Lightning bolts lanced downward. Only a handful of the shorter-ranged fireballs were successfully launched, and two of those went wide as defensive fire smashed into the firing reds. Sharonians screamed and died. The fireballs that landed inside the fort's confines exploded with tremendous force, and a tiny corner of Mesaion's mind thanked Prince Janaki fervently for insisting that his howitzer and mortar crews be kept under cover, out of their gun pits, until they were actually needed.
The overhead cover the prince had insisted with equal fanaticism upon providing for the riflemen spread out along the fort's fighting step proved its worth, as well. For all the heat and fury of the fireballs, they lacked the blast effect to penetrate those heaped sandbags.
What they did to Mesaion's exposed gunners, however, was something else entirely.
In less than two screaming minutes of savage action, fifty-three of Lorvam Mesaion's men were killed outright. Another eighteen were wounded so badly death would have been a mercy, and still another seventeen were put out of action. Four of his Yerthaks were destroyed or disabled. He lost five Faraikas, and two of his heavy mortars were thoroughly wrecked as all the ready ammunition in their—thankfully
—unmanned pit went up in a thunderous chain of explosions.
But while all that was happening, his gunners brought down eight more dragons.
One mortally wounded beast crashed directly into the top of the northwestern tower like a forty-ton hammer of scales, blood, and bone, and the impact reduced the pedestal gun crew atop that tower to gruel. The parapet exploded outward in a meteor storm of broken adobe, stones, and dust, and the dragon came to rest, one shattered wing drooping down until its tip trailed on the ground beyond. Its pilot dangled from its broken neck, hanging limp and broken himself from the straps of his flight harness. Another dragon smashed into the southernmost stretch of the western wall. It just missed the corner tower where the wall turned to angle back to the east, and the plunging beast crushed the firing step's improvised overhead protection. At least another thirty men were killed as the dragon exploded through the parapet and slammed to earth between the wall and the nearest gun emplacement.
Smoke billowed up from the fort's interior. The top of the southern tower might have been missed by the plummeting dragon, but it was enveloped in a holocaust all its own where that dragon's fireball had struck yet another of the Yerthaks before it was killed itself. The fireball had ignited the destroyed gun's ready-use ammunition, and two dozen neraby infantry had been killed or wounded. But only four of the attacking dragons managed to pull out of their dives successfully, and two of them staggered off, obviously badly hurt.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Mayrkos Harshu's face was completely expressionless as the imagery from Commander of Fifty Fahrlo's recon crystal played back before him. Klayrman Toralk wished his face could be equally disciplined, but that was more than he could manage.
Graholis! What the hells did Myr run into? And what the fuck did he think he was doing with that second attack?!
The imagery concluded with Deathclaw circling overhead while his two wounded wingmates came in for quick, clumsy landings. Toralk didn't have the dragon-healers' reports yet, but he'd be surprised if the more badly wounded of the two survived. And whether the beast lived or not, both of the injured dragons were going to be out of action for a long time.
Which means I have exactly three battle dragons left—all of them blacks, he thought grimly.
"Thank you," Harshu said almost absently to the Gifted technician. The man had done extraordinarily well to get the imagery transferred so quickly, but he didn't look very happy, despite the two thousand's well deserved thanks.
Probably because he isn't a total idiot, Toralk thought.
The technician departed, and Harshu and Toralk looked at one another across the map table.
"It would appear," Harshu said with a thin, humorless smile, "that it's fortunate I'd already decided to halt the offensive here in Traisum."
Toralk winced.
"Sir," he began, "I'd apologize for this ... this debacle, if there were any way to excuse it. I—"
"That's enough, Klayrman," Harshu interrupted. The Air Force officer closed his mouth, and the Expeditionary Force's CO shook his head. "I saw your and Five Hundred Myr's attack plan. I was fully aware of the Intelligence appreciations upon which it was based, and I approved it. Whatever blame there may be, it belongs to me as much as it does to you."
Toralk started to disagree with his superior's assessment, then made himself stop and shook his own head.
"That's very understanding of you, Sir," he said instead. "But whoever's to blame, we've got a major problem here."
My, Klayrman, a corner of his brain mocked, what a massive gift for understatement you do have.
"For all practical purposes," he continued, "my battle dragon strength has just been wiped out. The blacks I have left are the least effective for this sort of attack. And, to be honest, despite all the smoke and explosions our pilots have reported, I doubt very much that they succeeded in neutralizing the fort's defensive fire."
"Probably not," Harshu agreed. The two thousand gazed down at the map of the terrain around Fort Salby, rubbing his chin gently.
"All right," he said finally. "There's no point standing here beating ourselves up over our losses. What matters are our remaining resources for prosecuting the attack."
Toralk looked at him, then cleared his throat respectfully.
"Sir," he said diffidently, "as I understand our basic operational planning, the object was to secure a forward chokepoint we could hold against counterattack. That's what made this portal so attractive. But if we failed to secure that sort of chokepoint, our object became to conduct a mobile defensive withdrawal, slowing the enemy to the greatest possible extent while the Commandery found reinforcements for us."
"And you're thinking that if we take heavy losses—additional heavy losses—against Salby, we won't have anything left to conduct that mobile defense with." Harshu's voice sounded remarkably calm, and Toralk nodded.
"That's exactly what I'm thinking, Sir."
"Well, I'm not certain you're wrong," Harshu said frankly. "On the other hand, now that I've seen Fifty Fahrlo's recon images, I'm more convinced than ever that securing Fort Salby itself would be extremely valuable. The ground-level approach to the portal is even more constricted from the up-chain side than I'd thought it was, and thanks to the portal itself, there's no way—no practical way—they could flank us out of position. It would be a straight up fighting withdrawal to the portal, with our transport dragons giving us the ability to pull our men out at the very last-minute."
"I can't disagree with that, Sir. But at the same time, the cliff face, alone, is going to be a major terrain obstacle for anyone without aerial capability. Frankly, if I were a Sharonian, I'd figure it was a pretty solid cork all by itself. We don't need to control the approaches, as well."
"I'm not as positive about that." Harshu shook his head. "I've been thinking about what they did to Hundred Thalmayr at the swamp portal. They used man and pack animal-portable weapons for that attack; for this one, they'd have their 'railroad' available to bring in really heavy weapons. And remember the sheer size of some of the machinery the overflight picked up. I've been trying to imagine what one of their artillery pieces might look like built on that scale and, to be honest, the thought scares the crap out of me.
"Whether they've got any that big or not, it's obvious that they have some which are at least a lot bigger and heavier than anything we've encountered so far. Obviously, we haven't seen those in action yet ... which means I don't have any sort of measuring stick to evaluate how far through a portal they could shoot. I'd prefer to have some extra depth, enough room to at least get a good, solid feel for their capabilities, before we make a determined stand defending the cliffs. For that matter, simply deploying in well fortified defensive positions in this kind of terrain would force them to slow down, move cautiously. We wouldn't have that advantage anywhere else—or, at least, not to this extent—if they ever did get past the cliffs.