by David Weber
"Six thousand yards," chan Forcal said suddenly, sharply. "One-seven-three degrees. Two minutes."
"Six thousand yards!" Mesaion bellowed. "One-seven-three degrees! Move, godsdamn you!"
"Bugler!"
"Sir?"
"Blow 'At the Trot'!"
"Yes, Sir!"
Five Hundred Urlan heard the urgent, golden notes flaring from the bell-mouthed bugle, and the Seventh Zydors sprang ponderously into a trot. Their horses might be slower than unicorns, but despite their size, the massive beasts were still faster than the finest unaugmented thoroughbred ever foaled On the other hand, they still had over three miles to go.
"Bugler, blow 'Canter'!"
"Now!" chan Forcal shouted, and seven four-and-a-half-inch mortars coughed as one.
There was no warning.
One instant, the Seventh Zydor Heavy Dragoons were thundering forward, moving up from a trot to a hard canter in perfect order under the protection of their cloaking glamour. The next, thunderbolts came dropping out of the heavens without any warning at all.
Five Hundred Urlan swore savagely as the mortar bombs exploded. They clustered around his command standard with enough perverse accuracy to make a man actually believe in demons after all, and the sunbaked, stony earth was almost as hard as a paved street. The incoming mortar rounds scarcely dented it, and there was nothing to absorb the force of the explosions … or the deadly, whirling splinters those explosions threw out in all directions. Horses and men screamed as white-hot steel fragments drove into fragile flesh and bone. Half a dozen of the huge steeds went down, shrieking like tortured women as legs broke or whirling steel knives opened their bellies.
"Spread out! Skirmish order!" Urlan bellowed. Once again, the bugle's notes flared golden, and his men responded like the elite troopers they were. They opened their ranks, dispersing to deny their enemies a compact, concentrated target.
Urlan watched the evolution. The confines of the valley meant they couldn't open their ranks as widely as he would have preferred, but at least they were no longer riding knee-to-knee. He bared his teeth as more of those infernal explosions raked the Zydors, and then he swore again, hideously, as he realized the commander of fifty responsible for the glamour was down.
"There they are!" Lorash chan Braikal snapped.
He didn't know how the Arcanans had pulled it off. Still, if the bastards had dragons, why shouldn't they have cloaks of invisibility, as well?
The thought flickered through the back of his mind, but whatever it was and however it had worked, it obviously hadn't fooled Company-Captain Mesaion's Distance Viewer. The explosions sprouting amongst the oncoming cavalry looked like flame-cored toadstools, and he saw the huge horses going down, spilling their riders.
But not as many of them as I should see, something muttered in the back of his brain. Vothan, those things must be tough!
The howitzers were firing, as well, dropping their lighter shells in among the heavy mortar rounds, but they weren't going to stop that many pissed-off cavalrymen with less than a dozen tubes.
"Rifles!" he shouted as the range raced downward, and the platoon's Model 10s began to crack.
More of Urlan's men and horses went down as the Sharonian shoulder weapons-the "rifles"-opened fire from atop the wall. But at least the briefing from the recon crystal had been accurate. The tower that markedtheir objective was still on fire, and none of the machine guns and whatever-the-hells those other rapidfire weapons had been could bear on them from this angle. The rifle fire would be bad enough, but
–
"Fire!"
Sunlord Markan heard the young commander of horse's shout as the company of dismounted cavalry Markan had snatched away from the entrenched positions west of Fort Salby rounded the fort's flank.
Accuracy would have been too much to expect out of them after their hard run, and they'd lost at least ten or twelve men to stray, rampaging eagle-lions. But even unaimed fire from a hundred and twenty rifles had to get the other side's attention.
Of course, Markan thought distantly, getting heavy cavalry's attention might not be the very best thing dispersed infantry could do when it's outnumbered three or four to one . . in the open.
"Mother Jambakol!"
Five Hundred Urlan spat the filthy curse as still more rifles began to fire, this time from ground level.
His head whipped around, and his eyes narrowed as he saw the infantrymen. They were firing furiously, although with nowhere near the accuracy of the men on top of the wall.
For a moment, Urlan considered sending one of his dragoon companies to scatter them, but he quickly decided against it. They weren't hitting very many of his own men, and when the Zydors reached their objective, the fort itself would cover them against these new Sharonians' fire. They'd lose more men charging them than they would simply galloping straight into the waiting cover.
Chief-Armsman chan Braikal watched Arcanans dropping under his platoon's aimed fire. The mortar fire continued to rake their ranks, as well, but it wasn't going to be enough to keep them from reaching the wall, and they were going to run in under the mortars' effective arc of fire when they got a bit closer. His Marines weren't scoring as many hits as they should have been, either. Was that from excitement and too much adrenaline, he wondered? Or could it be that the bastards had some other spell protecting them?
Not something that could make them invisible, perhaps, but something that made them harder to hit?
He didn't know, and it didn't matter. What mattered was that at least some of them were going to make it to the base of the wall after all, and Prince Janaki and Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik were counting on chan Braikal to keep them out of Fort Salby.
"Chan Yaran!"
"Yes, Chief?" Petty-Armsman Rokal chan Yaran, whose promotion had come through less than two weeks before, replied.
"Get your grenade party ready!"
"Yes, Chief!"
Windlord Garsal had suddenly become the senior officer in the infantry and artillery positions protecting the western approaches to Fort Salby. It was not, he discovered, a position he particularly wanted.
Unfortunately, it was his.
Sunlord Markan's decision to personally lead the one company they'd retained as an immediate reserve struck Garsal as quixotic, at the very least. Nonetheless, he'd obeyed the sunlord's orders and his Flicker had sent out the orders that stripped an entire battalion out of its positions and sent them thudding across the barren, dusty earth in Markan's wake.
Which left Garsal to deal with the minor matter of what looked like at least two or three hundred dragons headed straight for him.
And they're the diversion, are they?
The thought flashed through his brain, and for the first time in his life, he found himself devoutly hoping all the tall tales and legends about the Calirath Talent were actually accurate. Because, if they weren't … .
He watched them coming on, and as he did, another thought occurred to him.
They may be supposed to be a diversion. In fact, I'll bet they are. They'd have followed closer behind those eagle-lions if this were a serious attack. But it looks like they may not have realized just how long ranged our artillery really is.
His smile was thin and feral as the huge dragons swooped and wove their intricate patterns. There was an awful lot of motion up there, but they weren't actually advancing all that quickly, and he looked at his Flicker once again.
"Message to the artillery. Prepare to load with shrapnel … but don't set the fuses until I give the order to fire."
Five Hundred Urlan's lead dragoons reached the foot of the fortress wall. The rear troopers leaned back, triggering their cutdown infantry-dragons, sending blasts of intolerable heat rolling up the outer face of the wall. A Sharonian who'd leaned out to fire down upon them shrieked horribly and plunged from the parapet, trailing fire like a human meteor. Others ducked back, cowering away from the searing fury.
But still others had been waiting.
Urlan saw the small objects plunging down from above, and his stomach tightened. He didn't know what the godsdamned things were, but he was certain he was about to find out.
Chan Braikal heard the hand grenades exploding even through the thunder of the rest of the battle, and his eyes glittered with cold satisfaction as he listened to the screams from below. The bastards were too close to the wall for the artillery to drop on them any longer, but chan Yaran's grenades were obviously a different matter. Yet even as they exploded, the blasts of heat and fury continued to roar up from below, as well.
He looked out across the parapet, wondering if he had any eyebrows left, and swore with fresh inventiveness as he saw the floating … whatever-the-hell-they-were. He didn't know what to call them.
They looked for all the world like some sort of airborne boats, towed by the massive horses to which they were tethered. But whatever they were, they floated even higher than Fort Salby's walls, and they were packed to the gunwales with Arcanans, some of whom obviously had fire-throwers of their own.
His men had the advantage of better cover, the fort's adobe had already proven itself virtually immune to the blast effect of the Arcanan fireballs, and the mortars could still reach the tow horses. Unfortunately, chan Braikal and the other defenders on the wall were also outnumbered by somewhere around ten-toone, and when one of the fireballs did find a chink in the parapet, it killed or wounded four or five of his people at once.
Chan Yaran and his squad were still chucking hand grenades over the edge as quickly as they could pull the pins, and chan Braikal had another squad doing nothing but protect the grenadiers. Which left him only three squads-less than thirty men, with the casualties he'd already taken-to hold off at least eight or nine hundred Arcanans in those floating boats.
It was not a winning proposition, even for Imperial Ternathian Marines.
Five Hundred Urlan grimaced in satisfaction as Charlie Company finally came up with the infantry assault force.
His two lead companies had taken at least thirty percent casualties, but they'd also managed to suppress a lot of the defensive fire. Now Kiliron's troopers had managed-not without taking serious losses of their own-to get close enough they were sheltered from the Sharonians' artillery fire by the wall itself, and that meant the infantry could damned well take over!
Chan Braikal felt someone pounding on his shoulder. He turned his head and found himself looking into Platoon-Captain Tarkel chan Noth's blue eyes.
"How bad, Chief?!" chan Noth shouted in the Marine's ear, pointing downward to indicate the ground at the foot of the wall.
"I think we've got the first batch of bastards pinned-sort of, at least!" chan Braikal shouted back, then pointed out at the approaching "air boats." More and more fire was beginning to come from them, and chan Noth ducked as a fireball exploded just below the edge of the parapet directly in front of him.
"But if we don't stop that, Sir, we're fucked!" chan Braikal added … quite unnecessarily, he was certain.
"Then it's a good thing I brought this!"
Chan Braikal turned his head and saw a three-gun section of Faraika I machine guns setting up with frantic haste.
"Mother Jambakol!" Urlan snarled again as the distinctive, ripping-cloth sound of one of the Sharonians accursed "machine guns" crackled above him. He whipped his head around in time to see splinters flying from two of the closer personnel pods as the Sharonians flayed them with fire. Then, suddenly, one of them plunged to shatter on the ground below as one of the Sharonian bullets either killed the Gifted engineer controlling the levitation spell or smashed the acumulater itself.
A second pod followed moments later, and the cavalry commander looked around quickly, then grunted as his eyes found what they'd been looking for.
"Fifty Rahndar!"
The dark-haired commander of fifty with the Engineers shoulder patch looked around sharply at the sound of his name.
"Yes, Sir!"
"I want a godsdamned hole, Fifty," Urlan snarled, jabbing a finger at the fort wall, "and I want it right fucking now!"
Rahndar darted a quick, anxious glance up the wall to where those infernal explosive devices were plunging down and swallowed hard. Apparently, however, the thought of being blown apart was less daunting than whatever he'd just seen in Urlan's eyes.
"Yes, Sir!"
Rahndar reined his horse around and started shouting for the rest of his engineering section.
Chan Braikal was just beginning to feel a certain cautious optimism when the world went crazy.
It wasn't really an explosion. It was too … quiet for that. There was no flash, no thunder, just the sudden concussive shattering of adobe and stone. It should have sounded like an explosion, but it actually sounded more like a frozen tree trunk snapping in an icy winter night.
But whatever it sounded like, the force of it shook Fort Salby to its bones. A section of wall at least eight feet across at the base simply disintegrated. It flew apart, spraying adobe, rock, and men as it opened a wedge-shaped gap which ran all the way to the parapet and measured better than forty feet across at the top.
Two of chan Noth's machine guns went with it … and so did Petty-Armsman chan Yaran and his grenadiers. Half of chan Braikal's platoon was simply gone, and the survivors were shocked, stunned by the sudden cataclysm.
Chan Noth's men had been hit less severely, but they'd also still been in the act of taking up their positions. Confusion swept through them, however briefly, and the defenders' fire faltered.
"Now!" Gyras Urlan bellowed as the fire from above slackened. "Now! Go-go, godsdamn it!"
Young Rahndar had done his job well. In fact, he'd done it too well for his own good. He and most of his section-and another twenty or so of Urlan's troopers-had been caught in the collapse his demolition spell had wreaked. That was unfortunate, but no one could control where the wreckage from a demo spell was going to fall, and at least they had a breach at last.
Half of Urlan's surviving men flung themselves off their horses. They took their swords, their infantrydragons, and their daggerstones with them and charged forward, swarming up over the wreckage, into the clouds of billowing dust and smoke, with the high, howling cheer of the Seventh Zydors.
Lorash chan Braikal stared down into the gap which had suddenly appeared and shook himself. Despite its width, it was choked with rubble that roase to at least a third of the wall's original height.
Unfortunately, enough of that rubble had spilled outward to provide a ramp, and he saw Arcanans in cavalry boots, breastplates, and helmets swarming up it. At least half of them seemed to be carrying the glittering tubes of their fire-throwers, and he snarled in fury.
He jerked the pin out of his final hand grenade and tossed it down into the gap, only to see it lodge in a hollow in the rubble before it exploded. The pocket into which it had fallen absorbed most of its power and only three or four men went down. The others kept coming, and a fireball roared past his ear.
Chan Braikal fired his rifle again and again, until the magazine was empty. He groped for another, but his hand came up empty. He cursed venomously, then kicked his feet over the edge of the gap and went slithering down into the dust and smoke, bayonet-first.
Five Hundred Urlan looked for his bugler, but the man was down with half his head blown away, and without the bugle, there was no way for him to communicate orders to Charlie Company. It should have already been here, and Urlan wanted to curse its commander as a coward. But that would have been unfair, and he knew it. Orkal Kiliron was no coward, but he was aware how valuable the Gifted engineers in his towed pods were. Although the fire from the wall directly in front of Urlan had been largely silenced, more and more rifle and light machine-gun fire was ripping out from the flanks. The smoke and dust hanging in the air was obviously affecting its accuracy, but at least two more pods had gone down, taking their infantry and engineers with them. If he'd been Kiliron, he probably would have assumed the defenders weren't being successfully
suppressed and started falling back, too.
The five hundred reached out and grabbed the nearest trooper who was still mounted. The man's head whipped around.
"Sir?" His surprise was obvious, and Urlan shook him.
"Get your ass back there! Find Hundred Kiliron and tell him we need those pods up here right fucking now!"
Chan Braikal hit the bottom of the breach. His boots slipped and slithered in the ankle-deep rubble, and he found himself face-to-face with an Arcanan cavalry trooper.
The Arcanan reared back in obvious surprise, then swung his hand around. There was something in it.
Chan Braikal didn't have a clue what it was, but given the things these people had already done, he didn't intend to sit there and find out the hard way. The other man was still trying to bring whatever-it-was to bear when a fourteen-inch, tempered steel bayonet slammed forward above his protective cuirass and opened his throat.
Chan Braikal drove a combat boot into the dead man's breastplate, wrenched the blade free, and whirled to a second enemy.
More Sharonians hurled themselves forward. There was no unit organization to it. The breaching spell had buried at least sixty men inside the fort. Another forty or fifty had come down with the collapsing parapet. The platoons closest to it had taken the worst casualties, and some of those who weren't physically wounded were too stunned, too shaken, to respond coherently.
But others were like Lorash chan Braikal. They waited for no orders, didn't worry about where the rest of their platoon, or even the rest of their squad, might be. They drove forward to meet the charging Arcanans with rifles, pistols, shotguns, bayonets, rocks, or even their bare hands.
It was hand-to-hand in the breach.
Urlan could hardly believe the ferocity of the defense. The normal range advantage of the Sharonians'
