Serenity’s captains trying to decide what to do next, unaware that each minute granted the Righteous would make their next surge that much more deadly.
Hecht considered the higher hills to either hand. Not terribly difficult ground if the enemy wanted to try going around.
Small groups of recently arrived Imperials were out there. He would be warned if Serenity’s captains did try the harder going.
The officers down there were no more eager than their men. Only after a full hour did they launch another mass charge, straight ahead.
This attack involved more men. So many they kept tripping over one another. Not to mention the dead and wounded.
Some nervous fool could not wait. He touched match to touchhole.
One premature discharge led to a score, then to all the rest, raggedly. Men went down like wheat blown over in a high wind.
The smoke closed in. That was worse this time. The air was almost still.
Hecht saw shapes moving through the smoke. Big shapes. Shapes not human. What were they? Illusions? He could not tell if there was sound associated with them. His hearing was gone again.
A lesson that should have been learned long since. Men around falcons needed to protect their ears.
He withdrew upslope a short distance, then crossed to a vantage he hoped would offer a better view beyond the smoke. He noticed that the men did have their ears protected. So it was just him.
The Empress followed. She had been jabbering for some time and he had not heard a word.
She and her lifeguards had protected their ears, too, with pieces of cloth.
The falcons designated to stay in action after the initial salvo did so, blindly-with little likelihood of failing to hit something. They had been laid according to patterns designed by Kait Rhuk and Drago Prosek. Their stone storm should sweep the meadow regularly, invisible or not.
A few men did stagger out of the smoke, glazed and watery of eye, driven by inertia.
Hecht did hear the Empress say, “I thought more of them would get through.”
He said, “I did, too. And they may still. There could be thousands in that smoke, still.” The big shapes were not there anymore.
There might be thousands in the smoke but only dozens emerged. Dully. Numbly. Ineffective except where they forced a falcon crew to stop work while they defended themselves.
That was what Hecht had feared from the moment he chose to make this stand. Each time a weapon fell out of the firing rotation more of Serenity’s men would get through. And that was the way it went, till many of the Righteous could not work their falcons. Though some never ceased firing and others came back quickly after handling a local threat.
The air began to move again. The smoke began to thin. That let falcon crews sight their weapons on the biggest clumps of men moving up.
The carnage was beyond anything Hecht imagined beforehand. It was beyond what Prosek and Rhuk had imagined, and those two always produced grim forecasts. The meadow had vanished under heaped bodies. Attackers had to clamber over and around the dead and dying, whose bodies continued to be torn by stone shot.
The breeze turned brisk enough to clear all but the freshest smoke. The attackers came on in tens, now, instead of hundreds.
Katrin demanded, “Why aren’t there more of them? They almost had us.”
“I don’t know, Your Grace.” Hecht was more interested in finding out what those shapes in the smoke had done. He saw nothing. “It might be Sedlakova’s fault.”
“Sedlakova?”
“The one-armed man. Running my cavalry.”
“I know who he is. What is he doing that might affect what happens here?”
“He’s supposed to be down there attacking their camp.”
“With fifty riders?”
Hecht spread his hands. “If he gets a chance to cause major misery.”
The Ninth Unknown might have done something distracting, too.
Hecht would not admit it but he had bet everything that his first salvo would panic the enemy.
That did not happen. They took incredible casualties and kept coming. And more were on their way.
The fighting fell off but continued. Prince Onofrio’s men, tasked with moving the idle falcons, did not do so with any alacrity. Some, with the weapons, got overrun.
“There’s something wrong, Commander of the Righteous.”
“They’re dogging it. They want to get caught. With my weapons. This isn’t going well, Your Grace. Leave before it starts again.”
The Empress snapped, “I don’t mean the Prince’s men. I mean Serenity’s. Look at them. Something’s been done to them. They wouldn’t keep coming, otherwise.”
She was right. They kept coming despite blasts that knocked them down twenty at a time. “Captain Ephrian. Might I borrow some men for messengers?” He had kept no one with him. He had foreseen no need to pull strings once the engagement began.
Ephrian glanced at Katrin. She offered a barely perceptible nod.
Hecht said, “Captain, I fear this won’t go as well next rush. Please move Her Highness to safety.” Looking Katrin in the eye. “She may not like it but she’ll be alive to punish me later.”
Ephrian flashed a nervous grin. Katrin flashed anger. Hecht gathered in the two men the captain volunteered. “I need you to run out to where the tripwire forces are hidden. One each way.”
“Those Imperials?”
“Correct. You know where they’re supposed to be. And what the hell is that?”
A roiling cloud of smoke rose over the distant enemy camp.
“Sir?”
“Right there! Oh. I see. So. Go. One to Consent, one to Vircondelet. Tell them I want them to swing in and hit these people from the sides. Downhill, out of falcon range, and don’t try to win the war in one skirmish. Just hit them, confuse them, panic them if possible, then get the hell out. This is just an experiment to test Her Grace’s hypothesis about them being englamoured. Plus, I want the distraction. Afterward, catch up with Captain Ephrian and the Empress.”
“Sir. Yes, sir.”
“Follow her for as long as it takes. All the way back to the coast if you have to. This could turn real bad.” He suspected a third and bigger wave was forming up out of sight. The dribble still coming was challenge enough.
“Yes, sir.” They split up and left. Katrin had gone with Captain Ephrian but was not happy about it.
Hecht wondered how Helspeth would have behaved in similar circumstances. He thought her sense of duty would have kept her away. She was not as self-indulgent or impulsive as Katrin.
The englamoured or drunken soldiers kept pushing closer despite inspired work by Rhuk and Prosek. Hecht guessed five thousand dead and dying men littered the meadow. More lay scattered right up to and past his own position. The nearby dead included half of Prince Onofrio’s treacherous levy.
The attackers treated Onofrio’s men as they did the Righteous. They would hear no claims of friendship. Hecht thought they might not hear at all.
Vircondelet and Consent launched the attacks Hecht had ordered, uncoordinated, like mosquitoes assaulting an elephant.
They hit the gathering mass Hecht had anticipated, doing much more damage than their numbers promised. The Patriarchals were slow to respond. Their focus was straight ahead.
Titus Consent hit first, from the north. He was in full flight when Rivademar Vircondelet struck from the south.
The spoiling raid delayed the third wave just when the fighting above the meadow had most of the Righteous engaged hand-to-hand.
Hecht personally fended off two attackers. One he thought he remembered from the fighting against the
