The bugler’s call changed. Advance. The strident notes echoed from the Fortress of Death. On that signal, the battalions marched forward. The Norillian artillery fired a volley. Iron balls flew, but hit the glacises and bounced high, passing over the walls. Owen could but hope that some would come down within the fortress environs and smash through waiting troops.
The Tharyngian response scythed through the Norillian lines at the point where the Fourth Foot and the cavalry met. Iron balls smashed through the ranks. A dozen men went down. The lucky ones died instantly, their heads splashed over their comrades, or torn in twain. The wounded clawed at the ground futilely trying to crawl to where their severed legs lay, or sat there unable to understand why a sleeve ended wetly at the elbow.
Even at that distance, the screams echoed sharply through Owen’s skull.
All six Ryngian batteries concentrated on the Norillians. Du Malphias had reinforced each with two extra cannon, and did not seem at a loss for crews. Owen would have taken their choice of target as a sign of contempt for the Mystrians, but the Fourth Foot were the most formidable force on the field. If du Malphias concentrated on them, he could blast the Mystrians close up with grape shot. Chances were they would break before they reached the wall.
But it wasn’t the Mystrians whose courage flagged first. Owen pointed toward the cavalry. A gap had opened between them and the infantry. “Thornbury isn’t driving his men forward.”
Sergeant Unstone stepped up beside Owen. “Gap only hurts if the Tharyngians have troops to push into it. Colonel says…”
“The Colonel doesn’t believe du Malphias has spare troops. If he’s right, filling that gap now won’t hurt. If he’s wrong, the battle’s lost.”
Suddenly gunfire echoed from the woods west of the river, where a battalion of Mystrians had been left to hold the flank. Owen stood on tiptoes to see what was going on, but only saw smoke rising from the woods. You were even craftier than we imagined.
Owen turned to one of the privates. “Take this message to Rivendell. There is firing on the right. The Mystrians are fighting in the woods. Du Malphias has a force he’ll cross at the ferry to flank the cavalry.”
The man looked at the Sergeant. Unstone sent him off with a curt nod.
Responding to the fighting across the river, the cavalry shifted its facing. Thornbury ordered his reserve unit to the river’s edge. The line unit reshuffled and withdrew to become a reserve for the river defenders. Their maneuver, executed poorly and in complete confusion, completely opened the Fourth’s flank.
The Private reached Rivendell’s station, but Langford never let him get to the man. The Colonel dismissed the soldier and then turned to Rivendell. They shared a laugh, then went back to watching the Tharyngian cannon ravage the men under their command.
The Mystrians had bravely moved up the slope toward the high fort, the Blackoak Pipers driving them forward. Then the high fort’s battery opened up. Grapeshot killed men several ranks deep in the Third battalion, but the survivors kept moving forward. A man on the formation’s edge kept shouting, and the men of the Third surged ahead.
The other battalions faltered and began to pull back. The cannon spoke again, nibbling at the Second battalion. A dozen of their men went down. Their rear ranks began to turn and run. The First and the Fourth slowed, then stopped.
Count von Metternin shook his head. “You cannot blame them.”
“I know.” Vlad snapped a pencil in half. “But I have to stop them.”
The Kessian looked at him. “What can you do? If you go down there, you’ll die.”
“But I have to do something. Look.” Vlad stood and pointed toward the Third. “The hill, the glacises, the guns in front can’t get them. But others will sweep them once they’ve destroyed the Norillians. The Third is trapped, and I can’t leave them there.”
The Count reached across the table and grabbed Vlad’s arm. “You are going to do something stupid and get yourself killed. And I shall have to inform Princess Gisella.”
“Come with me.” Vlad gave the man a confident smile. “If you agree to go, it can’t be stupid.”
The Count came out of the chair. The two of them ran to the wurmrest and the Count gasped. “This is insane, completely insane. No one has…”
In accord with the experimentation the Prince had been conducting through the spring, a second assembly had been fitted snuggly to the saddles, forward of them. It consisted of a steel post a foot and a half high, with a semicircular bar fixed to it by four spokes. The semicircle and spokes lay parallel to the ground. A six inch spike rose in the center of the arc.
A one-pound swivel-gun had been mounted on the post, secured with a water-tight leather sheath and cork plug. The ramrod had been fitted with a gimbaled guide, so it couldn’t go missing in the heat of the battle. The center spike prevented the cannon being fired straight forward—hence the rear gunner could not shoot the rider, and the rider could not shoot Mugwump. Oilskin saddle-bags before and behind the rider’s legs contained premeasured charges and rounds for the guns.
The Prince hauled himself into the saddle. “Baker, find Colonel Daunt. Tell him to charge the high fort on my signal.”
The wurmwright gaped up at him. “Signal, Highness?”
“He’ll know it. Go.”
Vlad turned in the saddle and smiled at von Metternin. “Use the spike to gash the charges when you reload. It’s all grape, and designed to kill pasmortes.”
Von Metternin laughed. “This is not stupid, Highness, it is spectacularly stupid.”
“Only if we die, my lord.” Vlad smiled and touched Mugwump’s flank with his heel. “We’re off to save Mystrians. The devil can take all else!”
By the time the Private returned, the battle had deteriorated. The Mystrians had stalled on the left flank. One battalion had been trapped near the hill’s summit. Whenever a squad tried to advance, cannon blew them to pieces. The survivors hunkered down, unaware that once the Tharyngian cannon had finished with the Fourth Foot and smoke had thinned enough for gunners to aim, it would rake their flank and clear them off the hillside.
More firing came from the right, sporadic but steady. Owen couldn’t make any sense of the noise. The smoke drifting up from the battlefield made seeing anything difficult.
In the Norillian center, the Second company had pushed forward and had actually reached the walls. The Third slid right, breaking contact with the Mystrians, to follow the Second through the forest of spikes. Bridging went over the trenches. Siege ladders leaned against walls. Soldiers started to climb, and then the Platine Regiment mounted the battlements. With deadly precision they opened fire. Musket balls blasted men from the ladders. Bayonets stabbed down. Norillian gunfire slew Ryngians—several bodies hung lifeless from the top of the palisade wall, but far more Redcoats fell.
Then Owen saw it, on the right. “There, Tharyngian troops mustering at the corner.”
Unstone looked toward Rivendell. “His lordship is gone, sir.”
“What?” Owen turned just in time to see Langford disappearing into Rivendell’s tent. “Sergeant, send a man back down there.”
“Won’t do no good, sir. Smoke. He can’t see a thing.”
Owen grabbed Unstone’s lapels. “Then we have to do it, Sergeant. We have to get the reserve battalion over there.”
“Sir, I can’t give those orders.” The Sergeant shook his head adamantly. “It’s not my place. I will be court-martialed and shot.”
“Listen to me. All of you.” Owen looked at the entire squad. “It’s your friends who are going to die, and you know damned well that Rivendell couldn’t care less. Do you think they will survive if we don’t act?”
Unstone glanced at his feet. “We won’t survive if we do.”
“I’d rather die saving friends than live watching them die.” Owen shoved the man away and started off down the hill. “Shoot me for escaping, or come with me and be a hero. Your choice. Me, I’m going to kill some Ryngians.”
> Mugwump charged from the wurmrest, then paused on the crest of the hill. His head came up and nostril slits flared. He turned, looking back at the Prince. Vlad could have sworn great intelligence burned in that golden eye.
The Prince nodded. “Yes, it’s into that Hell we’re going. Plenty of pasmortes. All you care to eat.”
The wurm blinked slowly, then loped down the hill as cannons boomed. They rode down into a cloud of gunsmoke, then appeared in the valley as if conjured. Soldiers who had been pulling back stopped. Mugwump curled his tail around to corral a few more.
The Prince looked down at astonished faces. “Done already? By God, I’ve just gotten to the fight.”
Mystrians stood there, dumbfounded, not even bothering to duck when another cannon roared. One man pointed back up the hill. “Highness, you can’t go up there. You’ll be killed!”
“I’m not abandoning the Third!” Vlad pointed at the fortress. “I’ll meet you at the top!”
The man who’d spoken stared at him as if he was mad, but another man raised his musket and shouted. “To the top! To the top.” Mugwump roared and more men took up the cry. “To the top! To the top!”
Vlad pumped a fist into the air. “To the top!”
The men turned, heading back toward the battle. Vlad tugged on the left rein. Mugwump looked back as if to ask, “Are you serious?”
“We’re meeting them at the top.”
The wurm growled, then set off to the east, running parallel to the line of battle. He began to gallop, exhibiting more fluidity and speed than Vlad had ever imagined he could. The Prince shouted to von Metternin. “By God, he knows he’s going to war!”
“He was trained to it.” The Kessian laughed as his hat blew off.
Vlad had a heartbeat to consider pulling back on the reins when Mugwump reached the lakeshore. The wurm didn’t bother to slide down the embankment, he just leaped. His legs, fore and back, came in. The Prince drew in a deep breath and ducked down, holding tight to the swivel-gun. The wurm’s dive carried them deep. A wall of water hit Vlad hard, almost tearing him from the saddle. Water rushed in, booming against his body.
Mugwump took them deeper. The water went from warm to cold, then the wurm’s nose came up. His tail twitched once, sending a powerful shudder through his body. They exploded from the depths. Water sheeted off as they flew upward, then stopped hard.
Mugwump’s claws sank into the cliff face. Stones cracked and fell away but the wurm’s grip remained strong. Effortlessly Mugwump climbed up the rock face, and swiftly enough that Vlad almost didn’t have enough time to pull the plug from his swivel-gun’s muzzle. Mugwump came up over the cliff edge with enough velocity that he grabbed the top of the palisade wall and hung there. He surveyed the interior as if he were a dog peering over a picket fence.
Vlad stripped off the leather sheath, swung his swivel-gun around to the right, and angled it up at the cannon batteries blasting away at the Mystrians. He clapped his right hand over the firestone, feeling cool smoothness beneath it. His hand tingled as he triggered the spell firing the small cannon.
The swivel-gun’s load was the Prince’s own creation. It consisted of pea-sized bits of lead and iron, meant in equal parts for the living and the dead. The shot expanded in a cloud, raking the crews. Pieces pinged off cannons. Perfect uniform coats tattered. Hats flew. Men spun and a loader pitched back over the wall, taking his waxed-paper cylinder of grapeshot with him.
Mugwump’s weight snapped lumber. He clawed away more of it and a portion of the palisade wall collapsed. Supports for two small gunnery platforms snapped, spilling cannons and crews into the main compound. The wurm landed atop the debris and scrambled forward, his claws shredding a trooper.
Vlad yanked open a saddle bag and pulled out a cloth cylinder knotted at both ends. A musket ball glanced off Mugwump’s scaled head, hissing past the Prince. Vlad tipped the gun up, gashed the lower half of the cylinder on a spike at the cannon’s muzzle, and let a little brimstone pour into the barrel before he jammed the entire bag into the weapon. The ramrod came around and down, slamming things home. He retracted it, then swung the gun around, aiming toward that battery again.
His next shot went low, cutting men’s legs from beneath them. It blasted one gunnery carriage wheel to bits. That cannon sagged. Carriage locks ripped free of shattered wood. The heavy bronze gun rolled, crushing the gunner and snapping another man’s leg.
The Prince’s hand stung as if attacked by a dozen wasps. Numbness nibbled at his fingers, and color bled into his skin. I bleed, they bleed. Two shots had sent nearly a dozen men to Perdition. Is this all it takes to kill?
Count von Metternin fired to the left, sweeping a Platine squad from the fort’s inner wall. Half of one man went back over the wall while his legs fell inside. Others just sagged, suddenly boneless and leaking. A few desperately clung to the wall as if remaining upright would hold death at bay.
The Prince loaded and fired mechanically, scattering soldiers, but giving no thought to directing Mugwump. The wurm darted toward the north and up onto the top of the stone wall. He raised his muzzle and repeated the roar he’d offered in response to the cry of “To the top!” Then his tail whipped around, sheering off the top of the palisade wall.
“To the top!” men screamed from below. Had Prince Vlad not been so busy reloading, he would have thrust a fist in the air. He rammed the powder and shot home, then looked west, seeking a target.
And he saw one, a grand one, but one too far away to target. There, by the river, two battalions of the Platine Regiment had crashed into the Norillian line. And to make things worse, a sloop under a Ryngian flag sailed down the Green River and had run its guns out to fire.
Every instinct urged Owen to sprint away from the battle. Straight ahead, through curtains of gunsmoke, two Platine battalions formed up. The cavalry had pulled back and faced the river, exposing its flank to the Ryngians. Their maneuver gave the Ryngians a boulevard into the heart of the Norillian formation wider than the road du Malphias had cut through the woods. On the left, the Fourth Foot had no idea of the danger. If the Ryngians split their forces, they could likely roll up both sides. And if they concentrate them…
Owen marched straight to the Captain commanding the artillery. “Compliments of Lord Rivendell. He wonders if it would trouble you too much to shift your guns forty-five degrees to the west. We have some Tharyngians forming up there.”
The artillery commander raised his telescope and dropped his jaw. “By God, that gap!”
“Fill it with fire, Captain, fill it with fire.” Owen turned and stalked toward the gap.
“Where the devil are you going?”
Owen turned, throwing his arms wide and laughed. “You fill it with fire, I’ll fill it with me. Shoot high, man, so I can watch you knock them down.”
The artilleryman shouted at his crews. Owen spun again, then dropped to a knee and pulled a musket and ammunition pouch from a dead body. A bit further along he recovered another musket and a bayonet, which he slung over his shoulder. He went to pull the cartridge case from another corpse, but the fallen man clung to it.
Owen looked at the soldier. Not a drop of blood. “On your feet soldier!”
The man—really just a boy—opened his eyes wide. “I don’t want to die.”
“Not like any of us have a choice, son. What’s your name?”
“Private Hodge Dunsby, sir.”
Owen tugged him to a sitting position. “You can sit here and weep, or laugh at Death and feed him Ryngians. It’s better to laugh. Move it.”
The young man stared up at him. “But, sir.”
“Son, if you don’t move, your friends will die. Come with me, and we might save a few.”
Hodge’s eyes focused distantly for a moment, then he wiped away tears and stood, bringing his musket to hand. “As you say, laughing’s better. Lead on, sir.”
Owen felt ridiculous. Dressed in his Altashee leathers, one musket over his shoulder, another in his r
ight hand. He thumbed the firestone, rotating it. He felt it grind. The musket had been loaded and never fired. With Hodge at his back, Owen marched into the gap as Ryngian drummers started in.
“Hodge, grab two more muskets.” Owen bent to get himself a third. “Sixty, forty, and twenty, then it’s steel on steel.”
“Yes, sir.”
Just looking at the Ryngians gave Owen gooseflesh. The enemy formed a solid wall of blue coats with white facings, silver-white buttons, and tall bearskin hats with silver crests. When he’d faced them in Artennes Forest he’d joked that one should aim for that badge. No need to aim now. At that range he couldn’t miss, but even killing two with every shot wouldn’t slow them.
The drums began a steady beat. Cannons roared from behind him. Balls slammed into the formation, plowing red furrows through it. The Platine just closed ranks, drawing closer, ever closer, step by step, their iron will and discipline revealing why they were the masters of the battlefield. An officer shouted an order and the front rank lowered muskets to the hip, then thrust them forward. Bayonets at the ready, they came on, with the second rank’s bayonets gleaming at shoulder height.
“You still with me, Hodge?”
“Got a couple more, sir.”
Owen looked to his side. Two other men, one bleeding from the shoulder and the other wounded in the thigh, raised their muskets. “If you can find an officer, drop him.”
More cannonballs hammered the Tharyngian forces, but the Norillian cannon were slow to reload. They might get one more volley in before the Ryngians overran Owen’s position. More Ryngians filled the gaps, leaving the line seamless. A hundred yards. Eighty. Owen raised his musket. Seventy. Sixty.
His thumb brushed the firestone. The musket spat fire. A second later the other three soldiers shot. Three Ryngians went down, their bodies instantly hidden behind the advancing line.
Then the drumbeats sped up, hammered more quickly.
The Ryngians charged.
Owen brought a second musket to his shoulder. Seeing a man with a sword shouting orders, he shifted right and tracked. He aimed for the badge, then invoked a spell. Gunsmoke hid the line, but it blew away quickly and the officer had vanished.