Chapter Twelve – Would you live forever?
At the battle of Koln in 1757 Prussian solder-king Frederick the Great saw his guards hesitate to attack the Austrians. “Rascals,” he called to them, “would you live for ever?”
When dawn broke Midis stirring out of their tents and huts were startled to find two lines of humans drawn up between their camp and the bridge, carrying the fire sticks they had heard about. At either end of these lines, the flanks, were the horse-humans they had seen in the distance marching up to the bridge, but this time they were close and not running away, their muskets were slung on their back and they carried swords at the hips.
The humans who seemed to have appeared from no where, started yelling.
“Haven, what do you want to do?” yelled Captain Toms.
“Kill! Kill!” the humans roared, the sound echoing off the structure.
“When are we going to do.”
“Now!”
“What do we do when we see a moon, Haven, we howl.” Toms put back his head and howled. The three hundred and ninety two musketeers in two lines, as well as the cavalry and artillery crews all howled. That got the Midi’s attention. The space in front of them filled up as Midis, still unaware of danger of being in a musket killing zone, gathered to see the fighting humans and the horse persons up close. Two Red Band officers at the front of the crowd were looking around, plainly wondering where the sentries and the small force by the bridge had got to, but the other Midis were simply curious. Plenty of time to kill the humans later.
Gideon, for his part, waited until he thought there were enough Midis in the kill zone.
“Mr Toms,” he said. “Time to Pump up the volume.”
“Musketeers, silence!” said Toms. The musketeers stopped howling. “Volley fire present.” Muskets were presented. The command had not been given seriously on Earth for the best part of two centuries. The hammers on nearly four hundred muskets were pulled back.
“Weapons hot, people,” said Toms.
“Weapons, hot,” whispered one of the musketeers. “We’ve just got muskets and he’s saying weapons hot.”
“Aim low, guys,” shouted Captain Hannigan from the other end of the line.
Silence.
The Midis had heard of fire sticks, although they were still not sure what they did. They had not been a major feature in the first battle at the bridge. However, most of them were now uncomfortably aware that they were looking at the wrong end of one and started backing away, realising that they had left their shields by their beds. One of the Midis, possibly slow witted, started laughing, thinking the humans looked funny.
“At my command musketeers will volley and charge,” called Toms. “Remember, only as far as the camp line.”
Then Gideon saw BD, her head showing just above the Midi crowd, obviously bewildered over this turn of events.
“BD,” yelled Gideon. “For heaven sake get down.”
BD saw and heard Gideon, but she was still sufficiently unaware of military matters to not want to get out of the way of nearly four hundred muskets. Captain Toms turned to Gideon. “Wait,” he mouthed. Gideon shook his head. They had to strike now.
“BD get down!”
At the very last moment the interpreter, finally realising the danger she was in, grabbed someone beside her and dropped to the ground.
“Musketeers.. fire!” yelled Toms. Nearly four hundred muskets spoke at once in a deafening crash. Smoke filled the air. The explosive provided by the Witches was not gunpowder but, unlike modern explosives, it was smoky. Midis started screaming. “Musketeers, charge!”
The humans charged.
Until that moment, despite all that had happened, Gideon could never bring himself to take his young soldiers seriously. They listened to music on parade and texted while on patrol. But they had been told to wait, blood boiling, while relatives and friends had been dragged away and killed. They had been told that negotiations and the passivist approach would work when their parents were enslaved. They were told that they did not understand, and that violence was not the answer when Midis wrecked their homes. Armed, disciplined and trained they were now a coiled spring of pent up fury and frustration aching to unleash themselves against an enemy that had caused them so much torment. They were ordered to charge; they charged – hard.
“Kill! Kill!”
The swept on to the Midi line, a tsunami of stabbing and thrusting bayonets wielding by musketeers who forgot lectures on passivism, negotiation, and the need to understand different viewpoints in favour of a red rage that might have been familiar to a Greek city state citizen of more than two thousand years ago. The God of War folded them in his black wings, the musketeers later told Gideon, and they felt that savage joy of killing their enemies.
Midis further back in the crowd who had survived the volley and tried to stand vanished in a spray of blood with bayonets in their chest and throat. Gideon saw Midis tossed into the air others simple flattened into a bloody mess.
Monster’s jaw dropped open.
“Fuck me,” he breathed.
“Recall. Recall,” said Gideon in alarm. He could see some of what was happening through the smoke and realised the humans had already reached the Midi camp line. He had a bugler. This was a musketeer with a trumpet which he could barely play but he had worked out how to make a “Ta da!” noise reliably, lingering for a while on the “Da” sound that the musketeers now knew as the recall. At the same time, another musketeer with everyone’s phone on speed dial sent a message to that activated alerts. This peculiar mix of ancient and twenty first century technologies stopped most of the charging musketeers who in any case had run out of victims. The Midis were running. A few musketeers continued to charge heedless of shouts, trumpet calls and phones buzzing, until they stopped, out of breath in the middle of the Midi camp, fortunately with the Midis running even harder in front of them. All but one was able to make it back. The one exception was found later, face down with a Midi spear in his back, his musket and pouch of cartridges missing – more company for Colin in the hero’s graveyard.
As the Musketeer line reformed Gideon walked over to where he had seen BD fall to find her pushing away the body of a Midi that had died on top of her.
“We meet again,” he said.
“I got mixed up in a battle – again,” she said, standing up. Her hair was a mess, she had Midi blood on her, but she still looked good, Gideon thought. The companion she had pulled down with her proved to be another, younger girl completely bewildered by the turn of events.
“I thought it was a demonstration of some kind,” she said, “but you killed them.”
“That’s the idea,” said Gideon, “We’re musketeers, it’s what we do. Shoot enough Midis and they might see our point of view.”
The girl thought about this heresy for a moment, pushing a strand of dark hair out of her face.
“Can I join up?”
“Sure, but you’ll have to wait behind our lines for the moment. We’re sorta busy right now.”
“What about you?” said Gideon to BD after the girl had left. “I guess your son is still back in Haven City.”
BD nodded.
“Well you won’t have any choice for the moment. Look behind you.” In the distance, on the other side of what was now a ruined mess of tents, shacks and lean- tos, where the bulk of the Black Band soldiers had been sleeping, the Red Band offices were yelling and pushing Midis, now armed with spears and shields, into a large column, much wider than the one they had faced on the bridge. They may have been surprised and taken casualties but there were still plenty of Midis and now they were angry. “Those guys might not understand that you’re on their side…”
On the other side of the river, the Musketeer’s two large mortars opened fire with a “Whump!” Gideon and BD watched as the shell arced over, falling beyond the Midi columns where it failed to detonate.
“Not to mention the danger from our artillery – when they get the range and timing of the fuses right,” Gideon said.
They walked back slowly towards the bridge just as the musketeer lines opened up to let through an electric car towing two cannons, their crews trotting along behind.
“Really big guns,” said BD.
“Cannons,” said Gideon. “Quite a struggle to make.”
Napoleon would have considered the weapons to be the equivalent of standard twelve pounders in his era, although he would have puzzled over their construction. This included an outer sheath of composite material to prevent the inner sheath, the barrel, from splitting. However, he would have appreciated the comparative lightness of the composite material, which meant the weapon could be moved around the battlefield with ease on wagon wheels, particularly when they were pulled by an electric car.
The car was unhitched from the cannons and moved back over the bridge well out of harm’s way, as the mortars spoke again. Those mortars, the first produced, had proved too heavy to move around the battlefield easily, even with electric cars, so they decided to shift them up close to the bridge, in its own sandbagged position, and hope that the Midis came with range. They had. This time the shot fell short and the shell, packed with musket balls, exploded well above ground. The resulting shower of musket balls hurt no-one but gave Midis and inkling of what earth technology could do to soldiers in close packed formation.
Gideon watched as the cannons were trained around to face the Midi column and loaded. In the distance he saw a black speck. Through binoculars he carried he could see that the speck was a slightly taller and broader version of the Witches, wearing a black rather than a red robe.
“Who’s the dude in the black robes?” he asked BD.
“I’ve spoken to him a few times. I think he’s creepy. But he mainly deals with the generals, the chiefs. All the other Midis avoid him.”
“Can you speak his language? Does it sound like birds twittering?”
“He gave me a computer program to learn it. I can speak some with difficulty - and, yes, it does sound like birds. Very difficult to make the sounds.”
“Well, then the Witches in the structure on the other side of the gorge must be his enemies. They speak a language like that, and they look a lot like him but have red robes, rather than black.”
“I heard you had contact with the creatures in the structure,” she said. “So they’re like that guy.”
This conversation was cut off by one cannon firing with a “Whump!” recoiling nearly a body length. The ball, which every musketeer watched with interest fell short, but bounced on the dry ground, contemptuously tossing aside a piece of the Midi camp. It managed to miss the main column but smashed a Red Band who did not have the sense to dodge, into pulp. Musketeers yelled with glee. Midis howled with outrage.
The second cannon fired sending a ball straight into the Midi column tossing aside the smashed bodies of warriors. The Midis howled. The mortar spoke again, this time getting the range and length of fuse right to reduce the head of the column to red ruin. But it was a huge column. The front was about half the length of the musketeer line and as deep as the line was wide. The Midi command had brought the equivalent of a small division to smash aside the pitiful line of humans.
Midi officers worked out that the longer their troops stayed in the cleared area they longer they were targets for these new human horror weapons. Orders were yelled. Trumpets sounded. The kettle drums started the “tum, tum, tum” of an attack.
“Now we’re for it,” Toms muttered.
“Neno huff,” shouted one of the Red Bands.
“Beeno haff,” the column roared back. Spears were clashed on shields. The attack began.
“Mr Chifley,” yelled Gideon.
“Sir!” Chief was up the front with his beloved artillery.
“When they get close enough fire grape and then get your crews back. Mr Toms, when the artillery crews are back its volley by ranks and then odds and evens.”
“Sir.”
The musketeers had basically made up their own drill for firing muskets. Instead of the idea of the time of muskets of rolling fire – Gideon wasn’t quite sure what that meant – the humans fired by alternate ranks and then by half ranks. Each musketeer in each line had counted off as an one (odd) or two (even). He was aware of the cavalry commander, Captain Geoffrey Parker, staring at him. Gideon shook his head. The cavalry’s time would come but it had not yet arrived. For the moment they were on the flanks ensuring that the Midis attacked the human line head on, rather than try to outflank it. Caesar would have understood the arrangement.
The cannon’s spoke again, firing balls that smashed files of Midi warriors but were otherwise like firing shots into water. Five cannons and more would teach the Midis a sharp lesson about artillery but they had only two.
“Neno haff!”
“Beeno haff,” roared the column.
All the time the drums continued beating. “Tum, tum, tum..”
“Remember your training,” Gideon heard the officers say, as they walked up and down the line. “Fire on command. Aim low.”
“What are the Midis saying, with the call and response?” Gideon asked BD.
“Its old, I think,” she said, “but it’s something like ‘who are we?’ ‘we are death bringers’.”
“Okay, thanks. Mr Toms, if the Midis yell we should yell back.”
“Musketeers,” roared Toms, “What do we want to do?”
“Kill! Kill!”
“When do we want to do it?”
“Now.”
“What do we do when we see a moon, musketeers? We howl.”
They all howled.
“There’s still time for you to get back on the other side of the bridge,” Gideon said, turning back to BD. “You’re a civilian.”
“If you guys lose, it won’t matter where I am,” she said. “I just hope to see my son again.”
The cannons had time for one more solid shot, then, with the column looming large in their sights, the artillery crews shoved a heap of musket balls into the barrels, stood back and pulled the trigger lanyards. This time much of the first few rows of the column disappeared in a bloody mess and the massive column checked for a heartbeat. The artillery crews took one wheel off each gun, and retreated to the main musketeer line, rolling the wheels in front of them - just as the artillery crews at Waterloo had done, taking refugee inside the Anglo-British squares.
The column loomed within spitting distance of the other side of the abandoned, lopsided cannons.
“Musketeers, volley fire present!” yelled Toms.
Again, nearly four hundred muskets came up to the shoulders of Gideon’s youthful volunteers. Monster and Honey, who were behind the line to deal with breakthroughs, drew their swords. Fred and Sam, also in the rear party, brought their spears up to the ready.
A Red Band shouted a command and the Midi column started to spread out while still moving forward. That was a worry but for the moment it presented a bigger target.
“Remember, only the front rank – front rank fire!”
Crash! The Midi column was obscured by smoke, but they could hear screaming.
“Change.”
The front rank stood up and started frantically reloading. The second rank knelt.
“Fire!”
Crash!
“Change. Odds and evens! Remember odds and evens! Odds, fire!” Toms paused. The idea was to ensure that the volleys were evenly spaced. There should be no respite, or time when no muskets were loaded. “Evens fire!”
The half line volleys were less impressive but still amounted to a distinct crash that made BD jump and caused more screams from the column now obscured by smoke. Another shell from the mortar roared overhead to hit the other end of the column.
“Odds fire!” Crash! “Evens fire.” Crash!
A wave of Midis appeared from the smoke to throw their spears.
“Incoming,” yelled Toms.
The musketeers ducked, the preferred way of avoiding the spears, and went on with their business, or used their weapons to knock the missiles to one side. Two struck home.
“Medics!”
“Don’t stop to help wounded,” roared Toms. “Look to your front. Keep firing.”
Having thrown their spears the surviving Midis flung themselves at the musketeer line screaming “Beeno haff!” – they were brave, that no one doubted - to be impaled by bayonet thrusts from several directions at once. One was shot by an officer with a musket. Monster and Honey stepped through the lines to deal with one each. Gideon saw Fred thrust his spear into a Midi only for the creature to become stuck there, like a fish on a hook. The android flipped the body over his head for it to narrowly miss a medic helping one of the wounded. The business of volley fire went on.
“Odds fire!” Crash. “Evens fire!” Crash. “Change!”
The wave of Midis petered out.
“Cease fire, Mr Toms.”
“Cease. Reload!”
For a few more moments the only sound was that of the musketeers ripping off the top of new cartridges with their teeth, and ramrods pushing the power, ball and paper down barrels. Then a puff of wind blew away the smoke to reveal a long carpet of dead, with a distinct mound where the first volleys had struck home. The shattered remains of the column was retreating. The humans howled. The Midis stared back in bewilderment. Beside him, Gideon heard BD let out her breath.
“You did it,” she said softly.
“Artillery!” yelled Gideon.
The two artillery crews pushed through the ranks of the musketeers, rolling the wheels of their pieces in front of them. They reassembled the cannons – the Midis had done nothing to them – and loaded them. By that time the Midis had spread out into a still very large mass of warriors that stared in bewilderment at the humans, as the cannons opened fire again. A few Midis at least had the sense to get out of the way of cannon balls only for the balls to smash warriors further back. The mortars roared again, and the humans watched as the shells arched overhead to explode among the mass of their opponents. Some Midis tried to judge the flight of the shell and get out of the way but there were still screams. It did not occur to them to lie down. Warriors did not lie down in a battle.
Red Bands were trying to push and prod the surviving Black Band Midis into a column for another advance – a move did not seem to appeal to any of them, as far as Gideon could tell through his binoculars. Most of them milled about, uncertain what to do. Time to unveil his next super weapon.
“Cavalry! Captain Parker. Time to go to work! Form up on the open ground to the right and hit ‘em hard.”
“Sir! You heard the man troopers! In line with me, march out!”
The cavalry from both wings trotted out, moving slowly at first. There were barely forty in total, not much more than a troop, but the relatives of many of them were Midi slaves. A few had seen relatives or friends die at Midi hands, while the authorities had preached peace from a safe distance. Like the infantry they were going to take the fight seriously. They trotted behind the still firing cannons and out to the right. The Midis stared at this new development with dread.
They watched, barely noticing even when the cannons sent balls skipping into their ranks, as the cavalry moved around to their flank and out to perhaps two hundred metres where they sorted themselves out into two lines. Gideon noted with interest, that the spacing was regular, with the second line close enough to support the first. His newest arm had been drilling hard. Parker drew his sword his troopers following suit, metal scraping in scabbards. Unlike the infantry the cavalry musketeers all had swords, as well as muskets which they had slung over their shoulders for the charge.
Gideon ordered the artillery to stop firing. The musketeer infantry stopped yelling.
Silence.
“Cavalry,” Parker yelled, holding his sword up and putting his horse into a trot.
“Hooah!” screamed the troopers, also thrusting swords skywards. Then they howled. The Midis visibly quailed.
“Pick up the pace. Keep in line on me.”
Mounted on greys with the occasional white stallion, all the riders would have appeared as enormous demons to Midi eyes – demons bearing down relentlessly on them. As with the Midi’s own form of attack much of the charge ritual was show, to terrify their opponents. It was working.
“Line with me, line with me,” Gideon heard Parker waving his sword to indicate a line.
The Midi warriors seemingly rooted to the spot, stared in horror. As the human swords were razor sharp and the troopers had been practising wielding their weapons from horseback, the Midis had good reason to be afraid.
“Cavalry, charge!”
They charged, at just the right distance to get up to full speed but not for the lines to become disorganised. Someone in the second row had a trumpet and used it. “Ta tarrr, ta tarrr,” as if they were blue-coated US cavalry troopers.
In the days of cavalry and spear troops on earth, charging warriors carrying spears would have been asking for trouble. If the Midis had stood and presented their spears against this new devilry, life would have been a lot harder for the troopers and for the bigger targets, their horses. They didn’t. They threw down their weapons and tried to run. Too late. The first line hit the Midi column with a distinct “whump”, a sound like that of gridiron or rugby forwards meeting mid-field.
It was the turn of the Musketeer infantry to gasp.
Bodies were tossed into the air. Others vanished in a bloody spray. Arms and legs severed by swords slashing down went in all directions. As Gideon watched, one female trooper leaned out of her saddle, cut down hard on a Midi where the neck met the shoulder, chopping nearly to the heart, then let the momentum of her charge pull the embedded blade out of its body. Very neat.
The column completely disintegrated, Red Bands joining Black Bands in running as fast as they could away from danger. The humans had won.
“Oh Lord,” said BD on seeing the cavalry charge. Then Gideon heard her mutter “serve the bastards right”.