“He may be right,” Marcus said. “They’re certainly fighting hard here.”
Fitz nodded. “He’s got us moving south, to link up with Val tomorrow morning. I imagine you’ll bring up the rear once you’re finished here.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Marcus said. He looked around for Kurot and saw the general inspecting the one battalion of Blackstream’s troops that remained in reserve. “I’d better go forward and see what’s happening before he decides to take command himself.”
“Good luck,” Fitz said. “And be careful.”
*
Satinvol was like something out of a nightmare. Cannonballs had wreaked havoc on the outskirts, punching through walls and cracking beams, leaving the houses leaning drunkenly against one another or lying in shattered piles of rubble. Broken roof tiles were everywhere, littering the streets like gray hail. Smaller craters from musket balls pocked the plaster.
Bodies lay all over, clustered behind temporary barricades or sprawled in the street. Almost all of them were dressed in blue, which to Marcus’ eyes made the field look like the site of a particularly one-?sided massacre. It was impossible to tell who had been on which side, except when the broken rag doll shapes were women. There was, as far as Marcus knew, no Girls’ Own on the other side. The sickening smell of torn guts and blood mixed nauseatingly with the gritty tang of powder smoke.
Casualty teams hurried back and forth, searching the bodies for those with a spark of life. In the Girls’ Own, this duty was carried out by women too young or too small to hold a musket in the line, and Marcus kept running into children in blue uniforms carrying stretchers. They ignored him, rolling bodies off a pile to get to the source of the groans coming from underneath, heedless of the sticky, thickening blood coating their hands. Marcus’ throat was tight.
As he approached the bridge, the sound of musketry got louder. Not eager to wander into the line of fire, he got directions from a passing soldier, and followed a back alley to reach Abby’s command post. She was crouched behind a barricade made from a wagon pulled sideways across the alley entrance, a couple of Girls’ Own soldiers with her. Beyond was a street liberally scattered with bodies, facing a tall, square building standing on its own. Past that was the footing of the bridge, a gently sloped stone span that crossed the wide river in three low arches.
“General,” Abby said. “Keep your head down, please.”
“What’s going on?”
“I gather that’s the rivermaster’s office,” Abby said. “Three stories tall and mostly stone. They’ve turned it into a blockhouse, and it’s a real bastard. Got to be a couple hundred men left in there.”
“You’ve got men—?soldiers—?around the sides?” Marcus said. He could see puffs of smoke rising from the buildings there.
“Working on it,” Abby said. “We’re in range of the bridge now. Nobody is getting out of there alive unless we let them.”
“You’ve asked them to surrender?”
“Twice. Dog-?fuckers won’t even acknowledge a truce flag. They just keep firing.”
Marcus frowned. That didn’t sound like Janus.
“What are you doing here?” Abby said, while he looked the situation over.
“Kurot sent me to hurry things along,” Marcus said with a grimace. “His words, not mine.”
“I’ve lost at least a hundred soldiers trying to charge that thing. If he thinks I’m throwing any more lives away, he can get fucked.” Abby shook her head. “Archer’s bringing up a couple of twelve-?pounders. Once he’s ready, we can blast the bastards right out of there.”
“Don’t change the plan on my account. How long until he gets here?”
“Shouldn’t be long. I’ll go find him. Stay here, and by all the saints, keep your head down. The bastards have been taking potshots, and they’re pretty damn good at it.”
Abby turned and ran back down the alley in a crouch, with a lieutenant in tow. A sergeant and two rankers remained with Marcus, pressed against the barricade. Musketry cracked and rattled all around.
The sergeant was a big woman, around Marcus’ age, broad-?shouldered and heavily muscled. She looked at him with undisguised curiosity, while the two young rankers kept their eyes averted. Marcus shifted awkwardly under her attention, not sure if he should speak.
“Hell of a day,” she said eventually.
“It is,” Marcus answered lamely.
“Hope this bridge is worth it.”
Marcus could only nod. General Kurot thinks it is. That was the only answer he had, and what kind of an answer was that?
He was saved the trouble of further conversation by the boom of a cannon, close by. An explosion of masonry and stone splinters cascaded from the side of the rivermaster’s office, quickly obscured by a cloud of dust. A second shot clipped a corner off the roof, spraying broken tiles.
Abby must have found her guns. Now she would offer surrender again—?no matter how dedicated they were, no soldiers would want to die in a collapsing building, unable to fight back. They’ll have to give in—
Three sets of big doors along the base of the building opened at once, and a crowd burst out at a dead run. For a moment Marcus thought the place was already falling in on itself and they were scrambling to get clear. But every one of them had a musket in hand, with bayonet fixed, and they weren’t shouting for quarter.
The half second of shock let them get out into the street. Then Abby’s voice, shrill with alarm, rose over the field. “Fire! Fire!”
Muskets roared, an impromptu volley that fringed the street with fire and smoke, Second Division soldiers shooting from every window and alley facing the blockhouse. The oncoming men, caught in the open, were scythed down by the dozens. The shock would have broken any charge Marcus had ever seen, but this one seemed impervious, the attackers stepping over the broken bodies of their comrades as though they weren’t there. They were coming in a furious mass straight across the street, right toward—
Right toward me. Marcus backed away from the wagon. His three companions had all fired and were frantically reloading their muskets. Marcus tore his pistol from its holster, checked his sword, and waited.
“Get to the rear, sir,” the sergeant said, slamming her ramrod home. “We’ll hold—”