David Drake - Conqueror

Raj nodded slowly. He turned and caught the eye of an artillery lieutenant who stood next to a tall wooden box. An iron crank extended from one side, and copper-cored wires ran from the top into a cellar trapdoor next to it. Raj raised a clenched fist and pumped it down twice. The young gunnery officer grinned and spun the crank on the side of the box. It went slowly at first, then gathered speed with a whine. The corporal beside him waited until he stepped back panting, then threw a scissor-switch on the box's other side. Fat blue sparks leapt from it, and from the clamps on top where the cables rested.

* * *

For a moment, rifleman Minatelli thought the wall under him was going to fall as the city's ramparts had. The noise was too loud for his ravaged ears to hear; instead it thudded in his chest and diaphragm. He flung up a hand against the wave of dust and grit that billowed toward his firing slit, and coughed at the thick brickdust stink of it as it billowed over him. The explosions ran from left to right across the D-shaped space before him, earth and rock gouting skyward as the massive gunpowder charges concealed in the cellars of the wrecked houses went off one after another. The Brigaderos on top of the charges simply disappeared — although for a moment he thought his squinting eyes caught a human form silhouetted against the sky.

Silence fell for a second afterwards, ringing with the painful sound that was inside his ears. His mouth gaped open at the massive craters that gaped across the open space, and at the thousands of figures that staggered or crawled or screamed and ran away from them. Then the big barrels of pitch and naphtha and coal-oil buried all around the perimeter went off as well, the small bursting charges beneath them spraying inflammable liquid over hundreds of square meters, vomiting the color of hell. Wood scattered through the rubble of destroyed buildings caught fire. Men burned too, running with their hair and uniforms ablaze. Men were running all over the killing zone, running to the rear.

They're running away! Minatelli thought exultantly. The lords of the Brigade were running away from him, the stonecutter's son.

He caught up his rifle and fired, again and again. Then, grinning, he turned to the villainous old sweat who'd been telling him what to do.

The veteran lay on his back, one leg crumpled under him. The bullet that killed him had punched through his breastbone and out through his spine; the body lay in a pool of blood turning sticky at the edges, and more ran out of the older man's mouth and nose. Dry eyeballs looked up at the iron-colored sky; his helmet had fallen off, and the cropped hair beneath was thin and more gray than black.

"But we won," he whispered to himself. His mouth filled with sick spit.

A hand clouted him on the back of his helmet. "Face front, soljer," the corporal snarled.

Minatelli started, as if waking from a deep sleep. "Yessir," he mumbled. His fingers trembled as they worked the lever of his weapon.

"Happens," the corporal went on. He bent and heaved the body closer to the wall, to clear space on the parapet, and leaned the dead man's fallen rifle beside the loophole. "I towt de ol' fassaro 'd live for'ver, but it happens."

"Yessir."

"I ain't no sir. An' watch watcha shootin', boy."

* * *

Rihardo Terraza grinned as he helped manhandle the gun forward. He could see through the firing slit ahead of them; the gun was mounted at the very edge of the new wall, where it met the intact section of the original city fortifications.

The Brigaderos were trying to fall back now, but they weren't doing it in the neat lines in which they attacked. They were all trying to get out at once — all of them who could still walk, and many of them were carrying or dragging wounded comrades with them. That meant a pile-up, as they scrambled over the jagged remains of the city wall. The ones closest were only about fifty meters away, when the muzzle of the gun showed through the letterbox hole in the inner wall. Some of them noticed it.

PAMMM. Firing case-shot. Everyone in the crew skipped out of the way as the gun caromed backward and came to a halt against rope braces.

"One for Pochita, you fastardos, " Rihardo shouted, leaping back to the wheel.

Four other guns fired down the line; the other battery at the opposite end of the breech in the city wall opened fire at the same moment. The crowds of Brigaderos trying to get out halted as the murderous crossfire slashed into them, while the massed rifles hammered at their backs.

Best bitch I ever trained, Rihardo thought, coughing in the sulfur stink of the gunsmoke. His eyes were stinging from it too.

PAMMM.

"One for Halvaro!"

* * *

Gerrin Staenbridge gave Bartin's shoulder a squeeze. They were waiting in the saddle, riding thigh-to-thigh.

The younger man flashed him a smile. Then the massive thudding detonations of the mines came; they could see the pillars of earth and smoke, distant across the intervening rooftops. The gates creaked, the ten-meter-high portals swinging open as men cranked the winches. This was the river gate, the furthest south and west in Old Residence you could get. The bulk of the anchoring redoubt loomed on their left, and beyond it the river wall. Behind them was one of the long radial avenues of the city, stretching in a twisting curve north and east to the great central plaza. It was packed solid with men and dogs, four battalions of cavalry and twenty guns.

The gates boomed against their rests. Gerrin snapped his arm forward and down. Trumpets blared, and the 5th Descott rocked into a gallop at his heels. The gate swept by and they were out in the open, heading west along the river road. Cold wind cuffed at his face, and the sound of thousands of paws striking the gravel road was an endless thudding scuff. The ragged-looking entrenchments of the Brigade siege batteries were model-tiny ahead and to the right. And directly to the right the plain was covered with men, marching or running or riding, a huge clot of them around the gaping wound in the city's wall where the guns had knocked it down. Almost to the railway gate and that was opening too. .

He clamped his legs around the barrel of his dog and swung to the bounding rhythm of the gallop; his saber beat an iron counterpoint to it, clanking against the stirrup-iron. Distance. . now. A touch of the rein to the neck and his dog wheeled right and came to a halt, with the bannerman by his side and a score of signallers and runners. The column behind him continued to snake its way out of the gate; the ground shook under their paws, the air sounded with the clank of their harness. Riding eight men deep, each battalion spaced at a hundred yards on either side of two batteries of guns. His head went back and forth.

Smooth, very smooth, he thought. Especially since there hadn't been time or space to drill for this in particular. They'd decided to keep each battalion stationary until the one in front was in full gallop, and that seemed to have worked. .

The time it took a dog to run a kilometer and a half passed.

"Now," he said.

Trumpets sang, and the great bar of men and dogs came to a halt — tail-end first, as the last battalion out of the gate stopped with their rear rank barely clear of the portals. Another demanding call, picked up and echoed by every commander's buglers. He turned in his saddle to see it; he was roughly in the middle of the long column, as it snaked and undulated over the uneven surface of the road. It moved and writhed, every man turning in place, with the commanders out in front like a regular fringe before a belt. Spaces opened up, and the whole unit was in platoon columns. A third signal, and they started forward at right angles to the road, front-on to the shapeless mass of the Brigaderos force.