Past the trenches, the Salv defences became less obvious, the dugouts and pillboxes well-hidden on the slope, the smoke and shattered trees making them even harder to spot. There were places where the forest was burning too hot to approach. Rann could only hope those same flames had consumed any defenders hiding there.
Inevitably, the loyalists were funnelled along the natural gullies and trackways that marred the mountainside, staying just behind the rolling barrage laid down by their artillery. The slope was still marginally shallow enough for the tanks to negotiate, though it steepened by the yard. The enemy fire kept coming from a hundred points at once. It had lost intensity, but certainly not lethality. Despite the bombardment, the place was infested with snipers, hidden in deep foxholes that allowed them to emerge when the barrage moved on. Every muffled snap of a marksman’s rifle meant another dead marine.
Rann did all he could to keep his squad in cover, sticking to the unburnt gulleys and never staying still for too long, cajoling them when he had to. They stayed low to the ground, where the air was less choking. The soil sucked and squelched underfoot.
With the earthworks five hundred yards behind them, they passed between two blazing evergreens, red-hot bark falling around them like rain. One smouldering piece landed on Iva’s exposed neck, making her flinch and slap it away, swearing heartily. She looked behind her, with hatred. “What were our fucking bombers doing all night? How could they miss all those guns?”
“Salv must have buried them deep. Camouflaged them in the earth, waiting to spring the trap,” Rann told her bitterly. “Nothing we can do about it now. Keep on. We have to find Chasck.”
“If she’s still alive,” Lidaro interjected.
“Even if she’s not, it doesn’t change our orders. We push up this mountain by squads. We’ll regroup when we’re able.”
They came to a sort of clearing, a gap in the forest made by concentrated shellfire. Jagged stumps protruded like monstrous teeth from the swampy black soil, flames still crackling in knotholes and splintered gouges in the wood. When Rann looked up, hoping for a glimpse of the sky, he saw only more smoke. The sun was nothing more than a lighter shade of grey.
Something roared past overhead, deafeningly close. He saw an angular shape cutting rapidly through the smoke. One of the new jets. It swooped low over the shrouded forest, loosing a flight of sodium-bright rockets at some hidden emplacement, before vanishing into the billowing murk. The rockets’ glare revealed the ghostly figures of men moving in the woods around them. He tensed up – it was impossible to tell by sight if they were friend or foe – but then saw that they were all heading in the same direction. He could hear tank engines somewhere not far off.
He led the squad across the clearing and on through the trees, swatting away embers like glowing flies. He got his bearings by the glow of shellbursts higher up the slope. Concentrations of heavy fire meant Salv positions that had been pinpointed; too dangerous to approach, between the Salv defenders and the risk of being hit by a friendly shell.
Not that it was much safer where they were. Sniper bullets hounded them uphill, chasing them along treacherous avenues of muddy ground. One came so close to Rann’s head he felt the displaced air on his cheek. He couldn’t believe there were so many of the bastards still shooting. He could see a steep ridge ahead, lined with toppled and burning trees, marking the point at which the forest began to thin out. He remembered from Dauman’s briefing that it was where the next ring of Salv fortifications began. Approaching it as an isolated squad was as good as suicide. They had to find cover until the rest of the vanguard caught up with them.
The growl of an engine reached his ears, as welcome as any lullaby. The Salv had no armour up here. That was a Kauln tank, and very nearby.
Following the sound, he guided the squad around a mire of overlapping craters that must have once been an enemy emplacement, judging by the twisted chunks of metal scattered in the mud. A human leg was visible among them, ending in red ribbons just above the knee. It looked so shrivelled and unreal, like something torn from a ghastly mannequin.
A deep gully, perhaps the course of an ancient river, sliced the mountainside ahead of them. A small tank in battleworn marine camouflage was grinding and jolting its way along the gully floor, which was barely wide enough for it. Rann recognised it as a trench-clearer, with a clawed dozer blade at the front, designed for plowing through swampy terrain and detonating buried mines. It must have been modified for mountain warfare, as it was making slow but steady progress up the steepening slope, its engine coughing and protesting. Bullets from Salv snipers ricocheted off its sloping frontal armour, leaving little more than long scratches in the muddy paintwork. Nothing heavier came anywhere near it. Between the thick smoke, the crazed wreckage of the forest and the low elevation of the gully, Rann guessed the remaining Salv artillery had no good fire solution up here.
“Get behind it and follow,” he commanded the others, as they gathered in the shadow of a shattered tree-trunk that leaned drunkenly off its roots. Their eyes were ghostly white holes cut into their soot-darkened faces. “Keep low.”
“That thing moves like a slug, sergeant. We’ll be quicker cutting around it up here,” Lidaro said petulantly.
“Not bloody negotiable, Lidaro. Move.”
A flicker of defiance crossed the boy’s face, quickly suppressed, before he pushed back the brim of his helmet and gave a sulky nod.
Rann doubted it would be the last they saw of Lidaro’s insubordination. There was no time to worry about it. He gave the others a quick confirmatory look before leading them under the slanted husk of the tree. They broke into a loping, zigzagging run from stump to stump, heads tucked low, flinching at the high whine of bullets slicing the air around them. The smoke stuck thickly to the back of Rann’s throat and seared his lungs, forcing him to narrow his eyes to slits to stop them from watering. He just about managed to keep the tank in sight, a squat metal lump growling ponderously uphill.
He was barely ten yards from the gully when the ambushers struck. A point of bright flame shot from somewhere in the trees on the far side, tracing a grey finger of smoke behind it. It slammed into the tank with a muffled crump. The turret skipped up in a gout of fire and splintered steel to settle brokenly over the forward hull. Ammunition cooked off, a staccato of secondary detonations spitting bright fragments. There was a mechanical gurgle as the engine died. Black smoke bled up into the greater miasma.
Rann, who had thrown himself flat when the rocket struck, lifted himself from the mud, groaning. He heard Geddan cough and curse loudly in the gloom behind him, and glanced backwards to check the others were still alive.
Movement in the corner of his eye snapped his attention back to the gully. The launcher team – three hunched men in black and grey, two of them hefting a long smoking tube underarm between them – were trying to reposition themselves among the trees. A shell-burst further off in the forest illuminated them for a moment, struggling to scale the thick winding roots that curled over the walls of the gully like arthritic hands. Rann dropped to one knee and brought his weapon up, ignoring the sharp twinge in his muscles. He squeezed one eye shut and let the iron spike of the rifle sight fill his vision. The recoil thumped the stock into his shoulder as he felled one of the Salv rocketeers, then another, watching them tumble bonelessly.
The last one abandoned the rocket launcher and tried to run deeper into the blasted forest. He almost made it out of Rann’s line of sight. Two quick shots spun him around in a strange little pirouette. His body collapsed against a smouldering tree stump and slid limply to the ground.
Lidaro and the others were now back on their feet, shaken and mud-splattered but intact. Rann indicated the broken tank below with a quick motion of his hand. The snipers seemed to have fallen silent, but he didn’t expect that to last long.
He scanned the treeline for more movement, then made his way awkwardly down the steep slope, using protruding roots for footholds as best he could. The squad dropped in behind him. They formed up to crouch behind the wreck. Red flames licked hungrily from the gunports, giving off an awful sweet reek of burning flesh. The fuel hadn’t ignited, thankfully; they never would have been able to get close if it had. The radiated heat was still fearsome, even through all that armour. Rann swallowed his gorge and prayed the men in there had died fast.
“We wait here,” he said. It was quieter in the gully, but not by much; he still had to shout. He examined the dirty faces of his squad, seeing a few cuts and bruises, a shrapnel-graze bleeding down Geddan’s jowly cheek. Nothing serious, as yet.
“For what?” Lidaro tilted his head contemptuously at the wreck. “This thing won’t be moving.”
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“It’s cover. Let the others catch up with us. We’re well ahead of the main force right now.”
“They’re already here, look,” Lidaro pointed down the gully behind them. A gaggle of army regulars in drab jackets had emerged from the smoke and were huffing up the slope, half of them helmetless, one cradling a wounded arm. They were laden with clinking ammunition bandoliers. It was unclear who was leading them; they all shared the same sombrely resigned expression. A few of them glanced at Rann, with apparent disinterest.
“Idiots are wide out in the open,” Wace told the boy.
“They’ll get to that ridge before us. It’s close enough to sprint,” Lidaro shot back.
“For fuck’s sake, hold up, will you. The sergeant gave you an order.”
Lidaro gave Rann a look that was half entreaty, half exasperation. “It’s clear ahead, sergeant. I’m not waiting here to get sniped. Come on, we can get behind the Salv.” Then, without waiting for an answer, he slammed a new magazine into his rifle, and strode out to follow the rearguard of the passing squad as they squeezed by the wreck. A shell fragment whizzed overhead, making him duck and clutch at his helmet. He straightened up, a crooked smile forming on his face.
“What are you doing? Get back here,” Iva hissed at him.
“Come on!” Lidaro called back excitedly. “Sergeant, tell them!”
Rann cursed under his breath, preparing to give chase. The boy was already several yards ahead. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad idea. The curves of the gully offered more cover from shellfire than the forest. And the longer they waited behind the wreck, the more likely it was that the fuel would finally catch, or a sniper would draw a bead. With the eyes of the others on him, he needed to regain control of the situation. He could discipline Lidaro for his impetuousness later.
“Lidaro, wait-”
Sudden movement caught his eye, making the words catch in his throat. A narrow patch of earth was beginning to give way on the gully wall just ahead of the advancing regulars. A strangely precise, rectangular patch of earth. Geddan stood up from cover, bellowing a warning to Lidaro, who now seemed so very far away.
Lidaro turned, too slowly. The screen of soil and dead branches sloughed away to reveal the wood-framed entrance of a crude dugout, barely more than a foxhole nestled among the tree roots. A machine-gun concealed in the shadows rattled to life and riddled the men running past it. The regulars went down in a mess of spurting blood and jangling bandoliers, their thin screams cut short. Lidaro was struck by a dozen rounds or more. He crumpled in on himself like a paper cutout, slumping onto his side in the mud.
It took maybe a second for Lidaro to hit the ground, a second that for Rann stretched into a numb eternity. His mouth shaped a word, involuntarily; Lidaro’s name. No sound came out.
Wace abruptly darted forward out of the cover of the ruined tank, too fast for Rann to stop him. He found his voice and yelled after the trooper, but his words were lost in the din. Lidaro had fallen facing him. He could see the boy’s blank, glassy stare, the blood running from the corner of his open mouth. Wace would die trying to reach the corpse, and there was nothing Rann could do to save him.
But Wace kept running. Bullets were singing around him, blasting little craters in the mud, ripping at the bodies of the fallen, but the Salv gunner’s aim was too wide. Wace slipped on the wet earth, and almost fell before recovering, making it to the wall of the gully where the gunner could not see him. He reached down to take something from his belt. Rann realised that he had never been trying to reach Lidaro.
Wace primed his grenade with his teeth, spitting the pin aside, and tossed it through the doorway, before flattening himself back against the slope. Smoke and clods of earth fountained from the dugout with a dull boom. The machine-gun fell silent.
Crouching behind the wreck, Rann, Iva and Geddan watched mutely as Wace leaned over to look into the blasted dugout. He raised his rifle and fired in, twice, three times, as calmly as if he was at the shooting range. His face was expressionless.
“That mad fuck,” Iva said.
Rann closed his eyes for a moment. He pictured Lidaro climbing the ridge at the Blacksands, smiling fiercely with his rifle held in one hand, silhouetted by the tropical sun. Then he opened them, and Lidaro was still lying there in the mud, a shrunken form with staring, sightless eyes.
He forced himself to look up, at the narrow path ahead, snaking off through the trees under the roiling smoke. From behind came the shouts of advancing platoons, the shriek of jets, the rumble of armoured vehicles growing louder and louder. The sound of the war they hadn’t won yet.
He signalled for the others to follow him.
*
Inch by bloody inch, they made their way through the jackknifing maze of trenches and gullies and dugouts beyond the treeline. It was soon too steep for even the lightest tanks to follow, so they had to forge on unsupported. The rolling barrage raised plumes of black earth that rained down to rattle off their helmets, while the jets and tankbusters strafed the bunkers on the heights with rockets and bursts of heavy-calibre gunfire. Corpsmen and white-jacketed army medics followed the platoons, stabilising the numberless wounded.
Rann kept himself moving by a relentless, exhausting effort of will. Step after step, head down, rifle held like a lifeline. He saw the same hard detachment in the eyes of Iva and the others. Like them, he had learned long ago to force fresh grief down like rising bile, to mourn when the guns were silent. If he let himself feel it now, the rage and guilt and sorrow would drown him like a harbour wave.
The Salvators fought with the savage desperation of men who had no hope of escape. Every corner and hollow brought a new ambush. Riflemen bursting out of concealed ditches, the decapitated turrets of tanks used as makeshift pillboxes, tight corridors of sucking mud crisscrossed with razorwire or doused with burning petrol. Men and women stumbled and fell like broken marionettes as the Salv snipers took their toll. In a cul-de-sac trench a mile up the slope, Rann saw a marine jumped and hacked to death by a wild-eyed Salv who couldn’t have been older than sixteen. The boy’s heavy-bladed knife rose and fell in frenzied rhythm before Geddan gunned him down.
The advance dragged on under the sunless sky as each strongpoint and redoubt was surrounded and overrun in turn. Hours became meaningless. They fired, reloaded, trudged uphill until every muscle screamed. They wiped the blinding soot and sweat from their faces. They saw men blown apart by landmines and eviscerated by machine-gun fire. They donned their gas masks when a green fog of chlorine billowed down the mountainside, and saw those who were too slow choke and drown where they stood. And when they breached the bunkers and pillboxes, kicking down doors and blasting open steel shutters, they killed all they found inside.
Only once did they see any attempt at surrender. Late in the afternoon, as they neared the scorched shell of a bombed-out casemate overlooking the valley, two young Salv soldiers clambered up from an air-raid ditch. They looked about Lidaro’s age. Clumsily bandaged and bleeding from a score of flesh wounds, they approached Rann’s squad with hands raised and hollow, watery eyes.
They hadn’t taken more than five steps when another Salvator – a scrawny officer with a broken leg in a crude splint – hobbled from the ruins of the casemate in a spitting rage and shot them both from behind. When he turned to fire at the marines, cursing feverishly, his pistol clicked empty. Wace shot him in the throat.
“Fucking animals,” Geddan spat, as the body collapsed back through the casemate doorway. “Just like at Taalo’s Ford.”
“They must have run out of prisoners to massacre,” Iva said grimly. She no longer had to shout for them to hear her. The thunder of the battle was abating now; resistance on this side of the mountain was crumbling before the advancing platoons. “Now they’re turning on their own.”
“It’s more than that.” Rann walked cautiously up to the two fallen youths, keeping his rifle ready. “Look at them. They’re half-starved, and wounded, and the officers are still making them fight.”
“So these ones are fanatics,” Wace said. “Nilen’s Incorruptible.”
Rann shook his head. “The Incorruptible were his personal guard. These are just conscripts. Barely more than kids.” Tiredness was closing around him like quicksand, and he could hear the exhaustion in his own voice. His muscles were knots of dull pain. It was a constant fight to stop his eyelids from drooping. “The Salv must have shipped them here before the Crown City fell, to use as cannon fodder. They’re sending them at us to slow us down. They’re desperate to keep us off this mountain.”
Wace kicked the dead officer’s dropped pistol into the smoking darkness of the casemate. “Not desperate enough. Send who they like, I’ll kill the lot of them.”
A halt was called at dusk, when they were within a few hundred yards of the main objective. As the sun sank in the east behind the smoke, they made camp with the remnants of their platoon in a cleared-out bunker. The bare concrete floor was darkened in places by pooled blood, and spent shell casings crunched under Rann’s boots he laid out his bedding near the back wall. The air stank of sweat and cordite. Outside, the rumble of distant guns went on, muted but unending. Bombers swept overhead on their way to hammer enemy positions on the far side of the mountain. Fires were burning steadily in what remained of the forest below, contributing to the shroud of smoke and dust that wrapped the slopes.
The platoon was in a sorry state. Seven of their number had been left on the slopes, shot or bayonetted or blown apart. Half a dozen more had been wounded too badly to go on, and had been stretchered back behind the lines by the corpsmen. Of the remainder, almost none were left unhurt. Rann saw a brittle resolve in their tired, bloodied, ash-caked faces, mirrors of his own. There were no gloryhounds or death-seekers among them. They had simply come too far to turn back now.
All the same, it was a shock to learn that Chasck was one of the dead. They hadn’t been friends, exactly, but there had been an understanding, an unspoken mutual reliance. She’d led the platoon three years. The absence of her hawkish face was another sting of loss in his chest, another familiar pillar of his world kicked away.
“What happened to her?” he asked one of the other sergeants.
“Sniper in the forest. Got her right in the eye,” the man said bitterly. “We found the fucker after, shredded him with a grenade. For all the good it did Chasck.”
One of the survivors was the platoon radioman, a lanky Esuloan like Wace, and they listened to coded updates from the headquarters on his crackling field wireless. The larger fortifications on the slopes had now fallen, and with them most of the enemy’s remaining artillery and anti-air. A counter-attack by the last of the Salv armour had been destroyed in the valleys. Reserves were being brought up to secure the captured positions. “We die for it. Rear-element nancy boys get to spring-clean it,” Geddan growled when he heard that.
“We’ll get inside the mountain first,” Rann replied. “This is our victory. They’ll remember our names.” The words rang hollow, even to himself.
“Will they remember Chasck?” Iva asked. She was lying on her bedroll staring up at the ceiling, her face stony and unreadable. “Or Lidaro?”
Rann thought of vacant blue eyes, a blood-dripping mouth that would smirk no more. He was quietly afraid that he would see that face behind his eyelids for the rest of his life.
“We will,” he said.