He didn’t have a musket today but drew his short sword from its scabbard. Instead of menacing anyone with it, he merely laid the gleaming blade on his shoulder and touched it with his chin.
“Like as not, some of ye’ll get a sticker like this. God knows we’ve got ’em ta spare, fer men on the guns. They’re good for pokin’ yer enemy in the belly if things get close an’ bloody. I’ll even teach ye how if yer chosen for a gun crew—though that’ll be wasted effort on me own part.” He sighed. Suddenly whipping the blade off his shoulder, he pointed it at one of the 6pdrs and his voice rose again. “That’s the weapon ye really need ta learn, instead o’ caperin’ on it like flies. That’s what wins battles an’ll kill bloody Doms farther than their muskets can hurt ye. Learn that, an’ ye’ll only ever need one o’ these”—he waved the short sword—“ta clear brush an’ cut firewood.” He lowered his voice and looked at the blade, glittering under the hot, bright sun. “Comes ta turnin’ these red, they won’t save ye anyway, ’cause it’ll mean yer tryin’ ta save yer guns—or ye’ve already lost ’em.” He slammed the sword in its scabbard. “If it’s the latter an’ we lose the fight, lose the war, the Doms’ll have yer families on spikes an’ ye better hope they get ye before I do.”
He glared at everyone, even the instructors. “So what am I gettin’ at? What’s the ‘moral’ to me story?” He pointed at the gun again. “Ye fight with that as hard as ye can an’ don’t ever leave it. Ye protect it as ye would yer families, since it’s the best protection for them!” With wide-eyed Pidros wordlessly gulping and swaying, McNabb turned to the corporals and snapped, “Get on with it, then. If ye waste more time—waste these men—I’ll have a handspike so far up yer arse, it’ll squirt yer meager brains out yer ears!”
With a new enthusiasm mixed with fear, the corporals started grabbing contrite recruits and physically placing them in various positions around the guns. Corporal Dodd pushed a tall young Pidro up even with the right wheel hub on the left-side gun and handed him a rammer staff. “You’re a ‘Number One’ man,” he said tightly. “Number One,” he stressed as the interpreter explained. “You’ll sponge the bore and ram the charge.” Stepping back to the line of men, Dodd fetched another and positioned him a pace behind the first, a long pace to the right of the shiny round cascabel on the breech of the gun tube. Handing him a brass priming wire or “prick” and padded leather “thumbstall” with ties to go around his wrist and hold it on his hand, Dodd said, “Number Three. You’ll clear the vent—that hole in the back of the barrel—and tend it. Cover it with your thumb and press down hard while the piece is sponged or loaded. You’ll also move to the back of the gun to help the gunner aim, shifting it from side to side with the handspike as the gunner commands. Got that?” The Pidro nodded uncertainly when the interpreter finished. “Finally, you’ll prick the charge and prime the gun, so this job’s damned important,” Dodd stressed. He and the other corporal filled the rest of the positions required to fire both weapons: Twos, Fours, Fives, Sixes, and Sevens—gunners (the corporals themselves) didn’t have a number—and told the men what their duties were.
Felix watched Sergeant McNabb finally start to nod to himself before he called for attention and boomed, “Each o’ ye devils’ll learn every one o’ these positions—what they do an’ why, an’ in what order—even how to take on two or three at once in case yer friends’re knocked on the head. Ye’ll learn the drill till ye do it like a bloody dance an’ can do it in yer sleep! Then, if yer chosen fer a crew, we’ll let ye shoot the big buggers an’ start learnin’ ta slaughter the goddamn Doms!”
That actually raised a hesitant cheer, and Sergeant McNabb sent Felix and Elijah a covert wink before turning and stalking toward another section training under Emmel Dukane.
“Hard to believe you outrank him now,” Felix said dryly.
“Aye. But as long as we have men like him, we might make soldiers of the rest after all.” Elijah paused and smiled. “Me too. How are your rifle recruits?”
Meder frowned, then brightened. “Not quite so bad. Like Captain Anson’s Rangers and dragoons, I’ll never get as many as the line infantry, or even your artillery. And most came from the Ocelomeh before we ever reached Uxmal, as you’ll recall.” He paused. “Subject to the approval of their King Har-Kaaska, of course, which Varaa-Choon expects. I understand he’s been southeast, toward Don Discipo’s Puebla Arboras, keeping an eye on things. But he’s finally coming here, and I’ll admit I’m curious to meet him. In any event, hunters and woodsmen make better riflemen, and Rangers as well. Now I get to choose the best of those who’ve completed basic infantry and artillery training!” His frown returned. “I only wish I had more powder and shot.” He waved at a gleaming 6pdr. “Just as a gunner needs live fire to get good with one of those, a rifleman needs practice as well—or he may just as well stay in the infantry with a musket!”
Elijah was nodding. “We can build an army, given time,” he agreed, “but we can’t bloody miracle it—an’ its ammunition—from the thin air!”
* * *
“Ammunition manufacture must be our utmost priority,” Colonel De Russy insisted again. He, Lewis, Captain Anson, and now Major Reed, were riding around the parade ground, where soldiers and recruits were hard at drill, accompanied by Alcalde Periz, Varaa-Choon, and Ixtla. Reverend Harkin and Father Orno shared a carriage with Captain Holland’s “villainous” purser, Mr. Finlay, who, along with a man named Samarez, the “Procurador” of Uxmal, was attempting to construct an “Allied Quartermaster’s Corps.” Building an army was hard enough, but supplying it, as Lewis had feared, was posing even greater difficulties and causing the most friction between the Allied cities.
Periz glared at De Russy. “I thought horses and uniforms for recruits were the first things you wanted.” After only two months, Periz was as fluent in English as Teniente Lara had been. He now swept an arm to his side, encompassing the parade ground. “I confess I considered the latter rather ridiculous at the time, but now I see the importance. It was something all three cities could immediately contribute together—along with feeding the army, of course. And not only, as you said, do uniforms make men feel like soldiers; it makes them feel like soldiers in the same army, no matter which city they’re from. That helps build the unity you’ve insisted”—he held up a hand—“and I agree we must have.” He shook his head. “But other things tear at that unity.” Periz glared at the carriage where Samarez brooded and Finlay still managed to look like a weasel in spite of the new uniform he also wore. “On one hand, as you know, though there’s iron ore in this land, we got by well enough with softer metals and never developed iron production. That makes iron as precious as gold. Yet you want us to hoard all the iron we took from your wrecked ships to make weapons. That annoys the Itzincabos, who want to make tools to extract copper and tin and lead from their mines—which you also want for ammunition, and perhaps even more great guns!”
“We must have lead for rifle and musket balls,” De Russy stated flatly, as he’d done before, “and you wouldn’t have us make roundshot out of that iron when copper will serve, would you? As it is, we can add what we have to the iron hoard and replace it with copper—if there’s time. And we can ultimately cast more ‘great guns’ from those other metals as well.”
“But how do the Itzincabos get those metals in the . . . preposterous quantites you demand without better tools? Especially if we give you all the blasting powder we make for their use in their mines as well!”
Lewis had been pleased if not wholly surprised to discover the Uxmalos made crude gunpowder for mining and blasting out the stones they used for construction. It wasn’t properly combined or corned, and they’d have to build a powder mill to make it usable, but they wouldn’t have to start from scratch. Still, Lewis had finally found out why firearms were so little used around here. The few who had them, like Varaa, some of her Ocelomeh, and various wealthy Uxmalos, got their gunpowder from some of Fathe
r Orno’s brother priests (almost considered magicians), who ran a tiny mill upriver and made decent stuff in small batches. Examining the guns and ammunition Tranquilo smuggled in for his assassination attempt, they’d seen what sort of arms the Doms had. Some were old matchlock “trade guns” of a sort Doms once provided their Indian allies, but they didn’t do that anymore, and the rest were newer weapons: robust, if somewhat crudely shaped and bored, flintlocks of the Spanish miquelet style. Varaa believed they were current Dom issue. There was no provision for a socket bayonet—Varaa said they used the “plug” type, inserted in the muzzle—and they couldn’t be as accurate as American muskets for a number of reasons, but they were probably just as reliable. Equally daunting, though the powder they recovered seemed rather weak, it was properly and uniformly made. Lewis and Father Orno had sent people to the “powder monks” to discuss how to make the various granulations required and increase their capacity to a scale they never could’ve imagined.
“You’ll have to increase your own production,” Lewis told Periz. “Make enough to use in the mines and feed our cannon.”
“And how do we do that as more of those who leech the sal-petrae—the ‘saltpeter’—char the wood, not to mention quarry and transport the . . . sulphurus from La Tierra del Sangre—the very land of our Holcano enemies—are taken into your army?” Samarez demanded through Finlay. He, like Captain Holland, had already had Spanish and a smattering of Mayan and had combined them into the local Spanya as well as anyone.
Lewis frowned angrily. “It’s our army, sir,” he retorted sharply, “and the sooner you get that in your head and heart, the better! But as we’ve also gone over before, aside from the necessary training all must eventually receive, your people will generally, also necessarily, continue their lives much as they have. They’ll drill once a week so they don’t forget what they’ve learned, but will only be called up when needed.” He looked at Varaa. “The people I brought here, the Ocelomeh as always, and a small percentage of townsfolk, will serve as the ‘standing army’ for the Allied cities, able to handle the Holcanos and Grik if they harass us again.” His expression turned hard. “Unlike before, however, if the Dominion sends a major force, we can’t fight them alone.” He shifted his gaze to Periz. “Everyone must be ready to fight, and we need ammunition. Not only to fight, but to train to fight!
“Much of our gunpowder was ruined, and Mr. Finlay has calculated that we used almost seven hundred pounds—a third of what we had left—in our tiny fight on the beach! And that was fixed ammunition. We have to replace that as well. We have molds for small arms projectiles and can cast those out of lead, but we need paper to wrap cartridges.” Uxmalos made a kind of rough wood-fiber paper but preferred parchment. Lewis wasn’t sure that would do. He shook his head without pausing. “And we need thousands of cloth powder bags for cannon charges. Not to mention wooden sabots, strapping, tin cylinders for canister, something to use for slow match when our cannon primers are exhausted . . .” He shook his head, not even trying to explain what percussion caps were. Only the dragoons needed large numbers of them for their Hall carbines, and they had enough, for now, carefully shipped in waterproof tins. They’d eventually need more, of course. . . . He sighed at Finlay and Samarez. “There’s more to do than I can even think of at present, but you two and your assistants must think of it all. And ways to get or make what we need. Not how to get by without it,” he finished with another glance at Periz.
The alcalde of Uxmal snorted and pasted a pained smile on his dark, square face. “War with flaked arrowheads and spear points seems so much easier.”
Varaa laughed. “You think so? You think it’s easy to make such weapons—or use them? They may be cheaper in materials, but they’re much harder to make than you think. I cast my own musket balls, as Captain Cayce says, and when the lead is flowing I can make a hundred in an hour. It takes many hours to knap a single hunting point for an arrow and a lifetime to learn to shoot it well.” She shook her head. “And all my warriors against an equal number of Doms with modern weapons would be slaughtered.” She glared at Periz. “So as hard as it sounds, it’ll be easier on us all in the end—in every respect—to get Captain Cayce what he needs!”
Anson slapped his forehead. “Jesus!”
“What?” Lewis asked.
“Gunflints! We have a lot in barrels, but what about when they’re gone? The stuff the Ocelomeh use for their points is more glass than flint. It’ll spark like the devil in a flintlock once—as it shatters into a thousand pieces.” He looked at Finlay, already resignedly scratching on a cluttered slate with a piece of chalk.
“I’ll look into a source for honest flint,” Finlay said in his dejected, reedy voice, glancing at Varaa. “Gunflints must be easier to make than spear points, and folk here should know how, once we show them the necessary dimensions.” He took a long, mournful breath. “I didn’t know Captain Holland hated me so, punishing me with this appointment!”
They all laughed at that, and it lightened everyone’s mood but Finlay’s. He still looked quite serious.
“Speaking of the good captain,” Reverend Harkin remarked, nodding to the northeast, “he seems quite taken with his fine new ship!”
Everyone looked out to sea beyond the wide bay to watch Tiger sweeping past the point where the last remnants of the broken Dom galleon still jutted from the surf. Tiger was far from “new,” of course, being almost sixty years old, but in her refitted, repainted glory, and without the weight of her long-gone lower-tier guns, she was quite a sight, flying along under a pyramid of taut canvas braced almost fore and aft.
“He’s been putting her through her paces,” Lewis agreed, nodding appreciatively at Alcalde Periz. “Used to such large ships or not, your boatbuilders were a big help with her repairs.” He smiled. “Holland has no complaints about the seamanship of the Uxmalo fishermen who’ve joined his crew either. On the other hand, I know he’s getting fidgety, just cruising off the mouth of the bay. He wants to stretch the ship’s legs.”
“The Doms lost a ship here,” Alcalde Periz reminded, with a glance up at the walls of the city. Twenty-eight large-bore but light-for-caliber banded iron cannons—mostly 16pdrs, but about a third 9pdrs—had been recovered from the wreck, along with a large quantity of stone shot. Lewis was appalled by their crudity, and Holland refused to take any aboard Tiger. Periz was glad to have them, however, and stonemasons were piercing the high wall for gun embrasures all around the city. Lewis supposed they could be replaced with bronze guns after the Allied cities started making them and their iron could be used for other things. Until then . . . surely they were strong enough for the light stone shot they fired, and once mounted they’d give invaders a hard time in the bay. “They may send another ship to investigate,” Periz continued. “It comforts me to have Tiger protecting us from the sea.”
“Holland understands that,” Lewis assured, “but he might protect us better with a more forward defense. Lightly armed or not, his ship can outsail anything the Doms have—that we know of,” he qualified. They had no idea what became of Isidra—and all those aboard—after the ship steamed away and left them. That bothered Lewis a great deal. If Isidra was taken by the Doms on her way to a far different Vera Cruz than she expected, and Lewis feared that was likely, they may wind up with few surprises for the enemy. “I’d be inclined to let him scout about—once we’re more secure here,” he quickly added with his own glance at one of the embrasures being opened in the wall.
Varaa blinked thoughtfully. “It might even be to our advantage if she was seen doing so. In the short term, until their spies report her”—no one believed Tranquilo and Discipo were the only Dom assets in the Yucatán—“they won’t know she’s from here unless they discover her here”—she pointed out gently—“and might send much of their fleet to search her out.” She looked at Lewis. “The Doms are very aggressive at sea, always hoping to pounce on peoples from other places or worlds.
Not only to learn what they can from them but to prevent”—she shrugged—“what you and your soldiers are doing now. I once told you my own small ship was wrecked in a storm, but that was only because we were pressed onto a lee shore by two Dom galleons.” She blinked bitterly. “We already knew of them, you see, and knew what they’d do to us. We drove our ship aground and burned her, taking our chances in the surf and the frightful forest. Many of us died,” she said, matter-of-factly, then suddenly grinned. “But it hasn’t been such a terrible life for the rest of us.”
“Divina providencia brought you to us,” Father Orno said with quiet certainty before looking at Reverend Harkin, then Lewis. “The same that brought you, I believe.”
Harkin nodded seriously.
Lewis cleared his throat. “Be that as it may, our time could be running out. We’re not prepared to face a real army of any size and never will be if we don’t get our logistics, recruitment, and training issues resolved.” He looked at Alcalde Periz. “You need to sort that out with the other alcaldes. You chose a ‘looser’ Union than originally envisioned, and that’s your affair, but you must tighten it in respect to your mutual security.”
“Indeed,” De Russy grumbled. “If I may make a suggestion?” Periz nodded and De Russy went on. “I think you should start wearing a uniform.” He grinned. “A colonel’s, I believe, like mine! And start training a bit as well. It’s . . . different where we come from, but I understand alcaldes are also the traditional war leaders of their cities. Not only would wearing a uniform serve as an example for your people; it’ll show them and your allies you’re ready to lead the defense of your land.” He paused while Periz considered that. “I also think you and I”—he waved at Finlay and Samarez—“and them as well, in addition to Consul Koaar of the Ocelomeh and a modest escort of course, should go to Pidra Blanca and Itzincab, and perhaps other reluctant cities. Thus far, we’ve expected them all to come here.” He shook his head. “Not the best way to win them over.”
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