A low snarl of agreement. "Everything depends on the wogs thinking we're still here, at least for a while. You'll move back to the docks quickly and you'll do it quietly, and with no foul-ups. Understood?"
Gerrin Staenbridge stepped forward. "You can count on us, mi heneral," he said solemnly. Another growl from the ranks.
* * *
"Keep it quiet, keep it quiet," Ensign Minatelli said.
There were only fifteen men left in his platoon, now-several of them lightly wounded-so it wasn't very different from running his squad. The star on the front of his helmet still felt like a weight of lead to his spirit, though. They formed up outside their bivouac, in the forecourt of what had been a nobleman's house. Minatelli walked down his platoon, giving everything a final check. The men's haversacks were full, three days' rations-smoked pork and hardtack, dried apricots and figs-and extra ammunition in their blanket rolls.
"Company G, fall in."
The men found their places by instinct, in column of twos back from the company pennant. It was dark outside: the city gaslights were out, of course-nobody left to shovel coal and tend the tank-farms-and all torches and fires had been forbidden.
Just as well, he thought. It was frightening how few of them were left; the main Colonial attack had come right over their sector of the wall yesterday. Forty men in the company, barely a full platoon.
The battalion colors came by, and Major Felasquez carrying a shuttered bull's-eye light. His one eye gleamed a little as he turned, stopped for a brief murmur with Captain Pinya and stepped closer to the men.
"All right, lads," he said, a little louder.
Don't expect the wogs could hear even if we shouted, Minatelli thought. On the other hand, it gets everyone thinking quiet.
"We've had enough from the towel-heads; now we're going to give it back, the way the monkey gave it to the miller's wife, by surprise and from the rear. Mind your orders, do it right, and with the Spirit's help and Messer Raj's plan, we'll whip them." He stepped back. "24th Valencia Foot-Waymanos!"
The column moved forward jerkily; it was strange to the point of being dizzying not to step off to the beat of the drum, and the troops had been told not to march in step. The uniform clash of hobnails on stone pavement was like nothing else on earth, and it carried. Instead they walked, with an occasional quiet curse as somebody stepped on the heels of the man ahead. Guides stood at intersections, their lanterns the only light in the deserted city. Minatelli kept his hand on the hilt of his new sword and ignored the eerie quietness.
Through the river gate the darkness lifted a little; a one-quarter Miniluna and the stars reflected off the rippled surface of the water. Gravel crunched, then planks boomed a little under their boots. The column halted.
"24th Valencia?" someone asked ahead, a dim figure against the water. "This way."
They waited; the men ahead melted away company by company. "Company G, this way."
The men scrambled through the knee-high water and into the barge; it was one of the boxlike constructs he'd helped to cobble together out of wood salvaged from wrecked houses. A long steering-oar marked the notional stern, and there were men standing to the sweeps on either side, six to a flank. They had only a single shuttered lantern to work with, but despite the darkness and the crowding only an occasional thump and oath marked someone tripping as they clambered down from the planking to the hold of the crude vessel.
"You'll be pulling the outermost raft," Captain Pinya said.
"That one, sir?" Minatelli said, pointing.
"That's right, Ensign."
Ensign. Spirit. My folks will never believe it.
He shook himself back to the present. There were so many more ways to fuck up at a higher rank. Right now, that could get everyone killed.
He saluted and climbed down himself, a little awkward with no rifle on his shoulder and a sword and pistol at his belt. He turned around as soon as he was at the bow, making sure everyone's equipment was blacked as ordered. Right. Nothing showing but eyeballs.
"Cast off," he said quietly.
The ropes were undone and the barge began to drift. "That way," he said, pointing.
The rowers were from the Sandoral District garrison; they'd all had some experience moving these damned things around. They dug their clumsy oars into the water and heaved, grunting. One step forward, lower the oar, haul it one step back. Minatelli thumped the boards beside him softly to keep the beat, peering ahead to his target. It was almost invisible until they were on top of it, two sections of the pontoon bridge decking with some timbers in between.
"Halto," he said.
Hands and poles on the raft fended them off and turned the barge around. Ropes were made fast to both sides of the stern, and then the barge released to drift slowly downstream. It halted with a slight jerk, held by the cables that anchored the row of rafts. Minatelli looked back along them, back to the shore and the black silhouette of the city wall. The sun had been down at least an hour and a half. More and more of the pontoon barges and every other type of boat available on the Sandoral docks-the ones that hadn't had a chance to get upstream when the news of the invasion got here-put out into the darkening water, anchoring or sculling up to the rafts. The docks were a moving carpet of men, helmets and furled banners and the muzzles of slung rifles.
Not long now.
"Rest easy, boys," he said. "Rest a bit."
* * *
"Gently, gently," Suzette whispered.
The infantrymen assigned as stretcher bearers were well-meaning but clumsy. There were enough of them to manhandle the stretchers into the bottom of the barge and fit them into the crude racks the carpenters had made, turning them into improvised bunk beds. The wounded were dosed heavily with opium to dull the pain of movement, but now and then a man would moan in his delirium. The Renunciates and priest-doctors moved quickly among them, checking pulses.
"Spirit have mercy, this one's dead," a nun said.
"Leave him be," Suzette replied. Damn.
The final load came from the carriages and handcarts they'd pressed into service as ambulances.
She looked west, towards the ramparts.
* * *
"Drop it in, don't throw it!" Jorg Menyez hissed.
An officer relayed the order. Endless files of infantrymen passed sacks of hardtack and crates of dried meat and fruit from hand to hand, out from the wagons to the end of the pier. Once there, they knelt and let their burdens drop into the water. The current caught them, the hardtack floating for a few minutes before waterlogging dragged it down with a scatter of bubbles, the pierced casks and boxes sinking faster.
A good thing this is fresh water. There would be downdraggers in a feeding-frenzy if they tried this in a harbor. Doubtless the plesiosauroids out in the deeper water would be feeding full tonight, as it was.
"Colonel. Major Tormidero sends 'is compliments, and is 'e to load tha wine?"
"No," Menyez said, biting off the damned fool with an effort. "Tell him Ali's men may drown their sorrows as they wish, if they don't fear Allah's wrath."
But not a scrap of food will they find in Sandoral, he thought with hard glee. He sneezed into his handkerchief, not too badly; there weren't any dogs in the immediate neighborhood. It was pitch black. He looked anxiously over the river to the Colonial fortlet planted where the pontoon bridge had been. Evidently they hadn't seen anything unusual, either. It's a siege. They don't expect anything to happen.