Island in the Sea of Time (90 page)

God, I can
smell
it,
he thought—like the aid station after the last battle, but here it was in the open air, shit and blood.
Like any slaughterhouse. God, I may become a vegetarian after this.

“Open fire, catapults,” Alston ordered, her hand clenching on the hilt of her sword.

The second set of machines went into action, throwing arms lobbing globes that trailed smoke. There were four of them; one fell short, trailing fire between the forces. Another overshot, and a splash of orange-red streaked the slope behind the attackers, where arrow-wounded men screamed and tried to crawl out of the path of the sticky jellied gasoline. Two more came down squarely on target, shattering on the upraised shields of the attackers. Men dropped to the ground writhing, or ran tearing and beating at their flesh. The whole phalanx wavered, and then steadied as chiefs shouted and waved their standards.

“Forward!” he could hear them screaming. “Forward with Sky Father! Death-shame for all cowards! Will you turn your backs on
women
? Your ancestors will piss on your spirits!”

The Fiernan spears were ready, but their ranks were thinner—had to be, when so many were archers. The shafts kept falling out of the sky, but soon the foremost enemy would be at handgrips, too close to risk blind fire.

Everything seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then the rhythmic shouting gave way to a long roar, and under it the flat unmusical clang and crash and rattle of metal on metal and wood and leather. The Fiernan ranks swayed back a step under the impact, then another . . . and held. Men gasped and struck, and here and there one would sink down; the front ranks were dropping their spears and drawing shorter weapons, while their comrades thrust over their shoulders. Knives were out, and men were rolling under the feet of others locked shield to shield, stabbing upward. He saw one such take a heel in the face, try to crawl back, and then go down under a half-dozen boots as the line swayed over him and men stamped desperately for footing. Flung spears from the rear ranks of the attackers answered the rain of arrows, and dead men stayed upright in the close press.

Alston was standing like an onyxine statue as she tried to keep the whole long thrashing line of battle in sight, through dust and smoke and confusion. Then something wobbled up out of the enemy ranks, slow enough to be clearly seen—a barrel.

“Down!” she shouted, diving for the earth.

Something jerked Ian’s feet out from under him; he went down awkwardly, the air battered out of him through his armor. Something went
bwammp
behind him, and something else went
whrit-whrit-whrit
over his head, hitting something with a sound like a buzz saw going into wet wood. Blood splashed his face. Then there was a larger, softer
whump
from behind him, and he felt heat wash over the back of his neck.

Doreen’s hands were fumbling at him. “I’m all right,” he gasped, kicking in revulsion at the mangled
something
that lay across his legs. “I’m all right.” Which was physically true, he realized, but otherwise a lie. “What
happened
?”

“Gunpowder, barrel full of gunpowder—it landed right on top of the flamethrower and its fuel. Why didn’t you get
down,
you idiot? I had to pull on your feet—you could have been
killed
. Meshuggah!” Her voice had a touch of shrillness.

“Oh,” he grunted, coming half upright. “Thanks.”

He looked back that way and then averted his eyes, wishing he could squeeze out the memory as people braver than he felt tried to haul survivors out of the lake of fire. Alston was on her feet again, listening to a messenger.

 

“Running?” she said sharply.

The Fiernan messenger grinned. “No, but backing up very fast—that way,” he said, pointing. “They don’t like our arrows, not as many there have armor, either side.”

Alston blinked, looked to her left, to the north, and tried to remember exactly how the ridge curved, and her line with it. “They’re backing up to the northeast? Not just east?”

The sound from that direction had altered, a different note to it.

“Yes,” he said happily. “Northeast—maybe they want to go home.”

“Oh,
shit,
” she said. “Rapczewicz! Take over! Ortiz, move the second company to face north, refuse the flank, we’ve got a disaster brewing. I’m taking the first company and doing what I can. Get to it.
Now.
”

She turned and ran down the hill—the horses were gone, they’d been too near where that barrel of powder had landed, and thank the
Lord
Walker didn’t seem to have more to spare. One of the reserve companies was waiting there, a company of her precious Americans—troops she could really rely on to do as they were told. As she ran her mind’s eye could paint the picture. The Sun People falling back, Maltonr—he was the senior Fiernan on that end—going whooping in for glory and vengeance, real redhead stuff. Then the enemy turning out in the open where the Fiernan archers couldn’t mass their fire, turning the fight into a melee, sweeping back up the ridge and into the rear of her line . . .

“Enemy breakthrough,” she snapped to Hendriksson. “We’re going to contain it.”
Or so I hope.
“Follow me.”

The Americans formed up smoothly, moving off at the double-quick. Ahead of them was a growing roar.

 

“Ask me for anything but
time,
” Walker quoted angrily to himself, then took his temper in an iron grip.

“No, father and lord,” he said to Daurthunnicar. “You must stay here with the last of the
reserves.
I and my handfast men will strike the enemy from the rear, and then they will give way. You must strike then, to push them into rout—when they start to run, to flee in terror, then we can slaughter until our arms grow tired. But it must be at the right
time.
”

Daurthunnicar hesitated, shifting in his chariot. The framework creaked; he’d put on a good deal of weight over the last six months. “Honor is with the foremost,” he protested. “How can men obey me as high
rahax
if my spear is not red and my ax is still bright?”

Oh, fucking Jesus Christ on a skateboard.
“Honor is in
victory,
father and lord,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “When all men see your banner sweeping the enemy into flight, honor will be yours.”

After a long moment the Iraiina chieftain shifted his eyes, not convinced, but giving way to his son-in-law’s superior
mana.
“I hear your word. Go and take the victory, chieftain who shares my blood.”

“All
right,
” Walker muttered, raising a hand in salute. “Let’s
go.
”

His eyes were fixed to the north.
Right on target. That Shaumsrix is a smart cookie.
Pretend to run away, take ’em when they got scattered in pursuit, then follow up with a nice brisk attack of your own—the Iraiina had caught on to the idea like it was a religious revelation. Just two things were needed to turn it into the battle-winner it deserved to be.

He turned in the saddle to look at his men. They were gripping their weapons and leaning forward, their longing eyes trained on the great heaving scrimmage up along the crest of the ridge.

“Listen up!” The helmeted faces turned to him. “We’re going there—” he pointed northwest—“and we’re going to kill them all. Limber up those guns, and keep in good order—any man who breaks ranks, dies like a dog. This is the ax blow that will decide this fight, and I mean to hit hard and straight.”

They cheered him, roaring out his name. “Cheer after the victory, not before. Let’s go!”

He led off, keeping the horse to a fast walk; the men behind him were on foot, and no matter how fit you were, you started puffing and blowing pretty fast if you tried to run in armor. No use at all getting there with the men too exhausted to fight. The field guns rumbled along behind him, and he grinned at the sound, looking down at a map drawn on deerhide with charcoal held across the horn of his saddle. Most of Alston’s army was sheltering on or just behind this long ridge, with a broad smooth stretch of open country just beyond. If he could get the cannon set up there at the north end of the Fiernan line, they’d have enfilade fire right down the whole enemy force. Alston wouldn’t have any choice—she’d have to come to
him
. All the men would have to do would be to guard the guns, and when the enemy rushed them . . . well, that was why God and William Walker had invented grapeshot.

The ground ahead was littered with wounded, and he was only a couple of hundred yards from the rear of the Sun People’s array as he hurried toward the right flank. Most of the injured here had arrows in them; they were lying and crying for water or help or crawling slowly back toward the host’s lines. A few of them tried to grab at the boots of Walker’s band as they passed, and were kicked aside. Eastward was a long dry valley, filled with scrub and second growth; they’d trampled paths through it that morning, marching to the battleground.

I’ll really have to organize some sort of medical corps someday
, he thought. It was wasteful to allow useful fighting men to die unnecessarily. His own band had a horse-drawn ambulance to take their wounded back to Hong.

He bent his head again over the leather map. Just as he did so something went through the air where his head had been, with a flat vicious whiplike
crack
.

Walker’s men stopped and milled in puzzlement as their leader’s uptime reflexes threw him out of the saddle and flat on the ground. He peered through the nervously moving legs of the quarterhorse and saw a puff of smoke from a clump of bushes two hundred yards away.

“There!” he roared, pointing. “Kill him!
There, you fools!
”

He scrambled upright, gripping at the reins to keep the horse between him and the unseen sniper, reaching over the saddle to grope for the Garand in its saddle scabbard. “Keep still, Bastard,” he hissed, but the stallion was rolling its eyes and laying back its ears, spooked by the smell of blood and the noise.

A second later there was another
crack
, this time accompanied by a
ptank
and a tremendous sideways leap-surge of the horse; that knocked Walker flat, still gripping the reins as Bastard reared. An ironshod hoof came down on his shoulder, and he shouted at the hard sharp pain as a thousand pounds of weight shifted for a second onto the thin metal protecting muscle and bone . . . and yielding to the weight. He hammered his right fist into the horse’s leg and scrambled upright again, sick and dizzy with the wave of cold agony washing outward from the wound. All he could do for a moment was cling gasping to the saddle; when he tried for the weapon again his fingers found a splash of still-hot lead across the receiver, and crushed parts below that.

Anxious hands gripped him. “They’ve caught the evil one, lord—are you all right?”

He moved his left arm, snarling at the sudden streaking fire. “You . . . grab my arm. Ohotolarix, hold me steady. Get ready.
Pull.
”

They were all familiar with putting a dislocated shoulder back in action. Walker clenched his teeth; you couldn’t show pain with this gang if you wanted to keep their respect, at least not something this minor.
Minor. Jesus Christ.
By the time he could move the arm again, two of his troopers were dragging up a third limp figure. One covered in a net cloak, the cloak stuck all over with twigs and bunches of grass.

“Here, lord,” one of the men said. He held up a rifle. “This evil one had a death-magic, but weak compared to yours.” The little finger of his left hand was missing, the stump bound with a leather thong. “All it made was a big noise and this small hurt, and we speared this one like a salmon in spawning season.”

“Let me have it,” Walker said tightly, examining the action.
Oh, that’s clever. Westley-Richards, but in flintlock. Good thing you couldn’t make more of these.

He took the satchel of paper cartridges and the horn of priming powder and slung them over his own shoulder. The landscape went gray for a second.
God, I’m not that badly hurt . . . oh
. A glance upward showed thickening cloud sliding in from the west, and a welcome coolness in the breeze.

“Let’s get going,” he said. Ohotolarix made a stirrup of his hands to help him into the saddle; the left arm was mobile, but it would be weeks before it was first-rate again. “Now! Go, go, go!”

 

“Halt!” Alston shouted. The false retreat had caught the Fiernan left well and truly, and they looked thoroughly smashed. “Fall in beside us! You’ll just die if you run!”

Swindapa joined in, but it was probably the sight of the ordered American ranks that stopped the fugitives. Many fell in on either side of the Americans, readying bows and spears or snatching up rocks from the ground, gasping as they tried to recover their breath.

Alston looked left and right. The ridge was sharper here to the east, the country flat and open to the west.
They’ll come straight down, try to hit us in the rear.
The ground to her right was too steep for easy footing, far too steep for a chariot—chances were they’d avoid it.

“Open order,” she said, heeling her horse a dozen paces to the left. She looked upward; it was typical English weather, utterly unpredictable. Right now it looked as if it might rain soon.
Just what we need. Damp bowstrings.

The first chariot came around the east-trending bend of the ridge just behind the hoof-thunder and axle-squeal herald of its passage, horses galloping with their heads down. She was close enough to see the goggle-eyed look of surprise on the driver and warrior-chief, just before Hendriksson snapped an order and a spray of crossbow bolts hit the two horses. They went down as if their forelegs had been cut out from under them, and the pole that ran between them dug into the dirt and flipped the chariot forward like a giant frying pan. Driver and warrior flew screaming through the air to land with bone-shattering thumps. Behind the chariot came panting a group of fighters on foot; they sensibly took one look and pelted back around the curve.