Fortune's stroke b-4 Page 15

  Here goes, thought Belisarius.

  He gave the signal. Again, the cornicens blew. As he turned back to face the enemy, Belisarius saw small figures on nearby hilltops frantically waving banners. The Pathan scouts had caught sight of the new Roman unit surging forward, and were signaling Damodara.

  Too late.

  Belisarius took a deep breath, and gave a small prayer for the soul of a man he had never met, and never would. A general of a future that would never be. A man he didn't much care for, as a human being, but who had been one of history's greatest generals.

  May your soul rest in peace, wherever it is, Iron Duke. I hope this works as well for me as it did for you at Busaco.

  Aide's words, when they came, surprised Belisarius. He had been half-expecting some muttered reproaches. Something to the effect that Wellington's men could fire three volleys a minute; or that Wellington had the massive fortifications of the Lines of Torres Vedras to fall back on; or even-Aide had a bit of the pedant in him-that the title "Iron Duke" was an anachronism, in this context. The nickname was political, not military. It had been given to Prime Minister Wellington by English commoners, years after the fall of Napoleon, when he responded to a mob breaking his windows by installing iron shutters on his mansion in London.

  But all that came, instead, was reassurance.

  It will. The reverse-slope tactic was Wellington's signature. It worked at Salamanca, too. And even against Napoleon at Waterloo.

  Belisarius was grateful for that quiet voice of confidence. He needed it. This battle was shaping up to be the worst fight of his life, rather than the simple cut-and-run he had anticipated. Once again, he had underestimated the Rajputs.

  The musketeers reached the crest of the pass, and leveled their handcannons at the Ye-tai storming forward. Belisarius rose to join in his world's first use of a musket volley in battle, but not before giving himself a small curse.

  Don't ever do that again, you jackass. Just because you've got brains, and a friend who can show you the future, don't ever forget that other men have brains too. And damned good ones, with the will to match.

  The muskets roared, all across the line. Instantly, the crest of the pass was shrouded in gunsmoke. It was impossible to see more than a few feet through those acrid billows. Impatiently, while his musketeers went through the practiced drill with their clumsy muzzle loaders, Belisarius waited for the smoke to clear.

  There was a good breeze coming through the pass. The clouds of gunsmoke were swept away within seconds. And Belisarius, seeing the havoc wreaked by a thousand.80-caliber smoothbores firing at close range, felt himself relax. Just a bit. The Ye-tai army was like a bull, half-stunned by a hammer blow between the eyes.

  He raised his eyes, staring across the mounded heaps of Ye-tai corpses to his opponent's distant pavilion. Belisarius had just sent his own message-to himself, as well as Damodara. Reminding them both that if Belisarius had no monopoly on intelligence, neither did he have a monopoly on overconfidence.

  And don't underestimate me again, Lord of Malwa, he thought. Better yet-do underestimate me again.

  The Ye-tai, stubborn and courageous, were pushing forward. They clambered up and over the corpses and hideously shattered bodies of their wounded comrades, roaring with rage and hefting their swords. The Ye-tai were no longer trying to maintain formation. They were just a mob of enraged berserks, burning to reach their tormentors. The bull was half-stunned, but it was still a bull.

  The second line of musketeers stepped forward and fired. While the smoke cleared, the third line took their place. Behind, the first line had already finished reloading and was preparing for a second volley.

  It was true that Belisarius' musketeers, with their awkward matchlocks, could not match Wellington's three volleys a minute. The guns themselves were not much better than sixteenth-century arquebusses. John of Rhodes, working with sixth-century technology, couldn't possibly match the precision of nineteenth-century gunmaking. But Belisarius had all of Aide's encyclopedic knowledge to draw upon, so he had been able to leap over centuries of military experimentation in other ways. It was within the capacity of the Roman Empire to manufacture the prepared cartridges which Gustavus Adolphus had introduced. The muzzle loaders themselves were clumsy things, but there was nothing clumsy about the way they were being used.

  His musketeers couldn't manage more than one volley a minute, but Belisarius could rely on that rate. And, as the smoke cleared, and he saw the carnage which the second volley had created, Belisarius knew that would be enough.

  Wellington's reverse-slope tactic depended as much on the shock of surprise as it did on rates of fire, said Aide.

  Belisarius nodded. An enemy storming forward in expectation of furious victory had its spirits shattered, along with its bodies, when it was struck down by a hail of bullets. Not even warriors like the Ye-tai could withstand such a blow.

  No more than Napoleon's Imperial Guard at Waterloo.

  The third line stepped forward, their weapons ready. There was no need for plunging fire, now. The vanguard elements of the Ye-tai had reached the crest and were not more than ten yards from the trenches. Felix Chalcenterus, the executive officer, was in charge of fire control. He called out the orders, in sure sequence.

  Level! The guns came up like so many blunt lances.

  There was no command to aim. Belisarius' musketeers, like Wellington's, were simply trained to fire in the general direction of the enemy. The weapons were so inaccurate, beyond fifty yards, that marksmanship was pointless.

  Fire! The handcannons erupted. Another cloud of smoke obscured everything.

  Obscured sight, that is, not sound. Belisarius could hear the bullets slamming into the struggling mass of Ye-tai. The sounds had a metallic edge, where bullets impacted armor, but he knew the armor was irrelevant. At that range, the murderous lead pellets punched through the finest plate armor as if it were mere cloth. The muzzle velocity of a matchlock arquebus was extremely high-supersonic, more often than not. The high-velocity rifles which would replace them in the future would do no more than double that, even after centuries of arms development and refinement. An arquebus' round shot lost its muzzle velocity very quickly, of course-far sooner than the spinning bullets of rifles. But at this range, the heavy-caliber arquebusses were probably even more effective than rifles.

  The shrieks of wounded Ye-tai began to fill the pass, like the wail of a giant banshee. The Ye-tai were tough-as tough as any soldiers Belisarius had ever seen. But no soldiers are that tough.

  The bull was on its knees, now. Bellowing, still, but dying for all that.

  Their bloody work done, the third line retired. Even with the breeze, the pass was still half-obscured with smoke. But Belisarius could hear Felix commanding the first line back to the front. Chalcenterus' voice still had the timbre of his youth, but the voice itself was relaxed and confident.

  I didn't make any mistake there, at least, Belisarius consoled himself. Felix had first caught the general's eye at the battle of the villa near Anatha, the previous year. Belisarius had been impressed by the Syrian soldier's alert calmness when the Roman army was subjected to its first experience with rocket fire. He had kept an eye on the youth, and seen to his rapid promotion.

  The first line, back in position, went through the sequence. Another roar of handcannon fire. The pass was completely shrouded in smoke. Even with their clumsy weapons, the men could still keep up a rate of fire that outmatched the breeze.

  The sound of bullets slamming into the enemy had a sodden quality, now. Belisarius was thankful that he couldn't actually see the results. This was sheer slaughter. He knew that the rear elements of the Ye-tai would already be staggering back in defeat. But the barbarian soldiers trapped at the front were helpless. Immobile targets. The bull was no longer even bellowing. It was just a dying beast, dumbly waiting for another blow of the hammer.

  The second line returned, and the blow came. Belisarius heard Gregory calling out an order. His p
ikemen had been in position since the first line of musketeers stepped forward, ready to fend off any Ye-tai who made it through the gunfire. But they had not even been needed. Gregory had obviously come to the conclusion that they wouldn't be, and so he had called on his men to use their grenades.

  The pikemen lowered their twelve-foot spears and plucked grenades from their bandoliers. Each pikeman carried only two of the devices. More would have impeded them in performing their principal duty. But these were special grenades. The pikemen had been equipped with the new grenades which John of Rhodes had developed-the ones with impact fuses.

  The grenades had a simple "potato-masher" design. A strip of cloth was attached to the butt of the wooden handle. Like the cloth strips often attached to javelins, it would stabilize the grenade in flight and ensure that the weapon would strike in the proper orientation to set off the fuse. There was no need to fumble with a striker, or cut a fuse to proper length. Each pikeman simply yanked out the pin which armed the device, and sent it sailing down the slope.

  The grenades disappeared into the clouds of smoke which were wafting down the pass. Before they hit, Felix had ordered another round of gunfire. Not more than a second after that roaring lightning, Belisarius heard the sharp claps of the grenades exploding down the slope. The sounds harmonized like music composed by a maniac. A homicidal maniac. Those Ye-tai at the rear, trying to retreat, were being savaged by the grenades even while their comrades at the front were being hammered into pulp by the guns.

  For an instant, Belisarius was seized by a savage urge to order a countercharge. That had been his plan from the beginning. The Ye-tai were already broken-as badly as any army could be, driven back from an assault. A rush of pikemen now would complete their destruction. The fierce army which had charged up the slope not minutes earlier would be as thoroughly beaten as any army in human history.

  Mark and Gregory were at his side now, awaiting the order. Their faces were tense and eager. They knew as well as Belisarius that they were on the verge of total victory.

  Fiercely, Belisarius restrained himself. Yes, the enemy was beaten here. But-

  Distantly, he could hear wails from another direction. To his left. Wails of pain, and the steel clash of weapons. He couldn't see anything through the wafting clouds of gunsmoke, but he knew the Rajputs were already hammering his left flank.

  All ferocity and sense of satisfaction fled. His counterstroke at the saddle had worked, just as it had worked in another future for a man named Arthur Wellesley. But battles are rarely neat and tidy affairs which go according to plan. Not against well-led enemies, at least.

  This battle could still wind up a disaster, came Aide's forceful thought.

  Belisarius had won the struggle at the center, true. But if he didn't withdraw his army quickly, and in good order-which was the most difficult maneuver of all, in the face of the enemy-Sanga and the Rajputs would roll up his flank.

  "No," he commanded, pointing toward the slope of the saddle to their left. Only the crest of the pass was still visible, due to the gunsmoke, but they could see hundreds of Rajput cavalry pouring across the terrain. Ten times that number would be hidden in the clouds below, on the lower part of the slope. Twenty times, more likely. There had been at least ten thousand Rajputs massed on the Malwa right, under Sanga's command.

  Mark began to argue-respectfully, but still vehemently, but Gregory restrained him with a firm shake of the shoulder. The Thracian cataphract was older than the Syrian, more of a veteran-and more familiar with Belisarius.

  "Shut up, youngster," he growled. "The general's right. If we charge down that slope, we'll be completely out of position when the Rajputs hit us. They'll turn us into sausage."

  Belisarius didn't pick his officers for reticence and timidity. The young Syrian flushed, a bit, from Gregory's rebuke, but plowed on. "The Greeks'll hold them! Those are Cyril's men-and Agathius', before him. The same cataphracts who broke the Malwa at Anatha, and then at-"

  "There are only three thousand of them, Mark," said Belisarius mildly. He wasn't going to spend more than a few seconds, arguing with a subordinate in the middle of a battle. But he was prepared to spend those seconds. There was no other way to train good officers.

  "They're facing four times their number-probably five," he continued. "They're splendid troops, yes. But they don't have as good a position as we did here in the center. There's no one protecting their flank. Sanga will just send enough men to keep them pinned while he sweeps around them. He won't even try to crush the Greeks, not now. He'll bypass them and fall on us."

  He pointed to the line of musketeers. The men had ceased firing now, and the pikemen had used up all their grenades. The center of the battlefield was almost quiet, except for the cries of wounded Ye-tai.

  "How do you expect to form a defensive line against that charge-here? Straddling a mountain pass, with the enemy coming down the slope?"

  Mark fell silent. His face still had a stubborn look to it, but Belisarius knew that the young Syrian was-not convinced, perhaps, but ready to obey.

  Satisfied with that, Belisarius turned to Gregory and said: "Fall back southwest, toward the river. Upstream." He pointed to a location where the narrow river below the pass broadened a bit. "Where Vasudeva's guarding the fords. Set your men, and the musketeers, to hold the river after I get the rest of the army across."

  Gregory nodded. A moment later, he and Mark were shouting commands to their men.

  And now, thought Belisarius, looking toward his left flank, I've got to try to get those men out of here. Which is not going to be easy. Sanga will be like a tiger, with me trying to pry meat from his jaws.

  Belisarius heard Valentinian and Anastasius stirring behind him. As the general's personal bodyguards, they hadn't been expecting to do much in this current battle beyond looking grim and fearsome. But they were veterans, and could recognize a battle plan in tatters when they saw one.

  "Looks like we're going to have to work, after all," groused Valentinian. Anastasius was silent. "What's the matter, large one?" came Valentinian's sarcastic voice. "No philosophical motto for the occasion? No words of wisdom?"

  "Don't need 'em," rumbled Anastasius in reply. "Even a witless weasel can see when he's in a fight for his life."

  Chapter 13

  By the time Belisarius reached his left flank, where the Greeks were holding back the Rajputs, his bucellarii were already arriving. He was deeply thankful for their speed in responding to his orders, but he took a moment to give himself a mental pat on the back.

  His tactics for this battle were at least half ruined, but Belisarius thought he could still pull his army out before disaster struck. If he did, it would be because of his past foresight. His Thracian cataphracts rode the finest heavy chargers in the world. Half the money for those magnificent and expensive warhorses was provided by Belisarius out of his own purse. Only the best steeds in the world, coming from halfway down the slope and carrying their own armor and armored cataphracts, could have reached the crest so quickly.

  And they would be needed. It took only the sight of Cyril's exhausted face for Belisarius to know that his Greek cataphracts were on the verge of collapse. They'd held off the Rajput charges, so far. But they would break under the next one, or the one after that. Sanga had taken full advantage of his numerical superiority on the Roman left. His Rajputs outnumbered the Greeks five or six to one, and Sanga had sent them up in swirling waves-one after another, with hardly a moment's pause.

  The Rajput king had not made the mistake of trying to hammer the Greeks under. The cataphracts were more heavily armed and armored than Rajputs, and they were fighting dismounted from behind fieldworks. If the Rajputs had tried a simple and direct assault, their numbers would have been nullified by the inevitable jamming up at the fieldworks. Instead, Sanga had used his own variation of "Parthian tactics," except that his sallies were as much lance-and-sword work as archery. Cut, slash, and whirl away. Repeat; repeat; repeat; repeat; repeat.

/>   With his advantage in numbers, Sanga had been able to rotate his units. His cavalrymen had had time to rest and tend to their wounded. But for the Greeks defending, there had been no respite at all. It was like holding back waves from the ocean. As soon as one ebbed, another came.

  The best soldiers in the world are only flesh and blood, and muscle. The Greeks were so weary that it was an effort to even lift a sword-much less swing it properly. Men at that stage of exhaustion are almost helpless against a good opponent. Lance thrusts strike home, that could have been parried by fresh arms. Sword strokes kill, that should have been easily deflected with a shield.

  Half the Greeks had dropped their shields, by now. They needed both hands to hold their weapons. And the hands themselves, often enough, were trembling with fatigue.

  "Get them out, Cyril!" called Belisarius. "Pull them out of the fieldworks-now." He twisted in his saddle and pointed to the river below. Vasudeva and his Kushans were clearly visible, in well-ordered formations, guarding the fords.

  "Get them across the river," he commanded. "Don't even try for an orderly retreat. Just get them mounted and down there, as fast as you can. The Syrians will cover your flank and the musketeers will hold the river against any Malwa pursuit."

  Cyril reached between the flanges of his helmet with a thumb and two fingers, wringing the sweat off his brow and down his nose. He staggered half a pace.

  "The Rajputs'll be coming again," he started to protest. "In a minute, no more. You'll need us-"

  "I'll take care of the Rajputs with my Thracians," snapped Belisarius. "Do as I say, Cyril. Get your men out of here!"

  The Greek commander stopped arguing. As Cyril began calling out orders to his men, Belisarius took the time for a quick study of the enemy.

  The Rajputs massed on the northern flank of the pass had paused in their attacks, he saw. They had seen the Thracians coming, and were taking the time themselves to gauge the new situation. The reinforcements would strengthen the Roman left, but-