“Why would she need to, with you there?”
“But if I die? Today, that is not unlikely.”
“Then someone else’ll waatch her. You worry too much.”
“And you do not? God keep you, Major Blas,” Koratin said, then backed away from the breastworks before moving off to the right.
“That guy is so weird,” said A Company’s First Sergeant Spon-Ar-Aak, better known as “Spook,” taking the place Koratin just left. The white-furred ’Cat had been a gunner’s mate on Walker, but had followed Blas ever since. “Prob’ly could’a been a gen-raal. The Heavens know he can fight. You know he’s a Chiss-chin, right?” Blas nodded. “One o’ the first o’ our people to be one,” Spook continued. “Now there’s bunches of ’em. I don’t know how folks can do that; just switch to a new Maker whenever they like. Gives me the creeps.”
Blas waved around. “Half our humans are Chiss-chins, an’ they fight just fine.” She snorted and blinked impatience. “An’ it ain’t a new Maker, it’s the same as ours. Even Adar said so. I got no problem with ’em.”
A trumpet sounded dully in the gloomy woods ahead, followed by a terrible rumble of drums that echoed and reverberated through the trees and off the nearby mountains despite the mist. With warning from the Ocelomeh, she’d chosen this spot carefully. It wasn’t exactly open, but the passing army had left a good killing ground. She nodded toward it. “I got no problem with anybody on our side today.” Shapes began racing toward them, forest creatures of various sizes. Some were dangerous, and one Blas saw looked amazingly like a Grik. Their allies had told them those were solitary, territorial predators, and only a threat if they caught you alone or in small groups, unarmed. A few larger beasts, like rhino pigs but with different horns and strange armor on their heads, thundered toward them. All veered from the breastworks when they saw it, crashing into the woods on either side. One must’ve gotten too close, however, because Blas heard a muffled shot far to the right. Somebody’ll get reamed for that, she thought. The drums grew louder.
“Here they come!” somebody hissed to her left. Through the mist-clouded morning, she saw them: rank on rank of men marching forward, muskets on their shoulders. Their lines grew confused as they avoided trees, but quickly reformed and pressed on. This will be baad, Blas thought. It still wasn’t light enough to see the yellow of their coats, but if their facings had been white, she could tell by now. That meant these troops had red facings, and were the toughest, most ruthless soldiers Don Hernan possessed. Called Blood Drinkers, they were the personal, elite warriors of the Dom pope himself, so in their minds, they were God’s own warriors. Rising, Blas stepped back a few paces, where a gun crew stood by its piece. They hadn’t brought many cannon—they couldn’t—and the two batteries they had were all the old, lighter, six-pounders the Allied armies had used since the Battle of Aryaal. She knew there were even lighter guns now, little things called mountain howitzers that would’ve been perfect for this, but none had made it to her. She wondered if Shinya had them. “Whistler,” she said, calling her Marine signal-’Cat near. “Sound ‘load canister,’ then ‘advance your pieces.’”
“Ay, ay, Major!” replied the ’Cat, raising his big brass whistle and blowing the sequence of sharp chirps to pass the command. Quickly, the cannoneers made their weapons ready and pushed them to the breastworks. She hadn’t already placed them because she hadn’t known how the attack would come. With the enemy moving straight back up the track like this, the guns would fight right alongside the infantry. “Standby mortars,” she added. The mortar sections had been carefully situated where they could fire without hitting trees overhead. With a rising exhilaration, she prepared to “start the dance.”
“Good morning, Major Blas,” came Sister Audry’s jarringly pleasant, strangely accented voice. Blas turned, blinking consternation, and saw the Dutch nun, dressed much as she was in helmet, combat smock, and tightly wrapped leggings. Her blond hair had been sawed off even with her jaw. A crucifix hung around her neck, and a white cross was painted on her helmet. Sergeant Koratin met Blas’s searching gaze and he rolled his eyes to the Heavens, as if asking for assistance. Beside Audry was “Captain” Ximen, his gray beard almost covering his own wooden cross. Ximen wasn’t a fighter, and rather frail in any event. His followers had joined Arano Garcia’s Vengadores. Captain Ixtli retained direct command, under Blas, of his Jaguar Warriors.
“Get . . .” Blas snatched what she was about to say out of her throat. “Ah, I wish you’d get baack from here, Col-nol. Those are Blood Drinkers comin’ to kill us, an’ we’re about to open fire.”
Sister Audry smiled. “Very well, Major. Don’t mind me. I just thought you might enjoy some conversation during the battle. Perhaps you might step behind the secondary breastworks with me and describe the action as it unfolds?”
“But . . .” The implication was clear. Sister Audry didn’t want Blas in the thick of it either. She looked to the front. It was almost time. The first volleys and initial blast of canister must be timed for maximum effect. “My place is here,” she finished lamely, almost yearningly.
Sister Audry nodded seriously. “In that case, if you’re certain, then here is where I belong as well, at your side.” She smiled sweetly. “I am your commander, after all.”
“But my Marines, they’re used to me fighting with them.”
“Your Marines, Major Blas, and Captain Ixtli and his Ocelomeh, consider you just as important as Sergeant Koratin insists I am to the Vengadores. It’s true your presence in the line inspires them, but your recklessness unnerves them and they fear for you. It was they who asked me to encourage you to protect yourself.” She nodded at the next line of stacked timber and deadfall. “It’s only a short distance. They will hear your orders quite well.”
Blas was stunned. She hadn’t considered that. Most important, however, Sister Audry meant what she’d said. If Blas stayed, so would she, and her death would be Blas’s fault. After a final glance at the enemy, now little more than a hundred tails away, pausing, preparing for the command to raise their own weapons, she looked Sister Audry in the eye. “Commence firing!” she roared. Even in the misty morning, her voice carried in that singular way Lemurians had, and the command was immediately repeated by officers up and down the line. Rifle and musket companies fired crashing volleys and the twelve guns of her two batteries slammed out buzzing swarms of canister amid great, choking clouds of dense white smoke. Screams echoed back from the enemy. “Cap-i-taan Aalis,” Blas shouted to her XO of the 2nd, “carry on. I’ll be just back here behind the fallback line, chaatting with the col-nol.”
“Ay, ay, Major!” The voice sounded triumphant. A heavy returning volley of musket balls churned the damp earth, sent splinters flying from the barricade, and caused a few screeching cries of pain. Most vrooped by overhead. With all the mist and lingering smoke, their position would be as invisible to the enemy as the Doms now were to them. Through it all, Sister Audry never flinched, her smile never faltered. “Okaay, Col-nol,” Blas said stiffly. “After you.”
Volley after volley thundered in the tight forest track, and even after the sun burned the mist away, choking smoke hid the combatants from one another. Blas imagined that if a plane did fly over, the battle would be easy to mark, simply by the rising smoke. The noise, unable to disperse, was tremendous, and her ears ached with the steady, cracking pressure of the heavily charged six-pounders. The mortars were behind them and they popped and popped, their bombs whooshing high in the air before falling so close. Screams accompanied their detonations—they’d been ranged and sited well—and many exploded in the trees, spraying blizzards of splinters into the enemy. But the Doms just stood and took it, maintaining a withering fire in return. Blas had expected them to charge almost immediately, to overwhelm the breastworks with sheer numbers, but that hadn’t happened. It made no sense.
Teniente Pacal, one of Garcia’s company commanders whom Blas conside
red a friend, hurried to join them, running low. Their hiding place, as Blas regarded it, was near the center of the line and had become, essentially, the division HQ—if one could describe a small group huddled in the damp soil behind fallen trees in such a way. Pacal saluted as he slid to his knees in front of them. “Capitan Garcia’s adoration, Santa Madre . . .” he began.
“Stop calling me that!” Sister Audry interrupted.
“Of course, Santa Madre. Capitan Garcia begs to report: our weapons do not miss fire as much, now the mist is gone, but the ammunition, it runs low. He wonders if this might be part of the enemy’s plan.”
Captain Ixtli joined them as well, walking upright. He was very young, probably twenty, but very self-assured. He seemed to be having the time of his life—and maybe he was. His Ocelomeh had suffered terribly at the hands of the Doms, and now to kill so many so easily made his eyes flash with satisfaction. He barely seemed to notice when a musket ball snatched at his tattered sleeve. “We are not so low on ammunition,” he said. “My people are not as well trained as yours.” He nodded at Pacal. “But this is not what I expected,” he confessed.
“I’ve begun to ask myself the same as Teniente Pacaal, Col-nol,” Koratin admitted to Sister Audry. “Like the Grik have done, they sacrifice warriors to leave us defenseless.”
Blas had been peering over the breastworks, as far as she thought she could get away with without earning a gentle reprimand. It was true they were using a lot of precious ammunition they couldn’t easily replace, and her 2nd Marines, with their breech-loading Allin-Silvas, were almost dry after nearly two hours of constant firing. Two hours . . . So, Koratin’s theory made sense—if the enemy knew how far out on the logistical limb they were. But if they knew that, they also had to know how small their force was. Why not just mob them under? She could see Doms out there as the smoke eddied, still roughly a hundred tails away. Gaps constantly opened in their lines and bodies were literally heaped at their feet. But the gaps closed and they continued firing. They were taking a grim toll in return and there were many dead and wounded behind the breastworks, but it seemed insane . . . She turned to Ixtli. “And our scouts still see no evidence the Doms are sneaking through the woods on our flaanks, like we’ve done to them?”
“No, Major Blas,” he said, bowing respectfully. He treated her with the same reverence the Vengadores showed Sister Audry, mostly because of what she and her people looked like. That made Blas uncomfortable. She looked at Sister Audry, speaking loudly over the battle. “Don Her-naan wouldn’t waste his finest troops just to soak up bullets,” she said, thinking her way through it. “He’d use reg-laars. They’d take it awhile, then break an’ he’d send up more until they did the same. If he was just tryin’ to empty our guns, he’d do that, then send Blood Drinkers to wipe us out. But Blood Drinkers’ll stand from start to finish until we kill every daamn one, if they’re told. Why waste ’em?”
Koratin’s eyes widened. “Because they’re the only ones who’ll staand that long. And perhaps because they’re the only ones there! They do not sacrifice their lives for our bullets, but for time!”
Blas’s mind whirled. “This isn’t a major attaack! It’s a rearguard made to look like one. They can’t charge because they’ll spend themselves up, an’ we’ll see there’s nothin’ behind ’em!” She barked a laugh, barely audible over another blast of canister, but there was no humor in it. “They’ve done the same thing to us we’ve done to them—slowing us with a small force—the Maker knows how long. Now they try to stop us in our traacks just one more day. . . .”
Sister Audry’s benign expression finally faded. “What must we do?”
Blas stood, oblivious to enemy fire, blinking determination. “We kill ’em until our ammunition’s almost gone, then attaack. It’ll be bloody,” she cautioned. “Blood Drinkers fight up close with the same resolve that keeps ’em staandin’ there, takin’ all we’ve thrown at ’em for two daamn hours. But we’re in a hurry now, an’ have to know how long we been sloggin’ along behind a reflection of ourselves.” She looked at Pacal, then Ixtli. “An’ that means prisoners. When we have ’em, we’ll leave it to you to find out what we need to know.”
“Major Blas . . .” Sister Audry began, her voice stern.
Blas blinked at her emphatically. “We leave it to them, Col-nol! I know your ways work on people”—she glanced at Pacal—“but these’re Blood Drinkers. You might convert a few over months, but we got no time—an’ lives’re at stake! Maybe the whole daamn war!”
• • •
When Blas predicted it would be bloody, she hadn’t really known how grimly inadequate her description was for the true horror to come. She’d fought Blood Drinkers before, but always with an advantage, from defensive positions. Never on the open ground, bayonet to bayonet. And despite Sister Audry’s objections, she didn’t stay behind when her Marines, the Ocelomeh, and the Vengadores followed their last loads of canister over the breastworks. She couldn’t abandon them for that, and if Koratin was right and the bulk of the Dom army was long gone, this last fight and what they discovered would be the task force’s final purpose. Charging and yelling with bayonets fixed, her Lemurian Marines yipping and howling in that terrifying way that unnerved even the Grik, they slammed into the brutalized Dominion line. The sheer magnitude of the slaughter they’d already wreaked hindered them then, as they had to climb or wade through bodies before they could even come to grips with Dom soldiers more lethal than any Grik. And they were at least a match, in terms of training, for Marines and veteran Vengadores. For the rest—the new members of Garcia’s force and the Ocelomeh in particular, despite their courage and rage after generations of abuse—it was a slaughter.
The Jaguar Warriors might be the finest rough-terrain, woodland guerrillas in the world—Blas knew nothing of the Khonashi—but they were hopelessly outclassed in this kind of fight. It was if they were fighting her own Marines, and the Dom’s bayonet work was professional, and just different enough that even her Marines had trouble adjusting. Many died in that first, frantic embrace, amid flashing bayonets; jetting muzzle flashes; the clash of steel; defiant roars; and shrill, unearthly shrieks. And despite the slaughter the Doms had endured, there were still plenty of them. Blas lost her rifle, knocked away by a finger-numbing blow, and immediately drew her pistol and cutlass. She’d become an artist with both, under the tutelage of such as Chack, Silva, and Gray, and inside the reach of Dom bayonets, she hacked, slashed, and shot her way through the line and started cutting men down from the sides. Others did the same. Finally, ultimately, it was technology and determination that turned the tide.
These Doms were still encumbered with plug bayonets, making it impossible to fire their muskets once they resorted to their blades. On its face, on some procurement bureaucrat’s ledger, it might seem a minor thing, but in practice, the tactical disadvantage was devastating. Blas suspected the next Dom army they met would be better equipped, but in the meantime, her people, with their offset, socket bayonets, could still fire when they got a chance to load, and that didn’t take but a few seconds for her Marines with their breech-loaders. And then there were the pistols, like her Baalkpan Armory copy of a 1911 Colt. At bayonet range, they were overwhelming. All her Marine officers and NCOs had them, and their sharp pop! pop! pop! joined the other sounds of battle. She’d hack a man with the cutlass in her right hand and shoot another with the pistol in her left. When it was empty, she’d push the magazine release with her trigger finger, thrust her cutlass in the ground when a moment came, and insert another magazine from the pouches on her belt. It took only seconds. Then she was back to hacking and shooting. Soon, all her Marines had broken through the center of the Dom line and begun sweeping to the left, killing as they went, joining the Ocelomeh.
And that was where the determination came in. Outmatched as they were, the Jaguar Warriors didn’t fall back. They kept up the pressure—and the enemy’s attention—even as the
y died in droves, and the 2nd of the 2nd rolled the Doms up in an irresistible sweep of lead and steel. By the time the last cluster of exhausted, broken, mostly wounded Blood Drinkers were surrounded on the far western side of the artificial clearing, triumphant shouts came from the Vengadores on the right, having achieved the same result on their own.
“Prisoners! Prisoners!” Blas shouted, gasping for air, her voice cracked, throat feeling like she’d swallowed hot sand. Others took up the call somewhat belatedly, and slowly, reluctantly, the killing began to ebb. It was only then she realized she was limping, and glanced dazedly at her right leg beyond the hem of her filthy, blood-soaked smock. How’d I get that? she wondered, seeing the deep puncture in her calf, blood flowing freely to mix pinkly with the foamy sweat slicking her fur. The rush of combat was beginning to fade, as if it was leaking from her wound. She felt faint.
“Corps-’Cat!” First Sergeant Spook bellowed, suddenly beside her. He looked worse than she did, with all the blood soaking his white fur.
“You do it,” Blas croaked, sitting heavily on a Dom corpse and fumbling at a pouch on her belt for a battle dressing. Her hands were shaking so badly, she let Spook get it out. “Healers are busy enough,” she managed to say, “an’ it’s just a little poke. Prob’ly a bayonet got me. By the looks of it, one of ours.” For some reason, that amused her. “How ’bout you? You look awful.”
Spook shrugged, uncapping the vial of polta paste and smearing it on her wound; then he started to apply the bandage. “I’m too daamn sore to tell, but I don’t think I’m hurt,” he answered at last. “That was tough,” he added, in classic understatement, tying the dressing in place. Then he raised his voice at the milling Marines and Ocelomeh. Many—those not still menacing the surrounded Doms—seemed utterly spent, almost in a state of shock. “Some o’ you dopes, gimme a haand with the major!”
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