Closer, closer. Hollard's lips skinned back as he scanned to his left. Walker's men were coming on briskly, advancing in company columns at the double, with their rifles across their chests. Trotting along were what looked like fieldpieces, six-horse teams, and light gleaming off iron and brass.
They're using the Hittite's to unmask and develop our position, he thought, plus using them to simply soak up bullets. Reasonably well-trained men and a commander with some grasp of tactics, then. Possibly one of Walker's Islander renegades. He hoped so; it would be a positive pleasure to string one of them up. They'd all been sentenced to death for treason in absentia years ago, too.
Hollard judged distances; you went by which features of a man's body you could see easily, when legs became separate from the generalized antlike blob, when you could see arms swing or a face. The Hittites were closing rapidly, but the Walkerites were hanging back- over two thousand yards, extreme rifle range but well within that of heavy-weapons fire.
He reached for the radio at his belt and clicked. "Captain O' Rourke."
"Here, sir."
"Let them have it, Paddy."
"With a will, Brigadier, sir, with a will."
BAAAAMMM! A hundred rifles volleyed from the Scouts' deliberately badly camouflaged rifle pits. Maskirovka was more than just hiding; it was deception, disinformation. It wasn't what you didn't know that killed you, it was what you thought you knew that wasn't so. A dozen Hittite chariots went down; a few of them flipped completely over, pitching forward and squashing the screaming crews like bugs beneath a frying pan.
Schooonk… whonk!
The Scouts' mortar opened up as well. A shell landed in the middle of the dense-packed Hittite infantry, and men fell, opening out in a circle around the explosion like an evil flower with a crimson blossom. The riflemen were firing independent-rapid as well and at less than four hundred yards mostly hitting. Men and chariots were going down all across the Hittite front; he saw arrows fly out, few covering even half the distance, and there were puffs of smoke from some of the chariots-smoothbores firing shot, even more futile than the bows. The charge wavered, which was exactly the wrong thing to do, like most half measures. They should either run as fast as they could, take cover, or keep charging. A running man could cover four hundred yards in a disconcertingly short time, if you were on the receiving end.
Horns and trumpets sounded. Hollard brought up his binoculars; the man with the sun disk on his helmet had survived and was going into a frenzy of signaling. In between he fired shotguns, handing them off to a loader as he did so-a new use for the three-man Hittite chariot crew, and quite ingenious. The chariots reversed themselves and galloped away, and the infantry flattened themselves to the ground.
Schooonk… whonk! More mortar shells falling among the prostrate men. He sympathized, in a way; that was the most unpleasant part, having to wait helplessly and hope you were lucky. Mostly he felt detached. Down underneath he could feel fear, not so much fear of death as of certain mutilating wounds, and more fear for the lives that depended on his decisions.
"Here they come," he said aloud, and his staff nodded soberly.
The Walkerites were deploying, going from column into a two-line formation, well spread out, swinging in to envelop the little Islander position.
"Right, about six hundred up, say three hundred in reserve," he said.
Through the binoculars he could see men manhandling weapons forward. They were on field-gun carriages with shields, like the Islander Gatlings but not quite the same. Fairly light, or they couldn't be brought forward that fast-keeping up well with the infantry. A battery of six real field guns galloped forward and then deployed, the teams turning and then being unhitched and led to the rear, crews leaping down and running the ammunition limbers forward, ready to form a chain to hand rounds up to the loading teams.
Budumm. A sound like a heavy door closing and a long puff of smoke from one of the enemy cannon; it ran back under the recoil. No surprise; the Republic couldn't make a mobile gun with a recoil-absorbing carriage yet either. Then a savage snapping crack of red fire in the air not far behind Paddy's position, and a wide oval of dust as the casing fragments and lead balls hit the ground.
Muzzle-loaders, twelve-pounder smoothbores, he thought, watching the swab-ram-fire loading drill. Firing shrapnel, time-fused shells. They were getting off more then two rounds a minute. Good practice.
Somewhere his soul winced; he'd put Paddy's unit out there as bait, and they were going to pay again, the way they had this morning. The rifle fire dropped off as the Scouts hugged the bottoms of their holes; the area around their position was turning into a haze of dust and smoke as the enemy fell into a regular rhythm of load-run-up-swab-ram-fire, rounds coming forward from the limbers like a bucket chain at a blaze.
Price of doing business, he told himself, as the cry of "corpsman!" went up and the stretcher teams went forward. He'd authorized enlisting local volunteers to carry wounded, to free his own troops for the fighting, and they were going in as bravely as men could be asked to do.
"Captain Lautens," he said into the radio. He wished Chong were here-he knew the man's work-but Lautens hadn't screwed up so far. The artillery commander's voice replied crisply:
"When you unmask, go for those whatever-they-ares brought forward with the infantry; they're your first priority."
"Sir, yessir. We're ready."
"Good man."
Closer, closer… One of the mystery weapons stopped, turned. The shield hid whatever it was the crew did at the breech, but he could see rifle rounds sparking off it in snapping white flicks of light, leaving lead smears across the metal. Has to be steel for that, he thought; a wrought-iron shield would be too soft. Then the muzzle flashes, and a distant braaaaapp of sound. The bullets struck sparks all around the Scout company's mortar position, off rocks and the barrel of the weapon. The crew had gone to earth in their slit trench, as he'd ordered in advance-they were there to lure the enemy, not hurt him.
"Take a note of that shield," he said to the lieutenant who was in charge of Intel. "Multiple barrels, I'd say." Hadn't there been some French weapon? "Rate of fire's not as high as a Gatling, but it's definitely useful."
Fairly close now, the long line of men jogging forward, their artillery firing over their heads. Those heads went up, an apprehensive movement-valuable clue to the reliability of their fuses. Now they went down on one knee, bringing their rifles to their shoulders…
"Paddy, your people are out of it-have them cease fire and take cover. All company commanders," he said into the radio. "Now! "
Canvas covers flew off, and the whole of the Islander position erupted in smoke and red strobing flashes. The Marine riflemen were firing at maximum speed, mad-minute snatch-and-shoot; the Gatling gunners turning the cranks and grinding out a storm of lead like water from a high-pressure hose. An endless string of firecrackers might have sounded something like that, if they'd been thrown by the hundreds. The steady, heavy thuds of the artillery came through it, and he saw one of the enemy rapid-fire weapons disintegrate, wheel and barrel and shield flying in separate directions… probably with pieces of the crew mixed in.
"Clamp! Clamp and tie off."
Clemens hated spouting wounds. Azzu-ena's hand came down into the cavity with the long scissorslike instrument; the blunt tips found the vein and pinched it closed. An assistant slid her fingers in with the loop of catgut ready. They stayed out of his way with practiced skill.
"Number four!" he called, and someone put it into his hand. It was a small silvered mirror on the end of a thin curved handle. He slid it in carefully…