“Sir,” O’Rourke went on. “They’re tired. We pulled them right out of the line for this. Another mile and at the double, and they won’t have much left.”
Robbing Peter to pay Paul and calling it a reserve,
Ken agreed, behind the mask of his face.
“If we don’t get there in time, there won’t be anything at all left,” he said. “That’s the choke point. Anywhere else and they can flank us and get by.”
“Sir,” O’Rourke said, grinning despite the crusted snow on his eyebrows. Individual hairs peeked out, like fire through cloud. “Since you put it that way—”
Hollard walked over to the head of the column; it wound back into the rocky hills, broken here and there by the higher shape of a gun team pulling cannon or Gatlings.
“All right,” he roared, and the front ten rows looked up. Hollard drew his sword; they were good for dramatic gestures, at least. “Up ahead, the Mitannians are dying to block this pass. Back there, the rest of the Corps is going to get buggered good and fair if the enemy get through. At the double—follow me!”
He turned with the standard-bearer beside him and strode forward. Behind him the whole force stumbled into a trot.
Whole force, he thought. Four hundred rifles and half a dozen heavy weapons. About all we’ve got left that isn’t hanging on by its teeth.
He recognized most of the sounds ahead; the crackle of rifles, the sound of the multibarrel quick-firers the Achaeans used because Walker couldn’t duplicate Gatlings yet, and the bark of cannon. Rifled three-and-a-half-inch jobs by the sound of it, standard enemy weapons. What he couldn’t hear anymore was the thump of mortars, or the
braaaaap
of the Gatlings. Damn, damn ...
Closer ... Dense snow was certainly the thing if you wanted to surprise somebody; it hid sounds as well as blinding sight.
“Deploy into line,” he said. “Heavy weapons forward as best they can—and be goddamned careful, I don’t want any friendly-fire accidents here.”
“Sir!”
O’Rourke gave orders; the thick column of marching Islanders dissolved, Marines running out to either side. Steel glinted bright gray through the soft dove-gray-white of the snow as bayonets rattled home, and multiple
click-clacks
sounded as the rifles were loaded. The heavy weapons deployed as well, as best they could, scattered among the infantry wherever the ground looked level enough for hooves and wheels to go forward. He had more confidence in the rocket launchers; this terrain was scattered with little gulleys and washes that would stop a cannon cold.
He drew a deep breath of air cold and damp and full of the scent of wet wool and unwashed soldier and gun oil and powder. Light flickered through the snow ahead ... muzzle flashes.
“Charge!”
he shouted, and ran forward.
Otto Verger came to full alertness when the sounds began to the northward, upriver. Very faint at first, a crackling of small arms. Then several huge soft
thuds,
like very large doors slamming shut. He turned his head, raised it slightly, strained his eyes to see through the murky dimness.
Was that a hint of fire, the red war-hawks of the
mirutha
beating their wings on a Tartessian foeman’s thatch? He could hear a whispered chant from his left; it raised his hackles a little, for Rueteklo was invoking Moon Woman—or Her sister of the Barrow, who he suspected was the same as the Blood Hag of Battles. You
didn’t
want to attract Her attention, and the Moon goddess was an unchancy thing ... though to be sure, she’d be on his side this time, and wasn’t that an odd happenstance? The noise from the north grew louder, and there was definitely a hint of light there . . .
“Oh, you sorry bastards are
fucked
the now,” he chuckled again. “The Midnight Mare will leave hoofprints on your grave-mounds—not that you’ll get graves, you’ll rot unresting, your ghosts wailing in the wind ...”
“Why don’t I report you for using something else but English on duty?” Rueteklo said, equally soft, a chuckle in her voice as well.
“Oh, shut up and get ready,” Verger said, switching to that language with a trace of resentment. She spoke it with less accent than he, for all his studying until he thought his head would crack.
“I wasn’t talking, I was cursing the foe,” he went on. It was a breach of regulations to talk anything but the Islander tongue when you were working—a fine of four days’ pay and four days’ KP. Most of the time he even thought in English, but it just wasn’t as
satisfying
for some things, like threatening or cursing. “I’ll want, mmmm, one more incendiary after the first. Then HE and frag.”
“You ask, I deliver.”
Gathering tension, silence save for an occasional buzz of insects—thank the Gods it wasn’t summer, or they’d be eaten alive. He could feel the spirits of his fathers and their fathers gathering around him, to witness his honor or his shame; his oath-brothers were here, too, and they would see.
His training whispered at the back of his mind, cooling him. It had a voice very much like Gunnery Sergeant Timothy Welder’s savage rasp:
Any dumb shit can get dead in a hurry! You’re not waving a fucking brass tomahawk now, horse-boy. We don’t go off half-cocked in the Corps. By the numbers, on the bounce...
The light around the gunports of the fort had faded as the night grew old. The briefings had warned that Tartessians sometimes slept in the afternoon and worked late, but even these had gone to bed by now. Then a bugle blew; not any notes he recognized, but from the voices and shouts the foemen had gotten the word about their camp upstream. Their burning, devastated, plundered camp. Now the whole force would be passing back this way, and they’d need him and his brothers of the war band to shield them against a blow that could kill—him and A Company, the finest unit in the Third Marines, who were the finest warriors in the Corps—nobody outside the Corps even counted for comparison’s sake, as these Tartessian swine would find out soon enough.
He forced the quivering eagerness out of his muscles and lay in the muck, eyes pinned to the gunport. Light flared brighter around it, then faded—they were getting ready to open the port, screens rigged behind it to preserve the gunner’s night sight and to stop stray sparks that might fall among ammunition.
“Just about—”
Whistles sounded in the swamp to his rear at the same instant as the rumbling squeal of iron and timber on stone. The gunports flipped up, and the long muzzles of the cannon came out.
“...
now!
”
Behind him poles had been fitted together and supporting stakes driven deep into the muck. Now strong hands pushed and pulled the poles upright and lashed them swiftly to the frames that would hold them so. Atop each was a magnesium flare ready to burn, and a hemisphere of focusing mirror right behind it. Cords pulled, primers went
pop,
and the light speared out hell-bright across the row of gunports in the low squat bulk of the fortress wall ahead of them, painting every detail in stark relief and blinding the gunners as if they stared into the naked sun. Eyes slitted, squinting at the ground for a second to let them adjust, Otto Verger laughed aloud.
Then he pushed himself up to his knees, wide-spraddled to keep him stable. “Clear!” he shouted. The crosshairs in the sight dropped over the dark square where the cannon’s muzzle showed. He squeezed the trigger, heard and felt the catch release and the striker drive down on the percussion cap. Flame spurted into the hollow core of the rocket’s propellant rod, and flame spurted to the rear out the venturi . . .
“Eat this!”
he screamed, under the
SSSSSRAAAAWACK!
For some things, English
was
satisfying.
A dozen rockets vomited out of the wrack of brush and felled timber at the edge of the swamp. Despite the damp, reeds caught and burned behind him. He ignored them, and the harsher stink of rocket smoke. His rocket lanced out, rose, descended in a graceful arc.
There!
It struck the comer of the gunport and exploded, fire belching back out into the night, paled by the light of the flares. And doubtless belching in, washing in a cataract of fire over the wedge-shaped gun position and the men serving the cannon, leaving them wailing and dancing in the agony of burning hair and flesh. Rushing back to spread chaos and terror in the gallery behind the guns . . .
“Feed me!”
he screamed, exultant.
“Up, up!”
“Clear!”
SSSSSRAAAAWACK!
The second rocket followed the first to his target. He ignored the others that were lancing through the air, some through the gunports, others slamming into the wall and blasting craters or dribbling fire down it. Several of the massive guns fired, but they were unaimed, mere bellows of agony like a stricken aurochs when it plunged into a deadfall or met a line of sharp spears. Behind him came a rapid
schoonk
...
schoonk
...
schoonk
as mortars lofted shells into the courtyards of the fortress, keeping heads down there, keeping the Tartessians away from their own high-angle weapons. It was an attack that could never have succeeded in daylight. or if the enemy had had any inkling of what was being prepared for them....
Another explosion, this one racking back around the barrel of the cannon. The ammunition stacked ready behind it gang-fired, throwing it forward to crash against the stone and iron of the embrasure and point harmlessly down.
Like a limp dick,
Verger thought triumphantly.
“Feed me!”
“Up!”
“Clear!”
One more cat-scream of victory from the rocket launcher, and he smashed at another gunport that might threaten his sworn brothers and chief.
“Frag round! Feed me!”
“Up!”
“Clear!”
Higher this time, at the crenellations atop the wall, where the enemy were getting riflemen into position. Their fire was wild, but it was a threat. He worked his way down it, smashing stone and men with fire and splinters of iron and granite. Body and mind and skill worked together, taking him out of himself as nothing had before, a sweetness of will and intent and action, knowing that he did better than his instructors could ever have dreamed.
“Feed me!”
“We’re dry—let’s get out of here, Otto. Otto, there’s the recall—let’s go.”
He stood, ignoring the waves of heat from the tube of the launcher scorching his hands where they rested on the grips. He would bear it with him, and someday he would put this rocket launcher in a niche and pour out sacrifice before it as the patron spirit of the kindred he would found! He howled, ignoring everything but the wave of exultation that ran through him at the burning, blasting destruction ahead. Wonderful, wonderful destruction. This was what it felt like to be a
God!
Sound burst from his lips, the old war yell:
“Ukasha-sa-sahau-hau-hau-hau!”
“You crazy ax-kisser, there’s the recall! They’ll have your guts for garters!”
That cut through the red mist before his eyes. He shuddered all over as he might in the embrace of a woman and turned, heading back toward the rubber boats.
Then he was lying on his side, spitting out swampwater. He shook his head—where had his helmet gone? He tried to stand and fell over with a grunt, clamping his teeth on the scream that tried to force its way out of his mouth. The blaze of pain was hard to locate at first; one hand went reflexively to his crotch, found everything in order, traveled down his right thigh and hesitated at the ripped wetness. Light faded as the flares burned out. He made himself look. No bone ends, but something grated with near-unendurable agony as he clamped hands around the wound; the bone must be broken. Blood was flowing, but not spurting or pumping; he fumbled out a field dressing, hissed again as the antiseptic powder struck the savaged flesh, then fastened it on and tied the ends. The effort of that had him panting again.
Verger shook his head again and looked around. A crater filling with water not far away, light mortar shell probably. Rueteklo had gotten up; she still had her helmet on, but there was blood on the side of her face, and her right arm hung limp.
“C’mon,” she muttered, pulling at him.
He climbed up her by the webbing, ignoring a small shriek as he jostled the limp arm. She dragged his arm across her shoulders with her good one, and they began to hobble forward. The way was muddy and dark, water rising around their calves, continually jostling his injured limb. Bullets went through the air around them with whickering cracks. His face was jammed next to Rueteklo’s, her teeth showing in a huge grin of effort, tears running down through the burned cork on her face. At last the reeds stopped them, and they toppled. He blacked out again for an instant then, came to lying on his back with her fingers trying to get the carrying strap of the rocket launcher out from under the epaulet strap of his jacket.
“No,” he grunted. “Comes along.
Ai!”
That as she turned on her back and wound her good hand in the back loop of his webbing harness, pushing them both along with her heels. Verger forced himself to push as well with his sound leg, hoping that they weren’t going around in circles as the marsh grew more liquid under his back, and his heel started to slip on the slick mud-coated surface of the crushed reeds.
“Your belt ... buckle’s cutting my ear,” he rasped after a moment. Something went overhead with a flat whack sound.
“Shut ...
unnnh
... up,” Rueteklo said, hitching him forward with her arm, digging in her heels and arching herself to push them further toward the river. “You’ve been ...
unnnh
... trying to get ...
unnnh
... between my legs ...
unnnh
... since Camp Grant . . .
unnnh
... now you’re there ...
unnnh
... and you’re still bitching.”
Verger felt a bubble of laughter grunt out through his throat. It wasn’t quite a warrior’s laughing scorn for death ... but it was close enough to be satisfying, despite the nausea that was twisting at his gut. Then he sensed the presence of someone else and grabbed for the bayonet on his belt; there were three dark figures—