The Keelanders suddenly reined in.
Finally, thought Brandor. Culich has realized how exposed he is and is about to pull back. If I’m going to act, it has to be now.
“Demian!” he shouted out to his younger son by his side. “Ride back to the last five hundred and tell their commanders to hold position to defend this flank. I leave you here in charge. I take the rest of our men to ride down Culich Keelan.”
“But, Father,” protested the seventeen-year-old, “our orders are to hold this position.”
“Do as you’re told,” Brandor snarled. “This is a chance to crush the Keelanders, and I mean to take it.”
With those orders, Brandor turned from his son to listening subordinates.
“Forward to destroy Keelan!”
Culich’s eyes focused on the Eywell leaders.
Would Eywell take the bait? Brandor would be stupid to do so. Then again, they were dealing with Brandor Eywell, so stupid wasn’t out of the question.
On cue, the Keelanders milled for perhaps a minute, before Culich pointed south and the Keelanders rode toward the alley at the end of which awaited Denes Vegga. The Eywellese must have seen both his banners and the upside-down Eywell flag, for suddenly the front of the Eywellese horsemen surged forward, a hetman’s banners in the lead.
Despite his low opinion of the Eywell hetman, Culich was still surprised.
Stupid wins again.
By the time the leading Eywellese trailed only fifty yards behind the last Keelan rider, both groups were racing toward Denes and the ambush.
“Run, you dogs!” yelled Brandor Eywell. He outnumbered them four or five to one. If he caught them against a barrier, even if only slowing them down, Culich Keelan would die.
The lead men in his pursuit were within twenty yards of the trailing Keelanders. Occasionally, one fell from a pistol fired by his lead men, shots from horseback finding a Keelan more by accident than skill. One of his men carrying a lance and on a fast horse caught a Keelan rider and pierced him in the back to fall from his horse and be trampled by pursuers.
Two hundred Keelanders raced through the open alley about a hundred yards wide between low hillocks with scattered trees. Ahead, Brandor saw an approaching line of brush and a hundred yards farther a twenty-foot escarpment the horses couldn’t climb. Would the brush slow the Keelanders? Maybe this was where they would pen them. Then . . . no . . . the front of the fleers dipped down and then back up in sight. A creek bed. Once they crossed the creek, the Keelanders would be pinned against the escarpment!
When Denes arrived at the creek, the first hundred of his men had already deployed. One man in four held the reins of four horses behind the screen of shrubs and small trees on top of the north section of the west embankment. The other men finished positioning for clear firing lanes and room to reload. South of the break in the brush, the swivel artillery and the rest of the musket men moved into place. Nine swivel barrels and three hundred muskets waited to see if the Eywellese obliged.
The three crossbow carriages were set up fifty yards behind the swivels, with orders from Yozef not to engage the Eywellese. He didn’t want to worry about quarrels landing short.
All of their positions were exposed, both the men with muskets and the swivel carriages. In the expected chaos, they hoped the mounted Eywellese couldn’t return effective fire. Nor could they directly assault the ambushers, since a six- to eight-foot vertical embankment fronted the men and the guns. The only way for the Eywellese to attack the ambush was from behind, after following Culich’s men down the far shallow embankment, across the creek, and back up a similar opening on their side. To prevent this, once the horsemen led by Culich passed between the two lines of ambushers, they would wheel to face any Eywellese riders reaching the Keelan side of the stream. When it was clear no significant number of Eywellese would survive to reach the ambush’s rear, the two hundred Keelan bait horsemen would join with Hetman Mittack’s four hundred riders and circle behind the remaining Eywellese horsemen protecting the Narthani flank.
Yozef crouched behind a rock next to the three makeshift artillery pieces. He rested one elbow on a rock and pretended to steady the telescope he held in both hands with a death grip. This was not what he had planned for his future on Anyar. What else could he do? He had made a place among these people, better than he could have hoped for. For this society, he was wealthy and provided with such luxuries as were available. He found the work in developing products and slowly introducing knowledge to the Caedelli more engrossing than he’d expected. The local hetman thought highly of him, and he had a wife who was bright and evidently dedicated to the marriage. He had one child already and another on the way. His memory flashed briefly to Maera, her belly just swelling, kissing him briefly and walking away, as he rode to join the Keelan contingent headed for Moreland.
So why was he here, waiting for a thousand screaming lunatics on horseback to gut him with sword or lance? The obvious answer was he had no choice, especially after he had suggested the very tactic they were attempting, after he had designed and overseen these abortions of artillery pieces, and after his wife expected that he would want to be part of this.
I wonder if it ever occurred to Maera I’d be scared shitless and wish I was back in our house, waiting for news of the battle.
He quit pretending to study the approach to their position, hunched down even lower behind the rock, took several deep breaths, and looked around. Denes alternately watched the alley and swung his gaze along their line, checking for any exposure that might warn the Eywellese.
Brave, honorable Denes.
Yozef remembered Denes’s family, a wife and three children. Would they have a husband and a father at sundown today? Carnigan. Hulking, sour-looking, gruff, and a heart bigger than the rest of him. Yozef wondered whether anyone but him realized this about Carnigan. And secrets. Why did Carnigan seem tied to the abbey? Some dark secret? Yozef had probed a few times with Carnigan and the abbot and gotten nowhere. Carnigan was the first person Yozef had connected with after he came to Anyar. Who’d held him that day in the garden, then taken him for food and cold beer. Would Carnigan be alive tomorrow? Would the men manning the cannon pieces? None were “friends,” except for Filtin, but several were his workers and had trained hard at handling the carriages. He knew all of their names, and if any of them died, he’d feel the loss. How many of them would survive the day and how many widows and orphans would there be by sundown?
Yozef returned to observing the alley, this time not pretending to look through the telescope, though he stayed crouched behind the rock. They heard the thunder of cannon and muskets and the cries of thousands of men and horses. What was happening back at the main battlefield? He hadn’t expected so much fire from a feigned charge.
Next to the farthest carriage from Yozef, a man crouched behind another of Yozef’s contraptions: a bladder two feet in diameter, fixed to a narrowing funnel with a fluted end, lay on the ground. At Denes’s signal, the man would lie hard on the bladder, forcing air into the end to emit a piercing shriek. They didn’t have signaling rockets yet, but even if they had, the bladder–horn was quicker and more reliable, albeit of shorter range. Everyone who needed to hear was within a hundred yards.
Yozef felt the earth shaking from thousands of hooves. The men crouching behind the brush also heard the thunder approaching, looked at one another, and gripped their muskets in silence. Even the hundreds of horses held only fifty yards behind the position were silent, as if they, too, anticipated.
Dust clouds rose from the north, and the first Keelan riders appeared in the alley, a few at first, then the cluster of banners within which Yozef hoped was Culich Keelan, then a solid mass of riders, stirrup to stirrup across the alley. They raced toward their waiting fellow clansmen and covered the two hundred yards from where they first appeared in seconds that seemed like minutes. Down the far slope they raced, splashing across the foot-deep water, hard up the near slope, through the opening in the bru
sh, and past their clansmen, the Eywellese hard on their heels. As Yozef watched, pursuers cut two of the slower Keelanders from their horses. Then, the last Keelan rider cleared the brush opening, and Denes tapped the bladder-horn man’s shoulder. The man jumped to his feet and let his full weight fall on the bladder.
A shriek pierced even the cacophony of horses and men, followed seconds later by the first swivel barrels, the muskets, then the second barrel on each swivel carriage, and finally the third barrel. Six seconds passed from the shriek to the third barrel firing. The first swivel barrels and muskets swept the creek and the opposite slope of riders and horses and turned them into a jumble of dead and dying. The closeness of the ambush meant many of the balls hit the most exposed targets many times, shredding those nearest and partly shielding those deeper into the Eywellese formation, who were only briefly spared.
As the horses in front of them went down, those following at full gallop had no time or room to react, and their horses collided with the fallen, adding to the tangled mass. As many Eywellese were crushed under the weight of horses or felled by thrashing legs as were struck by lead balls. The Eywellese not hit in the first salvo couldn’t see the extent of the devastation until too late. When still mounted Eywellese tried to rein in, the momentum of riders behind pressed them on. The second and third barrels of the three artillery pieces swept more riders and horses away. A hundred and fifty Eywellese fell from the Keelan fire in those first seconds. Another two hundred piled into the tangle of dead and wounded horses and men before the rest of the horsemen could stop.
Yozef heard nothing recognizable. The musket and cannon fire, overlaid on top of hundreds of men yelling and screaming and the wounded horses, saturated either his ears’ or his brain’s ability to process a wall of sound.
Twenty seconds after the first salvo, hundreds of Keelan muskets and three swivel carriages began independent fire, as the men reloaded as fast as possible. They had no cover themselves, especially once they rose from or stepped out from concealment, for which there was no need. Most of the Eywellese firearms were dropped in the chaos or fired from panicked horses. Meanwhile, Keelan men reloaded and fired directly into the Eywellese mass. Scores of unhorsed Eywellese ran toward the woods, often having lost their weapons, in no frame of mind to be a threat and who could be ridden down at leisure.
By the time the remaining Eywellese horsemen tried to retreat down the alley, Vortig Luwis closed the trap, as he led four hundred Keelan men back from their feigned retreat to block the alley’s entrance. The four hundred Eywellese riders still on their horses had no order or goal except escape. They scattered, every man for himself. For some unfathomable reason, a few turned back down the alley, only to face Denes’s muskets again. A few flung themselves at the blocking Keelan horsemen, perhaps in a fatalistic move to go down fighting. Of the thousand Eywellese who had left their positions to pursue Culich, less than two hundred escaped in all directions and ceased to be relevant.
As Culich and his men passed the ambush opening, they wheeled to support Denes and face any Eywellese who got through the ambush. It wasn’t necessary. Eleven Eywellese survived the hail of lead and the tangle of dead and dying, to find themselves surrounded by Keelan horsemen and foot soldiers. Brandor Eywell was one of the eleven but escaped only for seconds before a musket ball severed his aorta. Culich noted the body on the ground, as he forced his horse back through the milling mass to assess the ambush results. He thought himself prepared until he saw the creek clogged with bodies of men and horses, the downstream water flowing red, and the alley an abattoir.
Although the island had been relatively peaceful compared to the earlier generations, Culich had seen his portion of conflicts: criminals, bandits, family or clan vendettas, and a few more serious skirmishes, particularly with the Eywellese. He knew, intellectually, that the Narthani brought a new level of conflict to Caedellium, but this was the first time he saw the result for himself.
“Merciful Creator! My God! What have we come to?!”
The swivel cannon and crews stood silent after firing five times. Only sporadic Keelan muskets continued, as men thought they had a living target. Denes yelled, the muskets quieted, and Culich cringed, as men ran into the carnage to finish wounded Eywellese and horses.
What kind of world are we in? Is this the real world of Anyar, and we’ve been living a deluded fantasy?
Culich turned away to assess his clansmen. So few of his people had fallen, compared to what they did to the Eywellese.
I thank you, God, for that mercy.
Denes and Yozef likewise stood, eyes on the slaughter, although with different thoughts than Culich. They had seen it all happen—every second, every volley—the Eywellese horses and men swept down by the merciless Keelan fire.
For Denes, it was grim satisfaction that the ambush had worked so well.
Yozef hadn’t pissed himself, as he had during the abbey raid, although he again tasted bile. Wyfor had given him a musket, still unfired. Part of him wanted to keep himself separate from the fighting, as if keeping himself, or his soul, clean.
I did this. I know I didn’t kill anyone myself, and lord knows I didn’t want to be here, but I can’t avoid it was my suggestions that led to this.
He knew the fate planned by the Narthani and the Eywellese for his adopted people and Maera and knew they had no choice. Any help he gave was justified, but he also knew his hands were covered in blood that would never quite wash clean.
In spite of his nausea, Yozef was the first of the three men whose thoughts moved on.
Chapter 31: Turn the Tables
Yozef ran to Vegga. “Denes! We need to move.”
Denes didn’t acknowledge Yozef.
“Denes!” Yozef shouted again. No response. Yozef reached out, grasped Denes’s right arm, and swung him around. “Denes! Wake up! We need to move NOW, before the Narthani realize what happened! If we wait too long, all this’ll have been for nothing.”
Denes’s eyes cleared and he focused on Yozef. They stood staring at each other for several seconds, then as if a switch flipped, Denes whirled and ran fifty yards to where Culich sat frozen on his horse. Yozef couldn’t make out the words, but Culich shouted, horns sounded, and a score of men on foot or horse raced to their hetman.
Yozef roused the artillery crews to secure their pieces. The horse teams were brought forward with their limbers and the carriages attached. By the time Denes returned, their three artillery pieces, crews, cannon-experienced men, and the crossbow carriages were ready to move.
When Denes reached Culich, he brought the hetman back to the moment, similar to the way Yozef did him, except he grabbed the hetman’s horse’s bridle and swung the mount around to break Culich’s fixed gaze on the result of the ambush.
“Hetman! Hetman!” Denes yelled until Culich focused on him. “We must move quickly to take advantage of this!”
Culich shook himself, glanced once more at the abattoir of the creek bed and alley, and started yelling. Horns sounded for leader assembly, and within minutes, men raced off with their orders. Riders went to Luwis to initiate the smokescreens, as had been done for the frontal demonstration against the Narthani line, and then to use his own judgment to decide the right moment for his men and those of Hetman Gwillamer to attack the remaining Eywellese protecting the Narthani right flank. Hetman Mittack joined his men to the Keelanders Culich had led as bait and moved north to come in behind the Eywellese on the Narthani right flank. Culich’s part was over. The hetman would remain to the rear and maintain command-and-control, as Yozef called it. Yozef didn’t tell Culich there was little the hetman could do except say out of the way and be safe.
Denes’s dragoons remounted and moved up the northern side of the alley, which was more devoid of bodies. On the way, a few men finished sweeping the nightmare in the alley to dispatch wounded horses and men. There would be no prisoners. Any medical care would be reserved for their own wounded. If the allied clans took wounded prisoners, what w
ould they do with these enemies? They couldn’t be returned to fight again and kill Keelanders, and there was no will or resources to hold them prisoners. The men moved swiftly through the piles, pausing only to use knives and swords.
The casualness reminded Yozef that this was a different world. That however “civilized” Caedelli such as the Beynoms seemed, they were part of a harder worldview than he knew on Earth. He understood all of the reasons for what he could see being done and reminded himself not to judge too harshly. There were still places and situations on Earth where it would have been the same.
Yozef deliberately avoided looking at the Keelanders “cleaning up” and focused on getting himself and the artillery down the alley toward the Narthani line.
Patmir Tullok alternated scanning his front for threats to his command, watching his subordinate commanders to see if they were doing their jobs or looking to him with irritation because he missed something, and occasionally glancing to his right, where the Eywellese horsemen screened his block’s flank. He noted fewer of their clan allies than before. He had seen some of the Eywellese go charging at the clan riders who had retreated out of sight to the south.
Aivacs Zulfa sat satisfied. Not that the plan had gone according to their most optimistic forecast, but nothing obviously bad had happened, and they had clearly dealt a major blow to the Caedelli clans. For three-quarters of a mile wide and a half-mile deep, the alcove formed by their redeployment, he saw the ground littered with dead and wounded men and horses. His experienced eye estimated more than a thousand clansmen down. That part of the action had been successful enough. Now he waited to see what the islanders would do next. After this debacle, might they pull back and wait for his next move? Would they concede Moreland City and watch it burn? Would the battle dishearten enough of the clans that their tenuous coalition broke apart and let his people conquer them one at a time?
The Pen and the Sword (Destiny's Crucible Book 2) Page 38
