"It's time," he said, looking up to the man at the heliograph. "Now."
* * *
"Now!" the commander of the mortar battery said, swinging his saber down.
Two men dropped the heavy cylindrical shell into the muzzle of the mortar. SCHUUMP, and a tongue of flame and heavy smoke shot into the air; the bomb was almost visible, a blur arching up over the rooftop and down toward the harbor.
"Overshot seventy-five," the observer lying on the tiles of the roof shouted.
"Up three," the officer snapped. Men spun the main screw-wheel beneath the muzzle, and the fat barrel swung a fraction higher. "Fire!"
SCHUUMP.
Smoke was beginning to haze the street, drifting away slowly west. The loading crew had stripped to the waist, only their Star amulets swinging against their hairless brown chests as they waited with hands poised over the next shell.
"On target, right in the middle of 'em!" the spotter shouted exultantly.
"Fire for effect-all tubes-five rounds!"
* * *
"Now!" the infantry officer barked.
His men put their shoulders to the sides of the wagons and pushed; the ironshod wheels rumbled as they ran the vehicles out of the laneway and across the broader avenue. Boots thundered behind them, and they heaved in unison to tip the four-wheeled farm carts over. Scores of strong hands dragged them together, and the footsoldiers crowded up behind them as their sergeants cursed and pushed them into order.
"Aim!"
The bayonets winked as the long rifles leveled, a line three deep. Four hundred yards down the road, a black mass of Squadron warriors halted their tentative advance. There was just time for them to let out a scream of rage and begin to dash forward.
"By platoons-volley fire-fwego!"
* * *
"Now, lads!" Gerrin Staenbridge said.
Four hundred rifles spoke in a stuttering crash; from behind the barricade of furniture and boxes across the road, and from rooftops and windows along it. The head of the charging column disappeared; a two-wheeled cart they had been pushing ahead of them shattered in a shower of splinters and fell sideways. A wheel broke free and rolled away backward toward the harbor, overtaking some of the fleeing men who ran or limped or tried to drag wounded comrades back with them.
"Ser!" a man called from the back of the room.
Staenbridge turned just in time to hear the shot and see him stagger back with his face pulped by a shotgun blast.
"Face about!" he called crisply, bringing the blade of his pistol's foresight down on the window.
The rear of the room was a row of windows, giving out on the courtyard of the house. A Squadron warrior blocked one for a moment, and then the revolver kicked in his fist, the recoil a surprise as it always was when the aim was right. The body slumped and lay across the sill. Men turned from the street windows and fired from the hip, the ricochets as dangerous as enemy fire; one plucked at the sleeve of his coat as it wasp-whined by. Then the enemy were pouring through. He picked his targets and shot four times, dropped the empty weapon and drew his saber. Steel clashed about him, sword on bayonet; a charging barbarian came at him with long blade upraised above his head and practically ran up the outstretched point of Staenbridge's weapon.
"Feh," he said, kicking the man free of the saber and blocking another cut, locking wrists. The Squadron warrior fell away as a trooper drove his bayonet into his back, blade carefully horizontal to the ground to avoid catching on the ribs. The room fell silent.
"Lieutenant," Gerrin said, in a clear flat voice. "Take your platoon and check the courtyard and roofs, if you please."
* * *
"Messer Raj!" the company commander said in surprise.
"Damned if I'm going to sit on a couch all the way through a battle, Captain," Raj said, sliding out of the saddle.
The reserve company of the 5th was standing to arms in front of the pillared forecourt of a Star church, short a platoon already called away. The men were quiet, straining attention toward the firing nearer the docks; they gave a cheer as Raj's banner rode up, though. A panting runner skidded around a corner and jogged up to the steps.
"Ser," he said, facing Raj. "Major Staenbridge reports infiltrators tryin' to use the courtyards an' alleyways to git around his block-force. Thinks it's some Squadron chief got hisself a bright idear. Asks fer reinforcement to block it, got enough on 'is plate where we are."
"Sir, that must be-" the Captain began.
"I know, Captain Saynchez," Raj said. Center was painting a map on his eye, the most efficient route strobing across it in a red line. "Fall in and follow me."
There was a murmur of awe as they did, and a quick three-minute run to the mouth of an alleyway that gave into a gated internal patio shared by four houses. Downhill toward the harbor it was divided from a service lane by a low wall.
"Take up positions under that wall," he said. "Strict silence."
They crouched, the only sound their panting; these back alleys were heavy with the scent of stale garbage, and less pleasant things. Raj could hear nothing, see little, but Center shone a red light in front of his eyes. Then voices muttered on the other side of the wall; more and more of them, trying to be quiet. The narrow-heeled boots of Squadron warriors grated on the flagstones out there, and a sword clanged as it was brushed against a wall. The light before Raj's eyes turned green. He shot out a fist, conscious of the eyes on him, and extended one finger. Two. Three.
"Aim!" the Captain screamed, as the men leaped erect and leveled their rifles over the wall.
The Squadrones were massed not ten meters away, at least two hundred of them in the irregular opening beyond the wall and more down the five-meter alleyway between the houses. All their attention had been on the rooftops and to the west, where they hoped to filter through the buildings and move to take the 5th Descott's roadblock in the rear. Most of them had just enough time to look around when the rifles came level.
BAM. Smoke hid the enemy for a second; then it showed what happened when seventy-five rifles were fired into a confined space. Most of the bullets had found two or three targets, and the misses were bouncing down between the stone walls that lined the narrow lane.
BAM. The Squadrones were screaming in sheer horror as the rifles spoke again. A few managed to fire back; the young Captain beside Raj dropped, pawing feebly at the wound on his back. The legs did not move, except for a few pithed-frog twitchings as the severed spinal nerves sent their last impulses.
BAM. An attempt at a charge broke up in bloody chaos; Raj aimed his revolver carefully and gave mercy to a man crawling toward the Descotter guns with a mask of blood across his face.
"Marcy, migo!" A few voices called it out first: Mercy, friend. Then more, many more: "Marcy, varsh!" Mercy, brother. Some down at the end of the alley tried to run out, and more gunfire greeted them. All the Squadrones were throwing down their weapons now, those who could, and falling to their knees, crying out for quarter.
"Cease fire!" Raj shouted. A few more aimed rounds pecked out, and a man in front of him flopped backward, still kneeling, his long brown hair dropping into a pool of blood from the massive exit-wound in his back. "Cease fire, I said!"