The fortress guns turned back to the infantry, and the cannonballs began to fall around them, slamming into the earth with great sprays of dirt and bouncing back into the air at unpredictable angles. Wherever one sliced through the neatly ordered ranks, it yanked men down, snatching them out of the line like a giant’s hand one, two, three at a time. “Close up, close up!,” the sergeant’s eternal mantra, rose over the advancing men, competing in volume with the screams of the stricken.
Marcus marched on, fighting the instinctive urge to hunch forward as though walking into a rainstorm. Head down or head high, it would make no difference if a ball came right to him, and the thought was a little comforting. He looked over his shoulder and found Andy lagging behind, her steps faltering; her eyes were fixed on the ground, which was littered with the dead from the previous attack as well as their own. She almost tripped over the outstretched arm of a man who’d had most of his chest blown away, his blank eyes and curled fingers pleading.
This was not the kind of fight she was used to, Marcus realized. Andy had proved her toughness in the streets of Vordan, but it was a brawler’s toughness, the courage to face a thug in a dark alley and the willpower to keep fighting until you came out on top. This was different—death came from the sky, at random, like some ancient god hurling bolts of lightning, with no stopping it or turning it aside.
Marcus grabbed her arm and pulled her forward, past the corpse. She looked at him, eyes wide, and he leaned close enough to shout in her ear.
“Don’t look down!” he said. “Don’t look back! Keep your eye on the flags!” The endcaps of the flagpoles flashed silver, even through the smoke, and the Vordanai eagle snapped and rippled. “One step after another!”
Andy swallowed, blinked rapidly, and nodded, picking up the rhythm of the drum again. She stayed at his side as the fire from their own guns warred with the fire ahead, turning the world into a single mass of noise and billowing powder smoke. The timbre of the fortress guns changed as they switched to canister, loads of balls spraying across the lines with every bellow and belch of smoke. The companies were shrinking, contracting toward their centers as sergeants and corporals closed the files and men continued to drop.
Then the defenders’ muskets opened up, with a volley that spread along the wall like fire racing across paper. A new fogbank rippled out, puffing lazily over the slope of the wall and the grass beyond. Balls zipped overhead and thoked into the earth, or found purchase in flesh and sent soldiers reeling or stumbling or falling to their knees. The front companies, naturally, got the worst of it, but a man not twenty feet in front of Marcus stumbled out of line, clutching vainly at the ruin a wild shot had made of half his face.
Marcus drew his sword. “Sound the charge!”
“Charge!” Fitz shouted, his still-boyish voice hoarse.
The drums thrilled, quickening to the charge pace, heartbeat-fast. A roar rose from the Vordanai ranks, and they broke into a run, formations dissolving in the rush to close with the enemy. Cannons spat more canister, carving swaths through the soldiers, and Marcus found himself leaping bodies and dodging collapsing men as he came forward. Fitz was on one side of him, Andy on the other, but beyond that there was only swirling smoke.
“With me!” he shouted, his own voice cracking. “Over the wall! With me!”
He thought he heard answering shouts, but he couldn’t be certain through the ringing in his ears. They pounded through grimy shadow for longer than seemed possible. There wasn’t that far to go—could I have gotten turned around?—and then he could see the wall up ahead, a long, sloped brick surface with a shallow ditch in front of it. Once the ditch might have been sheer-sided and filled with stakes, but erosion and neglect had turned it into little more than a dip in the ground. Marcus leapt across, landed on the brick, and scrabbled a moment for balance. He turned, looking for Andy, only to find her missing.
Fitz was there, scrambling up the bricks on his other side. Marcus stared back into the smoke in vain, then screamed a curse at the top of his lungs and ran up the brick slope. Muskets were still going off all around him, deafeningly loud, the flashes like near-constant lightning. Directly ahead of him were two soldiers in Murnskai uniforms, white jackets over gray trousers, with heavy beards and tall, square-topped hats. They fell back a pace as he reached the lip of the wall and vaulted onto the fire step, swinging his sword in a downward cut that opened one of the enemy from shoulder to breastbone. The other dropped his musket and clawed for a weapon at his side, but Fitz was on him at once, running him through the stomach. He slid off the sword, groaning. Marcus realized the sound of musketry was fading, replaced by the clash of steel and the screams of dying men.
“What happened to Andy?” he shouted at Fitz. “Did you see?”
Fitz shook his head, then gestured with his sword. “We have to get to the water battery before they start spiking the guns!”
He was right, of course. That’s the mission Janus gave us. More blue-uniformed shapes were looming out of the smoke, men with bloody bayonets, chasing their opponents off the wall and deeper into the fortress. Marcus waved his saber over his head to attract their attention and raised his ragged voice again.
“To the battery! With me!”
—
It was more than an hour before the fighting ended altogether. Once the assault got over the walls, the outcome was never in doubt, but many of the Murnskai stubbornly refused to surrender. There were a hundred last stands in courtyards and corridors, each exacting its toll in blood from the attackers.
Fortunately, this instinct for last-ditch defense meant that only at the final moment did any of the garrison think to start destroying the weapons they were supposed to be guarding, and by then it was too late. Fitz’s men had fought their way into the water battery and held it against a desperate counterattack. Bskor was captured almost intact, save for where Viera’s guns had pitted the outer walls.
But the cost had been fearful. Compared with seven hundred defenders killed or captured, the First Division had more than twice that many dead or wounded, littering the slope or sprawled in the ditches and courtyards of the fortress. Telling which was which would take some time, too, as teams worked to gather the corpses, triage the wounded, and drag those who needed it to the cutters.
Marcus was standing atop the riverside wall when they brought Andy to him. She had one arm thrown across the shoulders of a burly corporal, and one of her legs was wrapped in a layer of bandage. She managed a salute, however, and a broad grin.
“Sorry about that, sir,” she said. “Didn’t mean to let you get ahead of me.”
Marcus smiled back, resisting an unsoldierly urge to hug her. “I’ll allow it, Captain. But only this once.” He glanced at her leg. “Are you going to be all right?”
“Cutter says I was lucky. Nice clean puncture, missed the bone. Unless it festers, I should be fine.”
“That’s good to hear.” Marcus let out a long breath. “Corporal, would you escort the captain to the officer’s quarters? Let her use one of the beds there.” While the barracks for the rankers was cramped and unpleasant, the large building the Murnskai officers had used was more like a country manor than a military installation. Squads of Vordanai soldiers were prowling the halls now, seizing knickknacks and cutlery as souvenirs.
Viera, wearing a bloody bandage around her scalp and her usual scowl, arrived soon after Andy had limped away. Teams of her cannoneers took stock of the big guns aimed at the river and hauled ammunition and powder from the underground armory. It wasn’t long before they had their first targets—a quartet of slow-moving river barges rowing upstream laden with food and supplies for the Murnskai army.
Marcus turned to Fitz. “Would you like to do the honors?”
Fitz smiled. “Warning shots, Captain Galiel. Ready. Fire!”
The huge naval guns roared. Enormous fountains of water rose from the calm river, br
acketing the barges. As froth rained down all around the startled sailors, a ranker Fitz had chosen for his carrying voice climbed up onto the wall and began to shout in Murnskai. Marcus guessed their hasty translation wasn’t perfect, but the men on the river got the idea. Slowly, the barges changed course, angling in toward the docks below the fortress.
“I want a watch kept day and night,” Marcus said. “Nothing gets past this point in the river without our permission. If so much as a rowboat refuses to dock, blow them out of the water.”
“Yes, sir,” Viera said, with obvious relish.
So far, so good, Marcus thought. Scouts sent to the east still reported no sign of the main Murnskai army. Let’s hope this works.
CHAPTER NINE
WINTER
Winter regarded the bowl of gray stuff with intense suspicion.
“What is it?” she said.
“Try it first,” Cyte said, offering a slice of heavy black bread.
“That is not encouraging,” Winter said. She picked up a knife and dipped it into the gray stuff. It spread over the bread like thick, grainy butter.
“The Murnskai call it dimotska. It’s considered a delicacy.”
“Remind me sometime to tell you about what they considered delicacies in Khandar.”
“Just eat it.”
Winter sighed, closed her eyes, and took a bite. The bread was coarse and chewy, and the gray stuff was intensely salty, with a slippery texture. Some of the tiny grains popped between her teeth. Privately, she had to admit that it wasn’t bad. I’d still rather have a nice pat of butter, though.
“Okay,” she said, finishing the slice. “What did I just eat?”
“Fish eggs,” Cyte said, helping herself.
Winter had a confused vision of a fish sitting atop a nest. “Fish don’t lay eggs.”
“They do, actually,” Cyte said, spreading a thick layer of the dimotska atop the bread. “They’re just tiny. This stuff comes out of the female arrowfish. When they’re in season, they swarm off the Split Coast, and the fishermen catch them and cut out—”
“You know, that’s enough.” Winter wiped her lips on her sleeve and sighed. “What’s the matter with the rest of the fish, anyway?”
“Fish is peasant food,” Cyte said. “This is for nobility.”
“I’m going to go on record and say that every country outside Vordan is insane,” Winter said. “Why can’t they eat normal things?”
“Like unmentionable bits of pig ground up and stuffed inside its own intestines?”
“That’s more of a Hamveltai thing,” Winter said, fighting a grin. “Foreign influences.”
“We eat chicken eggs,” Cyte said, finishing her slice of bread. “This isn’t so different.”
Winter made a face. Food had been plentiful the past few days, thanks to the depots of Bskor, but full of unfamiliar flavors. Cyte seemed to take a particular delight in grabbing the strangest items, usually “delicacies” intended for officers and royalty. Fish eggs weren’t the half of it.
There was a scratch at the tent flap. “Sir?” Bobby said without waiting for an answer. “They’re coming again.”
“By all the fucking saints,” Winter said. “I don’t believe it.”
“I saw them myself,” Bobby said. “At least six battalions—”
“I know. I know.” Winter grabbed her jacket off the ground and started doing up the buttons. “I’ll be right there.”
“That makes six attacks in two days,” Cyte said.
“Are they hoping we’re going to get tired?” Winter said, fastening her collar. “Or run out of ammunition?” Fortunately, there was no chance of the latter—the same depots that were providing their food had been stuffed with shot and powder.
“Maybe they just don’t know what else to do,” Cyte said.
“I know what I’d do,” Winter muttered. Head home as fast as I could, and to hell with anybody who tried to stop me. She belted on her sword and pulled the tent flap open, letting in the brilliant sun. The rain had passed, leaving the sky a blinding blue almost free of clouds.
Cannon-fire began as she hurried down the mud-churned path from her tent. The Second Division’s two batteries were placed high on the hillside, with clear lines of fire over their own infantry to the flat ground below. Between attacks, the artillerymen had occupied themselves with improving the position by creating a ramp of packed earth behind each gun; when it fired, the cannon would recoil backward, then roll down the ramp into firing position, allowing the crew to reload and fire again more quickly. Colonel Archer’s crews had the drill down to a fine art now, and the guns boomed with clockwork regularity.
Janus had chosen their position with his usual care. Halfway between Polkhaiz and Bskor, where the river Shulia entered the Syzria, a spur of hills extended north to within a mile of the riverbank. He’d brought the Second, Third, and Fourth Divisions to hold the narrow gap, following much the same route the First had taken days earlier, while the remaining half of the Grand Army bristled aggressively against the Murnskai front. The artillery reserve had come as well, manhandled by cursing, sweating infantrymen over miles of bad roads and muddy valleys.
The Third and Fourth had set up in the narrow strip of low ground between the river and the hill. At first Janus’ demand that the troops dig ditches and earthen ramparts had been met with widespread grumbling, but the past few days had convinced any doubters. The Murnskai army had come west, a seemingly endless stream of white-coated infantry and squadron after squadron of horsemen. They’d been met by a line of spiked ditches, with the infantry taking cover behind waist-high mounds of dirt topped with sturdy logs. Periodic gaps in the line allowed the massed batteries of the two divisions and the artillery reserve, parked nearly hub to hub, to rake the open ground of the valley floor.
Winter’s Second Division was deployed on the army’s right, where the land started its rise into the wooded hills they’d so recently struggled to march through. They were spread thinner, with more front to cover, but the terrain was enormously favorable. Just below the tree line, they’d dug pits and set up ramparts, strewing the approaches with more felled trees as an additional obstacle. The slope meant the guns had a perfect field of fire, outranging their Murnskai counterparts, although Murnskai gunnery had thus far proven to be lackluster at best.
Thus fortified, Janus had settled in to wait for the Murnskai army to attack. Which, to Winter’s astonishment, they obligingly had, bulling ahead in spite of the obvious difficulties. Whoever’s in command isn’t worried about casualties, that’s for certain.
The camp was even higher on the slope, back among the trees. Winter passed the artillery line and made her way down to the infantry. They’d set up a command post in the center of the Girls’ Own position, surrounded by logs with notches wide enough to peek through. Abby was already there, holding a spyglass to her eye.
“Looks like us and Blackstream’s boys are the lucky ones this time,” she said. Blackstream’s Fourth Infantry Regiment was deployed to the right, Sevran and de Koste’s regiments to the left. “But they’re doing something I don’t understand.”
“Let me have a look,” Winter said.
Abby handed over the spyglass. Sweeping it across the field, Winter could see eight battalions in column, the equivalent of an entire division, concentrated onto a narrow front and advancing steadily. Their white coats made for a pretty line, she had to admit. The ground they were crossing was already strewn with dead; as best Winter could tell, the Murnskai made no effort to either bury the corpses or gather the wounded, leaving soldiers who’d been hit to get off the field under their own power. The Girls’ Own had rescued a few who’d fallen relatively close to their own line, but hadn’t dared to venture out any farther. At night the camp was haunted by hoarse cries and pleas from the killing field, growing steadily weaker as time went on.
“Wha
t’s strange?” Winter said. Besides the fact that they’re coming at all.
“Look behind the infantry,” Abby said. “That looks like a cuirassier regiment to me, all strung out.”
Winter shifted the glass. They can’t be mad enough to try a cavalry charge, can they? Even a commander as rock stupid as this Murnskai general seemed to be would have to know that sending horsemen uphill into stakes and obstacles was madness.
But the cuirassiers were there, all right, big men on big horses, with steel breastplates and long fur capes. They were advancing slowly, keeping pace with the infantry. Instead of holding a tight formation, as cavalry usually tried to do, they were spread out in a long line, as wide as the entire infantry attack. Each man had his saber drawn already.
“That is strange.” Strange is bad, instinct told her. “But I can’t see how it’s going to help them.”
“Me neither.” Abby took her spyglass back. “Any orders?”
Winter shook her head. “Not for the moment.” By this time none were needed.
The cannon-fire tore great gaps in the Murnskai formations. After two days firing over the same ground, Archer’s gunners knew the ranges and elevations by heart, and nearly every shot went smashing through the white-coated lines. More human wreckage joined the stiffening corpses of the previous day and a half, piling in drifts that were so tall in places the advancing infantry had to detour around them.
After the first attack, the Girls’ Own had paced out distances from their position and set up markers that would be easily visible from the heights. When the Murnskai advanced past a hundred and fifty yards, therefore, the entire line erupted at once, as though the enemy had struck a tripwire. With the advantage of height, even a musket had a chance of being deadly at that range, and as ammunition was plentiful, Winter saw no reason to have her troops hold their fire. Smoke boiled over the log ramparts and poured down into the spiked ditches. From the command post, set slightly farther back, Winter still had a good view.
The Guns of Empire Page 22
