As if in answer to his thought the first rank of charging Slashers fired. Not quite a volley, more like a rippling crack down the line:
BAMbambambambam.
The dogs dropped their haunches and reared, turning; the second line galloped through the first and fired ten meters farther toward the Squadron troops, then turned as well; less than a minute and the three companies were galloping back along their own path, reloading as they guided their mounts with knees and voice. The trumpet sounded, and the two companies with Thiddo rocked into a gallop in their turn.
Nobody could achieve any useful degree of accuracy against individual targets from a moving dog, not at these ranges. With enough practice, you could learn to hit
large
targets—several thousand men bunched shoulder to shoulder would do nicely—and the Slashers, like most units recruited on the Colonial frontier, made a specialty of this maneuver—the
fantasia,
it was called. The mass of Squadrones ahead of him was littered with dead men, and with dogs dead or thrashing around wounded, which was much worse. He could hear their howling, and a flurry of blurred
whumps
from Squadron smoothbores as the animals were put down before they turned on the nearest human.
Closer; six hundred meters. More groups pouring across the plain, angling out toward his men or in toward the golden spaceship-and-planet banner . . .
Spirit save me, that must be the Admiral we're attacking, no
wonder
they're upset.
Five hundred. Four hundred, and he drew his saber; a pistol was about as much use as a holy-water sprinkler at that range. It flashed up and then down in a shimmering arc.
BAMbambambambam,
another stuttering crash, louder this time as the tongues of flame shot forward from either side of them. He wheeled his dog, the big animal scrambling sideways as it killed velocity and threw clods of dust and wheat-straw, then riding back and
BAMbambambambam
behind him as the second file fired. Ahead the first three companies had reined in and turned, galloping back toward him.
Aur! Aur!
They passed in a flash of combined speed; the trumpet sounded
rally
as Thiddo reined in and turned.
"Well, that's got them worked up and no mistake," he said to himself.
The whole mass of odds-and-sods around the Admiral's banner was rocking forward into a wild charge, waving swords and blunderbusses, banners flapping. The sound of their bellowing was almost as deep as the massed baying snarl of their dogs; more and more groups merged into the galloping mass, as individual noblemen and their retainers rallied to the Admiral. The last
fantasia
was from barely a hundred meters, and whole sections of the Squadrones went down before it. A few Slashers were hit by the return fire; a few more were dismounted, and swung up pillion by their comrades. The loose dogs mostly followed the retreating companies; two remained with bared teeth to fight and die over the bodies of dead masters.
"Sound
retreat,
" Thiddo said.
The Slashers heeled their dogs and headed back for the ridge; the companies closed up and fell in one behind the other as they rode. The ridge grew ahead: The gap with their pursuers was growing; the Civil Government cavalry were on faster dogs and knew where they were going. A mob as big as that following them would include a lot of slow riders, and not many wanted to be right out in front. Especially when the rear ranks of the pursued were turning in the saddle to shoot backward occasionally. . . .
POUMM.
A pulse through the air as much as a noise, and a long tongue of flame from a field gun among the olive trees on the low ridge.
POUMM. POUMM.
The shells went whistling overhead with a sound like ripping canvas. Thiddo looked back. Two of the shells airburst over the advancing host with vicious
crack
sounds. Dirty blackish smoke-puffs at ten meters height, and oblongs opening below in the dark densely packed mass of galloping men and dogs. Thiddo winced slightly: the casings of the shells were loaded with hundreds of lead balls packed around a bursting charge. A third shell's time-fuse was off and it exploded on contact in a dark poplar shape of pulverized soil. That one was less deadly than the airbursts, but there were bits and pieces of men and dogs among the debris cast skyward.
POUMM. POUMM. POUMM.
Three more shots, ten seconds later. There were ten thousand of them at least following him now, a huge moving carpet that heaved and sparkled in the sun, sparkled with steel and brass and polished iron musket-barrels. More riding in from all over the rolling plain. But the Squadrones were not used to artillery; the front rank faltered, and hundreds of dogs went wild with panic, throwing their riders or attacking those next to them—always a risk with animals who had not trained together—or riding off across the battlefield in uncontrollable funk with the men sawing at their reins. "Shooting stars," they were called. . . . The huge roaring noise of the charge changed timbre, mixed with the frenzied screaming of wounded dogs.
Major Anhelino Dalhouse cursed as the 75s let out another salvo and his wolfhound attempted to curvet.
The third gun of the battery had fired with a CRACK! an instant after the BOOM/BOOM of its sister tubes. Recoil from previous shots had driven the gun far enough back that this round was from the top of the ridge itself. The other two guns were still down the forward slope where the mass of earth and rock deadened their muzzle blasts. The shift in timbre made Dalhouse's knees clamp, multiplying the dog's own nervous reaction. The men behind him were murmuring to their crouching mounts spaced out through the sparse olive grove; a chorus of whines and growls sounded.
"Redlegged muckeating wogs!" Dalhouse snarled as he fought his mount back under control. No way
he
was going to dismount, of course.
The artillerymen ran their gun forward, heaving at the tall iron rims of the wheels to get it started as it disappeared down the forward slope again. Rifles volleyed at a greater distance, cutting through a sound like heavy surf that he couldn't identify.
I
can't see a damned thing from here,
Dalhouse thought, his mouth working. He had a gleeful momentary vision of heavy bullets scything down the gunners, ringing on the gun tubes . . . the caissons exploding, blowing to hell the whole
damnable
mess of stinks and noises and men with as little social position as the mongrel mule-dogs that drew their guns.
"How close are they, sir?" asked Ensign Meribor, Dalhouse's aide—a cousin from the wealthy side of his wife's family. His restive mount tried to lick the muzzle of Dalhouse's wolfhound, causing the latter to first snap, then growl in embarrassment at being startled.
Dalhouse fought his reins. "How in the bloody Starless Dark would
I
know?" he snarled. "And keep your dog back! What do you think you are, you shopkeeper on dogback, a
bleeding gunner?
"
"Sorry, sir."
Boom. Boom. Boom.
A
bullet whickered high overhead. Probably a ricochet, certainly no threat to anyone . . . but an evil sound, and a reminder of the things that
might
be taking place unseen on the other side of the ridgeline.
The thought decided Dalhouse in the instant it flashed across the surface of his mind. If that incompetent heathen-loving Descotter savage Thiddo thought he was going to leave Dalhouse to be shot down when a wave of Squadrones appeared on the ridgeline, he had another think coining . . .
Dalhouse spurred his mount toward the ridgeline from which he could view the battlefield for himself. "Come along!" he ordered Meribor.
Dalhouse wore rowels with long spikes for the look and jingle rather than need, but tension dug his heels deeper than he'd intended this time. The wolfhound yelped and brought its long jaws around by reflex, before it realized that the target was its master's booted leg—and therefore sacrosanct. The beast lurched forward, whining deep in its throat.
Boom.
"Sir, should we be—"
Boom.
"—leaving our position?" Meribor called desperately from behind Dalhouse. The boy wasn't a natural rider. He was a city lad, raised in the East Residence in a house which would have stunk of trade were the smell not smothered by so
much
money.
Boom.
One has to be practical, even in matters of honor.
Dalhouse glanced over his shoulder. Meribor's mount had followed Dalhouse's own, unbidden, catching the boy unprepared. His left hand was tangled in the wolfhound's curly neck fur, a white-knuckled grip that instinct said was safer than the reins.
"We're not leaving our position!" Dalhouse snapped.
Beyond Meribor, the helmets and polished brassards of the 17th Hemmar Valley Cuirassiers blazed with reflected sunlight, framing and concealing the faces of the troopers watching their commanding officer. They were glorious next to the rather drab issue uniforms of the Novy Haifa Dragoons.
"Do you think I'm going to trust a Rogor County half-wog to decide when
my
troops—"
CRACK!
and the rest of the sentence—"advance"—was shocked out of Dalhouse's mind by the muzzle blasts; a field gun and volleying Armory rifles no longer blocked by the ridge that his wolfhound had just surmounted. His head whipped around just as the other two guns let loose together. They bounded backward uphill behind a red flash an instant before their paired
CRACKCRACK
slammed Dalhouse's ears.
The view across the ridge was as sudden a shock as that of the unmuffled gunfire. Dalhouse had never been good with numbers. "Fifty thousand Squadrones," Whitehall had said, but that meant nothing, it was not
real.
It was like listening to a bailiff talking about tithes and harvests, when all that mattered to Dalhouse was that there be a sufficiency of money to buy whatever his whim required.
The mass of men and weapons and brightly caparisoned dogs now visible in the valley before Dalhouse was
real.
It was enough to sweep the whole world before it and grind anything that tried to stop it into dust The sound he had wondered at was their voices and the paws of their dogs, beating like the roar of surf, like a natural force, an earthquake or forest fire. Three guns and a handful of the Rogor Slashers—irregulars, near as no matter, half-breed wogs—would be swallowed up unnoticed by the Squadrones' advance. Even as Dalhouse stared, half of Thiddo's force turned their dogs and galloped toward the doubtful safety of the ridge.
A round musket-ball, flattened into a miniature frisbee when it ricocheted from a stone, moaned
burrburrburr
past Dalhouse's ear.
Powder smoke, white and sulfurous, lay like a gauze shroud over the valley. A breeze curled hazy whiffs up the slope. Dalhouse, breathing through flared nostrils as he considered the situation, the
impossible
situation, gagged as something like the blade of a buzzsaw scoured the back of his throat. His dog whined and pawed its nose.
Dalhouse wheeled his wolfhound. "Ensign Meribor!" he ordered. "Ride back to the camp! Tell whoever's in charge there to advance at once and support us. At once! Or it'll be too late!"
It was no doubt too late already. Well, a gentleman of the Civil Government was willing to die when honor demanded. . . .
Without waiting for Meribor to respond, Dalhouse spurred his mount into a deliberate trot toward the standard-bearer of the 17th. He had been betrayed. Thiddo and Whitehall had put him out here to die. Everyone knew what Descott County was like. Whitehall's blood father was undoubtedly some groom his mother had taken a fancy to, as sure as Whitehall's wife was a whore!
Meribor's mount passed Dalhouse at a dead gallop. The ensign clung to the big wolfhound's neck with both arms. He'd managed to lose the stirrups, and his brassard turned on its chains to jingle against his back. The stirrup-irons beat a tattoo in time with it on the mount's ribs.
Meribor was shouting—perhaps to the dog, perhaps to his mother. The dog, at least, took no notice.
"Pull him up!" Dalhouse bellowed. He spurred his own mount in pursuit. Dalhouse's wolfhound, nervy already from the noise and smoke, put its long head down and bolted after its companion.
Dalhouse realized his mistake at almost the instant he made it. He sawed his reins, but the half-ton carnivore had taken control of its immediate future and ignored the levers pressing on its muzzle. Neck and neck, the two dogs and the officers astride them swept around the southern flank of the 17th Hemmar Valley Cuirassiers, heading for the far hills. The color party and trumpeter dashed out to keep their station by the commander.
Like a sweater unraveling, the twin glittering ranks of the battalion began to trail off behind Dalhouse and his aide.
POUMM. POUMM. POUMM.
Mekkle Thiddo stood in the stirrups and stared ahead at the ridgeline: Where was the glitter of ranked riflemen moving forward? He heard a bugle blowing, sounding
stand, stand to,
and
halt.
The bottom seemed to drop out of his stomach as he swept over the ridge. The artillery was there, gunners slamming fresh shells into the breech and rolling the pieces forward by the wheels to their firing positions. And about a company of the Novy Haifa . . . and the backs of everyone else, spread out in wild disorder and racing full-tilt back north toward the camp.
There were shouts behind him, rage and fear as the men of the Slashers realized what had happened. The halt was ragged when the trumpet blew, but they halted . . . Mekkle Thiddo felt the collar of his uniform tunic cutting into his flesh, tasted a sudden rush of acid bile at the back of his throat.
Defeat. We're all fucking dead. Disgrace . . . Dohloreyz—
"Turn!" he screamed. "Battalion firing line along the ridge—keep your dogs with you—move, move,
now now now!