The Heretic

by David Drake

  Abel looked for Joab, who would be near a standard bearer somewhere in the rice fields below. He spotted him and led his Scouts thundering down to meet the district commander.

  The ground descended for a ways, bottomed out, and then began to rise. It would continue rising up, even higher than the levee Abel had just left behind, until it abutted another levee, the true Canal level, at about a fifty-elb elevation from the bottom of the bowl. The field itself was not a single field, but consisted of terraced units, divided by dikes, and ascending to the Canal levee. Each was hemmed in by a low dike that ran parallel to the Canal levee and the secondary levee upon which the Regulars were gathered. It was, in effect, a lopsided half tube that ran the length of the both levees. Its purpose: to collect water from the irrigated sluices that ran out in regular intervals through dike headgates set in the Canal levee.

  The fields were rice paddies, and they must be flooded twice a year.

  Abel had always loved the week after rice harvest, watching Hestinga fill up with wagons of the green paddy rice. Then it seemed as if half the population—any adult who could participate was required to by the priesthood—was flailing, treading, working the rice in a mortar. And then the winnowed rice would be tossed free of chaff in great papyrus mats controlled by groups holding to the corners. Sometimes, after the work was done, the mats were also used to toss small children into the air for a joyride.

  Second cutting had been completed a two-moon before, and the fields were now bone dry and in low-cover crop and stubble.

  Perfect ground for a dont charge.

  A perfect bowl into which to trap an infantry and run it to ground, hack it to pieces, destroy it wholesale.

  Abel hoped the Redlanders would see this fact. He hoped they would understand the opportunity that lay before them and would seek that slaughter with glee and abandon.

  Everything depended on them doing so.

  And for that, everything depended on preventing any outriders, lookouts, or—Law and Land forbid—an actual flank attack from penetrating the ruse by coming upon the assembled forces unawares and then communicating to the charging main horde the danger they faced.

  Abel reined to a stop before Joab. His dont was breathing hard, snorting a fine spittle through its breathing hole that sprayed backward and settled in a trail of phlegm across Abel’s tunic and shoulder.

  At least it didn’t catch me in the face, thought Abel. Dont drool was acidic and, though not harmful to the point of incapacitating, burned like an oven coal when it got in the eyes or settled on nasal membranes.

  “Father, the Blaskoye are on their way,” he reported. Although he spoke loudly, he found he didn’t have to shout once his dontback Scouts had settled their beasts nearby. “It looks like we have hell on our tails.”

  “Do we have at least seven thousand?”

  Abel smiled. “Yes, Commander,” he said. “I got a good look at the dust cloud they chuffed up while they were gathering to charge. And Kruso read the horn signals they were blowing. We believe we have ten thousand. The dust—it was like those stories you told me. When the rain came and stayed for a day.”

  “If you’re right, it’s the main body,” Joab said. He didn’t smile, but Abel could tell he was pleased, and at the same time gauging the effort that taking full advantage of the opportunity would entail.

  “All right,” Joab said. “So far so good. But if we can’t beat them in the field, and we’re sent fleeing—” He turned in his saddle and caught Abel with a stare. “If I fall, I want you to lead the regiments, all of them, to Garangipore. It will be emptied and easily taken. Not Hestinga, you understand?”

  “Yes, Father, but—”

  “No buts,” said Joab. “What ultimately matters is the Land and Lindron. Hestinga can be sacrificed. You—we—must be the wall between the heart of the Land and barbarity.”

  “Yes, sir,” Abel said. “I understand.”

  “Hopefully, it won’t come to that,” Joab said. “At least not this time. Those men of yours—you’ve placed them on the Canal levee.”

  “One hundred fifty Scouts.”

  “And they have the new arms, the reforged rifles you were telling me about?”

  “They do, supplied by the priests only yesterday.”

  “All right, then,” Joab said. “And you’re satisfied as to their functioning?”

  Satisfied. Oh, yes. Satisfied far beyond expectations. If only I had four thousand more.

  “I am, sir,” Abel answered. He held up his own rifle, newly modified. “I have mine right here.”

  Joab’s eyes fell immediately on the trapdoor breechlock. “And what the hell is that?” he asked, pointing to it.

  “The priest’s idea,” Abel said. “Based on information I supplied. I think you’ll be pleased.”

  “I just hope they work at all, or we’ll all be flitterdrock meat,” Joab said. “You see to the western flanks now with these men, then come back and get your levee force ready. Go now.”

  And Abel was away, charging west along the floor of the shallow valley, his train of Scouts beside him in a flying wedge of purpose.

  * * *

  Observe:

  Abel turned his mind to splitting his awareness into two fields. One was an overall picture provided by Center’s interpolation, the other was what was physically before him. For the moment, Center’s presentation was by far the most compelling of the two.

  The Blaskoye are taking the bait.

  The Militia poured over the hill. Most were moving at a measured pace, but some had broken into a headlong run. Some, also, did not remember what lay on the other side of that road levee, or had never been told. And some of those ran themselves through with the pointed stakes meant for the enemy.

  But most realized in time, found the passageways, and made it through. And, when they believed the last had come, the Regulars hefted large clumps of brush and briars and closed those passageways through the chevaux-de-frise.

  Only there was another wave of Militia. They had straggled perhaps, but some had been fighting a brave rearguard action. It didn’t matter. It was too late. The passage was closed. They were cut off.

  Some threw themselves against the chevaux-de-frise, trying to work their way under or through. Others began to tear wildly at the stakes, trying to throw them out of the way and get to safety. These the archers took aim at and, on an order from their lieutenants, shot.

  None of this lasted long. The Blaskoye flooded over the hill, ran headlong into the chevaux-de-frise, and all was dont screams and the yells of men. The first row of Regulars opened up with a fusillade of fire. They knelt down, began their reload. Those behind them fired over their heads.

  Bodies fell. Many stuck to the chevaux-de-frise like so many burrs.

  But the press was great. There were not hundreds of Redlanders to repulse, to drive away, to kill if possible, there were thousands. Even if the front line of dontback riders had wanted to stop, retreat, those behind crushed them forward. And slowly, body by body, a series of grisly, slick bridges began to grow, feeding on death, until there were ways across the barrier, even though it be a passage upon the backs of the writhing half-dead and the splayed gore of the slain.

  The Militia fell back. Blaskoye riders gained the other side of the barrier and rode its length, clearing the way with knives and bayonets. The barrier creaked, gave way entirely, and the horde was through.

  The Militia, with the Regulars behind them serving up whatever rearguard action they could muster, ran headlong down the side of the road levee and into the rice field basin that stretched between that levee and the second levee, the Canal levee, to the north.

  This was the basin that, for half the year, was kept wet as a swamp for the cultivation of rice.

  3

  Three days before, the great wheels were brought forth from the Hestinga temple complex on carts, along with barrels of rendered dak grease to lubricate the screws of the levee gates, which had only been used four times a y
ear since time immemorial. Occasionally, over the centuries, a new gate had needed to be constructed, and consecrated metal, reduced nishterlaub from the vast storehouses in Lindron, was brought in to construct one. The handwheels required two strong men to turn them and four to lift them up and place them on the tang of the screw axle. The handwheels were only brought out during flood days and then, when irrigation was complete several days later, to close the headgates and turn the water off.

  Abel had sent a Scout contingent to guard the priests as they deployed the wheels along the levee, and then Joab had sent along squads of Regulars on special assignment to stay with the duo of priests, each wearing the pith helmets they borrowed from the Engineer’s Guild for such ceremonies, who manned each headgate handwheel. That they, the priests, must be the ones who did the turning was understood and accepted by all.

  It was ever thus in the Land.

  The irrigation ditches themselves had required some reworking. The Militia had gathered to fight and wanted no part of moving the earth—something they could very well do on their own time—and Joab had sent his Regular engineer company to oversee and, in the end, perform additional dredging of the extant ditches and the cutting of new ones.

  Observe the preparative steps:

  There were, of course, the work squads sweating under the heat of the sun. They used wooden shovels to carve into the sunbaked ground. But the basin was also full of workdaks hitched to all varieties of digging and earthmoving tools the engineers had available. Buck scrapers and fresnos pulled by the daks worried the fill out of ditches until they were pristine and as ready to take water as they ever were during normal floodings.

  The only difference: the ground was going to be planted for a different kind of harvest, if Abel had anything to do with it.

  Now the irrigation scatter ditches were reamed, and every elb had been worked over by the engineers to produce maximum flow spread once the gates were open. It had been a massive task to accomplish in a day and a half, and yet they had done it, driving the teams of daks until many of them broke, dropped, and must be left where they lay for there was no time for butchery or burial. Now the insectoids were at the carcasses that dotted the basin and each one appeared to be surrounded by a translucent, flickering cloud as the flitternits danced, ate, bred, and then deposited their maggots into the humps of flesh.

  A signal flew down the levee by wigwag.

  Open the gates.

  Signalmen read it and called it out while their partners flashed it down the levee to the next group waiting by a handwheel.

  Open the gates.

  And the priests chanted their blessing and began to move. The great screws turned. Slowly, ever so slowly, the headgate doors were raised up by the screws’ rotation.

  The water poured forth upon the land. First a trickle, then a stream, and then a flood.

  Open the gates all the way!

  There was a limit, of course, which was the water level of the Canal itself. When it dropped beneath the lowest portion of the gate, no more water could flow. But that limit took long minutes to reach. Meanwhile the basin—a quarter league across and at least three leagues east and west—filled with a thin layer of water. It was at no time more than a hand’s depth. Furthermore, the thirsty ground soaked up at least half of that.

  But there came a point when the ground could absorb no more. The water pooled. Where there was bare earth, it became mud slurry. Where there was ground cover, it sheened the ground with great patches of wetness.

  And then the priests stopped. They closed the gates, turning in the opposite direction, speaking their prayers and blessings backward, as long tradition and special practice demanded.

  The Blaskoye charged down the basin, chasing fleeing men, wreaking destruction with bow and then with reloaded musketry. Shooting men in the back. Riding them down. Putting arrows through throats, arms, legs. Cutting men down with knives, swords, spiked clubs, the butts of rifles.

  And yet more remained. More sprinted ahead, huffing up the terraces of the fields, seeking the levee.

  These Farmers stood no chance, thought the riders. What was there on the other side but the Canal? Those that fled would be ruthlessly pursued. Slaughtered without mercy. It was amusing! It was exhilarating!

  A cry went up among the Blaskoye that Abel and many of the Scouts understood but, perhaps fortunately, few of the Regulars or Militia could.

  “Kill the Farmers!”

  And then the vanguard of the Blaskoye’s charging donts, riding donts unequalled in speed and power among all the dontflesh of the known world, hit the mud.

  They charged forward ten, twenty paces. It was not as if they sank out of sight into the damp ground. They even kept going, after a fashion, these donts, creatures of the desert, who had never conceived of such a substance as mud, much less encountered it. They were brave, well-bred creatures. Their masters urged them forward, and so forward they struggled.

  And that struggle served only to make room for more Blaskoye to reach the bottom of the outer levee slope and run into mud themselves.

  Up and down the line, the same scene repeated itself over and over. Then, as if it were a thought that had never occurred before, but now struck and burned like wildfire, about half the Redlanders attempted to turn around, to retreat back up the outer levee wall. They yanked at the reins. Some dismounted and tried to physically pull, or push, their animals backwards.

  They were cut off.

  Now observe the outcome:

  Even as the final stragglers of the horde charged the levee, another cloud of dust was forming to the west. There was a vanguard of a few donts with riders, but most of the dust was churned up by wagons rolling down the levee road. The wagons were stacked with a most curious cargo. Bound-reed tubes, some of them four and five elbs long, lay in the wagon beds. Attached to each tube was a willow-wand shaft, each shaft about a thumb’s thickness and each cut to seven elbs in length.

  From the rear of each tube, facing down the length of the shaft, depended a long fuse.

  It was the women’s auxiliary, riding hell-for-leather down the wagon track on the top of the levee.

  This was not a new maneuver, but one they’d been practicing over and over again for two days. They had practiced not here, but on wagon tracks close-in to Hestinga. This was even easier, for the wagon trail here was completely straight. Then the vanguard reached its agreed upon destination, and the line ceased to move. A signal went up from wagon to wagon.

  Deploy rockets.

  Each wagon was crewed by a team of ten. Six manned the artillery, four defended with muskets or, more commonly, bow and arrow.

  And what artillery it was—new to the Land itself.

  The lucifers had been supplied by the Scouts, the secret matches of Irisobrian, mother of Zentrum, patron of Scouts, who kept Zentrum alive with fresh milk from her otherwise dead body for fifty days and fifty nights. Now, using these fire sources, the wagon crews set up a simple A-frame on which to balance the rocket shafts.

  The box canyon explosion, gone awry, had provided the idea.

  Center and Raj had shown him how to improve the design once he’d seen the effect that could be achieved.

  Golitsin had engineered the final product, adding a pitch-coated interior that the priest claimed was fire resistant.

  Raj had warned him not to expect much actual damage. If the effect you are looking for is a direct hit on the enemy, this is an effect that is seldom achieved.

  Rockets burn their fuel as they fly, said Center. This causes the weight to change in flight. And the guide shafts that are essential to a good launch begin to shimmy, and the entire contraption frequently flies randomly off course. The Congreve rocket was an instrument of terror far more than a weapon of destruction. It is possible to create a multiple-angled exhaust nozzle that will impart spin to correct this tendency, but this piece requires metallic forges, which we at present lack.

  So we use them for terror and the occasional hit, Abel t
hought. I’m all right with that.

  The women set the rockets for a low trajectory. Their targets were below them, but the parabolic path would require them to elevate somewhat to reach their targets. Finding range would be the hard part. Each group had at least five rockets.

  The discipline was impressive. It was almost as if they moved according to Mahaut’s telepathic command. The fire began at one end of the line and moved down it to the end as each team lit their rockets and fired them into the hordes below.

  Then, when the last rocket on the end was fired, the direction was reversed and the rocket next door fired, and so back up the line again to its end. Watching the fire travel was like watching an echo made visible, Abel thought.

  As he’d known would be the case, the rockets didn’t kill many Blaskoye. Some were hit, and he saw at least one man’s head taken off by the two-pound charge that went off at the end of a rocket’s flight.

  The disorder and confusion the rockets created was complete, however. Those that had turned their donts around to retreat were terrified back into the basin. All around them rockets streaked, creating horrible shrieks of tortured sound as they travelled through the air, so loud a man couldn’t hear himself speak.

  Swooooosh!

  Over and over again, until the black powder smoke hung in a cloud, and still more rockets poured into that cloud.

  Swoosh!

  Drowning the screams of donts and men.

  And when the rockets reached their range and exploded, the sound resonated down the basin, rang from the levees, and obliterated all lesser noise in a moment that produced astonishment that something could be this loud, could physically hurt as much as a blow to the head.

  So the Blaskoye could not face the women with their rain of fire. They struggled on and up toward the Canal levee. Through the muck, churning themselves deeper, making the way forward for their compatriots all the more difficult.

  “When them walkers gome thinkah ye, Capun?” asked Kruso. “Donned them tha flats.”

  “Sounds like we’re ready,” Abel answered. He turned to Anderson, his wigwag officer. “Send a signal in all directions, Lieutenant. Forward half speed. Attack.”