Battle Hymn (12 page)

"Look to your left there. They're keeping their intervals spaced wide enough not to present a target. If a hit is made, only one warrior is lost."

"It lacks power," Yugba replied.

"If you think it lacks power, then send your own umen in and let us see who takes the center of the city first."

Yugba looked at him cautiously.

"Go ahead and let's see."

Yugba nodded. Mounting his horse, he unsheathed his saber.

"The old ways are still the best for us," he snarled, and he galloped down the line to join his command.

Ha'ark surveyed the other umen commanders. "Any others?"

The rest stood silent. Ha'ark now faced his own circle of four, who stood casually to his left, watching the developing battle with feigned indifference.

Ha'ark smiled. "Any of you care to join the amusements?"

"Why bother?" Jamul, the radio operator from his old unit, replied, making it a point to let his boredom show. "The results will be the same. We trained our warriors; they know what to do."

Ha'ark smiled inwardly. Jamul's words rankled him, but he knew that was Jamul's intent. Show them a different attitude to war.

Ha'ark watched the deployment. The skirmishers were dismounting six hundred yards from the enemy wall, advancing now on foot. A second wave dismounted, advancing fifty strides behind the first, and two more waves spaced themselves at even intervals of fifty paces. Warriors in the front rank opened fire with their rifles—taking careful aim, choosing targets, firing deliberately, reloading their weapons as they advanced, pausing to fire, then advancing again.

A loud cry erupting from the right of the line claimed Ha'ark's attention. Now an entire umen was advancing, warriors riding stirrup to stirrup, the great narga horns sounding the attack, pennants marking the line, the triangle flag of Yugba fluttering above him. The charge thundered forward.

Ha'ark turned to his signaler. "Artillery to advance. Mortars open fire as well."

The signal clicked out along the line, and seconds later the deep, coughing rumble of the mortar batteries opened up. Ha'ark trained his field glasses on the line.

The mortar tubes had already been set and aimed. Crews stood ready, dropping rounds in, the shells lofting upward, slowly enough that they could be seen as flashes of metallic gray streaking heavenward. The weapons were so blasted simple, he could not understand why the Yankees had never thought of them. They were nothing more than iron pipes with a firing pin in the bottom, a small explosive charge in the tail of the round with a percussion cap, and then the shell mounted in the front with another cap to set it off when it hit.

Thirty artillery pieces started forward, the horses pulling them kicking up clods of dirt as they struggled to build up speed. The defenses in the city opened up in dead earnest. A lucky shot caught a caisson, and it disappeared in a thunderclap roar.

All eyes turned toward Ha'ark.

"To be expected," he said quietly, and then he nodded toward Yugba's advancing umen. "I suggest you look to our right for a moment."

The charge was thundering across the steppe, the high, ululating cries of the Bantag host echoing across the field. The cry was picked up by more than one of the umen commanders behind Ha'ark. Some of them drew their scimitars and waved them overhead.

White puffs of smoke erupted along the wall, and seconds later the shots plowed into the line. Horses tumbled down, riders were thrown and then crushed beneath the inexorable wall charging up behind them. The umen commanders were completely carried away by the sight, screaming curses, encouragements, urging the charge forward.

On the left the skirmish line's firepower was increasing. In places the lines were bunched up, and Ha'ark looked significantly at Jamul, who nodded that he was aware of the mistake.

"They still need training," Ha'ark said quietly. As if to add weight to his argument, a shell burst in the middle of a knot of warriors, knocking down more than a dozen of them. The line continued to surge forward. In some places the range was now less than two hundred yards. A scattering of casualties dotted the field, warriors from the rear ranks rushing forward to fill the gaps. The artillery was unlimbering behind them, gunners swinging their weapons around. He trained his field glasses on a crew and watched as they unscrewed the breech, then rammed a shell in, followed by a powder bag.

Primitive, Ha'ark thought, but we don't have the metallurgy skills yet for high-grade steel and brass shell casings except for some lightweight equipment. The gun commander sighted down the barrel, a crew member working the screw to lower the elevation. The commander stepped back and held his hand up as another crew member inserted the primer, then moved to one side.

The gun kicked back, disappearing in a cloud of smoke. Ha'ark swung his field glasses toward the wall and grunted in satisfaction at the explosion, only a few paces from the main gate.

He turned his attention back to the right. The umen, now within a hundred paces of the wall, came to a stop, the riders milling about as they sent volleys of arrows heavenward, darkening the sky. Arrows thundered into the city, some of them flame-tipped, and fires were beginning to erupt. But along the battlement wall the artillery continued the pounding delivering deadly loads of canister that tore bloody paths through the ranks.

A cry of alarm went up from the warriors behind him.

"Yugba's down!" one of them gasped.

Ha'ark trained his glasses on the confusion but could no longer see the triangular blood-red flag.

"Get a rescue team down there with a healer," Ha'ark commanded, and seconds later a horse-drawn cart bounced across the field.

His own artillery on the left was in full play, smothering the gate and walls to either side. Several guns mounted on the battlements were already out of action, one of them lying broken in a pile of rubble. A well-placed shot burst the gates wide open, and Ha'ark looked at Jamul, who grinned with delight.

"I thought the place of a umen commander was forward with his warriors," someone in the crowd behind Ha'ark sniffed.

Ha'ark turned in his chair. "No longer. Let the regiment commanders be the examples. A commander of ten thousand will now lead from the rear, observing the battle, controlling it. What good did Yugba do?"

"He died a Bantag," came the reply.

"He died and the wall in front of him still stands. That was a wasted death. Dying does not equal victory, and victory is what I seek."

Ha'ark turned away with a gesture of contempt and pointed toward the chaos on the right flank. Riders were galloping straight at the wall. Some of them gained the side of the battlement and then leapt on their saddles and attempted to vault up onto the walls. Crossfire from the bastions kept knocking them down. Others were at the eastern gate, axes flashing as they attempted to cut through. Most were able to make only one or two strokes before being swept away by blasts of canister or crushed by rocks thrown from above. Sections of the overhead roofing of logs, designed for protection from plunging flights of arrows, were on fire, but Chin defenders gamely hung on, continuing to fire their cannon and muskets and throwing anything that might crush a Bantag storming beneath them.

"Call them back," someone whispered behind Ha'ark. He turned and looked at the umen commanders.

"What, order a retreat from mere cattle?" he asked sarcastically.

"Call them back, my Qarth. This slaughter is senseless." It was Katu, of the yellow horse umen. Ha'ark could see that Katu fully understood now. As for the others, it was clear that some still did not see.

"In a moment."

Ha'ark faced the battle. On the western side, the entire wall for fifty paces to either side of the now shattered gate was nothing but smoking rubble. Not a single Chin could be seen standing, and the houses behind the wall were in flames. The artillery fire suddenly shifted, pouring in on the flanks of the breech.

The heavy skirmish line stood up and rushed forward in short bursts, warriors in the front stopping to fire, then kneeling to reload as those behind them dashed another dozen paces forward and did the same. The first warriors hit the rubble and scrambled it. Several of them dropped, but the wave continued forward and stormed into the city. From the left flank a column of mounted warriors also rushed forward at the gallop, racing to the shattered wall, dismounting and pouring in. Where the shattered gate had stood, half a hundred warriors with rifles slung on their backs labored to clear a path as the supporting artillery started for the city as well. Along the western crest line facing the city the mortars fell silent.

Ha'ark finally stood up and faced the Bantag umen commanders, ignoring the debacle that was still under way on the eastern wall.

"Any questions?"

"This was a senseless slaughter," one of them snarled bitterly.

"Yes, it was," Ha'ark replied quietly, "but necessary because of you."

"Because of me?"

"Yes. You. And all like you. For four long seasons I've been telling you that what you call cattle have mastered war and you have not."

"They changed everything, the soulless scum."

"And either you must change or they will plow all our bones into the earth. That is why we must make new weapons and learn how to use them. A third of our army, twenty umens, is now arrayed with guns and artillery, but still you did not understand. Thus this little game today.

"Jamul, what are the estimates on losses?" Ha'ark asked without turning his head.

"I'd say less than two hundred dead and wounded gaining the western gate, it would have been fewer if they hadn't bunched up. At least a thousand on the other flank, and they're just gaining the wall now."

Ha'ark scanned his commanders with an icy stare, challenging a response.

"But the way you did this?" one of them finally offered.

"You mean this exercise?" Ha'ark snapped. "You had to be shown."

"But to deliberately arm cattle, train them, then promise them their lives if they can hold until dark? You just killed and crippled a thousand of our best in this mad show of yours."

"Yugba did," Ha'ark replied calmly. "I did not order him to charge. He did it himself."

"You goaded him, my Qarth."

Ha'ark nodded. "As will our enemy when we face them. Learn that as well!"

Ha'ark pointed at the chaos on the eastern flank. "Oh, they would have taken the town eventually, but at what cost? What you saw there was exactly the mistake the Tugars and the Merki made. In their arrogance they could not accept the fact that the humans could outthink them."

There was an angry stirring from the assembled commanders.

"I know that it stings," Ha'ark said, his voice dropping. "After all, they are only cattle."

He smiled. "That is undoubtedly what our cousins said, first in their disdain and then in their shock as they lay dying. 'After all, they are only cattle.' We must purge that thought from our minds if we are to win. They are crafty, capable, and in many ways better than we are at this new way of war."

"My Quarth, you are asking us to believe that the world has been turned upon itself, that we now walk in the sky and the earth is above us."

Ha'ark nodded as Vakal, commander of the fourth black horse, spoke. He could sense that Vakal was speaking not in defiance but in confusion.

"We shall set the universe right again," Ha'ark replied calmly. "But your words are true. These humans have set the world, the universe, upon its head. It is our task to set it right again."

"This war will corrupt us," someone in the back of the group hissed. "Let us leave this place. Let us do as Tamuka of the Merki said he would do. We should slaughter all cattle on this world, riding eastward as we have since the beginning. Then when we return to this place in a generation, we can slaughter what is left."

"Madness," Ha'ark snarled. "Do you leave the fanged leopard at your back while you pursue the rabbit at your front? No! You first turn and slay the leopard. You cloak yourself in his pelt, and then, if you wish to lower yourself, you hunt the rabbit."

Ha'ark saw heads nodding reluctantly in agreement.

Damn primitives, he thought to himself. Four long years of this, trying to drum it into them, that they were on the brink of disaster, annihilation. Even though many had come to accept the guns, still they did not understand the fundamental change in tactics and, beyond that, the profound societal changes that went with it. The day of the mounted charge against a well-positioned enemy was dead. The horse was nothing more than a means of getting to the battlefield. The shock that he would soon deliver would strike even harder—the majority of the Horde would go to battle on foot. Keeping six hundred thousand warriors mounted was a logistical nightmare. With the rail line to the sea completed, and his plans for projecting power on the sea, there was no need for his warriors to ride. How that would hurt their pride!

The umen commanders stood silent and he scanned their eyes. Some still gazed upon him as the Redeemer, the one of prophecy sent to return them to their glory. But in the thousands of years on this world their vision of glory had changed. They would charge to it, horses galloping to other worlds. The thought of doing it on steam engines was beyond them. Some had come to waver, his growing net of spies telling him of dark whisperings that he was an impostor. It was time to play upon prophecy again. He nodded to the four companions who stood behind him.

"We came to you from another world as a fulfillment of prophecy. For has it not been chanted that in the time of darkness there will be five, and they will return the Horde unto its former greatness? That we shall stride between worlds and take into our hands all that is rightfully ours?"

He saw that the appeal to the ancient prophecies still worked as many nodded in agreement. The prophecy was remarkably convenient. It never ceased to amaze him how an ancient chant about five warriors who disappeared but would one day return was one of the key tools in his quest for empire. What fascinated him as well was that fragments of the legend existed in the ancient history of his own world, yet another proof that this was indeed the home from which the race had sprung.