Heirs of Empire

* * *

“That’s it!” Tamman snapped to High-Captain Ithun. “They’re hitting the bridges now. Get the columns formed!”

“At once, Lord Tamman!”

Ithun dashed off, and Tamman’s enhanced eyes swept the entrenchments facing his position. There was no movement over there yet, but there would be soon. Now if only they’d pull enough off the parapets to give him an opening!

* * *

For the Yortown survivors, it was a hideous, recurring nightmare. They’d seen their formations smashed at Yortown, watched that wall of fire and smoke grinding down from the north behind the terrifying Malagoran yell, and known—not thought; known—they’d faced demons, but somehow they’d escaped. They’d fallen back, dug in, waited for the demon-worshipers to sweep over them, and as the weeks passed, they’d come, slowly, first to hope and finally to believe it wouldn’t happen after all. They’d stopped the heretics, held them, and at least their rear was secure if they were forced to retreat again.

But now their rear wasn’t secure. They’d spent days preparing bivouac areas for High-Captain Terrahk’s column, chattered in their relief, swapped lies and rumors about what would happen next, only to see the forces of Hell do it to them again. Some evil sorcery had transformed their reinforcements into rampaging demons that stormed into their positions in a solid, deadly mass of bristling bayonets and the terrible, shrieking war pipes of Malagor.

Surprise was total, High-Captain Ortak was nowhere to be found, and officers floundered in shock as the first, incredible intimations of disaster reached them. Folmak’s brigade slammed over the bridges and butchered its way across the closest encampment. Guardsmen looked up from routine camp tasks to see eighteen hundred screaming maniacs scythe into their position, and panic was a deadlier weapon than any bayonet. Cooks and drovers scattered, half-naked men erupted from tents and lean-tos and fled into the rain, officers shouted in vain for their men to rally, and Folmak’s riflemen swarmed forward like some dark, unstoppable tide.

Here and there a handful did rally around an officer or a noncom, but there were too few of them, and they were too stunned to be effective. The tiny knots of resistance vanished into the oncoming First Brigade’s bayonet-fanged maw, and Folmak slammed a full kilometer forward before his initial charge even slowed. Behind him, more men thundered across the Erastor, fanning out to secure the bridgehead, and behind them the weight of Sean’s entire corps swept forward in double time.

* * *

“They’re hitting us in the rear, I tell you! My God, there’re thousands of them!”

High-Captain Marhn stared at the gasping, half-coherent officer. Impossible! It was impossible! Poison-raw terror quivered deep inside, yet he’d been a soldier for over thirty Terran years. He didn’t know what had happened to High-Captain Ortak, and he couldn’t even begin to guess how the heretics could be behind Erastor in strength or what had happened to High-Captain Terrahk, but he knew what would happen if this attack wasn’t crushed.

“They’ve already got the bridges!” The officer was still babbling his terrified message. “We’re trapped, Sir! They’re going to—”

“They’re going to die, Captain!” Marhn barked so sharply the officer’s mouth snapped shut in pure reflex. “We’ve got eighty thousand men in this position, so stop howling like an old woman and use them, curse you!”

“But—”

Marhn whirled away with a snarl of disgust just as Captain Urthank, his own second-in-command charged up, still buckling his armor.

“What—?” Urthank started, but Marhn cut him off with a savage wave.

“Somehow the demon-worshipers got ’round behind us. They’ve taken the bridges, and they’re advancing fast.” Urthank paled, and Marhn shook his head. “Get back there. Send in the Ninth and Eighteenth Pikes. You won’t be able to hold, but slow them up enough to buy me some time!”

“Yes, Sir!” Urthank saluted and disappeared, and Marhn began bellowing orders to a flock of messengers.

* * *

The Ninth Pikes thudded through the mud towards the clamor in their rear, and their eyes were wild. There’d been no time for their officers to explain fully, but the Ninth were veterans. They knew what would happen if the heretics weren’t stopped.

The Eighteenth turned up on their left, and whistles shrilled as their officers brought them to a slithering, panting halt. A forest of five-meter pikes snapped into fighting position, and eight thousand men settled into formation as the wailing Malagoran pipes swept down upon them.

Folmak reined in so violently his branahlk skidded on its haunches as the Guard phalanx materialized out of the rain. Lord Sean had warned him the surprise wouldn’t last, and he’d managed—somehow—to keep his men together as they swept across the Guard’s rear areas. The clutter of tents and wagons and lean-tos had made it hard, yet he’d kept his brigade in hand, and he felt a stab of thankfulness that he had.

But he was also well out in front, and half his third regiment had been left behind to hold the bridges. He had little more than fifteen hundred men, barely a sixth of the numbers suddenly drawn up across his front, and not a single pike among them.

That phalanx wouldn’t stop the regiments coming up behind him, but he couldn’t let them stop him, either. If the Guard realized how outnumbered its attackers were and won time to recover, it had more than enough power to crush Lord Sean’s entire force.

“First Battalion—action front!” he screamed, and whistles shrilled.

His men responded instantly. First Battalion of Second Regiment, his leading formation, deployed into firing line on the run, and the officer commanding the Guard pikes hesitated. All he knew was that his position was under attack, and the visibility was so bad he couldn’t begin to estimate Folmak’s numbers. Rather than charge forward in ignorance, he paused, trying to get some idea of what he was up against, and that hesitation gave First Battalion time to deploy in a two-deep firing line and the rest of Folmak’s men time to tighten their own formation behind them. It was still looser than it should have been, but Folmak sensed the firming resolution of his opponents. There was no time for further adjustment.

“Fire!” he bellowed.

Almost a third of the First’s rifles misfired, but there were three hundred of them. Two hundred-plus rifles blazed at less than a hundred meters’ range, and the Guardsmen recoiled in shock as, for the first time in Pardalian history, men with fixed bayonets poured fire into their opponents.

“At ’em, Malagorans!” Folmak howled. “Chaaaarge!”

* * *

The Guard formation wavered as the bullets slammed home. At such short range, a rifled joharn would penetrate five inches of solid wood, and a single shot could kill or maim two or even three men. The shock of receiving that fire was made even worse by the fact that it came from bayoneted weapons, and then, against every rule of warfare, musketeers actually charged pikemen!

The Guardsmen couldn’t believe it. Musketeers ran away from pikes—everyone knew that! But these musketeers were different. The column behind exploded through the firing line and hit the