Marshal Grimmuh Formaalu grimaced at the cannon. Its bore was clear, but its carriage charred and overturned, a wheel broken, by the explosion of a powder wagon. "So only two are usable! Shit!" Turning in his saddle, he scanned briefly the rugged ridges across the border, their forts reddened by the rising sun, and the narrow canyons which were also fortified. His thick right arm made a backhand slash of rejection. "It makes no difference," he said to no one in particular. "We'd take them if we had no cannon at all."
He turned his scowl on a junior aide. "Have our best gunners assigned to the cannons that aren't ruined. And get this one onto a new carriage; it might as well be ruined too, the way it is now. Take one from a ruined cannon. Have a platoon of foot assigned to each of the two as protection, and see that the remaining powder and shells are protected too. Right away!"
The aide's hand snapped a salute, fist to breast. "Yessir!"
Then Formaalu touched spur to a flank of his ungelded white kaabor. Wheeling, it broke into a powerful canter in the direction of field headquarters.
His executive officer, Colonel Arruh Mustorru, spurred to keep up, thinking that the old man rode the same way he did most other things: abruptly, plunging, with little finesse and lots of energy. Better to be his EO or his aide than his kaabor. Or one of his harem. Or his enemy.
* * *
Doziellos, after a few hours' sleep, was briefed on the morning's observations. Apparently the Gorballis had two functional cannons, not as bad as twelve, but bad enough. They were peculiar looking things: a massive iron tube on a heavy wooden carriage with wide solid wooden wheels. They'd be damned tough to drag through the hills.
He had no doubt the Gorballis would attack soon; you didn't ordinarily bivouac an invasion army on a border and then wait around for very long. He'd see soon enough whether the foreigner's description of what cannons could do was an exaggeration or not.
Meanwhile there wasn't much he could do at headquarters, so he ordered his kaabor brought and started riding along the ridge to the forward fort, his immediate staff following. They'd passed the second fort when he heard a distant boom. That must be a cannon shooting, he thought. Then, much nearer, seemingly from the forward fort, another boom! Puzzled, alarmed by the nearer explosion, he spurred his mount to a trot. A minute later another distant boom, and another from near the fort failed to clarify anything for him.
He was less than a quarter mile from the fort when a third and fourth distant booms were followed by a loud one that sent rocks and shards erupting skyward from the fort's rear wall and one more distant from the next ridge west. Shocked, chagrined, he drew up and stared. The foreigner's description hadn't prepared him for this; what kind of iron balls would send rocks high into the air?
As another distant boom sounded, he touched spur to flank again, sending his kaabor forward at a trot. Seconds later there was a roar from within the fort, and screams, and he spurred to a canter. Short of the fort, he reined his kaabor back and dismounted.
"Abrullo!" he shouted. "Vembroosi! Come with me. The rest stay here." Then he darted for the rear gate, others dismounting to hold the vacated kaabors. His orderly also stayed with the general, without being ordered to. It was standard that he do so.
A fifth shell roared against the front of the fort as Doziellos and the others ran in through the rear gate, the only gate. The explosion drove blocks of dry-laid stone from the wall, and others above them fell. These things Doziellos heard and saw in an instant, and they jarred his overloaded senses so that for a moment he wasn't aware of the screaming. Then he heard, cursed, and bellowing orders to the garrison, trotted out the gate, leaving them to remove their wounded. Outside he shouted orders to his signalman, who also dismounted. The signalman unfolded and braced the staff of his signal flag, and began to signal the next fort for stretcher men, and to let them know what the situation was.
Meanwhile his orderly and the two aides followed Doziellos, skidding down the steep side slope a little way, then scrambled along it past the fort. It stood on a prominence just where the ridge began falling away toward the Gorrbian plain. Doziellos stopped a hundred and fifty feet past the fort. He had a clear broad view of the Gorrbian positions. For a moment he simply looked, scanning. Behind him, more shells struck the fort. He saw a puff of smoke, and with his telescope looked at it. The Gorballis had pulled their two usable cannons to about eight hundred yards from the fort behind him, and the fort on the next ridge west. They were bombarding both of them.
And forming up in five broad columns of twelve was an infantry division, its front ranks about four hundred yards from the mouth of the canyon.
The shelling continued. A round fell short of the fort, its explosion stunning Doziellos, showering him with dirt and fragments of rock. Then he heard trumpets and saw the five columns start forward. The flanking columns, he realized, were to take the ridgetop forts while the cannons held the garrisons down. The central three columns would attack up the canyon while the ridgetop bowmen were prevented from shooting down at them effectively.
Doziellos got up and dashed for the rear of the fort again, to his signalman, gasping for breath from the uphill run. He pointed to the lead fort on the next ridge and the second fort on their own. "Signal them that an attack is beginning up Canyon Three and Ridges Three and Four." He turned to an aide. "Ride down the ridge into Canyon Three. Have them hold their positions as long as they possibly can, then fall back to the next. Got that?"
The aide nodded and repeated. He hadn't dismounted; now he simply turned his kaabor and started slanting precariously down the ridgeside.
Doziellos turned to the fort then. Its surviving garrison had gotten out and were crouching behind the rear wall. "Centurion!" he called.
The commander trotted over, looking unsure, concerned. "Centurion, Gorrbian infantry are starting to attack up the ridge. Their cannons will have to stop when their infantry get near the top, and their men will be winded. When the cannons stop, have your people ready to counterattack with archery and grenades. Kill as many as you can." He paused for emphasis. "But don't be overrun. When you have to, go to the second fort. Their cannons aren't supposed to shoot that far." And the cannon balls—or whatever they were—weren't supposed to blow up like giant grenades, either, he told himself.
He swung into his saddle then and headed for the ridge's second fort, his aides and orderly with him.
* * *
Waiting for the trumpet call, Ramuulo had been glad to be well back in the column. The Maklanni had a reputation as archers, and he felt somewhat protected by the mass of men ahead. Ordinarily he didn't like to wait, but he was in no hurry to maybe get killed.
Meanwhile, waiting, he'd had time to look at the rugged hills in front of him. He distrusted hills. In the lower Hasannu River country, where he was from, you could look in any direction and see no hills at all. Suppose the Maklanni attacked from above. How could you fight with someone coming at you from uphill?
Somewhere well off to his left he heard a thunder weapon speak with a boom, and he looked at the fort to see what would happen. Dirt and rock geysered a little distance in front of it. After a minute the thunder weapon boomed again; this rime he could hear the explosion on the ridge but couldn't see it.
Once more the weapon boomed, and this time rock erupted at the base of the wall. The officers said the thunder weapons were a gift from Hrum, to beat down the fort, and it looked now as if there might be something to that, if so, he was all for it.
The thunder weapon to his left was joined by another well off to his right. The first had the range now, and began to fire about twice a minute. He watched explosions against the face of the fort.
Trumpets interrupted his watching, pealing out the "ready" call; he took the target shield from his shoulder, slipped his left forearm under one strap and took hold of the grip. Again the trumpets called. The whole division began to mark time, then the lead ranks began marching briskly toward the canyon in front of them, opening intervals between ranks. Ramuulo marked time until the rank ahead of his had taken its first three steps, then his own rank began to walk, with him as one of its parts.
Although he'd been in the army for five years, with all the unit drills, weapons drills, and war practice that that entailed, Ramuulo had never been in combat heavier than drinking brawls, and now, suddenly, he discovered he was nervous. Extremely nervous. His gut felt knotted. Shit, he told himself, just think of those poor shittin Maklanni. They're the ones that's gotta be scared. We got the numbers, we got the balls, and we got the thunder weapons.
Their brisk step brought them quickly to the toes of the long ridges, and they marched into the canyon, more than a hundred yards wide there. Ridges quickly rose to wall it; they made Ramuulo twitchy. In a place like this, numbers didn't mean as much. Rocks made the footing bad, especially in the shallow creek where they were wet. The canyon quickly narrowed. Boulders forced them to break ranks, men slipped and fell. The lines got ragged.
From ahead came shouts, and through the shouts a trumpet signalled first to draw swords, then to double time. They began to jog. Ramuulo heard screams, howls, roars of pain and rage. He stumbled on a rock, nearly fell, cursed.
Then, over the shouts and screaming, there were explosions as of little cannons, one, half a dozen, twenty! The column began to pack up, as if the foremost ranks had slowed to a walk again. The explosions ahead continued. Now Ramuulo could see a stone wall across the canyon, perhaps fifteen feet high, its parapet lined with bowmen. Arrows began to slice the air around him. He became totally alert, peering past his raised shield, walking onward, felt an arrow strike its thick, bullhide-covered disk, was surprised at the force of it, saw men fall wounded or dead.
He marched on past bodies with arrows protruding, bodies red with blood, bodies trying to crawl out of the way. And worse, there were beginning to be bodies torn open, bodies shredded. He stepped over them, hurrying. The explosions continued, some louder than others. One ripped a man open and cast him down, just ahead of Ramuulo; ugly warbling sounds passed his ears. Something hot and acid rose in his esophagus, and he swallowed it back. Dead men were everywhere, and he almost stopped. When the fuck are they going to blow retreat? he thought angrily.
The stone wall was just ahead now. He could hardly believe the bodies piled before it. The outer files were javelin men; these would stop, cast their spears at the bowmen, then sword still scabbarded, drop their shields to scrabble on all fours, slipping and swearing, up the ridge slope, trying to flank the wall. Arrows zipped and struck, men fell back sliding, sprawling, dying. And the explosions continued; Ramuulo had no idea what caused them. In the confusion at the foot of the wall, a sergeant had men throwing corpses to form a ramp against it. The sergeant exploded before his eyes, but the men continued their frenzied work.
In the midst of the noise, blood, and confusion, Ramuulo stopped, slung his shield over a shoulder, sheathed his sword. Then he clambered up the gruesome, yielding, slippery ramp, at the wall boosted a man up, heard him bellow and fall back. Then Ramuulo tried to climb it, fingers between dry-laid rocks, and saw what looked like a large, serrated iron egg bounce past him. It did nothing. Someone grasped one of his feet and boosted; Ramuulo got hold of the top of the parapet, swung a leg up. A sword hacked, got more rock than leg, and the swordsman fell backward with a javelin through him. And Ramuulo was somehow atop the wall with sword in hand, striking about him at the bowmen, felt his blade bite flesh, once, twice. Then a sword thrust him through. He felt someone pick him up and hurl him bodily back over the parapet past men who still came on.
Another iron egg arced over the parapet and fell toward him. He watched it and recognized death. It slowed, slowed, slowed, then inevitably struck the ground beside him . . ..