Casca 18: The Cursed

by Barry Sadler

  "Well," Casca mused, "perhaps all is not lost."

  He quickly ordered Huang to put all of his archers into action immediately, stressing that they should shoot from the greatest possible range, and stay under cover as much as possible.

  A second later three giant whistling arrows flew toward the legation walls, and in another second they were followed by a hail of perhaps a thousand arrows that swept the walls clear of defenders.

  Screaming and shouting exultantly, hundreds of peasants clambered up the ladders and threw new ropes over the walls.

  Few of them even made it to the top of the wall, as new defenders appeared and cut them down with rifle shots or bayonet thrusts.

  But many redcoats died, and the Chinese dead were quickly replaced from behind. The corpses piled up at the foot of the legation walls, but each corpse had cost the British a bullet.

  "And I've got more Chinese than they've got bullets," Casca muttered, but cursed that he could not order a retirement of the peasants, conserving some of their lives, and clearing some space for an attack by his warriors.

  A new sound struck Casca's ears, and the chatter of machine guns was accompanied by a horrible cacophony of screams and shrieks and groans as the withering fire hosed the rioters into bloody heaps.

  Still, as fast as the Chinese fell, others pressed from behind to take their place.

  Casca grimaced at the slaughter, but reckoned the cost in bullets to his own advantage.

  Another wave of arrows silenced the machine guns, and a few peasants made it onto the wall where they fought hand to hand with the British soldiers.

  Uselessly.

  They were all dead within moments, and the deadly chatter started again.

  Soon the mass of the peasants would realize what was happening and, Casca reasoned, they would break and run, leaving the streets free for his troops. He told Huang Chu to start the attack as soon as this happened, and Huang Chu ran to where an ostler waited by the gate with his horse.

  The moment came, and the tide of shouting Chinese turned. Those at the rear who did not realize the retreat was occurring still tried to press forward but were trampled by the terrified ones fleeing in horror. They had seen close up the effects of the hollow nosed ammunition as it plowed through the bodies in front of them, exiting through holes the size of a man's fist, spraying those behind with buckets of blood and chunks of hot dripping flesh.

  But Casca's archers, still firing from cover at long range, continued to whittle away the gunners, and when the guns were quieted for a moment the first of Huang's infantry rushed the legation walls.

  The sudden arrival of disciplined warriors was a bad shock to the defending soldiers, who quickly found they had a real fight on their hands.

  The carnage amongst Casca's troops was enormous, but here and there where the defense faltered one of Casca's men would gain the top of the wall, in many cases because a rifle had jammed, or the defender had run out of ammunition. Empty rifles and bayonets were poor defense against swords and the small bows and arrows carried by the Chinese infantry.

  The machine gunners were special targets, and they were butchered mercilessly as they strove to turn their clumsy weapons from aiming at the street to fire along the top of their own wall. And, when they did succeed, they shot as many of their own men in their frantic attempt as they did attackers.

  Casca raced around the walls of the legation, his horse slipping and sliding in puddles of blood, leaping over the dead and dying, or pounding them into the cobblestones with its hooves.

  In one street he came upon David Sen Yung, haranguing the fleeing peasants, exhorting them to return to the walls and certain death. Casca grabbed him around the waist and hoisted him onto his horse, turning to head back to the palace gates.

  Inside the portal he lowered Sen Yung to the ground.

  As the young Boxer opened his mouth to speak, Casca cuffed him unceremoniously with the back of his armored glove, knocking him to the ground.

  "Kowtow," he shouted, as the dazed rebel managed to get to his hands and knees and obediently bowed his head to the ground.

  "Are you all right?" Casca asked, carefully keeping the concern out of his voice.

  "Yes, I've been lucky or unlucky."

  "Damned fucking lucky, you young fool. Luckier than you deserve, and don't you mistake it. Now get up off the ground and get yourself a decent weapon and get your ass back out there.

  "Regroup all the men you can behind buildings the enemy's guns can't reach. Order any other Boxers, in my name, to do the same in dispersed areas of the city.

  "And wait for fucking orders do you know the whistle code?"

  "Of course."

  "The gods are smiling."

  He grabbed the bemused David by the arm and squeezed it, then wheeled his mount and raced back out through the gate.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Huang Chu met him in the street outside the legation, where he was directing the action below the one wall that his troops had taken. Hundreds of men were now pouring up the ladders. The Chinese had fought their way to one corner and were almost to the other.

  They advanced on the British riflemen, the Chinese falling in turn as their bodies soaked up the bullets until each rifleman found his five round magazine empty and had to try to wield his clumsy nine pound rifle and bayonet against the two or three or four or five swords facing him on the wall.

  And the Chinese soldiers behind these swordsmen sheathed their swords and drew the small bows they carried behind their backs. Each man's quiver carried only a handful of light arrows, but at the close range they were soon accounting for riflemen faster than the British could kill the swordsmen.

  A British bugle sounded retreat, and in the street Casca heard it and swung around to Huang.

  "Call everybody back. Now. Retreat. Get the men off the walls."

  Huang looked surprised and confused, but signaled his archers, and the whistling arrows soared almost vertically, shrilling their message, and howling it again as they plummeted down to thud into the ground inside the legation.

  But even the best trained troops are easier to recall when they are losing than when they are tasting victory. The order was obeyed, but tardily. Every Chinese who was within arm's reach or bow shot of a foreign devil hesitated just long enough to help him along the way to meet his ancestors.

  "Too fucking late," Casca cursed, as he heard the machine guns open up from within the legation. Half a dozen British crews were now operating guns from the legation grounds, spraying the walls with death, and ruthlessly wiping out any of their own men who had been tardy to answer the retreat.

  Hundreds of Chinese were falling into the streets. Every fifth bullet was hollow nosed, and expanded on impact to tear off an arm or a leg, or to blow a hole through a man's gut that would accommodate a football.

  The upward tilt of the guns sent great chunks of bleeding meat and tripe flying skyward. The streets were spattered with a rain of blood and meat and guts and shit and spent lead.

  Countless, perhaps more than a thousand, Chinese were dead, and another thousand or so were dying in moaning agony all around the legation bastion.

  As near as Casca could estimate the British had lost something like thirty men and were now back in control of the whole of the legation territory.

  The best that Casca could hope for was that his archers might be able to keep the British from remounting their machine guns atop the walls.

  Stalemate. Casca fumed.

  With some artillery he might have blown some holes in the walls, but the Chinese had no cannon.

  But they did have rockets. Casca consulted with Huang, some signal arrows flew, and within a few seconds fiery trails were howling from the palace.

  The first few rockets went wild, landing amongst Casca's own troops, blowing great bleeding spaces in their ranks; but the gunners in the palace quickly adjusted their aim, and soon a rain of fire was falling inside the legation.

  Huang Chu also b
rought up some companies of men armed with agny astras, long bamboo tubes that discharged fire tipped darts. He dispersed these all around the legation and they poured their fire over the walls. They could accomplish little damage, but they did keep a lot of the British troops busy putting out the fires that they started.

  The main fire was now being brought under control, and soon the British would be able to strike back.

  The thought had scarcely touched Casca's mind when cannon roared from within the legation and he saw shots land in the vicinity of the palace.

  The aim of cannon couldn't be adjusted as quickly as could rockets, but once the British gunners got their aim right their cannon would wreak havoc amongst Casca's rocketeers, and do much more damage to his palace than he could hope for his rockets to effect against the legation.

  Casca gave some quick orders to Huang and, setting spurs to his horse, wheeled away from the action.

  He found David Sen Yung obediently concealed behind a large warehouse with several hundred peasants. Sen Yung told him that other Boxer leaders had similar groups waiting for orders in various streets all around the legation.

  Gritting his teeth at the thought of what he was doing, Casca ordered them to charge the legation and get into the grounds at all costs. He galloped away to issue the same orders to the other Boxer led groups of peasants.

  Meanwhile Huang was carrying out the orders Casca had issued him.

  His infantrymen rushed to the walls with every available ladder, rope, and grappling hook, placed them, and quickly retired to cover as the Boxers and their peasants arrived. Then the archers laid down a dense pattern of arrows, effectively keeping the British off the wall. And at the same time every possible rocket and fire dart was unleashed.

  And into this rain of death Sen Yung and the other Boxers led their thousands of peasants.

  Many of them fell victim to their own arrows and rocket fire, but most of them reached the walls and clambered up the ladders and ropes that the infantry had put in place.

  Once on top of the walls the peasants were decimated by the machine gun fire from within the legation; but, pressed from behind by the teeming horde, some of them made it into the grounds, and then some more, and then more.

  The British machine gunners had to divide their fire. Some of the big, clumsy guns were tilted down from firing at the walls to shoot directly at the peasants who were now on the ground charging at them. Lines of redcoats knelt in turn to fire their Enfield rifles into the peasants on the ground, too.

  But, as fast as they fired, the British could not kill the Chinese as fast as they came over the walls.

  And now and again a rocket from the palace took out a machine gun, or a group of redcoats or a number of Chinese.

  It made no difference. The storm of men could not be stopped. The Chinese eventually reached some of the British troops, and although the redcoats kiIled ten or twenty or more Chinese for every British soldier who fell, the peasants' farm and kitchen implements took their toll, and they tore apart the foreign devils with their billhooks, scythes, flails, and meat cleavers.

  Now Casca nodded to Huang. Huang signaled, and his infantry came out from cover and charged in the wake of the dying peasants, using the mass of their bodies for cover once they reached the ground inside the legation. They advanced remorselessly on the machine gunners, then on the riflemen, and finally on the men at the cannons who were shelling the rocket stations in Casca's palace.

  As Casca clambered over the wall he saw Huang, sword in hand, leaping into the grounds from another part of the wall.

  Casca's archers were now getting established on the wall, and their big bows launched heavy three foot arrows to devastating effect. Casca had joined these archers in practice, and had been astonished at the force of their six foot bows. He estimated the required pull at two hundred pounds, more than twice the force of any other bow he had ever encountered.

  From their vantage point on the wall the archers could pick their targets almost at leisure, and the long arrows thudded home repeatedly, rarely missing their man, and sometimes the one arrow passed clean through a man's body to skewer the man behind him.

  With the wall secured, crossbowmen were able to take up position, some of them with chu ko nus, the repeating crossbows that could launch six bolts in a few seconds, and some with the very accurate pellet bows that fired clay balls or stones.

  The chu ko nus wreaked havoc on the machine gunners, and then on the cannon crews, as the crossbowmen could place each of the six successive arrows with increasing accuracy.

  The Chinese soldiers around Casca rallied to their Hsia. A similar group formed around Huang and the two fought their way toward each other.

  The British fought hard and well. Both officers and soldiers hated China and all Chinese, considered them barely human, and were always ready to butcher any number of them. But this action was like nothing they had ever experienced.

  The numberless peasants had been bad enough, but now they were facing well trained and well led professional soldiers and were learning the hard way the uselessness of empty rifles. Hand to hand fighting was a form of warfare these men had never known, and they were no match for the sword armed Chinese, who had never known any other battle mode.

  Casca and Huang met, pausing to embrace. They held one whole corner of the legation forecourt. The British troops were now backed up against the legation building, a hundred or so redcoats in a square, the front ranks kneeling to fire their rifles, the next rank standing to fire theirs, and both these ranks retiring into the square to reload as they emptied their magazines.

  There were a few machine guns in front of the square of British soldiers, and a lot more behind it on the legation steps, firing over the defenders' heads.

  On the top steps, swords in hand, were the colonel of the legation guard and his senior officers. There were a few subaltern officers in the square and amongst the gunners, and the rest were with the hundred or so other redcoats who were defending the remaining three walls.

  Alongside the colonel stood the British legate, a tall, spare figure, splendid in a royal blue tunis with gold epaulets, his gold hilted sword disdainfully undrawn in its tassled scabbard, a cocked hat resplendent with ostrich feathers covering a fringe of thin gray hair.

  It had not yet occurred to the British that they were losing, or that they could lose. And it made no difference. Surrender to a stinking horde of yellow animals was out of the question, and there was nowhere to run.

  So the carnage continued.

  Nobody thought of taking aim at the gorgeously arrayed figures of Casca and Huang. The British riflemen were trained to fire their guns and obey orders, not to think, and they poured their fire into the mass of the Chinese troops.

  Nor did Casca's archers fire on the colonel and the legate, but they did concentrate their arrows on the machine gun crews.

  Each Maxim gun took five men to operate it. One man held the two handgrips and, as he squeezed the trigger, tried to point the bucking contraption in the general direction of the enemy. Another fed in the ammunition belt while on the other side a third pulled on the slack of the emptied belt to try to prevent it from jamming. In theory, the other two men were supposed to rush back and forth with fresh belts of ammunition and cans of water to cool the steaming mechanism. But, in practice, they laid prone, holding on to the tripod legs and trying to restrain the wild bucking of the gun every time the trigger was squeezed.

  The gunners were easy meat for the archers. Any arrow that struck home temporarily immobilized the gun, no matter which man it hit.

  Casca was charging a machine gun when one of the men holding it down was killed. The gun bucked wildly, snatching the belt from the loader's hands so that the belt jammed. The last round tore through Casca's chest and he went down.

  As consciousness faded he saw Huang turn to look at him in consternation, then turn back to race again toward the gun.

  His troops raced past him as Casca lay on his face,
blood pouring onto the ground, the blessed relief of shock washing out the searing agony of smashed ribs and torn muscles. The bullet had passed through his right lung and out through his back, and Casca was drowning in his own blood, sinking into waves of darkness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The blades of grass before Casca's eyes swam back into focus. He vomited a bucket of blood and felt the hideous wrench as the shattered bones of his ribs began to reknit.

  The pain twisted face of the Jew on the cross swam before his eyes as the bleeding slowed.

  He rolled over onto his back to get his nose out of his vomit, and felt a gentle hand inside his armor. The face he saw was now Chinese, and as the needle went into his chest he recognized Poon Fong.

  Then there was a long moment of absolute peace and ease.

  The moment ended all too quickly, and Casca was staring up into the sun. Alongside him he could see Poon Fong bending over another wounded soldier. The pain in his chest was frightful, but he knew that the worst was over, that the curse of the Nazarene had once more taken effect. He was going to live, all right.

  Fuck it. He was going to live forever.

  His sword was on the ground beside him. He snatched it up and got to his feet in an insane rage.

  Huang and some others had taken out the machine gun crew and were now rushing the rifles.

  Casca was alongside them in an instant, and together they fell upon the redcoats.

  Casca's wrist shook as the downswing of his blade split a kneeling man's skull through to his neck. The force of his rush brought him chest to chest with the standing rifleman in the next rank, and the knife in his left hand disemboweled him while his sword arm swung in a flat arc to take off another man's head. Then he was upon the men who were squatting in the rear ranks to reload, their rifles lying useless in their laps as they hastened to change the five round magazines.

  It was like killing sheep in a pen.

  One man managed to get his rifle up over his head, and Casca thought that either his sword or his wrist had broken as the force of his blow jarred his arm.