Straits of Hell (37 page)

“Armen la bayoneta!”

“Keep firing!” she screamed, her voice now rough.

“Calen bayoneta!”

A high-pitched, desperate roar followed that command, and the massed, fuzzy ranks surged forward.

“Keep it up! Keep firing!
Wait
for it. . . .”

The firing around her intensified, the big colonial rifles still booming, but soon those men would draw pistols for the up-close work to come, then eventually the long, two-handed “hunting swords” they
carried. The first Dom troops to squirm through the entanglements appeared at the bottom of the works about thirty feet below. They died in a hail of bullets, but more quickly replaced them. The barbed wire stretched between the planted stakes had grown choked with dead over the last few days and lost much of its effectiveness despite attempts to clear it. A bigger mass of Doms lapped below, clawing at the slope, pushing men ahead of them. Blas could see their faces now and though the meaning of human face moving was still somewhat mysterious to her, she clearly recognized the desperate terror she saw, but there was also a kind of frenzied determination as well.

The yelling had all but stopped on both sides. Her Marines were too busy loading and shooting, and the Doms' cries had been replaced by gasping, grunting, and short, sharp calls she didn't understand. She saw they were getting closer, though, heaving one another up the berm, climbing bodies, a wall of glistening plug bayonets bristling slowly but remorselessly nearer. Dozens of times, she'd trotted up and down that very slope herself, taking only seconds to do it. But only now did she realize what a dreadful, unattainable height it must seem to those men now scrabbling upward under such a murderous fire.

Blas's Marines weren't the only ones doing murder, though. More enemy ranks had moved up to replace those that charged, and were still firing, killing Blas's Marines as they were forced to expose themselves to shoot downward. Cannon still sprayed them with clouds of canister, but there were just so many! The flag ruse was unnecessary now, but the Doms had clearly assembled a heavier force to assail the Guayakans. Maybe too heavy even for her. She considered sending to Blair for reserves; the Doms climbing the berm would reach its top in moments. But she decided Blair had to know what was going on and doubtless saw the same thing all along his line. He'd trust her to stem the tide with what she had, and she would try.

“Now! Gree-nades!” she roared, taking one of the lumpy hand bombs from her cartridge box strap. They didn't have many grenades in the East yet, but the few crates they'd received had been distributed along the line. Now her Marines pulled pins and tossed or rolled the things down the slope as fast as they could. She threw hers a little farther, hoping to catch an officer she'd glimpsed waving his sword in the press. With a stuttering
whump
, the grenades went off, showering them
with more dust, rocks, and a fine red mist. Momentarily, there was a kind of stunned silence below her position, then a mounting, horrifying roar that seemed to combine fury, anguish and terror in equal parts. That was when she knew she couldn't break this attack with bombs and firepower alone. The men coming for her were already dead. They'd die attacking her, or die much more horribly later if they failed. Victory was their only hope. More grenades rolled down among them, throwing bodies and clouds of dirt in the air, but the greater mass of Doms still surged upward. The first to reach the top were met with a withering fire; they tumbled back, screaming, but their bodies only widened the shifting, rolling platform for others. Their footing was unsure, but they had the numbers, and more and more reached the crest.

“Shields!” she coughed, hoping she was heard, but other voices carried the command.

“Up an' at 'em!” sergeants bellowed. “In their faces! Meet 'em at the top!”

Shields, fearful weapons themselves, slammed against the unsteady men, throwing them back. Those that stood were shot or bayonetted by 'Cats behind those banging their shields forward. The distant ranks of Doms stopped firing, already hitting too many of their own with their inaccurate weapons, so most of what little shooting remained came from Blas's Marines—and the cannon in their protected embrasures.

Blas fired past a shield, its holder crouching low behind it, grunting with the effort to stem the tide of men. Muskets pounded or slammed down on it, trying to knock it away, and Blas caught glimpses of desperate faces, mouths open in silent or unheard roars. Some sprayed spittle as they gasped; others managed short, defiant cries she couldn't understand. She shot as many of those faces as she could, and her ammunition was dwindling fast, but most of her attention was devoted to stabbing with the long, triangular bayonet on the end of her rifle. She stabbed at eyes, throats, arms, anything that appeared before her. She didn't always connect, but when she did, she drove in hard and twisted savagely before pulling her weapon back.

A huge man, swinging a pair of muskets by their barrels, flailed at the tiring 'Cat in front of her. He absorbed the blows on his shield with loud grunts of pain as the muskets shattered, but a Marine beside Blas drove his bayonet into the man's upraised armpit. He shrieked and tried
to knock the shield 'Cat over with his dying bulk, but already sliding backward, he merely grabbed the shield and took it with him. For an instant, the brave 'Cat had no defense, and a pair of the wicked, swordlike Dom bayonets found him before he could scrabble back. Blas stabbed at his killers, and the shields closed up over his corpse. A pair of colonials flanked her now, laying into the Doms with their long swords, like axes, and slinging blood in all directions. They didn't have the reach of bayonets, but at such close quarters, they could hack the enemy with flesh-cleaving, bone-smashing strokes. She wondered briefly why they'd chosen to fight at her side; colonials could be cliquish. But ever since Saint Francis, they'd shown a fondness for Lemurians in general, calling them “kitties,” to mixed annoyance and amusement, and she was grateful for them.

The fighting raged like that for at least an hour, maybe more. It was impossible to tell. And the bayonet work was the most prolonged and grueling Blas had ever endured. The new rifles made a huge difference since they could be loaded much more quickly and she doubted she'd have held if not for them, but her Marines were exhausted, the grenades were gone, and their ammunition was spent when the pressure on the faltering shield wall suddenly just . . . ended. Her hearing was destroyed, but she did perceive the sound of trumpets braying beyond the second massed ranks of Doms that had never advanced. Those opened fire again as their comrades melted back, scurrying over the heaped bodies and through the corpse-choked entanglements.

“Back!” Blas shouted, not recognizing her own voice. “Get down, back behind the wall!” She needn't have exerted her voice. Her Marines were already dropping down to the firing steps.

“Thanks, guys,” she managed to the two blood-smeared colonials.

“Our pleasure!” One of them grinned. “An' a rare fightin' kitty, ye are!”

She contemplated a retort, but then just grinned back. The small cats that had spread across the Empire of the New Britain Isles, arrivals with the same ancient “passage” that brought its people to this world, did look a little like Mi-Anakka, and she wasn't offended by the diminutive, considering the present source.

“It was the shields,” First Sergeant Spook declared as he joined her, handing her his water bottle again. She drank greedily. He was just as
bloody as the two men, and his beloved BAR hung from his shoulder with an empty magazine well. She suddenly realized she'd never even heard him fire, but apparently he'd shot everything he had. He tugged on his sling, noticing her gaze. “I'm not completely dry,” he said, blinking irony. “Savin' a couple maag-a-zeens back for if it gets
really
bad.”

Blas barked a laugh, and Spook peered carefully over the wall, watching the retreating Doms near the next ranks, still firing over their heads. It was scant protection. Mortar bombs and canister still clawed at the enemy, and Blas didn't know how they could just stand there and take it. The smoke and lingering fog beyond made the world invisible past the ongoing slaughter.

Spook's tail flicked annoyance. “I was hopin' those others'd kill the ones that ran, but I guess the Doms ain't Griks after all.”

“No,” Blas managed, handing the bottle back. Her throat was better, and she also felt a growing sense of triumph. Not that they'd won; she didn't really believe that, and suspected the fight was far from over. Just that she was still alive. “And they didn't just quit. They were
called
back. But why?”

“They were gettin' wasted.” Spook shrugged. “We'd have killed ever' daamn one.” Blas wasn't so sure, but she said nothing. The sun had risen above the distant mountains, and she could see it up there, amid bright blue gaps in the streaming white haze. It would be a clear day once the last of the fog burned away. But the smoke remained dense down low, still being generated as fighting raged on at other points along the wall. She expected the Doms to come back, but she'd enjoy the respite no matter how brief.

“The shields did it. Again,” Spook declared. “So maybe the guys an' gals'll quit bellyachin' about waggin' the heavy daamn thing around.”

Blas nodded. Decisive or not, the shields had been a help. Undeterred by cannon, accurate rifle fire, and even grenades, the Doms had finally driven through every obstacle to reach the shields at the top of the parapet. But difficult as all those other obstacles had been, the final one couldn't be avoided or climbed, and it battered at them mercilessly even as the bayonets and bullets still slew them from behind it.

“Yeah,” Blas agreed at last. “But just like the war in the West, one of these days this war'll move too fast for shields, and we'll have to quit 'em. I hope that's soon,” she added bitterly.

“Well, maybe,” Spook allowed, but paused. There was a growing commotion among the Marines around them, and together, he and Blas peeked up over the earthen wall.

“What the hell's that?” Spook muttered.

Beyond the Dom ranks, straight out of the ground haze and the overhead glare of the sun, something was moving toward them. Something huge, and more than one.

“I don't know . . . ,” Blas murmured, but then she thought she did. Everyone had heard the tales Fred Reynolds brought back of the momentous beasts to the north, and Suares, the “vice alcalde” of Guayak, had confirmed there were many horrible monsters, “great dragons,” on the other side of the mountains where the land was wild and choked with impenetrable jungles. Some of the monsters were mythical things, Blas was sure, but she was equally convinced not all of them were. Certainly not the ones Fred and Kari described. And as these things drew closer, she knew they must be similar creatures. Spook apparently thought the same.

“How'd they
train
them?” he suddenly muttered in awe.

The Dom ranks were peeling back, doubling at a trot and leaving a large gap for the monsters to pass through as they approached. Blas could see them fairly clearly now; enormous cousins to the aal-o-saur-like creatures Dennis Silva had dubbed “super lizards” that haunted the interior of Borno. Super lizards were bad, measuring up to twenty tails in length and able to reach as high as the main yard on a ship, but these, with the same terrible jaws, were possibly twice as big. They seemed to be all head and tail, perched atop long, powerfully made legs. It struck her as odd that they didn't have any forelegs at all that she could see, like humongous skuggiks, which were common carrion eaters in the West. She shook her head, and for an instant she railed to herself that the air corps should've warned them. But there weren't many planes left, and she hadn't heard any over the battle today. And even if they'd been present, they might not have seen them. Colored like dark tree bark, the monsters might've approached invisibly in the dark, then the shadow of the mountains, finally to come closer under cover of the smoke and fog.

Blas suddenly realized the method the Doms used to control them was almost as amazing as the creatures themselves. Their jaws were chained shut at present, and more chains spiderwebbed away from great
iron collars fastened around their necks. The chains were secured to a dozen of the big, fat, armored creatures the Doms used to move their heavy artillery, that strained against the chains at the urging of hundreds of men in bright red and black hooded robes. The Dom infantry, still under fire, shuffled more tightly together to make the gap wider as the “super-duper lizards” (Fred's name for the things reemerged in her mind) were led nearer by their bizarre handlers. As the first monster passed them, the Dom infantry advanced. Near panic had erupted, even among Blas's Marines, because it was obvious what the Doms meant to do with the things.

“Stand fast!” she bellowed with all she had left, her shout carrying in that peculiar way only Lemurians' voices could, as far away as the two lunettes on either side of her Marines and the Maa-ni-la 'Cats to her right. “Runners! Take to all stations, and personally ensure that Col-nol Blair and Gener-aal Shinyaa are aware that the Doms've led Fred and Kari's monsters against us! Tell 'em we need ammo
now
, and probably the reserve! Go! Aar-tillery, commence firing!” She paced a few steps, heart pounding, even as the first load of canister sprayed the closest beast. Hooded figures went down all around it, but it shook itself and trudged on, apparently unconcerned. “Solid shot!” she screamed. “Solid shot only at the monsters! Save your canister for the Doms!” They'd need every bit, she realized, because
all
the Doms were coming now, including those that had retreated. And in the distance, beyond the monsters, she could just make out more infantry with red-faced uniforms. . . .