The first charge had been mere showmanship, to get the blood stirring and to fire up his men. This was the real thing, and he drummed his barbed heels on the horse's flanks, urging it to its fastest gallop. He raised his head briefly to call a final command, “Fire at will!"
Almost immediately he heard the report of a rifle, small and distant over the rush of wind around his speeding mount. Despite all warnings and imprecations, there was always at least one impatient idiot who wasted his bullet.
A moment later the foremost, John among them, were riding past the edge of the village, their steeds easily leaping the surrounding ditch and charging down the streets that ran between the neat rows of stone and nearwood houses. John glimpsed faces in windows, saw doors open and close as he galloped past; the town was not empty. He looked for a foeman to strike.
A second rifle shot sounded, then two together, and he heard a woman scream somewhere nearby. Something crashed loudly to the ground, startling him; his horse broke stride and slowed, jerking him about in the saddle.
Then a new sound, a strange, heavy, threatening sound like nothing he had ever heard before, drowned out everything but the pounding of hooves. The sound was something like hoofbeats, but far louder and more even. It reminded John slightly of an ancient steam engine he had once heard run.
He judged it to be coming from somewhere behind him and to his left. He yanked hard at the reins, struggling to turn his mount in the narrow street.
Men were screaming-men and horses, and he had seen no trace of horses in the village. Now the street around him was jammed with milling horses as his soldiers, like himself, tried to locate and identify the strange new sound.
The thunder of the charge was gone. Instead of a steady roar of hoofbeats he heard the frightened cries of wounded animals and the hoarse shouts of men, and that constant rhythmic hammering. He thought he heard his name being called, but could not be certain over the din.
He had hoped to avoid any serious losses in attacking such a small and lightly-defended village; he had expected a quick surrender. It was plain that something was ruining his plans, and that if he did not regain control of events quickly the attack might turn into a disaster. Custom called for prayer at such a moment, but he did not feel that he could spare the time for that. He stood up in the stirrups, straining to see what was happening.
The lower part of the hillside was littered with downed horses and riders, some apparently dead, others still moving. Some horses, their saddles empty, were scattering and fleeing; a few of his men were fleeing after them. He could see no sign of what had wrought such carnage, unless it was the faint wisp of blue smoke that rose from a house at the edge of the village, the last house on the street where he rode, built close on the edge of the ditch.
Most of his warriors were still alive and ready to fight, but had become confused and frightened by the strange noise and the breaking of the charge. The noise continued unabated, but whatever had spread death across the slope had caught only the rearmost portion of the company. The rest were now riding up and down the village streets, uncertain what to do. The enemy had not emerged to defend the town in the usual way, as John and his men had expected. Ordinarily, when the defenders remained hidden, the attackers would have dismounted and formed squads, then gone from house to house, taking prisoners, killing anyone who resisted, and raping and looting as they went. After seeing their comrades strewn dead and wounded across the hillside, however, no one was eager to dismount and reduce his chances of fleeing safely from whatever had cut those men down.
No one who had reached the village had fallen. All the dead and wounded lay on the slope, well away from the houses. The hammering noise continued, and John saw puffs of dust spewing up from the hillside, a puff with each beat, as if bullets were tearing up the turf. Startled, he realized what the noise was, and what had torn up his cavalry; old stories and childhood history lessons came back to him in a rush.
“Machine gun!” he called. “It's a machine gun! Stay clear!"
The old stories had told him about machine guns, tanks, and aircraft, about bombs and artillery and computers, and a dozen other lost secrets of warfare, all left behind on Old Earth. They had not, however, told him how to deal with such weapons.
He saw bullets ripping through downed men and horses, finishing off any that might still have been alive, and realized that the gunner was wasting an incredible amount of ammunition by keeping up the steady stream of fire. The man was a fool; if he ceased firing, he might lure more targets-John's men-back into range.
As if someone had heard his thoughts, the hammering abruptly stopped.
A good sniper should be able to pick the gunner off, John theorized, but some of his riflemen had fired their single bullets, and others were probably lying dead on the hillside. If any remained, John was not able to spot them.
Furthermore, he was not able to see the machine-gunner, either.
A rifle cracked nearby; he ducked instinctively and spurred his mount forward as one of his men cried out in pain. That reminded him very effectively that the machine-gunner was not the only man defending the village, nor even the only one with a gun and ammunition.
Ordinary weapons his men could handle, but someone had to stop the machine gun before the attackers could rally.
Or did he? After all, the gun was no longer firing. It might be out of ammunition. Even if it were not, it had not been turned against anyone who had reached the shelter of the village streets. Wherever the gun was concealed, its field of fire was apparently limited to the slope above the town.
As he came to that conclusion, however, he saw a window in the second story of the house at the end of the street explode outward in a shower of shattered glass, smashed from inside. One of his own warriors raised his rifle and fired, wasting his lone bullet and, so far as John could see, hitting nothing but the rafters of the house.
A dull metal snout, large and awkward and not quite like that of a rifle in shape, thrust out through the shattered window, trailing blue smoke and pointing down toward the street. That, surely, was the machine gun.
“Look out!” John cried. He was already moving, guiding his horse close to the house.
The gun fired a short burst, perhaps half a dozen rounds, and two warriors fell from their saddles while the rest scattered. The street cleared with amazing speed, leaving only John in the neighborhood of the terrifying weapon.
John, looking at the gun projecting from the window, guessed that it could not be tipped down very far. A gun like that, he was certain, would have too powerful a recoil to be hand-held. It would need to be braced somehow, and in that case it could not be brought forward and held vertically out the window. That meant that if he hugged the wall of the house, right under the window, he could not be shot-at least, not with the machine gun. He was already fairly close; he urged his horse forward and even closer, huddling directly beneath the muzzle of the gun.
A man leaned out and started to look down the street for new targets; John's sword swept up and hacked a red line across his throat. The angle was wrong to get any real power behind the blow; John doubted that the wound would be fatal even if left untended. Still, the man made a wordless noise of pain and surprise and fell back out of sight. Inspired by this minor success-the first blood he had drawn so far-John gripped the hilt of his sword in both hands and brought it chopping forward against the protruding gun-barrel. Metal rang loudly and the machine gun tottered back, aiming at empty sky but not visibly damaged.
Someone out of sight within tried to straighten it, and John chopped at it again, twisting it over against the windowframe. He thought wryly that he would need a new sword after this; the edge would be ruined beyond recovery by such misuse.