Hope Renewed

by S. M. Stirling

  All the men had heard the sound before, and most of the dogs. The troopers rode with their rifles across their thighs.

  Whistles came from up ahead. One of the Scouts came down the road at a quick lope.

  “Courier comin’, ser,” he said.

  The messenger’s dog was panting. He pulled a sweat-dampened paper from a jacket marked with the shoulder-flashes of the 7th Descott Rangers. A smell of scorched hide came from the leather scabbard in front of his right knee, the smell a hard-used rifle made when it was slapped into the sheath still hot.

  “Ser,” he said, “Major Gruder reports we’ns ran inta a patrol. Thought’t were a patrol, turned out t’be more wogs’n we could handle.”

  Raj read quickly; it was a request for reinforcements, with a quick sketch map of the action. He shook his head. Kaltin was a first-class tactician, but he had a tendency to over-narrow focus, to lock his teeth in a situation and try to beat it to death.

  “My compliments to Major Gruder, and tell him I’ll be there shortly. And to be ready to move position, quickly.”

  “Ser!”

  “Barton, bring them up to a lope.”

  The messenger pulled his mount around and clapped heels into its flanks. The sound of the guns grew sharper as the ground rose. He could see powder-smoke rising above the higher terrain to the south. A trickle of wounded passed them, riding-wounded leading dogs with more badly injured men slung over them—it was all you could do, in a situation like this.

  POUMPF. POUMPF. POUMPF. The guns were firing steadily; he could see them now, spaced out amid spindly native whipstick trees on the ridge. They were firing from the top crest, the crews pushing them back every time they recoiled. Raj pulled off the roadway, leaning forward in the saddle as Horace took the ditch with a bound and swung up the hill.

  Kaltin Gruder met him. “Ran into a patrol,” he said. “Company strength—one tabor. I jumped them, more of them came up, I called in my raiding parties, then even more showed up. There’s a battle group of two thousand down there now, and they’re not stopping for shit. These aren’t line-of-communications troops. Regular cavalry, and good ones.”

  Raj grunted in reply, sweeping his binoculars over the slope below. It was sparsely wooded with whipsticks, tall spindly trees with branches that drooped up and away from the main stem on all sides, dangling fronds of featherlike leaves.

  POUMPF. POUMPF.

  The eight guns on the ridgeline kept up their steady shelling, the pressure-wave of the discharges slapping at faces and chests. At least twenty Colonial artillery were firing in reply from the lower ground to the front, half pom-poms and half 70mms. They weren’t attempting a counter-battery shoot, just searching the edge of the treeline to try and beat down the fire of the Civil Government riflemen. All across the open ground Colonial dragoons were moving forward on foot, line after line of them in extended skirmish order.

  Gruder went on: “I’ve got the 7th in the center, with Poplanich’s Own and the 1st Rogor to the right and left and the Maximilliano over there.”

  He pointed to the east, where smoke and the steady crackle of small arms indicated action. “Whoever the wog commander is, he knows his hand from a hacksaw—started trying to work around my flanks as soon as he got a feel for the depth of my firing line here. I moved the Maximilliano out to extend the line, but it thinned me here badly.”

  Raj nodded curtly. Gruder’s three battalions—a thousand men or so, all under strength—were keeping up a steady crackle of independent fire. Down below figures in red djellabas were scattered on the ground or hobbling, limping, and crawling back toward the guns and the banners grouped around them. Advancing against veteran riflemen cost heavily. A splatgun gave its ripping braaap and a file of Colonials nearly a thousand meters away went down as the spread of rifle bullets hit them. Several of the enemy guns shifted aim; Raj could see the splatgun team trundling their light weapon to a new position just ahead of the pompom and field gun shells.

  But more and more of the Colonials were making it to their own firing line close to the woods. Their repeaters were just as deadly as the heavier Civil Government weapons at ranges under a hundred meters, and they fired much faster. A haze of off-white powder smoke was drifting away from the thickening Colonial position. Even as he watched, several platoons rose and dashed forward for the woods. Many fell, but others went to ground in the scrub along the edge of the savannah. Once in among the trees, their repeaters would slaughter men equipped with single-shot rifles.

  “We can crush them like a tangerine if you swing in with the main force, mi heneral,” Gruder said.

  Kaltin does tend to get too focused, Raj thought. His own mind was moving in cool precise arcs and tangents, like something scribed on a drawing-board by an engineer’s compasses and protractors. Like a mental analogue of the way you felt when fencing; perhaps a little like the way Center felt all the time, if Center had subjective experience.

  He felt more alive than anywhere else. It was a pity he could only feel this on the battlefield, that his art could only be practiced as men died. There were times when he lay awake at night, wondering what that said about him. But not now. Not now.

  “No, Major, a full-scale meeting engagement isn’t what I have in mind. If there’s one Colonial battle group around, there’s going to be others.”

  He considered for a few seconds. “This will have to be quick. We’ll withdraw by leapfrogging battalions. Move Poplanich’s Own back half a klick to that rise, and the guns. You’ll take the 7th and the others back to join the main force. I’ll hold the rearguard.” Gruder didn’t like retreating. “M’lewis, detach two men to each of the battalion commanders to guide them to the main-force position. Follow with the rest.”

  Gruder nodded briskly; he didn’t like it, but that would make no difference to his obedience. Antin M’lewis turned and barked orders. Pairs of men galloped off.

  “Trumpeter!” Raj went on. “Relay. Half-kilometer withdrawal. On the signal.”

  The complex call went out, was echoed. A single long note followed.

  The battery on the rise fired one last stonk and let the guns roll downhill to their limbers. The teams snatched up the trails and slapped them on; retaining pins went home with an iron clank, the six dogs of each team rose, and the guns set off down the open slope at a trot. Three men rode the offhand dogs of the team; there were two seats on the gun axles and two on the limber, and the remainder had dogs of their own. Up from the savannah came the splatguns, hauled by four-dog teams; lighter, they overtook the field pieces despite the smaller draft.

  The crackle of small-arms fire intensified. “Barton. We’ll give the wogs a going-away present. Standing saddle-volley, use the crestline. Place the splatgun.”

  Company A of the 5th was nearest to full strength, eighty men, only forty down from regulation. They fanned out behind Raj, heeling their dogs a meter and a half downslope. The dogs turned and faced the crest, then crouched. The men crouched with them, squatting. It was an inelegant and uncomfortable posture—you couldn’t let your full weight rest on the dog—but the men moved into a flawless double line with the ease of a housewife slapping dough for tortillas. Three-meter spacing between each, and the rows staggered so that the rear row matched the intervals in the front. He looked at their faces: stolid, immobile under the film of sweat, a few chewing tobacco and spitting. Every one of them knew what was about to happen.

  Below, the Colonials hesitated a crucial handful of seconds when the fire from the Civil Government troops ceased. Just long enough to let them dash back to their waiting dogs. Center unreeled numbers as the depleted battalions trotted up the slope, rallied, and cantered northward. He winced slightly. Those units had been under strength before. A lot of them were still down there in the burning grass and shattered whipstick trees, and would never leave. Long curled trumpets sounded, shriller than his own. Half the Colonials turned and started to jog back towards their dogs. The others opened fire on the retreating raiders; n
ot many went down, but some men and dogs fell out of line.

  “Reacting fast,” Raj murmured.

  The Colonial commander was sending his mounted reserve forward, galloping up the hill. Two tabor, a little under three hundred men, with a pair of pom-poms galloping behind. Galloping guns was risky, especially on uneven ground like this. A few men, wounded or just extremely brave, had stayed behind among the dead. One rose to a knee and shot the off-lead dog of a pom-pom team. It collapsed, biting at its wounded leg. The gun slewed around, then tipped over and spun. The massive torque spun through the trail and the harness, turning the team into a thrashing pile of twisted metal and shredded meat that bounced downslope and scattered the dismounted Colonials who followed.

  Raj watched the mounted Colonials approach. Numbers scrolled across his vision. The Arabs were keening as they charged. If they could prevent his men from breaking contact . . .

  500 meters. 450. 400.

  “Now!” he barked.

  “Tenzione!” Bartin Foley called, his clear tenor pitched a little higher to carry. The men rose from their squat to stand straddling their dogs. The long Armory rifles came up to their shoulders in smooth curves, the muzzles dead level except for the minute individual quivers as they picked their targets. The slope had concealed them, and to the enemy it must have appeared as if the heads and shoulders popped up out of nowhere.

  The Colonials reacted with veteran reflexes, crouching in the saddle and sloping their scimitars forward. Their dogs bounced into a full gallop, throwing themselves forward to get through the killing zone as fast as possible.

  “Fwego!” Foley’s sword chopped down in a bright arc.

  BAM. Eighty rifles fired within a half-second of each other. Braaaaaap. The splatgun fired from its position in enfilade to one side.

  The charging Colonials seemed to stagger. Dogs went down all across their front. It was only three-hundred-odd meters, and at that distance most of the 5th’s long-service men could hit a running man, not to mention a thousand-pound dog. Men flew out of the saddle, and rear-rank dogs leaped and twisted desperately to avoid the thrashing heaps ahead of them.

  “Rear rank, fwego!”

  BAM.

  “Reload!”

  “Front rank, fwego!”

  BAM.

  “Reload!”

  Braaaaap. Braaaaap.

  “Rear rank, fwego!”

  BAM.

  Braaaaap. The crew worked the splatgun like loom-tenders in one of the new steam-driven factories. Its load struck like case-shot, but far faster and more accurate.

  A Colonial trumpet brayed and drums sounded. The mounted Colonials withdrew, leaving their dead and wounded; the thick screen of dismounted men down in the woods ceased to wait for their comrades to bring up their dogs and started up the slope once more. Field gun shells went overhead with a ripping-canvas sound.

  He’s putting in an enveloping attack, Raj decided, feeling through the movements for the enemy commander’s mind. He’s decided this is a sacrificial rearguard. Half the enemy were mounted already; the dismounted thousand or so would swamp a small rearguard like this in moments, and then the Arab troopers could pour after the fleeing Civil Government soldiers. They were lighter men on fast desert-bred dogs, slender-limbed Bazenjis; they would catch what they chased, and with a two-to-one edge in numbers and more in guns the issue could not be in doubt.

  “Waymanos,” Raj said.

  The dogs rose under the men and turned, and the splatgun crew hitched their weapon and leaped to the saddles and limber-seats. Ten seconds later Company A was moving downslope and north at a trot that turned into a rocking gallop.

  They were two hundred meters away when the dismounted Colonials crested the hill. Carbine bullets cracked around their ears; the bannerman’s staff jerked in his hand, and a man went out of the saddle with a coughing grunt.

  “Don’t mask their fire,” Raj cautioned.

  Foley flicked his saber to the left, and the block of men shifted course. Raj leaned forward against the rush of hot air, the banner snapping and crackling next to him. He looked back; the Colonials were re-forming on the hill, mounting up as their comrades led their dogs forward. North were flat open fields, marked with dust plumes where the retreating Civil Government battalions moved north toward his main force. A slight rise topped by a mosque and grove of cypress trees stood about a kilometer ahead.

  Metal flashed there. Raj looked over his shoulder again. The Colonials were coming now, in solid blocks of mounted men; moving at a fast trot and deployed in double line abreast, for speed when they had to go into action. Sensible. They’d had a bloody nose twice this morning. He took a quick squint at the sun; 1100 hours. And about now . . .

  There was a puff of smoke from the cypress grove ahead. A whir went by overhead, like heavy canvas being ripped in half. A malignant crack behind, and another puff of smoke, as the time-fused shell burst over the charging Colonials.

  “Hope none of them fire short,” Bartin Foley shouted, grinning.

  Raj felt himself showing teeth in response. “Take them home, Bartin,” he called.

  He shifted the pressure of his knees and turned Horace directly for the left end of the formation ahead—Poplanich’s Own, four hundred men strong. Plus two batteries of 75s, now firing as fast as the gunners could ram the shells home, reckless both of the barrels and the ammunition supply. Rounds whined by overhead and burst, in the air, or throwing up fountains of dirt if the time fuse failed. He crouched over the dog’s neck and set his teeth as the battalion’s splatguns opened up; no need to look behind. Closer, and he could see the two staggered rows of men in prone-and-kneeling formation. Then rifles came up and the steady BAM . . . BAM . . . of platoon volleys started. The smoke was thick enough to half-mask the troops as he pulled up in a spurt of gravel by the battalion commander’s position.

  The Colonials were closer than he expected, four hundred meters but wavering under the unexpected hail of fire. Yes, about two thousand of them still, Raj thought; and their artillery was coming over the hill, pompoms and field guns both.

  As he watched, blocks of mounted Colonials veered to left and right, moving to flank the Civil Government blocking force. Without prompting, each battery ceased fire for an instant and heaved its guns around to deal with the new threat; the flanking forces moved farther out, but the Colonials in front seemed to disappear. Raj read their trumpet signals: Dismount and At the Double. The line shrank as the dogs crouched, then turned into a long double rank of men on foot coming forward at a uniform jog-trot.

  “In a moment, Major Caztro,” Raj said.

  The Major—he was a cousin on his mother’s side of the late Ehwardo Poplanich—nodded.

  “The gunners aren’t happy about it,” he said.

  “Better grieving than dead,” Raj said dryly, taking a drink from his canteen; the day was already very hot.

  “And . . . now!” he said. The major relayed the order to his buglemen.

  The gunners fired a last round from their weapons. He could hear one sergeant cursing as he wrenched the breechblock free and tossed it to one of his men. Then he jammed a shell backwards into the opening, stuck a length of slowmatch into the hole where the fuse would normally go, and lit it with the last of the stogie clamped between his lips.

  “Fire in the hole!” the noncom shouted. It was echoed down the gun line. “Ten seconds!”

  The troopers were already double-timing back to their dogs and swinging out the rear of the cypress grove around the mosque.

  “Retreat by platoon columns, at the gallop!” Major Caztro shouted.

  Raj looked to either side as he touched his heels to Horace’s ribs. The flanking parties were still well back, and the main Colonial force were just remounting and kicking their beasts into a gallop—which must be rather frustrating for them.

  The noon sun was blinding-bright. The white dust of the road reflected its heat, and sweat rolled down his forehead out of the sodden sponge-and-cork lining
of his helmet. Horace was panting, his black coat splotched with dust. Raj uncorked his canteen and rubbed a little of the water into the dog’s neck; if it went down with heat prostration, he was deeply out of luck. Another check behind: the Colonials were coming on fast, but they were staying in line and bringing up their guns with them.

  Cautious, but smart, Raj decided.

  Barreling in hell-for-leather might have caught him quicker, but he’d already given them the back of his hand twice. There was nothing to show that he didn’t have the battalions who’d retreated from the meeting engagement waiting at intervals to mousetrap an unwary pursuit.

  Which is our margin, he knew. The Colonials would have won a flat-out gallop.

  “How far, mi heneral?” the major asked, swerving his dog over to Raj’s side.

  “Just under seven kilometers,” he said. The nearest Colonials were half a klick back, now. “Twenty minutes at this rate.”

  Caztro looked back as well. “Just long enough for them to get convinced we’re going to run all the way to Sandoral?”

  “Exactly, Major.”

  If everyone hasn’t bugged out when Kaltin’s men came in hell-for-leather.

  “Halto!”

  Raj pulled Horace to a stop, then let him crouch to the ground. His wheezing pant sounded half-desperate, and he was a strong-winded dog. Some of the others were collapsing outright; men brought buckets of water and sloshed them across the moaning, gasping animals. Raj pulled off his sweat-damp neckerchief and turned to trot for the command group below the crest of the hill.