Ahead — ahead and to the right of Raj's viewpoint — men in blue uniforms and bowl helmets bent over the curious chariotlike device Raj called a cannon.
"Juicy target," one of them said, grinning and spitting through brown irregular teeth. He stood aside and gripped a cord that ran to the rear of the cannon. "Nine hundred meters, shrapnel shell. . fire!"
Adrian blinked and nodded, smiling internally. A few of his slingers gave him odd looks, but it was only to be expected that a man who made miracles would be. . odd, occasionally.
"Fuses ready!" The fuse men whirled the rods that held the slowmatch, and trails of bitter blue smoke cut through the air. "Light!"
Each touched the slowmatch to the fuse of a grenade, and the cords sputtered into life. There was a gingerly care to the gestures that put the round brown pottery shapes into the pockets of the slings; the fuses were supposed to be seven-second, but they weren't entirely reliable yet.
"Targets—"
The slingers raised their staff-slings, eyes picking out spots in the onrushing formations. The snarling fangs of the velipads were clearly visible now, and the shouting contorted faces behind the bar visors of the helmets.
"Loose!"
The slings had yard-long wooden handles, and the silk cords at their ends were as long again. Each man swept staff and cords around in a full circle that put the strength of their shoulders and torso into the cast, not simply their arms. The one-pound bomblets didn't have the blurring speed a lead shot did; those almond-shaped bits of metal could punch through a shield and kill the man behind it through a cuirass. The grenades did snap out quickly enough to make men look up and raise their shields.
Crack. Crack. Crackcrackcrackcrack—
Vicious red snapping sparks, faint in the midday sun, visible only against the puffs of dirty gray-black smoke. The velipads reared and whistle-screamed at the noise and the unfamiliar sulfur stink. What couldn't be seen or heard were the fragments of hard ceramic and lead shot that smashed out too fast for the eye to catch, and the shockwaves of the grenades. Then men and beasts screamed as fragments gouged into flesh. The order of the charge disappeared into sudden chaos. An armored man and heavy war-velipad weighed over a ton; at a full gallop they couldn't turn swiftly, or overleap the writhing heap of mangled flesh that suddenly appeared at the footclaws of the mount. The riders' efforts to turn their beasts simply added to the chaos as clawed feet skidded out from under the torquing weight that hindered them. Worse, the lancers further back in the formation could see nothing within the dust cloud ahead of them, and spurred their velipads forward.
And the second volley of grenades burst over the heads of the milling, thrashing mass. More velipads went down, to add to the bone-breaking weights rolling and kicking in the tangled barrier of flesh. Another volley, and another. .
"They're running, by the Maiden!" Esmond shouted.
"That they are," Adrian replied, grinning, slapping him on his corseleted shoulder. He carefully avoided looking at the killing ground before him.
* * *
"D. . ddd. . demonic thunder!" the courier stuttered, his face the color of the whey that dripped from the pans when the dairywoman squeezed the curds to make cheese.
"Control yourself!" Justiciar Demansk snapped, shading his eyes with a hand; when that proved inadequate he swung up onto his velipad and stood in the stirrups.
Something had happened to his cavalry, and that was a fact. There was a huge cloud of dust; extraordinary noises were coming out of it. . and so were Southron mercenaries, some of them lashing their velipads, others lumbering on foot, all of them in utter screaming witless panic.
"Runner," he said. "If those imbeciles attempt to interfere with the formation, give them a volley of darts."
An order which his regular infantry would follow with zeal and enthusiasm. Nobody liked Southrons.
Demansk's eyes scanned as much of the battlefield as he could see. "And a general order," he went on. "The enemy has some sort of incendiary weapon." The pirates of the Isles used those, naphtha and seabeast oil and quicklime, compounds that would burn even under water. "Remind the officers that it can't do more than kill them."
One could get away with a good deal in the Confederacy, in these degenerate days. Even his own class was not safe from the rot anymore. But running away in battle wasn't among the pardonable offenses, thank the gods.
* * *
"Here it comes," Adrian said, licking dry lips.
look for a line of retreat, Center's passionless voice said.
What?
Do it, lad. This is a disaster waiting to happen, Raj confirmed.
"Esmond," Adrian whispered. "We should be preparing a line of retreat."
His brother looked back at him, his eyes sapphires in his dust-caked face. "Adrian," he said, "there are times when I think the Gray-Eyed gave you the general's gifts. All right, let's see."
He thought for a moment, called a pair of his underofficers, gave low-voiced instructions. They trotted off to the rear.
The Emeralds were on the right of the rebel position, at the junction between Audsley's brigade of fully-equipped troops and the shapeless clot of the volunteers. The dust had died down a little, and out of it Demansk's army came marching. Light sparkled and rippled down their line, sunlight off the points of the darts they held in their right hands, off helmet crests and standards and the gray gleam of oiled links of mail.
"My, aren't they pretty," Esmond said.
Adrian found himself joining in the chuckle that ran down the ranks of the Emeralds. I wonder if the rest of them are as nervous as I am, he thought.
Most of them, Raj murmured. The ones who aren't are stupid, overconfident, or very experienced.
Adrian licked his lips, tasted the sweat running down his face from the light helmet, and spoke: "Pick your targets. Aim for officers and standards — standards, and the ones with the transverse helmet crests. Wait for it, wait for it."
* * *
"Now!"
The slingers were loosing as fast as their loaders could put lighted grenades into the pockets of their weapons. The projectiles arched out towards the first line of Confed regulars, and eyes went up nervously under the helmet brims. Horns screamed harsh bronze music, and the whole formation speeded up into a trot — not a solid line, but a sinuous bronze-and-steel snake that advanced in pounding unison, keeping its alignment across the slight irregularities of the barley fields.
Crack. Crack. Crackcrackcrackcrack—
The bombs exploded, and a two-hundred-yard stretch of the Confed line vanished in smoke and malignant red snaps. Screams sounded louder than the explosions, as sharp metal and ceramic sliced into human flesh.
. . and out of the smoke marched the survivors, still moving at the same steady trot. Men double-timed up from the second and third ranks, and the whole formation rippled and closed as the gaps were plugged and the replacements effortlessly fell into alignment. Adrian could hear the harsh clipped commands of the officers and file closers, but no screams apart from the wounded men — and not all of those.
"Shit," Esmond swore feelingly. Then louder: "What a target! Give 'em more, lads."
Adrian whipped his own staff-sling around his head, aiming for a standard in the fourth rank of the nearest Confed battalion borne by a man with the tanned head of a direbeast over his helmet. The bomb flew faultlessly, exploding at waist level before the standard-bearer had time to do more than flinch. Smoke kindly hid what happened next, but he could see the pole with the upright gilded hand totter backwards and fall. Then the standard rose again; a trooper had scooped it up, bracing it on his hip as he trotted forward.
Esmond's head was whipping back and forth as he tried to keep the whole field under observation. He fell back half a dozen steps.
"The battalion in front of us is edging right," he yelled to his brother. "But any second now—"
"Vanbert! Vanbert!"
The shout was loud, and the rebel regulars to their left closed formation and raised their shields in a sudden bristling of vermillion-dyed leather and brass, turning their formation into some huge scaled dragon. The volunteers to the Emerald's right tried to do the same — most of them had shields, at least — but lacked the instinctive cohesion of real fighting units.
Ahead the attackers' formation rippled as well. Adrian felt the small hairs along his spine as he realized why; the whole front line was leading with the left foot, getting ready to—
"VANBERT! VANBERT!" the front-line troopers roared, pivoting forward as their throwing arms flashed up.