“Two hundred,” Yorak confirmed, and slapped Dynnys Bailahchyo on the shoulder. “You heard the man, Dynnys. Say it back, then send it.”
“Two hundred yards short,” Bailahchyo repeated, and reached for the sidemounted lever on his heavy, tripod-mounted signal lamp.
Ahlvyn Yorak grinned and shook his head, remembering all the care they’d taken to avoid showing even a single spark during the approach, as the shutters began to clatter and the light flashed back to Private Dohlar’s waiting eyes.
Still, I guess the bastards’ve figured out we’re out here by now anyway, Ahlvyn, he reflected.
* * *
Colonel Zhaksyn Hyndyrsyn dropped his pen and jerked up out of his chair as the first mortar bomb exploded in mid-air above the four-company strongpoint fifteen hundred yards northeast of his command post.
His regiment had been combined with Gylchryst Sheldyn’s to form Sheldyn’s Brigade. Hyndyrsyn hadn’t approved of the arrangement when he first heard about it. His approval hadn’t been required, however, and he’d changed his mind about it once the advantages made themselves apparent.
The idea had come from Sir Rainos Ahlverez’ experiences with the Army of Shiloh, and little though he’d cared for finding himself under Sheldyn’s command, Hyndyrsyn had to admit it had worked out well, especially with both regiments so badly understrength. Of the fourteen hundred men and officers he was supposed to have, he had just under eleven hundred, and if he was going to be stuck this far out on the Army of the Seridahn’s flank, he was thoroughly in favor of having friends close to hand. Of course, if both regiments had been fully up to strength, they’d still have been less than two-thirds the size of a Charisian regiment, although they’d have been a bit larger than a Siddarmarkian regiment.
They weren’t up to strength, however, and from the sound of things, Captain Tyrnyr’s detachment was about to get thoroughly reamed. And since Tyrnyr’s companies held the road junction that was the key to the entire Zhonesberg Switch.…
“Messenger!” Hyndyrsyn ripped open his command tent’s fly and bellowed at the sentry outside it. “I need a messenger right frigging now!”
* * *
Zhames Dohlar read the dimly visible light as it blinked through the rain, then began flipping the shutters of his own lantern, repeating the signal back to confirm. Unlike Bailahchyo’s lamp, it was at least remotely possible someone on the Dohlaran side would see Dohlar’s, although he suspected they’d be a little too busy at the moment to pay much attention to rakurai bugs in the trees even if they could see them through the rain.
He finished sending, and Bailahchyo opened his lamp’s shutters once again—this time in a single double-length dash of confirmation.
“Up two hundred yards, Sir!” he called down. “Confirmed!”
“Up two hundred,” Lieutenant Zhaksyn repeated, as calmly as if he were still in his Tellesberg classroom, making certain of the correction.
“Yes, Sir!”
“Very well. Up two hundred, Tymythy,” he told Sergeant Hustyngs.
* * *
Captain Tyrnyr was in no position to appreciate the exquisite choreography General Sumyrs and his Charisian artillery support had arranged for him. Each of the platoons assigned to Rynshaw’s support company fired separately to make it easier for the artillery support party assigned to it to spot its fire. In theory, one platoon was supposed to fire every ten seconds. In fact, of course, not even Charisians could keep to that sort of timing once the dance started. So each salvo included its own color-coded star shell as an identifier, as well. It wasn’t a perfect system, since there were soon a lot of star shells floating above the Dohlaran positions, but it got the job done.
By the fourth salvo, Rynshaw’s thirty-six mortars were putting over eighty percent of their rounds on target.
And in the meantime—
* * *
“Fire in the hole!” Lieutenant Hahrlys called, and reached for the ring on the varnished wooden box as the first mortar bombs warbled overhead.
The Army of the Seridahn hadn’t had the opportunity to profit from the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels’ experiments in fortification building. It had, however, amassed an enormous amount of … experiential data on the same subject during its grueling fighting retreat up the Seridahn River and then step-by-step back along the Sheryl-Seridahn Canal. Its men had discovered the beauty of the shovel and become almost as adroit at—and as fanatical about—digging in every time they stopped anywhere as the Imperial Charisian Army.
Given an hour, every single one of them had his own slit trench. Given three hours, and light breastworks crowned their fighting positions and their observation posts and any attached artillery were dug-in, with sandbags going up for additional protection. Given a full day, and communication trenches and rudimentary but serviceable dugouts made an appearance. Given a five-day, and blasting them out of their holes was Shan-wei’s own piece of work.
As an engineer, Klymynt Hahrlys appreciated a good job of fortifying a position when he saw one, and the men charged with holding the Switch had done a very thorough job indeed. No one on Safehold had ever heard of barbed wire, but they understood all about constructing abatises out of tangled, interlocking tree branches. And the Dohlarans—in a trick they’d acquired from Charisian engineers—had taken to weaving their abatises together with wire vine whenever it was available, which made a very fair substitute for barbed wire. For that matter, they were fond of studding logs with old bayonets or even sword blades and adding them to the obstacles protecting their positions.
Enough mortar fire could blow gaps even through Dohlaran obstacle belts … eventually, and if the attacker was prepared to expend ammunition lavishly enough to get the job done. There were more efficient ways, however, towards which end Baron Seamount had incorporated Doctor Sahndrah Lywys’ newly developed Lywysite into what an engineer from Old Earth would have called a Bangalore torpedo. The official name for it was the “Composite Demolition Charge, Mark 1,” but the engineers equipped with it referred to it as “Sahndrah’s Doorknocker” in honor of Doctor Lywys. By whatever name, it consisted of dynamite-loaded sections of lightweight pipe, each four feet long, which threaded together to produce a single, long demolition charge.
Watched over by protective teams of scout snipers and hidden by the darkness and pounding rain, Lieutenant Hahrlys’ platoon had very quietly assembled forty of those sections into four forty-foot long tubes, sliding them forward and under the Dohlaran obstacle belt, four feet at a time, from well outside it. Then they’d connected the waterproof fuse hoses to them and unreeled hose behind them as they retreated back into the concealment of the rainy woods.
Now the lieutenant yanked the ring and the friction primer inside the box ignited. Its spitting spark raced furiously down the main channel to the junction point of all four fuse hoses, then split and sprinted towards the waiting charges, invisible inside the hoses which had protected the fuses from the wet.
Eight seconds later, all four Doorknockers detonated as one in a long, ripping explosion that tore straight through the obstacle belt.
* * *
Captain Hytchkahk waited impatiently as the Charisian mortar fire savaged the Dohlaran position. The spectacular explosions were clearly visible from his vantage point, and he approved of them wholeheartedly. He’d felt even more satisfaction as the long, vivid pencil lines of the exploding Doorknockers ripped their way through the obstacles waiting for his assault force, however.
The scouts’ reports and prisoner interrogation identified the local Dohlaran commander as Captain Zhames Tyrnyr, and Tyrnyr was supposed to be very good. According to those same reports, he had four of Hyndyrsyn’s Regiment’s six companies under his command—about seven hundred men—and Hyndyrsyn’s Regiment had been part of the force Sir Rainos Ahlverez had taken with him to Alyksberg. By all reports, Hyndyrsyn’s men were no more atrocity-prone than the rest of the Royal Dohlaran Army, but like every other man in his regiment, Haarahld Hytchkahk had lost men he cared about in Alyksberg.