Men of War (40 page)

Tracer rounds tore across the flank of the 15th, two, three, four heavy .58 caliber bullets striking each warrior. Within seconds the breakthrough disintegrated and receded over the wall.

The machine, wheels churning up the thick sod, creaked past Vincent, still firing. He tried to block out the guttural screams of the Bantag wounded as the heavy iron wheels rolled over them, crushing their still-twitching bodies into the ground.

A long burst of fire swept along the battlement, dropping the charge that was still breaking in. A cheer went up from the 15th, and the counterattack was on as men turned and pushed forward with the bayonet. Again it was the old trade-off, the massive size and strength of the Bantag, offset by the smaller but far more nimble humans, who could dodge the heavy blows, rush in, and slash upward with the bayonet.

Gradually the embankment was regained, the ground for a hundred yards inside the square paved with the dead, wounded, and dying. As the ironclad gained the embankment it turned its fire outward, slashing into the mounted archers providing fire support, and within seconds created havoc.

Bantag were fleeing, stumbling back out of the square; knots of defiant survivors trapped inside grimly traded their lives. Those who were wounded in a final gesture of contempt struggled to cut their own throats rather than suffer the agony of death at the hands of the humans.

Vincent, still numbed from the brief sword fight, rode up to the embankment. The attack was breaking apart, broken fragments falling back like a wave shattered by a rock-bound coast.

“Did you see ’em, did you see ’em!”

It was Stan, blood streaming from a saber slash to his left cheek. He was shouting hysterically, aiming his revolver, squeezing the trigger. Its hammer fell on empty cylinders and yet he was still trying to shoot.

Rifle fire struck into the mounted units as the last of the dismounted assault fell back. Horses reared up, falling, the volume of arrow fire dwindled, then they reined about, retreating, joined by the surviving infantry.

Vincent gazed about in numbed awe. The ground was carpeted black with Bantags. The charge had been an annihilation. Yet as he surveyed his own line he saw that he had received a terrible blow as well. Well over a thousand, maybe two thousand or more of his own men were down, their bodies tangled in with the Bantag along the battlement line and far into the center of the square.

The center battery had been completely overrun, its entire crew annihilated in hand-to-hand fighting, an infantry officer was already at work, shouting for his men to stack their rifles and clear the guns. Walking wounded were heading back into the center of the square, stretcher-bearers were already at work, and the cries and shrieks from the hospital area could be heard throughout the square.

“Damn. We beat ’em, we beat ’em,” Stan cried in English. “Like Fredericksburg, except it was us behind the wall this time.”

Vincent said nothing, his gaze turning back to the east, where the roar of the ironclad battle rumbled. A machine, one of Gregory’s, ignited in a fireball, turret blowing off and rising straight up as the kerosene and ammunition inside blew.

Burning machines, both human and Bantag, littered the next ridge as both sides fought for possession of the high ground. Hundreds of Bantag infantry were filtering into the flanks of the battle outside the square. He saw several Bantag rocket teams maneuvering, running through the grass, trying to get close enough for a kill.

“We got ’em by the tail and really twisted it,” Stan gasped.

Vincent wearily shook his head. Raising his field glasses, he looked straight ahead. The broken charge was falling back to get out of range, but there were still thousands of them. If they had sent three umens instead of two into the infantry assault, he suspected they most likely would have broken clean through.

Looking to the west and around to the south, he could see signal pennants flying, dust swirling up, mounted warriors by the thousands moving. They could harass from the south, but the steep bluff along that side was too good a position to take by storm. No, they were shifting around.

“Stan,” Vincent snapped, “get your division commanders here now. They’re coming back, and we don’t have much time.”

Stan, calming at last from his battle frenzy, looked around at the wreckage of his corps and finally nodded toward the west.

“That way, the ground is still clear.”

“We don’t have much time.”

Time. He looked back to the east at the ironclad fight. It was slowly dragging out. The Bantag not closing for the kill, Gregory wisely not going too far in for fear of being overwhelmed by the infantry. If this kept up, the infantry would be annihilated and then the ironclad battle would no longer matter.

He gazed at the sun, which was now bloodred from the battle smoke. It seemed as if it hung motionless in the morning sky.

H
ans looked overhead to the red sun that seemed to hang motionless in the noonday sky.

The compound below him was a shambles, packed wall to wall with the wounded and terrified refugees. Mortar shells fell inside with terrifying regularity, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. The one artillery piece had fallen silent, shells exhausted, the survivors of its crew reduced to prying loose bricks from the wall and hurling them as the Bantag surged outside the wall. All along the railroad embankment the Chin, after hours of insane resistance, were falling back, retreating into the ruins of the factory compounds lining the rail line. In the fields to the south, tens of thousands of refugees were stumbling away, desperately trying to escape. Mounted units of Bantag rode back and forth, cornering and slaying them.

Hans knew it was hopeless. The compound could not hold much longer. The only thing that was slowing the Bantag was the sheer number of people they had to slay. Yet they were paying as well. Their first assault, which had come on with such self-assured cockiness, had stormed up over the embankment and then been swarmed under as tens of thousands of terrified Chin, desperate when they realized they were cornered by cavalry closing in from behind, turned and in a spontaneous surge rushed forward, crushing the Bantag by sheer weight of numbers.

That had given him several thousand more rifles and ammunition, enough that when the second charge came, the single volley at a range of less than a dozen paces so that his inexperienced riflemen couldn’t miss, dropped hundreds more.

Jurak had then pulled back. Letting firepower, his unrelenting artillery and aimed rifle from several hundred yards out, do the deed. The Chin, defenseless against such an onslaught, had held through midmorning, but now were finally beginning to melt away.

Risking the enemy fire, Hans looked up over the east wall back toward Huan. Rumors had come that tens of thousands of survivors, still huddled in the south end of the burning city, were pouring out, enveloping the flank of the enemy, but it was impossible to see what was occurring there.

Nargas sounded, and seconds later there was a ragged cheer. Leaning over the wall he saw the Bantag infantry pulling back.

Ketswana, eyes wide with battle frenzy, trailed by his two surviving Zulus, came up to Hans’s side and pulled him back down from the exposed position.

“They’re retreating!” Ketswana cried.

Hans, exhausted, absently rubbed his left arm and nodded.

“You know why?”

“Artillery; he’s shifting his artillery over here, the same treatment as the rifle works.”

The next compound up the line had been swarmed under after the Bantag rolled a dozen guns up to within a hundred yards and blasted a hole through the wall.

Hans stood back up and saw the two batteries riding into position out in the middle of the field where the airships had landed. Even as he watched, the first of the guns unlimbered, its crew swinging it about, aiming it straight at him. Other guns fell into position.

They were so close he could see the gunners opening their caissons, pulling out shot and powder bags. Hans rested his carbine on the battlement wall, took careful aim, and squeezed, dropping what he suspected was the battery commander. It barely slowed the crew.

He fumbled in his cartridge box. Only one round left.

One final round, and as he chambered it he knew what that had to be saved for.

The first gun fired, the shock of the solid bolt hitting the wall beneath his feet nearly knocking him off-balance. The other guns opened, bolt after bolt slamming into the wall beneath them. In less than five minutes the first round cracked clean through the brick barrier, the spent bolt careening into the foundry. The platform they were on swayed, a huge crack in the wall opening up from the ground all the way to the top.

“Down!”

Hans followed the rush as they abandoned their position, swarming down the ramp. More bolts slammed into the building, the vast room echoing with shrieks of terror as thousands of Chin, with no place to hide, huddled on the ground; the few with weapons clustered behind furnaces, upended cauldrons, piles of coke, slag, and iron ore.

“They’ll charge as soon as the artillery stops firing! So get ready,” Ketswana roared, trying desperately to be heard. Few paid attention.

Ketswana unholstered a revolver, opened the barrel, dropped the empty cylinder, and, reaching into his haversack, pulled out a loaded cylinder and clicked it in. He looked over at Hans.

“Figured to save the last six rounds.”

“Got one for myself,” Hans said, trying to smile as he patted his carbine.

“So we have come full circle.” Ketswana sighed. “Until you gave me hope I always figured I’d die here.”

Hans looked around at the terrified mob, remembering all too painfully the same sight of not much more than a year ago, when he had fought his way through this same building to gain the tunnel and escape, leaving thousands of others to die. Perhaps this was atonement.

“At least we smashed this place,” Hans announced grimly. “Smashed the whole damn place from here to Huan and beyond. Took their port of Xi’an as well and smashed that up good and proper. It’ll be months, a year or more, before they can even think of recovering.”

The artillery fire slackened and stopped. The cries from within the building hushed. Horrified, Hans saw that some of the Chin were already making their final choice, more than one turning a blade upon themselves or loved ones rather than endure the horror of the final butchering.

The nargas sounded the charge.

* * *

“Damn Tamuka,” Jurak roared. “Damn him. I wanted the flank kept back, give them room to run, let them break.”

Jurak stalked back and forth, angrily shouting at no one in particular. He knew he should have slain Tamuka. It was undoubtedly he who urged the charge forward that had cornered the Chin into a fight. He wondered if Zartak had somehow foreseen this, and wished that his old friend was here now.

The losses had been appalling. Nearly half his warriors were down, most of them dead, swarmed under in the slaughter. Now word had come that Chin by the tens of thousands were coming up from beyond Huan and out of what was left of the burning city. In another hour they’d be into his flank, forcing him to disengage. He had already passed a signal all the way up to Nippon to bring down yet another two umens. But every train available had been used to bring the forces he now had. It would take at least two days, perhaps three, to bring up the reserves. As for the vast encampments to the south, he had dispatched a flyer to them. The females, cubs, and old ones had to be prepared to defend themselves, and that was his true concern. A hundred thousand yurts with nowhere to go farther south because of the mountains and jungles. If he broke off the fight, if he allowed those still dug in along the line a breathing space, they’d rally the hundreds of thousands of Chin still alive and it would be massacre if they turned south. He had to kill the core of resistance now … or lose the war.

The wall of the factory finally collapsed under the incessant pounding. That, at least, was a relief. His battery commander before being killed by a sniper had already informed him that they were digging dangerously into their reserves of ammunition. A ragged cheer erupted from the warriors who had been ordered back, and they surged forward again, closing in for the kill. Soon it would be finished.

Somehow word had spread into his army that it was the legendary Hans who was leading this fight. A Chin demigod, a legend returned to liberate. And something now told him that directly ahead was where Hans was cornered. He had already passed the word to his warriors that if Hans could indeed be captured and brought to him alive, the warrior would be promoted to command of a thousand.

It wasn’t that he wanted Hans to die in agony as Tamuka muttered about. True, Hans would have to die, and the Chin had to see him die to crush their hope of resistance forever. And then the Chin would have to die as well.

Hans would have to die, but first he wished to speak to him. Ha’ark had had that privilege a number of times. He had but observed him from a distance. If one was to understand Keane, Hans was the teacher. He was, as well, a consummate foe, a warrior worthy of respect for what he had accomplished, escaping, leading the flanking attack that finished the campaign in front of Roum, and now this.

So he would feast him once and talk long into the night. Perhaps he would learn something from him, perhaps not, but still he wanted that moment, and then with the coming of the following dawn he would offer him the knife or the gun so that he could finish it with his own hand. Then, after the Chin were brought forth to see the body, he would bum and scatter his ashes to the wind out of respect.

The charge reached the wall and within seconds gained the entryway, a desperate hand-to-hand struggle erupting in the piled-up rubble.

And then he saw them.

A commander of a thousand had just ridden up to ask for orders and his gaze, locked on Jurak, drifted, looking past him, eyes going wide. Raising a hand, he pointed.

Jurak turned and looked. For a moment he refused to believe, and then the enemy aerosteamers began to fire.