WINTER
The march was a mild one, as marches went. The day was warm, but there was a breeze to cut the heat, and the fertile green countryside they passed through was a pleasant change from the endless rocks and sand of Khandar. Jane’s girls carried no packs—there weren’t enough tents and bedrolls for all the new men, and the wagons carried their food and extra ammunition. It would make for miserable camping, but for the moment it meant not having to lug anything heavier than their muskets.
Jane walked at the head of the column, and Winter near the back, encouraging any of the girls who flagged and making sure none of the men around them did more than stare. There had been plenty of that during their training at Ohnlei, and a fair bit of name-calling and whistles as well, but Winter had been impressed at the girls’ stoicism. Here on the road, things had gone surprisingly well. By accident or design—with Janus in charge, Winter suspected the latter—the groups directly ahead and behind were mostly made up of dockmen, who had a healthy respect for Mad Jane and the Leatherbacks.
Another worry had been resolved the day before, when Abby had turned up at the training ground. She’d been reluctant to talk about her errand, other than to say that her father was all right.
“He’s a rotten old coward,” she said, and refused to say any more on the matter. Now she was walking up and down the column, exchanging a few words with the girls, smiling and keeping up a brave front. It was needed, Winter thought. The faces she saw around her were the faces of young women wondering what the hell they had gotten themselves into. They whispered together, walking side by side for a few steps and then throwing an anxious glance up at Jane or back at Winter. No one dropped out of line, though.
Abby fell back until she was next to Winter, looking worried.
“Word from the head of the column,” she said. Rumors traveled down the length of the marching army like sparks along a powder trail. “We’re turning off the road. Give-Em-Hell is taking the rest of the horsemen out front.” The recruits, imitating their veteran comrades, had adopted the nickname for the cavalry commander.
“Then Orlanko’s just ahead,” Winter said. She glanced overhead, where the sun hung near its zenith. “We’ll fight today. Maybe tomorrow, but probably today. Orlanko can’t afford to wait around, and our supply situation can’t be good.”
“Right. Today.” Abby swallowed hard. Her hand was tight around the butt of her musket, the barrel resting on her shoulder. “You think we can win?”
“It’s not our job to think about that,” Winter said. “We signed up for this army, and that means we agreed to fight where and when Colonel Vhalnich and the other officers think we ought to. Whether we should fight is their decision, and we have to trust them. Letting every ranker think about that for himself is the first step toward a rout.”
“Right,” Abby repeated. “Right.” She looked at the backs of the marching girls. “Do you think they’ll do all right?”
Winter nodded. “I think so. As well as any of the rest.”
“Right.” Abby took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “All right.”
Winter wondered if her nerves had shown so clearly the first time she’d gone into a real fight. Probably they did, and I was too scared to notice.
Up ahead, the road turned to the left, but a blue-coated lieutenant was directing the column off to the right. They broke through a thin belt of trees and tramped across a field of cabbages, cutting a muddy brown trail through the rows of ripening green vegetables. A low wall of unmortared stone had blocked the way here, but the leading battalion had dismantled it and left an opening wide enough for the wagons and guns to pass. Beyond, a low hill sloped up toward a grassy crest, where a few milk cows grazed peacefully and watched the marching intruders with incurious eyes.
On the near slope of the hill, the army of Janus bet Vhalnich was forming up. The First and Second Battalions of the Colonials were already there, assembling around their twin flags into a battle column. Sergeants screamed orders at the recruits as they came up, directing the pike-armed men into a great mass milling behind the two Colonial formations, while those with muskets were sent farther up, just below the crest of the hill. The wagons remained down at the base, while the guns were wheeled farther on, over the top of the hill and out of sight.
Winter saw Jane paused up ahead, talking to Marcus. She hurried forward, Abby at her side.
“Ihernglass,” Marcus said. “I wanted to . . .” He looked at the young, female faces, gathered in a semicircle and staring at him, and rubbed at his beard distractedly. “Come here, would you?”
Winter stepped forward, and Marcus turned his back on the rest and spoke to her quietly.
“Look. The colonel has put you right in the center of the line. It’s the safest place, in some ways, but the fire is going to be hot. I don’t want . . . if you want me to reassign your company to the reserve, I will. They’ve made their point. Nobody would think less of them.”
“They’re not here to make a point, sir.”
“You can’t be any happier with a bunch of girls getting shot than I am,” Marcus hissed. “We ought to do the honorable thing.”
Winter couldn’t help smiling. What was it Janus had once told her? Captain d’Ivoire missed his calling as a knight-errant. “They wouldn’t agree with you, sir. As I think you know, or else you’d be willing to say it to their faces.”
“All right.” Marcus looked over his shoulder and shook his head. “All right. You remember the plan.”
“Yessir.”
He pointed up the hill, to a spot directly in front of the two formed battalions. “Up there. Take about a hundred yards of line and wait for the signal.”
Winter saluted. “Yes, sir!”
After Marcus had walked off, shaking his head, Jane tapped Winter on the shoulder.
“What did he want?”
“To offer us a last chance to back out,” Winter said.
Jane laughed. “You think he would have learned better than that at the Vendre.”
—
The guns began to roar as the army finished its deployment.
It was a simple enough formation. Up ahead of where she was standing, on the descending slope of the hill, the artillery had set up in a long line. The Preacher’s field guns were directly ahead of them, while the flanks were occupied by a motley collection of smaller cannon gathered from the city. Somewhere down below were the siege guns pulled from the river defenses, but manhandling those into position might take all day.
Behind the guns, and just far enough on the near side of the slope that they were not yet exposed to the enemy, the musket-armed volunteers had formed a long, loose line. It wasn’t the shoulder-to-shoulder line of battle Winter had marched in against the Auxiliaries in Khandar, but a thinner formation with plenty of space between each man and his neighbor. Winter herself stood in the center of the stretch of line occupied by Jane’s girls, with Jane a dozen yards in one direction and Abby about the same distance in the other.
Below this cordon, the regular infantry of the Colonials waited in double-company columns, four battalions strong. There was a considerable empty space between them, enough room for each column to fold out into a line if it needed to, or alternatively to provide a killing ground swept by musket fire if they had to form square and hold off enemy cavalry.
Finally, another hundred yards back, there was the mass of pike- and spear-armed volunteers. Their officers, borrowed from the Colonials, had herded them like sheepdogs into a squat block, dozens of men deep, with polearms waving slowly overhead like the legs of an overturned centipede. What they were supposed to accomplish like that wasn’t clear to Winter, since without training in disciplined marching, any formation would dissolve as soon as they tried to move. But, as she’d told Abby, it wasn’t her job to worry about that sort of thing.
The first cannonball passed over the crest of
the hill with a weird whining, woofing sound, overshooting the entire formation and burying itself wetly in the cabbage field below. Every head in the army turned to follow its flight, and every soldier flinched in unison a moment later as the boom of the gun’s report drifted over the field. It was followed by another, and another, the single blasts gradually merging into a solid wall of sound, a roll of thunder that went on and on without end. The duke’s cannoneers could see nothing except the Colonial artillery, over the crest of the hill, so the shots were aimed at these guns and mostly invisible from Winter’s position. The occasional ball ricocheted up and over the hilltop, or overshot like the first and screamed over their heads.
So far, so good. The girls hadn’t broken for the rear at the first sound of firing, not that Winter had expected them to. A cheer rang from the volunteers as the friendly artillery took up the challenge. Their close and louder reports were accompanied by the gradual appearance of a column of smoke from each gun as though two dozen small bonfires had been kindled along the ridge. Instead of rising into the sky like woodsmoke, though, the powder smoke hung in wreaths over the field, twisted and shredded into strange shapes by the breeze. Winter caught the burning tang of it in her nostrils.
Time passed, ludicrously slowly. Nervous tension tied Winter’s shoulder muscles into knots. It was a sensation she’d grown all too familiar with—the battle had begun, men were already fighting and dying, but there was nothing she could do but wait. It could drive you mad. Orlanko’s guns roared in their distant, hidden positions, the Colonial artillery responded with sharp barks, and balls smashed through the air or raised fountains of dirt where they struck the ground. Once or twice she heard screams, as a well-aimed shot plowed through an unlucky gun crew. Before long the first wounded men—the fortunate ones, those who could still walk—were hobbling or dragging themselves back from the firing line.
It wouldn’t be long now, if Winter understood Janus’ plan correctly. She beckoned to Abby and Jane, and they hurried over. Tension showed on both faces, but to Winter’s surprise Jane’s was especially pale. She flinched visibly at the blast of each nearby cannon.
“Remind everyone of what we’re doing here,” Winter said. “We’re not going to let the regulars get too close. Keep shooting, and keep falling back if they move up. And make sure they’re all waiting for the two signals.”
The two of them nodded, wordlessly, and started down the line in opposite directions, exchanging a few words with each of the girls. Farther on the flanks, Winter could see the other volunteer companies milling as their officers performed the same task. As the wounded passed through their line toward the rear, here and there they were joined by one or two volunteers whose courage had utterly failed them. They skulked away, hoping to join the trickle of injured, or simply tossed their muskets away and ran, ignoring the jeers of their erstwhile comrades. In the army, such behavior would be punished, possibly by summary execution, but the officers among the volunteers were too busy to do more than shout curses.
None of hers were leaving, Winter was glad to see. If they weren’t half-brave and half-stupid, they wouldn’t be here in the first place.
An officer on a horse—Fitz—trotted out from the waiting columns of Colonials and waved his hat for attention. He slashed his hand forward, his shout nearly lost amid the roaring cannon.
“First line, forward! Advance to range and open fire!”
He wheeled away, headed down the line to make sure everyone had gotten the message. Winter filled her lungs and repeated, “Forward! Walk, don’t run!”
Company by company, the volunteers began to move. They had none of the precision of the drum-measured advance of a regular army unit, looking instead more like a heavily armed crowd out for an evening stroll. The natural tendency of the men was to bunch up for mutual support, and every officer was quickly engaged in hurrying up and down his line breaking up these clots with the warning that larger groups would present better targets to the enemy. Winter, Abby, and Jane followed suit, pulling the girls apart with their hands when the cannonade grew too loud to speak.
As they came over the crest of the hill, the friendly artillery went quiet, perspiring gunners flopping to the ground beside their pieces to make the most of the pause. Orlanko’s guns kept firing. The thick pall of smoke hid everything farther away than a few yards, but the flash of the distant guns was visible, like a barrage of lightning, followed moments later by the booms and the scream of the balls. Human screams joined the chorus, too; the loosely packed volunteers made a poor target for artillery, but here and there the hurtling metal found flesh. The shroud of smoke hid the casualties from view, leaving only the shrieks, moans, and curses of disembodied ghosts.
Then, as if a curtain had been drawn aside, they stepped through the leading edge of the cloud and got a clear view of the descending slope of the hill and the valley beyond. Up and down the line, officers shouted, “Forward!” as men stopped to stare. Winter lent her voice to the general roar. She split her attention between watching the ground to keep her footing and trying to make sense of what she could see up ahead.
There was another hill, perhaps eight hundred yards distant, taller than the one they’d just crossed but less steep. At the top of it the duke’s artillery formed a long line, the mirror image of their own, and similarly hidden by its own cloud of smoke. His advantage in weight of metal was obvious from the volume of muzzle flashes.
Coming down the slope in front of his guns were the six battalions of Orlanko’s infantry, marked out by their fluttering battle flags. They had started moving before the volunteers, passing through their own line of artillery and making their way to the bottom of the hill. As Winter watched, they were deploying from column into line, companies folding out neatly from their positions behind the leading units and taking up their assigned places in the line of battle. The spaces between battalions were small, and when the maneuver was completed the enemy presented a single thin ribbon of blue, three ranks deep and more than a thousand yards long.
Waiting in the wings, well behind the advancing infantry, the squadrons of cuirassiers had formed into loose wedges. They had split into two groups, one on the left and one on the right, advancing at a walk to stay roughly behind the flanking infantry battalions. At this distance it was impossible to make out individuals from the mass of blue uniforms and horses, but the steel breastplates that gave the heavy horsemen their name flashed in the sun as they came forward. Their path forward was marked by the occasional splash of blue and red, where cannonballs had struck down horse, rider, or both together. A few of Give-Em-Hell’s troopers were visible, too, retreating across the valley in the face of the advancing infantry.
“Come on!” Winter waved her arm, beckoning the girls forward. “Come on, come on!”
The valley floor was broken by a small, rocky streambed, too shallow to be an obstacle. The slopes of the hills were all knee-high grass, tall enough to conceal an ankle-breaking rock, but not enough to provide any sort of cover. As the volunteers moved forward, the friendly guns started up again, raising fountains of dirt at the edges of the enemy lines and among the cuirassiers. Orlanko’s cannoneers were concentrating on trying to knock out Janus’ artillery—a difficult task at best, requiring precision gunnery—while their opponents went for the far more tempting target of the densely packed heavy horsemen.
As the volunteers descended, reaching the relatively flat ground of the valley floor, the drums of the regulars became audible. The steady clomp-clomp-clomp of the cadenced march, like the ticking of some enormous clock, grew until it was louder than the cannons. The wall of blue uniforms made an intimidating sight, each with musket held against the shoulder just so, officers on horseback behind them with drawn swords, battle flags flapping in the breeze. Their own troops, brown and gray with black armbands, made a pathetic comparison. The range closed steadily.
At seventy-five yards, Winter called for a halt. The r
agged line of volunteers grew more ragged still, as each company commander judged the moment for himself. The girls stopped, eyes glued to the steady advance of the blue line as if they were watching an oncoming avalanche.
“Ready!” Winter shouted. Jane and Abby repeated the order. Muskets came up to shoulders, and hammers clicked.
“Aim!” They’d stressed this in training. An ordinary infantryman, packed shoulder to shoulder, could normally fire nowhere but straight ahead. In the looser formation, they would have to make their shots count. On the other hand, it was hard to miss. The advancing regulars were slightly below them, fifty yards away, a wall of blue stretching out of sight in both directions.
Muskets started to crackle, somewhere else along the line. Winter swung her arm down before the roar made her inaudible. “Fire!”
It wasn’t a proper volley, discharged in a single deadly blast. The sharp reports were spread out over a half minute, as individuals stepped forward, found their balance, or lined their weapons up on target. Pink-white muzzle flares were instantly blotted out by billowing clouds of smoke. The pall was not yet thick enough to obscure the enemy, though, and Winter could see the effect of the shots. Men went down, all along the line, crumpling sideways in heaps, falling backward, tumbling out of rank or clutching suddenly at their wounds. The neat perfection of the oncoming regulars dissolved, for a moment, then reformed like the surface of a lake closing over a hurled stone as the line continued its relentless advance. The soldiers stepped over the dead and wounded, closed their ranks, and came on to the beat of their drummers.
“Load!” Winter shouted. Most of her girls were already working on it, fumbling with cartridge pouches and ramrods. She heard squeaks and curses where someone had dropped a ball or spilled the powder. The rattle of ramrods in barrels mixed with the beat of the drums as the regulars approached. “Fire at will!”
The Shadow Throne: Book Two of the Shadow Campaigns Page 59
