Empire from the Ashes

Chapter Thirty-Three

"All right, boys—you heard Lord Sean. Now let's go kick the bastards' asses!"

The officers of the First Brigade growled in agreement, and Folmak Folmakson grinned fiercely. He was a long, long way from Cragsend and anxious days waiting for the Church to condemn him for error just for searching for ways to make his mill a bit more efficient, and he was passionately grateful for it. Folmak loved God as much as the next man, but Malagor had been a captive province for twenty generations, and like many Malagorans, he'd harbored a festering resentment against the Inner Circle and their absentee bishops. Father Stomald, now. He was what a priest was supposed to be, and if the rest of the Temple had been like him...

But it wasn't. Folmak settled into the saddle and checked all four pistols before he tucked them away in his boots and under his captured Guard cloak. The rain was falling harder, as Lord Sean had warned, and he'd ordered his sergeants to check each individual pan to be sure it was securely shut until it was needed. They were still going to have an appalling number of misfires, but he'd done all he could to minimize them.

He put away the last pistol and looked over his shoulder for the signal to advance. Lord Sean stood surrounded by aides, speaking quietly and urgently to Tibold, hands moving in quick, incisive gestures, and Folmak remembered his look of surprise when the men had cheered his orders.

Folmak hadn't been surprised, but Lord Sean had actually apologized to them, as if it were his fault they couldn't just stand around and wait till the rain stopped. That sort of concern made the army love Lord Sean, but it knew what it was about. Especially Folmak's men. His was the First Brigade, already called "the Old Brigade," composed of men who'd followed Father Stomald from the very beginning. They regarded themselves as the elite of Lord Sean's army, though the Second and Third Brigades were every bit as old—and, Folmak admitted grudgingly, as good—and they understood what was forcing Lord Sean's hand. Every man in the column knew they'd taken far longer than expected getting to Erastor, yet they also knew only Lord Sean and the Angel Sandy could have gotten them here at all. And the angels' message—that men should be free to shape their own lives and their own understanding of God's will—had ignited a furnace in the Malagorans' stubborn hearts. If Lord Sean needed them now, they were proud to be here, and if he decided to fix bayonets and charge a hurricane, they'd follow with a cheer.

The regimental pipers formed in the intervals in the brigade's column, and Lord Sean nodded to his aides. They spurred up and down the entire length of the corps, and Folmak waved to his unit commanders.

"Move out!" he barked, and the Angels' Army slogged through blowing sheets of rain towards Erastor.

Sean watched his men move forward and tried to look confident. Every man in Folmak's brigade had been issued a Guard cloak, and his vanguard looked as much like Terrahk's relief force as he could make them, but the rest of his men wore Malagoran ponchos. One look at them would tell the dullest picket what they were. The rain wasn't falling as hard as he'd feared—yet—but it was getting worse, and only First Brigade marched with slung weapons. The rest of his men carried their bayoneted rifles under their arms like hunters to shield the priming with their bodies and ponchos and keep rain from running down the muzzles. It was awkward and it looked like hell, but it was the best he could do to insure their ability to fire.

He and Tibold had reorganized the army into six-hundred-man regiments, three to the brigade, and despite the rain and the slaughter to which he'd led them, each regiment cheered as it passed him. He slapped his streaming breastplate in answering salute, and his emotions were a welter of confusion. Shame for the mistakes which sent them into battle under such a hideous handicap. Pride in how they'd responded. Dread of the butcher's bill they were going to pay, a sense of awe that they were willing to pay it for him, and a strange, shivering eagerness. He'd seen battle and its aftermath now. He knew how horrible it was, how ugly and vile and brutal, yet part of him was actually eager to begin. Not glad, but... impatient. Anticipating.

He shook his head, angry with himself. He couldn't think of the word, and he was ashamed of feeling whatever it was, but that didn't change it. He spurred ahead to overtake Folmak's brigade, and as he splashed along the road, he wished he could ride away from his own complex feelings as easily.

Under-Captain Mathan stood under the lean-to and gazed out into the rain. It was barely midafternoon, yet it looked like late evening as charcoal clouds billowed overhead. His dragoons were glad to be spared the lot of the men manning the half-flooded entrenchments facing the heretics, but that didn't make their own duty pleasant. Like most of the Host, they'd lost all their baggage at Yortown, and they'd had to cobble up whatever they could to replace their Guard-issue tents. Mathan doubted the foraging parties had left an intact roof for miles around Erastor, but the valley's frequent rains soaked them to the skin anyway, whatever they did, and he was heartily sick of it.

He spoke to himself sternly. He should be down on his knees thanking God for sparing him the slaughter the demon-worshipers had wreaked on the rest of the Host, not complaining because of a little rain! He'd certainly told his troopers that often enough!

He turned to pace briskly. He could only go a few strides in either direction and stay under the roof, but the rain had chilled the mountain air, and the activity warmed his blood.

Perhaps he'd feel happier if his present assignment had some point. With the heretics blocked west of the Erastor Spur, the pickets east of the main position were little more than an afterthought. They were out here getting soaked simply because the field manuals said all approaches, however unlikely, should be covered, and like most soldiers, they resented being made miserable just because some headquarters type wanted to be neat and tidy.

A branahlk splashed up to the shelter, and Sergeant Kithar saluted.

"We've sighted the head of the column, Sir. Should reach the pickets in about another twenty minutes."

"Thank you, Sergeant. That's good news." Mathan returned Kithar's salute, then pointed at the smoky fire crackling under another crude awning. "Warm yourself and dry off a bit before you head back."

"Thank you, Sir."

The sergeant hurried towards the fire, and Mathan folded his hands behind him with a sigh of relief. High-Captain Ortak had sworn the Temple would reinforce them, but after Yortown it had been hard for many of his men—including, Mathan admitted, himself—to believe it would happen in time. Now it had, and he breathed a silent prayer of thanks.

Captain Folmak trotted at the head of his brigade, and his belly was a hard, singing knot. He could see the first dragoons now, and they looked as miserable as Lord Sean had predicted. They were waving, and he heard a few cheers, but they also weren't budging out from under the crude lean-tos they'd erected in a vain effort to stay dry.

"You know what to do, boys," he told his grim-faced riflemen. "No shooting if you can help it, but be damned sure none of them get away!"

"Sight for sore eyes, aren't they?" Shaldan Morahkson demanded. "I told you Lord Marshal Surak would reinforce us!"

"Sure you did," one of his companions jeered. "Between pissing and moaning about the rain, your saddle sores, and how fucked up the whole war's been, you told us all about your personal friend the Lord Marshal!"

The others laughed, and Shaldan made a rude gesture as the lead ranks of the relief column squelched past. The incoming Guardsmen looked almost as shabby and sodden as Shaldan and his fellows after their hard march, and he turned his back on the others to wave and shout at the newcomers, then paused.

"That's funny."

"What?" his critic demanded. "Your buddy Lord Marshal Surak screw up somehow?"

"They're all musketeers," Shaldan said. "Look." He pointed as far down the column as they could see in the blowing rain. "There must be a thousand, fifteen hundred of them, and not a pike among 'em!"

"What?" The other dragoon turned to peer in the direction of Shaldan's pointing finger.

"And another thing. I've never seen bayonets like those. Have you?"

"I—"

Shaldan never found out what his fellow meant to say, for even as they stared at the column, it suddenly broke apart.

"Take them!" Under-Captain Lerhak shouted, and his men swarmed out across the picket. There were cries of alarm from the watching dragoons, and two or three turned to race for tethered branahlks, but surprise was total. Musket butts and bayonets did their lethal work, and within ten minutes, every man of High Captain Ortak's easternmost picket was dead or a prisoner.

Under-Captain Mathan stretched and called for his mount. He'd already sent a messenger ahead to Erastor, and if Sergeant Kithar was right, the column should have reached his forward position by now. Little though a ride in the rain appealed to him, he'd best go up to greet them like a properly industrious junior officer, and he trotted away from the lean-to with regret. He was riding directly into the wind, and the water running into his eyes made it hard to see where he was going. His branahlk tossed its head and jibed under him, whistling mournfully to voice its own verdict on the weather, and he tightened his knees to remind it who was in charge.

He looked back up and blinked on rain as mounted men in the soaked crimson cloaks of the Guard loomed out of the dimness. One of them waved, and Mathan started to wave back, then paused.

He stared at them, watching them ride closer, unable to believe his eyes. Their saddles and tack were mismatched, not standard Guard issue, and aside from their cloaks, they weren't even in uniform. Two of them actually wore what looked like farmer's boots, not jackboots. But that was impossible. They had to be Guardsmen! No one else could get at Erastor from the east! Not unless the demons had—

He jerked out of his shock and wheeled his mount. The branahlk squealed in protest as his spurs went home, then bounded forward with a teeth-rattling jerk. He had to warn High-Captain Ortak! He—

Something cracked behind him, and he didn't even have time to scream as the rifled pistol bullet smashed him from the saddle.

"Sir, the relief column's been sighted."

High-Captain Ortak looked up and smiled at his aide's report.

"Well, thank God for that! Call for my branahlk. High-Captain Terrahk deserves to be met in person."

"Did you hear something?" Sergeant Kithar raised his head, ears cocked, and glanced at the man beside him.

"In this rain?" The trooper gestured at the water drumming from the eaves of their rough roof.

"It sounded like a shot... ."

"You're joking, Sarge! It'd take a special miracle to get a joharn to fire in this stuff!"

"I know, but—"

Kithar was still gazing out into the rain when Folmak's lead company stormed into the picket's rear area.

"Folmak's taken out the picket."

Sean nodded as his com implant carried him Sandy's voice.

"Anyone get away?" he subvocalized back.

"I don't think so. It's hard to be sure with so many people moving around in the rain, but I don't see anyone headed away from the picket."

"What's Folmak doing?"

"Rounding up POWs and shifting into assault column to hit the bridge. Don't worry, Sean. He knows what he's doing."

"So far, so good," Folmak murmured, then raised his voice. "This is what we came for, boys! Follow me, and from here on out, make all the racket you can. Let's make these bastards think the 'Cragsend Demons' are here to eat 'em all! First Brigade, are you with me?"

"Aye!" The roar almost blew him from the saddle.

High-Captain Ortak dismounted, handed his reins to an orderly, and tried not to scurry as he hurried for the shelter of the bridge tollhouse. The under-captain commanding the bridge traffic control detachment jumped up and saluted, but Ortak waved him back into his chair.

"Sit down, sit down!"

"Thank you, Sir, but I prefer to stand." The bridge commander was a very junior officer, but he knew better than to sit in the presence of a high-captain, whatever the high-captain in question said.

"Suit yourself, Captain." Ortak stood in the doorway, peering into the gloomy afternoon. He could just make out the head of Terrahk's column at the far end of the bridge, and he wondered why they'd stopped in the rain. Were they dressing ranks for some sort of parade?

He frowned. The rain and the rush of river water around the bridge pilings filled his ears, but that didn't keep him from hearing the cheer. What in the world—? Were they that happy to be here?

And then, suddenly, the relief column lunged forward onto the bridge, and High-Captain Ortak stared in horror as it swept over the half-dozen men watching the far end of the span. Bayonets flashed in the rain, musket butts struck viciously, and the high-captain went white, for he could hear the voices clearly, now.

"Malagor and Lord Sean!" they howled, and twenty-five thousand men stormed into the Guard's undefended rear behind their screaming war pipes.

"That's it!" Tamman snapped to High-Captain Ithun. "They're hitting the bridges now. Get the columns formed!"

"At once, Lord Tamman!"

Ithun dashed off, and Tamman's enhanced eyes swept the entrenchments facing his position. There was no movement over there yet, but there would be soon. Now if only they'd pull enough off the parapets to give him an opening!

For the Yortown survivors, it was a hideous, recurring nightmare. They'd seen their formations smashed at Yortown, watched that wall of fire and smoke grinding down from the north behind the terrifying Malagoran yell, and known—not thought; known—they'd faced demons, but somehow they'd escaped. They'd fallen back, dug in, waited for the demon-worshipers to sweep over them, and as the weeks passed, they'd come, slowly, first to hope and finally to believe it wouldn't happen after all. They'd stopped the heretics, held them, and at least their rear was secure if they were forced to retreat again.

But now their rear wasn't secure. They'd spent days preparing bivouac areas for High-Captain Terrahk's column, chattered in their relief, swapped lies and rumors about what would happen next, only to see the forces of Hell do it to them again. Some evil sorcery had transformed their reinforcements into rampaging demons that stormed into their positions in a solid, deadly mass of bristling bayonets and the terrible, shrieking war pipes of Malagor.

Surprise was total, High-Captain Ortak was nowhere to be found, and officers floundered in shock as the first, incredible intimations of disaster reached them. Folmak's brigade slammed over the bridges and butchered its way across the closest encampment. Guardsmen looked up from routine camp tasks to see eighteen hundred screaming maniacs scythe into their position, and panic was a deadlier weapon than any bayonet. Cooks and drovers scattered, half-naked men erupted from tents and lean-tos and fled into the rain, officers shouted in vain for their men to rally, and Folmak's riflemen swarmed forward like some dark, unstoppable tide.

Here and there a handful did rally around an officer or a noncom, but there were too few of them, and they were too stunned to be effective. The tiny knots of resistance vanished into the oncoming First Brigade's bayonet-fanged maw, and Folmak slammed a full kilometer forward before his initial charge even slowed. Behind him, more men thundered across the Erastor, fanning out to secure the bridgehead, and behind them the weight of Sean's entire corps swept forward in double time.

"They're hitting us in the rear, I tell you! My God, there're thousands of them!"

High-Captain Marhn stared at the gasping, half-coherent officer. Impossible! It was impossible! Poison-raw terror quivered deep inside, yet he'd been a soldier for over thirty Terran years. He didn't know what had happened to High-Captain Ortak, and he couldn't even begin to guess how the heretics could be behind Erastor in strength or what had happened to High-Captain Terrahk, but he knew what would happen if this attack wasn't crushed.

"They've already got the bridges!" The officer was still babbling his terrified message. "We're trapped, Sir! They're going to—"

"They're going to die, Captain!" Marhn barked so sharply the officer's mouth snapped shut in pure reflex. "We've got eighty thousand men in this position, so stop howling like an old woman and use them, curse you!"

"But—"

Marhn whirled away with a snarl of disgust just as Captain Urthank, his own second-in-command charged up, still buckling his armor.

"What—?" Urthank started, but Marhn cut him off with a savage wave.

"Somehow the demon-worshipers got 'round behind us. They've taken the bridges, and they're advancing fast." Urthank paled, and Marhn shook his head. "Get back there. Send in the Ninth and Eighteenth Pikes. You won't be able to hold, but slow them up enough to buy me some time!"

"Yes, Sir!" Urthank saluted and disappeared, and Marhn began bellowing orders to a flock of messengers.

The Ninth Pikes thudded through the mud towards the clamor in their rear, and their eyes were wild. There'd been no time for their officers to explain fully, but the Ninth were veterans. They knew what would happen if the heretics weren't stopped.

The Eighteenth turned up on their left, and whistles shrilled as their officers brought them to a slithering, panting halt. A forest of five-meter pikes snapped into fighting position, and eight thousand men settled into formation as the wailing Malagoran pipes swept down upon them.

Folmak reined in so violently his branahlk skidded on its haunches as the Guard phalanx materialized out of the rain. Lord Sean had warned him the surprise wouldn't last, and he'd managed—somehow—to keep his men together as they swept across the Guard's rear areas. The clutter of tents and wagons and lean-tos had made it hard, yet he'd kept his brigade in hand, and he felt a stab of thankfulness that he had.

But he was also well out in front, and half his third regiment had been left behind to hold the bridges. He had little more than fifteen hundred men, barely a sixth of the numbers suddenly drawn up across his front, and not a single pike among them.

That phalanx wouldn't stop the regiments coming up behind him, but he couldn't let them stop him, either. If the Guard realized how outnumbered its attackers were and won time to recover, it had more than enough power to crush Lord Sean's entire force.

"First Battalion—action front!" he screamed, and whistles shrilled.

His men responded instantly. First Battalion of Second Regiment, his leading formation, deployed into firing line on the run, and the officer commanding the Guard pikes hesitated. All he knew was that his position was under attack, and the visibility was so bad he couldn't begin to estimate Folmak's numbers. Rather than charge forward in ignorance, he paused, trying to get some idea of what he was up against, and that hesitation gave First Battalion time to deploy in a two-deep firing line and the rest of Folmak's men time to tighten their own formation behind them. It was still looser than it should have been, but Folmak sensed the firming resolution of his opponents. There was no time for further adjustment.

"Fire!" he bellowed.

Almost a third of the First's rifles misfired, but there were three hundred of them. Two hundred-plus rifles blazed at less than a hundred meters' range, and the Guardsmen recoiled in shock as, for the first time in Pardalian history, men with fixed bayonets poured fire into their opponents.

"At 'em, Malagorans!" Folmak howled. "Chaaaarge!"

The Guard formation wavered as the bullets slammed home. At such short range, a rifled joharn would penetrate five inches of solid wood, and a single shot could kill or maim two or even three men. The shock of receiving that fire was made even worse by the fact that it came from bayoneted weapons, and then, against every rule of warfare, musketeers actually charged pikemen!

The Guardsmen couldn't believe it. Musketeers ran away from pikes—everyone knew that! But these musketeers were different. The column behind exploded through the firing line and hit the Eighteenth Pikes like a tidal bore. Dozens, scores of them, died on the bitter pikeheads, but while the Guardsmen were killing them, their companions hurled themselves in among the pikes, and the Guard discovered a lethal truth. Once a phalanx's front was broken, once the Malagorans could get inside the pikes' longer reach, bayoneted rifles were deadly melee weapons. They were shorter, lighter, faster, and these men knew how to use them to terrible effect.

"Drive 'em!" Folmak shrieked. "Drive 'em!" and First Brigade drove them. The Malagoran yell and the howl of their pipes carried them onward, and once they'd closed, they were more than a match for any pikemen.

Bayonets stabbed, men screamed and cursed and died, and mud-caked boots trod them into the mire. Folmak's men stormed forward with a determination that had to be killed to be stopped, and the Guardsmen—shaken, confused, stunned by the impossibility of what was happening—were no match for them.

The Eighteenth broke. Those of its men who tried to stand paid for their discipline, for they couldn't break free, couldn't get far enough away to use their longer weapons effectively, and First Brigade swarmed them under like seldahks. Six minutes after that first volley had exploded in their faces, the Eighteenth Pikes were a shattered, fleeing wreck, and Folmak swung in on the flank of the Ninth.

Even now, he was outnumbered by better than two-to-one, and the melee with the Eighteenth had disordered his ranks. Worse, the Ninth was made of sterner stuff, and its commander had managed to change front while the Eighteenth was dying. His men were still off balance, but they howled their own war cries and lunged forward, slamming into Folmak's brigade like a hammer, and this time they hadn't been shaken by a pointblank volley.

Folmak's lead battalion had already been more than decimated. Now it reeled back, fighting stubbornly but driven by the longer, heavier weapons of its foes, and the officers of both sides lost control. It was one howling vortex, sucking in men and spitting out corpses, and then, suddenly, Sean's Sixth Brigade slammed into the Ninth from the other side.

It was too much, and the Guardsmen came apart. Unit organization disintegrated. Half the Ninth simply disappeared, killed or routed, and the other half found itself surrounded by twice its own number of Malagorans. They tried to fight their way out, then tried to form a defensive hedgehog, but it was useless. Despite the rain, scores of riflemen still managed to reload and fire into them, and even as they died, more Malagoran regiments rushed past. They weren't even slowing the enemy down, and their surviving officers ordered them to throw down their weapons to save as many of their men as they could.

High-Captain Marhn's face was iron as more and more reports of disaster came in. The heretics had swept over the entire bivouac area, then paused to reorganize and fanned out in half a dozen columns, each storming forward towards the rear of the entrenchments. A third of his men had already been broken, and the panicky wreckage of shattered formations boiled in confusion, hampering their fellows far more than their enemies. The last light was going, and the Host's entire encampment had disintegrated into a rain-soaked, mud-caked madness no man could control.

He had no idea how many men the heretics had. From the terrified reports, they might have had a million. Worse, the units they were hitting were his worst-armed, weakest ones, the men who'd been reformed out of the ruin of Yortown. They'd been placed in reserve because their officers were still trying to rebuild them into effective fighting forces, and the demon-worshipers were cutting through them like an ax, not a knife.

He clenched his jaw and turned his back, shutting out the confused reports while he tried to find an answer. But there was only one, and it might already be too late for it to work.

"Start pulling men out of the redoubts," he grated. Someone gasped, and he stabbed a finger at a map. "Form a new line here!" he snapped, jabbing a line across the map less than four thousand paces behind the earthworks.

"But, Sir—" someone else began.

"Do it!" Marhn snarled, and tried to pretend he didn't know that even if he succeeded, it could stave off disaster for no more than a few more hours.

"They're moving men from the trenches, Sean!" Sandy shouted over the com.

"Good—I think!" Even with Sandy's reports and his own implant link to her sensors, Sean had only the vaguest notion what was happening. This was nothing like Yortown. It was an insane explosion of violence, skidding like a ground car on ice. His men were moving towards their objectives in what looked like a carefully controlled maneuver, but it was nothing of the sort. No one could control it; it was all up to his junior officers and their men, and he could hardly believe how well they were carrying out their mission.

Even in the madness and confusion, he felt a deep, vaulting pride in his army—his army!—as his outnumbered men cut through their enemies. He was losing people—hundreds of them, probably more—and he knew how sick and empty he'd feel when he counted the dead, but he had no time for that now. A desperate counterattack by the broken remnants of several Guard pike units had taken his HQ group by surprise and smashed deep into it before a reserve battalion could deal with it, and only Sean's enhancement had kept him alive. His armor had turned two pikeheads, and his enhanced reactions had been enough to save his eye, but a dripping sword cut had opened his right cheek from chin to temple, and Tibold limped heavily from a gash in his left thigh.

Now he waved his battered aides to a halt, and the reserve battalion—whose commander had made himself Sean's chief bodyguard without orders—fanned out in a wary perimeter.

"How much movement?" he asked Sandy in English, speaking aloud and ignoring the looks his men gave him.

"A lot, all up and down the center of his lines."

"Tam?"

"I see it, Sean. We're moving now."

"Give 'em time to pull back! Don't let them catch you in the open!"

"Suck eggs! You just keep pushing 'em hard."

"Hard, the man says!" Sean rolled his eyes heavenward and turned to Tibold. "They're pulling men out of the trenches to stop us, and Tamman and Ithun are moving up to hit them in the rear."

"Then we have to push them even harder," Tibold said decisively.

"If we can!" Sean shook his head, then grabbed an aide. "Find Captain Folmak. If he's still alive, tell him to bear right. You!" he jabbed a finger at another messenger. "Find Fourth Brigade. It's over that way, to the right. Tell Captain Herth to curl in to the left to meet Folmak. I want both of them to hammer straight for their reserve artillery park."

The aides repeated their orders and ran off into the maelstrom, and Sean grimaced at Tibold.

"If this is a successful battle, God save me from an unsuccessful one!"

"Sir!" Marhn looked up as a gasping, mud-spattered messenger lurched into his command post. "High-Captain! The heretics are coming from the west, as well!" The messenger swayed, and Marhn realized the young officer was wounded. "Captain Rukhan needs more men. Can't... can't hold without them, Sir!"

Marhn stared at the young man for one terrible, endless moment. Then his shoulders slumped, and his watching staff saw hope run out of his eyes like water.

"Sound parley," he said. Urthank stared at him, and Marhn snarled at him. "Sound parley, damn you!"

"But... but, Sir, the Circle! High Priest Vroxhan! We can't—"

"We aren't; I am!" Marhn spat. His hand bit into Urthank's biceps like a claw. "We've lost, Urthank. That attack from the rear blew the guts out of us, and now they've broken our front as well. How many more of our men have to die for a position we can't hold?"

"But if you surrender, the Circle will—" Urthank began in a quieter, more anxious voice, and Marhn shook his head again.

"I've served the Temple since I was a boy. If the Circle wants my life for saving the lives of my men, they can have it. Now, sound parley!"

"Yes, Sir." Urthank looked into Marhn's face for a moment, then turned away. "You heard the High-Captain! Sound parley!" he barked, and another officer fled to pass the order.

"Here, boy!" Marhn said gruffly, catching Rukhan's wounded messenger as he began to collapse. He took the young man's weight in his arms and eased him down into a camp chair, then looked back up at Urthank. "Call the healers and have this man seen to," he said.