Doesn’t mean they don’t have some on the backside of that hill, he reminded himself as his company settled into position and gathered itself. But they can’t shoot through their own men, and if they’re trying something fancy, the boys’ll have time to close with them while their pikes try to dodge out of the way. His lips drew back from his teeth. I’d love to see how their damned “bayonets” make out against proper pikes if we can get to them!
The drums gave one last roll and then began the hard, hammering tattoo that sent the company rumbling down the high road towards the waiting heretics.
* * *
“I don’t think the boys are going to like this,” Styvynsyn said as he watched the rebel advance begin.
“Well, I’m not so very fond of it myself, Sir, begging the Major’s pardon,” Zhaksyn said tartly. Styvynsyn looked at him, and the sergeant shrugged. “Oh, if it works it’ll be a right fine sight, and no mistake. But if it doesn’t.…”
Styvynsyn could have done without the eloquence of the sergeant’s shrug … mostly because Zhaksyn had such an excellent point. The major wouldn’t have dreamed of trying something like this with any of the militia units, but his men were regulars. They had the discipline to maneuver with machine-like precision even in the heat of battle … and to run away when they were told to without its turning into a real rout.
Or I hope to hell they’ve got it, anyway, he thought. And we’re going to find out just … about … now!
* * *
Major Cahrtair’s eyes went wide.
The pikemen aligned to withstand his attack held their ranks with the rocklike steadiness of the veterans they were. Despite his numerical advantage, it was going to be ugly, and he expected to take at least as much damage as he inflicted. Then again, he had the strength to absorb the damage, and they didn’t. Besides—
That was when it began.
It was almost imperceptible at first. A tiny stir, a slight wavering, like the branches of a tree at the first touch of a breeze. But it grew. That steady, unyielding wall of pikeheads began to move, and as he watched, he saw the unthinkable happen.
The 37th Infantry Regiment broke.
It didn’t simply break—it shattered, before his own men had gotten within sixty yards of its line, At least a quarter of its men actually threw away their pikes, turned, and ran.
The 3rd Saiknyrs faltered, breaking step at the unbelievable sight of an entire Siddarmarkian pike company retreating in wild disorder before the mere threat of an attack. There was something so wrong about it, so contrary to the way the world worked, that they couldn’t quite make sense of what their eyes were seeing. But then as the 37th’s platoon standards disappeared into the swirl of fleeing bodies, a roar of delighted triumph—and contempt—went up from Hahlys Cahrtair’s men.
“After them!” Cahrtair bellowed. “Stay on them! Don’t let them rally! Kill the fucking heretics!”
The drums snarled, translating his commands, and the entire 3rd Company went forward at the quick-march in pursuit.
* * *
Styvynsyn hated throwing away those pikes, but the sad truth was that they had more weapons than they had men these days, and all the world knew a Siddarmarkian pikeman died with his weapon in hand rather than discarding it. It was the one sure proof 2nd Company had actually broken, and Colonel Wyllys’ orders had been clear.
His men headed down the high road, and if the rebels had been able to see past the hill on which Styvynsyn stood, they might have been astounded by the orderly way in which the rearmost sections of his “wildly fleeing” line funneled along the roadway. They were less concerned with maintaining meticulous formation than usual, but they were far from the bolting rabble the rebels thought they’d seen. And as Colonel Wyllys had prophesied—and as one Zhorj Styvynsyn had devoutly hoped—his regulars could march much more rapidly than the less well trained rebels. Unless the rebels chose to break ranks, of course, which he doubted they were stupid enough to do.
The one thing he’d actually worried about—aside from his minor concern about whether or not the entire plan was going to work—was that Cahrtair might bring his arbalesters forward. Unencumbered by pikes or the need to maintain a rigid formation, the light infantry could have overtaken him, and their arbalest bolts could have inflicted painful casualties. But as he’d hoped, Cahrtair had been too smart to let his missile troops get trapped between opposing pike walls, and he’d been too eager to halt the pikes and pass the arbalesters around them.
Hard to blame him, really, Styvynsyn thought, jogging along the shoulder of the high road with Zhaksyn at his side. He’s got to be thinking about breaking clean out of the Gap, but even if he doesn’t manage that, the farther south he can get before he has to stop, the better. And on this kind of frontage, he can hold two or three times his numbers until his supports come up. So the last thing he’s going to do is give a routed enemy the chance to catch his breath, turn around, and find a place to stand after all.
Personally, he didn’t much care for letting the rebels this far south himself, but Colonel Wyllys hadn’t asked his opinion. And it wasn’t as if they hadn’t been likely to be pushed farther back over the next few five-days, anyway.
* * *
Major Cahrtair swore with venomous passion as the gap between the fleeing regulars and his own company widened steadily. There wasn’t anything he could do about it—cowards running away were always faster than the people chasing them; something about the fear of death seemed to give them an extra speed advantage—and at least they showed no signs of stopping.
He saw the half-flooded ruins of the town of Harystn drawing nearer on the right as the high road stretched across a vast expanse of flooded terrain. There was a broad, shallow valley here, he remembered, one the high road crossed like a wall, with a tributary of the Sylmahn River at its bottom. Under normal conditions, it was only a shallow, bubbling stream running through the trees which had grown even thicker to either side, but the culverts under the roadbed were more clogged than usual here. The water spread out to the west, and it wasn’t much better to the east. The canal had overflowed into the same valley where the tow road had crossed it on a wooden bridge whose gaunt, blackened trestles stood up out of the water swirling about them, and the high road was a virtual causeway across the flood.
Third Company was beginning to slow. The quick march—a hundred and twenty paces per minute, as opposed to the normal marching rate of seventy-five paces per minute—was hard to sustain in formation even on a flat, paved surface and even for men whose endurance hadn’t been undercut by starvation, and none of his men had been particularly well fed over the last several months. The heretics, however, actually seemed to be moving still faster, and he felt the opportunity to overhaul them and wipe them from the face of the earth slipping away from him. Sooner or later they were going to run into another heretic position, and if the fleeing 37th managed to escape past another blocking formation, the chance would be gone, probably forever.
On the other hand, panic’s contagious, and they might just hit the next position hard enough to carry it with them. Or if it holds, they might not be able to get past it before my boys catch up with them. At any rate, the farther south we get before we have to stop, the better, and nobody’s getting past us if we have to stop here!
He looked out over the watery waste of flooded trees stretching away to either hand with a sense of satisfaction. The entire Gap was less than ten miles wide at this point, and choked by the tangled forest crowding in on the high road and overshadowing the tow roads from either side. No open flanks here, no way for the regulars to use their greater mobility to slip a pike block around his position and force him to retreat. No, even if he had to stop right here, they wouldn’t be moving him before that sluggard Chermyn came up in support, and then—
* * *
Zhorj Styvynsyn peeled off from his “routed” column as its head passed the ruins of Harystn and headed into the denser woodland to the south. The canal bed w
as relatively clear aside from the flotsam and jetsam on its flooded surface, but the high road passed through a dense belt of mixed evergreens and seasonal trees just south of the burned, half-flooded village. The woods didn’t actually constrict the roadway, but it felt as if they did as the rough-barked trunks rose from the water on either side of it like walls. He looked back and muttered a short, pungent phrase. Their pursuers were closer behind than he’d hoped. It was time to slow the bastards down and convince them to go back where he wanted them.
“Any time now would be good, Gahvyn,” he said a bit sharply, looking at the officer who’d just materialized beside him, and Major Sahlys nodded.
“I believe you have a point,” the commanding officer of 5th Company, 37th Infantry said calmly, and glanced once to each side of the road. Then he nodded again, this time in satisfaction.
“Fire!” he shouted, and the fifty-three men of Captain Ellys Sebahstean’s 3rd Platoon braced their rifles on the carefully concealed rests they’d built hours earlier and squeezed their triggers.
* * *
“Shan-wei fly away with their souls!” Major Cahrtair snarled as the woods ahead blossomed suddenly with puffs of smoke. The riflemen were still a good three hundred yards away, but his company made a solid, compact target. The bullets slammed into his men with a sound like fists punching a side of meat, and he heard the screams as half Mahkhom’s front rank went down in a tangle of blood and broken bones.
* * *
Sebahstean’s riflemen stood and stepped back from their firing positions, biting the tops off paper cartridges, pouring powder down their rifle barrels. As they reloaded, Captain Zhon Trahlmyn’s 1st Platoon took their places, and another deadly volley roared. Only two of 5th Company’s seven platoons had been equipped with rifles, and neither was at full strength, but they still had just over a hundred men between them, and their bullets hammered Cahrtair’s men mercilessly.
* * *
Cahrtair mastered his temper.
It wasn’t easy. He’d been able to taste his triumph, but now it had been snatched away. Yet there was no point lying to himself. He might—might—be able to drive forward through the rifle fire. It didn’t sound like there could be more than eighty or ninety of the damned things, after all. But he’d lose half the company doing it, and with the trees crowding the road that way, bayoneted rifles would be at least as dangerous as his pikes. Ramming his head into a stone wall and losing men he couldn’t afford to lose would be not simply stupid but pointless. Better to fall back to the more solid ground to the north and dig in behind proper earthworks, bring up his own arbalesters, and get Chermyn’s lazy arse forward to support him after all. He still wouldn’t be able to match the rifles’ range, but with good solid parapets to cover his arbalesters until the heretics came to him he’d become a cork they wouldn’t be pulling out of the bottle anytime soon.
“Pull back!” he commanded, and the drums began a different beat.
* * *
Styvynsyn drew a deep breath as the rebel pike column stopped, then began pulling back. They’d lost no more than thirty or forty men, he estimated—not even rifles were truly magic, and the range was long—but Cahrtair was obviously just as smart as their reports suggested. He wasn’t going to bloody his nose by coming any closer to riflemen dug in amongst such dense tree cover.
Which means he’s doing exactly what we want, the major thought coldly. Assuming, of course, Klairynce knew what he was doing.
He shaded his eyes with one hand, once more wishing he still had his spyglass. But if his had been smashed, Sahlys’ hadn’t. The other major was peering through the glass, watching the rear of Cahrtair’s formation, which had just become its front, falling rapidly back along the high road.
“About even with the marker,” he said, and Styvynsyn frowned.
“They’re a little more spread out than we’d hoped for,” he replied, watching Bairaht Charlsyn’s 1st Platoon forming up on the high road. It had reclaimed its standard from the men he’d taken north with him, and Charlsyn was almost quivering with anticipation. “Give them another few seconds.”
“Going to lose a lot of their arbalesters,” Sahlys warned.
“Assuming it works at all,” Styvynsyn shot back, then shrugged. “I’d prefer to eliminate as many pikes as we can get, given who’s going to be responsible for the cleanup and all.”
“A point,” Sailys agreed. His lips quirked at Styvynsyn’s tone, but he never lowered his glass. He simply stood there peering through it, then inhaled deeply.
“Now,” he said simply, and Captain Sebahstean personally lit the fuse.
* * *
Hahlys Cahrtair never had the opportunity to discover how thoroughly misinformed he’d been.
It was quite true that Trumyn Stohnar’s units were badly understrength; unfortunately, they weren’t nearly so badly weakened as Father Shainsail’s spies had informed him. But then, Father Shainsail hadn’t realized several of “his” spies were actually loyal to the Republic or that General Stohnar had deliberately misled the civilians under his charge when he’d asked them to be on the lookout for all those deserters who hadn’t actually deserted after all. Or when he’d complained about those serious delays in the arrival of his supply convoys. Not that he’d been completely mendacious. Food did remain in short supply, but somehow he’d neglected to mention the twenty-seven tons of gunpowder which had been delivered to Serabor by canal boat.
Eleven tons of that gunpowder had been carefully emplaced in culverts under the high road by soldiers working under Hainree Klairynce’s direction. Waterproofing the charges had been a challenge, but the mayor of Serabor had remembered a canal warehouse full of pitch and turpentine which had escaped destruction during the siege. Enough pitch smeared on the outside of flour barrels had worked quite handily.
The trickiest part had been waterproofing the fuse, which had to run several hundred yards through soggy conditions. Fortunately, Klairynce had been up to the task, coating the quick match in pitch, as well. It slowed the combustion rate slightly, but it protected it from the wet—a trick he’d picked up from an uncle who’d learned it while working to extend the Branath Canal. He’d tucked it up along the side of the elevated roadbed, above water level, using the pitch’s darkness to make it even harder to spot. One or two of Cahrtair’s men might have seen the sputtering combustion racing up the black length of cord, but it was unlikely any of them had time to realize what they were seeing.
Cahrtair himself certainly didn’t. He was still fuming over his lost opportunity when the eight hundred pounds of powder directly under him and his horse erupted like a crazed volcano.
* * *
“Well, I’ll be damned. It actually worked.” Styvynsyn’s tone was almost conversational, although he doubted Sahlys could have heard him through the thundering echo of the massive explosions even if he’d shouted at the top of his lungs.
No one else had heard him, either, he realized. In fact, no one was even looking in his direction. All eyes were locked on the enormous columns of dirt, water, mud, and pieces of men spewing into the heavens. Styvynsyn couldn’t tell for certain, but it looked like the explosion had killed or maimed at least three-quarters of the rebels, and the others were undoubtedly too stunned and shocked to do more than stand there, trying to understand what had happened.
I never really believed it would work, but damn if it didn’t! I guess I owe Hainree that beer after all … as soon as there’s any beer to buy him, anyway. Pity we couldn’t’ve gotten the rest of Maiksyn’s regiment into our sights, but let’s not be greedy, Zhorj. So far, you haven’t lost a man, and it’s just possible even some of Cahrtair’s butchers will be smart enough to surrender after this.
“Go!” he shouted. He could hardly hear his own voice through the ringing in his ears. Fortunately, it turned out at least one person had been watching him and not the explosions, after all. He didn’t know whether or not Bairaht Charlsyn had heard him, but the captain obviously saw
him waving vigorously and nodded.
“Advance!” he shouted, and 1st Platoon, followed by 3rd Platoon, rested and unwearied, swept out of the trees and bore down on the shattered, shaken survivors of Hahlys Cahrtair’s company.
Well, that’s going to be a godawful mess, Styvynsyn thought, watching the wreckage reach the top of its flight and begin plunging back towards earth. Must’ve taken out a good thousand yards of the roadbed, and I wonder how much of the debris landed in the canal? Rebuilding the road’s going to be a copper-plated bitch, but we were going to have to wreck it somewhere if we didn’t want the bastards punching us out by sheer weight of numbers eventually. Hopefully, Langhorne’ll forgive us, and this is a pretty damned good spot, actually. And taking out an entire company—especially that bastard Cahrtair’s— that’s a nice bonus.
He watched Charlsyn’s men closing with leveled pikes and smiled thinly.
I wonder if any of the bastards really will be smart enough to surrender? If they’re really quick, dump their weapons in the canal, get their hands on their heads, and act very meek they might actually manage it without getting their throats cut.
He thought about that for another moment, then shrugged. Bairaht knew the rules about accepting surrenders, and it was out of his hands at this point, either way.
Still, he thought coldly, I can always hope they’re a little slow, can’t I?
.VI.
Siddar City, Old Province, Republic of Siddarmark
Merlin Athrawes sat in his small, neat, but comfortable chamber in the Charisian Embassy. It was rather cramped, but it was also one floor below Emperor Cayleb’s suite and just happened to be located directly off the stairwell. No one could reach the emperor’s level without passing Major Athrawes’ door, which could be expected to have a … dissuading effect on any assassin familiar with the seijin’s reputation.
Unfortunately, there were quite a few people in the Republic of Siddarmark, let alone right here in the capital city, who were unlikely to be dissuaded by anything. As someone had remarked many years ago on a planet called Old Earth, when someone actively wanted to die to accomplish his mission, the only way to stop him was to give him what he wanted. The sort of people who preferred to survive the attempt were easier to stop, but there were also more of them. So far, Henrai Maidyn’s agents had uncovered and defeated two plots to assassinate Cayleb. Aivah Pahrsahn had quietly (and without mentioning it to anyone) defeated another and seen to it that the would-be assassins’ well-weighted bodies had been equally quietly disposed of in North Bay, and Merlin and Owl’s remotes were tracking five different groups of plotters who all at least aspired to striking down the heretical emperor in the name of God, the Holy Archangels … and Zhaspahr Clyntahn.