To: Nuthrat Metan
From: Aivacs Zulfa
Major Caedelli attack on our right flank of unknown severity.
Army is to prepare to reposition to defensive stance.
The rest of your artillery batteries to move west and southwest
to approx position block 5. Block 6 detached
from your command to Erkan Ketin. Stretch your 7, 8,
and 9 blocks to cover gaps.
Denes stopped his men facing the next Narthani block only eighty yards away. They fired as fast as they could reload, while the Narthani musket men finished their maneuver to face the islanders and answered in return. For three minutes it was a worst-case scenario—a duel with guns at eighty yards. Only the disorganization of both sides saved them from mutual suicide. More Narthani fell, then Denes saw another Narthani block coming at them from their oblique left. Denes redirected his leftmost men at the new threat, which lessened their suppression of the forward block.
Thus far, the Narthani pike men had only served as targets for the islander fire. That was about to change, as the two Narthani blocks moved into position facing Denes’s men. Yozef had warned them what might be coming. The Narthani musket men would fire a volley, followed by a charge by the pike men. Even with losses, the number of pike men was more than sufficient to overrun his men trying to reload their muskets or defend themselves using muskets against twelve-foot pikes.
Where are our artillery pieces?
Denes looked around just in time to see two of the three pieces pulled into firing positions, the ropes pulling them dropped, and the crews straining to turn the barrels toward the advancing Narthani. The third piece had overturned in the haste to move it forward, and its crew frantically tried to get it back upright.
Yozef trailed the advancing Keelanders and was behind the overturned carriage and limber. He saw that only six men had been pulling the piece, four on one side and two on the other. Where the missing two men were, Yozef didn’t know, but likely they had fallen somewhere farther back. In their haste to get the gun forward, the unbalanced effort upended the carriage. Yozef recognized that the gun chief, a carpenter who had sailed on merchant ships in his younger years, was among the missing. The serious, reliable man must also lay dead or wounded somewhere behind them. The six remaining crewmembers argued about whose fault it was the piece had upended, while musket balls hissed around them.
While Yozef watched, one crewmember spun clockwise as a round struck him in the back, and he fell to the ground without uttering a sound. The other five stopped their pointless argument and looked down at the one who had been standing with them seconds earlier.
They’re about to abandon the piece! Yozef thought. Denes needs this piece with the other two!
Without it, their firepower was reduced by a third, and who knew if it could be decisive?
Later Yozef couldn’t remember making a decision, only that he suddenly ran to the five men, yelling and directing them to get the piece upright. Carnigan had been a large presence shadowing Yozef and now pitched in, along with Wyfor and two medicants. The nine men got the piece upright, ropes untangled, and the seven of them got the piece moving again, with Carnigan providing the strength of two and the two medicants going back to their primary task.
As they pulled up beside the first two carriages, Yozef could see both pieces firing barrels alternately. As before, they reloaded only the two outer barrels. Several of the men were down, hit by musket fire. He saw one man fall, to be immediately pulled aside and another take his place. Their smaller-barreled pieces were having an effect, but with only six swivel barrels firing and crewmembers falling and being replaced, the loss of crew cohesion dramatically slowed the reload and accuracy rate.
Other men were trying, unsuccessfully, to get some of the Narthani pieces into action. A knot of Keelanders had turned a loaded Narthani 12-pounder at the next infantry block but had the elevation high, and the already loaded canister passed over the Narthani.
We have to get more guns firing faster! Yozef thought frantically.
Despite the dummy practice Yozef had put these men through, handling Narthani 12-pounders under fire was a different world.
He ran to where a crew tried to get another Narthani gun into action. They worked hard but were uncoordinated. With Yozef yelling and Carnigan forcing men into their proper positions, they got the gun turned and properly elevated. This crew wasn’t sure what to do next, because the Narthani shot components looked different from the ones they had practiced with. The powder bags were black cloth; their own practice ones were white. Their own canister rounds were simple thick cloth bags holding the rounds, while Yozef recognized the Narthani rounds as wooden cylinders. One was lying to its side, split open and the balls visible.
Yozef put a powder bag in the muzzle. A man with a rammer was by his side immediately and rammed it down the barrel. Yozef grabbed the nearest canister round and slid it into the muzzle, and the same man rammed it home. Normally, a wad of something—cloth, rope, or whatever was handy—would follow to hold the powder and the shot in place. Since the gun already pointed in the right direction and elevation, Yozef skipped the wad. Another man roused himself and found a powder horn draped over the shoulder of a dead Narthani and remembered what to do next. He tapped powder into the firing hole of the cannon, pulled out a smoldering piece of rope from a leather bag at his side, and touched the glowing end to the hole’s opening.
The cannon, to Yozef’s surprise, fired, didn’t explode in their faces, and had an immediate effect on the Narthani block. A whole section of line flattened, as if a giant fly swatter had swept through. The men in the crew whooped and scrambled to reload.
Yozef left them and went to the next crew. There were six men when he started toward them. A Narthani musket ball hit one crewmember before Yozef got to them. They had watched enough of Yozef helping the other crew that he only stood by for a few seconds, as they finished loading, stood back, and fired before he moved on. Another crew figured it all out themselves, and Yozef ran to the next cannon, this one with ten men getting in one another’s way. Two of the men went down simultaneously, and Yozef quickly got the others to remember their crew positions, and he helped load.
While they fired and started the reloading cycle, Yozef looked back down their line at how the other guns fared. As far as he could see, their three light pieces and four Narthani 12-pounders fired with only seconds passing between firings. Added to the fire were explosive quarrels from two of the crossbow carriages. A wheel on the third carriage broke while running over a wounded Narthani, and the metal rim twisted and broke the bow stock.
Suddenly, Yozef noticed that the buzzing of Narthani musket balls seemed to have slackened, and for the first time since the initial firing of a 12-pounder, he looked at the Narthani position. The original block was decimated. Fewer than a hundred of the original five hundred men still stood, without a cohesive formation—the chance survivors of dragoon muskets and the bites each round of canister had taken from among them.
The second block, the one that came to support the first, had been preparing a pike charge. That plan was no longer tenable with half of their men down, most of whom were the pike men in their front ranks who had taken the brunt of the Keelan musket and canister fire. The remaining pike men were in no position or had no inclination to charge and were falling back to allow their musket men a clearer field of fire—in theory. In less than a minute, the remaining men dropped their pikes and ran to the rear. The remnants of the first block tried to follow suit, but the merciless Keelan fire felled all but a score before the survivors reached the next Narthani line.
Yozef found himself twenty yards to the left of Denes, who surveyed the scene and was obviously trying to decide what to do next. They had captured half of the Narthani guns, destroyed two blocks of infantry, and savaged a third block. Now the Narthani were redeploying the center of their line, and about two hundred yards away they faced three unscathed blocks with cannon
setting up between blocks. Until now, they had had the advantage of both surprise and numbers. No longer. The new Narthani line facing them would outgun them with experienced artillery and match them in muskets. Denes could see this, but Yozef was afraid their unexpected level of success might tempt him to keep going. That they shouldn’t do.
Yozef ran to Denes. “Time to go, Denes!”
Denes just looked at him.
“Time to go,” Yozef repeated. “We accomplished all we can and need to pull back and regroup. We can’t attack a Narthani line that’s ready for us.”
Denes looked again at the Narthani line, then licked his lips and his eyes widened, as he looked at the next Narthani block.
Shit! He’s tempted to keep going!
“No, NO!” exclaimed Yozef. “We’re too close and in range of their canister. They’ll rake us with massed muskets and artillery as soon as they set up, which is going to be soon. We have to GO!”
This time, there was no hesitation from Denes. He grasped what Yozef was saying and ordered a withdrawal, taking their wounded and the guns with them. Their swivel carriages still had the ropes used to pull them this far, and men quickly had those three well on their way, this time avoiding the carnage of the first Narthani block they had annihilated by heading straight for their original position at the end of the clan alignment. The Narthani guns and limbers were something else. Yozef yelled to forget the limbers, just get the guns. They could always make more limbers, but the guns were priceless, because who knew when they could cast such pieces themselves, if at all. Lacking ropes, men pulled and pushed at the larger pieces, and some men turned the wheel spokes, a slow process.
Yozef filled his lungs to yell at one cluster of men to get ropes on a 12-pounder when a carriage crosspiece shattered, sending wood fragments in all directions. Knocked flat, Yozef stared at clouds. “Wha . . .” he croaked.
Wyfor’s face filled Yozef’s vision. “Nothing serious. It’s just bleeding a lot. Head wounds do that.”
“Head wound?” Yozef asked, before realizing something warm and wet covered the right side of his head. He sat up, dizzy, and put a hand to his ear. It came away covered in blood. “Oh, shit.”
“Not to worry,” a deep voice growled. Carnigan knelt next to him and wrapped a cloth around his head. “Probably will need stitches, but it’s not deep. A cannon ball got lucky and hit the crosspiece of the 12-pounder. Must have been from a Narthani cannon too far away to use canister or grapeshot.”
Yozef’s two wardens helped him to his feet. His first instinct was to sit back down, as vertigo washed over him, then abated.
“Let’s get him out of here,” said Wyfor. The two men supported and half-dragged him, as they joined the retreating Keelanders who were still the target of Narthani cannon fire.
A shallow depression gave temporary cover, but by the time they were again visible, the Narthani field pieces had switched to grapeshot. The deeper drone of two-inch iron balls passing overhead spurred them on. At another hundred yards, one piece was hit by a ball, shattering the carriage and killing one man. Another ball missed the gun but tore through three men on one side of the carriage. Other men immediately replaced the dead, and the gun hardly slowed.
By now, Luwis had had horses brought up. Every rider carried a length of rope, and all artillery pieces were pulled by several horses. In many cases, no attempt was made to roll the carriage. Ropes were tied to barrels, and the cannon dragged along the ground.
At 900 yards, the Narthani switched to solid shot. One last carriage was destroyed and five more men wounded before all firing ceased at 1,200 yards. When they reached their original encampment, Denes and the medicants made a fast count of his men. Of the original 480, 406 men had survived, including 92 wounded. They had 74 known dead lying somewhere on the battlefield. Of the 80 men in the artillery group, they had 17 dead and 12 wounded. The mounted clansmen would take another two hours to be accounted for, but the clans’ total losses were mild compared to their enemy’s.
Besides the decimated Eywellese, an estimated 1,000 Narthani infantry and artillerymen were killed or critically wounded. The clansmen had captured seventeen 12-pounder field cannon and picked up hundreds of muskets, pistols, and swords from dead Narthani and Eywellese. By any rational measure, it had been a smashing victory, though of little consolation to families of the dead.
Zulfa left the command platform for his horse, to allow more mobility. Firing had died to an occasional musket shot, likely from someone either firing out of range, due to frustration, or accidental discharge. With the cessation of firing, the powder smoke cleared, and only a smattering of smoldering grass generated scattered risings of smoke. These, along with a slight increase in wind, cleared the battlefield to give Zulfa visibility to survey the carnage on two fronts. The remnants of the Moreland charge still lay to the east, where they had fallen two hours earlier. Cries of wounded horses and men could still be heard. The scene would have been satisfying to Aivacs Zulfa, if it were not for the equally grim visage to the south where the Narthani right had been.
Gone were the screening Eywellese cavalry, the anchoring infantry block, the western artillery redoubt, and one other block. Another block had been so depleted the men were distributed to other units. His forward-facing deployment toward the Caedelli horse army had contracted to a rough square with infantry blocks and the remaining artillery on two sides, the east ridgeline shielding a third side, and all of the remaining cavalry guarding the fourth and western side. The area where his right wing had been was now dotted with the bodies of his infantry and artillerymen. Aides estimated he had lost a thousand dead, plus two hundred wounded. The disparity between dead and wounded was testament to how quickly the islanders overran his men and finished the wounded before they withdrew.
A Caedelli rider carrying a white flag rode halfway between their positions, likely to request a ceasefire long enough to recover the wounded. Zulfa didn’t respond. He might have his own wounded who could be saved, but from the appearance of the battlefield, there were more Caedellium wounded that Narthani, so he saw no reason to agree to a ceasefire benefiting the enemy more than his army. If several hundred islanders died of wounds, it was a justified tradeoff for a few score Narthani.
The last action had ceased more than an hour ago. He had waited to see whether the islanders had any further action in mind this day. The evidence and his intuition said no. The fighting evidently being over for today, he could no longer put off the bad taste in his mouth. The clever plan to deal a crushing blow to the Caedellium clans and hasten the island’s subjugation lay in tatters.
Their success in trapping the central clan charge in no manner compensated for the collapse of their right wing. He had lost almost a fifth of his Narthani infantry, most of the Eywell auxiliary light cavalry, and as much as half of his artillery. With seven intact infantry blocks, the Narthani heavy cavalry, thirty cannon, and the Selfcellese horsemen, he was confident they could repel any Caedellium direct attack in the open field, but not as supremely confident as previously. Something new had been added that their assessment of the clans hadn’t accounted for. The islander horse charge had cost the clans dearly but had focused the Narthani attention to their front so much, they hadn’t recognized the danger to their flank until too late. It wasn’t that Zulfa was appalled by the willingness to sacrifice so many men as a diversion; he would have done the same under the circumstances. It was the unanticipated willingness of the Caedelli to make that sacrifice, in addition to the coordination needed for their flank attack.
Zulfa listened to updates from his staff and weighed their next move. He saw little choice.
“We’ll withdraw back to Preddi Province,” he announced. A few of his staff appeared shocked to hear they would retreat from the islanders, though most understood the necessity. A hundred and fifty miles separated them from the Preddi border. They had suffered serious losses, including half of their cavalry screen, and would be outnumbered by a more mobile enemy
showing unexpected tactical sense. Galling though it might feel, they needed to retreat to a more defendable position.
“Erdelin, how many of the Eywellese are still with us?”
The grim-faced commander of the broken right wing answered. “Somewhere between a hundred and a hundred and fifty. There may be another couple of hundred scattered to the rear, and many may be running for home.”
Some Narthani commanders would have replaced Erdelin by now or even had him arrested for criminal incompetence to deflect blame from themselves. However, Zulfa knew that Akuyun demanded honest reports, and Zulfa’s evaluation of Erdelin’s performance would be positive, much to even Zulfa’s surprise. He had had low expectations of Erdelin, but it had been Zulfa’s plan, albeit approved by General Akuyun, that failed so badly. Erdelin, given the plan and their understanding of the Caedelli, had done about as well as anyone else could have in his place. Although more initiative in responding to the threat to his right might have saved the day, initiative wasn’t encouraged by the Narthani military culture.
“Colonel Erdelin, you’re most familiar with Eywell and still have some of them with us. They’ll know more of the terrain on the way back to Eywell territory. Therefore, you’re in charge of the lead van. The remaining Eywellese horses will scout and screen to our direction of movement west. We’ll keep to open territory to maximize our fire discipline, and it will be a forced march. If the Caedelli are smart, they’ll harass us all the way back, so we need to move quickly. I’ll leave you one infantry block and half the artillery. Be sure to keep the artillery moving. We also need to send riders back to both Eywell and General Akuyun. The Eywellese are to gather the rest of their horsemen and provide an obstacle for clan cavalry trying to get in front of us. I don’t expect the Eywellese to fight if greatly outnumbered, but they are to get at least five hundred horsemen to us, if at all possible. No dithering is to be tolerated.”
The Pen and the Sword (Destiny's Crucible Book 2) Page 40
