Straits of Hell (36 page)

“Perhaps we should . . . delay the attack a short while longer, until just before dawn,” he said tentatively. “Heroic as they are, the Blood Drinkers have marched all day and must still get into position. They are tired, Your Holiness, as will be the gift, no doubt. Let them rest awhile; refresh themselves.” He paused, waiting for Don Hernan's displeasure, but the Blood Cardinal was silent and Nerino couldn't judge his expression in the darkness. “And honestly,” he continued, “I fear the difficulty of coordinating so many men in the darkness, not to mention managing the gift. I've never even seen that done. But given the greater part of
the night, I'm confident we can have all in readiness for the final great assault before the morning comes.”

“Yet another delay,” Don Hernan said broodingly, but he seemed to see the sense.

“A
final
delay, Your Holiness,” Nerino stressed, “just one more, before the great . . . cleansing battle you have dreamed of, and after tomorrow the heretic's fort will be yours—as will all that lies beyond.”

Don Hernan sighed. “Very well. A
final
delay.” His voice turned wistful. “I had so looked forward to the night attack. The fire of the great guns is beautiful in the night, is it not? A night battle on the scale we will launch would rival the fires of El Paso del Fuego. Surely that would draw the attention of God Himself!”

“We should begin the battle before dawn,” Nerino consoled, “and I suspect it will be sufficient to draw His notice in the night or day.”

A low-frequency gurgling moan rumbled in the darkness, echoed by others, and Nerino peered eastward. Massive shapes were moving down the Camino Chimborazo, emerging from the gloom. Some seemed as tall as the mighty trees flanking the road, while others, smaller, moved on either side.

“The gift!” Don Hernan crooned, spreading his arms as if to embrace the monstrous shapes. “The gift is here! Oh, look at them, General Nerino! Are they not magnificent?”

Nerino gulped. He was terrified. In the dark, he couldn't see what controlled the things, though he suspected it had something to do with the smaller shapes on either side. Those he recognized as armabueyes; giant armadillo-like beasts with long, spiked tails just like the army used to draw its heaviest guns. There were hundreds of the things, pacing the dozen or so larger monsters that had resolved themselves on the road, and despite his growing awe, he felt an instant of resentment considering how many great guns could've been brought to the battle if so many armabueyes had been made available earlier. He shook his head. The gift should certainly offset that. Surrounding the lumbering draft animals were as many as a thousand much smaller shapes, he realized. Men.

“Dragon monks,” Don Hernan proclaimed grandly, guessing the object of his attention. “A very exclusive order, as you might imagine.” He chuckled. “Did you know they will not speak a human tongue?
Though it is said they speak directly to the armabueyes.” He actually snorted. “I do not believe it. Speaking to animals is impossible, of course. But they do control them.” Ghanan Nerino frowned, troubled. He'd spoken to an “animal” himself, one named Captain Blas. So either that was not true, or she was not an animal. But he was not about to make that observation aloud to Don Hernan. “And the armabueyes control the gift by keeping tension on the chains you will soon see,” Don Hernan continued. “All you must do is tell the dragon monks where to go. Ah! The escort commander!”

Several Blood Drinkers scrambled up the rocks and went to their knees before Don Hernan, kissing his hand as he passed it before them. Now closer, Nerino could see the dark red facings on their yellow coats, where ordinary uniforms were faced in white. “My sons,” Don Hernan greeted them, as he did all the soldiers of his order, “stand and salute your general, His Excellency Ghanan Nerino!”

“General!” they chorused, covering their hearts with their right hands. “Your orders?” the one with a captain's braid asked harshly. Nerino tried to look stern. Though undeniably the most elite troops in the Holy Dominion, Blood Drinkers were also the most privileged and arrogant, and somewhat notorious for ignoring commands from regular officers outside their order whom they didn't respect. That shouldn't be a problem with Don Hernan present, but they knew Nerino had lost a battle to animals and heretics, after all.

“Captain, you will lead your charges down the road a quarter
legua
farther, where my officers will direct you to the staging area we have set aside. There you will find provisions for your men.” He paused, then added, “And the gift you bring from His Supreme Holiness. Rest yourselves, but the entire Army of God shall begin its general assault in the hour before dawn. The gift will follow, aiming at specific points at which you will be directed. The rest of the Blood Drinkers will exploit the breakthrough I expect of you. Is that understood?”

Don Hernan de Devina Dicha beamed, his happiness seeming to cast more light than the frail moon above.

//////
The Battle of the Crossroads
Fort Defiance
September 15, 1944

C
aptain Blas-Ma-Ar had fallen asleep, scrunched down on her haunches against the wall at the top of the earthwork. She'd been exhausted by the previous day and then the confused, nighttime redeployment that followed. Most of her 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines had found some rest, but she'd felt compelled to help her friends, the newly brevetted Captain “Finny” Staas-Fin and Lieutenant “Stumpy” Faal-Pel, shift their 8th Maa-ni-la as well. Then there'd been the even more confusing job getting the 3rd Saint Francis “Frontier” troops plugged into the line. They hadn't liked being split up and she didn't blame them. However, their long rifles wouldn't accommodate bayonets, and she didn't dare allow them to man even a company-size section of the wall, so she stuck them in by squads so they could at least “fight alongside their mates.” The 4th
Guayak was gone now, reassembling behind the high inner wall behind her position that protected the compound beyond. Much of this had been done under a galling bombardment that, while largely ineffective, had been a nerve-racking distraction. But the guns on both sides fell silent sometime after 0100, and without even realizing it, she'd slumped down and slept.

“Cap'n Blas,” came a soft voice, and a hand gently squeezed her shoulder.

“Yes, First Sergeant,” she said, her voice amazingly clear, though her mind was still fuzzy. Her eyes opened, but it made little difference. The overcast was heavier now and the moon had set, leaving the world beyond the works in utter darkness. She could see around her to a degree because the fires in the fort reflected light against the smoke and haze above.

“Sump'ins goin' on,” First Sergeant Spon-Ar-Aak “Spook” told her quietly. He nodded over the dirt wall. “Doms've put out all their fires an' our observation posts say they's a lotta noise out there, some pretty screwy noises too. But they figger the Doms is on the move.”

Blas rubbed her eyes and stared hard, then shook her head. “I'm sure they're right. First smart thing they've done too. Try to move closer to us in the dark. How long until daylight?”

“About a hour.”

“No order to stand to?”

“Just verbal. Word's passin' along to be ready for . . . loom-inaton.”

Blas realized then that all the Marines and colonial men around her were beginning to stir as sergeants moved down the line, waking them and telling them to be ready.

“Stinks here,” she observed absently. “I didn't notice before.”

“Them Guayakans,” Spook snorted. “Filthy buggers. Couldn't be bothered to run fifty tails to the latrine, an' crapped right here.” He shrugged philosophically. “Course, they been a little pressed these last few days, an' at least they buried their turds. Mostly.”

“How's ever'body holding up?”

“Swell,” Spook said, but his tone was less sure. “To say honest, a buncha' the fellas ain't happy about leavin' our flag over the Eighth, an' us fightin' under that Guayaak raag. What is it, anyway? Looks like one o' them flyin' squid critters First Fleet seen, standin' on the moon.”

Blas shrugged. “I don't know. Haven't even looked at it before. But orders are orders, and they kinda make sense.”

Blas grabbed the water bottle hanging from a strap over Spook's shoulder and took a long gulp before returning it. All the water bottles of the wounded and dead had been filled and spaced along the defensive line, but she couldn't see one right then, or even where she'd dropped her own when she fell asleep. “Got anything to eat?”

“Just crackers. Hot chow's on the way—if we get time,” he added ominously.

Blas thought about it. “Hand me a cracker, wilya?”

She heard a dull shriek, then another, as rockets soared into the sky trailing tails of sparks. A dozen more quickly followed, all popping high in the air and making bright orange glares that were usually hard to look at as they drifted downward. The clouds were quite low, she realized, and there was fog as well that dulled the eye-searing lights, but they cast sufficient illumination to reveal long, thick ranks of massed Dom infantry, less than five hundred tails out, rolling toward them as relentlessly as the surf.

“Shit!” Spook growled.

“Yeah,” Blas agreed.

Muskets popped and flashed out across the killing ground as the men and 'Cats in the forward OPs opened up, then scrambled back toward the fort.

Drums thundered and Imperial horns sounded their calls to “stand to,” but there was little point by then. Those not already alerted had seen the rockets or heard the mounting shouts of alarm.

“There's a lot of 'em this time,” Spook said without inflection.

“I think it's
all
of 'em this time,” Blas said, gazing as far to the left and right as she could see under the guttering flares—and then the Dom artillery opened fire. Either they hadn't been using all their guns before, or they'd brought up more, because it seemed like the entire distant tree line erupted in flaring strobes of yellow-red light. Cascades of sparks arced out, quickly followed by the choking smoke, and roundshot began impacting the earthworks, causing the very earth to shake. The Dom artillery still couldn't do much damage or inflict many casualties, but the clouds of earth and shattered wood from the entanglements were making things very hot.

More rockets
whooshed
into the sky, and there was Colonel Blair,
trotting his horse along behind the line, yelling for the protected guns to commence firing at the advancing infantry. “Ignore their damn guns. They can't hurt us!” he cried. “Captain Blas!” he said, seeing her there. “Have your riflemen hold fire until the enemy is in musket range! They think you're Guayakans, remember. Mustn't frighten them away!”

Blas looked at the advancing Doms, then back at Blair. “I don't think that much matters now, sur, an' they were close to musket range when we saw 'em!”

“Nevertheless. At least keep your rate of fire down a bit until they're committed. Don't want them to veer off, into the First of the Tenth for example. When they're in musket range, you may go to rapid fire.”

Blas felt her ears lie flat. “I'm tellin' you, Col-nol, they're daamn near in musket range
now
, so why don't you come up here and see for yourself if they're ‘committed'! Have you even looked? It's a gener-aal advance! Their ranks look deeper in front of us, sure, but there's nowhere for 'em to bloody veer
to
! And if we don't start killin' 'em right daamn now, as fast as we can, they gonna ‘veer' the hell all over us!”

To her surprise, Blair actually urged his horse to claw its way up the embankment onto the fighting step behind her. More flares popped just as he arrived at the top, lighting the grim expression on his face. “General Shinya was right,” he murmured. “Quite right, Captain,” he said louder. “My apologies. You may certainly commence firing at once.”

Blas nodded. “Battaalion!” she roared. “Load!”

The roughly four hundred 'Cat Marines under her command raised their weapons, pulled their hammers to half cock, flipped the hinged breech blocks up, and inserted fat cartridges into the chambers. The failing flares glinted dully on the brass. Spook stood beside Blas with his cherished BAR and handed her an Allin-Silva rifle and cartridge box. She already had a cutlass and pistol on her belt. She slung the box, taking one of the new cartridges—new to the Allied troops in the West at least—and looked at it.
Quite ingenious,
she thought.
That monstrous Dennis Silva has never been as silly as he pretends, and this conversion was his idea. The weapon is identical in appearance and function to those we've used so long, but now they can be loaded from behind and, being rifled, are much more accurate
. The only thing people had to get used to was how easy they were to load. She inserted the cartridge, latching the breechblock closed behind it.

The colonial “frontier” troops checked the priming on their massive flintlock rifles, already loaded, and leveled them. “Runner,” she called aside, with a quick glance at Blair. “Hurry over to the right and get our own flag back from the Eighth Maa-ni-laa, if you please.” A satisfied cheer followed that, and Blair didn't object. She turned back to the front. “Take aim!” Four hundred rifles went to shoulders and pointed toward the enemy. The Imperial Battalion to her left with their smoothbores would have to wait a little longer, but they were ready. On her right, the 8th Maa-ni-la might as well have been following her commands, so quickly did Captain Finny repeat them. Cannon started firing, their sputtering shells arcing out to explode among the enemy ranks, now little more than three hundred yards away, and mortars emplaced on the ramparts of the inner wall started thumping, sending bombs rising over their heads. She waited an instant longer for the smoke from the guns around her to clear, but it just hung there in the still, humid air. It didn't matter. The Doms were visible even through the smoke, and she opened her mouth. “Fire!”

It wasn't a perfect volley, but considering it was still dark and most who fired it had been asleep shortly before, she thought it was fine—particularly considering the effect. The front rank in front of hers and Finny's battalions staggered amid the delayed, resounding, stuttering
blop!
of heavy lead bullets slamming into men. Blas figured that maybe a quarter of the volley hit somebody, but, as usual, more were struck by slugs passing through men in front of them, or pieces of things the bullets shattered such as equipment or even bone. A roundshot hit nearby, throwing up a geyser of dirt and broken rocks. “Carry on, Captain Blas,” Blair said, coaxing his frightened horse back down the slope.

“You heard the col-nol, First Sergeant,” Blas said. “Pass the word to all company commanders: commence independent fire.”

“Ay, ay.”

Blas was a big believer in volleys, under certain circumstances, but except for the initial impact they produced, she preferred to let her Marines pick their targets and fire when they were ready instead of when someone else told them to. They got a lot more hits that way. And her Marines were good, certainly among the best marksmen in the Alliance even before they got the newer weapons. Almost immediately, the clatter of fire resumed from her position and became a continuous roar.
More rockets burst in the sky, illuminating the enemy, and the battle became a slaughter—but the Doms kept coming, and it grew increasingly clear that she'd been right: They
were
bringing everything they had this time, and they wouldn't stop. No matter how many men her people killed, heaping the ground behind the advancing ranks with bodies, the Doms would hit her line—probably the entire sector at once, she thought—with a remorseless, senseless abandon reminiscent of the Grik. Her Marines
were
slaughtering them, but she began to grow concerned. There were just so many! And the Dom guns didn't stop even when their shot started falling among their own men. It was madness—but it might just work. She began calculating how many Doms they could kill before they reached the top of the wall.

When an approximate answer formed in her mind, she grimly joined the firing line and began the mechanical process of firing, loading, and firing again as quickly as she could, the rifle slamming her shoulder and her bullets trailing vapor in the humid air before knocking another Dom to his knees or to the ground.

“Fix bayonets,” she called. “Don't stop firing all at once, but fix bayonets! They'll charge us soon, and you won't have a chance.” At one hundred tails, about where the thickest entanglements began, the Doms stopped to dress their lines even as men tumbled to the ground, dropped their weapons, and fell in grotesque heaps, screaming and clutching themselves.

“Here it comes!” someone shouted. The commands they heard were clear.

“Apunten! Fuego!”

Several thousand musket balls struck near the crest of the berm, sending dozens of 'Cats who hadn't ducked in time flailing backward down the slope. A pair of guns near Blas sprayed the massed enemy with canister and whole companies went down, but those in the second rank leveled their muskets and fired again, hitting more of her Marines. “Keep your stupid heads down, for the sake of the Heavens!” she roared. More canister whirred through the air, but so did the balls of the third Dom rank. That volley didn't catch as many of her people, but when she glanced over the crest, she saw two things. First, a gray-yellow light was staining the sky, silhouetting the great mountains to the east. Second, the enemy was now
advancing
between volleys, getting closer!
They're
learning,
she thought grimly. Before, they would've just stood and exchanged the unequal fire until they couldn't take it anymore, then fixed their bayonets and charged from where they were. For an instant, she contemplated the inevitable casualties to come but realized there'd be far more if the Doms reached the top of the wall. Nothing for it.

“Let 'em have it!” she roared. The staccato crackle immediately resumed, and continued even when the whirlwind of the fourth volley engulfed them. More of her Marines fell back, most struck in the head, and loose helmets rolled and clattered down the slope. The big rifles of the colonials, meant for giant game on the northern continent, boomed intermittently. Cannon, mostly six- and twelve-pounders, but mixed with a few Imperial eights and who-knew-what-size Dom guns captured at Guayak, fired all along the line. Blas suddenly realized the scope of this fight was beyond anything she'd ever seen, in firepower if not numbers. The noise was tremendous, and the thick smoke made her body try to reject the short, rapid breaths she took. Coughing, she pushed another shell in her rifle and cocked the hammer. She couldn't see! The sun was still far from cresting the mountains to the east, but the brightening day on the smoke and fog actually made visibility worse. She searched the smoke, found a yellow-coated shape, and squeezed the trigger. Even more white smoke jetted from her rifle, and she had no idea whether she hit her target or not. She didn't know how long she fought like that, loading and shooting at blurry shapes, but it felt like moments and hours at the same time. It couldn't have been the latter even though it was somewhat brighter when, through the maelstrom of roaring fire, drifting dust, grit, and flying lead, she heard a muffled command. The shout was picked up by other throats, indistinguishable in the streaming, dirty white haze.