Gunpowder God (19 page)

The artillery captain in charge broke off from his battery and rode his horse over to Sarmoth’s mount. He cupped his hands to better amplify his voice through the popping of gunfire and screams of the wounded. “We should have the gap cleared soon, Horse Master. Two or three volleys of grapeshot and there won’t be enough Agrysi soldiers left to make up a company!”

Sarmoth cupped his hand around his ear and indicated that the captain was to come closer. His voice was hoarse from moons of shouting over continual artillery fire and his voice cracked as he spoke. “The grapeshot will only kill those stupid enough to stand up. Who knows how many are hiding behind barricades, walls and on roofs? Be careful and keep your mucking powder dry!”

The captain nodded in return and rode up to join his battery. It wasn’t long before he disappeared through the wide gap in the walls.

As Darnos made his way carefully through the rubble-strewn streets, he got his first look at the breach. It was as if one of the gods had reached down from his Sky-Palace and ripped out a big chunk of the City Wall! Most the buildings near the gap had collapsed and were in ruins. Dead bodies were scattered about and not all of them were soldiers; he saw women and children, too.

The man ahead of him bent over to pick up a lopsided cannonball the size of his fist. “Look at this!”

Darnos looked it over: It was dented and pushed out of shape.
This little thing did all that damage?
he wondered. Then he saw a big one, about ten times the size of the little one. It was a perfect sphere, almost as if it had been laid down gently in the rubble by the giant hand of one of the gods.

“Keep moving!” cried one of the petty-captains. “The Styphoni will be moving into the breach soon. It’s up to us to stop the spawn of Styphon before they bring in their Investigators.”

They all knew what that meant and stepped up their pace. He used the butt of his arquebus to steady himself where the road was covered with broken stones and bricks. He had to be careful in his sandals as it would be easy to break a toe on one of the rocks, or trip and fall. Only the cavalry were supplied with boots and he’d heard that some of them had traded them for gold crowns in the marketplace. People were hungry enough to eat almost anything, even rich people. He doubted there was a leather belt left in the City.

Using the ruins for cover, he watched as one of the captain-generals lined the Agrysi regulars in rows with the arquebusiers and musketeers in the front lines, halberdiers at the sleeves and pikemen to the rear. There were banners from over fifty companies, but most of them were about half strength. The early sorties against the Host had been costly. Darnos estimated their number at between two and three thousand men. There were another two thousand regulars behind the City Militia either guarding their backs or making sure they didn’t run off.

The militiamen formed up and started going down into the second section of trenches; the first section was where the regulars would retire after their first few volleys. Darnos was relieved that he wasn’t a regular; it was much safer in the trenches, especially if the Styphoni moved guns through the breach.

When the first of the prisoners came into the gap, a few of the musketeers fired their weapons, causing an expletive-laced outburst from their petty-captains. Several of the rag-clad prisoners were hit, falling to the ground, but the rest kept working. Darnos suspected there were hand gunners, with orders to shoot, out of sight behind the breach.

One of the captains cried out, “Hold your fire! These are your neighbors, not Styphoni.”

All fire ceased while several captains and the three captain-generals argued among themselves. Meanwhile the prisoners tossed rocks and debris into ox- and horse-drawn carts.

One of the mounted officers rode through the breach, after having an animated discussion with some scouts, who were a motley collection of buckskin-clad hunters and outlying ranchers. Darnos suspected that the scouts refused to ride beyond the gap. They heard shots and screams. The officer didn’t return. The scouts laughed uproariously.

Damn fool!
Darnos thought to himself.
Did he think a one-man charge was going to panic the Styphoni or was he bent on suicide? Or did he just panic?
He’d seen stranger sights in the past few moons, like the merchant who climbed up to the top of the wall in broad daylight screaming his allegiance to Styphon only to get gut-shot by the Styphoni.

After several candles of watching as the prisoners cleared rocks, they were finally brought some tough jerky to chew on while they waited for the Styphoni to move forward. Darnos’ teeth were so loose he could barely chew and it took a long time to moisten the jerky in his mouth so that it was soft enough that he could gnaw on it. Water was brought by donkeys with casks tied to either side. He used the communal cup and filled it twice before being jostled away.

Darnos knew things were going from bad to terrible when the prisoners ran away and there was a short period of silence. His heart began to thump like a drum.

Most of the nearby towers were in ruins, but there were still men on the parapets watching the Styphoni from above. He heard several of them shouting. He couldn’t make out what they were yelling, but he noticed that several of the couriers below them were leaving their posts and running toward the officers.

He took his time to set the butt of his arquebus on the ground, then grip it by the barrel and pour a measured amount of fireseed into it from his spring-loaded powder horn. Next he took a bullet from his pouch and used the ramrod to push it home with a small piece of tattered cloth he used as wadding. When the gun was loaded, he cocked the hammer and then loaded fireseed in the flash pan, making sure to secure the striker.

“First ranks prepare to fire!” one of the captain-generals in front of their ditches cried out. Almost a thousand smoothbores dropped into firing stance.

The first notice they had that the Styphoni were coming was the bellow from the Zarthani Knights’ battle horns. Some of the militia began to stomp their feet in agitation. A few attempted to claw their way out of the trenches, but were clubbed back with gun butts by the petty-captains.

“When those Dralm-damned bastards get here, don’t give up a pace,” the Captain ordered. “The Investigators will follow behind their ranks as sure as nightfall. They will torture and kill any man jack of you who’s stupid enough to fall into their hands! Better to die like a man than be tortured by Styphon’s minions in human form!”

Darnos nodded with the rest. If even half the tales that had come out of Hostigos were true, anything was preferable to letting those white-robed demons take you into custody.

The bellowing of the horns grew closer and suddenly the first ranks of the black-clad Zarthani Knights came marching through the breach, which was about fifty men wide. It was a terrible sight; they had Styphon’s Own Device on the breasts of their black tunics in white. The Captain-General kept his sword raised until ten lines of the Styphoni were through the gap, then he dropped it. “FIRE!”

There was a ragged roar in response. The man in the line beside him had overloaded his pan and his arquebus blew up in his face! Something clanged off Darnos’ helmet and bits of flesh splashed onto his face and jack. He used his sleeve to clear his eyes, stole a look at the enemy line which had buckled and was now reforming. He stepped back through the files to let the next rank move forward, then began to reload.

His shaking was worse than ever and he wasn’t sure whether it was due to hunger or fear. It seemed to take him a quarter candle to fumble his powder horn into position and measure out a load of fireseed. The ramrod almost slipped out of his hand before he finally rammed it and the bullet home. His nerves weren’t helped when the forward rank fired. Then they moved back and his rank moved forward.

“FIRE!”

He squeezed the trigger and as he fired the Styphoni returned fire. Most of the enemy were too far back to do much more than fire into the forward trench. The Styphoni lines wavered as men dropped and others screamed in pain. More Order Foot advanced through the breach, replacing the ones who’d fallen. The enemy were moving closer, in between volleys, and some were shooting directly into the trenches. Some of the petty captains used their halberds to try and push back the most forward Styphoni; one of them was gut-shot and fell back into the trench.

Their return salvos rattled the Order’s first ranks, but there seemed to be no end to them as more and more of the enemy marched through the breach to take the dead and wounded men’s places.

Still, they were killing and wounding hundreds of the enemy as they fired volley after volley into the Order’s ranks. Hope began to spring up in his chest.
Maybe we can stop the Styphoni and drive them back
.

The first artillery piece drawing up through the breach blew out that small flicker of hope like a sudden breeze. The Styphoni artillery carts were moving forward through the defile.

“Kill the gunners!” their Captain cried out.

The Order arquebusiers and musketeers formed ranks before the guns, making it almost impossible to hit the artillerymen. Behind the trenches several companies of Agrysi musketeers were firing salvos overhead, ripping through the front of the Styphoni line. Hundreds died before the first salvo thundered forth, knocking the Agrysi rear lines about like a seawall breached by a bad storm.

Now that the artillery had driven away the Agrysi rear guard, the gunners pulled their carts right up to the trenches.

Darnos felt something strike his arquebus and knock it out of his hands. His left arm felt numb from his wrist to his shoulder. Another grapeshot hit his back-and-breast, knocking him to the ground. He tried to get up and find another weapon, but everyone around him was either dead or lying wounded. He had a terrible weight on his chest; tried to lift it off but his hand came back covered in blood—then everything went black….

A
s the last of the artillery wagons rolled into the breach, Sarmoth heard war cries and the sound of arquebus fire from beyond the break in the wall. The guns roared and the cries of the wounded grew even louder and a cloud of smoke blew back through the gap.

Longshanks, his oath-brother, rode up beside him. He carried his feathered spear in one hand and a pistol tucked into his white sash. His head was shaved but for a rooster-comb of hair that ran from his forehead to the back of his neck and was braided at the back with hawk feathers, the totem of his tribe.

“The men are eager, Brother.”

“Good. We should see action soon.” Sarmoth removed his morion helmet to wipe the sweat off his forehead. The second volley sounded and Steel Hooves shivered, then whinnied. It wouldn’t be long now.

He signaled Steel Hooves into motion and waved his trumpeter forward, making the sign for “move forward but cautiously.” The trumpet sounded the proper notes.

The five Blades—each Blade was comprised of ten Points (sixty Knights) and their supporting units, either archers or mounted arquebusiers—started to move toward the breach, with the Brother Knights at the fore. Their helms were closed, lances positioned to the side. The Knights were wearing their black tunics with the Order’s device on the breast; the same insignia was on the front of the black bards covering their mounts’ horse armor.

His banner bearer was now to his left flank, while Longshanks protected his right. Each Blade had its own banner and they were now moving forward into the breach. As Sarmoth reached the breach, a clash of thunder struck his ears as the lowered guns fired another salvo, into what appeared to be deep trenches, tearing the blackened Agrysi soldiers into chunks and flying pieces of flesh. Several men survived the barrage of gunfire and fired back, only to be shot down by the Order handgunners at the van of the Host. Those who could still walk or crawl retreated behind the ruins on the other side of the avenue.

There were gunshots from several broken buildings. He quickly ordered several squads of Order Foot to enter them and take out the snipers. Fortunately, the Agrysi didn’t have any of Kalvan’s
rifles
and their firing was more irritating than deadly. Aiming a smoothbore downslope was always a problem as more often than not the ball and wadding fell out before the trigger was pulled, especially when ramrodded under combat conditions. It took a cool head to pack the ball in tight enough to fire downhill.

Sarmoth’s own heart was racing and it was all he could do to keep from joining the Order Foot as they advanced to clear the broken buildings of the disorganized Agrysi soldiers. His orders were to let the infantry clear the breach and to enter as soon as the Agrysi had been killed or driven off.

There was a lot of shooting and cursing, but most of the fighting was obscured by the ruins and fireseed smoke. The Agrysi militia refused to surrender and were dying by the droves.
Too many good men are dying this cursed day
, he thought. As the Grand Master said, even with Archpriest Roxthar gone his
legacy
remained behind.

There were two or three squadrons of cavalry holding the right side of the road behind a blockade of broken wagons, carts, furniture, posts and big stones. He rode over to the artillery officer who was overseeing the battery.

Sarmoth pointed to the blockade. “Captain, can you clear that obstacle?”

The officer’s white teeth blazed forth as a smile broke out on his blackened face. “We’ll send those buggers off to Galzar’s Hall. Round shot, By Galzar’s Mace, will make quick work of that junk pile!”

He turned to his men and had the oxen teams hitched up to the gun carts again. The guns were all six- and eight-pound hooped-iron guns. Two companies of Order Foot followed behind for close support. The artillery men turned the gun carts and hauled them to within fifty paces of the makeshift barrier.

Some of the Agrysi infantry began to fire their muskets. Several of the artillery men took body shots. Sarmoth gave the signal and the Order arquebusiers moved forward, loaded their smoothbores and fired a volley. A cloud of smoke obscured the barricade, but not the screams from the wounded. After three more volleys, there were no more shots from behind the obstacle.