by Robyn Bennis
“It’s amazing what the fear of being thought afraid will do to an ambitious company captain,” Josette said. She looked over the rail, to the companies still formed up in the rear. “But if they don’t join the fight, I’d say I’m in rather a lot of trouble.”
“Nothing like what those poor bastards are in for,” Ensign Kember said, looking over the opposite rail, where that single company of Fangless Fops, outnumbered five to one, were charging into the breach.
* * *
DESPITE BEING SLOWED by his stiff leg, Bernat’s little militia couldn’t quite keep up with him. They followed several paces behind, which was either an odd sort of politeness or a conscious effort to ensure that Bernat alone bore the consequences of first contact with the enemy.
He rounded a connecting street and could see the breach ahead, the broken edges of the wall flanking it, and two hundred and fifty fusiliers stretching out on either side. Gunsmoke drifted up and to the south, the puffs of independent fire mingling in odd patterns with the longer, unbroken lines of smoke from volleys, and forming an odd sort of recording of the regiment’s musketry.
Bernat’s group spilled out onto the pomerium. Behind him, he heard gunshots. He turned to see that his little militia had grown yet again during the trip, and many of the new recruits had brought rifles or scatterguns. But, along with his few musketmen, they fired their shots the second they were on the pomerium—too great a range for effective fire from such an unsteady force—and so not a single Durumite bullet hit. Other townsfolk had picked up whatever makeshift weapons they could find along the way, and were now armed with pitchforks, threshing flails, rakes, cobblestones, and in one case even a saucepan.
The Vin fusiliers answered this cosmopolitan array of weapons in the same familiar way: with a thunderous volley of musketry. At orders barked above, two hundred of them ceased their platoon fire, loaded, turned crisply on their heels, and fired together into the town, aiming for the densest part of the mob, as they came into effective range.
A pitiful, pained, collective groan rose from the Durumite mob. Those who didn’t fall checked as one, mere yards from the breach. Bernat knew they were stalled even before he looked back at them. He was only surprised at how far behind they were. He found himself very much alone, and very much a target, standing halfway between the bulk of his force and their objective.
“Come on!” he screamed, flecks of spittle flying from his mouth, despite how goddamn dry it was. “Those boys out there—” He was interrupted by the boom and clatter of the cannon in the nearest bastion firing grapeshot down at the 132nd. Even though it wasn’t aimed at Bernat’s mob, that grapeshot seemed to freeze them more firmly in place. “Goddamn it,” he begged, “just give me a few more yards!”
The mob did not advance a few more yards, did not climb into the breach, but neither did they run away. His words had stopped a full rout, but Bernat had achieved the worst possible compromise, for now his people stood under enemy fire while accomplishing nothing. As much as he cursed them for it, as much as he wanted to call them fools as well as cowards, he was gripped by the same idiotic impulse to freeze where he was. He knew he had to move or die, and yet he stood rooted to the ground, half wishing that a bullet would cut short his failure as a military leader.
And a bullet granted his wish.
It came not from the wall but from directly above, and was accompanied by the report of a Brewer rifle, distinctly louder than the fusiliers’ muskets. More to Bernat’s interest, it did not hit him, but plucked a Vin defender off the wall and sent the man plummeting fifty feet to the pomerium below. Bernat looked up to see Mistral rising over the wall, and heard more fire from the ship’s Brewers. He turned, made a bellowing war cry, and stormed up the inside slope of the breach. “Follow me!” he screamed.
His fighting mob followed.
* * *
“REVERSE ENGINE! LEFT hard rudder! Elevators down five degrees!”
The captain’s orders brought Mistral into a downward, twisting turn as the ship slowed, so that her length came parallel to the wall, her bref guns pointing down at it as she drifted with her remaining momentum.
Ensign Kember was behind the starboard gun, eyes on its forward sight and hand clenched around its lanyard. The gunsight slid over the slanting wooden roof atop the wall. She couldn’t see them, but underneath that roof were men. Men she hated—no goddamn Dumpling sympathizer she—but men whose pain and fear were not diminished because of her hatred. In her head, the face of Lieutenant Hanon stared up at her, imploring.
“Ensign!” the captain barked. “Quit fondling that gun and shoot!”
Kember pulled the lanyard without another moment’s thought. The morality of inflicting pain and death was one thing, but having the captain mad at you was another entirely.
Canister shot exploded from the muzzle, a fanning arc containing a hundred and sixty lead balls that tore through lumber and flesh with equal ease. The protective roof was blasted apart. Pulped bodies flew over both sides of the wall. Even at the edges of the canister shot’s destructive cone, splinters of wood flew fast enough to maim.
The Vins’ composure once again limited their casualties to only a few, but of the men who were killed, the sheer volume and force of musket balls reduced them to mere scraps of meat. Kember didn’t let her thoughts dwell on the sight of it, only because her duty called her to the port bref gun. This one was loaded with ordinary round shot, the least remarkable of all Mistral’s armament.
“Elevators up!” the captain called, her order bringing the ship closer to level.
She gave the elevation screw a single turn, sighting on the far edge of the hole she’d already blasted in the Vins’ protective roof. She pulled the lanyard, stepped out of the way of the recoil, and peered into the smoke.
She couldn’t see the shot’s effect. The roof blocked the view. But she could hear it. She could hear the cannonball ricocheting inside that tight space, could trace the flight of the ball by the crunching impacts against stone or wood as it bounced right down the line of the wall. A hundred yards away, it hit a merlon and ricocheted out into the town. As the smoke cleared and Mistral steered to come behind the wall, she could see the effect on the Vins. But she only saw it for a moment before she closed her eyes.
* * *
“DAMN FINE SHOOTING, Ensign.” Josette clapped the girl on the shoulder as she looked forward.
The cannonball, fired at an acute angle into the space between wall and cover, had bounced between them, killing and maiming as it went, before skipping out and falling into the town ironmonger’s scrap yard. It left a dozen Vin infantrymen dead and twice as many missing arms or legs.
Taking a rifle, Josette went to the taffrail and looked down into the breach. She spotted Bernie by his stylish jacket, now tattered and caked with mortar dust from the rubble. The Durum mob was behind him, struggling up the unstable inner slope of the breach, scrambling on hands and knees, sliding two yards down for every three up, while the single forward company of the 132nd was climbing the outer slope. The Vins, meanwhile, fired down from the wall on either side. There was only room for one or two men to stand on the jagged edges of the wall, but each fusilier took his shot and stepped aside to let another through, so that together they kept up a continuous fire. Garnians were being slaughtered on both sides of the breach, but even by dying they were doing the work of a forlorn hope, occupying the defenders’ attention and giving the 132nd a chance to advance in force.
And they were advancing. All the reserve companies were moving forward at double time, and at that speed might arrive just in time to see their friends routed and fleeing the breach, for the renewed forlorn hope was itself wavering. Josette could see it in the way they picked their way through the rubble, not bounding up the slope but crawling on their bellies from stone to stone, always looking for some outcrop of rubble to keep between themselves and the nearest Vin fusilier. Only Bernat climbed the breach wit
h vigor, and that was about to get him killed.
“Steersmen, come into the wind and keep us directly over the breach. Riflemen, fire at the Vins on the edges. Deliberate, careful aim, please.”
Below, a fusilier fired his musket and turned to make room for the next. Josette took aim and quite deliberately shot him in the ass. As his comrades came forward to carry him away, she took a fresh rifle and shot one of them in the ass as well. As cathartic as this was after the morning she’d had, her real purpose was to block up the edges of the wall with wounded men who couldn’t get out of the way to let new shooters through.
And it worked. Bernie led the Durum mob up the slope, toward the battered edges of the wall flanking the breach, and faced only scant musket fire as he went. Indeed, more fire was aimed at Josette, but she stood her ground, hoping the distance and elevation would protect her, and that the screams of their wounded comrades would unsteady the fusiliers’ aim.
Bernat crested the rubble heap in the middle of the breach. At the top of it, with nowhere to go but down, he turned left and futilely kept trying to go up, climbing hand over hand on the steeper slope leading to the lip of the wall, where the Vins were shooting down at them. This made him a very stupid man, but Josette couldn’t help but grin at the audacity. It must have amused the advanced company of the 132nd as well, for the Garnian infantrymen rose off their bellies and bounded up the slope, sending loose rocks tumbling behind them, to be dodged by their comrades farther down.
And why wouldn’t they race up the rubble? After all, there was a gentleman like them at the top, climbing to attack the Vins without so much as a sword or bayonet, and townsfolk swarming behind him, including one member of the Durumite mob armed only with … was that really a saucepan? And higher still there was a mere woman standing stalwart in her airship, half her face ruined, but proving by her accurate rifle fire that Vinzhalian asses bled the same color as anyone’s.
The Fighting Philosophers stormed the breach, shouting themselves hoarse as they went. Under the cover of rifle fire from Mistral, they followed Bernat’s example, climbing to the top of the rubble and then dividing outward to climb to the very top of the wall. The Vins replied with bullets and bayonets, and even loose stones tossed from above.
Not one of the 132nd made it to the top of the wall, though a score died trying. But they had done their work nevertheless, for they were in the breach in force. Men from the companies behind them finally arrived, funneling into the breach, and went up the slope in a wave, spilling over the top of the rubble and into the town. The Vins saw the danger and sent companies down the bastion stairs, aiming to form a second defense in the pomerium below, but wherever the stairs opened onto the pomerium, there were townsfolk waiting in force, and they were out for blood.
And so, on the pomerium behind the wall, with not a single Vin on the ground to trouble them, the men of the 132nd were being organized into a firing line, in whatever order they came through the breach and by whatever officers were nearest. They fired one volley at the wall—such a nervous, ill-aimed volley that several shots hit Mistral’s envelope by mistake.
The effort was all but useless in its physical effect. A hundred or more Garnian muskets had slain one or two Vins, if that many.
Yet, for all its pitiful effect in drawing blood, that was the volley that won the battle. For it convinced the Vins that they would soon be facing an overwhelming force inside the town, and that there was nothing they could do to change that fundamental reality, no matter how stubbornly they clung to the high ground, no matter how many Garnians they managed to kill in the meantime.
And so, rather than inflame the passions of the victors with a futile effort at holding the wall, they threw down their arms.
“Send a bird,” Josette said. “Message to read, Durum is ours.”
21
THE CITY’S CANNONS fired in celebration now, and the concussion of every shot sent a pulse of pain through Bernat’s aching leg. “I have never done so much walking and running in my life,” he said, leaning heavily on his cane, “as I have while recovering from a leg wound. In all seriousness, do you think God hates me?”
Beside him, Josette looked at the town through the west gate, where they’d stopped to let him rest. She shrugged and said, “I’m not a theologian, you know. I can’t speak on such matters. I can only say that, if I was God, I would certainly hate you.”
He snorted. “Yes, but you could say that about everyone you know.”
“Nonsense,” she said, sticking her nose in the air. “I’m quite fond of Sergeant Jutes.”
He was about to probe for her current attitude toward Roland or her mother, but thought better of it. “Why don’t you go on ahead?” he asked instead. “I’d like to see how Pesha is getting on, and I expect you’d prefer to go straight to your captured airship.”
“I admit that I’m eager to see how much of their luftgas Jutes managed to save.”
An avaricious thought which had been bubbling in the depths of Bernat’s mind finally broke through to the surface. “Does this capture fall under prize law? Does it legally belong to us? The ship and all that luftgas … Why, we’d all be rich. Even the crewmen. And where do supernumeraries fall in this regard?”
“The same as a warrant officer,” Josette answered. “So, according to prize law, you split an eighth of the total value with Chips and Chief Megusi.”
Bernat’s eyes widened. “So, between ship and luftgas…”
“And bref guns, powder, shot, cordage, goldbeater’s, instruments, chronometers, not to mention head money. I’d say that your one twenty-fourth share entitles you to something in the nature of twenty thousand liras, if not more.”
Bernat stumbled backward as he imaged the possibilities.
“Or it would,” Josette added flatly, “if naval prize law applied to the aerial corps—which, of course, it doesn’t.”
The shock of it sent him stumbling farther back, right against the thick stone wall of the gatehouse. “You let me think we were rich!”
She only grinned.
“You spiteful bitch!”
After a moment’s thoughtful reflection, she nodded in agreement, then said, “Meet up at the pub later?”
“Yes, yes,” he said, waving her away.
She turned and walked off, whistling a jaunty tune and picking at the fresh bandages on her face.
Bernat rested a while longer at the gatehouse, watching townsfolk, soldiers, and officers as they came and went. More townsfolk going than coming, he noticed, and he finally stopped a group of them to ask about it.
“Headin’ to the fields,” a grizzled older man said. “Plantin’ season.” He led a dozen grizzled middle-aged men, several of whom bore hastily bandaged wounds from the morning’s battle.
Bernat was taken aback. “But surely you should spend today in rest and celebration?”
The old man would have none of it. “Planting’s gotta be done, my lord. We’re a week behind on account of the siege, and low on food on account of the granaries getting burned last fall, and on account of what the Vins ate, and if we don’t get seed in the ground fast, we’ll have nothing left, long a’fore harvest comes.”
Bernat wondered if they knew that the 132nd had eaten their plow oxen. But as the farmers walked off to their fields, Bernat was sure they’d manage. They still had their plow horses, didn’t they? And though it was unlikely anyone had thought to feed those horses since the siege began, the people of Durum were a resourceful people, and would surely find a way to plow, and to harrow, and to do whatever else was involved in planting—probably something to do with rakes, he imagined.
When they were past, he set off for Durum’s town hall, where the gravely wounded were being tended to. It took him a while to find Pesha, for this was a town hall in the old sense—a single hall, large enough to hold a significant fraction of the populous. Indeed, a significant fraction of them were laid out in it now. After a quarter hour’s search, he found Pesha in a distant c
orner, lying with a tourniquet twined tight around her upper arm and a bandage wrapped around the stump below it.
She was still sweating from the pain when he knelt beside her and asked, “Was it Heny who amputated?”
Pesha answered in a voice exhausted from the intensity of her ordeal, and hoarse from the intensity of her screaming. “She didn’t trust anyone else to do it. The battalion doctor offered.” She smiled as she stopped to catch her breath. “She told him to go to hell.”
“Good, good,” Bernat said. “You never know, with these army doctors. Most of them are half mad and half drunk. Still, I can’t imagine having to do that to someone I…” He trailed off.
“Hurt her more than me, I think,” Pesha said. “Still, it’ll be a story to tell the grandkids, won’t it?”
This comment garnered some odd looks from the patients around her, and Bernat didn’t think she would have dared to say it if she were in a more balanced state of mind. “You know,” he said, grasping for anything to distract from that careless comment, “we thought for a time that you and Heny were the turncoats, that you’d given away our plans to the Vins.”
Pesha didn’t even bother to call him an idiot, though her face said quite enough.
“Well, I … I think I’ll just see about … I’ll leave you to your … Best you get some rest.” He patted her on the head, which did not improve her disposition. Indeed, quite the contrary.
He left before he could dig himself into a deeper hole, and nearly stepped on several wounded townsfolk in his hurry to get out the door.
Outside, the Vinzhalian fusiliers were being gathered up into a pen in the town square—a little larger and more exposed than the one the Durumites had been herded into, but otherwise similar. He spotted Major Emery among a group of Garnian officers, and went over to shake his hand.
