Devil's Due (Destroyermen #12)(71)
“Your Marines, Major Blas, and Captain Ixtli and his Ocelomeh, consider you just as important as Sergeant Koratin insists I am to the Vengadores. It’s true your presence in the line inspires them, but your recklessness unnerves them and they fear for you. It was they who asked me to encourage you to protect yourself.” She nodded at the next line of stacked timber and deadfall. “It’s only a short distance. They will hear your orders quite well.”
Blas was stunned. She hadn’t considered that. Most important, however, Sister Audry meant what she’d said. If Blas stayed, so would she, and her death would be Blas’s fault. After a final glance at the enemy, now little more than a hundred tails away, pausing, preparing for the command to raise their own weapons, she looked Sister Audry in the eye. “Commence firing!” she roared. Even in the misty morning, her voice carried in that singular way Lemurians had, and the command was immediately repeated by officers up and down the line. Rifle and musket companies fired crashing volleys and the twelve guns of her two batteries slammed out buzzing swarms of canister amid great, choking clouds of dense white smoke. Screams echoed back from the enemy. “Cap-i-taan Aalis,” Blas shouted to her XO of the 2nd, “carry on. I’ll be just back here behind the fallback line, chaatting with the col-nol.”
“Ay, ay, Major!” The voice sounded triumphant. A heavy returning volley of musket balls churned the damp earth, sent splinters flying from the barricade, and caused a few screeching cries of pain. Most vrooped by overhead. With all the mist and lingering smoke, their position would be as invisible to the enemy as the Doms now were to them. Through it all, Sister Audry never flinched, her smile never faltered. “Okaay, Col-nol,” Blas said stiffly. “After you.”
Volley after volley thundered in the tight forest track, and even after the sun burned the mist away, choking smoke hid the combatants from one another. Blas imagined that if a plane did fly over, the battle would be easy to mark, simply by the rising smoke. The noise, unable to disperse, was tremendous, and her ears ached with the steady, cracking pressure of the heavily charged six-pounders. The mortars were behind them and they popped and popped, their bombs whooshing high in the air before falling so close. Screams accompanied their detonations—they’d been ranged and sited well—and many exploded in the trees, spraying blizzards of splinters into the enemy. But the Doms just stood and took it, maintaining a withering fire in return. Blas had expected them to charge almost immediately, to overwhelm the breastworks with sheer numbers, but that hadn’t happened. It made no sense.
Teniente Pacal, one of Garcia’s company commanders whom Blas considered a friend, hurried to join them, running low. Their hiding place, as Blas regarded it, was near the center of the line and had become, essentially, the division HQ—if one could describe a small group huddled in the damp soil behind fallen trees in such a way. Pacal saluted as he slid to his knees in front of them. “Capitan Garcia’s adoration, Santa Madre . . .” he began.
“Stop calling me that!” Sister Audry interrupted.
“Of course, Santa Madre. Capitan Garcia begs to report: our weapons do not miss fire as much, now the mist is gone, but the ammunition, it runs low. He wonders if this might be part of the enemy’s plan.”
Captain Ixtli joined them as well, walking upright. He was very young, probably twenty, but very self-assured. He seemed to be having the time of his life—and maybe he was. His Ocelomeh had suffered terribly at the hands of the Doms, and now to kill so many so easily made his eyes flash with satisfaction. He barely seemed to notice when a musket ball snatched at his tattered sleeve. “We are not so low on ammunition,” he said. “My people are not as well trained as yours.” He nodded at Pacal. “But this is not what I expected,” he confessed.
“I’ve begun to ask myself the same as Teniente Pacaal, Col-nol,” Koratin admitted to Sister Audry. “Like the Grik have done, they sacrifice warriors to leave us defenseless.”
Blas had been peering over the breastworks, as far as she thought she could get away with without earning a gentle reprimand. It was true they were using a lot of precious ammunition they couldn’t easily replace, and her 2nd Marines, with their breech-loading Allin-Silvas, were almost dry after nearly two hours of constant firing. Two hours . . . So, Koratin’s theory made sense—if the enemy knew how far out on the logistical limb they were. But if they knew that, they also had to know how small their force was. Why not just mob them under? She could see Doms out there as the smoke eddied, still roughly a hundred tails away. Gaps constantly opened in their lines and bodies were literally heaped at their feet. But the gaps closed and they continued firing. They were taking a grim toll in return and there were many dead and wounded behind the breastworks, but it seemed insane . . . She turned to Ixtli. “And our scouts still see no evidence the Doms are sneaking through the woods on our flaanks, like we’ve done to them?”
“No, Major Blas,” he said, bowing respectfully. He treated her with the same reverence the Vengadores showed Sister Audry, mostly because of what she and her people looked like. That made Blas uncomfortable. She looked at Sister Audry, speaking loudly over the battle. “Don Her-naan wouldn’t waste his finest troops just to soak up bullets,” she said, thinking her way through it. “He’d use reg-laars. They’d take it awhile, then break an’ he’d send up more until they did the same. If he was just tryin’ to empty our guns, he’d do that, then send Blood Drinkers to wipe us out. But Blood Drinkers’ll stand from start to finish until we kill every daamn one, if they’re told. Why waste ’em?”