Conqueror

* * *

'We'll proceed as planned,' Jorg Menyez said firmly.

'Sir-' one of the infantry battalion commanders began.

'I know, Major Huarez,' Jorg said.

He nodded down towards the river. The last of Huarez' battalion was scrambling out of their boats, but that gave them only six battalions ashore-less than five thousand men. The rest were scattered along the river with the sailors and marines laboring at the oars.

'Commodore Lopeyz,' Menyez said. 'I'm leaving you in command here. Send the steamboats back for the remainder of the force.' Rowing had turned out to be less practical than they'd thought from tests conducted with small groups. Speeds were just too uneven. 'Assemble them here. As soon as three-quarters are landed, the remainder is to advance at the double to support me. Emphasize to the officers commanding that no excuses will be accepted.'

Translation: anyone who hangs back goes to the wall. Of course, if the scheme failed they were all dead anyway, but it didn't hurt to be absolutely clear.

He took a deep breath of the cold dawn air. Off a kilometer or so to the east the walls of Old Residence were hidden, but they could hear the massed rifles and cannon-fire well enough. A hazy cloud was lifting, as if the city were already burning. . Below him were what he had. A few thousand infantrymen, second-line troops officially. Peons in uniform, commanded by the failed younger sons of very minor gentry. Ahead was better than four score thousand Brigade warriors.

'Fellow soldiers,' he said, pitching his voice to carry. Whatever he said would go back through the ranks. With appropriate distortion, so keep it simple.

'Messer Raj and our comrades need us,' he said. 'If we get there in time, we win. Follow me.'

He turned, and his bannermen and signalers formed up behind him. Normally company-grade officers and above were mounted, but this time it was everyone on their own poor-man's dogs. 'Battalion columns, five abreast,' he said. 'Double quickstep.'

The Brigadero emplacements on the bluff above were ruined and empty, but there would be somebody there. Somebody to report.

'Hadelande!' he snapped, and started toward the sound of the guns.

* * *

'Follow me!' Raj called.

He touched his heel to Horace's flank. The trumpet sang four brassy notes, and the column broke into a jog- trot; he touched the reins lightly, keeping his dog down to the pace of the dismounted men behind him. The fog of black-powder smoke was thick, like running through heavy mist that smelled of burning sulfur. The wall to his right was almost hidden by it despite the bright sun, towers looming up like islands. The noise was a heavy surf, the continuous crackle of rifle-fire under the booming cannon. A louder crack sounded as a forty-kilo cannonball struck the ramparts, blasting loose chunks of stone and pieces of men.

Messengers and ambulances were moving in the cleared zone behind the walls. Now they saw men running, unwounded or nearly so. The fugitives shocked to a halt as they saw the Starburst banner and Raj beneath it; everyone recognized Horace, at least.

'You men had better rejoin your unit,' Raj said. They wavered, turned and began scrambling back up the earth mound on the inside of the wall.

Raj opened the case at his saddlebow, calming the restless dog with a word as a shell ripped by overhead to burst among the outermost row of houses behind. Through the binoculars he could see the rough pine-log ends of scaling ladders against the merlons of the wall, and infantrymen desperately trying to push them aside with the points of their bayonets. Any defender whose head was above the stonework for more than a second or two toppled backward; there must be forty or fifty blue-clad bodies lying on the earth ramp, most of them shot through the head or neck. The defenders were pulling the tabs of hand-bombs and pitching them over the side; more showered down from the towers a hundred meters to either side, thrown by hand or from pivot-mounted crossbows.

A dozen more scaling ladders went up, even as smoke and flashes of red light above the parapet showed where the bombs were landing among men packed in the mud of the moat, waiting their turn at the assault.

'Deploy,' Raj said. The trumpet sang, and the 5th faced right in a double line, one rank kneeling and the one behind standing. A ratcheting click sounded as they loaded their weapons. 'And fix bayonets.' It would come to that, today.

'Captain, can those splatguns bear from here?'

'Just, sir,' the artilleryman said.

The multi-barreled weapons were fifty meters behind the firing line, itself that distance from the wall. The crews spun the elevating screws until the honeycombed muzzles rose to their limit.

Raj drew his sword and raised it. The bullets that had sent sparks and spalls flying all along the parapet under assault halted as Brigaderos helmets showed over the edge, masking their comrades' supporting fire. The Civil Government soldiers rose themselves, firing straight down; but the first wave of Brigaderos were climbing with their pistols drawn. In a short-range firefight single-shot rifles were no match for revolvers. Smoke hid the combatants as dozens of five-shot cylinders were emptied. Seconds later the unmusical crash of steel on steel sounded as scores of the barbarians swarmed over the parapet, sword against bayonet.

'Wait for it.'

One moment the firing platform above was a mass of soldiers in blue uniforms and warriors in steel breastplates, stabbing and shooting point-blank and swinging clubbed rifles. The next it held only Brigaderos, the defenders pitching off the verge and into the soft earth of the ramp below, or retreating into the tower doors. A banner with the double lightning flash of the Brigade waved triumphantly.

'Fwego!' His sword chopped down.

BAM. Then BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM, crisp platoon volleys running down the line. A long braaaap four times repeated from the splatguns.

Time shocked to a halt for a second. There were hundreds of Brigaderos jammed onto the fighting platform of the wall, and most of them did not even know where the bullets that killed them came from. Many were looking the other way, waving on comrades below or hauling up the assault ladders to lower down from the wall. The whole line of them shook, dozens falling out and down to crash with bone-shattering force. Some of the Civil Government soldiers who'd jumped down were still moving, it was soft unpacked earth below on the ramp and a grazing impact, but doing it with thirty kilos of steel on you was another matter altogether.

Half the enemy were still up, even with the splatguns punching four-meter swaths through the packed ranks. A few had time to fire revolvers or begin the cumbersome drill of loading their rifle-muskets-both about as futile as spitting, but he admired the spirit-before the next rattle of volleys hit them. The splatguns traversed, snapping out their loads with mechanical precision.

'Cease fire,' Raj said. 'Marksmen only.'

Silence fell as the trumpet snarled; the best shots in each squad stepped forward a pace and began a slow crackle of independent fire at anyone unwise enough to climb the ladders and show his head over the parapet. The Civil Government troops in the towers at each end of the breach were cheering as they fired and lobbed handbombs. That meant the enemy were giving back from the foot of the wall, although the slamming roar of noise continued elsewhere. And incredibly a few of the infantry who'd tumbled down from the fighting platform were up and forming a firing line at the base of the earth ramp. Raj heeled Horace forward; a young officer was limping down the improvised unit of walking wounded, hustling men with the slack faces of battle-shock into line, slapping them across the shoulders with the flat of his saber. Here was someone who also had the right instincts.

'Lieutenant,' Raj said.

He had to repeat the command twice before the young man heard; when he turned his eyes were wide and staring, the iris swallowed in the pupil.

'Cease fire, lieutenant.'

'Ci, mi heneral.'

'Good work, son.' The younger man blinked. 'Now get them back up there. Anyone who can shoot.'

'Back up, sir?' The lieutenant was shivering a little with reaction. He looked at the earth ramp above, littered with enemy bodies, two deep in places. A fair number of bodies in blue-and-maroon uniforms, too. One was crawling down the timber staircase that rose from the flat cleared zone to the ramparts, leaving a glistening trail