Forged in Fire (Destiny's Crucible Book 4)

by Olan Thorensen

  When the first Narthani appeared over the top of the berm, Denes ordered forward a mixed regiment of Pawell and Nyvaks men. He prayed that the men of two traditionally feuding clans had forgotten their history and were focused only on the Narthani. Those reinforcements hadn’t yet reached the berm when he saw the last of the original defenders vanish under a Narthani wave. He immediately ordered in the Skouks men who had arrived only before first light. He could see hand-to-hand fighting, but the Narthani pressed relentlessly forward.

  “Yellow and violet flares!” he yelled at three men behind his bunker.

  They crouched near a score of three-foot-long rockets, the latest versions, after Yozef decided parachute flares were too unreliable. Employing the same type of ignition rods used by artillerymen, they lit off two rows of rockets. Eight of the ten worked and rose straight up two hundred feet into the air before exploding in yellow and violet smoke.

  All along the line and on the walls, men and women translated what Denes had signaled: yellow smoke meant all remaining fighters to move where the violet smoke originated. Thousands of Caedelli left wherever they were and ran, walked, or limped as fast as they could toward Denes’s position. The limited room and the collapse of coordination meant clanspeople were fed piecemeal into a meat grinder.

  Although Denes himself couldn’t see beyond the berm, heliograph messages from the city walls updated him every few minutes on the Narthani’s positions. When even the reinforcements were being hard pressed, he ordered them to fall back to a secondary line forming with packed muskets as fighters ran to the position. They made room only for wheel-to-wheel batteries of 6- and 12-pounders. The few 30-pounders were too heavy to move in time.

  The Narthani flowed over the berm, hesitated when they saw the secondary line with guns forming, then charged.

  Munmar Kellen

  He had survived the first attack, even though his company was one of the first to reach the ditch and the berm the islanders had constructed as if by magic. That he was still alive felt unreal, because he now had only fourteen of his original hundred men with him. He didn’t doubt that a few others were scattered among units in the chaos. Yet most of his men lay dead or wounded in front of him as he and his few remaining men joined one of the last fresh regiments heading to expand the breakthrough. He didn’t know what was on the other side of the berm or how the units that had already flowed up and over the islander defenses had fared. He would find out in less than two minutes, though.

  Denes

  The two reinforcing units had momentarily stopped the Narthani, only to finally be forced back. Their numbers dwindled, and the seemingly unending stream of Narthani flowed forward. The secondary line seemed to hold, but there wasn’t enough time to reload muskets and cannon, and a breach in the line opened. First, a single Narthani appeared behind the secondary line, then five, then a hundred. The line began to collapse in both directions, and the Narthani even threatened Denes’s own position. He looked north to see a seemingly solid stream of runners, riders, and wagons pouring through Orosz City’s main gate.

  The wall, he thought. Culich and Orosz have abandoned the wall and sent everyone here. The Keelan and Orosz hetmen were commanding the city’s defenses. There’s too many of them! It’s more than all the people stationed on the wall, and there aren’t that many muskets. He grabbed a telescope hanging by a strap on a timber and scanned the oncoming throng. His first look answered his question; many of the people arriving either carried no weapon or held makeshift implements: shovels, axes, pitchforks, cleavers, knives.

  Avan

  General Kamil Avan reached the top of the berm. His staff and escorts formed a human shield around him that hampered his view, but their utility was proved when a lieutenant and two infantry rankers fell from musket fire, one after the other.

  “Get down, sir,” yelled a senior noncommissioned officer who had served with Avan for ten years. “What the hell good will you be to us if you get yourself killed?”

  “I have to see, Kormac. Otherwise, how do I assess what to do next?”

  “There’s nothing to do,” the man yelled back at Gullar’s second-in-command. “We either finish breaking through, or we don’t. Let the officers leading their units do their jobs, and you stay ready to do yours once we’re through.”

  A Mistake

  The second attack had started thirty minutes earlier, and the sun was still an hour shy of mid-day when Marshal Dursun Gullar made a fatal, yet understandable, misjudgment. Seeing his men occupying more and more of the berms’ top, he ordered the two flanking attacks to turn toward the breakthrough, thereby releasing the defenders to turn into the edges of the breakthrough.

  Live or Die

  Carnigan saw the flares first. “Yellow and violet, Yozef! The Narthani must be breaking through near Denes’s position.”

  Yozef whirled to see thousands of islanders running toward Denes’s position five hundred yards away.

  Oh, Christ! This is it! screamed inside Yozef’s head. Denes must believe the line can’t contain the Narthani. They’re running to their deaths to stop a leak from becoming a deluge.

  Yozef dropped the telescope and grabbed the musket he’d leaned against the rampart. “We go!” he yelled to the captain whose company he was in the midst of.

  The Keelan officer blew a whistle to get his men’s attention, pointed to the flare smoke, then drew a sword and pointed to the direction of Denes’s position. Yozef joined the men leaving their positions on the berm and racing south. Carnigan didn’t try to stop his charge. As important as Yozef was, losing him wouldn’t matter if the Narthani won. Assuming they won, Carnigan would later explain to Maera that seeing the Septarsh running to help seemed like the right thing to bolster faint hearts.

  Avan

  He looked back toward the Narthani side of the berm. Enough planks had been laid side by side and lashed together that whole companies were racing across. Even so, not enough men had crossed, and regiments had slowed or stopped, waiting their turn. An engineering unit was assembling a sturdier crossing for the thousand cavalry waiting five hundred yards away and the artillery moving into column formation with their limbers. More infantry regiments were moving in his direction, their biggest obstacle the carpet of dead and wounded comrades, often two and three deep. A temporary dam to the water flowing down the trench toward the river had formed when several planks the infantry crossed over had slipped into the water and then lodged against the trench sides. The Narthani had pushed bodies of their own men against the planks. This completed a dam with water near the top of the trench on the upstream side and only a few inches of water and mud on the downstream side.

  “Major Nerturk!” Avan yelled. “Get yourself to the next regiment waiting to cross, and have them clear paths through the bodies. Throw them aside or in the trench if necessary.”

  “What about the wounded?” asked the senior aide.

  “Them, too. We’ll have to worry about them later. All that matters now is getting as many men across as fast as possible. We need to push well behind the islanders so we can form blocks.”

  Denes

  A stream of Narthani infantry charged west a hundred yards from where he stood. It was a surreal image—the Narthani units so intent on the breakthrough, they ignored Denes’s command bunker.

  “Message from the balloon!” a voice called out to his left, and a piece of paper was shoved into his hand. He didn’t look to see who the voice belonged to, only quickly read the heliograph message.

  “They’re throwing everything at the breakthrough,” said Denes. “If they get too many men to our rear, it’ll turn into a disaster. Flags to signal units on the line to turn toward the breakthrough. If we close the gap, we’ll have time to worry about the Narthani that are already through.”

  He turned to the cluster of runners waiting for messages and began dictating names and units as he checked a diagram of unit and commander deployments.

  “Colonel Arlinton to turn directly nor
th and attack the Narthani breakthrough.” A runner scribbled furiously, repeated the message, and was off, running south. Denes didn’t believe the Stent regiment could stop the flow and would certainly take heavy casualties, but they would buy time.

  “Colonel Meenford to follow Arlinton.” Another runner dashed off. Meenford’s mixed Bultecki/Vandinke regiment would fill in inevitable gaps in the first regiment, and Denes hoped that would be enough to keep the breakthrough from widening south.

  More messages went to units farther south to try to move on the flanks of what was left of the first two regiments.

  North was more difficult. Runners couldn’t cross the Narthani flow, so heliograph messages went to Orosz City’s walls, then relayed to a heliograph station north of the breakthrough. Denes doubted the units north of the breakthrough would get the messages in time.

  Yozef

  The Keelan company Yozef and Carnigan were embedded with at the start of the second attack formed part of a mainly Oroszian regiment.

  “I need to get to Colonel Mizerone!” Yozef yelled into Carnigan’s ear over the din of men shouting, musket and cannon firing, and the general chaos as the company moved south.

  Carnigan grabbed Yozef’s arm and pulled him along, the big man bulldozing through men standing and wondering what to do and men rushing back and forth, sometimes with objectives in mind and other times just to be doing something. Faster than Yozef had thought possible, they pushed their way through Mizerone’s aides and staff, a hundred yards from where Yozef and Carnigan had stood on the line.

  Several men started to block their path until they recognized both Yozef and his largest “shadow.”

  Mizerone looked almost relieved when he saw Yozef.

  Poor bastard, thought Yozef. How’s he supposed to know what to do? He was probably a carpenter or farmer only a few months ago. At least he looks like he knows he should be doing something; he just doesn’t know what!

  “Colonel Mizerone,” said Yozef, “you need to turn your regiment south and attack the Narthani flank. We have to slow them down until reinforcements get here.”

  The Oroszian looked toward the original Narthani deployment and the bodies of Narthani caught in the traps, the mines, and the killing zone to his regiment’s front. He licked his lips.

  Oh, Jesus, thought Yozef frantically, he’s going to say his orders are to hold this front.

  “My orders are to hold this position, but the Narthani attacking have pulled back, and we can see them moving south—I assume to the break. So . . . our purpose here is no longer valid—is it? You wrote in On War that a commander has to adjust to the real situation and not fixate on orders that might no longer make sense.”

  Oh, thank you, Jesus. Forgive me for taking your name in vain before. Thank you, thank you for this commander actually having read On War and thought about it.

  Mizerone yelled orders, and subordinates scattered to get the regiment to wheel right. Yozef and Carnigan stood aside—Yozef, to avoid being run over; Carnigan, so men wouldn’t have to detour around him. They stayed near Mizerone’s position and watched a 25-pounder carronade battery pass by, commanded by Filtin Fuller. Yozef vaguely remembered him being assigned to artillery when the final call for fighters came. Yozef hadn’t seen Filtin in several months and didn’t realize he would be commanding a 25-pounder battery. Why they ended up positioned with an Oroszian regiment, Yozef didn’t know, but the three men waved to one another as the battery rushed by. Filtin yelled at the four crews and ran around, urging his men on.

  Denes

  Temporary reprieve arrived in the form of a mounted Bevans dragoon regiment. Its commander had seen the breakthrough occurring and brought his men a half-mile from where they had waited as a reserve. If the lead Narthani had had artillery or were organized enough to form squares, the Bevans unit would have been annihilated. As it was, they rode their horses straight into the point of the Narthani advance, crushing scores of the enemy and a few unlucky clansmen whose backs were to the charge and couldn’t get out the way.

  Frenzied Narthani officers and non-coms screamed and pushed, trying to restore order for lead elements of their advance. Most units lost cohesion in the melee at the berm and when attacking the secondary line. Then confusion ensued on what to do next when breaking through to open ground.

  The Bevans riders cut through them and advanced two hundred yards before the Narthani could organize. Then Bevans ran into the lead elements of a Narthani regiment newly arrived on the islander side of the defenses. Infantry volley fire took a terrible toll on the Bevans riders before their leaders got them turned around. However, the Bevans regiment slowed the Narthani push and provided enough of a distraction for the vanguard of the people pouring out of Orosz City to reach the northern flank of the lead Narthani regiment. Although unorganized and poorly armed, through sheer numbers the islanders ate into the Narthani flank. Two or three islanders fell for every Narthani, but at this narrow point in the battle, the islanders had the numerical advantage.

  The following Narthani units became stacked up behind the lead elements as Meenford’s, Arlinton’s, and Mizerone’s men fell but refused to give way.

  Balloon

  Elvin Walshon focused his telescope on the battlefield lying before him and not on the 150-foot drop from the two-man basket hanging below the balloon. His job was observing and dropping messages to be relayed via heliograph. Marlan Toosbury’s job consisted of constantly adjusting the modified kerosene lantern, whose rising hot air kept them aloft. Walshon had long ago gotten so used to Toosbury’s cursing the balloon, the kerosene lantern, and himself for ever volunteering to be a ballooner that now he ignored everything but observing the Narthani.

  They had watched the other balloon slowly sink back to the ground two hours ago.

  “Must be a slow leak,” Walshon had said.

  “Why couldn’t it have been our balloon?” Toosbury had moaned. “It’d be my luck for this damn thing to just suddenly come apart. Then we’d find out how fast we can fall a hundred and fifty feet.”

  They had started at a hundred feet, then let out more line as the battle started. Walshon ignored Toosbury’s latest reason why they were going to die. He switched from looking through the telescope at the battle in the middle of the defensive line in front of the city to another spot a mile east, where a cavalry battle had been underway for thirty minutes. At first, he had seen flashes of cannon from both the clans and the Narthani, then the flashes ended as horsemen became intermingled.

  He checked a landmark he’d noted a few minutes earlier. He had no doubt the cavalry battle was moving west. Stent is pushing the Narthani cavalry back! Walshon thought. And maybe it’s an illusion, but I’d swear I think, for the first time, I see many more clan dragoons than Narthani.

  He scribbled a message, wrapped the thick paper around a fist-sized rock, tied the paper to the rock, and dropped it over the side of the basket. It fell, nearly hitting one of the men assigned to watch for message drops. The startled man grabbed the rock, retrieved the message, and ran off to the south wall bastion. There, hetmen Keelan, Orosz, and Farkesh watched the battle. The message reported the Narthani cavalry retreating from Stent’s forces and that a second Narthani infantry regiment had turned from waiting to cross the ditch and the berm to face the rear, as if redeploying to face Stent. Four other regiments still waited to get to the breach, and the first cavalry that had been waiting to cross the trench now streamed across, but only three abreast.

  “Elvin!” Toosbury called out. “What’s that to the west? I noticed it a few minutes ago, but it’s changed size.”

  Walshon whirled and directed his telescope to the horizon. There, four to six miles away, he saw a dark mass that seemed to undulate. It took almost a minute for enough pauses to occur in the balloon basket’s rocking motion. What he saw was horsemen. Lots of them. Coming their way.

  Yozef

  He was now near the front of the Oroszian regiment’s men with Carnigan when Wyfor Ka
les and Gowlin Reese both appeared from nowhere. All three men refused to let him move closer to the fighting fifty yards away. Yet he heard the firing, shouts, screams in two languages of wounded and dying men and the wounded horses from the Bevans charge. Even dying, the horses’ bodies and flailing legs had served to delay the Narthani.

  Fifty yards to his right and slightly forward, Yozef saw Filtin Fuller urging on his men as they pushed their four 25-pounder carronades. They followed two clan 6-pounder batteries moving into position behind 12-pounder batteries, whose crews were mainly dead or wounded and most of the guns destroyed by satchel charges thrown or carried by Narthani soldiers. Some of the charges had exploded while still carried by Narthani—whether intentional or not. When the 6-pounders were in place, they fired canister in unison, barely missing the last 12-pounder crew pulling their gun back to the 6-pounder line. Filtin’s battery moved to a gap between the two 6-pounder batteries, and Yozef caught a quick glimpse of Filtin helping turn a carronade toward the Narthani.

  Avan

  General Kamil Avan still stood on the top of the berm in the middle of the breakthrough. It had grown to six hundred yards an hour ago before stalling. Ahead were remnants of four Narthani infantry regiments. They’d been sent into a meatgrinder of hand-to-hand fighting, interspersed with temporary unit actions that devolved quickly with casualties. Bodies of the dead and wounded hampered movement by both sides. In his years of serving in the Narthani army, Avan had never seen such savage action, nor had he ever heard or read of such a brutal fight, neither side surrendering an inch while men lived. Footage was gained by blood, not by the other side giving way.