The Tears of the Sun

by S. M. Stirling

  “Dismount the lancers,” he decided. “We won’t have time to get the mounts out and warhorses can’t be wasted.”

  There was grumbling at that, but Association knights trained to fight on foot when they had to, and being armored cap-a-pie the men-at-arms would stiffen the footmen nicely. The mantlets trundled along, bouncing on their spoked steel wheels over the irregular ground.

  “Idle bastards,” Guelf said, looking around at the ruins of what had been Pendleton’s northern half.

  Nobody had to ask who he meant. The wreckage of the suburbs here had mostly been left to decay naturally, with only occasional efforts to clear a field of fire on the north bank of the river—or perhaps that was simply people salvaging building material. Concrete floor-pads and basements and the ruins of burnt-out houses were still thick, and others had been converted into workshops or storage or piles of rubble had been shoved aside for truck gardens and turnout pasture. There were even occasional rusted automobile hulks littering the dirt-drifted, sagebrush-grown roadways, though they’d been stripped of useful items like springs and glass windows. Anywhere in the Association territories—or at least anywhere with an inhabited countryside and a city in the middle of it—would have been a lot neater.

  The wagon with the engineering supplies followed behind, lurching and jerking as the heavy horses dragged it up the footpath east along the bank opposite Pendleton’s walls.

  “Keep going!” Guelf called. “Eighth Street first, then work your way back!”

  They broke out into open country as they traveled, east of the ruined suburb. There was the Eighth Street bridge, the last one actually fronted by the wall of the smaller modern city on the south bank. A couple of sentries pelted back across it, their yells thin with distance; a sally port beside the main gate opened for a second to their frantic pounding, and then slammed with a hollow boom as they dashed through. That looked as if everyone in the city was firmly focused on the battle shaping up to the southwest.

  Good.

  “My lord, where should I put this stuff?” a sergeant asked, gingerly holding a cloth tube of the mixture of powdered aluminum and iron oxide.

  “The thermite? See there, where the crossbeams are riveted to the main support pillars? Pack it in there. Crossbowmen here, ready to give covering fire!”

  The mantlets swiveled to face the city walls, trundled forward and dropped on their support props with a thunk. The crossbowmen took position behind them, thumbing bolts into the grooves of their weapons and leveling them through the firing slits. Working parties scrambled down the steep slope to the foundations of the bridge, men standing on each other’s shoulders to reach the vulnerable part he’d pointed out.

  Guelf sweated more than running around in a sixty-pound suit of plate and carrying a fifteen-pound shield in ninety-degree heat demanded. Pendleton was notoriously sloppy, but Boise was equally notorious for paying tight-arsed attention to detail. And the CUT . . .

  His mind seemed to skip a beat. He blinked in confusion. What was I about to think? What—

  “Done!” the sergeant called.

  “Light the fuse. Back west, next bridge!”

  The river turned a little south of west; the Main Street bridge was absurdly wide in the fashion of pre-Change construction, and the banks of the Umatilla were forested here.

  “Sentries!” yelled Sir Harold, pointing.

  Guelf looked up. Several men were standing on the wall, visible between the crenellations as light flashed off field glasses. One had a transverse crest of scarlet-dyed horsehair on his helmet.

  Boise centurion, that one, he thought. The rest are Registered Refugee Regiment, no mistaking the red pants. The Pendleton Bossman, Carl Peters, must have ordered some of his household troops to stay back and protect his precious hide.

  “Get going! They’re not going to stay asleep forever!”

  Damn! he thought. It made sense to rush to the end of the job and work my way back, I thought; we have to take these down so they use the ones we want when they sally. At five hundred feet from the wall to us this one isn’t safe, that’s a long crossbow shot. Much less the next one, it’s barely half that. Should have taken the nearer ones out first before they got men here to harass the working parties. Crap! No help for it, got to get it done. They’ll be waiting for us at 10th; might even defend it.

  “Chezzy! Grab thirty men and the wagon and go start on 10th Street! Be careful; be smart, but get it down. Take two of the mantlets!”

  He turned back to the Main Street bridge, wishing he had Thierry’s training as a field engineer. Crossbows began to twang and thump from the wall; most of the bolts fell short, but he ordered spearmen forward to hold their shields up to protect the working parties. Just as they finished the work and were forming up, a scorpion was wrestled up onto the wall. Men looked up and yelled in alarm; they were well within range of the four-foot bolts and you couldn’t count on a siege mantlet stopping them.

  Guelf laughed; it was even mostly genuine.

  “They haven’t fastened that thing down, men!”

  Recoil would buck it right off the wall if they tried to fire it without a solid anchor. Pendleton was short of artillery; the Boise army had probably brought in a lot, but there wouldn’t be pre-fitted bolts ready to secure them on the walls. There were men working around it, probably trying to improvise braces.

  “Give them a salute, boys!”

  He turned his back on the wall, pulled the knot on his trews’ waistband and mooned the useless scorpion; a knight’s plate armor left the seat bare to grip the saddle.

  Dangerous, he thought. But it puts fresh heart in the men.

  The Gervais contingent roared and laughed and followed suit, waggling and slapping their buttocks at the wall and shouting remarks that started with shoot this, you sheep-fuckers and went downhill from there. The thermite charges lit with a hissing dragon’s roar, and off-white smoke poured heavenward. Metal bubbled and ran, and concrete broke with a snapping crackle. Guelf yanked his trews up, pulled a new slip knot and pointed his sword west . . .

  “Back! Let’s help Chezzy stick it to them again!”

  He led the way down the old footpath, mantlets clanking and rattling beside them. Over the rattling sound of his men double-timing in pounding unison and the banging of the mantlet’s steel wheels came a sudden wheep, like an arrow hugely magnified.

  “Hurry!” he roared.

  The muffled impact came with a scream, high and pain-laden. Guelf pounded up onto 10th Street, into chaos. The men he’d sent were milling about, on the ground . . . he clenched his jaw against the welling of despair—Chezzy and Chezzy’s squire, Terry Reddings, a huge bolt transfixing his body. Terry was his wife’s younger brother and as like to Layella as a twin.

  God! Thank you! He’s facedown. I couldn’t bear to see his dead face . . . her face—dead . . . She’s not dead, she’s not!

  He laid about with the flat of his sword, banging on mail and shocking men back into sense.

  “Get that mantlet set up, get us some cover!”

  He turned to see Father Stanyon working on Chezzy.

  “He’s alive? What’s happened to him?”

  “Crossbow bolt in the scapular.” The doctor-priest jerked a thumb to the right. “They got a man over the wall and he sneaked up close enough to take a shot. Young Reddings is dead, and Sir Czarnecki isn’t. But the bolt hit a vein; luckily not an artery. I can’t budge it and we need it out to cauterize it. I have to get him back to the cars. Probably need to get him to Hermiston before we can do anything.”

  Guelf nodded. “Brandon! Take three men for stretcher duty. Take Chezzy and . . . and . . . Terry, Terry’s body, back to the rail head. Evacuate all nonessential personnel, now. Charlmain! Get those drums unloaded all over the bridge, spill the oil, now!”

  The flat tung of the scorpion twanged again and everybody threw themselves flat. This one was properly anchored, which meant they could reload it quickly. The bolt went overhead with a toot
h-grating wheep and then a whunk of impact as it buried half its length in the soil. They worked, using the mantlets as best they could to shield themselves. Another bolt hit one, and half the shaft stood through it; a man stumbled back swearing as the sharp three-sided head stopped a handsbreadth from his face, then dropped flat with a yell as crossbowmen volleyed at his suddenly exposed form.

  Beyond the walls a slowly growing brabble sounded; pounding feet, equipment clanging and thumping against other men or walls and stairs, shouts loud enough to be almost comprehensible. That meant hundreds of men at least, massing in the open space just inside the walls. When there were enough of them the gates would spring open.

  “They’re getting ready to sortie,” he muttered to himself.

  And there’s nothing much we can do but wait for it, and hope those Stavarov men get here the way Ruffin promised.

  He looked up and was shocked to see the morning was gone and the sun was in the west. A squire handed him a couple of hardtack biscuits and a lump of rock-hard cheese strong enough to make you feel that it was biting you, and the sight brought on a sudden raw hunger that had nothing to do with taste and everything with fuel. He worried at both, and drank from a canteen of Umatilla water cut one-to-five with bad brandy to kill the bugs.

  Then the banners of House Stavarov, a glitter of lance-points and footmen trotting behind; just far enough away to see clearly, as they reined in beside the flag of House Odell. He breathed out in relief—they might not be enough, but he certainly didn’t have enough without them.

  “Pile it all up!” he shouted. “The tents, the food, tear down those corrugated-iron sheds. There, there, there! We’ll stop them in these ruined streets just north of here!”

  The stink of blood, sweat, spoiling food, dust, oils and distillates was compounded by the filth three hundred men could void in a single day of hard and ceaseless work.

  Go ahead and shit, pee, spit and foul the nest. We’ll either lie in our filth with the coming of dark, or leave them lying in it.

  The last pedal cars were already pulling up on the rail line to the west, ready to take them out. Viscount Chenoweth, Thierry and Guelf met at the railhead; it was close to sundown.

  “Are we ’bout ready?” Chenoweth asked.

  “Yes.” Guelf answered shortly. Then, seeing anger begin to darken the other’s eyes, apologized. “Too long a day and too much sun, my lord. What’s the plan, now?”

  To his relief, Chenoweth nodded an acceptance for the implied apology. “They’re going to launch an attack soon; it must have taken this long to get enough troops up from the main battle south of town. Thierry’s specialists will fire the Highway 84 bridge the moment they do, then double-time over to the Westgate Bridge and fire it with incendiary bolts from the prearranged positions. It’s thick with the HD40 now. We’ll all converge on the railcars.”

  Constantine Stavarov’s face fell. “Well, fuck your mother, don’t I get to fight?”

  “Yes, you do, Sir Constantine,” the Viscount said patiently. “You have to hit the head of their column when they come out of the city and across the bridge. Hold them. Then I hit them. Then Sir Guelf hits them in the flank. Then you withdraw, we withdraw, and we spring our little surprise on them when they’re nicely stalled just where we want them. Understand, my lord?”

  “Da, da. They come out and I charge them down this street here.”

  The heir to Odell sighed. “Exactly. My lords, Sir Constantine and his people will hold until we get there and then take the first pedal cars off. Most of Thierry’s specialists will follow in the next two cars. They won’t need their reloading crews and the machines will be laid in advance.”

  Guelf nodded, frowning as he looked for his squires. Brandon and Charlmain were . . . back by the rails, arguing? He strode back, a blistering rebuke behind his teeth. They were confronting a child of eleven. Odo Reddings, his wife’s youngest brother and his youngest page.

  “God’s teeth, Odo! I sent you back to Hermiston with orders to accompany the wounded into Portland, hours ago! This is no place for a page!”

  Odo looked up at his lord, his defiant, angry attitude towards the squires crumbling. “I missed the train, sir. Do I take the one with the Chehalis menie?”

  God, of course not! One of Constantine’s knights, I know his reputation. I can’t tell them Odo hid from his brother’s dead body, but I’m sure that was it! Damn! I didn’t think of that!

  “Brandon, detail someone to get this brat on the train with you—”

  “And what is going on here?”

  At the angry voice, Guelf turned, baring his teeth at Thierry. “A little bit of a snaggle. My page is still here!”

  “Get your men into position, Mortimer. I’m going up.”

  Guelf nodded, his cheeks burning with embarrassment. And Odo’s butt is going to burn!

  “Brandon, Charlmain; back to your position. Sir Thierry, the padre will be at your orders. I’ll see you at the rendezvous.”

  Guelf and his squires double-timed it to the formation point in the tangle of dead streets. As Guelf strode up the line, checking his men’s readiness, he saw many reach for their scapular or the saint’s medal they wore around their necks, murmur a brief prayer and tuck it back.

  With a sour smile, he did the same. The plain gold disk dangling on a fine gold chain around his neck was set with a small piece of jasper. Unless somebody took it in hand and looked at it, they wouldn’t realize his old St. Valentine medal was gone, nor what the new one signified.

  The Ascended masters are real. So is their power.

  Then a shout of: “Here they come!”

  He skipped backward a few steps to get a line of sight. The city gates were open, and at least two hundred men were quickstepping out with more behind; the assault party was Pendleton city militia from the looks, wildly mismatched armor but long pikes, coming straight down the road to the bridge and heading equally straight for Constantine’s banner. His position would be invisible to them . . . hopefully until too late.

  “Face forward, all of you. When the signal comes we’re going to run down this street, turn right—that’s right, everyone—into the cross street and hit, in a wedge, splitting the join between the Chehalis men and the enemy. I want you all to think that you’re wild Celts! Like the McClintock woodsrunners from the far south, fangs out and hair on fire. We have to hit them like a sledgehammer; it’s our asses if we don’t. Charlmain, you’re there! Brandon, there!”

  He took his place at the head of the lines, spearmen and men-at-arms with their shields forward, the lighter-armed crossbowmen on the flanks.

  “Nobody look back! Everybody, eyes front! You’ll follow me!”

  He turned his head over his right shoulder, waiting for the flash of red, stamping his feet rhythmically and hearing the whole menie take it up as they jogged in place. Just a few feet forward was the entrance to the north-south alley they had numbered two. He could hear the fight struggling back and forth, like the sound of sea surf in storm as a bristle of long Pendleton pikes slammed up against the County Chehalis men-at-arms and spearmen. Chenoweth was at the other end, though he couldn’t see him. Thierry’s flag signal would synchronize the attack.

  Thierry’s squire swung the red flag from his position on top of the post and Guelf lifted his sword and knocked down his visor. The world shrank to a bright slit, and he put his left fist four inches below his chin. The shield covered him from face to knee, and he tucked his shoulder into it, making his armored body into a battering ram. Then he filled his lungs and screamed the order:

  “With me, forward.”

  Everyone stepped off together, synchronized by their stamping unison. He moved at a trot, building momentum and speed as his menie came behind him in a thick wedge of muscle and bone and steel and wood and leather, a harsh stink of sweat and oiled metal like a wave moving with them, a crashing rhythm of hobnailed boots and clattering steel. Voices echoed, muffled by the visors and booming from the curved inner surface
s of the big kite-shaped shields:

  “Forward for Portland! Haro! Face Gervais, face Death! St. Valentine protect us! Haro!”

  Ahead the clatter and thump of close-quarter combat, the unmusical crash of steel on steel, like scrap falling on a stone floor. The grunting and panting of the heaving shoving match, shield against point or shield, men crushed forward by the weight at their backs and forced into the enemy ahead. Shocked screams of pain as steel bit home, shrieks of animal rage and fear, the patterned bellow of war shouts from the men of County Odell:

  “Dismas, Dismas, Saint Dismas protect! Odell, Odell, Odell! Haro! Haro!”

  They hit the enemy force locked with the Odell and Chehalis men, and the sound turned shrill as they realized they were being flanked and the crossbow volleys struck home. He rammed his shield into a pikeman’s unguarded right side with an impact that knocked into all his joints and the small of his back, smashed him off his feet and into the press of stamping boots below and thrust over and down into a man’s neck above the breastplate. The points of spears and gisarmes slammed past him from behind, thudding home in faces and guts or screeching off armor with tooth-grating tortured squeals.

  Odell’s oliphants were sounding retreat. Guelf kept his head moving as he fought; you had no peripheral vision with a visor down, but he could feel the Pendleton men crumbling. He could also see Constantine Stavarov, shieldless, his visor knocked away, with blood spattered across his flushed high-cheeked, snub-nosed face and the white showing all around his eyes as he swung a two-handed war hammer with a thick spike on the other side in a blur of smashing, stabbing motion.

  He was either laughing or just giving a bestial roar of joy, mouth like a red-and-white cavern. It was impossible to hear him in the tumult, but it was utterly obvious he wasn’t going to obey any trumpet-call to retreat and probably hadn’t even heard it. Two of his squires grabbed him neatly in what was obviously a rehearsed maneuver, each throwing an arm about him to pin his arms to his sides, pushing their shields forward to guard all three as they backed up with their lord’s feet almost off the ground as he screamed and struggled wildly.