The Guns Above Page 31

  Mistral’s war cry began with Sergeant Jutes, but it spread across the deck, until Bernat found himself joining involuntarily, raising his voice and screeching out his own feeble shout. The sound of it, and the hollow roar of the steamjack behind, bellowed from Mistral as if she really were some baleful dragon descending from a fairy tale.

  The bottom of the deck splashed into the stream, heaving Bernat up even as the keel came crashing down. The weakened companionway ladder, sandwiched between deck and keel, snapped in the middle, sending splinters flying.

  And then the keel was bouncing back up and crewmen were leaping over the side into the veil of smoke. He felt a hand grip his arm and pull him forward, and he sprang over the rail to splash into the stream next to Josette. He looked up to see the ship already rising, becoming nothing but a dim silhouette above.

  “This way, Bernie!” Josette called, drawing her saber and pushing through the knee-deep water.

  He followed as fast as he could, wondering how the hell she knew which way to go. No matter which direction he looked, it was water for three feet ahead and only smoke beyond. He tore his goggles off and discarded them, but it didn’t help. The smoke stung his eyes, parched his throat, and burned his nose with the intensity of its horrible rotten-egg smell.

  Coming out of the stream and onto a muddy shelf, he tripped on the bank and fell into a patch of moss, nearly coming down atop his own sword. As he lifted himself up, he became aware of several pertinent facts. One was that he had tripped not on the bank, but on a severed leg. The second was that he had fallen not into moss, but amid a pile of bodies.

  As he ran to catch his fellows, the glint of bayonets caught his eye to the left. There were hundreds of them, all held at the ready, their gleaming points aimed right at the spot where Josette and the Mistral crew had disappeared into the smoke. He knew he should run after them and help, but all his vigor fled from him in an instant.

  The shouts and screaming began ahead. He wanted to follow, wanted to die with them, but he couldn’t move from that spot. It was only by sheer force of will that he kept himself from falling to his knees and bursting into tears.

  He heard feet splashing through the water behind him. He looked over his shoulder to see the metal badges of a hundred shakos looming out of the smoke, with more bayonet tips ahead of them. He ran, but they were faster. He spun around and whirled his blade in a wild slash at the nearest one, shouting, “No!”

  A big hand came down on his shoulder and someone said, “This way, sir!” It took him a moment to realize that the voice was Garnian.

  * * *

  THE LITTLE GUN battery was more impressive from the ground. Two twelve-pounder cannons and two twenty-four pounder howitzers had been emplaced on dry, level ground, five feet above the stream. Anyone attacking the battery had to climb that slippery, shoulder-high earthwork, then negotiate the wood-and-gabion wall atop it. There were even planks spread across the top of the battery to protect the artillerymen from shell fragments. Vins who wanted to storm this battery would either have to break through the roof, fight their way past the entrenchments at the flanks, or climb in through the cannon embrasures.

  All three of which they’d done, it seemed to Josette. The battery had become a charnel house, with dead infantrymen from both sides strewn across the ground, along with dozens of wounded Garnians whom the stretcher-bearers were still collecting. There was a notable lack of Vinzhalian wounded, which could only mean they’d all been bayoneted after their comrades had retreated.

  “You’d better call back the gun crews,” Josette said to the first officer she saw, a young lieutenant from the 24th Fusiliers. “We have to get these cannons firing.”

  “You’re looking at the gun crews,” the lieutenant said, pointing to several shirtless bodies lying here and there inside the battery. “General Fieren ordered them to stay with their guns and keep firing.”

  She sighed, suddenly feeling very, very tired.

  “Are you from the airship?” the lieutenant asked.

  “Mistral, yes.”

  He seemed to roll the name around his mind for a second, before suddenly snapping his fingers. “Hey, you’re that lady captain!”

  “Lieutenant,” she said sharply, “there’s a reserve column out there, forming for an attack right now.”

  He froze and swallowed. “Shit,” he said. “We have to get these guns firing!”

  “An excellent idea.” Shouting so loud the young lieutenant covered one ear, she called, “Mistrals, to me!” She turned to shout in the other direction, and saw Bernat coming out of the smoke. “Bernie, where the hell have you been?”

  Bernat stumbled as if drunk, and said in a distant voice, “Oh, here and there.”

  “It was a hell of a sight, wasn’t it?” She slapped him hard on the back, making him wobble. “A thousand Vins, running in terror from little old us. Of course, all those Garnian infantrymen charging in behind us probably helped, but I dare say it was our example that inspired them.”

  Bernat bobbed his head, his eyes pointing vacantly in whatever direction his face was turned. “My thoughts exactly,” he said.

  She slapped him again. “Ha! Well, if you want to be useful, refill those buckets from the stream. We have to get these guns firing, Bernie.” She took a deep breath. “Mistrals! Get your lazy asses back here! There’s work to do!”

  The silhouettes in the smoke approached and resolved themselves into her crew. They’d never gone farther than twenty paces from her, but that may as well have been a mile in this smoke. The smoke was thinning gradually, but with no wind, it would take a while to disperse.

  “Cannoneers, reload with canister over round shot,” she ordered. “Riggers, assist the cannoneers. Act as powder monkeys or help clear out this mess. Lieutenant Martel, go back to the caissons and check on our powder supplies. If you see an officer from the reserve company, send him to me. And keep your sabers handy, men. This day isn’t over.” A cannonball screamed toward them and hit with a hollow thump against the front of the battery. She stepped under the shelter of the battery’s roof as a shell exploded overhead.

  Sergeant Jutes leaned against the inner wall for a few seconds to catch his breath, then went straight to a cannon, putting his thumb over the vent hole while another man swabbed.

  Her cannoneers, used to the short, easily serviced bref guns, were having difficulty loading these big cannons, but they were soon assisted by a few artillerymen who’d retreated when their battery was overrun, as well as one who’d risen alive and well from the bloody mess of bodies after having played possum at the first sight of blood. He tried, shame-faced, to explain himself, but Josette only slapped him on the back and thanked him for his prudence.

  A horse trotted up to the back end of the battery, right to Josette, and the man atop it saluted her. “General Fieren’s compliments, sir, and would you ‘kindly get your goddamn guns firing again.’” In the smoke, the horseman must have mistaken her for an officer of artillery.

  “Most of the cannoneers are dead or wounded,” she said. “My men are filling in as best they can.”

  When he heard her voice, the horseman leaned down to get a better look. With his face so close, she could see that he was hardly more than a boy. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked. “There’s a battle going on!”

  “Thank you, Ensign, I had worked that out for myself.” She took hold of the horse’s bridle, to keep him from leaving. “There’s another column coming right at us. I need the nearest reserve company up here to support these guns.”

  “Who’s in charge of this battery?” the ensign asked, indignant.

  She stared up and said, “I am, you pimply little twit!”

  He only huffed at her and urged his horse on. Josette could have held fast to the bridle, but it wasn’t worth it. Behind her, the battery finally renewed its fire.

  As the ensign rode off, Martel emerged from the smoke, accompanied by a hulking, scar-faced captain of infantry in a mitre c
ap. “Captain Whetstan, Captain Dupre,” Martel said, by way of introduction. On the ground, she was only a lieutenant, but she wasn’t about to correct the record if misinformation could serve her.

  In the few quiet moments since she’d sent Martel out, Josette had been trying to work out the best way to finagle the help she needed from the reserve company’s commander. She would have to flatter him, of course; explain the circumstances carefully; and deftly imply—without lying outright—that the general had ordered the man’s reserve company forward to support her.

  Before she could speak, however, the scarred captain scanned the battery from left to right and said, “We have to keep these guns firing. I’ll bring my grenadier company up to support you.” He turned without another word and disappeared into the smoke.

  Josette was left with her mouth hanging open. She looked at Martel and said, “Thank you, Nic, for finding the one infantry officer in this entire army who possesses a single morsel of brains.”

  Martel smiled and said, “My pleasure, sir. And the caissons have ample powder. Shall I attend to the guns?”

  She nodded. “Canister over round shot until they’re within pistol shot, then double canister.” Unlike Mistral’s bref guns, these sturdy cannons could be double-shotted, at the cost of a reduced powder charge and shorter range.

  The guns were firing briskly now, but she had no notion of their effect on the attacking force, which was invisible out there in the smoke. If her cannoneers had miscalculated, they might be firing short—digging harmless divots in the mud, while the Vins took pinches of snuff and laughed at Garnian incompetence.

  There was an impact on the roof and something rolled over it. It had to be a shell. “Down!” she cried, and leapt behind the nearest cannon as the shell burst, caving in the roof and sending the corner gabion tumbling into the stream. She came up to find two men down, one of hers and one of the artillerymen.

  “Keep these guns firing!” she said, clearing a broken plank from atop the nearest howitzer.

  The rightmost cannon fired, and the percussive force sent the weakened right side of the battery wall tumbling into the mud. Infantrymen in the trench below scrambled out of the way as logs rolled through their line. There was no repairing the damage. It would take a score of men to lift that lumber back into place.

  Her eyes were drawn to a line of muskets flashing in the smoke. The bullets thumped against the forward wall, and she heard men in the trench groan or scream as they fell. And then came the sound of drums, and Vinzhalian voices cheering the advance.

  “Don’t let up!” Josette said, pulling a swab from the hands of a dead artilleryman and taking his place in the gun crew.

  * * *

  BERNAT SAW JOSETTE and Martel taking the place of fallen men, and the sight made him feel desperately useless. He’d filled buckets with bloody water from the stream until he ran out of buckets, and then had gone back to the caissons to fetch powder charges, but he couldn’t tell one charge from another, and didn’t know which to bring. Now he was casting about, looking for some way to be helpful.

  He saw his chance in the motionless form of a man lying facedown in a trench. Someone from the reserve ranks had already taken his place on the line, so Bernat snuck in and took up the dead man’s musket. Unable to tug the cartridge box free, he sawed the strap off with his sword.

  He found a spot at the edge of the battery, out of the way of the cannoneers but with a clear line of sight over the remains of the defensive wall. He loaded and fired into the smoke, where he imagined the Vins were coming from, though he couldn’t see them except when they paused to fire a volley. He resolved to never again complain about the smoke in Arle.

  He had no idea if his aim was true, but it hardly mattered with a musket. Even a well-aimed bullet from this inaccurate gun might miss, or it might hit though misaimed. So he loaded and fired, loaded and fired, again and again.

  The Vins were firing two volleys for every shot he sent at them. With every volley, men fell on the Garnian line, but every time more came from behind to fill their places. Above, he heard the drone of an airship, probably Ibis, and found its presence calming.

  Which is not to say he was calm. Particularly not when there came, louder than the airship above, the roaring battle cry of a thousand frothing Vins. “Here they come!” a scarred Garnian officer called from the line. “Fix bayonets!”

  Josette and Martel simultaneously held their hands up to stop the gun crews from firing. “Wait!” Martel said, while Josette shouted, “Save your last shot!”

  Bernat was halfway through reloading. He redoubled his efforts until, seeing the brass shako badges and bayonets gleaming through the smoke, he realized the futility and tossed his musket aside. He drew his sword instead, and moved among the remnants of the wall, willing himself to be strong, to be brave, to face death with the dignity befitting a nobleman.

  On the sides of the battery, the grenadier company was moving forward, unwilling to simply wait for the enemy, but massing to charge them head-on.

  “Hold! Patience, men!” Josette shouted at the gun crews. They stood by their guns, now reloaded and double-shotted with canister. The Vin column emerged from the smoke just yards away, charging through the mud and the bloody froth, screaming their war cry.

  Bernat found that he was screaming back at them, baring his teeth, spitting with rage and waving his sword over his head. He had no idea when he’d started to do it, but he couldn’t have stopped if he’d tried.

  “Now!” Martel and Josette called simultaneously.

  The world turned to smoke and noise and fire as cannons, howitzers, and hundreds of muskets went off at the same moment.

  And the front ranks of the Vin column ceased to exist; the men who had been there left no fragment of their corporeal forms that couldn’t fit into a hat box. Their shattered remains tore into the ranks behind, where men were lacerated not only by musket balls but by splintered shards of bone that an instant before had been their friends.

  It was the most horrible, the most gruesome, the most unnerving carnage that Bernat had ever witnessed, and some small part of him reveled in it. That part swelled to become his only focus, the sum of his existence on the battlefield. He gulped a breath and screamed a guttural, savage battle cry. Hardly aware of what he was doing, as if he looked out through another man’s eyes but had no control of his actions, Bernat leapt from the battery and down into the bloody hole torn through the enemy column, his sword flashing.

  He slipped on spilled guts and fell flat on his face, but was back on his feet before he even felt the pain. To his right the grenadiers were charging. Behind him he could hear the gun crews following his example. He wouldn’t let them get in front of him, wouldn’t let them beat him to the fight. He pushed on through the mud and shattered flesh, boots slipping with every step, nostrils burning with the smell of smoke and blood and shit.

  But somehow he stayed upright, scrambled forward until, after what seemed an eternity of running, he saw the bayonets in front of him, pointed at him in two gleaming rows. There were more bayonets behind them, endless rows pointed at the sky, but they didn’t concern him. He swung his sword at the glint of steel ahead, the one pointed at his heart, and grabbed the bayonet next to it with his bare hand, pushing it aside to make a space between.

  The Vin in front of him pulled his musket back, but Bernat thrust his sword into the man’s thigh and sent him stumbling to the side. Now, with a clear space in which to work, Bernat lifted his sword in both hands and brought it down into a hammer blow that cut through the shako of the man in front of him, knocking the gilded metal badge aside on its way into the soldier’s skull. The dying man stared in disbelief as blood trickled over his forehead and down one side of his nose.

  A bayonet came at Bernat from the second row, but these soldiers were reacting to him with such pitiful dullness and lethargy, as if they were moving in water and saw the world through frosted glass, while Bernat’s world was crisp and sharp, his mus
cles primed, nimble. He twisted out of the way as the bayonet stuck harmlessly in his jacket.

  He turned his eyes on the soldier who’d thrust it, and a vicious, sadistic smile came to his lips. The smile was reflected as terror in the soldier’s face. The man struggled to free his weapon, but Bernat pulled his sword free and brought it down on him. The soldier screamed, let go of his musket, and tried to duck out of the way, but Bernat struck him on the shoulder, crushing through muscle and bone and sending the man crumpling to the ground.

  The dead man twisted around and landed on his back, atop the first man Bernat had killed. There was an opening now, and Bernat pushed into it, tugging at his sword to free it from the second man’s shoulder as he stepped forward.

  He was amid them now, wedged so tightly into their ranks that they couldn’t lower their muskets to attack him, nor could he raise his sword hand above his waist. This inconvenienced him only briefly, for he was soon slashing back and forth across their legs. There was no power in these wild swings—even the fabric of the soldiers’ trousers was enough to turn the blade—but they recoiled from his fury all the same, pushing back against the ranks behind.

  Their retreat opened a space just wide enough to bring his sword hand up to waist level. Though he still couldn’t lift it high enough for a powerful swing, he settled for punching the weighted pommel into the nearest man’s groin, doubling him over.

  The soldier in the next rank back lowered his musket across the stricken man’s back. Bernat readied himself to dodge the bayonet, but the soldier did not thrust. Instead, he reached for the trigger.

  Bernat wrenched his sword hand up, but knew already that he couldn’t do it in time. He gritted his teeth and stared balefully ahead as, in a flash of exploding gunpowder, his killer’s face disappeared amid smoke and blood.

  Bernat stood staring for a moment, then looked down at his unperforated body. Another shot went off by his ear, and another Vin fell in the rank behind. Bernat looked left to see Josette, a smoking pistol in each hand, pushing her way through the throng to stand even with him. She flipped her right-hand pistol into the air, caught it neatly by the barrel, and brought the handle crashing down onto the skull of the still-doubled-up man in front of Bernat.