By Heresies Distressed (39 page)

The Charisians had never halted
their
advance, however. Or, rather, they'd simply continued closing until the range had fallen to about two hundred yards. Then they'd stopped, meticulously dressing their own formation, letting the Marines catch their breath, while the Corisandians recovered from the disorganization the scout-snipers had imposed. When the enemy resumed his advance, they were ready.

Gahrvai's budding optimism vanished into icy horror when the entire Charisian line of battle vanished behind a sudden, fresh eruption of smoke. He might have been too far to the rear to realize the range at which the scout-snipers had fired, but he was close enough to tell the Charisian line battalions had opened fire at at least twice his own troops' maximum effective range.

From the elevated advantage of the steeple, he saw the front line of his own battalions ripple, like trees in a high wind, as the deadly volley ripped through their tight formation, and all too many of them toppled before that wind's dreadful strength. They were packed so closely together that any Marine who missed his own target could be virtually certain of hitting someone else's, and the big, soft-lead bullets struck like mangling hammers that shattered limbs and bodies in grotesque sprays of blood. Gahrvai couldn't hear the screams of the wounded, but he could almost taste his men's panic as they realized just how badly outranged they were.

My God, they're going to
massacre
us!

The thought ripped through his mind as a second, equally massive volley of rifle fire crashed out from the Charisians. It wasn't quite as deadly as the first one, but that was only because the previous volley's smoke prevented the Marines from seeing their targets as clearly. And it was deadly enough. Still more Corisandians went down, and Gahrvai's front began to waver.

Hektor Bahnyr, the Earl of Mancora, watched in disbelief as the rifle fire smashed into his lead regiments' battalions. Reorganizing around the loss of so many junior officers had been bad enough. Now this!

He clenched his jaw, his mind working furiously as he sought some answer to the looming catastrophe he already saw rumbling down upon his wing of Gahrvai's army. It was deliberate, he realized. The pinpoint removal of so many company commanders, so many standard bearers, had been intended to make a point, as well as to ravage his command structure. The Charisians had been telling him—telling all of his
men
—that their marksmen could pick—and hit—individual targets at preposterous ranges. Now they were making the even more devastating point that even their line units could fire at those same insane ranges.

And however they were doing it, it wasn't with any sort of rifle Mancora or any other Corisandian had ever heard of. It
couldn't
be a rifle—not with the deadly speed with which volley followed upon volley. The bastards were actually firing
faster
than any of his own flintlock-equipped musketeers could have! Yet at the same time, those
had
to be rifles, because no unrifled musket could possibly have so much range!

He felt his own nerve wavering as the implications hammered home. All of the priests' fiery rhetoric, their condemnation of the “apostate Charisian heretics,” came back to him in that moment. To be honest, he'd never really believed the wild tales about Charisian heresy, about the way they'd opened the doors to Shan-wei and her dark temptations. But now, as that impossible weight of fire mowed down his men, he wondered.

No! There was nothing demonic, no violation of the Proscriptions, in the new Charisian artillery. He didn't know how they'd managed what they were doing to him now, but he told himself that it had to be something else like the new artillery mountings. Some cunning new trick, yes, but something any mortal man could have devised.

Which did nothing at all to rescue his command.

He glared at the rising wall of smoke above the Charisian firing line, then drew a deep breath.

“Sound the charge—
now
!” he barked.

Brigadier Clareyk heard the Corisandian bugles. They were faint and distant through the wailing of his own bagpipes and the crash and thunder of artillery and massive rifle volleys, but he recognized them, and he nodded in ungrudging understanding.

Whoever that is in command over there, he's quick
, the brigadier thought.
Not quick enough . . . probably. But quick
.

The two sides were a little more than two hundred yards apart. Advancing at the double, infantry would require at least two minutes to cross that gap, and it was most unlikely the Corisandians could hold together for two minutes under his brigade's rapid, massed fire. Each rifleman was firing approximately once every fifteen seconds, and he had fifteen hundred of them in his two-deep firing line. In the two minutes it would take the enemy to reach them, those fifteen hundred men would fire twelve thousand rounds at no more than
five
thousand targets.

The opposing commander couldn't know that, though. If he'd had time—time to think about it, time to analyze the weight of fire ripping through his men, to truly grasp the rapidity of that fire as well as its accuracy and range—he almost certainly wouldn't have tried it. But he
didn't
know, hadn't had that time. Which meant, under the circumstances, that he'd put his finger on the only slim chance he had—or ought to have had—for victory. A stand up firefight between his musketeers and Clareyk's riflemen could have only one ending, but if he could charge, get to grips with his greater total number of men, he might still carry the field.

Only that isn't going to happen
, Clareyk thought grimly.

Gahrvai grasped Mancora's thinking as rapidly as Brigadier Clareyk had. Unlike Mancora, however, he wasn't trapped in the very forefront of the disaster sweeping over his army like some inrushing tidal wave. He didn't have to make the decision in the midst of bloodshed, carnage, screaming wounded, blinding waves of gunsmoke, and the smell of shed blood and riven and torn bodies. He never blamed Mancora for a moment, knew he would probably have made the same choice in the earl's position.

And he knew it was the wrong one.

Barcor, on the other hand, showed no sign of launching any charges. For what Gahrvai was privately certain were all the wrong reasons, Barcor was doing the right thing, while Mancora—for all the
right
reasons—was about to make a disastrous mistake.

“Signal Baron Barcor!” he snapped over his shoulder, never taking his eyes from the field before him. “Instruct him to begin falling back immediately!”

“Yes, Sir!” one of his aides blurted, and Gahrvai heard boots thundering across the planking as the young man dashed for the signal station.

Of course, with all this smoke, the odds are no better than even that Barcor will even
see
the semaphore
, Gahrvai thought bitterly.
On the other hand, he's . . . cautious enough he may turn tail and run on his own any minute now
.

It was already far too late to stop Mancora, but it was possible he might still salvage at least the majority of Barcor's men if he could only withdraw them from the perfect killing ground he'd provided for the Charisian rifles. The realization that he was the one who'd chosen exactly the right terrain for the Charisians' new tactics filled him like poison, and the fact that he actually wanted one of his subordinate commanders to be gutless enough to run away from the enemy was bitter as gall. Yet it was also true, and his face set like congealing stone as Mancora's infantry advanced into the dreadful maelstrom of the Charisians' fire.

Why?
The thought went through his brain.
Why are You
doing
this, God?
We
aren't the schismatics trying to tear Your Church apart
—they
are! So why are You letting a good man, a good commander, take his troops into a meat-grinder like this one while a cretin like Barcor won't even advance?

There was no answer. He knew there wouldn't be one, and his eyes were hard as he realized he'd actually be forced to
commend
Barcor after this battle—assuming God and the Archangels weren't merciful enough to get the baron killed—rather than stripping him of his command as his timidity so justly deserved.