Serpent Sword: A Steampunk Military Fantasy, page 18
Three hunched figures appeared in the dark, carrying pistols in their right hands and gripping iron chains in their left. The chains led to something else in the darkness, several somethings that hissed ominously.
“Those aren’t dogs,” Harris said. “They’re something else — ”
Whatever the hunchbacks were holding leaped forward, long bodies whipping through the grass. A thick, fetid stench filled Andrew’s nostrils.
Rippers? Did the Blood Alchemy troopers have rippers? No, rippers walked too high. Whatever approached moved low to the ground. What could it –
Serpents of fur and fangs erupted from the grass. Repeaters crackled. That young trooper from Dodd’s poker game went down, a huge mouth engulfing his head.
Dodd himself didn’t have time to react before another creature slammed him into the ground. His forearms barely held its gnashing teeth away from his face.
Fuck! Andrew raised his repeater and pulled the trigger. The first shot missed, but the second shot caught the monster in the back of the head. The damn thing would not die! It dove at Dodd’s face again and again. The latest blow slashed open Dodd’s left cheek.
Andrew put a second bullet into it, then a third. Good Lord above, what does it take to kill one of these things!
Dodd screamed as the big head came down for another bite …
Then came a fourth bullet from another trooper. The beast went limp. Though its blood painted a crimson goatee on his face, Dodd shoved the monster off. He’d barely risen to his knees when a bullet caught him in the shoulder. Blood, bright red in the silver light, flew. Andrew fired into the dark where the monsters had come. One hunched figure fell, then another. Pistols replied to repeaters, but in seconds the night was silent again. Andrew rushed over to where the impact had knocked Dodd onto his ass.
“Did we get them all?” Dodd asked.
Andrew inspected the wound. “Looks like it.” The bullet had cut across the top of his shoulder and didn’t look deep. “Or they’re playing possum. I’ll take a look.”
Andrew looked at the creature he’d killed. It was five or six feet long, brown-furred and with huge eyes glowing green in the moonlight. “Is that a weasel?” He shuddered. Back in Carroll Town, weasels were nasty little bastards that killed chickens. Sometimes they didn’t even eat them, just killed for shits and giggles.
He stepped forward, hoping they’d gotten them all. There were two more, both needing a powerful load of ammunition to kill. Ammunition we can’t fire willy-nilly. Anybody could make rifle bullets, but the precious repeaters didn’t use those.
He looked around. Two dead troopers and another two — besides Dodd — moaning in pain. The big bastards had served their purpose.
Andrew soon found a corpse in gray and blue face down on the ground. Andrew looked closer, then recoiled.
“Hell, sergeant. He does have eyes in the back of his head.” He rolled the dead man onto his back, not even wanting to look anymore. “Did he see all the way around? How would he even sleep?”
Harris glanced at the fallen enemy trooper. “Probably the same way we do.” He shook his head. “Poor bastard.”
Andrew had two minds on that. Someone like that would be pretty damn hard to sneak up on. But what woman would want such a man? His stomach twisted. Was that why the platoon’s few girls had been left behind?
Thunder cracked to the east. It was the other dirigible, wreathed in smoke. Gunfire sparked off its gondola. Harris grinned. “Looks like the enemy’s taken the bait, boys. Let’s go wreck some balloon-poppers. Stay low.”
The men scrambled forward through the grass. The buildings surrounding the mooring tower grew larger, more detailed in the moonlight. They were square, made from sheet metal, and looked slapped together. It wasn’t long before Harris raised his hand again.
Ahead lay a trio of balloon-poppers — long skinny guns pointing skyward from low-slung carriages — but what made Andrew’s gut clench was the pair of wheeled Sawyers between them and their target. Manned, alerted Sawyer guns. He counted the gun crews and their guards, most with ordinary rifles. Heaps of the same sheet metal that made the buildings formed crude barriers, but there were no visible trenches.
They really must not have been here long.
Harris singled out Andrew, Dodd, and a couple other green boys. “Corporal Sutter, you four go left. Get them shooting at you and we’ll flank them.”
“Get them shooting at us?” Dodd whispered. He winced, and it wasn’t just from the wound.
Andrew desperately tried to keep the fear from own his voice. “You heard the sergeant.” The plan made sense, but he sure as shit didn’t want to be the bait for it. “We’ve got repeaters and they’ve mostly got rifles. We can do this.”
Dodd looked from the unyielding sergeant to Andrew and back. He nodded. “Yes, sergeant.”
Andrew led them as directed, hopefully out of the sight. He kept eyes locked on the enemy position the whole time. Although the enemy knelt around their artillery with their guns up, they didn’t seem to see Andrew and his men. “All right,” he hissed. “We can only get this right once.” He shouldered his repeater and aimed for a Sawyer crewman.
Before he could take the shot, an enemy trooper looked right at him. The light glimmered strangely in his eyes, just like those of the damned giant weasels. The man shouted and opened fire. Bullets snapped far too close to Andrew’s bum ear. The Sawyer crew Andrew had targeted started turning the gun. “Hit the ground and shoot!” Andrew shouted. He threw himself down, squeezing the trigger as he did so.
His first shot missed entirely, but it did force the crewman to duck behind the gun. That saved him from the second shot. The Sawyer continued rotating, its barrels like black pits. “The crew! Kill the gun crew!” Why the hell weren’t Harris’s men firing? The attempted surprise had obviously failed.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK. Andrew’s men were all shooting now, bullets bouncing off the heaps of sheet metal or the flat shields bracketing the Sawyer’s barrels. Despite this, the big gun unleashed its fury. Bullets passed over Andrew’s head like a hot scythe. Blood Alchemy troops were firing too. A bullet slashed close by Andrew’s shoulder. Someone screamed.
Whistling overhead heralded explosion behind the enemy position. The blast pushed a balloon-popper forward, knocking an enemy trooper entirely too big to be normal aside before slamming into the sheet-metal barrier.
The other Sawyer crew swung their gun toward Harris’s men, bullets sweeping murderously through the dark. Another monstrous man stepped forward and hurled grenades. An explosion. Screams. Harris’s men were getting it now.
“Dodd, get that big bastard! The rest of you, keep on the Sawyer!”
Then he spotted enemy troopers setting up something behind the Sawyer. Short cylindrical tube — fucking mortar! “Dodd, keep it up on the Sawyer.”
As the others kept their attention on the Sawyer, Andrew knelt and fired on the mortar crew. He dropped one, but the other shoved a shell into the tube. The mortar clunked. Andrew threw himself to the ground, hoping against hope they hadn’t time to aim.
The whistling grew loud as the shell came down …
Instead of one thunderous explosion, there were many small ones. Was that one shell full of grenades? Then he felt heat and caught a harsh chemical scent. Fire was eating the grass behind them.
“Incendiary! They’ve fucking backlit us! Hit the dirt!”
Andrew’s troopers obeyed, barely avoiding the Sawyer’s wrath. Andrew pressed himself as hard as he could against the ground. Other men lurked behind the sheet metal, emerging only to shoot. Bullets cut through the grass around them.
Andrew aimed carefully and fired. One man’s head exploded like a melon struck by a cudgel.
More whistling. Andrew hadn’t seen them loading another shell. This time fire bloomed among the enemy. Both Sawyer guns crumpled and Blood Alchemy troopers flew. Andrew shouted in glee. Beside him, Dodd whooped, then winced again.
The main body of Merrill troopers rushed forward, a few stopping at time to cover the advance. A Blood Alchemy soldier carrying four pistols in long and bony arms contested the advance, but only got one shot off before a head shot ended his misbegotten life.
“Let’s join the party!” Andrew shouted. “I’ll bring up the rear.” As his little detachment ran to join the skirmish line, Andrew kept an eye out for any freaks trying to flank them.
Amid the ruined gun position, Harris drew a heavy-looking pistol from his belt and raised it high. Andrew had never seen such a weapon, and firing it straight up? A deep crack and a second later the sky overhead flashed silver, the unnatural radiance swallowing the moonlight. Every man, building, and blade of grass cast black shadows as the night briefly turned to day.
Andrew’s detachment soon arrived. “Sergeant says to stay low and wait,” Dodd said.
The troopers fanned out, sheltering behind the sheet metal or the ruined Sawyers. Andrew lay on his stomach, repeater in hand, and kept alert.
Whistling filled the air, and Andrew closed his eyes. The ground shook, two hammer-blows rattling the earth. When he opened his eyes, pillars of smoke bracketed the wrecked balloon-poppers.
Then came the whooping and the hollering. Enemy troopers poured forward, preceded by their monstrous weasels. Even as Merrill gunfire cut their fanged vanguard down, the enemy threw grenades.
A few Merrill grenades sent foes sprawling, but there were so many. The green boys scrambled away. A couple managed to shoot and scoot, but others simply skedaddled into the dark. A weasel leaped onto one man’s back and slammed him into the ground. White claws and teeth flashed in the moonlight, sharp edges growing red. Another trooper fell to a maddened weasel, while a third fell to bullets.
“Form!” Zeke shouted from the center of the Merrill line. A quick glimpse saw him batting at fleeing men with his new officer’s saber. A quick blow from the flat was enough to get them turned around, most of the time. One yellowbelly almost got past Zeke, but a well-placed foot sent him sprawling.
“Bullets will kill them as easily as a man!” Zeke snarled. When a weasel leapt after the man who’d tried to skedaddle, Zeke drove the saber deep into one of its huge eyes.
“Get them!” Andrew shouted. He opened up with his repeater, catching the oncoming Blood Alchemy troops in the flank.
One graycoat, who had to be at least seven feet tall and muscled like an ox, pointed their way and roared. Andrew felt his balls pull up. Him, it, whomever that was, made a sound too deep for a normal man. The amount of gunfire Andrew’s way increased.
“They’re getting it from two directions!” Andrew shouted. “Keep shooting!” He aimed at the monstrous man, but a bullet snapped over his head and forced his face into the dirt.
More men in gray coats formed up around the big bastard, hunched men with big weasels on chains and a squat man with three arms, each clutching a revolver in a six-fingered hand. Andrew’s stomach churned. This was going to be bad.
Then gunfire thundered from behind him. Bullets stitched up the beastly man from crotch to skull. He pitched over backward, blood everywhere. Thunder cracked and an explosion of dirt, grass, and blood consumed the knot of troopers around him. Andrew threw a glance over his shoulder.
It was one of their dirigibles! He whooped with glee.
Now it was the Blood Alchemy men’s turn to run. At first they fell back in good order, shooting and scooting, but as those who stopped to fire fell to the dirigible, they routed.
“After them!” Harris shouted. “Cut them down!”
Andrew snapped his repeater up and dropped two fleeing men. Other Merrills joined in even as the dirigible continued its merciless work. Once the men in gray were gone, the dirigible rumbled forward and laid into the airbase itself.
“Come on, boys!” Harris shouted. “Don’t let them have all the fun!”
SMOKE FROM THE looted airbase drowned the stars as it billowed upward. Andrew looked from the gondola window over the inferno and reckoned they were skedaddling not a moment too soon. Even if the enemy hadn’t managed a distress call, the fires would be visible for miles around. In the inferno’s center lay the mooring tower both dirigibles had shot to pieces. They’d be better off melting it down for rail lines than trying to raise it again.
Of the forty troopers aboard the dirigible, the fifteen greenest had stayed behind to provide fire support when the captain ordered the dirigible into the scrap. All were still there, none particularly mussed.
For a moment, Andrew seethed. They could claim to have been part of this victory, but they weren’t there on the ground.
Meanwhile, of the twenty-five who’d fought on foot, seven were laid out in the back of the gondola and another was likely joining them soon. Four more had gotten bullets in arms or legs, wounds that might require amputation. A bunch more had been lightly wounded like Dodd, who was currently getting his shoulder stitched up.
Andrew’s gaze fell on a green boy who wasn’t part of the ground force, this one skinny and red-headed with a thin wisp of a mustache. He leaned against the gondola’s metal wall, eyes closed tightly, and hugged his repeater. His lips were moving, but Andrew couldn’t conjure what he was saying.
Andrew’s heart twisted. He’d hesitated to shoot the fleeing Flesh-Eater back at Carroll Town, and the man-eaters had killed most of the people he’d grown up with. Memories of growing up in the small town on the fringe of the Iron Desert welled up, guilt blowing away anger.
If this boy had killed Blood Alchemy troopers from above, he might well have saved lives. If he was suffering, he was suffering for doing what, not long ago, Andrew couldn’t.
“Sutter,” Harris interrupted. He gestured toward the scared young trooper. “You and him, police the gondola for spent brass. See if there’s any lead we can reuse.”
“Yes, sergeant.” Andrew didn’t know what purpose this would actually serve, but orders were orders and it wasn’t like he had anything better to do.
He stepped over to the boy. “What’s your name?”
“T-Terry, corporal. Private Terry O’Connell.”
Andrew made himself smile. “The sergeant wants us to clean up the brass. We don’t want somebody who survived that scrap to trip on a casing and split their head open.”
“Yes, corporal.” Together, they gathered and pocketed the brass casings the Sawyers had spewed. It didn’t take long for the young man’s disposition to improve considerably.
So that was why Harris told him to mind Terry. Andrew looked around. Other green boys were collecting spent brass, cleaning the Sawyer guns, or climbing the ladder in the center of the gondola into the envelope to, he assumed, look for damage. Or perhaps just “look for damage.”
Good. If it kept the day’s horrors from gnawing at their minds, maybe they’d be able to sleep tonight.
LAYING SIEGE TO ONE’S OWN HOME
Escorted by several imposing bodyguards, Alonzo rode to the top of Chester’s Hill overlooking the Grand River’s deep blue waters. Although the Asherton floated overhead, the open countryside between the main army’s vanguard and Jacinto’s outskirts wasn’t as clear as he’d have liked. There were the dregs of a dozen broken Flesh-Eater regiments between him and the city’s distant spires. The cavalry rode ahead to clear them out — he remembered one group led by a woman with honey-colored hair — but they might not have gotten them all. Right ironic if some hillbilly cannibal bagged me now, right before I can lay siege to my own home.
He took a breath. For once he couldn’t smell spent gunpowder, blood, or shit from a gut wound. Just … purity. Clean air, the sharp scent of distant pine trees. He took in another breath. That purity would be spoiled soon enough. Best savor it while he could.
The river narrowed halfway between Chester’s Hill and the city. There two huge concrete citadels flanked the blue water. Big gray squares, with black cannon peeking from gunports. The Flesh-Eaters’ red and black flag fluttered proudly over each, as though his troopers hadn’t been kicking their asses up between their tailbones these last weeks. Between the two fortresses hung a heavy iron chain married with rust the color of blood.
Fort Potter and Fort Suddes, the Gates of Jacinto.
Simply blasting the two forts out of existence with the Asherton or the army’s limited number of field guns wasn’t an option. Grendel’s men were clearing out the tributaries, and it wouldn’t be long before they started on the Grand itself. When they began rolling east, the Merrills would need those forts. Alonzo scowled at the twin citadels and the heavy chain. They’re not gates, they’re prison doors, and that goddamn chain is on my people’s neck.
And the man-eaters kept the old capital locked down. Only a few Shoemaker representatives had managed to reach his army. They’d reported sabotage, strikes, and riots. The Flesh-Eaters weren’t able to go out after dark except in numbers. Apparently the cannibals kept a dirigible overhead at all times, which kept them from sending it elsewhere.
Those forts and that chain kept the civilian boats armed with whatever he could requisition and the occasional cottonclad from supporting the advancing land forces. It’d be easy as pie to give the cannibals what they deserved, if only his armies could get to Jacinto.
He returned his attention to the city. Towering skyscrapers rose from coal smog like mountains rising over fogbanks. One, tall and proud and faced with tan sandstone, housed Alvarez and Sons. Before the Fall, the company had been some kind of giant store selling all kinds of goods. It’d helped Charles Merrill keep Jacinto and the nearest cities alive in the dark years afterward, helped keep the surviving roads and rail lines working. Hopefully they weren’t doing the same for the man-eaters, or at least not willingly.
Just beyond it stood the round Merrill citadel, Flesh-Eater flags flapping from its black iron mooring towers.
Alonzo gritted his teeth. He’d see those flags burned. He tugged the reins to turn his horse around. “We’re heading back to the main army,” he told his guards. “We’ve got a city to liberate.”
