by David Weber
Kaitswyrth had recognized the risk of sending men forward in visibility so bad it virtually guaranteed none of them would see the infernal devices waiting for them, but he had badly underestimated the density of the minefields awaiting his columns. Again, that was largely a matter of inexperience, since no one in Safehold’s entire history had ever encountered a defensive position like this one. Yet even if he’d known exactly how many men he’d lose to the heretics’ “Kau-yungs,” that only brought him back to those unpalatable alternatives. He could try to get his men close enough to assault the enemy positions in visibility poor enough to give them at least some protection from the withering rifle and artillery fire he knew would be forthcoming, or he could attack under conditions which gave those men at least a chance of spotting the mines waiting for them. He couldn’t accomplish both, and so he’d chosen to take his chances with the mines.
Not that he hadn’t tried to have it as close to both ways as he could. Dense morning mist was more common than not along the Daivyn at this time of year, and that had offered the possibility of bridging the gap between a night assault and a dawn attack while still giving his infantrymen at least a chance to spot trip wires during their approach.
* * *
The Duke of Eastshare stood atop his command bunker, gazing into the west as the red and white flowers of exploding landmines ripped holes in the darkness. He knew they were ripping holes in the Church’s infantry, too, and he showed his teeth as he watched them inching closer. He and Major Lowayl had far fewer of them than they would have preferred, but the ones they did have had proved even more effective than anyone had hoped. So far, at least. Ruhsyl Thairis wasn’t going to make the mistake of underestimating his enemies’ adaptability. Once enough of them had survived to realize what the sweepers, footstools, and fountains were and how they worked, they’d begin to evolve techniques to minimize their effectiveness.
Of course, there’s only so much adaptability can do about some problems, he reminded himself. And whatever these bastards may be able to do in the future, at the moment they can’t do squat.
The thought pleased him immensely whenever he thought about what had happened to Mahrtyn Taisyn and his men on this very river less than a month before. There wasn’t a fire in Shan-wei’s Hell hot enough for the men who’d massacred and tortured not only Taisyn’s men but General Charlz Stahntyn’s entire Aivahnstyn garrison.
We can only hope at least some of Clyntahn’s damned inquisitors are close to the front. Not that I wouldn’t mind watching a few of them hang as a post-battle celebration. Preferably over a nice plate of fried potato slices and a stein of beer.
A general in the Imperial Charisian Army wasn’t supposed to think that way, and the Church of Charis would not have approved of approaching the execution even of inquisitors with such burning anticipation. The policy was set, and those inquisitors would be summarily executed, but Cayleb and Sharleyan Ahrmahk weren’t Zhaspahr Clyntahn and the ICA wasn’t his Inquisition. It would do what it must without exulting in the doing or wallowing in blood vengeance, and that was an end of it.
As a theoretical and philosophical proposition, Eastshare fully agreed, and he’d made damned sure it was the official policy of his brigade. But he wasn’t going to pretend in the privacy of his own thoughts, and so he watched those savage pinpricks of brilliance blaze in the misty dark with a stony lack of expression and rejoiced.
* * *
“Well, Raymahndoh?” Ahdrais Pohstazhian asked harshly as Colonel Allykzhandro turned back to him from the runner.
“From Colonel Kahlyns, Sir.” Allykzhandro’s voice was grim. “His men’ve encountered two new sorts of Kau-yungs.” The Sulyvyn Division’s executive officer glanced semi-apologetically at Isydohr Zoay as he used the unsanctioned term, but the Schuelerite only waved for him to continue. “One sounds like the buried ones Bishop Gahrmyn’s men encountered near Haidyrberg, but the other sort seems to jump up into the air before it explodes.” Allykzhandro shook his head. “Colonel Kahlyns estimates he’s lost more than a third of his men already.”
Pohstazhian’s jaw clenched and he inhaled deeply. Zhandru Kahlyns’ 1st Regiment was his leading formation—the men who’d been clearing the heretics’ infernal devices with their own bodies and blood.
“We knew we’d take losses,” he said. “And the natural thing is to overestimate casualties at a time like this.”
Allykzhandro nodded, although Pohstazhian suspected the XO was as unconvinced that Kahlyns was overestimating anything as he was himself. Not that either of them could do anything about it … except collect payment in blood from the heretics when they carried those accursed entrenchments.
“Have we heard anything from Fahstyr?” he asked. Bahzwail Fahstyr commanded Sulyvyn Division’s 3rd Regiment, following directly behind Kahlyns.
“He’s lost some men,” Allykzhandro said, “but nowhere near as many as First Regiment.”
“Good. Thank Chihiro something’s working the way it’s supposed to!” Pohstazhian said, then shook his head as he realized what he’d said. “God forgive me,” he muttered, and Zoay rested a hand lightly on his shoulder.
“I don’t like it any more than you do.” The divisional intendant’s soft words were punctuated by still more explosions—and screams—out of the gradually brightening mist. “I imagine any war is hard, but the Jihad is hardest of all. You do what you have to do in God’s name.”
Pohstazhian nodded, but his heart was a stone in his chest. He was using up Kahlyns’ men deliberately, sacrificing them simply to clear a path for his other regiments. He had no doubt Zoay was correct … and he knew that wouldn’t help the guilt he’d see in his own eyes the next time he looked into a mirror.
* * *
“They’re almost into the last belt of fountains, Sir.”
Platoon Sergeant Hahpkyns’ tone couldn’t have been more respectful, Lieutenant Hylmyn reflected but there was no missing his point.
“No doubt we’ll be able to see something sometime soon, Ruhfus,” he said soothingly. “I’m sure the Duke would appreciate our waiting until we can actually see what we’re using up perfectly good cartridges on, though. Less wasteful that way, don’t you think?”
“Yes, Sir.”
The noncom turned away to discuss the platoon’s readiness with Private Makysak, who happened to be engaged in earnest conversation with one of his squad mates instead of watching his own front at that unfortunate moment, and Hylmyn smiled. He had no intention of ever admitting just how comforting he’d found Ruhfus Hahpkyns’ rock-like, experienced steadiness, but it was actually a little reassuring when the platoon sergeant allowed a bit of his own nervousness to show. Not that anyone else was likely to realize that was what he’d just done, of course.
And not that Ahbygayl Hylmyn’s little boy Styv wouldn’t be far happier himself when Duke Eastshare got around to passing the word.
Of course, he told himself, as you just reminded Ruhfus, it would help if you had targets you could actually see. Suppose it’s possible that’s what the Duke and Colonel Celahk’re waiting for, too?
Hylmyn never noticed the way the runner standing at his shoulder relaxed as he heard his lieutenant’s chuckle through the backdrop of exploding mines.
* * *
Colonel Stywyrt Sahndhaim, commanding Zion Division’s 1st Regiment, swore as the crest of the heretic entrenchments etched itself against the red disk of a rising sun. The parapet rose from the undergrowth like some ominous, mist-shrouded mountain range, made far more ominous by what he and his division had experienced storming the heretic redoubts farther upriver. He knew what waited on the other side of that raw earth—or he thought he did, at least—and he wished fervently that he didn’t.
His regiment had advanced side-by-side with Zhandru Kahlyns’, losing dozens of men to the heretics’ diabolical Kau-yungs, and his mouth was dry at the thought of what was about to happen to the men who’d survived that ordeal.
“Stand ready!�
� he barked and heard a dozen other voices rippling away from him, passing on the warning no one in the Army of Glacierheart was actually likely to need.
* * *
“Open fire!” Hylmyn barked as the mist retreated in golden billows and the advancing waves of men in the Army of God’s purple and red stepped out of the thinning tendrils.
“Open fire!” Ruhfus Hahpkyns echoed, and fifty Mahndrayns spewed fire as one. The muzzle flashes were blinding, despite the strengthening dawn. They crowned the line of the entrenchments in flame, like the flare of Langhorne’s own Rakurai, and the storm front of brilliance rolled away to either hand as the other platoons of Colonel Allayn Hobsyn’s 5th Regiment, detached from the 2nd Division’s 3rd Brigade to reinforce 1st Brigade, opened fire as well.
* * *
Unlike the Army of God, the Imperial Charisian Army had abandoned the concept of volley fire. Their breech-loading Mahndrayns fired three times as rapidly as muzzleloaders, and they’d been trained to fire as individuals and to pick their own targets. Fifth Regiment had three of its four battalions in the front line. That was just over three thousand rifles, each firing once every five seconds, and 1st Brigade had deployed three regiments to man its fortifications.
A solid sheet of flame from almost ten thousand rifles sleeted over the crest of those entrenchments, so heavy any observer might have been forgiven for thinking it was a single volley. But it was far more devastating than any blind-fired volley could ever have been, and the men behind those rifles knew exactly who and what their targets were. The ghosts of Mhartyn Taisyn’s slaughtered command stood at their shoulders, and there was no mercy in them.
* * *
Colonel Sahndhaim cringed as he discovered he’d been wrong. His worst estimate of what awaited his men hadn’t come remotely close to the reality. Brigadier Taisyn had commanded less than four thousand men, half of them pikemen, and they’d been deployed in half a dozen separate redoubts, not concentrated the way these riflemen were. They’d savaged the columns sweeping up the hillsides to assault their entrenchments, but they hadn’t had the numbers to simply annihilate those columns.
First Brigade’s regiments did.
Sahndhaim heard the screams, the incredulous curses, of men who’d survived all the way through the heretics’ Kau-yungs as that whirlwind of gunpowder and lead crashed over them. His leading companies disintegrated into bodies and blood, and the scattered survivors discovered that not even the deepest faith could survive some shocks. It was less fear than sheer astonishment, Sahndhaim thought, yet the result was the same. The toughest-minded raised their rifles and fired back into the face of that tempest, fired at the men who were killing them—men they couldn’t even see behind the solid earthen parapets and the rippling wave of fire and the choking cloud of smoke spewing from the heretics’ muzzles—but they were the exception. The others—the pitiful handful of others—simply turned and ran.
“Stand!” Sahndhaim heard the command from the surviving officers and noncoms. “Stand, Schueler curse you! Stand!”
His own voice was shouting the same command. It didn’t matter, and he couldn’t blame the men bolting away from that holocaust. He knew what they’d already paid in blood and courage to come this far, and they’d grasped what was waiting for them no more clearly than he had himself. Now they knew, and it was simply too much.
His second and third companies advanced into the teeth of their fleeing comrades with fixed bayonets and faces of stone. The refugees parted around them and Sahndhaim heard the bugles sounding as the Holy Bédard Division advanced on their heels. Major Dahnel Howail, 1st Regiment’s executive officer, appeared out of the confusion, face and tunic splashed with someone else’s blood, eyes blazing with fury and shame as he watched half the regiment disappear.
“Rally them if you can, Dahnel!” Sahndhaim ordered, pointing to the rear.
“But, Sir—!”
“Don’t argue! Do it!” Sahndhaim seized the younger man’s shoulder and shook him. “I’ve got something else to do!”
“But, Sir, you can’t—!” Howail protested even more vehemently.
“Go!” Sahndhaim half threw the major towards the rear, then beckoned to the regimental standardbearer and thrust his way into the pale-faced column of Captain Gahvyn Taylar’s 3rd Company. He showed his teeth, fighting to hide his own despair, as he reached his right hand out to the standardbearer. He took the banner from the color sergeant, holding the staff in both hands, waving it over his head, and looked around him.
“Who’s with me, boys?!” he shouted. For an instant he thought his men were too shaken to respond, but only for an instant. Then a hard, angry sound—not a cheer, but something an infuriated slash lizard might have produced—came back to him. It lashed him like a powerful wind, foaming in his blood, gilding his despair with a sort of maddened elation.
“All right, then!” He waved the banner again, feeling it stream out, silk snapping in the wind. “Holy Langhorne and no quarter!”
“No quarter!” his company bellowed, and they charged.
* * *
“All right, Hynryk.” Eastshare glanced at the brown-haired, brown-eyed Old Charisian standing beside him, listening to the roar of rifle fire. “I believe we can assume they’re close enough. Open fire anytime you’re ready.”
“Yes, Your Grace!” Colonel Hynryk Celahk touched his chest in salute, his smile clearly visible as the rising sun turned the rolling waves of smoke to gold in front of them. He’d been waiting literally from the moment 1st Brigade dug in for that order, and he turned to his aide. “You heard the Duke, Wahltayr!”
“Yes, Sir!”
The lieutenant saluted in turn, struck a Shan-wei’s candle, and lit the fuse.
* * *
Ahdrais Pohstazhian’s head jerked up as something arced into the sky. He couldn’t hear a thing over the cacophony of musketry, and for a moment his mind was blank. Then he realized it had to be another of the “rockets” the heretics used to pass signals, and his stomach tightened. He had no idea what this one was a signal for, but he was certain he wasn’t going to like it.
He didn’t.
* * *
Each of 1st Brigade’s forty-eight companies had its own attached support platoon, each with six three-inch mortars. The brigade as a whole was assigned an organic artillery battalion, with thirty-two twelve-pounders, and two batteries of six-inch angle-guns had been attached to it before it ever sailed for the Mainland. In Siddar City, it had been mated with sixty-four more twelve-pounders and sixteen four-inch muzzle-loading rifles. Ten batteries of field guns—just over two-thirds of 1st Brigade’s total—and almost four hundred mortars had been dug in along the line of Eastshare’s entrenched position, with carefully planned fields of fire. The Army of God engineers sketching the maps of those positions had spotted most of the eighty field guns; they hadn’t even recognized the mortars for what they were. Nor had they been able to see the sixteen angle-guns dug in the next best thing to two miles behind the entrenchments, hidden by belts of untouched forest.
Which meant the Army of Glacierheart had no least inkling of the fiery hurricane that much artillery could spawn.
When Hynryk Celahk’s signal rocket exploded against the morning sky, it found out.
* * *
Cahnyr Kaitswyrth’s eyes went wide as a volcano erupted. The spreading, echoing crash of rifle fire had been bad enough, telling him at least a part of what his columns were advancing into. The runners headed for his position to tell him how much more murderous than even his worst nightmares those rifles were had yet to reach him, but the crushing thunder of the Duke of Eastshare’s massed artillery needed no runner. The ground seemed to quiver underfoot as eighty field guns fired in a single long, echoing bellow. It reached out from the center of the heretics’ line, that bellow, spreading from the first battery to the last, and the shrapnel of its exploding shells scourged his bleeding regiments mercilessly. Yet for all their fury, all their thunder, the field guns were m
atched and overmatched by the hell-spawned canopy of mortar shells exploding overhead. It was as if some fiery cloud had spread its wings above his assaulting columns, and the cones of shrapnel shrieking down from it flayed flesh and bone with Shan-wei’s own hatred.