Warlord

Something is wrong here, very fucking wrong. Ahead the strange shrill-sounding trumpets of the Colony sounded, and the line of enemy cavalry began to move. Two thousand paws thumped the ground, crunched through the loose rock that clattered and slid audibly. This is the obvious move, and it's obviously going to fail. Which was not Tewfik's reputation, not at all.

'Either he's stupid, or he's counting on me doing something stupid, or we are all about to be royally buttfucked,' he muttered to himself.

'Ser?' the standard-bearer said; he was a veteran of fifty, and a little hard of hearing from too much exposure to the noise level of combat.

'Nothing,' he said. The enemy knew the range of a 75 to a hair, and they had positioned to build their charge to full speed before they came under the iron flail. Another glitter and blink as the scimitar blades came down; full gallop now, another line of light as the points of the helmet spikes caught the sun, surging up and down with the motion of the dogs. Their dressing was faultless, which was not easy on terrain as rough as this. Those are good troops, he thought. And disciplined. There were Civil Government units-he probably had a battalion of them on his right-which would flat-out refuse an order to charge against rifles and artillery like this.

POOUMP. The first gun fired, ten meters behind the riflemen. A ripping-canvas sound, then a puff of dirty blackish-grey smoke a little ahead of the enemy line.

'Fire for effect, rapid fire, down ten each!'

POOUMP. POOUMP. POOUMP. The guns fired from right to left, slapping the back of his neck with pillows of hot air. More shellbursts across the enemy line, looking like misses but men and dogs were down, scythed down by a soldier's worst nightmare, artillery striking from above without anything they could do about it except endure and hope. Their ranks closed again with a veteran ripple, closing like thick liquid around the bubbles hammered by the guns, leaving figures writhing or still or scattered in pieces across the barren plain, they were half the distance closer already, and Spirit but it was good to have guns at your back-

Raj's eyes widened. 'Foley!' he shouted. 'To Stanson, quickly, beware of a feigned retreat.' The boy kicked into a gallop. To his right: 'Hold your positions under all circumstances, pass it down!' Better to be thought a nervous maiden than a dead fool. .

Much closer now. He raised the binoculars again; no, no eyepatch. . yelling faces, glaring eyes, beards. His mouth was dry, but he ignored the canteen at his saddlebow, stroked a hand down Horace's neck; the hound had its ears up, and it was scenting, big woofing intakes of breath with a pause to lick its nose between each. Thick grimy-cotton smoke from the guns drifted slowly over him, the odor of Hell. Barton Foley pulled up beside him in a spurt of gravel.

'Sir-' He paused; there were spots of color high on his cheeks under the ruddy-brown Descotter skin. 'Captain Stanson directs me-'

'What did he say?' Fifteen hundred meters, the guns were firing twice a minute, another eight rounds-

'Sir, he said that you should teach your grandmother to suck eggs, and that I-he offered insult, sir.'

'He was hatched himself, lad.'

'May I-'

'Off to Gerrin, Ensign, and good luck.'

Eleven hundred meters. A long stuttering crash from his right, a few more saddles emptied, but didn't they realize they were just pumping out smoke to obscure their aim when it counted, Spirit curse them for fools? A dense cloud was growing in front of the 2nd Gendarmerie's ranks, fairly soon they would be shooting from estimates and glimpses and demons knew they'd be lucky to hit their feet doing that. Thank the Spirit for small mercies, at least the wind was from the northwest and it was not carrying the smoke across the 5th's front. Nine hundred meters. Eight hundred.

'Ready!' repeated down the line, and the front rank's muzzles came up. He thought he could see a slight waver through the ranks of the enemy.

'Pick your targets!'

'By platoons-volley fire-fire!'

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM, eight times repeated as the front-rank platoons fired. Hands opening the levers, flashing back to the bandoliers. Rear rank presenting with a uniform jerk.

'Fire!'

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Chaos downrange, dogs falling in heaps, he saw two collide in midair as they tried to leap that barricade of flesh and fall, and thousand-pound bodies would be thrashing, maddened by pain, riders crushed . .

'Fire!'

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Slowing, nobody on earth could take this. . clumps of men pushing ahead, if they kept coming the last of them would die before the bayonets.

'Tewfik!' Raj heard himself screaming, barely audible over the hammering crash of volley fire and artillery. 'Tewfik, you mad evil wog bastard, you're murdering them, you're murdering good soldiers, call them back, call them back.'

Then they were turning back, their own trumpets blowing retreat. Moving fast, too, crouched over in the saddle to lower their target profiles. Leaving a quarter of their numbers scattered down from the ridgeline; another hundred meters of charge and that would have doubled, tripled. The artillery lifted sights to harry them, and-

A trumpet sounded 'charge.'

Raj grunted as if a fist had struck him in the belly. The 2nd's trumpeter was blowing the simple four-note call again and again, and the men in the white uniforms were obeying. Cheering wildly, some even throwing aside their rifles as they leaped astride their dogs and drew sabers.

'Trumpeter, sound stand fast,' he shouted. The young man gave him a shocked glance. 'Stand fast, and now, soldier,' he shouted, dragging Horace's head around to face his own ranks. The 5th were on their feet now, too, cheering as madly as the 2nd, waving their rifles in the air and screaming County hunting calls as the enemy fled without order, lashing their dogs as if they intended to keep galloping all the way to the equator and the Zanj Sea.

Raj saw what he had dreaded, men leaving ranks and dashing back for their mounts. A few of those and it would be all of them, beyond holding, blood up to avenge the desert chase and be in at the kill. He drew his pistol and clamped his heels into Horace's ribs; the hound dashed out and to the left, before the 5th's ranks.

'I'll shoot the first man to break ranks!' he shouted, knowing his voice would not carry through the tumult. The trumpeter blew tirelessly at his side, though; the 2nd's was two hundred meters downslope and moving fast, the sound fading. And the muzzle of his pistol was a message in itself; he managed to get in front of the first to leave the firing line. Barely old enough to shave, he saw; one of the draft that had caught up to them on the road, a Descotter but from the northern fringe of the County. Filled with sixteen years' conviction of immortality, and nothing but a few skirmishes in this campaign.

'Back!' he screamed, pushing the weapon into the boy's face. Behind him the officers and noncoms were running down the line, cursing, calling orders, knocking men down with fists and boots and rifle butts. Raj thumbed back the hammer. 'I'll shoot you dead, boy.'

The young man's eyes lost the berserker-blankness, and his saber wavered and fell. 'Back into ranks,' Raj snapped.

'Yisser,' the young soldier gasped.

'Sound attention to orders,' Raj said. It took three repetitions to get quiet; it helped that the artillery had fallen silent with no clear target except the backs of the 2nd Gendarmerie.

'Officers to me,' Raj called; they were already trotting out. He looked over his shoulder; there was a fringe of saber-swinging melee at the edge of the 2nd's charge as it passed the midway point of the swale and started up the slope, the fastest of the Gendarmerie catching up with the Colonists on winded or injured dogs, but the bulk of Tewfik's battalion was drawing ahead, opening a perceptible gap. And they were nearing extreme artillery range from this position.