"Say hello to my leetle priend!" he shouted, then swung over and down at the head of the barrel like a golfer.
Fain nodded as the first gush of fish oil fell through the holes. The Krath, who'd expected it to be hot or even boiling, were pleasantly surprised that it was neither. The slippery substance made it even harder for them to move forward over the bodies piling up in the tunnel, but as far as they were concerned, that was a more than equitable trade-off. Fain doubted they'd feel that way much longer.
"That's right," he whispered. "Just a little further... ."
Poertena rolled the third, massive barrel aside as the last of the oil gushed from it, then nodded at Neteri and pulled out a grenade.
"One, two, t'ree—"
He thumbed the tab on the grenade and dropped it through the hole. Neteri dropped his own grenade simultaneously through the hole beside it, then both of them moved on to the next pair of holes and repeated the process.
"Time to get t'e pock out of here," Poertena said, headed for the door and accelerating steadily. "T'is t'e next best t'ing to teaching t'em bridge!"
The incendiary grenades were ancient technology—a small bursting charge, surrounded by layers of white phosphorus. Simple, but effective.
The burning metal engulfed the interior of the gate, and some of it spread as far as the front rank of the Diaspran infantry. Despite the weight of their rifle fire, they had been unable to keep the fanatic Krath from staying closer to them than Roger had hoped. Unfortunately, in the words of that most ancient of inter-species military aphorisms, "Shit happens," and so a few of the humans' allies learned the hard way that the most terrible thing about white phosphorus is that there is no way to extinguish it. You have to get it off, or simply let it burn out. Water doesn't quench it; it only makes it burn hotter.
Yet what happened to the Diasprans was only very bad; what happened to the Krath was indescribable. The blazing phosphorus raised the temperature in the gate tunnel to over a thousand degrees Kelvin in a bare instant. The dozens of Mardukans who were covered in Poertena's fish oil never had a chance as it flashed into vapor and flame. The only mercy—if such a noun could possibly be applied to a moment of such transcendent horror—was that death came very swiftly, indeed.
It came less swiftly for the forces gathered around the interior side of the gate as the ravening flames licked outward. Some of those at least fifteen or twenty meters back actually survived.
The flame gouted up through the murderholes, as well, narrowly missing the last Vashin cavalryman as he scrambled down the scaling rope on the outer wall. The inside of the gate tower was like a chimney, channeling the explosion of heat and fury that set fire to all the woodwork and oil-drenched barrels in the tower's interior. Force fed from the conflagration underneath, which now included burning bodies, the flame and heat swept through the upper sections of the tower as if it were a blast furnace.
In seconds, the entire gatehouse was fully involved.
"Cut it out, you stupid beast!"
Roger jerked on the reins of his civan as it stamped nervously. He understood why the flames and the smell of burning flesh made all of the cavalry mounts uneasy, but understanding didn't make his own mount any easier to control, and he felt a sudden longing for Patty.
For virtually the entire march across the far continent, his primary mount had been a flar-ta pack beast—an elephant-sized monstrosity that resembled nothing so much as an omnivorous triceratops. His particular mount had had more than a touch of the much more dangerous wild strain that the Marines had taken to calling "capetoads." Patty had been five tons of ravening, unstoppable mean in a fight, and at times like this, when it looked like a hard slog all the way to the mountains and possible battles with barbarian tribes beyond, he missed her badly.
But there'd been No Way to fit a flar-ta onto a schooner, so for the time being, he'd just have to put up with these damned two-legged idiots, instead.
Pahner walked over and glanced up at the prince as Roger attempted to soothe the nervous civan.
"I think your plan worked, Your Highness."
"Better than I'd hoped, actually," Roger admitted, listening to the steady roar of the flames consuming the gate tower's interior. "They'll have to wait for it to cool before they can pursue us on this side of the river. Either that, or climb down the walls."
"But they'll have sent out runners on the far side," Pahner pointed out, gesturing across the barely glimpsed river. "You know there's a bridge upstream somewhere and garrisons are already being turned out."
"Then I suppose we should get headed out," Roger said, kneeing the beast around to face north, away from the inferno at the gate. He lowered his helmet visor and tightened his gauntlets.
"Time to show these religious gentlemen why you don't pock with House MacClintock."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"You are an absolute idiot, Sor Teb," Lorak Tral snarled.
The general fingered his sword as he glared at the Scourge while smoke from the fires wafted even into the small interior meeting room. It hadn't taken long for the fire from the gate to spread throughout the upper temple district, especially with oil- and fire-covered soldiers running screaming in every direction. A brief, fortuitous deluge had helped control the worst of the flames, but the damage was extensive. And that didn't even count the damage to the gatehouse itself... or the loss of the High Priest. The jockeying for that position always led to social unrest, and in the wake of the chaos left by the retreating humans, the city balanced precariously on the brink of civil war.
"You may not speak to me that way, Lorak," the Scourge's reply made an insult of the naked name. "Whatever has happened, I am still the Scourge of God. I am the Chooser. Beware who you call an idiot."
"I'll call you anything I want, you idiot," the general told him in a voice of ice. "You may be the Scourge, but until this is settled, you are to refrain from any further action. Is that perfectly clear?"
"And who made you High Priest?" Teb snapped. He refused to show it, but a tiny trickle of fear had crept into his heart. Lorak was normally a rather self-effacing type; there must have been notable changes in the last hour or so for him to take this high a hand.
"He is not the High Priest," Werd Ras said quietly. The Flail, the head of the internal police, had kept out of most of the maneuvering for the succession, but he had eyes and ears everywhere.
"However," Ras continued, "a quorum of the full council has determined that he will have plenipotentiary authority to deal with this situation. And he is specifically ordered to bring the humans to ground. The council was... not impressed by your actions, Sor Teb. Endangering the Voice was idiotic. Doing so with too few guards simply compounded your idiocy. And deserting him when it was clear your plan had failed was inexcusable."
"You're going to try to stop the humans with your Sere vern?" Teb said to Lorak scornfully. "All you know is how to make pretty formations. The humans are headed for the Shin. They had one with them, disguised as a Shadem female. You do know what that means, don't you?"
"You make too much of the Shin," the general replied with equal scorn. "It is high time to teach those barbarians a lesson."