CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Come on lads, put your backs into it,” Colonel Jorg Menyez shouted. “Messer Raj needs this finished and ready to go by full sunrise!”
Arc lights hissed and kerosene lanterns cast their softer light across the chaos on the riverbank quays of Sandoral. Miniluna and Maxiluna were both on the horizon, paling to translucence as the sun cast bands of yellow and purple up into the fading dusk of night.
At least it’s a little cooler, the infantry officer thought. That should speed things up. He’d had the preparations going on all night, what could be done without attracting attention.
There was no more point in trying for silence now, not with two thousand men splashing and clattering as they moved the big boxlike pontoon barges into position. Most of the supports had been beached along Sandoral’s long waterfront, just outside the river wall. Teams of men grunted and heaved, some pushing, others prying with beams and planks. One by one the square shapes surged out into the river, then jerked to a halt as the anchor-ropes caught them. Other ropes were payed out and men hauled in groaning unison to pull the barges to the growing eastern end of the bridge. North of it was a line of cable floating between barrels; each marked a line dropping down to an anchor on the riverbed. Naked boatmen swam out with more lines to secure the barges to the cable.
As each was tied off against the current, notched beams went into the cutouts in the bulwarks, and sections of planking were pegged down on top. Men scrambled forward to the next even while the mallets were still pounding on the one they ran on; water slopped over the upstream side as the weight of scores of infantrymen and their burdens of timber and cordage rested on the end barge alone. Down in the hulls others threw buckets of water overside and screamed abuse at the work teams above.
A long hollow boooom sounded from the southward, from where the nearest part of the Colonial siege line had anchored itself with an earthen fort on the riverbank. A long whirring crash followed, and men froze as a heavy roundshot hit the water and skipped like a thrown rock across the surface of the water by a playful boy. Once . . . twice . . . three times, and the final plume of water was shorter than the others. The Drangosh drank down the big cast-iron ball as easily as it would the boy’s pebble. Menyez blew out the breath he had not been aware of holding.
Two kilometers. A little too far. There were ironic cheers from some of the men, and the hammering clatter of work resumed. He looked eastward. The bridge was nearly to the other shore, where a company of infantry was heaving at winches anchored in the dirt, hauling the last few barges. Nice fast piece of work, he thought. It helped that they’d done it before, of course.
Booooom. A little sharper this time, a rifled piece. The sound of the shell was higher as well. It came much closer, only a few hundred meters south, but struck the water only once. A tall fountain of spray reached skyward, high enough that its top was touched red by the light of the sun rising in the west.
“Close, but that only counts with handbombs,” he said.
Far off and faint, trumpets spoke on the eastern bank. A message began to flicker in from the heliograph station there, as the light strengthened enough for the tripod-mounted mirrors to catch it.
The problem was that there were other heliograph relays farther down the river—Colonial ones.
“Come on, mi heneral,” Menyez said under his breath.
He looked back over his shoulder at Sandoral. The city was eerily quiet, hardly even a thread of smoke marking the hushed stillness of the morning. Not even a cock crowing; all the chickens had gone into the stewpots several days ago.
And nearly the whole garrison out here working on the bridge, he added to himself. Pretty soon that thought was going to occur to somebody else.
Ali ibn’Jamal lowered his telescope. “My so-brilliant brother has let them escape,” he said bitterly. “Allah requite him for it. And their bridge of boats is nearly finished to receive the ravagers of the House of Peace.”
Everyone else in the clump of nobles and commanders maintained a tight silence. A cool morning wind ruffled robes and beards and the peacock and egret plumes in turbans and helmets, but many of them were sweating nonetheless.
Cowards, Ali thought, and raised the telescope again. The kaphar were working like men possessed on their bridge, getting the surface laid before Whitehall appeared. Tewfik was going to let him ride back into Sandoral like a conquering hero!
“Commander of the Faithful.”
It was one of the cavalry generals, a protégé of Tewfik’s. Who cannot be Settler. But who could rule from behind the Peacock Throne, with a puppet Settler. It had happened before.
The man knelt and touched his forehead to the floor. “The deserters have told us the kaphar are on half-rations—they have been for a week. With another eight thousand men and eight thousand dogs within the walls, they will eat their stores bare in a few days. Then the city must fall.”
Eight thousand. Tewfik hadn’t killed more than a few hundred of them, after they spent more than a week ravaging his lands. His lands! I do not want them to surrender. I want them to die.
Of course, they could die after they surrendered . . . but if he allowed them terms, it would be unwise to break them. Not with Tewfik and his officers so close around him—not when they absurdly, blasphemously valued a word given to an unbeliever.
He raised the telescope again. It was incredible how quickly the infidels had gotten their bridge put back together. Cannon were firing from the walls of the earth fort around him, but doing no damage—the range was so great that only sheer luck or divine intervention would land a shell where it could accomplish anything.
They must have their whole garrison working on that, Ali thought. He could see them clearly now that the sun had risen.
Ali smiled suddenly. Those watching his face flinched and looked away, then forced themselves to turn their heads back; it was not safe to be unaware of the ruler’s moods.
Ah, Tewfik my brother, you did not think of that. All his life he had been in Tewfik’s shadow in matters of war; blundering and hacking his way through the complex problems of the battlefield in confusion, while Tewfik cut to victory with a lambent clarity. But this time, he was the one to see.
“You,” he said to the kneeling officer. “Ubaydalla Said. I order an assault on the walls—an immediate assault. Rise, take command of the forward troops, and execute my commands.”
“I hear and obey, Settler of Islam,” the officer said. He paused thoughtfully. “That is an excellent suggestion. But the preparations—”
It was the expression on his face that moved the Settler; the surprise, that Ali could have come up with a workable plan. He plucked the ceremonial whip out of the man’s belt and lashed him across the face with it. An upflung hand saved Said’s eyes from the nine pieces of jagged steel on the ends of the thongs, but blood dripped heavily into his beard and from his gashed mouth.
“Are you a coward as well as a fool, pig? Are you deaf? I said immediately! If you have time to prepare, so will the enemy! And you are to lead the attack, personally.”
“As God wills,” the officer said quietly. He bowed again, blood dripping on the priceless carpets, and wheeled away sharply, calling for his subordinates.
A whistle blast jarred Corporal Minatelli out of exhausted sleep. It was much like waking up after a payday in Old Residence. For a moment he lay blinking in puzzlement. It must be Star Day, why were they calling him to work at the quarry already?
The whistle went on and on, sharp repeated calls. A trumpet joined in, sounding: Stand to, Stand to over and over again. Then he knew exactly where he was: on the parapet of the wall at Sandoral, with hot white sunlight slashing through the firing slits. He erupted up out of his blanket roll and grabbed his rifle and webbing in either hand, running to his duty station. His muscles ached from a night of hard labor, and the two hours of sleep seemed to have dumped a skullful of hot sand behind his eyes. He was hungry too, mortally hungry with the aching need of a man who had been using twice as many calories as he took in. None of it mattered.
He buckled his belt and leaned back slightly from the wall to make sure that everyone in the squad was at their posts—seven men to hold a section of wall that had been undermanned with forty. Seven men and the six militiamen left of the dozen that usually operated the big gun to his left. Probably the rest of the walls were just as empty. Spirit!
“Oh, scramento,” he said as he knuckled the crust out of his eyes and looked out the slit.
From left to right across his field of vision the Colonial earthworks were belching jets of smoke with lances of red fire at their hearts; the siege guns were cutting loose. Underneath their deep booms he could hear the sharper sounds of the field guns in the forward bastions, and the rapid pom . . . pom . . . pom of the quick-firers. Much of the ground between the Colonial outworks and the city moat and wall was still covered by bloating bodies, and the ripe oily stink was thick—the wog commanders had refused the usual truce to remove the dead. That didn’t seem to be slowing down the men who boiled out of the forward ends of the assault trenches any.
In the days since the first attempt at an escalade, the Colonials had braved constant sniping to rig overhead covers for the last few hundred meters of the trenches—platforms of palm logs and sandbags that wouldn’t stop a heavy shell but did quite well against rifle bullets and case shot. Now the last ten meters or so of that were jerked down, and the soldiers in crimson came out like red warrior ants. They didn’t seem to be as well organized this time, but there were an awful lot of them.
“Ready for it,” Minatelli called, clearing his eyes with the thumb of one hand. The fabric of the fortifications quivered underneath him as the heavy solid shot rammed into the granite facing of the concrete-and-rubble wall. Dust quivered up from every crack and crevice. He took an instant to gulp water from a dipper, stale and welcome as a mother’s love.
The wogs were running forward with their long ladders, built to cross the moat and not break even at an acute angle to the ground. The walls of Sandoral were not very high; they could not be, and be thick enough to resist modern rifled cannon. Others carried grapnel-throwing mortars.
“Now!” he shouted, and fired. Shots were crackling out all along the walls, and the deeper roar of cannon.
Booom. The fortress gun fired. A swath of the enemy went down, but the scratch crew were cursing with the shrillness of panic as they struggled to reload and relay the huge piece; there just weren’t enough of them. Minatelli fired again and again, as fast as he could work the lever—worry about overheating and extraction jams later. Wogs fell, to lie among the bloated, swollen remnants of the previous attack, but they kept coming. Grapnels thumped out of the mortars and blurred up to the ramparts, trailing snakes of cable with knotted hand- and footholds. A shadow fell across his eyes as a ladder toppled toward the wall, slanting out to the ground beyond the moat. He dropped his rifle on the stone ledge for a moment and reached into a bin, pulling out a hand bomb and snagging the ring on top on a hook set into the wall. A quick jerk freed the ring, and the bomb began to hiss as the friction primer within burned.
Toss. A vicious crack over towards the base of the ladder. Men fell, and the heavy eucalyptus poles of the construct swayed. A dozen men cut loose with their repeaters at Minatelli’s gunslit. Thousands were kneeling all along the edge of the moat, bringing the fighting platform under direct aimed fire. A little way down from Minatelli a lucky pom-pom shell blasted right into a gunslit and exploded; an instant later so did the hand bombs in the bin there, blowing chunks of stone and flesh out into the moat and back down into the cleared zone below the city walls. He ducked down and back as ricochets buzzed through the narrow space, then dashed to the next slit. A file of wogs was already running up the ladder—it was no steeper than some stairways—toward the roof of the fighting platform overhead. He fired again and again. Men fell tumbling off the ladder and down into the foul water of the moat; some of them bobbed limply, others swam for the shore.
Boom. The fortress gun cut loose again, and another swath of wogs went down back toward the assault trench—but there were far too many already near the wall. Almost at the same time an enemy shell struck right underneath the muzzle of the gun. The huge banded barrel jumped backwards; a trunnion cracked, and the weapon pivoted sideways with a squeal of ripped bronze and crackling timbers. A gunner’s legs were caught in the way, and the man smeared against the pavement and the iron guide-ring like liver paste on bread.
More carbine rounds flicked at Minatelli’s firing slit. He ducked back again, fixed the bayonet on his rifle, then slung it across his back. He filled his hands with hand bombs, slipping his fingers through the rings to carry them—dangerous, but fuck that right now for a game of soldiers.
“Saynchez! Hold ’em!” he screamed, and ran back down the covered walkway to the dismounted gun.
The other five militia gunners were standing gaping, looking at their dead comrade.
“Get yor fukkin’ guns,” Minatelli screamed. His hands were full, so he kicked one of the gunners in the arse to get his attention; the man whirled, gaped, then went for his personal weapon. The gunners were equipped with shortswords, revolvers, and double-barreled shotguns: just the thing for the sort of short-range scrimmage that was all too likely in a moment. He could hear boots on the roof overhead.
“The wogs is over the wall,” Minatelli shouted, and leaped for the top of the gun.
There was a circular hole above it, with an iron ladder and an octagonal observation-point of timber and boilerplate above, usually for the master gunner. Minatelli scrambled up it, stuck his head out of the hatch, and began throwing hand bombs. There were wogs clambering up onto the roof of the fighting platform by the score—though many were cut down by the enfilade fire of the light swivel guns on the bastion towers to either side—and thank the Spirit, none of them looking at him!
The cast-iron bombs clattered on the stone flags; he ducked back down as they burst with rending crang sounds, and bits of casing peened off the outside of the observation point. He rose again and threw the last of them; wogs were shooting at him from the outer edge, pausing at the top of their scaling ladders.
He dropped back down. Case shot hammered the boilerplate outside as a swivel gun tried to sweep the ramparts clear.
“Hingada tho!” he cursed at the unseen gunner in the tower, and dropped back to the gun. He could feel the heat of it through the soles of his hobnailed boots.
“Follow me!” He jumped down to the decking with a clash and spark of nails on the concrete.
The militia gunners ran behind him as he dashed back. A wog with his carbine slung and a long curved knife between his teeth swung down from the lip of the overhead, hung by both hands and jacknifed himself in to land on the very edge of the platform, with a fifteen-meter drop behind him. Minatelli shouted and lunged; he had just time enough to meet the Colonial’s eyes, black and unafraid. The man was trying to draw the revolver tucked through his sash when the point of Minatelli’s bayonet thumped into his chest. The steel didn’t penetrate the breastbone, but it was enough to send the man backward over the edge, snarling in frustration.
Another landed beside him. A militiaman fired his shotgun from behind Minatelli, powder scorching his side. The spreading buckshot caught the wog in the gut, blasting him over the edge with his limbs flailing like a jointed doll. Another was hanging from the lip of the roof—it was deliberately made with an overhang beyond the fighting platform below, to make this sort of thing difficult. Minatelli lunged again, this time between the dangling legs. The wog let go with a scream and plunged downward. His drop revealed another kneeling above, aiming a carbine. Minatelli fired from the hip; the Colonial threw himself backward out of the line of fire.
The infantryman pivoted. Two of the militiamen were down, and a pair of wogs he hadn’t even noticed stood on the deck. Two more were fighting another; one blocked his scimitar with the barrel of his shotgun, then reeled away wailing over fingers hanging by threads of flesh. That gave his comrade time enough to draw a revolver and fire five times with the muzzle almost pressed against the Arab swordsman’s back.
The body hit the ground with a thump. The survivors of Minatelli’s squad were at their firing slits, shooting and throwing hand bombs. No, one was stabbing outward with his bayonet. The corporal started towards that slit, hands reloading his rifle of their own volition. The last militiaman shouted from behind him, warning in the tone.
Minatelli turned. Another wog was coming at him, carbine clubbed. He caught it on the bayonet, pivoted the rifle and buttstroked the wog in the face; turned with frantic speed and caught another through the throat with the point. The militiaman was at his side, but more and more wogs were dropping down to the firing platform, some coming through the observation hatch over the gun. His men turned from the firing slits. He shouted to them to rally.
Something flashed very brightly, and there was a soft floating sensation. A heavy pressure. Blackness.
Raj drew up beside Menyez at the western end of the pontoon bridge. The infantry commander grabbed at his stirrup-iron. “Wogs over the wall,” he said. “Everything’s committed—no more reserve!”
“I’ll handle it,” Raj replied. “Organize this end and get the remainder and the artillery concentrated in the plaza. Waymanos!”
The lead cavalry were coming over the bridge at a round trot, the fastest safe pace.
“Bugler,” Raj snapped. “Sound Charge!”
The man obeyed instantly, but his eyes went wide. The troops responded as if the call were playing directly on their nervous systems, clapping their heels to their dogs and plunging forward. The floating bridge rocked and shuddered under the sudden impact of thousands of half-tonne dogs accelerating to their running pace. Howls and shouts rose over the massive thudding and creaking; Raj ignored them, drew his sword and spurred Horace across the Maidan, the empty space by the riverside, to the main water gate. It was broad, thank the Spirit; more than broad enough for cavalry to take in four-abreast column, and there was a wide straight avenue from there to the Plaza Real.
He looked westward, squinting into the sun and straining to hear the sounds of combat from the city walls. Green arrowed vectors painted themselves over his vision.
major penetrations at these locations.
“There!” he yelled, pointing with his sword.
Gerrin Staenbridge went by with the banner of the 5th Descott; his reply was a flourish of his own saber, and the men followed his abrupt curve with fluid precision.
“There!” Raj directed the next battalion. “There! There!”
A fourth. “Follow me!”
Not only over the wall, they’re into the bloody city, Staenbridge thought, as the column of the 5th Descott burst out of the street into the harsh light of the open ground just inside the city wall. Broad stairways angled up from the roadway to the fighting platform; right now they were swarming with Colonials, their crimson djellabas a solid blotch of color in the dark shade, an occasional helmet-spike or officer’s plume glinting. More were milling about on the ground at its foot, the survivors of the first wave. They were disorganized—not many in any unit would have made it this far—but that wouldn’t last. Men who’d made it through the killing ground outside and over the wall in the first wave would be too aggressive to sit around waiting for orders.
“Deploy in line of companies!” he roared. Buglers relayed the order every man half-expected.
The column of mounted troopers pouring out of the mouth of the street split on either side of him, fanning out like the arms of an outstretched capital Y with his banner as the dividing point. In thirty seconds they were in a line facing the wall, and moving forward three hundred strong.
“Dismount! Fix bayonets!”
The dogs crouched and the men stepped free, drawing their rifles from the scabbards. Steel glinted as the long blades snapped home.
“Advance with fire, volley fire by platoon ranks!”
BAM. The men moved forward at the double. Colonial officers were hustling the wogs at the foot of the wall into makeshift firing lines, moving them forward in turn. Can’t give them room to deploy. He’d be outnumbered too badly if he did. Unless more troops arrived up from the river, and he couldn’t count on that.
BAM. BAM. BAM. The 5th could double forward and volley-fire at the same time, something possible only with endless practice. There weren’t many Colonials at the foot of the wall . . . yet . . . and more of them were reloading than firing, pulling rounds out of the loops across their chests and thumbing them through the loading gates of their carbines. Men fell on both sides, stumbling out of his line, flopping backward when the heavy 11mm Armory rounds punched them in the Colonials ahead.
A sound of iron wheels on flagstones. A splatgun crew wheeled their weapon around and ran it forward. Staenbridge pulled his dog aside.
“The stairway!” he barked.
The master gunner nodded and spun the elevating screw down to maximum. The honeycombed muzzle of the weapon rose like the nose of a hunting dog sniffing the wind. Two more crewmen moved the trail to his direction as he crouched over the breech. He snarled satisfaction and spun the crank.
Braaaaap. Thirty-five rounds punched into the mass of Colonials on the stairway. A bubble of dead and dying sprang into existence in the thick crowd, instantly filled as more pressed down from above. Braaaap.
Staenbridge spurred back to his banner, dismounted. The rest of the command group followed. He drew his revolver, tossed it into his left hand, then drew his saber and filled his lungs. Bartin was beside him, hook ready, his double-barreled coach gun in his good hand. Their eyes met for an instant.
“Charge!” he shouted, and broke into a run forward.
With a bellow, the 5th Descott threw themselves after their Colonel.
“Charge!” Raj barked.
The trumpeter sounded it; the brassy clamor echoed back from the silent walls of the houses on either side.
“UPYARZ! UPYARZ!” the men bellowed in reply.
Raj snarled silently and leaned forward, point outstretched beyond Horace’s neck. The 1/591st filled the street from wall to wall; some of them were riding down the sidewalks, inside the line of plane trees and gaslights that separated the brick walkway from the granite paving blocks of the street. The heavy paws of the big Newfoundlands made a drumming muffled thunder, and the column filled the road for better than two hundred meters back. Even at a slow gallop it was insanely risky; he gritted his teeth against the memory of what men looked like after a hundred war-dogs trampled over them.
Just have to be careful.
Horace was a little ahead of the pack, beside Raj’s personal bannerman; the battalion standard and Teodore Welf were to one side. Ahead was a thin scattering of Colonials, running down the road; except for the ones turning to run away when they saw that juggernaut of huge black dogs and white fangs, bared swords and shouting barbarian faces. One officer—a high-ranking one, from the spray of plumes at the front of his helmet—had managed to find a dog, in Civil Government–issue harness. It was highly restive under its new rider. Dogs were like that; you had to train with them a good long while before they accepted you, if they had any spirit. He was keeping the reins and the cheek-levers they controlled tight, and slapping at men’s shoulders with the flat of his scimitar as he hustled them into a semblance of a firing line.
His eyes grew wide as he saw Raj’s banner. He turned to meet the onrush, drawing an ornate silver-inlaid revolver with his other hand. He clapped spurred heels to the dog’s flanks; it bounded forward and a little to one side, crabbing against the ruthless skill of the rider as he forced it forward.
“Whitehall!” he cried in Arabic. “Shaitan waits for thee, Whitehall—and God is great!”
Crack. The bullet scorched past Raj’s face. Going to have a coal miner’s tattoo from that one, a distant corner of his mind recorded. The Arab had bleeding wounds across his face in a nine-line pattern, but his eyes were utterly intent. One well-placed shot or slash, and the heart would be out of the Civil Government force.
All the rest of his attention was on the point of his saber. Luck as well as skill saved the Colonial; his restive dog jibed at the last instant, and the swords crossed in a unmelodious skirring of steel on steel. Nimble, the Colonial’s dog pivoted in its own length and started back to avoid the trampling rush of the Brigaderos. The dismounted men ahead had no such option. They managed one volley, an eruption of smoke and red fire. The whole front of the attacking line seethed as men and dogs went down across the fifteen-meter front. Men arched through the air to smash with bone-shattering force against the hard stuccoed stone of the house walls or crumple on the pavement; one landed with gruesome accidental accuracy on the crossbar of a gaslight and hung impaled and twitching like a shrike’s prey on a thorn.
But there was too much momentum behind the charge for a single volley to halt, and many of the wounded dogs kept their feet. The light 10mm bullets of the Colonial carbines were deadly to men, but it took a lucky hit to kill a twelve-hundred-pound dog with one shot. Riderless dogs were almost as dangerous as the ones with swordsmen on their backs; one seized a Colonial by the head in its half-meter mouth and flipped him over its tail with one flex of its massive neck. The rear files squeezed by the thrashing chaos of the front rank, and the thin Colonial line went down in a flurry of swordstrokes and two-inch fangs.
The Colonial officer was very much alive. He took aim again; Raj threw himself down on the right side of his dog, holding on to the pommel with one heel. A trick a Skinner nomad had taught him, and it paid off . . . the pistol bullet went snapping through the air where his body had been an instant before. He drew his pistol and shot underneath Horace’s belly, into the stomach of the Colonial’s dog. The animal hunched itself up in an astonishing leap that made the Arab release the gun and grab for the reins; then two 1/591st troopers were on him. The scimitar flashed against the heavy MilGov broadswords for one stroke, two, three; he slashed one trooper across the face even as the other slammed his heavy blade through the Arab’s stomach.
Raj heaved himself upright. That had been close. For a moment there were no wogs in sight except the ones running away—and running away from a dog in a straight line was a losing proposition. Then they were out into the cleared zone just inside the wall. The main city gate—the one with the railway entrance—was just to his right; it was wreathed in smoke, but the Civil Government’s banners were still flying above it, and the cannon mounted there were a constant rolling booom of thunder. Ahead of him a thin line of Civil Government troopers—the three companies of the 5th he’d left as the main reserve—were holding against a growing tide of wogs pouring down from their foothold on the wall. Just barely holding, and not for long; the Colonials had lost all unit cohesion coming over the wall, but they were forming up again like crystals accreting in a saturated solution, and more every minute.
The 5th’s volleys rang out, crisp and unhurried, but as he watched, they were losing men like a sugar lump under a stream of hot tea.
Teodore Welf drew rein beside him as the 1/591st fanned out into line. “Dismount?” he asked.
Raj shook his head. “Not enough time. We’ve got to hit them before they get organized.”
These MilGov knights liked cold steel, and this was the situation for it. The whole scene in front came in glimpses, flashing through gaps in the drifting clouds of sulfurous smoke. More every second, as cannon and rifle fire pumped it out. Bullets went by with an ugly crack sound. Five men down the line a trooper gave a grunt and toppled slowly out of the saddle.
A captain of the 5th dashed up, breathless. “Sir?”
“Get them out of the way, Fittorio, then re-form on my left and give me fire support. Welf, get those splatguns out to the right now we’ve got room for them. Move!”
The bugles sounded. The Descotters ahead gave one last volley and turned, moving back at the double. The ragged line of Colonials beyond them gave their yelping cheer and charged in turn, unaware of what awaited behind. Unaware until the bugle sang, and the dogs of the Brigaderos howled in unison. The screams of their riders were only slightly more human. There was just space enough to build up momentum, but plenty of room to deploy in the drill manual’s double line. The cavalry came looming up out of the smoke, big men on big dogs, their swords bright. They crashed into the dismounted Colonials like a baulk of timber swinging at high speed; men went down, slashed and stabbed and bowled over by sheer momentum.
Now we see how well their training has sunk in, Raj thought. Aloud: “Halto! Dismount, fix bayonets, forward with fire and movement, independent fire!”
One or two of the troopers vanished into the throng ahead, eyes fixed and froth dripping from their mouths. The rest halted and stepped off their crouching dogs, sheathing swords and drawing their firearms—although some might not have, if the dogs hadn’t stopped automatically. Click, and the long bayonets snapped onto the Armory rifles. The men walked forward in a steady line, not quite straight—more like a very shallow C—taking their dressing from the battalion standard and Raj’s beside it. The front of their formation showed level for an instant, then vomited smoke. The sheet of fire smashed into the Colonials clustered at the base of the stairway.
The detachment of the 5th moved into place on the left flank, swinging in like a hinged door. The splatguns wheeled by at a trot and unlimbered, pushing into place to cover the gap between the end of the line on his right and the bare ground around the gate, swept by fire from the bastion towers.
Raj took a step forward. “Charge!” he shouted.
The troopers leveled their bayonets and ran in pounding unison; he ran along with them. The Colonials wavered, and then fled. The bayonet’s a terror weapon, Raj knew. It didn’t really kill all that many people, not in this age of breech-loaders, but there were times when it could make men run. Or try to run; the stairway that slanted down along the wall was too jammed with men for the ones on the ground to make much headway. Figures in crimson djellabas began to fall from the stairs in ones and twos, caught and squeezed out when the pressure from above and below forced the thick torrent of men to buckle sideways.
“Halto! Volley fire!”
The order relayed down the chain of officers. One rank knelt, the other firing over their heads. The rifles came up, aiming upward into the press. BAM. BAM. BAM. Rippling down the line, rounds whanging and keening off the stone, punching through three and four men at a time.
“Platoon column,” Raj roared. “Welf, feed them up after us—you men, follow me!”
“To hell with that,” the young MilGov noble said, and relayed the command. A column of forty troopers formed, with the banners only a few ranks from the front.
“Hadelande!”
“Upyarz!”
Many of the first Colonials went down with the bayonets in their backs. The troopers to the rear of the column fired over their comrades’ heads, up the broad stairway. From the foot of it, six hundred men did likewise, and the splatguns with their muzzles raised to maximum elevation. Trapped, the Colonials on the stair turned to fight.
Raj found himself shoulder to shoulder with Teodore Welf; bayonets bristled on either side of them, and the banners waved behind. Up a step. Raj caught a scimitar on the guard of his saber, shot under it into his opponent’s body. It tumbled down underfoot, and he nearly went over himself, with no room for his feet. An Armory rifle shot next to his ear, leaving it ringing. He threw himself back into swordsman’s stance, right foot forward, and lunged again. Again. Welf was fighting with a long dagger in his right hand, using the heavy single-edged broadsword in his left like a ribbon saber; blond hair flew about his shoulders as he howled some Namerique war chant with every other breath. Fire swept the stairs ahead of them; Raj’s hair crawled on the back of his neck at the thought of what would happen if somebody aimed a little low.
Or if these wogs had the time to reload. One did. Center’s green aiming-grid slapped down across Raj’s vision, outlining the figure in strobing light. He moved the red dot onto the center of mass and pulled the trigger, and the man spun away with the carbine flying out of his hands. Another target designated; he turned slightly, the pistol outstretched, squeezed the trigger. It was a hand bomb beginning its arc downward towards him, an impossible target . . . impossible without Center. Left-handed, at that. The iron sphere exploded less than a meter from the thrower when the bullet struck it.
A lot of men had seen that, seen his arm like a pointer and the result. It was close enough to a miracle as no matter, to anyone with practical experience of firearms. Welf shouted:
“Spirit with us! Spirit of Man for Messer Raj!”
The Brigaderos behind him took it up; and some of the stubborn fight went out of the Colonials ahead. More and more were running back up, trying for the grappling lines and ladders over the walls. Raj chanced a look over his shoulder; more banners in the open ground beneath the wall: the 18th Komar, the 7th Descott. The stone was slippery underfoot, slippery with red rivulets running down from above. Fire from the ground was raking the firing platform above, deliberately built with little rear cover.
Not often you actually see that, see ground running with blood. The last time had been in Port Murchison, when Conner Auburn’s fleet had sailed into his ambush.
Suddenly he was staggering onto level ground, the fighting platform on the wall; fire from below ceased, and a huge cheer went up as the bannermen waved their flags back and forth. Bodies heaped the pavement. Men poured out of the bastion towers before and behind him, shooting and wielding bayonet and rifle butt, shotguns and clubbed ramrods for the gunners. Ladders toppled as men thrust with poles or the points of their bayonets, through the firing slits and from the roof above.
Silence fell—comparative silence: only the cannonade and the screams of the wounded that littered the platform and stairs and the ground on both sides of the wall. He stepped up to a gunslit and looked out. The Colonial artillery was firing again; shells whined by overhead and crashed into the city behind.
“Get—” he turned and croaked; then stopped, realizing that he didn’t recognize the man holding his banner. There were always volunteers for that job, and a continuous need for them. One of the runners was still there, though, reloading his pistol with a hand that dripped blood. “Verbal order to the battalion commanders. Pull their men back into cover. Get me Menyez. And then get that seen to.”
“Ser.”
The staircase was emptying; men rushed up it to take positions at the firing slits. Others helped or carried the wounded back below; the enemy went over the side to fall like bundles of discarded clothing to the hard-packed earth below. Except that bundles didn’t scream on the way down, sometimes . . . Well, no time for niceties.
A voice spoke in Namerique: “Otto, this whore’s son is alive—shoot!”
Raj looked up sharply and said in the same language: “Check there isn’t one of ours alive under there first, man.”
The big trooper braced himself and then began dragging bodies away by their legs; two of his comrades waited to either side, bayonetted rifles poised, and an ensign joined them with his revolver drawn. Half a dozen of the bodies were Colonial regulars, the remainder Civil Government infantry—24th Valencia, by the shoulder-flashes.
24th’s been taking it on the chin, Raj thought. They died hard, though, by the Spirit.
Suddenly he had time to notice his own panting exhaustion, and the way his harness seemed to squeeze at his ribs. He felt for the canteen at his belt and found it empty, the bottom half ripped open in a flower of jagged tinned iron. Somebody made a joke as he tossed it aside, and he felt his testicles trying to draw up. He wasn’t afraid of death, much—it was more that he had so much to do—but there were some wounds that were much more terrifying. A trooper handed him another canteen and he rinsed out his mouth, spat, and drank; it was water cut with vinegar, cutting through the dust and phlegm in his throat.
“Tenk,” he said—the Namerique word for thanks—and handed it back.
He started to wipe his mouth on the back of his sleeve, then stopped when he realized it was still sodden with blood. There was a little less on his left arm, so he used that instead. Now he could feel the sting of a half-dozen minor wounds, mostly superficial cuts, and a couple of bone-bruises. He broke open the revolver, ejected the spent brass and reloaded, then cleaned his saber a little, enough to resheath it. A trooper swore from the pile of dead.
“This one is alive, and he’s one of ours!”
Raj moved over. His brows rose; that looked like a minor miracle. The infantryman was even more covered with blood than Raj, although—just like the stuff all over Raj—most of it didn’t seem to be his own. A huge bruise covered one side of his face; a rifle lay beside him, the butt shattered and bayonet bent. The rings of a half-dozen handbombs were still on his fingers.
Raj whistled silently, and a number of the cavalry troopers nodded. He went on one knee and extended his hand; someone put another canteen in it, and he used that and his neckcloth to wipe some of the crusted blood from the man’s face. He was young, no more than his early twenties, and rather light-skinned.
corporal minatelli, Center supplied. enlisted in old residence two years ago. literate, watch-stander. Details from the service record ran through his mind with the icy certainty of the ancient computer’s data-transfer.
Damn, if he’s as good as he looks, make that Ensign Minatelli, Raj thought.
The noncom’s eyes snapped open, and he started violently, hand reaching for the knife in his boot. Raj caught it with irresistible strength.
“Easy there, fellow soldier,” he said.
Minatelli controlled a dry retch. Raj checked his pupils; no noticeable difference in the dilation, so the concussion couldn’t be too bad. A day’s weakness and a bad headache. Lucky: any blow strong enough to knock you out was a real risk to life and limb.
“Sor,” he said. The situation seemed to be sinking in. “Anyone else, sor?” he said hoarsely, with a clipped Spanjol accent under the Army dialect of Sponglish.
Definitely Ensign Minatelli, Raj decided. He looked up at the 1/591st junior officer with a question in his face.
“One other, sir—we’re giving him first aid now. Looks fairly bad but he might make it.”
“Sorry, son,” Raj said.
“Spirit,” Minatelli whispered. “Did our best, sor, but t’ere was just too many.”
“You did fine, soldier. You held them long enough for us to get here.”
He slapped the young man gently on the shoulder and rose. Teams of stretcher bearers were coming up the stairs at a run, now that they were a little clearer. A messenger preceded them.
“Ser. From Colonel Staenbridge—wogs back on their sida t’wall. Same frum Major Belagez.”
That was a relief, though not unexpected. This had been the most dangerous penetration, the one nearest to the main gate.
“Raj!”
He looked around quickly; it was Suzette, with Fatima in tow and a Renunciate nun-doctor, who was bending over the wounded men being loaded onto the stretchers. Raj looked down at himself . . . well, it was a little alarming. She finished helping tie off a bandage and picked up her kit, walking over to him with a determined expression.
“It’s not mine,” he said, slightly defensive.
“Well, what about this?” she asked.
Raj looked down in genuine surprise. There was a long slash down his right arm, starting just above the wrist and running to his elbow. He worked the fingers. Not deep enough to really hurt, and it was with the grain of the muscle anyway. The soft scab broke and fresh blood oozed out along the path the scimitar had traced. Must have been a good one, he thought absently. They had some really fine swordsmiths in Al Kebir and Gedorosia, who made blades you could cut through a floating scarf of torofib-silk with; ones that would keep the edge when they hacked through bone.
“Take that jacket off right now.”
Suzette’s voice was determined. Raj obeyed automatically, and caught some of the soldiers concealing grins. All part of the legend, he thought resignedly. Even Horace had his place in it, and they all had to follow their roles willy-nilly. He swore mildly as she swabbed out the cut with iodine and washed down the arm before bringing out a roll of bandages.
“Is all that necessary?” he said.
“It should have some stitches,” she said tartly. “Try not to use it too hard.”
“I’ll try,” he promised. Then he smiled. “I couldn’t let you be the only one to collect a scar from this campaign, now could I? Think of my reputation.”
She gave an unwilling snort of laughter. “Your reputation will suffer even more if you get killed doing a lieutenant’s work. Let the younger men have a chance.”
“When you stay home and do embroidery, my dear, it’s a deal.”
He levered himself erect from his seat on a ledge and looked up. 0900, he thought. Less than two hours past dawn.
Looking down from the fighting platform, he saw that the cleared ring inside the walls was mostly empty. Except for the enemy dead, of course. Burial parties. He’d look in on the wounded . . . Get those fires under control. The Colonial shelling had started more; luckily, Sandoral was mostly a city of adobe, brick, and stone with tiled roofs supported by arches—timber had always been expensive here, and he’d ripped out most of it for the bridge.
“Back to work,” he said, and walked toward the staircase. Flies rose in a buzzing cloud from the stone, amid the faint sweetish smell of blood beginning to rot in the hot morning sun. A severed hand lay almost in his path; he started to kick it aside, then shook his head and walked down the stairs.
The flags crackled in the wind as his bannermen followed.