David Weber - Hell Hath No Fury

"I understand what His Highness said, Sir," Wesiar chan Forcal protested. "I'm trying. But they just godsdamned disappeared and I can't get them ba-"

The Distance Viewer broke off. For an instant, his eyes were distant, almost confused looking. And then, abruptly, they snapped back into focus.

"I've got them again," he said flat-voiced. "I See the standard, too. Gods, those are big fucking horses!"

"Screw their size!" Lorvam Mesaion snapped. "Give me a target!"

"Yes, Sir."

Chan Forcal closed his eyes once more, concentrating on his Talent. Distance Viewers were critical to accurate indirect artillery fire, but chan Forcal had a special Talent, and Mesaion had never been gladder that the chief-armsman had wound up assigned to Fort Salby. Men with his Talent were more often snapped up by the Navy, because chan Forcal was a predictive Distance Viewer. His particular Talent included just a touch of Precognition. The ability to project a moving target's position ever so briefly in advance.

"Six thousand yards," chan Forcal said suddenly, sharply. "One-seven-three degrees. Two minutes."

"Six thousand yards!" Mesaion bellowed. "One-seven-three degrees! Move, godsdamn you!"

"Bugler!"

"Sir?"

"Blow 'At the Trot'!"

"Yes, Sir!"

Five Hundred Urlan heard the urgent, golden notes flaring from the bell-mouthed bugle, and the Seventh Zydors sprang ponderously into a trot. Their horses might be slower than unicorns, but despite their size, the massive beasts were still faster than the finest unaugmented thoroughbred ever foaled On the other hand, they still had over three miles to go.

"Bugler, blow 'Canter'!"

"Now!" chan Forcal shouted, and seven four-and-a-half-inch mortars coughed as one.

There was no warning.

One instant, the Seventh Zydor Heavy Dragoons were thundering forward, moving up from a trot to a hard canter in perfect order under the protection of their cloaking glamour. The next, thunderbolts came dropping out of the heavens without any warning at all.

Five Hundred Urlan swore savagely as the mortar bombs exploded. They clustered around his command standard with enough perverse accuracy to make a man actually believe in demons after all, and the sunbaked, stony earth was almost as hard as a paved street. The incoming mortar rounds scarcely dented it, and there was nothing to absorb the force of the explosions … or the deadly, whirling splinters those explosions threw out in all directions. Horses and men screamed as white-hot steel fragments drove into fragile flesh and bone. Half a dozen of the huge steeds went down, shrieking like tortured women as legs broke or whirling steel knives opened their bellies.

"Spread out! Skirmish order!" Urlan bellowed. Once again, the bugle's notes flared golden, and his men responded like the elite troopers they were. They opened their ranks, dispersing to deny their enemies a compact, concentrated target.

Urlan watched the evolution. The confines of the valley meant they couldn't open their ranks as widely as he would have preferred, but at least they were no longer riding knee-to-knee. He bared his teeth as more of those infernal explosions raked the Zydors, and then he swore again, hideously, as he realized the commander of fifty responsible for the glamour was down.

"There they are!" Lorash chan Braikal snapped.

He didn't know how the Arcanans had pulled it off. Still, if the bastards had dragons, why shouldn't they have cloaks of invisibility, as well?

The thought flickered through the back of his mind, but whatever it was and however it had worked, it obviously hadn't fooled Company-Captain Mesaion's Distance Viewer. The explosions sprouting amongst the oncoming cavalry looked like flame-cored toadstools, and he saw the huge horses going down, spilling their riders.

But not as many of them as I should see, something muttered in the back of his brain. Vothan, those things must be tough!

The howitzers were firing, as well, dropping their lighter shells in among the heavy mortar rounds, but they weren't going to stop that many pissed-off cavalrymen with less than a dozen tubes.

"Rifles!" he shouted as the range raced downward, and the platoon's Model 10s began to crack.

More of Urlan's men and horses went down as the Sharonian shoulder weapons-the "rifles"-opened fire from atop the wall. But at least the briefing from the recon crystal had been accurate. The tower that markedtheir objective was still on fire, and none of the machine guns and whatever-the-hells those other rapidfire weapons had been could bear on them from this angle. The rifle fire would be bad enough, but

–

"Fire!"

Sunlord Markan heard the young commander of horse's shout as the company of dismounted cavalry Markan had snatched away from the entrenched positions west of Fort Salby rounded the fort's flank.

Accuracy would have been too much to expect out of them after their hard run, and they'd lost at least ten or twelve men to stray, rampaging eagle-lions. But even unaimed fire from a hundred and twenty rifles had to get the other side's attention.

Of course, Markan thought distantly, getting heavy cavalry's attention might not be the very best thing dispersed infantry could do when it's outnumbered three or four to one . . in the open.

"Mother Jambakol!"

Five Hundred Urlan spat the filthy curse as still more rifles began to fire, this time from ground level.

His head whipped around, and his eyes narrowed as he saw the infantrymen. They were firing furiously, although with nowhere near the accuracy of the men on top of the wall.

For a moment, Urlan considered sending one of his dragoon companies to scatter them, but he quickly decided against it. They weren't hitting very many of his own men, and when the Zydors reached their objective, the fort itself would cover them against these new Sharonians' fire. They'd lose more men charging them than they would simply galloping straight into the waiting cover.

Chief-Armsman chan Braikal watched Arcanans dropping under his platoon's aimed fire. The mortar fire continued to rake their ranks, as well, but it wasn't going to be enough to keep them from reaching the wall, and they were going to run in under the mortars' effective arc of fire when they got a bit closer. His Marines weren't scoring as many hits as they should have been, either. Was that from excitement and too much adrenaline, he wondered? Or could it be that the bastards had some other spell protecting them?

Not something that could make them invisible, perhaps, but something that made them harder to hit?

He didn't know, and it didn't matter. What mattered was that at least some of them were going to make it to the base of the wall after all, and Prince Janaki and Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik were counting on chan Braikal to keep them out of Fort Salby.

"Chan Yaran!"

"Yes, Chief?" Petty-Armsman Rokal chan Yaran, whose promotion had come through less than two weeks before, replied.

"Get your grenade party ready!"

"Yes, Chief!"

Windlord Garsal had suddenly become the senior officer in the infantry and artillery positions protecting the western approaches to Fort Salby. It was not, he discovered, a position he particularly wanted.

Unfortunately, it was his.

Sunlord Markan's decision to personally lead the one company they'd retained as an immediate reserve struck Garsal as quixotic, at the very least. Nonetheless, he'd obeyed the sunlord's orders and his Flicker had sent out the orders that stripped an entire battalion out of its positions and sent them thudding across the barren, dusty earth in Markan's wake.

Which left Garsal to deal with the minor matter of what looked like at least two or three hundred dragons headed straight for him.

And they're the diversion, are they?