The Thousand Names

Chapter Fifteen

MARCUS

At dawn, the Auxiliaries began a cautious advance, a company in loose order probing the rubble and barricades to their front.

Marcus, determined to buy every minute he could, had sent Adrecht and his Fourth Battalion to man the line while the rest of the Colonials pulled back around the hilltop temple. These soldiers almost immediately began a harassing fire, driving back the initial tentative push. The Auxiliaries formed up, solid blocks of brown and tan parade-ground even, and charged into the tangle of detritus with a yell.

The men of the Fourth did not stand to receive them. They were too few, and in any case their orders were to fall back. Each man fired and then ran for it, finding another covered position farther up the hill to reload. Shots rang out from the spreading Khandarai line, trying to find their attackers, but the men in blue were as elusive as mosquitoes. Marcus watched with satisfaction from his hilltop vantage as the Auxiliary advance fell apart, neat lines breaking down in their zeal to come to grips with a retreating enemy amidst the wreckage.

It would have been an ideal time for a counterattack, as he’d done so many times yesterday, but circumstances had changed. There were two more Khandarai battalions waiting, well formed and ready, down by the bank of the canal. Worse, there were guns-all four of the Gesthemels and two of the monster naval guns, no doubt loaded with canister in anticipation of just such a move. So the Colonials held their ground, Adrecht’s men continuing to deliver harassing fire while the flustered Auxiliary officers reorganized their scattered ranks to continue the advance.

That bought a couple of hours, all told, and left the approach to the hill scattered with brown-and-tan-uniformed bodies. But the ultimate outcome was not in doubt. The Fourth was gradually pushed back through the town and toward the hilltop, until the advancing Auxiliaries finally ran into something solid. The Colonials had constructed a line of barricades, bricks and timber from destroyed houses, with the bulk of the stone-walled temple looming behind them. As soon as the enemy approached, this position exploded into fire, and the startled Auxiliaries reeled back out of range.

A few minutes later, Marcus watched the other two Khandarai battalions start moving up. As Adrecht had predicted, they were veering left and right, respectively, pushing past the now-empty streets of the destroyed village and out onto the plain, where they could get on the flanks and rear of the force on the hill. They would converge, like the pincers of a scorpion, and from the time they came into range of the fortifications the Colonials would be committed. No way out, except for surrender. And everyone knew what the Redeemers did to prisoners.

• • •

The two big naval guns each had a cloud of attendants who clustered and fussed around them like priests around an altar. In spite of all the attention, the first shot went wide, whistling past the temple and continuing for quite a long way out across the squelching-wet fields. The next, however, scored a solid hit, and before long both guns were pummeling away. The huge things were a bear to reload, so the shots came at intervals of three or four minutes.

Marcus had never been inside a stone building under bombardment. It wasn’t something that had been on the syllabus at the War College because it wasn’t supposed to happen, now that big stone castles had gone the way of the crossbow and the trebuchet. A good siege gun would produce an impression on even the strongest stone, no matter how thick or high the walls, so breaking them down was only a matter of time. A proper fortification looked more like a burrow thrown up by enormous and geometrically minded moles, with overlapping fields of fire for the defender and sloping berms of dirt to deflect cannonballs or absorb their impact in a harmless spray of soil.

He was unprepared, therefore, for the way that the cannonballs rang against the walls, as though the temple were being attacked by a swarm of angry bells. The distant thud of the gun itself arrived only just in advance of the shot, and every hit shook the walls like the entire building was rocking in a gale. Dust sifted down from the ceiling as ancient stones were jostled, and there were periodic alarming cracks and pops. One of the men brought Marcus a cannonball, still warm from its firing, which had ricocheted high and landed amongst the defenders. It was about the size of a child’s head, and flattened on one side by the terrific impact at the end of its flight. The iron rippled around that spot, as though it had been briefly liquid.

Marcus called for Archer, who had managed to clean up considerably overnight. A silver Church double circle was prominent on the breast of his uniform.

“How long have we got?” Marcus demanded.

“Well, sir,” the lieutenant said, “I’m an artilleryman, not a siege engineer, but-”

“Do your best.”

“Yessir. I took a look and there’s already a few cracked blocks. On the upside, those guns aren’t very accurate, so they’re battering away all over the wall. On the downside, this place wasn’t designed as a fortress, and as best I can tell there’s no bracing or internal supports.”

Marcus put two fingers to his head and massaged his temples. “And so?”

“Once part of the wall goes, the whole thing is going to come down in a hurry. A couple of hours, I’d say. It could be longer, of course, if we get lucky, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

A couple of hours. It couldn’t be past eight in the morning. He’d tentatively hoped to hang on until nightfall, but. .

There was a tremendous boom from outside, echoing off the temple walls and shaking more dust from the ceiling. Marcus looked at Archer in a panic. To his surprise, the lieutenant was smiling.

“What the hell was that?”

“Ah. I’d been expecting that, sir. I’ll have to go and check, of course, but in my professional opinion one of the thirty-six-pounders has just exploded. Those are old tubes, sir, and they’ve been working them pretty hard. I’m amazed it took this long.”

• • •

“I’ll give them this,” Adrecht said. “They’re game little bastards.”

He and Marcus stood at a second-floor window, its glass long ago kicked out. The view wasn’t as good as it would have been from the front steps, but there was less risk of catching a cannonball.

One team of Khandarai was already dragging the wreckage of the ruined naval gun out of the way, along with the bodies of the gunners who’d been caught by the shrapnel when the overheated tube burst. Across the river, a second team was pushing another of the big guns into the ford, two dozen men hauling on ropes or shoving from behind while four more walked gingerly in front of it, feeling for soft patches of mud that might bog the heavy thing down.

In the meantime, the howitzers had opened up again. They had a harder time of it than the naval guns did, since their fragmenting projectiles were useless against the stone walls of the temple itself. Marcus could hear the steady ping of fragments off the facade, but they weren’t doing any damage. The big open ground floor of the building had room for only a few hundred men, however, and was currently occupied by the wounded and most of Adrecht’s Fourth Battalion, resting up after its rearguard action. Aside from the men at the second-floor windows, all the rest of the Colonials were in a narrow strip of ground surrounding the hilltop on three sides, crouching behind improvised barricades or in shallow ditches they’d scratched in the stony ground. It was into this strip that the howitzers tried to drop their shells, with intermittent but bloody success.

“They’re not going to bomb us out, though,” Adrecht said. “Not unless they intend to stand a siege.”

“No,” Marcus agreed. “This is just preparatory stuff. Just wait for a few-ah, here they come.”

A brown-and-tan line materialized, rising from the earth as the Khandarai infantry got to their feet and started forward. Amidst the explosion of a few last shells, he could hear their shouting even at this distance. They’d sensibly abandoned any attempt at close order and came forward in a swarm of angry, screaming men. Marcus was forcefully reminded of the battle on the coast road, the thin line of blue standing against the vast horde of peasants. If only I had a nice, solid line and a dozen guns to back it up. .

More shouting indicated that the other two enemy battalions, who had spread left and right to face the sides of the hilltop temple, were attacking as well. So it’s to be a general assault. They must know how few men we’ve got in here. A canny commander might focus his attack on the weakest section of the enemy line, but with an overwhelming advantage in numbers there was more value in forcing the defenders to spread themselves thin.

The rattle of musketry rose, first from close by as the defenders opened fire, then more distant shots as the Khandarai started to reply. It was joined shortly by the deeper boom of Archer’s guns, positioned at intervals along the barricade and loaded with canister, their depleted crews filled out by hastily trained volunteers from the infantry. The smaller Khandarai guns opened fire as well, aiming high to avoid their own troops, and mostly sent their fist-sized balls bouncing gaily off the stone walls of the temple with high, ringing notes.

Marcus was pleased to see the attack had broken down almost as soon as it had gotten started. The Khandarai officers were discovering that most men, given a choice between rushing a fuming, spitting barricade bristling with bayonets and ducking into cover to bang away with their own muskets, would choose the latter. And once so ensconced they were difficult to shift, though Marcus could see a few wildly gesticulating officers and sergeants trying. They were off the tactics manual now. Towns, if they were attacked at all, were invested according to the formal rules of a traditional siege, and expected to capitulate once the proper point had been reached in the proceedings.

“Ha!” Adrecht said, as a Khandarai officer who’d stood up to berate his men suddenly pinwheeled to the ground as though he’d been clubbed. “Good shot. Wonder if that was one of ours or one of theirs.”

“I’m going to see how the right is doing,” Marcus said. “Check the left, would you?”

He turned without waiting for a reply and hurried through the warren of little rooms that made up the temple’s second floor until he found a window that provided a suitable view of the right side of the building. The situation below was not as promising as at the front of the building. There was nothing on the gentle slope of the hill to serve as cover for the Khandarai, which perversely made the attack more fearsome. Deprived of the opportunity to drop into relative safety and exchange fire with the defenders, the Auxiliaries had no choice but to run to the barricade, hunched over as though advancing into a strong wind. Musketry and canister cut them down by the score, and in some places the attack faltered, but in others they had reached the line of barricades and charged into a desperate hand-to-hand struggle.

Marcus cursed and hurried back to the central stair, meeting Adrecht coming the other way.

“We’re holding on the left,” Adrecht said, “though they got closer than I’d like.”

“They need help down there,” Marcus said. “That’s-” He tried to remember who had charge of the right wing, and then guiltily recalled it was his own men of the First Battalion. With Vence down, Thorpe was the most senior officer, with Davis after him. “Thorpe,” he finished. “Come on, let’s get them some support.”

He detached half a company from the Fourth Battalion and sent them down at the double. The arrival of fresh troops seemed to have an impact out of all proportion to their actual numbers. The Khandarai who’d made it over the barricade fell back or surrendered, leaving a mix of blue — and brown-coated bodies strewn over the debris like broken toys. The other Khandarai battalions were pulling back as well, the men who’d refused to rise from cover to attack only too willing to get up when they were retreating. Marcus returned to his window, where he could see them forming again out of musket range.

In the distance, a puff of smoke was followed by a distant boom, and then a much closer blast accompanied by the zip and ping of shell fragments. Then the naval guns opened fire again, and the bombardment resumed in earnest.

• • •

That was the pattern all through the morning and into the early afternoon, while the sun climbed overhead to turn the battlefield into a blazing inferno. The Auxiliaries dressed their ranks, listened to speeches and shouts from their officers, while behind them the big guns and the howitzers banged away at the obstinate Colonials in their makeshift fortress. Then, worked to a suitable pitch of enthusiasm, the infantry stormed forward, and the rattling tear of musketry overwhelmed every other sound.

Marcus committed his reserves like a miser spending his last eagle, half a company here and half a company there. It stabilized the line, but in order to keep it stabilized, as often as not the fresh troops had to stay, so the Fourth dwindled from three companies to two and finally to one, barely eighty men strong. As the hale troops trickled out of the temple, meanwhile, the wounded trickled in, faster and faster, until they occupied the entire ground floor and the stretcher details had to haul them painfully up the stairs. The cutters were hard at work, and the inevitable charnel house smell made Marcus grateful for even the bitter reek of gunsmoke. The dead, and the severed, mangled limbs of those who might or might not survive, were piled unceremoniously in one corner to make room for new arrivals.

Two o’clock, Marcus reckoned by the sun. Two o’clock, and the southern horizon was still clear. Another shot from the naval guns rang off the front of the temple, and he could feel something shift unpleasantly in the stonework. How many balls have they got for the damn things?

One of the sentries on the roof-a dangerous position, given the howitzers’ tendency to overshoot-had come down to report that he’d seen something off to the south. Riders, he thought. Marcus had hurried to a south-facing window to check, but either his eyes were not as good or whoever it was had gone. Or was never there in the first place. Irritated, he walked back to his usual position. Outside, the big guns fell silent one by one, which could only mean another attack was coming.

Adrecht met him by the window. He did his best to conceal it, but Marcus could see the accusation in his face. Or is that the imaginings of a guilty conscience?

“We’re not going to make it to nightfall,” Adrecht said. “This place is standing up better than we thought it would, but Archer says he doesn’t think it will take much more. If it collapses entirely. .”

He didn’t have to finish. Marcus could imagine the stone walls crumbling all too well, enormous blocks coming loose to fall among the tight-packed wounded in the main hall below.

“We might be able to cut our way out,” Adrecht went on. “Wait until they start shelling us again, try to pull everyone out of the line before they can get reorganized, make a push across the fields to the south. There’s a gap there.”

Marcus nodded slowly. Again, the important part went unsaid. Even if it worked, that would mean abandoning everything that couldn’t be carried on a soldier’s back-the guns, the supplies, the wounded. And breaking contact with the enemy afterward was far from certain.

“Or else,” Adrecht continued, “we can surrender. Hope that the Auxies aren’t as bad as your common run of Redeemer. We drilled them to do things our way, after all. Maybe they absorbed the bit about the proper treatment of prisoners.”

Marcus remembered the pyres in the streets of Ashe-Katarion. “We may not have a choice. If I give the order to punch out, I’m not sure how many men would follow.”

“No. They’re tired.” Adrecht gave a mirthless grin. “It’s a good thing the Redeemers have such a fearsome reputation, actually. If they could be sure they’d be treated fairly, I’m certain some of ours would have handed over their muskets some time ago.”

Outside, the occasional pop of a musket rose rapidly to a sustained roar. Moments later, an agitated soldier burst into the little cell.

“Sir!” he said. “Captain, it’s gone bad on the right. They’ve taken one of the guns, and they’re holding right against the wall. The whole side’s cut off, sir!”

“Balls of the Beast!” Marcus hesitated, but only for a moment. The company of the Fourth that remained below was his last reserve, his last card to play. Once they were committed, there would be nothing to do but grit his teeth and fight things out to the finish. But if they get that gun turned down the line, those men are as good as dead. His own men, he remembered. The First Battalion, Thorpe and Davis.

Adrecht was already halfway to the door. Marcus hurried after him, pounded down the stairs, and ran across the temple hall, trying not to look at the mounting pile of the dead and the endless ranks of the dying. Instead he focused on the handful of blue-coated soldiers huddled near the front door. Adrecht got there first, and within a few moments the company sergeant was shouting the men to their feet.

There was no time for speeches. Marcus stopped in the doorway, drew his sword, and chopped forward. The company followed, booted feet pounding on the flagstones. A few halfhearted cheers from the men guarding the front accompanied their appearance, but these died away as soon as it became clear the men weren’t coming to help them. Instead, Marcus turned right, hugging the wall of the temple. To his left was the barricade, held so thinly it seemed impossible that the Khandarai had not already swarmed over it. Pools and streaks of blood showed where men had been hit and dragged away.

Two of Archer’s guns still boomed defiance on either side of the doorway, and Marcus caught sight of the lieutenant himself, face bloodied from yet another wound. He couldn’t spare more than a glance, however. The shouts and screams from the melee were audible even above the gunfire. Stumbling a little on the rocky ground, Marcus rounded the corner of the temple with Adrecht and the company hard on his heels and found himself face-to-face with a knot of struggling men.

The Khandarai had swarmed over the gun, and a dozen men were at work on it, turning it to fire down the Vordanai line along the temple wall. The men in blue closest by had recognized the danger, and two dozen men from the right wing and a similar number from the center had already hurled themselves with musket butt and bayonet against the disorganized mass of Auxiliaries around the cannon. There was no order left, no organized charges and countercharges, just a confused brawl where soldiers laid into one another with whatever came to hand.

Marcus didn’t need to give a command. He just gestured with his sword, and the men of the Fourth Battalion surged past, shouting with hoarse voices. A few shots rang out from both sides before the masses met, and then the struggle was once again hand to hand.

It was going to work, Marcus saw. His little band, depleted as it was, nonetheless outnumbered the Khandarai survivors, and they were falling back from the captured artillery piece. A few moments more, and they would break. And then we’ve bought a few more minutes. .

He couldn’t hear Adrecht’s voice, and it took him a moment to see his frantic gestures. Marcus looked up, toward the Khandarai line, and saw another mass of brown-and-tan uniforms approaching.

At least a company, he had time to register. Obviously the Khandarai commander had seen the same opportunity Marcus had led his men to prevent, and had committed his own reserves. Damn, damn, damn. .

Then the newcomers were on them, a solid line of leveled bayonets that shattered at the last minute as they had to traverse the uneven footing of the barricade. Marcus saw the flash of Adrecht’s sword coming out of its sheath. It was a pretty thing, he remembered-gold chasing on the hilt and colored embroidery on the scabbard. He just had time to hope that Adrecht hadn’t entirely neglected the edge before the Auxiliaries were on them.

Marcus would never have described himself as a master swordsman. At the War College, there had been students who’d gone in for that sort of thing, studying the ancient forms under the College tutors and staging flashing, glittering contests in the quad while onlookers applauded politely. He remembered the beauty of those bouts, the way the contestants had clashed and spun, almost as though they were dancing instead of sparring.

What experience Marcus had with his blade had come in back alleys and desperate ambushes, and none of it had been beautiful in any sense. He had learned a few important lessons, though, not the least of which was never to discount the efficacy of an unconventional blow. A punch to the stomach or a kick to the groin might not be as elegant as a perfectly executed thrust, but it would put a man on the ground just the same.

In any case, his weapon was not one of the light, elegant rapiers the College swordsmen had favored. It was actually a cavalry saber, begged from the stores after his army-issue officer’s sword had broken in a skirmish years ago. The heavy, curved thing was really designed to be wielded from horseback, but Marcus liked the weight of it. The pommel could crack a skull, properly applied, and the blade was a solid three feet of good steel.

He’d also learned, in a rough way, what to do when you were up against more than one opponent. Keep moving. Hold still and they’d circle round and skewer you. Thus, as three men clambered over the broken timber that topped the barricade in front of him, he bulled forward, dodging the point of a surprised Auxiliary’s bayonet and giving the man a wild slash across the stomach that sent him reeling. Before the man beside him could recover from his surprise and bring his unwieldy weapon to bear, Marcus slammed him in the face with the guard of the saber, which left him stumbling and clutching a broken nose.

There were brown uniforms all around him now. He hacked and slashed at random, grabbed the haft of a musket as it thrust past him and twisted it out of the owner’s grasp, blocked another blade by sheer luck and replied with a wild swing that took off most of the Khandarai’s face. He expected every moment to feel the sting of a point in the small of his back. Looking around, he saw a knot of blue and struggled toward it, but a hard shove from behind drove him practically into the arms of another Auxiliary. Instinctively, Marcus lowered his blade, and the point went in the man’s stomach and came out between his shoulder blades. He sagged, face twisted in a comic surprise, and the deadweight tore the saber from Marcus’ grip.

Another bayonet flashed, over his shoulder, and he ducked. Someone kicked him-obviously he wasn’t the only one who’d spent time in the back-alley school of swordsmanship-and sent him sprawling. His world was suddenly a mass of dusty, stamping boots. Marcus saw a gap ahead and crawled toward it, grabbing ankles to use as handholds. Someone looked down and a bayonet shivered into the turf by his leg, but the next moment he managed to drag himself into the clear.

He rolled over and looked up, dumbfounded, into the maw of a twelve-pounder. He’d fought his way into the little clear space the Auxiliaries were striving to maintain around their prize. The gun was a few feet away, aimed over his head, but Marcus didn’t doubt it would be loaded with canister, which made the precise orientation of the barrel irrelevant. He remembered the fields of fire of the Preacher’s guns at the last battle, the men torn to pieces so small they weren’t even recognizable as corpses. By the side of the gun, a gawky Khandarai in a brown uniform grinned, showing a mouthful of rotten teeth, and raised a lit match to the side of the cannon-

— and scrabbled at it, mystified. The gun was engraved all over, verses from the Wisdoms crammed in as small as careful hands could manage. A Kravworks ’98, Marcus remembered. Friction primers.

He jumped to his feet, driven by a sudden, desperate energy, and slammed his fist into the would-be gunner’s face. There were four more men beside the piece, though, and these still had their muskets. They surrounded Marcus on three sides, advancing cautiously. He tried to grab a musket by the barrel, but the man pulled back so fast Marcus nearly cut his hands on the bayonet, and one of the others thrust at his head. Marcus avoided being skewered only by falling awkwardly backward, leaving him looking up at four gleaming steel points.

One of which twitched suddenly and fell away. Adrecht broke through the circle of Khandarai, and the other three turned to face him. He raised his sword, and under other circumstances Marcus would have had to laugh at the expression on his fellow captain’s face. His blade had snapped off half a foot from the hilt.

Two of the Khandarai thrust simultaneously. The third would have as well, but for the fact that Marcus grabbed his ankle from behind and pulled his foot out from under him, leaving him sprawling in the dust. Adrecht spun away from the pair. One bayonet just missed his back, and the other caught him on the upper arm, ripping a deep, bloody gash through the muscle. Suddenly off balance, Adrecht stumbled against the cannon.

Marcus snatched up the fallen man’s weapon, treading on him in the process, and sank it into the small of another man’s back. The fourth Auxiliary turned to face him, but Adrecht managed to kick him off balance, and Marcus slammed the butt of the musket into his fingers, then skewered him on the point of the bayonet. He hurried to Adrecht, who was clutching the deep cut just above his elbow.

“Fucking sword,” Adrecht moaned. “The damned armorer promised me that was good steel. Remind me to kill him if we ever get to Ashe-Katarion.”

“Fair enough,” Marcus said. He put his back to the cannon, beside Adrecht, and took a moment to look around. There were fewer brown uniforms in view than he’d expected, and those he could see were retreating rapidly. Don’t tell me we actually stopped them after all?

There was a boom, close at hand. Not the deep-throated roar of a gun going off, but the higher-toned blast of a shell exploding. Howitzers already? The Auxiliaries were still engaged all along the perimeter-the inaccurate weapons would be as likely to kill their own men as the Vordanai. He straightened up for a better look.

Another shell exploded with a flash, well back from the temple, down among the wreckage from which the Auxiliaries had launched their attack. Where their reserves, officers, and wounded were presumably still waiting. That’s a hell of an unlucky shot, Marcus thought, until another one exploded practically on top of the first. Then he understood.

“Marcus?” Adrecht said. His eyes were shut tight against the pain. “What’s happening? Are we going to die?”

“No,” Marcus said. “Not unless Janus overshoots a bit.”

“Janus?” Adrecht cracked one eyelid cautiously.

“The colonel.” Marcus waved a hand. “He’s captured the guns, which means he’s captured the ford. Which means he’s captured the whole lot.”

All around the temple the Auxiliaries were falling back under the unexpected fire from their own artillery. Most of them were streaming back the way they had come, toward the ford, unaware that they were running straight into the arms of fresh blue-uniformed infantry. The brighter ones scattered, heading east or west or south across the fields, but no doubt there were cavalry waiting to gather them up. The colonel, Marcus knew, did not believe in half measures.