“And no enemy scouts,” Shinya concluded with satisfaction. “I doubt they imagine our purpose yet.” He frowned. “But that won’t last. We’ve only encountered a few small villages but their people are far enough inland and off the beaten path, far enough from . . . civilization”—Blas could tell he found it distasteful to associate that word with Doms—“that any strangers are cause for alarm. And a ‘heretic’ army?” He shook his head. “They’re no threat, but I doubt we’ll get many recruits. They may even send runners to warn the Doms. We could leave squads to sit on the villages but it would do no good. They can’t possibly ensure that no one escapes, or find them if they did. This forest is their home.”
“With respect, General Shinya, we do have sympathizers here,” Bustos countered. “You should let some Vengadores—and a few Ocelomeh,” he grudged, “scout with your dragoons. Warn the people before we march through. Explain we’re here to crush the Dominion forever!” He paused significantly. “Other than accused dissidents and heretics, where do you think people in the cities get their slaves, their sacrifices?” He waved around. “Off the ‘beaten path,’ as you said. On the frontiers.”
“He’s right,” Ixtli agreed. “You consider ‘frontiers’ to be faraway places, but each city in this land encroaches on one. Trust us. This forest harbors more hatred of the Doms than you would imagine, and more allies for our cause as well.”
Shinya looked at Blas and Sister Audrey. Blas blinked agreement. “Worth a try,” she said, blinking fondly at Ixtli. “Obviously, it’s worked before.” She straightened in her saddle. “But thaat’s not why you sent for us.”
“No,” Shinya said, glancing back at a courier riding behind, then focusing again on Blas and Audrey. “I sent runners to inform Colonel Iverson and Colonel Garcia but in the interests of our . . . new understanding, I felt compelled to tell you face-to-face that, difficult as it might be, we must pick up the pace.”
Blas blinked hot disagreement and her tail whipped menacingly beside her. “Thaat’s aasking too much, Gener-aal. These troops’re veteraans. More importaant, they’re fightin’ for a cause they believe in. Most won’t just faall out when they caan’t go on, like they might’ve once. They’ll maarch theirselves to death.”
“I know,” Shinya said, and seemed genuinely sorry. “But that’s as much your fault as mine, Colonel Blas. More so,” he pointed out. Stung, Blas couldn’t speak.
“General Shinya—” Sister Audrey began, but Shinya cut her off.
“And yours as well, ‘Santa Madre,’” he snapped, using the title the Vengadores had bestowed on Audrey despite her constant complaints. “You might even bear the greatest blame of all,” he added harshly, then his tone immediately softened. “And you should both be proud of that. But the fact of the matter is, our comm-cart”—he waved behind them—“has been picking up some rather garbled wireless traffic. It’s these damned trees, you see,” he explained, “but we’ve heard enough to know that General Cox and his NUS Army have a significant battle on their hands. Details are scant, but it sounds as if General Cox himself isn’t sure what’s going on. But that doesn’t matter, and we haven’t a moment to lose.”
Blas had recovered from Shinya’s brutal compliment. “But Gener-aal, we’ve only made about sixty miles from Monsu. It would take weeks to join General Cox even if we followed thaat main Dom road.” She waved around. “In this? Whaat’s the point? We caan’t affect whaat haappens at El Paalo no maatter how faast we go!”
“We can,” Shinya disagreed.
Blas blinked utter confusion.
“We’ve actually come about seventy miles. But the point is, General Mayta must know about our presence at Monsu by now. He doesn’t have many professional troops and he’ll fortify the city as best he can against our ‘inevitable’ attack.”
“But we’re not going there,” Audrey pointed out.
“Exactly, and Mayta will discover that as well. He’ll then be faced with some unpleasant alternatives. He can march on Monsu and attack our beachhead, but it’s well protected by now and should withstand an assault. Mayta could lay siege, but eventually General Blair will arrive with two full corps. Mayta would probably learn he was coming but could only scurry back to El Henal by then.”
“What else might he do?” Audrey asked.
“Believing Cox is weakened by his battle, Mayta might descend on him—but not only would that leave El Henal open to our forces, he’ll know by then that we’ve moved southeast, toward their capital in New Granada City. I suspect the farther along we are in that direction, the more likely he’ll be to chase us.”
“And leave Cox alone,” Blas guessed.
Shinya nodded. “He’d also, incidentally, wind up trapped between us and General Blair, or perhaps General Cox, coming up behind us.”
“That’s assuming Cox wins his battle, of course,” Audrey interjected.
“I am assuming that,” Shinya confessed. “I hope my trust isn’t misplaced.”
“Whaat do you think Mayta’ll do?”
Shinya frowned. “Honestly? My biggest fear is he’ll do nothing at all, and Don Hernan will spirit him away. I’m not worried about his little army at El Henal.” “Little” was a relative thing. It was believed Mayta had thrown as many as forty thousand men together, but against the veterans of X Corps, they’d collapse in a stand-up fight. “Mayta’s no fool,” he continued. “He showed us that before El Corazon. And then we showed him how not to defend a fixed position. I’m sure he took it to heart. On top of that, he survived Don Hernan’s wrath over the loss of El Corazon and the Pass of Fire. He’s either better connected than we can imagine in some way, or even Don Hernan believes he’s the best general they have. I’d much rather he chased after us so we can kill him.”
CHAPTER 8
////// El Palo
Holy Dominion
This ain’t lookin’ good!” Kari-Faask shouted in Fred Reynolds’s ear. He barely heard over the booming guns and crashing musketry. In spite of everything, the first wave against the south breastworks had been shattered, almost muzzle to muzzle, as Nussie troops shook off their initial terror and surprise—this was their first real action, after all—and their training and superior weapons began to tell.
Like the Doms—or maybe vice versa?—the standard NUS infantry weapon was .69 caliber, but there were profound differences. Even after finally discarding plug-style bayonets in favor of the socket type, Dom muskets remained smoothbore flintlocks that fired a loose-fitting one-ounce ball. They were wildly inaccurate past forty or fifty yards and very prone to misfires in high humidity. Still muzzle-loaders as well, Nussie muskets may not have changed much in appearance, dimensions, or rate of fire over the last century, but they were ignited by weather-resistant percussion caps and they were rifled. This and their ingeniously calibrated sights allowed them to accurately strike a man-size target with a 750-grain elongated, hollow-base bullet at three hundred yards with relative ease. They were thumpers, of course, but few soldiers really noticed recoil in the heat of battle.
Their long-range capability hadn’t been an advantage here, but the fact they still worked and their heavy slugs could slam through two or three closely spaced attackers certainly had been. Regardless of their zealotry and the high-pitched haranguing of their surviving officers, the Doms fell back, stumbling over the heaped bodies of their comrades. The relaxing pressure allowed the troops in sky blue to really pour it in, and rifled cannon sprayed swathes of canister in thunderclaps of death. Rifled guns weren’t good with canister, they blew their patterns all to hell, but at close range it hardly mattered and the Doms were turned to steaming mulch.
They’d hammered the Nussies hard, however, and the breastworks were clotted with dead and wounded. Worse, even as enemy case shot started bursting in the town again, the swirling fog of smoke revealed another wave of Doms. “My God!” Cox had exclaimed. “They’re pushing the broken ranks
of the first assault back forward, at bayonet point!”
“Sure,” Fred confirmed, coughing smoke. “That’s what they do. Doms that break keep fighting or die. If nothing else, they’ll soak up bullets for fresh troops.”
That’s when Captain Anson’s first prediction was confirmed and a large force rushed out of the forest to the east, quickly formed across the Camino Militar, and charged into the blocking breastworks there. From their elevated perch, they saw and heard the sudden explosion of fighting before the first reports came in, and that’s what inspired Kari’s gloomy appraisal.
“Don’t worry about it,” Fred replied, realizing his tone wasn’t particularly encouraging. “We’re used to watching battles from the air. Mostly,” he quickly added, remembering their experience on the shattered deck of Captain Ruik’s Simms at the Battle of Malpelo. “Everything always looks worse when you’re in the middle of it.”
“Not alwaays,” Kari denied. “Sometimes you see better how much things is go to shit!” As usual, when she was excited, her English had begun to suffer. A shell burst on the roof of the temple below them and an officer shouting down at couriers in the street collapsed bonelessly by the telegrapher’s station, the top of his head sheared off. Musketry on the south breastworks reached a fever pitch and Doms fell as thick as rain, but those behind were firing back, on the march. Accuracy was poorer than usual, but the volume of fire was sufficient to take a toll. Horns wailed from somewhere beyond the fighting and all the Doms flooded forward. Point-blank cannon blasts staggered the rush just before it hit, but in an instant, the fighting at the breastworks to the south and east had degenerated into a hand-to-hand brawl.
“General!” one of the telegraphers cried, “Colonel Roland urgently requests reinforcements for the Eleventh!”
Cox glanced at Anson, remembering his warning against committing reserves too quickly. “The Eleventh is in the center,” he said, “where the heaviest blow has fallen.”
“Then pull troops from the regiments around it,” Anson suggested. Cox wavered, and Anson pressed, “Why else would the Doms attack so heedless of loss except to fix our attention? And where are their lancers? I’m certain they’re coming from the west, against our weakest line.”
“When?” Cox demanded.
Anson blinked, much like a Lemurian. “I’d do it now, if I were them.”
Cox took a deep breath, gazing at the panoramic struggle, almost dazed by the titanic thunder of it all. He’d heard accounts of the unbelievable scope of some of the battles their Allies had fought and was honest enough to admit to himself that his imagination had failed him. This was the largest land battle the NUS had fought in a century and he hadn’t been ready for it. No one could be. He looked back at Anson. “Very well. I hope to God you’re right. I’ll alert the reserves to complete the movement you suggested. Go. Take charge on my authority if you must, and we’ll all pray whoever commands their lancers isn’t as aggressive as you.”
Anson saluted and turned toward the spiral stairs. Fred and Kari both rushed to join him, calling, “We’re with him!”
“What’re you doing?” Anson demanded, taking the steps two at a time.
“Goin’ with you,” Kari simply said.
“It’ll be dangerous.”
Fred laughed. “No more than squatting up in this big-ass target of a tower, if the smoke ever clears enough for the Dom gunners to see it better.” He waved behind them. “Besides, there’s nothing but a bunch of old sticks-in-the-mud up there.”
Kari snorted. “An’ when did we ever do somethin’ not dangerous? Don’t worry, we’ll staay outa your waay.”
The roar of battle was slightly muted on the west side of town. A breeze was finally rising from the northwest, starting to carry some of the noise away. And it was a kindly breeze for the Nussies already engaged, cooling them while blowing gunsmoke back in their enemies’ faces. Anson and his Ranger company, accompanied by Fred and Kari, fell in with Captain Meder’s battery rushing to bring up the rear of Colonel Hara’s 3rd Artillery. The jingling, rattling clatter of six guns and limbers pulled by eighteen horses, surrounded by nearly a hundred more mounted men was almost deafening in itself. Up ahead, Hara’s other two batteries were already unlimbering astride the Camino Militar on the outskirts of town, while columns of infantry raced at double time to form up behind them. Fred saw Lieutenant O’Riel trotting at the head of his company of the 4th Infantry and shouted, “Hi!” O’Riel either ignored him or didn’t hear. Young face grim and pouring sweat, naked sword clenched in his right hand and resting on his shoulder as he jogged, he was focused on other things.
The teams pulling Meder’s 12 pdrs, each horse carrying a crew member, dashed past the leftmost gun already in position and performed a wide turn to the rear. When they were even with the other guns on the line again, three men sprang from their cramped seat atop the limber chest, joined by half the men off the horses, and quickly unhitched the gun. The horses, relieved of all but three riders and the limber, moved a short distance to the rear. Fred was impressed by how seamlessly it all went and glanced past the arriving infantry at more teams pulling ammunition caissons. Anson shouted, “Good luck to you!” and led his Rangers toward a group of mounted officers clustered near the center of the forming line. Dragoons blew through it, racing west on the still empty road.
Looking at Kari, Fred urged his horse toward Captain Meder who was shouting at someone to “pull that God-damned handspike out of your arse and put it where it belongs!” Then he cupped his hands and bellowed, “Battery C! Take implements! Prepare for action to the front!” Noticing Fred and Kari, Meder grinned. “You decided to join me after all, I see.”
“You did offer us a job.”
“So I did—here, move your horses out from between the gun and limber. Better. The lads out there”—he gestured at the gun’s crews, removing rammer staffs from the carriages and donning accoutrements handed out by men holding the lids of the limber chests only slightly open—“tend to take offense to that sort of thing.”
“Whaat caan we do?” Kari asked.
Meder shrugged and quickly described the duties of the crew members at each position and how they used their implements. Then he asked a man standing behind a limber chest to open it wide enough for them to see how the ammunition was arranged inside. Reluctantly, the man complied. “That’s a great, monstrous bomb, you see,” Meder explained, “and that man, ‘number six,’ is justifiably hesitant to expose it—or himself—to the dangerous world around him.”
“So where do you want us?” Fred asked.
Meder chuckled. “You’re officers. Sit with me, watch the men. If the time comes when you’re truly needed on a gun, you’ll know better what to do. In the meantime, I appreciate the conversation. No one much to talk to.” He nodded darkly at the officer behind the battery to their right. “That’s Dukane. I call him ‘Donkey,’ of course, and he’s an imbecile. He throws his roundshot true enough, but swears against all reason that one must fire low with canister. Says it’s lighter and must therefore fly higher. Fool.” He snorted and lowered his voice. “And a Jacksonian as well.” He spoke louder. “All proper artillerymen are Whigs.”
Dukane must’ve heard because he sent Meder a glare.
“I don’t know whaat thaat means,” Kari complained.
“Neither do I,” Fred whispered back.
The sound of fighting behind them roared louder and Meder glanced that way. “I do hope we didn’t scurry all the way out here for nothing. Worse, I’d hate to think the lads back there were in a bad way because of it.” He nodded in the direction Anson went. “He seems a solid fellow and most speak well of him, but you don’t suppose he misread this situation . . . ?”
As if to answer his question, puffs of smoke gushed from the forest at the dragoons advancing, spread out, up the road. A couple of men fell from their saddles but the rest started firing back, the popp
ing of their carbines drifting to them seconds later.
“Caap’n Aanson usually knows whaat he’s doin,” Kari replied.
Heavy fire started coming from the trees and animals of all sorts darted across the road. More dragoons fell, but the rest wheeled their mounts and whipped them into a gallop. Almost immediately, a line of Dom lancers surged into the road, spearing men from their saddles. A few dragoons pulled sabers or pistols—large percussion six-shooters like Captain Anson carried—and tried to fight clear. Those outside the melee hesitated, but when more shots came from the forest, they continued their retreat.
“Lancers indeed,” Meder growled. “Dangerous buggers. Well, we’ll meet them with more than a few carbines if they’ve the nerve to try us.”
Kari started to remark that the Army of the Sisters had pretty much rendered Dom lancers ineffective, but then again, Shinya’s dragoons had breechloading carbines, shorter versions of the Allin-Silva rifle, that could fire fifteen rounds a minute.
The lancers had the nerve. Thick columns poured from the forest and galloped closer to the NUS position. The timber opened up at about eight hundred yards and they fanned out in a long, thickening line. About the time the dragoons returned, their horses white with foamy lather, the order came for the batteries to open fire.
“My God, what a lovely target!” Meder exulted, lowering his short brass telescope. “This is the day the Lord has made,” he murmured softly. “Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Glancing around self-consciously he bellowed, “C Battery, load case and hold! The damned wind’ll be in our faces now,” he muttered aside to Fred and Kari, then raised his voice again. “Elevation, one and a half degrees, fuses for two seconds!”
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