Calziran pirates. The man did not recognize him. He, his companion, and the rest of the attackers moved slowly, as though part of some army of the dead.
Hecht had seen, smelled, and fought exactly that at al-Khazen. This did bear the stamp of the Night but was not the same.
Deeper analysis would have to wait.
Only a score of falcons still barked regularly. Twice in rapid succession, then a third time, Hecht heard weapons explode. Heard falcon crews scream. Caught whiffs of burnt flesh. And thought Krulik and Sneigon might not be totally clever after all.
The lessened rate of fire was more than matched by a lessened flow of attackers. The assault finally high- watered, then receded.
Titus Consent arrived, so far out of breath that he could do nothing but suck air for half a minute.
Once he had breath enough to dare, he puked. Done with that, he gasped, “They’re trying to come around our flanks, now, boss. They’re like the undead, or something. I can’t stop them all.”
A falcon exploded just twenty yards away. Iron shrapnel took the feather off Consent’s helmet. “God just busted me back to the ranks.”
“No. He just showed you He loves you enough to make that miss. Here we go again.”
Another cloud climbed the air over the enemy camp, way down at the bottom of the slope. “Think that’s Clej?”
“About time.”
Could not be Sedlakova, though. He and his horsemen were barely strong enough to mount a harassment. There was no evidence that they had done any harassing. Nor had they taken explosives with them.
A half minute later something changed.
Hecht watched it come, a wave racing its way through those Patriarchals he could see. He felt it himself but the impact was slight and without personal meaning.
It meant everything to the attackers.
The assault collapsed instantly.
Serenity’s troops stood around stupidly gathering their thoughts. But the falcons continued to talk.
Serenity’s men ran.
Hecht told Consent, “Get back to your men. See if this helped.”
“Right.” Titus looked abidingly suspicious, like he thought Hecht had orchestrated everything by sheer wishful thinking.
The world grew still. The smoke cleared away. Between long periods of restful inactivity the surviving Righteous positioned their surviving falcons to greet another assault. Damaged and suspicious weapons left the line.
Time passed. No attack came. The enemy seemed interested in nothing but recovering his casualties. Hecht did not interfere. His officers began to feel comfortable enough to come report. They found their commander overwhelmed by his success.
So far.
He was sure another wave would come. He concealed his confidence that it would be successful.
The reports were good. And they were bad.
The good news was that friendly casualties were implausibly light. Initially, Hecht heard about forty-three killed and wounded, the majority victims of exploding falcons. According to Rhuk and Prosek, those casualties could not be laid at the feet of Krulik and Sneigon. Falcons exploded when panicky crews got into too much of a hurry. They failed to properly clear a weapon’s bore of sparks before trying to reload. Or they shoved in multiple loads before remembering to apply the match. Or they measured their firepowder wrong. Or they decided to double charge. All of which happened more often as men grew tired and the acid of fear gnawed at reason.
“Falls into the realm of lessons learned, Kait. Drago. Work on it when we have time. Measure the powder ahead of time. Come up with a work song with a rhythm that reminds them to follow the proper steps in proper order. Something like that. Oh. And find a way to protect their hearing. I like to went deaf and I wasn’t on top of a falcon.”
Both men eyed him like they were having trouble believing what he had said. “Boss, we’ve been doing that for two years.”
“Oh. So. Maybe I ought to pay closer attention…”
Shouts from several directions declaimed, “Here they come again!”
In an instant Hecht was alone. Men scurried in every direction. Then he was not alone. A funny-looking little man in brown was there beside him.
“What do you think of that, Piper?”
“Looks like a false alarm.”
“Not that.”
“Then what do I think of what?”
“You were having big-ass problems with enemy soldiers who didn’t see any reason not to trudge on into the teeth of your marvelous killing machines. Right? Out there? Five deep. They just kept coming, right?”
“Yes. But then they all ran away.”
“So say thank you, honored ancestor.”
“For?”
“I cribbed an idea from your sister. I took a keg of firepowder and planted it where it was likely to do some good when it went boom.”
“Say what?”
“Took me two tries but I got the Collegium asshole responsible for the sorcery. Name was Portant?. Principat? Catio Portant?.”
“I don’t know the name. Looks like it wasn’t a false alarm.” Enemy troops were on the move, though not many. “A probe.”
“I never paid attention to him before, either. He was lowlife and low-key. From one of the cities up north, related to the Benedocto by marriage. So related to Bronte Doneto, obscurely.”
“My guess is, Serenity has a lot of friends we don’t know.”
“Muno knows them. You should let me take you down to see him.”
Hecht shuddered. “Of course.” A falcon bellowed greetings to Patriarchals who had come too close. “I’ll just pop out during a battle. No one will miss me.”
“See, this is why I never let myself get roped into big responsibilities. They eat you up. They keep you from doing what you want. Like this right here. Here come some of them dicks that need you to think for them. And I can’t disappear because they’ve already seen me.”
Rhuk and Prosek had returned. The enemy probe was not developing a threat. Hecht said, “Do keep your opinions to yourself while we talk.”
Februaren snorted. Shooting your mouth off was another thing you could not do when you had responsibilities.
Prosek seemed interested only in the man in brown. He stared, let Rhuk do the talking. Rhuk said, “Boss, we might consider pulling out after this stops.”
“Why?”
“We’re worn out and beat up and the weapons are getting fatigued.”
“Kait, I’m going to take a second to make sure I have my temper under control. All right. Go. We’ve had six weapons explode. I know that. I know why.”
“True. But our casualty estimates before were way off.”
“All right. Tell me.”
Rhuk went pale. “Sorry. Sir. We have twenty-three dead or wounded on my side.”
“Forty-two for me,” Prosek said. “Those people got into several of my positions before they high- watered.”
“To which we have to add casualties suffered by Vircondelet, Consent, and Sedlakova,” Hecht grumbled. “Unless you counted them already.”
