March To The Sea

'Sure they do,' Bes grunted in laughter. 'Almost as well as oversized basik.'

* * *

Knitz De'n grabbed both his horns and shook them back and forth in anger. A scout had just brought back word that Sindi had actually fallen—that the city was being looted to the ground and that all of their women and children had fallen into shit-sitter hands—and this tiny group had repulsed five charges by the finest ax wielders in the Valley of the Tam. It wasn't possible.

'One more time,' the subchief hissed. 'One more charge, and we can destroy them all.'

'No, we can't,' Sof Knu said flatly. 'These new arquebuses of theirs are impossible, and they fight like demons. Let us go west; surely some warriors must have escaped the fall of the city. We can find them—join with them, and harass these K'Vaernians. Harass them, and pull them down like kef do a turom. It's how we always face greater forces.'

'No!' Knitz De'n shouted. 'We'll kill them here and now! This is our land, taken by our arms, and no one will take it away!'

'Do as you wish,' Sof Knu said, 'but I'm leaving, and taking my warriors with me. I'm not insane.'

The ax entered between Knu's shoulder and neck, almost severing his right true-arm. He fell, and Knitz De'n dragged the ax free with a wrench and waved it in the air.

'Do any others dispute my right of command?' he snarled, looking around the group of sullen barbarians. 'One more charge! Into the face of death I fly! With the heart of an atul and the strength of the pagathar! Wesnaaar!'

* * *

'I don't believe it,' Despreaux said, and Roger looked up from bandaging Cord.

'This is a joke, right?' he said as he watched four Boman charge out of the brush. The unsupported quartet was about as much threat to the combat veterans dug in to await it as a similar number of children.

'Either berserk, or doing it for honor,' Pri said. He gave the barbarians another look and grunted. 'Berserk.'

'Well? Is anyone going to shoot them, or are we just going to let them kill us all?' Despreaux asked tartly.

Four bead pistol shots cracked out before a single rifle could speak, and the Boman flew backwards in explosions of gore.

'What?' Roger said, holstering the pistol and returning to his asi's bandage. 'Like that?'

'Yeah,' Despreaux said quietly into the sudden silence. 'Like that.'

'You know,' the prince said, never looking up from the bandage, 'one of these days, I'm going to be in a fight where I don't kill anything.'

'That'll be the day,' the sergeant replied sadly.

* * *

'You know, this could turn out to be a nice day after all,' Krindi Fain said as regular volleys started hammering to the east.

Despite the lack of support, the former sergeant had sent snipers forward to peck at the Boman line. The response had been violent, but uncoordinated, with nearly three hundred Boman chasing the snipers into the woods . . . where the survivors of his hundred-man company had finally ambushed them at the edge of a thicket. The company's fire had piled up most of the barbarians for very little loss, which had been one of the first things to go right all day. But nice as that had been, the sudden, massive firing crashing out to the east now was the most blessed sound he'd ever heard.

'Our job's done,' he said. 'Let's go find the good guys. And for the God's sake, keep an eye out! The Boman are going to be swarming around the flanks, and we don't want to get shot by our own people, either!'

'Can we loot the ones we killed, Lieutenant?' one of the troopers asked.

'Not until after the battle,' he snapped. 'Now let's move out while the moving's good.'

'But we're gonna retreat,' the trooper protested. 'We won't be able to get nothin'.'

'You're gonna get my foot up your ass if you don't shut up,' Erkum Pol said. 'You heard the Lieutenant. Move it!'

'Time to leave, people,' the company commander said, pointing slightly to the south of the firing. 'About there should be good.'

* * *

'Right there!' Rastar shouted as the civan lurched to its feet. He spurred to the west, revolvers streaming smoke and flame. Half a dozen of his troopers rode with him, their massed fire tearing a hole in the Boman line, and then all of them dodged aside as the herd of stampeding civan thundered past them.

The loose civan, driven by Honal and a dozen more mounted troopers and maddened with fear from the firing and blood smell behind them, smashed into the already breached Boman line, throwing it even further into chaos. The regular volleys from the south, when most of the previous firing—light as it had been—had come from the southwest, had thrown the enemy totally off balance. Caught between two fires, the barbarians on the south side of the perimeter hadn't known which way to turn.

The barbarians on the other three sides had no such doubts. They charged forward when they saw the cavalry slipping out through the hole in the line, but only to run into regular, slamming volleys of aimed rifle fire. The three thousand cavalry in the pocket had been low on ammunition, and barely a tenth of them had been armed with rifles. The men of the five rifle battalions Bistem Kar had peeled off and assigned to Major Dnar Ni, who had replaced the recently deceased Colonel Rahln as CO of the Marton Regiment, suffered under no such handicap. There were two thousand of them, and they slammed volley after volley into the packed barbarians. The four-armed Mardukans could load, prime, and fire their weapons without even lowering them from the firing position, and their rate of fire was incredible by any human standard. The Boman were crowded so closely together a single bullet could kill or wound as many as three, or even four of them, and each rifleman was sending six aimed rounds per minute straight into them. Not even the famed Boman fighting frenzy could carry them forward into that vortex of destruction, and the warriors in front of the firing line were driven to ground.

The warriors to either side of the relief force riflemen spread wider, seeking to find and envelop their flanks, only to encounter assegai-armed spearmen and recoil afresh.

'Message to Colonel Des,' Kar said. 'He's to refuse his right flank and withdraw. Same message to Colonel Tarm, but he's to refuse his left.'

The K'Vaernian general looked up with a nod as Rastar reached his command group and reined in.

'Prince Rastar.'

'General Kar,' the prince said with a matching nod. 'Nice of you to show up.'

'Had a few problems with a subcommander,' the K'Vaernian admitted. 'They're solved. How many are we looking at?'

'Not the entire host, thank the gods.' The cavalry officer slid off his civan. 'I think Camsan figured out where we were headed sooner than we'd planned. Whatever happened, he scattered his own troops and the first ones to reach him through the woods here in an effort to keep us from getting back to Sindi, and that's all we've got to worry about right this minute. The rest are still back there, coming down from the north to join up. Only a few of them actually found us, I think, but that, unfortunately, seems to include Camsan himself, so the coordination's been fair. And all the rest of them are undoubtedly coming on from behind him.'

'As long as it's not the full hundred thousand already, we should be fine,' Kar said. 'We need to retreat smartly, though.'

'Oh, yes,' Honal agreed fervently, riding into the conference. 'I don't want to spend another night like that last one.'

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE