"Volley fire, present-fire!"
BAAAAAMM.
The bullets slammed into the front rank of the Ringapi, who were crammed shoulder to shoulder across the width of the enclosure, too. And packed arse to belly down the length of it, where they'd swarmed over the walls from both sides.
The Marines who'd fired ducked down and reloaded; behind them in the last redoubt another line stood and volleyed over their heads; the firing step there was a foot higher, and they were over the heads of the Marines in front of the biscuit-tin wall as well. Hot air slapped the back of O'Rourke's neck beneath the flare of his helmet, like a soft heavy hand. The noise slapped his eardrums, too, hard enough to hurt.
"Volley fire, present-fire!"
BAAAAAMM.
By then the front rank of the Marines who'd rallied to him were ready. He filled his lungs, remembering to keep his voice in the same parade-ground tone as always:
"Front rank-volley fire, present-"
"-fire!"
"-fire!"
"-fire!"
"-fire!"
The volleys slashed out at intervals of three-quarters of a second, four ranks to shoot, steady as a metronome, the rifles rising and falling like the warp and weft of a loom. Islanders still fell; the Ringapi were throwing spears at close range, and they thudded into chests and bellies, gashed faces and arms. But most of the enemy were too crowded to do anything but stand or try to swarm forward. The front rank ran into an almost physical barricade of lead.
O'Rourke added his pistol's fire to the volleys. Even shooting left-handed he didn't miss, with a row of targets scarcely beyond arm's reach. This close to a Ringapi warrior with the battle lust upon him, you knew right down in your gut that this was a man who'd kill you if he could, and acted accordingly. Somewhere down deep in a very busy mind he still found a spare second to admire the way they kept coming, right into the muzzles. If this was what his ancestors were like, he wasn't surprised they'd ended up overrunning everything between Turkey and Ireland. He was surprised they hadn't gotten themselves massacred en masse.
Of course, then they'd met Roman discipline, and that was about what had happened…
The wall of enemy warriors in front of him bulged, swelling upward like a wave hitting a steep beach: men falling dead or wounded; men tripping over them as they were pushed from behind by the onrush of those too stupid to realize what was happening or too brave to care; or men trying to climb right over the mass ahead of them.
"Front rank-volley fire, present-
"-fire!"
"-fire!"
"-fire!"
"-fire!"
And suddenly the wave ahead of them wasn't trying to advance anymore. The volleys went on as the front rank turned and clawed at the men behind, and then they turned as well, until no Ringapi were left standing inside the enclosure.
"Cease fire," O'Rourke said, his voice sounding a little tinny and faint in his ears.
Hantilis was swearing in amazement, possibly just at being alive. Stretching across from the northern wall to the southern in front of the leveled rifles was a mound of dead and dying Ringapi; at the very front it was higher than a man's waist- nearly high enough to block the fire of kneeling marksmen, too high to remain stable, and bodies were slithering down to rest against the Marines' boots. The heaving of injured men trying to get free of the four-deep crush atop them helped that process. Where the layer of bodies thinned out behind the front of the wave the whole surface crawled and moved, amid a threnody of agony, right back to the wall of the burning hospital.
"All- ' O'Rourke cleared his throat. "All right, let's get back over this wall here. See to the wounded. Move it, people, let's go!"
Barnes's voice added to his, and the surviving noncoms. He lost himself in work, waiting for the shrieks and panther screams that would herald the next attack. It was ten minutes before he realized that there was silence outside the fortlet, half an hour before he believed it. The Ringapi campfires still guttered and gleamed through the dark to the westward. Not until dawnlight caught the snows atop Mount Ida to the south was his gut convinced, and not until he heard the cries of the jackals and foxes coming close to feed.
True dawn showed the Ringapi camp struck and empty, nothing but litter and smoldering fires left burning through the tail end of night. The ruins of the hospital still smoldered as well, sending up a sour dark smoke that had everyone coughing when the wind shifted wrong. Ash came along with the smoke, more of it when brick or bits of roofing fell with thumps and crashes. Overhead there was a thick scatter of circling kites and ravens and…
Yes, by God, eagles too, he thought with dull amazement.
"What do they eat when there's no war?" he thought aloud.
"When is there no war in these lands?" Hantilis asked.
Barnes came up as well, with mugs of sassafras tea. O'Rourke sipped gratefully at his, trying to ignore the men calling akawa… akawa… from the heaps of enemy dead. Water, he suspected. And mathair was unpleasantly obvious, too…
"What's the butcher's bill, Captain?" he asked.
"Twenty-two dead, sir," Barnes said; it was as if a robot was speaking. "Including Hussey and my company sergeant.
Another forty badly injured. That's not counting the sick from the hospital."
He knew she was using the term badly injured conservatively; half or more of the ones still at the walls had crusted bandages. Many of them were only fit to shoot if they had something to prop them up.
"We're down to eighty rounds per rifle," she went on. "Must've shot off… God, forty, fifty thousand rounds. We're short of medical supplies, too; well fixed for food. Most of the transport animals are dead but we've got about six horses left."
Including Fancy; he felt a slight pang of guilt even now at how relieved that made him feel.
"We should get things policed up," she continued in the same dead voice. "Get some hot food for the troops. Clean weapons. See if we can help some of the enemy wounded, get the bodies buried or at least hauled away, strengthen the walls-they might be back."
O'Rourke looked around; most of the Marines were slumped into unconsciousness beside their rifles; the one in ten still awake on orders looked at him through red-rimmed eyes that stared out of smoke-blackened faces. He suspected he had the same fixed, flat stare; he also suspected-knew-that what everyone wanted right now was sleep.
"You're right," he said, dragging himself upright. Then, softly: "Hell of a shindy, macushla. Hell of a shindy, indeed." A mental shake. "First-
"Heads up!" the lookout on the roof of the storehouse called, and then: "By God, it's the regiment!"
That brought a thin cheer from those awake, and woke some of the sleepers. O'Rourke dragged himself to the rooftop and confirmed the sentry's sighting; two companies in column of march, mounted scouts out ahead, and some heavy weapons in between. He walked out into the track he'd ridden down…
"Saints, was it only thirty hours ago?" he whispered to himself. "They must have forced the march." The base was better than forty miles away, and the roads were terrible.
He blinked in surprise when he saw who was heading up the column, and snapped off a salute. "Brigadier Hollard!" he said. "Last I heard you were in Hattusas."