Purgatory's Shore

by Taylor Anderson

  “Better early than late,” quipped Sergeant Visser. “ ’Specially since I doubt the Doms’ve even noticed us.”

  It looked that way to Hanny Cox as he gazed at the panorama before him. They’d emerged less than two hundred yards upslope of the enemy right, not right on it, but at an oblique angle to its front, and the serried yellow-and-black ranks of the Doms made them appear almost numberless from here, stacked up in two rows of three, still converging on Major Cayce. Messengers—Dom lancers—galloped back and forth between the engaged formations and the surprisingly distant reserve still formed in front of the enemy camp. Cayce’s position, now shrouded in the smoke of guns and a growing grass fire, appeared pitifully small in comparison. Looking around, so did the 3rd Pennsylvania, also alone for the moment, the men’s sky-blue uniforms, white crossbelts, and glittering weapons shockingly conspicuous under the blazing bright sun on the vast green plain. But now Captain Olayne was wheeling his battery of beautifully polished bronze 6pdrs out on their left, and Hanny saw the flag of Captain Manley’s 1st Uxmal a short distance beyond, its men hidden by one of the “washboard” features of the ground. Wagley, on his horse, must’ve seen it as well. “Uncase the colors!” he shouted, and Hanny and Apo released the ties on the blue silk tubes and pulled them off the flags, raising them up as they unrolled them. They were soon streaming over the field as well.

  “Advance the regiment,” Captain Wagley called.

  “Third Pennsylvania! Shoulder—arms! Forward—march!”

  * * *

  “My God,” Captain Anson shouted over the shooting, pouring sweat blowing from his lips as he rammed another ball down the fouling-choked barrel of his rifle, “don’t they see them?”

  In spite of the fury of the intermittent storm of musket balls, Lewis was wishing for Arete again, to be a little higher. Still, if he could see the 3rd Pennsylvania and 1st Uxmal—fifteen hundred men—sweeping inexorably down on the right flank of the enemy . . .

  “The men about to die have,” Lewis called back, smoke-dry throat cracking his voice. “They just don’t know what to do about it because nobody’s told them! I doubt their commanders know. This is what I was counting on. Who’d ever train to refuse a flank nobody’s ever threatened before? Look!”

  Olayne’s Battery had just opened a murderous fire with solid shot, ranging down the length of the Dom regiments, shattering scores of men with every rapid blast. The grass fire was spreading almost protectively in front of Lewis’s force, keeping the Doms from simply charging them, but its smoke wasn’t so thick that he couldn’t see the Pennsylvanians and Uxmalos abruptly halt, load, present their weapons, and fire. The effect of that first volley at less than one hundred yards was appalling. Doms fell away like bloody yellow dominoes, and the next volley hacked even deeper.

  “Yes!” Lewis hissed, drifting back into that heightened state where the battle consumed his consciousness. His senses were as cold and sharp as could be, and he retained a concern, a defensiveness for his people, but pity, humanity, even self-preservation submerged beneath a quickening excitement, even lust to crush the enemy. Ironically, his critical mind understood even then that this was what he hated and feared most about war—and himself: what war did to him, what it turned him into, what it left him feeling like in its aftermath, when the fighting was done and he saw what he did. He’d felt it first at Palo Alto, but it was most profound after Monterrey. Even wounded, he’d seen what he’d done to an enemy he didn’t hate—and the men who’d fought them with him. He’d never wanted to feel that way again. Now he did, but it was different, even stronger. His critical mind was only a spectator, a mere passenger at the moment, but it recognized the difference at once. He’d finally found a cause he could fully unleash himself for, and an enemy that deserved what he did to it.

  Even if the fire had stopped their advance a little more than a hundred yards distant, the Doms in front of them were still shooting, still taking a toll—especially on the Uxmalo Home Guards who couldn’t even fight back. But the enemy artillery was suddenly all but silent. It, at least, must be turning to engage the new threat. “Lieutenant Hudgens,” Lewis shouted, hoarse and detached, “reconcentrate all your guns here, at intervals along the line. We haven’t enough small arms to match the enemy, but rapid-fire canister can. Have you enough?”

  “The twelve pounders are getting low, but more is coming from the caissons. The six pounders haven’t used any yet.”

  “See to it.”

  Hudgens’s wounded bugler called to the guns.

  “Major Cayce,” Barca cried, gasping as he ran up to join them. “Colonel De Russy’s compliments, sir, and he asks, can the guards be withdrawn to the trees? They’re getting slaughtered to no purpose.”

  “There is a purpose,” Lewis replied hotly, mind resurfacing for a moment. “We have to keep the Doms where they are. We can’t charge them—not yet,” he inserted cryptically, “but if they see us pull back, they might charge after us, fire or not, and smash us from behind before we re-form. We couldn’t hold them at the trees, or even on the forest road after that. No, Colonel De Russy and the guards must stand. With all this smoke, the enemy can’t know they aren’t firing back.”

  Barca nodded unhappy understanding. “I’ll tell him,” he said, then blurted, “He’s doing quite well, by the way. He’s only concerned for the men. He’ll stand, and so will they.”

  “I’m sure of it,” Lewis said with a lighter voice, “and hopefully they won’t have to take it much longer.” Barca hurried away.

  The Doms were still firing in slow-timed volleys and the men on the skirmish line had taken to ducking them. That didn’t always work, and a dragoon next to Anson took a large ball through his hat and the crown of his head as he lay on the ground. Lewis felt another sharp tug on his jacket. At least Leonor is ducking down now, he thought before he saw something else and plunged wholly into the battle again.

  The enemy’s withered right regiments were attempting to turn and face their tormenters at last, but there wasn’t much left of them and the Dom Commander—was it General Agon?—was sending the regiments backing the two on his left, right in front of Lewis, to reinforce them. The confusion was terrible, made worse by the fact they were doing it under fire. Furthermore, Hudgens’s 6pdrs had come rattling up and unlimbered right on the line, immediately coughing sprays of lethal canister and decimating the men left in place. This compelled their commander to compound the confusion by trying to split the reinforcements he was sending to the flank and pull some back. The movement collapsed into chaos as the fresh 1st US marched out of the trees in time with their fifes and drums, banners flowing, and took its place by the 1st Uxmal. And on its left, due south of Lewis, Dukane came out with his six 12pdr howitzers. All opened up together on the increasingly terrified, milling mass of the Holy Dominion’s Army of God.

  The men around Lewis all stood to fire now, the 6pdrs mulching the wavering line in front of them—only one man deep in places now—while Captain Anson capered with glee. “By God, it’s like shootin’ rats in a bucket. They don’t know what to do!” It was true. The Doms were still dangerous, many still loading and shooting as their officers commanded, but their fire remained largely ineffectual. Especially since, rattled as they were, most pointed their weapons even more vaguely at the enemy than before when they jerked their triggers, sending bullets into the ground or even the sky, more often than not. And the wildly jumbled Doms attempting to refuse their right flank were hardly even capable of that, being hacked down by steady, accurate fire from superior American muskets at barely sixty yards. The howitzers moved forward by hand to that same distance and added to the carnage with canister. A few Dom artillery pieces were still in action, though quite a few had been stripped of their crews by Hudgens’s well-aimed case shot, but one managed to strike the left cheek of Dukane’s Number Three gun with an 8pdr ball. The howitzer barrel flipped in the air, smashing its Numbers One and Th
ree men, while the shower of jagged splinters from the shattered carriage mowed down the gunner and half the crew of the Number Four gun beside it. More solid shot started crashing through the ranks of the 1st US and 1st Uxmal, shredding men just as horribly as only the Americans had accomplished so far.

  Lewis saw none of this, nor did Leonor. Of all those fighting for their lives in the washboard glade, they were probably the only ones expectantly staring down where the trees behind them met the sea. Leonor, Varaa, and Anson were among the few who knew every aspect of Lewis’s plan. Not only had they almost always been with him, suggesting big parts of it; they’d been there when he mentioned little things he’d added in his mind. Even Major Reed wasn’t expecting what happened next, and though there’d been no way to time it perfectly, it came as if there had.

  “There’s her fore-topmast,” Lewis said with satisfaction, and as swift and fluid as running mercury, HMS Tiger emerged completely in the open, barely a mile offshore. “Captain Holland won’t be happy with this wind; he doesn’t dare come any closer, but he’s worked his crew up well and won’t have any trouble tacking.”

  “He wouldn’t have missed this if he had to run her ashore,” Leonor said somberly.

  Others had noticed Tiger too, and a great cheer swelled as a cloud of white smoke blossomed from her larboard bow. Then, one after another, all ten 12pdrs and five 6pdrs of her reduced larboard battery spat projectiles; not at the men fighting in front of Lewis, but at the distant, unengaged formations and the Dom camp itself. Something like a moan arose from the Doms, loud even over the shrieks and cries of the wounded and dying. Varaa had told Lewis that Doms wouldn’t break, but she’d also said their semi-divine leader, “His Supreme Holiness” in the Great Valley of Mexico, was the next thing to God in this world to them. And the next thing to Him was his Blood Cardinals—like Don Frutos. There was no telling how an attack on him would affect his troops. Would it inspire them to protect him, or further inflame their rage? Unconcerned with keeping enemy infantry off her or dueling other guns (as long as the big siege guns remained undeployed and silent), Tiger was free to rain shot after shot into the rear area as fast as she could, and Holland’s gun’s crews went at it with a will. It was a calculated risk, but it might tip the scales. And as for whether regular Dom infantry (as opposed to their lancers) would break, even Varaa hadn’t been sure. They might be “inhuman,” as Lewis would define it, in their beliefs, culture, and depravity, but they had human minds and hearts, and those can only take so much.

  A horse galloped up through the flying lead, squealing and falling just as it slowed. A muscular, older officer in a shot-torn frock coat hopped off the animal before it could roll over him and ran up to Lewis. “Lieutenant Ulrich, B Company, Third Pennsylvania, sir!” the former sergeant breathlessly proclaimed.

  “He knows who you are,” Leonor snapped impatiently while Lewis smiled.

  “Yes sir,” Ulrich acknowledged without thought, pale, sweaty cheeks reddening slightly. “Captain Wagley’s respects, Major, and we’ve closed the gap between the Third and the guards.” He nodded to the left. “Captain Olayne was forced to abandon his position as the grass fire burned toward him, and moved his guns around between us. That’s weakened our connection with the First Uxmal, but all the other gaps between our forces have closed as the engaged regiments tighten around the enemy!” he added excitedly.

  “As hoped and expected,” Lewis replied, looking to the front. The fire between him and the enemy was still creeping restlessly out to the sides, slightly broadening its largely exhausted, blackened path, but no longer a real barrier. “Is the Third in good condition?”

  “Pretty fair, sir,” Ulrich hedged. “The enemy’s in great confusion at present, and their volleys are slow and inaccurate.” His eyebrows went up. “You’ve doubtless observed they simply won’t fire without a command. There’s no independent fire at all. But we’re right on top of them, and our casualties are mounting.”

  Lewis scratched his beard, glancing at Anson’s powder-blackened face. He’d finally stopped shooting long enough to pay attention to larger affairs. The difference between us, Lewis mused. I get too wrapped up in the life of the whole battle, and he does the same with his own small part of it.

  “We’ve let ’em push us long enough,” Anson said darkly.

  “I agree. Let’s push back and see how they like it. Has Private Willis returned? There you are. Run to Colonel De Russy and tell him to prepare to advance.”

  “Run here, run there,” Willis mumbled dejectedly as he trotted away and Lewis looked at Ulrich. “Get another horse and return to Captain Wagley. Compliments, of course, and ask him to make ready as well. He must signal ‘General Advance’ so Major Reed and the others will hear,” he stressed, “and we’ll all step off together. The guns will advance in support of the infantry.”

  Lieutenant Ulrich ran to take a horse from a wounded rifleman holding a pair of them back by the guards and dashed off to the left. Only a moment later, it seemed, the high sharp sound of a bugle pierced the tumult of battle, repeating the call for a general advance over and over again. Lewis sent a reluctant Anson and his Rangers back for their horses when the drums began to stutter, but kept the dragoons and riflemen to support De Russy’s guards. Anxious to return some of the punishment they’d taken, the guards lowered their pikes and went forward to flank the guns as their crews heaved them toward the enemy. The Doms, in response—and much too soon in Lewis’s detached view—ceased firing entirely at the rapid, almost panicky, high-pitched commands to draw plug bayonets to insert in the muzzles of their weapons. Quite a few dropped them in their excitement—or was it panic?—and had to retrieve them. Soon, there were no Doms firing at all, and Lewis felt the first hint of pity for them. His force was inexperienced, badly outnumbered, and very unsure of itself. But although the Doms were just as inexperienced, far more so in reality because their leaders had no idea how to deal with the unexpected, they’d come to this fight with absolute confidence in their superiority. Now, after suffering more than they could’ve imagined, their confidence had shattered, and it had to unnerve them even more that so small a force would attack them on open ground like this.

  Lewis’s battered force, including the guards and touching the 3rd Pennsylvania, must be down to less than fifteen hundred effectives by now, and the combined 1st Uxmal and 1st US never had more than that to begin with. Canister from the guns effectively doubled the number of projectiles they fired, but even savaged, confused, and increasingly demoralized, the Doms in direct contact had a huge edge. Yet with bayonets fixed—inflexible doctrine when attacking in close quarters but never envisioned as a defensive measure—the six engaged regiments of Doms made no sound above the shrieking and crying of wounded while HMS Tiger mercilessly hammered their camp and their lord while Allied drums and fifes kept up a lively rumbling, piercing cadence as American and Uxmalo infantry advanced by crashing volleys and the artillery spewed thunderous sprays of canister.

  Despite the iron discipline that kept them enduring the terrible slaughter no matter how much confusion their conflicting, ineffectual orders created, the men they were, Doms or not, couldn’t take it anymore. Almost simultaneously, the various regimental commanders or their successors took it upon themselves to make decisions on their own. The partial and currently least-pressed regiments that had returned to bolster the one in front of Lewis abruptly turned about and marched to the rear, reforming with admirable precision. The shattered survivors of the three intermingled regiments facing the onslaught of the 3rd Pennsylvania and 1st Uxmal did the exact opposite and charged, en masse. And those longest engaged, right in front of Lewis, though clearly now faced chiefly with pikes, felt the sudden absence of the troops that abandoned them and started to back away.

  “Charge them!” Lewis roared at Colonel De Russy. Varaa, just visible under the Stars and Stripes farther away down the line, held her musket up and used it to gesture for
ward. De Russy still had no hat, and his brushy side whiskers and wispy hair were plastered to his face and head with sweat, but red-rimmed eyes burned with determination when he raised his sword and nodded back at Lewis.

  “Charge!” he bellowed, repeated by Barca and Varaa, whose voice rose even above the sudden yipping, screeching, almost animalistic chorus of the guards as they surged at the faltering Doms.

  Lewis drew his saber, but Leonor grabbed his arm. He whipped around to face her, and she shouted, “I thought you wanted to watch the whole battle. Can’t do that in there.” She nodded at the backs of the guards as they slammed their pikes home into the enemy. Rifles and carbines spat another long flurry of shots before riflemen plied their own newly fitted bayonets and dragoons dropped their carbines to hang from their straps and turned to their sabers.

  Captain Anson and his Rangers thundered up behind, leading Arete and Leonor’s horse. “You still ain’t told us where you want us,” Anson pressed, nodding at Arete. “Hop up, have a look, an’ show us.”

  Lewis nodded thoughtfully, realizing he was just as capable as Anson of getting too involved in his “own small part” of the battle. “You’re right,” he agreed with a last look at the guards. Pikes or not, their skill far surpassed that of the Doms, and they were killing them with a kind of wild abandon. He saw Varaa swinging and thrusting her sword, musket slung over her back. Lieutenant Meder and Barca—and there was Reverend Harkin with a rifle!—had pulled a strangely agitated De Russy from the press, and all but the colonel were still loading and firing. Lewis used his hat (Willis had returned it) to soak sweat off his forehead and looked around.