by David Drake
“Not to mention the way Whitehall’s stirred up the commons and the petty-guilds against their betters,” someone said irritably. “The Brigade always backed us against those scum.”
Paratier raised a hand. Silence fell, and he spoke softly into it: “These temporal matters are not our primary concern. Love for Holy Federation Church, the will of the Spirit of Man of the Stars—these are our burden. Raj Whitehall is zealous for the true faith, yet the Handbooks caution us to be prudent. If General Ingreid takes this city by storm, he will not spare the Church.”
Needless to say, he wouldn’t spare anyone else either.
“However, if he were to receive the city as a gift from us—then, perhaps we might appease him with money. This war will be expensive.”
The Brigade troops had to be paid and fed from the General’s treasury while they were in the field. It was full right now, Forker had been a miser of memorable proportions and had fought no wars of note, but gold would be flowing out of it like blood from a heart-stabbed man. The conspirators looked at each other uneasily; there was no going back from this point.
“How?” Enrike asked bluntly. “Whitehall’s got the militia under his control.”
“His officers,” the head of the Priest’s Guard said. “But not many of them.”
“The gates are often held by these battalions of paid militiamen he’s raised,” the Abbess said thoughtfully.
There were forty thousand of the militia, but most of them were labor-troops at best. Half of them had volunteered when Raj Whitehall called; a thousand of the best had gone into the regular infantry battalions. From the rest he had culled seven battalions of full-time volunteer troops, uniformed and organized like Civil Government infantry but armed with captured Brigaderos weapons. The training cadre came from his regulars, but the officers were local men.
The Priest’s Guard officer snorted. “Every one of the battalion commanders he appointed is a rabid partisan of Whitehall’s,” he said. “I’ve checked, sounded a few of them out very cautiously.”
Paratier nodded. “Many men of sound judgment, devoted to Holy Church, were considered for those positions,” he said thoughtfully. “Yet every one ready to take our counsel was rejected.”
The officer nodded. “It’s unnatural. You can’t lie to him, to Whitehall. He looks at you and, well, he can tell.” The priest-soldier touched his amulet. “There’s a shimmer in front of his eyes sometimes, have you noticed? It’s not natural.”
The Priest coughed discretely. “Yet men change. Moreover, not all of the officers chosen for those battalions were hand-picked by the heneralissimo. He is but one man, with much to do.”
The others leaned forward.
“Fun while it lasted,” Grammeck Dinnalsyn said dismally.
Raj nodded. The first set of Brigaderos gun-rafts had burned and exploded spectacularly when the mortar shells dropped on them—and the steamers had brought in cargo ships unhindered for several weeks.
Today was a different story. It was a cold bright day, with thin streamers of cloud high above, cold enough to dull scent. The waterspouts and explosions across the river were clear and bright, like miniature images in an illustrated book. The long booom of heavy guns echoed flatly, and huge flocks of wintering birds surged up out of the reeds and swamps at the sound. The new enemy rafts had their sloping sides built up smoothly into peaked roofs, and the whole surface glinted with the dull gray of iron. Hexagonal plates of it, like some marble floors, as thick as a man’s arm and bolted to the heavy timber wall beneath. A mortar-shell struck one as he watched. It exploded, and the water surged away from that side of the raft in a great semicircle. When the smoke cleared and the spray and mud fell, the iron was polished brighter, but barely scarred.
A port opened in the armored side of the raft, and the black muzzle of a fortress gun poked through. The hole in the center was twice the width of a man’s head. Red flame belched through the cloud of smoke. The forty-kilo shot struck the side of the Civil Government mortar-raft only a thousand meters away. White light sparked out from the impact, and a sound like a monstrous dull gong. The smaller mortar raft surged backward under the impact.
More roundshot were striking around the mortar raft, raising plumes of water or bouncing off the armor.
“The son of a whore’s keeping his rafts fairly close to the shore batteries, too, in daytime,” Dinnalsyn said. “Enough hits and they’ll break the timber backing or spall off fragments on ours.”
Raj sighed. “Recall them,” he said. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”
Dinnalsyn nodded jerkily, and signed to his aide. Rockets flared out over the water. After a few minutes, the mortar rafts began to back jerkily, as the crews inside winched in the cables and paid out on the ones attached to the anchors set closer to the southern shore.
“Losien,” Dinnalsyn said: sorry. Then more thoughtfully: “Although . . . mi heneral, if we put a chilled-iron penetrating cap on the mortar shells, maybe a delay fuse . . . or I could . . . hmmm. I know the theory, with a little time I could set up a rifling lathe for some of the big smoothbores we found here. Fire elongated solid shot with lead skirts like the siege guns back home—we use cast steel from the Kolobassian forges, of course, but I could strengthen the breeches of these cast-iron pieces with bands. Heat some squared wrought-iron bars white-hot and then wind them on—”
“Good man,” Raj said, clapping him on the shoulder in comradeship. “Delegate it, though, don’t get too focused on this one aspect. And this sort of move and countermove can go on indefinitely.”
observe, Center said.
The real world vanished, to be replaced with the glowing blue-white curved shield of Bellevue seen from the holy realm of Orbit. Blossoms of eye-searing fire bloomed against the haze of the upper atmosphere. They came from dots that fell downward, dodging and jinking. Fingers of light touched them and they died, but others survived, penetrating deeper and deeper until some went down into the night side of the planet below. Down to the grids of light that marked cities, and then sun-fire billowed out in circles, rising in domes of incandescence toward the stratosphere . . .
Raj shook his head. “Muzzaf,” he said. “Two-thirds rations for the populace again. Grammeck, what really has me worried is the area southeast of the wall. Meet me in the map room this afternoon, and we’ll go over it.”
Sweet incense drifted over the pounded dirt of the cleared zone between the inner face of the wall and the buildings of Old Residence. A hundred meters wide, it stretched on either side of them like a wavering road. Much of it was as busy as a road; men marching, or exercising their dogs, or supply wagons hauling rations and ammunition. This section was the 24th Valencia Foot’s, and they were inducting their recruits, the ones who’d survived probationary training.
The new men stood in ranks, facing the wall and the rest of the battalion, with the unit standard beside the commander and Raj. The colors moved out to parade past the files, and the unit saluted them—both arms out rigidly at forty-five degrees with the palms down and parallel to the forearm, the same gesture of reverence that they would have used for a holy relic passing in a religious procession. The banner was commendably shot-riddled and many times repaired; it had Sandoral embroidered on it, and Port Murchison.
The battalion chaplain gathered up his materials, a tiny star-shaped branding iron and a sharp knife. The unit commander was Major Ferdihando Felasquez, a stocky middle-aged man with a patch over one eye, legacy of a Colonist shell. He had a riding-crop thonged to his wrist.
That was how the oath was administered. I swear obedience unto death, though I be burned with fire, pierced with steel, lashed with the whip. A taste of salt, the brand to the base of the thumb, a prick on one cheek with the knife, and a tap on both shoulders with the riding crop. Some officers didn’t bother with it personally, but Raj had had the same scar on his thumb since he turned eighteen and took up the sword.
“Captain Hanio Pinya, isn’t it?” Raj said, as t
he men went back to parade rest.
“Ci, mi heneral,” the younger man said, stiffening slightly, obviously conscious of the newness of the Captain’s two stars on his helmet.
Felasquez spoke: “I’m forming one extra company,” he said. “Putting about half recruits and half veterans in it, and splitting the rest of the new men up among the others.”
“How are they shaping?” Raj asked.
“Not bad, seyor,” the newly-promoted captain said. “They’re all over eighteen and below twenty-five, all over the minimum height, and they can all see a man-sized cutout at five hundred meters and run a couple of klicks without keeling over. Better raw material than we generally get.”
They all nodded. Infantry units usually got peons sent by their landlords in lieu of taxes, or whatever the pressgang swept up when a unit was ordered to move and had to make up its roster.
“Odd to have so many townsmen,” Felasquez said. “Although some of them are peasants who got in before the enemy arrived. No clerks, shopkeepers or house servants—all farmers or manual laborers.”
The three men moved down the ranks. The recruits were all looking serious now—taking the oath did that to a man—and they’d had enough drill already to remain immobile at parade rest. With Old Residence to draw on there had been no problem equipping everyone up to regulation standards, and better than the sleazy junk that garrison units often got stuck with at home. Blanket roll over the left shoulder, wrapped around with the waxed-linen sheet that was part of the squad tent. A short spade or pickaxe stuck through the leather bindings, its head just showing over the shoulder. Spare socks, pants and knitted-wool pullover inside the blanket roll. Bandolier with seventy-five rounds, and twenty-five more in a waxed cardboard box. Three days’ allowance of hardtack. Rifle and bayonet; roll of bandages; gun-oil and cleaning gear; cup, bowl and spoon of enameled iron; share of the squad’s cooking gear . . .
“And by the way,” Raj said, when the officers returned to the standard. “We’ve managed to get a satisfactory reloading shop set up, so double the usual firing practice and collect all your spent brass. Work them hard.”
“They’ll sweat, mi heneral,” Felasquez promised. “Although I’d prefer to get them out under canvas ’til the new men shake down. They’ll pick up Sponglish faster with no distractions, too.”
“Ingreid might object to maneuvers,” Raj replied dryly. “Wall duty will give them some experience of being shot at, at least.” The Brigaderos had been infiltrating snipers within range of the wall by night and picking off the odd man.
Felasquez cleared his throat and rested one hand on the pole of the battalion standard.
“Men,” he said, in a clear carrying voice. “You are no longer probationers, but members of the 24th Valencia Foot. For two hundred and fifty years, this flag has meant men not afraid of hard work or hard fighting. May the Spirit of Man of the Stars help you be worthy of that tradition. You will now have the honor of an address by our heneralissimo supremo, Raj Whitehall.”
A brief barking cheer echoed off the surface of the fortification wall. Raj stepped forward, his hands clasped behind his back.
“Fellow soldiers,” he said; the cheer was repeated, and he waved for silence. “I’ve been called the Sword of the Spirit of Man. It’s true the Spirit has guided me . . . but if I’m the hilt of the Spirit’s sword, my troops are the blade. These veterans—” his stance stayed the same, but he directed their attention to the ranks behind him “—have marched with me from the eastern deserts to the Western Territories, and together we’ve broken everyone who tried to stop us. Because the Spirit was with us, and because we had training and discipline that nobody could match.”
The soldiers made no sound, but Raj could almost feel the pride they radiated. Poor bastards, he thought. Every fifth man in the 24th had died in the trenches at Sandoral. Mostly from artillery, with no chance to strike back.
“Victory doesn’t come cheap,” he went on. “But none of us has been killed running away.” Even the 5th’s retreat from El Djem hadn’t been a bugout. Tewfik’s men had been glad enough to break contact. “If you can become worthy comrades of these men—and it won’t be easy—then you’ll have something to be proud of.”
Or you’ll be cripples, or bodies in a ditch, he thought, looking at the young men. Only the knowledge that he shared the danger he sent them into made it tolerable.
“One last thing. Before you enlisted, probably only your mothers loved you.” He allowed himself a slight smile.
“Now that you’re wearing this—” he touched his own blue jacket “—probably not even your mothers will, any more. And that’s no joke. We guard the Civil Government, but damned little gratitude we get for it. Gratitude is nice; so is plunder, when we find it—but that’s not what we fight for. There’s precious little faith or honor in this Fallen world; what there is, mostly wears our uniform. We fight for Holy Federation, for our oaths . . . and mostly, for each other. The men around you now are your only family, your only friends. Obey your officers, stand by your comrades, and you’ve nothing to fear from anyone who walks this earth.”
* * *
“Put your backs into it,” Howyrd Carstens shouted.
“You put your fuckin’ back into it,” the soldier growled back at him. “I’m a free unit brother, not a goddam peon!”
The Brigade-Colonel jumped down from his dog. Sweating, muddy, stripped to the waist despite the chill, the soldier backed a pace. Carstens ignored him. Instead he walked past to the head of the cable and grabbed the thick hemp rope, hitching his shoulder into it.
“Now pull, you pussies,” he roared.
Men, dogs and oxen strained. The siege gun began to inch forward, over the last steeper section of the hastily-built road. With a groaning shout the teams burst onto the surface of the bluffs. It was full dark, lit only by a few carefully-shuttered lanterns. And by the flare of the occasional Civil Government shell, landing in the entrenchments at the eastern face of the hill. Everyone ducked at the wicked crack of the seventy-five-millimeter round going off, but the shrapnel mostly flayed the forward surface of the hill with its earthwork embankments and merlons of wickerwork and timber.
“That’s how to do a man’s job, boys,” Carstens said, panting and facing the others.
Most of the troops on the line had collapsed to the ground once the heavy cannon was on the level hilltop. Their bodies and breath steamed with exertion; the dogs beside them were panting, and the oxen bawled and slobbered. Men ran up to hitch new cables to the iron frame of the gun’s mount and lead the animals back down the slope for the next weapon. Winches clanked, dragging the gun across the log pavement laid on the hilltop, an earthquake sound as multiple tons of iron thundered over the corrugations. The soldiers gave Carstens a tired cheer as they looped up the heavy ship’s hawser they had used for haulage.
“And keep your jackets on,” Carstens called after them. A chill was always a danger when you sweated hard and then stopped in cold weather. There were too many men down sick as it was.
“Yes, mother,” a trooper shouted back over his shoulder—the same one who’d challenged his superior to get down in the dirt with them. The men were laughing as they trotted down the uneven surface, dodging around the wagons that followed the gun with loads of ammunition and shot.
His escort brought up his dog, and he took down the cloak strapped to the saddle and flung it around his shoulders. His heart was still beating fast. Not as young as I was, he thought.
The area ahead looked like a spaded garden in the dim light. Earth was flying up from it, as thousands of men worked to dig the guns into the edge of the bluff facing the city. A dozen positions faced the wall two kilometers away, each a deep narrow notch cut into the loess soil of the bluff from behind and then roofed over; other teams worked on the cliff-face itself, reinforcing it with wicker baskets of earth and thick timbers driven down vertically. Behind the guns were bunkers with beam and sandbag covers, to hold the ammunition and
spare crewmen. As he watched, the latest gun was aligned with its tunnellike position and a hundred men began heaving on ropes. Those were reaved through block-and-tackle at the outer lip of the position, in turn fastened to treetrunks driven deep into the soil. The monstrous soda-bottle shape of the gun was two meters high at the breech, and nearly ten meters long. It slid into position with a jerky inevitability, iron wheels squealing on rough-hewn timber.
Carstens followed it, to where Ingreid and Teodore waited under the lip of the forward embankment. Just then an enemy shell plowed into the face beyond. Dirt showered up and fell back, pattering on the thick plank roofing overhead. He bowed to the Brigade’s ruler and exchanged wrist-clasps with the younger nobleman.
“Glad to see you on your feet,” he said.
Teodore nodded, then waved a hand toward the city. “Our oyster,” he said. “A tough one, but we’ve got the forks for it.”
Carstens peered through his telescope. The white-limestone walls were brightly lit by Civvie searchlights, and he squinted against the glare. A globe of red fire bloomed, and a shell screeched through the air to burst a hundred meters to his left. Dirt filtered through between the planks overhead, and he sneezed.
“They’re not making much practice against this redoubt,” he said.
“Told you,” Teodore said with pardonable smugness.
Ingreid barked laughter and thumped him on the back; the glove rang on his backplate with a dull bong.
“This time we’re the ones pissing on ’em from above,” Ingreid said. He took the telescope from his subordinate and adjusted it. “How long will it take?”
“We’re at extreme range,” Teodore said. “Wouldn’t work at all without—” he stamped a heel “—a hundred meters of hill under us. With a dozen guns, and overcharging the loads—four, five days to bring down a stretch of wall.”