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 whe
n 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 packe
d 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.