Conqueror (105 page)

Five hundred meters. "Sound
Dismounted Advance.
"

The buglers sent the message down the lines: a four-note preparation, twice repeated, then a single sustained note taken up by the signalers in unit after unit. Six thousand dogs crouched. Not quite in unison, but nearly so within battalions. The men stepped free of the stirrups without pausing, and the dogs rose and walked behind, still in ranks as regular as the men's. A good cavalry battalion drilled six hours a day, six days a week for this moment, until the signals played directly on the nervous systems of men and mounts. Raj turned his binoculars to the far right of his line: Hwadeloupe's men were badly under strength, but they were carrying it off quite well.

A long clatter as the men loaded. Raj's head went back and forth; the troops were advancing at a steady walk, the splatguns trundling forward with the soldiers, two per battalion. They were light enough for the crews to manhandle them like that; they looked much like field guns, but each was actually thirty-five double-length rifle barrels clamped in a tube. He watched as one crew let the trail thump to the ground and loaded. One man swung the lever down, another inserted an iron plate with thirty-five rifle cartridges, the lever went back up with a thump. Waiting for the order—but they were artillerymen and very good at estimating ranges. He chopped out his palm. The buglers took it up. All up and down the line men checked a half-pace. And . . .

"Halto!" 

Officers ducked ahead and spread arm and drawn saber to mark the firing line. Another bugle call and the front rank dropped to the ground and the men behind them went to one knee, right elbow resting on it. The platoon commanders and senior noncoms walked quickly between the two ranks for a moment, checking that the sights were adjusted for the range. The muzzles quivered as each trooper picked a target. The dogs crouched; only the mounted officers, Company-grade and above, marked the line. Company pennants and battalion banners too, of course; the men took their dressing from the flags.

Raj took a deep breath. It was a peculiar exultation, like handling a fine sword with perfect balance; the pleasure that came only from a difficult task performed exactly as it should be.

Some of the enemy were turning now, firing frantically. Far too late. The trumpets spoke again, preparing men for the order:

"Fwego!" 

BAMMMbambambambabam . . .
Six thousand rifles fired within a few seconds of each other. A discordant medley of battalion trumpeters sounded the
Fire by Platoon Volleys
. BAM. BAM. BAM. Rippling down the formation. Front line prone, second rank kneeling. Front rank fire-and-reload, second rank fire-and-reload, a steady pounding crackle. The dawn wind was from the east, blowing the new fogbank of powder smoke backward in tatters. The smell was overwhelming in the fresh morning air: a sharp unpleasant reek of burnt sulfur and stinging saltpeter. The smell of death.

The splatgun crew spun the crank at one side of the breechblock.
Brraaaap.
A long splat of sound as the thirty-five rounds snapped out.
K-chung
as the lever went back and the plate was lifted out by the loop on its top, a rattle as another was slapped home and the lever worked.
Brraaaap. Brraaaap.
Three hundred rounds a minute. An ancient design, ancient before the Fall, from man's first rise; primitive enough that men in these days could build it. The priests said that Man had been perfect, before the Fall. Raj had always been a believer; it was obscurely disturbing that part of that perfection was better and better mechanisms of slaughter.

He threw the thought aside, with a touch to the amulet blessed by Saint Wu; there was the work of the day to be done. Raj turned and cantered down the line. The Civil Government formation was at right angles to the Colonial formation, like the crossbar on a "T." The whole weight of its fire was crashing into the end of the Arab line. And most of the Civil Government cavalrymen could
hit
a man-sized target at three hundred meters, many of them at twice that range. Even if they missed, their 11mm bullets would run the entire length of the enemy line, with good odds of hitting
something
. The Colonials were melting away, men smashed to the ground by the heavy hollowpoint bullets with massive exit wounds that bled them out in seconds, or tore limbs from bodies.

He paused behind one of the ex-Brigadero units. A noncom was walking down the line, slapping men across the shoulders with the flat of his saber when they instinctively rose to fire standing.
Problem,
Raj though. They'd trained on muzzle-loading rifle muskets. You had to stand to reload those, tearing open the paper cartridge and pouring the powder down the barrel. They were excellent shots even by Descotter standards, but not used to getting under cover—and even at this range, some of the Colonial carbine-bullets would hit standing men. A few snapped by him.

Ludwig Bellamy rode up. "It's a slaughter,
heneralissimo
," he said enthusiastically. "Teodore—Major Welf—asks permission to remount his battalion and charge—"

"Denied," Raj said sharply.

Welf had been a very tricky opponent in the Western Territories, but he was still a Brigadero at heart and had a lingering fondness for cold steel. The Civil Government military style was economical of men where it could be, not having so many trained soldiers to expend.

"I'm not going to waste men on this lot." He raised the binoculars again. "Besides, about now—"

There was boiling confusion all down the front of the Arab army. A knot of mounted officers around a huge green banner was galloping toward the threatened flank, with more courage than sense. At their head was a portly gray-bearded man waving his ceremonial lash and shouting furiously, probably trying to pull units out of line and get them to face front left. Small chance of that, since Osterville's men were still firing from
their
front, besides which most of them probably hadn't realized what was happening, and facing about would put the morning sun directly in their eyes.

The enemy bannerman went down. Seconds later half a dozen of the officers around him did, and then the elderly man with the whip punched backward over the cantle of his saddle. His dog whipped about and sniffed him, then sank down on its haunches and howled.

"—they're going to bug out."

It started with the men in sight of the dead commander. They broke like a glass pitcher dropped on a stone floor, and fled back toward the city. Bullets kicked up dust around their feet like the first raindrops of a storm, and littered the ground with bodies. That unmasked the central part of the Colonial host, and for the first time they could see exactly what it was that had devoured the left wing of their army. And the steady, unhurried volleys punched out, from a Civil Government line marked by a growing tower of smoke that made their position clear even a kilometer away. The Arabs disintegrated like a rope unraveling from the left end, men throwing away their weapons to run screaming for the city gates. Droves piled up at ditches that a man could leap easily, as the first tripped and the men behind trampled on them.

"
Spirit
, sir—if we charge now—"

"Major Bellamy, all that charging now would do is give
them
an opportunity to hurt
us
." He looked around. "Messenger to Major Gruder: advance from the left in line, by battalions, pivoting on . . ." —he considered— "on the 3/591st." You had to start moving the outside of a line first, or the whiplash effect would leave the outermost man running.

"Are we going to let them back into the city,
mi heneral?
" Ludwig Bellamy asked, crestfallen.

Raj smiled unpleasantly. "By no means, Major. By no means."

"Range three thousand. Up three. And a bit. Contact fuse. Load."

Grammeck Dinnalsyn raised his eyes from the split-view rangefinder. Three batteries were deployed along the slight rise: twelve guns. Another three were a few hundred meters farther on, setting up amid the outer spray of the dead Colonials. Dismounted men were trotting by in waves as the left flank of the Civil Government force swung in to pin the retreating Colonials against the walls of Ain el-Hilwa, but that was no concern of the artillery today; they weren't tasked with supporting the dogboys. The riflemen were firing as they advanced, independent fire in a continuous crackle all up and down the line. The sun sparkled on the bright brass of the spent cartridge cases.

Breechblocks clattered as the big 75mm shells were passed from the limber and rammed home. The crew stood aside as the master gunner clipped his lanyard to the trigger and payed it out.

"Ranging gun, shoot," Dinnalsyn said.

Battery commander's work, really, but enjoyable, and he rarely got a chance to do it these days. The gunner jerked sharply.

POUMPH. A long jet of smoke shot out from Number One of A Battery. The gun threw itself backward in recoil, the trail gouging a trough in the clay. The crew jumped forward as soon as it came to rest, grabbing the trail and the tall wheels and running it back to the original position.

Dinnalsyn raised his binoculars. A tall plume of black dust sprouted from the roadway outside the northeast gate of the city, like an instant poplar that bent in the breeze and dispersed as the dirt scattered.

"Excellent," he said. "Batteries, range."

The thick tubes of the guns rose as the gunners spun the elevating screws under the breeches.

Excellent shooting on the first try, and it was excellent to serve under a commander who
understood
what artillery could and could not do.

The other two batteries were tasked with the northwestern gate, a bit farther—near maximum effective range. Their ranging gun fired seconds after his, and the gout of dirt flung skyward was a hundred meters short. Even that trial shot told, flinging parts of men and equipment skyward. Both roads into Ain el-Hilwa were black with running men, and more every second. They tried again, and the next round fell neatly before the open gates.

"Airburst, three-second fuse, shrapnel, load."

Blue-banded shells from the limbers, passed forward hand to hand three times; gun crews had redundant members to replace casualties in action. Not that there looked to be much counterfire this time. The master gunners pulled the ring-shaped blockers out of the noses of the shells, arming the fuses. Into the narrow hole went a two-pronged tool they carried chained to their wrists, to adjust the timers. A brass ring on the fuse turned, listing the time in seconds; within, drilled beechwood turned in a perforated brass tube, exposing a precisely calculated length of powder-train.

"Number one gun ready!"

"Number two gun ready!"

"Number three gun ready!"

"Number four gun ready!"

"Battery A ready!"

"Batteries will shoot, for effect. On the word of command."

He raised his free hand, the other holding his binoculars.
Use your judgment,
the general had said. Men were running through, but that was the first spray of them. He waited, gauntleted hand in the air. The gates were narrow, and so were the arched bridges that carried the roadways over the city moat. You
wanted
city gates to be a chokepoint, for defensive reasons, and Ain el-Hilwa had excellent fortifications. Routed, the Arab troops were not going to wait while they were marshaled through with maximum efficiency. Every man for himself meant a tie-up.

Sure enough, the roadways were black with men and great fans of them were spreading out along the edge of the moat. He chopped his hand downward.

"Now!" 

POUMP.
The first gun fired. A precise twenty seconds later the second followed.
POUMP. POUMP. POUMP.
By the time the last gun fired, the first had been pushed back into battery and was ready to fire again. A steady two rounds a minute, to conserve barrels and break armies. No problem, with the men fresh. Pushing the ton weights of metal around was hard work, but they were trained to a hair and the day was young.

Four
crack
sounds downrange, as the shells burst. Ragged black smokeballs in the air over the crowd at the gates; below them panic, as the shells' loads of musketballs scythed forward in an oval pattern of destruction.

POUMP. POUMP. POUMP. POUMP.
This time one of the rounds hammered into the dirt before exploding, a faulty time-fuse. No great problem this time; the crater made the pileup greater. He shifted his glasses to the other gate. The spread of shell was wider there, some far enough from the gate to kick up dust, but you expected that at extreme range.