by David Drake
And there were just so damned many Blaskoye. His men cut them down, inched forward in their squares, cut down another swatch.
But some got through, some squares broke. And then they did, the Blaskoye riders swept into the attack from the flank and even the rear.
There were just so damn many Blaskoye.
And only so many bullets. So many shots. So much time to reload.
We’re going to lose, Joab thought. But we’re going to go down fighting.
Then something began to happen to Joab’s right. It was as if his lines were slicing in there, cutting deep. As if the Blaskoye were giving away. Why, he couldn’t say, but Joab Dashian was not a man to question good fortune. He threw in what reserves he had.
The penetration of the enemy continued to his center, until Joab’s stretched lines resembled a southwest to northeast diagonal across a league or more of Ingres countryside.
What the hell was happening on that right?
Joab rode forward through a cloud of dust. His staff called him back, but he had to see. Dust got in his good eye, and he wiped it with a gloved hand. Closer.
And then he emerged from the dust and away west saw what he was looking for. Banners of gold and blue.
Someone, he wasn’t sure who, was fighting alongside him. He and the other had linked up and joined forces. It hadn’t been a plan, but it had been inevitable since they were, indeed, fighting the same enemy.
But that couldn’t be right. These were Goldies. And every bit of intelligence he had received confirmed to Joab that, in a perverse deal to destroy an alleged threat from the north, the Guardians had joined forces with the Blaskoye.
These were Goldies. And they were on his side.
Then he looked more closely. They fired, then fired again. Then fired again.
There was no line of reloading men, just a few who dropped behind the line momentarily, fiddled with their rifles, and then joined once again in the shooting.
Blam! Blam! Blam!
Joab counted.
Blam! Blam! Blam!
Six shots before reloading.
Six shots from one rifle and one rifleman in a handful of eyeblinks.
No wonder the Blaskoye seemed to be melting like sizzling dak fat.
These new rifles, however they worked, were murder weapons.
4
Ingres District
The Wheatlands
Southeastern Front
Afternoon
The front was chaos, as Abel had expected. But for better or worse, Abel had learned to look past the dead and mangled bodies, the destruction, the odor of burning dont and human flesh, the constant pop of rifles leavened by an occasional full volley.
The screams of the dying.
And if he thought he could not see anything from the rise before, here any hope of making out the larger action was obscured by smoke, overturned wagons, donts and riders charging this way and that, all on errands Abel could only guess at.
Yes, there was an order to the madness. And his men were streaming toward—not away—from the sound and fury.
He rode left along the lines. As he might have expected, the farther north he moved, the closer the fighting became until finally it was very near indeed and shots were whistling through the air.
Something through the gunsmoke and dust caught his eye. It was across the mass of von Hoff’s Goldies. A banner he recognized. The Red and White with Twin Stripes, representing the Canal and the Canal Road.
It was the flag of the Treville Regulars.
The one sight he’d most longed for.
But that couldn’t be. They were out of the fight.
Another bullet whizzed by.
I’m deluding myself and my mind is playing tricks on me.
Against instinct, Abel turned away, rode a safe distance, then turned to Metzler. “Here’s where we need those boys who were up front at Tamarak and Sentinel.” Wednesday Company had been made of Cascade reserves and had reconstituted whole when Abel had assembled his forces in Bruneberg. “Let’s send Fowlett’s boys in, and send them in hard. We can roll those bastards up here, we truly can.”
“Will do, sir.”
Abel realized he was hungry. He’d eaten in the boat coming down the River but had skipped midday meal, as had probably every man in Abel’s army. He’d spent his life with the simple issue of when to grab a bite to eat always nagging at him when out scouting, on maneuvers, even fighting. And, as he usually did, he pushed it away and thought about something else until the hunger pangs either went away or were subsumed by other worries.
Such as the fact that the sun was going to set in little more than a quarter watch.
The command group backtracked to get out of the way of the surging reinforcements. Best to avoid any chance of being mowed down by friendly fire when you could. As they rode south, an odd group made their way up from the north. Abel saw them over the trampled wheat fields from a good distance away. There was a dust cloud with a flash of white color showing and then becoming obscured, then showing again. As the group grew closer, Abel saw that it was several of his own mounted troops surrounding, in boxlike fashion, a group of three dont riders who rode stiffly in the middle.
Then he could make out the white: a flag on a pole.
A truce?
Closer still, and he could make out the gold and tan of the boxed-in riders. They were Goldies. Von Hoff’s troops. The enemy. Abel recognized one of them. It was Bunch, his chief of staff in Progar. The groups linked up.
“General, these men claim to represent the Guardian Corps and other Lindron troops currently in this conflict.”
“What is it they want, Major?”
Metzler shook his head. “Well, they say they want to surrender, sir. They say they are empowered to do so for the all the Goldies.”
“General von Hoff might have something to say about that,” Abel replied.
“General von Hoff is dead,” called out Bunch. “I’ve come from wrapping him in a burial blanket and laying him out for the ceremony.”
Abel couldn’t quite believe what he’d heard. He had Bunch repeat it again.
“Did we kill him?” Abel said, not quite believing what he was hearing. “Zachary von Hoff is too smart to put himself in harm’s way.”
“He did not,” said Bunch. “He has died of the stomach rot.”
“What?”
“Cholera, sir.”
Abel motioned for the man to ride forward. “Metzler, let him through. I want to talk to this man.”
Bunch rode slowly forward until he was close enough to speak with Abel in a normal tone. But the news was anything but normal. “The general took the fever about a week ago, just after his audience with the Lord Zentrum. It hit him pretty hard. These past two days, he was much better. It seemed like he had fought it off and was nearly over it. Then last night the shivers and sweats came back. Almost like something was fighting inside, trying to get out. I was called in after midnight. General von Hoff was gone.”
“And now you claim to speak for him?”
“No, I cannot do that. But I can represent my branch of this force. Colonel Vallancourt tried to take command, but he was cut down not a half watch ago—a bullet from behind.” The man shook his head. “We’ve lost our leadership. If we go on this way, there’s going to be senseless slaughter.”
“So you propose a truce until you can find someone to take the general’s place,” Abel said with a grim smile. “And then we’ll all go back at it?”
“No, General,” Bunch replied. “You misunderstand me. I’m offering the surrender of the Guardian Corps.”
“I see.”
“Surrender with terms. We hand in our arms. We keep our donts.”
We’ve won. Here. On this field.
Abel considered. “Not mounted units.”
“All right. I can agree to that.”
“Officers only.”
“Yes, sir. That will be acceptable.”
The man looked ex
hausted, barely hanging in his saddle. His dont was in the same condition, barely on her legs. Abel imagined a morning galloping hither and yon, trying to contain breakthroughs, trying to shore up the trenches even as they were being overrun from the flank.
“And what of the Blaskoye?” Abel said.
“We sent word of our decision,” Bunch said, setting his jaw. “They sent back our messenger’s headless body tied to his mount.”
“Ah.”
“The Blaskoye are having quite a problem themselves,” Bunch said. “They got hit from the northeast, and pretty hard.”
“The northeast? But there’s nothing up that way but—”
“Treville, sir. Very clever of you to bring in the Regulars after we thought they were sitting this one out.”
“I didn’t—”
But he let the thought hang.
Whoever it is attacking them, the Blaskoye have not surrendered and are still to be dealt with. We’ve still got hard fighting ahead of us, Abel thought, and night coming.
“Very well, Major Bunch. Get down from there and meet with my staff immediately. You need to tell them the best way to get your troops to stand down. And they’ll need to know details of your deployment to call off our attack as safely as we can, as well.”
The man lowered his head and let out an audible sigh. “General Dashian, I thank you,” he said. “We thank you.”
“Let’s get this done as quickly as we can, and you can thank me later,” Abel said. “I suppose it’s too much to ask for us to turn around your force and send it at the Blaskoye?”
“General, if they were able, they might be willing to do it. This is the damndest alliance I’ve ever seen or ever thought to see. We all ought to be fighting those Redlander devils. You know it and I know it. But we . . . we just don’t have the strength to do it at this time.”
Bunch seemed to be telling the truth. And if he were, then the Guardians were much further beaten than Abel had supposed.
“All right, let’s get this thing underway.” Abel turned to Metzler. “Find out how the trenches run to the east. If I know von Hoff, he’ll have built them along that line of east-west hills toward the Lindron border. He’ll have sent the Blaskoye out in front of them for shock attack. What else do you do with a horde of mounted wildmen? If we can get into those trenches in time, we’ll give them nowhere to fall back. Got that, Major?”
“Yes, sir,” Metzler said. “I’ll see to the details, sir.”
“Very good.” Abel reined his dont and took her a few paces away.
Von Hoff dead. Dead of cholera. As easily handled as his mother’s own gum infection would have been in another age.
Zentrum has done this to you, and countless others, old friend, he thought. And Zentrum himself has lost his best general.
“Sometimes the man does matter,” Abel said, to himself, to the rapidly building evening breeze that prickled the hairs on his arm and the back of his neck. Zentrum may be playing the long game, but today the statistics had shifted. Without Center, Abel couldn’t put it in numbers, couldn’t pull out probabilities, but he knew that Zentrum’s possibilities had narrowed. Victory was no longer a given, either in the short term or the long. “You lose a man like von Hoff, you might just lose a war.”
But whatever the implications for today and the future, the worries of generals, priests and artificial intelligences, there was one certainty: Abel would never be able to repair his relationship with his old mentor. The breach was permanent. This was more than temporary separation. He’d lost his friend forever—which was longer than the longest game Zentrum could ever play.
Even if I win, I will have lost, Abel thought. They never come back, and I will never forget what was yanked from the world too soon, for no reason other than a machine’s befuddled equations for an equilibrium that would never hold.
That’s what this fight was really about.
* * *
“Sir, we got most of them when they headed back toward the trenches. It was like target practice. But a large group, maybe half a thousand, broke through. They’re heading toward Lindron.”
“Them? Who do you mean?”
“Why, the Blaskoye, sir. We ran right up on their backs. And with the revolvers, we made quick work of them. They couldn’t even turn around, they were so hard engaged in the front.”
“Engaged? But General Athanaskew’s men were fighting the Goldies.”
“It isn’t General Athanaskew, sir. It’s Treville.”
“Are you absolutely sure?”
“Saw the banners myself, General. We were holed up in that old villa about a half league south of here, then we ran after them when they started to retreat.”
“What villa? Who does it belong to?”
“Not sure, General, but after the Blaskoye moved off, that young firebrand Lieutenant Simmons caught some men in there doing what they ought not be doing. He says he’s waiting for higher authority before he hangs them.”
“He said that, did he? Well, let’s go see.”
Abel rode forward into the dust.
5
Ingres District
Hoff Plantation
Late afternoon
The villa was mostly a ruin. There were a few outlying buildings that hadn’t been pulled down, but even these had gaping holes in the mudwork walls. There was smoke rising from the main dwelling, seemingly out of the hole in the roof. This was the only sign of life. Several donts were tied outside. Abel recognized their markings as Cascade military beasts. On the villa porch, two Cascade Regulars, men Abel didn’t recognize, were trussed hand and foot and tied by the neck to a post. Simmons, who had served under Metzler at Montag Island, stepped out of the shadows of the doorway as Abel dismounted.
He nodded toward the soldiers on the porch. “Those two happened by, saw what was going on inside, and decided to join in on the fun. I don’t think they instigated it, but they sure joined in.”
The young man was obviously so caught up in what he was doing he’d failed to realize everyone else around him did not know precisely what he was referring to.
“Let’s go inside,” said Abel.
They walked through the opening to the villa. If there had been a door once, it had been ripped from its moorings and either used elsewhere or burned for firewood. Now the entrance was a gaping maw. Inside was dim, lit by only a single oil lamp. The windows had been covered over with thin boards and papyrus scrolls, and only strips of light came in through the chinks. In the far corner, two women huddled, one older and one younger. The youngest looked to be in her teens. The oldest—
Abel gazed at her. Something familiar . . .
“She’s Trina von Hoff,” Simmons said. “She’s General von Hoff’s sister.”
On the other side of the room, under guard by two Regulars with muskets, four men sat in a clump. They were wearing little more than rags. Three were bowed down with dejected expressions. One looked up at Abel angrily.
“They deserved what they got,” the man spat out at Abel. His accent was pure Ingres countryside. “And I for one was happy to give it to ’em.”
“Both women were raped by these scum,” said Simmons. “The rest of the family is in a back room. They were tortured and beaten to death.”
It took Abel a moment to understand what had happened, but then it dawned on him. The clump of men were indentured servants. They had turned on their masters when no one was around to stop them, and they had believed the act could be hidden in the cloud of war.
“How did we find this?” Abel asked.
“Those two outside were part of a group of three. Stretcher party looking for wounded. They found this place, went in. Found the women. The third one wouldn’t join in with his buddies. He came back to get help to put a stop to it. Funny thing, but I think he’s of the lowliest Delta stock himself. You might think he would be on the side of the scum.”
“Have him commended,” said Abel. He turned and regarded the women. Trina von Hoff pursed her
lips and sat up stiffly. The lower portions of her robe were bloodstained in a wide swath.
“I want them killed, all of them.”
“What makes you think you have any authority to ask this of me?” Abel replied. “My responsibility is to do what’s best for my men.”
“My brother is your general. You’d better think twice before you defy his sister. And we are von Hoffs. That means something in these parts. It means everything.”
“Yes, Zachary once told me what it meant to him.”
“You will do as I command or I’ll send for him.”
“He’s no longer my general,” Abel said. “He’s no longer anyone’s general. And I might, by right, take his family to be my enemy. I will do as I see fit.”
Trina von Hoff pulled the younger woman’s head toward her breast. The other quietly sobbed. Abel realized she’d been sobbing from the moment he entered the room, filling it with an ambience of lamentation.
“They should die for what they’ve done to her,” the older woman said. “Those two outside went after her. These here were only interested in me, I’ll give that to them. Not those soldiers. I can stand anything. But not her. She’s my . . . she’s my baby.”
“Yes,” said Abel. “Listen, woman: find a place to hide and go there until the fighting is over. And get used to change. Get used to nobody caring you’re a von Hoff. Nothing is going to be the way it was before. This is only the beginning, and after this whatever happens will be up to you. Do you understand?”
The woman set her jaw and started to say something, but then she held in whatever it was and only nodded.
Abel turned to Simmons. “Have those two outside flogged,” he said. “Make it to within an inch of their lives, but give them their lives. Geld them. Have a man you trust handle it. Then hand them back over to their units.”
“I’ll see to it, sir,” answered Simmons.
“As for these creatures,” said Abel, nodding toward the ragged servants. “I noticed a deep well in front of the house. Take them there and throw them in.”
