Author's Note: To all of our small group of readers, thank you for being so patient. We realize it's been a long wait, but we have had some difficulties recently. Hopefully from this point on we'll be able to post more regularly. Who knows. Secondly, we are now in need of another beta reader, and we'd like one who's up to speed on the story. Anyone interested can send a PM to teyr25. Thanks again, and we hope you enjoy the chapter.
Rusgren Pass - June 4, 1836
Lieutenant Colonel Gunther was in a foul mood. Not only had the recent battle resulted in casualties amounting to about a third of the infantry and nearly a hundred of his own troopers, his scouts had reported to him that the delay from regrouping the XIII had allowed the Darcsens to create some very formidable defenses indeed.
His black thoughts were interrupted as Zeichmeister strode rapidly into his tent and saluted rigidly.
"Yes?" Gunther looked up from the map spread across his table.
"I wish to inform you that my men are formed up and ready to lead the assault on the Gallian works sir."
"Excuse me?" The cavalry officer really took his mind off the map for the first time since the other man had walked into the room. "You took some heavy losses yesterday sir. Our combined strength is now barely over 1,500 fit to fight. Moreover, our morale is very poor. Are you suggesting we throw away the rest of this force to drive the enemy out of his works?
"They're only Darcsens sir," the other man said tightly.
"Oh yes," Gunther said acrimoniously. "The Darcsens that killed only about four hundred crack Imperial troops the other day. And that was a field battle. I'm sure they'll fight less efficiently since they're entrenched now."
Zeichmeister flushed. "I ask only to regain the XIII's honor-"
"By killing yourself and all your men?" Gunther wondered whether he had gone too far as the man took a pace forward and reached for the hilt of his sword. Then he visibly arrested the movement and subsided, shaking his head.
"You are in the right, sir. I was. . . careless with our previous battle. It shall not be repeated today." Zeichmeister paused. "You may stay here if you wish sir, but the XIII is going forward. Valkyrur be with you." With a nod, the man turned and ducked under the tent flap.
"Damn!" Gunther slammed a fist into the table. "Czherny!"
"Yes sir?" The sergeant ducked in from his post outside the tent. "Dismount about five hundred of our troopers and post orders for them to support Zeichmeister's attack. Keep the rest in reserve, but move them up too."
"Sir?" Czherny said, startled. "You said-"
"I know what I said. But Zeichmeister's going ahead come hell or high water, and he doesn't have enough of an edge to win, not if those Darcsens fight like they did yesterday. Move, damn you!"
"Sir!" With a hasty salute, the underofficer was off like a shot.
Gunther cursed under his breath as he pulled out his cavalry carbine and headed out for the mustering area. He hated fighting on foot, but it was the only way to synchronize with the infantry assault. "There's going to be hell to pay for this. . ."
Kasu peered over the top of the trench, scanning the pass ahead for any sign of Imperials. A crash-building course lasting the last few days had left him sleepy, but also tense. All the same, six of Gatz's contraptions had been built, and were now scattered throughout the 57th's lines.
"Any sign of 'em?" Gatz said, looking up from the floor of the trench where he had been sleeping.
"No. And what's more, the boys are nervous. We might have slowed them down a little, but there's still got to be at least a thousand of 'em out there."
"Assuming there are only a thousand, they have us about four to one," the engineer said after a quick mental calculation. "That's not so bad; we might lick 'em yet, 'specially with these," he said patting his creation sitting in the trench next to him.
"The sergeant said, 'at least'," Major Weber said, jumping down into the trench. "I agreed to this since it was the only way we might even possibly get out of this alive, but if it doesn't work, there's going to be a hell to pay."
Gatz leaned back against the trench after jumping to his feet at hearing the major's voice. "You have to stop doing that sir," he said reproachfully. "Besides, it'll work. I've tested these a dozen times each. As long as the men keep their act together, they'll multiply our rifle's effect by a hundred, guaranteed."
Kasu grunted as he turned back to the pass. "You sound like a salesman, Gatz. . . They're coming!"
Ehren Gunther slogged along in the ranks alongside five hundred dismounted cavalrymen, all of whom were rather chagrined at having to actually fight on foot.
"Give me a horse any day over this mess," Czherny complained, mopping at his brow. "How the infantry deal with it, I don't know." One of the XIII's riflemen turned and grinned at this remark. "Why, we've barely marched two miles and we're nearly there. You should see some of the long marches we have to do."
The cavalry sergeant shook his head in disbelief. "Unbelievable." He craned his head to watch the cavalry reserve riding along after them, with each trooper leading an extra horse or two. "Why couldn't we just ride there, then get off?"
Gunther sighed. "Because it would have taken too long to do it and we would have been vulnerable during the change." He had explained the reasons at least half a dozen times during the march, but various cavalrymen kept coming up and asking.
All conversation petered off as the head of the column wheeled around a bend in the pass, bringing the Darcsen works into view. The assault moved much more slowly than the disaster the day before; the infantry shook themselves out into a block the width of the canyon, then waited.
The four Imperial field pieces the force had brought along set up on the flanks of the block and began bombarding the Gallian emplacements. Gunther clicked his tongue between his teeth. Guns were in demand on the banks of the Vasel to keep the Gallian heads down, so the artillery section had been precariously undersized. He leaned over, whispering into Czherny's ear.
"At this rate, those Darcsens are going to be digging trenches faster than we can blow holes in them." Apparently Zeichmeister agreed; the guns fell silent after a mere half hour bombardment, and the infantry began probing forward.
"Alright boys, let's go!" Gunther shouted to his men, waving them after the infantry. The Imperials closed the gap, stopping at the 300 yard mark to loose a volley at the Gallian works.
Gunther brought his troopers into the line alongside the XIII, unleashing another wall of lead at the Darsen line. A round cracked as it sped past his ear; he ducked instinctively at the sound. He shuddered at the close call, working the carbine's action and firing a defiant shot at the Gallians to pay them back for the scare.
A minute later, it happened again, followed by another and another. Wondering if the Darcsens had noticed that he was an officer and had decided to try and eliminate him, an honor he could do without, he looked up and down the line. What he saw made him wish he hadn't. Men were starting to go down on all sides, their screams renting the air.
Men were starting to cower and edge backwards. If this continued, they would lose all trace of momentum, and with their disadvantage in firepower, that could spell doom for the Imperials. Before that, he had to figure out why this miserable outpost had such a huge advantage in volume of fire. "Keep moving!" he shouted, grabbing a nearby sergeant. After some painful minutes of enduring the punishing fire, the bugle rang out, signaling a charge. Despite the men's visible fear, every man obeyed and the line picked itself up, moving out at a steady clip.
However, they only made it about a third of the distance before Gallian bullets began to bite in earnest, and the assault ground to a halt. Gunther cursed, squinting at the enemy line. With a start, he noted that the flash and smoke from the galling fire was grouped around two or three points. "Volley guns?" the cavalryman muttered.
Czherny struggled over to him, shouting over the gun's endless roar. "We can't stay here sir! Whatever those things are, they're tearing us up!"
Gunther looked about just in time to see the XIII's color party go down within seconds of each other. He gritted his teeth. "Bugler, blow Retreat." The unfamiliar words tasted bad in his mouth, like meat that had gone foul. As the bugle sounded the mournful notes, the Darcsens cheered. The fire, if possible grew even hotter, cutting down more of Gunther's men from behind. The retreat turned into a rout, with some of Gunther's men throwing away their rifles to run the faster, to his eternal shame.
The cavalrymen slowed to a halt near the reserve, panting. Swinging himself onto his horse, Gunther took a quick head count. Shit! At his best guess, he had little over six hundred and fifty troopers left, with maybe a handful of the XIII still on their feet. He considered.
"What are your orders sir?" Staff Sergeant Czherny asked, now also back in the saddle.
"We can't win this battle on foot," he muttered. "We just tried that with more men, and look what we got for it." He looked up abruptly. "Feldwebel, did you get a clear look at what those things were?"
Czherny considered for a moment. "I can't say so, sir. Whatever they were, they've got at least as much range on them as our rifles, and they fire ungodly fast."
"Hmm. How fast would you say?"
"Maybe as fast a few dozen of these," the underofficer said, pointing at the lever-action rifle in the scabbard on his saddle.
"Mm-hm," Gunther thought, still ruminating. "And would you say that our men could close the distance fast enough for us to be past those guns and still have enough men to fight?"
Czherny paused and looked over the remains of the cavalry. "I suppose so, sir. If the guns have to reload, we might have a chance. Our losses would be heavy to say the least though."
"My thoughts exactly, Feldwebel. Back in the Empire, I was able to see a clever contraption the Imperial armorers had come up with. It was an artillery carriage with a few dozen rifle barrels on it." Gunther paused for thought. "I don't consider it inconceivable that the Gallians have come up with the same idea. If you fired one barrel at a time, you might get results like we saw out there."
"And if you have a dozen rifle barrels, you need to reload all of them!" Czherny exclaimed, warming to the idea. "If we can weather the first bit, we can probably get to those guns and take them like any artillery piece."
"Exactly." Gunther beamed at his sergeant's astuteness.
The underofficer wheeled his horse around and looked about for the musician. "Bugler, blow, Mount!"
The remnants of the II Imperial Cavalry swung as one man into the saddle, fired by the knowledge that there was a way to hit back at the withering fire.
"Charge!" Gunther spurred his mount forward with the rest of his men as the bugle sang out the notes. The cavalry officer looked up the line, watching the guidon bobbing in the ranks. Good, good. Everything was looking well. Men were starting to fall as the fire started afresh, but the II was closing the distance fast enough to reach the line with little difficulties. Gunther reached down and pulled out his cavalry saber, savagely anticipating the chaos he would wreak among the Darcsen soldiers.
Then a horse's leg broke, the sickening crack and scream audible above even the thunder of the Gallian guns. Gunther's head whipped around in time to see both horse and rider describe a neat half-cartwheel before falling to the side and being trampled by their oncoming fellows. The officer stared at the spot where the two had disappeared is disbelief. Cavalry horses were trained very demandingly; Gunther could not remember something like this happening during the entirety of his five years in the cavalry.
Before Ehren could wrap his head fully around how rare such accidents were, another horse fell as its leg gave out with a snap. More men and horses were going down the whole length of the line as the charge slowed, then stopped.
As the cavalry milled about in confusion, Gunther's eyes suddenly narrowed. Not a foot away from him, there was a small hole about a foot across, thinly covered with grass, terminating in a sharp wooden spike. Around him, troopers were cursing and screaming maledictions in the general direction of the enemy lines as they discovered the same thing.
If things had ended there, they would have been bad enough. Instead, they got worse. A pair of the fearsome repeaters the Darcsens had abruptly opened up on the cavalry's flanks, pouring enfilading fire into the confused mass.
Gunther cursed horribly as he fought his mount's head down and tried to reform the line. "Come on, lads! Charge 'em!" The charge proved to be a sad shadow of its former self as the cavalrymen swerved wildly to avoid fresh holes in the ground, grinding forward with none of their former dash and vigor.
Ehren heard his horse scream in agony as its foot plunged into another hole in the ground. He jumped clear of his mount, watching the attack fall to pieces around him.
This was like one of the scenes of hell painted by Yggdist priests in their temples. Men and horses screamed and fell and died all around as the pitiless fire went on and on.
Waving his sword in desperation, he ran forward, intending to rally his men or die trying.
Then he was on his knees himself, clutching at the hole in his leg and howling like a rabid wolf. He heard more than felt the impact of a hoof on the back of his head as his world flamed red, then black as the ground rushed up to meet him.
Kasu worked the crank handle on the mechanism in front of him as Gatz dumped cartridges into the hopper on the top to feed the gun's voracious appetite for ammunition. Multiple barrels spun about the central axle as they continued their endless roar.
In a sort of fascinated horror, Kasu watched the scene before him through the flame from the gun's muzzle. The Imperial cavalry that had seemed so invincible until now fell in droves, most dying before getting anywhere near the Gallian earthworks. Alongside the repeaters, dozens of rifles barked, adding to the storm of metal being poured on the horrified Imperials.
Finally, like the Darcsens before them, the Imperials found that some fires were too galling to bear. The pitiful remnants of what had been the II Imperial Cavalry staggered out of the fight, some running, others simply throwing aside their rifles and raising their hands.
Kasu stopped turning as the rest of the fire died away. "Goddamn," he said, half in wonder and half in a strange sort of pity for the Imperials. "We actually broke 'em."
"Damn straight we broke 'em," Gatz said happily. "Now we'll pick up the pieces."