Forged in Fire (Destiny's Crucible Book 4)

by Olan Thorensen

  Men rushed to bring Yozef, Rintala, and other major commanders in the defense. Once they arrived, each took a turn at the ears.

  “What I think I hear is large numbers of men moving and artillery coming closer,” offered Denes.

  “I agree,” seconded Rintala. “They must know they are outgunned, so they would want to shorten the range to more equalize an artillery exchange. I doubt they would risk their guns unless it was part of an attack, and they need the guns forward as much as possible to support infantry.”

  “First light?” Denes asked Rintala. The two had developed a good working relationship and mutual respect.

  “First light,” agreed the Fuomi.

  Denes turned to Yozef.

  “Do you agree?”

  How the hell do I know? Yozef thought.

  “It sounds reasonable.” How’s that for waffling?

  “Should I call a general alert and get people on the wall?” Denes asked, still looking at Yozef.

  Your guess is at least as good as mine, thought Yozef. So what should we do? The sounds are at some distance yet and evidently have not gotten closer. Probably means the Narthani are moving into predetermined positions. Would they attack in the dark? I have no fucking idea.

  “You’re in command of the defense, Denes,” Yozef said after a long moment. “What do you think?”

  “I think the Narthani are going to attack this section of the wall. I think we should get the walls manned and ready for them.”

  “Then do so. But you might consider only a partial alert. Perhaps half at their stations. Give the others more sleep. That is, as long as there is no action by the Narthani and the sounds don’t get closer.”

  “Hmmm . . .” considered Denes. “Maybe a quarter of the men now and another an hour before first light. Jaako, what do you think?”

  Rintala turned from looking outward—not that he could see anything.

  “Either is probably as appropriate, although you might make that two hours before first light to give everyone plenty of opportunity to wake up, dress, eat, and then get in position.”

  Denes gave the order: one quarter stations immediately, another quarter in an hour, and the remainder in three hours. It was five hours until first light.

  Narthani Positions

  Brigadier Susfar Tunik knew why Marshal Gullar had selected him to command the assault on the islanders’ city walls. It was simple—and correct. There needed to be a senior commander close enough to the assault to make decisions in real time, someone who could see immediately what was transpiring and issue orders on the spot. Tunik was the youngest of Gullar’s brigadiers and the least experienced, therefore the most expendable. Not that Tunik doubted Gullar’s opinion of his competence. The marshal didn’t tolerate officers in whom he had no confidence.

  The same thoughts occupied the minds of the colonels of the two infantry regiments who would lead the attack and the third in reserve. They all knew their units would take heavy casualties. The only question was how bad would it be? All four officers understood that there could be no hesitation. Once the attack commenced, it had to be pressed forward at all costs. Not only success in the attack, but the best chances of the most men surviving depended on breaching the walls as fast as possible. To hesitate would only leave them under fire longer.

  The thoughts of the major commanding their 12-pounder batteries varied only slightly. While he and his men would not make the assault, as soon as they opened fire, the heavier cannon on the bastions would respond. If they couldn’t bring down a section of the wall or at least suppress the islanders’ cannon, their position would get grim very quickly.

  The five men squatted around a map laid on the ground. Troops held overlapping rain ponchos to shield a low lamp from view of the islanders’ walls. They had been over the plan numerous times, but going through it again was never a waste of time. It also gave them a last-minute feeling of focus on their assignments instead of on what awaited them.

  The first lightening of the sky to the east outlined the mountains behind the city. In a few minutes, the whitish bastions would be barely visible. Time to commence.

  “Any last questions before we go?” asked Tunik, looking at the four faces illuminated by the low lamp. None of the four men spoke.

  “To your stations, then. All are in place. Artillery will begin as soon as there is enough light to aim. Glory to the Narthon Empire. I’ll see you all inside the city.”

  Orosz City

  Maera woke when the messenger came to fetch Yozef. He had returned to their house to get a few more hours of sleep. She lit a lantern and watched him quickly dress.

  “Is this it? Are they coming?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Denes must think something is happening and wants me on the wall with him.”

  She rose from the bed.

  “I’ll go the headquarters, just in case. Should I send for the other operations and intelligence staff to come also?”

  Yozef thought for moment.

  “Yes, go ahead and get them here. I’ll send word to the headquarters when I know more.”

  “Just remember, the plan is for you to also be at the headquarters during an attack. You need to help coordinate instead of shooting at the Narthani yourself.” After learning of Yozef’s role at the Battle of Moreland City, Maera never tired of reminding him to stay out of the direct fighting. She always couched it as his being too important to risk, which was true, but Yozef had finally come to accept that she genuinely worried about him, her husband, irrespective of what else he was.

  Cannon

  Anarynd heard the first cannon fire while sitting next to Aeneas’s crib. Meara had woken her to tell her the latest developments and where she and Yozef were going. Anarynd’s hand rested on the crib rail, slowly rocking it. Aeneas would never keep covers on himself. She watched his belly rise and fall in the manner of the youngest. Her own belly had begun to make her movements less instinctive and more deliberative. She still had five months before her baby was expected, but she’d already grown large for the time of her term. The medicants said it would probably be a big baby, but all was progressing normally. Despite her condition, she felt as good as she ever had. Many people had told her she glowed with health. Morning sickness and other side effects had apparently passed her by—as Maera said had happened with her. When the two women talked about how well they felt during pregnancy and their good fortune not to have gotten sick since they married, Maera threw Yozef a “look.” They hadn’t told Anarynd the reason for this, and they weren’t sure how to bring up the topic.

  When Anarynd heard the first distant boom, she stopped rocking the crib, and her torso muscles clenched. Immediately, a salvo followed the first boom. There was a minute of silence, then cannon fired again but more sporadically.

  Aeneas stirred. Not from the sound of the guns, but from the sudden cessation of motion. Anarynd resumed rocking, and he lapsed back into the oblivious sleep of infants.

  Anarynd was not the only person thinking of a child at that moment. Susfar Tunik had left Narthon six months before his wife was to give birth to their fourth child. Would it be a boy or a girl? If he were not there, what would his wife name it? They had discussed names before he left but never settled on one for each sex. He wondered when and if he would ever see and hold the child. Despite his discipline, the thought strayed across his mind that after this day, the baby might never meet its father.

  When the firing began, Maera was at the headquarters organizing the staff. People had slowly trickled in after being roused from sleeping. Everyone in the room froze when they heard the guns.

  “Back to your duties, people,” Maera said. “Those on the wall count on us to keep everything organized. Our job is right here. Do what you’re supposed to be doing.”

  When the firing began, Yozef had one of the best observation sites—adjacent to the Narthani’s initial target with round shot. At the first Narthani cannon flash, Carnigan grabbed him by the back collar and j
erked him down behind the rampart wall. Seconds later, they heard the loud buzz of grapeshot rounds passing over their rampant and the impact of several on the outer rampart wall.

  “Time for you to get back to headquarters, Yozef,” growled his bodyguard. Carnigan was not happy that he himself would not participate in defending the wall, but he took seriously his assignment of keeping Yozef safe.

  Denes had also ducked down as the grapeshot hit their bastion. “Carnigan’s right, Yozef. There’s no good reason for you to stay. We will do the rest. Go on with Carnigan.”

  Logically, Yozef knew his being there would not contribute to the defense. Part of him wanted to protest that he needed to stay and observe. The other part wanted to be anywhere but someplace where a random shot could find him.

  When the firing began, Diera Beynom was overseeing last-minute details in the central hospital set up to treat major injuries. She talked to others as they finished laying out tools of their calling. At the same time, she mentally recited prayers asking God to protect them all and especially those directly facing the Narthani.

  When the firing began, Welman Stent stood on a hill looking west in the direction of Orosz City, five miles away. Even if it were daylight, he wouldn’t be able to see the city, because several low hills intervened. What he could see from the hilltop would be a pattern of signal rockets—should they be fired upward from the Orosz City headquarters roof. There was only one signal. It happened to be white and yellow rockets. If he saw them, it would tell him the city was in danger of being overrun by the Narthani, and he was to use his discretion to attack the Narthani rear and flanks with the twenty-five thousand dragoons and ninety-seven 6-pounder horse artillery he led. It would be a desperate measure to try to save the city.

  When the firing began, Reimo Kivalian stood on a bastion top just to the east of the initial Narthani target. He immediately directed the two 30-pounder crews to load and fire grapeshot at the flashes from Narthani cannon. Despite each 30-pounder having a Fuomi gun captain, Caedelli made up at least two-thirds of each crew. The islanders had drilled to an extent they had thought unnecessary. They learned otherwise in the first ten minutes. Drilled or not, the Caedelli found loading, aiming, firing, quenching, and repeating different in reality and when other cannon fired back. Still, they kept up a steady rate of return fire. They ran into a major problem: they kept aiming at where they thought the flashes had been, not always where they were. Many of the clans’ grapeshot clusters sailed over the heads of Narthani gunners or into the ground, which was not quite firm enough to skip the shot. Unbeknownst to the islander crews, occasionally a half-blind cluster of grapeshot would find the Narthani batteries by accident.

  The Narthani artillery major cursed when he could finally see the round shot having little effect on the city bastions. He immediately ordered a complete switch to grapeshot and to keep sweeping the tops of the ramparts—the range being too long for effective canister. Each grapeshot round contained twenty-seven balls, just under a half-pound each. With forty 12-pounders, each salvo, whether together or staggered, sent 1,080 inch-and-a-half balls at the tops of the three bastions and intervening walls, covering a front of four hundred feet. Due to the balls spreading into a cone-shaped dispersal pattern, most of them sailed over the defenders’ heads or hit walls and ramparts, but enough found human bodies to create a steady number of casualties. In addition, the whiz of a ball passing, even many yards from a human ear, gave people cause to reflexively duck.

  By the time the Narthani switched to grapeshot, the leading infantry regiment was already past the batteries and trotting silently toward the wall. With the dim light and their dark uniforms, they were not detected until within 150 yards of the moat. The clans’ 30-pounder cannon switched to canister and were joined, for the first time, by bastion 12-pounders and a few 6-pounders on the intervening walls. In addition, clansmen troops wielded swivel guns, muskets, and even a few crossbows if the men could shoot better with quarrels than with musket balls.

  The islanders’ defenses firing at the infantry seemed sporadic as guns and men came into play, then turned into a continuous rolling noise with peaks of sound from cannon of different calibers.

  The Narthani charge at first seemed unaffected, but as more Caedelli guns and cannon fired down on them, their charge became jagged. Holes appeared in the formation where a coincidental concentration of hits decimated the ranks. By the time the first Narthani regiment reached the ditch, half of their men were down. The following regiment had suffered nearly two hundred casualties from shot aimed at the first regiment when it had passed on to hit bodies in the second. The third regiment waited in reserve for Tunik’s signal.

  Denes Vegga watched from his bastion position. The Narthani’s charge, which had seemed so dramatic at first, slowly disintegrated. Even so, hundreds of Narthani crossed the ditch. Several tried to place charges at the base of the bastions or the walls; others used grappling hooks with ropes to throw over the walls. The islanders’ “potato-masher” grenades rained down on the attackers, but still they came on. By this time, the Narthani artillery had quit firing grapeshot at the walls to avoid hitting their own men and concentrated all fire at the bastion tops, where Caedelli casualties mounted. The islanders’ 30-pounders in the bastions raked the Narthani at the base of the walls and neighboring bastions. Narthani bodies started to carpet the ground, yet more came on.

  Watching how they kept going in the hail of fire made Denes’s blood run cold. What discipline! he marveled. Or is it insanity? Whatever it was, he didn’t know whether the islanders could have done the same.

  The sun still hadn’t risen above the horizon and wouldn’t for another twenty minutes or so, but Susfar Tunik could see clearly—or, at least, as clearly as the existing light and the clouds of gun smoke allowed. Despite the clans’ murderous defensive fire, the Narthani had successfully placed several charges that went off at the base of the fortifications.

  Two charges had erupted at the bastion at the center of the Narthani’s assault. Signs of damage marked the bastion wall, but it remained intact, and firing continued from its top. One Narthani charge at the lower wall between bastions looked more promising, then two successive charges went off at the same point.

  It took over a minute for the smoke and dust to clear enough for Tunik to see any effects. Then he clenched a fist in the air! A gap showed in a twenty-foot section of the wall! They had done it! He could see his men running to the gap.

  Caedelli fire from nearby on the wall had stopped, because the defenders were either dead or stunned. Tunik ordered the third regiment to the gap, then composed a message to Marshal Gullar that he was committing his third regiment to the gap and following it himself. When the marshal received the message, he ordered six more regiments, a division and a half, to quickly flow forward to exploit the developing breakthrough.

  Among the stunned was Denes Vegga. The explosion occurred in the middle of the wall between his bastion and the next. When he got back to his feet, he saw the gap in the outer wall, the Narthani flowing toward it, and the defenders on the wall starting to retreat to the inner wall, which was the original city wall and was separated from the outer wall by thirty yards. A killing zone lays between the walls.

  The clan defenders of the inner wall joined shoulder to shoulder—men and women from fourteen to eighty years old. Not all had muskets, but those who didn’t instead carried crossbows and even the bows of earlier eras. Many wielders could not accurately shoot with whatever weapon they carried, but in this case, accuracy was less important than simply firing. As the Narthani flowed into the area between walls, defenders had only to fire in the general direction to have a good chance of hitting someone. Yet still the Narthani came on. By now, the third regiment’s lead elements had joined the flow. It seemed as if no number of casualties would stop them.

  Then, just as the first Narthani reached the second wall, the islanders threw torches from the ramparts. They ignited raw oil lying in a shallow tre
nch a few feet from the wall. Flames leaped from the trench. Simultaneously, smoke-trailing crocks came arching from the ramparts.

  From his vantage, Denes could see defenders on the wall ramparts igniting fuses on crocks. Then they used an attached five-foot length of rope to twirl each crock several times and send it sailing into the killing ground. The crocks, each filled with half a gallon of “napalm,” burst as they hit. Yozef had dreamed up the incendiary substance, and many, including Denes, had had severe qualms about using it against other humans. But no more. Seeing the Narthani attack, their fanatical discipline, the possibility that they might breach even the islanders’ second defensive wall had all combined to rid Denes of lingering qualms. Despite himself, he inwardly exulted when most of the crocks burst on impact, igniting and throwing a spray of the sticky substance at nearby Narthani.

  Flashes of grenade explosions helped spread the napalm flames. In less than a minute, the determined Narthani drive to the inner wall was replaced by Narthani scrambling to get out of the zone. They bolted back over and through the wall gap, fleeing anywhere to escape the ghastly scene of dead and dying comrades and those who wished they were dead, as the napalm burned their bodies.

  Repulsed

  Yozef heard cheers over the continued firing as he stood on a balcony of the headquarters’ second floor. Runners had brought news of the assault. The last report contained Denes’s message that the Narthani had breached the first wall, and the kill zone was ready. It must have worked, he told himself, half in confidence and half as a prayer. Within another few minutes, the firing itself slacked off, particularly the more muffled sounds of the Narthani artillery.