by David Weber
Ahlvyn Yorak grinned and shook his head, remembering all the care they’d taken to avoid showing even a single spark during the approach, as the shutters began to clatter and the light flashed back to Private Dohlar’s waiting eyes.
Still, I guess the bastards’ve figured out we’re out here by now anyway, Ahlvyn, he reflected.
* * *
Colonel Zhaksyn Hyndyrsyn dropped his pen and jerked up out of his chair as the first mortar bomb exploded in mid-air above the four-company strongpoint fifteen hundred yards northeast of his command post.
His regiment had been combined with Gylchryst Sheldyn’s to form Sheldyn’s Brigade. Hyndyrsyn hadn’t approved of the arrangement when he first heard about it. His approval hadn’t been required, however, and he’d changed his mind about it once the advantages made themselves apparent.
The idea had come from Sir Rainos Ahlverez’ experiences with the Army of Shiloh, and little though he’d cared for finding himself under Sheldyn’s command, Hyndyrsyn had to admit it had worked out well, especially with both regiments so badly understrength. Of the fourteen hundred men and officers he was supposed to have, he had just under eleven hundred, and if he was going to be stuck this far out on the Army of the Seridahn’s flank, he was thoroughly in favor of having friends close to hand. Of course, if both regiments had been fully up to strength, they’d still have been less than two-thirds the size of a Charisian regiment, although they’d have been a bit larger than a Siddarmarkian regiment.
They weren’t up to strength, however, and from the sound of things, Captain Tyrnyr’s detachment was about to get thoroughly reamed. And since Tyrnyr’s companies held the road junction that was the key to the entire Zhonesberg Switch.…
“Messenger!” Hyndyrsyn ripped open his command tent’s fly and bellowed at the sentry outside it. “I need a messenger right frigging now!”
* * *
Zhames Dohlar read the dimly visible light as it blinked through the rain, then began flipping the shutters of his own lantern, repeating the signal back to confirm. Unlike Bailahchyo’s lamp, it was at least remotely possible someone on the Dohlaran side would see Dohlar’s, although he suspected they’d be a little too busy at the moment to pay much attention to rakurai bugs in the trees even if they could see them through the rain.
He finished sending, and Bailahchyo opened his lamp’s shutters once again—this time in a single double-length dash of confirmation.
“Up two hundred yards, Sir!” he called down. “Confirmed!”
“Up two hundred,” Lieutenant Zhaksyn repeated, as calmly as if he were still in his Tellesberg classroom, making certain of the correction.
“Yes, Sir!”
“Very well. Up two hundred, Tymythy,” he told Sergeant Hustyngs.
* * *
Captain Tyrnyr was in no position to appreciate the exquisite choreography General Sumyrs and his Charisian artillery support had arranged for him. Each of the platoons assigned to Rynshaw’s support company fired separately to make it easier for the artillery support party assigned to it to spot its fire. In theory, one platoon was supposed to fire every ten seconds. In fact, of course, not even Charisians could keep to that sort of timing once the dance started. So each salvo included its own color-coded star shell as an identifier, as well. It wasn’t a perfect system, since there were soon a lot of star shells floating above the Dohlaran positions, but it got the job done.
By the fourth salvo, Rynshaw’s thirty-six mortars were putting over eighty percent of their rounds on target.
And in the meantime—
* * *
“Fire in the hole!” Lieutenant Hahrlys called, and reached for the ring on the varnished wooden box as the first mortar bombs warbled overhead.
The Army of the Seridahn hadn’t had the opportunity to profit from the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels’ experiments in fortification building. It had, however, amassed an enormous amount of … experiential data on the same subject during its grueling fighting retreat up the Seridahn River and then step-by-step back along the Sheryl-Seridahn Canal. Its men had discovered the beauty of the shovel and become almost as adroit at—and as fanatical about—digging in every time they stopped anywhere as the Imperial Charisian Army.
Given an hour, every single one of them had his own slit trench. Given three hours, and light breastworks crowned their fighting positions and their observation posts and any attached artillery were dug-in, with sandbags going up for additional protection. Given a full day, and communication trenches and rudimentary but serviceable dugouts made an appearance. Given a five-day, and blasting them out of their holes was Shan-wei’s own piece of work.
As an engineer, Klymynt Hahrlys appreciated a good job of fortifying a position when he saw one, and the men charged with holding the Switch had done a very thorough job indeed. No one on Safehold had ever heard of barbed wire, but they understood all about constructing abatises out of tangled, interlocking tree branches. And the Dohlarans—in a trick they’d acquired from Charisian engineers—had taken to weaving their abatises together with wire vine whenever it was available, which made a very fair substitute for barbed wire. For that matter, they were fond of studding logs with old bayonets or even sword blades and adding them to the obstacles protecting their positions.
Enough mortar fire could blow gaps even through Dohlaran obstacle belts … eventually, and if the attacker was prepared to expend ammunition lavishly enough to get the job done. There were more efficient ways, however, towards which end Baron Seamount had incorporated Doctor Sahndrah Lywys’ newly developed Lywysite into what an engineer from Old Earth would have called a Bangalore torpedo. The official name for it was the “Composite Demolition Charge, Mark 1,” but the engineers equipped with it referred to it as “Sahndrah’s Doorknocker” in honor of Doctor Lywys. By whatever name, it consisted of dynamite-loaded sections of lightweight pipe, each four feet long, which threaded together to produce a single, long demolition charge.
Watched over by protective teams of scout snipers and hidden by the darkness and pounding rain, Lieutenant Hahrlys’ platoon had very quietly assembled forty of those sections into four forty-foot long tubes, sliding them forward and under the Dohlaran obstacle belt, four feet at a time, from well outside it. Then they’d connected the waterproof fuse hoses to them and unreeled hose behind them as they retreated back into the concealment of the rainy woods.
Now the lieutenant yanked the ring and the friction primer inside the box ignited. Its spitting spark raced furiously down the main channel to the junction point of all four fuse hoses, then split and sprinted towards the waiting charges, invisible inside the hoses which had protected the fuses from the wet.
Eight seconds later, all four Doorknockers detonated as one in a long, ripping explosion that tore straight through the obstacle belt.
* * *
Captain Hytchkahk waited impatiently as the Charisian mortar fire savaged the Dohlaran position. The spectacular explosions were clearly visible from his vantage point, and he approved of them wholeheartedly. He’d felt even more satisfaction as the long, vivid pencil lines of the exploding Doorknockers ripped their way through the obstacles waiting for his assault force, however.
The scouts’ reports and prisoner interrogation identified the local Dohlaran commander as Captain Zhames Tyrnyr, and Tyrnyr was supposed to be very good. According to those same reports, he had four of Hyndyrsyn’s Regiment’s six companies under his command—about seven hundred men—and Hyndyrsyn’s Regiment had been part of the force Sir Rainos Ahlverez had taken with him to Alyksberg. By all reports, Hyndyrsyn’s men were no more atrocity-prone than the rest of the Royal Dohlaran Army, but like every other man in his regiment, Haarahld Hytchkahk had lost men he cared about in Alyksberg.
That was the real reason Earl Hanth had assigned this attack to the 3rd Alyksberg Volunteers, and they were eager to be about it.
* * *
“Second rocket now,” Sedryk Maiyrs said almost gently, and an
amber signal rocket streaked into the heavens. It exploded, and the mortars stopped firing HE and shrapnel rounds instantly. Star shells continued to erupt above the smoking, half-shattered Switch, but no more explosives rained down upon it.
* * *
“Yes!” Hytchkahk hissed and raised his Charisian-designed flare pistol. He squeezed the trigger, and a brilliant red flare arced into the night.
* * *
Captain Tyrnyr looked up from the dressing the healer was tying around his badly lacerated left thigh as the first red flare popped into the night. Even as he watched, another one blazed to life. Then a third … a fourth, raging like rainy curses in an arc around the Switch’s left flank.
Of course there are four of them, he thought past the pain flaring in his wounded leg. One for each of the lanes the bastards blew through the abatises. And if they turn our left, get between us and Zhonesberg.…
He pushed himself to his feet.
“Sir, I’m not done!” the healer snapped.
“Yes, you are,” Tyrnyr said distantly.
“Captain, you could lose that leg—assuming you don’t just bleed out first!”
“Later,” Tyrnyr said.
He took a step, his leg folded, and he started to fall, but a powerful arm caught him. He turned his head and saw Company Sergeant Stahdmaiyr.
“Healer’s right, Sir.” Stahdmaiyr’s voice was pitched low, although it was clearly audible now that the portable angle-guns fire had stopped pounding them. “Let him finish, fer God’s sake!”
“I know he’s right.” Tyrnyr smiled crookedly. “Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ve got time right now, Wylsynn.” He wrapped his left arm around the sergeant’s shoulders. “Get me the rest of the way to the command post—now.”
For an instant, Stahdmaiyr looked as if he was going to protest. But then he clamped his jaw and nodded, instead.
“Come with us,” he told the Pasqualate lay brother as his CO started hopping towards the CP. “Might be you can finish tidying up once we get there.”
* * *
The last flare blazed to furious crimson life, spilling tendrils of flame down the rainy night, and the Siddarmarkian drums rolled. Then the rifle-armed Volunteers started forward, bayonets gleaming in the star shells’ light, throwing back the bloody reflections of the flares, and the high, shivering war cry they’d adopted from their Charisian allies rose fierce and hungry into the downpour.
The 3rd Alyksberg Volunteers stormed forward into the sporadic riflefire of the stunned and shocked defenders behind a wave front of hand grenades.
* * *
“Stand your ground! Stand and give ’em hell!” Lieutenant Kartyr Clymyns shouted. “Stand, boys—stand!”
Clymyns’ 2nd Platoon held the line of trenches covering the Switch’s left flank. The company hadn’t been on its positions long enough to build the dugouts they really wanted, but the trenches—almost knee-deep with water in the rain—were chest-high and he’d laid out his firing lines with care. But no one had seen a single damned thing before the first star shell burst overhead, and then Shan-wei’s own fury had ripped a gap straight through the obstacles in front of his lines. How the hell had they gotten that frigging close? And what had happened to the men he’d had out there to prevent them from doing anything of the sort?
A spasm of grief tore through him at the thought, sharp as a slash lizard’s claw even through his desperate focus on the men around him, because he knew what had happened to those sentries.
“There, Sir!” Corporal Zhaikyb Sairaynoh, one of his runners shouted, pointing to the right. “Over there!”
“Shit!” Clymyns punched the muddy side of his trench as the assault came out of the dark into the glaring brilliance of the heretic star shells. That was no Charisian attack—it came forward in an almost solid mass, not in the individual waves the Charisians favored. That meant it was the Siddarmarkians, and—
“Alyksberg!” The deep-throated bellow sounded even through the rattle of drums and the crackle of the defenders’ rifles, as if confirming his thoughts. “Remember Alyksberg!”
“Get back to the Captain, Zhaikyb!” he shouted in the corporal’s ear. “Tell him they’re hitting the junction between us and Captain Yairdyn’s company!”
“Aye, Sir!” Sairaynoh slapped his breastplate in salute and vanished.
* * *
“At a run, boys! Take ’em at a run!” Captain Hytchkahk shouted. “Take ’em at a run—don’t stop!”
There was a time and a place for the Charisians’ finely developed assault tactics, and he and his men had learned a great deal from their allies. But there were still times and places for the traditional, unstoppable charge of the Siddarmarkian pikes, too … even if it was made with bayonets and grenades instead of pikes these days.
Third Section stormed forward—four hundred men, roaring their fury, driving straight into the rippling flashes of the Dohlaran rifles. He was losing people, he knew, but not nearly so many as he might have under other conditions. The heavy rain wasn’t doing the defenders’ rifles any favors, and he knew were having their share of misfires. There weren’t many of them, though, and shock and confusion were his men’s strongest allies.
“Go!” he shrieked. “Go for the fuckers’ throats!”
* * *
“Look out, Sir!”
Clymyns’ looked up as Adulf Wyznynt, his platoon bugler shouted the warning, and his eyes widened.
“Alyksberg! Alykskberg!”
A second Siddarmarkian column came storming in from the left on the wings of that shout, riding a tidal wave of exploding grenades. He heard the screams of wounded men—his men—as those grenades arced into their trenches and exploded among them. The front ranks of the column reached the outer trench line and its leading squads leapt down into the trenches, bayonets stabbing, while the ranks behind them simply hurdled the gap and kept right on coming in an obviously preplanned maneuver.
The lieutenant snatched at his double-barreled pistol with one hand and drew his sword with the other.
The 3rd Alyksberg Volunteers swept onward, each unstoppable column driving straight for its assigned objective, and the sudden violence and utter surprise was too much even for veteran troops. Dohlarans began to break from cover, started to fall back from the fury of grenades, the deadly gleam of bayonets gilded in the star shells’ spiteful brilliance, and the terrible threat of that battle cry. Only by ones and twos, at first, but Clymyns could feel the fight going out of his men, and his eyes were wild with fury and grief as he vaulted up out of his trench.
“Sound the charge, Adulf!” he shouted, then glared at the two squads of his reserve, staring up at him from the trench he’d left.
“Come on, boys!” He stabbed his sword at that oncoming wave of death as the bugle took up the urgent call. “With me!”
He turned without another word, charging to meet the Siddarmarkians without even looking back.
Every single one of his men followed at his heels.
* * *
“Second Platoon’s gone, Sir!” Sergeant Stahdmaiyr said, and Zhames Trynyr swore. Fourth Platoon had already crumbled and 1st and 3rd were fighting for their lives. If 2nd was gone.…
“Anything from Captain Yairdyn?” he demanded.
“Nothin’, Sir. But it don’t look good,” Stahdmaiyr said grimly. “Looks like the left’s clear back t’ the reserve line.”
“Chihiro,” Tyrnyr breathed. If Yairdyn had been driven back that far.…
“We can’t hold them, Wylsynn.” His voice was bleak, his face grim. “Go find Captain Zholsyn. Tell him it’s time to get as many out as he can. We’ll buy him as much time as we can.”
“I’ll send a runner,” Stahdmaiyr promised.
“No, damn it! Go yourself, Make sure the frigging order gets through!”
“I’ll send a good man.”
“You’ll take it yoursel—!”
“No, Sir,” Stahdmaiyr said flatly. “I won’t.” He showed his
teeth for an instant, white as bone under the star shells. “Happen you can court-martial me later, if you’ve a mind to.”
Tyrnyr opened his mouth again, only to close it with a snap. There was no time … and he knew the sergeant wouldn’t go, anyway.
“All right then, you frigging idiot,” he said softly, squeezing the older man’s shoulder. Then he cleared his throat. “You’d best get it off quickly, though.”
“I’ll do that thing,” Stahdmaiyr told him, and Tyrnyr drew his pistol and checked the priming while the tide of battle rolled towards him in the staccato thunder of exploding grenades and the rattle of gunfire.
* * *
“Message for Colonel Sheldyn! Where’s Colonel Sheldyn?!”
The exhausted, mud-spattered courier half ran and half staggered into the Zhonesberg command post. He couldn’t have been a day over nineteen, although the insignia of a lieutenant was visible through the liberal coating of mud, and he scrubbed fresh muck off his face as he stared around the dripping, poorly lit hut.
“Here!” Gylchryst Sheldyn straightened, turning away from the map table. The light was so bad he’d had his nose almost touching it and still found the smaller labels almost impossible to read. “What message? And who sent it?”
The courier swayed on his feet as he scrabbled in his shoulder pouch and found the hastily sealed letter.
“From Colonel Hyndyrsyn, Sir.” Urgency burned through the hoarse fatigue of his voice. “The Switch’s been overrun. Captain Tyrnyr’s dead—we think—and no more than a hundred of his people got out.”
Sheldyn’s face tightened. He didn’t need to be able to see any maps to understand what that meant.
The heretics had taken Byrtyn’s Crossing just over a five-day ago, after driving the Army of the Seridahn out of Fyrayth in two five-days of heavy fighting. They’d obviously received a significant number of heavy angle-guns, and the heretic Hanth had used them to devastating effect on the Fyrayth defenses.
That was … unfortunate, since, Fyrayth had been the most important barrier, short of the border fortresses of Bryxtyn and Waymeet, against Hanth’s advance into Dohlar itself. It had dominated the highest ground along the entire length of the Sheryl-Seridahn Canal, and that alone would have made its capture a critical loss. Worse, though, its loss had let Hanth out of the bottomless quagmire which had mired his every effort to repeat the short, flanking hooks which had driven the Army of the Seridahn back, step by bloody step, before the winter rains set in in earnest. Drainage west of the Fyrayth Hills was far better, the ground was firmer, and the network of small farming communities between Fyrayth and the border provided a network of roads. They were little more than farming tracks, but they still offered far better mobility for troops and supplies than anything east of the hills.
