“Division!” he trilled in his best long-distance tone, only to hear the word race down the line, repeated half a dozen times. “Prepare to charge bayonets!” He was answered by an animalistic roar, and sixteen hundred glittering steel, two-foot spikes came down and leveled at the enemy.
“Remember to reserve your fire until you’re right on them!” an officer shouted from some distance away. “It seems to rattle the sods!”
“Charge!” screamed Chack.
He’d faced more Grik charges than he could remember, and no matter how often he endured and survived the primal force of the Ancient Enemy-its wicked swords, short, thrusting spears, claws and ravening jaws-he still felt a shadow of the visceral horror that struck him the very first time. Implacable and remorseless as the Grik were, however, they attacked as a mob, a “swarm” as even they described it. General Alden had long told Chack that, daunting as their charges were, nothing could be more terrifying-to people-than a disciplined bayonet charge, executed by thinking, committed, determined beings. Chack had faced Dom bayonets, but not yet in a charge. He’d seen the effect his charge had at the Dueling Grounds… and he saw it again now. As usual in such matters, General Alden knew what he was talking about. Of course, Chack had added his own little twist that seemed to shake the Doms as badly as anything else: the point-blank volley before the clash that the Doms, with their plug bayonets, never expected-yet-and couldn’t answer. The rippling blast was devastating, and delivered so close that even after their short sprint, the unsteady hands of gasping men and Lemurians simply couldn’t miss. Then, with another roar that all but shattered the remaining defenders, the bayonets went to work.
Despite Lieutenant Blas-Ma-Ar’s best attempts to stop him, Chack went in with the rest of them. He never fired the old Krag; the ammunition in its magazine was the “real stuff,” not the hard-cast black powder reloads. It was precious for its long-range accuracy and utter reliability, despite its age. He went in with the bayonet just like his Marines and fought with a savagery that frankly unnerved a few Imperials, and an economical proficiency and precision that came only with the hard experience he’d gained. Through it all, his diminutive female lieutenant and apparently self-appointed “protector” fought alongside him with similar competence and equal vigor. That would later unnerve some of Chack’s Imperials even more, when they had time to reflect on various things, such as their own attitude toward women-and the kind of combat that had taught Chack and Blas, and all the Lemurians, their skill. But more than that, if there’d been present any Imperial Marines who, despite the reputation Chack had gained at the Dueling Grounds, still clung to any concern or discontented notion that they were commanded by an “ape” or “wog,” it vanished in the swirling smoke and bloody ground north of Waterford, New Ireland, that day.
The sky was purple, with long bloody streaks, when Major Blair found Chack in a large Dominion tent that was spared the firestorm that engulfed most of the enemy encampment when the mortars turned their wrath there. As always, Lieutenant Blas-Ma-Ar stood beside the brindled Lemurian while he sat on a bench, his furry tso bare, stoically enduring the stitches “Doc-Selass-Fris-Ar” applied to the dark, shaved skin over his left shoulder blade. Other wounded were in the tent, being tended by more “corps-’Cats” as even they’d begun calling themselves, and Chack seemed annoyed that Selass was bothering with him when others needed her attention more. In the middle distance, at the south edge of town, mortars still burst with their distinctive crackling thuds, and all the artillery of two divisions now thundered continuously, pulverizing the final works of the enemy along the shore of Lake Shannon.
“I’m heartily glad to find you in one piece, my friend,” Blair said with a touch of reproach. “Or at least fit to be sewn back into one,” he added.
Chack snorted. “You chastise me, when you creep along like a freshly hatched grawfish in the mud!” Chack pointed at Blair’s leg. “You still limp from the wound you had at the Dueling Grounds! You hid that before.”
Blair chuckled and patted his leg. “Actually, this is new. Courtesy of a Dom musket butt.” He shrugged. “Perhaps not entirely new, then. The bugger hit me in the same blasted spot!”
“Do you need someone to look at it?” Selass snapped, her large eyes flashing.
Blair was taken aback, and wondered why she was so angry. Then it hit him. He suddenly remembered the rumors that she and Chack had a “history” of some sort; a history perhaps aggravated by her proximity, continued devotion, and Chack’s betrothal to the distant “General” Safir Maraan.
“Um, no, not at all. It’s just a slight ache.”
“Then, as soon as I’m finished with this foolish person, you can take him off somewhere where he can hurt himself yet again-and I can resume treating others!”
“I just came here to check on the wounded. I never asked…” Chack began.
“Be silent!” Selass ordered. “If you speak again… I will sew your arms together behind your back!”
Chack said nothing more until Selass clipped the thread and daubed the wound with the purplish polta paste that would prevent infection. Even then, he didn’t speak while he snatched his bloody armor from a hook and gathered his weapons. Only once he, Blas, and Blair were outside the tent and among his and Blair’s waiting staffs-and the horses!-did he mutter, “I have always been respectful to that… spiky female. I can’t imagine why she hates me so.” Blas turned her head to hide the blinking she couldn’t stop, but her tail twitched erratically. “What?” Chack demanded angrily.
“Nothing, Major,” Blas replied, hiding her eyes under the rim of her helmet. “I’m just a lowly Marine. Selass-Fris-Ar is almost royalty, as our Imperial allies reckon such things. Her father is the great Keje-Fris-Ar, High Chief of Salissa Home, and ahd-mi-raal of First Fleet! Who am I to grasp the thoughts of one such as she?”
Chack growled with frustration, but went to his horse and patted the animal affectionately. He turned to Blair. “Come, it is time to finish this. The enemy here cannot escape and can no longer harm us.” He remembered the sincere, confused sentiments of an Imperial lieutenant he’d last seen lying facedown in the bloody mud at the bottom of a Dom trench. “Perhaps we are doing murder now,” he murmured, swinging stiffly into the saddle. Then his voice grew louder. “We must at least offer them surrender.”
“ Pity for the enemy?” Blair asked strangely as mal athe others mounted as well. “This from the hero of the Dueling Grounds who was physically dragged from the fighting?”
Chack sighed. “Of course I pity them. Hard as it may be to remember at times, the Doms are people. They’re not born evil. They do evil because they’re taught to, forced to, bred to…” Suddenly, Chack felt heat at the back of his neck, coursing into his head-along with a staggering revelation. “ Bred to evil,” he said again, a picture of Lawrence, cheerfully-and relentlessly-guarding Princess Rebecca from any possible harm springing to his mind. Lawrence wasn’t Grik… but he was as much like them as Imperials were to Doms-or the remnants of the New Britain Company. Lawrence was no more different from the Grik than the evil Rasik-Alcas had been from Lord Rolak, his beloved Safir, or all the good People he knew. “Maker above,” he whispered, “let us hurry and see if the enemy will let us save them.”
“Very well,” agreed Blair. “We must deal with them at any rate, and the less ammunition we expend, the better. The bulk of the enemy still infests New Dublin, across the Sperrin range. We must quickly prepare to threaten them there if the rest of the plan is to succeed-and every mortar bomb, roundshot, and musket ball we fire, not to mention the food to sustain us, must be brought over the Wiklow range from Cork, or all the way down the Waterford road from Bray.”