The Guns of Empire (50 page)

“But the army isn't here,” Winter said. “It's still camped at the Kovria.”

“They can't track an army in this weather,” Snowfox said. “But they can track
you
. The have sensitives who can feel a demon-host miles away. For all they know, you're at the head of a division.”

“But the Priests of the Black would never abandon their citadel,” Maxwell said. “They would lose too much.”

The Eldest nodded. “They will remain, to protect the Beast and their archives.”

“Which means the poisonous Penitent is probably still there,” Winter said. “We still need to get inside.”

“There are a great many ways into Elysium,” the Eldest said. “Some are more dangerous than others. Snowfox can show you one of them and guide you as far as the walls.”

Winter looked at the girl. “Are you certain? I don't want to put her in danger.”

“I can look after myself,” Snowfox snapped.

“And you will need her,” the Eldest said. “Her power is our greatest asset.”

“Her power?” Winter frowned. “She's a demon-host?”

“Weird, isn't it?” Alex said. Snowfox rolled her eyes at her.

“Her demon grants protection from other demons' senses,” the Eldest said. “That power, imbued into the wards around the valley, is what keeps us hidden. If she goes with you, the Black Priest's sensitives will not be able to find you until you leave her side.”

“In that case, we'd be very grateful for your help, Snowfox,” Winter said, inclining her head.

The girl's cheeks pinked and she sat up a little straighter. “If the Eldest thinks it's a good idea.”

“Alex,” the Eldest said. “You wish to go with the Vordanai?”

“I do,” she said. “If I have a chance to strike back at the Black Priests, I want to take it.”

“Maxwell will also accompany you,” the Eldest said, nodding. “He has studied our maps of Elysium and knows a good deal about the Penitent Damned.”

Maxwell nodded at the old man, and Winter sensed there had been a long conversation on this particular topic. She cleared her throat.

“How long will it take to get there?” she said. “We should leave as soon as we can.”

“If we start at dawn, we'll get to Elysium by dusk,” Snowfox said. “There's no point trying to move over the mountains in the dark.”

“Tomorrow morning, then,” the Eldest said. “I will pray for all of you.”

“F
ire!” Viera screamed.

The cannons belched flaming death. Canister rounds sprayed balls over the ford, turning the icy water to froth in a thousand tiny waterspouts. The ragged line of bone women dissolved into chaos, figures punched off their feet, struggling to stay upright, or slumping into the water. Marcus felt a moment of crawling horror as he watched them—any who were wounded and couldn't walk would drown or freeze in the bone-chilling torrent.

The volley was the signal for the bone women to break formation, casting aside their big hide shields and sprinting across the river at the Vordanai line. They shouted as they ran, waving spears in the air, heedless of the danger. The rest of the bone men came on behind them, archers holding their bows over their heads to keep them out of the water, horsemen pounding past on wings of spray. In the forest on the north side of the river, Marcus could see shadows moving through the trees—white riders, moving in like vultures to pick at a dying animal.

He and Fitz stood in the center of the camp, on a wagon they'd made into an improvised command post. The slope gave him a clear view of the river and the oncoming mass of bone people. Every day since Give-Em-Hell had departed, the tribesmen had assaulted their defenses, but so far the Vordanai had held them off.
So far.

“Give them one more!” Viera shouted. “One more, then fall back! Move, move!”

The artillerymen, bone-weary and working with numbed fingers, loaded and repositioned their pieces faster than Marcus would have thought possible. It wasn't fast enough; some of the archers paused in midstream to loose, and
shafts were falling among the cannoneers before the second volley was ready. Men were hit and staggered away, or kept working grimly with arrows jutting from an arm or a leg, stepping over the thrashing bodies of their companions.

“Ready!” Viera said, as her crews withdrew from their guns. Two arrows whistled past her, but her face was alive with anticipation.
“Fire!”

Double canister this time, at barely a hundred yards, slamming out into the bone women like God's own scythe. A few unlucky souls in the lead were struck by a half dozen balls at once and simply disintegrated, stray limbs pinwheeling over the river trailing arterial sprays of blood. The swath of destruction extended for hundreds of yards, cutting down some and sparing others. An archer dropped his bow and clutched his throat, hot blood pulsing between his fingers and staining the front of his leather jerkin. Another woman in the act of helping a comrade collapsed atop her body, hands slapping feebly at the water.

“Back!” Viera shouted. “Back to the walls!”

The cannoneers scrambled backward, swearing and stumbling in the snow. One man fell on his face, and no one could spare a moment to help him; he was already dead, in spite of his screaming. Viera led the way, running up the sloping wall of packed, mounded snow. It was coated in ice, and she began to slip backward, but before she could fall Andy leaned over and grabbed her arm, pulling her over the parapet. All along the rampart, First Division soldiers did the same, hoisting the cannoneers up and out of the way before bringing their muskets back in line.

The walls had been Marcus' concept, but Fitz had made them work. At the War College, the younger boys had built snow forts in the winter, practicing attack and defense with arsenals of packed snowballs and down-stuffed coats for armor. Digging into the frozen earth of the north bank of the Kovria was out of the question, and so Marcus had proposed using the only construction material available.

He'd been thinking of a low wall that might slow down a charge or trip up a horse, but Fitz, as usual, had seen further. That first night, while the rankers packed snow into chest-high ramparts and wondered if their commanders had gone mad, Fitz had melted cauldron after cauldron of snow over the bonfire. He'd had them pour the still-cold water over the top, and the night's chill had frozen it solid, leaving a layer of hard, slippery ice. More snow and more ice had followed, the men setting to the work with a will once they understood the purpose of it.

By the time the bone men attacked the next morning, there was a low, broad
fortress overlooking the ford, and the soldiers spent every spare moment further strengthening their position. The walls were built up, and fire steps constructed on the inside, while wooden stakes were hammered into the ice to deter charging horses. Tents were cannibalized for cloth, which the men stretched across wooden frames over their firing positions to block descending arrows.

Only the cannons had to remain outside the protective cordon. No wall made of snow, however reinforced with ice, could handle the shock and recoil of a twelve-pounder firing. Every time the bone men charged, the cannoneers stood to their pieces as long as they could, then vaulted the wall just ahead of the maddened horde of tribesmen. Every time there were fewer of them to go back out. Viera picked men from the infantry and gave them a crash course in gunnery, but the firing was still slower and less accurate.

A few moments longer and the bone women were among the guns, screaming and whooping. The artilleryman who'd fallen struggled back to his feet, only to be transfixed by a thrown spear. He slumped down again, propped at an angle on the weapon that had punched through his belly. Arrows began to fall on the ice fortress, ripping down with soft
zip, zip, zip
noises. The tent canvas, two or three layers thick, caught and tangled many of the shafts, but some punched through with enough force to kill, or found the gaps between the makeshift sheets. A soldier at Marcus' side stumbled back from the wall, swearing, as an arrow drew a long, ugly gash up his arm. More arrows came from behind, the white riders venturing close enough to fire at the undermanned defenses there.

Lieutenants and sergeants shouted the order to fire, and the wall of the fortress was suddenly billowing with gray powder smoke. Balls ripped into the bone women, sending them stumbling rubber-legged to fall in a heap or staggering back toward the dubious safety of the river. Many of those who were hit simply came on, driven by madness or faith or both. Marcus saw a young woman holding her guts in with one hand while casting a spear with the other. Blood slicked another's face from where a ball had creased her scalp, but she grinned and kept running, teeth shockingly white against the crimson stain.

Behind the rampart some men loaded and handed readied muskets up to others, who stood on the fire step to loose into the oncoming mob. Arrows were coming in flat now, a harder shot but with no protection from the improvised defenses, and a man went down screaming with a shaft in his eye. The fastest of the bone women had reached the base of the wall, threading their way between the icy wooden stakes. The first few charges had stalled here, the
spearwomen unable to get purchase on the iced-over surface of the wall, but they had learned from those attacks. Now the bone women stowed their spears and took small axes or long knives in each hand, stabbing these weapons into the ice to make hand- and footholds. It was slow work, and the defenders leaned out to fire down into them as they came, deadly at point-blank range. But more bone women waited a few steps back, spears at the ready, hurling them whenever a man showed himself over the parapet. Marcus saw more than one soldier scream and vanish over the edge, to be slaughtered in the milling mass below.

When they'd built their ladders of axes and knives high enough, the bone women swarmed up it, jumping from the highest point to catch the lip of the wall. The first to try it, a fierce-eyed girl who couldn't have been more than sixteen, threw her arms over the rampart, only to get a bayonet through the throat from the Colonial on the other side. She slid down the wall, leaving a long, red slick on the ice, but two more spearwomen ascended in her place. The Colonial thrust at one of them, but she slipped aside, grabbing the front of his uniform and pulling him over the edge. His scream mingled with shouts of triumph from below. The second bone woman lifted herself over the rampart and got her spear up in time to block a thrust from a desperate Vordanai soldier, wielding her weapon with deadly efficiency as she knocked his bayonet aside and slashed his belly open. Then a sergeant raised a pistol and shot her in the chest, and she reeled backward and vanished over the wall.

“It's not going to hold,” Fitz said conversationally.

“Balls of the Beast,” Marcus swore. He looked around—all four sides of the makeshift fort were engulfed in powder smoke, where the bone men cavalry and the white riders were trading arrows for musket balls, but it was here facing the ford that they were coming over the wall. He and Fitz stood in the center, under another improvised shelter. Beneath it were their practically nonexistent stores, the ever-growing ranks of the wounded, and the reserve—eight companies from the First and Second Battalions, shrunken to perhaps five hundred men under the relentless assaults.

“I'll lead the attack,” Fitz said, hand dropping to his sword.

“No!” Marcus surprised himself with his vehemence. “Not this time.”

“You're in command,” Fitz said.

“And the men need to see me sharing the danger,” Marcus said in low tones. “Besides, you know as well as I do that we can't afford to lose you, either.”

“As you wish, sir.” Fitz straightened and saluted. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.” Marcus drew his sword, the battered cavalry saber he'd carried all the way from Khandar. “Reserve! With me! To the wall!”

A roar came from behind him, answered by scattered cheers from the troops on the rampart. They'd built three large ramps of snow leading up to the fire step, and Marcus ran for the middle one, right where the bone women were on the verge of breaking through. His men came on behind him. With friends and enemies thoroughly mixed, there was no room for musket-fire, so they met spears with bayonets.

Spears, Marcus thought, had definite advantages. He cut the first bone woman down from behind while she was administering the coup de grace to a fallen Colonial, then leapt over her corpse to engage two more. They backed off, keeping him at a distance, and for a moment it was all he could do to fend off their thrusts with frantic parries. The one on the left shifted to engage a soldier coming up behind him, and Marcus took the opportunity to dodge the other's spear, reaching out with his free hand to grab it just behind the head. He yanked, and she stumbled forward, off-balance. His other hand came up, the heavy guard of his saber crushing her nose with a spurt of blood. Her legs went out from under her, and his sword shot forward, almost automatically, and punched into her chest as smooth as a knife into butter. Her eyes went wide, and she died with a shiver.

Girls.
Five days of constant attacks had given him a thorough education in how deadly the bone women were. But every so often, in the middle of the fight, his perspective would slip, and they'd go from being
the enemy
to
young women
, people he'd always been taught he had to protect. It was stupid, he was well aware, but—

But nothing
, he snarled at himself.
It's stupid and it'll get you killed.
He turned away from the girl's corpse and pushed his way to the wall, hacking through the press of struggling bodies. A woman was pushed against him by someone else's shove, bone fetishes clattering on her leathers, and Marcus slammed a knee into her midriff and smashed her on the top of her skull with his pommel as she went down. When he got to the rampart, another bone woman was just climbing over, and he kicked her in the chin and watched her fall into the press. More hands appeared on the edge, and he hacked down at them, sending fingers flying. An arrow brushed his arm, opening a long cut, but he was too keyed up to feel more than a dull sting.

The reserve turned the fight, driving the bone women back over the wall. The defenders' muskets once again began to sound, cutting down spearwomen
at the base of the wall by the score and taking a toll on the archers. At some unheard signal, the attack broke off, cavalry wheeling away from the walls and spearwomen running for the ford and the shelter of the other side of the river. The white riders retreated into the woods, leaving a few of their number dead on the frozen plain.

A ragged cheer rose from the defenders.
It's hard to muster much excitement when you know they'll be back tomorrow.
But for now, at least, they were still alive.

—

“I want them stripped for anything we can use,” Marcus said. “Horses butchered. Bodies dragged to the pit.”

“Yes, sir,” Fitz said. He was wrapping a bandage around Marcus' arm himself; Marcus refused to burden the overworked cutters with such a minor injury. “What about the wounded?”

“The usual,” Marcus muttered, not meeting his subordinate's eye.

That meant that any who could walk would be turned loose outside the walls, to make their way to their own camp as best they could. Any who couldn't got a slit throat. It went against all the rules of civilized war, but as Marcus had to keep reminding himself, they were well away from civilization here. The simple fact was that they couldn't feed their own men, let alone the enemy.

“Understood, sir.” Fitz tied off the bandage. “That should hold you. I'll check it in the morning.”

“Thanks.” Marcus felt a little embarrassed by his earlier outburst. “Sorry for running off like that. I just needed to . . .
do
something.”

“I understand, sir. And it
is
good for the men to see you fighting alongside them. Just be careful.”

“Has anyone taken Janus his dinner?”

“Not yet.”

“I'll do it, then.” Janus' tent was the one quiet—or nearly quiet—place in a camp overrun with the moans of the wounded and dying.

“Make sure to eat something yourself, sir,” Fitz said.