Hells march, p.45
Hell's March, page 45
The column was crashing to a jumbled halt behind its stunned and horrified leaders, injuring and possibly killing dozens of horses and men in the process as those behind slammed into the press ahead. A long moment passed while Barca knew nothing about what was happening elsewhere, but assumed the tail of the column must’ve sensed something at last and started to slow its mad dash, pulling up, pausing, starting to mill about.
And get shot.
A fusillade erupted a fair distance away as Major Anson opened fire. His men, over two hundred Rangers, would be firing straight down at very close range, probably with dangerously heavy loads of drop shot. Squealing screams of horses and men came to Barca’s ears, and he reacted to “the signal.”
“Fire!” he yelled.
Both 6pdrs roared simultaneously, leaping back and spewing a total of one hundred eighty .69 caliber balls shrouded in the billowing yellowish-white smoke that always accompanied canister. Dust started kicking up three-quarters of the way to the milling mass of Doms, but on this dry, hard surface, even projectiles that initially struck low would skate up into the target. Some went high, but were already dropping quickly enough to fall among Doms behind those in front. Most hit somewhere in the middle, a space tightly packed with men and animals. Everyone in the very front went down, often smashed by multiple, even dozens of, balls apiece. Horses simply crumpled, legs and bodies destroyed, and men were shredded in the fog of blood gusting around them.
Barca barely heard these closer screams begin because the Rangers around the guns opened fire as well.
“Sir?” Hanny shouted the question back.
Barca gulped. “Commence independent fire,” he managed to cry with authority even as his stomach turned and bile rose in his throat. He was almost shocked by the casual, matter-of-fact wave the young, sensitive—he believed—Hanny Cox threw back before roaring for his crew to reload. The gleeful chortling of Daniel Hahessy was expected while they did bloody murder. Sheer, simple murder. Not a single ball from an enemy carbine warbled back toward them. He felt sick, like this was all a terrible mistake.
Then he heard the cries of the Ocelomeh Rangers as they fired. Almost all was in Spanya, but he understood it well enough. The things they shouted reflected sentiments like, “Come to murder our families, will you? Enslave us? How does it feel to take it for a change?” And most commonly, “Remember Los Arboles! Remember Agua Ancha! Remember Valle Escondido!”
That’s when he remembered they hadn’t chosen this war. Oh, they’d chosen to fight at last, when given the means, but the dread of war with so much at stake had been upon them for generations, torturing their souls if not yet their bodies. Even the skirmishing with Holcanos had been part of that—as the Holcanos themselves now knew. Despite their barely suppressed savagery, Barca actually pitied the Holcanos. Only the arrival of the Americans (imperfect “heroes” as they were)—witness men like Hahessy and too many like him—and then the Battle of the Washboard had shown them they had a chance, that they didn’t have to just take it when the Doms came for them. Barca vaguely knew how that felt. He’d chosen not to take it himself, hadn’t he? Instead of accepting whatever role might’ve been expected of him, he’d forged a place for himself among heroes. Now he must earn it.
They weren’t doing murder here. They were destroying enemies who’d treat them unspeakably if they could. As they would if they weren’t killed. These particular Doms may not be Blood Priests and hadn’t massacred the villages along the Usuma River, but they were part of a system, a creed, that gave rise to creatures who could.
Poom! Poom! roared Barca’s guns. And they were his guns.
Boogerbear galloped up on his horse, so lathered with sweat that the stripes were invisible. Barca crisply saluted him.
Boogerbear waved it away with a grin. “I b’leve you can cease firin’, for the present,” he said cheerfully. “A few are leakin’ back the way they came, but you’ve built too big a heap in front of you to jump. Stay where you are, but hold off awhile. I’ll send somebody back d’rectly.” He gazed at the blackened guns for a moment while men sponged them out with black water. “Was I ever glad ta see them,” he said. “Scary as hell ridin’ into ’em, in case somebody got itchy,” he confessed, “but I wasn’t worried.” He pointed back at the arroyo with the revolver still in his hand. “More worried about them boogers behind us. Ol’ Dodger ain’t a racin’ horse, an’ they were gettin’ close.” With another jaunty wave, he turned his tired animal back the way he came and urged him into a slow trot.
Barca turned back to his guns. “Section! Cease firing, secure your pieces!”
“Cease firing, secure the piece,” echoed Cox and Dodd.
Barca shifted in his saddle and noticed First Sergeant Petty standing by with a musket on his shoulder. The artillerymen still kept muskets in the battery wagon for guard duty, foraging, and “just in case.”
“I haven’t seen you since we unlimbered, First Sergeant. Where have you been?” Barca asked.
Petty waved vaguely around. “With just two guns, nothin’ much for me to do.” He tugged on his sling. “Figured I’d stand around with this, case them devils got close enough to need it.” He shrugged. “They didn’t, an’ you didn’t need me.” He came as close as he was probably capable to a smile. “You did fine, Lieutenant.”
Barca took a long breath. “Thank you, First Sergeant. I appreciate that.”
CHAPTER 24
ARMY OF GOD’S VENGEANCE
With an east, southeast wind and the land as dry as could be, the shroud of choking, swirling dust created by an army of more than twenty thousand men marching west with all their guns, animals, and wagons stalked and blanketed the entire column, including General Agon and his staff at the front, where dust wasn’t usually a problem. It was hot too, and the chalky tan dust stuck to sweaty skin and sweat-dampened uniforms. Capitan Arevalo had attempted to shield his general from most of it with a broad, somewhat flimsy parasol, but the wind made it batter the general, replacing whatever dust it knocked off him with more it collected and deposited. Agon finally snatched it away and cast it angrily on the ground. A glance from Arevalo at a servant caused the man to retrieve the device. Who knew when it might rain?
“I never thought I’d miss the forest!” Agon exclaimed. “Just as dusty, I suppose, but rarely so windy.” He frowned. “Rarely a breeze at all, in fact, and all the air as dense and hot and reeking . . .” He sighed. “But one could at least breathe it.”
Arevalo looked around. There were still trees, quite a few, dotting the rolling, wash-cracked savanna in disorderly clumps, but most were quite stunted compared to the titans in the Yucatán. There were mountains far to the south (beyond view at present with all the dust), and there’d be another forest ahead, on the other side of the narrow bridge of land at Gran Lago, but the countryside would be more pleasant there, with more little villages and more people between what were considered the “old” and “new frontiers.” They’d probably crossed the unseen but very real line designating the latter and the beginning of La Tierra de Sangre a day or two before.
“I don’t miss any part of it,” Arevalo said simply, and both knew why. This was his third “retreat” from Nautla and beyond. The first time he’d been desperately wounded, shot by the strange but beautiful daughter of the terrible Ranger named Anson. He probably should’ve died. If grace truly came from suffering, he’d already accumulated more than enough for passage into paradise.
“Yes. Well. I expect we’ve seen the last of that particularly disagreeable expanse of forest for a while. Who knows when we’ll be at liberty to resume our work in the Yucatán?” What Agon left unsaid was that they’d probably have to win a civil war first.
A squadron of lancers clattered up alongside the plodding column, throwing more dust in the air and causing General Agon to hold a handkerchief over his mouth and nose and close his eyes. “I assume that’s Coronel Uza, come to report?” he asked.
“Yes, my general,” Arevalo replied.
“Well, Coronel, did you find what you were looking for?” Agon asked, squinting over the cloth as Uza slowed his horse beside his own and a gust of wind cleared the air a bit.
Uza hesitated a little too long, even uncharacteristically avoiding Agon’s gaze.
“Well, speak up!” Agon demanded.
“Yes, my general,” he finally replied, tone subdued. “Yesterday, we discovered a heavily used trail in an arroyo to the southeast.” He gestured loosely to the left. “To the south now, I should think. You’ve marched farther than I expected since then. That’s why we rejoined from the east, after a . . . delay.” He pressed on. “As I suspected, the heretics have been using depressions such as that to move undetected, and the evidence indicated the trail had been made by a force roughly equal to my own, surely the bulk of the heretic raiders, apparently intent on outpacing your column and harassing it again at some point. That’s what I thought. . . .” he added somewhat lamely, then straightened in his saddle. “In any event, as you commanded, I did not endanger myself”—that statement sounded almost like an accusation—“when I stayed back with this squadron behind me and dispatched the greater part of my battalion in pursuit.”
Uza took a deep, bleak breath. “It was a trap. Shortly after we separated, I heard heavy gunfire some distance ahead. It was muffled and badly distorted by convoluted terrain, but I’m sure I heard at least two cannon as well.”
Agon looked shocked. “We heard no cannon here. How far was this?”
“Less than two leguas, no more.”
“It wasn’t as windy yesterday, but it came from the same direction,” Arevalo jumped in. “Combined with the noise of our army, and if this . . . trap occurred in a depression, it’s entirely possible we wouldn’t have heard.”
“It wasn’t just a depression, it was a pit of death!” Uzo snarled, control slipping. “I only got the details from the few survivors as I rushed forward myself . . .”
“Few survivors?” Agon breathed, glancing back at the lancers. There were less than a hundred, and many were wounded.
“. . . and finally saw what happened,” Uzo relentlessly continued. “That . . . ese diablo llamado Anson deliberately baited my men to their doom, like pouring ants into a cup and setting it on a fire! They had no chance at all. Worse, we rode as fast as we could, but by the time we reached”—he covered his eyes with his hand, and his voice broke—“that open grave of mangled flesh, the Diablos who dug it for almost three hundred of my men were already gone! Every one! There wasn’t even a heretic corpse.” He shuddered. “It was as if they were never there!”
“But there were other survivors?” Arevalo urged gently.
Uza wiped his face, smearing damp dust like mud. “Yes. More wounded than I counted. Some—and all the damaged horses—had their throats efficiently cut, but”—his tone changed to what might have held grudging appreciation—“it appeared only those who couldn’t have lived were treated so. The rest were even left with water.” He sounded like he could hardly imagine that.
Agon grimly nodded, contemplating what he’d heard and remembering when Coronel Itzam had proposed a truce to retrieve the wounded around Nautla. He personally believed Anson was a devil, of a sort, but this might’ve been the first time a credible senior officer openly called him and all his men “Los Diablos” out loud where everyone could hear. The whole army would be calling them that by nightfall, probably inclusive of all the heretics, and he didn’t know if that would frighten them or strengthen their resolve. Conversely, what might weaken it was the mercy shown to the wounded. Mercy, or “misericordia,” was a rarely used word in the Holy Dominion, and few would recognize it if they heard it. Many ordinary people practiced it among themselves, no doubt, but the Blood Priests would burn and crucify and impale the very notion out of existence. Of course, it wasn’t as if the Dominion army was known for “mercy” either, and Agon’s version in the same circumstances Coronel Uza had observed would’ve been to swiftly kill all the enemy wounded. Who then truly is the devil in this contest? whispered a quiet, careful voice in his soul. Don Hurac had decided the Blood Priests were the ultimate enemy, and Agon concurred. Does that make them devils? How can it when they’re merely rabid versions of ourselves? As always, he grew very confused when he thought about such things.
All other confusion was gone entirely, however, and he spoke abruptly; “Detail whatever escort you can manage to fetch your wounded with however many wagons you need, Coronel Uza,” he said. “Most of our wagons are quite empty at present, you know.”
“Thank you, my general,” Uza said, “but I should go myself.”
“No. I said ‘whatever you can manage’—after you send messengers to bring the rest of your lancers back up from behind us. I want you out front, scouting the way to Gran Lago. Fetch me General Tun!” he commanded one of his own messengers, then looked back at Uza. “Have you wondered why you were trapped so thoroughly here, now”—he snorted—“when ‘Los Diablos’ could’ve done it at virtually any point since they forced us to consolidate nearly all our mounted troops into a tidy package?”
“Because they could?” Uza answered bitterly.
“Of course, but there’s more to the timing. We’re getting very close to Gran Lago, which is as fine a choke point or ‘cup’ as your men found themselves in, and this entire army is now no better equipped to sniff out a trap than you were. To shamefully mix my metaphors, we’re blind. As far as we know, Coronel Cayce continues to plod along the Camino Militar safely behind us, drawing no closer despite the delay caused by the raid on our camp. Why?”
He thought about that hard and barely noticed when General Tun rode up to join them. Finally acknowledging his friend, he said, “For the second time, I’m as sure as I can possibly be that Coronel Cayce is not where we think he is.”
“Indeed? Then where is he?” Tun asked incredulously.
Agon pointed south. “Out there, somewhere, alongside us. Stalking us.”
“You’re mad,” Tun huffed. “How? Why?”
“I believe—I’m certain—he’s trying to get around us, to Gran Lago. That’s what he’s been doing all along! He never was at Nautla. At first he was probably just trying to get behind us and smash us between his force and Coronel Itzam’s. It would’ve been most convenient if he caught us, bled white, in front of Nautla. . . .” He clenched his fist as realization came; how close he’d been to complete destruction. “But we left,” he said, carefully controlling his voice. “Now—I don’t know how—he’s spent all these months contriving to do it again, and Gran Lago is the perfect place! We must hurry the column forward. Leave everything and everyone who can’t make it behind.”
In spite of his sudden, almost desperate intensity, Agon appeared almost giddy. Tun lifted an eyebrow at him. “Why so excited? Cayce’s no longer our chief concern. A battle now can only hurt us, even if we win.”
“True,” Agon agreed. “But I’ve so craved another meeting with Colonel Cayce—without that fool Don Frutos on my back.”
“ ‘That fool,’ and his puppet masters, will be on all our backs forever if we can’t stop him. We must avoid a major action with Coronel Cayce if we can. We can’t fritter our army away as we did at the Washboard, in pointless frontal assaults—even if he does reach Gran Lago before us.”
Agon nodded wistfully. “I know that as well, but I’m . . . pleased that I divined Cayce’s plan, so bold that it almost eluded me—again. But this time it didn’t, and if we reach Gran Lago first, Cayce will have to come to us. He must if he truly means to march all the way to Vera Cruz.” He made a moue. “I’m still not certain of that. It seems unbelievable that he’d try it, regardless how tempting. But if he does, we’ll have him!” Agon delighted in the prospect a few moments more before finally conceding, “We’d get hurt, no question about it, but then we’d have only the Blood Priests and Don Frutos to deal with, and half the Dominion in which to rebuild our strength on the way to Vera Cruz to rescue Don Hurac. From there, we march on the Holy City and restore the Dominion to its proper path!” He lowered his voice. “Our fraternity of warriors will finally be appreciated and respected again.”
“Wonderful, all of it,” Tun agreed, then held up a finger. “If.”
“ ‘If’ what?”
“If we defeat or avoid Coronel Cayce. If there are any troops left to be had between Gran Lago and Vera Cruz—Don Frutos will have already passed through there, remember? If we defeat him before he murders Don Hurac. Who would we raise as Supreme Holiness in his place? And finally, if Don Julio hasn’t already recalled the Gran Cruzada and sworn it to serve him. I’ve no idea how large it was when it finally departed, but don’t forget the Blood Priests were involved in its creation from beginning to end, and it took years to build. We’d never raise an army to match it.”
“No,” Agon conceded. “But even if Don Julio—I won’t call him ‘His Supreme Holiness’—does recall the Gran Cruzada—most difficult without appearing weak—it will require months for so large a force to grind to a halt, turn around, and march all the way back to the center of the empire.” He shrugged. “We have a long way to go as well and can only do what we can do, but all the more reason to hurry. Pass the word to all brigade commanders: we pick up the pace!”
* * *
As it turned out, General Agon didn’t win the race to Gran Lago; nor did Lewis Cayce or “El Diablo” Anson. It was Capitan Ramon Lara and his 1st Yucatán Lancers, joined on his sweeping, end-around push by Coryon Burton’s 3rd US dragoons and Dukane’s battery of 12pdr howitzers, who got there first, groping about in the trackless, foggy, predawn dark. They would’ve bumbled around even longer without Alcaldesa Consela to guide them as best she could remember. She’d been born in the town of Gran Lago but fled the increasing religious intolerance of the Dominion with her family as a child, more than thirty years before. They hadn’t been alone, and that exodus resulted in the foundation of several now-shattered villages along the Usuma River. Interestingly, her memory was aided by Father Orno who, along with his friend and colleague Reverend Harkin (still with Lewis Cayce), had worked together to compile the best possible maps from their own and captured sources before joining the army, and continued to update them as they advanced. Just as important, their shared passion for understanding the natural world God created gave them certain advantages when it came to interpreting the conditions as well.
