Straits of Hell (27 page)

“They're testing us, it seems,” he said mildly, anticipating her questions. “And their own troops as well, I'd wager, to see what we will do—and if they can take it, after our last meeting. Bloody wasteful.” He gestured to the north, and for the first time Blas realized that hers wasn't the only fight. The Doms had marched all night, through exhaustion and air attacks, and plunged directly into battle. Counting the five or six thousand men coming at her point of the line, the enemy must've committed nearly twenty thousand to the strike. It made no sense—unless they really thought it would be that easy.

“The fever,” she guessed. Blair nodded. “Might as well see how weak it left us. And it's not all madness. They attack with sufficient force at selected points that we can't ignore them. We've been forced to pull many of our Nancys back from harassing their main column, to hold in reserve for us here, and that may be their main goal. Otherwise, they count us, they mean to bleed us—particularly our natives—while testing their own new army. All while they bring the rest of it down relatively unmolested.” He looked at her. “We must destroy them, of course, but we mustn't make it look too easy. No heavy artillery, Captain Blas, or mortars just yet either. But if the locals waver, by all means, support them however you must. We can't have those people running loose within the fort no matter how few they may be.”

Blas nodded, still confused, but knowing exactly what was expected of her. Blair galloped to the left, disappearing in the smoke behind the Fourth Guayak. At a little over a hundred tails, the Guayakans opened
fire, their volley punctuated by light guns spraying dense swarms of canister into the surging ranks. The canister performed the greater execution, no doubt, but even as Blas watched, Guayakan infantry mechanically tore cartridges, poured powder, drew rammers, and slammed fresh loads down their muskets. That aspect of their training, at least, had been well ingrained. Most were firm, determined, Blas saw, but quite a few were on the verge of panic, staring wide-eyed at the enemy who'd show them no mercy and had sworn to
impale
their families, drawing relentlessly closer. The Doms were hitting the entanglements in the killing ground now, slowing at last against the barbed wire and sharpened stakes. Some, probably veterans of Guayak, had faced similar obstructions before, but not on as great a scale. For the first time, wails of frustration and panic overrode the screams of agony that permeated the desperate roar of the Dom brigade, and Blas knew at last what drove them so maniacally: They
were
more afraid of Don Hernan than they were of their enemies! They'd storm in against withering torrents of projectiles, against all odds, because there was at least a chance they'd somehow succeed, but the formidable entanglements represented failure—and failure was certain death. Worse than death.
If they were not yet hu-maan Grik before, Don Her-naan and his twisted faith has made them so,
Blas realized. Even faced with the entanglements that stalled them, helpless in the face of murderous fire, they tore at them, ripping their uniforms and tearing their flesh, throwing blankets, coats, bodies, anything that came to hand over the wire, so they could continue the charge, All the while, the Guayakans, now emboldened, stood straighter, more determined, and poured it in.

“I don't think we'll have to more actively support the Guayak-aans today, First Sergeant Spook,” Blas said, glancing at her rifle again. She hadn't fired a shot. The fight still raged, all around the northwest perimeter, but she somehow sensed a diminishing . . . urgency, even as the firing grew more intense. She suspected that such an ear, a
feel
, meant more that she'd been in too many battles than anything else. The Doms in front of her battalion, and the two to the left, were wavering now, some finally starting to back away. “Pound them! Kill them!” she roared, pacing behind her rifle-'Cats now, urging them on. “Let me hear you!” There'd been remarkably little incoming fire, and the earthen wall had protected her Marines amazingly well. The usual shouts and curses, and
thankfully few screams, had been the only voices raised among her veterans. That was as much a reflection on their professionalism as it was a throwback to a time when they'd fought behind a shield wall and simply didn't have the reserve air for sustained yells or anything of the sort. Now she wanted a yell that would send the last teetering Doms on their way. Off to her left, the Impies must've had the same idea as the skirling scree of their bagpipes joined the tumult. To her delight, Spook let out a savage, trilling roar, the likes of which she hadn't heard since the Battle of Baalkpan, and it was quickly joined by hundreds more. Now the Guayakans joined in, with a sound all their own, and the Doms still lingering at the wire, trying to fire, trying to do anything, finally broke.

“Keep firing!” Blas roared at the closest section of guns. “More canister!”

“They runnin'!” cried the 'Cat section chief.

“I don't care! You think they won't be back? They got no choice! Kill 'em now while it's easy!”

She steadied her breathing and climbed up past the guns, peering over the parapet that protected them. They'd just broken a brigade of Doms—but what was that? She raised her glass, peering beyond the fleeing force as best she could. She saw Nancys now, finally, swooping low in the middle distance, leaving toadstools of greasy fire in their wakes. Then she saw why. Still forming just as quickly as the first force, was another, maybe bigger, and it was already headed in! No doubt it would sweep up the survivors of the broken brigade and bring them on as well. She took a long gulp from her canteen and sighed.
If Col-nol Blair's right, it makes sense. They can't sneak up on us, so they gotta keep us occupied till they can get their whole army up—and if our spies are right, they got the troops to spare
. “But daamn,” she muttered softly. “Gonna be a long goddaamn day.”

//////
Fort Defiance

B
las tagged along with Colonel Blair to meet with General Shinya after dark. She was exhausted but unhurt and actually somewhat amazed by that. The Doms hit on or near her section of the line five times that day, actually breaking through the entanglements and meeting her Marines' shields and bayonets at the top of the parapet the final time, near dark. (Blas remained a firm believer in the shield wall at close quarters. Shields had been discarded and returned to several times throughout this war, but against spears, swords, and even muskets they'd proved helpful time and again—and particularly in defensive situations. The time for carrying them on the march was probably past, but she was glad they still had them in Fort Defiance.) They'd been forced to practically exterminate the attackers, and the extreme sloping ground before her works, and for half a thousand tails beyond the entanglements, were choked with enemy dead. The last rays of the setting
sun had lain on a dreadful sight, bloodred all its own on the red-splattered yellow and white of countless corpses. And beyond it all, in the final glimmer of the day, she could see the even greater mass of the Dominion host assembling in the distance.

The 2nd of the 2nd had been very lucky, its casualties amazingly light, but she knew that would never last. Tomorrow—maybe tonight?—the Doms would finish emplacing their artillery, the chief target for the Nancys that day, she'd learned, and more people inside the fort would start to die. There'd be a response, of course, and no Dom artilleryman's life would be worth much once their positions were revealed, but it would increasingly be a slugging match of guns. They hadn't seen many Grikbirds, comparatively, but they'd been there, employing new ambush tactics that cost them several planes. Unable to replace them or even properly service those seriously damaged with
Maaka-Kakja
away, they'd have to grow more judicious in their use; primarily scouting the enemy and attacking irresistible targets. Blas suspected things would get even bumpier tomorrow.

And, to her surprise, as bloody as the fighting had been in front of her, it had been worse around the northern lunette. The Doms had even briefly managed to occupy the position before the reserves erupted from the inner wall and pushed them out. But they'd spiked a couple of the big guns that
had
been used there, spraying massive loads of canister in a last-ditch effort to keep them out. They hadn't held the position long and their efforts to damage the big naval guns had been rushed and shoddy, but that was what had Blas's attention now, the lamp-lit effort to clear the vents and check for other damage.

“Tough day here,” she observed quietly to an exhausted, soot-smudged Impie artillery lieutenant who sat on a crate, staring past the breastworks at the rapidly growing number of enemy campfires in the distance. He just gaped at her in confusion, and she figured her comment had been such a gross understatement, in his mind, that it didn't even register as language. She understood. She'd felt much the same way herself once before, when no words could've adequately described what she'd just been through.

“A tough day,” General Shinya agreed, motioning Blas and Blair to join him where he stood before a red-faced Imperial colonel. He turned back to the man. “Despite what you think, your brigade did well, and
you should not apologize for their performance here. We regained the position after all. The whole division did extremely well, and we bloodied the Doms very badly. It was my fault that we weren't better prepared for such an impetuous attack. You were at Guayak yourself. You saw how they ordinarily proceed. I expected much the same again and was too comfortable in my assumption that it would take them longer to try something new. I alone bear the blame for that complacency. Clearly, they've radically changed their approach to war with us, and we must be on our guard lest they continue to do so.” He paused, blinking apology in the Lemurian way. The apology was probably lost on the Imperial. “I'll make arrangements to stiffen your lines here, and make sure your ready reserve can be deployed more quickly at need. In addition, all heavy artillery and mortars will be better employed against massing formations at whatever distance. They'll probably come at us even more strongly tomorrow, and we'll alter
our
tactics by firing heavily on every massed formation, even at extreme range. Let us show the breadth of the hell they must cross before they come to grips with us again!”

“Thank you, General Shinya,” the man said, obviously relieved. “May I express your congratulations to my brigade?”

“Please do.”

They exchanged salutes, and the Imperial officer made his way off. Shinya looked at Blas and Blair and nodded stiffly at them. “The same goes for your troops as well, of course,” he said, briefly massaging his temples.
He hides very well that he is still quite ill,
Blas realized.
But he'd never use that as an excuse
.
All the more reason he remains, in spite of any lingering discomfort or confusion, the person to lead us here
.

“It was a mistake,” Shinya confessed again. “We should have hammered the Dominion forces from the time we first saw them today, and galled their columns with artillery all the way in. Put the fear of whatever God they worship in their souls, and to hell with Don Hernan.”

“We may've begun that anyway,” Blair said. “And how long can we sustain operations of the sort you describe? We're fairly well supplied, but such expenditures of ordnance . . .”

“Will kill a great many of the enemy and demoralize the rest. We cannot let them get so close, so easily, again.” Shinya let out a breath. “We suffered more than
nine hundred
casualties today,” he growled, gesturing around, “most right here. And their advantage was barely
three to one. We virtually destroyed those attacking forces,” he conceded, “but there will be many more tomorrow.”

“True,” Blair continued, “but how long can we sustain the ammunition expenditure you envision?” he persisted.

“A few days,” Shinya confessed. “Perhaps a week. But High Chief Saan-Kakja and the Governor-Empress will be at Puerto Viejo by then, regardless of how Second Fleet fares at sea, and the relief column will arrive quickly thereafter. We must base our plans on that.”

“Our
hopes
, you mean?” Blair asked. From, or in front of other officers, Shinya might have been angered by Blair's question, but now he only grunted. Blas did see a flash of Shinya's frustration, however. It was something he very rarely showed. “Hope, yes, if you insist. I'll plan on what I hope for. For reasons I've already explained, this must be a battle of attrition—the last such battle I ever hope to fight,” he added grimly. “Our cavalry slowly improves but is still no match for Dominion lancers in the open field, even given the disparity in numbers. So we can't fight a battle of maneuver as I would prefer. The inferior numbers and . . . relative incapacity of this army at the present time only emphasizes that point. And therefore it comes down to something as straightforward and dreadful as mathematics. We remain shorthanded. It's as simple as that, and we'll lose more troops with each day that passes. But we'll also gain a few as the ill return to their duties. Eventually, we'll have reinforcements as well. The Doms attack with greater vigor than I anticipated, and things got . . . ‘frisky,' here today, as I believe the inestimable Dennis Silva might characterize it. We'll use that tomorrow, if we can, to kill a disproportionately higher percentage of their army than they can kill of ours. That's the only plan I can rely on at present. The only ‘equation,' I'm sorry to say.” He looked intently at them both. “We will savage the enemy at every opportunity, near or far, as aggressively as we possibly can. Hopefully—yes,
hopefully
—we'll grow progressively less ‘shorthanded' compared to them, one way or another. If that requires ‘profligate' expenditures of ordnance, so be it.”

•   •   •

Despite General Ghanan Nerino's best, even somewhat clandestine efforts, he'd accomplished very little in the way of establishing any kind of real, effective, field medicine for the army. There'd been no such thing
a century before when the Dominion first clashed with Los Diablos del Norte, and of course, there'd been no other continental battles of note until the current war began. Since then, at the Imperial Dueling Grounds at Scapa Flow, Saint Francis, and then Guayak, few of the wounded had been evacuated, and so there'd still been little need for such a thing. Now, as Nerino had foreseen, there was. Well over two thousand wounded men had been dragged away from the killing ground around the enemy fort, or collected along the line of advance after attacks from above, and gathered here at the foot of the great mountains alongside the Camino Chimborazo. And here they lay. A few of their comrades went among them, bringing water and whatever comfort they could in the darkness, but little actual healing was performed. The Blood Priests examined them, but only to discover which were fit, with a minimum of care, to be returned to the fight. The rest, if already unconscious, were simply allowed to die. Those who suffered noisily enough to distress the others were drugged into insensibility. The result was an amazingly, surrealistically peaceful field of suffering that Ghanan Nerino, having tasted near-mortal agony himself, could hardly bear. Even more difficult for his honor to endure was Don Hernan's strict policy that those too badly injured to contribute to the current fight would be prepared as fodder for the small flying dragons—and the ‘gift' from His Supreme Holiness when it arrived.

There'd been a time when he wouldn't have given that a second thought. That was simply the way of things, and even in “peacetime” the dragons had to be fed. Even in garrison, there was always a steady trickle of men either killed or seriously injured by accidents, the depredations of local bandits who styled themselves “rebels,” or simply carried away by disease. Dragons couldn't be allowed to run wild and hunt for themselves, or all control over them would be lost, and livestock was expensive. The one thing the Dominion had plenty of was people, and the pagan tribes on the periphery of civilization provided a constant source of conscripts for the army, candidates (mostly female) for sacrifice—and fodder for dragons, of course. But they had to be transported, most often at the expense of local commanders. Dead soldiers were already at hand, and what else was to be done with them? Nerino's honor was disturbed, however, because
these
men had been nobly wounded in actual combat against enemies of God, and many could recover if given the
chance. They deserved care and praise, in his view, not what they would get, and he feared Don Hernan's policy would prove corrosive to the valor of others. Don Hernan, on the other hand, seemed convinced that it not only served his stated purpose, but would encourage the troops to avoid serious wounds! As if they
courted
them for their amusement, or to avoid closer combat! Nerino gazed at Don Hernan in the gloom as his retinue drifted among the fitful wounded like the robed deaths they were, and considered. Don Hernan could be serious. In his mind, pain was synonymous with grace, and brought those who suffered it as close to God as they could get in this world. But if Don Hernan truly believed that, why the drugs? Why deaden any pain? One would think, if he was sincere in his own beliefs, he'd gladly wallow in a steady chorus of agonized wails.

A sudden drug-hazed screech of agony, probably elicited by a Blood Priest stepping on a wounded man in the dark, seemed divinely inspired to test Nerino's suspicions.

Don Hernan spread his arms and advanced on the sufferer. “God hears you, my son!” he said, his voice angelically soft. “He is coming! Soon your soul will be cleansed of all corruption and you will be at peace!” The screams continued, incoherent, and Don Hernan crouched over the man, enveloping him in his robes. Something flashed in the starlight, and the screams gurgled to a stop. Grasping the bloody grass in both hands, Don Hernan spoke to the earth beside the corpse. “In the name of His Supreme Holiness, I beseech you to take the soul of this, thy true and faithful warrior, and enroll him in the ranks of your holy army of the dead, there to defend your Heaven from all incursions of this evil world.” It was the customary petition for the fallen soldier, normally delivered in a rote monotone by any Blood Priest, but Don Hernan managed to make it sound fresh and sincere, and Nerino was taken aback.
The man is either the greatest pretender alive, and the most dreadful villain, or he truly believes,
he realized. Just then, Nerino didn't know which was worse for his army. He'd watched him during the day, observing the growing, if uncoordinated battle below, and knew that Don Hernan hadn't been prepared for what transpired. By all accounts, the fight at the Imperial Dueling Grounds on New Scotland had been savage, but that had been a mere skirmish compared to this. And Don Hernan hadn't seen much of it in any case. He'd never seen a
real
battle in
his life, and Nerino had the impression he'd been a little stunned by the spectacle. Perhaps now was the time to press his case.

“Your Holiness,” he said quietly, “have you considered my counsel further?” He gestured at the field of bodies. The moon was finally beginning to rise, more fully revealing its scope.

Don Hernan slowly rose, wiping his hands on his robes. “I have, and do, my general.” He sighed. “And must confess, I now have two minds.” He waved at the field of men who'd soon be corpses—and worse. “El Vómito did not do our work for us as I'd hoped, and as you warned. God, as ever, stands ready to punish hubris, and those who place too much reliance on Him to accomplish their tasks for them, even when in His name.” He pursed his lips. “There is much grace here, much inspiration. So many already stand in the shadow of God.” He straightened. “But far too many more lie in His embrace beneath the heretic's position. Too many, too quickly, for our needs, I confess.”