With growing determination, Greg pulled the slide back on the Colt and released it, letting it chamber a round. Calmly, he pushed the magazine release button and caught the two-tone device. Fishing in his pocket, he thumbed a copper-nosed cartridge in on top of the others, then shoved the magazine back into the well until it latched.
“About two hundred yards, Skipper,” Saaran-Gaani shouted, barely audibly.
“Very well,” Garrett replied. “Let’s go to canister,” he recommended. “Lieutenant Bekiaa, commence firing at your discretion.”
General Halik had never seen anything like it. He was accustomed to small-scale combat, one-on-one, in the sport-fighting arena. Even before, when he’d been part of larger actions against other Grik, “his” battles had been narrowly viewed from his own perspective without thought for the larger issue. Now he watched from a distance, not so different from those who once is fights so many times in the past, but he’d designed this attack, he and Niwa, based on fundamental principles he’d learned in the arena. Feint, slash, parry; the unexpected blow from the side, the demonstration to gain an opponent’s attention while preparing a blow from a neglected quarter-all were appropriate here, writ large, and yet…
“The enemy fights well,” he admitted grudgingly. “They react much quicker, I think, than we would in similar circumstances.” The “amphibious” attack across the river mouth was disintegrating, each barge full of Grik savaged in turn, with no opportunity to reply, by typhoons of small projectiles-“canister and grape,” fired by those three heavy guns. The heavier thrust at the center had been decimated as well, by canister, arrows, and musket fire, but at least it could respond, and it hit the enemy defenses with an awesome crash clearly audible over the other thunders of battle. He saw nothing of the attack from the sea, but the back mast on the stranded ship had fallen.
“They’re all ‘Hij,’ General Halik,” said Niwa. He’d rejoined the Grik leader after watching the waterborne assault depart. The confusion and chaos he’d witnessed, even among their “better” troops, appalled him. “That’s something even First General Esshk has difficulty comprehending. The lowliest warrior in their ranks can recognize the ebbs and flows of battle, or call attention to perceived threats. Of course they react more quickly.” He paused. “The barges are a waste of Uul. If that attack had begun in darkness, it would have fared better.”
“Probably, but it still serves a purpose. It is the blunted jab that holds a portion of the opponent’s attention. When he is forced to forget it by the battering sword, it might yet become the fatal thrust.” He snorted apologetically. “I am new at this. I have never even faced this enemy before.” He hissed a sigh. “I do not expect the ‘prisoners’ we’d hoped for, but I am learning from them.”
“Remember, these are castaways, stranded warriors with no support,” Niwa warned. “The larger force will be more difficult.”
“I understand, but still I learn how the enemy thinks and fights. I see for myself the value of prepared defenses, these ‘breastworks’! Once our armies learn to use such things, at need, do you believe they could be dislodged?”
“No,” Niwa said.
The tumult of battle reached a crescendo, and the enemy line began to falter in the center.
“Look! Oh, look, General Niwa!” Halik cried. “We have broken through!” He looked at Niwa. “Let us send a company of our ‘special troops’ to join this exercise!”
Greg Garrett inserted his last magazine and racked the slide. Grik were in the trench behind the breastworks! The line had been holding well enough and with his limited view, he’d begun to feel a sense of optimism. Then, with a suddenness that left his thoughts reeling, the shield wall at the barricade simply disintegrated under the unexpected weight of a solid block of Grik reinforcements. He saw Graana-Fas thrust upward with a spear from the bottom of the trench, impaling a squalling Grik, and sling it among the wavering troops behind him. While he was thus occupied, more enemies leaped down upon him, and he fell beneath their hacking swords and gnashing teeth and claws. Greg fired at them, but one shot was spoiled when Bekiaa, covered in blood, dragged him out of the trench to the rear, where another shield wall was trying to form.
“Where’s Saaran?” he yeled, but Bekiaa didn’t respond. Grik were milling in the trench below, their wickedly barbed crossbow bolts flying past in thrumming sheets. Garrett fired down into the momentarily stalled Grik, joining a volley of muskets and arrows that piled them deep in the damp sand. His slide locked back.
“Here!” Bekiaa screeched, handing him a musket, a bloody, blackened bayonet fastened to the muzzle. “Find ammunition!” Bekiaa had a musket now as well. Greg scooped a black cartridge box out of the sand and glanced inside. Empty. He saw another and opened the flap, discovering three paperlike cartridges, each containing a. 60-caliber ball and a trio of “buckshot” atop a load of powder. He had some caps in his shirt pocket already-just in case. Loading as he’d been trained, he joined the fusillade firing into the trench, yelling as savagely and incoherently as any of the ’Cats forming alongside him. Shields protected him now, placed there by Lemurians joining them from other parts of the line. A bolt grazed his inner forearm as he rammed down his final charge, and he looked up for a moment. Uncountable Grik had assembled beyond the trench, pausing for an instant across what had become a river of corpses they could almost walk across.
“Form square!” Bekiaa thundered.
Square? But that must mean… They were surrounded. Somehow, the line at the breastworks had fallen apart across a broad front. Only a few of the great guns spoke now, those facing the river, and maybe a couple on the extreme right, near the ship. Donaghey ’s guns still thundered furiously, but none was directed at the Grik infantry anymore, and Greg smelled wood smoke in the air.
He’d seen Lemurian Marines form a square only once before, and that had also been at the Battle of Aryaal-when everything fell apart. They’d saved themselves, managing to retreat in good order while embracing troops from other broken regiments. They did the same now, creating a temporary shield-studded barricade that sailors and other Marines could join, but this time, they had nowhere to go. The Grik were streaming across the trench now, and he poked at them with his bayonet as they came snarling toward him, battering at the shields with their sickle-shaped swords and their own bodies, slashing and gnawing with their teeth.
“I need ammunition!” he cried.
“There is no more,” Jamie Miller shouted. Somehow, the young surgeon had joined him in the press, a spear in his hands. The kid looked wounded, wearing so much blood, but didn’t act like it.
“We have to make it to the ship,” Greg roared. “Bekiaa? Can we move the square to the ship?”
“What good will that do?”
Greg wasn’t sure. He assumed Pruit still had something there, and if they could get more people aboard her, they might still ply Donaghey ’s landward guns. But he couldn’t see the ship anymore, over the mass of furry-feathery, reptilian shapes, and the wood smoke was growing thicker. Bekiaa probably thought Donaghey was afire. If she was… But trying to fight their way to Chapelle was impossible. It was twice as far, and there wasn’t even the chance of more ammunition in that direction. “Just do it, damn it! It’s our only choice!”
Slowly, the square moved like a vast turtle festooned with thousands of crossbow bolts jutting from shields like porcupine quills. The Grik seemed to divine their intent, and fought even more furiously to hold them in place and finish them. Wounded ’Cats fell and were left for the enemy to shred. Grik waved body parts, arms and legs, and even battered at the shields wi the macabre clubs.