arsed attention to detail. And the CUT.. .
His mind seemed to skip a beat. He blinked in confusion. What was I about to think? What-
“Done!” the sergeant called.
“Light the fuse. Back west, next bridge!”
The river turned a little south of west; the Main Street bridge was absurdly wide in the fashion of pre-Change construction, and the banks of the Umatilla were forested here.
“Sentries!” yelled Sir Harold, pointing.
Guelf looked up. Several men were standing on the wall, visible between the crenellations as light flashed off field glasses. One had a transverse crest of scarlet-dyed horsehair on his helmet.
Boise centurion, that one, he thought. The rest are Registered Refugee Regiment, no mistaking the red pants. The Pendleton Bossman, Carl Peters, must have ordered some of his household troops to stay back and protect his precious hide.
“Get going! They’re not going to stay asleep forever!”
Damn! he thought. It made sense to rush to the end of the job and work my way back, I thought; we have to take these down so they use the ones we want when they sally. At five hundred feet from the wall to us this one isn’t safe, that’s a long crossbow shot. Much less the next one, it’s barely half that. Should have taken the nearer ones out first before they got men here to harass the working parties. Crap! No help for it, got to get it done. They’ll be waiting for us at 10th; might even defend it.
“Chezzy! Grab thirty men and the wagon and go start on 10th Street! Be careful; be smart, but get it down. Take two of the mantlets!”
He turned back to the Main Street bridge, wishing he had Thierry’s training as a field engineer. Crossbows began to twang and thump from the wall; most of the bolts fell short, but he ordered spearmen forward to hold their shields up to protect the working parties. Just as they finished the work and were forming up, a scorpion was wrestled up onto the wall. Men looked up and yelled in alarm; they were well within range of the four-foot bolts and you couldn’t count on a siege mantlet stopping them.
Guelf laughed; it was even mostly genuine.
“They haven’t fastened that thing down, men!”
Recoil would buck it right off the wall if they tried to fire it without a solid anchor. Pendleton was short of artillery; the Boise army had probably brought in a lot, but there wouldn’t be pre-fitted bolts ready to secure them on the walls. There were men working around it, probably trying to improvise braces.
“Give them a salute, boys!”
He turned his back on the wall, pulled the knot on his trews’ waistband and mooned the useless scorpion; a knight’s plate armor left the seat bare to grip the saddle.
Dangerous, he thought. But it puts fresh heart in the men.
The Gervais contingent roared and laughed and followed suit, waggling and slapping their buttocks at the wall and shouting remarks that started with shoot this, you sheep-fuckers and went downhill from there. The thermite charges lit with a hissing dragon’s roar, and off-white smoke poured heavenward. Metal bubbled and ran, and concrete broke with a snapping crackle. Guelf yanked his trews up, pulled a new slip knot and pointed his sword west…
“Back! Let’s help Chezzy stick it to them again!”
He led the way down the old footpath, mantlets clanking and rattling beside them. Over the rattling sound of his men double-timing in pounding unison and the banging of the mantlet’s steel wheels came a sudden wheep, like an arrow hugely magnified.
“Hurry!” he roared.
The muffled impact came with a scream, high and pain-laden. Guelf pounded up onto 10th Street, into chaos. The men he’d sent were milling about, on the ground… he clenched his jaw against the welling of despair-Chezzy and Chezzy’s squire, Terry Reddings, a huge bolt transfixing his body. Terry was his wife’s younger brother and as like to Layella as a twin.
God! Thank you! He’s facedown. I couldn’t bear to see his dead face… her face-dead… She’s not dead, she’s not!
He laid about with the flat of his sword, banging on mail and shocking men back into sense.
“Get that mantlet set up, get us some cover!”
He turned to see Father Stanyon working on Chezzy.
“He’s alive? What’s happened to him?”
“Crossbow bolt in the scapular.” The doctor-priest jerked a thumb to the right. “They got a man over the wall and he sneaked up close enough to take a shot. Young Reddings is dead, and Sir Czarnecki isn’t. But the bolt hit a vein; luckily not an artery. I can’t budge it and we need it out to cauterize it. I have to get him back to the cars. Probably need to get him to Hermiston before we can do anything.”
Guelf nodded. “Brandon! Take three men for stretcher duty. Take Chezzy and… and… Terry, Terry’s body, back to the rail head. Evacuate all nonessential personnel, now. Charlmain! Get those drums unloaded all over the bridge, spill the oil, now!”
The flat tung of the scorpion twanged again and everybody threw themselves flat. This one was properly anchored, which meant they could reload it quickly. The bolt went overhead with a tooth-grating wheep and then a whunk of impact as it buried half its length in the soil. They worked, using the mantlets as best they could to shield themselves. Another bolt hit one, and half the shaft stood through it; a man stumbled back swearing as the sharp three-sided head stopped a handsbreadth from his face, then dropped flat with a yell as crossbowmen volleyed at his suddenly exposed form.
Beyond the walls a slowly growing brabble sounded; pounding feet, equipment clanging and thumping against other men or walls and stairs, shouts loud enough to be almost comprehensible. That meant hundreds of men at least, massing in the open space just inside the walls. When there were enough of them the gates would spring open.
“They’re getting ready to sortie,” he muttered to himself.
And there’s nothing much we can do but wait for it, and hope those Stavarov men get here the way Ruffin promised.
He looked up and was shocked to see the morning was gone and the sun was in the west. A squire handed him a couple of hardtack biscuits and a lump of rock-hard cheese strong enough to make you feel that it was biting you, and the sight brought on a sudden raw hunger that had nothing to do with taste and everything with fuel. He worried at both, and drank from a canteen of Umatilla water cut one-to-five with bad brandy to kill the bugs.
Then the banners of House Stavarov, a glitter of lance-points and footmen trotting behind; just far enough away to see clearly, as they reined in beside the flag of House Odell. He breathed out in relief-they might not be enough, but he certainly didn’t have enough without them.
“Pile it all up!” he shouted. “The tents, the food, tear down those corrugated-iron sheds. There, there, there! We’ll stop them in these ruined streets just north of here!”
The stink of blood, sweat, spoiling food, dust, oils and distillates was compounded by the filth three hundred men could void in a single day of hard and ceaseless work.
Go ahead and shit, pee, spit and foul the nest. We’ll either lie in our filth with the coming of dark, or leave them lying in it.
The last pedal cars were already pulling up on the rail line to the west, ready to take them out. Viscount Chenoweth, Thierry and Guelf met at the railhead; it was close to sundown.
“Are we ’bout ready?” Chenoweth asked.
“Yes.” Guelf answered shortly. Then, seeing anger begin to darken the other’s eyes, apologized. “Too long a day and too much sun, my lord. What’s the plan, now?”
To his relief, Chenoweth nodded an acceptance for the implied apology. “They’re going to launch an attack soon; it must have taken this long to get enough troops up from the main battle south of town. Thierry’s specialists will fire the Highway 84 bridge the moment they do, then double-time over to the Westgate Bridge and fire it with incendiary bolts from the prearranged positions. It’s thick with the HD40 now. We’ll all converge on the railcars.”
Constantine Stavarov’s face fell. “Well, fuck your mother, don’t I get to fight?”
“Yes, you do, Sir Constantine,” the Viscount said patiently. “You have to hit the head of their column when
