Chapter the 2nd
Battle: He Is Dead Who Will Not Fight
. . . And life is colour and warmth and light,
And a striving evermore for these;
And he is dead who will not fight;
And who dies fighting has increase.
“Into Battle”
Julian Grenfell
Melville’s troops were in a line, facing downhill. The grassy stubble made the slope a golden brown, ending abruptly when it hit the gray boles and emerald leaves of the forest. Many habitable worlds in the galaxy had been seeded by a mysterious ancient civilization, but this was a world with its own, independently evolved ecology. Flitting across the slope were splendid, beautiful, red and blue things that looked a bit like dragonflies that glistened in the sun like rubies and sapphires, unlike anything they’d ever seen before.
Every warrior in that thin line had a clean shot at the approaching foe. When speed was required their muskets were loaded with paper cartridges and minié balls, but now every double-barreled musket in the line was carefully and lovingly prepared with precise loads of powder, and carefully selected minié balls and percussion caps. The first shot would be at 250 yards. Precision and care was required at this range. As the enemy drew closer, less care and more speed would become the order of the day.
The center of the line was anchored in the southern, downslope edge of the little copse of trees. The wings extended straight out to the left and right, prepared to wheel back and defend the trees and the bones of their cutter, which was immediately adjacent and upslope of the trees. Twenty-four redcoated marines formed the center of the line. Six bluejacketed sailors were on each wing.
Lieutenant Melville and Sergeant Broadax stood in front of the line.
Melville was a man of Westerness. He was tall and slender in a blue jacket and sailcloth trousers, with nut brown hair tussled by the light breeze.
Broadax was a Dwarrowdelf in sworn service to the Crown of Westerness. She was short, squat and wide, dressed in marine red, with long dark hair jutting out from under a round iron helmet. She looked like the stump of a mighty tree, painted red. Except this stump had the stub of a cigar clenched in her teeth, and a thin little beard on the point of her chin.
Other than Broadax, and a few sailors with a kerchief tied to protect a bald head from the sun, the rest of the company were bare headed. Everything about them was a product of their endless years sailing the seas of Flatland. Their hair was generally short, since water was a scarce and precious commodity in two-space and long hair was almost impossible to keep free of fleas and other exotic vermin. They were also barefooted, having built up thick calluses from a lifetime aboard ships where the floorboards and spars were coated with Elbereth Moss. When their bare feet were in contact with the smooth white Moss they were in contact with their Ship, and they didn’t want to scar or scuff the precious Moss with rough boots or shoes.
Both Melville and Broadax knew that anything they had to say to their men was best said in front. Throughout history military leaders knew that they needed to get out in front if they wanted to influence the behavior of their troops. They also knew that the one in front usually died first. They weren’t out front because they wanted to. They were in front of their men because they had to.
Over the centuries military leaders had succeeded in convincing themselves that it was bad for morale for leaders to die. A little blood was okay, even good for the troops’ morale, but death was definitely out. So they tried hard to find a balance between necessity and stupidity. In this case Broadax and Melville had worked out a plan. A tried and tested plan. One leader led from the front to direct and exhort, and one stayed behind to direct, push and prod.
Private Jarvis’ heart was pounding in his chest. He’d been taught the breathing exercise to prevent this from happening, but his training failed him. He was already experiencing a loss of peripheral vision, like looking through a “toilet paper tube.” And he was experiencing “auditory exclusion,” in which his sense of hearing “tuned out” as his brain focused all attention toward his vision, the primary sense bringing in survival data.
The marines here on the left flank were commanded by the huge Corporal Kobbsven. Sergeant Broadax was striding down the front of the line just as Kobbsven was passing on some of his old soldier wisdom. “Yah, yew betcha,” said Kobbsven, “I svare it’s true. If ya put a coat of olife oil on yar bayonet blade unter a full moon, then the blade von’t schtick in the enemy. Olifes represent peace, and under the full moon there’s power to resist stickin’ to the enemy. ‘Course, it vouldn’t vork on an ordinary vorld, but once that blade comes out into Flatland the Elder King makes it so.”
“Really, Corp’rl?” squeaked Jarvis.
“Kobbsven,” said Broadax, stopping abruptly and scowling up at the towering corporal, rolling her glowing stub of a cigar to the corner of her mouth. Red veins in her eyes, set between a repeatedly broken nose, made the map of two small neighboring villages separated by a vast mountain chain. “We ain’t got no olerv earl, an’ this wurld ain’t got no moon. So it looks like we’s scruwd, blued and tattooed. So how ’bout if ye jist remember to twist the blade as ye pull it out! Ye think ‘at might wurk too?!”
There was only one thing in all the world that Kobbsven feared, and she was standing in front of him, looking him squarely in the belt buckle. “Uhh, yeah, Sarge, I reckon that’d wurk. . . .” Kobbsven was a giant of a man with a huge, scraggly, handlebar mustache. He was standing at rigid attention, but despite all efforts his belly was at ease. If Broadax’s eyes were the maps of two mountain villages, then the pink lines in Kobbs’ two cheeks were the map of a thriving metropolis being savagely mauled by a ferret.
“All right yew lot, listen up! Look at me! Look at me, Jarvis!” roared Broadax, glaring at him as she strode in front of the marine private and caught his eye. Her glare was particularly effective. A veritable concentrated essence of NCO glare flowed out from the small space between her helmet and beard, and her voice echoed in the hot stillness as she clenched her cigar in the corner of her mouth. “Don’t let yer mind wander, son. It’s too small to be out on its own!” A ripple of nervous laughter went through the ranks, easing the tension.
“By the Lord, all of ye’d better pay attention to me. I’ll make yer life a hell of a lot more miserable than they will if ye don’t listen up!” She scanned the line and made sure every set of eyes was on her. As they looked at her they began to listen. As they looked and listened they were able to shake off the spell of tunnel vision and auditory exclusion. Jarvis’ training began to kick in and he started taking slow, deep breaths.
Broadax stood with her stubby legs planted as if the 1.5 gees of her homeworld’s gravity held her down. Her twenty pound, double-bladed battle-ax hung lightly in her left fist, carried at the balance point, right up near the business end. “Lads, in this heat yer powder is gonna perform extra well an’ ye’ll shoot flatter, so ye can aim a little lower than usual. The heat shimmer is also gonna distort their image an’ make it look a little higher than it really is. And some of ye sorry bastards will tend to overshoot when ye shoot downhill.”
Everyone nodded as she continued. “We’re gonna get a lot of cheap shots at ’em as they come up this hill. By God I almost feel sorry for ’em. By God I do! But it’s no damn good if ye waste it! We will fire our first volley when they pass the two-hundred- and-fifty-yard stake, but I want ye to treat it like two hundred yards. Then we’ll adjust from there. When we’ve loaded our last volley we’ll fix bayonets an’ see if the bastards can digest cold steel!”
There was a lot of drop in the trajectory of black powder projectiles at 250 yards. You had to aim well above your target. But Broadax’s marines trained extensively for this kind of combat. The key was using the ramrod with great precision, so that you “seated” the bullet down with consistent pressure, every time.
The weird twisting of Flatland wouldn’t tolerate anything more complex than a rifled musket, and that only with daily maintenance, so their sights were a crude but effective set of posts that weren’t even placed on the sailors’ muskets. “Ye damned blueboys,” she added, looking first left and then right to catch the eye of the two groups of sailors on the wings. “Jist fire right at ’em, like they was on a ship right next ta ye. By the time all the factors balance out, that’s as good as ye’ll ever do. If ye undershoot, yer bullets will likely hit this dry ground and bounce up into ’em.”