Jerry Pournelle & Roland Green Janissaries 3 Storms of Victory

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the castle, and there wasn't a dry campground in sight. No dry wood, either.
They'd better move on and try to make it home tonight, or there were going to
be seven hundred men thoroughly pissed off at one Lord
Gengrich do Zyphron, former Corporal, U.S.A. Come to think of it, he was
fairly pissed off at himself. This stuff worse than the 'Nam highlands. Should
have expected it. "Alex."
"Yeah?"
"The men won't like sleeping out in the wet this close to home. Take Clayton
and Green and a double load of ammo and fifty men and ride up ahead. Picket
the road every couple of hundred meters. If that smokes out an ambush, we can
come up and bail you out. If it doesn't, we can push on through."
Boyd nodded slowly. "If you say so "
"What's buggin' you, Alex? The ammo?"
"Yeah. I don't mind shooting it off, but risking its being captured ..."
"Got any better ideas?" Boyd shook his head. "Then move it. We sure don't want
to be out here in the dark."
"Aaaa-men, brother."
Gengrich watched as Boyd rode off to round up the other two mercs for his fire
team and pick a half-company of locals. He spat into a clump of sheepdog bush
beside the track. Never knew what officers did. Until I had to be one.
Christ, for a nickel I'd give it up. Except that doesn't work either. Bad
enough taking care of two thousand people, but damn all it's worse being
alone.
Goddam crummy planet.
A snatch of song ran through his mind. Something he'd seen on an arts channel
movie. "And it is a pleasant thing, to be a pirate king."
Flipping bull shit it is!
At least the harvests hadn't been too bad, which had bought him a little time
to play what was now really his only card. He didn't know what good would come
of sending an embassy north to Ganton's wedding, but old Daettan had a
reputation for being a pretty smart bargainer.
No harm asking. Maybe the Captain will take us all back. Only what happens if
he wants just the mercs and none of the locals? What in hell do I do then?
When Alex's patrol rode through Gengrich ordered the others to dismount and
lead. "Save the horses." There were grumbles, and some arguments. One of his
NCOs shouted and .he heard blows.
No flipping discipline, and what do I do about that. Pirate king my ass.
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It was just enough darker to notice when Gengrich heard the shots. Six that
sounded like one of the H&Ks and another that sounded like a .45. That meant
trouble unless it was Green firing; he had a bad rep for being trigger-
happy.
"Red alert!"
Gengrich heard the order relayed as he swung up into his saddle. If it was
Green wasting ammo again, he'd just made a real good down payment on being the
first merc to really smoke for screwing up
"Bandits!" somebody shouted, invisible in the mist ahead. Then two more bursts
and a lot of wordless yelling, some of it not even sounding human.
Gengrich felt his hands quiver the way they always did when he knew a
firefight was coming. It never bothered him once he was doing some personal
shooting, but sitting and watching or even worse listening always got to him.
"First and Fourth Companies, mount up! Second and Third Companies, take the
flanks and advance for dismounted action!" Please God the horseholders knew
their business and all the bandits were up front and not lurking down here
ready to grab the mounts.
Gengrich drew his sword and dug in his spurs. Gravel flew as he came level
with the captain of Fourth Company. As the mounted column got into motion, it
made enough noise to alert any bandits for miles around. Not enough to drown
out more bursts of firing up ahead. Gengrich concentrated on con-
trolling his horse with one hand. He could now manage a horse if he kept his
mind on it, although he suspected that most of the born-in-the-saddle types
among the locals still sniggered at him behind his back.
He was so busy with his mount that he didn't notice the battle noises getting
louder. Suddenly they were all around him, and he saw Alex Boyd down on one
knee behind his dead horse, one arm dangling useless, firing his pistol with
the other hand.
Gengrich opened his mouth to shout to Boyd. Before he could take a deep breath
not just the battle noises but the battle itself was all around him. A
stand of scrub oak spewed ragged figures in all directions. The captain of the
Fourth Company flipped backward out of his saddle, his face mashed into jam by
a flail.
Someone leaped into his saddle and started to turn his mount's head, then
screamed even louder and fell under its hooves as Boyd shot him in the belly.
Two other bandits closed in on Gengrich. He slashed down at the head of the
one in the lead. The man's long dagger gashed his boot as the sword came down.
The man tried to slash again as he reeled back, his skull split open, then
crumpled. The other bandit let out a scream that turned Gengrich's stomach and
leaped like a frog, left hand gripping the bow of the saddle and the right the
horse's reins. As Gengrich realized the bandit was a woman, she brought the
knife in her right hand around toward the horse's neck. His swordcut only
gashed her shoulder, but it broke her grip in time to save the horse. He made
another wild slash at her and felt it hit something, but didn't see what
happened to her after that. The bandits who'd run past him came running back,
and after them some reinforcements from the First Company.
The bandits didn't wait around for the full four companies to come up; they
scattered with what they'd managed to grab or strip from the dead. Gengrich
was just starting to think of casualty reports when he heard four evenly
spaced rifle shots from back where the horses of the dismounted companies were
being held. He was turning his mount when he heard a horse's scream, another
shot, then silence. He waited while the silence dragged on, then sighed.
Whatever it was back there, it wasn't a full-scale attack on the rear.
What the bandits up in front had done was bad enough. Joe Green was going to
have to be trigger-happy with his left hand; somebody had hacked off the first
two joints of his right index finger. Alex Boyd would be out of action for a
while with a broken arm; that was a mace. Twelve of the locals were dead and
about twenty had reported wounded, which meant probably twice as
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many needing the medics. The local habit of proving your guts by not reporting
wounded wasn't quite as bad as it was before Gengrich trained the medics in
antisepsis; now you could prove your guts by letting boiling water be dumped
on your wounds. You still got a lot of people walking around with legitimate
Purple Hearts and never saying a frigging word!
The bandits left fourteen bodies behind, and any of them who lit out with a
bad wound was probably going to die, but they'd also made off with a dozen
weapons and five horses.
No star weapons or ammo, thank God; Gengrich still knew that Alex Boyd had
come too damned close to being a prophet instead of just'a casualty.
A scribe was getting the figures down on a wooden tablet when Private Alan
MacAllister rode up the track. "That's wrong," he said, pointing at the
figures.
"Yeah?"
"I got five more back there. They tried to come through the horses. I think
they were in a hurry."
"They probably were. We weren't exactly running a resort up here." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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