Every fiber of his being screaming at him to hurry, Carvalho took his time and carefully lined up the shot. He could see the defenders rise up from behind the shelter of the parapet, leveling their long guns and fiddling with something on top of each weapon. He finished, powdered the touch and stepped aside just as the men atop the gatehouse disappeared behind a cloud of powder smoke.
He nearly missed the touchhole with the linstock as every man of gun three perished in a hail of bullets.
The cannon belched, firing true. A portion of the parapet jumped as the heavy ball shattered sandstone to embed itself in the brick backing beneath. One of the outsized crenellations that sheltered a defender buckled and fell outward from the gatehouse, dropping him four stories to the hard ground amongst the rubble of his former protection.
Carvalho again watched his other guns as his crew repeated the complex, carefully orchestrated dance the machinery of war required when one was in a race to see who could kill more, faster. The other gun crews, hurrying to match his aim and get off a shot before the deadly weapons of their opponents could be reloaded, hardly matched his accuracy. Two struck too low to repeat the effect of Carvalho’s shot, burying themselves in the sandstone gatehouse without visible effect. One sailed high, disappearing from view. The fourth, either by some freak stroke of luck or the gun captain’s skill, raked the top of the perpendicular wall that had been their initial target. Sandstone, men, and masonry shattered amid great clouds of dust and smoke.
Another series of flares rose above the walls, though by now dawn was more than a gray suggestion to the east.
Two gun’s reduced crew, struggling heroically to position their weapon for another shot, died at their gun. The lone cannon that could bear on them from Red Fort had found them with a shot that skipped from the ground some forty yards in front of their position and then barreled into the gun, savagely shoving it sideways and breaking it from the limber. Carvalho could see no one alive in its wake when the weight of iron and bronze settled to earth.
The grinding lethality of battle continued: the crew of gun five perished under the lash of the up-timer long guns before they were ready to fire again.
Sweat pouring from his lean frame, Carvalho made certain of his aim one more time and unleashed another shot. Another paltry few Sikhs were injured. It seemed for a moment that their bawling cries could be heard even at this remove.
Then the camel corps loped past his battery, screaming zamburakchi whipping their bawling mounts relentlessly toward the sound of the guns.
“The Sultan Al’Azam sends his regards!” someone shouted from behind Carvalho.
The Portuguese mercenary turned and saw a man in messenger greens sitting a fine tall horse that looked as if it would rather be anywhere but smelling camel.
“The Sultan Al’Azam commands y—” the man started to say, but pitched backward over saddle when one of the heavy bullets of the infernal up-timer weapons struck him in the chest. The horse, predictably, bolted back the way it had come.
“God. Hates. Me,” Carvalho muttered. There being nothing else to do and unable to spare a man for clarification of his orders, he shouted for his men to continue firing. They would fire as long as they could.
The artillery captain cursed God, cursed Aurangzeb, cursed his brother umara, but most of all he cursed the spies who had failed to uncover the truth. Based on their reports, everyone from the emperor to the least soldier of Aurangzeb’s army had been dead certain the explosion that claimed the munitions factory had cost Dara the ability to produce ammunition for the up-timer weapons.
They were paying for that failure now with their lives.
Aurangzeb’s command group
Aurangzeb ground his teeth as yet another Rajput fell, an arrow sprouting from his chest. If the man yelled or cried out to his gods, the sound was lost in the distant roar and crackle of the battle taking place at the base of Red Fort’s walls.
It had been hard to tell how things were going until the defenders had set off the fireworks. Until then, Aurangzeb had been fairly sure most of his men had made it, if not into position, then close enough, by the deadline the plan called for.
The light of the flares had revealed the shambles his carefully thought-out timetable had been reduced to. Some areas of the defenses were almost entirely uncontested while others were faced with masses of men packed so tightly they got in each other’s way.
Worse yet, Aurangzeb’s subordinates, commendably eager to come to grips with the enemy, fed men into the assault without carefully lining the troops up to minimize the time they would spend under fire from the defenders. It was less than perfect.
A messenger rode up as his artillery began firing.
The Sultan Al’Azam nodded. He had given no order to begin the cannonade, but he approved of Carvalho’s initiative. The initial plan had called for the artillerist to move his mobile pieces up under cover of darkness and then only fire at dawn, when it was hoped there would be enough light to avoid striking the attacking men. The flares gave him the opportunity to do just that, and, rather than wait for Aurangzeb’s permission, he’d opened fire.
Aurangzeb waved for the messenger to speak.
“Carvalho reports his guns are in position and he is firing, Sultan Al’Azam.”
“Understood.” Aurangzeb smiled, admiring the ferenghi’s style. Making certain the emperor could not interfere with the best application of his guns even while he sent a messenger to mollify his superior smacked more of the experienced courtier than hardened mercenary.
The messenger’s
