Shining Steel

Chapter One

The brass casings gleamed golden in the firelight as he picked up the first bullet. He handed it to a waiting warrior and solemnly spoke the ancient and meaningless ritual phrase, “Mekkit kant!"

The warrior accepted it with equal solemnity, then stepped back to make room for the next.

The ten bullets were distributed to ten men, and each of the chosen carefully slid the precious cartridge into his rifle. When all had done so, they settled comfortably on the ground to await the order to attack. Some cast occasional glances at the eastern horizon.

Around them their less fortunate comrades, those who had not been chosen to carry firearms in the coming battle, covered the hillside. Many of them, as they polished swords and knives, also looked to the east.

“Won't do no darn good watching the sunrise,” said the man who had passed out the ammunition. “We go on Captain John's word, not before."

“He told us we'd attack at dawn, same as always,” one of the riflemen replied.

“We probably will, then,” said the first, “but it's at his word."

The other shrugged and looked to the east. The sky was blue now, no longer black, and the first warm hints of pink were beginning to show. Whatever the signal, he told himself, it would not be long in coming. He cradled his rifle in his arms and looked down the slope at the waiting horses.

The tent-flaps behind him parted and the commander stepped out, already dressed in his riding leathers, his sword on his hip and his helmet on his head.

“All right, boys,” he called. “Get your horses. We're riding out now. Got your bullets, riflemen? Habakkuk?"

“All set, John,” answered the man who had distributed the cartridges. The ten chosen recipients nodded confirmation.

“Good; don't waste them. We want this village as a base; this isn't just a raid for the fun of it. Shoot to kill, and use your swords, not your lungs. We mean business, we aren't just out to scare them."

There was a muttered chorus of assent.

“Well, don't just stand there, then; get the horses!” The commander waved, and the men hurried down to their waiting mounts.

The commander's own horse was led up the slope by a young aide; it was beneath the dignity of the captain's office to fetch the beast for himself. That, at any rate, was what the Elders insisted, and that was why John forced himself to wait while the boy cajoled the reluctant animal. He would have preferred fetching his own horse, as the other warriors did, but that went against custom-and custom was very important, as no one could say for sure, in these benighted latter days when so many had fallen away from the True Faith, what was mere habit and what was the One Way.

Hiding his impatience, John waited.

The instant the animal was within reach he snatched the reins from the boy and swung himself into the saddle. A glance around assured him that at least half his men were astride; that was enough for the next step. The others could mount during the invocation or catch up later. This hurry would keep them on their toes; he could not allow anyone to get soft.

“Douse the fire,” he ordered the boy, “and break camp. After today we'll either be in the village or we'll be dead.” That said, he turned toward his waiting men and shouted, “Hear us, O Lord!"

The warriors watched expectantly.

“O Lord, it's me, John Mercy-of-Christ, who You've made the Armed Guardian of the True Word and Flesh, and I'm speaking for all these men here. We're about to go into battle, Lord, to fight against people who have left the true path, the way of the True Word and Flesh. We're fighting for You, Lord, to bring Your truth to those who have spurned it, and we ask that You bless this task, and these men who attempt it. And if any of us fall today, Lord, we know that You've got a special warm welcome waiting and an honored place in Heaven for us, because we're doing Your work. Amen."

“Amen,” his men replied.

Satisfied, John took a final look at his advance unit of cavalry, more than a hundred strong, then turned and spurred his mount up the slope. “To battle,” he bellowed. “In the Name of the Lord!"

“In the Name of the Lord!” his men shouted back. In a great rushing mob they stampeded up and over the crest of the hill.

John had not been foolish enough to make camp right atop his target, where any idiot chasing a lost pup might find it. Beyond the hill lay a short stretch of broken country, not fit for farming or much of anything else, consisting largely of gray stone speckled with scraggly red mosses. A mile or so to the northeast, beyond this worthless expanse of rock, a long grassy slope led down to the marshes that edged the Little New Jordan. At the foot of that slope, nestled against the marsh, stood the village he intended to make his supply base and reserve headquarters for the coming campaign.

The village was not actually in enemy hands, so far as he knew; its people were neutral in the current conflict. He was not overly concerned by that, save that it meant the defenses might be weak. He knew nothing about the inhabitants of the town, not even their name for the place, and cared just as little; all that mattered was that they were in a convenient location and that the survivors would presumably make decent slave labor until the Elders could convert them. After all, they were heretics. If they had not been, they would have joined with his own people, the People of the True Word and Flesh, long ago. That went without saying.

The initial enthusiasm of the first riotous charge up the slope faded quickly in the intervening rough. John had expected that, and even planned it. This would provide him with an opportunity to gather his men into some sort of order, rather than letting them gallop down in threes and fours, wasting their numbers.

“Keep together!” he bellowed. “Bring it in, keep it tight!"

Those nearest him heard and obeyed; some of those further out, seeing the inward movement, copied it.

“Keep together! Pass the order on! We strike as a single group!"

The order was passed; reluctantly, the hotheads in the lead dropped back to join the main body, while the stragglers strained to catch up. The central group was moving at a steady trot, the best pace that the dim light and broken land safely allowed.

The glow in the east had spread across half the sky, and the edge of the sun's disc was beginning to show as a bloody red line on the horizon when the leading edge of the mass of horsemen reached the grassy slope.

“Hold up!” the commander bellowed. “Hold up! No one goes until I give the word! This isn't a raid!"

A few horses were already on the slope, but their riders reined in and turned them back. It took several minutes for the whole company to gather along the brink; by the time John was satisfied that all were ready the sun was showing a half-oval.

When he was certain that all his men and horses were where he wanted them to be, and all facing in the right direction, he glanced down at the village. There was no wall or stockade; small villages off the trade routes were usually not bothered.

Despite the noise his men had made, and the delay until nearly full daylight, he saw no sign of movement below, no sign that anyone suspected he and his soldiers were nearby. No one was working in the narrow grainfields squeezed in between the hillside and the marsh. It was utterly still, and he wondered if the inhabitants might have fled.

He drew his sword, the steel shining red in the early light.

“In the Name of the Lord!” he cried, and spurred his horse down the slope.

The first charge had been mere showmanship, to get the blood stirring and to fire up his men. This was the real thing, and he drummed his barbed heels on the horse's flanks, urging it to its fastest gallop. He raised his head briefly to call a final command, “Fire at will!"

Almost immediately he heard the report of a rifle, small and distant over the rush of wind around his speeding mount. Despite all warnings and imprecations, there was always at least one impatient idiot who wasted his bullet.

A moment later the foremost, John among them, were riding past the edge of the village, their steeds easily leaping the surrounding ditch and charging down the streets that ran between the neat rows of stone and nearwood houses. John glimpsed faces in windows, saw doors open and close as he galloped past; the town was not empty. He looked for a foeman to strike.

A second rifle shot sounded, then two together, and he heard a woman scream somewhere nearby. Something crashed loudly to the ground, startling him; his horse broke stride and slowed, jerking him about in the saddle.

Then a new sound, a strange, heavy, threatening sound like nothing he had ever heard before, drowned out everything but the pounding of hooves. The sound was something like hoofbeats, but far louder and more even. It reminded John slightly of an ancient steam engine he had once heard run.

He judged it to be coming from somewhere behind him and to his left. He yanked hard at the reins, struggling to turn his mount in the narrow street.

Men were screaming-men and horses, and he had seen no trace of horses in the village. Now the street around him was jammed with milling horses as his soldiers, like himself, tried to locate and identify the strange new sound.

The thunder of the charge was gone. Instead of a steady roar of hoofbeats he heard the frightened cries of wounded animals and the hoarse shouts of men, and that constant rhythmic hammering. He thought he heard his name being called, but could not be certain over the din.

He had hoped to avoid any serious losses in attacking such a small and lightly-defended village; he had expected a quick surrender. It was plain that something was ruining his plans, and that if he did not regain control of events quickly the attack might turn into a disaster. Custom called for prayer at such a moment, but he did not feel that he could spare the time for that. He stood up in the stirrups, straining to see what was happening.

The lower part of the hillside was littered with downed horses and riders, some apparently dead, others still moving. Some horses, their saddles empty, were scattering and fleeing; a few of his men were fleeing after them. He could see no sign of what had wrought such carnage, unless it was the faint wisp of blue smoke that rose from a house at the edge of the village, the last house on the street where he rode, built close on the edge of the ditch.

Most of his warriors were still alive and ready to fight, but had become confused and frightened by the strange noise and the breaking of the charge. The noise continued unabated, but whatever had spread death across the slope had caught only the rearmost portion of the company. The rest were now riding up and down the village streets, uncertain what to do. The enemy had not emerged to defend the town in the usual way, as John and his men had expected. Ordinarily, when the defenders remained hidden, the attackers would have dismounted and formed squads, then gone from house to house, taking prisoners, killing anyone who resisted, and raping and looting as they went. After seeing their comrades strewn dead and wounded across the hillside, however, no one was eager to dismount and reduce his chances of fleeing safely from whatever had cut those men down.

No one who had reached the village had fallen. All the dead and wounded lay on the slope, well away from the houses. The hammering noise continued, and John saw puffs of dust spewing up from the hillside, a puff with each beat, as if bullets were tearing up the turf. Startled, he realized what the noise was, and what had torn up his cavalry; old stories and childhood history lessons came back to him in a rush.

“Machine gun!” he called. “It's a machine gun! Stay clear!"

The old stories had told him about machine guns, tanks, and aircraft, about bombs and artillery and computers, and a dozen other lost secrets of warfare, all left behind on Old Earth. They had not, however, told him how to deal with such weapons.

He saw bullets ripping through downed men and horses, finishing off any that might still have been alive, and realized that the gunner was wasting an incredible amount of ammunition by keeping up the steady stream of fire. The man was a fool; if he ceased firing, he might lure more targets-John's men-back into range.

As if someone had heard his thoughts, the hammering abruptly stopped.

A good sniper should be able to pick the gunner off, John theorized, but some of his riflemen had fired their single bullets, and others were probably lying dead on the hillside. If any remained, John was not able to spot them.

Furthermore, he was not able to see the machine-gunner, either.

A rifle cracked nearby; he ducked instinctively and spurred his mount forward as one of his men cried out in pain. That reminded him very effectively that the machine-gunner was not the only man defending the village, nor even the only one with a gun and ammunition.

Ordinary weapons his men could handle, but someone had to stop the machine gun before the attackers could rally.

Or did he? After all, the gun was no longer firing. It might be out of ammunition. Even if it were not, it had not been turned against anyone who had reached the shelter of the village streets. Wherever the gun was concealed, its field of fire was apparently limited to the slope above the town.

As he came to that conclusion, however, he saw a window in the second story of the house at the end of the street explode outward in a shower of shattered glass, smashed from inside. One of his own warriors raised his rifle and fired, wasting his lone bullet and, so far as John could see, hitting nothing but the rafters of the house.

A dull metal snout, large and awkward and not quite like that of a rifle in shape, thrust out through the shattered window, trailing blue smoke and pointing down toward the street. That, surely, was the machine gun.

“Look out!” John cried. He was already moving, guiding his horse close to the house.

The gun fired a short burst, perhaps half a dozen rounds, and two warriors fell from their saddles while the rest scattered. The street cleared with amazing speed, leaving only John in the neighborhood of the terrifying weapon.

John, looking at the gun projecting from the window, guessed that it could not be tipped down very far. A gun like that, he was certain, would have too powerful a recoil to be hand-held. It would need to be braced somehow, and in that case it could not be brought forward and held vertically out the window. That meant that if he hugged the wall of the house, right under the window, he could not be shot-at least, not with the machine gun. He was already fairly close; he urged his horse forward and even closer, huddling directly beneath the muzzle of the gun.

A man leaned out and started to look down the street for new targets; John's sword swept up and hacked a red line across his throat. The angle was wrong to get any real power behind the blow; John doubted that the wound would be fatal even if left untended. Still, the man made a wordless noise of pain and surprise and fell back out of sight. Inspired by this minor success-the first blood he had drawn so far-John gripped the hilt of his sword in both hands and brought it chopping forward against the protruding gun-barrel. Metal rang loudly and the machine gun tottered back, aiming at empty sky but not visibly damaged.

Someone out of sight within tried to straighten it, and John chopped at it again, twisting it over against the windowframe. He thought wryly that he would need a new sword after this; the edge would be ruined beyond recovery by such misuse.

“Ho, the True Word!” he called.

“Aye,” a few voices responded; not all his men had fled beyond earshot.

“This house, last on the street,” he bellowed. “Take this and you take the machine gun! I'll keep them from firing; you get inside and take the house!"

As if to disprove him, the gunner stopped trying to bring the gun to bear on anything, and instead fired a few rounds. They sprayed harmlessly across the rooftop opposite.

John laughed as he pressed his sword with both hands, forcing the gun aside. “Waste your bullets, heretic!” he called. “I don't mind!"

His horse shifted under him; he risked a glance back and saw that four of his men had heeded his call and were clustered at the door of the house, led by his lieutenant, Habakkuk Doomed-to-Die.

When he turned his eyes back toward the upper floor a man's sword-arm was reaching out the broken window, preparing to slash at John's wrists. He parried, releasing the barrel of the machine gun; while the swordsman was blocking the opening the gunner would be unable to fire effectively in any case.

Fighting around the corner formed by the windowsill was awkward, but John had by far the better of it. In order to reach out far enough to strike at him or keep his blade away from the barrel of the gun the other swordsman had to put at least a hand out the window, giving John a good target, while John could remain safely out of sight below the sill and still interfere with the use of the gun.

“Damn you, pagan!” a voice shouted from inside the house.

Behind him, John's men kicked in the door of the house and ran inside. A gunshot sounded, followed by a short scream and much shouting.

The swordsman above locked blades with John, forcing both swords back against one side of the window, and John realized that he meant to snap the blade. He pulled his weapon clear, barely keeping his balance in the saddle.

“They're inside,” someone called within the house. “Turn the gun around!"

Desperately, John slashed at the gun-barrel again, and the blade of his sword rang loudly as it struck. That did not prevent the gunner from pulling the weapon back out of sight.

“Captain!” a voice called.

John turned and saw Habakkuk standing in the doorway.

“John, we can't get up the stairs. There are five or six of them up there. We're going to burn them out."

John glanced back at the window. Neither the swordsman nor the machine gun barrel was visible. He would have preferred to have captured the gun intact, but that appeared to be impossible.

“All right,” he said, “but try to keep it from spreading. I want this town as a base, not a ruin. If you can take anybody alive, take them, and don't hurt them more than you have to. I want to know where they got that thing. And once the gun's out of the way, go house-to-house; take all the prisoners you can, burn out anyone who gives you trouble, but keep enough standing for us to use."

“Aye, Captain.” Habakkuk raised his right hand in salute, then vanished back through the doorway.

John watched the window, sword ready, but saw no further activity there. A moment later the smell of smoke reached his nostrils, and shortly after that his men came spilling out the doorway, coughing, swords bare in their hands. One blade was spattered with red, and only three men emerged where four had gone in.

He turned his horse, keeping one eye on the window. He heard renewed shouting inside as the defenders struggled to put out the fire. No sign of life showed at the window.

A few moments later the first two staggered out the door, choking and gasping. John's men were waiting, swords drawn; the villagers threw down their weapons and surrendered, to no one's surprise. This was not the first time John had seen smoke take the fight out of men.

A third villager emerged and was taken, but after him came a long moment of near-silence. The smoke pouring from the door grew thicker, and thin streamers began to leak from the upper story.

Finally, a fourth defender dashed out, sword ready, and not willing to give in easily. Two warriors pursued him, leaving John astride and Habakkuk afoot to watch the door and guard the three prisoners.

John shifted his grip on his sword; he was certain that the fleeing enemy was a diversion.

Sure enough, a few seconds later another man emerged. He swung immediately to the side and engaged Habakkuk, while behind him a sixth villager appeared, lugging a long, heavy metal thing. John spurred his horse and clouted this last man with his sword. The villager managed to duck at the last instant, but the blade gouged his scalp and he fell, dropping his burden-the machine gun, John was certain. One end was identical with the barrel that had protruded from the window; though the rest of the mechanism bore little resemblance to an ordinary gun or rifle, John had no doubt what it was.

Flames were licking at the doorframe; the defenders had waited until the last possible minute before making their break. John was sure that any who might remain within the house were doomed.

The three who had surrendered, upon seeing their comrades putting up a fight, attempted to join in, grabbing at Habakkuk from behind; John urged his mount forward again, trampling over the downed gunbearer to get at them, his sword flashing in the sun.

More of John's warriors, hearing the combat and seeing the smoke, were emerging from wherever they had fled, and in moments three of the six villagers were dead, another seriously wounded, and the remaining two captive. A horse's hoof had caved in the gunbearer's skull, and John saw, to his disgust, that the machine gun had been broken open somehow in the melee, scattering small bits of metal in the street.

“The machine gun is ours!” Habakkuk cried, and more of the invading cavalry reappeared. “Take the village, house by house!"

John did not bother to confirm the order; the men were obeying without his command. He stared down at the scattered fragments with regret. He had no mechanics with him. If the gun could be repaired at all, it could not be done here. Even the belt of ammunition, spilling from a box at one side, was of no immediate use; he could tell at a glance that the shells were far too large to fit the rifles his men carried. Eventually, of course, the gunpowder could be salvaged and used in ordinary cartridges-in fact, the ammunition belt probably contained a fortune in gunpowder. Perhaps a gun could be improvised that could use the shells.

A woman's scream distracted him; he looked up to see three of his men dragging her from her house, her skirts already torn away and blood running from a cut on her head.

“Keep them alive!” he shouted, “Take prisoners! I'll flog any man who kills an unarmed villager!"

One of the three men grinned at him and signalled an acknowledgement. “Yes, sir, Captain,” he called. “We won't kill her, we'll just pass her on!"

“You do that,” John replied. He glanced down at the pieces of the gun. “We need to know where they got this thing.” He grimaced with distaste. A machine gun-obviously valuable, perhaps an irreplaceable historical relic, maybe brought on one of the founding ships all the way from Earth itself, and now broken.

He cared more for its value as an artifact than as a weapon; this gun was a piece of Godsworld's history. As dangerous a weapon as it might be it was not to his liking, killing indiscriminately at a distance. He preferred more personal weapons. He wiped the blood from his sword, holding it up so that the blade gleamed bright in the sun.

Give him steel, he thought, shining steel, not the dull lead and brass of bullets.