Casca 18: The Cursed (13 page)

He grabbed the bemused David by the arm and squeezed it, then wheeled his mount and raced back out through the gate.

Huang Chu met him in the street outside the legation, where he was directing the action below the one wall that his troops had taken. Hundreds of men were now pouring up the ladders. The Chinese had fought their way to one corner and were almost to the other.

They advanced on the British riflemen, the Chinese falling in turn as their bodies soaked up the bullets until each rifleman found his five round
magazine empty and had to try to wield his clumsy nine pound rifle and bayonet against the two or three or four or five swords facing him on the wall.

And the Chinese soldiers behind these swordsmen sheathed their swords and drew the small bows they carried behind their backs. Each man's quiver carried only a handful of light arrows, but at the close range they were soon accounting for riflemen faster than the British could kill the swordsmen.

A British bugle sounded retreat, and in the street Casca heard it and swung around to Huang.

"Call everybody back.
Now. Retreat. Get the men off the walls."

Huang looked surprised and confused, but
signaled his archers, and the whistling arrows soared almost vertically, shrilling their message, and howling it again as they plummeted down to thud into the ground inside the legation.

But even the best trained troops are easier to recall when they are losing than when they are tasting victory. The order was obeyed, but tardily. Every Chinese who was within arm's reach or bow shot of a foreign devil hesitated just long enough to help him along the way to meet his ancestors.

"Too fucking late," Casca cursed, as he heard the machine guns open up from within the legation. Half a dozen British crews were now operating guns from the legation grounds, spraying the walls with death, and ruthlessly wiping out any of their own men who had been tardy to answer the retreat.

Hundreds of Chinese were falling into the streets. Every fifth bullet was hollow nosed, and expanded on impact to tear off an arm or a leg, or to blow a hole through a man's gut that would accommodate a football.

The upward tilt of the guns sent great chunks of bleeding meat and tripe flying skyward. The streets were spattered with a rain of blood and meat and guts and shit and spent lead.

Countless, perhaps more than a thousand, Chinese were dead, and another thousand or so were dying in moaning agony all around the legation bastion.

As near as Casca could estimate the British had lost something like thirty men and were now back in control of the whole of the legation territory.

The best that Casca could hope for was that his archers might be able to keep the British from remounting their machine guns atop the walls.

Stalemate. Casca fumed.

With some artillery he might have blown some holes in the walls, but the Chinese had no cannon.

But they did have rockets. Casca consulted with Huang, some signal arrows flew, and within a few seconds fiery trails were howling from the palace.

The first few rockets went wild, landing amongst Casca's own troops, blowing great bleeding spaces in their ranks; but the gunners in the palace quickly adjusted their aim, and soon a rain of fire was falling inside the legation.

Huang Chu also brought up some companies of men armed with agny astras, long bamboo tubes that discharged fire tipped darts. He dispersed these all around the legation and they poured their fire over the walls. They could accomplish little damage, but they did keep a lot of the British troops busy putting out the fires that they started.

The main fire was now being brought under control, and soon the British would be able to strike back.

The thought had scarcely touched Casca's mind when cannon roared from within the legation and he saw shots land in the vicinity of the palace.

The aim of cannon couldn't be adjusted as quickly as could rockets, but once the British gunners got their aim right their cannon would wreak havoc amongst Casca's rocketeers, and do much more damage to his palace than he could hope for his rockets to effect against the legation.

Casca gave some quick orders to Huang and, setting spurs to his horse, wheeled away from the action.

He found David Sen
Yung obediently concealed behind a large warehouse with several hundred peasants. Sen Yung told him that other Boxer leaders had similar groups waiting for orders in various streets all around the legation.

Gritting his teeth at the thought of what he was doing, Casca ordered them to charge the legation and get into the grounds at all costs. He galloped away to issue the same orders to the other Boxer led groups of peasants.

Meanwhile Huang was carrying out the orders Casca had issued him.

His infantrymen rushed to the walls with every available ladder, rope, and grappling hook, placed them, and quickly retired to cover as the Boxers and their peasants arrived. Then the archers laid down a dense pattern of arrows, effectively keeping the British off the wall. And at the same time every possible rocket and fire dart was unleashed.

And into this rain of death Sen Yung and the other Boxers led their thousands of peasants.

Many of them
fell victim to their own arrows and rocket fire, but most of them reached the walls and clambered up the ladders and ropes that the infantry had put in place.

Once on top of the walls the peasants were decimated by the machine gun fire from within the legation; but, pressed from behind by the teeming horde, some of them made it into the grounds, and
then some more, and then more.

The British machine gunners had to divide their fire. Some of the big, clumsy guns were tilted down from firing at the walls to shoot directly at the peasants who were now on the ground charging at them. Lines of redcoats knelt in turn to fire their Enfield rifles into the peasants on the ground, too.

But, as fast as they fired, the British could not kill the Chinese as fast as they came over the walls.

And now and again a rocket from the palace took out a machine gun, or a group of redcoats or a number of Chinese.

It made no difference. The storm of men could not be stopped. The Chinese eventually reached some of the British troops, and although the redcoats kiIled ten or twenty or more Chinese for every British soldier who fell, the peasants' farm and kitchen implements took their toll, and they tore apart the foreign devils with their billhooks, scythes, flails, and meat cleavers.

Now Casca nodded to Huang. Huang
signaled, and his infantry came out from cover and charged in the wake of the dying peasants, using the mass of their bodies for cover once they reached the ground inside the legation. They advanced remorselessly on the machine gunners, then on the riflemen, and finally on the men at the cannons who were shelling the rocket stations in Casca's palace.

As Casca clambered over the wall he saw Huang, sword in hand, leaping into the grounds from another part of the wall.

Casca's archers were now getting established on the wall, and their big bows launched heavy three foot arrows to devastating effect. Casca had joined these archers in practice, and had been astonished at the force of their six foot bows. He estimated the required pull at two hundred pounds, more than twice the force of any other bow he had ever encountered.

From their vantage point on the wall the archers could pick their targets almost at leisure, and the long arrows thudded home repeatedly, rarely missing their man, and sometimes the one arrow passed clean through a man's body to skewer the man behind him.

With the wall secured, crossbowmen were able to take up position, some of them with chu ko nus, the repeating crossbows that could launch six bolts in a few seconds, and some with the very accurate pellet bows that fired clay balls or stones.

The
chu ko nus wreaked havoc on the machine gunners, and then on the cannon crews, as the crossbowmen could place each of the six successive arrows with increasing accuracy.

The Chinese soldiers around Casca rallied to their Hsia. A similar group formed around Huang and the two fought their way toward each other.

The British fought hard and well. Both officers and soldiers hated China and all Chinese, considered them barely human, and were always ready to butcher any number of them. But this action was like nothing they had ever experienced.

The numberless peasants had been bad enough, but now they were facing well trained and well led professional soldiers and were learning the hard way the uselessness of empty rifles. Hand to hand
fighting was a form of warfare these men had never known, and they were no match for the sword armed Chinese, who had never known any other battle mode.

Casca and Huang met, pausing to embrace. They held one whole corner of the legation forecourt. The British troops were now backed up against the legation building, a hundred or so redcoats in a square, the front ranks kneeling to fire their rifles, the next rank standing to fire theirs, and both these ranks retiring into the square to reload as they emptied their magazines.

There were a few machine guns in front of the square of British soldiers, and a lot more behind it on the legation steps, firing over the defenders' heads.

On the top steps, swords in
hand, were the colonel of the legation guard and his senior officers. There were a few subaltern officers in the square and amongst the gunners, and the rest were with the hundred or so other redcoats who were defending the remaining three walls.

Alongside the colonel stood the British legate, a tall, spare figure, splendid in a royal blue
tunis with gold epaulets, his gold hilted sword disdainfully undrawn in its tassled scabbard, a cocked hat resplendent with ostrich feathers covering a fringe of thin gray hair.

It had not yet occurred to the British that they were losing, or that they could lose. And it made no difference. Surrender to a stinking horde of yellow animals was out of the question, and there was nowhere to run.

So the carnage continued.

Nobody thought of taking aim at the gorgeously arrayed figures of Casca and Huang. The British riflemen were trained to fire their guns and obey orders, not to think, and they poured their fire into the mass of the Chinese troops.

Nor did Casca's archers fire on the colonel and the legate, but they did concentrate their arrows on the machine gun crews.

Each Maxim gun took five men to operate it. One man held the two handgrips and, as he squeezed the trigger, tried to point the bucking contraption in the general direction of the enemy. Another fed in the ammunition belt while on the other side a third pulled on the slack of the emptied belt to try to prevent it from jamming. In theory, the other two men were supposed to rush back and forth with fresh belts of ammunition and cans of water to cool the steaming mechanism. But, in practice, they laid prone, holding on to the tripod legs and trying to restrain the wild bucking of the gun every time the trigger was squeezed.

The gunners were easy meat for the archers. Any arrow that struck home temporarily immobilized the gun, no matter which man it hit.

Casca was charging a machine gun when one of the men holding it down was killed. The gun bucked wildly, snatching the belt from the loader's hands so that the belt jammed. The last round tore through Casca's chest and he went down.

As consciousness faded he saw Huang turn to look at him in consternation, then turn back to race again toward the gun.

His troops raced past him as Casca lay on his face, blood pouring onto the ground, the blessed relief of shock washing out the searing agony of smashed ribs and torn muscles. The bullet had passed through his right lung and out through his back, and Casca was drowning in his own blood, sinking into waves of darkness.

The blades of grass before Casca's eyes swam back into focus. He vomited a bucket of blood and felt the hideous wrench as the shattered bones of his ribs began to reknit.

The pain twisted face of the Jew on the cross swam before his eyes as the bleeding slowed.

He rolled over onto his back to get his nose out of his vomit, and felt a gentle hand inside his armor. The face he saw was now Chinese, and as the needle went into his chest he recognized Poon Fong.

Then there was a long moment of absolute peace and ease.

The moment ended all too quickly, and Casca was staring up into the sun. Alongside him he could see Poon Fong bending over another wounded soldier. The pain in his chest was frightful, but he knew that the worst was over, that the curse of the Nazarene had once more taken effect. He was going to live, all right.

Fuck it. He was going to live forever.

His sword was on the ground beside him. He snatched it up and got to his feet in an insane rage.

Huang and some others had taken out the machine gun crew and were now rushing the rifles.

Casca was alongside them in an instant, and together they fell upon the redcoats.

Casca's wrist shook as the downswing of his blade split a kneeling man's skull through to his neck. The force of his rush brought him chest to chest with the standing rifleman in the next rank, and the knife in his left hand
disemboweled him while his sword arm swung in a flat arc to take off another man's head. Then he was upon the men who were squatting in the rear ranks to reload, their rifles lying useless in their laps as they hastened to change the five round magazines.

It was like killing sheep in a pen.

One man managed to get his rifle up over his head, and Casca thought that either his sword or his wrist had broken as the force of his blow jarred his arm.

He furiously booted the squatting man in the throat, and hacked his belly clean open with his sword as he fell. Then he turned his wrist for the upswing, catching the next soldier between the legs; the slice continuing all the way up the red tunic till the point of the sword lifted him by the chin as it slit his throat.

Red blood sprayed all over Casca, and he shook it from his eyes as he hacked and slashed at everything that stood before him.

The square broke, the soldiers falling back in a wave t
o make a path for the blood drenched horror with the iron face of a fiend from the very gates of hell.

Then Casca was fighting his way up the steps amongst the British officers. They fenced well, but none of them was any sort of match for the mindless, murdering monster that Casca had become.

Two captains and a major fell before his sword, and he dispatched the colonel with a single up-thrust to the fat belly on the steps above him.

Still climbing the steps, he twisted his sword out of the falling colonel's gut and was bringing it up to guard position when it was almost struck from his grasp.

He backed away crab-like across the steps, and kept moving as a relentless rain of blows clashed steel against his steel.

The British legate had at last unsheathed his sword, and was flailing it at Casca with enormous energy and fantastic skill.

The whole of the rest of the battle vanished from Casca's awareness as he fought for his life.

For his part, the legate knew that he was the last Englishman between the Chinese and the women and children in the building, and he was determined to hold them all off single handed.

In two thousand years of sword fighting Casca had learned barely enough to keep his measure with this man, just managing to stay out of reach of the furious Britisher's sword, but unable to make a stand that put him within striking distance.

They fought the whole width of the broad steps, and then the legate was forcing Casca down the slope toward the backs of the last of the retreating redcoats. He had killed a dozen or more men coming up these steps, and now one lone old man was slamming him back toward where he had come from.

And the benefit was all to the legate. He took advantage of his superior position and pushed Casca one step at a time, Casca wasting energy as he tried to reach up at him, while being forced to yield step after step.

When Casca backed away rapidly the legate declined to fall for the ploy and only reached after him with the tip of his sword, keeping him engaged, but despite his fury, running the fight as it suited himself.

And when the legate again closed, he advanced down step in time with a slash or a thrust so that Casca had to parry and retreat and could not get in position to return the attack.

Casca recognized that he had met a better swordsman than he had ever before encountered, even among the gladiators of the Circus Maximus.

"But, fuck it, I've died once today, and that's enough," he spat.

Instead of retreating yet another step, he bent his knees so that he was almost squatting, and then came up in riposte, turning his wrist to bring up his sword in a great underhand swipe, the whole force of his straightening legs and back behind it, the edge of his sword reaching to slash beneath the legate's guard and open his belly.

But the old man simply wasn't there.

He had kept one foot on the upper step, and as Casca started his enormous slash he stepped up and away so that Casca's sword met empty air.

And then the legate's sword came down with all the fury of a man who was no longer fighting for a queen's empire, but for the lives of his own family.

His sword took Casca squarely in the face, the iron mask smashing his nose to pulp as it disintegrated into its several pieces.

Casca stood numbed by the blow.

Two steps above him the legate, too, stood still,
momentarily shocked by the sight of a white face and blue eyes.

It was his last sight on this planet as Casca lunged automatically and buried half the length of his sword in the old man's gut, and the cocked hat and the elegant sword fell to the steps.

Casca allowed the falling body to slide off the length of his sword. He muttered as he surveyed the now empty steps: "Thank all the gods there are no more like you."

He briefly saluted the crumpled blue tunic and raced down the steps to the redcoats' backs, cleaving skulls, severing spines, lopping heads, and spitting kidneys as the startled troops found themselves squeezed between his sword and those of Huang and his men advancing up the steps.

In a few minutes there was not an Englishman alive on the steps.

Actually, there was scarcely an Englishman alive anywhere within the legation grounds. The thousand strong Chinese soldiers who had stormed the walls with Casca and Huang had been followed by an even greater swarm of peasants, and these, together with the survivors of Sen
Yung's attack force, were rampaging through the grounds, hacking and stabbing with their clumsy implements, even tearing at wounded redcoats with their bare hands until not a single foreign devil breathed.

And now they swept up the steps toward the great doors of the legation.

For a single instant Casca thought of trying to order them to desist, then he shrugged and turned away as they forced open the huge double barred doors by sheer weight of numbers.

Scream followed terrible scream as the English women were raped and mutilated and their children torn apart by the frenzied mob.

Casca sheathed his sword and walked slowly down the steps and across the forecourt and out into the street to where his ostler stood patiently holding his horse.

Wearily he climbed into the saddle; he sat there while the horse slowly found its own way back to his palace.