“You wanna let a girl run you down you motherless runts?”
The soldiers made no reply; they had no breath. The old Centurion might jog along in full kilt and have wind enough to bellow insults, but the troopers knew to keep their mouths shut and legs working. Ahead, Sue ran as gracefully as a girl, long hair unbound and swaying in her wake; alongside her ran the Prince. Behind them a forest of pikes swayed and bobbed in time to the pounding feet. The last half-mile had been hard, but there was no straggling. Men doubled vomiting and fell choking in the dust of the street but none stopped to rest, not with those two running lightly, tauntingly on ahead.
In front of the two runners, the legate held his horse to a trot and frowned in worry. He thought he understood what he was supposed to do, but pikemen were supposed to hold ground, not charge over it. And this ground was worse than any battlefield he had seen, strewn with bricks and stones and pitted with potholes. Not to mention having royalty looking over his shoulder. And if the Prince was hurt… or killed… If only they could get there in time! That street ahead must be the one. Now they’d have to turn the column onto the street, dress their ranks and wait for the general’s order. Maybe drop off a battalion on the street on each side just for insurance.
A horseman came galloping around the corner, his mount surefootedly picking its way down the littered lane, his arm waving for the legate’s attention. Beside him, the standard-bearer stiffened as the man drew near. “Sir! That’s General Heinrich!” The legate snapped off a hasty salute, then held up one arm to bring the men to a stop. Most of them braced their pikes on the ground for support and doubled over gasping or retching or both.
“It’s too late to do what we planned,” the general said with no introduction. “Dress your ranks here! Now!” Centurions bellowed and drums rolled, calling the men to their accustomed drill. “Hand your pikes… Raise your pikes… you damn fool Auros, raise your pike or I’ll run you back to camp… right, then… Order your pikes…”
While the men dressed their formation and rattled through the drill, Hitch sketched his plan to the legate, who was flatly horrified. “Sir! I beg of you! We just can’t do that with pikes, not in such close quarters!”
“Do you know what the Turks do to prisoners, Legate Josef? You’d never be constipated again, I promise you. Look you, we have to do this. Just make your mind up and let’s get going!” The sound of the Turks was growing louder, jangling bell-trees and pounding drums, roaring voices and curious falsetto yips rising from the sound of gunfire. Ahead the street was filling with dust and smoke, a cloudy precursor to the coming storm.
“There aren’t any real cross streets for, oh, six or eight blocks, maybe more.” He doesn’t know what a block is and I don’t have time to explain, Hitchcock thought desperately. This is it – one last throw of the dice. Just get them moving! “That street runs due west and doglegs before it gets to your HQ and Army HQ. If we don’t stop them they’ve got the supplies, artillery and all! So let’s do it!”
The Centurions were still bellowing out commands in steady voices. “Advaaaance your pike! Chaaaaarge your pike! The cohooooort will advance! By battalions, maaaaarch! At the quickstep, march!”
Hitchcock had just enough time to see the John, mounted, proffer a spare horse. The Prince swung up on it and pulled Sue into pillion; he spurred after them, but they and the lead pikes vanished into the smoke.
Timing, timing, timing. He’d held them until the first janissary scouts had streamed past, a few filtering into the side street. Now they were running for their lives, pursued by a clacking hedgehog of sharp steel blades. Ahead in the dimness of the smoke he saw the mass of janissaries, lines opening up in the momentary extra room of the intersection. A flash of dark faces turning, a flash of officers jerking up in alarm, a flash of bewilderment and frozen indecision, and then they hit.
Janissaries howled in shock and pain; all order collapsed as the axe-blade of the pikes chunked deep into the Turkish flank. Ahead he could see the Prince, curvetting atop his horse, bringing the pikemen to a halt before they could continue farther down the street. There was no way he could reach them; the janissaries had broken, bolting madly down the street to the east, but they would be reforming. And they had guns, the slayer of pikes.
“Shooulder your pike! You, Kithros you worthless son of… And riiight face!”
It took time to bring up the cumbersome pikes, time to turn, time to dress the ranks… as he had expected, the Turkish officers were screaming and lashing at the routed janissaries, droplets of blood flying from whips that were no longer ceremonial. He felt a moment’s admiration as the janissaries turned and unslung their guns, loaded and ready to fire when the matchlock was set. Men were whipping matchcord over their heads now to fan the spark, sliding it into the matchlocks with practiced hands. More and more were trickling back into the firing line, feet apart, shoulders set, barrels swinging up…
“The cohort will adva-hance… maaaarrrch!” Pikes swung down, rows of bloody knives ready… the guns were coming up… the officers screamed, the muskets roared, the smoke blasted down the street. Pikemen tumbled like bowling pins, heavy wooden staves clattering forgotten to the street as leaden balls shattered arms and legs, punched into soft intestinal tissue, exploded eyes like rotten grapes, splattered brains across friends and companions.
The Turks shouldered arms, hands moving in practiced precision to powder, ball and rammer. The smoke thinned, revealing an enemy with no firearms of his own, no armor, an enemy whose ranks were shattered and whose men were shaken, exhausted. There was a moment’s pause, a silence peculiar to great battles, an instant when the gods themselves bend forward and cup an ear, raise a hand to shadow eyes that peer anxiously into the uncertain future.
“Dress your damned ranks you motherless…You Mikhail don’t you cut your eyes like… The cohooort will advance! For the Emperor! Forward the Sixteenth! Forward the Sixteenth! Chhhaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrge!”
Unbelieving eyes widened in shock; unnerved hands paused in the habitual motions of reloading the precious guns. Unguarded feet shifted, unnerved heads lifted… No troop could have taken such punishment and then come on. It was not possible! It could not be! The infidel could not… could…
Oh, Shaitan.
The Sixteenth – what was left of it – came out of the smoke at a steady jog, the gaps left by the dead and dying closing as a fist clenches before it strikes, pikes down and blades flickering in uncertain light.
The janissaries stood, faithful to their oath, and a few even got off a second shot. The rest were thrown into the mincing machine or tossed down their precious guns, hurled aside their officers and fled in unreasoning terror, not from the terrible, thirsty blades, but from the men behind them.
