The Guns of Empire (52 page)

It didn't work. Not even in the wildest reaches of fantasies could he make “the Queen of Vordan” and “Marcus d'Ivoire” fit together. It was just too absurd.

But . . .

If he forgot, just for a moment, that she was the queen, everything changed. The woman who'd raided Exchange Central at his side, in a red courier's uniform, breaking in and hiding from the guards and laughing madly when it was all over. The woman who'd stood with a Black Priest's blade to her throat on the
Rosnik
and demanded he leave her behind. The woman who'd listened so earnestly while he explained strategy and tactics, learning everything she could to help her do her duty.

The woman who'd come to him in the middle of the night with a knife and shared a secret hardly anyone else knew.

He could hold
her
, kiss
her
.
Raesinia.
Not the Queen of Vordan, but a human being.

Maybe Andy's right.

“. . . swear,” Janus mumbled. Marcus' heart jumped in his chest. The First Consul lay twisted on his bed, breathing hard, sweat standing out on his skin.
Isn't that supposed to be good, with a fever?
When the problem was a magical poison, though, who knew anything?

“I swear,” Janus said. “I will find you. If I have to fight the Beast itself, I will get you back. You will have the life you ought to have had. I should be the one down in the dark. I should . . .”

He rolled over, eyes still closed.

“. . . not there,” he mumbled. “Not among the Mages, not in Khandar.
Must
be there. Only place. Elysium . . .”

He snorted, and was silent again. Marcus lay down on his own bedroll, listening to Janus' shallow breath, and closed his eyes.

If I see Raesinia again,
he told himself,
I'll tell her.

Under the circumstances, it seemed like a safe enough promise.

—

“Brass Balls of the
fucking
Beast,” Marcus said, peering south over the river. “Where the hell did they all come from?”

“That's got to be close to their whole force,” Fitz said, watching the ranks of spearwomen and archers form up on the opposite bank. “They're not holding anything back.”

“What changed?” It was disquieting to realize that the previous week of attacks had been relatively small affairs, a few thousand strong. That was not true now—Marcus guessed there were at least fifteen thousand men and women getting ready to come over the river, with more lurking in the woods or on horseback at the flanks.

“Maybe they're just tired of waiting,” Fitz said.

“I was hoping they'd get tired of dying first.” Marcus shook his head. “It won't help them
that
much. The ford isn't wide enough for that whole mess to come at us at once.”

“My guess is they're not going to back off when they get their nose bloodied,” Fitz said. “Whoever's in charge over there wants us dead, and they don't care how many of their people they have to spend to get it.”

“Saints and bloody martyrs.” Marcus sighed. “Right. Here we go, then.” He peered over the rampart, down to where Viera and her cannoneers were getting their guns ready. “Captain Galiel!”

“What?” she said, shading her eyes to look up at him.

“Everything's ready?”

She nodded. “And Lieutenant Cosk knows what to do if anything happens to me. I left him with the reserve.”

Good idea.
Marcus hadn't thought of that, but of course Viera's position with the artillery, outside the wall, was a dangerous one. He turned around to find Andy climbing up to the wall.

“They're coming,” he said. “A hell of a lot of them.”

“You're not kidding,” Andy said with a low whistle.

“Try to hang back a little,” Marcus said. “And if things look like they're going bad . . .” He shot a significant look at the ice under his feet.

“Believe me, I'm trying not to think about it,” Andy said.

“Assuming we live,” Marcus said, “remind me that I need to thank you.”

“What for?”

“Something you said last night,” Marcus said. “It . . . clarified things.”

“You know me,” Andy said cheerfully. “Always clarifying things.”

“They're moving,” Fitz said. “We'd better get to the reserve.”

Marcus clapped Andy on the shoulder and moved off. The center of the camp was on higher ground than the wall near the river, so their command position was just an old wagon bed resting on a couple of hardtack boxes. It was tall enough to see over the wall and give a good view of the ford beyond, where the bone people were already wading into the freezing water. The spearwomen had split into a number of bands, each a thousand or two strong, stretched into a long, thin formation covering the width of the ford. There were considerable gaps between them, so they would reach the Vordanai line in successive waves. Bands of archers prowled the spaces between.

“Smart,” Fitz said. “If one unit breaks, it can flee without sweeping away the ones behind it, like it would if they were packed tight.”

“And it doesn't make such a nice target for our cannon.” Marcus frowned. “This is going to be bad.”
Not that there was much chance it would ever be any other way.

Viera started firing solid shot at long range, cannonballs plowing into the shallow river and throwing up giant waterspouts. It didn't do much damage to the loose formations, but as she'd remarked to Marcus the night before, there wasn't much point in conserving ammunition. Once the leading formation of spearwomen advanced to within five hundred yards, the guns switched to canister and the firing became more serious. Once again mangled bodies thrashed in the water or floated limply with the current.

Viera's gunners kept firing until the very last moment, slamming double canister into the enemy lines until the charging spearwomen were practically on
top of them. More than one man was cut down in turn, hit by an arrow or simply a little bit too slow getting back over the wall. Perhaps because of their bravery, however, the first line of bone women was wavering before it even reached the wall, newly coated in ice to repair the cracks from yesterday's assault. Arrows stuck in the canvas overhead until it sagged under their weight, and some broke through or found gaps and hit the defenders, but the ragged volleys of musketry from behind the ramparts quickly broke up the wave of attackers. Before long they were fleeing back into the ford, passing through the loosely ordered ranks of the next wave. Marcus hoped these new attackers would be discouraged, but they only shouted jeeringly at the broken troops as they ran.

“White riders making a nuisance of themselves, as usual.” Fitz pointed to the north, where pale-coated men on ponies had emerged to challenge the rear defenses of the fortress. They didn't have the numbers to mount a close-in assault, but their constant harrying kept the defenders from pulling men from the other walls to reinforce the troops facing the ford.

“Bastards just wait for the guns to start up,” Marcus spat. “They know we don't have any cavalry to go after them.”

Fitz nodded. “We haven't seen much of the Murnskai cuirassiers, either. I wonder if they're still out there.”

“Not if they have any sense,” Marcus muttered. “They'd be wasted here.” He sent up a silent prayer of thanks that the bone people's Murnskai allies apparently didn't have any cannon. Even the smallest field-gun would have smashed his snow-and-ice fortification like it was made of matchsticks.

The second wave of bone women charged, flowing around the stationary clumps of archers who were now exchanging fire with the muskets on the wall. As usual, the enemy were getting the worst of it, with no cover and inferior weapons, but they had more than enough lives to spend to even the scales. Marcus saw Andy shouting and waving her sword, and the troops shifted fire to the advancing spearwomen as they reached the bank. There hadn't been enough time for Viera and her cannoneers to return to their pieces, so the second wave didn't have to run the deadly gamut of canister to reach the wall. Smoke rolled down and across them when they got to the bottom, once again hammering axes, knives, or wooden spikes into the icy surface to make it climbable.

Fighting with desperate fury, the defenders pushed the bone women back over the rampart wherever they found purchase. The second wave was still milling about the base of the wall when the third wave arrived, and the combination of increased pressure and mounting losses from the arrows drove the Vordanai
back. Fitz, without a word, led the reserve forward at a trot, charging up the snow-ramps and slamming into the enemy in a wave of flashing bayonets. Once again the spearwomen were thrown from the wall. But this time, secure in the knowledge that fresh troops were coming up behind them, they didn't break, only tried again, a dense-packed mass of screaming warriors held at bay only by a dozen feet of ice and packed snow. The fight turned and turned again, fallen bodies trampled into the churned mix of mud and snow at the base of the wall or unceremoniously rolled aside to make room for fresh defenders.

One more card to play before we throw the dice.
The mixed metaphor made Marcus smile for a moment. He nodded to Fossard, the regimental cutter, and the man and his assistants fanned out through the infirmary, pushing and prodding and pleading. Marcus drew his sword and held it in the air, to serve as a rallying point. In a few moments they started to trickle in, men who were pale with fever or mottled with bruises, men wrapped in bandages or with sleeves freshly pinned up. Every man who could still walk, Marcus had said, and the cutters had taken him at his word. A few collapsed in the snow, and others lacked even the strength to pick up a weapon. The rest collected bayoneted muskets and captured spears from a pile near Marcus' feet and gathered into some semblance of a formation. It was more of a rough blob than anything with ranks, but Marcus saluted them with his sword anyway, and got a ragged cheer.

It was probably time for a rousing speech, but he'd never been good at those, and in any case the rattle and bang of musketry all along the walls and the scream of combat would have drowned out his words. Marcus swept his sword down, pointing at the wall, and hopped down from his vantage point.
No use staying at the command post when there's nothing left to command.

He ran, aiming for where he could see the blue line bulging. The men behind him, a couple of hundred cripples and sick, raised a shout that would have done credit to twice their number. The bone women turned to receive them in a horrible clash of spears and bayonets, blades tearing flesh on all sides. Marcus ducked low, slipping beneath the initial shock, then popped up inside the reach of the first rank of bone women, laying about him for all he was worth. Blood flew, and where the spears fell away his men pressed into the gap, shoving and punching when the press got too close for weapons.

Time disappeared into a red haze. There was only an ocean of bodies, men and women, Vordanai and bone people, sometimes pressed together so tight he could hardly breathe, sometimes receding enough that he could dodge and fence with his enemies. At first they'd been fighting on the ramps, but step by step
they pushed the enemy back toward the rampart. Some bone women were jumping off, risking the spikes and bodies below to get away.
They're breaking—

Then, with a hoarse scream, a fresh tide of spearwomen surged up and over the defenses. Glancing over the rampart, Marcus could see that the fourth wave had paused, waiting for the fifth, and the two units had hit the wall together. The defenders were exhausted, and these new attackers hadn't suffered any musketry on their approach; they were fresh and screaming for blood, and they shattered the Vordanai line like glass.

The fact that there was nowhere to run was forgotten in the heat of the moment, overwhelmed by the desperate need to get
away
. Men ran in ones and twos, then whole groups together, backing away in a fighting retreat or simply throwing their weapons down and fleeing for their lives. Some officers tried to hold them, calling them cowards and hurling threats, while others simply joined in with the tide. Those who held firm were quickly surrounded and cut down by the bone women, who pressed on as fast as they could get over the wall.

Marcus, sword still in hand, slashed a woman across the belly and jumped down from the wall before her companion could get around her. He saw Viera nearby, two of her cannoneers fighting at her side, wielding long sponge-staffs as though they were spears. She held a lit torch, and as their eyes locked Marcus jerked his head toward the base of the wall.
Do it.

“Andy!” Marcus shouted, his voice nearly inaudible over the din. “Get clear! Everyone
run!
”

Viera bent, running the torch along a length of line, then tossed it aside as the fuse took fire. She turned on her heel and sprinted, long-legged strides catching up with the fleeing soldiers. Marcus lagged close to the back of the pack, looking for Andy. Fitz shouted something at him from the middle of a group of soldiers executing a slower, more controlled retreat, but Marcus couldn't understand and waved him on.

Finally, he saw Andy, jumping down from the wall with the last half dozen Vordanai. A cut on her cheek had coated her face in blood, but her sword still flashed, fending off the spears that stabbed down at her. The men around her started to run, but she paused, looking for something. Marcus saw her mouth go wide as she shouted an unheard oath. He followed her gaze and realized that the sparking, hissing fuse had gone dark.

“Andy!” Marcus skidded to a halt in a spray of snow. “Viera, Fitz—it's gone out. We have to—”

But there was no time, no time for anything. The bone people were over
the wall, victorious spearwomen spreading out through the makeshift fortress, attacking the other walls from behind. There was nothing left to stop them.
We're all going to die.