By Heresies Distressed (33 page)

“You did well, Sergeant Wystahn,” he said now. “Very well. Thank you.”

“Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.”

Zhanstyn couldn't see Wystahn very clearly in the darkness, but he could hear the sergeant's smile of pleasure at the well-deserved words of praise. The colonel did a little smiling of his own, then frowned as he considered Wystahn's report.

It fitted well with all of the other reports he'd so far received. The Corisandians had cavalry pickets scattered across an arc that extended about three thousand to thirty-five hundred yards from where the highway cleared the woods with the concave side towards Zhanstyn's battalion. That gave him some room for maneuver, but not enough to carry out his orders.

He pondered it for several more minutes, then shrugged. He could have sent a messenger back to the Brigadier with a dispatch summarizing the situation and asking for fresh instructions. But the Marine tradition had always been that once a superior officer's intentions were understood, it was up to a junior officer to show a certain degree of initiative in accomplishing those intentions. He knew what Brigadier Clareyk wanted to happen; it was just a matter of seeing to it that it did.

And there's a way
, he mused, his thoughtful frown turning into a cold, thin smile.
I'm afraid Sergeant Wystahn isn't going to get much rest this evening
.

“What was that?”

“What was
what
?” the corporal in charge of the three-man cavalry picket demanded irritably.

“I heard something,” the private who'd spoken up said.

“Like what?”

The corporal, the private noted, wasn't getting any less irritable.

“I don't know what,” the trooper said a bit defensively. “A sound. A branch breaking, maybe.”

The corporal rolled his eyes. Given the stiff breeze sighing through the tall wheat around them, the chance that the other man could actually have heard something was remote, to say the least. He started to rip a strip off of the unfortunate private's backside, then stopped himself. The man might be an idiot, but better an idiot who reported an imaginary sound he
thought
he'd heard than the sort of idiot who wouldn't report something he really
did
hear for fear of being reamed out.

“Look,” he began as patiently as he could, “it's dark, we're all tired, we know the bastards are out there,” he waved one arm in an arc to the south, “and we're all listening as hard as we can. But there's enough wind stirring this crap around to make a man think he's hearing just about anything. So—”

The patient corporal never completed his final sentence. The hand which snaked around him from behind, cupped his chin, and yanked his head back for the knife in the
other
hand saw to that.

The picket leader's blood fountained from his slashed throat, spraying over the nearer of the other two troopers. That unfortunate soul jumped back, mouth opening to shout something, but his instinctive recoil from the dying corporal took him directly into the arms of a second Charisian Marine, and a second combat knife went home with a gurgle.

The alert trooper who'd thought he'd heard something was a quick-witted fellow. He didn't waste time trying to get to his horse; he simply turned and bolted into the darkness. That took him directly away from the two Marines who'd been detailed to cover the horses. Unhappily for him, it took him directly into the path of Sergeant Edvarhd Wystahn. Still, he made out better than his fellows, although he might be forgiven for not realizing that immediately as Wystahn's rifle butt slammed into the pit of his belly. The cavalryman folded up with an agonized, wheezing gasp, and the sergeant struck him again—this time a scientific blow across the back of his neck that didn't quite pulverize any vertebrae.

“Good work,” Wystahn told the other members of his squad softly as they filtered out of the darkness around him and the single, unconscious survivor of the cavalry picket.

Unlike the majority of the men of Brigadier Clareyk's Third Brigade, Wystahn and his men wore single-piece garments of mottled green and brown, rather than the traditional light blue breeches and dark blue tunics of the Royal Charisian Marines. Their rifles were also shorter than the standard weapon, with browned barrels, and the brims of their traditional, broad-brimmed black hats were sharply rolled on the right side.

Their distinctive garb marked them as scout-snipers. None of them were aware that the inspiration for their organization had come from a chance remark
Seijin
Merlin had dropped in conversation with Brigadier Clareyk when he'd been only a major. What they
were
aware of was that they'd been selected and trained specifically as a small, elite force to be attached to standard Marine formations. They were intended for missions exactly like the one they'd just carried out, and their function once combat was joined was to serve as covering skirmishers in the early stages and to specifically target any officer they could identify on the other side. Quite a few of them had enjoyed previous careers as hunters or, in some cases, poachers, and they'd developed a distinctive swagger which was guaranteed to . . . irk any other Marine whose path they happened to cross in a tavern or bordello. Many of them, as a consequence, had come to know the shore patrol quite well.

This was the first time they'd actually been used in the field, of course. Sergeant Wystahn was well aware that he, his men, and the entire scout-sniper concept were on trial. Although it might not have occurred to him to describe it in precisely those terms, he was determined that they were going to prove themselves, and so far, he had nothing to chew anyone out for.

So far.

“Zhak, go back and tell the Lieutenant where we are. Tell him the last picket on the list's gone. The rest of us'll wait here.”

“Aye, Sarge.”

The indicated Marine nodded, then went loping off into the darkness. “The rest of you take position,” Wystahn continued, and the others filtered out to form a loose perimeter around the former picket's position.

Wystahn watched them critically, then grunted in satisfaction and squatted to check on the surviving Corisandian's condition.

 

Sir Koryn Gahrvai made himself look patient as he waited for the early dawn light to creep back into the world. He could smell rain, but it didn't feel very imminent, and its approach suggested that the day might at least be a little cooler than yesterday had been. That would be nice, although if things went as he'd planned, today would be hot enough to satisfy anyone.

There
, he thought, watching the first hint of salmon and gold creep across the eastern horizon.
It won't be much longer now
.

He'd left his headquarters at the planter's house and ridden forward to keep a personal eye on things, but he hadn't gone beyond the town itself. Tempting though it was, he knew he had no business with his most forward formations. Nothing they might gain from his presence in terms of improved morale or steadiness would be worth the possibility that he might be taken out of action . . . or the much greater
probability
that he would find himself bogged down in some purely local situation when he ought to be supervising the overall battle.

After considering carefully, he'd chosen the steeple of Haryl's Crossing's biggest church as his forward command post. It would give him the best view over the greatest area, it offered good height for the semaphore mast his engineers had rigged overnight, and it was a prominent enough landmark (especially now that it had the mast stuck on top of it) that couriers trying to locate him with messages from his subordinate commanders shouldn't find their task difficult. Now he yawned, cradling a cup of hot chocolate in both hands, while the sky gradually brightened and details began to emerge from the darkness.

He was glad he'd made his decision to get the troops into position yesterday. Either Windshare's scouts had misreported the Charisian column's position earlier in the day, or else the Charisians had picked up the pace considerably yesterday afternoon. He was inclined to believe it was probably a combination of the two. Estimating the enemy's position accurately in such heavily overgrown terrain would have been difficult at the best of times, and he would have liked to ascribe the Charisians' unanticipatedly early arrival solely to a perfectly natural mistake on the cavalry's part. But he didn't think it was that simple, and he wondered if the Charisians might somehow have caught wind of his own presence at Haryl's Crossing. He didn't see how they could have gotten any of their own scouts close enough for that without even being detected, but it was always possible one of the locals had provided information to the other side, whether involuntarily or in return for payment.

He sipped chocolate, savoring the rich flavor, and fresh energy seemed to trickle through his veins. It shouldn't be much longer now. . . .

There. Those were the standards of his farthest forward battalions. He still didn't have as many muskets, flintlock or matchlock, as he would have preferred. Worse, according to his own cavalry scouts' reports, every single one of the Charisians they'd seen so far appeared to be armed with a flintlock musket, whereas a third of his own men were still armed with pikes. Fortunately, he had a lot more men than the Charisians did, and while he might be weaker, proportionately, in firepower, the difference in total manpower meant he actually had more of them, absolutely. And whatever the relative numbers of firearms might be, those pikes were going to be a nasty handful if the infantry formations ever managed to close.

The light was still too poor for him to use his spyglass, but he squinted his eyes, peering eastward to where the shadows of the tangled woodland continued to conceal the single Charisian battalion which had encamped just this side of them. They ought to be about—

Gahrvai's eyes widened in sudden astonishment. Surely it was only a trick of the light!

He set his chocolate cup aside, and stepped closer to the open side of the belfry. He was conscious of the cool breeze, the awakening twitter of birds and gentle whistling of wyverns, and the dew-slick, man-sized bell, hanging just behind him like some watching presence. And he was also conscious of the handful of staff officers and aides in the belfry with him. That was the reason he forced his expression to remain calm, kept his hands still as they rested on the waist-high safety railing. The light continued to improve, and his eyes tried to water with the intensity of his gaze.

“Sir!” one of his aides blurted suddenly. “I thought—”

“I see it, Lieutenant,” Gahrvai said, and he was pleased—and more than a little surprised—by how calmly he managed to speak.

The evening before, a single battalion of Charisian infantry had been bivouacked in a restricted arc whose broad side had been centered on the highway where it emerged from the tangled wilderness. Now, somehow, that battalion had advanced at least a full mile without any of his cavalry pickets having spotted a thing. Worse, the battalion had been substantially reinforced. His scouts had estimated the Charisian column at a maximum of five or six thousand men. Assuming that the higher number was accurate, it looked as if at least two-thirds of the enemy's total strength had somehow managed to magically appear in front of his own men.

His jaw clenched as he attempted to estimate frontages and strengths. In close formation, each infantryman covered a frontage of approximately one yard. In open formation, that frontage doubled. So a four hundred–man battalion in close formation, with three companies up in a double line and the fourth in reserve, covered a front of around a hundred and fifty yards. In a three-deep line, their frontage shrank to only a hundred yards. The scouting reports suggested that the Charisian battalions were larger than his own, probably about five hundred men, instead of four hundred. Assuming each of them retained one company as a reserve, that meant each of their battalions should cover about two hundred yards in close formation, dropping to only a hundred and thirty if they went to a triple line. Which seemed. . . .

The light was significantly stronger than it had been, and he raised his spyglass, then frowned. Details were still hard to make out at this distance, even with the glass, but one thing was obvious; they weren't in close formation at all. Instead, they were in a peculiar, almost staggered open formation.

What the
hell
are they up to?
he fretted.
If it ever comes to a general melee, we'll go through them like shit through a wyvern even without a single pike! So why . . . ?

Then he realized. That formation wasn't intended for hand-to-hand combat at all. His own flintlock muskets could fire much more rapidly than the old-style matchlocks. He'd already assumed the Charisians had to be able to fire
at least
as rapidly as his own flintlocks, and that formation was obviously optimized to allow the greatest number of muskets to fire at any given moment. It wasn't a melee formation at all; it was one which had been specifically designed around the rate of fire of the new weapons.