“No buts,” said Joab. “What ultimately matters is the Land and Lindron. Hestinga can be sacrificed. You-we- must be the wall between the heart of the Land and barbarity.”
“Yes, sir,” Abel said. “I understand.”
“Hopefully, it won’t come to that,” Joab said. “At least not this time. Those men of yours-you’ve placed them on the Canal levee.”
“One hundred fifty Scouts.”
“And they have the new arms, the reforged rifles you were telling me about?”
“They do, supplied by the priests only yesterday.”
“All right, then,” Joab said. “And you’re satisfied as to their functioning?”
“I am, sir,” Abel answered. He held up his own rifle, newly modified. “I have mine right here.”
Joab’s eyes fell immediately on the trapdoor breechlock. “And what the hell is that?” he asked, pointing to it.
“The priest’s idea,” Abel said. “Based on information I supplied. I think you’ll be pleased.”
“I just hope they work at all, or we’ll all be flitterdrock meat,” Joab said. “You see to the western flanks now with these men, then come back and get your levee force ready. Go now.”
And Abel
* * *
Observe:
Abel turned his mind to splitting his awareness into two fields. One was an overall picture provided by Center’s interpolation, the other was what was physically before him. For the moment, Center’s presentation was by far the most compelling of the two.
The Blaskoye are taking the bait.
The Militia poured over the hill. Most were moving at a measured pace, but some had broken into a headlong run. Some, also, did not remember what lay on the other side of that road levee, or had never been told. And some of those ran themselves through with the pointed stakes meant for the enemy.
But most realized in time, found the passageways, and made it through. And, when they believed the last had come, the Regulars hefted large clumps of brush and briars and closed those passageways through the chevaux-de-frise.
Only there was another wave of Militia. They had straggled perhaps, but some had been fighting a brave rearguard action. It didn’t matter. It was too late. The passage was closed. They were cut off.
Some threw themselves against the chevaux-de-frise, trying to work their way under or through. Others began to tear wildly at the stakes, trying to throw them out of the way and get to safety. These the archers took aim at and, on an order from their lieutenants, shot.
None of this lasted long. The Blaskoye flooded over the hill, ran headlong into the chevaux-de-frise, and all was dont screams and the yells of men. The first row of Regulars opened up with a fusillade of fire. They knelt down, began their reload. Those behind them fired over their heads.
Bodies fell. Many stuck to the chevaux-de-frise like so many burrs.
But the press was great. There were not hundreds of Redlanders to repulse, to drive away, to kill if possible, there were thousands. Even if the front line of dontback riders had wanted to stop, retreat, those behind crushed them forward. And slowly, body by body, a series of grisly, slick bridges began to grow, feeding on death, until there was way across the barrier, even though it be a passage upon the backs of the writhing half-dead and the splayed gore of the slain.
The Militia fell back. Blaskoye riders gained the other side of the barrier and rode its length, clearing the way with knives and bayonets. The barrier creaked, gave way entirely, and the horde was through.
The Militia, with the Regulars behind them serving up whatever rearguard action they could muster, ran headlong down the side of the road levee and into the rice field basin that stretched between that levee and the second levee, the Canal levee, to the north.
This was the basin that, for half the year, was kept wet as a swamp for the cultivation of rice.
3
Three days before, the great wheels were brought forth from the Hestinga temple complex on carts, along with barrels of rendered dak grease to lubricate the screws of the levee gates, which had only been used four times a year since time immemorial. Occasionally, over the centuries, a new gate had needed to be constructed, and consecrated metal, reduced nishterlaub from the vast storehouses in Lindron, was brought in to construct one. The handwheels required two strong men to turn them and four to lift them up and place them on the tang of the screw axle. The handwheels were only brought out during flood days and then, when irrigation was complete several days later, to close the headgates and turn the water off.
Abel had sent a Scout contingent to guard the priests as they deployed the wheels along the levee, and then Joab had sent along squads of Regulars on special assignment to stay with the duo of priests, each wearing the pith helmets they borrowed from the Engineer’s Guild for such ceremonies, who manned each headgate handwheel. That
It was ever thus in the Land.
The irrigation ditches themselves had required some reworking. The Militia had gathered to fight and wanted no part of moving the earth-something they could very well do on their own time-and Joab had sent his Regular engineer company to oversee and, in the end, perform additional dredging of the extant ditches and the cutting of new ones.
Observe the preparative steps:
There were, of course, the work squads sweating under the heat of the sun. They used wooden shovels to carve into the sunbaked ground. But the basin was also full of workdaks hitched to all varieties of digging and earthmoving tools the engineers had available. Buck scrappers and fresnos pulled by the daks worried the fill out of ditches until they were pristine and as ready to take water as they ever were during normal floodings.
The only difference: the ground was going to be planted for a different kind of harvest, if Abel had anything to do with it.
Now the irrigation scatter ditches were reamed, and every elb had been worked over by the engineers to produce maximum flow spread once the gates were open. It had been a massive task to accomplish in a day and a half, and yet they had done it, driving the teams of daks until many of them broke, dropped, and must be left where they lay for there was no time for butchery or burial. Now the insectoids were at the carcasses that dotted the basin and each one appeared to be surrounded by a translucent, flickering cloud as the flitternits danced, ate, bred, and then deposited their maggots into the humps of flesh.
A signal flew down the levee by wigwag.
Signalmen read it and called it out while their partners flashed it down the levee to the next group waiting by a handwheel.
And the priests chanted their blessing and began to move. The great screws turned. Slowly, ever so slowly, the headgate doors were raised up by the screws’ rotation.
The water poured forth upon the land. First a trickle, then a stream, and then a flood.
There was a limit, of course, which was the water level of the Canal itself. When it dropped beneath the lowest portion of the gate, no more water could flow. But that limit took long minutes to reach. Meanwhile the basin-a quarter league across and at least three leagues east and west-filled with a thin layer of water. It was at no time more than a hand’s depth. Furthermore, the thirsty ground soaked up at least half of that.
But there came a point when the ground could absorb no more. The water pooled. Where there was bare
