By Heresies Distressed (34 page)

Which ours haven't been
, he thought grimly.
That's going to be . . . painful
.

The fact that the Charisians had managed to get so many more muskets forward and out of the constricted woodland behind them was also worrisome, although now that the surprise was beginning to ebb, that particular discovery bothered him less. The object had been to draw the enemy forward, after all. The fact that the Charisians had obliged him should scarcely have been a matter for concern.

Except that they did it on their own terms, not mine. And except for the fact that Alyk had cavalry pickets out there expressly to warn us if they tried something like this. Not only that, but those bastards' front is on
this
side of where some of those pickets were posted. So they didn't just keep Alyk's troopers from spotting them; somehow, they took out every single picket without anyone's firing a single shot or a single man getting away to warn us. Now that's . . . bothersome
.

“How did they manage that, Sir?” the same aide muttered behind him, and Gahrvai shrugged.

“I don't have the foggiest idea, Lieutenant,” he admitted. “And just between you and me, the fact that they did manage it without our catching even a sniff of what they were up to bothers me. On the other hand, all they've really accomplished is to shove their heads deeper into the noose for us. Not only that, but they're a good thousand or fifteen hundred yards this side of the woods. If Earl Windshare's cavalry can get into that gap, cut them off from retreat . . .”

The lieutenant was nodding now, his eyes intent, and Gahrvai discovered that the youngster's response actually made
him
feel a bit better, too. If the lieutenant thought what he was saying made sense, it probably did. Even better, other people might be thinking the same thoughts instead of worrying about how the hell the Charisians had managed to magically move that many men that far forward without anyone happening to notice.

That thought was still percolating through the back of his mind when he heard the faint, distant call of bugles.

They weren't
his
bugles, and as he watched, the Charisian formation shivered, then stirred into motion.

“Now that's an unpleasant sight, isn't it?” Brigadier Kynt Clareyk murmured to himself.

He and his staff had attached themselves to Colonel Zhanstyn's headquarters group. Each of the two Charisian brigades had three of its battalions up in line, with the fourth battalion in reserve, and Zhanstyn's ⅓rd Battalion formed the center of Third Brigade's line on the Charisian left.

At the moment, Clareyk had paused on a slight knoll, peering through his own spyglass over the heads of his advancing riflemen at the Corisandian formation waiting for them.

The Corisandian lines were far denser than his own—deeper, bristling with pikeheads. That tighter frontage and greater depth were going to provide them with much greater shock value if it came to a melee, but that possible advantage had been obtained by decreasing each Corisandian battalion's maximum firepower. Or, rather, by decreasing it in comparison with the
Charisian
battalions. It looked as if Clareyk might be about to find out whether or not his theories about firepower trumping shock power were going to turn out to have been accurate after all.

Something fitting about that
, he mused as he swung his spyglass steadily, sweeping across the front of the enemy's position.
It's only fair that the fellow who thought he was so clever when he worked it all out should get to test his own concepts under fire, as it were. Odd. Somehow I don't really find myself looking forward to the opportunity
.

“I make it about eight or nine thousand men, Sir,” a voice said quietly at his elbow, and he turned his head, quirking one eyebrow at Major Bryahn Lahftyn, his senior staff officer. “In their main formation, I mean,” Lahftyn added.

“Ah, yes. In their
main
formation,” Clareyk said dryly.

“Well, yes, Sir.” Lahftyn looked rather uncomfortable for a moment, then saw the glint of humor in his brigadier's eye.

“Somehow,” Clareyk said, “the odds didn't seem so bad until just now.” He grinned crookedly. “I've just discovered that seeing all of those fellows standing over there sort of takes the concept of ‘outnumbered' out of the merely intellectual category.”

“It does do that, Sir,” Lahftyn agreed. “And look over there, in the center of their line.”

Clareyk gazed in the indicated direction, and his mouth tightened ever so slightly.

The terrain between the tangled wilderness through which they'd marched and the river, some six or seven miles farther west, consisted primarily of cotton silk fields, cropland, and pastures, with belts of orchards closer to the town nestled around the stone bridge. There were scattered sections of woodlot out there, as well, although none of them seemed as choked with wire vine as the wilderness they'd slogged through to get here. At least some of the pastures were separated by carefully trained hedges of wire vine, and there were several stone walls, as well. Fortunately, the walls were obviously intended as property markers rather than significant obstacles, and very few of them rose much higher than midthigh.

Overall, it was as close to ideal terrain as he was likely to find. It did slope steadily uphill towards the feet of the Dark Hill Mountains. In fact, the foothills on the far side of the river were actually closer to low bluffs, he thought, and he had no doubt they were solidly manned by the additional troops the Corisandian commander had declined to cram into his relatively limited battlefield. The river was too broad for smoothbore muskets atop those bluffs to dominate the lower, flatter eastern bank, although it would be quite a different matter for field artillery, even the carronade-style artillery the Corisandians had developed. Aside from that, though, the ground in front of him was close to perfectly fitted to his own tactical needs, while the denser, deeper Corisandian formations were going to find the relatively minor terrain obstacles much more hampering than his own men would.

Unfortunately, the reason it was ideal for his riflemen was because the Corisandians had been seeking exactly the same sort of clear fire zones for their
artillery
, and they'd placed no fewer than thirty or forty field pieces at the center of their own front. That was what Lahftyn had spotted, and Clareyk's mouth tightened a bit more as he contemplated what those guns would do to his own battalions if they got the chance.

We'll just have to see that they
don't
get the chance, won't we, Kynt?

“Signal Major Bryndyn,” he said. “I want our field guns and Lieutenant Hahthym deployed in the center. Tell him he's not to come within five hundred yards of their pieces with his own guns.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Lahftyn scribbled busily in his notebook, then read back the brief message. Clareyk listened, then nodded in satisfaction, and the youthful major went jogging across to the heliograph which shared the top of their knoll. The signalman manning the device read over the major's note, trained his sight on the mounted officers clustered around the twelve-pounder field guns and their draft dragons, and reached for the lever on the heliograph's side. A moment later, the shutters began to clatter as he flashed the instructions in coded flickers of mirrored sunlight.

Lahftyn waited until Major Bryndyn's acknowledgment had been received. As it happened, there wasn't yet enough light on Bryndyn's position for him to use his own heliograph, but his signal party displayed the single green flag which indicated a message had been received and understood. It wasn't as good as having the text of the message repeated back to be sure it wasn't garbled, but if Bryndyn had been in any doubt about what he was supposed to do, his signalers would have displayed the red flag which requested that the message be repeated.

“Message acknowledged, Sir,” Lahftyn announced as he rejoined Clareyk.

“Thank you, Bryahn. I saw the flag myself.”

Lahftyn nodded, and then he and his brigadier stood side-by-side, watching as four thousand Charisians marched steadily towards well over
ten
thousand Corisandians.

“Sir, they're marching straight
towards
us!”

The young lieutenant—he couldn't be much over nineteen, Gahrvai thought—sounded aggrieved, almost indignant. And he also sounded puzzled. Which, Gahrvai decided, could have been said of the lieutenant's commander, as well.

They couldn't have known how many men we had waiting for them
, he told himself firmly.
Not when they advanced to their present positions last night, at least. On the other hand, unless they're blind, they can sure as hell tell we've got more than they do
now!
So why are
they
coming to
us?

Koryn Gahrvai would have given a great deal if he could have been positive the answer was Charisian arrogance or stupidity. Unfortunately, he doubted it was either of those.

Still, if they didn't expect to see this many of us, that could explain why they're as far forward as they are. And it could just be that having put themselves in a position where their only avenue of retreat is down a single, narrow roadway, they figure their best chance is to hit us and hope we break rather than see their unit organization go straight to hell trying to wiggle away through that miserable rat hole of a road
.

His chain of thought broke off as more bugles sounded. This time, they were his, and he watched his own infantry begin rolling forward as planned.

He scratched the tip of his nose reflectively, forcing his expression to remain calm, while a sudden craven temptation to call his troops back ran through him.

Don't be an idiot
, he told himself sternly.
You're about to panic yourself into deciding to retreat before a single shot's even been fired! You're supposed to be attacking
them,
not waiting for them to attack
you!
Besides, if you can't take them with odds this heavily in your favor, what's the point of even trying?

Brigadier Clareyk nodded in something very like satisfaction as the Chisholmians began to move forward. That massive artillery battery of theirs stayed put, not surprisingly. They'd put their guns in an almost perfect position, along the crest of a long, sharply rising slope. The artillerists had a wide open field of fire, well placed to fire over the heads of their own advancing infantry. Of course, there were downsides to that, as well. For example, firing canister or grapeshot
over
your own troops wasn't a very good idea. The patterns spread rapidly—vertically, as well as laterally—which meant you tended to kill quite a few of your own men if you tried something like that, and the infantry, for some peculiar reason, didn't much care for that.

Which probably explains why no one is advancing directly in front of their guns
, Clareyk told himself dryly.
I wonder if they've had decent artillery long enough to figure out about grazing fire?