The Forge

by S. M. Stirling

  "Holy Federation uphold you," they replied. Everyone leaned inward, slapping their fists together in a pyramid of arms, then dispersed to their units.

  Raj sat under the banner of the 5th Descott Guards, bullet-tattered and hung with ribbons, and allowed the ice knot of terror under his breastbone to unfold.

  Something is wrong here, very fucking wrong. Ahead the strange shrill-sounding trumpets of the Colony sounded, and the line of enemy cavalry began to move. Two thousand paws thumped the ground, crunched through the loose rock that clattered and slid audibly. This is the obvious move, and it's obviously going to fail. Which was not Tewfik's reputation, not at all.

  "Either he's stupid, or he's counting on me doing something stupid, or we are all about to be royally buttfucked," he muttered to himself.

  "Ser?" the standard-bearer said; he was a veteran of fifty, and a little hard of hearing from too much exposure to the noise level of combat.

  "Nothing," he said. The enemy knew the range of a 75 to a hair, and they had positioned to build their charge to full speed before they came under the iron flail. Another glitter and blink as the scimitar blades came down; full gallop now, another line of light as the points of the helmet spikes caught the sun, surging up and down with the motion of the dogs. Their dressing was faultless, which was not easy on terrain as rough as this. Those are good troops, he thought. And disciplined. There were Civil Government units—he probably had a battalion of them on his right—which would flat-out refuse an order to charge against rifles and artillery like this.

  POOUMP. The first gun fired, ten meters behind the riflemen. A ripping-canvas sound, then a puff of dirty blackish-grey smoke a little ahead of the enemy line.

  "Fire for effect, rapid fire, down ten each!"

  POOUMP. POOUMP. POOUMP. The guns fired from right to left, slapping the back of his neck with pillows of hot air. More shellbursts across the enemy line, looking like misses but men and dogs were down, scythed down by a soldier's worst nightmare, artillery striking from above without anything they could do about it except endure and hope. Their ranks closed again with a veteran ripple, closing like thick liquid around the bubbles hammered by the guns, leaving figures writhing or still or scattered in pieces across the barren plain, they were half the distance closer already, and Spirit but it was good to have guns at your back—

  Raj's eyes widened. "Foley!" he shouted. "To Stanson, quickly, beware of a feigned retreat." The boy kicked into a gallop. To his right: "Hold your positions under all circumstances, pass it down!" Better to be thought a nervous maiden than a dead fool…

  Much closer now. He raised the binoculars again; no, no eyepatch… yelling faces, glaring eyes, beards. His mouth was dry, but he ignored the canteen at his saddlebow, stroked a hand down Horace's neck; the hound had its ears up, and it was scenting, big woofing intakes of breath with a pause to lick its nose between each. Thick grimy-cotton smoke from the guns drifted slowly over him, the odor of Hell. Barton Foley pulled up beside him in a spurt of gravel.

  "Sir—" He paused; there were spots of color high on his cheeks under the ruddy-brown Descotter skin. "Captain Stanson directs me—"

  "What did he say?" Fifteen hundred meters, the guns were firing twice a minute, another eight rounds—

  "Sir, he said that you should teach your grandmother to suck eggs, and that I—he offered insult, sir."

  "He was hatched himself, lad."

  "May I—"

  "Off to Gerrin, Ensign, and good luck."

  Eleven hundred meters. A long stuttering crash from his right, a few more saddles emptied, but didn't they realize they were just pumping out smoke to obscure their aim when it counted, Spirit curse them for fools? A dense cloud was growing in front of the 2nd Gendarmerie's ranks, fairly soon they would be shooting from estimates and glimpses and demons knew they'd be lucky to hit their feet doing that. Thank the Spirit for small mercies, at least the wind was from the northwest and it was not carrying the smoke across the 5th's front. Nine hundred meters. Eight hundred.

  "Ready!" repeated down the line, and the front rank's muzzles came up. He thought he could see a slight waver through the ranks of the enemy.

  "Pick your targets!"

  "By platoons—volley fire—fire!"

  BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM, eight times repeated as the front-rank platoons fired. Hands opening the levers, flashing back to the bandoliers. Rear rank presenting with a uniform jerk.

  "Fire!"

  BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Chaos downrange, dogs falling in heaps, he saw two collide in midair as they tried to leap that barricade of flesh and fall, and thousand-pound bodies would be thrashing, maddened by pain, riders crushed …

  "Fire!"

  BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Slowing, nobody on earth could take this… clumps of men pushing ahead, if they kept coming the last of them would die before the bayonets.

  "Tewfik!" Raj heard himself screaming, barely audible over the hammering crash of volley fire and artillery. "Tewfik, you mad evil wog bastard, you're murdering them, you're murdering good soldiers, call them back, call them back."

  Then they were turning back, their own trumpets blowing retreat. Moving fast, too, crouched over in the saddle to lower their target profiles. Leaving a quarter of their numbers scattered down from the ridgeline; another hundred meters of charge and that would have doubled, tripled. The artillery lifted sights to harry them, and—

  A trumpet sounded "charge."

  Raj grunted as if a fist had struck him in the belly. The 2nd's trumpeter was blowing the simple four-note call again and again, and the men in the white uniforms were obeying. Cheering wildly, some even throwing aside their rifles as they leaped astride their dogs and drew sabers.

  "Trumpeter, sound stand fast," he shouted. The young man gave him a shocked glance. "Stand fast, and now, soldier," he shouted, dragging Horace's head around to face his own ranks. The 5th were on their feet now, too, cheering as madly as the 2nd, waving their rifles in the air and screaming County hunting calls as the enemy fled without order, lashing their dogs as if they intended to keep galloping all the way to the equator and the Zanj Sea.

  Raj saw what he had dreaded, men leaving ranks and dashing back for their mounts. A few of those and it would be all of them, beyond holding, blood up to avenge the desert chase and be in at the kill. He drew his pistol and clamped his heels into Horace's ribs; the hound dashed out and to the left, before the 5th's ranks.

  "I'll shoot the first man to break ranks!" he shouted, knowing his voice would not carry through the tumult. The trumpeter blew tirelessly at his side, though; the 2nd's was two hundred meters downslope and moving fast, the sound fading. And the muzzle of his pistol was a message in itself; he managed to get in front of the first to leave the firing line. Barely old enough to shave, he saw; one of the draft that had caught up to them on the road, a Descotter but from the northern fringe of the County. Filled with sixteen years conviction of immortality, and nothing but a few skirmishes in this campaign.

  "Back!" he screamed, pushing the weapon into the boy's face. Behind him the officers and noncoms were running down the line, cursing, calling orders, knocking men down with fists and boots and rifle butts. Raj thumbed back the hammer. "I'll shoot you dead, boy."

  The young man's eyes lost the berserker-blankness, and his saber wavered and fell. "Back into ranks," Raj snapped.

  "Yisser," the young soldier gasped.

  "Sound attention to orders," Raj said. It took three repetitions to get quiet; it helped that the artillery had fallen silent with no clear target except the backs of the 2nd Gendarmerie.

  "Officers to me," Raj called; they were already trotting out. He looked over his shoulder; there was a fringe of saber-swinging melee at the edge of the 2nd's charge as it passed the midway point of the swale and started up the slope, the fastest of the Gendarmerie catching up with the Colonists on winded or injured dogs, but the bulk of Tewfik's battalion was drawing ahead, opening a perceptible gap.
And they were nearing extreme artillery range from this position.

  "All right," he said. "Shift front, space the Companies out to cover what the 2nd had, I want 15 meter gaps between each." To give the survivors of this charge somewhere to ride through and rally, if they could be rallied this side of Komar. Thank the Spirit Suzette's safe in El Djem, he thought briefly. "And I want the dogs moved up to arm's reach behind the firing line," he continued grimly. They glanced at each other; a last-ditch chance to escape, if the line broke. "Let's do it, gentlemen, let's go."

  The line rippled and split at the seams between companies, the men trotting with rifles at the trail and their dogs' reins in hand. Noncoms were calling dressing as they shifted, checking the setting of the men's sights as they settled into the new positions; he saw men taking the time to pry out jams, or throwing down their rifles and picking up discarded weapons from the 2nd. Presence of mind, he thought, as he loped Horace back to the gunners. The more you fired, the hotter the chamber and the more likely the cartridge was to tear and jam rather than extract smoothly. Many of the veterans were waiting with the lever down and the bolt back.

  "Shift position, Lieutenant Dinnalsyn," he said crisply, and pointed to the new line. It was like a string of four dashes across a page; his finger pointed to the middle two companies. "Two guns each behind those, if you please, and no wasted time."

  "Yes, sir!" He snapped out the orders, then turned to Raj. "Ah… what's happening?"

  "Either I'm making myself a laughingstock, or we're about to find out why Tewfik got his reputation," Raj said; he pointed with the blade of his saber to the opposite ridge. The 2nd had managed to form a ragged four-rank formation, and were slowing a little before they plunged over the top and down the reverse slope. "If I'm right, and I pray to the Spirit I'm not, Tewfik's coming over that hillock in about eight minutes, dogs and guns and their little cats, too. Open up as soon as they're in range and fire as fast as you bloody can, that's all I can say."

  * * *

  "Hold steady, lads!" Raj called, as he cantered down the line. "The creamsuit johnnies will be coming back faster than they left, and the ragheads close behind. Stand to it, and we can still pull it off; run, and we're all buggered, it's that simple."

  One man shouted out to him: "We're ready to die game, ser!"

  "That's for losers, we're going to win," Raj replied. There was no cheering or laughter this time, only a grim boulder-stolid readiness. Luck, he prayed. Just a little luck, that's all I need. No more disasters, no more surprises. Probably Tewfik had been surprised when the whole Civil Government force hadn't taken his bait; it had wavered within a cunt hair of happening that way, too. Raj looked at the scattered clumps of Colonist dead with new respect; the enemy commander had calmly sacrificed them to make the bait convincing, nothing less would have worked. He remembered the swath of devastation his men had cut through the El Djem basin. It was unlikely in the extreme that the Colonists would be inclined to mercy.

  "We'll just have to win, is all," he murmured, staring at the ridge. Perhaps he was wrong after all—

  The sound of massed carbines was lighter than that of Armory rifles, but just as deadly at close range. His mind's eye could paint the picture, the 2nd going over the crestline at a full gallop, the ranks of crimson-uniformed Colonists rising as one. Volleys pouring in, and the carbines held seven rounds in a tube magazine under the barrel … He whispered prayers and curses under his breath, but a trained ear was estimating. A lot of carbines, many more than the eight hundred or so rifles the 5th and 2nd had deployed a few minutes before. And a pom-pom-pom sound, Colony artillery. Light quick-firing guns spraying half-kilogram miniature shells from a clip of five. Not as accurate as the 75's, and a lot less weight of shell, but they fired as fast as a carbine… A cloud of smoke was rising from the low swale over the ridge, twin to the one that was drifting and dispersing ahead of him.

  "Oh, shit, oh, shit," he murmured to himself. I didn't really believe it was happening, he thought. Not really. A minute before he had been afraid of being wrong, of ending his career with a reputation for cowardice, the man who sat and shook while Stanson's 2nd charged to glory. Now he tasted vomit at the back of his throat, and knew that fear can put a red curtain before the eyes as surely as rage.

  What, no advice? he asked Center.

  You are the sword of the spirit of man, the dispassionate voice answered. His spine crawled with a different fear, to hear that said of him. There can be no weakness,

  The first stragglers of the 2nd shot over the ridge, like melon seeds squeezed between fingers, the ones with the fastest dogs in the rear ranks. Individuals, few of them even carrying their swords and none bothering to look behind; then clots and masses. A few of the last paused to shoot from the saddle behind them, before putting heels to their dogs. Wounded men and animals dropped or staggered out of the chase all the way down the field where the first Colonist attack had come; now you could see the difference between real panic and feigned, and it was obvious.

  Spirit of Man, Raj thought in awe. They knew it was a feint to draw us out, and they rode straight into the guns anyway.

  He sat Horace with his saber-arm down, the steel clicking against the stirrup iron. The fugitives from the ruin of the 2nd's charge were bunching, instinct driving most of them to aim for the gaps in the ordered line of rifles and bright bayonets. Those that didn't were going to be right in the line of fire, which would affect the actions of the 5th only to the extent of wasting some of their ammunition. Raj's attention was focused utterly on the ridge, but he could hear voices coming as if from a distance through an echo chamber: it was surprisingly quiet here, for a few instants.

  "… remember, dog down, man down. Aim low." Da Cruz.

  "… an' if yer don't have time t' adjust sights, just aim down another body length." M'lewis, talking to the young trumpeter, who had his rifle out and resting across his saddlebow while the brass horn bumped his chest.

  "… that's right, lads, keep those pretty backsides to me and the sharp ends at the ragheads; I can restrain myself and they can't." Gerrin Staenbridge, sounding coolly amused.

  "… first man who turns gits my bay'net in 'is gut." Some nameless noncom, with a warning as old as battles. The first task of command is to make men face death; pride, love, fear, any emotion is grist for the mill.

  And Tewfik's army came over the hill. Army was the proper term; they filled it from side to side, four deep, two thousand strong. Moving fast, sliding down the hill like a solid block of crimson and green and bright metal, and how had Tewfik gotten that many men here so fast? Unless somebody had laid a railroad from al-Kebir out into the desert and they would have heard about that, if it was one thing the Civil Government didn't lack it was spies … I may be an idiot, but at least I've the comfort of knowing I wasn't killed by an idiot, he thought.

  Aloud: "Steady, men, steady. Don't think of it as being outnumbered, think of it as having a real big target selection." Even now that drew some laughter, although a few were near-hysterical giggles. He raised his glasses. "Gerrin."

  "Sir?"

  "That's Tewfik personally, under the main banner, the one with the big gold crescent on top? I'd really feel better about all this if he sort of didn't make it, you know?" It would be one real service to the Spirit of Man and the Civil Government.

  "Noted, sir," he drawled, and passed the instructions to his subordinates; they told off marksmen, it was out of the question to direct the whole of the Company's fire on one man. And quite likely it wouldn't work, battle was odd that way.

  "Three-two-zero-zero," the man at the artillery rangefinder sang out.

  A dog-drawn gun followed the cavalry over the hill, a Colonial one-pounder pompom; then two more, and another, lashing their dogs on like madmen.

  "Prepare for counter-battery shoot!" the battery commander said. Raj gritted his teeth; it was necessary, his firing line could not stand being raked by streams of those deadly little shells, not now… but that meant t
he rifles would have to do most of the work.

  The earth shook, and the screeching of the Colonists was like needles driven into the ears. A 75 crashed behind him, and the smell of fresh gunsmoke made him realize how raw his throat was. The others opened up, no point in trying for the pompoms until they halted, but the cavalry were a moving target too big to miss. Gaps tore in the line, but the Colonists closed ranks with insolent courage. Fifteen hundred meters. Men in white coats were streaming through the spaces between the companies of the 5th; a few were so ridden by fear of the thing behind them that they tried to gallop directly through the serried ranks of the Descotters. Shots crashed out and bayonets flicked forward like giant knitting needles, and hardly anyone but those involved even noticed.

  Nine hundred. Eight hundred. "Fire!"

  BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Bodies down all along the front, and the dragon glimmer of the swords was mercifully dulled by the smoke.

  "Fire!"

  BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Gaps in the Colonist line, pileups of corpses adding to the obstructions from the first charge.

  BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. The pompoms were slowing, the teams swinging around to bring the slender two-meter barrels to bear on the line of the 5th. The shellbursts lifted instantly from the cavalry, and the dirty-cotton puffs blossomed in the air around the Colonial guns; not very dramatic, but one gun team dissolved into bloodied snarling chaos, turning on its drivers as metal slashed the dogs. The first crack of high-velocity shot went overhead, aiming for the guns.

  BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM.

  More men down, and some of the Colonists were wavering, slowing, a few in the rear ranks reining in their dogs, probably without conscious intent.

  BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Three hundred meters, and hardly a round was missing; some of Tewfik's men were hit half a dozen times between saddle and ground. Then the great banners of black and green surged forward, the amir throwing himself into the space between the forces to draw his men through the beaten ground by sheer force of will.