Carvalho felt for them, even as he was glad his guns were out of reach of bows and aimed fire from the defenders. He had brought the guns of the grand battery to well within three hundred yards, the range he could be confident his own battery could reliably damage earth-backed walls and even aim with some precision once the sun rose.
Carvalho focused, projecting outcomes with the dispassionate eye a lifetime of conflict had trained him to. He wouldn’t have delayed, but had to decide if this surprise merited a change to his report.
More of Aurangzeb’s men rushed forward, a seemingly unstoppable flood. Such was the pressure of their numbers the men nearest the dead and dying were shoved forward over their unlucky comrades whether they wished to advance or not.
A minute passed. Another. The men continued to rush headlong into the killing field at the base of the wall.
“Go!” Carvalho shouted, deciding the flares were insufficient cause to substantially change the disposition of his guns. They simply decreased the wait he would have to begin accurate fire. He turned his face away as clods of earth pattered around him, shot from beneath the hooves of the messenger’s mount.
Talawat had been very clever. The fireworks they were using cast their light farther and far longer than anything Carvalho had seen before. Light enough he could see his own guns were nearly ready.
A grin stretched Carvalho’s lips. Unintended consequences made the Fates smile: the flares also allowed the attackers to clearly see their targets. Carvalho’s guns would soon punish the defenders for the gunsmith’s creativity.
Carvalho checked the positioning of his battery. They had used the light to good purpose, aligning on his own.
Satisfied, Carvalho blew on the match cord.
“Fire!” Carvalho bellowed, touching the red coal clutched in the stylized dragon’s teeth at the end of his linstock to powder.
One after another, all of his grand battery belched smoke, fire, and death at the walls of Red Fort. The men bent to the task of reloading as Carvalho assessed the damage wrought by his guns and the progress of Aurangzeb’s infantry.
Their fire did little but serve to keep the more fearful of the defenders from showing themselves for a few moments. Moments the infantry used to advantage, scaling the outer wall.
The defenders resumed firing down on the heavy infantry, dropping perhaps one man in five. It was hard to tell exactly how many were wounded but did not fall as the Rajputs’ use of opium-infused bhang in battle made them virtually immune to pain.
Men died, those who fell serving as fuel to fire the anger that sent men over the wall regardless of the cost, the danger, the pain.
The first man was over the wall. He died, was replaced by ten more, then twenty more Rajputs followed.
“Up!” his second yelled, when the great bronze piece was reloaded. Attention drawn by the shout, Carvalho set about aiming the gun when the wall disappeared in a sheet of flame.
The space between the outer and inner walls of Red Fort became a hell on earth as flames and screams rose to the heavens. No doubt seeking to quench the flames burning the flesh from their bones, men flung themselves from the top of the outer wall to perish on the rocks below.
Carvalho flogged his brain into some semblance of coherent thought: Some new type of mine. Stands to reason Talawat wouldn’t be caught idle when his original plan died in the explosion of the munitions factory.
Hoping there remained enough Rajputs to carry the wall, a sweating Carvalho pressed the linstock to the touchhole. He skipped back and out of the way as the cannon fired, sending its shot to slam into the red sandstone of the middle gatehouse. His careful aim was rewarded, as two of the crenellations topping that portion of the structure nearly perpendicular to his position exploded in red dust and flying stone fragments, killing the men shooting from within and dropping much of it into rubble. The murderous fire from the Sikh defenders slackened, at least for the moment.
Well drilled, his crew leapt to their tasks. A wet leather swab went hissing into the barrel. The rest of the men strained and heaved to drag the heavy gun back into position, began loading her.
Carvalho bent over the gun but spared a glance at the rest of the crews of the grand battery. Three gun bellowed as he watched, closely followed by the auditory assault of guns four and five, then number six. Number two was still not in position to shoot again. The reason became apparent an instant later when the gun captain slumped over, the contents of his chest smeared over the barrel of his gun.
“Up!” his second shouted, letting his distracted captain know they were ready to correct, but Carvalho was still trying to figure out what had hit the man at the next gun. He’d carefully sited his guns to be outside the range of arquebusiers and bowmen on the walls and in a position to be fired upon by only two of Red Fort’s cannon. Laying out the path and final positions had been difficult, but they should have been safe from any but a freak shot from the walls.
Another crewman from gun two fell screaming, struck in the back by a heavy bullet. Carvalho sought the source of the fire, found an absurdly long plume of white powder smoke projecting from what appeared to be a single man’s gun above the gatehouse.
Must be one of those up-timer weapons I heard so much about. Thank God they don’t have more than a few of—
A man holding a similar weapon joined the first. Then Carvalho made out two more.
Mouth suddenly dry, Carvalho screamed at his men to adjust aim. More heaving and cursing had
