By Heresies Distressed

by David Weber

  They couldn’t have known how many men we had waiting for them, he told himself firmly. Not when they advanced to their present positions last night, at least. On the other hand, unless they’re blind, they can sure as hell tell we’ve got more than they do now! So why are they coming to us?

  Koryn Gahrvai would have given a great deal if he could have been positive the answer was Charisian arrogance or stupidity. Unfortunately, he doubted it was either of those.

  Still, if they didn’t expect to see this many of us, that could explain why they’re as far forward as they are. And it could just be that having put themselves in a position where their only avenue of retreat is down a single, narrow roadway, they figure their best chance is to hit us and hope we break rather than see their unit organization go straight to hell trying to wiggle away through that miserable rat hole of a road.

  His chain of thought broke off as more bugles sounded. This time, they were his, and he watched his own infantry begin rolling forward as planned.

  He scratched the tip of his nose reflectively, forcing his expression to remain calm, while a sudden craven temptation to call his troops back ran through him.

  Don’t be an idiot, he told himself sternly. You’re about to panic yourself into deciding to retreat before a single shot’s even been fired! You’re supposed to be attacking them, not waiting for them to attack you! Besides, if you can’t take them with odds this heavily in your favor, what’s the point of even trying?

  Brigadier Clareyk nodded in something very like satisfaction as the Chisholmians began to move forward. That massive artillery battery of theirs stayed put, not surprisingly. They’d put their guns in an almost perfect position, along the crest of a long, sharply rising slope. The artillerists had a wide open field of fire, well placed to fire over the heads of their own advancing infantry. Of course, there were downsides to that, as well. For example, firing canister or grapeshot over your own troops wasn’t a very good idea. The patterns spread rapidly—vertically, as well as laterally—which meant you tended to kill quite a few of your own men if you tried something like that, and the infantry, for some peculiar reason, didn’t much care for that.

  Which probably explains why no one is advancing directly in front of their guns, Clareyk told himself dryly. I wonder if they’ve had decent artillery long enough to figure out about grazing fire?

  His and Baron Seamount’s own experiments had quickly demonstrated that field artillery firing solid projectiles was most effective when the ground was hard enough to produce ricochets and the gunners had learned how to judge the strike of their shot in order to bounce it through an enemy formation. Grapeshot and canister could benefit from the same effect, although they couldn’t hope to match the effective range of round shot.

  In this instance, the ground was almost certainly too soft for good grazing fire, he reflected. Still, he would have liked to know whether or not the Chisholmians had reached the same conclusions. Sooner or later, they were going to wind up fighting each other when the ground was hard enough, and it would be nice to not have it come as a surprise if the Corisandians were prepared to bounce their shots into his men.

  Let’s see, he thought. I see lots of infantry out there in front of me. What I don’t see is their cavalry. I wonder. . . .

  He gazed speculatively north, once again wishing that he had a decent mounted element of his own. If this Gahrvai was as good as he was supposed to be—and the fact that he’d produced this much fighting power in what had to seem like an ideal position on the basis of everything he knew about the Marines’ weaponry certainly indicated that he was—then that cavalry had to be somewhere. And the most likely place for it to be was waiting where it ought to be able to cut off Clareyk’s retreat back into that blasted wilderness.

  “We need another message, Bryahn,” he said.

  “All right, I don’t like this,” Sir Charlz Doyal muttered.

  The Charisian artillery, despite the fact that it had only a dozen pieces, was angling across the developing battlefield straight towards his own thirty-five guns. That indicated either terminal stupidity (which, given what Charis had recently done to the navies of its various opponents, didn’t seem particularly likely) or else that the gunners on the other side knew something he didn’t. Which seemed entirely too likely.

  Maybe they’re just counting on their greater range, he thought. We don’t know how much greater it is, but if they stay more than five or six hundred yards out, we won’t be able to reach them effectively even with round shot. Not on ground this soft. And I’ll bet you they’ve got a range closer to a thousand or even fourteen hundred yards. This is going to be unpleasant.

  Still, ultimately the only function of the artillery on either side was to support the infantry. And the infantry battalions on both sides were continuing to march straight towards each other. Eventually, that was going to bring the Charisians into Doyal’s range, whatever their own artillery might be up to. And if he and Sir Koryn’s infantry could kill enough of their infantry, then their guns wouldn’t be enough to stem the tide of disaster.

  “Steady. Steady, lads,” Sergeant Wystahn murmured, even though all but two of the men of his platoon were well outside earshot. If he’d thought about it at all, he would have admitted it was really more of a supplication to whichever of the archangels might be listening than an admonition to his Marines.

  The rest of the Third Brigade was advancing steadily behind him through what struck him as a profoundly unnatural quiet. The pipes began to skirl, but even that seemed distant and far away. He could still hear distant birdcalls and the hum and zing of insects buzzing about in the tall, almost ripe wheat in which he and his men lay concealed.

  He raised his head cautiously, lifting just the crown of his hat above the wheat. At the moment, that hat looked far less martial than it did on the parade ground, which didn’t bother Edvarhd Wystahn one little bit. The overwhelming majority of the scout-snipers were farm boys like Wystahn himself. Most of them had hunted—some, like the senior corporal of Wystahn’s own platoon, had probably supported themselves as poachers, in fact—and they understood how concealment worked. The handful of city boys who made it through the rigorous scout-sniper training program had to learn that, and most of them thought it was funny as hell the first time they were ordered to attach random greenery to their hats. That amusement tended to disappear quickly, though, as soon as they discovered how simply breaking up the outline of a human head could make it disappear into background vegetation. Which just went to show that even city boys could learn if their sergeants were prepared to kick them in the arse hard enough.

  He brushed that thought aside while he raised his eyes just high enough to see across the gently waving sea of wheat, then grunted in satisfaction. The Corisandian infantry formations were moving forward, as well, and he tried to tell himself he was glad to see it. He didn’t quite manage to convince himself of that, though. Satisfied that the enemy was performing as hoped, yes; glad to see several thousand armed men moving straight towards him, no.

  Oh, hold your water, Edvarhd! he told himself sternly. And while you’re doing that, check your priming.

  Captain Ahntahn Illian was young enough that excitement and anticipation almost overwhelmed his anxiety.

  Almost.

  His youthful self-image didn’t like admitting that that qualifier applied, but given the sweatiness of his grip on his sword hilt and the queasiness stirring around in his belly, he couldn’t very well deny it. Not that he intended to let any of his men see it. His battalion commander and his senior sergeant, at least, knew this was going to be his very first battle, and he rather hoped they’d kept that information to themselves. He’d been very careful not to tell anyone else that it wasn’t, but he also hadn’t gone out of his way to admit he’d never yet smelled powder smoke in actual combat, and he’d just as soon not have any of the members of his company figure it out at this particular moment. Somehow, he doubted the discovery would have contribut
ed to their confidence in his leadership.

  He looked up as the sound of the Charisian bagpipes rose against the morning quiet. It still seemed distant, faint, like a backdrop behind the closer-to-hand swishing sound of thousands of boots behind him, moving through the waist-high, dew-slick wheat. Behind the muted clatter, jingle, and scrape of weapons, the distant shouts of command from his fellow officers and leather-lunged sergeants, and his own breathing. Morning sunlight was warm on his face, although rain clouds were gathering in the west behind him. It wasn’t going to be as hot as yesterday, and he found himself suddenly hoping desperately that he’d be around to see the rain when it finally began to fall.

  He rested the flat of his drawn sword across his shoulder, as he’d seen his more experienced fellows doing, and concentrated on striding confidently. His breeches were already soaked from the morning’s dew, and his lips quirked in sudden amusement.

  At least this way no one’s going to be able to tell it if I piss myself when the shooting starts!

  They were starting to get closer to the enemy, and he glanced back over his shoulder to check the major’s position. He wasn’t worried about dressing his own company’s ranks; his sergeants knew their business far better than he did, and they would have resented the very suggestion that they needed his oversight to do their jobs properly. At the moment, his job, like that of every other company commander in the leading battalions, was to look confident as he walked straight towards the enemy with unquestioning assurance that his perfectly formed up company was following on his heels.

  It’s a lot harder to do this when there are real people with real guns waiting for me, he reflected. And they do have a lot of muskets. In fact, I don’t see a single pike over there.

  His eyes narrowed as he realized he truly didn’t see a single pike. Corisande’s new flintlock muskets had a much higher rate of fire than old-fashioned matchlocks, and he had no doubt the Charisians’ weapons could fire at least as rapidly. Even so, it was unlikely musket fire alone would keep a determined enemy from closing, and if that happened, they were going to miss those pikes—badly. But the Charisians had to know that at least as well as he did, so why . . .?

  He forced himself to set that question aside, although the back of his mind suggested that he’d just seen one of the reasons there were no pikemen on the other side of the field.

  He glanced back at the major again, waiting for the signal. The distance between the opposing front lines had closed to little more than five hundred yards. According to their orders, they were supposed to advance to seventy-five or eighty yards before firing. If their firepower proved as effective as everyone expected—or hoped, at least—they would stay at that range and pound away until the Charisians broke. If it turned out that, for some reason, their fire wasn’t as effective as expected, the pikemen would charge with the musketeers following in support. Since the Charisians were advancing towards them, as well, it was up to the major to indicate exactly where and when he wanted his battalion halted, which was why Illian was watching him. And, undoubtedly, why the major was watching the colonel, who had to decide where the entire regiment would halt.

  Sergeant Wystahn’s eyes narrowed as the Corisandians continued to wade through the tall wheat towards him. It was odd. He’d felt more than a little nervous when Colonel Zhanstyn had given him his orders and informed him that it was up to him—Sergeant Edvarhd Wystahn—to decide when to fire the very first shot of the battle. Now that the moment was almost upon him, that particular nervousness had vanished. He couldn’t say he missed it, but he did wish it could have taken all of his other nervousnesses with it.

  He had to admit the Corisandians were maintaining almost perfect formation as they advanced. That wasn’t easy, especially when the troops had to trample their way through wheat this high, and it didn’t do much for the wheat fields in question, either. The local farmers were going to be pissed off, he thought. The field behind the oncoming enemy had been trampled as flat as a pavement by thousands upon thousands of feet. One of the horse-drawn reapers couldn’t have cut the unharvested wheat any shorter. Rabbits, hedge lizards, grass lizards, quail, and white-ringed field wyverns rustled and swarmed through the still-standing wheat, fleeing before those oncoming, trampling feet, and Wystahn felt a certain sympathy for them. He’d like to be fleeing, too, if he was going to be honest about it, and he wondered what would happen when the wildlife running away from the Corisandians ran into the wildlife running away from the Charisians?

  A large grass lizard, at least a foot and a half long, ran directly into Wystahn’s chest as the sergeant knelt in the wheat. The impact was enough to make the Marine grunt as the lizard bounced off him, and the already terrified creature gave a high-pitched squeak of panic. It landed with all six feet already churning and disappeared somewhere beyond him.

  Well, that hurt, the sergeant reflected. Not to mention almost making my heart stop. And I’m glad I took a leak before I settled in.

  The thought made him snort, and he glanced back at the oncoming enemy. The lead Corisandians were almost up to the farmer’s scarecrow he’d moved last night to serve as a range marker.

  At an overall length of sixty-four inches, the scout-snipers’ weapons were a half-foot shorter than the standard rifled musket of the line formations, although their barrels were only about two inches shorter, thanks to what someone from Old Earth would have called the rifle’s “bull pup” design. The shorter barrel’s rifling also had a tighter twist, and the weapon was equipped with a peep sight graduated out to five hundred yards. In theory, a man should be able to shoot accurately out to a thousand yards, but what with bullet drop, the difficulty in judging the range in the first place, and the sheer difficulty of picking out a target at such extended distances, it wasn’t really a practical option for the majority of people. A single platoon of elite marksmen in each scout-sniper company was equipped with rifles that were actually sixteen inches longer than the standard infantry weapon, with flip-up aperture sights graduated all the way out to twelve hundred yards. In the proper hands, that rifle could register a headshot at five hundred yards and reliably hit man-sized targets at twice that range, assuming of course that the target cooperated by holding still. At the moment, however, those marksmen were all concentrated elsewhere, probably where the Corisandian artillery had been emplaced.

  Wherever they were, they, too, were waiting for him. Now, as he watched one of the junior officers leading the Corisandian battle line walk past the scarecrow, he slowly and carefully cocked his rifle. The front rank of musketeers reached the scarecrow and shouldered it aside, and Edvarhd Wystahn raised his weapon, captured his sight picture, and squeezed the trigger.

  Captain Illian heard the first shot.

  His head snapped up in astonishment. The closest Charisian was still at least three hundred yards away!

  That thought flashed through his brain, but then he saw the powder smoke in the wheat field. It was to his left, and far closer than the main Charisian formations.

  But it’s still a hundred and fifty yards away from—

  Ahntahn Illian stopped thinking abruptly as another Charisian scout-sniper squeezed his trigger and a fifty-caliber bullet punched straight through his breastplate.

  Sir Phylyp Myllyr stiffened as the “pop-pop-pop” of musket fire rippled across the front of his advancing regiment.

  Like Captain Illian, he couldn’t quite believe his own ears for the first heartbeat or so. The enemy was much too far away for either side to be shooting at the other! But then he, too, saw the smoke blossoming out among the tall wheat. There were dozens—scores—of the sudden, white puffs, and his jaw muscles ridged as he realized what they were shooting at.

  Wystahn felt a wave of mingled satisfaction and something like guilt as he watched his target collapse like a broken toy. Other scout-snipers were firing, taking their cue from him, and all along the Corisandian front, officers and standard bearers were going down.

  The company commander
s who’d been acting as living guidons for their men were the primary targets, and the deadly accurate rifle fire went through them like a reaper. As far as Wystahn could tell, every single one of them was hit at least once, and behind them, unit standards toppled as other riflemen targeted their bearers.

  The entire enemy formation wavered in shock, but Wystahn was no longer looking. He was too close to the Corisandians to waste time admiring his own marksmanship, or even that of his men. Even with paper cartridges instead of a powder horn, reloading a single-shot rifle took time. Especially if a man was trying to do that while hiding in three-foot wheat. Which was why none of the scout-snipers were even trying to do anything so foolish. Instead, they were busily scuttling towards the rear—much like the grass lizard, a corner of Wystahn’s brain reflected—while doing their dead level best to stay completely concealed.

  Myllyr swore viciously as he realized the Charisians had just picked off at least half of his regiment’s company commanders.

  He’d known every one of those officers personally, and most of them had been young enough to be his sons. Despite that, the rage he felt at seeing them deliberately shot down would have astonished him if he’d had time to really think about it. Officers had always been high-priority targets, after all. The only difference this time was that the Charisians had done it in a carefully coordinated, preplanned ambush. The range was so great, and the accuracy of the executions—and that was what they had really been: cold-blooded, carefully planned executions—was so high, that the men who’d carried them out must have been armed with rifles. And that meant the Charisians were fielding specially trained and equipped marksmen for the express purpose of ambushes just like this one.