by Roland Green
"Where are my reinforcements?" General Alkides asked, his face and breeches black with soot. "What did Chartiphon say?"
"The Great King ordered him to hold back a reserve in case the Knights defeat or outflank Ptosphes," Verkan said. "Which is exactly what Chartiphon intends to do, Great Battery or no Great Battery."
Alkides-already at wits' end over the loss of his precious guns at the redoubt-appeared to be nearly beside himself at the thought that the Styphoni might soon be using his precious guns, Verkan noted. To make matters worse, the Hostigi and the Holy Host were so thoroughly entangled that the gunners of the Great Battery had been holding their fire for most of the battle.
Verkan understood why Chartiphon was holding back the last reserve, the Ktethroni pikemen. It was clearly the safest course of action. Verkan also knew that the safest course of action in a battle was not always the best strategy.
Harmakros' Mobile Force dragoons had brought the advance of the Royal Square to a halt, but now it was advancing again. It struck Verkan that the Ktemnoi infantry were living up to their reputation. For that matter, so were the Hostigi regulars, and in any case the time for the dispassionate evaluations of comparative military prowess was about over. The Mounted Rifles were the last line of defense for the Great Battery; they were either going to stop the Holy Host or die trying.
Verkan saw Harmakros lead another company of dragoon musketeers to a small barricade that had now become the next-to-last line of defense.
"Colonel," one of his subordinate captains, with only one eye, said, "We should be going down to join those dragoons."
"We haven't any orders, Captain Itharos."
"Sir, we haven't any orders not to, either."
Verkan frowned. The captain had been at Tenabra, where he'd lost his eye, and obviously wanted to avenge forty or so lost comrades badly enough to argue with his Colonel. By regular Aryan-Transpacific standards he wasn't committing a serious offense, particularly against an outlander, but for the Mounted Rifles, right here and now standards Another gun blast saved Verkan the trouble of replying. He looked down the slope. The Royal Square was still advancing, slowing in the face of fire from the barricade. Both the front ranks of billmen and the rear ranks of shot looked much neater from a distance than they doubtless did close up. The ground between the Ktemnoi and Harmakros' position was littered with discarded weapons, dead horses, and dead and not-so-dead men of both sides…
Verkan knew from First Level studies and his own battlefield experiences that many of the wounded had minor or survivable wounds, but by evening most would be dead of shock or just plain self-hypnosis-it was easier to die than to face the reality of losing, or even worse facing another battle!
On the other hand, some soldiers just didn't know when it was time to die, like the four battered and battle-stained Hostigi soldiers running just ahead of the enemy up the rocky slope toward their position. The big man in front was a giant in armor that looked as if it had been chewed on by wolves with metal teeth! He was holding upright, in one hand, a two-handed curvy bladed sword taller than Verkan. Right behind were two men with bloodstained halberds and a badly wounded banner-bearer, only just on his feet.
"Acting Petty-Captain Xykos reporting, Colonel," the giant said between breaths.
"Who ordered you here, Petty-Captain?"
"No one, sir. We're all that's left of the Hostigos regiment, the Veterans of the Long March-or all we know about. We fought our way out of a mess of the enemy, sir. I thought the Great Battery was where we might be needed."
Verkan shook his head in amazement. Most NCOs would have taken hours to answer that question, with blow-by-blow accounts of every skirmish. Here was a man with leadership potential; he'd have to talk to Kalvan about Xykos-that is, assuming all of them survived this killing field.
"Captain Xykos."
"Captain, Sir?"
"Yes, consider it a battlefield promotion. Why don't you and your men stay with me? I think we'll have all the fighting we want in less than a quarter of a candle." Or sooner, he thought. Most of the retreating Hostigi had dispersed to either side of the Great Battery. Verkan hoped Harmakros could rally and re-form them, but that couldn't happen soon enough to make up for the lack of the Ktethroni reinforcements. Verkan needed all the help he could get, and Xykos looked to be worth a whole platoon by himself.
"Yes, sir!" Xykos answered with a savage grin.
As if that was a stage cue, Captain Itharos came running up, followed by a messenger.
"What is it?"
"The Holy Warriors of Styphon are coming against the Great Battery," the messenger blurted.
The Captain's jaw dropped. "Great Galzar, have mercy!"
Verkan didn't bother replying. That meant that either Ptosphes and the Hostigi left wing were in retreat, or that Soton was so confident of victory that he'd committed what had to be nearly his last reserves to help the Sacred Squares take the Great Battery. Nether was particularly good news, although he preferred the latter to the former. If Ptosphes had to carry the weight of another defeat, he wouldn't be worth a thing either to himself, his daughter or Kalvan-who already thought of him as a surrogate father.
Verkan knew that with Harmakros' help they might be able to stop the Holy Warriors, who were more a rag-tag group of lower nobility and younger sons then a proper fighting force. Still, whatever the Holy Warriors lacked in tactics they more than made up for him fervor. Without Chartiphon's reserves or the Ktethroni pikemen, it was going to get interesting.
"It looks as if it's mostly up to us now. Let's see how those anvil heads deal with hot lead!"
Xykos smiled as if he'd just been given a free jug of his favorite winter wine.
Verkan moved through the ranks of the Mounted Rifles patting shoulders and giving encouraging little remarks while he mentally noted the number of walking wounded and near battle-fatigue cases. The Great Battery was firing more continuously, now that most of the Hostigi center was behind it or around the rise. The crowd of soot-blackened figures dancing in and out of smoke around the guns gave the impression of a horde of demons toiling at some sinister task-which wasn't far from the truth!
Verkan was glad he wasn't carrying any First Level gear in this battle; the odds were too good that the dead-man timer would detonate the security charge on his body among live comrades. He was willing to kill deliberately to protect the Paratime Secret; he'd be Dralm-damned if he would do it by simple chance if he could avoid it.
Verkan took his own position along with his bodyguard behind a boulder, shouted "Down Styphon!" and looked down the hill. The Holy Warriors of Styphon were mounted volunteers who'd come from all over the Great Kingdoms to fight for their god, Styphon. Not too well mounted, he noted, or else they'd been at the back of the line when supplies were distributed. Not too well armed either and fewer than he had expected were armored. If there were many nobles, they were mostly country squires and younger sons with cast-off armor and weapons. Still, some three thousand-according to First Level surveillance-or more fanatic cavalry against five to six hundred of Harmarkos' dragoons, a hundred and thirty or so rifled muskets, and the battlefield remnants-call it a thousand and some men-of the retreating center still wasn't Verkan's idea of safe odds.
Then the mass of Holy Warriors was coming up the slope at a trot, and Verkan stopped worrying about anything but finding a target. Harmakros' musketeers fired a solid volley; the front rank of the Warriors swayed and shivered.
"Fire at will," he ordered. He didn't bother to tell them to choose their targets with care-these were veteran Styphoni killers.
Verkan sighted on a thin man with gilded armor, wearing a back-and-breast with Styphon's stylized red swastika painted on it. He braced his elbow on the boulder, squeezing the trigger. The men-at-arms fell forward on his horse's neck, his horse reared and lost its footing, and two more lost theirs trying to avoid the fallen ones.
Petty-Captain Dalon-one of his Paratime operatives-picked off one of the fallen riders a
s he struggled to his feet. Dalon Sath had taken Ranthar Jard's place with the Mounted Rifles, now that Ranthar was busy 'babysitting' the Kalvan Study Team. "Having fun yet, Chief?" he asked in First Level sign language.
Verkan laughed despite himself. "It won't be so funny, Dalon, when I leave and put you or Ranthar in charge of this outfit."
Dalon gave him a jaunty smile. "Some good boys here. I won't mind. Besides, I've already done my duty watching over those clucks at the University hen house! Ranthar can have that job."
Verkan was too busy yanking out his ramrod, the next bullet from its leather pouch and fumbling for his powder horn to reply. He cursed the spectacle he must be making of himself-the outlander friend of King Kalvan who wasn't as well trained as his men! Even Petty-Captain Dalon had finished his re-load and was already beading in on a Styphoni horseman.
Suddenly his rifle was loaded and swinging down to firing position; he had a beautiful target in a rider turning broadside to avoid a patch of tough ground. This time he hit the horse, and someone firing wildly hit the top of his rock close enough to spray rock dust into his eyes. He found the old familiar motions coming back so perfectly that he didn't even wait to blink his eyes clear before he started reloading.
On his next reload he heard volley firing close at hand and looked around to find that his bodyguards had scrounged enough abandoned arquebuses, calivers and muskets to give each one of them several weapons apiece. He gave them a thumbs-up signal-an almost universal hand signal on every time-line-and felt pleased when they responded with wolfish grins. It was almost a shame he couldn't take them along with him the next time he had to appear before the Executive Council on Home Time Line!
When he looked down again, the Holy Warriors were at Harmakros' makeshift barricade, in the process of being repulsed by his musketeers and pikemen. Wielded by veterans who knew their strengths and weaknesses, the eighteen-foot pikes were deadly against the poorly equipped Holy Warriors, spearing some right off their horses. He saw one man take a pikehead though the mouth that came out in the other side of his head in an explosion of blood, teeth and gore. Others were speared out of their saddles and sent tumbling down to join the rocks under the horses' hooves.
At last the Holy Warriors retreated back down the slope out of range and dismounted. Someone with a lot of plumes and gilded armor was yelling and waving his arms at them, probably telling them to dismount. Most were beginning to follow his orders, when at almost point-blank range, a round shot took out a dozen or more men just to his right. To give him credit, the near hit didn't appear to faze the commander and he continued with his rant. Another half dozen cannons fired almost in a volley and shifted the entire front line of the Holy Warriors, scything down horses and men with equal impartiality.
The commander got back on his horse and the dismounted Holy Warriors advanced on foot over their own casualties and up the slope at a dead run. Harmakros' musketeers shot them down by the dozens, but that wasn't enough; hundreds of them reached the barricade and suddenly it was every man for himself. Verkan's riflemen continued to help thin their ranks, but more kept coming from behind. To make a difference here, Verkan's riflemen would have needed breech-loaders or Gatling guns!
The Mobile Force pikemen at the barricade dropped their pikes in favor of swords, mallets and pistols, while the musketeers swung their muskets like clubs. Over a third of his dragoons and reinforcements were dead or wounded before Harmakros began a slow retreat to the top of the ridge. Of the three thousand Holy Warriors, at least half their number littered the ground or had run away. Still, a formidable number kept charging.
Verkan fired five shots and hit four men before the first wave of dismounted Holy Warriors reached his boulder. He fired a sixth shot with his hide-away pistol, then used his rifle like a club, letting his unarmed-combat training take over his muscles and reflexes. He might look a little strange if anyone was watching carefully, but he'd not lay any bets on that and he did intend to stay alive.
The rifle wasn't quite balanced like the quarterstaff Verkan knew well, but the butt end's extra weight made up for it. Designed especially for Verkan, his rifle-while looking like a perfectly ordinary flintlock-was almost indestructible. With ridiculous ease he brained the first man who ran at him, poked a second in the groin, smashed a short sword or long knife out of the hand of the third and knocked down a fourth with a butt-blow to his armored chest and finished him with another to the forehead under the rim of his morion helmet.
He turned to see Xykos decapitate a heavily bearded Holy Warrior with his two-handed sword. The Veterans' banner-bearer had lost one arm to an evil-looking polearm and was in the process of losing the other, when Verkan shot his attacker dead with his belt pistol.
Someone was shouting in his ear and tugging at his arm. It was Dalon Saln, pulling him back from the edge of the slope. Xykos and one of the halberdiers were coming with him, but the third Veteran was dead and the banner-bearer was dying, one arm gone, the other crippled, but his teeth locked on the banner pole.
They cleared the Great Battery's field of fire just in time, as case shot from something heavier than a sixteen-pounder sprayed the slope. Two score of dismounted Holy Warriors and a few mounted ones behind them went down, and twice as many turned and ran; apparently even religious zeal had its limits.
Verkan and his bodyguards ran back another fifty yards, then stopped to make sure the rest of the Mounted Rifles were clear. They were. The number of Holy Warriors, both mounted and on foot, climbing the slope discouraged him from lingering to count the Rifles' casualties, particularly since the Holy Warriors were now being pushed ahead of the first ranks of the Royal Square. A company of billmen rose out of a draw, and a round shot smashed the first six of them into a bloody, screaming tangle.
Verkan began to reload his rifle on the move, and discovered the lock was hopelessly jammed with blood and gore. He made a mental note to suggest caltrops to Kalvan if he could find a non-contaminating way of doing so. Strewn over the slopes of the ridge, those multipointed hoof destroyers would have made Kalvan's Great Battery a lot more cavalry-proof.
The ground between Verkan and the Great Battery offered little cover or concealment, and he had the nasty feeling that the career of the Mounted Rifles was about to end here. A four-pounder had already been overrun, and an old-style eight-pounder was being defended by its crew against mounted Holy Warriors. What was left of Harmakros' three regiments of dragoons was manhandling two eight-pounders and the sixteen-pounder called Galzar's Teeth into a position where they could hit the Styphoni at point-blank range.
Alkides himself was standing on the breech of Galzar's Teeth in a fraction of his shirt and a smaller fraction of his trousers, defaming the ancestry and habits of his gunners for not moving faster. Behind the big gun rode Harmakros, and behind him was a line of men carrying objects the size and shape of round shot, but not quite…
Verkan suddenly realized he was about to see the first test of explosive shells in Kalvan's Time-Line. While he appreciated the honor, he hoped the fusing was reasonably accurate or the shells might burst right over the Mounted Rifles.
"Down!" he shouted, gesturing frantically. The Riflemen obeyed, searching for any fold in the ground large enough to give at least the illusion of safety. The two eight-pounders bellowed together, hammering the advancing Holy Warriors with grape shot. The line stopped and a good number of them dropped to the ground as well. The Riflemen opened fire, to encourage this notion.
With his rifle useless and the action just out of pistol range, Verkan was free to watch the entire process of loading the first shell, including the lighting of the fuse, the various rites of propitiation and Alkides firing Galzar's Teeth. Verkan kept his head up, following the shell all the way to where it struck the ground, bounced twice, rolled under the legs of a Holy Warrior's horse-and exploded!
It took only four shells to convince the Holy Warriors that they were facing something unusual. From "unusual" to "Demonic" was a short men
tal step for most of them. Contemplating the undignified speed of the Holy Warrior's retreat, Verkan had to admit that superstition could have its uses.
Verkan would have felt better if Galzar's Teeth hadn't fired a fifth shell, which burst over the Mounted Riflemen. When the smoke cleared away, he saw that the one-eyed captain would never argue with him again, and the captain wasn't the only casualty.
Then the massed billmen of the Royal Square topped the rise, still in their columns of march and with a self-confident swagger that said bluntly, "Clear the way, you amateurs. The professional soldiers have arrived."
"Move out!" Verkan ordered. There weren't enough guns the size of Galzar's Teeth to take a bite out of these men. He turned to Xykos and added, "When we reach Captain-General Alkides, you make sure he goes with us. I don't give a damn what he says, general or no general!"
The grin splitting Xykos' face told Verkan that Alkides would have an easier time avoiding the marksmen of the Royal Square than he would escaping his giant bodyguard.
IV
Sirna stepped out the door of the foundry warehouse, mopped the sweat off her forehead, and looked up at the roof where Captain Ranthar was still wearing a groove in the wood as he paced back and forth, looking off to the southwest. Sirna had been up there herself earlier in the day, but the steady drumming of gunfire and the vast cloud of gray smoke off toward Phyrax didn't tell her anything.
She doubted they told Ranthar very much either, and suspected that he was up on the roof because it was a way of not having to talk with the rest of the University Team. She was sure he'd sensed the hostility of some of them, and she also suspected that he felt guilty at not being in battle with his comrades-and whom did he see as his comrades, his Chief Verkan Vall or the Mounted Rifles?
Even their military advisor Professor Aranth Saln had admitted that it was hard to tell much from a lot of smoke and intermittent rumbling noises, without being able to see any troop movements. "At least there haven't been any wounded or fugitives coming back," he'd added. "That means something. Either Kalvan's army has gone into the bag without any survivors"-at which point Sirna felt the blood leave her head-"or else the Hostigi are still holding on and in good order. I'd say it's more likely the second. From what we know about Kalvan and his army, it would take more than the Holy Host to mop them up that fast."
