The Heretic (General)

2

Three days and nights of patrol in the fields south of the Road and nothing.

Abel was tired of the endless stretches of farmland, treeless, with few rocks or distinguishing features for leagues on end. Only unending rows of harvest fields, some lying fallow, some being made ready for the next planting—a planting that had occurred twice a year in this place for three thousand years.

The only exception: the years of nomad slaughter.

If Zentrum and the Blaskoye had their way, this would be one of those years.

I am bored with the Land, Abel thought more than once. I miss the desert.

This is the breadbasket of Treville, Raj told him. It may bore you, but to control it is to control the stomachs of the people.

I know, but could there be just one outcropping, one winding stream, instead of all this dipping and rolling over one hill that looks the same as the others and the endless irrigation-channel hopping?

You think you’ve got it bad? Imagine the poor Militia, laughed Raj. Joab has them marching back and forth on the Canal road, beating drums and shooting all the way to Talla bridge, then making an about-face and countermarching all the way back to Hestinga again. To a footman it must seem like the biggest bunch of lunacy he’s ever taken part in. And he may be right.

On pre-dawn patrol of the third morning, he received his distraction. Kruso, on point, was the first to hear it to the southeast. He signaled, and Abel called a halt. It was difficult to miss the thunderous hoof fall of ten thousand donts on the move.

The Blaskoye horde had exited Garangipore. Had they taken the bait?

Kruso was already off his dont, his ear to the ground. Abel waited patiently for the old Scout to make his judgment. He stood up.

Even in the wan light of the crescenting of the smallest moon, Levot, Kruso’s crooked smile told Abel all he need to know.

“They’re turning north?”

Kruso nodded. “Tham all, ut sunds like, too.”

In the distance, they heard the bone horns blow.

* * *

The Blaskoye timed the Canal road ambush just before sunrise, and it came off as planned.

Give that to them, thought Abel. They are a magnificent light cavalry.

The Blaskoye adjusted their attack on the run as they swept up from the south toward the road. The Militia was strung out for about a quarter league, although the captains, forewarned, had done their best to keep the marching order compressed. It was in the nature of the beast of a marching line to straggle out no matter what, it seemed.

They must have outriders reporting in on where the ends of this Militia worm are, Abel thought.

Undoubtedly, Center said. And they are most impressive. Even though it is clearly an intuitive move, they’ve chosen almost the exact center to attack.

His Scouts had given fair warning. At the first sign of the Blaskoye move, they charged north toward the Militia with news of the coming storm.

In addition, one rider was sent east and the other west to spread the alarm along the Road. Later in the day, wigwag and flashing glass could serve the purpose faster, but in the wan pre-dawn light, flags were impossible to see at any distance, and mirrors were useless, as well. Abel had ordered the Scouts to construct a series of watchfires along the road at thousand-pace intervals. Each had a two-man scout team manning it and would be lit later when it was certain where the Blaskoye were heading.

The Militia still managed to be taken by surprise, at least some of the troops. But for the most part the line in the road, two abreast, formed into squares, as they’d been drilled to do for the past sixty-two days. The squares were ragged, especially where they sloped down from the road and into the flax fields, but they would do.

All they need to do is get a couple of volleys in and retreat, Raj had said. If they were too effective, the Blaskoye might pull back, and the whole plan go to seed.

Raj didn’t have to worry about the amateurish nature of the Militia squares. Three deep, not able to move at a quick pace in any direction, forward or backward. But deadly to dontback riders, all the same.

Abel was through the line with his lead group of Scouts and galloping at breakneck pace toward the distant levies. Center provided him with a vision of what was happening behind his back, however.

Observe:

The Blaskoye moved toward the Canal road like an approaching wave. Some fanned out to right and left so that they would hit the lines obliquely. The Militia riflemen waited. And waited.

The watchfires were lit, and Abel’s remaining Scouts scrambled back behind their line.

The Blaskoye skirted the fires and kept coming.

I would estimate a force of ten thousand two hundred on dontback, Center put in. It is a huge gathering of nomads that the Blaskoye have managed to summon into the Valley. Very impressive. And deadly. Our forces on the Road are under four thousand. Total forces are at five thousand three hundred fifty-two.

But as soon as the donts passed the first of the watchfires, another signal was given among the Militia. Rifles were raised. Aimed.

The cry of “Ready!” and a front row of muskets were taken from shoulders and aimed into the morning gloom. Behind these, another group lowered rifle butts to the ground and prepared for a volley as soon as the front troops had complete theirs and knelt down to reload.

“Aim for the donts, thrice-damn you!”

First the horns, the eerie bone horns of the Redlands.

Then the thunder came, the thump of the horned feet of donts on the stubble-filled fields. The dusty cloud rising now, an approaching whirlwind.

And standing ready and afraid, yet ready—

Abel, in the split vision of the approaching Blaskoye and his own headlong gallop, felt pride in these Valleymen.

Observe:

They will stand. We are not a decadent, useless people. The Redlanders truly are the enemy of civilization, of what is good in men, or at least that which elevates us above savagery, good or not, and makes us twice, no, ten times the savage as the savage himself. And yet also, twice as productive, able to see our creations to fruition.

Perhaps even worthy of those ships from the stars when they come, as Center and Raj had promised they would. Worthy, at least in this moment when a terrifying horde of deadly warriors gallops toward them and they do not break, but stand and—

One hundred paces away.

Seventy-five.

Fifty.

“Fire!”

Crackle of muskets. And the Blaskoye are in range, as well, with carbines, perhaps not as accurate, but deadly, deadly.

Charging all in an uneven line bunched a half league long and ten, sometimes twenty, donts deep. Most are armed in some fashion—armed with powder and muskets that were the bloodgeld of Cascade and Progar—and make their shot. A bit too early for the carbines, perhaps. A bit too far away for the unrifled barrels. But many balls strike their targets.

A square of men sags, three down. Those in line behind them step up, take their place.

The Redlanders, still at a gallop, stow their rifles. These are the light cavalry of dreams. Even the Scouts cannot ride like this. Every Redlander had, since birth, spent more time on dontback than walking. They post instinctively with the beasts, reach effortlessly behind them and draw forth their bows. Notch an arrow while at full gallop.

Another volley from the squares.

Murder in the front of the Blaskoye line. Screaming, falling men and donts.

Now a cloud of arrows launched at the Militia, much more coordinated than the musket fire. And it flies toward the squares, the ten squares caught now at the brunt of the attack, just as the first volleyers have reloaded, raised their weapons.

“Fire!” The command from lieutenants down the line. It, too, crackles sporadically, as each platoon comes up a little faster, or a little slow.

The arrow cloud strikes. Those who came up faster get their shots off. Many do not, or, if they do, are hit before the trigger pull and sent reeling. Some fire into their own forces. And some, reloading from behind, almost ready, now raising their weapons, are startled. They pull the triggers and more than one man in the front line of a square goes down with a minié ball in his back, his neck, or the flesh of a calf, shot by his brother in arms.

Now it’s slaughter on both sides.

Ahead, the two levees: the one nearest the road, and, across a basin of rice paddies, the other levee that ran along the Canal.

Abel bent his head down and galloped all the harder.

Observe:

The Militia lines are breaking. Even if the call had not come, which it does in places up and down the road—“fall back!”—there would be no choice.

And some march, but others run, north into the post-harvest flax and barley stubble.

“Halt!” Some, not all, but most, do so. They turn around and begin to pack and prime their muskets, even as the Blaskoye charge down upon them.

These men who had been farming not days before, who had been tending carpentry shops, potteries, charcoal pits, or droving daks, wrighting wheels, driving wagons with goods for trade, milling barley, retting linen from flax, were nervously, competently, tipping their powder into the muskets while a line behind protected them with arrow fire.

Such unreasonable pride I feel, Abel thought. I had, somehow, expected them to be too soft, to lose cohesion, to break and run. At least that was my greatest fear.

And with the donts almost upon them, many, most, get those rifles up, take aim—

“Fire!”

And the charging wave breaks upon the spray of lead. The Blaskoye veer away, suddenly riderless donts charging back into the mass behind them, spreading confusion and chaos.

The Redlanders will recover, said Raj. But that was enough. This should give the Militia time enough to make the first levee before they’re ridden down. All they need do now is—

“Fall back!”

Then Abel’s vision became whole, and he was charging up the first slope of the outer levee, the road levee, he and the Scouts who accompanied him. Up and onto the top.

“Slow now!” Abel called out and enforced the order with a hand signal. But his Scouts knew what they were about. If they were to go charging over the levee’s top and down the other side, they would risk running their donts directly into a wall of chevaux-de-frise.

These lined the levee along its length. Mostly willow-wood cut from the beautiful trees that had once lined the Canal, but now were no more. A generation or more would have to wait until the Canal was lined with such beautiful shade again.

At least there will be generations to greet the return of those old willows, said Raj. If we are successful here today, that is.

Beyond the chevaux-de-frise, the gathered forces of the Regulars waited. They were invisible from the fields to the south.

Abel and the Scouts veered down the line of pointed stakes, searching for and finding the few gates that had been left open for them, and for the approaching Militia.

Then they were through and among the Regulars. A triple line of riflemen. At least half of them had bayonets, something wholly lacking among the Militia. Then, several paces behind the riflemen, the archers, standing ready with archer’s stakes set in the ground beside them. Each bowman had cut his own stake, each a sapling’s thickness, and a few had seemingly competed for length. Some had festooned the ends with a gaudy banner, a black and tan flag, but most were notched and tapered to wicked points, set at a height calculated to pierce donts’ breasts most effectively and fatally. It would make a most effective secondary curtain of menace to retreat behind. All archers were well within range of the top of the levee, as were, of course, the rifle troops.

A position prepared for slaughter if I ever saw one, Raj said with a savage growl. Your father has a very good idea of what it takes to kill a great many men at one time.

Abel looked for Joab, who would be near a standard bearer somewhere in the rice fields below. He spotted him and led his Scouts thundering down to meet the district commander.

The ground descended for a ways, bottomed out, and then began to rise. It would continue rising up, even higher than the levee Abel had just left behind, until it abutted another levee, the true Canal level, at about a fifty-elb elevation from the bottom of the bowl. The field itself was not a single field, but consisted of terraced units, divided by dikes, and ascending to the Canal levee. Each was hemmed in by a low dike that ran parallel to the Canal levee and the secondary levee upon which the Regulars were gathered. It was, in effect, a lopsided half tube that ran the length of the both levies. Its purpose: to collect water from the irrigated sluices that ran out in regular intervals through dike headgates set in the Canal levee.

The fields were rice paddies, and they must be flooded twice a year.

Abel had always loved the week after rice harvest, watching Hestinga fill up with wagons of the green paddy rice. Then it seemed as if half the population—any adult who could participate was required to by the priesthood—was flailing, treading, working the rice in a mortar. And then the winnowed rice would be tossed free of chaff in great papyrus mats controlled by groups holding to the corners. Sometimes, after the work was done, the mats were also used to toss small children into the air for a joyride.

Second cutting had been completed a two-moon before, and the fields were now bone dry and in low-cover crop and stubble.

Perfect ground for a dont charge.

A perfect bowl into which to trap an infantry and run it to ground, hack it to pieces, destroy it wholesale.

Abel hoped the Redlanders would see this fact. He hoped they would understand the opportunity that lay before them and would seek that slaughter with glee and abandon.

Everything depended on them doing so.

And for that, everything depended on preventing any outriders, lookouts, or—Law and Land forbid—an actual flank attack from penetrating the ruse by coming upon the assembled forces unawares and then communicating to the charging main horde the danger they faced.

Abel reined to a stop before Joab. His dont was breathing hard, snorting a fine spittle through its breathing hole that sprayed backward and settled in a trail of phlegm across Abel’s tunic and shoulder.

At least it didn’t catch me in the face, thought Abel. Dont drool was acidic and, though not harmful to the point of incapacitating, burned like an oven coal when it got in the eyes or settled on nasal membranes.

“Father, the Blaskoye are on their way,” he reported. Although he spoke loudly, he found he didn’t have to shout once his dontback Scouts had settled their beasts nearby. “It looks like we have hell on our tails.”

“Do we have at least seven thousand?”

Abel smiled. “Yes, Commander,” he said. “I got a good look at the dust cloud they chuffed up while they were gathering to charge. And Kruso read the horn signals they were blowing. We believe we have ten thousand. The dust—it was like those stories you told me. When the rain came and stayed for a day.”

“If you’re right, it’s the main body,” Joab said. He didn’t smile, but Abel could tell he was pleased, and at the same time gauging the effort that taking full advantage of the opportunity would entail.

“All right,” Joab said. “So far so good. But if we can’t beat them in the field, and we’re sent fleeing—” He turned in his saddle and caught Abel with a stare. “If I fall, I want you to lead the regiments, all of them, to Garangipore. It will be emptied and easily taken. Not Hestinga, you understand?”

“Yes, Father, but—”

“No buts,” said Joab. “What ultimately matters is the Land and Lindron. Hestinga can be sacrificed. You—we—must be the wall between the heart of the Land and barbarity.”

“Yes, sir,” Abel said. “I understand.”

“Hopefully, it won’t come to that,” Joab said. “At least not this time. Those men of yours—you’ve placed them on the Canal levee.”

“One hundred fifty Scouts.”

“And they have the new arms, the reforged rifles you were telling me about?”

“They do, supplied by the priests only yesterday.”

“All right, then,” Joab said. “And you’re satisfied as to their functioning?”

Satisfied. Oh, yes. Satisfied far beyond expectations. If only I had four thousand more.

“I am, sir,” Abel answered. He held up his own rifle, newly modified. “I have mine right here.”

Joab’s eyes fell immediately on the trapdoor breechlock. “And what the hell is that?” he asked, pointing to it.

“The priest’s idea,” Abel said. “Based on information I supplied. I think you’ll be pleased.”

“I just hope they work at all, or we’ll all be flitterdrock meat,” Joab said. “You see to the western flanks now with these men, then come back and get your levee force ready. Go now.”

And Abel was away, charging west along the floor of the shallow valley, his train of Scouts beside him in a flying wedge of purpose.

* * *

Observe:

Abel turned his mind to splitting his awareness into two fields. One was an overall picture provided by Center’s interpolation, the other was what was physically before him. For the moment, Center’s presentation was by far the most compelling of the two.

The Blaskoye are taking the bait.

The Militia poured over the hill. Most were moving at a measured pace, but some had broken into a headlong run. Some, also, did not remember what lay on the other side of that road levee, or had never been told. And some of those ran themselves through with the pointed stakes meant for the enemy.

But most realized in time, found the passageways, and made it through. And, when they believed the last had come, the Regulars hefted large clumps of brush and briars and closed those passageways through the chevaux-de-frise.

Only there was another wave of Militia. They had straggled perhaps, but some had been fighting a brave rearguard action. It didn’t matter. It was too late. The passage was closed. They were cut off.

Some threw themselves against the chevaux-de-frise, trying to work their way under or through. Others began to tear wildly at the stakes, trying to throw them out of the way and get to safety. These the archers took aim at and, on an order from their lieutenants, shot.

None of this lasted long. The Blaskoye flooded over the hill, ran headlong into the chevaux-de-frise, and all was dont screams and the yells of men. The first row of Regulars opened up with a fusillade of fire. They knelt down, began their reload. Those behind them fired over their heads.

Bodies fell. Many stuck to the chevaux-de-frise like so many burrs.

But the press was great. There were not hundreds of Redlanders to repulse, to drive away, to kill if possible, there were thousands. Even if the front line of dontback riders had wanted to stop, retreat, those behind crushed them forward. And slowly, body by body, a series of grisly, slick bridges began to grow, feeding on death, until there was way across the barrier, even though it be a passage upon the backs of the writhing half-dead and the splayed gore of the slain.

The Militia fell back. Blaskoye riders gained the other side of the barrier and rode its length, clearing the way with knives and bayonets. The barrier creaked, gave way entirely, and the horde was through.

The Militia, with the Regulars behind them serving up whatever rearguard action they could muster, ran headlong down the side of the road levee and into the rice field basin that stretched between that levee and the second levee, the Canal levee, to the north.

This was the basin that, for half the year, was kept wet as a swamp for the cultivation of rice.