Chapter 11

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Stand to!”

Thirty heavily armoured, dirt streaked engineers ran to the edge of the spoil heap. They locked into close order, the big breech-loading rifles held expecting action. Patti planted herself at the right end of the line and scanned the battle through a hefty old telescope.

Beside her, the engineers loaded their long rifles – feeding the long, heavy cartridges into open breeches then slamming home the bolts. They all stood at the ready, watching the action far out on the plains.

A kilometre and a half to the north, the open ground was black with onrushing shapes. A seething mass of pygmy warriors came at a loping, snarling run, with at least forty giants striding deep inside the mass. A few dozen metres in front of them were the cavalry – firing and retreating in skilful, darting groups. They fired constantly, and the plains were littered with a scatter of dead pygmies that trailed far off to the north and east. But the enemy came relentlessly onward, storming towards the rocky platform that stood like a tall island in the grass.

A trumpet sounded the clear, repeated notes that signalled the recall. The distant shapes of the cavalry on their gloriously coloured birds and beetles all sped back and away from the pygmies, formed into groups, and moved swiftly towards the fortress. Throckmorton bobbed above the cavalry at the end of a tow rope, occasionally honking his little horn.

The tired, powder stained cavalry came thundering up the long rock slope to the trench line at the top, cantering in through the gap one day intended to be the fortress gate. Snapper vaulted from her saddle, calling out to the riders across the chaos of clanking equipment and clattering claws.

 

“Minimal water for the mounts! Don’t cool them down too much! I want them in the redoubt and ready for action!” She patted Onan’s neck. “Good boy! Good birdie, Onan.”

“Salty cracker?”

“Yeah – here you go.” Snapper handed over a cracker. She wiped her face, then put one gauntleted hand upon Patti’s shoulder guards. “I have to get the cavalry battened down! Can you hold?”

“No worries! We’ll keep ‘em happy.” The squat, powerful engineer trundled forward to take her place amongst her men. “Alright – close up! Set sights to one thousand metres!”

Kitterpokkie raced past, collected Throckmorton, then hastened off to see to her mines and fuses. The cavalry led their tired mounts straight towards the spring, the animals surging forward as they caught scent of the water. The birds screeched and flapped their wings, while the beetles clicked and hummed.

Snapper led Onan over to the wooden redoubt, where Sparkle and Beau were watering their mounts from long canvas water troughs. They were tired, their ears half stunned from the constant firing – faces stung and grimed with powder. Snapper plunged a tin cup in amongst the thirsty animals and took a drink. She cast about: Mister Raymond’s riding bird was gone from its chosen perch beneath the tree, and the artillerymen were all long gone.

Ammunition was being shared out in a rush. Beau was busily reloading spare pistol cylinders. He shot a glance towards the little firing line of engineers.

“How long until we’re in action again?”

The engineers suddenly seemed to make a half turn to the right, rifles coming up into their shoulders. Two dozen heavy rifles barked out a volley, slamming heavy bullets off across the grass. Riflemen threw back their bolts, pulled new cartridges from bandoleers and reloaded, firing a second volley almost in unison. The noise swiftly became a rapid, deafening crash and crackle as the men picked their targets and fired. Snapper watched the riflemen calmly loading and firing, and finished off her water.

“Ten minutes at most. Can you guys get the teams moving?” Cornet Hokkehattie was already stumbling in Snapper’s direction, leading her rainbow lorikeet by its bridle. “We need to shoo them back from the water.”

“On it.” Beau holstered both of his long, elegantly decorated revolvers. He tugged at Pendleton’s bridle. “Come on Pendleton, old boy. Let’s go stir the hen house!”

Hokkehattie stood to attention, trying to draw Snapper’s eye.

“Ma’am? Colonel?”

“Yes? What’s up?”

“The science officer is trying to signal you, ma’am.”

Kitterpokkie was up with the main firing line, blaster in hand, waving urgently towards Snapper.

“Snapper!”

The mantis ran back towards the shark, met her half way, seized hold of her and propelled her towards the trench. “Snapper Snapper Snapper Snapper Snapper! They’re up to something! We’ve got trouble!

They reached the end of Patti’s firing line, in amongst the smoke and thundering noise. Beside them, armoured men worked their rifle bolts, sending spent brass ringing down onto the rock face. They never paused for an instant, while Patti raced along the line behind them, passing a spare rifle to one man whose weapon had jammed. Kitterpokkie found her way past the worst of the gun smoke, found a rock outcrop, and actually managed to hoist Snapper up onto the rock beside her. Throckmorton was beating his wings and holding station up above, watching weird developments out on the plains.

The mass of giants and pygmies had stalled about eight hundred metres out from trench line. The pygmies had fanned out, flailed by rifle fire. Even at this range, the riflemen were scoring hits in ones and twos, and the sheer volume of lead cracking into the ground around them made pygmies flinch and dodge aside. But they were deliberately waiting for the giants, who had suddenly clustered together.

The giants were busy, working to swiftly make something that was hidden down in the grass. Bullets cracked around them – one monster staggered – but still they lurched and laboured, snapping at one another as they worked. Kitterpokkie pointed off towards them in concern.

“Is this new behaviour? Were they doing this when you were out there on the plains?”

“No! Never seen this before.” The shark whipped out her binoculars. “What the hell…?”

“I can’t see that far. Tell me what you see!”

Snapper flicked the binoculars through several filters – finding one that turned the entire scene into weird shades of green while cutting through the smoke. She caught sight of the giants, who were crouched down and removing hefty items they had carried on their backs. They seemed to be assembling them.

“They’re making things. Looks like… ropes attached to something…”

“What sort of somethings?”

“Nets. It’s nets holding some sort of huge spheres…” Each sphere must have weighed close to a ton! “Forty giants! They’ve each got one.”

Flames flickered amongst the giants. Snapper upped the magnification on her binoculars.

The whole pygmy horde was suddenly coming at a dead run, pygmies in the lead and a solid line of giants rampaging behind, crossing the grasslands at astonishing speed. The giants now all towed great net covered spheres behind them – each sphere now starting to blaze with flame. The monsters moved faster and faster, stampeding forward like a tidal wave. Kitterpokkie shouted back to Snapper through the smoke.

“Snapper – go!”

Forty giants were coming. Each one swung their burdens in the air, fanning the flames. Each net held a cluster of massive heavy spheres, with wads of blazing matter jammed in-between. Rifle bullets smashed one of the spheres in a giant’s net, and the netting was instantly aflame. Suddenly the entire massive package exploded like a bomb, consuming the giant inside a massive fireball. The creature fell – collecting another, whose own bomb exploded, covering everything within thirty or forty metres with blazing oil. But the rest came on in a crazed stampede, far beyond caring about casualties.

Snapper stared. The giants stampeded towards the little plateaux, swinging their titanic bombs. And the north plateaux had been mined with dynamite…

“Move! Get the cavalry off the plateaux! Evacuate the wounded from the redoubt!” Snapper bellowed orders. “South! Get everyone down the south face now!”

Hokkehattie raced up, mounted her lorikeet, bringing Onan and Felicity in tow. Snapper shoved Kitterpokkie up into her saddle, then vaulted up onto Onan.

“Cornet – sound withdrawal! Patti – pull out! Get down the south slope – move!”

The engineers fired a final volley, then turned and ran. Kitt hung back and opened fire with her blaster rifle. A blinding streak of plasma whipped out from the barrel and seared across the grass. The rampaging giants had charged to five hundred metres, and the mob split, the blaster beam narrowly missing monsters left and right. Kitt’s second shot took a monster’s head off, but the giant ran onwards, finally falling in a spectacular flailing mass of tentacles and claws before bursting into flames.

The trumpet still pealed, sounding the withdrawal. Wagoners ran from the redoubt dragging boxes of ammunition behind them, while the doctor helped Gregor limp down the steep southern face of the plateaux. Throckmorton flew honking along behind the pack beasts, chasing them to safety. The cavalry mounted up at speed, the birds still shaking water from their beaks. Snapper pointed her sword and bellowed to Toby, signalling him to lead.

“Form up at the bottom of the south slope! Dismounted action!”

The rampaging horde closed to two hundred metres. Kitt’s blaster beam literally sheared one monster clean in half. But the rest came on in one immense wave, the pygmies following behind. Kitt’s blaster slammed a bolt into one last giant before the battery fizzed and died. The giants began to spin in place, the huge missiles whirling about them. Snapper seized Felicity’s bridle and led Kitt racing away from the northern trench. They galloped south, straight through the deserted compound as ton after ton of flaming missiles sailed up into the air.

The first bomb slammed down right in the centre of the redoubt, utterly engulfing it in flames. Snapper ducked low, covering Kitterpokkie with her own body as a second bomb smashed apart behind them, chemicals spilling then detonating into a roaring ocean of flames. The heat was so intense that Onan’s tail feathers burned. The horsehair crest of Snapper’s helmet scorched and withered. They whipped past the redoubt just as the ammunition boxes began to explode.

Bullets whip-cracked past. Huge fire bombs came raining down, smashing apart everything. The entire plateau was engulfed with flames. The incandescent heat sucked the oxygen clean out of the air, dragging at the fleeing engineers.

The dynamite detonated.

One by one the mines went off, making the great roiling mass of flames leap and heave. Metal shards flew through the air. Some of Patti’s engineers were flung sideways by the blast. Others ducked and stumbled beneath a raging canopy of flame. Patti led them fleeing into the dense rocks that trailed down the south western corner of the plateau, pursued by blazing rivulets of oil.

Snapper, Kitt and Hokkehattie fled with shrapnel ringing from their armour. Onan half leapt, half flew down the southern slopes, landing with a shower of scorched feathers, debris and rubble crashing down around him. Snapper led the bird racing towards the cavalry, who were all mounted and hunching in the debris storm, shocked by the total destruction of the plateau above. Snapper rode in amongst them, carbine in hand. Hokkehattie was still beside her – scorched and shocked, with her bird half denuded of feathers. But the Cornet was already blowing the call for dismounted action, turning her lorikeet around and about. The riders leapt from their mounts.

The pygmies would come from the west, where open ground invited the attack.

Snapper spread out her arms, sabre in one hand, indicating the axis of the new line. She faced the line west, with its flank anchored on the impassable inferno that had been the hilltop.

“Cavalry! Prepare for dismounted action front!” The engineers were scattered, but trying to re-form behind the shelter of the cavalry. The men were horribly dazed. Snapper remained mounted and put herself in front of the line, seeing the cavalry kneeling in line, readying their repeaters and breech-loaders. Some men stuck their sabres into the ground in front of them, ready for instant reach.

“Engineers! Second rank standing behind the cavalry – move!” The engineers shock was excusable, but there was no time for weakness. “Load!”

Toby placed himself at the right end of the line, closest to the blazing heat of the hill. Beau and Sparkle ran to the left flank – the vulnerable section of the line – and staked their place. Patti led her men forward into ranks. Some of the injured had swapped their rifles for pistols and revolvers.

Behind them, the mounts did as they had been trained to: they dropped flat, waiting for the instant they were called to race forward and be mounted. Snapper saw Gregor coming forward with a revolver in his good hand, taking position with the cavalry.

The ammunition stores up on the hill fired off with a constant blast and crackle. Throckmorton braved the storm, rising up, battling as hot blasts and storm-like winds. He rose high enough to see past the corners of the little plateaux, and honked his horn, pointing to the west.

A babble of pygmy screams and battle snarls came from that direction. Snapper adjusted the sights on her carbine.

“Set sights – two hundred metres!” The men adjusted their sights, the weapons clicking. “Volley then independent fire, maximum rapid!” Snapper stayed aboard Onan, where she could see the action. Hokkehattie stayed mounted beside her, swapping her trumpet for a revolver carbine.

The pygmies came thundering about the corner. Seventeen hundred, all in one dense, hate-filled phalanx. Their darts were long-hurtled and gone – so they came racing forward with bone-spiked war clubs and knives.

The turn around the plateaux corner compressed the pygmy mass into a narrow front – a wedge of death that came charging straight towards the little line of ninety men.

Snapper’s voice rang out clear above the crash and roar of the inferno up above.

“At two hundred metres! Maximum rapid fire! Present…!”

Ninety rifles and carbines flashed up onto target. The pygmies hurtled themselves forward, screaming disdain at the pathetically small line of enemies to their front. War clubs and daggers were raised for the kill.

“Fire!”

The guns roared, hammering lead down range. Pygmies were blasted back, sometime with a single bullet striking more than one. Injured pygmies made the ranks behind them spill forward into the murderous fire of the breech-loaders. Bullets made a sound like axes chunking into wood as they punched into the monsters that came shrieking across the grass.

Ninety breech-loaders. Twelve rounds a minute. The pygmies tried to fling themselves forward through the storm. But it was too much – the entire head of their column was literally blasted apart. As the monsters struggled forward, the repeating carbines came into their own, barking with murderous speed. Some of the pygmies closed to a hundred metres, then fifty, then ten, but the attack was bloodily hammered to a stop.

The rear ranks of the pygmy horde flooded around to the south, threatening to outflank the firing line. Snapper rode the rear of her line and bellowed orders to the engineers.

“Engineers! Extend the left flank, inclining back forty five degrees!” Snapper needed to throw back the outflanking attempt. “Move!”

Beau was fighting with twin pistols, Pendleton crouching beside him like a titanic evil cat. The pygmy swarm were running and stumbling across his front. Beau strafed the line, causing absolute carnage. He sheathed the empty revolvers and snatched up his carbine, but a pygmy leapt at him through the grass, shrieking wildly for blood.

Pendleton leapt forward and took the attackers’s head clean off, then dropped straight back to lie waiting in the grass. The light from the burning hillside made demonic patterns in the moth creature’s fur. Sparkle fired his immense shotgun into the press of pygmies, hurtling several back – and then the engineers arrived, firing as they came, shaking out into a rough line that met at an angle with the cavalry.

Here and there, pygmies somehow managed to reach the firing line – forty raging forward, becoming twenty, then ten. Two or three burst in upon the cavalry, knocking men down only to be shot or sliced to pieces by other riders. Sparkle raged forward into every melee, his big flail smashing down, sweeping space clear to let the revolvers do their work.

Kitterpokkie searched frenziedly through the few bits and pieces salvaged from above. She had six grenades, and two dozen sticks of dynamite. With the battle raging all about her, she wired bags of rocks and nails about paired sticks of dynamite, adding fuses cut from a scorched reel. Men were firing all around, but the mantis kept her head down and worked with dedicated speed. As a sudden surge of pygmies came racing towards her section of the line, Lieutenant Kinross and three of his men opened fire with revolver carbines, the guns barking again and again and again. Pygmies were hurled aside, but others leapt screaming up over the wounded, moving with astonishing speed. One launched itself straight at Kitterpokkie, only to be struck mid-air and hurtled back into the grass.

Gregor stood behind Kitterpokkie, somehow carrying his rifle crooked in his arm. He dropped the weapon and drew his sword. Swathed with bandages, the man managed to meet three pygmies head to head, his sabre whipping down. He cut through one, parried a war club and skewered another before Lieutenant Kinross leapt in to club down the last pygmy with his carbine.

Gregor reloaded awkwardly with one arm. Kitterpokkie looked back at Gregor and nodded to him in thanks. The badger nodded back, then limped forward to stand beside Beau, firing into another oncoming rush of enemies.

Kitterpokkie finished making her bombs. She shoved them into the hands of the cook and wagon drivers.

“Go!”

The pygmies had been slaughtered in their hundreds, but still they kept coming. Rifle barrels glowed red hot, actions stiff as power residue clogged the barrels. But the sheer volume of fire was immense. As the pygmies tried to charge, the cavalry switched to revolvers, the sudden flurry of pistol fire driving the enemy back. But pistol rounds were running low. The pygmies recoiled from their last charge, slithering in blood and ash, then hurtled themselves insensately forward yet again, driving straight for the centre of the gun line.

“Mind the bang!”

Kitterpokkie and her wagoners all skipped forward, hurtling a rain of grenades and dynamite forward into the pygmy mass. A line of blasts tore into the enemy, flinging pygmies high into the air. The entire horde recoiled in chaos, and Snapper instantly drew her sword.

“Into them! Into them!”

The shark spurred straight into the fray, her sword slicing down, slamming clean through one monster after another. Some cavalrymen raged forward on foot with sabres and revolvers, tearing into the dazed pygmies. Others leapt aboard their mounts and charged home. Patricia’s engineers fixed long bayonets and charged straight into the pygmies ahead of them, their line swinging like a gate and clearing everything violently out of their path.

Snapper and Onan fought like demons, hurtling pygmies aside. The silver sword sliced leaping pygmies from the air, carving a terrible path deep into the enemy – and then suddenly the enemy were running. The creatures fled, speeding away. Mounted cavalry pursued, bloodily riding in amongst them and hacking down. But Snapper drew to a halt and found Hokkehattie still riding at her side.

“Sound ‘Recall’!”

The trumpet blew the staccato signal to pull back and reform the line. The disciplined cavalry instantly broke off the pursuit and raced back to Snapper. The entire field all about them was black with pygmy dead. Seven hundred – eight hundred – the grasslands were smothered with cadavers, wounded pygmies and blood. Snapper pulled the men straight back past the dead.

“Back to the first firing line! Dismount and reload!” There was now precious little ammunition. Only three or four boxes had been saved from the redoubt. “Any casualties?”

Toby was reloading his shotgun. His bandoleer was looking dreadfully empty of rounds.

“Looks like four or five got hit bad! Doc’s got two of them.”

“Ammo count. Do it quietly as you can.” Snapper put a hand on her old friend’s shoulder. “See if there’s any on the pack beasts.”

Throckmorton was already aloft, keeping watch, whirring forward to see the far side of the plateau. Barrowes and Kinross dismounted from their birds, walking over to Snapper. Both men were filthy, half deafened, but still had their weapons loaded and properly slung. They saluted Snapper and joined her as she looked out over the battlefield.

Barrowes looked to the rough ground behind them to the east. “What happens if they come at us both ways at once?”

“That escarpment there is pretty steep. They’re going to want to come at us where they can run in fast.” Snapper kept her eyes upon the west. “No – next time they’ll bring the giants and make it a joint assault. Maybe a few boulders hurtled to bust up our line.”

“We don’t have the ammo to take out another wave attack. And there’s no more bombs.”

Snapper was calculating ranges and approaches, polishing her spectacles.

“No worries, gentlemen. As long as they still really, utterly hate us, we’re sweet as a nut…” She could see movement to the west. Throckmorton spoke to her with exaggerated tendril gestures from thirty metres above: the giants were coming, with the pygmies massing to the open flank. “Patti – we’re going to incline you back forty-five degrees from the flank of the cavalry again. Lieutenant Dogwood – your section will join the engineers and hold the flank.” She looked back to see Kitterpokkie busily at work with length of copper wire. “Kitt?”

“I’m wiring spare battery cells. I can get the blaster rifle a few more shots.”

“Excellent! Support Patti if you can!”

The battlefield was fogged with powder smoke, drifting ash and black clouds from the fires up above. Suddenly there was motion out on the range. Little figures dashed swiftly across the field, heading to the south, trying to keep out of sight beneath the dip of lower ground. But up in the air above, Throckmorton suddenly turned about, waving his electric light bulb. He seemed marvellously pleased. Snapper immediately straightened, setting her pelisse into its most swashbuckling swing.

“Ladies and gentlemen – to your posts! The neighbours are about to get stroppy.” Snapper called out to the troops. “Stand by for dismounted action, front!”

The enemy were coming – hard and fast, and with a violent plan. There were perhaps seven hundred left – enough to tear the line apart if they could ever rage forward into contact.

The pygmies surged off to the south, aiming to hook around the line and strike the flank of the defenders in one savage mass. And to pin the main line – to smash the hated invaders into a pulp - the giants rampaged onto the field.

They came at a dead run, vast tentacles flailing, bellowing and roaring in hatred. The pygmies rose up out of the grass and headed straight at the defending line.

“At two hundred metres! Maximum rapid fire! Present…!” Snapper was up on Onan once again, Hokkehattie beside her with carbine in hand. “Fire!”

The guns slammed back in a volley, and the deafening blaze of rapid-fire instantly began. The pygmies were coming in a wild leaping, sprinting charge, heading straight towards Patti’s command. Bullets were slamming into them, hurling the creatures back. But the fire was too small a volume to keep the sheer bulk of the force back.

As pygmies charged, forty giants came lumbering about the corner of the plateau. The turn around the edge of the plateau compacted them into a single solid mass as they came running into a stinging blizzard of gunfire. Snapper emptied her carbine – her final rounds – and drew her revolver.

“Keep slamming it in! Just hold them back! Just a few minutes more!”

 

 

Out on the plains a few hundred metres to the west, Samuels finally took his restraining hand from Lieutenant Kyneton’s shoulder. The giants were all compacted into a tight mass in open ground, with no possible route of retreat. The rocket artillery had emerged from the dead grounds and deployed. The old crow took one last look, and unleashed hell.

“Lieutenant Kyneton. You may indulge yourself.”

Kyneton barely heard. He was deeply engaged in his business, peering through a range finder, aiming at the centre mass of the target through two sights and noting the angles on a slate. The swan bobbed his head between two different pads, checking a wind meter stuck into the ground a dozen metres away.

“Rocket troop! Set for four hundred and sixty metres.”

Two rocket racks had been set up – each crammed with ten of the huge, grim artillery rockets. The senior rocketeers adjusted the angle of the racks, and put their fists in the air to indicate they were ready to fine.

“Four sixty set!”

“Four sixty set!”

Kyneton looked to his loading teams – men who crouched like pairs of sprinters, holding more of the huge rockets that had been laboriously relocated from the plateaux.

“Prepare for rapid reload!” Kyneton readied his binoculars, raising one hand. “Rack one – fire!”

An electrical switch was thrown. Rocket engines thundered, spewing red hot exhaust. The missiles flashed up and away into the air, sheeting smoke into the skies. Dust blasted back over the rocket teams.

“Reload! Rack two – fire!”

The second volley of huge rockets blasted up into the smoke of the first. High in the air, the first rockets arched up, up and slowly over, jostling one another as they flew. Suddenly they were streaking downward, blazing down into the ground at numbing speed. The air rang to the shriek and scream of their diving as the first weapons smashed down in the middle of the giants.

Rockets pulverized giants, scything shrapnel through the air – knocking monsters bloodily sideways. Inaccurate, imprecise and unwieldy as they were, the rockets had been given a target they could not miss. Ten explosions crashed into life, filling the air across the plains with smoke – then ten more came in as great staccato roll of thunder.

Kyneton saw the rocketeer at the first rack punch his fist up into the air as his reloading crew dashed clear. Electric leads were reattached and ready.

“Rack one – fire!” Kyneton watched the next volley climb, counting the seconds. “Rack two – fire!”

The target zone was alive with explosions as rockets climbed high, then plunged straight onto target, smashing home in volleys. Giants could be seen deep in the smoke cloud – running, falling – sliced by shrapnel or hammered down by rifle fire.

“Adjust to four hundred!”

“Four hundred set!”

“Rack one – fire! Rack two – fire!”

A dozen giants were trying to flee back out into the plains – moving straight towards the rocket batteries. More rockets arched then slammed down, perfectly anticipating the enemy move. The giants ran straight into a wall of death, explosions lifting and hurtling them aside,

“Rounds complete!”

“Rounds complete!”

There was a sudden shocking silence. Out at the distant battle site, the crackle of small arms fire seemed ludicrously quiet. The gunners stood beside their rocket frames, scorched and smothered, panting from their frenzied efforts to load the heavy rockets with lightning speed. The entire rocket team looked to Samuels.

The old crow gave a nod.

“Well done, the rockets! Well done…” Samuels looked to the blackened battlefield, where a few wounded giants crawled. “Lieutenant Kyneton! Mount your men – sabres and carbines. We will join the cavalry pursuit!”

“Yes sir!” The swan ran excitedly towards the mounts in the dell a few metres behind them. “Rockets! Mounted action! Mount up!”

Samuels led the way forward, leaving the baggage animals and rocket racks to fend for themselves. He drew his old, brilliantly sharpened sabre, saw the first scattered pygmies come running from the smoke, and led the artillerymen forward in the charge.

 

 

In the western firing line, carbines barked, repeaters punching bullets in a destructive storm, concentrating on the leading titans that came charging forward. Giants staggered – the front rank slowed, and the others crammed in behind them, raging and shoving their wounded fellows out of their way. To the south, Patti’s rifle line opened fire upon the remaining pygmies – heavy blasts from the rifles, switching to a rapid blaze of revolver fire as groups of pygmies flung themselves straight at the battle line.

Snapper’s western battle line was rapidly running short of ammunition. She shouted at the men to keep up the storm of fire – to never slow down. The sheer frightening intensity of smoke and flame had balked the giants, with the leaders being ripped and stung with fire, staggering backwards into rearward monsters that tried to physically climb up and over the laggards.

Gun smoke was thicker than fog. A boulder came bounding and crashing across the grass. It smashed into the left flank of Snapper’s line, hurtling two men aside and sending two more diving for cover. Beau leapt up and raced in to plug the hole. He stood over an injured man like a hero from an ancient painting, firing his carbine at the giants as they milled in confusion in the smoke. The fox-pheasant reached down to help a stunned female rider to her feet, gave her a smile full of overwhelming confidence, then dashed to pass his last ammunition out amongst some other men who were feeling frantically in empty ammo pouches. Behind the line, beetle-horses, cockatoos and budgerigars all lay flat, tensed and waiting for the order to rise. Snapper and Hokkehattie rode behind the line, directing fire and orchestrating the vicious fight.

There was no sound of cannon – no warning. Quite suddenly the air was rent by the scream of something vast and horrible whipping downwards from above. Snapper’s voice was echoed by the trumpet call.

“Take cover! Take cover!”

A hundred metres away, the world dissolved into utter chaos.

Rockets came shrieking down from above – the sound was absolutely terrifying. They hammered down in a rapid rain of explosions, each one blasting shrapnel that flew screaming above the ground. The giants were caught in the middle of the hammer blows – blasted apart and flailed by metal fragments that sent them stumbling through the flames. The battlefield was instantly choked with a dense grey powder fog.

The impacts had hit the firing line as a physical blow. Men were lying flat, trying to burrow into the ground. Giants bellowed and raged, some rampaging towards the battle line, blinded with blood and fury. Snapper lay with Onan behind the line, and tugged Hokkehattie’s head down an instant before a second horrifying barrage smashed into the ground. A giant was catapulted almost to their feet, smoking and charred. Others reared and shrieked, blundering about and trying to flee back towards the plains.

An overshoot screamed down from above, smashing into the dirt and exploding only thirty metres from the line. Men burrowed down, and shrapnel rang from gun barrels and helmets. Two men were injured – but the gambit had been worth it. The giants had been channelled into a killing ground from which there was no escape. The rocket barrage came in immense, horrifying volleys, crashing explosions down onto the earth. The experimental weapons were no longer quite so funny.

A last deafening apocalypse of explosions came – now further out towards the plains. The giants were gone – blasted into a charnel ruin. The air was black with dust and ash – flames dimly lit the hell of smoke and ash. No living creature stirred. Snapper was already up on Onan, her voice carrying out into the inferno.

“Up! Mount up!” It was almost impossible to hear anything. The air was thick with fog and fire. “Up, hussars – up! Form for the charge!”

Hokkehattie blew the call to form ranks. The cavalry emerged out of the ash and dust like creatures erupting from another world. Men flung themselves onto their birds and beetles, streaming dust.

“Sabres!”

Blades hissed out of sheathes as the riders formed solid ranks, boot to boot. The sabres glittered in the hellish light. Snapper rode to the fore – saw that Toby had the right wing and Beau the left. The cornet was beside her, trumpet ready. Snapper pointed her long blade to the southwest.

“At the canter – forward!”

The cavalry sped onward. Behind them to their left, the frenzied sounds of Patti’s line firing at the pygmies made a constant blaze and crackle. There was a sudden storm of revolver fire – the sound of swords clashing with native clubs. Kitterpokkie was in there somewhere, her blaster fire flashing bright. Snapper had to ignore it. She took her formation away through the smoke

Someone shot a ruined giant as it twitched and tried to rise. The cavalry moved swiftly onward. Snapper took them out through the smoke and into open grass. Samuels and a small line of nine rocketeers came galloping from the west, waving and jubilant. Snapper rose in her stirrups and pointed to the left end of the line.

“Samuels! Form on my left!”

The new group of riders flooded in and bolstered the line. Snapper heard the fight back in the smoke now directly behind them – the sounds of melee were replaced by steady rifle fire. She spread out her hands.

“Halt! Troop – about face!”

The riders halted, each man wheeling his mount about in place, locking back into line. Snapper rode back through with Hokkehattie behind her, putting herself at the front of just forty sabres. The dense smoke of the fire fight was in front of her – the flash of rifle fire frantic as Patti’s line tried desperately to hold. The range was four hundred metres.

“At the trot – advance!”

The tight line of cavalry moved forward – Striper clansmen with flails and long clubs, and townsfolk with their deadly sabres. Snapper could see towards the fight through the smoke – perhaps four hundred pygmies in a churning mass, trying to surge forward into the little line of engineers and dismounted cavalry. There was a pink flash as Kitterpokkie dashed across the line, flinging something that exploded amongst charging pygmies in a sheet of flame. Throckmorton was up above her, firing his crossbow.

Snapper checked her line. The new artillerymen were now on the right, and the Striper clansmen to her left. The long ranks wavered, but the lieutenants dressed the line and kept them tight.

The Stripers were not so disciplined – they chafed, but Toby held them in check. There was a reason why Townsfolk cavalry had won so many encounters back in the plains wars. A cavalry charge had to hit as a dense, irresistible wall. Snapper looked to her front, and never again looked back.

“At the canter…!”

They increased speed, moving fast – slashing through the grass. Snapper let it settle for only a moment – saw pygmies crashing into Patti’s defence line – sabres and bayonets locking with raging little monsters – and she swept her sabre down.

“Charge!”

The entire line seemed to leap forward. Snapper raced towards the fight, air whipping through her long hair, smoke flashing past – shark teeth bared in a terrifying roar. Hokkehattie raced behind her, blowing the four maddening, climbing notes that unleashed the cavalry. Riders screamed with the hellish joy of it – birds shrieking, beetles raging. They thundered forward, sabre points levelled, following the shark who plunged wildly forward through the smoke.

Snapper was suddenly passing pygmies. She cut down one – then another – then suddenly she was amongst an ocean of monsters. As the cavalry crashed into them, the pygmy horde exploded around them like a wave.

Riders obliterated everything before them. Birds’ beaks tore and scissored – heavy sabres plunged down, slashing and slicing. They left nothing but red ruin in their path. The Striper clansmen smashed down with their flails – pygmies screamed, and suddenly the entire mass of monsters tried to break and run. They were fleeing from the destruction, heading east, but the cavalry were amongst them like a storm of death.

The defending engineers and dismounted cavalrymen rose – blackened and bloody, and surged forward, cheering. The pygmies were smashed clear from their entire front, the cavalry riding amongst the panicked crowds of fugitives and slicing into them, creating total slaughter. Snapper plunged forwards, carved her way into another knot of screeching pygmies, then finally pulled Onan up, waving her crazed cavalry onwards.

They had more than won – the pygmies were destroyed. The last few hundred were fleeing in panic, but the horsemen were too fast, and far too deadly. The shark waved Beau and Toby on.

“Toby! You keep into them! I’ll send you a reserve!” She signed to Hokkehattie. “Cornet – take station with Toby.”

“Yes Colonel.”

“Keep into them. Don’t break off till after dark.”

Snapper turned and rode back to the bloodied line of engineers. One-eyed Lieutenant Dogwood was there, already mounted. His tired men – only half a dozen left – were climbing onto their mounts.

“Dogwood – how fresh are your mounts?”

“Fresher than yours.” The man checked his revolver. He had only two rounds to his name. Behind him, a few engineers mounted up on birds and beetles left behind by casualties. “We’re fit!”

“Right. Move behind the main pursuit. When Toby’s men flag, you’re to pass through and keep slicing.”

“Ma’am!” Dogwood saluted with his sabre. He and his men rode off in a great clash and clatter of claws. Snapper rode Onan over to the remaining engineers and leapt down from the saddle.

Throckmorton and Kitterpokkie were assisting the doctor. Pygmies had managed to hit the line, and there were men with head wounds and dagger wounds. But Townsman armour was tough, and the troops had been engineers – tougher still. Bloodied men moved about, assisting comrades or fetching canteens. Gregor – half mummified in bandages – helped drag a wounded man free from a tangled pile of pygmy dead. He nodded to Snapper and pointed her back towards a group of figures just behind the line.

Patti was down – injured in one thigh by a spiked war club that had managed to punch through her thigh guards. Kitterpokkie had her in charge: the mantis had one of the last bottles of Cobbleback’s, and was parcelling it out amongst the wounded. Snapper knelt down and gripped one of her hands. The mantis looked at her in weary gratitude.

“We’re done?”

“We’re done.” The cavalry would be gone for hours. The entire pygmy force was eliminated. “Patti. How are you?”

“One of the little bastards corked me!” The engineer was in pain, but had no intention of displaying it. “We lost about twelve men here in that last attack. But we held ‘em. We held em!”

“It was magnificent.” Snapper patted the woman on the shoulder. “I’m painting you up on the pub wall personally.”

The gun smoke was slowly clearing. Up on the plateau, the fires were dying down at last, and stinking clouds of petroleum smoke were dissipating. Snapper limped forward – unaware that she had taken a hit to one thigh somewhere in the fighting. She looked over the wreckage of the battlefield.

“I suppose we’ve solved the problem of pygmies in the ruins…” She sighed. “I tried to trade. I tried to talk. I really did.”

“Not your fault, my friend. Here.” Kitterpokkie passed the Cobbleback’s. “Here.”

The mantis sat on an empty ammunition crate, looking terribly weary. She watched her friend drink, then took a small swig for herself.

“Samuels really held back that artillery fire.”

“There were only three volleys. Had to hit where they could be totally decisive.”

“Well – he certainly did the job.”

“Sure did.” Snapper looked about herself, resting on hand upon Onan’s weary head. “So – we’ve got what? A dozen wounded?”

“Yes – and some walking wounded like Gregor.”

The shark suddenly frowned.

“Where’s Raymond? Not helping the doctor?”

“No.” Kitterpokkie drew her face inwards in a frown. “No – I never saw him on the line.”

Snapper rose and scanned across the battle site.

“Patti – where did you station Raymond?”

The engineer looked up and scowled.

“He was mounted earlier. Back about two hours ago. We thought he’d gone off to help you in the skirmish.”

“So he wasn’t with you after that?”

“No. Just rode north.”

North. Kitterpokkie scowled, and then looked to Snapper. “You don’t think he went to the city? Just – just abandoned us?”

“I bet that’s exactly what he did. All the pygmies were otherwise engaged – so he’s decided to go in there himself.” The shark was furious – and too damned tired to move much further. “Bastard!”

The mantis rose to her feet. “Do we go after him?”

“Not today.”

There were wounded to care for, the ruins of a camp to try and salvage, graves to be dug, and the cavalry was still in action. Snapper gave a sigh, then moved towards the plateau. Throckmorton helpfully steadied her on her feet. She took Onan and the plant with her, and climbed slowly up the hill.

It was not yet lunch time – and there was a hellish ton of work to do.