Chapter 64
Southern battle line
Matei Basarab stood beside a hot cannon and watched as his once powerful advancing army now fell back across ground that they had already captured earlier in the day. “What’s happening?” he asked Stroe Leurdeanu. “What’s happening?”
“The Jews have rallied, my lord,” Stroe said, his voice wavering. “All three regiments, including the one that Captain Dordevic and the Serbians had in full retreat. They shout Rak Chazak Amats, and our men fall back.”
“What does that mean?” Matei asked.
Stroe shook his head. “I don’t know, my lord. I can try to find out for you if—”
“Forget it! Where’s Usan Hussein?”
Stroe pointed toward the center of the battlefield. “He has moved to the center, as you requested.”
“What is his status?”
“I don’t know, my lord. We’ve received no word. Though”—he took a step in that direction and pointed the spyglass toward rising smoke—“there are large pillars of smoke in that area one can see even from here. It is certain that he has engaged.”
Matei closed his eyes and prayed. Oh, merciful God, let those Janissaries see their way to victory.
Central battle line
The hefty wheels of the fire tanks churned through the soft ground as musket and rifle fire from Hajdu and Bohemian gunmen, defending a stone wall, peppered their hulls. Usan was less afraid of taking a direct shot and more worried about ricochet, as lead whistled through the air like hornets, striking thick chassis, and dropping men in front of him, beside him. Enemy cannons behind the wall and set atop a hillock now fired. A cannonball struck the Ifrit farthest to the left; a burst of metal and naphtha flew out of the flamethrower barrel, and it seemed as if the tank would ignite and blow. It shook from the cannon strike, halted, righted itself, and continued, though Usan could see that its turret now seemed sluggish, harder for the crew to correct its trajectory.
He struck the hull of the tank in front of him with his rifle butt, a series of short, precise staccato taps that he hoped the crew inside could discern from the musket fire. They seemed to do so, as its turret swung to the left, paused, and let out a stream of fire that leapt through the deadly space between it and the stone wall. The fire doused very little, save for thick tufts of grass, a tree, a bush, and a few horse and human carcasses from the previous cavalry charges. The heat of the flame, however, forced the defenders of the wall to pause and step back a few paces lest their exposed skin be badly singed. Usan struck the tank’s hull again, a different pattern this time, and the Ifrit reacted with a cough of steam and heightened speed.
Through smoke and the choking fumes of naphtha, he suddenly realized that the Ifrit in front of his men was the one that had had mechanical problems before the battle: an axle repair and fume leakage around its tank. All Ifrits had some amount of leakage, he knew. As good as the Sultan and his engineers were in adopting up-time military technology, many of their weapons were hampered by lack of refinement. Usan had grown to understand and accept that truth, but now he worried about it, as a cannonball struck the tank’s hull and rocked it to the right. Will its axle hold, he wondered, or will it break climbing that wall? And what of the fumes? So far, it had proven unimportant, save for stinging his eyes, choking his throat. But as long as the flames fired forward, what concern could there be?
Right now, the biggest problem was the enemy at the stone wall, firing and shouting expletives, almost daring their assailants to charge. One Hajdu had the courage—and stupidity—to stand and expose himself and gyrate his hips as if he were fucking a goat. He was promptly shot dead, but Usan wondered, Is it just boastful pride, or do they want us to come? What foul devilment lay behind those cannons on the hill?
It did not matter now, he realized. The path to glory, the way to redeem himself in the eyes of Sultan Murad, of Allah, was forward. From his place in the line, Usan could already see the outline of Gyulafehérvár. So close. So, so close. There was no retreat now, regardless of what lay before or behind him.
He struck the tank again, raised his sword, and shouted, “Forward, men! Forward to the wall. Seize it, and don’t leave anyone alive!”
✧ ✧ ✧
The Ifrit belched fire and burned whole swaths of men in its stream. The Hajdu line buckled and fell back, and Usan ordered another push, into the wall and over it. The tank’s tires scraped against the ground as its battering ram struck the wall and pushed, pushed, until its stones toppled over, leaving a breach. The cannons on the hillock fired again, striking the tank’s hull in mid-lurch over the broken wall. For a moment, Usan feared a kill, but the Ifrit took the hit, settled, and pushed over the wall, slamming into the ground and broken stone on the other side.
His men shouted their joy and raced forward around the tank like water around a rock, drawing their yatagans and giving chase to the retreating enemy soldiers.
The other two tanks leading the Dorobanţi regiment forward breached the wall as well, though the last tank could not bring its turret into the proper position to fire. Its naphtha stream had diminished to half the distance, a mere thirty yards. It’s done, Usan thought, though its beleaguered crew did its best to keep it. The Dorobanţi, however, were less enthusiastic with the breach. They seemed unwilling to exploit it.
In his capacity as corbaci and an envoy to Sultan Murad IV, Usan reached the wall, stepped onto it, raised his sword, and shouted, “Attack! Attack, you spineless—”
Then he saw why the Dorobanţi had hesitated.
To their left and moving fast was a metal monstrosity, much like an Ifrit but long and twisting like a snake, with large rubber tires and thick armor, belching steam, and pulling equally armored wagons behind it.
And in front of where he stood, just beyond the hill where Bohemian cannons lay in defense, was another.