Hells march, p.4
Hell's March, page 4
“It wasnae that bad,” McNabb deflected. It had been.
“All the horses dead in the traces, the damned Doms overrunning our limbers? Only you with the sense to pull the guns back by hand and keep loading them from the caissons!”
“You would’a thought of it,” McNabb assured loyally.
“I did! I just didn’t know how!” McNabb had called for wounded men, infantry—anyone at hand—to clap onto the prolong ropes and heave the guns back even as their crews kept loading and firing. Any pause at that moment would’ve doomed them all.
“Well . . . it was fine in the end.”
The guns roared again, to more cheering, and Olayne opened his telescope to peer at the distant target as pulverized stone exploded in all directions and a long section of wall by the gate collapsed in a billowing cloud of dust. “It was never built to withstand artillery,” he murmured.
“No sir,” McNabb agreed with a touch of irony, “just hugeous man-eatin’ beasties.”
Olayne frowned. Too true, he thought. By anyone’s reckoning—whose mind I can understand—the . . . different enemy we’ve found on this strange and deadly world seems as starkly wicked as any soldier could hope that men he’s ordered to kill could be. Their prisoners—combatants or not—are invariably tortured and murdered, even eaten by Holcanos and Grik. And bent on “holy” conquest by extermination, the Doms are just as cruel and ruthless to their own troops, enforcing mindless discipline with ghastly examples. For all that, however, their battlefield tactics are straightforward enough. Too straightforward for their own good, so far. But as McNabb said, the land and creatures infesting it are terrible enemies in their own right, even more frightening and incomprehensible than the Doms. At least to those of us “new” here.
They’d encountered no Holcanos on their ten-day dash down the Cipactli River road, or during the week it took to get here from Itzincab, but even their large, noisy, well-armed force couldn’t discourage all the monsters, and they’d lost nine men. Four were killed in a single attack by what looked like a furry, ten-foot-tall . . . crow, with great toothy jaws instead of a beak, long arms with terrible claws on its fingers, and a rigid, whiplike tail under bright plumage that spread out toward the end. A fusillade of shots finally drove it off but didn’t seem badly injured. Just possibly frightened and annoyed by its many wounds. The others—as many Ocelomeh as not, so even the woods-wise weren’t immune—were lost to slashing attacks by similar, smaller beasts, usually at night. Without the wall they were battering down, no city could survive in this densely wooded wilderness, and that explained why even the surrounding homes were stoutly made.
McNabb nodded behind them. “Colonel’s comin’.”
Olayne turned again, muttering lightly, “And I was only just now contemplating ‘strange creatures.’ ”
Colonel “King” Har-Kaaska drew near, surrounded by a small staff—mostly colorfully dressed civilian leaders from Pidra Blanca, Techon, and Itzincab—all human. Har-Kaaska wasn’t. In fact, he looked like a man-size cross between some kind of wide-eyed cat and a burly, furry ape, complete with what seemed like a disproportionately long tail. Wearing gold scale armor over a black and brownish-gray brindled pelt, he rode a bipedal creature that might’ve been a giant platypus . . . shaped more like a lizard . . . or a fat duck, complete with a broad protruding bill beneath smallish black eyes.
Still, as bizarre as all the Americans might still consider Har-Kaaska and his mount, all his Mi-Anakka, for that matter, they were ultimately just “another thing” on top of the multitude of other opium-dream phenomena they’d coped with as all their beliefs, worldviews, even prejudices came under unrelenting assault. After eight months of that, combined with actual bloody combat, a very few might still cling to old notions and bigotries, even teeter on the brink of madness, but most had accepted and adapted to their unexplainable situation. The portly Reverend Harkin’s belief that God put them here specifically to confront the evil of the Holy Dominion was a comfort to some, but nearly all were inspired by their growing attachment to the natives and the cause of uniting and protecting them.
This offensive was a start; Har-Kaaska’s brigade of 2nd Division was composed of the 2nd Ocelomeh (a thousand archers with big, powerful bows and heavy-shafted obsidian-tipped arrows), joined by a thousand uniformed pikemen from Pidra Blanca and Techon, and two thousand militia from Itzincab (some in uniform, some not). They’d come to liberate Puebla Arboras and secure the southeast approach to the Allied cities. With a little help from us, Olayne mused as his guns roared again, even though most of his roughly four hundred “American” troops were now either Ocelomeh or Uxmalos themselves. They were doing their part while Major Cayce completed refitting, reorganizing, and resupplying 1st Division in its new position at Nautla and prepared for whatever it was he meant to do next.
“Fine execution!” Har-Kaaska boomed at Olayne. “I do love your great guns—beautiful pieces—and it was good of Major Cayce to lend them to us.”
“We’re all in this together, Your Majes . . . I mean Colonel.” Olayne would’ve flushed again and shook his head.
Har-Kaaska kakked a kind of laugh. “Don’t be embarrassed. I’m not a real ‘king,’ you know. They just call me that. And I’m not really a colonel, since I’d outrank Major Cayce, and we all agreed he’d exercise supreme military command. I hear he’s to be forced to accept a promotion, but . . .” He blinked that away and gestured forward through the smoke as another dust cloud drifted downwind from the rubbled wall, stark white against the deep green of the forest beyond the city. “Mustn’t overdo it, though. That wall will have to be rebuilt to protect the innocent people remaining here”—he blinked something else Olayne knew held meaning but he had no idea what it was—“if there are any left,” he added bleakly. “I believe it’s about ripe,” he continued decisively. “Your other guns—the twelve pounder howitzers—are in place, yes? And your Rangers and dragoons?”
“Yes sir,” Olayne replied, glancing at a dragoon sergeant named Buisine who’d just reported.
“Very well. Cease firing, but you’re welcome to advance your guns with the infantry. The enemy’s heavy arrows won’t carry past two hundred paces, and even if they have a few Dom muskets, they won’t do any better.”
“We’d be honored to accompany you, sir”—Olayne smiled—“especially if you’d be kind enough to detail half a dozen stout fellows to help us move each gun.” He smiled wider. “We ordinarily pull them with horses, you know, and tired artillerymen make poor marksmen.”
Har-Kaaska grinned back. “Of course! And I do appreciate it,” he added. “Just because we don’t see a great mob of defenders on the walls doesn’t mean they aren’t there. You can sweep them away with canister if they pop up.”
“Gladly, sir.” Olayne raised his voice. “Battery! Cease firing and secure implements. Prepare to advance by hand to the front! Caissons will remain here, but limbers will keep their spacing. Ensure there are at least ten rounds of canister in each chest.”
A hundred Ocelomeh archers raced out ahead as skirmishers, followed by two ranks of five hundred pikemen in uniforms copied from the Americans and under the flags of their cities: what looked like a stylized feathery lizard of some sort on a red saltire crossing bright green for Pidra Blanca, and a red, white, and gold tricolor pennant for Techon. Olayne moved his 6pdrs forward under his own flags: a four-by-four-foot Stars and Stripes and a gold battery flag with crossed cannons on red-painted banners. There were no fifers, but Itzincab had supplied drummers aplenty, and they pounded their instruments in time with tramping feet, rolling louder as the bulk of the archers stepped off, followed by the Itzincabos themselves.
Olayne remained mounted near the center with Har-Kaaska’s small entourage behind his spaced-out guns, watching the spectacle from above, as it were. The troops seemed determined enough, but then it wasn’t the first time for them as it had been for the Uxmalos at the Washboard. These men had fought Holcanos already, and the terrifying, semireptilian Grik as well (even worse in Olayne’s view). The closer they got to the looming wall and gaping gap his guns made, the more impressed he was with Har-Kaaska’s little division. Of course, they weren’t taking any fire yet. . . .
“There’s smoke rising over the city!” Har-Kaaska suddenly exclaimed. “A lot of smoke.” He looked questioningly at Olayne.
“We were careful, sir, and didn’t even bring any exploding case shot. Haven’t figured out how to make more, yet. Solid roundshot might scatter braziers or lanterns, but can’t start fires on its own. Not like that.” Even as they watched, the smoke spread and rose from other places.
“They’re burning the city!” Har-Kaaska decided at once. “We must hurry! Major Klashi,” he called to his human aide, who nodded and urged his horse toward the infantry commander. Moments later, the troops surged forward, and Olayne’s cannoneers and their helpers were gasping to keep the guns with them. Then came the distant Poom-poom! of howitzers spewing canister on the other side of the city, followed by the rapid crackle of fire from the dragoons’ breechloading Hall carbines.
“They’re trying to escape out the south gate, just as expected,” Olayne said, “and Boogerbear—I mean Lieutenant Beeryman—is giving them hell.” The two 12pdr howitzers were mounted on the same carriages as Olayne’s 6pdrs and were specifically designed to fire exploding case or shell—which they didn’t have—at relatively low velocities and high trajectories. They were simply too light to fire solid shot on top of useful loads. If the thin-walled tubes didn’t fail, the recoil would beat the carriages apart. They did just fine with canister at close range, however. They and all the mounted troops had secretly positioned themselves in the forest to the south, flanking the road, to catch the fleeing enemy in a crossfire. That seemed to be working, but the enemy was burning Puebla Arboras as they left.
“Very good, as we hoped,” Har-Kaaska said distractedly, “but we must get inside the city.”
Olayne nodded, chilled by the normally unflappable Mi-Anakka’s tone.
There was no resistance as Har-Kaaska’s troops swept through the shattered gap in the wall and started spreading out while the officers paused. “Get that debris cleared away so we can take a section of guns inside,” Olayne told First Sergeant McNabb.
“Aye, sir. Bear a hand, you awkward buggers,” McNabb tried to shout at some Itzincabos in terribly accented Spanya—what they called the odd mix of antiquated Spanish and Mayan the locals used. Olayne doubted they understood McNabb’s words, but they took his meaning. Several dozen militia started clearing jagged stones from around the shattered gate as the rest of the troops surged through. “That’ll do,” McNabb yelled. “Sergeant Murphy, take yer section. I’m with ye. The rest of ye, stay here, but stay sharp an’ ready ta come if called. Corporal Rosar, unhitch a limber an’ bring it through by hand!”
Once the guns and limber were through, Har-Kaaska left Major Klashi and five hundred Itzincabos and two hundred Ocelomeh archers as a rear guard and reserve with the rest of the guns. His party entered the city as well. They were greeted by a terrible sight. Flames were leaping everywhere, most vigorously from thatch-roof stables and shops built against the inside of the wall, but heavy smoke poured from more impressive stone structures as their contents and framing burnt, shriveling the greenery covering the walls. Abandoned loot was everywhere, and all manner of livestock lay slaughtered in the street under blankets of swarming flies and feasting “lizardbirds.” Goats, burrows, hundreds of “gallinas” (fat, vicious little semidomesticated types of lizardbirds the locals used like chickens), and even dozens of armabueys. Holcanos had little use for the giant, knobby-armored armadillos, but the fact all the other fine plunder had been left or wasted proved they were spooked and wouldn’t carry anything to slow their retreat. It also sent Har-Kaaska into a near panic as he bolted forward on the heels of his troops, rushing through the smoke and littered street toward the plaza surrounding the looming pyramid.
“What is it?” Olayne called out, urging his horse to keep up.
“The people! Where are the people?” replied Alcalde Truro. The small, usually unassertive leader of Itzincab seemed consumed with a fearful rage. “If goats and gallinas were too much trouble to take—and they killed them rather than leave them—what of the people they’d consider their ‘property’ as well?”
They found them in the plaza, hundreds and hundreds of men, women, and children, all beheaded and dismembered with their bloody parts heaped in different piles. Hundreds more had been impaled on stakes and burnt, all around the base of the pyramid. From the condition of some of those remains, it looked like that had been going on for months, ever since Alcalde Don Discipo turned his city over to the Holcanos—and the Blood Priests of the Dominion. The latter had been “cleansing” their new acquisition of “heretics,” no doubt.
The advancing troops stopped, frozen in shock and horror, and even though he’d almost expected it by then, the sight made Olayne take a sharp breath. He nearly retched from the stench. Whipping his neck cloth off and holding it over his face, he did retch when he saw fire-blackened cook pits with human bones strung around. Animal monsters aside, nothing in his previous life, not even lurid tales of Indian massacres, had prepared Justinian Olayne for the human barbarity displayed on this world. He’d fought Holcanos and Grik on the beach when they first arrived and had his first glimpse of it then, and he’d watched the Doms slaughter almost an entire regiment of their own men who retreated from the battle at the Washboard. He retained no illusions about their enemies and expected only depravity from them. But this . . . Nothing could more graphically reinforce the stakes they fought for, or more perfectly justify their cause.
Har-Kaaska was openly weeping, dark furry face wet with tears. “I failed,” he said harshly. “I failed in my duty to protect these people. We should’ve moved on Puebla Arboras as soon as we suspected Don Discipo!”
“No,” Olayne said softly, gathering himself. “What would you have done it with? Your Ocelomeh alone? You had no army yet, none of us did! You might’ve stopped Don Discipo, but we couldn’t have stopped the Doms in the west without your Ocelomeh. Uxmal, Pidra Blanca, Techon, perhaps even Itzincab would already look like this as well.”
There was movement in the smoke. Suspecting trapped Holcanos—the fighting to the south was still swelling—vengeful Jaguar Warriors raised their bows and blue-clad infantry surged forward with pikes. What they found were pitiful survivors: half-starved, ragged civilians, hopefully, tentatively emerging to greet their liberators. Olayne was surprised how many there were, their numbers quickly growing as they cried out in relief and thanksgiving at the distinctly familiar sight of Har-Kaaska.
“The tombs beneath the city,” Alcalde Truro guessed, voice breaking with a kind of tragic relief. “Many look as though they’ve been there for months.” Seeing Olayne’s confusion, he explained, “The vile god of the Dominion dwells in the underworld and it’s sacrilege for anyone but Priests to go down in the ground. Holcanos are afraid of such places for their own reasons,” he snorted, “and Priests aren’t warriors. Anyone who made it down in the tombs would’ve been safe enough, with sufficient provisions.”
Evidently heartened by the fact he hadn’t come too late for everyone, Har-Kaaska straightened in the saddle of his strange mount, tail whipping behind him. “There are more warriors to deal with, however,” he snapped savagely, gazing toward the sound of battle. “Alcalde Truro, please see to the needs of these people and secure the rest of the city with your Itzincabos. I’ll take my archers and the pikemen”—he blinked something that might’ve been a plea at Olayne—“and the artillery out the south gate. Judging by the volume of fire, Lieutenant Beeryman has likely pinned a sizable number of vermin in the depressions alongside the Cayal Road.”
Armed with intimate knowledge of the ground he’d gained by personal scouting before Har-Kaaska arrived with the main force, Boogerbear and his Rangers and dragoons had done exactly that. A clot of mounted men, mostly Holcanos, escaped when he opened fire, bolting down the road as fast as their horses would carry them, but the bulk of Holcanos and few remaining Grik were afoot when lethal sprays of canister and murderous carbine fire and heavy-shafted arrows suddenly flew. Boogerbear’s Rangers had their bows, of course, but most were also armed with captured Dom carbines, or “musketoons.” Instead of a single ball, they’d been loaded with handfuls of “drip shot” made by pouring molten lead through a copper bowl pierced with dozens of holes and letting it drop in a bucket of water. The individual projectiles looked like big teardrops, but hundreds of them discharged at once made the inaccurate musketoons much deadlier at close range.
And then there were the dragoon’s breechloading Hall carbines, hated and loved by their owners. They leaked a lot of gas (and the force of their shot) and were prone to lock up with fouling when it was dry, but the high humidity actually helped with that and didn’t affect their reliability as much as it did flintlocks. Relatively accurate and quick to load, they’d convinced the enemy they were surrounded by three times their number. Escape was impossible, a charge was broken, and some who tried to run back to the south gate of the city, for whatever good that would do, were shot down. The rest could only hunker in the ditches by the road and that’s where Har-Kaaska found them when he poured out the gate with several hundred vengeful Ocelomeh archers, pikemen, and two 6pdrs loaded with canister.
Olayne never got to fire, and the 12pdr howitzers were silenced as well because Har-Kaaska immediately whipped his strange mount forward and led a screaming charge. It quickly turned into a desperate melee and even the dragoons had to stop shooting, but Olayne saw Boogerbear and his quickly mounted rangers dash from the woods and smash into what had been the enemy “front” and was suddenly its “rear.” They fired musketoons from feet or inches and Boogerbear was doing the same with a Colt Paterson in each hand.
