Serpent Sword: A Steampunk Military Fantasy, page 20
He frowned. They’d only be able to use the smallest artillery lest they destroy the bridge and clog the river. Sustained fire from the Ymirs could sweep the enemy from it, but the ships arrayed below made that harder.
There were three cottonclads this time, boxy steamers with covered wheels on both sides. The bow and stern of each ship carried cannon. Rows of brown-wrapped cotton bales rose along their sides, probably concealing sharpshooters and smaller balloon-poppers. One cottonclad was bigger, its companions obviously escorts.
“More cottonclads?” a Jiao Obsidian Guard ranker sneered. “Is that all they’ve fucking got?”
“Pups should listen when the old dog barks,” Fritjofsson growled. The first sergeant pointed at the rows of cotton bales. “Replacements like you must not’ve been there last time we fought cottonclads. Those bales’ll disperse impacts better than poor-quality iron, and they’re a damn sight easier to make. Best way to deal with them is fire, and does it look like we’ve got any fucking flamethrowers?”
While the top kick reamed the ranker, Falki examined the larger cottonclad. Something seemed different about how its top deck was laid out. He squinted. Were those … turrets? And what caliber guns did they carry? The bottom fell out of his stomach when he realized just what that cottonclad was. He turned to Fritjofsson immediately.
“First Sergeant, the big one’s got turrets with balloon poppers. It’s antiaircraft, purpose-built. The flyboys need to know.”
Fritjofsson ordered the guardsman he’d been chewing out to summon a telegraph operator. The rest of the regiment was about a mile back and there were Blood Alchemy and Flesh-Eater forces too.
Thank the nonexistent Odin for the field telegraph.
Falki continued watching the ships. They’d need most or all of the Ymirs for this one. Have to take out the big one first. The smaller ships probably had balloon-poppers too, but not nearly the larger ship’s firepower. He wondered if anybody had ever thought about dropping torpedoes from airships. If the river were deep enough, they could run straight and hit ships below the waterline. No cotton bales there.
“Reply from headquarters,” the short and broad Menceir telegraph operator interrupted. “Blood Alchemy’s getting their howitzers ready. Scout force is to hold position and await the remainder of the company and air support.” He paused. “Also, the colonel has something for dealing with enemy mines.”
MOONLIGHT GLINTED ON the iron leg-chains binding a line of ragged Merrill prisoners, mostly men but a few women, together in twos and threes.
Falki faced them, standing before just under a hundred hale members of A Company. Among them sat the company’s two wheeled Sawyer guns and even a horse-drawn field gun borrowed from the nearest artillery unit.
The latter was from the long-lost forges of the Old World, something modern galloper guns aspired to be. A long smooth green tube emerged from the center of a huge square metal shield hanging between two huge rubber tires. Metal split trails extended behind the gun, each affixed to the largest horse Falki had ever seen. Each big gun had a Merrill prisoner chained to them.
“You are guilty of treason against Grendel, first lord of the Northlands,” Falki told the unfortunates arrayed before him. “Attacking in the night and hiding among your kin rather than facing us openly. Or aiding and abetting, if you did not have the balls for even that. You are fortunate to be prisoners of the Obsidian Guard. The Leaden Host would have shot you out of hand, while the Flesh-Eaters would have eaten you. What the Blood Alchemy Host would do is best not discussed.” He paused for effect. “However, as long as this country remains in rebellion against the first lord, no one is safe.”
Falki pointed down the riverbank toward the abutment. “Your kinsmen have no doubt laid mines. You will clear them for us. With your feet.” A couple female prisoners wailed. Falki gritted his teeth and did his best to ignore it. “No one lives for — ”
One man fell to his knees as best the chains would permit, his pleading interrupting Falki’s speech. A guardsman struck the supplicant across the face with the butt of his repeater. The man toppled onto his side, blood pouring from a broken nose. Another guardsman roughly hauled him up.
“You have a choice,” Falki continued. “Possible death moving forward; definite death standing still or trying to run. That choice is ultimately yours.”
Across the river, another group of hostages was getting the same speech by another officer. Hostage-taking was a risky policy, equally as likely to inflame resistance as to quell it. And as Father had said, corpses didn’t pay taxes.
Falki gritted his teeth tighter. These people hadn’t been randomly scooped up; they’d been court-martialed by Obsidian Guard tribunals and given to Colonel Gyrdsson to do with as he willed. No different than that youth shooting at the Guard in the mountains. Taken alive in arms and offered to Odin. They’re lucky he didn’t horse-trade them to the Flesh-Eaters or Blood Alchemy.
Falki glanced back. Several Ymirs gathered over the broad river. Others were no doubt circling around to attack from the sides or to deliver guardsmen onto the bridge itself once the Merrill cottonclads were dealt with.
“A Company is ready to advance,” Falki told the telegraph operator. “We await the colonel’s command.”
The telegraph operator passed the message along. Falki returned his attention to the cottonclads. They’d need to take those down, especially the big one, or else they wouldn’t get much air support.
Engines thundered as the dirigibles moved into position. The cottonclads crept forward, the big one leading. It wouldn’t be long now, not long at all.
“Word from the colonel,” said the telegraph operator. “Advance and fire on the cottonclads.”
Falki drew his curving Jiao sword. The blade shimmered in the moonlight as he pointed it at the bridge. The guardsmen bracketing the prisoners fell back and raised their repeaters. “Advance!”
The hostages didn’t immediately move. The guardsmen fired a round each over their heads. That set them running, as fast as their chains allowed. They spilled pell-mell across the open ground toward the bridge. Across the wide river, other guardsmen drove their own hostages on.
“Keep up!” Falki shouted. The farther they fell behind their human shields, the more likely they’d receive fire, especially from mortars. “Mortars and guns, once you are in range of the ships!”
Smoke and dirt fountained ahead as the hostages hit mines. Screams. Others kept running, dragging the red ruin of the unlucky behind them. Then came a second explosion. It didn’t seem like the Merrills laid many mines.
The Obsidian Guard advanced behind the hostages, mortar parties and the artillerymen breaking off from the formation to attack the cottonclads. Others formed defensive positions around the artillery, firing on the ships with their repeaters. Whistling, then the first wet fountain erupted as a shell almost hit the cottonclad closest to the river bank. Merrill bullets sliced into the dark water or others buried themselves in the muddy banks. A guardsman screamed as one caught him.
A fireball rose on the bow of the closest cottonclad. Burning men threw themselves overboard. Flames flickered on the cotton bales, but not enough to set the whole ship alight. The Merrills on the bridge were firing now, cautiously given the human shields.
“Any remaining hostages, keep them front and center!” Falki ordered. “If there are Sawyers on those ships, we are proper fucked!”
Cannon boomed as the dirigibles unleashed their heavier guns on the Merrill flotilla. Water erupted around the big ship before the first shot hit home. The impact rippled through the cotton barriers, sowing small fires here and there but doing little damage. A galloper gun boomed from the bridge. The shell fell short of the dirigibles, but Falki didn’t want to give the enemy time to find the range. Hopefully, the Blood Alchemy howitzers would start clearing the bridge.
In the meantime, the Merrill ships still needed killing. Falki threw a glance behind him. The field gun’s crew maneuvered their low-slung weapon toward the antiaircraft ship. Occasionally a bullet sparked off its heavy metal shield. The hostage chained to it was already dead, a woman judging by the blue dress hanging from her in rags. Falki frowned, but turned his attention to the nearest men.
“Cover that gun!” he ordered.
Guardsmen grabbed any hostages who hadn’t run fast enough and forced them onto the shoreline in front of the gun, or simply started shooting at the Merrill ships. Bullets pierced water, pierced hulls, pierced flesh. Men fell into the deep water or onto the muddy shoreline. Water and bodies flew as mortar shells bracketed the antiaircraft ship. Somewhere a horse screamed.
“Come on,” Falki hissed. “Hit the damn thing!”
Paired thunders from the antiaircraft ship. Flames snaked along the front of the leading Ymir’s envelope. Falki winced. Enough of that and the whole envelope would go up. At least the dirigible was close enough to the river anybody who jumped would likely survive.
The Ymir was damaged, but not out of the fight yet. Its bow gun boomed. A fireball rose on the warship’s foredeck. More shells, more screaming. Mortar shells exploded around the enemy’s vessel’s paddle-wheel as the guardsmen finally hit their target.
But the Merrill ship kept firing. Explosions rang the Ymir’s gondola like an enormous bell, while the burning rents on its envelope grew. The Ymir sank toward the river. Men, most bleeding heavily, jumped from windows into the dark water. They barely had time to resurface before gunfire from the ships or the bridge sent them back into the depths.
Falki snarled. He’d rip the bastards apart for firing on helpless men like that!
Then with a popping thud quieter than a modern galloper gun, the ancient field gun spoke. It recoiled behind the shield and then forward again, as though it were on springs. Its shells struck the antiaircraft vessel amidships. Jagged wood flew in all directions, mostly burying itself in the neighboring vessels’ cotton shields but occasionally in Merrill flesh. The guns firing on the dirigible slowed.
A huge fireball rose at the bridge’s north end. Finally. The gunfire above slackened but did not stop. Another fireball. Thick black smoke rose from where the shells landed, smothering the stars.
The enormous bulk of another Ymir appeared above the bridge. Immediately the Merrills on the bridge opened fire on the oncoming monstrosity. Wreathed in flame it continued forward, its bow guns hammering the bridge. Guardsmen fired from the gondola’s windows. The gunfire from the bridge slackened.
“Come on!” Fritjofsson ordered. “Their buddies up there can’t help them now!”
The mortar crews found their rhythm. Explosions flared around the Merrill ships. More shouts, more screams, more fires spreading across the cotton bales.
A pity they didn’t give us incendiary rounds. That’d deal with these fuckers double-quick. Unfortunately over the centuries too many of the bridge’s rusted steel beams had been replaced with wood. A burning ship lodged against a piling or an incendiary shell that missed could cause real problems.
One Merrill escort moved between the Old World cannon and the antiaircraft ship. Sawyer fire slashed across the riverbank. Guardsmen and hostages alike fell.
“Hit that one!” Falki shouted, gesturing with his sword. Repeater fire stabbed back. A Merrill sailor fell into the river, an arc of blood trailing from a ruined throat. A Sawyer blazed, bullets burying themselves in the cotton bales. A bullet nipped at Falki’s left arm. He hissed in pain and threw himself to the ground. A second later, a bullet passed through where he’d been.
Fire lit up the sky. The Ymir over the bridge was fully aflame. Men jumped from the gondola, some armed and ready to fight and others burning and screaming. Even through the stink of gunpowder and shit, Falki could smell cooking meat. He winced. Burning up with an airship was not how he wanted to go.
But someone still commanded the flying conflagration. It veered away from the bridge. Two more guardsmen leaped from the torn gondola. One landed on a bridge strut and held on for dear life, while the other bounced off into the river.
Falki narrowed his eyes. What was the pilot doing? The men aboard the dirigible might’ve been able to fight if they landed on the span, or at least survive if they got onto the struts. Hitting water from that high up would kill them.
Then a Merrill swimming toward a piling was yanked underwater by something big he couldn’t quite discern.
And for anybody surviving a water landing, there’s that.
Renewed smoke belched from the farthest Merrill escort’s smokestack. It groaned forward from the other side of the antiaircraft boat. Falki laughed. The dirigible pilot was going to land his burning vessel atop the escort!
“Sergeant Fritjofsson!” Falki shouted over the din. “Remind me to recommend that son of a bitch for a medal!” It’d probably be posthumous, but it’d bring honor to his kin.
The top kick didn’t hear him. And he didn’t see Nahed anywhere. What if he were dead? He’d been with Falki since he’d first joined the company. He’d never cared Falki was Grendel’s son. His expression darkened. If the Merrills had dared kill him, they would suffer.
Across the river, the third escort had escaped from under the falling dirigible. Unfortunately for its crew, that put it in the perfect place for another Ymir’s broadside. The escort rocked. Cotton bales toppled into the river or onto the deck. Smoke rose from the remaining barrier. Bullets sparked off the Ymir’s gondola as a Sawyer on the vessel fired back. The Ymir’s guns spoke again and the foe fell silent. The escort began drifting.
The Old World field gun now targeted the other escort. A shot amidships ignited another fireball. Although the surrounding air shimmered, the gunners shoved another shell in. Another, bigger explosion, and the smaller vessel broke in half. A pitiful few survivors, many burnt or bleeding, scrambled into the water. Guardsmen shot them from the shore, sending corpses bobbing downriver.
The blazing dirigible settled between the third escort vessel and the antiaircraft ship. Its envelope was largely burned away, revealing a red-hot metal skeleton. That skeleton began to crumple — onto the remaining cotton armor of both surviving ships. Ammunition chattered as it cooked off. Falki ducked as some of those bullets hurtled overhead. More men leaped screaming into the water, many burning.
“The ships are taken care of!” Falki shouted. “To the bridge!” The surviving hostages staggered around the base, the chains keeping them from climbing the hill or escaping into the river. The Old World gun swiveled toward the bridge, while the mortar and Sawyer teams reoriented their weapons.
“Hold fire!” the telegraph operator shouted in the din. “The Blood Alchemy Host is forcing the bridge from the north side. The Flesh-Eaters are hitting it from the south. The colonel doesn’t want friendly fire!”
“Confirm those orders!” Falki shouted back.
If the man-eaters could sweep the southern half of the bridge without the Obsidian Guard having to scale it, well that meant fewer casualties for A Company. Some Sejer might resent the lack of a chance for glory, but it was a long way to Jacinto and he needed every man.
Thunder cracked again, louder than when the escort ship went up. One of the biggest fireballs Falki had ever seen reached for the sky from the bridge’s center. Chunks of the span fell into the river. One piece slid along the struts, dragging men from both sides into the water. Another fell straight into the river, spraying the guardsmen closest to the shore.
“What was that?” a guardsman shouted. “What in Odin’s name?”
“A suicide bomb,” Falki whispered to himself. “Their position must’ve been overrun, or they feared it would be.”
The gunfire on the bridge slowed, then stopped. Men in Blood Alchemy and Flesh-Eater colors appeared along the span.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, once Lufkin’s last defenders were driven from basements, Falki received summons from Gyrdsson to a meeting in what had been the town hall.
Two cups of coffee, a check-in with the thankfully-unscathed Nahed, and a brisk walk later, Falki joined his commander. The big Sejer stood at a pitted wooden table in the center of what had once been the city council’s chambers. Sunlight streamed in through a jagged hole in the ceiling. A large map was spread out atop the table. Gyrdsson nodded to Falki and they waited.
It didn’t take long for the Flesh-Eater and Blood Alchemy brigadiers to arrive. Alban Murray, the Flesh-Eater commander, was short and beginning to thicken around the middle. The skin visible around his neck was darker than that of his face and the hair underneath his wide-brimmed hat was receding. Falki noticed missing teeth. Looks like pellagra, when he was young.
The Blood Alchemy brigadier Owen Campbell was surprisingly nondescript. Thin face, dark hair going gray, and cold blue eyes. No obvious deformities or mutations. Maybe there was a second mouth or stunted limbs under his gray coat, but nothing Falki could see.
Good. Falki could understand the uses Father put Mangle and his freaks, but that didn’t mean he wanted to spend time with them. His aide stood out more with the third eye in the center of his forehead, a hunched back, and arms and shoulders that would be the envy of some long-lost animal called a “gorilla.” But he and the brigadier whispered among themselves and the aide seemed to be keeping up without issue. Strong and at the very least not unintelligent. Best not treat this one like furniture.
“Lufkin is ours, gentlemen, and the Armand rolls unvexed from the roots of the Basin to the Grand,” Gyrdsson began. Falki wondered if his colonel had ever tried skald-work. “Our men have done an excellent job.”
Murray spoke first. “When will the offensive begin? The Merrill is at Jacinto’s very walls. With the Armand cleared, we can supply and reinforce the city by river. Every day that passes, more likely the capital will fall.”
“I have not been made privy to the first lord’s plans,” Gyrdsson said. “None of us have.” Falki felt relieved. Father was more open with him than with his unrelated underlings, but he wasn’t privy to everything. “Until we’re told otherwise, our orders are to eliminate fugitives and ensure Lufkin’s security.” He pointed to a wooded region south of the town on the map. “There’re probably still Merrill survivors in the immediate area, and they’ll be a problem if we allow them time to organize.”
