The Thousand Names (39 page)

Two o’clock, Marcus reckoned by the sun. Two o’clock, and the southern horizon was still clear. Another shot from the naval guns rang off the front of the temple, and he could feel something
shift
unpleasantly in the stonework.
How many balls have they got for the damn things?

One of the sentries on the roof—a dangerous position, given the howitzers’ tendency to overshoot—had come down to report that he’d seen something off to the south. Riders, he thought. Marcus had hurried to a south-facing window to check, but either his eyes were not as good or whoever it was had gone.
Or was never there in the first place.
Irritated, he walked back to his usual position. Outside, the big guns fell silent one by one, which could only mean another attack was coming.

Adrecht met him by the window. He did his best to conceal it, but Marcus could see the accusation in his face.
Or is that the imaginings of a guilty conscience
?

“We’re not going to make it to nightfall,” Adrecht said. “This place is standing up better than we thought it would, but Archer says he doesn’t think it will take much more. If it collapses entirely . . .”

He didn’t have to finish. Marcus could imagine the stone walls crumbling all too well, enormous blocks coming loose to fall among the tight-packed wounded in the main hall below.

“We might be able to cut our way out,” Adrecht went on. “Wait until they start shelling us again, try to pull everyone out of the line before they can get reorganized, make a push across the fields to the south. There’s a gap there.”

Marcus nodded slowly. Again, the important part went unsaid. Even if it worked, that would mean abandoning everything that couldn’t be carried on a soldier’s back—the guns, the supplies, the wounded. And breaking contact with the enemy afterward was far from certain.

“Or else,” Adrecht continued, “we can surrender. Hope that the Auxies aren’t as bad as your common run of Redeemer. We drilled them to do things our way, after all. Maybe they absorbed the bit about the proper treatment of prisoners.”

Marcus remembered the pyres in the streets of Ashe-Katarion. “We may not have a choice. If I give the order to punch out, I’m not sure how many men would follow.”

“No. They’re tired.” Adrecht gave a mirthless grin. “It’s a good thing the Redeemers have such a fearsome reputation, actually. If they could be sure they’d be treated fairly, I’m certain some of ours would have handed over their muskets some time ago.”

Outside, the occasional pop of a musket rose rapidly to a sustained roar. Moments later, an agitated soldier burst into the little cell.

“Sir!” he said. “Captain, it’s gone bad on the right. They’ve taken one of the guns, and they’re holding right against the wall. The whole side’s cut off, sir!”

“Balls of the Beast!” Marcus hesitated, but only for a moment. The company of the Fourth that remained below was his last reserve, his last card to play. Once they were committed, there would be nothing to do but grit his teeth and fight things out to the finish.
But if they get that gun turned down the line, those men are as good as dead.
His own men, he remembered. The First Battalion, Thorpe and Davis.

Adrecht was already halfway to the door. Marcus hurried after him, pounded down the stairs, and ran across the temple hall, trying not to look at the mounting pile of the dead and the endless ranks of the dying. Instead he focused on the handful of blue-coated soldiers huddled near the front door. Adrecht got there first, and within a few moments the company sergeant was shouting the men to their feet.

There was no time for speeches. Marcus stopped in the doorway, drew his sword, and chopped forward. The company followed, booted feet pounding on the flagstones. A few halfhearted cheers from the men guarding the front accompanied their appearance, but these died away as soon as it became clear the men weren’t coming to help them. Instead, Marcus turned right, hugging the wall of the temple. To his left was the barricade, held so thinly it seemed impossible that the Khandarai had not already swarmed over it. Pools and streaks of blood showed where men had been hit and dragged away.

Two of Archer’s guns still boomed defiance on either side of the doorway, and Marcus caught sight of the lieutenant himself, face bloodied from yet another wound. He couldn’t spare more than a glance, however. The shouts and screams from the melee were audible even above the gunfire. Stumbling a little on the rocky ground, Marcus rounded the corner of the temple with Adrecht and the company hard on his heels and found himself face-to-face with a knot of struggling men.

The Khandarai had swarmed over the gun, and a dozen men were at work on it, turning it to fire down the Vordanai line along the temple wall. The men in blue closest by had recognized the danger, and two dozen men from the right wing and a similar number from the center had already hurled themselves with musket butt and bayonet against the disorganized mass of Auxiliaries around the cannon. There was no order left, no organized charges and countercharges, just a confused brawl where soldiers laid into one another with whatever came to hand.

Marcus didn’t need to give a command. He just gestured with his sword, and the men of the Fourth Battalion surged past, shouting with hoarse voices. A few shots rang out from both sides before the masses met, and then the struggle was once again hand to hand.

It was going to work, Marcus saw. His little band, depleted as it was, nonetheless outnumbered the Khandarai survivors, and they were falling back from the captured artillery piece. A few moments more, and they would break.
And then we’ve bought a few more minutes . . .

He couldn’t hear Adrecht’s voice, and it took him a moment to see his frantic gestures. Marcus looked up, toward the Khandarai line, and saw another mass of brown-and-tan uniforms approaching.

At least a company
, he had time to register. Obviously the Khandarai commander had seen the same opportunity Marcus had led his men to prevent, and had committed his own reserves.
Damn, damn, damn . . .

Then the newcomers were on them, a solid line of leveled bayonets that shattered at the last minute as they had to traverse the uneven footing of the barricade. Marcus saw the flash of Adrecht’s sword coming out of its sheath. It was a pretty thing, he remembered—gold chasing on the hilt and colored embroidery on the scabbard. He just had time to hope that Adrecht hadn’t entirely neglected the edge before the Auxiliaries were on them.

Marcus would never have described himself as a master swordsman. At the War College, there had been students who’d gone in for that sort of thing, studying the ancient forms under the College tutors and staging flashing, glittering contests in the quad while onlookers applauded politely. He remembered the beauty of those bouts, the way the contestants had clashed and spun, almost as though they were dancing instead of sparring.

What experience Marcus had with his blade had come in back alleys and desperate ambushes, and none of it had been beautiful in any sense. He had learned a few important lessons, though, not the least of which was never to discount the efficacy of an unconventional blow. A punch to the stomach or a kick to the groin might not be as elegant as a perfectly executed thrust, but it would put a man on the ground just the same.

In any case, his weapon was not one of the light, elegant rapiers the College swordsmen had favored. It was actually a cavalry saber, begged from the stores after his army-issue officer’s sword had broken in a skirmish years ago. The heavy, curved thing was really designed to be wielded from horseback, but Marcus liked the weight of it. The pommel could crack a skull, properly applied, and the blade was a solid three feet of good steel.

He’d also learned, in a rough way, what to do when you were up against more than one opponent.
Keep moving
. Hold still and they’d circle round and skewer you. Thus, as three men clambered over the broken timber that topped the barricade in front of him, he bulled forward, dodging the point of a surprised Auxiliary’s bayonet and giving the man a wild slash across the stomach that sent him reeling. Before the man beside him could recover from his surprise and bring his unwieldy weapon to bear, Marcus slammed him in the face with the guard of the saber, which left him stumbling and clutching a broken nose.

There were brown uniforms all around him now. He hacked and slashed at random, grabbed the haft of a musket as it thrust past him and twisted it out of the owner’s grasp, blocked another blade by sheer luck and replied with a wild swing that took off most of the Khandarai’s face. He expected every moment to feel the sting of a point in the small of his back. Looking around, he saw a knot of blue and struggled toward it, but a hard shove from behind drove him practically into the arms of another Auxiliary. Instinctively, Marcus lowered his blade, and the point went in the man’s stomach and came out between his shoulder blades. He sagged, face twisted in a comic surprise, and the deadweight tore the saber from Marcus’ grip.

Another bayonet flashed, over his shoulder, and he ducked. Someone kicked him—obviously he wasn’t the only one who’d spent time in the back-alley school of swordsmanship—and sent him sprawling. His world was suddenly a mass of dusty, stamping boots. Marcus saw a gap ahead and crawled toward it, grabbing ankles to use as handholds. Someone looked down and a bayonet shivered into the turf by his leg, but the next moment he managed to drag himself into the clear.

He rolled over and looked up, dumbfounded, into the maw of a twelve-pounder. He’d fought his way into the little clear space the Auxiliaries were striving to maintain around their prize. The gun was a few feet away, aimed over his head, but Marcus didn’t doubt it would be loaded with canister, which made the precise orientation of the barrel irrelevant. He remembered the fields of fire of the Preacher’s guns at the last battle, the men torn to pieces so small they weren’t even recognizable as corpses. By the side of the gun, a gawky Khandarai in a brown uniform grinned, showing a mouthful of rotten teeth, and raised a lit match to the side of the cannon—

—and scrabbled at it, mystified. The gun was engraved all over, verses from the Wisdoms crammed in as small as careful hands could manage. A Kravworks ’98, Marcus remembered.
Friction primers.

He jumped to his feet, driven by a sudden, desperate energy, and slammed his fist into the would-be gunner’s face. There were four more men beside the piece, though, and these still had their muskets. They surrounded Marcus on three sides, advancing cautiously. He tried to grab a musket by the barrel, but the man pulled back so fast Marcus nearly cut his hands on the bayonet, and one of the others thrust at his head. Marcus avoided being skewered only by falling awkwardly backward, leaving him looking up at four gleaming steel points.

One of which twitched suddenly and fell away. Adrecht broke through the circle of Khandarai, and the other three turned to face him. He raised his sword, and under other circumstances Marcus would have had to laugh at the expression on his fellow captain’s face. His blade had snapped off half a foot from the hilt.

Two of the Khandarai thrust simultaneously. The third would have as well, but for the fact that Marcus grabbed his ankle from behind and pulled his foot out from under him, leaving him sprawling in the dust. Adrecht spun away from the pair. One bayonet just missed his back, and the other caught him on the upper arm, ripping a deep, bloody gash through the muscle. Suddenly off balance, Adrecht stumbled against the cannon.

Marcus snatched up the fallen man’s weapon, treading on him in the process, and sank it into the small of another man’s back. The fourth Auxiliary turned to face him, but Adrecht managed to kick him off balance, and Marcus slammed the butt of the musket into his fingers, then skewered him on the point of the bayonet. He hurried to Adrecht, who was clutching the deep cut just above his elbow.

“Fucking sword,” Adrecht moaned. “The damned armorer promised me that was good steel. Remind me to kill him if we ever get to Ashe-Katarion.”

“Fair enough,” Marcus said. He put his back to the cannon, beside Adrecht, and took a moment to look around. There were fewer brown uniforms in view than he’d expected, and those he could see were retreating rapidly.
Don’t tell me we actually stopped them after all?

There was a
boom
, close at hand. Not the deep-throated roar of a gun going off, but the higher-toned blast of a shell exploding.
Howitzers already?
The Auxiliaries were still engaged all along the perimeter—the inaccurate weapons would be as likely to kill their own men as the Vordanai. He straightened up for a better look.

Another shell exploded with a flash, well back from the temple, down among the wreckage from which the Auxiliaries had launched their attack. Where their reserves, officers, and wounded were presumably still waiting.
That’s a hell of an unlucky shot,
Marcus thought, until another one exploded practically on top of the first. Then he understood.

“Marcus?” Adrecht said. His eyes were shut tight against the pain. “What’s happening? Are we going to die?”

“No,” Marcus said. “Not unless Janus overshoots a bit.”

“Janus?” Adrecht cracked one eyelid cautiously.

“The colonel.” Marcus waved a hand. “He’s captured the guns, which means he’s captured the ford. Which means he’s captured the whole lot.”

All around the temple the Auxiliaries were falling back under the unexpected fire from their own artillery. Most of them were streaming back the way they had come, toward the ford, unaware that they were running straight into the arms of fresh blue-uniformed infantry. The brighter ones scattered, heading east or west or south across the fields, but no doubt there were cavalry waiting to gather them up. The colonel, Marcus knew, did not believe in half measures.