William Forstchen - Down to the Sea

“I’m a flyer,” Theodor announced, his voice edged with anger. “It’ll pass. He should have waited for everything, throw everything at them at once.”

“Well, he won’t, and I wouldn’t either. Any comment, Mr. Rosovich?”

Adam swallowed and shook his head. “If Admiral Bullfinch sailed, he must have had good reason to do so, sir.” Theodor looked over at Rosovich as if he had just sold out.

“I’m tempted to tell the chief engineer down below to bring us down to half speed. The engines are barely broken in, and we’re banging them to pieces steaming at this rate. We’ll miss the fight and that’s that.”

Theodor shifted uncomfortably and looked over at Adam.

“Sir,” Adam said quietly, “our orders were to make best possible speed to Constantine to report.”

“Report to who? The local madam? The fleet’s sailed, sonny, and we missed it.”

“Still, sir, the orders said the best possible speed.” Petronius crumbled up the telegram and tossed it on the deck.

“Wrong place at the wrong time, damn it,” he growled. Neither of the pair spoke.

“Best possible speed then, Mr. Rosovich. And that thing you were going to build up forward, what about that?”

“The steam catapults,” Theodor replied. “I’ve decided not to.”

“Pray why?”

“It would mean tearing up fifty feet of deck. We have the parts, and they would have been installed for the two scout planes, but I don’t want to risk having a deck torn apart and going into action with the job half done. It will have to wait.”

“This speed that Mr. Rosovich keeps hollering about and the wind. Suppose there isn’t enough wind.”

“You just said there’d be a blow, Petronius.”

The admiral glared at him. The rest of the bridge crew went rigid, staring straight ahead.

“Then see to that damn leaking smokestack. You came along for some purpose or other, make yourself useful.” Both of them, taking his comment as a dismissal, backed out of the bridge and went down the ladder.

“If I wasn’t interested in seeing what the hell happened to you, Rosovich, I’d get off this boat at the next town,” Theodor announced, shaking his head.

“He’s just shaken up, that’s all.”

“Shaken up?”

“He just found out all his old friends are going down to death or glory, and he isn’t with them.”

“Death or glory? You think that’s what war is?” With a sigh Theodor walked away.

The attack came the hour before sunset, catching Abe by surprise. The first wave swarmed up out of the ravine where they had snatched the water a day and a half ago, a position that the Bantag had occupied heavily the following night. Six men had ventured down there last night, but their heads had been found at dawn, carefully placed in front of the redoubt on the west slope.

In spite of the outrage the sight had triggered, Togo was impressed by the gesture. Usually the Bantag ate the brains of fallen cattle in order to kill their spirits. The return of the heads was meant as a sign of respect to a courageous foe.

The mounted charge came forward at a gallop. Abe had posted himself by the unit’s best marksman along the north edge of the butte, trying to spot a shot for him. Earlier in the day they had seen the standard of a leader of a thousand in a ravine to the north. Twice the sniper had taken a shot at him and missed. He was just lining it for the third time, a long gamble at six hundred yards, when the cry went up that an attack was under way.

Abe, crouching low, ran to the west side of the butte and looked down. The charge was already halfway across the six hundred yards of open ground. In a remarkable display of horsemanship, the riders were hanging over the sides of their saddles, keeping the body of their mount between them and any incoming rounds.

He had less than twenty men watching the west side. Turning, he screamed for half the men on the east side to come over.

As the charge thundered in, the troopers waited for the range to close. Abe could see that the redoubt at the base of the butte would be overwhelmed. He stood up and leaned over, cupping his hands. “Sergeant Voinov! Get out!”

The sergeant didn’t need to be told. He already had his detachment of ten men up. The men let loose a single volley, which dropped several riders, turned, and started up the steep slope, while above them their comrades opened with covering fire.

The charge pressed in, riders swinging up into their saddles for the last fifty yards. More than half of them were armed with bows, and a deadly volley slashed out, catching two of Voinov’s men. Both of them collapsed, rolling back down the side of the butte.

The rest of the men dodged from rock to rock, firing as they went, several running out of ammunition. Another man was hit, and when a comrade turned to pull him back up, he too was hit, in the chest. Both of them fell, sliding down to the Bantags, who were dismounting and swarming into the redoubt. Screaming, the men disappeared under a swarm of Bantags with drawn scimitars.

Troopers on the rim of the butte, cursing madly, fired straight down into the seething mass until the attackers finally withdrew, scrambling over the far wall of the redoubt and dropping down behind it.

“More on the north side!”

“Keep these bastards pinned down,” Abe cried, and he sprinted back over to the other side.

A second wave of riders was surging up out of another ravine, riding in the same hidden manner as the first group. The northern slope of the butte was far too steep for a mounted assault, and he instantly knew where they were heading. Running to the east side, he scrambled over the edge and looked down to where the gatling was positioned on a rocky outcrop twenty feet above the plains. The gun had run out of ammunition the morning of the third day.

The outcrop, however, was their only other way off the butte, and a rock wall had been built up around it with twenty men holding the tiny fort.

He looked back to the north. The first of the riders was still a quarter mile off but coming on fast. He knew the lieutenant down there would use what ammunition he had left trying to hold it, and he sensed that the Bantag knew it as well.

“Lieutenant Hamilcar! Get out!”

“Lieutenant Keane, we can hold it!”

“Get out, Lieutenant, get out!”

Hamilcar hesitated for a few precious seconds, then turned, shouting to his men to move. Picking up a rock lying atop the empty ammunition limber, Hamilcar smashed it down on the breech of the gatling and then hammered the barrels several times for good measure. Throwing the rock over the wall of the redoubt, he followed the last of his men up the slope. Covering fire snapped from the northern rim, then rippled around to the east as the charge swept around the base of the butte. One of Hamilcar’s men caught an arrow in the leg before reaching the summit, but he did not stop. Gasping, the men piled over the edge. The sergeant major, by Keane’s side, helped to pull them over. Everyone cursed and ducked as bullets nicked the air, and arrows, aimed nearly straight up by the mounted archers, came clattering down around them.

Hamilcar, his skin pale and dry, was the last one in. “We could have held it, Keane.”

“And used the last of our ammunition doing it. Then they overrun us.”

“Damn it, Keane,” Hamilcar wheezed. “So now what? We can’t get off this Baal-cursed rock with them holding both ways out. Now what?”

Even as he spoke the last words Hamilcar’s eyes seemed to go unfocused and then rolled up. He silently collapsed.

“Get him under some shade,” Keane said, looking at two of Hamilcar’s men. They nodded and wearily carried him over to the hospital shelter.

He’d lost five men to heat stroke, and from the look of Hamilcar he feared he’d lose him as well. From down below he could hear taunting shouts, occasional arrows soaring up and then clattering onto the hard ground.