.V.
Jairth, Sylmahn Gap, Mountaincross Province, Republic of Siddarmark
Hahlys Cahrtair’s horse’s hooves clattered on the high road’s stony surface and his face was grim as he followed 2nd Platoon. At least one in ten of his pikemen was barefoot, without even boots, although Father Shainsail and Colonel Baikyr promised new boots would be forthcoming from Guarnak any day now. Personally, Cahrtair would believe that when he actually saw them.
At least the weather’s turned, he reminded himself harshly. We’re not still losing the boys to frostbite. Not that we haven’t lost more than enough of them already.
The Siddarmarkian army had long been noted for its quartermaster’s efficiency, but that had been before it was two-thirds destroyed in the Rising. Both sides had burned or destroyed the army’s peacetime network of provincial magazines in order to keep them from falling into the other side’s hands. That had inevitably increased civilian suffering, since those magazines had also been intended to feed civilians in times of disaster, and the devastation of the Republic’s transportation system, especially the sabotage of so many canal locks, had turned a dire situation into catastrophe. Indeed, the chaos as vast numbers of refugees struggled through snow and ice, seeking some sort of security, amply demonstrated the reasons for Langhorne’s charge to protect the canals on which so much depended. The fact that the Grand Inquisitor had been forced to suspend that rule, despite the consequences for so many civilians, had been equally ample proof of God’s decision to punish Siddarmark for its leaders’ sins, nor had that been the only scourge laid across the Republic’s bleeding back.
The starving, ill-equipped troops in the field had been unable to comply fully with Pasquale’s Law, and the inevitable upsurge of disease had cost the Faithful many more casualties than they’d suffered in battle. Unless Cahrtair missed his guess, they weren’t done yet, either. His own company—made back up for this attack to something which actually approached its assigned strength with drafts from the reinforcements which had arrived three five-days ago—had lost over half its original strength. Most of those men were dead, and over fifty of those who hadn’t died—yet—were too sick to march. And with their privation-weakened resistance, at least half of them would die in the end, even if fresh food miraculously arrived tomorrow. That was simply the way it was, and there wasn’t one damned thing he could do about it.
And if those heretic bastards manage to flood the lower Gap completely, we’ll be frigging well stuck here in the middle of a goddamned swamp until next autumn. Pasquale only knows what kind of sickness levels we’ll be looking at then!
Hahlys Cahrtair didn’t know, and he didn’t want to find out, which was why he intended to push as far south as he possibly could, whatever Maiksyn might have to say.
He’s not as much of an old woman as I thought he was before the Rising, the major admitted grudgingly. Not quite. And I’d just as soon have some support handy when I run into the bastards, for that matter. But the high road runs too close to the west side of the Gap at Jairth. If the heretics get their damned riflemen up on our flank, especially with a couple of hundred yards of water between us and them, we’ll play hell pushing farther down the road later.
The truth was that those riflemen had proved far more effective than anyone had anticipated. Indeed, they’d played a major role in breaking the Faithful’s morale when Stohnar’s attack drove them back from Serabor. Not because they’d killed all that many people; there hadn’t been enough of them for that. No, it was the range at which they’d been able to kill. Nobody on the Temple Loyalist side—not even Colonel Baikyr and his regulars—had ever actually experienced rifle fire. They’d expected it to be more effective than matchlocks, but they’d never counted on a weapon that could hit specific man-sized targets at three hundred yards! It was only through the grace of Langhorne and Chihiro the heretics had so few of them, but those few had been more than enough to give Cahrtair and his men a profound respect for their capabilities. Indeed, in his opinion, Maiksyn had yet to fully appreciate the range at which rifle fire could dominate exposed terrain, and he was only glad Stohnar didn’t have any artillery.
Yet. That we know of, anyway, he corrected himself. Of course, we don’t either, do we?
That, too, was something they were promised, along with rifles of their own, but they hadn’t seen either yet. And the unhappy truth was that it was going to take a lot of both to beat the damned heretics in the end. At the moment, though, the new weapons were still too thin on the ground, even among the heretics, to be decisive, and that meant the campaign for the Gap all came down to a race. In a head-on confrontation, a well-prepared defender always had the advantage, and in the confines of the Sylmahn Gap, the only attacks possible were going to be frontal. No one was going to manage to get men armed with eighteen-foot pikes through the lizard paths that snaked through the mountains above it, at any rate! The heretics clearly understood that as well as Cahrtair did, and their efforts to flood the valley until only the high road itself stood above water would make that even worse.
Langhorne only knows how many thousands of men we’ve already lost. But if we don’t break through the Gap before the heretics dig in and build a frigging fortress all the way across it, we’ll never get through at all, and all the men we’ve already lost will’ve died for nothing, Cahrtair reflected with cold, harsh pragmatism. We have to drive through now, even if it costs another regiment or two. Father Shainsail understands that, and if he’s behind me, I’ll take my chances with Maiksyn and Baikyr.
* * *
“I think it’s time to open the dance,” Major Styvynsyn said, watching the column of rebel infantry march steadily down the high road towards him.
He and Sergeant Zhaksyn stood on the crest of a little hill, no more than a dozen feet high. It said a great deal about the flatness of the Sylmahn Gap’s floor that such a small terrain feature could be considered a “hill” at all, and it would have offered very little in the way of concealment or tactical advantage if the rebels had scouted the towering slopes to either side properly. From such elevated perches, they would have been able to see for miles along the Gap, and they’d easily have spotted anything Styvynsyn had hidden behind the hill.
The rebels weren’t doing that kind of scouting, though, the major reflected grimly. Even the relatively small number of rifles General Stohnar had brought with him were enough to allow his troops to dominate the narrow paths which snaked through the mountains to either side of the Gap. In this instance, though, they weren’t sending patrols very far out in front even down here on the valley floor, and he wondered whether that was caution—they’d lost a lot of scouts to ambushes—or arrogance.
Not that it mattered at this point, since Styvynsyn had precious little to hide … and absolutely no intention of holding his position. On the other hand, a little uncertainty on an adversary’s part never hurt.
Now he looked down to where Captain Dahn Lywkys, commanding his Second Platoon, stood watching him intently and waved his hand in a rapidly rotating circle. Then he pointed up the road towards the oncoming rebels, and Lywkys waved his own hand and nodded to his standard-bearer. 2nd Platoon’s colors started forward, and a forest of upright pikes followed them as Lywkys’ men moved up.
* * *
Hahlys Cahrtair’s stomach muscles tightened as the heretics moved into sight at last, but he was hardly surprised to see them. If he was surprised by anything, it was that he hadn’t run into them sooner. Not that they hadn’t chosen their position well when they finally decided to turn up, he conceded sourly.
He was several miles south of Jairth, between the charred ruins of the villages of Ananasberg and Harystn. It was a stretch he knew well from 3rd Company’s operations last autumn, and it put him a good six miles past the point at which Maiksyn had expected him to halt. He was well aware of that minor fact, just as he was aware that the gap between him and Dahnel Chermyn’s 1st Company had widened considerably … probably because Chermyn had obeyed orders and stopped where he’d been told to instead of exercising a spark of initiative. Well, that was fine for him, but 3rd Company had more gumption than that. Given the total absence of opposition, it would’ve been criminally stupid for Cahrtair to simply park his entire command on its collective arse and wait for Chermyn’s dawdling, timid company to catch up—if it caught up! With his flanks secured by the swamp of steadily rising runoff to his right and the canal the heretics had so obligingly backed up on his left, the only way anyone could come at him was from the front, and the high road was only a hundred feet wide, including its shoulders. The encroaching flood on his right had reached almost to the roadbed itself, and even the northbound tow road, usually a good six feet above the canal’s surface was less than two feet clear of its climbing water level now. Of course, the tow road was also fifteen feet lower than the high road, at the foot of a sharp, ballasted slope, and it added only another forty-five feet or so to the road’s width.
The water to his right was shallow enough to allow men on foot to slog forward through it, at least in theory, but it would have been impossible even for regulars to maintain formation wading through that muddy, icy water, not to mention all the unseen dips and other obstacles lurking under its surface to trip anyone foolish enough to try. Even worse, a tangled mass of spiretree, slabnut, wild ananas, and hickory sprawled across the three thousand yards between the roadbed and the valley’s western wall, stretching to within no more than a hundred yards of the road and rising out of the standing water like gloomy sentinels. Even the sharply pointed spiretrees seemed to droop dispiritedly, the tips of their spreading evergreen branches trailing in the brown water, and the seasonal trees were just beginning to throw out their spring foliage. The frail green leaves looked lost and forlorn against the mud and desolation, but Cahrtair, never an imaginative man, didn’t care about their dismal, dejected appearance. What he did care about was the fact that no pike formation in the world could have moved through that tangled, sodden barrier. So his total effective frontage was no more than fifty yards, even after he accepted the need to deploy troops on the lower level of the tow road despite the awkward break in his lines the slope down to it would impose.
This is exactly why the motherless bastards are so busy flooding the goddamned valley. We know how badly we’ve hurt them since we kicked them back past Terykyr, so they’ve created a situation where we can’t use our numbers effectively.
Normally, a Siddarmarkian pike regiment arrayed for battle had a frontage of sixty yards. Each of its four hundred and fifty-man companies was organized into seven platoons, each of two thirty-man sections, plus a fifteenth section attached directly to the company commander. Formed for battle, each section marched directly behind the one in front of it. Since each man required a yard of frontage but six feet of depth, a platoon formed a line thirty yards across and four yards deep, and a company column was thirty yards across and (counting the headquarters section) thirty yards deep. As a result, each company could form its own pike square at need, although that wasn’t standard tactical doctrine. A regiment was supposed to form two companies abreast and two companies deep, with its fifth company of light infantry deployed to screen its front with arbalests or muskets as it approached the enemy. Alternatively, the light infantry could be pulled back into the gaps between pike blocks when multiple regiments were arrayed in the checkerboard pattern proper tactics required. In either case, once the pikes came into contact with the enemy, it was time for the light troops to get out of the way by flowing back between the advancing squares or peeling away to screen the main body’s flanks. Sword-armed musketeers and arbalesters had no business confronting a solid wall of pikes in melee, and they knew it.
At the moment, thanks to the reinforcements he’d received, Cahrtair’s company was at better than three-quarters of its official strength. That meant he was in much better condition than the heretics’ tattered companies could claim, but it wasn’t a great deal of help just at the moment. Even if the entire regiment had been behind him, and fully up to strength to boot, its frontage, allowing for the interruption of the slope down to the tow road, would have been limited to a single company … like his.
His column halted, obedient to the orders he’d issued before setting out as the heretics moved over the crest of the hill. The enemy’s formation was better and tighter than his own men could have produced, and his jaw tightened as he recognized the standard of the 37th Infantry. He’d acquired a lot of information about the heretics’ units and their troop strengths—it was amazing how talkative a heretic became with the proper … encouragement, and he had just the boys to supply it—and the 37th had been the core of the force which had snatched victory from the Faithful by driving them back from Serabor just as the town had been about to fall. In the process, they’d displayed the tighter unit organization and lethality imparted by the longer, more intensive drill possible for a full-time standing formation. His own militiamen, limited to part-time, periodic drill, fell short of that standard of training, and it had cost them dearly against Colonel Wyllys’ regulars.
But the 37th had suffered disproportionate casualties of its own, since it had been called upon to lead the heretics’ offensive and then pounded during the Faithful’s counteroffensive. According to Father Shainsail’s spies, the regiment was at scarcely half its paper strength, and General Stohnar’s other units were in little better shape. Coupled with the failure of the heretics’ supply chain—Stohnar’s last convoy of supplies was almost two five-days overdue, and his hungry men were beginning to desert in small but steadily increasing numbers—they’d had no choice but to fall back under the Faithful’s driving attacks. Stohnar was using Wyllys’ regiment as his rearguard because it was the most effective formation he had left, with the best morale and cohesion. If they could break it, they’d be up against mostly militia who’d already been disenheartened at being forced to give up all the ground they’d retaken since Stohnar’s arrival.
Of course, he thought bleakly, the problem is that heretics or not, they’re tough bastards, and they’re in a defensive position that’s going to be a bitch to drive them out of. And it’s not—
His thoughts paused as a second standard appeared. He climbed down from the saddle and unslung the spyglass hanging over his shoulder. He would have preferred to be able to use it from the higher vantage point of his saddle, where he could see over the heads of the infantry halted in front of him, but the heavy tube was a two-handed proposition, and his horse would never have stood still enough. It didn’t matter too much, since the heretics’ higher position let him see them clearly, and he smiled thinly as the image swam into focus and confirmed what he thought he’d seen.
Each Siddarmarkian platoon had its own banner, although it was less than half the size of the company and regimental standards. That banner was the reference point the men of the platoon looked to when it came to keeping their formation aligned in the smoke and confusion of battle. That was no small task when it came to maneuvering something as inherently ponderous as a pike square, even for the ruthlessly drilled regulars, and when formation changes were ordered, the platoons’ standard-bearers led the way through the evolution. They were less useful to the militia units, whose lower standards of training couldn’t match the regulars’ maneuvering ability anyway, but even for the militia, they were important to unit cohesion and morale.
They also made it easier to estimate the number of platoons in an opposing formation, however. That didn’t much matter under normal circumstances, but it did this time. It should have required only fifty men to form a single line completely across the bed of the high road and the tow road. Allowing for casualties and routine sickness or injury, a platoon was usually closer to fifty men than sixty, so it shouldn’t have been too difficult for the heretics to fit two platoons abreast, each formed into the standard double line, into that space. But there were three standards in those first two lines … and it didn’t cover the entire width of the two roadbeds, anyway. More than that, he could see at least three more standards in the next two lines. He couldn’t be certain about the lines farther back, since they were concealed by the crest of the hill, but he didn’t have to. If it took the full remaining strength of six platoons to form a line no more than fifty yards wide and twenty-four deep, the regiment they belonged to must have taken more than fifty percent losses. Substantially more, in fact … unless he wanted to assume the opposing commander was an idiot who’d put his weakest units out in front to take the initial shock of combat.
And these are the same bastards who got their arses kicked at Terykr. I’ll guarantee you the assholes’re remembering that right this minute—yes, and that we’re the ones who did the kicking! Their morale has to be at the bottom of the crapper right now, especially for the ones who’ve begun figuring out who’s going to be waiting for their sorry souls after we get done with them! “Regulars” or not, they’ve got to be hanging by a thread over there. So if we kick them again quick, right in the teeth.…
He re-slung the spyglass, climbed back into the saddle, and looked around quickly. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for, and he drove in his heels so hard his thin-fleshed horse jumped in surprise before it leapt forward.
“Yes, Sir?” Captain Mahrtyn Mahkhom, 2nd Platoon’s commanding officer looked up from a hasty conference with his section commanders as Cahrtair reined the horse back in beside him.
“The bastards’re even thinner on the ground than we thought, Mahrtyn,” Cahrtair said, without dismounting. “They’ve got the leftovers of six entire platoons in a line less than fifty yards across and half that deep! If we hit ’em hard enough and fast enough, we’ll punch through like shit through a wyvern! We may clear the route all the way to Serabor, and if we don’t manage that, we’ve still got a chance to finally break these heretical sons of bitches once and for all! Get your men formed up!”
“Yes, Sir!” Mahkhom slapped his breastplate, turned to the section commanders, and smiled thinly. “You heard the Major, so why’re you all still standing here?!”
Hungry smiles, most as hard and hating as his own, answered him, and his subordinates headed for their own commands at a run.
* * *
“I hope the rest of the boys aren’t too pissed off at me for taking their standards away from them,” Major Styvynsyn remarked, watching the leading rebel platoon’s pikes drop from a vertical moving forest into fighting position.
“’Spect they’ll get over it, Sir,” Sergeant Zhaksyn reassured him. “Long’s they get ’em back, that is. And ’specially if this works out half as well as you expect it to.”
There might, Styvynsyn reflected, steadfastly keeping his eyes on the rebels rather than giving his senior noncom a beady look, have been something less than total enthusiasm in Zhaksyn’s tone. If so, the major was disinclined to argue with him, although he did think it was a bit unfair of the sergeant to call it his idea. The truth as Zhaksyn knew perfectly well, was that he’d been less than ecstatic over the battle plan when Colonel Wyllys described it to him, and he intended to have a few words with that overly innovative sprout Klairynce. On the other hand, it might just work. It was his job as the man charged to carry it out, to act as if he believed that, at any rate, and he was going to take immense satisfaction out of what happened if it did. Especially since he’d identified the banners of the rebels coming towards him.
According to our reports, the one good thing about that bastard Cahrtair is that he’s got the guts to stay up close to the front. That’s nice.
Hahlys Cahrtair’s company had earned itself a large debt of hatred. At first, Styvynsyn had been disinclined to believe the stories, but not after he’d personally interviewed the handful of survivors who’d escaped—or survived—the 3rd Saiknyrs’ attentions, most of whom had the scars to prove their stories. None of the rebel militia regiment’s companies had been notable for their restraint, but 3rd Company had certainly distinguished itself for its lack of restraint.
Styvynsyn didn’t like where this war was headed—or where it had already gone, for that matter—if only because he knew what it was going to do to discipline when—if—the time came for them to move into territory which had gone over to the rebels. If one thing was as certain as the fact that the sun rose in the east, it was that even the best troops in the world were going to retaliate for what they’d seen in the Sylmahn Gap. Some because every man had at least a bit of Shan-wei down inside somewhere, clamoring to get out, and that bit of the Fallen would seize the opportunity to sate itself in bloodlust with cackling delight. But more because they were so sickened and infuriated by what the rebels had done “in God’s name” that they were going to visit retribution on anyone they could catch. It didn’t take the sight of too many naked girls and women dead in the snow, often enough with babes beside them, to fill even a good man with hatred. Styvynsyn understood that perfectly, because he’d felt exactly the same thing when the 37th advanced through Harystn on its way north and found the half-stripped skeletons of the village mayor’s entire family nailed to the wall of what had been the town hall. The youngest couldn’t have been much more than ten or eleven years old and the spikes driven through his wrists and ankles had been thicker than one of his own finger bones. Zhorj Styvynsyn wasn’t a man whose stomach turned easily, but it had then, and he’d lost the one hot meal he and his men had been able to wolf down that entire five-day.
He hoped the boy had been dead before that atrocity was visited upon him and his older brother and sister. Judging by the way the back of his skull had been crushed, he probably had, and wasn’t it a sad, miserable thing to find himself grateful someone had smashed in a ten-year-old’s skull? Styvynsyn had seen all too many other atrocities since that day, and whatever he might have wished, not all had been committed by rebels. Yet it was those animal-gnawed, half-demolished skeletons, still hanging against that charred, half-consumed wall, that stayed with him and visited him in his dreams. He didn’t know—not for certain—that Hahlys Cahrtair’s company had had anything to do with that particular massacre, but from the things he knew they had done, it seemed likely. And even if they hadn’t, they had more than enough blood on their hands. So much as he might fear where the ever-building cycle of blood and hatred was going to end, he didn’t really care right this moment.
It was time to inflict a little retribution of his own.
* * *
The Siddarmarkian army didn’t use bugles. It relied instead on drummers, who accompanied the company and regimental commanders. Now Cahrtair’s drums snarled and rolled as Mahrtyn Mahkhom’s 2nd Platoon assembled itself across the high road with Shawyn Mahlyk’s 1st Platoon behind it.
There was almost enough space for Cahrtair to have formed the company with two platoons abreast, instead of the standard one, but not quite. He probably could have crowded that many into line if he’d packed them shoulder-to-shoulder, and it was tempting to get as many men as possible into action against the weakened 37th as quickly as possible. But even with all his subunits slightly understrength, he would have required a generous fifty yards to squeeze them in, and the slope down to the tow road took too big a bite out of the available level ground for that to work. Even if it hadn’t, crowding them that tight would have grossly inhibited their mobility. A unit of regulars like the 37th might have made it work; Cahrtair was too smart—and had learned too many lessons the hard way—to try it with militia.
He’d also disbanded his 7th Platoon and his headquarters section to bring the remainder of his platoons back up almost to full strength. Captain Arystyn, the 7th’s CO, had died with a pike in his guts in the attack on Terykyr, anyway, and he’d needed the men elsewhere. The redistribution had cost the company some depth, and none of its platoons was quite at full strength, despite the move, but no unit ever was, really.
He didn’t like attacking on a thirty-man frontage, but it was the formation the men were most accustomed to, and he wasn’t about to try introducing new wrinkles in the heat of combat, especially with no one close enough to support him if things went badly. Besides, if the heretics were as understrength as those crowded banners suggested, they had to have lost a lot of unit cohesion. Their line would be marginally wider than his, but they were going to be less resilient, without the staying power to resist the shock of four hundred charging men with the power of God upon them.
He did wish there was more room to deploy 8th Platoon’s arbalesters, but in such constricted terrain, there was no way they could have fallen back to get clear of the melee when the pikes crossed. Besides, the 8th was at barely half strength, and the heretics didn’t have any of their accursed riflemen deployed anywhere where he could see them, anyway.
Doesn’t mean they don’t have some on the backside of that hill, he reminded himself as his company settled into position and gathered itself. But they can’t shoot through their own men, and if they’re trying something fancy, the boys’ll have time to close with them while their pikes try to dodge out of the way. His lips drew back from his teeth. I’d love to see how their damned “bayonets” make out against proper pikes if we can get to them!
The drums gave one last roll and then began the hard, hammering tattoo that sent the company rumbling down the high road towards the waiting heretics.
* * *
“I don’t think the boys are going to like this,” Styvynsyn said as he watched the rebel advance begin.
“Well, I’m not so very fond of it myself, Sir, begging the Major’s pardon,” Zhaksyn said tartly. Styvynsyn looked at him, and the sergeant shrugged. “Oh, if it works it’ll be a right fine sight, and no mistake. But if it doesn’t.…”
Styvynsyn could have done without the eloquence of the sergeant’s shrug … mostly because Zhaksyn had such an excellent point. The major wouldn’t have dreamed of trying something like this with any of the militia units, but his men were regulars. They had the discipline to maneuver with machine-like precision even in the heat of battle … and to run away when they were told to without its turning into a real rout.
Or I hope to hell they’ve got it, anyway, he thought. And we’re going to find out just … about … now!
* * *
Major Cahrtair’s eyes went wide.
The pikemen aligned to withstand his attack held their ranks with the rocklike steadiness of the veterans they were. Despite his numerical advantage, it was going to be ugly, and he expected to take at least as much damage as he inflicted. Then again, he had the strength to absorb the damage, and they didn’t. Besides—
That was when it began.
It was almost imperceptible at first. A tiny stir, a slight wavering, like the branches of a tree at the first touch of a breeze. But it grew. That steady, unyielding wall of pikeheads began to move, and as he watched, he saw the unthinkable happen.
The 37th Infantry Regiment broke.
It didn’t simply break—it shattered, before his own men had gotten within sixty yards of its line, At least a quarter of its men actually threw away their pikes, turned, and ran.
The 3rd Saiknyrs faltered, breaking step at the unbelievable sight of an entire Siddarmarkian pike company retreating in wild disorder before the mere threat of an attack. There was something so wrong about it, so contrary to the way the world worked, that they couldn’t quite make sense of what their eyes were seeing. But then as the 37th’s platoon standards disappeared into the swirl of fleeing bodies, a roar of delighted triumph—and contempt—went up from Hahlys Cahrtair’s men.
“After them!” Cahrtair bellowed. “Stay on them! Don’t let them rally! Kill the fucking heretics!”
The drums snarled, translating his commands, and the entire 3rd Company went forward at the quick-march in pursuit.
* * *
Styvynsyn hated throwing away those pikes, but the sad truth was that they had more weapons than they had men these days, and all the world knew a Siddarmarkian pikeman died with his weapon in hand rather than discarding it. It was the one sure proof 2nd Company had actually broken, and Colonel Wyllys’ orders had been clear.
His men headed down the high road, and if the rebels had been able to see past the hill on which Styvynsyn stood, they might have been astounded by the orderly way in which the rearmost sections of his “wildly fleeing” line funneled along the roadway. They were less concerned with maintaining meticulous formation than usual, but they were far from the bolting rabble the rebels thought they’d seen. And as Colonel Wyllys had prophesied—and as one Zhorj Styvynsyn had devoutly hoped—his regulars could march much more rapidly than the less well trained rebels. Unless the rebels chose to break ranks, of course, which he doubted they were stupid enough to do.
The one thing he’d actually worried about—aside from his minor concern about whether or not the entire plan was going to work—was that Cahrtair might bring his arbalesters forward. Unencumbered by pikes or the need to maintain a rigid formation, the light infantry could have overtaken him, and their arbalest bolts could have inflicted painful casualties. But as he’d hoped, Cahrtair had been too smart to let his missile troops get trapped between opposing pike walls, and he’d been too eager to halt the pikes and pass the arbalesters around them.
Hard to blame him, really, Styvynsyn thought, jogging along the shoulder of the high road with Zhaksyn at his side. He’s got to be thinking about breaking clean out of the Gap, but even if he doesn’t manage that, the farther south he can get before he has to stop, the better. And on this kind of frontage, he can hold two or three times his numbers until his supports come up. So the last thing he’s going to do is give a routed enemy the chance to catch his breath, turn around, and find a place to stand after all.
Personally, he didn’t much care for letting the rebels this far south himself, but Colonel Wyllys hadn’t asked his opinion. And it wasn’t as if they hadn’t been likely to be pushed farther back over the next few five-days, anyway.
* * *
Major Cahrtair swore with venomous passion as the gap between the fleeing regulars and his own company widened steadily. There wasn’t anything he could do about it—cowards running away were always faster than the people chasing them; something about the fear of death seemed to give them an extra speed advantage—and at least they showed no signs of stopping.
He saw the half-flooded ruins of the town of Harystn drawing nearer on the right as the high road stretched across a vast expanse of flooded terrain. There was a broad, shallow valley here, he remembered, one the high road crossed like a wall, with a tributary of the Sylmahn River at its bottom. Under normal conditions, it was only a shallow, bubbling stream running through the trees which had grown even thicker to either side, but the culverts under the roadbed were more clogged than usual here. The water spread out to the west, and it wasn’t much better to the east. The canal had overflowed into the same valley where the tow road had crossed it on a wooden bridge whose gaunt, blackened trestles stood up out of the water swirling about them, and the high road was a virtual causeway across the flood.
Third Company was beginning to slow. The quick march—a hundred and twenty paces per minute, as opposed to the normal marching rate of seventy-five paces per minute—was hard to sustain in formation even on a flat, paved surface and even for men whose endurance hadn’t been undercut by starvation, and none of his men had been particularly well fed over the last several months. The heretics, however, actually seemed to be moving still faster, and he felt the opportunity to overhaul them and wipe them from the face of the earth slipping away from him. Sooner or later they were going to run into another heretic position, and if the fleeing 37th managed to escape past another blocking formation, the chance would be gone, probably forever.
On the other hand, panic’s contagious, and they might just hit the next position hard enough to carry it with them. Or if it holds, they might not be able to get past it before my boys catch up with them. At any rate, the farther south we get before we have to stop, the better, and nobody’s getting past us if we have to stop here!
He looked out over the watery waste of flooded trees stretching away to either hand with a sense of satisfaction. The entire Gap was less than ten miles wide at this point, and choked by the tangled forest crowding in on the high road and overshadowing the tow roads from either side. No open flanks here, no way for the regulars to use their greater mobility to slip a pike block around his position and force him to retreat. No, even if he had to stop right here, they wouldn’t be moving him before that sluggard Chermyn came up in support, and then—
* * *
Zhorj Styvynsyn peeled off from his “routed” column as its head passed the ruins of Harystn and headed into the denser woodland to the south. The canal bed was relatively clear aside from the flotsam and jetsam on its flooded surface, but the high road passed through a dense belt of mixed evergreens and seasonal trees just south of the burned, half-flooded village. The woods didn’t actually constrict the roadway, but it felt as if they did as the rough-barked trunks rose from the water on either side of it like walls. He looked back and muttered a short, pungent phrase. Their pursuers were closer behind than he’d hoped. It was time to slow the bastards down and convince them to go back where he wanted them.
“Any time now would be good, Gahvyn,” he said a bit sharply, looking at the officer who’d just materialized beside him, and Major Sahlys nodded.
“I believe you have a point,” the commanding officer of 5th Company, 37th Infantry said calmly, and glanced once to each side of the road. Then he nodded again, this time in satisfaction.
“Fire!” he shouted, and the fifty-three men of Captain Ellys Sebahstean’s 3rd Platoon braced their rifles on the carefully concealed rests they’d built hours earlier and squeezed their triggers.
* * *
“Shan-wei fly away with their souls!” Major Cahrtair snarled as the woods ahead blossomed suddenly with puffs of smoke. The riflemen were still a good three hundred yards away, but his company made a solid, compact target. The bullets slammed into his men with a sound like fists punching a side of meat, and he heard the screams as half Mahkhom’s front rank went down in a tangle of blood and broken bones.
* * *
Sebahstean’s riflemen stood and stepped back from their firing positions, biting the tops off paper cartridges, pouring powder down their rifle barrels. As they reloaded, Captain Zhon Trahlmyn’s 1st Platoon took their places, and another deadly volley roared. Only two of 5th Company’s seven platoons had been equipped with rifles, and neither was at full strength, but they still had just over a hundred men between them, and their bullets hammered Cahrtair’s men mercilessly.
* * *
Cahrtair mastered his temper.
It wasn’t easy. He’d been able to taste his triumph, but now it had been snatched away. Yet there was no point lying to himself. He might—might—be able to drive forward through the rifle fire. It didn’t sound like there could be more than eighty or ninety of the damned things, after all. But he’d lose half the company doing it, and with the trees crowding the road that way, bayoneted rifles would be at least as dangerous as his pikes. Ramming his head into a stone wall and losing men he couldn’t afford to lose would be not simply stupid but pointless. Better to fall back to the more solid ground to the north and dig in behind proper earthworks, bring up his own arbalesters, and get Chermyn’s lazy arse forward to support him after all. He still wouldn’t be able to match the rifles’ range, but with good solid parapets to cover his arbalesters until the heretics came to him he’d become a cork they wouldn’t be pulling out of the bottle anytime soon.
“Pull back!” he commanded, and the drums began a different beat.
* * *
Styvynsyn drew a deep breath as the rebel pike column stopped, then began pulling back. They’d lost no more than thirty or forty men, he estimated—not even rifles were truly magic, and the range was long—but Cahrtair was obviously just as smart as their reports suggested. He wasn’t going to bloody his nose by coming any closer to riflemen dug in amongst such dense tree cover.
Which means he’s doing exactly what we want, the major thought coldly. Assuming, of course, Klairynce knew what he was doing.
He shaded his eyes with one hand, once more wishing he still had his spyglass. But if his had been smashed, Sahlys’ hadn’t. The other major was peering through the glass, watching the rear of Cahrtair’s formation, which had just become its front, falling rapidly back along the high road.
“About even with the marker,” he said, and Styvynsyn frowned.
“They’re a little more spread out than we’d hoped for,” he replied, watching Bairaht Charlsyn’s 1st Platoon forming up on the high road. It had reclaimed its standard from the men he’d taken north with him, and Charlsyn was almost quivering with anticipation. “Give them another few seconds.”
“Going to lose a lot of their arbalesters,” Sahlys warned.
“Assuming it works at all,” Styvynsyn shot back, then shrugged. “I’d prefer to eliminate as many pikes as we can get, given who’s going to be responsible for the cleanup and all.”
“A point,” Sailys agreed. His lips quirked at Styvynsyn’s tone, but he never lowered his glass. He simply stood there peering through it, then inhaled deeply.
“Now,” he said simply, and Captain Sebahstean personally lit the fuse.
* * *
Hahlys Cahrtair never had the opportunity to discover how thoroughly misinformed he’d been.
It was quite true that Trumyn Stohnar’s units were badly understrength; unfortunately, they weren’t nearly so badly weakened as Father Shainsail’s spies had informed him. But then, Father Shainsail hadn’t realized several of “his” spies were actually loyal to the Republic or that General Stohnar had deliberately misled the civilians under his charge when he’d asked them to be on the lookout for all those deserters who hadn’t actually deserted after all. Or when he’d complained about those serious delays in the arrival of his supply convoys. Not that he’d been completely mendacious. Food did remain in short supply, but somehow he’d neglected to mention the twenty-seven tons of gunpowder which had been delivered to Serabor by canal boat.
Eleven tons of that gunpowder had been carefully emplaced in culverts under the high road by soldiers working under Hainree Klairynce’s direction. Waterproofing the charges had been a challenge, but the mayor of Serabor had remembered a canal warehouse full of pitch and turpentine which had escaped destruction during the siege. Enough pitch smeared on the outside of flour barrels had worked quite handily.
The trickiest part had been waterproofing the fuse, which had to run several hundred yards through soggy conditions. Fortunately, Klairynce had been up to the task, coating the quick match in pitch, as well. It slowed the combustion rate slightly, but it protected it from the wet—a trick he’d picked up from an uncle who’d learned it while working to extend the Branath Canal. He’d tucked it up along the side of the elevated roadbed, above water level, using the pitch’s darkness to make it even harder to spot. One or two of Cahrtair’s men might have seen the sputtering combustion racing up the black length of cord, but it was unlikely any of them had time to realize what they were seeing.
Cahrtair himself certainly didn’t. He was still fuming over his lost opportunity when the eight hundred pounds of powder directly under him and his horse erupted like a crazed volcano.
* * *
“Well, I’ll be damned. It actually worked.” Styvynsyn’s tone was almost conversational, although he doubted Sahlys could have heard him through the thundering echo of the massive explosions even if he’d shouted at the top of his lungs.
No one else had heard him, either, he realized. In fact, no one was even looking in his direction. All eyes were locked on the enormous columns of dirt, water, mud, and pieces of men spewing into the heavens. Styvynsyn couldn’t tell for certain, but it looked like the explosion had killed or maimed at least three-quarters of the rebels, and the others were undoubtedly too stunned and shocked to do more than stand there, trying to understand what had happened.
I never really believed it would work, but damn if it didn’t! I guess I owe Hainree that beer after all … as soon as there’s any beer to buy him, anyway. Pity we couldn’t’ve gotten the rest of Maiksyn’s regiment into our sights, but let’s not be greedy, Zhorj. So far, you haven’t lost a man, and it’s just possible even some of Cahrtair’s butchers will be smart enough to surrender after this.
“Go!” he shouted. He could hardly hear his own voice through the ringing in his ears. Fortunately, it turned out at least one person had been watching him and not the explosions, after all. He didn’t know whether or not Bairaht Charlsyn had heard him, but the captain obviously saw him waving vigorously and nodded.
“Advance!” he shouted, and 1st Platoon, followed by 3rd Platoon, rested and unwearied, swept out of the trees and bore down on the shattered, shaken survivors of Hahlys Cahrtair’s company.
Well, that’s going to be a godawful mess, Styvynsyn thought, watching the wreckage reach the top of its flight and begin plunging back towards earth. Must’ve taken out a good thousand yards of the roadbed, and I wonder how much of the debris landed in the canal? Rebuilding the road’s going to be a copper-plated bitch, but we were going to have to wreck it somewhere if we didn’t want the bastards punching us out by sheer weight of numbers eventually. Hopefully, Langhorne’ll forgive us, and this is a pretty damned good spot, actually. And taking out an entire company—especially that bastard Cahrtair’s— that’s a nice bonus.
He watched Charlsyn’s men closing with leveled pikes and smiled thinly.
I wonder if any of the bastards really will be smart enough to surrender? If they’re really quick, dump their weapons in the canal, get their hands on their heads, and act very meek they might actually manage it without getting their throats cut.
He thought about that for another moment, then shrugged. Bairaht knew the rules about accepting surrenders, and it was out of his hands at this point, either way.
Still, he thought coldly, I can always hope they’re a little slow, can’t I?