The Thousand Names (38 page)

If it works . . .
She almost didn’t dare think about that.
If it works, I don’t care if Feor is some fiend from the black pits. If I can talk to Bobby . . .
The need hung in her chest like a painful lump. Something had changed, she realized. Before the revelation of the corporal’s gender, he’d been a friend and comrade-in-arms. Now
she
was something else—a co-conspirator, possibly—and the possibility had knocked a scab off a part of Winter’s heart that she’d long ago closed off. The thought that there might be someone who
shared
her secret was exhilarating and terrifying, both at once.

“They’re leaving the wagons.”

Winter almost fell off the box. She’d been so wrapped up in her own thoughts she hadn’t noticed that anyone else was nearby. Looking up, she found herself sharing her impromptu bench with a young Vordanai woman in trousers and a loose wool blouse. Her hair was pulled up tight, which gave her a severe air, but she smiled at Winter’s obvious discomfiture.

“I’m sorry. I startled you.”

“I was just . . .” Winter shook her head, not quite trusting her voice.

“It’s understandable,” the woman said, and for one mad moment Winter thought she knew everything—her secret, the magic, everything. Then she went on. “The battle seems to take everyone in different ways afterward. Some men want to dance and sing, or go whoring and drinking, whereas some just want to
 . . .
sit.” She gave a little sigh. “It was terrifying enough at the bottom of the hill. I can only imagine what it must have been like to actually go up it.”

Winter nodded, feeling a bit at sea. She sought for something concrete to focus on. “What did you mean about the wagons?”

“They’re leaving them behind. Look.”

The woman pointed. The First’s tents were near the edge of the camp, and Winter had a view of what had been the regimental drill field the previous day. Men were forming up there now, carrying heavy packs as if for a long march, but the horse lines beyond remained undisturbed and the wagons were still unhitched.

She blinked. “What’s going on? Are we marching?”

“The Second and Fourth battalions are. They had the easiest time of it in the battle, the colonel said, so they get to go fight in the next one.”

“The next battle?”

“The colonel is all in a lather to go assist Captain d’Ivoire. We’re behind schedule, apparently.”

Winter could well believe that, given the delays they’d suffered on their approach. “What about us?”

“First Battalion?” the woman said, and when Winter nodded she continued. “Taking a well-earned rest, I should think. First and Third are staying behind with the trains and the wounded.” She looked down at herself and smiled ruefully. “And other impedimenta.”

Winter put on a vague smile of her own, at a loss how to proceed. The woman regarded her thoughtfully.

“What’s your name, Sergeant?” she said after a moment.

“Winter, ma’am,” Winter said, feeling suddenly formal. “Winter Ihernglass. And it’s lieutenant, actually.” She hadn’t yet bothered to track down a lieutenant’s stripe to replace the pips on her shoulders.

“Lieutenant,” the woman said. “Excuse me.” She extended her hand, and Winter took it and shook cautiously. “I’m Jennifer Alhundt.”

The handshake lasted perhaps an instant longer than it should have. In that instant, Winter got the queerest feeling that there was some
thing
emerging from this woman’s skin, some invisible fluid or gas that raced up Winter’s arm and wrapped itself around her, sinking by degrees through her uniform and then through her skin to embed itself in her flesh. Goose bumps rose along her arms, and she let go a bit too hastily.

“Is this you?” Jen said, jerking her head.

Winter, suppressing a shiver, forced herself to focus. “What?”

“Your tent,” Jen said patiently. “Behind us.”

“Oh. Yes. Why?”

Jen shrugged. “Just curious. I’m always amazed at the conditions in which you soldiers manage to survive. Four men to a little tent, for years at a time. I’ve got one to myself and I’m still not going to regret leaving it behind when this is over, I don’t mind telling you.”

“It was better when we were in camp by the city,” Winter said. “We had time to—spread out a little.”

“You’re Old Colonials, then?” Jen said.

Winter nodded. “They brought some of us in to teach the recruits a few things.”

“Interesting. Is it working?”

Winter thought of the folded paper Folsom had brought her. “No,” she said. “Not really.”

For some reason that made Jen smile. She stood up, brushing off the seat of her trousers.

“Well, Sergeant Ihernglass—sorry, Lieutenant Ihernglass—I’m sorry to have imposed on your time. I’m sure you have better things to do.”

“Not really, ma’am. Except maybe sleep.”

“That’s awfully important,” Jen said. “I’ll leave you to it. Thank you for the bit of company.”

Winter nodded, and Jen strode off.

I wonder who she is?
There had been no Vordanai women among the Old Colonials, so she had to have come over with the colonel.
Some civilian functionary? A mistress?

Winter shrugged and turned back to her tent. There were more important things to worry about.

•   •   •

Drying blood had stuck the bandages solidly to Bobby’s skin, even once Winter had untied the knots.

She really ought to have called Graff back, but he was probably asleep somewhere. And Winter wasn’t sure what she’d find, but the fewer people who knew about Feor’s—about Feor, the better. She glanced over her shoulder to confirm that the Khandarai girl was still sleeping.

Bobby was sleeping, too, and looking considerably less drawn than she had when Winter had left her. Whatever Feor had done was having
some
positive effect. Winter brought one of the kettles and a supply of fresh bandages to the side of the sickbed and poured a trickle of lukewarm water across the stiff, scarlet-soaked cloth. Once it had loosened a bit, she peeled the ruined linen away, leaving behind a mess of caked-on gore. She soaked a fresh cloth and went to work cleaning the blood away, trying not to touch the wound itself.

Only—something was wrong. With some perplexity, and then increasing excitement, Winter worked the cloth across the spot where the gory hole had been and found nothing but smooth skin under her fingers. She poured another stream from the kettle and wiped it away, then sat staring.

The injury was gone, but not without a trace. An irregular patch of skin, vaguely star-shaped, was
changed
. It was white—not the pale, ugly color of a scar or the sickly white of a fish’s belly, but the pure, brilliant white of marble. Winter imagined it even had a bit of sparkle to it, the way some marble did, as if someone had replaced that patch of Bobby’s skin with a perfect replica grafted from a statue. Winter touched it, carefully, half expecting to feel the cool hardness of stone, but it gave under her finger just like ordinary skin.

It worked.
She sat back, letting out a long breath, her shoulders shaking from released tension.
Whatever Feor did, it worked.
A little patch of oddly-colored skin was a small price to pay. Winter looked from one girl to the other, still half in shock.
It really worked.

She was suddenly unutterably tired. Leaving the dirty bandages on the floor, she fetched one of her own shirts and pulled it onto Bobby’s limp form, struggling with the sleeves and the buttons. Fortunately, the girl’s bust was modest even by Winter’s standards. The shirt alone would probably be cover enough for the casual eye.
Graff knows, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to.

Winter covered Bobby with a blanket, checked Feor one more time, and then flopped onto her own bedroll. She was asleep in an instant and didn’t dream at all, not even of Jane.

MARCUS

A
t dawn, the Auxiliaries began a cautious advance, a company in loose order probing the rubble and barricades to their front.

Marcus, determined to buy every minute he could, had sent Adrecht and his Fourth Battalion to man the line while the rest of the Colonials pulled back around the hilltop temple. These soldiers almost immediately began a harassing fire, driving back the initial tentative push. The Auxiliaries formed up, solid blocks of brown and tan parade-ground even, and charged into the tangle of detritus with a yell.

The men of the Fourth did not stand to receive them. They were too few, and in any case their orders were to fall back. Each man fired and then ran for it, finding another covered position farther up the hill to reload. Shots rang out from the spreading Khandarai line, trying to find their attackers, but the men in blue were as elusive as mosquitoes. Marcus watched with satisfaction from his hilltop vantage as the Auxiliary advance fell apart, neat lines breaking down in their zeal to come to grips with a retreating enemy amidst the wreckage.

It would have been an ideal time for a counterattack, as he’d done so many times yesterday, but circumstances had changed. There were two more Khandarai battalions waiting, well formed and ready, down by the bank of the canal. Worse, there were guns—all four of the Gesthemels and two of the monster naval guns, no doubt loaded with canister in anticipation of just such a move. So the Colonials held their ground, Adrecht’s men continuing to deliver harassing fire while the flustered Auxiliary officers reorganized their scattered ranks to continue the advance.

That bought a couple of hours, all told, and left the approach to the hill scattered with brown-and-tan-uniformed bodies. But the ultimate outcome was not in doubt. The Fourth was gradually pushed back through the town and toward the hilltop, until the advancing Auxiliaries finally ran into something solid. The Colonials had constructed a line of barricades, bricks and timber from destroyed houses, with the bulk of the stone-walled temple looming behind them. As soon as the enemy approached, this position exploded into fire, and the startled Auxiliaries reeled back out of range.

A few minutes later, Marcus watched the other two Khandarai battalions start moving up. As Adrecht had predicted, they were veering left and right, respectively, pushing past the now-empty streets of the destroyed village and out onto the plain, where they could get on the flanks and rear of the force on the hill. They would converge, like the pincers of a scorpion, and from the time they came into range of the fortifications the Colonials would be committed. No way out, except for surrender. And everyone knew what the Redeemers did to prisoners.

•   •   •

The two big naval guns each had a cloud of attendants who clustered and fussed around them like priests around an altar. In spite of all the attention, the first shot went wide, whistling past the temple and continuing for quite a long way out across the squelching-wet fields. The next, however, scored a solid hit, and before long both guns were pummeling away. The huge things were a bear to reload, so the shots came at intervals of three or four minutes.

Marcus had never been inside a stone building under bombardment. It wasn’t something that had been on the syllabus at the War College because it wasn’t supposed to happen, now that big stone castles had gone the way of the crossbow and the trebuchet. A good siege gun would produce an impression on even the strongest stone, no matter how thick or high the walls, so breaking them down was only a matter of time. A
proper
fortification looked more like a burrow thrown up by enormous and geometrically minded moles, with overlapping fields of fire for the defender and sloping berms of dirt to deflect cannonballs or absorb their impact in a harmless spray of soil.

He was unprepared, therefore, for the way that the cannonballs
rang
against the walls, as though the temple were being attacked by a swarm of angry bells. The distant thud of the gun itself arrived only just in advance of the shot, and every hit shook the walls like the entire building was rocking in a gale. Dust sifted down from the ceiling as ancient stones were jostled, and there were periodic alarming cracks and pops. One of the men brought Marcus a cannonball, still warm from its firing, which had ricocheted high and landed amongst the defenders. It was about the size of a child’s head, and flattened on one side by the terrific impact at the end of its flight. The iron rippled around that spot, as though it had been briefly liquid.

Marcus called for Archer, who had managed to clean up considerably overnight. A silver Church double circle was prominent on the breast of his uniform.

“How long have we got?” Marcus demanded.

“Well, sir,” the lieutenant said, “I’m an artilleryman, not a siege engineer, but—”

“Do your best.”

“Yessir. I took a look and there’s already a few cracked blocks. On the upside, those guns aren’t very accurate, so they’re battering away all over the wall. On the downside, this place wasn’t designed as a fortress, and as best I can tell there’s no bracing or internal supports.”

Marcus put two fingers to his head and massaged his temples. “And so?”

“Once part of the wall goes, the whole thing is going to come down in a hurry. A couple of hours, I’d say. It could be longer, of course, if we get lucky, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

A couple of hours.
It couldn’t be past eight in the morning. He’d tentatively hoped to hang on until nightfall, but . . .

There was a tremendous
boom
from outside, echoing off the temple walls and shaking more dust from the ceiling. Marcus looked at Archer in a panic. To his surprise, the lieutenant was smiling.

“What the hell was that?”

“Ah. I’d been expecting that, sir. I’ll have to go and check, of course, but in my professional opinion one of the thirty-six-pounders has just exploded. Those are old tubes, sir, and they’ve been working them pretty hard. I’m amazed it took this long.”

•   •   •

“I’ll give them this,” Adrecht said. “They’re game little bastards.”

He and Marcus stood at a second-floor window, its glass long ago kicked out. The view wasn’t as good as it would have been from the front steps, but there was less risk of catching a cannonball.

One team of Khandarai was already dragging the wreckage of the ruined naval gun out of the way, along with the bodies of the gunners who’d been caught by the shrapnel when the overheated tube burst. Across the river, a second team was pushing another of the big guns into the ford, two dozen men hauling on ropes or shoving from behind while four more walked gingerly in front of it, feeling for soft patches of mud that might bog the heavy thing down.

In the meantime, the howitzers had opened up again. They had a harder time of it than the naval guns did, since their fragmenting projectiles were useless against the stone walls of the temple itself. Marcus could hear the steady
ping
of fragments off the facade, but they weren’t doing any damage. The big open ground floor of the building had room for only a few hundred men, however, and was currently occupied by the wounded and most of Adrecht’s Fourth Battalion, resting up after its rearguard action. Aside from the men at the second-floor windows, all the rest of the Colonials were in a narrow strip of ground surrounding the hilltop on three sides, crouching behind improvised barricades or in shallow ditches they’d scratched in the stony ground. It was into this strip that the howitzers tried to drop their shells, with intermittent but bloody success.

“They’re not going to bomb us out, though,” Adrecht said. “Not unless they intend to stand a siege.”

“No,” Marcus agreed. “This is just preparatory stuff. Just wait for a few—ah, here they come.”

A brown-and-tan line materialized, rising from the earth as the Khandarai infantry got to their feet and started forward. Amidst the explosion of a few last shells, he could hear their shouting even at this distance. They’d sensibly abandoned any attempt at close order and came forward in a swarm of angry, screaming men. Marcus was forcefully reminded of the battle on the coast road, the thin line of blue standing against the vast horde of peasants.
If only I had a nice, solid line and a dozen guns to back it up . . .

More shouting indicated that the other two enemy battalions, who had spread left and right to face the sides of the hilltop temple, were attacking as well.
So it’s to be a general assault
.
They must know how few men we’ve got in here.
A canny commander might focus his attack on the weakest section of the enemy line, but with an overwhelming advantage in numbers there was more value in forcing the defenders to spread themselves thin.

The rattle of musketry rose, first from close by as the defenders opened fire, then more distant shots as the Khandarai started to reply. It was joined shortly by the deeper
boom
of Archer’s guns, positioned at intervals along the barricade and loaded with canister, their depleted crews filled out by hastily trained volunteers from the infantry. The smaller Khandarai guns opened fire as well, aiming high to avoid their own troops, and mostly sent their fist-sized balls bouncing gaily off the stone walls of the temple with high, ringing notes.

Marcus was pleased to see the attack had broken down almost as soon as it had gotten started. The Khandarai officers were discovering that most men, given a choice between rushing a fuming, spitting barricade bristling with bayonets and ducking into cover to bang away with their own muskets, would choose the latter. And once so ensconced they were difficult to shift, though Marcus could see a few wildly gesticulating officers and sergeants trying. They were off the tactics manual now. Towns, if they were attacked at all, were invested according to the formal rules of a traditional siege, and expected to capitulate once the proper point had been reached in the proceedings.

“Ha!” Adrecht said, as a Khandarai officer who’d stood up to berate his men suddenly pinwheeled to the ground as though he’d been clubbed. “Good shot. Wonder if that was one of ours or one of theirs.”

“I’m going to see how the right is doing,” Marcus said. “Check the left, would you?”

He turned without waiting for a reply and hurried through the warren of little rooms that made up the temple’s second floor until he found a window that provided a suitable view of the right side of the building. The situation below was not as promising as at the front of the building. There was nothing on the gentle slope of the hill to serve as cover for the Khandarai, which perversely made the attack more fearsome. Deprived of the opportunity to drop into relative safety and exchange fire with the defenders, the Auxiliaries had no choice but to run to the barricade, hunched over as though advancing into a strong wind. Musketry and canister cut them down by the score, and in some places the attack faltered, but in others they had reached the line of barricades and charged into a desperate hand-to-hand struggle.

Marcus cursed and hurried back to the central stair, meeting Adrecht coming the other way.

“We’re holding on the left,” Adrecht said, “though they got closer than I’d like.”

“They need help down there,” Marcus said. “That’s—” He tried to remember who had charge of the right wing, and then guiltily recalled it was his own men of the First Battalion. With Vence down, Thorpe was the most senior officer, with Davis after him. “Thorpe,” he finished. “Come on, let’s get them some support.”

He detached half a company from the Fourth Battalion and sent them down at the double. The arrival of fresh troops seemed to have an impact out of all proportion to their actual numbers. The Khandarai who’d made it over the barricade fell back or surrendered, leaving a mix of blue – and brown-coated bodies strewn over the debris like broken toys. The other Khandarai battalions were pulling back as well, the men who’d refused to rise from cover to attack only too willing to get up when they were retreating. Marcus returned to his window, where he could see them forming again out of musket range.

In the distance, a puff of smoke was followed by a distant
boom
, and then a much closer blast accompanied by the zip and ping of shell fragments. Then the naval guns opened fire again, and the bombardment resumed in earnest.

•   •   •

That was the pattern all through the morning and into the early afternoon, while the sun climbed overhead to turn the battlefield into a blazing inferno. The Auxiliaries dressed their ranks, listened to speeches and shouts from their officers, while behind them the big guns and the howitzers banged away at the obstinate Colonials in their makeshift fortress. Then, worked to a suitable pitch of enthusiasm, the infantry stormed forward, and the rattling tear of musketry overwhelmed every other sound.

Marcus committed his reserves like a miser spending his last eagle, half a company here and half a company there. It stabilized the line, but in order to keep it stabilized, as often as not the fresh troops had to stay, so the Fourth dwindled from three companies to two and finally to one, barely eighty men strong. As the hale troops trickled out of the temple, meanwhile, the wounded trickled in, faster and faster, until they occupied the entire ground floor and the stretcher details had to haul them painfully up the stairs. The cutters were hard at work, and the inevitable charnel house smell made Marcus grateful for even the bitter reek of gunsmoke. The dead, and the severed, mangled limbs of those who might or might not survive, were piled unceremoniously in one corner to make room for new arrivals.