riding down the line to carry the order to retreat.
"Here." Apelles indicated a ditch that would be the outermost boundary of his
new field hospital at the rear of what everyone was calling the Great Redoubt.
Acolytes came to erect the tent, with its solid roof for shade, and its thin
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netting that gave ventilation but prevented flies and borers from entering.
More star lore, but it seemed to work. Something worked. Exclude the small
devils that hid in dirt from entering the body, and more often than not wounds
healed. And certainly flies and borers and carvers carried dirt on their
feet.. ..
"I have never heard anyone speak so to an Eqeta." Fnarg was senior acolyte.
His father had been a silversmith and town councilor.
"Nor I," Apelles said. "And if we are wise we will not remember that we ever
heard such."
Apelles knew that Publius Caesar was right, but his heart was with the knights
of Drantos. Perhaps they had not chosen the wisest way of proving their honor,
yet what honor was there in calling them "barbarians" to their very faces?
Mnrenver %vac the Rnman kind cif nherlience really what he wished to see in
Drantos? Publius had ordered eight hundred lances of
Drantos knights led by one of the five greatest nobles of the Realm as if they
were spitboys or sweepers. Not even the bheroman of Apelles' native village
would have dared order his father about so at least where it was a matter of
knowledge of swine and where they had the right to feed.
As with Maev, Apelles found he was not quite sure if what he'd thought he
wanted was in truth his real desire. He was no more sure when the knights
finally rode past the Great Redoubt.
As they did, horns and drums signaled another enemy attack.
Rick watched helplessly as the cavalry rearguard, two cohorts of the Fourth
Legion, dissolved under the massed enemy cavalry. If they'd had room to
maneuver or arrows to shoot, they might have made a fight of it. Backed
against the forest they couldn't maneuver, and they'd emptied their quivers
covering the retreat of the Drantos ironhats. The Tamaerthan archers in the
forest and the star weapons in the Great Redoubt had plenty of ammo, but no
clear targets.
A couple of centuries of the cohortes equitates came pelting down the hill,
but all they could do was drag a few wounded out from the fringes of the
battle.
That was one legion that was going to have a blood debt to settle today. Rick
only hoped they weren't too weakened or shaken to take it when they had a
chance.
When the cavalry action petered out, Rick saw that the enemy was now across
his line of retreat up the hill. Ganton needed him as a Captain General, the
Tamaerthans and the city-state infantry needed him as a CO. Neither needed him
as a casualty.
"Let's move, Top!" he called to Elliot.
"Sir." Elliot waved commands.
Twenty Guardsmen moved ahead. Rick had long since got used to that: the elite
troopers weren't about to let him lead the way into combat. They rode across
the leading skirmishers of the Prophet's army. Lances dipped, and rose
dripping red. Sabers flashed. Rick, Elliot, and the fifty Guards of his head-
quarters troop rode through the enemy foot at a gallop.
When they were past they saw the cavalry.
"Damn all!" Elliot shouted. He raised his Ingram. "Going to take shooting to
get through those."
"Right as usual," Rick said. And we're getting low on ammo. Should be more in
the Redoubt. He smiled to himself. The Great Redoubt. Like Borodino.
Ring it with artillery. Fill it with star weapons. And wait. The Prophet would
send his troops charging toward it, to be cut down in thousands.
Good battle plan, Rick thought. Good enough? What the hell is a track star
doing in a place like this?
Elliot's Ingram sounded like tearing paper as he fired off a full clip into
the lancers blocking their path.
Trouble with those things. Easy to shoot up too much ammo for too little
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effect. And we're getting low on nine mm parabellum He raised his automatic
and shot an approaching cavalryman out of the saddle. How casually you do
that. Having fun, Galloway?
Then they were past. A dozen Guardsmen wheeled behind Rick to cover his
retreat. He turned to urge them to follow him, but saw they were needed. The
enemy cavalry wasn't retreating at all. Fanatics. They all fight like
fanatics. I
guess the rumors are true, the Prophet holds all their families hostage.
Another fifty yards. He spurred his horse forward. The Guards shouted behind
him. "Cover them!" Rick shouted to Elliot.
"Roger." Elliot wheeled and rammed a new clip into the Ingram.
Rick came to the ditch and abatis of the Redoubt. Larry Brentano waved,
something like a salute.
"Help Elliot," Rick ordered.
Brentano waved again and ran to the edge. After a moment his H&K
chattered. Then Elliot rode in followed by the rest of the Guards.
"Who'd we lose?" Rick demanded.
"None," Elliot said proudly. "Two wounded." He pointed to the hospital area at
the rear. "Get 'em up there, Sarkas." "Sir." The Guards lieutenant shouted his
own orders. "Colonel!" Brentano shouted. He pointed downhill.
The Prophet's army was moving forward in one vast wave of infantry.
"You taking command now?" Brentano asked.
"Right. Just give me a moment to have a drink." 1k reached for the wineskin
attached to his saddle and tried to look casual as the
Prophet's drums and horns sounded again and again.
Rick hitched one leg up to sit casually atop his horse as he watched the enemy
boil forward. Somebody had finally got them organized. As organized as that
outfit would ever be. "Forty thousand?" he asked Elliot. He tried to keep his
voice calm and casual.
"Maybe that many," Elliot said. "Maybe even a few more. How close you going to
let them get?"
"Not much more," Rick said. He signaled to his signalmen. "Trumpeter, sound
the General Alert, then All Units." The notes sang out.
Gunners stood to their guns.
"Sound Fire On Command," Rick said. He reached out to his signalman and took
the red and white striped flag, raised it high, and waited as the enemy
infantry moved forward. When they reached the clump of brush he'd mentally
selected he brought the flag sharply down.
The Redoubt erupted in fire. Bombards, musketeers, all the mercs, including
the mortars and the crew with the Carl Gustay. The mortars were right on
target: Rick saw whole squads fall in the center of the enemy ranks.
Meanwhile twenty-pound stone balls from the bombards cut lanes from front to
as far as Rick could see into the enemy formation.
The one-oh-six blazed again. White phosphorus exploded just at the enemy first
rank. Men screamed in horror and ran trailing smoke.
"That ought to stop them," Elliot said.
"Yeah, it ought to, Sarge," Brentano said. "But it don't look like it did." He
raised his H&K and fired slowly and deliberately. "And I don't reckon we're
going to stop them."
"Fire in the hole!"
The one-oh-six roared, and more of the Prophet's army died.
Not enough. Rick raised his own H&K and fired carefully and deliberately.
Men fell.
"They just keep coming," Elliot said. "Goddam, Colonel, I could sure use
troops like that."
"Yeah." With competent leadership those men could takeany army on Tran.
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