Heirs of Empire

* * *

Lord Rokas strained to pierce the smoke. The waves of fire washing along those redoubts was impossible. No one could fit that many guns into so small a space even if they had them, and the heretics couldn’t have that many!

But they did. Tongues of flame transfixed the pall, smashing tangles of bloody limbs through his advancing pikes. Vrikadan’s men were falling too quickly and too soon, and he turned to a signaler.

“Tell High-Captain Martas to tighten the interval. Then instruct High-Captain Sertal to advance.”

Signal flags snapped, and Rokas chewed his lip. He’d hoped Vrikadan would clear at least one ford, but that would take a special miracle against those guns. Yet his bleeding columns should cover Martas long enough for him to reach charge range of the river.

He raised his glass once more, cursing silently as his men entered grapeshot range and his estimate of Yortown’s cost rose.

* * *

Sandy MacMahan was white, and her brain screamed for her to arm her cutter’s weapons, but she couldn’t. She was sickened by how glibly she’d suggested taking part in this horror, yet stubborn rationality told her she’d been right—as Sean was right now. Imperial weapons could never be used if they couldn’t be used throughout, but logic and reason were cold, hateful companions as she watched the smoke and blood erupting below her.

* * *

High-Captain Vrikadan’s arlaks thundered. They were too distant to penetrate the earthen ramparts, but their crews heaved them further forwards with every shot, pounding away in a desperate effort to suppress the heretic guns.

They weren’t accomplishing much, Vrikadan knew, yet every little bit helped, and if they could dismount a few of those guns…

His northern column wavered, and Vrikadan charged through the smoke, bouncing off wounded men, beating at stragglers with the flat of his blade.

“Keep your ranks!” he bellowed. “Keep your ranks, damn you!”

A wild-eyed under-captain recognized him and wheeled on his own men, quelling their panic. Vrikadan shouldered up beside the younger man, waving his sword while the lead company of the stalled phalanx stared at him.

“With me, lads!” he screamed, and dashed forward like a man possessed.

* * *

Smoke blinded Tamman, and he switched his vision to thermal imaging. The image was blurry, and he could no longer see the range stakes, but a mass of men was almost to the east bank. He sent a runner forward.

* * *

Vrikadan’s lips drew back in a snarl as a ray of sunlight pierced the smoke and the river glistened before him. Grapeshot heaped his men in ugly, writhing tangles, but the weight of numbers behind them was an avalanche. They couldn’t stop—they couldn’t be stopped!—and the water beckoned.

And then, just as he reached the bank, the smoke lifted on a billow of flame. There were gun pits at the feet of the redoubts! Camouflaged pits filled not with arlaks but with chagors, light guns packed hub-to-hub and spewing fire.

He had only an instant to see it before a charge of grape ripped both legs off at the hip.

* * *

Sean swallowed again, cringing inwardly as he watched through Sandy’s scanners and saw the east bank of the Mortan writhe with screaming, broken bodies … and saw living men advancing through the horror.

God in Heaven, how could they do that? He knew the momentum of the men behind drove them forward, giving them no choice, but it was more than that, too. It was unreasoning, blood-mad insanity and it was courage, and there was no longer any difference between them.

They were going to reach the fords despite Tamman’s guns, and he hadn’t really believed they could.

* * *

The first Guardsmen splashed into the river. It ran scarlet as case shot flailed at them, but they came on. High-Captain Lornar saw Lord Tamman’s slender sword rise above his head and blew his whistle, and more whistles shrilled up and down the fighting step. Three thousand rifled joharns were leveled across the rampart, and Lord Tamman’s sword hissed down.

* * *

The leading pikemen were still three hundred paces away when a sheet of lead slashed through them like fiery sleet. Whole companies went down, and those following stared in horror at the writhing carpet of their companions and the isolated individuals who still stood, stunned by the density of the volley. They wavered, but High-Captain Martas’ men were on their heels, driving them forward. There was nowhere to go but into those flaming muzzles, and they lowered their pikes and charged.

* * *

The first three thousand musketeers reached for cartridges and stepped down from the fighting step, and three thousand more replaced them. Ramrods clinked and jerked, whistles screamed again, and a second stupendous volley smashed out. Sergeants shouted, bellowing to control the lethal ballet, and the musketeers exchanged places again. The first group’s reloaded joharns leveled, and lightning sheeted across the rampart once more.

* * *

Lord Rokas paled as the roar of massive volleys drowned even the artillery. With no way to know how quickly Tamman’s men could reload, those steady, crashing discharges could only mean the heretics had far more muskets than he’d believed possible.

He couldn’t see through the wall of smoke, but experience told him what had happened to Vrikadan—and that Martas was moving into the maelstrom, with High-Captain Sertal on his heels. Those fords were mincing machines, devouring his troops, yet they were also the only way into Yortown, and he banished all expression as he barked out orders to send even more of the Guard to their deaths.

High-Captain Martas’s men burst through the smoke. Bodies littered the riverbank, but the heretics’ guns and muskets had been too busy dealing with Vrikadan’s men to ravage Martas’s companies. Now they lunged for the river, for their only salvation lay in reaching and silencing those redoubts.