By Heresies Distressed (58 page)

His spyglass showed him the Charisians, marching with their rifles slung. To his considerable surprise, they were marching with fixed bayonets, as well, which was more than simply odd. Bayonets were musketeers' last-ditch defense, and a clumsy substitute for proper pikes, at best. Worse, men with the circular hilts of bayonets shoved down the muzzles of their muskets could neither fire nor reload, so what in the world could the Charisians be thinking of?

Deep inside, a little voice suggested to him that someone like Gahrvai might have been able to come up with an answer short of assuming that his opponents had succumbed to lunacy. It should, perhaps, have occurred to him that none of his earlier reports had mentioned anything about bayonets. On the other hand, that wasn't the sort of detail cavalry scouts normally included in their reports, and at the moment, Windshare had other things on his mind. Like the fact that, bayonets or no, they were coming hard, concentrating on covering ground as quickly as they could without exhausting themselves, and the way they'd allowed themselves to become more spread out indicated that they weren't spending a lot of energy worrying.

No reason they should be
, he thought grimly.
We've been shadowing them—and they've been killing and wounding my men—for hours now, and I doubt their maps are as good as ours. As far as they're concerned, this is just more of the same, and they probably don't even know what the ground looks like between here and Green Valley. No reason for them to think I could have over four thousand cavalry hidden away
.

He smiled hungrily, watching the enemy approach.

It was going to be ticklish getting his men up and over the crest line. Not only was there the slope to consider, but the terrain would be constricted until they crossed the crest, where the fan-shaped prospective battlefield began to open out once more. No trooper liked to start a charge headed uphill, for a lot of reasons, and in this instance, they were going to be packed like apples in a basket, forced to adopt a deeper formation than he would have preferred, until they cleared the top of the slope. On the other hand, there were those bayonets. Even if the Charisians' muskets were loaded, they'd still have to remove the bayonets before they could fire, and his troopers would have the downslope on the far side to help them build and maintain speed once they got started. The trick was going to be timing. He needed to start the charge soon enough to give his men time to come over the hill and gain speed, but at the same time, he wanted to give the Charisians as little time as possible to react.

Still
, he thought, studying those slung muskets,
surprise is bound to keep them from reacting instantly
.

Merlin had deliberately looked away from Clareyk. In fact, he'd turned in the saddle to look back down the length of the column behind them to where the first battery of twelve-pounders had just come through the belt of trees in road column. It probably wasn't strictly necessary, but he wanted to make it clear to any potential observer that he wasn't even thinking about the brigadier at this particular moment.

Of course, he wasn't really looking at the
column
, either, as he waited, watching and listening through his SNARC.

“Now!”
Windshare snapped, and Major Galvahn stood in the stirrups, waving the red signal flag vigorously.

Merlin might not have been watching Clareyk, but the brigadier had been very attentively—if unobtrusively—watching
him
. Which was why the Marine saw the bodyguard reach up and remove his helmet in order to wipe sweat from his brow.

“
Now
, I think, Bryahn,” he said crisply.

Major Lahftyn looked at him for just a moment, then glanced up the slope before them. Obviously, he couldn't imagine what had prompted Clareyk to give the order at that precise moment, but it was an order he'd been expecting. He hesitated for no more than a heartbeat, then nodded to the bugler at his side.

“Sound ‘Form square,' Corporal,” he said.

Windshare's massed horsemen started up the slope. First, at a walk, but moving rapidly to a trot, with the smoothness of years of experience and the demanding training Windshare had put them through ever since assuming command of Gahrvai's cavalry.

The lead squadrons reached the crest in an eight-deep line, moving at a hard trot, covering just over two hundred yards per minute, and the front two ranks accelerated rapidly. By the time they'd covered another forty yards, they were moving at a full, extended gallop, hooves showering clods of moist earth, lances and sabers glittering in the sunlight, while the next two ranks thundered along thirty yards behind them. About them and behind them came the music of bugles, the drumming thunder of sixteen thousand hooves, and a deep, baying cheer as they turned on their enemies at last.

Windshare himself came over the crest with the third double-line, sixty yards behind the first. He rode in the exact center of the line, his standard snapping and popping in the wind of his passage, and his eyes glittered with fierce satisfaction.

But then those eyes widened in astonishment.

The men of Clareyk's first two battalions had been waiting for the bugle call, and they responded instantly. Both battalions unraveled, moving with the speed and precision only endless, brutally demanding drill could have instilled. They spread out, First Battalion moving to its right while Second Battalion moved to its left, forming not a column, not a line, but a single hollow formation. It wasn't literally a “square”; the ground was too uneven for that, and it was more of a rectangle than a square, anyway. But that compact, steady, unshaken,
unsurprised
formation bristled with bayonets, facing outward in every direction, and, in direct contravention of every standard safety regulation, the rifles upon which those bayonets were mounted had been carefully loaded and primed before they were ever slung.

Windshare couldn't believe it.

He'd never seen infantry move that quickly, that precisely, even on the drill field. Surely there was no way they could have responded that instantly! It wasn't possible!

Yet the Charisians had done it, and it was too late for him to change his own mind. Half his total force—including Windshare himself—was already at a full gallop, pounding downhill towards the enemy at over seven yards a second in a series of lines which were each a hundred and twenty-five men across. His lead elements had little more than a hundred and fifty yards to go, and the front rank of the second half of his force was already moving up and over the crest line behind him, ready to exploit his charge's success.

And the bastards
still
have their damned bayonets fixed, too!
he realized, and grinned savagely.
They may
think
that'll keep my lads from closing with them, but they're about to find out just how wrong they are!

Brigadier Clareyk sat his horse in the middle of First Battalion's square, watching the enemy come. His expression was as calm as ever as he glanced over at Merlin.

“I suppose this is where we find out just how clever I really am,” he remarked.

The front of his square, where it faced uphill, was three ranks deep, instead of two. The front rank knelt on one knee, rifle butts braced, bayonets thrusting up and out at a sharp angle . . . right about at chest height on a horse. The second and third ranks waited, rifles cocked. The temptation to fire as soon as possible was almost overwhelming as they watched two thousand cavalry thundering towards them, but they didn't. They waited.