The Crimson Campaign (23 page)

Tamas stood in the stirrups, watching through a looking glass as Kez scouts crested the last hilltop between the Kez cavalry and Tamas’s two ragged brigades of infantry.

After a few more moments of examining the enemy scouts he sat down and handed the looking glass to Olem.

“We’ll have about two-thirds of our men inside the forest by the time they reach us.”

Behind him, the Hune Dora Forest rose above the plains. The prairie up to the forest had been logged to the twig a century ago, but Hune Dora itself was a barricade of trees, protected by royal decree and declared a national property of Kez. The terrain changed drastically here, as the rolling foothills of the prairie gave way to sharp mountain ridges that crept like mighty old roots toward the Amber Expanse.

Tamas suspected the difficulty in logging Hune Dora had as much to do with the forest being protected as the king’s hunting practices.

He spurred his mount around and rode to catch up with the rear of the column. The men marched at half-time as the elements of the column ahead of them adjusted from six abreast to four abreast in order to smoothly transition to the forest roadway.

“Colonel Arbor,” Tamas said as he joined the rear guard.

Colonel Arbor was ancient as army standards went. He was ten years older than Tamas, and had long since lost most of his hearing and all of his teeth. Despite his age he could march, fight, and drink like a man of thirty, a fact he attributed to a glass of wine and fine cigar before bed every night. The colonel walked beside the very last men of the rear guard, rifle slung over his shoulder like a common soldier, cavalry saber at his side. The First Battalion of the Seventh Brigade was Tamas’s very best. It was no accident they carried the rear.

“Eh?” the colonel said.

“I wish you’d ride.” Tamas nearly had to shout, just to be sure the colonel would hear him.

The colonel flexed his jaw and popped out his false teeth into one hand. “Won’t do it,” he said. “My old bollocks hurt like the pit in a saddle. Besides, sir, we need horses for scouting.” He eyed Tamas and Olem’s mounts as if he thought they’d find better use with the rangers.

“We’re going to have company in about fifteen minutes,” Tamas said. “You’ve the rear guard. I want a walking retreat. Steady and brave.”

Arbor cleared his throat and spit out a wad of phlegm. “Battalion!” he screamed. Farther up the line, a captain jumped half a foot in surprise. “Fix sword bayonets! Interlocking windmill. Livers in ten!”

The orders were passed up the column by sergeants, though half the brigade had probably already heard them. Arbor brushed his false teeth off on his uniform jacket and then slipped them into his back pocket. “Wouldn’t want them to get damaged in the coming melee.” He winked at Tamas.

“Right.” Tamas urged his mount forward to join his powder mages farther up the column. Behind him, Arbor’s battalion fanned out across the prairie, forming a half-moon shield around the rear of the column.

“Sir!” Andriya turned to Tamas with a salute as Tamas rode up to the group. Five powder mages gathered around Andriya. They’d all spent the night hunting and scouting, and looked like the pit, with bags beneath their eyes. Tamas could smell the black powder hanging around them like a cloud.

Tamas reined in. “The Kez van is just over that hill. About twelve hundred dragoons coming on hard.”

“We going to stay and fight?” Andriya asked. He had the same hungry look he always did when it came time to shed Kez blood.

“No,” Tamas said. “The van will be here about an hour before the rest. I want us to be well into the forest by that time. Don’t worry,” he added upon seeing the disappointment on Andriya’s face. “We’ll have plenty to kill.”

He looked over the field of battle – for it was that. No doubt now that blood would be shed within the hour. He examined the tree line and the contour of the land, then the old stone walls of the abandoned city of Hune Dora. With more time to plan – a day, or even a few hours – he’d have been able to set up a trap and exterminate the Kez vanguard. As it was, he needed his men off the plains.

He pointed to where the forest rose sharply from the prairie. “Andriya, I want your team a few hundred yards out from the tree line. Vlora, put yours on those rocks over there.” He pointed to the north. “As soon as they’re within range, take horses off the front. Try to stumble the whole column. When they spread for a charge, kill their officers. Dismissed.”

The powder mages scattered at a run. They’d be in place and begin firing within a few minutes. It might buy his brigades a little extra time to get into the forest.

He’d placed his powder mages at high points to be able to make long shots, but the road itself fell into a wide, flat gully before rising once more into the trees. The Kez vanguard would have an easy charge.

Just inside the forest, the Seventh’s Fourth Battalion had taken up firing positions. They’d give the First Battalion some cover if it came to a sprint into the woods.

Tamas whirled his horse to face northwest, toward the forest, then dismounted. He cracked a powder charge between his fingers and sprinkled some on his tongue. He felt the powder trance take hold.

“Carbine,” he ordered.

Olem, who had been shadowing him silently this whole time, handed him a loaded carbine. Tamas lowered himself to one knee. The carbine was a shortened rifle, able to be fired and be reloaded on horseback easier than a long rifle, but it was still best to fire dismounted. Instead of an elongated stock to hold it steady, it had a steel handle attached to the barrel.

Tamas gripped the carbine tightly and lined up his shot on the horizon. He watched as the dragoon scouts drew closer.

A Kez dragoon was typically armed with a carbine, one pistol, and a straight sword. The older Kez commanders treated them as mounted infantry – that is, they rode horses but fought on foot. Younger commanders utilized them as light cavalry.

The current scenario would see them firing carbine, then pistol, and then making an open charge with the hope of breaking Tamas’s rear guard. Tamas was willing to bet his horse on the tactic.

It wasn’t long until the main company of the Kez vanguard breached the far hill. Tamas breathed out gently, sighting down his carbine. The dragoons were a little over a mile away and still in formation at four abreast. The horsehair on their spiked cavalry helmets waved in the wind, jostling as they rode.

Tamas heard the crack of a rifle come from his left and knew Andriya had taken the first shot. Several long seconds passed, filled with the reports of rifle fire.

The first dragoon stumbled. The horse fell, twisting as it went down. Another, then another fell. They slammed into the road in a cloud of dust. The horses immediately behind the front line became entangled and many of them went down, tumbling and thrashing beneath the hooves of their own allies.

Tamas didn’t have to hear the screams of the horses for them to echo in his head.

They had to have known Tamas had his powder mages, yet they’d kept close formation. Tamas wanted to shake his head at the mistake. The dragoons should have been ready for it.

But then again, who is ready for a bullet to take them when the enemy is only a dot on the horizon?

He pulled his trigger.

A few seconds later his bullet entered a horse’s eye. The beast jerked and fell. The rider went up and over his horse, hitting the ground hard enough to break his neck.

Tamas handed Olem his carbine and took a loaded one in its place.

The Kez column spread out from the road, widening their formation. More came over the hilltop. Tamas’s initial elation at seeing a dozen brought down so quickly disappeared. He had twelve hundred more to deal with. Tripping up a few at the head of the column was hardly a victory.

He searched the breadth of the dragoons for an officer’s epaulets. He found them quickly and rested his carbine against his shoulder. A deep breath. Let it out. Squeeze the trigger.

The bullet caught the young officer in the throat. He was thrown from the saddle, and Tamas was instantly on to the next target.

For the next couple of minutes, his powder mages fired at will, each bullet finding a deadly mark with few exceptions. The Kez vanguard drew closer.

“Better mount up, sir,” Olem said, not a hint of nervousness in his voice.

Tamas could read the dragoon formation. They spread on the eastern side of the road in columns six deep. They would hit the First Battalion’s flank, driving them away from the possible protection of the city of Hune Dora’s walls. The dragoons would strike hard and fast, avoiding entanglement, and be back out of range of conventional musket fire within a few moments. They would be able to pull back around behind Hune Dora’s walls, shielding them from powder mages, and then sweep an attack against the column’s flank.

Tamas saw carbines lifted to shoulders. He swung up into his saddle and cleared the barrel of his carbine.

“Watch the wall,” he said to Olem. “Let’s go.”

Arbor’s First Battalion slowed to a crawl. Every other man suddenly stopped, whirled, and lowered to one knee. Tamas could hear Arbor scream the order to fire, and a cloud of powder smoke rose in the air. Fifty or more dragoons fell. The soldiers leapt to their feet, reloading as they resumed their march.

Tamas galloped toward the rear guard and drew his curved cavalry saber.

The dragoons let loose with their carbines, leaving their own clouds of powder smoke like a memory behind them.

The line of soldiers staggered. Some fell, some limped along, crying for help. None of them broke to tend to the wounded.

They’d been trained well.

The dragoons holstered their carbines in the saddle. Pistols were drawn, aim taken.

The second line of Adran soldiers turned, knelt, and fired.

A cloud of smoke went up from the dragoons as they returned shots with their pistols. They were out of the cloud only a moment later, swords drawn, as they came in for the charge.

Arbor’s First Battalion turned to meet the charge. Their sword bayonets were fixed on the ends of their muskets, making the weapons long enough to act as pikes. Tamas cursed. Their formation was too loose…

The dragoons’ thunderous charge was upon Tamas’s soldiers.

Horses screamed as they were impaled upon sword bayonets. Men fell from their mounts. Adran soldiers were cut about the neck and face by straight-edged cavalry swords. The lines of infantry and cavalry met, disappearing in a bloody tangle.

Tamas leaned forward, urging more speed out of his charger, Olem right beside him. Across the field of battle, opposite him where the old walls of Hune Dora turned around a hill, another cavalry charge appeared.

Gavril was at the head of these cavalry. Two hundred cuirassiers in the dark-blue pants and crimson coats of the Adran heavy cavalry raced across the prairie just as the tattered remains of the Kez dragoons extracted themselves from the First Battalion.

Though still outnumbered three to one, Gavril’s cuirassiers hit the dragoons with the force of an artillery shell. The collision was audible, the yells of the dragoons turning desperate at the sudden appearance of an enemy at their flank. Somewhere in the midst of the tangle a Kez trumpet belted out a desperate retreat.

A moment later and Tamas hit the fray himself. He swung his cavalry sword out and across, neatly severing the carotid artery of a Kez dragoon. He whirled in the saddle, barely catching the sword strike of another dragoon. He reached out with his senses and detonated a powder charge in the dragoon’s breast pocket and immediately urged his charger forward, looking for the next target.

The last of the dragoon vanguard extracted themselves and fled back toward their brigades.

A cheer went up among Tamas’s men. It carried from the First Battalion down the column and on to the Ninth Brigade, which was already safe inside the forest.

Tamas caught his breath as his charger picked its way through the bodies of men and horses to join Gavril. “Rein in your cuirassiers,” Tamas shouted to Gavril. Gavril nodded and gave the orders.

“The main body of cavalry will be here in an hour,” Tamas said, gasping, his heart still pounding, the powder smoke stinging his eyes and reminding him that he was an old man.

Gavril brought his mount close to Tamas and lowered his voice. “What will we do with the dead and wounded?”

Tamas examined the field of battle. There were at least a thousand dead and wounded, counting the Kez and Adrans together. The Kez couldn’t have retreated with more than three hundred of their men. There was no way Tamas could march with his wounded.

“Arbor!” Tamas said, searching. “Olem, find Arbor.”

A few moments later, the old colonel joined him on the field. He had a new cut on his cheek and powder burns on his sleeves. He’d seen action himself, it seemed.

“Sir?”

“Status of the First Battalion?”

“Fine and kicking, sir. We gave ’em pit. No exact count yet, but I lost no more than two hundred men.”

Two hundred men from Tamas’s best battalion. Almost a fourth of them. It was a staggering victory against almost twelve hundred dragoons, but Tamas couldn’t afford to lose a single man, let alone two hundred of his very best.

“Pack up your wounded. Send them up the column. Strip the battlefield of everything useful.”

“Permission to slaughter the horses, sir?” Arbor said. “We need the meat.”

“Granted. Give your men a battlefield burial. I wish we had more time, but I mean to be off this prairie when the rest of the Kez get here.”

Arbor gave a brisk nod and headed off, giving orders.

“A battlefield burial, sir?” Olem asked.

“Something we did on the march in Gurla. When another army pressed on us after a fight, we’d wrap our dead in their canvas tents with their names marked on the canvas and hope the enemy had the decency to give them a proper burial.” Tamas sighed. He didn’t like battlefield burials. The dead deserved more respect than that.

“Did they?”

“What?”

“Did they give them a proper burial, sir?”

“Four times out of five… no. They’d leave them to rot in the Gurlish sun.”