by Chuck Dixon
The general wheeled his horse about to gallop back the way he came. Silence fell over the field. His entourage of officers and bodyguard of bowmen turned to follow their leader, sending clods of dirt flying through a growing pall of yellow dust. The bannermen followed, double timing after the cavalry in rank after rank.
This parade was followed by coolies dragging hundreds of carts onto the field. The carts were loaded with rice balls bound in leaves. These were tossed to the eager crowd who were, moments before, roaring with the rage of caged beasts but were now laughing like children in anticipation of the general’s munificent treat. Some giggled like school girls when their first mouthful of sweetened rice revealed a copper coin hidden within.
“They’ll die with a full belly and a penny in their pockets,” Lee said, taking Bat’s arm to pull her from the path of a particularly eager favor seeker.
“I don’t know who I feel sorrier for. This bloodthirsty bunch or the poor bastards who don’t know that their hometown is going to get shit on today,” Bat said, moving to stand close by the Ranger while the party crowd around them grew more raucous.
“Not our fight, baby,” Lee said, resisting the urge to put his hand in her hair and draw her nearer. “Not our fight.”
48
A Swig in Hell
The heavy doors teetered in the frame and crashed to the floor followed close by a stumbling crew of eunuchs gripping the cannon barrel they had been using as a ram.
They spilled to the floor. The bronze cannon barrel hit the tiles, ringing like a gong. A dozen more eunuchs, armed with long swords and longer pikes, stormed in behind them.
Jimbo sighted on the biggest and pressed the trigger home. The others stared in momentary bewilderment as one of their number flew in the air as though slipping on a slick surface. A second spun to the ground atop the first, clawing and shrieking with a slug in his guts. A third collapsed clutching a spurting wound to his throat.
The gang of eunuchs turned their fury to the source of their punishment. They charged up the long flight of stairs toward the man standing at the top in a haze of black powder smoke. A high-pitched ululating cry rose from them as they rushed to the mezzanine, spears thrust before them.
Their advance was slowed as first one; then another fell under Jimbo’s rifle fire. The eunuchs tripped over the tumbling corpses and fell in a tangle of limbs and weaponry back the way they’d come. Jimbo pumped round after round into the pack, dropping men before they could rise again. The rest backed off toward the open doorway and out of sight, leaving behind a writhing mass of wounded at the foot of the stairs.
The Pima blinked through the thick, acrid smoke at the carnage below. As he reloaded, he could hear the sound of gongs from outside. The alarm was raised. The next attack would be soldiers.
The fanatical personal guard of the Kingdom Of Heavenly Peace and Contentment.
Chaz was beside him, handing over one of his bandoliers of ammo.
“You okay out here?” he said.
“I can hack. Any luck inside?”
“No joy. There’s a lot of shit to look through in there,” Chaz said, shaking his head.
“Find a back door out of here?”
“Not yet, brother. You may be covering the only exit.”
“Rangers lead the way. Right into a corner.” Jimbo wore a grim smile and jacked a fresh round home.
From below, the sound of bashing gongs grew louder. It was joined by the trudge of boots on gravel. A crush of men exploded through the open doorway, pounding over the fallen doors, leaping the bodies of Jimbo’s victims. These were soldiers in leather armor studded with iron and heads topped with conical helmets. They were armed with spears and axes and moved to the foot of the stairs and climbed with a fearful silence, four men across, up the steps. The column stretched back to the doorway and beyond in what looked like an endless stream.
The Rangers opened up on the mass rising toward them. The front ranks dropped only to vanish beneath the boots of the men pressing behind. Rifle fire poured into the soldiers, punching holes through armor and flesh. The advance didn’t seem to slow, only rippled like a serpent while the onrushing men climbed over the dead. The front rank loomed close enough for the Rangers to see black eyes and gnashed teeth and the shining spear points wavering ahead of them.
A long shriek of what they recognized as obscenities in Mandarin forced Jimbo and Chaz to step apart. Wei exploded from the doorway of the treasure chamber, pushing one of those decorated rickshaws. He’d piled it with glittering junk including a life-size brass statue of Confucius. Howling dire threats, the fireplug of a man launched the rickshaw to roll bouncing down the steps, the weight of it fracturing tiles.
The half-ton load smashed into the ascending soldiers, striking flesh and bone with terrible force. The upward charge halted and reversed. Soldiers crashed into the ranks behind them in a panic to escape the blunt force of the treasure-laden cart. The clot of routed soldiers grew wider and deeper until men were falling from either side of the staircase to drop two stories to the floor below. As the soldiers receded down the stairs, the rickshaw followed, bumping on the steps and fallen bodies, becoming airborne. It came to rest on its side at the foot of the steps. The way above it was carpeted with dead men. More were wounded and crawling and dropping away, slowed by broken limbs and crushed organs.
Jimbo and Chaz kept up a withering fire from their rifles until the magazines were empty and barrels glowed an angry red. They kept up the punishing fusillade with their handguns. Wei joined them and worked the lever of his rifle, picking off any man who still stood. The spearmen had retreated back to the doorway but stubbornly refused to leave. They stood in a hedge of spear points. Each man that fell to gunfire was replaced by a new man.
“They’re working up the balls for another charge!” Chaz roared to be heard over the ringing in their ears from the racket of constant gunfire.
“More like they’re holding the line!” Jimbo said, feeding rounds into the magazine tubes of his rifle, the steel burning hot to the touch.
“For what?” Chaz shouted.
He had his answer within seconds. The wicket of spears parted to allow in a crowd of men in white bamboo armor. The newcomers formed two ranks even as bullets from above ripped into them.
The first rank dropped to a knee and, within seconds, two dozen fat muskets were trained up the steps at the invaders.
The Rangers dropped to the floor, and Wei leapt backward. A boom erupted from below. Heavy lead balls struck the railings either side of the steps, punching holes in the masonry. More lead tore into the ceiling, dropping chunks of plaster down on them.
Jimbo belly crawled to the edge of the steps and trained his rifle down into the fog of creamy smoke spreading out at the foot of the stairway. He sent rounds into men reloading muskets with astonishing speed. He dropped two, and Chaz dropped a third before he saw a rear rank of men joining the firing line.
Jingals.
The third file was made up of men armed with muskets that fired either canisters packed with round shot or lead balls an inch across. Jingals were mini-cannons that required two men to fire. One at the trigger and a second to support the heavy barrel on his shoulder.
The Rangers were rolling away when the third rank let loose in one thunderous volley. Sprays of shot and lead balls turned the air into a storm of debris. The lethal shower ripped into walls and ceiling. The head of a statue, a crouching temple dog, was torn away to clang across the tiles. The twin ranks of musket men followed the jingals in a combined barrage. Balls whistled by the Rangers scrabbling back toward the doorway. They could feel rather than hear the steady tramp of boots as soldiers rushed up the steps under cover of the hail of lead.
The first row of spearmen was in sight at the top of the staircase when the Rangers and Wei pressed the big brass doors closed. Their quarry within reach, the soldiers let out a rolling growl and came on at a run, spear points lowered and steady.
They swung the doors
shut and dropped the crossbar into place. The first spear butts struck on the other side. The treasure chamber echoed with the booms of the pounding fists and weapons of the enraged fanatics eager to get at the barbarians who dared despoil their sacred place. The doors held and would hold for a while. The chains on the thick, iron-banded cross bar jingled in their places.
“Sweet Jesus, I’m thirsty,” Jimbo said, panting.
“Me and Wei found the wine collection back there,” Chaz said, jerking a thumb into the gloom of the treasure vault.
49
The Forlorn Hope
The sun rose to its apex over the towers of Nanking.
The guns along the walls continued their regular cannonade, the occasional stone ball reaching the outer lines of the besiegers’ camp. But the mortars and cannon of the emperor remained silent throughout the morning. Sensing a change in the current of battle, the artillery crews on the walls of the city stopped their labors. A hush fell over the open field between the enemies.
“Almost noon. This is about to get real,” Boats said, squinting up at the sun through wisps of rising smoke.
“It’s too real for me already,” Bat breathed, eyes on the city walls. She leaned on the long Whitworth rifle, the butt resting in the grass.
The team stood upon a slope of raised ground behind the stockade walls to watch the coming show. Lee stood by Bat, sighting through his telescope. Byrus paced like a dog, anxious for the hunt. Shan climbed the slope to join them.
“Do you ever get used to this?” he asked no one in particular. “Get used to what?” Lee said.
“Knowing what is to happen next. Seeing the future by reading the past,” Shan said, turning to join the vigil of the tableau below them.
“Trust me; the history books are bullshit. Nothing is a sure thing,” Lee said.
“You may think it amusing, but I find that reassuring,” Shan said.
“No. I get that.” Lee nodded.
The ground heaved under their feet. Birds rose in the sky in droves.
The caches of gunpowder, in their burrows deep beneath the wall of the city, ignited seconds apart from one another.
In a mighty rush of dust and debris, the mouth of the pit vomited up a brown tower of dust that shot hundreds of feet in the air within seconds before collapsing to cover the siege camp in a suffocating miasma. Midday became dusk as the gritty cloud shut out the sun. Visibility was reduced to an arm’s length. The endless ranks of men, bunched for the assault in their thousands, were suddenly alone in a world where they were blind to anything but the man either side of them.
At the base of the city walls, a massive dome of earth rose that doubled in size with the force of the second blast from the belly of the foundation. The concussive wave from the twin explosions could be felt thousands of yards away. An evil gust, tinged with the rotten eggs stink of sulfur, caused banners and flags to unfurl for an instant in a gale force wind. Then the city of Nanking was invisible behind a dense, swirling cloud of dust and smoke. From within the cloud came a rumble and grind sounding like a monstrous approaching wave.
All was silent except for the sounds of men coughing to clear their throats of the cloying powder of atomized dirt that had settled over everything in a shroud.
The silence was broken by the clash of gongs. They were joined by hundreds of others being struck in a rising emphatic din. Trumpets sounded from all around the camp. Men spat to clear their mouths of the cloying dust. They gripped weapons and tensed for what came next, all while straining their tearing eyes to see through the curtain of smoke that isolated them from their goal.
After what seemed like hours, the dust began to settle and the air to clear across the no man’s land between the walls of the city and the earthworks of the besiegers. All eyes were upon the crest of the falling tide of smoke to see if the walls still stood in place. At first, they saw nothing and then, as a man, they realized that nothing was precisely what they wished to see. Instead of a two-hundred-yard stretch of unbroken battlements between two stout towers, there was now a wide gap as though some unimaginably enormous beast had taken a bite from the wall. At the bottom of the bite lay a steep hillock of scree that would act like a ramp into the gap. The wall had collapsed in on itself to fill the man-made sinkhole created by tons of gunpowder. The unassailable defenses were now gored. The city lay beyond, through that ragged tear in its armor, to be plundered.
The first wave of assault companies broke ranks and rushed up the slope to the walls, their officers trailing behind shouting unheeded orders. Bannermen followed in the rear of the attack rather than leading the charge. The mass of sprinting peasant soldiers converged in a point like an arrowhead aimed for the breach in the walls. The first lines of professional soldiers swayed but held their ranks at the sharp commands of their officers riding on ponies before them and swinging whips. All were eager to get at the imagined treasures within the walls. The mandarins were content to allow the rabble of armed coolies to be the first in.
They could kindly be called auxiliary infantry, barefoot and armed with farm implements and cheap swords of hammered iron. They were nothing more than livestock to the mandarins. Perhaps less. How better to test the defenses?
The mob of peasants raced across the rough hill of broken masonry and timbers that now filled the moat between the glacis and the base of the ruined wall. They clambered upward on hands and knees. The walls and towers above remained mute until the first of the auxiliaries reached the crest of the rubble and perhaps caught a glimpse of the wonders of the city beyond before all hell opened up.
Along the walls, puffs of smoke bloomed from muskets, jingals, and carronades. Rockets soared in the air in twisting spirals to explode harmlessly in the sky. But a few dropped among the rear of the attackers. The rockets exploded, creating blasts of razor-sharp shrapnel that shredded men to bloody rags. The assault staggered, slowed and came to a stop at the top of the rubble heap. Musket balls tore into the front ranks from the ramparts and towers. The peasant soldiers were routed under the murderous hail of lead and stone shot and turned to flee. The lethal rain continued, cutting down men as they tumbled off the hill of scree and ran across the open land toward the siege camp. The hillock of ruins was now carpeted with the dead.
The besiegers answered with their own artillery. Cannon opened up from embrasures dug close to the walls. Stone shot and gravel raked the ramparts in an effort to clear them of defenders. The reply from Nanking was a storm of rockets that filled the sky with snaking contrails of smoke and sparks. Most of the rockets landed to discharge on empty ground. They did little but spur the fleeing survivors of the first assault to greater speed.
But one tube dropped by the slimmest of chances into the powder magazine of the nearest gun embrasure. The blast vaporized the gun crew and sent the cannon barrel spinning high into the air like a stick tossed for a dog. It crashed to the earth, warped and smoking, a few yards forward of the first rank of imperial troops. Smoke drifted from the dragon’s mouth forged at the end of the barrel. The shock of the impact caused a horse to rear, pitching an officer to the ground.
A trumpet blared and the imperial troops, in fine black lacquered bamboo armor and bearing long spears in their fists, surged forward in rank after rank, moving in time to beating drums. They streamed toward the break in the walls across the open ground. They marched in perfect discipline, formed in squares of a thousand men each. And behind them, by fifty yards, a second wave marched followed by a third and fourth. Officers cantered their mounts forward along the flanks. Bannermen trotted, long streams of colorful regimental flags fluttering behind. Boy peasants ran alongside, banging on gongs and squealing encouragement as if on a playing field rather than a killing ground.
Steady fire pelted down from the walls either side of the breach. The first column of men was already leaving bits of itself behind. Either still or writhing, victims of the muskets and carronades along the ramparts, men in black armor sprawled on the ground behind the advanci
ng regiment. The following ranks marched over them as only another obstacle in the path to brace their enemy in his lair.
The army of the boy emperor meant to exploit the chink in the city’s defense through sheer blunt force. General Sang would spend as many men as it took until his army was invested in the city and the houses there put to the torch and the defenders put to the sword.
“I think I understand what Chaz was saying,” Bat said, eyes fixed on the mass of men walking in orderly procession directly into the withering fire from the walls.
“Yeah? What was he saying?” Lee asked, eye to a telescope.
“I feel like I’ve never really been to war before,” she said, throat suddenly dry.
50
Lonely Planet
He stood on the beach, watching lazy white rollers coming off the Pacific. Gulls wheeled in the air. Egrets and terns stalked tidal pools hunting for fish and crabs.
It took him three days of hard hiking to reach the coast. On the way, he saw not one single sign of any kind of human habitation. Not a campfire, structure, or even any rubbish left behind. The ocean to the horizon was free of any kind of vessel.
As far as he knew, he was alone on the planet.
Not entirely alone. There was wildlife. Rabbits, lizards, birds, and deer. There were coyotes though he never saw one. He heard their yips in the night when he camped. Their tracks crisscrossed the sand between the dunes.