by David Drake
So the enemy was herded north, dying in droves along the way. Abel continued the chase until he was certain there was no possibility for them to cut across the hill country and provide help at Fish Pens.
When he got back, he found the holdouts in the town had surrendered, their position hopeless. They sat sullenly under guard along the plank sidewalks. Their weapons and equipment had been stripped from them, and from the looks of them, a great many were wounded.
Can I get a count?
You have one thousand four hundred ninety-two troops in custody, although some will likely expire within the watch from their wounds, Center intoned. Enemy killed or wounded is close to three thousand, out of a force that I now estimate with high confidence at eleven thousand five hundred total strength.
And what about my own casualties?
One hundred fifty-seven killed. Two hundred sixty wounded.
Always too many. But we whipped them. We really whipped them.
That is a correct assessment, said Center. But do not forget the ultimate purpose of this battle: to relieve pressure from the main body of Guardian troops at the Fish Pens.
Yes, now we reinforce von Hoff.
Concur.
* * *
Abel garrisoned the town and called in his ambush party. The men were making sounds of settling down in the brisk chill of the afternoon. Some had picked out women from the civilians of Isham and were about to drag them away. Not today. Abel sent out an order to refill cartridge boxes from the supply wagons and stay ready.
Could he possibly march them again today?
Von Hoff might be desperate for reinforcement. How could he not be? But to arrive bedraggled and useless?
These men are capable of more than you give them credit for, Raj said. Much more. They arrived in the peak of health in a corps that prides itself on being the best of the best. They have fought long and bravely. But they aren’t exhausted. Not by a long shot.
Well, I feel exhausted.
As long as you feel anything, you can go on.
Thrice-damn you to cold hell, General.
Deep-throated laughter. What do you think being stranded on this backward planet for nigh on one hundred fifty years is? I’ve been more than thrice-damned to hell, Abel Dashian. But I have to say there is interesting company here. That compensates for much.
All right, General. Well, we’ll have the moons. Tonight will be a good night to march.
Abel called Timon. His arm was bandaged, but he seemed otherwise sound. He was also beyond showing surprise at Abel’s orders now. In fact, he smiled and anticipated them.
“Shall we depart, sir?”
“Yes. Leave. Go. Everyone at once. Tell them to drop those women softly, though.”
“Aye, sir,” Timon replied. He signaled the couriers with a quick whistle. They jumped to and soon were approaching weary captains and lieutenants who had thought their day was done.
“Major Athanaskew, do you know what tonight is?”
Timon thought a moment. “Yes, sir. It’s three moons night, and Churchill’s at the full.”
“That it is,” Abel replied.
“We’ll march at midnight, when Churchill is at its highest.”
Timon smiled, shaking his head. “Abel, the men are going to hate you for this. And love you after it’s done.”
“I’ll settle for the hatred if we get there in time to relieve von Hoff.”
“Alaha Zentrum.”
“Alaha Zentrum, Major Athanaskew.”
And you’re worth more than an infinite number of Zentrums, my friend.
He turned to gaze over what he could see of the Third.
So are they all.
* * *
It took them longer than Abel liked to get moving, but they were on the Gap Road less than a halfwatch after midnight. It was acceptable.
Blood and Bones, it’s damn good, considering.
They moved at a steady and deliberate pace. Even with the bright full moon, there was a great deal of stumbling, shuffling into one another, falling down and helping one another up. Fortunately, the Gap Road was well maintained. Unfortunately, it was mostly downhill when travelled from the east, which contributed to the stumbling and falling even more.
The sun rose. They marched on. Stragglers began to fall by the wayside once again, far more than had in the march up the Three Sisters and Manahatet valleys. Center reckoned he had lost over seven hundred that way. But those who still functioned did their job and got the fallen to the side of the road.
There was a great split about league before it reached the River Road. One wagon trail led north, one south. There was a large meadow here with plenty of water for the donts in a nearby stream. The beasts didn’t require much. Unlike humans, they had evolved on this world and needed to drink far less often than a man. Their blood ran with a whitish hemoglobin-hemocyanin mix, and the snot that shot from their blowholes could burn out your eyes if you happened to get too much of it in them. But even donts had their limits, and they were fast approaching them.
One more league to go.
He had Timon form them up in two columns of eight abreast. These were released four at a time, with a wide gap between one thirty-two-man group and the next. This would be their fighting deployment when they arrived. The Isham Gap had been narrow. There was no time to form into a line of attack as they spilled out.
The Gap Road was the rifle barrel pointed at the Progar militia. His men were the bullets careening down it.
When the front line of men reached the enemy, Abel, who was to the rear, saw a tremor run through the men in front of him.
Contact. Observe:
The rest of Third Division poured steadily out of the gap. Two thousand and more men slammed into the side of the Progar militia. The Progarmen were brave, but they had no group discipline. They were herders, miners, tradesmen conscripted by the local warlords.
Yet . . .
What they did have, ever third or fourth man or so, was a terrible weapon. A weapon he and Landry has speculated about, had dreamed of possessing.
It was real. In the enemy’s hands.
It took Abel a moment to understand what was going on. His men had fanned out left and right and attacked the left flank and rear of the militia in an outwardly expanding half circle. But something was halting their progress, and his men were falling at an alarming rate. The rate of enemy fire seemed fantastic.
Even breechloaders could not be fired at this rate. He knew. He’d fought with breechloaders; he’d used them against men armed with musket rifles. The result had been horrific. This was slaughter.
Sonic analysis indicates multichambered weapons. Scattered, but each with the firepower of eight men. Portions of the Progar militia are armed with revolving rifles.
So this was why von Hoff hadn’t made short work of the militia. A load of revolvers must have arrived from Orash, or wherever the infernal things were constructed. The Progarmen certainly hadn’t had them in the marsh battle.
Aye, they may have them now, but they can’t understand how to use them yet, said Raj.
“Major Athanaskew!”
“Sir!”
“We can’t let them concentrate those revolvers or they’ll wipe us out.”
“Those what?”
“Nishterlaub rifles. Like breechloaders, but worse.”
“Ah. Agreed.”
“We have to keep them on their heels. And we have to turn them toward von Hoff.”
“I’m not sure we can, Abel. There are so many of them.”
“They’re bloodying us, but we have a lot of sunlight left.”
A courier charged up with a request from Randolph, the Tuesday Company captain, for support on the southern flank of the deployed Goldies. Abel considered. They had come out of the Gap Road partly to the rear of the enemy, and partly at his flank.
“You tell the captain to hold that position, wherever he is, at all costs. He’s going to be our pivot,” Abel said. “I’ll send h
elp.”
The lines to his front had concentrated to counter the revolver fire with massed volleys. But this had squeezed several units out of the line and to the rear. They seemed to be patiently waiting their turn to get back in.
“Major, get those Wednesday men gathered. Send them to help Randolph.”
“Yes, sir,” said Timon. “Request permission to lead them myself, sir.”
Abel shook his head. “No, I need you here. Fowlett can do it. He’s good in a pinch, and that voice of his carries like a bone horn.”
Timon looked chagrined, but sent a messenger away to Fowlett.
He needed a regiment of cavalry . . . but only had Captain Arondale’s mounted skirmishers. They would have to do.
“Tell Arondale to get his cavalry up to the right flank. They’ll have the most ground to cover. But he should not stretch farther than the infantry, not today.”
“Yes, sir. On it, sir.”
Another messenger in from the middle. “Those nishterlaub nightmare guns are killing us, Colonel. The ground’s no good. No cover, nothing.”
“Tell Randolph to keep them fighting. There’s nothing else to do and everything depends on him.”
“Yes, sir. We just keep dropping, though. Never seen anything like it.”
“Tell Randolph what I said. Now get moving, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.”
He charged off on his dont to deliver the reply.
A watch passed. The flood of messengers back to Abel began to lessen. Then he found himself slowly moving forward to get a better view. It took him a moment to realize that he needed to do this because his line was advancing. It was advancing at a walking pace, but definitely, inexorably, shuffling forward.
What was more, the massed musket fire to Abel’s left had increased perceptibly. Von Hoff was advancing, too.
Now that there was movement, the line began to swing as Abel had wanted. The mounted troops to the north moved faster, carrying the adjacent infantry along with them from sheer momentum.
By the Lady, we might just surround them if this keeps up.
A likelihood of thirty-five percent. More likely their front will break and von Hoff will push them north.
Right through our enfilade.
Exactly.
When the Progar retreat came, it was much more ordered than Abel had expected. The troops he’d routed at Isham must have been green. These soldiers did not cut and run.
But they died like any other man when caught in the middle of two fields of fire. The retreat became more hurried, more desperate. To the north, the mounted units reported that they could go no farther. The Progarmen were erupting past them in a floodtide.
More Progarmen died as they ran Abel’s gauntlet.
Toward midafternoon, he caught sight of the Red and Golds advancing from the south. They had already made contact with Tuesday’s southern flank. The danger to his left was over. A halfwatch later, the southern advance reached Abel’s position.
The shooting did not stop to the north, but a hush fell, as if the advancing troops were a blanket of silence.
The rifles to your front have stopped firing.
There was nothing else to do except let the remainder of the day play out. Abel weaved his way between the troops streaming north, until he found von Hoff. The general was sitting astride his oversized dont. Abel rode up to him and thumped a salute.
“You are a sight for sore eyes, Colonel.”
“You, too, sir,” said Abel.
“You look as if you’ve been dragged through a pit of mud and obsidian shards, Dashian.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I think they’re on the run now. We’ll hunt them. We won’t give them rest.”
“You’ll have the moons for it tonight.”
“We surely will.”
But it did not turn out that way. As the sun set, the exhausted men of the Corps found their limit. No matter how much von Hoff cursed and urged them on, they broke contact with the Progar remnant. They slowed. The Progar militiamen, running for their lives, did not pause. And by midnight, they’d slipped away.
Von Hoff shook his head at the missed chance. But there really was little to complain about. The Progar, for all intents and purposes, were destroyed.
Abel wandered along the mass of the dead for a while. There were many groaning wounded, too. He saw that they were tended. The Guardian medicos used primitive methods, but they were as good as any in the Land.
Then a man stepped out of the field of bodies and ran up to greet Abel.
It was Landry.
“I found one,” he yelled. “I found one, Abel.”
“Found what, Captain Hoster?”
“This!” He lifted a revolving rifle and pointed it up to the sky. Then he caressed the cylinder fondly, as if it were a beloved pet. “Do you know what this is?”
“Yes,” Abel replied. “Very nearly the death of us.”
“Yes, yes, really effective. I almost took a shot to the head myself from one of them. Missed me by a hair, I tell you, a hair. Then he pulled the trigger to fire again, but he was out. He had me dead to rights. He was a good twenty paces away, but I knew he had me and he knew it.”
“I’m glad you’re alive, Landry.”
“Oh, me, too. Me, too. I killed that man, too. Blew his brains out. Took his top off like a pot lid. Ugly way to die. But that’s neither here nor there.”
“I guess it’s not. Are you all right, Landry?”
“Yes. I am. A bit agitated. My thoughts running on a bit. Running like the River when she floods.” He lowered the rifle in his hands, considered the revolving cylinder once again. “See the grip? That ingenious little bracket? You can’t hold the stock. It’ll scorch your hand to cinders. So you aim it like this, holding this bracket instead of the stock.” Landry demonstrated. “I’m just thinking . . . I know I could make these. A lot of them.” He frowned and shook his head sadly. “Too bad they’re nothing but thrice-damned nishterlaub. I would really like to make them. I can see how to do it. You ever had that? Some idea in your mind you can’t shake, that won’t go away. And you know it’s going to task you till the end of your life if you don’t do something about it?”
“I’m pretty sure I know exactly how you feel, Captain Hoster,” Abel answered.
PART NINE
The Lost
The Present
1
Treville District
476 Post Tercium
Joab Dashian went about the work of his office as he had for a thousand days before. There were military and civilian plans to oversee, provisions to see to, reports to read, threats to ponder. Scrolls came in, he examined them, marked his changes, they went out. His captains reported before going about their duties. Runners from outlying forts and garrisons delivered the daily or weekly dispatches. Joab sent them on their way with new orders.
Then, after a noon lunch, the locals arrived with their plans for approval: all civil works had to be approved and recorded by the District Military Command, including road building, the laying of irrigation ditches, the locating of new mizzen piles for garbage, and a dozen other projects. Joab was himself, via his military engineers, in charge of works and services such as wells, aqueducts, and the military tithe collection of grain or barter chits that paid for it all.
And then of course there was the fact that he was the top soldier in Treville District. Mornings and late afternoons he reviewed the Regulars in the Hestinga garrison, and, though it was not strictly required of him or any on his command staff, he got in sparring, range practice, and exercise with the men at least three days a week. Occasionally, as was his duty, he attended a Friday hanging.
His days of drinking into the night were long past, but he did manage to make it to his favorite tavern one or two nights a week, usually to share a pint of beer with old friends. These were his favorite moments. There was no woman to go home to. Since the death of his wife over thirty years ago, he had never felt the urge
to remarry.
This did not mean he had remained celibate during that time. Far from it. There was a trio of widows in the town who sometimes received an evening caller—a caller who frequently wound up staying the night. Joab chose his lovers well, and each was intelligent or at least empathetic enough in her own way to understand that there was not a chance in cold hell of her ever landing the DMC as a husband, however much she might fantasize about the prospect in her heart of hearts. All were too old to have children. Even when, once or twice a year, he called at the whorehouse, it was the proprietress who did him the honors, and she, too, was past childbearing age.
There would be no offspring other than Abel. All of his hopes were wrapped up in the boy—now a man. He had no ambition for himself other than a vague plan to retire some day on a small vineyard or olive orchard on the Escarpment, maybe in a villa that would have a view of the Valley from its portico.
Joab had never been an extremely self-reflective man—he didn’t have the time—but there was no place he’d rather be than Treville, and no job he’d rather have than its DMC.
His job-seeking had stopped when he’d been assigned the district, and his main worry in life was that, though some bureaucratic blunder in Lindron, he might one day be promoted. The Regulars had a way of making such mistakes on occasion. This was why he kept up a correspondence with his old brothers in arms, many of whom were Guardians now. The DMC who survived was the DMC who kept his ear to the ground for political shifts in the capital.
So he was surprised, then angry at himself, when he came home late one evening and walked into a trap.
The men who had broken in were good. There was no lamp lit and no door ajar to betray their presence. There were six of them, and as Joab stepped through the door, the two on either side of the doorframe shoved him inside.
He stumbled to a knee on his own reed mat carpet and rose with a pistol cocked in his hand.
“Don’t,” said a man’s voice from the darkness. “Commander Dashian, we are from the Tabernacle Security Service. We wish to talk to you.”
“Get out of my house.”
“Please do not make this difficult, sir.”
