Dewey Lambdin - The King

Choundas shoved the girl away from him and scrambled for his breeches and stockings. "From the east? And just how did they land, eh, Gabord? Get back to the ship and prepare to up-anchor. We'll have the 'biftecs' sailing into harbor with the sun behind them. I join you as soon as I stiffen our miserably blind allies. Go!"

He stood and donned his shirt, and gave the crawling girl a kick of frustration. "Goddamned useless, all of them! Putain!"

"Reg'ment!"

" 'Tal'ion!" came the chorus.

"Halt!"

Rather a lot of 'em, Sir Hugo thought, surveying his enemies. The village had come to a boil, and what seemed a brigade of pirates had emerged, swords, spears and antique muskets waving, each done up in gold, silk and batik-printed cotton as sleek and shiny as an army of poisonously colorful sea-snakes.

"Reg'ment will load!" he shouted, stepping back toward his color party. "Skirmishers, engage!"

The light companies broke off into skirmishing pairs, one man standing, and one kneeling. With a howl of rage, the Lanun Rovers lurched forward, thousands of them in an avenging mob. The flat crack of muskets sounded from the light companies as they opened fire. Once a man had discharged his piece, he would retreat a few paces behind his rear-rank man, who would cover him while he reloaded, and take a shot of his own. Back they came, giving ground slowly and raking the leading pirate ranks with ball, dropping a man here, a man there. The pirates checked, shying away from being the first man to die, while their leaders urged them on.

"Light companies, retire!" Sir Hugo howled. "Reg'ment! First rank, kneel!"

Emboldened by the seeming retreat of the skirmishers, the pirates found their courage again, and started walking forward. At first uneasily, then with greater boldness. Some began to trot, to save their lungs and strength for hand-to-hand combat later. Some braver souls broke into a run.

Sir Hugo stepped forward again, to ascertain that both light companies were safely out of the line of fire on the flanks.

Brown Bess was a hideously inaccurate weapon. Massed gunfire shoulder to shoulder settled the day, delivered at a man-killing sixty yards. To strike a man in the middle, one aimed high for the neck at that range, even so. With his regiments deployed in only two ranks Sir Hugo had to wait to let them come even closer.

"Cock your locks!" Sixty yards, and mechanical crickets sang.

"Present!" Fifty yards, and barrels were leveled with sighs.

Forty yards. "Fire!"

The long line of musketmen erupted in a wall of gunpowder and the crackling reports of priming pans and rammed charges sounding like burning twigs. Pirates screamed in surprise, and went down like wheat.

"Second rank… cock your locks! Present… fire!"

He could hear the rattle of ramrods just before the second rank pulled their triggers and the snapping and crackling rang up and down the line. More pirates howled, with pain this time, and he saw men driven backward, thrown off their feet and back into their mates by the sledgehammer blows of.75 caliber lead ball.

"Guns!" he yelled, turning to glare at Captain Addams. And the artillery went off, rippling from the center half-battery of six-pounders out to the flanks where the converted boat-guns barked and reared on their trails.

"Well, Goddamn!" Sir Hugo spat. He'd never seen the like, not in the last war certainly, not at Gibraltar for sure. The air was so moist with humidity that when the artillery discharged, those brutal barrels not only flung out a huge cloud of spent powder and sparks, they split the air with their loads, leaving a misty trail behind.

The best one could expect from any field gun loaded with canister and grape was about five hundred yards, and one usually saw the end result, but not the passage of shot. But this time, it was as if each barrel had flung out a giant's phantas-magorical fist of roiled air that went milky as the shock wave passed through it. Like a row of shotguns, the artillery cleaved great swathes from the enemy ranks. Densely packed as they were, they went down by platoons. Before each piece, there was a mown lane of dead and dying twenty yards across and three times that deep!

"Platoon fire!" Sir Hugo roared. Now for the grim business to continue in normal fashion, to create a continuous rolling volley of fire up and down the line. No one could fire faster and with more effect than an English-trained regiment.

The pipes had been skirling out something Sir Hugo had never heard before. Now, with no need to set a marching pace, they broke into civilian strathspeys and reels. "The Wind That Shook the Barley," "The Devil among the Tailors" and "The High Road to Linton." Hard-driving, frightening in their hurried pace, for all their gaiety, dance tunes turned to the Devil's business amid the rattling of musketry and the deeper-bellied slamming of the guns.

"They're breaking!" Major Gaunt shouted. "They're retiring!"

"Cease fire! Load! Fix bayonets!"

"Fix… bayonets!" the officers repeated eerily, and the sudden silence was broken by the slither of steel, steel that winked and glittered in the dawn.

"The 19th will advance!"

The pipers cut off their latest reel, extemporizing themselves back into a march as the coehorn mortars began to fire. Explosively fused round-shot lofted overhead to burst in mid-air above the wavering hordes of pirates, who had just begun to screw their courage back to the sticking post, and were ready to charge once more.

It was the guns that decided the matter. Slow to roll between the company ranks, the regiment had to stay to a half-step pace even with the pipes urging them on, so that they looked as if they minced forward, but with both ranks bearing musket-stocks held close to the hip, barrels and wicked bayonets inclined forward. And for bayonet work, the sepoys had to be closer together, shoulder to shoulder, reducing their front to a bare two hundred yards.

With an unintelligible shout, the native pirates came forward to meet them once more, sure they could sweep around both flanks and encircle them this time, and chop them to bits at last.

"Reg'ment… halt!" Sir Hugo screamed. "First rank, kneel! Cock your locks! We'll serve 'em another portion of the hottest curry they've ever tasted, by God!"

Chiswick pulled back the fire-locks of his two pistols, stuck his smallsword into the turf in front of him, and stood ready, with his nerves singing a gibbering song as that manic horde came on.

"By volley… first rank… fire!"

Twenty muskets discharged at sixty yards. Perhaps nine foe-men went down, trampled by their fellows in their rage to get at Sir Hugo's men.

'Too damned soon!" he cursed himself. "Second rank, present! Fire!" Another eight or nine pirates were hammered backward.

Too few once more! The artillery subadar looked at him, and he waved his arm vigorously. Both boat-guns bucked and reared, slashing the front of that implacable mob with grape and canister, and finally they checked their headlong rush, shying away for a second.

"Goddamnit!" Chiswick moaned. He had shot all his bolts, and there was nothing left. Although his immediate front was cleared, there were at least a hundred foe sweeping his right flank. He fired both his pistols, and took down one man, then cast them aside and drew his sword from the earth. "Bayonets! Charge!"

His troops went in at a rush, weapons fully extended, to be met with shields, spears and sword blades. At first, they carried all in front of them with bayonet and musket-butt. Chiswick carved a spearman's face open, reversed and ripped the belly from another to his left. Nandu gave a great scream as he was shouldered backward and stumbled under the point of a third. Chiswick hammered the edge of his blade across the foe's back; the man screamed like a rabbit with his spine cut in half, then twitched uncontrollably.