Hell's Foundations Quiver by David Weber
Something shrieked, shrill enough to be heard even through the heretic guns, the drums, and the bugles. Failyx Sylvstyr had never heard anything like it in his life, yet he knew instantly what it had to be.
He turned back to the river, and his mouth was a thin, bloodless line as the ugly black carapace of the heretic ironclad surged through the golden glow of river mist, trailing twin banners of smoke.
“Stand to! Stand to!”
He heard other voices repeat the order. Then more bugles were sounding, calling his regiment to war, and he flung himself into the heavily sandbagged battery command post with a silent prayer to Langhorne and Chihiro.
* * *
“There’s the battery, Sir. ’Bout six points on the larboard bow.”
Captain Bahrns swung his double-glass to the indicated bearing and grunted.
“Got it. Good eyes.”
“Thank’ee, Sir!”
The lookout’s pleasure at the compliment was obvious, but most of Bahrns’ attention was focused on the battery itself. If their spy reports were as accurate as usual, it was likely to prove a tough slabnut to crack. On the other hand, his breechloaders had been designed to crack nuts just like it.
“Clear the bridge!” he commanded, still peering at the raw earthen face of the enormous battery. It was high enough its guns might just be able to score on the thinner armor of the decks and casemate roof, but the angle would be shallow if they did. “Inform Master Blahdysnberg that we’ll be needing his gunners soon,” he continued. “And bring her a point to starboard, if you please!”
Acknowledgments came back, and he felt the lookouts moving past him through the conning tower door. He stood where he was for a moment longer as Delthak swung slightly away, presenting her broadside more fully to the battery. Then it was his turn, and he stepped over the raised coaming and swung the armored door shut. One of the lookouts dogged the latches, and he nodded his thanks and stepped across to the forward vision slit on the larboard side.
The first furious gouts of gunsmoke blossomed from the heavily dug-in field guns, and he raised an eyebrow in ungrudging respect. They were quick off the mark, those gunners, and Delthak’s armor rang like a hammered anvil as twelve-pounder round shot ricocheted from her casing.
“Slow to one-quarter,” he said. There was no point dodging about, and the lower speed would improve his own gunners’ accuracy.
“One-quarter speed, aye, Sir!” the telegraphsman sang out, and Bahrns stepped to the voice tube, uncapped it, and blew down it to sound the whistle at the other end.
“First Lieutenant!” Pawal Blahdysnberg’s voice acknowledged.
“I believe it’s time you earned your princely salary, Master Blahdysnberg. You may open fire when ready.”
“Aye, aye, Sir!”
Bahrns let the voice pipe cover snap shut and stepped back to the vision slit just as HMS Delthak’s six-inch rifles spoke in anger for the very first time.
* * *
Major Sylvstyr felt a fresh, fierce surge of pride. Even surprised by the ironclad’s appearance, his gunners had gotten off their first salvo before the heretics could fire. The waterspouts clustered around the ironclad were proof they’d taken time to aim, as well, and at least nine or ten had scored direct hits.
Which appeared to have been just as effective as the hits Bishop Militant Bahrnabai’s gunners had registered at Guarnak.
He caught his lower lip between his teeth, peering out the observation slit through his spyglass, and his heart sank like a stone as he got his first really good look at his opponent.
Whatever those run-out guns were, they weren’t the thirty-pounders the ironclad had used against Guarnak. Those barrels were longer than any gun he’d ever heard of, which suggested they were even more powerful than he’d feared. But how in Shan-wei’s name did something that long run back in to reload? He couldn’t imagine how it might be done, but however they did, the rate of fire must be incredibly slow. For that matter, how did they swab out and extinguish the sparks from the last round before loading the charge for the next into the muzzle? And—
The ironclad fired.
The muzzle flash was incredible, a bubble of fire raging out above the river’s surface, burning away the mist, laying a ripple pattern of shockwaves across the water. The volcanic eruption of smoke was enormous, and it was brown—dark, dense, thick brown smoke!
That thought had just begun to register when six six-inch shells struck their targets almost simultaneously, and Sylvstyr staggered to their earthquake arrival.
Sweet Langhorne! How the hell much powder are those things filled with?!
The shells drove deep before they exploded, and even black powder could blow an enormous crater when there were eleven and a half pounds of it in each shell. At six thousand yards, Delthak’s armor-piercing shells would have penetrated four inches of solid, face-hardened steel armor. She wasn’t firing armor piercing … but the range was less than two hundred yards, and she certainly wasn’t firing at face-hardened armor.
One of her six shells drilled into the face of the bluff below the battery and ripped its hole harmlessly into the inoffensive dirt and clay. But the other five struck the parapet face, and Failyx Sylvstyr discovered that he hadn’t made it thick enough, after all.
* * *
Shell bursts erupted along the shore, and Bahrns showed his teeth as the earthwork between two of the gun embrasures blew heavenward in a vortex of fire, smoke, and dirt. The embrasure to the right of the point of impact disintegrated, and he thought he could see the muzzle of that field gun buried in the spill of earth and ruptured sandbags. He wasn’t sure about the second gun; it might have survived, if its crew was unreasonably lucky. But there was no question about one of Delthak’s other shells. It landed almost directly under a third twelve-pounder’s barrel and the explosion ripped open its emplacement and threw the shattered gun high into the air.
Down on the gundeck, the big rifles recoiled, then slid smoothly back into battery under the urging of the hydropneumatic recoil system. Gunners turned the heavy breech blocks and swung them open, and the waiting swabs hissed into the breeches to extinguish any lingering embers, followed by fresh sixty-eight-pound shells and twenty-pound bags of powder.
Twenty seconds later, they fired again.
* * *
Not possible. That’s not possible, damn it!
Failyx Sylvstyr stared in disbelief. Those preposterously long guns hadn’t run back in at all! They’d merely surged backward several feet, then slid right back into firing position. And then, impossibly quickly, they did fire again. His twelve-pounders’ maximum rate of fire was no more than four rounds per minute—one every fifteen seconds—even with a superbly trained crew. There was no way guns with the massive destructive power the heretics’ had revealed could fire equally quickly! It simply couldn’t be done!
But the heretics were doing it. Somehow, they must be loading the accursed things from the breech end, like their damned infantry’s rifles!
Another hurricane of devastation ripped through his regiment’s position, rending and shredding, setting off ready charges in a cascade of secondary explosions, and Major Sylvstyr’s stomach was a frozen iron ball as he realized just how quickly that demon-spawned ironclad was going to tear his command apart.
And they weren’t even scratching its paint.
Bile rose in his throat. His men were dying about him, and they were dying for nothing. Surely, whatever God demanded of them it wasn’t to sacrifice their lives uselessly when their weapons couldn’t even hope to damage the enemies who were killing them!
“Get them out!” he roared, staggering out of his command post and down the length of the earthwork, feeling his way through the smoke, the stench of explosions, and the shattered bodies of his men. “Get the men out of here, damn it!”
He collided with Captain Hylmyn, one of his battery commanders, in the smoke and chaos and grabbed him by both shoulders.
“Get your men out, H
“But … but, Sir—!”
“Don’t argue, damn you!” Sylvstyr snarled. “Get them out—now!”
Fresh thunderbolts unleashed new explosions and the screams of torn and broken men tore at their ears. Hylmyn stared at him for a single heartbeat longer, then jerked a choppy nod and spun away, shouting orders of his own.
Sylvstyr left him to it, fighting his way down the length of the earthwork through the confusion and the dying, bellowing the order to retreat again and again. Some of his men heard him and refused to obey. Others would never hear anything again, but most of his gunners—those who were still alive, anyway—heard and obeyed.
The major felt the shame of running away. He knew—he knew—it was the right order to give, but still he felt the shame. And he knew his men would, as well. He didn’t know what the inquisitors might say about this day’s work, but General Rychtyr would understand. He’d know there’d been no choice but to—
Another six-inch shell stabbed into the ruins of Failyx Sylvstyr’s regiment. This one found a magazine, and the major felt himself flying through the air. Then he felt a shattering impact … and nothing else at all.
* * *
“Secure the guns, Master Blahdysnberg,” Halcom Bahrns said, and his voice was flat, his eyes dark. “Tell the crews I said well done.”
“Aye, aye, Sir!” Pawal Blahdysnberg’s jubilant voice came back up the voice pipe. “Thank you!”
“You’re welcome,” Bahrns replied. “You deserve it.”
He closed the voice pipe, undogged the conning tower door, and stepped back out onto the bridge wing. The long, brown fog bank of Delthak’s gunsmoke rolled away on the chill, strengthening breeze. More smoke rose in a thick, choking plume above the plowed wreckage which had once been a battery of twenty-four twelve-pounders. There might be as many as five intact guns buried in those ruins, he thought grimly. There couldn’t be more of them.
I wonder how Pawal will feel about those compliments of mine when he has time to come above decks and really see what we’ve done? I know Baron Green Valley’s right. You don’t win a war by dying for your cause; you win it by making the other poor damned bastard die for his. And Langhorne knows the perfect battle from any CO’s viewpoint is one in which none of his people die. But this—! It was like … like clubbing baby chicks. They couldn’t possibly hurt us, and we.…
He stared at his ship’s handiwork, listening as the thunder of the army’s artillery rolled and bellowed, and then he drew a deep breath and turned back to the conning tower.
“Come a quarter point to larboard and increase to half ahead,” he said quietly.
“Quarter point to larboard and half ahead, aye, Sir!” PO Fyrgyrsyn responded, and if there was any doubt in his voice, Bahrns couldn’t hear it. At the moment, that mattered. It mattered a lot, because Fyrgyrsyn mattered.
Captain Halcom Bahrns squared his shoulders and raised his double-glass again as he looked for the tow road along the top of the western riverbank. The one he was supposed to take under fire to deny it to the enemy and cover the landing of the Marine battalion Earl Hanth was sending upriver in Delthak’s wake. It was unlikely they’d be able to cut off Rychtyr’s retreat entirely. The Dohlaran general had been too smart to dig in on the eastern side of the river. He’d probably believed—hoped, at least—that his barricade of river barges would protect his rear, but it was obvious he hadn’t been prepared to risk his army’s existence on that belief. And their spies reported another barricade across the river five miles farther north. However willing the engineers might be, they wouldn’t be able to blow a gap through that obstacle before most of the fleeing Dohlarans were already past it on their way to Evyrtyn. So, no, they weren’t going to keep Rychtyr from falling back up the line of the Seridahn, but they could damned well make it a costly process.
And that, he reminded himself, glancing back at the shattered defensive battery, was what fighting a war was all about, wasn’t it?
.VII.
Fifty Miles East of Malys, The South March Lands, Republic of Siddarmark
“We’re down eighteen more draft horses, Sir,” Colonel Ahlfryd Makyntyr said wearily. “And another twelve-pounder broke an axle this afternoon, too. I think I can spread the remaining horses to keep the other pieces moving—for a while, at least—but I’ve lost two more dragons, as well.”
Sir Rainos Ahlverez’ expression was grim as he listened to his senior artillerist’s report. Makyntyr wasn’t telling him anything he hadn’t expected. Or anything he hadn’t already heard entirely too many times during the nightmare retreat from the Kyplyngyr Forest debacle. The general commanding what was left of an army which had once counted almost a quarter million men shouldn’t have been worrying his head over the loss of a single twelve-pounder, but he no longer had almost a quarter million men. By the best estimate available to him, he was down to under forty thousand, including over ten thousand Desnairians.
And, allowing for Makyntyr’s most recent loss, nineteen pieces of artillery.
“Do what you can, Ahlfryd,” he said. There’d been a time when his relationship with Makyntyr had been icily formal, but that time was long past. One thing about unmitigated disasters, he thought mordantly; they put pettier concerns and conflicts into perspective. “Go ahead and pull your remaining dragons off the ammunition carts. The guns are more important than they are, and we’ll settle for the ammunition on the limbers. Once you’ve got the traction you need for all of them, turn the other dragons over to Shulmyn and lay fuses to the carts.” He quirked a bitter smile. “No point leaving all that powder lying around for the heretics.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Makyntyr’s unhappiness was apparent, but he didn’t even try to argue. No artillerist liked to be told his reserve ammunition had become irrelevant. There was no point pretending it hadn’t, however, and Sir Shulmyn Rahdgyrz’ remaining supply wagons were vastly more important to the beaten army shambling its way towards what it hoped might someday be safety and survival.
A hunger-gaunt horse trotted up beside Ahlverez, and the captain in its saddle touched his chest in salute to his superiors.
“A courier just came in from Colonel Ohkarlyn, Sir,” Sir Lynkyn Lattymyr said. “The Colonel’s reached Malys. He says it’s deserted, but he’s pushing a section out towards Kostyr and one of his companies has established a blocking position on the road to Thyssyk.”
“Any word from Colonel Tyrwait?”
“Not since this morning, Sir.”
Ahlverez grunted in acknowledgment and unfolded his wretched excuse for a map, wishing for no more than the ten thousandth time that he had a better one. For that matter, that he had any maps of this Archangels-forsaken stretch of the South March. The best he had was this rough sketch, with an unreliable scale and so-called details in which he dared not place much trust. Worse, he had to assume any heretics hunting his command to finish off what was left of it had much better ones than he did.
What he did know was that the miserable, narrow, muddy tracks connecting the tiny hamlets thinly scattered across the almost three hundred straight-line miles between the village of Sygmar south of the Kyplyngyr and the larger town of Malyktyn on the high road between Roymark and Cheryk were the closest thing to a road net the Army of Shiloh’s remnants had. The only hope that any of Ahlverez’ men might ever see home lay on the far side of Malyktyn, and they had precious little chance of getting there.
The farm tracks had never been intended for the traffic required to support even a routed army, especially in winter. They existed primarily to haul crops to market after harvest, when the weather was dry and the dirt roads offered firm going for farmers’ wagons. In winter, soaked by the all too frequent rains and plagued by nights when the temperature dropped below freezing, the going had been anything but firm even before hundreds of
Sir Rainos Ahlverez was a nobleman, accustomed to looking down his aristocratic nose at the commoners who provided the Royal Dohlaran Army’s enlisted soldiers, yet every one of his surviving men—even the wretched Desnairians who’d attached themselves to his command—had become precious to him. Not simply because they represented the dwindling fighting power (such as it was) under his command, either. No. He knew what these men had done, what they’d suffered and given for God and king, how many others had lost their lives already. It was his responsibility to get them home again; he owed them that for the price they’d paid. And it was a responsibility he knew he was unlikely to meet.
But it wouldn’t be because he hadn’t tried, he reminded himself, inhaling deeply. He was just as happy none of the Army of Shiloh’s senior Desnairian officers had made it this far. While it would have been intensely satisfying to be able to shoot them out of hand, he had at least a chance to get some of their men home without them to hinder him.
He frowned down at the dogeared sketch map. Malys lay southwest of the Kyplyngyr, at the intersection of no less than five of the pitiful, muddy excuses for roads available to him. The fact that Ohkarlyn, commanding one of his last two semi-full-strength cavalry regiments, had secured the road junction was good news. But to offset that, he’d still heard nothing from Tyrwait, who commanded the other one of those regiments. Tyrwait was doing his best to screen the main column’s western flank, and he was supposed to be scouting towards the village of Zhonstyn, eighty miles south-southwest of Malys. Hopefully, he was also finding a place for at least a temporary blocking position on the farm road that led from Malys, through Zhonstyn, to Thesmar, although Ahlverez hoped to Langhorne it wouldn’t be required. If it was.…