by David Weber
He groped for his cane, found it, levered himself upright, and wondered if he’d have the opportunity to issue any apologies whether he wanted to or not.
“Hit them! Hit the bastards!” he shouted, stumping forward into the nearest gun emplacement on his cane.
* * *
“What do you think, Sir?” Sir Lynkyn Lattymyr asked quietly.
Ahlverez glanced at his aide, then back at the blazing line of the Army of Shiloh’s artillery, and shrugged.
“It’s too early to say, but it’s just possible Duke Harless and Baron Climbhaven are in the process of changing their opinions about the ineffectiveness of those slow-firing naval guns.”
* * *
The Earl of Hanth remembered a conversation with Kydryc Fyguera what seemed like decades ago. He’d assured the Siddarmarkian general that no one in the Royal Dohlaran Army was going to be able to match the skill of Imperial Charisian Navy gunners. He supposed that had been arrogant of him, but the ICN had earned its expertise the hard way. Accustomed to firing from moving decks at moving targets, it was child’s play to fire from fixed platforms of heavy timbers at targets that didn’t move. And that didn’t even consider Charis’ other advantages, like the dispart and tangent sights mounted on its pieces. The dispart sight was a simple post on the muzzle swell to allow for quick, accurate alignment of the weapon’s point of aim. That alone would have been a significant advantage, but the tangent ring sight on the weapon’s breech was mounted on a steel bar that was fixed perpendicular to the axis of the bore in a bronze case. The bar was graduated in yards and moved up and down in the case guides, with a thumbscrew to fix it in place. Raised to the proper height, it automatically adjusted elevation for range when aligned with the front sight and the target. It wasn’t perfect, given the differences in ballistic performance between different lots of powder, but it was far better than anything on the other side and it allowed all the guns in a battery to be fired at the same elevation.
As Lieutenant Bukanyn’s battery fired now.
* * *
Symyn Bukanyn watched the strike of his battery’s first shells. They landed short, which was better than landing long, and he watched several hit the ground and skip. At least two of the ricochets exploded above the enemy gun line, where their shrapnel balls had to have inflicted casualties, but that was an unacceptably low percentage. Obviously they’d underestimated the range to the gun pits the Temple Boys had been so sneakily building for the last five-day or so.
“Make your range twelve hundred! Cut your fuses for two seconds!”
Acknowledgments came back and he saw gun captains bending over their tangent sights, sliding the bars up, squinting to make sure the gradations were properly aligned, while the number two on each gun set the fuses. They worked quickly, urgently, apparently oblivious to the enemy shells slamming into their protective earthworks or whistling overhead, and he felt a rush of pride in them.
* * *
Earl Hanth winced as the first Dohlaran angle-gun shells exploded above the Navy Redoubt. They were as light as he’d hoped, but that didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous. Cones of shrapnel streaked down from each white and red explosion, smashing into his men’s positions like leaden rain. He couldn’t hear the screams from here, but he knew they were there.
* * *
Symyn Bukanyn could hear the screams, yet there weren’t many of them. Firing a thirty-pounder under a protective roof was a … noisy proposition, but nothing gunners trained to fire from a galleon’s gundeck were unaccustomed to, and Earl Hanth’s insistence on providing overhead cover—and Commander Parkyr’s decision against manning the angle-guns until they were needed—paid a handsome dividend as the shrapnel slashed downward. Looking out through the broad firing slits that served as his battery’s gunports, Bukanyn saw the earth ripple in a heave of dust and dirt as shrapnel impacted all around the position.
He couldn’t even hear the balls that hit the overhead.
One of the Temple Loyalist shells hit the ground, rolled, and skittered to a wobbling halt directly in front of the number five thirty-pounder. The shell’s fuse had been cut too long or else it had burned too slowly, but in the event, that worked for the gunners who’d fired it. Instead of detonating overhead as they’d planned, the evil thing simply sat there, rocking, spouting sparks, hissing, and then detonated like Shan-wei herself. Three of his men went down as some of its shrapnel ripped in through the firing slit. One of the wounded was screaming, the sound high and shrill as he clawed at the bloody ruin of his face, and it was only a matter of time before the enemy twelve-pounders found the range, as well. That could be more dangerous than the angle-guns. If the Temple Boys got themselves sorted out, started throwing accurately fused shells at those firing slits in horizontal salvos, casualties were likely to soar.
Assuming someone gave them the time for that, of course.
Bukanyn’s eyes were like flint as the battery’s attached corpsmen pulled the casualties clear, but he never looked away from his target.
The guns were reloaded and relaid, and his smile was as cold as those stony eyes.
“Fire!”
* * *
Colonel Makyntyr staggered as the heretics found the range.
There were no more than six shells in the salvo, but the greater height of the heretics’ position atop the hill gave them a direct line of fire down into Makyntyr’s gun pits. It wasn’t the vertically plunging fire of his own angle-guns, praise Chihiro, but it was bad enough. The massive thirty-pounder shells exploded no more than twenty or thirty yards short of his positions and the spreading patterns of shrapnel arrived like Langhorne’s own Rakurai. The guns had been skillfully dug-in, their muzzles just clearing the low earthen walls where the spoil of the gun pits had been thrown up to protect them, but the heretics’ height advantage negated much of that protection. Screams went up as the shrapnel claimed its harvest of blood, torn flesh, and shattered bone, and his gun crews’ faces were stone as they reloaded with desperate haste.
* * *
Both the Navy Redoubt and Redoubt #1 were in action now. The Army of Shiloh’s gunners fired as quickly as they could reload, pouring shells into the Allies’ lines, but Hanth’s gunners fired back much more slowly. Not because they couldn’t have fired faster, but because they were shooting with cold deliberation. Protected by overhead layers of timber and earth, they returned that tornado of fire with the icy professionalism of the Imperial Charisian Navy, delivering concentrated thunderbolts to their foes.
As he watched the volume of fire going back and forth, as he saw the explosions hammering the enemy’s guns, Hauwerd Breygart knew how it was going to end. The only question was how long the enemy would endure his gunners’ fire before they started trying to extract their surviving artillery from the death trap they’d thrust it into.
* * *
Well, Sir Rainos Ahlverez thought bitterly, so much for that brilliant inspiration.
The steady flashes of the heretic guns were like coals blazing up to the steady rhythm of a blacksmith’s bellows. If there was any diminution of their fire, he couldn’t see it. And whatever Harless might think, they weren’t firing so slowly because of their weapons’ clumsiness. No, they were firing that slowly because they were taking careful aim and slaughtering the Army of Shiloh’s artillery.
It might be a different story in open terrain, where the greater number of their lighter weapons could be brought into play against guns that weren’t dug-in behind walls of solid earth. But they weren’t in open terrain, and matching their guns against the heretics in a duel like this one was a losing proposition.
Sir Rainos Ahlverez didn’t intend to lose any more of his guns—or his men—than he had to, and he turned to Captain Lattymyr.
“Go to Colonel Makyntyr. Tell him that on my authority he’s to begin pulling—”
His head snapped up in disbelief and he wheeled back around as the golden voice of bugles cut through the bedlam. It was only a single bugle,
at first, but it was taken up by others—by dozens, and then by scores, and Sir Rainos Ahlverez swore vilely, betrayed by his own incredulity, as he recognized the call.
They were sounding the charge.
* * *
“Dear God,” Hanth muttered in disbelief.
Visibility was so poor in the gunsmoke-smothered dark that he couldn’t convince himself he’d actually seen it. Not at first. But then the lightning glare of muzzle flashes reflected from the standards at the heads of the bayonet and pike-bristling columns.
Not even a Desnairian could believe he’s managed to suppress our guns! What in the name of heaven are the idiots—?
“What in God’s name do they think they’re doing, My Lord?”
Lieutenant Karmaikel had obviously seen the same thing, and Hanth looked at his aide for a moment while his brain grappled with it. Then his nostrils flared and he shook his head sharply.
“I doubt they are thinking,” he grated, eyes straining as that vaguely seen movement was veiled by smoke and darkness once more. His jaw clenched, and he shook his head again, like a man trying to shake off a hard punch. “If there’s anything remotely like an actual thought behind this, though, they have to be hoping a massive enough assault can carry the outer works by sheer weight of numbers despite our batteries.”
“That’s … insane, My Lord,” Karmaikel said slowly, and there might have been an edge of horror in his voice, despite his bitter hatred for all things Dohlaran.
“That or the act of a man who hasn’t figured out how badly the rules’ve changed. Or maybe both.” Hanth snorted harshly, and his voice was hammered iron. “There’s a term Seijin Merlin and Emperor Cayleb’ve taken to using—a ‘learning curve,’ they call it, from the charts Baron Green Valley uses to measure units’ level of training. The ‘learning curve’ of whoever the hell is in command over there is about to get one hell of a lot steeper.”
Wind pushed aside a wall of smoke, reflected gunfire flashed off those standards once more, and he turned to the signalman at his elbow.
“Signal Captain Sympsyn. Enemy infantry is advancing. Illuminate in three minutes.”
“At once, My Lord!”
The signalman turned to the bulky, swivel-mounted contraption on the lookout tower’s rail. It was almost three feet tall and equally wide, with a lever on its side, and the signalman approached it cautiously, despite the thick glove on his left hand. The smell of heated metal rose from it, for it was searingly hot thanks to the lanterns blazing inside it, and his gloved hand gripped the steel-loop handle on its side so he could peer through the ring sight at the command post at the lookout tower’s base.
He aligned it carefully, then began flipping the lever on its side in a practiced, staccato rhythm.
* * *
“Signal from Earl Hanth, Sir!”
Captain Lywys Sympsyn turned as the shout wrenched his attention from the volcano smoke and fury. He couldn’t see the actual muzzle flashes from here—there were too many earthen walls in the way—but he could see their reflections lighting that smoke with flame as the guns belched thunder.
Now he looked in a different direction, up at the lookout tower—a blacker shape rearing against a night-black sky. The fury of the artillery exchange picked out the latticework of its supporting spars in a lightning glare like Shan-wei’s own crown, but what mattered to Lywys Sympsyn at that moment was the light blinking from its lofty platform. Its oil-lamp flames would have been all but invisible in daylight, despite the brilliantly polished reflector and the lens which the Royal College had designed to concentrate its light, but against the night it burned with bright, fierce clarity. Daylight was the province of the heliograph or the signal flag; darkness called for other means, and he waited as patiently as he could while the signalman read off the flashing message.
“‘Enemy infantry is advancing,’ Sir. ‘Illuminate in three minutes.’”
* * *
“That idiot! That Shan-wei-damned, witless, mother-loving, dog-fucking, Desnairian piece of shit! That—!”
Ahlverez dragged himself to a white-hot, shuddering halt. Much though Harless deserved every word, it wasn’t going to do any good … or make any difference.
Maybe not. But maybe if I get at least some of it out of my system now, I’ll be able to face him later without cutting his throat the instant I get into range!
He knew what Harless was doing, although until this moment he wouldn’t have believed anyone could be stupid enough to try it. The Desnairian had realized there was no way his guns were going to silence those “slow-firing, ineffective” naval guns after all, so he was throwing in the infantry columns, instead. The Army of Shiloh’s guns would be forced to stop firing when their own infantry blocked their line of fire; until then, they’d continue to pour shells at the heretics, hoping to knock back the defensive fire. That was part of the plan Harless had discussed with his senior officers when planning this night’s debacle. But the infantry wasn’t supposed to be committed until after the bulk of the heretics’ artillery had been silenced by his own guns. Now, like a gambler unwilling to acknowledge that Andropov’s luck had turned against him, he was casting the dice in one last grand gesture, to win or lose it all.
But it was a wager which would be paid in lives, not marks, and in that moment, unwillingly, Ahlverez realized what the Earl of Thirsk must have felt when Ahlverez’ own cousin ignored his advice off Armageddon Reef.
At least they’ve got the cover of darkness and all that smoke, he told himself, trying to pretend he wasn’t grasping at straws. The heretics may not even realize they’re coming until our guns go silent. Even then, they won’t be able to see well enough to aim. It’ll be blind fire on their part, and maybe—just maybe—the infantry can get close enough to rush the parapets.
* * *
Lywys Sympsyn checked his watch under his command post’s lantern and pulled the fire striker from its belt holster. It was an absurdly simple device which someone should have thought of years ago: just a cylindrical steel tube about three inches tall and an inch in diameter with a screw set into its bottom and a hinged, tightly fitting cap at the top.
He flipped up the top with his thumb to expose the toothed steel wheel and wick. The body of the striker was filled with cotton saturated in distilled fire vine oil which could be replenished by removing the bottom screw. Personally, Sympsyn would’ve preferred something less smoky (and less poisonous), but few things in all the world were more flammable or harder to extinguish than fire vine oil, and when his thumb spun the wheel against the spring-loaded flint in a shower of sparks, the wick from the oil reservoir burst into instant flame.
And smoky or not, a corner of his brain reflected, it still smells a hell of a lot better than a Shan-wei’s candle!
His mouth quirked at the incongruity of the thought at a moment like this one and he touched the flame to the first fuse.
* * *
Sir Rainos Ahlverez wondered why his teeth didn’t crumble into powder under the pressure of his clenched jaw muscles as the first heretic rocket streaked into the night. The Desnairian guns had already gone silent as the three columns on the right of the assault swept past them. His own artillery would have time for no more than a single additional salvo before it had to cease fire, and he knew—somehow he knew, even before it happened—what that rocket foretold. Oh, yes, he knew, and he wondered in that moment, in a strange, still corner of his brain, who he hated more, the Duke of Harless or the heretics?
He watched the rocket climb, riding its own fiery breath like a curse, trailing a banner of smoke. It rose higher than he would have believed possible, and then, suddenly, it exploded. But not in the colored bursts of light he’d been warned the heretics used as battlefield signals. No, it birthed something else entirely: a single brilliant, artificial star blazing above the Army of Shiloh’s advancing infantry like some bizarre midnight sun.
He stared up, slitted eyes glittering in its light, and he could just make out somet
hing above it. Something that held it up, drifting on the wind like some fire-breathing wyvern come straight from Shan-wei’s hell. And then a second rocket streaked up to join it. And a third.
The pitiless light streamed down across the infantry columns, exposing them in all their naked vulnerability, and the heretics’ artillery retargeted.
.XII.
Charisian Embassy, Siddar City, Republic of Siddarmark
“Anything more I should know before our meeting with Greyghor and Daryus?” Cayleb Ahrmahk inquired as the gentle breeze flapped the awning.
Merlin had given up on convincing him not to perch on rooftops, especially since he was developing an increasingly severe case of “cabin fever.” Cayleb had always hated sending men into battle while he stayed out of the line of fire, and that was getting worse as Charisian troops found themselves in direct combat with the Army of God and its allies. The fact that he could actually see what was happening to those troops through Owl’s SNARCs was simply icing on the cake. It wasn’t as if Cayleb were deliberately seeking to attract the attention of a potential rifle-armed assassin so much as the fact that he was spending far too much time in one office or conference or another. Besides, the emperor was never happy indoors when he could be outdoors … at least when his empress was somewhere else.
