Warlord (69 page)

The mass of men and weapons and brightly caparisoned dogs now visible in the valley before Dalhouse was
real.
It was enough to sweep the whole world before it and grind anything that tried to stop it into dust The sound he had wondered at was their voices and the paws of their dogs, beating like the roar of surf, like a natural force, an earthquake or forest fire. Three guns and a handful of the Rogor Slashers—irregulars, near as no matter, half-breed wogs—would be swallowed up unnoticed by the Squadrones' advance. Even as Dalhouse stared, half of Thiddo's force turned their dogs and galloped toward the doubtful safety of the ridge.

A round musket-ball, flattened into a miniature frisbee when it ricocheted from a stone, moaned
burrburrburr
past Dalhouse's ear.

Powder smoke, white and sulfurous, lay like a gauze shroud over the valley. A breeze curled hazy whiffs up the slope. Dalhouse, breathing through flared nostrils as he considered the situation, the
impossible
situation, gagged as something like the blade of a buzzsaw scoured the back of his throat. His dog whined and pawed its nose.

Dalhouse wheeled his wolfhound. "Ensign Meribor!" he ordered. "Ride back to the camp! Tell whoever's in charge there to advance at once and support us. At once! Or it'll be too late!"

It was no doubt too late already. Well, a gentleman of the Civil Government was willing to die when honor demanded. . . .

Without waiting for Meribor to respond, Dalhouse spurred his mount into a deliberate trot toward the standard-bearer of the 17th. He had been betrayed. Thiddo and Whitehall had put him out here to die. Everyone knew what Descott County was like. Whitehall's blood father was undoubtedly some groom his mother had taken a fancy to, as sure as Whitehall's wife was a whore!

Meribor's mount passed Dalhouse at a dead gallop. The ensign clung to the big wolfhound's neck with both arms. He'd managed to lose the stirrups, and his brassard turned on its chains to jingle against his back. The stirrup-irons beat a tattoo in time with it on the mount's ribs.

Meribor was shouting—perhaps to the dog, perhaps to his mother. The dog, at least, took no notice.

"Pull him up!" Dalhouse bellowed. He spurred his own mount in pursuit. Dalhouse's wolfhound, nervy already from the noise and smoke, put its long head down and bolted after its companion.

Dalhouse realized his mistake at almost the instant he made it. He sawed his reins, but the half-ton carnivore had taken control of its immediate future and ignored the levers pressing on its muzzle. Neck and neck, the two dogs and the officers astride them swept around the southern flank of the 17th Hemmar Valley Cuirassiers, heading for the far hills. The color party and trumpeter dashed out to keep their station by the commander.

Like a sweater unraveling, the twin glittering ranks of the battalion began to trail off behind Dalhouse and his aide.

POUMM. POUMM. POUMM. 
 

Mekkle Thiddo stood in the stirrups and stared ahead at the ridgeline: Where was the glitter of ranked riflemen moving forward? He heard a bugle blowing, sounding
stand, stand to,
and
halt.
The bottom seemed to drop out of his stomach as he swept over the ridge. The artillery was there, gunners slamming fresh shells into the breech and rolling the pieces forward by the wheels to their firing positions. And about a company of the Novy Haifa . . . and the backs of everyone else, spread out in wild disorder and racing full-tilt back north toward the camp.

There were shouts behind him, rage and fear as the men of the Slashers realized what had happened. The halt was ragged when the trumpet blew, but they halted . . . Mekkle Thiddo felt the collar of his uniform tunic cutting into his flesh, tasted a sudden rush of acid bile at the back of his throat.
Defeat. We're all fucking dead. Disgrace . . . Dohloreyz—
 

"Turn!" he screamed. "Battalion firing line along the ridge—keep your dogs with you—move, move,
now now now!
 

The trumpeter sounded it, again and again; the men moved, a little slowly at first and then with desperate speed. The five companies wheeled out into line just behind the crest of the ridge, the dogs crouching flat and the men staying seated in the saddle. The Squadron was spread out over three, four times their frontage and beginning to come forward again, although there were milling clumps where the dogs were still panicked by the shellfire, and swirling confusion where the rear ranks pressing forward had run into them.
No more than a minute's leeway,
he knew. Suddenly everything was diamond-clear; his own lips seemed too slow, too numb for the words he must pour out of them.

Major Istban of the Novy Haifa came up, weeping tears of rage and shame. "The Cuirassiers bugged out. It was like a dam breaking—Dalhouse couldn't hold them and when they didn't rally he took off after them"—There was red dripping from the edge of the other officer's sword, a sign of how he had turned back some at least of his own men.

"Shut up," Thiddo said calmly. "Take those you've got, rally what you can on the way, set up there—" He pointed to a clump of eucalyptus four thousand meters to the north. "Lieutenant Muhadez!" The gunnery officer had come running. "Limber up after your next shoot, then get the hell back there and support us as we withdraw. We'll slow them down, you shoot hell out of them as they come over the ridge—leapfrog. Understand?"

He nodded. "Go!" The guns fired once more, but this time the crews caught them as they finished their recoil and used the momentum to run them to the caissons. An iron clang sounded as the trails were dropped onto the loops and holding-bars slammed home, then they leaped to saddle and handhold, and the men mounted on the lead pairs of the dog-teams shouted their mounts into a gallop. The remnants of the Novy Haifa Dragoons followed the bounding, jolting passage of the guns.

Then there was nothing but his own command and the pounding thunder of the Squadron host starting their climb up the long shallow slope to the ridge. Light flashed across the raised sword-blades: The front of the charge was a thousand meters, and the ranks were packed up to fourteen deep.

"Wait for it!" Thiddo shouted, keeping his voice flat and his mount well back so that only his head and shoulders were above the crestline. The last thing the men needed was to hear him screeching. "We'll be giving them five rounds and then pulling back to the next position."

Gray sweating faces under the helmets on either side. A thousand meters to the spray of brave men on fast dogs the Squadrones were casting ahead. Nine hundred. They would be firing down a long slope into the mass of the enemy. Beyond the Admiral's standard the whole plain was alive with growing clumps of them, gathering and heading toward the sound of combat. Down along the line he could hear officers and NCOs giving last-minute instructions:

"Steady, brothers, and aim for their feet, aim low."

"Malash, Malash, the Spirit is with us—and I'm behind you, Assed."

"Volley fire by platoons and rank. Prepare for rapid fire."

Eight hundred meters. He heeled his dog forward to the crest, the standardbearer and trumpeter following, and raised his saber. The men stood; they were in double file, with the ranks staggered so that the rear men had a clear field of fire through the gaps in the front rank. There was a yell and surge through the Squadron formation as the figures rose as if by magic among the edge of the olives. The enemy vanguard recoiled on those behind. . . .

"Aim." The front rank brought their long Armory rifles to their shoulders with a single smooth jerk; there was a barely perceptible ripple as each picked his target.

"Fire!" His saber slashed down.

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Like five blurred shots, very loud walking down the line from the left; three hundred fifteen rifles firing, the sixty-man half-companies ripple volleying. Very crisp, the sound of long practice. All along the Squadron front men and dogs went down in threshing tangles. A cloud of smoke rose from the line, drifting up into the flickering velvet-silver leaves of the olive trees. A few last dactosauroids fluttered up with it.

"Aim!" The rear rank's rifles came up in unison; the front were working the levers of their weapons and reaching back to the bandolier for a fresh round to push into the breech. Clatter and snap amid the shouting and echoes. Six hundred yards.

"Fire!"

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. A horizontal comb of red tongues reaching out for the enemy. The whole formation staggered; it was turning into a C with the open end pointed at the ridge, as the solid bar of volley fire punched into the middle of it like a fist. Dead men and dogs were piling up all across the frontage covered by the Slashers' line, but there were too many Squadrones, too many swinging wide around the barrier of flesh.

"Fire!"

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. You couldn't fault their courage, at least; there must be hundreds dead and more wounded, but the dismounted were coming on at a run, leveling their flintlocks, more pushing up on either side, and new bands galloping full-tilt to join them.

"Fire!"

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. A bit of a stutter in the line now; if the Squadrones got to handstrokes his command would be chopped into dogmeat in less than a minute. Four hundred yards . . .

"Fire!"

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM.

"Withdraw!"

The trumpet sounded, and the dogs knew the call as well as the men. They surged erect under their riders and wheeled; the whole formation was moving back at a trot in a few seconds. A huge bellow of triumph came from behind them, as the Squadron force poured forward. Thiddo glanced to either side; the formation was tight and the men were keeping their dogs well in hand, as some of the shock of betrayal faded. Most of the men were riding with their rifles in their right hands, the lever down to let air cool the barrel and chamber. Extraction-jams were the great weakness of the Armory rifle, the fragile brass cartridges ripping when softened by heat or coming loose from the iron base. A few men were hammering at the levers with knife-hilts or trying to pick the cooling metal scraps out of the breech with the points as they rode.

Ahead of them the cannon had drawn up; they flashed as the Slashers reached the flat ground below the ridge. Men ducked as the shells went by overhead. This was extreme range, and if someone had turned a time-fuse improperly—or if the trail of powder in it burned a little too fast . . .

Thiddo looked behind. The ridgeline was a mass of men, many halting with screams as they heard the shells again; the three airbursts speckled the front behind them. Six hundred meters gap, and they would push it to three times that by the time they got to the guns and wheeled to sting their enemies again. Ahead, Istban had managed to draw up nearly two companies of his Dragoons off to one side from the Slashers' line of retreat, so he could take the Squadrones in enfilade and open fire while the battalion covered the last thousand meters.

"Peydro!" he shouted. Senior Lieutenant Peydro Belagez angled his galloping dog over beside the battalion commander. "Messengers to Zahpata and Messer Raj, verbal reports."

Another flight of shells went overhead and cracked open their loads of hissing metal. The Squadron might be chasing him and the Slashers, but they would pay for the privilege.

The Squadrones would
pay first.
 

"And who ordered this withdrawal?" Raj said coldly.

The Cuirassier captain flushed and braced to attention, staring to the front. "Sir. The withdrawal was spontaneous. I attempted to rally the men—"

"Which was why you ended up in front of most of them?" Raj asked, dangerously mild. "Shut up."

He looked to the front; there were several hundred men immediately ahead of him—

two hundred seventy-four,
Center said.

—and more straggling in across the fields. The base was half a kilometer behind him; he could hear the steady throb of drums as it beat to arms. Menyez's own Kelden Foot were moving out from the gate, forming in square and marching smartly to the tap of the drum, out to cover the entrance in case the retreating columns of cavalry came in fast with the Squadron on their heels. The mid-morning sun was bright, bleaching the fields to a yellowish-white and making the clumps of trees almost black by contrast A pillar of dust over most of the southern horizon was growing steadily closer; the air was already dry with it, even though the wind was from the north.

"Captain . . . Hermano Suharto, isn't it? Captain Suharto, right now I'm about convinced that I should have every officer in the 17th Cuirassiers shot, and the unit's enlisted men decimated, for cowardice-in-the-face. So you'd
better
rally them, right now, and bring them along smartly. Convince me to change my mind, Captain. Work hard at it."

Suharto gave an unanswered salute and rode off to the men; they responded quickly, losing a little of the lost expression as they heard orders. Sergeants began to push them into line, and troopers accreted in their platoons and companies.

"Ehwardo," Raj said, "this looks like a complete balls-up, and we're going to have to pull it out of the pot. Form up for a company advance in line"—that meant a column a hundred and twenty men wide and six deep—"ready for extension, rifles out and a round up the spout.

"Jorg," he went on to Menyez, "I'm not going to let them besiege us if I can help it." Everyone nodded; the position was impregnable, but badly supplied. Once closely invested, the Civil Government army would be swamped if it tried to come out and starved if it did not. "We'll draw up a battle line here." There were two kilometers or more of clear ground to their front, only a few shaws and the odd dip in the ground to provide cover. "Spread the infantry across in a shallow crescent. When the cavalry comes in we'll dismount two battalions on each flank and keep one in reserve."

He pointed. "Anchor your right flank on that," he said, pointing to a deep ravine to their west. "But be careful, use your best—I don't like the look of the ground beyond it"—broken, and largely covered with olives and cork oak. "Left flank over on the ravine opposite." That one was open to the east, but the western bank was higher, a sheer clay wall. "Grammeck, guns in three bastions—left, right, and center. Quickly, Messers, if you please."