a cross upon the plain!
But the forts still crowned the height
With a bitter iron crown!
They had lived to flame and fight,
They had lived to keep the Town!
And they poured their havoc down
All that day . . . and all that night . . .
Each morning when the dazed defenders looked out at the swarming, teeming enemy they felt despair, yet still they fought. One night the enemy finally succeeded in gaining a major bridgehead across the river, a salient that couldn't be dislodged, and the Guldur began to work their way up the slopes. Now vast numbers of hastily trained riflemen and musketeers manned the ramparts and added their fire to the withering barrages that swept down the bluffs. Yet still the enemy advanced.
So they stormed the iron Hill,
O'er the sleepers lying still,
And their trumpets sang them forward through the dull succeeding dawns,
But the thunder flung them wide,
And they crumpled up and died,
They had waged the war of monarchs—and they died the death of pawns.
The sailors—Stolsh, Sylvan and Westerness—spent most of their time on board their ships waiting for any possible attack upon the Pier. They were under orders to stay out of the ground battle. They wouldn't tip the balance much on the ground. Barely trained militia could man the ramparts almost as well as a sailor.
Only Melville's two rangers were active in the front lines, happily serving as snipers to wipe out enemy gun crews and key leaders. Technically this was disobeying his orders, but the rangers' unique status as elite, attached, ground troops made this acceptable in his mind. Also, although it was dangerous on the battlements, Melville couldn't bring himself to stay away, and the Stolsh and Sylvan admirals were often there beside him.
As the battle unfolded it became increasingly clear that they would be defeated. The defenders' only real option was to hurt the hateful enemy as much as possible and then evacuate, and only well-trained sailors could do that. Militia couldn't fight through the blockading armada. And soldiers couldn't evacuate beloved family members. But first they would make the enemy pay, and pay, and pay.
But the forts still stood . . . Their breath
Swept the foemen like a blade,
Though ten thousand men were paid
To the hungry purse of Death,
Though the field was wet with blood,
Still the bold defences stood,
Stood!
Then one night at moonrise the Guldur king came to look upon that which he had wrought. He was a huge cur upon a white horse, dressed in a red-trimmed gray uniform. Surrounded by an elite cavalry regiment, he came down to the river's edge. All along the line the Stolsh cannons paused as the mortal personification of their foe looked across the river and gazed up at the bluffs. Arrogantly, without a flag of truce, he surveyed the battlefield.
And the King came out with his bodyguard
at the day's departing gleam—
And the moon rode up behind the smoke
and showed the King his dream.
For a moment the grim battle ceased, and only the constant, tragic cry of the wounded echoed down the slope. A writhing sea of maimed and wounded, crawling over the dead, envying the dead, cried out to their king.
Three hundred thousand men, but not enough
To break this township on a winding stream;
More yet must fall, and more, ere the red stuff
That built a nation's manhood may redeem
The Master's hopes and realize his dream.
Beside the Guldur king, riding as an equal, was a figure wearing a hooded black robe. Who could have dreamed that such a target would appear? Melville cursed and wished that his rangers were here, but they were contributing to the battle as snipers now; which was a daylight activity, and they were back at the ship getting some well deserved rest. The two BARs with expert gunners would have cut the enemy force to ribbons, but the precious BARs and their few thousand rounds of ammunition weren't here. They were being held back out of danger, for a key, future battle. Melville cursed himself. Who could have imagined that an opportunity like this would arise!
He yearned to give the order to strike down that distant figure, but only Broadax and Ulrich and his squad of marine bodyguards were with him. He grabbed a rifle from a nearby Stolsh soldier and took aim. Westminster or Valandil might have made it, but it was virtually an impossible shot for him, or for his marines. Nevertheless, he would try. He would do his best.
"On my command, open fire on the enemy leader!" he called out to his marines, and they eagerly leaned or knelt against the walls to take careful aim.
"No! Don't!" shouted the Sylvan admiral beside him. "We do not wage war on leaders."
Ulrich and Broadax gave synchronized snarls and drew their weapons, turning their backs to their captain, facing the surrounding Stolsh and Sylvan leaders and staff officers. The squad of Westerness marines never wavered as they waited patiently for their captain's order to fire.
"Haven't you figured it out yet?" asked Melville. "War as you know it is over. Now you battle evil itself. Before you is an enemy who is no respecter of kings. They murdered our captain under a flag of truce, and they'll do the same to you. Here is an enemy who will intentionally, remorselessly butcher men, women and children, and then make the survivors envy the dead. You can no longer play by the old rules. Strike! Strike with every gun and pray that you slay your foe!"
The Sylvan admiral and the Stolsh commander exchanged glances. "He is riight," said the ancient commander, sadly. "The oold ways aare goone." With a deep, booming voice he continued fiercely, "Ie willl diee with this cityy, and befoore Ie diee Ie willl killl everyy Guulduur Ie caan! Aalll caannoon, aalll rifles, aat myy commaand, yoou willl fire aat the enemyy commaander!"
Many of the cannon had already been shifted to bear on this new target, the rest shifted eagerly, swiftly. The riflemen waited impatiently. The word rippled down the ramparts. Finally, as the moon rose and the enemy force began to pull back, the old general gave his order, in a deep booming voice, "FIIRE!!" Such a command would have echoed like a gunshot across the wide river valley, but in this case his "echo" was a vast array of cannons and muskets roaring out defiance and hate.
Melville and his bodyguards joined in the fusillade firing at the distant target. The Guldur bodyguards around the king staggered and fell. His mysterious, hooded comrade turned his horse and raced away. The king himself had his horse shot out from under him. He scrambled over the mounds of Guldur dead. He was a little gray louse upon a great, vast corpse. Then he disappeared into the darkness as a cloud came across the moon.
One barrow, borne of women, lifts them high,
Built up of many a thousand tragic dead.
Nursed on their mothers' bosoms, now they lie—
A Golgotha, all shattered, torn and sped,
A mountain for those royal feet to tread.
Chapter the 13th
Rear Guard:
Not the Be-medalled Commander
Not of the princes and prelates with periwigged charioteers
Riding triumphantly laureled to lap the fat of the years,
Rather the scorned—the rejected—the men hemmed in with spears;
"A Consecration"
John Masefield
The next morning a cold rain swept down from the north. On that tragic morn the Guldur's Orak allies joined the attack and the walls of Ai finally fell. As the rain and cold swept away the sweltering heat, so did the Orak forces sweep away the brave defenders of the last Stolsh stronghold on Ambergris, and drive them from their world. No one had known that the Guldur were allied with the Orak, but now they understood who it was that rode beside the King of Curs as an equal.
If the Guldur were canine derived, then the Orak were from porcine stock. Pigs, swine, hogs, and porkers, they were called, but in reality they were like huge boars standing upright, with sword, shield and tusks
rending all before them.
The same ancient, Ur-civilization that seeded the galaxy with human, Sylvan and Dwarrowdelf to live on worlds with varied gravities, and Stolsh to live on aquatic worlds, had also chosen to wander farther afield in their genetic manipulation of the basic human stock. The Guldur were a strange cross of human and canine, but they were still far more man than dog, just as the Orak were more human than porcine. Most of these races could, reputedly, interbreed. Just as all the diverse breeds of canines or felines could generally mate and reproduce, although some such matches were reported to produce only sterile "mules."
Little was known about the Guldur, and even less about the Orak. They were from a distant part of the galaxy, far to the galactic east of the Guldur's star empire, and this was one of the elite divisions of that vast distant realm. The presence of this new enemy added a frightening new dimension to the war.
They must have been staged and ready to attack long before their leader came out with the Guldur king to survey the battlefield. Their attack was perfectly equipped and prepared, and it broke the back of the Stolsh defenders in less than an hour.
In the streets of Ai, chaos reigned.
There was one narrow street leading up to the Pier, and he stood astride it like a colossus. He was the biggest Stolsh Melville had ever seen, dressed in full armor, like some ancient knight. Every surface was polished to a mirrorlike luster, reflecting the rainy skies in dismal splendor. When he stepped forward and shook hands it sounded like a brass band rolling gently down a steep hill. Shaking his armored hand was like grabbing a sack of large bolts.
He was Marshall DuuYaan, the commander of the Stolsh rear guard. He'd seen combat on many worlds before, and his people called him the "bravest of the brave." Now Melville and his small force of sailors and marines were attached to him for this final defense. Melville had volunteered his men, and he was accepted with the same admonition that the Westerness consul had given him, "Doo noot becoome decisivelyy engaaged. Yoour ship willl be neeeded sooon."
The sudden fall of the city walls caused their carefully conceived, complex plans to collapse. Most of the preselected refugees had struggled through the panic-stricken mobs to the Pier, but they needed time to board and escape from the rapidly advancing enemy forces. The rest of the city's occupants, the vast majority of the remaining Stolsh population on Ambergris, were fleeing into the hinterland. But they, too, needed time to escape.
Time. It was all about time. Napoleon is reputed to have said, when asked by one of his generals for more time, "Ask of me anything but time." In war, time is almost always purchased with lives.
Much of DuuYaan's ad hoc force was already defeated and destroyed in desperate street battles. They'd traded their lives for time. Time for their wives and children to escape. Elite forces had been held in reserve for this mission, but now the rear guard was a tangled remnant of screaming, dying creatures battling in the street as Melville and DuuYaan looked on.
Melville watched in awe, with tears in his eyes as they died. No one ran, no one panicked. Each defender was a hero to the end. No, it was not about the "princes and prelates with periwigged charioteer." It was about these men . . .
The men in tattered battalion which fights till it dies,
Dazed with the dust of the battle, the din and the cries,
The men with the broken heads and the blood running into their eyes.
They'd been pushed back to the final wooden bridge leading up to the isolated high ground where the Pier was located. Engineers were arriving to rig the bridge for demolition. Below them a brook, now flooded with rainwater, gushed through a deep ravine. To their rear, on the far side of the bridge, a battery of light howitzers was being positioned to cover the approaches.
Immediately in front of the two leaders was a four-way intersection. Straight ahead was the battle, behind them was the bridge. Refugees flowed into the intersection from the left and right, and fled over the bridge. These were the ones who had been selected for evacuation. The rest of the city's citizens were headed into the swamps, marshes and coastlines of the outback. There were only three choices in the city that day. Escape to the Pier, flee into the wilderness, or die at the hands of the vast numbers of Orak, Guldur, and Goblan who were murdering, looting, tormenting, burning, molesting, torturing, raping, and eating everything in their path.
The rain pelted down and Melville shivered in his tattered blue wool uniform jacket. After the stifling heat, the impact of the cold front felt even more bitter than it actually was. Added to the shock of sudden defeat, the cold rain seemed to reach in and freeze men's hearts.
Melville's men stood behind him on the bridge, pressed to one side as the refugees flowed past. He and Petreckski, his two young lieutenants, four midshipmen, twelve marines, and two corpsmen all carried .45s. Von Rito and Kobbsven each had a BAR and an assistant gunner carrying extra magazines. Broadax and the two rangers brought up the rear with a reserve of ten marines. Each marine carried a bayoneted, double-barreled muzzle-loader, and a bandoleer of grenades. Each warrior also had a monkey, holding a belaying pin in its upper two hands.
The engineers were scrambling to rig the demo charges on the bridge's wooden support structures. This should have been done before, but the sudden collapse of the city's defenses had caught them by surprise.
"Ie knoow thaat yoou haave oorders too noot becoome decisivelyy engaaged," DuuYaan boomed out to Melville.
Yeah, yeah, he thought. I'm getting tired of hearing those words. But they were his orders, and he intended to follow them.
"Buut," the huge, gleaming Stolsh commander continued, "wee aapreciaate whaatever yoou caan doo foor us."
"We will be here as long as you'll have us, or until someone makes us go away. Either way I promise it'll be exciting," Melville said with a grin.
Even as he spoke, the flood of fleeing refugees dropped to a trickle, and the defending forces fell back from all directions. Left, right, and center, the retreating Stolsh rear guard now was pushed back into the intersection in one great heaving, dying mass of defenders.
An educated eye could tell that the defenders were losing heart. The engineers needed a few precious minutes to prepare the bridge for destruction. After fighting for every inch of city streets, the Stolsh rear guard was starting to crack. Dear God, thought Melville, they have been magnificent. But now, when they needed just a few more minutes, they were going to lose it all. That's how so many battles have ended up over the centuries. So close, so very close. All they needed was a few more minutes. Now was the time for the leader to commit his last reserve: himself.
"Thoose aare myy men, aand theyy aare dyying. Ie muust jooin them," said DuuYaan, drawing a long sword and cinching up his shield. A group of Orak broke through the line and he charged straight into them. The armored behemoth hit the enemy line with an impact that sounded like the brass band had rolled to the bottom of the hill and fallen into a deep ravine. In an instant his gleaming armor was coated with black powder, blood, and viscera. The men around him gained strength from his presence, the line stiffened, and they fought on for a few more precious minutes.
Steven Pressfield wrote historical novels about ancient Greece. He wrote with such scope and power that his works became required reading for military men across the generations. He'd written about what happened at moments such as this. . . .
Someone put the query, "How does one lead free men?"
"By being better than they," Alcibiades responded at once.
The symposiasts laughed at this . . . even our generals.
"By being better," Alcibiades continued, "and thus commanding their emulation. When I was not yet twenty, I served in the infantry. Among my mates was Socrates the son of Sophroniscus. In a fight the enemy had routed us and were swarming upon our position. I was terrified and loading to flee. Yet when I beheld him, my friend with gray in his beard, planted his feet on the earth and set his shoulder within the great bowl of his shield, a species of eros, life-will, aros
e within me like a tide. I discovered myself compelled, absent all prudence, to stand beside him."
Yes, thought Melville, that's what is happening here. I'm seeing something ancient and powerful unfold before my eyes. This is what Pressfield meant when he wrote: "A commander's role is to model arête, excellence, before his men. One needs not thrash them to greatness; only hold it out before them. They will be compelled by their own nature to emulate it."
And so they were. And so they were, for a little while.
DuuYaan was like a lighthouse, his men anchoring themselves around him as they were whirled and tossed by the storm. Then they were swept away and he stood alone.
Melville's men were in a battle line with eighteen .45s up front and a BAR on each flank. He had himself, Petreckski, the two corpsmen, and the rangers immediately behind the line. Broadax and her squad of marines stood in reserve behind them. The two rangers were already picking off enemy sharpshooters who were moving onto the roof lines, firing double-barreled rifles as fast as the ten marines could load them. Behind them the engineers still worked desperately with the demolition charges.
"Ready . . . FIRE!" Melville roared, and the battle line cut loose with a withering fusillade. Each of the eighteen .45-armed warriors on the battle line had a round in the chamber and seven rounds in the magazine. In just a few seconds, 144 .45 rounds were expertly fired into the enemy. It took less than a second to slam a fresh seven-round magazine into place and release the slide, then 126 more slugs plowed into the enemy. Then another mag change, and 126 more.
But the real killers that day were the two BARs, sending magazine after magazine of .30-06 rounds scything into the enemy mass on full auto. Each high-powered, copper-jacketed bullet punched through several bodies, greatly multiplying their contribution to the death that day, as Von Rito and Kobbsven plied their twenty- pound weapons with almost supernatural strength and skill.
Two Space War Page 30