At least a tenth of them were killed or wounded before they understood what was truly happening. Worse, casualties were disproportionately concentrated among their noncoms and junior officers. Despite that, the majority responded by going prone and spreading out to make themselves poorer targets, not by simply turning around and pelting back the way they’d come in terrified retreat. Many of them did begin working their way back, crawling on their bellies towards the inner of the town’s two lines of entrenchments, but 4th Regiment had been rearmed with St. Kylmahns. Two of its companies found cover in folds in the ground or behind sidewalks, planters, walls, trees—anything they could—and returned fire, trying desperately to cover their companions’ retreat.
Single-shot breech-loading weapons were far from equal to the Charisians’ M96s, but they were also far more effective than muzzleloaders would have been, and the scout snipers began taking casualties of their own, despite their protected positions. Still, they were taking many fewer casualties, even proportionately, and the mortars which had come up so close behind them began raining shrapnel on the defenders.
“Fall back! Fall back!”
No one would ever know who first shouted that command, but it was the right order to give. The decimated Church riflemen staggered toward the rear, moving in short dashes between inadequate bits of cover. They’d never been trained in the movement and fire tactics the ICA routinely employed, but sheer, dogged stubbornness prevented their retreat from turning into a rout, despite the confusion, chaos, and casualties. Men stopped to fire back again and again, effectively covering their fellows’ movement even if no one had ever trained them to do so. The loss rate was unambiguously in the scout snipers’ favor, but the differential was lower than it might have been. Almost half of 4th Regiment’s two hundred riflemen made it back to the second trench line alive.
They flung themselves into position, looking around, realizing how many comrades they’d already lost, hearing the explosions and carnage ripping the town apart around them, and their eyes were wild. There were few cowards among them, but the certainty of eventual defeat had sunk its fangs deep into their bones, and they could see it in one another’s faces.
“Reload!” a surviving lieutenant was shouting. “Keep your heads down, reload, and fix bayonets! This time it’ll be their turn to come out in the open!”
The men of the Fourth obeyed; there was nothing else they could do.
Five minutes passed, then ten. Fifteen.
Cold gnawed into inadequately clothed bodies. The moans, whimpers, and sobs of the wounded faded quickly in the icy temperatures. The thunderous mortar bombardment went on—punctuated by a handful of much larger explosions when plunging bombs found the garrison’s ammunition dumps—then tapered off. The crackling roar as flames consumed the shelter which spelled survival was like a dozen blast furnaces, and the shrieks of men trapped inside the inferno were the voices of souls condemned to Shan-wei’s own hell.
Twenty minutes. Thirty … then another Charisian signal rocket soared into the heavens and, all the more terrible for the nerve-twisting wait, a hurricane of antipersonnel bombs shrieked down upon them.
Billowing smoke and blazing wreckage interfered with the Charisian ASPs vision, but they knew approximately where the second line of entrenchments had been dug, and each bomb was an airburst, fused to disperse its shrapnel over a circle fifty yards in diameter. The only overhead protection was in the dugouts spaced along the trenches at regular intervals, and many of the defenders retreated into them … which was exactly what their enemies had wanted.
The Imperial Charisian Army’s signals capability was better than that of any other Safeholdian army, yet it remained almost entirely dependent upon visual signals. Whistles and bugles could be used to augment runners—and the new flare pistols just coming into service—at relatively short range. But audible signals were all too easily drowned out in the background roar of battle, and runners could too easily become lost. Although Charisian supporting fire could be coordinated and controlled with a sophistication no one else could match, signals were more likely to go astray than to reach their intended recipients once smoke began to obscure the battlefield. Initial fire missions could be preplanned, but “on call” fire was much more difficult and far more dangerous, given the high possibility of friendly fire incidents.
No one was better aware of that than Kynt Clareyk, who’d spent months developing the ICA’s artillery doctrine. He’d stressed the need for concentration of fire, for exercising the tightest possible control yet recognizing that truly “tight” control would be impossible, and the artillerists had come up with several approaches to the problem. As much as possible, they released the mortars to specific rifle companies or even platoons, ready to put fire where it was requested by the units they were tasked to support but never firing in anyone else’s support. That might mean they spent a lot of time standing idle, but it also decreased the chance of dropping rounds on friendly troops they hadn’t known were there.
They’d also allowed for fire support at the battalion or regimental level, however, and devised standardized fire missions, like the one Major Sethry Ahdyms’ 2nd Battalion had just called for. And for those sorts of missions, all of the units’ mortars could be concentrated, with control temporarily reverting from the forward companies to higher authority. It could be difficult to get the word out when such a mission was required, and it relied more heavily on signal rockets than on runners, semaphores, and mirrors. It was also accepted that some of the support platoons who hadn’t gotten the word would be unable to contribute to the mission, but it could be done.
Fire hammered down on the defenders, designed not simply to kill them but to pin them, drive them to earth—or down into the dugouts—in self-preservation. And as the mortars flailed them, the companies detailed to lead the Charisian assault moved out of the original trench line. They stayed low, close to the ground, easing forward while the supporting fire kept the defenders down.
It was a timed fire concentration. There was too much chance a ceasefire signal from the assault troops might be missed by some or all of the gunners supporting them, so the mortars fired steadily for fifteen minutes. It was the infantry’s responsibility to be in position, waiting and ready when the fire mission ended as abruptly as a slammed door exactly fifteen minutes after it had begun.
The way 2nd Battalion was.
The handful of dazed, all too often wounded Church riflemen in the threshed and shattered trenches didn’t understand why the fire had stopped. They didn’t even realize for a second or two that it had.
But then a bugle blared, and suddenly white-smocked infantrymen were on their feet, erupting from the fogbanks of smoke like Shan-wei’s own demons behind a thicket of bayonets and the high, piercing howl the ICA had adopted from the Royal Charisian Marines.
.XII.
St. Kylmahn’s Foundry, City of Zion, The Temple Lands
“Thank you, Brother Lynkyn,” Rhobair Duchairn said, cupping the heavy mug of hot tea gratefully between his chilled palms.
It was early afternoon, but the gloomy winter day was already sliding into dark and it was snowing outside Lynkyn Fultyn’s office windows … again. A nasty wind gathered strength as it moaned about the eaves, too. It was entirely possible, the Church’s treasurer thought, that he might end up spending the night in one of St. Kylmahn’s guest chambers. It wouldn’t be the first time, and while they were a far cry from his sumptuous Temple suite, at least they were weather tight and warm. That mattered in Zion in March. In fact, given the weather, Major Phandys, the recently promoted commander of his personal bodyguard (and the Inquisition spy Zhaspahr Clyntahn had personally assigned to report his comings and goings), had probably made provisional arrangements to quarter his Guardsmen for the night already.
“You’re most welcome, Your Grace.” The bearded Chihirite lay brother set the teapot on the small spirit burner beside his desk, picked up his own tea mug, and sat back. “Forgive me,” he
continued, “but I was under the impression Vicar Allayn would be joining us, as well.”
“As far as I know, he will be.” Duchairn sipped the hot tea, liberally sweetened with honey, appreciatively. “That was his intent this morning, at least. Considering what the weather seems intent on doing to us, however, I think we should probably accept that he may not make it after all.”
Fultyn nodded. Winters in Zion were like winters nowhere else in the civilized world. Oh, winters in northern Harchong were even worse, but North Harchong scarcely qualified as “the civilized world,” did it? It wasn’t at all uncommon for snow, ice, and wind to disrupt meeting schedules in Zion this time of year. What was uncommon was for a member of the vicarate to stray beyond the Temple’s mystically heated precincts to attend those meetings rather than summoning more lowly beings to the Temple. One could hardly expect such senior servants of God to expose themselves to the bitter cold, snow, and ice when they had so many more important and pressing matters to attend to.
Of course, the lay brother reflected, there were vicars, and then there were vicars. It was barely past midday, yet he knew St. Kylmahn’s Foundry was Vicar Rhobair’s second stop of the day, not the first. No, his first meeting, with Father Zytan Kwill, who administered the holy city’s homeless shelters, had begun halfway across the city and no more than an hour past what passed for dawn in Zion, at Father Zytan’s lakefront office, where the wind was even icier than here. And knowing Vicar Rhobair, it had probably ended no more than an hour or so ago.
“Excuse me, Your Grace,” he said as that thought struck him, “but have you had lunch?”
“Lunch?” Duchairn looked up and arched his eyebrows. “Why, no, I haven’t.” He shrugged wryly. “My meeting with Father Zytan ran over, and I’m afraid we couldn’t stop along the way if I meant to get here on time.”
“I’d gladly have waited long enough for you to eat, Your Grace!” Fultyn gave the vicar a stern glance, then shook his head, reached up, and tugged the cord hanging from the ceiling. A bell jangled on the far side of his office door and, a moment later, that door popped open to admit his secretary, another Chihirite lay brother. The newcomer bent his head in a respectful bow to Duchairn, then looked at Fultyn.
“Yes, Brother Lynkyn?”
“His Grace hasn’t eaten since breakfast, Zhoel. What’s today’s lunch menu?”
“I’m afraid it’s only clam chowder,” Brother Zhoel replied apologetically (and possibly a little anxiously), with a sideways glance at Duchairn.
“Clam chowder would be perfect on a day like this one, Brother,” the vicar said, and smiled. “Especially if I could get a really big bowl of it.”
“I’m sure we could manage that, Your Grace!” Brother Zhoel assured him.
“And some fresh bread?” Duchairn injected an edge of wistful longing into his tone, and the secretary smiled.
“They just finished baking, Your Grace. In fact, if you’d like, I could bring it to you in a bread bowl?”
“That would be marvelous, Brother. And if you could add a stein of Brother Lynkyn’s excellent beer to it, I’d be forever in your debt.”
“Of course, Your Grace!” Brother Zhoel bowed to him again, then looked at his own superior. “And for you, Brother?”
“Vicar Rhobair’s menu sounds just fine to me, too, Zhoel.”
“Very good.”
The secretary dipped his head to Fultyn, then disappeared, and Duchairn turned back to the foundry director.
“Now that we’ve attended to that pressing concern—and thank you for asking, by the way—I suppose we should get some business done. Since Vicar Allayn may not join us after all, why don’t you and I go ahead? If he does get here, we can bring him up to date on anything we’ve already covered. In the meanwhile, I’m sure there are things you and I need to discuss from the Treasury’s viewpoint, anyway.”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Fultyn inclined his head in a sort of half-bow across the desk.
It wasn’t as if the foundry was so busy that finding time for meetings was difficult. The tempo in Zion’s manufactories always slowed, along with all the rest of the city, during the winter, but this year it had slowed much further than the winter before. The shipments of coal and iron ore which Mother Church’s capital city and its foundries routinely stockpiled each autumn against the coming winter’s needs, especially since the outbreak of the Jihad, had been hugely curtailed last year by the chaos in Siddarmark. As a consequence, Fultyn found himself with entirely too much time in which to do entirely too little, so making reports, even knowing he’d have to do it all over again whenever Vicar Allayn did arrive, was something of a relief from boredom. Besides, Vicar Rhobair was a frighteningly intelligent man. He was no mechanic or artificer, yet many of his questions had sent Fultyn questing down highly profitable avenues which might never have occurred to him otherwise.
“I realize it may not look like we’re getting much accomplished just at the moment here at Saint Kylmahn’s, Your Grace,” he began, waving one hand at the ice frozen into the corners of his office windowpanes. “But we got quite a bit done before we froze over, and our shops are still turning out gauges and jigs to the new patterns. Of course, things are more lively at our less icy manufactories, but Brother Tahlbaht’s taking advantage of our own lowered tempo to tweak his production circles’ arrangements. The slower conditions let him move his workers around hunting for ways to increase their efficiency still further, and we’re sending his suggestions out by semaphore whenever weather permits. I understand they’ve increased productivity by another three or four percent at the manufactories that are still operating at peak levels.”
“Believe me, I’m fully aware of that, Brother.” Duchairn smiled briefly. “The bills arriving at the Treasury would confirm it even if the letters coming back from the front didn’t. Bishop Militant Bahrnabai’s praises have been especially loud, and I assure you I’m equally well aware—probably even more aware—of how much the entire Church owes you and Lieutenant Zhwaigair.”
Fultyn smiled back at the sincerity of the vicar’s last sentence. He’d read many of the same letters from the Army of God’s frontline officers, but the approval of a man like Vicar Rhobair was always welcome.
“Well,” he said, “I have to admit I’ve been happily surprised myself by the production numbers. They’re much higher than I’d anticipated, to be honest. And the conversion kits are working out better than expected, as well.”
Duchairn’s lips twitched on the edge of another, broader smile. He and Fultyn hadn’t had this conversation previously, but Allayn Maigwair had waxed almost poetic making the same points to him, and never more so than about the modifications Lynkyn had made to Zhwaigair’s original rifle design.
The sheer brilliance of the Dohlaran’s deceptively simple concept had started the process, but the final design was as much Lynkyn’s brainchild as Zhwaigair’s. The lieutenant had designed an entirely new receiver as a separate unit that threaded onto the breech end of a rifle’s barrel. The receiver was considerably broader than the rest of the barrel, and not just to accommodate the new breech and the multi-start screw which opened and closed it. The extra width allowed for a firing chamber, slightly larger in diameter than the rest of the rifle’s bore, that tapered smoothly to meet the rifled portion of the barrel. It also meant the well in which the plug traveled was wide enough to admit the tip of a thumb. The idea was to load a paper cartridge through the well at an angle, using the tapering chamber to guide it, then push it fully home with a thrust of the thumb. That allowed the lieutenant’s original design to be fired much more rapidly than any muzzleloader, but the loading motion was still a little awkward, and burned thumbs were inevitable, given how fiercely the breech heated in firing. The first experiments with the original design had demonstrated that very high rates of fire could be maintained once a rifleman was trained, yet Zhwaigair himself would have been the first to suggest there was room for improvement.
Lynkyn had provi
ded that improvement, and his modification had been just as brilliant—and almost as simple—as Zhwaigair’s initial concept. He’d simply observed that the screw sealed the breech when the threads on the front and sides of the screw engaged the threads cut into the face and sides of the breech … and that there was more than enough metal to either side—and above and below the axis of the bore—to hold the screw securely when it was closed. That meant metal behind the screw could be cut away. Or, put another way, the bore could be extended clear through the receiver and, with the breech screw dropped to the loading position, a cartridge could be inserted from the rear in a straight-line, natural path, exactly the same way the heretics loaded their rifles. The new receiver was a sturdy block of metal which contained the breech screw and trigger group, with the caplock mounted on its right side. It also formed a bridge joining the shoulder stock to the forestock and handguard without weakening the stock’s wrist the way Zhwaigair had feared it might. In fact, the new rifle was even stronger than the old one had been.
“I wish we had more of the kits than we do,” Fultyn continued, and his own smile vanished as his brain returned to a familiar frustration. “They’re working better than trying to ship rifles back to the manufactories for conversion, but they’re not working enough better.”
“No one could possibly accomplish any more than you are, Brother Lynkyn. Vicar Allayn and I know that, even if you don’t.” Duchairn allowed a hint of sternness into his own tone. “And judging from his correspondence, Bishop Militant Bahrnabai clearly shares our opinion in that respect!”