The Ancient Enemy (45 page)

Suddenly the bugle was blowing for a retreat, and Burok was bellowing. Sergeant Hugga was roaring, too, and the Blitzers backed off, disengaged, and retired to the first stone wall.

The monkeys had lost all organization, and they, too, were not ready to resume the fight. But the Blitzers' position was untenable, because to their immediate right rose up the tip of the sand dune. A hundred feet above them there were monkeys and those damned catapults.

Another huge spear flashed down, and there was a shriek on the line and some poor bastard was skewered. It took him ten minutes of agony to die.

Again the bugle blew and they withdrew and moved back in good order to the previous front line. The monkeys were not ready yet to reengage. The casualties had been too many, and their formations were completely disorganized.

They stood there, panting, chests heaving, then they looked to wounds. Everyone had some by then, from what had turned into the biggest fight they could remember. The monkeys held their ground, the giant spears were the only threat for the moment. After a while even they ceased to fire.

The Blitzers realized the fighting was over. The lines stood down. Burok went round to count casualties, and men with wounds were told to assemble for treatment.

Rukkh heard that Forjal had been taken off in one of the first boats. Good old Forjal was one tough bastard of a soldier. Must have run two hundred yards holding his Goddamn guts in. Rukkh sent up a prayer to the Great God.

Give your grace to old Forjal, He Who Eats.

About then the ships appeared at last, tacking into the bay and dropping their anchors. There came a ragged cheer from the army on the bloodstained shore. The ships, however, remained much farther from the shore than on the previous day, so the boats took far longer going back and forth.

A medical tent was set up just for the Blitzers, some food was brought up, and they gathered around the cauldrons. Everyone was pretty quiet. The sun was barely over the horizon and already they'd fought a major battle and lost more than a hundred men. The mighty Blitzers were now reduced to fewer than four hundred men capable of fighting.

Admiral Heuze was finding it harder and harder to take the repeated shocks thrown up by the battle. The monkeys were proving themselves to be tough opponents, against all predictions, they were many thousands of miles from home, and there were no reinforcements in the offing. The situation, in a word, was precarious.

All through the morning hours the fleet beat its way back up the coast against a stiffening north wind. When they finally slipped into the bay, reduced sail, and lowered their anchors, they found the army in a state approaching complete disaster. Heuze felt his head begin to pound as soon as he read the reports.

General Raltt had been surprised by a dawn attack and had fought a desperate rearguard battle back and forth over the beach in the first hours of daylight. Hundreds more good men had been lost. Now the army was just sitting there, pulled into a defensive arc on the beach while suffering constant harrying fire from enemy archers and catapults. Casualties in the first full day of this campaign were approaching a thousand, half of them fatalities. That was unacceptable. Who knew how many such battles they might have yet to fight to subdue and destroy the pestilential monkeys?

Heuze could hardly believe that Raltt had let himself be surprised and pushed back to the water's edge. He sent a message requesting Raltt's appearance on the flagship at once. Raltt sent a message back saying that his presence was required on the battlefield. The monkeys might attack at any moment.

After counting to a hundred to try to calm himself, Heuze ordered his personal barge and went ashore. He had the sense that the expedition itself was hanging in the balance. He had to intervene here personally to turn things around.

Filek jumped at the chance to accompany the admiral, filling the barge with extra medical supplies, which he was sure would be needed.

The admiral's barge surged over the water, impelled by twelve strong men. Filek admired the coastline. What struck him every time was the lushness of the place. Above the shallow cliffs and sandy beaches grew enormous trees in wild profusion. It was uncanny to one more familiar with the barren lands of Shasht.

Ahead was the line of the beach, waves crashing on the shore. Yellow sand dunes rose up beyond the beach. On their tops was a dark mass that had to be monkeys and their shields. Filek shivered. There were the weavers of those amazing mats. There were the potters and wood-carvers whose work he had marveled over.

Then he saw the beach. By the Great God's Wrath, the place was a slaughterhouse. There were dozens of bodies washing in the surf, some of them women from the
Growler
. Filek shuddered with disgust. To think of the women of Shasht dishonored by public exposure in this way was horrifying to his soul. And he breathed a prayer to the Great God that he didn't even believe in, because the disaster could so easily have befallen the
Anvil
rather than the
Growler
.

The barge was run ashore, and the admiral was lifted out by the bargees and set on the shore. He dug his crutches into the shingle and heaved himself up the beach. There was no one to meet him, and he was furious at the lack of respect.

While Heuze stormed off to see General Raltt, Filek oversaw the unloading of the supplies he'd brought and had them taken to the medical tents. The tents were virtually madhouses, the surgeons working flat out for hours on the horde of wounded that were camped around them. The wailing, the stench, the baskets of amputated limbs, it was all stomach-churning.

One of the first serious cases Filek was confronted with was Forjal from the Blitzers. The medics had pushed his innards back inside him and sewn him up. The man was pale, there had been considerable loss of blood, but his heartbeat seemed perfectly regular. Filek noted that the man's body was already covered in scars. He was obviously a hell of a fighter. Filek had Forjal put at the head of the list to be ferried out to the
Anvil
. He would take that case himself out of sheer curiosity. It was unusual for a man to live so long after being partially eviscerated. This Forjal must be incredibly tough.

Meanwhile, farther along the beach Admiral Heuze had found General Raltt and his staff standing by a field table poring over the scouting chart. Forewarned of Heuze's approach, Raltt was working furiously on a "plan." There were still details to try to work out, though, lots of details.

Heuze swung himself past the adjutant and right up to Raltt's map table.

"General Raltt, what is the meaning of this?"

"Excuse me, Admiral, but I'm in the middle of something important."

"You'll be in the middle of a trial before the priests if you don't stop this insubordination and start listening to me."

"Admiral Heuze, do you think that by pulling rank at this moment, when our forces are locked in combat here, that you are helping the situation?"

Heuze looked around himself slowly.

"You are not locked in combat, General. There has been a battle, and I see that you have lost much of our army. But you are not fighting right now. And our army is hemmed in on the beach where it landed, a full day and a night after it was put ashore. What is going on, General?"

Raltt sighed. He knew he would have to give in. Heuze outranked him, and the Hand of Aeswiren would enforce military discipline.

"I'm sorry, Admiral Heuze. I apologize for not being able to greet you personally as you stepped ashore. I am busy trying to come up with some remedies for the serious situation we find ourselves in."

"Why in the name of the purple ass of He Who Eats are we in this so-called 'serious situation'?"

"It's, ah, hard to say, Admiral Heuze." Raltt was a little shocked at such open blasphemy. Things were obviously a bit different in the fleet. The army was more straitlaced about this sort of thing.

"When I assumed command, the line was pretty much where it is now, but we were fighting off an assault from the sand dunes. Since then we've fought off another assault during the early dawn. We counterattacked and drove the enemy back to his lines, but we could not hold our position there because of enemy missiles from the top of the dune."

"General Uisbank was responsible for the loss of the dune top, correct?"

"Ah, yes, Admiral Heuze."

"So what we have here is a complete failure by the army command, correct?"

"I wouldn't say that, Admiral. General Uisbank was taken by surprise."

"And what happened at dawn?"

"Well, I don't know how they did it, but the damned monkeys crept up on the Blitzers' front and weren't noticed."

"So it was the fault of the Blitzers?"

Raltt stiffened. "You will find everything in my report when it's done. Right now I have to win a battle."

"Yes, of course. Enlighten me; I would like to know how you plan to do it."

Raltt gritted his teeth. "Then watch, but please don't interrupt while I explain things to my officers. Clarity is very important right now."

Heuze gave an angry snort as they both turned to the big chart spread out on the table. He would have the general's hide pegged out under the sun eventually, but for now he needed to win this battle.

There on the chart it was all laid out quite plainly, a complete military nightmare. They had landed, been stiffed in their attack, and pushed back into a shallow salient on the beach and the plain in front of the city walls. The enemy had the high points of both ends of the field. To the left they held the city walls and on the right they held the line of dunes that sat back from the beach.

Raltt fought to control the nervousness he felt. This was his first major command, and he had been dealt an atrocious hand.

"All right, listen up. We will strengthen our right and force the top of the dunes farther down the line. Then we will push the enemy off the dunes entirely and regain control of the situation. Understood?"

They nodded as if impressed by his military genius, though anyone could see that they didn't have a lot of choices.

"So units of the First, Second, and Third Regiments will detach and move along the line to the right. I will leave it to unit commanders to select which sections they wish to send, but remember we want the men who are freshest and ready to give it their all today. All right? Any questions?"

There were none.

"Good. Orders will be drawn up."

Heuze stilled any critical thoughts. There were more important fish to fry.

"Well, General, it looks like the best thing available. I will land more regiments on the southern part of the beach, and that will help speed things up."

"Admiral, that would be wonderful. If we could have the five regiments still aboard ship, I think we could guarantee to sweep these dunes clear of the enemy."

"Of course it is going to take an hour or two to get those men ashore. I daren't come in too close, not after last night."

Raltt pursed his lips. Naturally, the fleet commander was nervous, after the previous night's fireworks. However, from the army's point of view, it was essential to get some reinforcement on that right wing and force the monkeys off the high ground on the dunes. More than ever, Raltt regretted Uisbank's cavalier refusal to fortify that dune top when they first had it.

The officers milled there for a few moments while the clerks wrote out their orders and stamped them with the general's seal.

Raltt and Heuze looked over the map while Raltt tried to get Heuze to put the men aboard one of the smaller ships and send them in at once.

"Even an hour might make a great difference."

Heuze was about to respond, but at that very moment one of the admiral's bargees came running up, face filled with fear.

"Admiral, begging your pardon for interrupting, like, but Lieutenant Kligg says you should take a look at the entrance to the city harbor."

Heuze snapped up his spyglass. His blood ran cold as ice.

"Another God-damned fireship!" he exploded. "Look! Sails all filthy brown and she's coming out as proud as you damned well please."

Heuze turned back to the bargee.

"Ready the barge!"

Then to Raltt.

"I have to get back to my ship; we may have to maneuver until we can destroy that filthy little cog they're sending out."

"What about the reinforcements? I need to build up that right wing."

"As soon as possible we'll set them down."

"What does that mean?"

"Just that, as soon as possible."

And then with a sudden blare of bugles they became aware that the monkeys had started another attack. This time it fell on the First Regiment, which was on the farthest left of the line, facing the walls of the monkey town. The gates there had opened again and a column of monkeys came charging out, straight along the top of the beach toward the First Regiment. At the same time a pair of trebuchets, located behind the city walls, began to throw huge rocks over the walls, high into the sky and down on the First Regiment's position. The rocks weighed hundreds of pounds, and where they landed the First Regiment broke aside in disorder.

Raltt and his staff swung their attention to the new threat. The left flank had to be held. Further thoughts about strengthening the right wing were forgotten for the moment.

Heuze hurried over to the medical tents, where he found Filek already stained red from neck to waist.

"We should get back to the ship at once. The enemy has another of those damned fireships."

Filek's eyes widened. He took off his apron and followed the admiral. Something told Filek just then that he did not want to be left behind on this bloodstained beach. It was possible that he might never get another chance to leave it.

Back they went, through the throngs of wounded men, while Heuze said nothing, but kept looking anxiously over to the harbor where the dark brown sails were filling. The small monkey ship was clearly visible now, a small bow wave breaking white before her.

Filek stared for a moment. All that talk about how stupid the monkeys were seemed painfully incorrect.