Fourth Vector Ch. 31

"Is there any chance the Swabians may have gotten reinforcements?" he asked Altieri who was on his other side. "Could they have gotten a supply convoy in Marmora since the city fell?"

Altieri shook his head. "Not enough time. They were hot on our tracks right after the city fell. There wouldn't be enough time for them to organize a supply convoy and receive reinforcements, at least from Marmora. Now, they could have brought in soldiers from the other islands but that looks to be the full size of the force that's been pursuing us."

If that was the case, they were going to need all the help they could get. Jack only had six thousand men with him—three thousand Galicians from the elite regiments would help tremendously with the battle to come, but the other three thousand were a mix of Apulian regulars and militia, not giving them great odds.

"They'll have a hard time taking the neck," said General Chapman, directly behind Jack. "We'll see them coming at us long before they can start firing back at us. They can throw their numbers at us and by midmorning, we'll be using their dead bodies as part of the defenses."

"At least the general is feeling confident," said Bill. "Me? Not too much. If they manage to force us off the neck, we'll have nowhere to go. Much of the city is flat land without any natural defenses. And I'd rather not have to fight another urban battle after how close the last one was."

"Then we'll have to make sure they don't get a toehold on the neck," said Jack firmly. "The way we've set up our defenses will mean they won't easily clear it. Let's not forget that we have the full backing of naval artillery behind us as well. One word to Admiral Taylor and we'll make that plain nothing more than a series of muddy craters."

"What are your orders for tonight?" asked Chapman to Jack. "Do you want me to send out any men on a reconnaissance mission?"

Jack shook his head. "Not tonight. Let the men rest and get their strength. They'll need all of it tomorrow. Make sure all units are as stocked as they can be with ammunition and mortars. We're going to need everything we can get."

"My men will do their part," promised Chapman.

"As will the Apulians," added Altieri. "We may not look much like soldiers, but my men will defend their homeland to the last. I can promise you that."

Jack left Chapman and Altieri to take over the particulars of the defense while he and Bill made their way back to their shared headquarters. Along the way, Bill was more quiet than usual, a remarkable change from his usual chattiness.

"Something on your mind, Bill?"

"Several things, and many of them aren't great," said the old lord.

"Well, talk to me. What are you thinking?"

Bill let out a deep sigh. "It's just . . . I've risked everything to get you to this point, Jack. Risked my life, my family, my home, and risked never seeing Galicia again to get you forces that can see you returned to your throne. I'm not saying that like I've earned myself a favor, but what I'm trying to say is do we need to fight here tomorrow?"

Jack stopped and looked at the man. "Why wouldn't we fight here tomorrow?"

"Because the odds are so against us. Twenty thousand against six? I thought the Apulians might be exaggerating but we all just saw that they weren't. We've fought so hard just to make it to this point that the last thing I'd want to see is the renewed flame of our army extinguished in the first fight."

Jack started walking again slowly, feeling Bill trailing along just slightly behind him. They walked together in silence for a couple blocks before Jack finally answered.

"If not here, then where? Where else would we fight the Swabians?"

Bill shrugged. "Just about anywhere else. Or we can go home to retake Galicia, reuniting all Galician forces under one banner before we attempt to fight the Swabians. All I'm saying is that we don't need to fight here tomorrow. We can leave."

"We can leave and we'd lose all respect from the Apulians forever," said Jack. "Or from the rest of the West when they heard about it. The Swabians wouldn't take us seriously if we abandoned the city without a fight. How can I hold this alliance together if we're seen as too weak to give battle to them?"

"It's not a weakness," argued Bill. "It's a reassessment of the situation."

Jack smiled. "It'll be seen as a weakness, I assure you." Jack stopped and put his hands on Bill's shoulders. "I appreciate all that you've done to get us to this point. Just about none of this would have happened without your guiding hand. But sooner or later, we're going to have to fight. We can't run from trouble forever. Kalmar was about staying alive. Here, we have more than enough force to keep the Swabians out of the city."

"I just worry about our movement ending before it has a chance to begin," admitted Bill quietly.

"Trust in me," said Jack. "We'll get through tomorrow. I've fought the Swabians before and won, even with bad odds. Our defenses will help, as will our navy behind us. But we can't abandon Apulia. We can't let this country fall."

Bill didn't look too thrilled. "Even if we put a good portion of our force at risk tomorrow?"

Jack nodded. "Even so. You never fight anything without risking something. Otherwise, it wouldn't be worth fighting for. Apulia is worth fighting for. Right now, this country needs to believe that they can stand up to the Swabians. Tomorrow, we'll give that back to them. This war has seen nothing but Swabian success so far. Tomorrow, we're going to show them that they can bleed too."

*****

The next morning started off with a bang.

And then another.

And another.

And it never ended.

As the morning began, the positions of the Galician and Apulian soldiers on the neck came under fierce artillery and mortar bombardment from the Swabian Army.

Jack was up before dawn and close to the neck as last minute preparations were made before the attack even started. With him was General Chapman, as well as Altieri, Bill, and Lindy, with whom's men would be sustaining the first wave of attack. It was decided to rotate the regiments during their time on the front line so that they would have a chance to recover from the devastation.

That proved to be a wise course because that small strip of land became a raging inferno almost from the start. Heavy artillery pounded the position relentlessly, making a terrible racket to begin the day. The original plan had been to meet Swabian firepower with naval artillery from the Galician task force but low-lying fog over the waters surrounding Arezzo prevented that part of the plan from happening. Russell feared their accuracy in the fog, and the decision was made to hold off for the time being lest they hit their own men.

That small setback set the tone for the first portion of the battle as the Swabians hammered the front lines at the entry to the neck. The firepower was so fierce from the start that Jack doubted that any man could truly survive such carnage.

"They'll hold up," promised Chapman of the men. "Their defenses are deep and as long as they don't get any direct hits, they'll survive."

"We need them too," said Jack. "As long as this fog persists, we're on our own!"

Jack was thankful for his vote of confidence but Chapman's words were proven true once the artillery started to die down and the Swabians started to attack the position. The sounds of gunfire soon poured forth from the defenses, showing the Swabians that clearing the neck wouldn't be as easy as they thought.

This was where the training of the Galicians proved their worth. Their overlapping fields of fire decimated the first Swabian attacks, pushing them to find any hint of cover they could to avoid the hail of lead. No sooner would the Swabians concentrate on one portion of the line than another portion would focus on them, making a toehold difficult to manage.

Had the forces been vaguely equal in size, it would have been a foregone conclusion on the result.

However, for every three or four Swabians that fell, they managed to take down an Apulian or a Galician. After the first hour of battle, the first defensive line was starting to look very thin indeed and that's when the order was given to rotate the soldiers. The fog still showed no signs of letting up as the second wave of Galicians moved forward.

The rotation was carried out under fire and proved to be remarkably orderly for the intensity of the battle. New bodies on the front line were able to stem the growing enemy tide, temporarily pushing them back from the rocky neck.

By midmorning, Chapman's prediction from the night before proved to be correct. There were mounds and mounds of Swabian dead, so much that they could have been stacked to form another defensive wall. Regrettably, there was another pile of allied dead as well and that pile kept growing throughout the morning. The men were holding up well but many of them needed a break from the fighting.

Unfortunately, the Swabians just kept coming.

By the time of the third rotation, the decision was made to abandon the front line defenses. The Swabian forces were finally starting to make forward progress, and the first soldiers were now beginning to make their entry along the road of the neck. The going for the enemy was just as arduous. They were still taking heavy casualties although it was starting to make Jack nervous how much forward progress they were continuing to make.

It even seemed Chapman was starting to get anxious as well as the rotation system was soon stopped to put every man within range of the Swabians to slow them down. The fighting became every bit as fierce and as thick as the early morning bombardment but still the Swabians showed no signs of letting up, even trampling over their fallen dead in an effort to move forward.

It was as the second defensive line was finally threatened that Jack realized they wouldn't be able to stop them with the army alone. The fog was finally starting to lift and without the heavier guns of the navy, they wouldn't be able to stop the tide of the rushing Swabians.

"We need more firepower," yelled Jack to Chapman as the sound of their voices was nearly drowned out from all the noise. "They aren't showing any signs of stopping and they're going to keep coming as long as at least one of those Swabian bastards can walk!"

"I don't have anything left to throw at them," said Chapman. "Our ammunition is running low but they can't keep coming much longer! Not after as many as we've killed! They have to be tired!"

"We're going to need something heavier to make them stop then," replied Jack as he gestured to Bill. "Get Russell on the radio and let me talk to him."

Bill handed over the radio a moment later where Jack had a direct line to the Galician admiral. "Russell, I'm going to need your guns here soon or we're going to get overwhelmed. Think you can drop some lead on them?"

"Aye, Jack, we can try. You'll want to stand clear. You might want to warn your men what's about to start," said Russell. "We'll drop as far away from the neck as we can to prevent any friendly fire but I can't promise anything."

"If you can focus on the plain, we'll nab anyone left behind," promised Jack.

"Just give us a couple minutes and we'll start firing," said Russell.

Those couple minutes felt like an hour. The Swabians were picking up momentum and the men near the second defensive line were starting to pull back due to how close the enemy was.

That was why when Jack heard the telltale sign of naval artillery, he said a silent prayer of relief. The first ordnance exploded not far from the neck, about two hundred yards away on the plain side. It was a devastating bombardment, taking with it the lives of many Swabians who had no other cover on the plain besides hovering close to the ground.

The next wave to come in was a little closer, perhaps about a hundred yards from the neck.

After that, the shots kept coming. Soon a gap formed between the ranks of Swabians in the rear and the very front, separated by a no-man's-land of deep craters and heavy ordnance.

"Look at them go!" yelled Chapman as he pointed to the Swabians on the other side of the plain. "They're hesitating!"

Indeed, the ones who had yet to cross into the killing field slowed their steps rather than to enter that muddy graveyard. The ones that were closest to the neck on the other side became trapped between certain death all around them. All the while, the bombardment grew in intensity.

As noon approached and the last of the fog started to burn out of the sky, the allied position became more secure while the Swabian one dwindled. Chapman was able to send the men forward to reoccupy the first line of attack, while forced movement on the Swabian side to get them to press beyond the killing field proved to be futile.

On the allied side, the tide appeared to be turning.

*****

"My lord, the men won't follow orders! They won't move toward the city!"

Godric Katla growled and once again looked out over the field of battle, or at least the part of it he could still see. The enemy side was now almost completely shrouded by the heavy smoke and fires left over from the naval bombardment. On his side of the plain, all he could see were masses of Swabian infantry refusing to go through the devastated terrain.

Godric couldn't say he blamed them. Even a soldier with the bravest of hearts would hesitate before stepping into that killing field but it meant that their attack had largely bogged down. He could still see the occasional muzzle flash from beyond the rocky neck but there was little doubt that those men wouldn't be able to be saved.

The Apulian resolve had stiffened. And they had found some new friends.

"Curse those fucking Galicians," muttered Godric under his breath. It was always the Galicians that stood in their way, meddling in affairs in which they had no business in.

"My lord, the men are starting to fall back!" came the voice of his aide. "They are going to retreat. Shall we make them keep fighting?"

"No, let them fall back," said Godric after a heavy sigh. "Let all of the men fall back. We're going to move our main camp back away from the coast and out of range of those guns."

The aide gave him a confused look, his eyes wide and questioning.

"There's nothing more that can be done today," said Godric. "As long as this city is guarded by that fleet, we won't be able to take it by land. No sense in wasting any more of our army, especially now as the conquest is nearly complete. Send the orders out to pull the men back."

The aide spurred into action and soon the army could be seen in retreat, the first time such an army had to march away in the face of the enemy. Godric was determined it would be the last time, but he would need the help of the Swabian fleet in order to clear the protection around the city. He vowed to send a message to the emperor that very night about it.

By the time most of the men were back and his generals had gathered in his tent, there was a sense of total confusion amongst the entire army, many of whom had never tasted defeat.

"Are we going to leave Arezzo altogether?" asked one general.

"No, we are not," answered Godric. "There will be other ways to bring the Apulians to their knees."

*****

"By the gods, we've done it! They're pulling back! The Swabians are actually retreating!"

Jack grabbed the binoculars to look out at the field, watching the still sizeable remains of the Swabian Army moving backward across the plain. He let out a small sigh of relief at their good fortune. Had the fog not lifted when it did, they might have been pushed back through the city without giving the ships a chance to fire.

Closest to the neck, the fighting began to wind down. Those Swabians that were cut off there were soon cut to pieces by the surging allied soldiers. Many of them surrendered rather than go into the killing field in an attempted retreat.

"Russell, I'd say you can stop firing now," said Jack into the radio a moment later. "Looks like we pushed them back."

"Aye, Jack, I'll give them the word. The gunners did well out there?"

Jack could only grin as he looked out on the shattered Swabian Army. "They did real good, Russ. Really good."

With the battle winding down and the danger passing, there were many congratulations that went around. For one, Jack spoke with Chapman and his men, thanking them for a job well done in spite of the adversity. He even took the time to thank the Apulians, many of whom seemed to have stiffened spines after finally managing a victory against the Swabians.

The most important remarks came from Director Altieri as he found Jack after the battle.

Altieri gave him a small grin. "I didn't know what to make of you first. Did you know that?"

"I got that impression," replied Jack. "It wasn't hard to tell you didn't trust us."

"No, you would have to earn that. Trust isn't given easily in a country like Apulia. It's earned more than anything. After a day like today, I would say you've earned my trust."

Jack extended his hand. "So we can be firm allies moving forward? You and I can fight against the Swabians until they're out of Apulia, Director?"

Altieri took his hand and shook it firmly. "That we can do. I'm your man moving forward. I thank you for providing the leadership that let us stand up to the enemy. Without you, I'm sure Arezzo would have fallen."

"We still have a lot of work to do," said Jack before he gestured out to the Swabian Army. "As long as that army sticks around, we'll have to find a way to defeat them."

Altieri started to grin. "I'm sure we'll do that. If we could save Apulia from falling, then anything is possible."

Jack chuckled and began to walk away, determined to help the men clean up the evidence of battle. That was before Altieri called out to him again.

"Yes, Director?" asked Jack.

The smile never left Altieri's face. "Call me Santino, Jack. I would say you've earned that right as well."

Jack grinned. "All right then, Santino."