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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

GALLOWAY’S LAST STAND

Lance Clavell’s radio chirped, and he unhooked it from his webbing and raised it to his ear. He hadn’t been assigned a radio, originally, but that was before Saxon had mentioned the additional handhelds in the cargo containers. They weren’t identical to the firefighter radios Baker’s “employers” had provided to the Brits, and they were probably a lot more fragile, but they were close enough to tie in to the radio net, and Clavell had been glad to get one.

“Clavell here. Over,” he said, releasing the transmit button.

“Get your people ready,” Art Mason said over the radio. “You’ve got incoming. Over.”

“Understood. Over.”

Clavell rehooked the radio carefully, a bit surprised by how steady his hand was, then raised his voice.

“All right!” he told the musketeers he’d been assigned. “Lord Rick says at least some of the enemy are headed our way! Remember your orders!”

He heard other voices shouting the same warning in Italian as Bisso passed the word from his central position in the Doge’s Palace, and he leaned out the open palace window, looking across the Palazzo San Marco towards the inner lagoon.

The rain and dim light made it impossible to make out any details about the galley fight in the North Channel, even with binoculars, but the ship raft seemed to be holding, so where—?

He swung the binoculars to his left, and his jaw tightened as he saw the galleys emerging from the inner end of the fishing boat channel.

Thought that was supposed to be too shallow, he thought grimly. Surprise, surprise! Wonder what else is going to bite us on the ass before this is over? For damned sure something is!

The galleys weren’t charging forward as soon as they cleared the channel, either. Instead, they were forming up, damn it.

Bastards are too frigging smart to come in one at a time. They’re going to try to swamp us with a mass attack, instead.

He lowered the binoculars and looked at the Palazzo itself.

Only the northernmost, lowest section of the big square had been covered in seawater when the last container arrived, but that had been days ago. Today, the water had climbed much higher up the Palazzo’s shallow slope. Shallow waves ran in across it to break against the defensive barricade, and the water was up to the calves of the men huddled behind it. More waves lapped ankle deep even across the lower steps of the Doge’s Palace, and the dim afternoon light was growing dimmer as a storm-shot evening came on quickly. The pelting rain was cold, the wind blew it almost directly into the defenders’ faces, and despite his current perch inside the palace on the west edge of the square, Lance Clavell couldn’t remember the last time he’d been colder, wetter, or more miserable.

On the other hand, he thought, watching the water wash across the paving stones between him and the invisible edge of the square, it’s one hell of a killing ground. Just as long as everyone remembers their assigned sectors. Last thing we need is friendly fire casualties!

He’d made that point, repeatedly, to the two platoons of Chelm musketeers under his command. All of the musketeers, not just the ones assigned to him, had been positioned carefully along the barricade and in the buildings to either side. Those on the barricade were supported by halberd-armed militia and two platoons of the Doge’s guard. More of the Doge’s men were stationed inside the Palace with Sergeant Major Bisso. Additional musketeers covered the Palace’s windows. Clavell was less than confident about the priming of the men on the barricade, but the muskets in the buildings should be sheltered from the driving rain.

And then there were Major Baker and his Gurkhas, positioned along the center of the barricade.

If the rain bothered them, they gave no sign of it. They sat calmly on the firing step behind the barricade, sipping hot tea from their canteen cups. As Clavell watched, a Nikeisian emerged from one of the palaces fronting on the square and splashed across with a steaming pot to refresh their tea, and he tried to imagine something more quintessentially British.

Passavopolous and his Tran-born loader were with them, along with one of the Brits’ Bren guns. Passavopolous was trying to make jokes with the Gurkhas. Clavell doubted they understood a word he was saying, but they smiled politely, anyway.

Guess you’ll be finding out how well it all works in about, oh, twenty minutes, he thought, turning back to watch a solid wave of at least a dozen galleys begin rowing steadily across the lagoon towards him. You spent all damned day telling people everything was under control and that it’d all work out fine in the end. Hope to hell you were right!

“Professore! Professore!”

Clavell wheeled to find Ginarosa Torricelli standing up to her knees in the water as she tugged on his sleeve. She looked far more like a bedraggled rat than a Councilor’s daughter daughter, yet she and her child militiamen had made themselves astoundingly useful. They’d been assigned to firefighting duties, originally, but the pounding rain had made bucket brigades superfluous. So they’d become scouts, message runners, and guides, instead. They knew the city’s streets better than anyone else, and they’d become a different sort of fire brigade, leading flying squads of mercs and Tamaerthan archers, like Jimmy Harrison’s, to critical spots. In fact, Ginarosa had been with Jimmy, the last Clavell heard, although Jimmy had made a point of sending her to the rear with “important messages” whenever he thought he could get away with it.

Too bad she was too damned stubborn to stay there, damn it!

Clavell doubted Ginarosa’s father knew everything his daughter had been up to, and he didn’t expect Councilor Torricelli to be delighted when he found out. For that matter, Clavell wished the girl would just stay put in his palace where he’d stashed Lucia Michaeli and Bart Saxon for safekeeping. If something happened to her—

“What?” he asked.

“Lord Bart and Lord Cal are back,” she replied, “and Lucia has been wounded!”

“Back?” Clavell stared at her. “Back from where?”

“They had gone to defend the Canale Gottardo Capponi. Did no one tell you? They were forced to retreat, but they reached Lord Jimmy and he told me to guide them to the Palazzo.”

“No, they didn’t tell me they were going!” And the Colonel will have my ass if anything happens to Saxon, damn it! What the hell was he thinking?

“You said Signorina Michaeli’s been wounded? How badly?”

“I don’t know. But Lord Bart told me they need a medico, and I thought—”

She gestured at the radio clipped to his webbing, and he grimaced in understanding. Saxon might be idiotic enough to traipse off to “defend” the canal with a sixteen-year-old girl, but at least Ginarosa had her wits about her, and he nodded to her in approval.

“I’ll pass the word,” he assured her, “but I think a lot of people are going to need medics. We’ll do what we can, I promise, but I don’t know how quickly they can get to her. Where is she now?”

“Lord Bart carried her back to your palace.”

“She’s probably as safe there as she’d be anywhere else. Now you get yourself inside to keep her company!”

“Of course, Professore,” she replied, and he unhooked the radio as she waded away from him.

Yeah, sure you’ll stay where it’s safe, he thought bitterly, and pressed the transmit button.

“Major Mason, this is Clavell. Over.”

“Whatcha got? Over,” Mason replied.

“Major,” Clavell said, watching the galleys slide steadily closer, “you’re not gonna believe what Saxon and Haskins have been up to.”

* * *

“They did what?”

Rick stared at Mason, and the major shrugged.

“That’s what Clavell says. Says the Michaeli girl got hurt pretty bad, too.”

Rick shook his head in disbelief, wondering what lunacy had afflicted Saxon. If Rick had been forced to pick one man on Tran they couldn’t afford to lose, Saxon would have to be pretty damn high on the list.

“Gotta say, Sir, that crazy as they were, they could be the reason we didn’t have galleys coming through the fishing channel a lot sooner.”

“Maybe, but if it was a choice between not plugging the channel and risking Saxon, I’d have voted for not plugging the channel. And it’s sure as hell open now, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Mason agreed.

They stood gazing down at the inner lagoon, and neither of them liked what they saw. Fighting raged all across the arc from San Giorgio to San Lazzaro, and the defense was losing ground. The defenders of the northern ship raft were retreating towards its eastern end, anchored where the fortress on San Lazzaro still held. Cargill and his Gurkhas had retreated into the Fortezza di San Lazzaro instead of falling back to Isola di San Matteo, the way they’d been supposed to, which might well be the only reason that fortress hadn’t already fallen. But it had also deprived the bridges from San Lazzaro to San Matteo of the firepower which had been meant to hold them. And it meant that if the fortress did fall, Rick lost Cargill and his men, as well.

He bit his lip as he thought about all of the men fighting and dying out there. The men he was responsible for, God help him, but also the men on the other side. He was so sick of the slaughter. Of the knowledge that each battle he won only promised that he’d be available to fight the next one.

And that he only had to lose one to lose it all.

“At least it looks like Baker was right about command and control on the other side,” he said out loud. “If they were able to coordinate, those galleys would be heading down to hit del Verme from behind and open the West Channel for their great galleys and some of the navibus onerārius troop ships. And then we would be screwed.”

“Small blessings, Sir,” Mason replied, then chuckled harshly. “I’ll take whatever we can get, though!”

“You and me both, Art. You and me both.”

Rick thought for a moment longer, then inhaled deeply.

“What does Bisso have in reserve? Mercs and musketeers, I mean.”

“He’s got Brentano’s team, Sir. No musketeers or archers.” Mason grimaced. “I’m thinking he’s gonna need Brent’s boys right where they are in a couple of minutes.”

“Maybe he is, but tell him to send them to San Matteo anyway. We need Brentano on the bridges if Cargill’s locked up on San Lazzaro.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Rick looked back at the North Channel and his mouth tightened. The pirates might not be organized enough to attack del Verme’s back, but they didn’t have to, either. The increasingly heavy rain and oncoming darkness made it difficult to be certain from here, but it sure as hell looked like the attackers were starting to clear a way through the western end of the North Channel’s ship raft, closest to Lido Island. As inextricably as the pounding seas had jammed those ships together, it was going to take them a while, but “a while” wasn’t the same thing as forever.

Getting close to time for Walbrook, he thought grimly. And I don’t have any dice left to throw after that.

* * *

“Oh, shit!” Larry Warner snarled as Sergeant Frick toppled back with a crossbow bolt clear through the bony part of his shoulder. He thudded to the deck . . . and the recoilless rifle tipped over the side.

Even if Frick lived, which was far from certain given the state of medicine here on Tran, he’d be crippled for life. Douglas McQuaid grabbed the gunner as he curled up in agony and dragged him into the shelter of the bulwark while more crossbow bolts slashed overhead or buried themselves in the ship’s planking.

The security line on the Carl Gustav jerked taut, and the same marine who’d caught the loose round earlier leapt to heave the star weapon back aboard. He got it as high as the top of the bulwark, then grabbed it by the venturi lock and pulled it the rest of the way to safety. Warner heard him shout in triumph—and then another crossbow bolt took him between the shoulder blades and he slammed to the deck.

Warner put his head up from where he crouched against the inside of the bulwark himself and his stomach clenched.

They’d managed to cripple two of the troop laden navibus onerārius with the recoilless, despite the wild seas. It had cost them another six rounds of precious ammunition, though, even with him trying to time the ship’s motion for Frick. One of the troop ships had gone down completely, and Warner didn’t like to think about how many men must have drowned in the process. The second one had been hit right on the waterline and looked like it was going, too, and they’d put at least eight or nine enemy galleys out of action with a combination of the recoilless and firebombs. But getting in close enough to attack the transports had been costly. They’d lost three of the Roman galleys, including one of the triremes with a six-man section of Gurkhas aboard, cutting their way through the escorting galleys. Worse, the seven remaining Romans were trapped inside the pirate formation now, with fire coming from three directions and at least ten pirate galleys in hot pursuit and closing fast from astern, and Martins had been right about both the force of the wind and the options its direction offered.

We are so fucked, Warner thought as he ducked back down and peered aft.

Captain Pilinius was down. Whether he was wounded or dead was more than Warner knew, but he’d been hauled below by the flagship’s surgeon and it was Martins standing next to the steersman now, while Junius conned the ship. All seven of the remaining galleys, including Ferox, showed signs of damage, and the rest of the fleetmaster’s winnowed squadron formed a ragged wedge on either side of his flagship as the brutal wind drove them helplessly south.

Warner left McQuaid to do what he could for Frick while he himself clawed his way aft along the safety lines. A dozen bodies lay sprawled along the main deck, marked down by enemy archers and crossbowmen despite the rain and the spray, but Warner reached the quarterdeck unharmed.

So far, at least.

“Frick’s down!” he shouted to Martins through the tumult, and the British lieutenant gave him a choppy nod.

“Saw it!” he shouted back. “Anyone else we can put on it?”

“McQuaid, but I think he’s going to be more useful shooting boarders with a rifle than trying to hit anybody else with the recoilless with the ship bouncing around like this.”

Martins looked as if he were going to argue for a moment, but then he looked at the pirate galleys closing in from either side and astern and nodded.

“Seems probable,” he acknowledged, with a grimace.

“Are we in as much shit as I think we are?” Warner asked.

“Probably.” Martins actually managed a smile. “Only one place we can go now, old man.” He pointed ahead to where the entrance to the North Channel was coming up fast.

“Fantastic.” Warner felt his shoulders slump, then forced his spine to straighten. “What? About fifteen minutes?” he asked.

“Closer to twenty, I should say. Always assuming none of these other buggers catch us up, first. I’m afraid they’re likely to overhaul Fulminis, at least, before we get there.”

Warner glanced back at the squadron’s rearmost liburnian, grunted in acknowledgment, and stepped closer to Junius.

“Fleetmaster, I think—”

Junius was turning towards him when the crossbow bolt tore through the fleetmaster’s throat. He went down, choking and gurgling on his own blood, and three of the Roman crewmen bent over him.

“Oh, crap!”

Warner went down on one knee as well, but the Roman’s eyes, staring sightlessly up into the rain, told him all he needed to know, and he stood again, clinging to a safety line.

Now what?” he asked, looking at Martins. “Who’s in command now?”

“Technically, one of the other captains, I suppose,” the lieutenant said. “Don’t really see how we can pass command, though. It’s a matter of staying in formation and following the flagship at this point. Which means, I’m afraid, that you’re in command, Mr. Warner.”

Warner felt his heart sink, although it was hard to see how even his inheriting command could make things any worse. He swiped rain from his face and turned to peer forward again. He couldn’t make out a lot of detail, but—

“Is that gunfire on San Lazzaro?” he demanded.

Martins squinted his eyes, trying to shade them from the rain with one hand. He stared hard into the dimness for a second or two, then nodded once.

“I believe it is,” he said.

“Then that means the fort’s still holding,” Warner said. “It doesn’t look like the one on Lido is still in our hands, either. I say if we’re going to be forced into all that crap, we do it as close to friends as we can.”

“By all means!” Martins actually smiled at him. “For that matter, I don’t suppose our chaps would be dreadfully disappointed if we turned up to reinforce them, either!”

* * *

“Still nothing from Warner?” Rick asked.

“No, Sir.” Mason shook his head. “May just mean his radio got wet or the batteries went. Could be a lot of reasons.”

“Including the possibility that it’s at the bottom of the Inland Sea with him,” Rick said harshly.

Mason started to speak, then closed his mouth and simply nodded.

I shouldn’t have sent him out there, Rick thought. I knew I shouldn’t have! He’s too damned important. And he’s my friend, goddamn it!

A part of him desperately wanted to blame Baker and Martins—and Publius—for the decision, but he knew whose it had been in the end.

And they were right. If we were going to stop them short of the city, enveloping them in the outer lagoon was the best way. But it didn’t stop them short of the city. They’ve got Cannaregio, Lido, most of San Lazzaro, and more galleys are still piling on from the north. Looks like two or three more of the big troop transports, too. Jesus, did we underestimate how big they were!

“Should I tell Walbrook to light them up?” Mason asked.

Rick bit his lip, staring down at the inner lagoon as the first wave of galleys through the Canale Gottardo Capponi suddenly accelerated, surging towards the Palazzo San Marco. He wanted to say yes. Wanted it so badly he could taste it.

“Any more word on those transports?” he asked instead.

Lieutenant Cargill had spotted the late arriving quartet of navibus onerārius from the fortress on San Lazzaro when Rick had been unable to see them in the worsening visibility. That was another worry. If this crap closed in much further, his observation post atop the bell tower would become useless. Hell, it already was, mostly! So what did he do when he couldn’t see anything?

The troopships had been escorted by what Rick hoped to God were the last stragglers of the galleys. Their hundred-galley estimate had obviously been low. Badly low, in fact, and if the new navibus onerārius were fully loaded with troops, their original estimate of enemy strength had been even farther off the mark than their galley count. And he needed to know where those troops were headed.

“No, Sir. Last report said they haven’t committed yet.”

Of course they haven’t. But, damn it, the weather’s not going to let them stand off much longer. They’re more seaworthy than the galleys—the high-sided square-riggers were far better suited to stormy seas then the low-slung galleys—but they still have to find some place to call home pretty damn soon. And once I use Walbrook, I lose the shock effect. At least I’m not going to need him on the West Channel, too. But if I turn him loose before the transports commit . . .

The first wave of galleys swept across what had been the Palazzo’s seawall and grounded on its paved surface, and musket fire sputtered from the barricade and flanking palaces as hundreds of men boiled over the galleys’ sides and stormed forward through the water. Dozens of the attackers went down, but dozens more took their place, and a second wave of galleys was right behind them.

We’re at the breaking point. If we can hold San Marco, beat them back there, and then relieve the pressure from the North Channel, we’ve got a chance. But only if we can take out the rest of those goddamn troopships. If they put another five or six thousand men ashore in the wrong place at the wrong time, it’ll all go south. And this time, there’s no retreat. We lose it here, and it’s over. Not just for Nikeis but for everything Tylara and I ever hoped to accomplish.

And it’s all on me.

“No,” he heard himself say, eyes on the Riccigionan and Five Kingdoms marines and seamen storming towards the barricade. “Not yet. Contact Cargill again. Ask about the transports.”

* * *

Lance Clavell stood just inside the palace that flanked the barricade, watching the galleys drive towards the palazzo. He couldn’t hear McAllister’s rifle through the storm, but he saw two or three steersmen go down to mark the sniper’s presence. It wasn’t enough to stop them. It wasn’t even enough to slow them down, and the galleys shuddered as their keels grated on the square’s paving. Men leapt over the sides, splashed into the water, and turned to charge the barricade.

Ready!” Bisso’s booming voice could be heard over both the radio and the bullhorn he’d acquired from Baker, and the Gurkha riflemen rose and leveled their rifles across the parapet.

“Ready!” Clavell repeated to his own musketeers in the palace.

Fire!” Bisso shouted.

“Fire!” Clavell barked.

The Gurkhas’ first salvo was a single, explosive crack of sound. Individual, deliberate shots followed, but Clavell couldn’t hear them through the roar of his own musketeers’ first volley. Choking powder smoke filled the palace. Empty muskets were handed back for reloading; fresh ones were passed forward. He heard another sharp, extended volley from the Gurkhas, and at least some of the muskets out there on the barricade were firing as well, despite the rain.

“Ready!” he said, then paused for a three count. “Fire!

Minié balls and rifle bullets swept furrows of death through the charging attackers. He heard wailing screams in the interval between volleys, but they came on. It was conquer or die for them; they certainly couldn’t retreat from Nikeis with the storm roaring down upon them. Besides, they could see the containers they’d come to loot right in front of the Doge’s Palace, taunting them.

Fire!

Another deadly volley ripped through them, and Nikeisians rose on either side of the Gurkhas. Spears and halberds crossed the parapet, thrusting and chopping. Combat swirled madly, crashing up against the barricade. Some of the attackers tried to rip away paving stones or timbers to find a way through it while others lunged up it, some of them climbing mounds of their own dead and wounded to get at the defenders.

Sheer weight of numbers was coming across it, Clavell thought as his musketeers poured fire into the attack wave’s flank. They were coming across, and—

Passavopolous and the Bren gunner stood, threw their weapons’ bipods onto the prepared positions, and opened fire. They swept a torrent of bullets across the massed attackers, beginning in the middle and moving towards the flanks, and the entire front rank crumpled under its fury. Then two more Gurkhas popped upright with the Milkor revolver grenade launchers Baker had described. The launchers coughed, lofting forty-millimeter grenades far back into the attackers. They spat their deadly missiles in timed fire, and the explosions came with metronome precision.

The combination of machine-gun fire and grenades, on top of rifles and muskets, was too much. Hundreds of the attackers were down, turning the water around them crimson, and the survivors fell back, took shelter between and behind their beached galleys while they waited for the next wave to reinforce them.

* * *

“I thought they were getting all the way to the fort before they grounded!” Rick said, watching the first wave of attackers recoil. “Damned storm surge!”

“Not quite,” Mason said.

Rick heard McAllister’s rifle cracking and thought about telling him to cease fire. Good as the private was, he couldn’t pick off enough individual targets in that mass of men to make much difference. But then he shrugged. It wasn’t going to hurt anything, either.

“Sir, you better take a look at the second wave,” Mason said, and Rick raised his binoculars, then swore.

“Well, we know where at least some of the transports went,” Mason said grimly, and Rick nodded.

The first wave of galleys had gone in with only their own crews aboard. Maybe they’d thought that would be enough to clear the square, or maybe they’d expected all along that the first wave’s grounded ships would simply provide cover for the second wave when it poured its men ashore. He didn’t know about that, but every one of the galleys in that second wave rode low in the water, heavily overloaded with scores of extra men. As Mason had suggested, they had to have come from transport ships that had gotten through to Lido or Cannaregio.

“Should I order Walbrook to support the Palazzo?” Mason asked.

Rick hovered on the brink of saying yes, but he didn’t. He looked down at that tidal wave of ships and men sweeping towards Palazzo San Marco, and he didn’t.

“I think they can hold a little longer,” he said instead, harshly, wondering if he really did, feeling the consequences of his decision waiting for him. “Pass the word to get ready with the firebombs, but I’m not giving away Walbrook yet. Not till I know where those other damned troopships are.”

He didn’t look at Mason. He was afraid of what he might have seen in the major’s expression.

“Anything from Cargill?” he demanded.

“Not yet, Sir.”

Rick nodded curtly and watched the tidal wave surge onward.

* * *

“Hold on!” Richard Martins shouted, and Warner braced himself as Ferox drove down on a Riccigionan galley like a five-hundred-ton battering ram.

The Riccigionans hadn’t seen them until the last moment. Probably because they’d been too focused on fighting their own way towards Isola di San Lazzaro. Someone finally had spotted them, though, and he saw marines and sailors racing towards their target from other ships.

Let fly!” Martins screamed and the seamen at the sheets loosed them. The sails blew out from the yards, horizontal and cracking like canvas thunder as they spilled their wind. And then Ferox’s ram smashed squarely into Martins’ chosen victim. The shock of impact knocked dozens of Romans from their feet, but—

Now!” Warner bellowed, coming back to his feet on the forecastle with the other mercs.

A crossbow quarrel struck his flak vest with sledgehammer force, but it didn’t penetrate, and rifles crackled. Dozens of defenders went down, but it was the sheer shock of taking fire from star weapons that was truly decisive. The Riccigionans knew there were star men in the city; they hadn’t expected to encounter them aboard a Roman quinquireme coming at them out of the gale, and surprise flashed over into panic. They fell back, abandoning their own ship’s bulwarks, and Warner and the mercs stepped aside as Ferox’s marines charged past them. The rowers were right on the marines’ heels. They couldn’t possibly hold their own ship against the weight of numbers the pirates and their allies could bring to bear. Their only hope was to abandon the quinquireme, cut their way along the ship raft to the fortress on San Lazzaro.

One of the surviving triremes slammed into the ship beside the one Ferox had rammed in a thunder of shattering oaken timbers, and its marines and the squadron’s second section of Gurkhas vaulted from its forecastle to join the flagship’s crew aboard the ship raft. Another struck home on the quinquireme’s other side, and a pair of liburnians slammed into the sterns of their consorts, their crews using the abandoned galleys as bridges.

Warner leapt across to the raft himself, looking around through the rain and the wind while thunder bellowed like overhead demons and the mass of ships groaned in agony as the pounding seas slammed them into one another. They had a firm bridgehead, but the pirates were recovering from their initial shock. More than that, a half dozen enemy galleys were about to crash in right behind them. They couldn’t afford to let the other side do the same thing to them, and he pointed to the left.

“That’s where we’re going!” he screamed through the tumult. “Now let’s go!

A hungry, baying cheer went up from the marines, and they charged.

* * *

A third wave of equally heavily laden galleys swept up behind the first two. Thousands of men boiled up out of them, and Rick shuddered as he remembered the slaughter at the Grand Battery at the Battle of Vis. Passavopolous was in the middle of this bloody madness, too, hammering away with his machine gun, but at least this time his M60 wasn’t alone. Baker’s Bren gun stuttered and flamed alongside him, and the Gurkhas’ rifles crackled in aimed fire.

Waves of dead and wounded piled up on the flooded square, mounding above the water like gory islands, and musket fire ripped into the attackers from the palaces on the flanks. But that huge mass of men continued to surge forward, and crossbowmen and archers stood on the beached galleys’ forecastles, firing back despite the pounding rain. Their rate of fire was far lower, especially for the crossbows, but there were hundreds of them. The ballistae fired even more slowly, but when they hit, it was with devastating power, and defenders started going down, despite the parapet’s protection.

It was pure, undiluted carnage, concentrated into a tiny pocket in time and space, and he was the one who’d engineered that killing ground. He was the one who’d decided to stand and fight, and he’d brought every single one of his men—and Baker’s, and Publius’ Romans—to this right along with him. And while they fought and bled and died, he stood up here on his godlike perch watching them.

Disgust filled him, and he wanted to vomit, but he didn’t. Instead, he stood there and listened to someone else speaking with his voice.

“Warn Bisso they’re going to flank him,” that someone else said as the fourth and final echelon of galleys peeled off, circling San Marco, looking for somewhere else to put their men ashore.

“Yes, Sir. Not gonna be able to pull too much off the fort to do anything about it, though.”

“Then we’ll just have to relieve the pressure. It’s time for the firebombs.”

* * *

Clavell shifted his musketeers’ fire to the missile troops on the beached ships’ bows. Ark, the Bren gunner, and the Gurkhas would just have to deal with the frontal assault. At least while their ammo lasted.

Smoke jetted from the windows of the palace across from his position as the musketeers on that side of the square poured volleys into the carnage. Battle rifle fire crackled from his own palace, and he found himself praying that Ginarosa and Lucia and the other kids were safe.

He shouted encouragement, steadying the men, keeping their fire coordinated. Even rifled muskets depended more on volume—on crushing volleys, delivered in a single devastating blow—than on accuracy, and they couldn’t afford—

“Oh, shit!” he muttered as the next wave of galleys spread out instead of driving straight in. The bastards were circling, looking for another way in, and with everybody pinned down defending the fort . . .

Some of the galleys disappeared from view, but he watched one ship take advantage of the high water and drive straight into one of the palaces that normally stood fifteen yards back from the waterfront. It struck between a pair of ground floor windows, the ram drove through the supporting stonework, and marines shoved a boarding ramp through the gap and poured into it.

“Breach on the main island, east side of Palazzo San Marco!” he barked into the radio. Second Platoon’s going to have some close-quarters fighting.

A red rocket roared up from Colonel Galloway’s bell-tower command post.

“Wagon Box under attack.” Mason’s voice on the radio underlined the rocket’s meaning. “Time for the firebombs. Watch where you put those things—we have friendlies in contact.”

Something thumped on the roof above Clavell’s head, and a bright, sparkling flame soared through the rain and wind. His eyes tracked the firebomb’s fuse as other ballistas fired from other roofs, lacing the air with streaks of fire. They rose in glittering arcs, curving as the wind whipped them, harmless looking as they flew.

They seemed to hang for a moment as they reached the top of their trajectories. Then they swooped downward . . . and exploded in midair.

Liquid fire cascaded from the heavens, falling across beached galleys and the men around them in a torrent of flame. Saxon’s additions to Nikeis’ version of Greek fire had produced an incendiary as viscous as napalm and men shrieked as they burned alive. Others simply collapsed where they stood, unable to breathe, and still others ran screaming, wrapped in clinging fire, and plunged into the lagoon.

Clavell looked away from the carnage.

God, please make them break and run! Haven’t we killed enough here yet?!

* * *

Corporal Jimmy Harrison stood in the window of a building that overlooked one of the two massive stone bridges between Isola di San Marco and Isola di San Giorgio. A militia formation armed with spears and shields guarded the San Marco end of the bridge below him, but they didn’t hold the other end.

He hadn’t expected San Giorgio to hold when the attackers began sweeping down from Lido and Cannaregio, but the western two thirds or so of it had. Only a few pirate and Five Kingdoms galleys had landed south of the West Channel, and the militia and the squad of mercs Admiral del Verme had sent ashore had held them in check while del Verme himself continued to hold the ship bridge that blocked the channel.

That hadn’t kept parties of invaders—some a few dozen men strong, but some much larger—from getting past the defenders and circling towards San Marco. Still, that would have been handleable, if not for the galleys which had snuck in through the fishing channel and landed on the inner, eastern side of San Giorgio. The troops they’d put ashore were far better organized than the ones who’d beached south of the West Channel, and they’d been working their way inland for a couple of hours now. But they’d stayed away from del Verme’s defensive lines; instead, they’d moved steadily south, away from the West Channel, because their objectives were the bridges that would let them flank the defenses around the Palazzo.

Harrison and Private Ezekiel Goodman were supposed to keep them from getting there.

And this was the last spot where they could do it.

He scanned the windows of a townhouse on the San Giorgio side of the canal, and his eyes narrowed as he spotted a couple of crossbowmen creeping out onto a balcony that overlooked the bridge below him. He braced his rifle on the back of the chair he’d positioned to use as a rest—the loss of his left hand made it difficult to hold a steady aim firing without one—and drew a bead on one of them. He squeezed the trigger, the rifle slammed his shoulder with a familiar recoil, and his target fell. The other crossbowman fled back the way he’d come, and Harrison snarled in triumph.

But the crossbowmen hadn’t been alone. A knot of men armed with swords and axes rushed out onto the bridge in what had obviously been intended as a coordinated attack.

Goodman waited calmly, then picked off two men in the front rank as they got to the midpoint of the bridge. The momentum of the charge broke as more men tripped over the fallen leaders, and the handful of Nikeisian crossbowmen in the guard force took out several more. The survivors retreated—wisely, in Harrison’s opinion. Even if they’d made it across the bridge, the militiamen waiting for them were the survivors of the militia who’d teamed up with Harrison and Goodman even before the enemy broke into the inner lagoon. They’d acquired a lot of experience the hard way in the last seven or eight hours, and they would have eaten those bozos for breakfast.

They’d started out all the way over on the other side of San Giorgio, but they’d quickly realized the attackers were headed for the bridges. Harrison had radioed it in and asked for reinforcements. He hadn’t been surprised by the order to stop them, but it had been accompanied by the unhappy news that the forty Tamaerthan archers they already had were all they were getting. That was enough, combined with the two mercs’ rifles and the scratch-built force of militia they’d picked up along the way, to hold a solid stopper almost anywhere. But that was the problem. They could hold a solid stopper; they couldn’t hold two of them, and the attackers kept filtering around them.

They’d almost been cut off a couple of times, but the Girl Scouts had saved them. He doubted that Ginarosa Torricelli would have been very happy if she’d known where the term came from, but she’d adopted it as a badge of honor when Harrison started using it to describe her youthful followers, and they’d been lifesavers. Literally. They knew this city better than anyone else, and they’d spotted oncoming enemy troops repeatedly, well before they got close, giving the militia—and Harrison’s team—time to evacuate as many as they could when they pulled back through the deserted streets to their next position. Nor was that the Girl Scouts’ only contribution.

“Signorina,” he’d said severely, the second time he came across a clutch of enemy troops with stab wounds in their backs and slit throats, “this isn’t what we need you to be doing! You—all of you—are our eyes and ears. Our sense of direction. You know this city, and we don’t. We need you. Please don’t take chances like that!”

Ginarosa hadn’t said a word, but her icy gaze suggested that she’d learned a little something from her father. He’d glared back, but his best glare had bounced right off her, and there’d been no hope that any of “her” militia would argue with her. They not only obeyed and trusted her, they clearly feared her, as well.

But at least he had her safely bottled up behind him on this side of the canal now, and he meant to keep her that way. The last thing he wanted was for the most deadly assassin in Nikeis to blame him for getting his daughter killed on his watch! Besides, he liked the girl. When she wasn’t scaring the shit out of him, anyway.

Of course, that still left the little matter of holding the bridges.

Another wave of ships swept into the inner lagoon. There weren’t many of them this time, and they didn’t head straight for the Palazzo.

“They’re rowing hard,” Harrison said.

“Spreading out, too,” Goodman said. “Looks like they’re not following the others to the square.”

“Don’t blame ’em,” Harrison replied. “But you’re right. And that one’s headed our way.”

“I’ll be a centaur’s uncle. What’re they doing? Ain’t no channels for ’em here!”

One of the ships had broken off from the others and headed straight for them.

“If they don’t turn, they’re gonna run aground,” Goodman said.

“I think that may be what they’ve got in mind—ram a building and jam their ship crosswise in the canal between us and San Giorgio. They come ashore on this end, flank the militia, and the ship turns into a bridge for the bastards on the other side of the canal. If they get away with it, we’ll be flanked again.”

“Incoming!”

They took cover as a volley of crossbow bolts, javelins, and darts came raining down.

“Damn!” Harrison cursed. “Whoever’s in command over there is pretty good. The bastard moved up more missile troops while he figured we’d be distracted by those ships. And it frigging worked!”

Their surviving archers returned fire, but they had too few arrows to waste on blind fire. They had to pick their shots, and unlike crossbowmen, they couldn’t shoot from a prone position. That meant exposing themselves in their window positions, and they were unable to suppress the fire coming at the bridge guards. More sailed across the canal, and the militia ducked down behind their shields. Those shields were big enough to give them decent cover against crossbow bolts and javelins, but the fire pinned them down while the incoming galley swept closer. White water curled back from its prow, and its oar blades flashed in the glare of the galleys burning along the edge of Palazzo San Marco as the stroke quickened.

Harrison reached into his rucksack with his remaining hand and pulled out a bottle with a rag stopper. He held it up and shook the viscous, ugly mixture inside for good luck.

“The wind’s in our face,” Goodman said. “You’ll never hit that ship from here. And I don’t think one Molotov cocktail’s going to stop it, anyway.”

“You’re right, I can’t hit it from here. But I can from the middle of the bridge, and I ain’t gonna hit it with one cocktail. Hold this!”

He put the bottle against the side of the rucksack and Goodman held it while he looped the rucksack’s shoulder strap around it and cinched it tight, fastening the bottle to it. There were four more Molotov cocktails inside it.

“I don’t think those Fivers on the other side are going to let you cross,” Goodman said.

“Don’t plan on asking permission.”

“They’ll kill your ass, Jimmy!”

“Nah.” Harrison grinned. “Mama always said I was born to be hung.”

“Let me do it,” Goodman pled. “You can’t carry your rifle and the cocktails at the same time!”

“You don’t have the arm for it, Zeke. ’Sides, I need you up here covering me. You can shoot a hell of a lot better with two hands than I can with one. Now grab that shield and strap it to my arm.”

“You’re a damned fool, Jimmy,” Goodman said as he strapped the shield to Harrison’s handless arm. “Since when did you start taking risks for other people?”

“Let’s just say I’ve gotten attached to the place. I owe ’em something, and I guess it’s time to pay up.”

Goodman shook his head as he finished strapping the shield in place. Then the two of them sprinted down the stairs and over to the street-level door nearest the bridge. They crouched, just inside the doorway, and Harrison squinted down at the canal. The galley was getting close, and he looked at Goodman.

“Still got your Zippo? Good. Light me up!”

Goodman lit the rag of the bottle tied to the outside of the rucksack.

“Back in a sec,” Harrison said with another grin. “Cover me.”

“Covering fire!” Goodman barked to the archers and militia, and Harrison flung himself to his feet and dashed out the door.

Goodman blazed away with his rifle and their archers and a squad of Nikeisian crossbowmen joined in.

Harrison darted from stanchion to stanchion, crouched behind the outsized shield, as he ran up the slope of the arching bridge. Crossbow bolts and javelins rained down from at least three buildings on the San Giorgio side of the canal. They weren’t all that accurate, probably because of the fire coming from his own people, and they could only fire at him from directly in front, but there were a lot of them, and he felt repeated shocks, like rain on a skylight, as they pelted his shield.

He reached the crest of the bridge and crouched, and his right arm came up like a softball pitcher in the bottom of the seventh inning. The rucksack soared upward, trailing smoke from the burning rag, arcing through the rain and wind howl towards the incoming galley. But the throw had brought him out from behind the shield. Before he could raise it again, a javelin struck him in the chest and a thrown stone slammed into his head.

Goodman watched the rucksack and knew Harrison had been right—he could never have made that throw. In fact, as he watched its arc, he was afraid Harrison had thrown it too hard, that it was going to overshoot. But the wind slowed it as it reached the top of its trajectory, and he realized Harrison had allowed for that nearly perfectly. The rucksack plummeted almost vertically and hit on the forward edge of the galley’s main hatch.

The outer bottle shattered in a fierce bloom of fire, but then the rucksack toppled over the edge, down onto the middle oardeck . . . and the cocktails inside it went up in a massive fireball that flung liquid flame everywhere.

Some of that fire, especially from the initial cocktail, splashed over marines and crossbowmen gathered on the galley’s deck, but the true horror came from below decks. Shrieking rowers, covered in clinging flame, clawed their way up through the hatch that was itself a seething inferno. They screamed their way to the bulwarks, flung themselves desperately into the canal in a vain effort to extinguish themselves, and the shrieks of those still trapped below sounded like souls in hell.

Smoke billowed into the wind-sick night, oars flailed in wild confusion, then hung motionless as they were abandoned, and the galley faltered. It turned broadside to the canal and grounded heavily well short of its intended point.

“Jimmy!” Goodman screamed. “Jimmy!

Harrison didn’t move, and Goodman slammed his fist into the floor.

“Damn it!”

He stared at his friend for a moment, then shook himself.

“Cover me!” he barked and rose into a crouch. He started through the door, but a voice stopped him.

“Do not worry,” it said, and Goodman’s head snapped up. The voice was Ginarosa Torricelli’s, and it was extraordinarily calm as she crouched on the other side of the doorway, ignoring the crossbow bolts whistling through it. Her eyes met his, and she twitched her head in the direction of the bridge. He followed the gesture with his eyes and saw a team of militia file out into the open and form a shield wall.

“He is one of ours,” Ginarosa said. “My men will bring him home.”

* * *

“McQuaid!” Larry Warner bellowed. “McQuaid!

“Here!”

McQuaid appeared at his elbow as if by magic. The half dozen Roman marines told off to guard the priceless Carl Gustav were right behind him, and Warner gave a choppy nod of satisfaction.

“Look!” he said, pointing out into the gathering darkness. “There’s two more navibus onerārius out there. Can you take them out?”

“If I had any ammo,” McQuaid said bitterly. “Still got the tube, but we lost the ammo chest on that last jump forward. Think at least one of the Romans drowned trying to save it. We’re dry.”

“Well that’s not good.” Warner grinned mirthlessly. “Because I think they’ve seen our muzzle flashes and they’re headed this way.”

“Shit.” McQuaid watched the two big transports for a second, then nodded. “Sure as hell looks that way,” he said.

Warner looked around. For the moment, the Romans and mercs held a section of the ship raft. They’d managed to bring along all their wounded—so far, at least—and no one on the other side seemed disposed to threaten their current perimeter. Thanks to the battle rifles, no doubt. He found himself wishing they’d had at least one of the machine guns, as well, but wishes weren’t going to change anything.

Problem is we can’t stay here, he thought grimly. Whoever’s running those transports must have figured out we’re pinned down, and he has to have enough manpower to overrun everything we’ve got left, especially if his buddies chime in from Lido. So we’ve got maybe twenty minutes before they come down on top of us and it’s over.

It was funny, in a way. He’d been scared to death a hundred times since they’d arrived on Tran. This time, he was pretty sure they weren’t going to make it, and he wasn’t scared at all.

The wet deck heaved under his feet, driven by the pounding seas. The outermost ships were little more than splintered wreckage, battered and swamped by the angry waves but they were so tightly jammed only a handful of them had actually sunk. The sea was nothing if not patient, though, and those same waves were beginning to batter the raft apart. It wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, but it was going to happen.

Not that they could stay where they were long enough for that to become a problem for them.

He looked to the east. Occasional flashes of rifle fire and the stuttering glare of one of the Bren guns still came from the fortress walls, but there were at least several hundred enemies on the galleys between him and the island. He looked back north. The navibus onerārius were closer, bearing down on them. Maybe their captains hadn’t actually realized there were star men trapped on the ship raft. Maybe the storm was simply bad enough that it was driving them into the raft. In the end, it didn’t much matter, though.

He turned and waved to Martins, and the lieutenant jogged over to him, his rifle slung over his shoulder and the surviving Gurkhas—all four of them—at his heels.

“We’re screwed,” Warner said. “Another fifteen or twenty minutes, and those bastards”—he pointed at the transports—“are gonna be right on top of us. So that’s how long we’ve got.”

“Got for what?” Martins asked.

“Got to cut our way through to San Lazzaro.” Warner shook his head. “I’m down to my last mag. You?”

“Afraid I’m empty,” Martins said. “Aside from this, that is.” He touched his holstered Beretta, then twitched his head at the Gurkhas. “My lads are just about down to their bayonets, too.”

“Well, that’s probably about where we all are.” Warner looked around again, then shrugged. “At least it’s a simple proposition. What you might call a binary solution set.”

“One way to put it.” Martins surprised him with a smile, then beckoned to the marines carrying the recoilless. “Here,” he said in Latin, unslinging his bayoneted rifle. “I imagine you can use this.”

“Yes, Praefectus.” One of them gave him a Roman salute and took the weapon from him.

“I suppose we should be going,” Martins said. “Wouldn’t do to be late to the party!”

“Are all Brits lunatics?” Warner asked, checking his rifle.

“Probably, a bit,” Martins replied. Then extended his right hand. “I’m sorry we didn’t have longer to get to know one another, but it’s been an honor.”

“Don’t go all fatalistic on me,” Warner growled, but he gripped the hand firmly.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Martins released his hand, drew his Beretta, and snapped the safety lever down. “Last man to the fort buys the beer!”

* * *

“Baker here.” The clipped British voice sounded preposterously calm. “Over.”

“Galloway,” Rick said into the microphone, staring out into the flame-shot, stormy madness. Half the beached galleys continued to blaze, despite the rain, washing the building fronts in waves of lurid light, but between the storm and the oncoming night, that was about all he could see. “I need an assessment, Major. Visibility’s going completely to hell, and I can’t see much from here. What’s your status? Over.”

“I believe the situation is in hand, Colonel,” Baker replied. “My lads are short of ammunition, we have only six more magazines for the Bren, and your Passavopolous is down to his last two belts, but the firebombs and the flanking fire have done for them, for the moment at least, I believe. They seem more concerned about covering in place behind the unburned galleys than they are about trying to advance. Can’t say how long they’ll stay that way, especially if more of their friends get around our flanks, but absent some major change in the situation, I believe we’re secure here. I shouldn’t like to see a fresh lot coming at us, though. Over.”

“Understood.”

Baker’s last sentence had been more than a little pointed, Rick thought, and with good cause. The major knew their estimate of the enemy’s strength had been disastrously low, and for all his ever-so-British understated calm, he had to be aware of how tightly stretched the defense was.

“I think del Verme’s going to hold in the West Channel,” Rick continued, “but we’ve lost control of Lido and Cannaregio completely, and the other side seems to have most of San Lazzaro. We believe the fortress is still holding out—largely because of your Lieutenant Cargill, I suspect—but they’re starting to press hard on the bridges between San Lazzaro and San Mateo. So far, San Mateo itself seems solid, though. So does Santa Cecilia and most of San Giorgio. Over.”

“And Admiral Stigliano? Over.”

“He’s dead,” Rick said harshly. “What’s left of his crews and marines were falling back on San Lazzaro, last we heard. Over.”

“The Roman squadron? Over.”

“No damned idea,” Rick said even more harshly. “Haven’t heard a word from Warner or anyone else since we ordered them to attack the transports. Over.”

Baker was silent for a moment, and Rick heard more musket volleys. They weren’t firing into the killing ground where so many bodies washed in the bloody water, so they had to be engaging galleys which had peeled off to either side.

“Colonel,” the major said finally, “I don’t think they have another frontal assault on the wagon fort left in them, and we’ve retaken the two palaces they seized on the southeast side of the square. All of the flanking attacks I know about were launched by single galleys, without support, and we have all of them pinned down. I expect there are some we don’t know about, but the Nikeisian militia are covering the eastern side of the island and I’m pulling together a reserve of musketeers and halberdiers under your Clavell to serve as a fire brigade. If it isn’t needed for that, it will be available to begin pinching out their lodgments one at a time. In my opinion, I can hold San Marco as long as they aren’t able to bring a significant force of fresh troops into the fight against us. Over.”

Rick nodded and closed his eyes for a moment, listening to the fury of the storm mingling with the fury of combat. San Marco, San Giorgio, and Santa Cecilia were the three largest islands of Nikeis, with the largest populations. If they managed to hold there, they could retake the smaller islands one at a time. But only if they held there.

And they won’t hold if the bad guys clear a way through that mess in the North Channel. Last we heard from Cargill, those last transports were still managing to stand off. If they get inside the lagoon, work their way around Baker, hit him with that “significant force of fresh troops,” it’s over. Hell, it may be over anyway!

“Understood,” he said again, finally. “Galloway, out.”

He handed the microphone back to Mason.

“It’s time, Art,” he said.

“Sir, there’s probably still friendlies out there in the channel.”

“I know!” Rick snapped, then shook his head. “Sorry, Art,” he said wearily, “but I do know. And it doesn’t matter. We can’t see what the hell is going on out there, we’ve lost touch with Cargill, and there’s no way we’re holding that raft in the end. For all we know, they’re already cutting a way through it for those damned transports! But at least if they are, they’re also concentrated in one spot, and that’s what we need. So we hit them now and hope they take the hint, or we’re done.”

Mason looked at him, and Rick wondered if he looked as used up as he felt.

I wasn’t this exhausted at the Ottarn or Vis, he thought, and I haven’t fired a single shot. Does Art realize that I’m done, whatever else happens? And maybe I feel so exhausted because I am so sick and tired of all this. The killing, the dying, the playing God! I’m done. Whatever happens tonight, I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.

“Pass the word to Walbrook,” he said.

“Yes, Sir.”

* * *

Sergeant Chester Walbrook’s radio chirped, and he snatched it from his webbing and pressed the transmit button.

“Backstop, over,” he said.

“The Colonel says to do it,” Art Mason said. “Over.”

“About damned time!” Walbrook growled. He and his crews had stood by uselessly for hours, waiting for a moment that might never come while other men fought and died without them. “North Channel? Over.”

“North Channel,” Mason confirmed. “Over.”

“Understood. Backstop, out.”

Walbrook replaced the radio and turned to his gun chiefs.

“Our turn now,” he said with grim satisfaction.

* * *

Rick stood looking to the north. The rain, the dark, and the wind-shredded smoke were too dense now for him to see any gun flashes even if Cargill’s squad was still alive. Were they? And was the fort still holding? Maybe it was. Maybe the men in it would even live now, he thought distantly. Of course, they might not, too. Probably wouldn’t. Nobody lived once the great Captain General Rick came along. Besides—

Something flashed on the northern tip of the Isola di Sant’Andrea, the island between San Mateo and Santa Cecilia. And then, a second later, a blazing white sun seared its way across the night.

* * *

“Yatar!”

Captain Agesilaus staggered back as the terrible light blasted into his eyes, blinding him. It came at the worst possible moment, just as he was preparing to lay Summer Dawn alongside that grinding, twisting mass of wreckage.

It was the last thing he wanted to do. He loved his ship, one of the biggest navibus onerārius of the entire Five Kingdoms, and now he was going to murder her. The waves would beat her to death against the rafted mass of galleys as surely as against any rocky coast, but it didn’t matter. He’d fought wind and sea with every skill, every trick, learned in thirty years afloat, but he was out of tricks and the sea always won in the end. He’d even tried anchoring, only to have the anchor drag. He either put her alongside that reef of broken galleys and got the two thousand miserable, seasick troops packed into her hold onto it—if he could—or else she went down anyway and took all of them with her.

But this!

It had to be another star weapon, but what was it supposed to do?!

* * *

The magnesium candle swung wildly across the night as the wind drove its parachute back towards the center of the inner lagoon. The heavy rain reduced its effectiveness, but its light still poured down across the stormy water like some sudden dawn, and the storm-battered raft of ships across the North Channel appeared out of the darkness.

Rick had his binoculars up, waiting, and his nostrils flared as he saw the tangle of galleys aswarm with men. They were cutting a way through the western end of the raft, he realized, and there had to be several thousand of them, either on the raft itself or on the galleys and transports waiting to pour into the inner lagoon as soon the way was clear.

Good luck with that, you bastards, he thought bitterly, and bared his teeth as something plunged into the water short of the raft and exploded.

Of all the weapons on Tran, the ones whose ammunition he’d hoarded most fanatically were Chester Walbrook’s three mortars. He’d even managed to convince the Shalnuksis to replenish his ammunition supply, although like everything else, they’d provided nowhere near as much of it as he’d asked for. That was one reason he hadn’t used them yet today.

Of course, there was another reason, as well.

* * *

“Short!” Walbrook said, peering through his binoculars. “Up fifty!”

CHONK!

Another mortar bomb wailed its way through the storm. It plunged into the water and exploded. It was short of the galleys, too . . . but not by as much.

* * *

“Oh, shit!” Larry Warner shouted as the flare blazed overhead. He knew exactly what it meant, and the Colonel couldn’t have a clue that Warner and the Romans were still on the ship raft.

They were still a hundred yards, at least, from the fortress at the eastern end of the line, working their way steadily towards it and there were far too many Fivers and Riccigionans between them and safety. But it was also the only place to go . . . and they’d just run out of time for steady, methodical advances.

He tossed his empty rifle to an astonished Roman sailor, who caught it despite his surprise. Then he drew his fighting knife with his left hand and his .45 with his right and shoved up beside Martins.

“All right, you bastards!” he bellowed to the surviving mercs and Romans. “Follow me!

* * *

“Up twenty!” Sergeant Walbrook snapped, and tapped his toe impatiently while Private Jeff Balaika, the gunner on the number one tube adjusted the elevation wheel again. The gunners on the other two tubes followed suit, putting all three pieces on the same elevation. Once they found the range—

“Set!” Balaika announced.

“Fire!” Walbrook barked, and Balaika’s assistant gunner—one of the Colonel’s Chelm volunteers who Walbrook had personally trained—dropped another round down the tube.

CHONK!

Walbrook peered through his binoculars, cursing the rain and the wind as they drove his illuminating round across the night. Technically, it was supposed to give him seventy-five seconds of light, but that number hadn’t been calculated for conditions like this. They didn’t have many of them, though, and—

“Yes!”

* * *

Captain Agesilaus was still trying to grasp what was happening when Walbrook’s fourth 81-millimeter high-explosive round landed on Summer Dawn’s quarterdeck.

* * *

The explosion flashed with the brightness of a direct hit, and Walbrook snarled in satisfaction.

“All right, lay it to them!” he snapped, and his number-two tube coughed.

Then the number three.

* * *

Rick watched as the mortar bombs came storming down the heavens. They might have run out of white phosphorus for the Carl Gustav, but not for the mortars. Two of Walbrook’s mortars dropped HE onto the ship raft; the third fired WP, and the savage, inextinguishable incendiary blazed despite the rain and the waves and the spray while the high-explosive shattered timbers and men with equal abandon.

Their ammunition supply might be limited, but their enemies had obligingly packed several thousand men into a concentrated target in the middle of the water with nowhere to go, and the mortar bombs ripped into them mercilessly. Walbrook walked his fire along the raft, maiming and killing, burning men alive, and Rick Galloway lowered his binoculars and looked away.


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