David Weber - Empire from the Ashes

"Drive 'em!" Folmak shrieked. " Drive 'em! " and First Brigade drove them. The Malagoran yell and the howl of their pipes carried them onward, and once they'd closed, they were more than a match for any pikemen.

Bayonets stabbed, men screamed and cursed and died, and mud-caked boots trod them into the mire. Folmak's men stormed forward with a determination that had to be killed to be stopped, and the Guardsmen—shaken, confused, stunned by the impossibility of what was happening—were no match for them.

The Eighteenth broke. Those of its men who tried to stand paid for their discipline, for they couldn't break free, couldn't get far enough away to use their longer weapons effectively, and First Brigade swarmed them under like seldahks. Six minutes after that first volley had exploded in their faces, the Eighteenth Pikes were a shattered, fleeing wreck, and Folmak swung in on the flank of the Ninth.

Even now, he was outnumbered by better than two-to-one, and the melee with the Eighteenth had disordered his ranks. Worse, the Ninth was made of sterner stuff, and its commander had managed to change front while the Eighteenth was dying. His men were still off balance, but they howled their own war cries and lunged forward, slamming into Folmak's brigade like a hammer, and this time they hadn't been shaken by a pointblank volley.

Folmak's lead battalion had already been more than decimated. Now it reeled back, fighting stubbornly but driven by the longer, heavier weapons of its foes, and the officers of both sides lost control. It was one howling vortex, sucking in men and spitting out corpses, and then, suddenly, Sean's Sixth Brigade slammed into the Ninth from the other side.

It was too much, and the Guardsmen came apart. Unit organization disintegrated. Half the Ninth simply disappeared, killed or routed, and the other half found itself surrounded by twice its own number of Malagorans. They tried to fight their way out, then tried to form a defensive hedgehog, but it was useless. Despite the rain, scores of riflemen still managed to reload and fire into them, and even as they died, more Malagoran regiments rushed past. They weren't even slowing the enemy down, and their surviving officers ordered them to throw down their weapons to save as many of their men as they could.

High-Captain Marhn's face was iron as more and more reports of disaster came in. The heretics had swept over the entire bivouac area, then paused to reorganize and fanned out in half a dozen columns, each storming forward towards the rear of the entrenchments. A third of his men had already been broken, and the panicky wreckage of shattered formations boiled in confusion, hampering their fellows far more than their enemies. The last light was going, and the Host's entire encampment had disintegrated into a rain-soaked, mud-caked madness no man could control.

He had no idea how many men the heretics had. From the terrified reports, they might have had a million. Worse, the units they were hitting were his worst-armed, weakest ones, the men who'd been reformed out of the ruin of Yortown. They'd been placed in reserve because their officers were still trying to rebuild them into effective fighting forces, and the demon-worshipers were cutting through them like an ax, not a knife.

He clenched his jaw and turned his back, shutting out the confused reports while he tried to find an answer. But there was only one, and it might already be too late for it to work.

"Start pulling men out of the redoubts," he grated. Someone gasped, and he stabbed a finger at a map. "Form a new line here!" he snapped, jabbing a line across the map less than four thousand paces behind the earthworks.

"But, Sir—" someone else began.

" Do it! " Marhn snarled, and tried to pretend he didn't know that even if he succeeded, it could stave off disaster for no more than a few more hours.

"They're moving men from the trenches, Sean!" Sandy shouted over the com.

"Good—I think!" Even with Sandy's reports and his own implant link to her sensors, Sean had only the vaguest notion what was happening. This was nothing like Yortown. It was an insane explosion of violence, skidding like a ground car on ice. His men were moving towards their objectives in what looked like a carefully controlled maneuver, but it was nothing of the sort. No one could control it; it was all up to his junior officers and their men, and he could hardly believe how well they were carrying out their mission.

Even in the madness and confusion, he felt a deep, vaulting pride in his army— his army!—as his outnumbered men cut through their enemies. He was losing people—hundreds of them, probably more—and he knew how sick and empty he'd feel when he counted the dead, but he had no time for that now. A desperate counterattack by the broken remnants of several Guard pike units had taken his HQ group by surprise and smashed deep into it before a reserve battalion could deal with it, and only Sean's enhancement had kept him alive. His armor had turned two pikeheads, and his enhanced reactions had been enough to save his eye, but a dripping sword cut had opened his right cheek from chin to temple, and Tibold limped heavily from a gash in his left thigh.

Now he waved his battered aides to a halt, and the reserve battalion—whose commander had made himself Sean's chief bodyguard without orders—fanned out in a wary perimeter.

"How much movement?" he asked Sandy in English, speaking aloud and ignoring the looks his men gave him.

"A lot, all up and down the center of his lines."

"Tam?"

"I see it, Sean. We're moving now."

"Give 'em time to pull back! Don't let them catch you in the open!"

"Suck eggs! You just keep pushing 'em hard."

"Hard, the man says!" Sean rolled his eyes heavenward and turned to Tibold. "They're pulling men out of the trenches to stop us, and Tamman and Ithun are moving up to hit them in the rear."

"Then we have to push them even harder," Tibold said decisively.

"If we can!" Sean shook his head, then grabbed an aide. "Find Captain Folmak. If he's still alive, tell him to bear right. You!" he jabbed a finger at another messenger. "Find Fourth Brigade. It's over that way, to the right. Tell Captain Herth to curl in to the left to meet Folmak. I want both of them to hammer straight for their reserve artillery park."

The aides repeated their orders and ran off into the maelstrom, and Sean grimaced at Tibold.

"If this is a successful battle, God save me from an un successful one!"

"Sir!" Marhn looked up as a gasping, mud-spattered messenger lurched into his command post. "High-Captain! The heretics are coming from the west, as well!" The messenger swayed, and Marhn realized the young officer was wounded. "Captain Rukhan needs more men. Can't... can't hold without them, Sir!"

Marhn stared at the young man for one terrible, endless moment. Then his shoulders slumped, and his watching staff saw hope run out of his eyes like water.

"Sound parley," he said. Urthank stared at him, and Marhn snarled at him. "Sound parley, damn you!"

"But... but, Sir, the Circle! High Priest Vroxhan! We can't—"

" We aren't; I am!" Marhn spat. His hand bit into Urthank's biceps like a claw. "We've lost, Urthank. That attack from the rear blew the guts out of us, and now they've broken our front as well. How many more of our men have to die for a position we can't hold?"

"But if you surrender, the Circle will—" Urthank began in a quieter, more anxious voice, and Marhn shook his head again.

"I've served the Temple since I was a boy. If the Circle wants my life for saving the lives of my men, they can have it. Now, sound parley!"