He had less than twenty men watching the west side. Turning, he screamed for half the men on the east side to come over.
As the charge thundered in, the troopers waited for the range to close. Abe could see that the redoubt at the base of the butte would be overwhelmed. He stood up and leaned over, cupping his hands. “Sergeant Voinov! Get out!”
The sergeant didn’t need to be told. He already had his detachment of ten men up. The men let loose a single volley, which dropped several riders, turned, and started up the steep slope, while above them their comrades opened with covering fire.
The charge pressed in, riders swinging up into their saddles for the last fifty yards. More than half of them were armed with bows, and a deadly volley slashed out, catching two of Voinov’s men. Both of them collapsed, rolling back down the side of the butte.
The rest of the men dodged from rock to rock, firing as they went, several running out of ammunition. Another man was hit, and when a comrade turned to pull him back up, he too was hit, in the chest. Both of them fell, sliding down to the Bantags, who were dismounting and swarming into the redoubt. Screaming, the men disappeared under a swarm of Bantags with drawn scimitars.
Troopers on the rim of the butte, cursing madly, fired straight down into the seething mass until the attackers finally withdrew, scrambling over the far wall of the redoubt and dropping down behind it.
“More on the north side!”
“Keep these bastards pinned down,” Abe cried, and he sprinted back over to the other side.
A second wave of riders was surging up out of another ravine, riding in the same hidden manner as the first group. The northern slope of the butte was far too steep for a mounted assault, and he instantly knew where they were heading. Running to the east side, he scrambled over the edge and looked down to where the gatling was positioned on a rocky outcrop twenty feet above the plains. The gun had run out of ammunition the morning of the third day.
The outcrop, however, was their only other way off the butte, and a rock wall had been built up around it with twenty men holding the tiny fort.
He looked back to the north. The first of the riders was still a quarter mile off but coming on fast. He knew the lieutenant down there would use what ammunition he had left trying to hold it, and he sensed that the Bantag knew it as well.
“Lieutenant Hamilcar! Get out!”
“Lieutenant Keane, we can hold it!”
“Get out, Lieutenant, get out!”
Hamilcar hesitated for a few precious seconds, then turned, shouting to his men to move. Picking up a rock lying atop the empty ammunition limber, Hamilcar smashed it down on the breech of the gatling and then hammered the barrels several times for good measure. Throwing the rock over the wall of the redoubt, he followed the last of his men up the slope. Covering fire snapped from the northern rim, then rippled around to the east as the charge swept around the base of the butte. One of Hamilcar’s men caught an arrow in the leg before reaching the summit, but he did not stop. Gasping, the men piled over the edge. The sergeant major, by Keane’s side, helped to pull them over. Everyone cursed and ducked as bullets nicked the air, and arrows, aimed nearly straight up by the mounted archers, came clattering down around them.
Hamilcar, his skin pale and dry, was the last one in. “We could have held it, Keane.”
“And used the last of our ammunition doing it. Then they overrun us.”
“Damn it, Keane,” Hamilcar wheezed. “So now what? We can’t get off this Baal-cursed rock with them holding both ways out. Now what?”
Even as he spoke the last words Hamilcar’s eyes seemed to go unfocused and then rolled up. He silently collapsed.
“Get him under some shade,” Keane said, looking at two of Hamilcar’s men. They nodded and wearily carried him over to the hospital shelter.
He’d lost five men to heat stroke, and from the look of Hamilcar he feared he’d lose him as well. From down below he could hear taunting shouts, occasional arrows soaring up and then clattering onto the hard ground.
He looked around at his men.
“Holding the redoubts was no longer worth it,” he shouted, slowly turning, looking at each man as he spoke. “They knew our routine, and you saw what happened to Magnus and his men last night.”
“So now what, sir?” someone cried, and he could hear the resignation in the man’s voice.
Keane turned to look at him, a ragged-looking trooper with a bandage around his knee. The rag was caked with dirt, and from the look of it, it was covering a leg that was starting to rot.
“We hold.”
“I’m down to three rounds, Ishi has only got one left, and I told him to save it for himself.” As the wounded man talked, he pointed at the body of the man lying next to him. Fresh blood was seeping out of a head wound. The trooper was feverish and so near to hysteria that he didn’t even realize that his comrade had been killed in the last firefight.
From down below the taunting continued. Togo crept up to the edge and shouted something. It was met with a flurry of rifle shots and cries of outrage.
“What did you say?” Keane asked, trying to divert the men.
“I discussed his relationship with his mother,” Togo replied with a caustic grin.
The joke fell flat, and there was no response.
Abe was tempted to simply sit down, curl up, and go to sleep. His last sip of water had been doled out at noon, and he felt as if the heat was about to finish him as well. The two canteens of water still left were in the hands of the medical orderly, to be doled out a small cupful at a time to those men he felt he could still save.
Shading his eyes, Abe looked off to the west, Distant clouds had drifted across the horizon during the day. A lone thunderhead had swollen in the southwestern sky during the afternoon and had passed agonizingly close. For a few minutes there had even been a cooling breeze, but then it had marched on, touching the ground with lightning as it continued on its stately way.
A mad raving came from the hospital shelter. It was the major again. Either the repeated blows to the head, the heat, or simple fear had driven him over the edge, and he had fallen to alternating bouts of desperate pleading for water followed by wild oaths about court-martials and firing squads.
Abe felt he was finally losing control of the situation, that he had overstepped his bounds in the first minutes of the battle and now was paying the full price. Perhaps the major had been right all along. They should have gotten the hell out. Now they could be riding under a thunderstorm, soaking up the rain, laughing about their narrow escape.
“Damn it, Keane, let’s just load, charge, and be done with it,” the wounded trooper cried. As he spoke he tried to get to his feet. As Abe looked around, several of the men stood up in response, and gradually more began to do likewise.
He looked over at the sergeant major, desperate for some advice, but he could see that he had none. The old Zulu almost seemed detached, as if standing on a parade ground, waiting to see what the young cadet would do next. Togo was sitting on the ground, rifle across his knees, watching and saying nothing.
What now? What the hell do I do now? He suddenly wished more than anything that his father were there. The Colonel would know what to do. Everyone was always telling him how old Keane always knew what to do.
And then he started to laugh. The laughter came because of the utter absurdity of the whole situation. He slowly turned, looking at the men who were standing, and continued to laugh. They gazed at him, some startled, some terrified that he had gone mad as well. The rest were just silent, dejected and beyond caring whether the lieutenant was mad or not.
“Don’t you get it?” Abe shouted. “We’re not going to die out here. I’m the son of the bloody president of the Republic. I’m the only surviving son of Andrew Lawrence Keane!”