Warlord (26 page)

One man shouted out to him: "We're ready to die game, ser!"

"That's for losers, we're going to
win
,"
Raj replied. There was no cheering or laughter this time, only a grim boulder-stolid readiness.
Luck
,
he prayed.
Just a little luck, that's all I need. No more disasters, no more surprises
.
Probably Tewfik had been surprised when the whole Civil Government force hadn't taken his bait; it had wavered within a cunt hair of happening that way, too. Raj looked at the scattered clumps of Colonist dead with new respect; the enemy commander had calmly sacrificed them to make the bait convincing, nothing less would have worked. He remembered the swath of devastation his men had cut through the El Djem basin. It was unlikely in the extreme that the Colonists would be inclined to mercy.

"We'll just have to win, is all," he murmured, staring at the ridge. Perhaps he was wrong after all—

The sound of massed carbines was lighter than that of Armory rifles, but just as deadly at close range. His mind's eye could paint the picture, the 2nd going over the crestline at a full gallop, the ranks of crimson-uniformed Colonists rising as one. Volleys pouring in, and the carbines held seven rounds in a tube magazine under the barrel
 . . . 
He whispered prayers and curses under his breath, but a trained ear was estimating. A
lot
of carbines, many more than the eight hundred or so rifles the 5th and 2nd had deployed a few minutes before. And a
pom-pom-pom
sound, Colony artillery. Light quick-firing guns spraying half-kilogram miniature shells from a clip of five. Not as accurate as the 75's, and a lot less weight of shell, but they fired as fast as a carbine. . . . A cloud of smoke was rising from the low swale over the ridge, twin to the one that was drifting and dispersing ahead of him.

"Oh, shit, oh, shit," he murmured to himself.
I didn't really
believe
it was happening
,
he thought.
Not really
.
A minute before he had been afraid of being wrong, of ending his career with a reputation for cowardice, the man who sat and shook while Stanson's 2nd charged to glory. Now he tasted vomit at the back of his throat, and knew that fear can put a red curtain before the eyes as surely as rage.

What, no advice
?
he asked Center.

you are the sword of the spirit of man,
the dispassionate voice answered. His spine crawled with a different fear, to hear that said of
him
.
there can be no weakness,
 

The first stragglers of the 2nd shot over the ridge, like melon seeds squeezed between fingers, the ones with the fastest dogs in the rear ranks. Individuals, few of them even carrying their swords and none bothering to look behind; then clots and masses. A few of the last paused to shoot from the saddle behind them, before putting heels to their dogs. Wounded men and animals dropped or staggered out of the chase all the way down the field where the first Colonist attack had come; now you could see the difference between real panic and feigned, and it was obvious.

Spirit of Man, Raj thought in awe. They knew it was a feint to draw us out, and they rode straight into the guns anyway.

He sat Horace with his saber-arm down, the steel clicking against the stirrup iron. The fugitives from the ruin of the 2nd's charge were bunching, instinct driving most of them to aim for the gaps in the ordered line of rifles and bright bayonets. Those that didn't were going to be right in the line of fire, which would affect the actions of the 5th only to the extent of wasting some of their ammunition. Raj's attention was focused utterly on the ridge, but he could hear voices coming as if from a distance through an echo chamber: it was surprisingly quiet here, for a few instants.

" . . . remember, dog down, man down. Aim low." Da Cruz.

" . . . an' if yer don't have time t'adjust sights, just aim down another body length." M'lewis, talking to the young trumpeter, who had his rifle out and resting across his saddlebow while the brass horn bumped his chest.

" . . . that's right, lads, keep those pretty backsides to me and the sharp ends at the ragheads; I can restrain myself and they can't." Gerrin Staenbridge, sounding coolly amused.

" . . . first man who turns gits my bay'net in 'is gut." Some nameless noncom, with a warning as old as battles. The first task of command is to make men face death; pride, love, fear, any emotion is grist for the mill.

And Tewfik's army came over the hill. Army was the proper term; they filled it from side to side, four deep, two thousand strong. Moving fast, sliding down the hill like a solid block of crimson and green and bright metal, and
how
had Tewfik gotten that many men here so fast? Unless somebody had laid a railroad from al-Kebir out into the desert and they would have heard about that, if it was one thing the Civil Government didn't lack it was spies
 . . . I may be an idiot, but at least I've the comfort of knowing I wasn't
killed
by an idiot
,
he thought.

Aloud: "Steady, men, steady. Don't think of it as being outnumbered, think of it as having a real big target selection." Even now that drew some laughter, although a few were near-hysterical giggles. He raised his glasses. "Gerrin."

"Sir?"

"That's Tewfik personally, under the main banner, the one with the big gold crescent on top? I'd really feel better about all this if he sort of didn't make it, you know?" It would be one real service to the Spirit of Man and the Civil Government.

"Noted, sir," he drawled, and passed the instructions to his subordinates; they told off marksmen, it was out of the question to direct the whole of the Company's fire on one man. And quite likely it wouldn't work, battle was odd that way.

"Three-two-zero-zero," the man at the artillery rangefinder sang out.

A dog-drawn gun followed the cavalry over the hill, a Colonial one-pounder pompom; then two more, and another, lashing their dogs on like madmen.

"Prepare for counter-battery shoot!" the battery commander said. Raj gritted his teeth; it was necessary, his firing line could not stand being raked by streams of those deadly little shells, not now . . . but that meant the rifles would have to do most of the work.

The earth shook, and the screeching of the Colonists was like needles driven into the ears. A 75 crashed behind him, and the smell of fresh gunsmoke made him realize how raw his throat was. The others opened up, no point in trying for the pompoms until they halted, but the cavalry were a moving target too big to miss. Gaps tore in the line, but the Colonists closed ranks with insolent courage. Fifteen hundred meters. Men in white coats were streaming through the spaces between the companies of the 5th; a few were so ridden by fear of the thing behind them that they tried to gallop directly
through
the serried ranks of the Descotters. Shots crashed out and bayonets flicked forward like giant knitting needles, and hardly anyone but those involved even noticed.

Nine hundred. Eight hundred. "Fire!"

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM
.
Bodies down all along the front, and the dragon glimmer of the swords was mercifully dulled by the smoke.

"Fire!"

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM
.
Gaps in the Colonist line, pileups of corpses adding to the obstructions from the first charge.

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM
.
The pompoms were slowing, the teams swinging around to bring the slender two-meter barrels to bear on the line of the 5th. The shellbursts lifted instantly from the cavalry, and the dirty-cotton puffs blossomed in the air around the Colonial guns; not very dramatic, but one gun team dissolved into bloodied snarling chaos, turning on its drivers as metal slashed the dogs. The first
crack
of high-velocity shot went overhead, aiming for the guns.

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM.

More men down, and some of the Colonists were wavering, slowing, a few in the rear ranks reining in their dogs, probably without conscious intent.

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM
.
Three hundred meters, and hardly a round was missing; some of Tewfik's men were hit half a dozen times between saddle and ground. Then the great banners of black and green surged forward, the amir throwing himself into the space between the forces to draw his men through the beaten ground by sheer force of will.

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM.

"By the Spirit, we're going to do it!" Raj shouted exultantly; they
were
slowing, half the party around Tewfik was down, the flag fell and the commander himself scooped it off the ground, waving it through the air in a swirling flourish.

A hand pulled Raj around. "
Ser
!"
the standard bearer shrieked into his ear, pointing with his charge.

The slope behind the 5th was scattered with the remnants of the 2nd; some even looked as if they were rallying . . . but
another
disorganized, blue-clad mass was pounding down the trail
from
El Djem, and by this time Raj felt expert enough to know panic flight when he saw it.

"Oh, shit," he said with infinite weariness.
Suzette, Suzette . . . 
Tewfik had stolen a march; Tewfik's maps had waterholes where the Civil Government's showed only impassable desert. And El Djem had been virtually undefended, garrisoned with wounded and noncombatants. A small knot of men in blue was well ahead of the rest, with another figure in their midst. Smaller, on a light boned brown-and-black dog with floppy ears.

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Some of the rearmost Colonists had pulled around and were fleeing, actually running. A clip of pompom shells struck just short of First Company's line. Men fell, silent or screaming; their comrades ignored them, and a 75 shell landed just under the ammunition limber of the pompom a second later. The explosion was noticeable even through the other sounds of combat.

And Suzette was bounding up the slope toward him on her palfrey-hound Harbie.

"Where's Thiddo and the Third Company?" Raj shouted, burying relief. Hell,
he
was probably going to die within the next hundred seconds or so.

"Thiddo's dead, this is all," Suzette shouted back, wild-eyed and clutching her carbine. There were less than a platoon around her, and most looked barely fit to stay in the saddle, much less fight. One had a flap of cheek hanging down, exposing a red-and-white grin. "Tewfik's men were waiting for us, these cut their way out with me, they're about an hour behind us!"

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM
.
One last full volley, and the Colonist charge shuddered almost to a halt; almost, and the first of the fugitives struck the 5th's rear, destroying the safety they so desperately sought. The firing line shattered like a glass jar dropped on concrete.

"Sound
Fall back and Rally
,"
Raj ordered, sweeping Suzette behind him with one arm. Tewfik's cavalry were pouring through the gaps, but the very mass of the fugitives from El Djem hindered them, as a runner would be who suddenly plunged into knee-deep water. The ones who had gotten this far were all mounted; their dogs fought, catching the madness of their riders, and each victim took a moment to saber down, if nothing else.

Seconds would determine whether anyone survived at all. "Rally around the guns," Raj was shouting. "Form square!" He saw men turn to run, men of the new drafts. One such made it only two paces before the soldier beside him drove his bayonet through his back . . . and was himself cut down by a Colonist scimitar only a moment later, a great fan-shaped spray of blood bursting out of his mouth.

A group came back in a block, turned, knelt, fired a ragged volley.

"Rally! Rally to the guns!" Raj heard them take it up; more were struggling in from the two companies in the center, men with the ability to see their only chance of survival even now. The slopes around them were scattered with individuals and small groups from the outer two companies, riding for their lives in a spatter like mercury on glass. The whole position on the ridgeline was a mass of struggling men and dogs, jammed in by the pressure from both sides; a ragged circle was beginning to form about the four 75's and the banner of the 5th, men on the outside, a milling sea of dogs who refused to abandon their masters on the inner.

"Load, load cannister," the artillery lieutenant barked. "Out of the way there! Out of the way!" The gun squads manhandled their weapon until its muzzle poked through the thin line of 5th troopers, pointing at a mass of Colonists . . . mostly Colonists. "Fire!"

PAMM
.
A different sound; a cannister load was a giant shotgun shell, no bursting charge, just hundreds of lead balls. They hummed through the air like a swarm of giant wasps, and a gap opened through the press as if a knife had sliced paper. Another
PAMM
from the opposite side of the circle; the formation was growing like a crystal in a saturated solution. Individuals were seed crystals, a leather-lunged noncom, an officer, simply someone who didn't want to take the sword in the back. Gerrin Staenbridge came in on a back; on Barton Foley's, although he outweighed the youth by half as much again, although the wound in his side would have made most decide they were carrying a corpse.

"You there," the Ensign shouted. "Get this Messer over a dog!" The troopers obeyed; Foley paused only long enough to shove a hank of rag under Staenbridge's tunic as a pressure bandage and tie his belt to the saddlehorn. "Follow me!" he called, pulling his shotgun from the over-shoulder scabbard. "Those men need help." He pointed to a smaller knot of troopers of the 5th, stalled in a circle of Colonists. The men looked at each other, at the youngster, leveled their rifles and charged.

"Back one step and volley," Raj said. Have to keep the guns or they'll cut us to pieces with the pompoms. Longer we hold out, more will get away. Keep as many dogs as we can. "Back one step and volley. Make it count, make it count, aim damn you." The crash of rifles was ragged, but there were more of them this time. Scimitars clashed on bayonets at the edge of the circle, and it lurched northward one long pace. The gun crews ran their cumbersome weapons forward again; their recoil made them almost as dangerous as the enemies outside, but they plowed furrows through the packed Colonists and left only sausage meat behind; meat that whimpered and twitched.