by David Weber
Still more sniper bullets were hidden inside the artillery storm, and they continued to reap their own grim harvest from any man who exposed himself incautiously. Doyal couldn’t pick the snipers’ victims out of the general chaos, but he was harshly aware that he was losing men in steady twos and threes, despite the protection of their gun pits. One of the unseen bullets clipped the tip off the feathered officer’s cockade on his own hat, and he started to duck down behind his gun pit’s sheltering berm. He stopped himself barely in time, not because he was feeling especially heroic, but because of his awareness of his men’s wavering morale. So instead of withdrawing into cover like a sane man, he played the lunatic role his command responsibilities required of him. He took off his hat to examine the cropped cockade, then looked at the men around him and waved it over his head.
“All right, boys!” he shouted. “They’ve gone and ruined my hat, and that’s really pissed me off! I don’t know if we can mark the bastards from here or not—but I damned well intend to find out! How about you?”
More than thirty of his gunners were down by now, at least half of them dead, but the others responded with echoes of his own fierce grin, and gun captains’ hands rose as their crews finished extracting the charges of grape and reloading with round shot.
“Fire!”
Dahryn Bryndyn watched the sudden eruption of smoke from the Corisandian guns. Its sheer volume was intimidating, and he held his breath as the twenty-six-pound round shot sliced through the air towards him.
Unfortunately for Charlz Doyal’s gunners, they simply didn’t have the range to reach Bryndyn’s guns. The round shot thudded into the earth well short of the Charisian officer’s batteries, and he’d been right about how soft the ground was. The Corisandian shot were the next best thing to six inches in diameter, but the rich, damp, well-watered topsoil was almost four feet deep, and it simply swallowed them down. Some of them plowed channels across the wheat fields before they finally stopped, and clods of dirt spattered outward, yet not a man or a draft animal was even wounded, and Bryndyn smiled grimly.
“All right! Let’s put it to the bastards!” he shouted.
Doyal jumped up onto the edge of the gun pit, exposing himself recklessly as he tried to see through the smoke of his own fire. Some small, very fast-moving object went by his right ear with a sizzling sound, and he realized that his new position went beyond anything that could be justified on the basis of encouraging his men. But he stayed where he was long enough for the breeze to roll away the battery’s smoke, and his jaw tightened painfully.
So far as he could tell, not a single one of his shot had reached the enemy. He could see rips and gouges in the deep, even green of the wheat fields which must have been left by his fire, but none of them even came close to the Charisians.
He jumped back down into the gun pit, his heart like lead. His men were doing a better job of staying under cover while they served their weapons now—the slow learners were probably all already dead or wounded—but they had to expose themselves to work the guns. And because they did, they continued to go down, in a bloody, brutal erosion of his strength, and they couldn’t even reach the men killing them.
It’s time to withdraw, he thought, astonished that he could have accepted defeat so rapidly, yet unable to think of any other alternative. I’ve got to get these guns out of here while I still have the animals to move them and the men to man them. Koryn will just have to under—
His thoughts broke off abruptly in a stupendous, far louder explosion of musketry.
Gahrvai’s steeple perch let him see the entire panorama of his chosen battleground, but only until the clouds of smoke streaking the heavens started obscuring parts of it. Critical parts, he realized as the opposing batteries wrapped themselves in gunsmoke his spyglass couldn’t penetrate.
Unaware of the deadly sniper fire sizzling in on Doyal’s position, or of the fact that his own guns couldn’t even reach the Charisian artillery’s exposed position, he had no idea of how one-sided that confrontation was turning out to be. Instead, he felt a cautious stir of optimism that the enemy wasn’t having it all his own way. And that sense of optimism grew stronger as Barcor and Mancora finally resumed their interrupted advance.
The Charisians had never halted their advance, however. Or, rather, they’d simply continued closing until the range had fallen to about two hundred yards. Then they’d stopped, meticulously dressing their own formation, letting the Marines catch their breath, while the Corisandians recovered from the disorganization the scout-snipers had imposed. When the enemy resumed his advance, they were ready.
Gahrvai’s budding optimism vanished into icy horror when the entire Charisian line of battle vanished behind a sudden, fresh eruption of smoke. He might have been too far to the rear to realize the range at which the scout-snipers had fired, but he was close enough to tell the Charisian line battalions had opened fire at at least twice his own troops’ maximum effective range.
From the elevated advantage of the steeple, he saw the front line of his own battalions ripple, like trees in a high wind, as the deadly volley ripped through their tight formation, and all too many of them toppled before that wind’s dreadful strength. They were packed so closely together that any Marine who missed his own target could be virtually certain of hitting someone else’s, and the big, soft-lead bullets struck like mangling hammers that shattered limbs and bodies in grotesque sprays of blood. Gahrvai couldn’t hear the screams of the wounded, but he could almost taste his men’s panic as they realized just how badly outranged they were.
My God, they’re going to massacre us!
The thought ripped through his mind as a second, equally massive volley of rifle fire crashed out from the Charisians. It wasn’t quite as deadly as the first one, but that was only because the previous volley’s smoke prevented the Marines from seeing their targets as clearly. And it was deadly enough. Still more Corisandians went down, and Gahrvai’s front began to waver.
Hektor Bahnyr, the Earl of Mancora, watched in disbelief as the rifle fire smashed into his lead regiments’ battalions. Reorganizing around the loss of so many junior officers had been bad enough. Now this!
He clenched his jaw, his mind working furiously as he sought some answer to the looming catastrophe he already saw rumbling down upon his wing of Gahrvai’s army. It was deliberate, he realized. The pinpoint removal of so many company commanders, so many standard bearers, had been intended to make a point, as well as to ravage his command structure. The Charisians had been telling him—telling all of his men—that their marksmen could pick—and hit—individual targets at preposterous ranges. Now they were making the even more devastating point that even their line units could fire at those same insane ranges.
And however they were doing it, it wasn’t with any sort of rifle Mancora or any other Corisandian had ever heard of. It couldn’t be a rifle—not with the deadly speed with which volley followed upon volley. The bastards were actually firing faster than any of his own flintlock-equipped musketeers could have! Yet at the same time, those had to be rifles, because no unrifled musket could possibly have so much range!
He felt his own nerve wavering as the implications hammered home. All of the priests’ fiery rhetoric, their condemnation of the “apostate Charisian heretics,” came back to him in that moment. To be honest, he’d never really believed the wild tales about Charisian heresy, about the way they’d opened the doors to Shan-wei and her dark temptations. But now, as that impossible weight of fire mowed down his men, he wondered.
No! There was nothing demonic, no violation of the Proscriptions, in the new Charisian artillery. He didn’t know how they’d managed what they were doing to him now, but he told himself that it had to be something else like the new artillery mountings. Some cunning new trick, yes, but something any mortal man could have devised.
Which did nothing at all to rescue his command.
He glared at the rising wall of smoke above the Charisian firing line,
then drew a deep breath.
“Sound the charge—now!” he barked.
Brigadier Clareyk heard the Corisandian bugles. They were faint and distant through the wailing of his own bagpipes and the crash and thunder of artillery and massive rifle volleys, but he recognized them, and he nodded in ungrudging understanding.
Whoever that is in command over there, he’s quick, the brigadier thought. Not quick enough . . . probably. But quick.
The two sides were a little more than two hundred yards apart. Advancing at the double, infantry would require at least two minutes to cross that gap, and it was most unlikely the Corisandians could hold together for two minutes under his brigade’s rapid, massed fire. Each rifleman was firing approximately once every fifteen seconds, and he had fifteen hundred of them in his two-deep firing line. In the two minutes it would take the enemy to reach them, those fifteen hundred men would fire twelve thousand rounds at no more than five thousand targets.
The opposing commander couldn’t know that, though. If he’d had time—time to think about it, time to analyze the weight of fire ripping through his men, to truly grasp the rapidity of that fire as well as its accuracy and range—he almost certainly wouldn’t have tried it. But he didn’t know, hadn’t had that time. Which meant, under the circumstances, that he’d put his finger on the only slim chance he had—or ought to have had—for victory. A stand up firefight between his musketeers and Clareyk’s riflemen could have only one ending, but if he could charge, get to grips with his greater total number of men, he might still carry the field.
Only that isn’t going to happen, Clareyk thought grimly.
Gahrvai grasped Mancora’s thinking as rapidly as Brigadier Clareyk had. Unlike Mancora, however, he wasn’t trapped in the very forefront of the disaster sweeping over his army like some inrushing tidal wave. He didn’t have to make the decision in the midst of bloodshed, carnage, screaming wounded, blinding waves of gunsmoke, and the smell of shed blood and riven and torn bodies. He never blamed Mancora for a moment, knew he would probably have made the same choice in the earl’s position.
And he knew it was the wrong one.
Barcor, on the other hand, showed no sign of launching any charges. For what Gahrvai was privately certain were all the wrong reasons, Barcor was doing the right thing, while Mancora—for all the right reasons—was about to make a disastrous mistake.
“Signal Baron Barcor!” he snapped over his shoulder, never taking his eyes from the field before him. “Instruct him to begin falling back immediately!”
“Yes, Sir!” one of his aides blurted, and Gahrvai heard boots thundering across the planking as the young man dashed for the signal station.
Of course, with all this smoke, the odds are no better than even that Barcor will even see the semaphore, Gahrvai thought bitterly. On the other hand, he’s . . . cautious enough he may turn tail and run on his own any minute now.
It was already far too late to stop Mancora, but it was possible he might still salvage at least the majority of Barcor’s men if he could only withdraw them from the perfect killing ground he’d provided for the Charisian rifles. The realization that he was the one who’d chosen exactly the right terrain for the Charisians’ new tactics filled him like poison, and the fact that he actually wanted one of his subordinate commanders to be gutless enough to run away from the enemy was bitter as gall. Yet it was also true, and his face set like congealing stone as Mancora’s infantry advanced into the dreadful maelstrom of the Charisians’ fire.
Why? The thought went through his brain. Why are You doing this, God? We aren’t the schismatics trying to tear Your Church apart—they are! So why are You letting a good man, a good commander, take his troops into a meat-grinder like this one while a cretin like Barcor won’t even advance?
There was no answer. He knew there wouldn’t be one, and his eyes were hard as he realized he’d actually be forced to commend Barcor after this battle—assuming God and the Archangels weren’t merciful enough to get the baron killed—rather than stripping him of his command as his timidity so justly deserved.
Earl Mancora’s infantry hurled themselves forward.
How the handful of survivors from the winnowed ruin of his forward ranks managed to advance instead of running away in terror or simply flinging themselves to the ground was more than the earl was prepared to say. But somehow, they did it, and his heart wept within him at the gallantry with which they responded to the bugles.
They moved forward, stumbling over the bodies of dead and wounded comrades. They waded into the smoke, forged ahead into the stormfront of rifle fire like men leaning into a hard wind, and the meaty thuds and slapping sounds of heavy caliber bullets ripping through human flesh were like hail.
The Charisians watched them come, and even the men killing them recognized the courage it took to keep advancing. Yet courage was not enough in the face of such a totally unanticipated tactical disadvantage. It wasn’t Gahrvai’s fault, wasn’t Mancora’s. It was no one’s fault, and that changed nothing. Almost eight hundred half-inch bullets slammed into them every fifteen seconds, and they were only flesh, only blood.
The advancing Corisandian battalions were like a child’s sand castle in a rising tide. They melted away, shredded, broken, shedding dead and wounded with every stride. They marched straight into a fiery wasteland like the vestibule of Hell itself, roofed with smoke and fury, filled with the stink of blood, the thunder of the Charisian rifles, and the shriek of their own wounded, and it was more than mortal men could stand.
The men of the leading battalions didn’t break. Not really. There weren’t enough of them left to “break.” Instead, they simply died.
The battalions behind them were marginally more fortunate. They realized that all the courage in the universe couldn’t carry them across that beaten zone of fire. It simply couldn’t be done, and they did break.
“Yes!” Clareyk shouted as the Corisandian formation disintegrated.
Pikemen dropped their cumbersome weapons, musketeers discarded their muskets, men threw away anything which might slow them as they turned and ran. A harsh, baying cheer of triumph went up from the Marine riflemen, and yet, in its own way, that wolf-like howl was almost a salute to the courage of the Corisandians who had marched into that furnace.
“Sound the advance!” Clareyk commanded.
“Aye, Sir!” Colonel Zhanstyn acknowledged, and Third Brigade swung into motion once more.
Charlz Doyal swore savagely as Mancora’s wing came apart. He understood exactly what had happened, not that understanding changed anything. He’d still just lost the infantry covering the right flank of his beleaguered grand battery, and it wouldn’t be very long before the Charisian left swung in on his own exposed right. The range at which they’d dismantled Mancora’s infantry told him what would happen when their massed volleys joined the blasts of grapeshot and pinpoint sniper fire already tearing into his men. But if he pulled back, if he tried to get his guns out, then Barcor’s right would be uncovered, as well. And if the Charisian left could advance fast enough, they might actually reach the highway bridge before Barcor. If they managed that, trapped Barcor between themselves and their advancing fellows . . .
Doyal’s jaw clenched so tightly his teeth ached as he watched Barcor’s wing falling back with alacrity. He had no more doubt than Gahrvai about why Barcor was doing what he was, yet whatever the man’s reasoning, it was the right thing. He was still going to lose heavily to the Charisians’ fire, but his retreat was the only thing that might get half of Gahrvai’s advance guard out of this disaster reasonably intact. And if that meant sacrificing Doyal’s thirty-five guns and six hundred men to save five thousand, it would still be a bargain at the price.
Besides, he thought with a sort of ghoulish humor, I’ve already lost so many dragons and horses I couldn’t get more than half of the battery out of here, anyway.
His heart ached at what he was about to demand of the men he’d trained and led, yet he drew a
deep breath and turned to the commander of his right flank battery. The major who had commanded that battery half an hour ago was dead. The captain who’d been his executive officer up until ten minutes ago was wounded. Command of the entire battery had devolved onto the shoulders of a lieutenant who couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. The young man’s face was white and set under its coating grime of powder smoke, but he met Doyal’s eyes steadily.
“Swing your battery to cover our flank, Lieutenant,” Doyal said, and forced himself to smile. “It looks like we’re going to get a bit lonely.”
APRIL,
YEAR OF GOD 893
. I .
The Temple
and Madame Ahnzhelyk’s,
City of Zion,
The Temple Lands
The side conversations in the Grand Council Chamber were more hushed than usual this year.
The chamber itself had been meticulously prepared for the afternoon’s ceremony. Ancient tradition said the Archangel Langhorne himself had sat in council with his fellows in this very chamber, and its magnificent wall mosaics and the enormous, beautifully detailed map of the world—four times a man’s height—inlaid into one wall certainly supported the tradition. Portraits of past Grand Vicars hung down another wall, and the floor, paved in imperishable, mystically sealed lapis lazuli like the floor of the Temple sanctuary itself, was covered with priceless carpets from Harchong, Desnair, and Sodar. An entire army of servants had spent the past five-day dusting, mopping, polishing, honing the chamber’s normal magnificence to the very pinnacle of splendor.
The glittering crowd of vicars seated in the chamber’s luxuriously comfortable chairs made a fitting match for the enormous room in which they had gathered. Jewels glinted and flashed, bullion embroidery gleamed, and priests’ caps glittered with gems. The air in the chamber circulated smoothly, soundlessly, warmed to exactly the proper temperature by the Temple’s mystic wonders, despite the snow falling outside the Temple Annex in which this treasure box of a meeting room was housed. Perfect, softly glowing illumination poured down from the chamber’s lofty ceiling, lighting every detail of priceless artwork and sumptuous clothing. A long buffet table of delicacies stretched across the short end of the chamber (although “short” was a purely relative term in such an enormous room), and servants circulated with bottles of wine, ensuring that the vicars’ glasses did not suffer a sudden drought.