David Drake - General 04 - The Steel

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The General
Volume 4: The Steel
by S.M. Stirling and David Drake
CHAPTER ONE
Thom Poplanich floated through infinity. The monobloc exploded outward, and he felt the
twisting of space-time in its birth-squall. . . .
I think I understand that now, he thought.
excellent, Center said, we will return to socio-historical analysis: subject, fall of the
federation of man.
He had been down here in the sanctum of Sector Command and Control Unit AZ12-b14-c000
Mk. XIV for years, now. His body was in stasis, his mind connected with the ancient battle computer on
levels far broader than the speechlike linkage of communication. It was no longer necessary for him to
see events sequentially. . . .
Images drifted through his consciousness. Earth. The True Earth of the Canonical Handbooks,
not this world of Bellevue. Yet it was not the perfect home of half-angels that the priests talked of, but a
world of men. Nations rose and warred with each other, empires grew and fell. Men learned as the
cycles swung upward, then forgot, and fur-clad savages dwelt in the ruins of cities, burning their books
for winter's warmth. At last one cycle swung further skyward than any before. On a small island
northwest of the main continent, engines were built. Ones he recognized at first, clanking steam-engines
driving factories to spin cloth, dragging loads across iron rails, powering ships. The machines grew
greater, stranger. They took to the air and cities burned beneath them. They spread from one land to the
next, springing at last into space.
Earth floated before him, blue and white like the images of Bellevue that Center showed him —
blue and white like all worlds that could nourish the seed of Earth. One final war scarred the globe
beneath him with flames, pinpoints of fire that consumed whole cities at a blow. Soundless globes of
magenta and orange bloomed in airless space.
the last jihad, Center's voice said. observe.
A vast construct drifted into view, skeletal and immense beside the tubular ships and dot-tiny
suited humans.
the tanaki spatial displacement net. the first model. Energies flowed across it, twisting into
dimensions describable only in mathematics that he had not yet mastered. The ships vanished, to
reappear far away . . . here, in Bellevue's system. The Colonists, first men to set foot on this world. They
landed and raised the green flag of Islam.
even more than the jihad, the net made the federation of man essential, Center said. the
empire that rose this time expanded until it covered all the Earth, and leaped outward to nearby
stars. a century later, its representatives landed on distant Bellevue, much to the displeasure
of the descendants of the refugees, and the net was its downfall. expansion proceeded faster
than integration. Long strings of formulae followed. once the tipping point was reached, entropic
decay accelerated exponentially.
The higher they rise, the harder they fall, Thom thought.
true. There was a slight overtone of surprise in Center's dispassionate machine-voice.
More images. War flickering between the stars, mutiny, secession. Bellevue's Net flaring into
plasma. The remnants of Federation units turning feral when they were cut off here, bringing civilization
down in a welter of thermonuclear fire. Swift decay into barbarism for most areas, a pathetic remnant of
ancient knowledge
preserved in the Civil Government and the Colony, degenerating into superstition. Now a
thousand years and more had passed, and a tentative rebirth stirred.
cycles within cycles, Center said. the overall trend is still toward maximum entropy,
unless my intervention can alter the parameters. fifteen thousand years will pass until the
ascendant phase of the next overall historical period.
An image eerily familiar, for he had seen it with his own eyes as well as through Center's senses.
Two young men out exploring the ancient catacombs beneath the Governor's palace in East Residence.
Unlikely friends: Thom Poplanich, grandson of the last Poplanich Governor. A slight young man in a
patrician's hunting outfit of tweed. Raj Whitehall, tall, with a swordsman's shoulders and wrists. Guard to
the reigning Barholm Clerett, and like him from distant Descott County, source of the Civil Government's
finest soldiers. Once again he saw them discover the bones outside the centrum, the bones of those
Center had considered and rejected as its agents in the world.
Raj will do it, Thom thought. If any man can reunite the world, he can.
if any man can, Center agreed. the probability of success is less than 45% ±3, even with
my assistance.
He's already beaten back the Colony. The battle of Sandoral had been the greatest victory the
Civil Government had won in generations. Destroyed the Squadron. The Squadron and its Admirals had
held the Southern Territories for more than a century, the most recent of the Military Governments to
come down out of the barbarous Base Area. And he's beating the Brigade. The 591st Provisional
Brigade were the strongest of the barbarians, and they held Old Residence, the original seat of the Civil
Government at the western end of the Midworld Sea.
to date, Center acknowledged, he has taken the crown peninsula and lion city. the more
difficult battles remain.
Men follow Raj, Thom said quietly. Not only that, he makes them do things beyond
themselves. He paused. What really worries me is Barholm Clerett. He doesn't deserve a man like
Raj serving him! And that nephew he's sent along on this campaign is worse.
cabot clerett is more able than his uncle, and less a prisoner of his obsessions, Center
noted.
That's what worries me.
CHAPTER TWO
The cavalry were singing as they rode; the sound bawled out over the manifold thump of paws
from the riding dogs, the creak of harness and squeal of ungreased wheels from the baggage train:
Oh, we Descoteers have hairy ears —
We goes without our britches
And pops our cocks with jagged rocks,
We're hardy sons of bitches!
"Hope they're as cheerful in a month," Raj Whitehall said, looking down at the map spread over
his saddlebow. His hound Horace shifted beneath him from one foot to the other, whining with
impatience to be off at a gallop in the crisp fall air. Raj stroked his neck with one gauntleted hand.
The commanders were gathered on a knoll, and it gave a wide view over the broad river valley
below. The hoarse male chorus of the cavalry troopers sounded up from the fields. The Expeditionary
Force snaked westward through low rolling hills. Wagons and guns on the road, infantry in battalion
columns to either side, and five battalions of cavalry off to the flanks. There was very little dust; it had
rained yesterday, just enough to lay the ground. The infantry were making good time, rifles over their right
shoulders and blanket-rolls looped over the left. In the middle of the convoy the camp-followers spread
in a magpie turmoil, one element of chaos in the practiced regularity of the column, but they were keeping
up too. It was mild but crisp, perfect weather for outdoor work; the leaves of the oaks and maples that
carpeted the higher hills had turned to gold and scarlet hues much like the native vegetation.
The soldiers looked like veterans, now. Even the ones who hadn't fought with him before this
campaign; even the former Squadrones, military captives taken into the Civil Government's forces after
the conquest of the Southern Territories last year. Their uniforms were dirty and torn, the blue of the
tailcoat jackets and the dark maroon of their baggy pants both the color of the soil, but the weapons
were clean and the men ready to fight . . . which was all that really mattered.
"Looks like more rain tonight," Ehwardo Poplanich said, shading his eyes and looking north.
"Doesn't it ever not rain in this bloody country?"
The Companions were veterans now too, his inner circle of commanders. Like a weapon whose
hilt is worn with use, shaped to fit the hand that reaches for it in the dark. Ehwardo was much more than
a Governor's grandson these days.
"Only in high summer," Jorg Menyez replied. "Rather reminds me of home — there are parts of
Kelden County much like this, and the Diva River country up on the northwestern frontier."
He sneezed; the infantry specialist was allergic to dogs, which was why he used a riding steer,
and why he'd originally chosen the despised foot-soldiers for his military career, despite high rank and
immense wealth. Now he believed in them with a convert's zeal, and they caught his faith and believed in
themselves.
"Good-looking farms," Gerrin Staenbridge said, biting into an apple. "My oath, but I wouldn't
mind getting my hands on some of this countryside."
And Gerrin's come a long way too. He'd commanded the 5th Descott before Raj made them
his own. Back then garrison-duty boredom had left him with nothing to occupy his time but fiddling the
battalion accounts and his hobbies, the saber and the opera and good-looking youths.
There were a good many orchards hereabouts; apple and plum and cherry, and vineyards trained
high on stakes or to the branches of low mulberry trees. Wheat and corn had been cut and carted, the
wheat in thatched ricks in the farmyards, the corn in long rectangular bins still on the cob; dark-brown
earth rippled in furrows behind ox-drawn ploughs as the fields were made ready for winter grains. Few
laborers fled, even when the army passed close-by; word had spread that the eastern invaders ravaged
only where resisted . . . and the earth must be worked, or all would starve next year. Pastures were
greener than most of the easterners were used to, grass up to the hocks of the grazing cattle.
Half-timbered cottages stood here and there, usually nestled in a grove, with an occasional straggling
crossroads village, or a peon settlement next to a blocky stone-built manor house.
Many of the manors were empty; the remaining landlords were mostly civilian, and eager to come
in and swear allegiance to the Civil Government. Here and there a mansion stood burnt and empty.
Ill-considered resistance, or peasant vengeance on fleeing masters. Some of the peons abandoned their
plows to come and gape as the great ordered mass of the Civil Government's army passed, with the
Starburst fluttering at its head. It had been more than five hundred years since that holy flag flew in these
lands. Raj reflected ironically that the natives probably thought the 7th Descott Rangers' marching-song
was a hymn; there was much touching of amulets and kneeling.
We fuck the whores right through their drawers
We do not care for trifles —
We hangs our balls upon the walls
And shoots at 'em with rifles.
"Area's too close to the Stalwarts for my liking," Kaltin Gruder said. His hand stroked the scars
on his face, legacy of a Colonial shell-burst that had killed his younger brother. "Speaking of which, any
news of the Brigaderos garrisons up there?"
"The Ministry of Barbarians came through on that one," Raj said, still not looking up from the
map. "The Stalwarts are raiding the frontier just as we paid them to, and most of the enemy regulars there
are staying. The rest are pulling back southwest, toward the Padan River, where they can barge upstream
to Carson Barracks."
Bribing one set of barbarians to attack another had been a Civil Government specialty for
generations. Cheaper than wars, usually, although there were dangers as well. The Brigade had come
south long ago, but the Stalwarts were only down from the Base Area a couple of generations. Fierce,
treacherous, numerous, and still heathen — not even following the heretical This Earth cult.
"Right," Raj said, rolling up the map. "We'll continue on this line of advance to the Chubut river
—" he used the map to point west "— at Lis Plumhas. M'Brust reports it's opened its gates to the 1st
Cruisers. Ehwardo, I want you to link up with him there — push on ahead of the column — with two
batteries and take command. Cross the river, and feint toward the Padan at Empirhado. It's a good
logical move, and they'll probably believe it. Engage at your discretion, but screen us in any case."
The Padan drained most of the central part of the Western Territories, rising in the southern
foothills of the Sangrah Dil Ispirito mountains and running northeast along the range, then west and
southwest around its northernmost outliers. Empirhado was an important riverport, and taking it would
cut off the north from the Brigadero capital at Carson Barracks.
"Actually," Raj went on, "we'll cut southeast again around Zeronique at the head of the
Residential Gulf and come straight down on Old Residence. I want them to come to us, and they'll have
to fight for that eventually — it is the ancient capital of the Civil Government. At the same time, it's
accessible by sea up the Blankho River, so we've a secure line of communications to Lion City. Strategic
offensive, tactical defensive."
Everyone nodded, some making notes. Lion City was a very safe base. Its ruling syndics had
tried to resist the Civil Government army, fearful of Brigade retaliation and confident in their city walls.
Raj had found an ancient Pre-Fall passageway under them and led a party to open the gates from within.
After the sack, the syndics who'd counselled resistance had been torn to bits — quite literally — by the
enraged common folk of the city. The commoners' only hope now was a Civil Government victory; if the
Brigade came back they'd slaughter every man, woman and child for treason to the General . . . and for
the murder of their betters.
"Meanwhile, I'm going to keep five battalions of cavalry with the main column and send the rest
of you out raiding. Round up supplies, liberate the towns and incidentally, knock down the defenses —
we don't want Brigaderos occupying them again in our rear. Be alert, messers, there'll probably be more
resistance soon. I've furnished a list of objectives of military significance. Grammeck?"
"I don't like these roads," the artilleryman-cum-engineer said.
Like most of his branch of service, Grammeck Dinnalysn was a cityman, from East Residence.
Unlike most of the military nobility, Raj Whitehall had never hesitated to use the technical skills that went
with that education.
"They're just graded dirt, and it's clay dirt at that. Much more rain, and it's going to turn into
soup."
Raj nodded again. "Nevertheless, I intend to make at least twenty klicks per day, minimum."
Jorg Menyez shrugged. "My boys will march it," he said and sneezed, moving a little aside to get
upwind of the dogs. "I'm surprised we haven't seen more resistance already," he added. "We're well
beyond the zone Major Clerett raided."
Raj grinned. "A little dactosauroid flew in and whispered in my ear," he said, "in the person of the
Esteemed Rehvidaro Boyez — he was one of the Ministry talkmongers at Carson Barracks, bribed his
way out — that the Brigade has called a Council of War there."
Harsh laughter from the circle of Companions. The Council of War included all male Brigade
adults, and decided the great issues of state in huge conclaves at Carson Barracks, the capital the
Brigade had built off in the swamps. Or to be more accurate, debated the issues at enormous length. To
men used to the omnipotent quasi-divine autocracy of the Civil Government, it was an endless source of
amusement.
"No, no — it's actually a good move. They have to decide on their leadership before they can do
anything. Filip Forker certainly won't." Forker was a mild-tempered scholar, very untypical of the
brawling warrior nobility of the Brigade; he was also a defeatist who'd been in secret communication with
the Civil Government.
"So they have to get rid of him and elect a fighting man as General. Of course, they have left it a
little late."
The troopers below roared out the last verse of their marching song:
Much joy we reap by diddlin' sheep
In divers nooks and ditches
Nor give we a damn if they be rams —
We're hardy sons of bitches!
"Let's get moving, gentlemen. I expect some warm welcomes on the way to Old Residence."
***
"Compliments to Captain Suharez, and Company C to face left, on this line," Gerrin Staenbridge
said. He sketched quickly on his notepad, and tore off the sheet to hand to the dispatch rider. The man
tucked it under his jacket to shelter the drawing from the slow drizzle of rain.
Gerrin raised his binoculars. The lancepoints of the Brigaderos cuirassiers were clearly visible
behind the ridge there, four thousand meters out and to the west. From the way the pennants whipped
backward, they were moving briskly. Bit of a risk to spread his front, but the fire of the other companies
should cover it. Better to stop the flanking movement well out than to simply refuse his flank in place.
"And one gun," he added.
The messenger spurred, and the trumpet sounded. Men moved along the sunken lane to his front,
where the main line of the two battalions faced north. A company crawled back and stood, then
double-timed west in column of fours. Water spurted up from their boots, and squelched away from the
gun that followed them, its dogs panting and skidding on the surface of wet earth and yellow leaves as
they trundled out of sight to meet the enemy's flanking attack. The remaining men moved west to occupy
the vacant space, spreading themselves in response to barked orders.
The paws of the colonel's dog squelched too as he rode down the lane; it was barely nine meters
wide, rutted mud flanked on either side by tall maple and whipstick trees. North beyond that was a
broad stretch of reaped wheat stubble with alfalfa showing green between the faded gold of the straw.
Beyond that was a line of orchard, and the Brigaderos, those whose bodies weren't scattered across the
field between from the first failed rush.
"That's right, lads," Staenbridge called out, as he cantered toward the center of the line, where
the standards of the 5th Descott and the 1st Residence Life Guards flew together, beside the main
battery. "Keep those delectable buttocks close to the earth and pick your targets."
The men were prone or kneeling behind the meter-high ridge that marked the sunken lane's
northern edge. The trees and the remains of a rail fence gave more cover still; there were a scatter of
brass cartridge cases and the lingering stink of sulphur under the wet mud and rotting leaf smell. Most of
them had gray cloaks spread over their backs; Lion City had had a warehouse full of them, woven of raw
wool with the lanolin still in them, nearly waterproof. Staenbridge had thoughtfully posted a guard on that
when the city fell, and lifted enough for all his men and a margin extra. Raindrops glistened on the wool,
sliding aside as the men adjusted sights and reloaded. The breechblock of a gun clanged open and the
crew pushed it forward until its barrel jutted in alignment with the muzzles of the riflemens' weapons.
He drew up beside the banner. "Captain Harritch," he went on, "shift a splatgun to the left end of
the line, if you please."
The commander of the two batteries shouted, and the light weapon jounced off down the trail,
the crew pulling on ropes; there was no need to hitch the dog team for a short move, but it followed
obediently, dragging the caisson with the reserve ammunition.
"We could put a mounted company behind the left and countercharge when those lobster-backs
are stalled," Cabot Clerett offered.
It was the textbook answer, but Staenbridge shook his head. "Fighting barbs with swords," he
said, "is like fighting a pig by getting down on your hands and knees and biting it. I prefer to keep the
rifles on our firing-line. We'll see if they come again."
"These're going to," Bartin Foley said emotionlessly.
He was peeling an apple with the sharpened inner curve of his hook; now he sliced off a chunk
and offered it. Staenbridge took it, ignoring Cabot Clerett's throttled impatience. It was crisper and more
tart than the fruit he was used to. Probably the longer winters here, he thought.
Cabot Clerett probably resented the fact that Bartin Foley had started his military career as a
protegee — boyfriend, actually — of Staenbridge's. Although the battles that had taken the young man's
left hand, and the commands he'd held since, made him considerably more than that.
"Look to your right, Major Clerett," Gerrin said. "They may try something there as well."
Long lines of helmeted soldiers in gray-and-black uniforms were coming out of the orchard three
thousand meters to their front. Serried lines, blocks three deep and fifty men broad all along the front,
then a gap of several minutes and another wave, but these in company columns.
"Two thousand in the first wave," he said. "A thousand in column behind. Three thousand all up."
"Plus their reserve," Foley noted, peering at the treeline.
Clerett snorted. "If the barbs are keeping one," he said.
"Oh, these are, I should think . . . this is Hereditary High Colonel Eisaku and . . ."
"Hereditary Major Gutfreed," Foley completed. "Thirty-five to forty-five hundred in all,
household troops and military vassals."
To the right a battery commander barked an order. The loader for the guns shoved a
two-pronged iron tool into the head of a shell and turned, adjusting the fuse to the distance he was given.
Within the explosive head a perforated brass tube turned within a solid one, exposing a precise length of
beechwood-enclosed powder train. Another man worked the lever that dropped the blocking wedge
and swung the breechblock aside, opening the chamber for the loader to push the shell home. The blocks
clattered all along the line, five times repeated. The gunner clipped his lanyard to the release toggle and
stood to one side; the rest of the crew skipped out of the path of recoil, already preparing to repeat the
cycle, in movements better choreographed than most dances. The battery commander swung his sword
down.
POUMPF. POUMPF. POUMPF. POUMPF. POUMPF. Five blasts of powder smoke and
red light, and the guns bounced backward across the laneway, splattering muddy water to both sides.
Crews heaved at their tall wheels to shove them back into battery, as the loaders pulled new shells out of
the racks in the caissons.
The crack of the shells bursting over the enemy followed almost at once. Men died, scythed
down from above. Staenbridge winced slightly in sympathy; overhead shrapnel was any soldier's
nightmare, something to which there was no reply. The Brigaderos came on, picking up the pace but
keeping their alignment. The columns following the troops deployed in line were edging toward his left; he
nodded, confirmation of the opposing commander's design. It was a meeting of minds, as intimate as a
saber-duel or dancing. Closer now, it didn't take long to cover a thousand meters at the trot. A thousand
seconds, less than ten minutes. The Brigaderos dragoons had fixed their bayonets, and the wet steel
glinted dully under the cloudy sky. Their boots were kicking up clots of dark-brown soil, ripping holes in
the thin cover of the stubblefield.
POUMPF. POUMPF. POUMPF. POUMPF. POUMPF. More airbursts, and one defective
timer that plowed into the dirt and raised a minor mud-volcano as the backup contact fuse set it off.
Nothing like the Squadrones, Staenbridge thought. The barbarians of the Southern Territories
had bunched in a crowded mass, a perfect target. These Brigaderos were much better.
POUMPF. POUMPF. POUMPF. POUMPF. POUMPF. Powder smoke drifted along the
firing line, low to the ground and foglike under the drizzle.
At least the Southern Territories were dry, he thought. Descott County got colder than this in
midwinter, but it was semi-arid.
"I make it eleven hundred meters," Foley said. Getting on for small-arms range.
"Ready," Staenbridge called. Officers and noncoms went down the firing line, checking that sights
were adjusted. "I wonder how the left flank is making out."
***
"Did ye load hardpoint?" Corporal Robbi M'Telgez hissed.
The rifleman he addressed swallowed nervously. "Think so, corp," he said, looking back over his
shoulder at the noncom.
Company C were kneeling in a cornfield, just back from the crest of a swell of ground. The corn
had never been harvested, but cattle and pigs had been turned loose into it. Most of the stalks were
broken rather than uprooted, slick and brown with decay and the rain; they formed a tangle waist-high in
wavering rows across the lumpy field. Just ahead of the line of troopers was the company commander,
also down on one knee, with his signallers, and a bannerman holding the furled unit pennant horizontal to
the ground. The field gun and its crew were slightly to the rear.
"Work yer lever," M'Telgez said.
The luckless trooper shoved his thumb into the loop behind the handgrip of his rifle and pushed
the lever sharply downward. The action clacked and ejected the shell directly to the rear as the bolt
swung down and slightly back. The noncom snatched it out of the air with his right hand, as quick and
certain as a trout rising to a fly. There was a hollow drilled back into the pointed tip of the lead bullet.
"Ye peon-witted dickehead recruity!" the corporal said. "Why ain't ye in t' fukkin' infantry? Ye
want one & them pigstickers up yer arse?" Hollowpoint loads often failed to penetrate the body-armor of
Brigaderos heavy cavalry.
He clouted the man alongside the head, under his helmet. "Load!"
The younger man nodded and reached back to his bandolier; it was on the broad webbing belt
that cinched his swallowtail uniform coat, just behind the point of his right hip. The closing flap was
buckled back, exposing the staggered rows of cartridges in canvas loops — the outer frame of the
container was rigid sauroid hide boiled in wax, but brass corrodes in contact with leather. This time there
was a smooth pointed cap of brass on the lead of the bullet he thumbed home down the grooved ramp
on the top of the rifle's bolt. Hunting ammunition for big thick-skinned sauroids, but it did nicely for armor
as well.
"Use yer brain, it'll save yer butt," the corporal went on more mildly.
He sank back into his place in the ranks, watching the platoon's lieutenant and the company
commander. The lieutenant was new since Stern Isle, but he seemed to know his business. The platoon
sergeant thought so, at least. They'd both behaved as well as anybody else in that ratfuck in the tunnel.
M'Telgez smiled, and the young trooper who'd been looking over to him to ask a question swallowed
again and looked front, convinced that nothing he could see there would be more frightening than the
section-leader's face. M'Telgez was thinking what he was going to do if — when — he found out who
had started the stampede to the rear in the close darkness of the pipe tunnel. There'd been nothing he
could do, nothing anyone could do, once it started. Except move back or get trampled into a pulp and
suffocated when the pipe blocked solid with a jam of flesh.
The 2nd Cruisers, jumped-up Squadrone barbs, had gone in instead of the 5th Descott. With
Messer Raj. The stain on the 5th's honor had been wiped out by their bloodily successful assault on the
gates later that night . . . but M'Telgez intended to find out who'd put the stain there in the first place. The
5th had been with Messer Raj since his first campaign and they'd never run from an enemy.
The gunners were rolling their weapon forward the last few meters to the crest of the slight rise,
two men on either wheel and three holding up the trail.
"On the word of command," the lieutenant said, watching the captain. A trumpet sounded, five
rising notes and a descant.
"Company —"
"Platoon —"
"Forward!"
One hundred and twenty men stood and took three paces forward. The lieutenants stopped, their
arms and swords outstretched to the side in a T-bar to give their units the alignment.
To the Brigaderos, they appeared over the crest of the dead ground with the suddenness of a
jack-in-the-box.
Five hundred meters before them about a quarter of the Brigaderos column was in view, coming
over a slight rise. They rode in a column six men broad; expecting action soon, they'd brought the
three-meter lances out of the buckets and were resting the butt-ends on the toes of their right boots. The
dogs they rode were broad-pawed Newfoundlands, shaggy and massive and black, weighing up to
fourteen hundred pounds each. They needed the bulk and bone to carry men wearing back and
breastplate, thigh-guards and arm-guards of steel, plus sword and lance and firearms and helmet. Their
usual role was to charge home into Stalwart masses already chopped into fragments by their dragoon
comrades' rifle fire. Sometimes the savage footmen absorbed the charge and ate it, like a swarm of lethal
bees too numerous for the lancers to swat. More often the cavalry scattered the Stalwarts into fugitives
who could be hunted down and slaughtered . . . as long as the lancers went in boot to boot without the
slightest hesitation.
It was a style of warfare that had ended in the eastern part of the Midworld basin two centuries
ago, when breechloading firearms became common. The Brigaderos were about to learn why.
Of course, since there were nearly a thousand of the cuirassiers, the Civil Government troops
might not survive the lesson either.
POUMPF.
The field gun recoiled away from the long plume of smoke. The first shell exploded at
head-height a dozen yards from the front of the column; pure serendipity, since the fuses weren't sensitive
enough to time that closely. It was canister, a thin-walled head full of lead balls with a small bursting
charge at the rear. The charge stripped the casing of the shell off its load and spread the balls out, but the
velocity of the shell itself made them lethal. The first three ranks of the lancers went down in kicking,
howling confusion. The commander of the cuirassier regiment had been standing in his stirrups and raising
the triangular three-bar visor of his helmet to see what had popped up to bar his commands way. Three
of the half-ounce balls ripped his head off his torso and threw the body in a backwards somersault over
the cantle of his saddle.
Behind him the balls went over the heads of the rear of the column, protected by the dip in the
field in which they rode. The projectiles struck the upraised lances instead, the wood of the forward
ranks and the foot-long steel heads of those further back and lower down. The sound was like an iron
rod being dragged at speed along the largest picket fence in the universe. Lances were smashed out of
hands or snapped off like tulips in a hothouse for a dozen ranks back. Men shouted in fear or pain, and
dogs barked like muffled thunder.
The cuirassier regiment was divided into ten troops of eighty to ninety men each, commanded by
a troop-captain and under-officers. None of them knew what was happening to the head of the column,
but they were all Brigade noblemen and anxious to close with the foe. They responded according to their
training, the whole mass of lancers halting and each troop turning to right or left to deploy into line. When
the Civil Government or Colonial dragoons deployed for a charge under fire they did so at the gallop, but
the Brigaderos were used to fighting men equipped with shotguns and throwing-axes. Used to having
plenty of time to align their lines neatly.
M'Telgez watched his lieutenant's saber out of the corner of his eye. It swung to the right. He
pivoted slightly, taking the general direction from the sword as his squad did from him; a group of lancers
opening out around a swallow-tail pennant, borne next to a man whose armor was engraved with silver,
wearing a shoulder-cape of lustrous hide from some sauroid that secreted iridescent metal into its scales.
The corporal picked a target, a lancer next to the leader — no point in shooting the same man twice, and
he knew someone wouldn't be able to resist the fancy armor. The rear notch settled behind the bladed
foresight, and he lowered his aiming-point another few inches — six hundred meters, the bullet would be
coming down from the top of its arch at quite an angle.
"— volley fire —"
He exhaled and let his forefinger curl slightly, taking up the trigger slack. The strap of the rifle was
wound round his left hand twice, held taunt with the forestock resting on the knuckles. He might not
know who'd fucked up in the tunnel, but at least he was going to get to kill somebody today.
"Fire!"
***
Bullets went overhead with an unpleasant wrack sound. Down the line from the command group
a trooper slumped backward with his helmet spinning free to land in the mud and the top taken off of his
head. He'd been holding two rounds in his lips like cigarettes, with the bases out ready to hand; they
followed the helmet, a dull glint of brass through the rain.
Gerrin Staenbridge looked back and forth down the sunken lane. Stretcher-bearers — military
servants — were hauling men back, crouching to carry them without exposing themselves over the higher
摘要：

[frontblurb][versionhistory]TheGeneralVolume4:TheSteelbyS.M.StirlingandDavidDrakeCHAPTERONEThomPoplanichfloatedthroughinfinity.Themonoblocexplodedoutward,andhefeltthetwistingofspace-timeinitsbirth-squall....IthinkIunderstandthatnow,hethought.excellent,Centersaid,wewillreturntosocio-historicalanalysi...

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