Django Wexler - The Thousand Names

The closest groups were only minutes away. The slope would slow them, but not enough. Winter cursed again. She hurried to the mass of men on the ridge, only to find it melting away before she got there. The soldiers, momentarily transfixed by the sight, had recovered their wits, and one by one they were making the same decision as d’Vries had. There were only a few dozen left when she arrived, Bobby and the other two corporals among them.

Winter grabbed Bobby’s shoulder. The boy looked up at her, eyes wide.

“Wh-wh-what-”

“Back down the hill,” Winter said. “But stop at the stream . Understand that? Get everyone you can to stop at the stream.”

“We have to get back to the column,” Bobby gabbled. “We’ll be killed-oh, saints and martyrs-”

“We’ll never make it,” Winter said. “Too far. If we run they’ll cut us down. We have to stand them off!”

She glanced up at the other two corporals for support. Graff looked dubious, but Folsom nodded grimly. He took off down the hill at a run, bellowing at the top of his lungs.

“The stream! Halt at the stream!”

“Help me,” Winter said to Graff, and started grabbing men by the arm and pulling them away from the crest. Mesmerized by the sight of their own deaths approaching at a gallop, at first they refused to move. Winter turned them about by brute force, shouted in their ears to form up at the stream, and pushed them so they stumbled down the slope. Graff followed her example. By the time the pair of them were the only ones remaining, the first of the Redeemer horsemen were already climbing the ridge.

Winter spun at a piercing, inhuman shriek. D’Vries had tried to get even more speed from his mount, in spite of the rocky, broken ground, and the gray had put a foot wrong. The animal went down and rolled, screaming its terror, and the lieutenant was thrown free. Both came to rest near the bottom of the slope. The horse tried to rise, but immediately went down again, one foreleg refusing to bear its weight. D’Vries, miraculously unhurt, took one look at it and continued his run on foot, splashing across the muddy stream in his enameled leather boots and starting up the opposite slope.

Folsom’s shouts were having some effect. The long-legged corporal had reached the bottom before most of the men, and he waved his musket in the air while he called on them to form. Some gathered around him, although no formation was evident, and those still coming down the slope headed for the crowd that was growing in the creek bed. Others, mostly those already past the stream, kept running after the lieutenant.

“Come on,” Winter said to Graff, and ran. Turning away from the horsemen was hard, and keeping herself from stumbling in the first dozen yards was harder. The small of her back itched, expecting a musket ball or a rider’s saber. When the ground leveled out enough that she could risk turning her head, she found she’d made better time than she’d thought. The first of the Redeemers were just cresting the rise, whooping and shouting at the sight of the Vordanai soldiers running for their lives. They wouldn’t be able to gallop down without the risk of ending up like d’Vries.

She spotted Folsom in the crowd of nervous men, some of whom looked ready to take off running again. Winter cupped her hands to shout as she ran.

“Square! Make them form square!”

She covered the rest of the distance at a dead sprint, Graff behind her, his stubby arms pumping. Folsom was already at work, shoving the uncomprehending men into line. He’d managed to force the knot of men into a hollow oval, but it was open at the back, where the men were spreading out along the creek bed. Winter pulled up short, gasping for breath.

“Fix-fix-” She coughed, mastered her lungs by sheer force of will, and managed, “Fix bayonets. Two ranks. Don’t shoot till they close. Graff!”

The wiry corporal was beside her, hands on his knees. “Yes?” he replied, coughing.

“Straighten them out. Hold fire. You understand?”

She caught his eye, and he nodded. Winter ran around the face of the oval, toward where the line dissolved into an amorphous mass. Bobby was at the edge, still shouting at the men who were climbing the opposite slope behind the lieutenant. Winter grabbed the boy’s hand.

“Listen. Bobby, listen to me!” Winter gestured up to where the riders were picking their way through the rocks, only minutes from contact. “We need a rear face to this formation. Otherwise they’ll just go around and take us from behind, you understand?” She became aware that the men nearby were listening, too, and raised her voice. “Form up! Double line! We have to guard their backs”-she waved at the men at the front of the square, now in a recognizable line-“and they’ll guard ours! Form up now !”

Bobby raised his voice as well, high and girlish with barely mastered fear. The men started to form, pushing and shoving, and on the inside of the square Folsom started taking them by the shoulders and jamming them into the right positions. As the formation came together, the nerves of the recruits seemed to steady. It was agony to look away from the oncoming horsemen, as the back face of the square was obliged to do, but under Winter’s prodding they stopped staring over their shoulders and concentrated on their weapons. Bayonets came out of their sheaths, and each man fixed the triangular steel blade to the lug just below his musket barrel. Folsom still bellowed from inside the square.

“Hold fire until my command! Any man who fires without my command is getting cracked over the head!”

It was strange to hear the big corporal speak so freely, as though danger had finally loosened his tongue. Graff was at work on the right face of the square, and Winter went to the left, but the men didn’t require much steadying. Some critical threshold had been passed, and the Seventh Company had gone from a fleeing mob back to an organized body of soldiery.

The sudden clap of a gunshot cut through the shouts of the men, and Winter saw a wisp of smoke rising from the ridge. The rider who’d fired lowered a stubby carbine and drew his sword. Other shots followed. Every bang and flash was accompanied by a collective swaying of the men in the square, each man individually attempting to dodge.

“Hold fire!” Folsom screamed. “Hold your fire, by Karis the Savior, or you’ll wish you had!”

The line of horsemen directly opposite the square slowed their descent, but those beyond it on either side swept forward with wild cries. Free of the rocky ridge, they spurred their horses to a gallop, starting up the smaller rill beyond. D’Vries had made it halfway to the top, with the men who’d fled straggling behind him, but the horsemen easily caught up to them. Some of the men turned to face their pursuers, and there was a ragged chorus of shots and a billow of smoke. Winter saw a couple of horses go down. Then the riders were on them, shouting and slashing with their sabers or jabbing with long spears. The last Winter saw of Lieutenant d’Vries was a brief glimpse of glittering gold and silver as four men closed in around him.

Other men were cut down as they ran, or spitted on the spears. Some tried to fight, blocking the sabers with the barrels of their muskets, but the clang of steel on steel invariably drew the attention of another horseman, who cut down the unfortunate soldier from behind.

Directly above, on the crest of the high ridge, a party of Redeemers was forming. They’d been quick to sweep around the sides of the square, giving it a wide berth to stay out of easy musket range, but none of them had yet challenged it directly. Here and there a carbine or even a pistol cracked, but at that distance the riders had little chance of hitting even the tight-packed ranks of the Vordanai formation. Winter could see one of the black-wrapped priests screaming at the top of his lungs, and the scattered horsemen gathered into larger groups. Many continued on, over the low ridge behind which the Vordanai main column waited.