and the next, stamping and shuffling against the cold, no-doubt yearning for the boiler-room warmth of their cabins. Each bore the Post Office horn-and-horse armband, but field-grey uniforms like hers betrayed secondment from Military: one from the Infantry like Jasmine, one from the Artillery, and two from Mounted Recon.

  Woodsman nodded. “Carry on.” He positioned himself so he was not quite part of the conference, nor quite overseeing it.

  The captains seemed to be taking it in turns to check the sky.

  Jasmine pointed at the low lying cloud. "No flying saucers here folks — that's why we came."

  They exchanged glances then laughed nervously. Back home, such a concentration of armoured vehicles would have drawn a swarm of alien craft spewing their heat-rays.

  "Right," said Jasmine. "We need to take that… fort… from the native... um... aliens, without using our howitzers – unless anybody’s got any idea how to fix them? So, we're going to use standard building entry drill, but do it with tanks, leading the way for the infantry."

  As she continued, she realised she did have a place in the picture after all. If the aliens of this planet were like humans, then they deserved the life that the Egality could give them.

  Whoever owned that castle was just some sort of robber baron. Wrapped in their field-grey 30mm armour plate, her people were modern-day knights come to free an entire world from the chains of feudalism.

  #

  Ranulph adjusted his visor to shade his eyes from the horizon-hugging sun. There it was again. A movement on Unicorn Hill.

  The stone had gone. Instead, a column of infantry marched over the summit and down into the pastureland. Except for the glitter of blades, the mass was mud-grey. Behind them came a nightmare baggage train — a dozen well-laden... horseless... wagons.

  That settled it. Wherever it came from, this army was mounting an invasion, not a raid.

  A sound like a growling wolf pack drew Ranulph's attention back to the immediate threat.

  Across the Cattle Market, ten ironclads detached themselves from the rest. Casting long shadows before them, they rattled and squealed out of what was left of Clifford’s lines. Lacking visible horses or men, the ugly machines spoke of the New War taken to its logical conclusion: battles reduced to the mechanical inevitability of a siege, with no space for courage or prowess.

  Ranulph smiled without mirth. Revenge at last.

  The leading ironclad crushed an armoured corpse and splintered a half-fallen mantlet.

  Ranulph’s pulse quickened. "Wait for it…" The words came out as a croak. He loosened Steelcutter in its belt ring, braced for the pain in his throat and tried again. "Wait for it, gentlemen! I want them all!"

  "In range, Milord!"

  Ranulph turned to tell Albrecht to capture the moment in his sketch pad.

  Damn. He screwed shut his eyes and shook his head. The momentum of his open visor tugged at his neck. He wriggled his gauntleted fingers, warming the leather of the inner gloves. One way or another, battle was the best medicine for grief.

  Between the horns of each war engine, a gun flickered, adding its own ripping sound to the din, so that it seemed a thousand imps ran amok in a silk caravan. Nothing, however, came near the ramparts of Castle Dacre.

  The wind carried their smoke to the battlements, an odd stale smell. Ranulph coughed. A nice wheat beer would hit the spot — the kind his comrades must be drinking right now in some Imperial tavern, planning the next season’s adventures in front of a blazing fire, contemplating the prospect of a flaxen-haired wench for later.

  Life went on.

  But not for Ranulph’s father whose head graced Kinghaven’s Traitor’s Gate. Not for his brothers, hung in chunks around the kingdom. Not for Albrecht, laid out in the chapel.

  Ranulph raised his ancestral sword high and bellowed, "For Dacre and for Albrecht!"

  Along the wall towers, hatches slammed open, revealing the boxy-framed springalds to the attackers. Torsion-driven arms thumped. Strings thrummed. A dozen three-foot bolts whirred out across the corpse-strewn Cattle Market, each of them rune-etched. If the Invaders had more powers than just cunning artifice, Ranulph was about to find out.

  #

  Jasmine's tank crunched through the siege tower's smoking stump and the stench of burning leather stung her nostrils. She wrinkled her nose and squinted through the smoke. The breach was close now.

  The roof clanged. Jasmine flinched, then grinned at her own stupidity. Primitive siege weapons weren’t going to harm a —

  Her tank veered to the right and hurled her against the inside of the conning tower. She lost her perch, clutched wildly at the ladder, and half tumbled into the main cabin.

  Marcel brought them to a juddering halt. "Starboard engine disabled."

  The lights were out, but a shaft of daylight came through a gash in the roof. The cabin was silent, except for the Port Engine Specialist muttering, "What. The. Fuck," over and over again as she cranked the backup differential gears so that the port engine could drive both tracks. A big arrow now projected like an improvised control lever from the other engine. Blood trickled down the shaft and dripped onto the body of the Starboard Engine Specialist. Judging from the gaping hole in her skull, the missile had passed clean through her helmet and head before wrecking the machinery.

&n
bsp; Jasmine looked from the arrow to the tear in the 30mm plate, and back. She closed her eyes. Opened them. Still there. Not an Elitist Thunder Rocket, just a giant wooden-shafted arrow.

  The radio operator said, "Better hear this." She switched to speaker.

  "Green 02 disabled. We-" The voice gurgled into silence.

  "Green 04 penetrated. Port howitzer out."

  "Aliens! It’s the fucking Aliens!"

  "No! It’s a secret Elitist base! "

  With a shriek of metal, another giant arrow tore through the armoured hull, passed through the body of the radio operator and embedded itself in the decking.

  Jasmine vaulted back up into the conning tower and peered through the rear vision port.

  Green 02 was immobile, its port track wrecked. Green 03 rounded the crippled ironclad, only to take a direct hit behind the starboard sponson. The primitive missile tore through the armour as if it were cardboard. A wisp of smoke escaped the gash, then a gout of flame as the gasoline splashed onto the overheated engine and caught fire.

  Metal fatigue? Shoddy workmanship? Sabotage? Exotic alien arrowheads?

  Jasmine grabbed her headset. "Green Squadron, regroup at start line. The rest of you; Wake the fuck up! Let’s have that fucking covering fire! Please."

  "You already got it, Colonel. But it’s.... ineffective."

  Jasmine bit her lip. She should have realised that whatever affected the howitzers would also screw up the machine guns. "Use the AA guns with tracer. That way you can't miss." It would take a minute to haul the heavier machine guns up out of the conning towers, but this way her people would see where the bullets were going. Perhaps they could even correct their aim.

  Woodsman’s voice blared in her ears. "Remain in place, Klimt. We’ll take it from here."

  Grey uniformed figures swarmed out from behind the tanks of Blue and Teal Squadrons. They sprinted towards the breach, bayonets glinting in the late afternoon light. If Green Squadron retreated now, they would have to do so over the living bodies of the Carbineers. General Woodsman had effectively trapped a fifth of her tanks under enemy fire.

  "Fucking Hell! — Green Squadron, cancel last order." Jasmine swivelled to look forward. Any moment now and there would be another volley from the bolt-throwers.