Hell's Foundations Quiver (24 page)

*   *   *

“Yes!
” Corporal Portyr shouted. He couldn't actually see down into Snow Dragon Square, even from his perch, but he could see well enough to know the second round had landed inside it. He looked down at the private at the foot of his tree. “Perfect. Tell the Lieutenant that was
perfect!
”

Eleven more M97 mortars duplicated Corporal Khulpepur's sight settings. Confirmations were called out. And then—

“
Fire!
” Lieutenant Azkhat barked.

*   *   *

Kynt Clareyk stood with his head cocked, listening to the mortars' deep-throated coughs. His eyes were half closed, his expression intent, but he wasn't simply listening to the mortars, whatever his officers might think. No, he was watching through the SNARCs as their bombs came hurtling down all across Esthyr's Abbey, and unlike Corporal Portyr, he
could
see down into the town's squares and alleys.

He'd personally selected Snow Dragon Square as the target for Azkhat's heavy support platoon. Officially, he'd chosen it because it was close to the center of town and an easily identifiable target. Both of those reasons were true, but he'd also chosen it because he knew where Preskyt was headquartered. Chaos and confusion in the enemy's ranks were two of the deadliest weapons in any soldier's arsenal, and if he could decapitate the entire garrison.…

A dozen thirty-three-pound projectiles scorched across the sky, wrapping Snow Dragon Square in explosions, blasting roofs off of houses, setting fires. They were filled only with gunpowder, not the antipersonnel rounds' flesh-shredding shrapnel charges, but they scourged the town with fire and blast, and the garrison's troops—totally surprised, with no warning there was an enemy within a hundred miles—reacted with all the confusion Clareyk could have asked for.

The explosions shattered roofs and walls, and men who'd been huddled around fireplaces, or mending worn equipment, or asleep in their blankets under heaps of straw stumbled to their feet as the arctic cold swept in on the heels of destruction. Not just in Snow Dragon Square, either. More mortars had been positioned all around the town's eastern and southern perimeters. Most were M95s, but their lighter bombs were perfectly adequate, and there were a great many more of them. They targeted the outermost houses and barns which had been turned into barracks, directed by the ASPs embedded with the scout snipers and the forward companies of the 8th Brigade. Roofs disintegrated, glass and shutters blew outward as bombs exploded inside houses, stored hay—more precious than gold in the heart of a North Haven winter—caught fire, and cries of shock and screams of pain were everywhere. Men staggered out of the sudden inferno into the bitter cold, many only half-clothed, and a third of the M95s
were
firing antipersonnel bombs fused for airburst that sent cyclones of shrapnel through their bleeding ranks.

Each support platoon had its predesignated targets, and the mortar crews worked their way outward toward the town's edges, methodically shattering its buildings. Despite the carnage, the garrison's officers and noncoms managed to restore some sort of discipline and order. Leather-lunged sergeants bellowed orders, sending men into their assigned positions in the entrenchments which had been hacked out of the icy ground. Other sergeants and officers—the ones with the quickest minds, the ones who realized that even if they survived the attack they'd still have to face the winter—sent some of their men back to fight fires and rescue whatever of winter clothing and supplies they could snatch from the flames.

On the eastern side, the infantry racing for the forward trenches—most from St. Manthyr's Division's 3rd Regiment—came suddenly under accurate, heavy rifle fire. Two of Major Dyasaiyl's scout sniper companies had infiltrated to within thirty yards of the trenches under cover of the streambed and the eye-blurring effect of their white snow smocks. They'd lain patiently in the snow for hours, waiting without a sound, until the instant the first mortars fired. Then they'd come to their feet behind a hailstorm of hand grenades, bayonets fixed on their whitewashed M96 rifles.

The entrenchments were more rudimentary than anything the ICA would have tolerated. First, because it had been so difficult to hack them out of the frozen ground, but second—and more damningly—because no one had really expected to
need
them before spring. There would be plenty of time to deepen the trenches, build the shallow parapets higher, before the heretics could possibly advance this far. More effort had been expended on the dugouts threaded along the trenches, but that was mainly because they also served as snugger, better-insulated barracks for the infantry companies assigned to man them. It certainly hadn't been because anyone anticipated an actual attack, and the startled sentries, minds numbed as much by routine as by cold and hunger, never had a chance. They were swept away in the first rush, before most of them even realized they were under attack, and the infantry platoons sheltering in those dugouts for warmth had only a very little more warning. They were just beginning to pour out of them when the scout snipers arrived among them in a blizzard of bullets and bayonets. Men who normally would have stood their ground in the face of the most furious assault gave way, succumbing to a panic born of surprise, not cowardice. Dozens fell as the scout snipers' fire swept over them, others went down, screaming, as bayonets drove into them, and even as they died, the dreadful rain of mortar bombs doubled and redoubled in fury behind them.

The defenders fell back. They more than “fell back”; they routed. Many threw away the weapons which might have hindered their flight. Others fled back into the dugouts from which they'd come, only to discover the horrific depth of their error when scout snipers tossed grenades in behind them and turned their protection into charnel houses. And while one platoon in each scout sniper company dealt with that problem, the other three spread out along the captured trenches. They found firing positions among the defenders' bodies, and most of them removed the outer gloves from their right hands, retaining only the knitted glove liners, to improve their ability to manipulate bolt handles and triggers.

Each man had seventy rounds—one ten-round magazine already locked into his rifle's magazine well and six additional charged magazines in the ammunition pouches affixed to his web gear—and all along the captured trench line, scout snipers unbuttoned their ammo pouches and made sure those extra magazines were ready to hand. Behind them, the four infantry companies of Major Sethry Ahdyms' 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry, slogged forward to reinforce them. And behind 2nd Battalion, more support squads dashed forward from the stream bank dragging their sled-mounted weapons up to the far side of the entrenchments, where the parapet concealed them from the defenders, to provide the close fire support which was so fundamental a part of Charisian tactics.

By the time the first counterattacking companies of Colonel Sahndyrs' 4th Regiment emerged from the smoke, dust, and flying snow of the bombardment, the scout snipers were ready. For the first time in Safeholdian history, magazine-fed, bolt-action rifles came into action on a field of battle, and the result was horrendous. The first savage volleys went home before the scout snipers' targets realized what was happening, while they were still moving forward in column formation under their officers' orders. They took a minute to grasp what was happening—to realize they were being killed by rifle bullets coming from in front of them rather than shrapnel and explosions from above—and they kept surging forward towards the illusory protection of the trenches they didn't know had been occupied by their enemies.

At least a tenth of them were killed or wounded before they understood what was truly happening. Worse, casualties were disproportionately concentrated among their noncoms and junior officers. Despite that, the majority responded by going prone and spreading out to make themselves poorer targets, not by simply turning around and pelting back the way they'd come in terrified retreat. Many of them did begin working their way back, crawling on their bellies towards the inner of the town's two lines of entrenchments, but 4th Regiment had been rearmed with St. Kylmahns. Two of its companies found cover in folds in the ground or behind sidewalks, planters, walls, trees—
anything
they could—and returned fire, trying desperately to cover their companions' retreat.

Single-shot breech-loading weapons were far from equal to the Charisians' M96s, but they were also far more effective than muzzleloaders would have been, and the scout snipers began taking casualties of their own, despite their protected positions. Still, they were taking many
fewer
casualties, even proportionately, and the mortars which had come up so close behind them began raining shrapnel on the defenders.

“Fall back!
Fall back!
”

No one would ever know who first shouted that command, but it was the right order to give. The decimated Church riflemen staggered toward the rear, moving in short dashes between inadequate bits of cover. They'd never been trained in the movement and fire tactics the ICA routinely employed, but sheer, dogged stubbornness prevented their retreat from turning into a rout, despite the confusion, chaos, and casualties. Men stopped to fire back again and again, effectively covering their fellows' movement even if no one had ever trained them to do so. The loss rate was unambiguously in the scout snipers' favor, but the differential was lower than it might have been. Almost half of 4th Regiment's two hundred riflemen made it back to the second trench line alive.

They flung themselves into position, looking around, realizing how many comrades they'd already lost, hearing the explosions and carnage ripping the town apart around them, and their eyes were wild. There were few cowards among them, but the certainty of eventual defeat had sunk its fangs deep into their bones, and they could see it in one another's faces.

“Reload!” a surviving lieutenant was shouting. “Keep your heads down, reload, and fix bayonets! This time it'll be
their
turn to come out in the open!”

The men of the Fourth obeyed; there was nothing else they could do.

Five minutes passed, then ten. Fifteen.

Cold gnawed into inadequately clothed bodies. The moans, whimpers, and sobs of the wounded faded quickly in the icy temperatures. The thunderous mortar bombardment went on—punctuated by a handful of much larger explosions when plunging bombs found the garrison's ammunition dumps—then tapered off. The crackling roar as flames consumed the shelter which spelled survival was like a dozen blast furnaces, and the shrieks of men trapped inside the inferno were the voices of souls condemned to Shan-wei's own hell.

Twenty minutes. Thirty … then another Charisian signal rocket soared into the heavens and, all the more terrible for the nerve-twisting wait, a hurricane of antipersonnel bombs shrieked down upon them.

Billowing smoke and blazing wreckage interfered with the Charisian ASPs vision, but they knew approximately where the second line of entrenchments had been dug, and each bomb was an airburst, fused to disperse its shrapnel over a circle fifty yards in diameter. The only overhead protection was in the dugouts spaced along the trenches at regular intervals, and many of the defenders retreated into them … which was exactly what their enemies had wanted.

The Imperial Charisian Army's signals capability was better than that of any other Safeholdian army, yet it remained almost entirely dependent upon visual signals. Whistles and bugles could be used to augment runners—and the new flare pistols just coming into service—at relatively short range. But audible signals were all too easily drowned out in the background roar of battle, and runners could too easily become lost. Although Charisian supporting fire could be coordinated and controlled with a sophistication no one else could match, signals were more likely to go astray than to reach their intended recipients once smoke began to obscure the battlefield. Initial fire missions could be preplanned, but “on call” fire was much more difficult and far more dangerous, given the high possibility of friendly fire incidents.

No one was better aware of that than Kynt Clareyk, who'd spent months developing the ICA's artillery doctrine. He'd stressed the need for concentration of fire, for exercising the tightest possible control yet recognizing that truly “tight” control would be impossible, and the artillerists had come up with several approaches to the problem. As much as possible, they released the mortars to specific rifle companies or even platoons, ready to put fire where it was requested by the units they were tasked to support but never firing in anyone else's support. That might mean they spent a lot of time standing idle, but it also decreased the chance of dropping rounds on friendly troops they hadn't known were there.

They'd also allowed for fire support at the battalion or regimental level, however, and devised standardized fire missions, like the one Major Sethry Ahdyms' 2nd Battalion had just called for. And for those sorts of missions, all of the units' mortars could be concentrated, with control temporarily reverting from the forward companies to higher authority. It could be difficult to get the word out when such a mission was required, and it relied more heavily on signal rockets than on runners, semaphores, and mirrors. It was also accepted that some of the support platoons who hadn't gotten the word would be unable to contribute to the mission, but it could be done.

Fire hammered down on the defenders, designed not simply to kill them but to pin them, drive them to earth—or down into the dugouts—in self-preservation. And as the mortars flailed them, the companies detailed to lead the Charisian assault moved out of the original trench line. They stayed low, close to the ground, easing forward while the supporting fire kept the defenders down.