Inferno's Shadow

Chapter 1

December 16, 1848

The Battle of Texcoco

Hurry up, god damn ye. The bastards're strung out in column, an' if we get there quick enough, we'll catch 'em in the latrine with their breeches 'round their ankles!" rumbled Sergeant Major James McNabb, inexpertly urging his striped native horse past the mud-mired 6pdr guns of A Battery, now better known as "Barca's battery," struggling to obey the summons calling it to the front. "Sir," McNabb belatedly but sincerely amended, adding a hasty salute when he found his path blocked by an equally frustrated young officer. McNabb wasn't tall, built more like a rock-hard oaken barrel, reddish hair and side whiskers making a flyaway mane framing a cold-pinkened face between a faded blue wheel hat and high, red-trimmed collar. The dark blue of his shell jacket was faded as well, but the saber belt encircling his belly was as white as the snow atop the surrounding mountains, his brass beltplate and jacket buttons as bright as gold in the early morning sunlight.

The mounted officer couldn't have looked more different. He was whip-thin, ramrod straight in the saddle, and his dark blue frock coat showed less wear. The short but already curling side whiskers he'd begun to cultivate for fashion's sake were a glossy midnight black around a somewhat angular face just a few shades lighter than his hair. The rarest of men on this world of exotic people and beasts-even more so on the world he came from-he wasn't only a former slave, but now a respected artillery officer wearing the shoulder boards of a captain.

Returning the salute, Captain Barca simply said, "I'll thank you to stop berating my men. They're doing their best, as you can see." He gestured to encompass the mud-smeared men on the ground, heaving on the slippery spokes of the guns, pushing on axles, straining on horse harness. Even the men who usually rode atop the limbers, to which each gun and a half-dozen horses were hitched, had jumped down to help the rest of the crew. He noted without surprise the newly promoted Lieutenant Hannibal "Hanny" Cox right down there with his section, just as filthy, expression as indignant as the one Barca hid. Hanny had proven his courage many times, but no new lieutenant would answer back to a force of nature like McNabb. Hanny might officially outrank the sergeant major, but any superiority was somewhat . . . theoretical. Besides, Barca knew the two shared a history. McNabb had once been there for Hanny when few others would've dared.

"Apologies, Cap'n Barca. I know the damned mud is bad. So does Major Olayne." What made it particularly mucky was slow-melting snow that soaked the ground deep. "But the buggers nearly caught us with our britches down an' the major sent me tae hurry things on." Major Justinian Olayne was the army's chief of artillery. McNabb nodded at the infantry crowding the hard road, flowing by at double time. "Use some o' them tae help."

"I would without thinking, I assure you," Barca explained, "but as far as I know, Har-Kaaska's Second Division is all we have on line as yet, and First Division-that's the Third Pennsylvania alongside us at present-was called forward to deploy before us and has only now made it this far. God knows how things stand with Third and Fourth Divisions."

The army had split to advance on Texcoco along two briefly parallel roads precisely so it could arrive and deploy more quickly, hopefully overawing the inhabitants of the city a few miles ahead. From the forested track they remained confined in, Barca could see nothing yet, but judging by the rumble of guns and muffled staccato of skirmishers' musket fire-considerably closer than the city should be-it didn't sound like things were going as planned. The Allied Army of the Yucatán, the remains of General (now Colonel) Agon's Army of God, and the American "Detached Expeditionary Force" that had formed the rest or glued it all together, might well be the best, most professional military force on this earth, but it-and its revered overall commander, Colonel Cayce-was still occasionally surprised by the enemy's behavior.

It had been expected that the Dom general Gomez would defend Texcoco from its walls. Like other Dom cities, those walls weren't designed with defense against human threats in mind, only large marauding predators. Consequently, there were no ramparts behind the walls from which infantry could fight, nor were they pierced for artillery. But there'd been time for Gomez to prepare all those things if he'd been inclined. Instead, it seemed he'd chosen to meet the Allied force in the open and even Major Anson's Ranger scouts had missed his advance. Barca could hardly imagine that. The only possibility was that Gomez had brought out his whole force the very night before, under cover of darkness.

Well done, he mentally congratulated the enemy commander. As good as it had become, the various parts of the combined Allied army had rarely moved independently, nor had it often practiced doing so. The whole force together had usually been significantly outnumbered, after all. Large contingents often detached themselves to perform flanking movements or assemble in unexpected places once the general battlefield was defined, but the army as a whole had only ever split entirely once before, and never on the current campaign, with large numbers of newer troops who'd never done it at all. Confusion was the inevitable result.

"Well, we've got a grand total o' one battery in place-Dukane's howitzers, if ye can imagine," McNabb fumed, "an' whoever arranged the day's order o' march . . ." He shook his head and Barca nodded. All he heard from ahead was the duller boom of howitzers-and Dom guns, of course, that sounded very much like them. "But Colonel Cayce wants all the guns up right goddamn now-sir," McNabb continued, "an' I know there's at least two more batteries behind ye." He stood in his stirrups, gazing east. "Can't even see 'em 'round that bend in the road. If we don't hurry, them devils in the second column'll have their guns up before us an' take all the best places tae shoot!"

"Can't have that, can we?" came a shout from among the almost-jogging infantry. Anyone would've had to raise his voice to be heard amid the crashing rumble of hobnailed shoes, heavy breathing, and clanking muskets and accoutrements. Both men turned to see First Sergeant Visser fall out of line and salute Captain Barca. Gesturing toward the Number One and Two guns of Hanny's section, he continued, "I once assured Lieutenant Cox that his guns'd never be overrun while the Third Pennsylvania was at hand-and here we're overrunnin' him ourselves! At least chasin' him off the road in the muddy ditch." Turning, he shouted at another officer on a horse, "Captain Cullin?"

"By all means, First Sergeant," Captain Cullin agreed without even looking, or indeed slowing his horse. He'd obviously been prepared for the request.

"C Comp'ny," Visser bellowed, "turn out an' clap onto these guns. The colonel wants 'em on the line, an' by God I expect we'll be wantin' 'em too!"

About sixty rough-looking men in dingy, sky-blue uniforms elbowed their way out of the column, breathing hard and shifting muskets off their shoulders so they could drop packs and bedrolls before re-slinging their muskets diagonally across their backs. This took a few moments while most retrieved their greatcoats from where they'd wadded them up in their knapsack straps and put them back on. Already sweating from their rapid march, they'd get badly chilled if they didn't. A few men were quickly delegated to take charge of the discarded packs, and the rest hurried to help the artillerymen without another word from Visser, who watched with a satisfied air. "You may recall, Cap'n Barca," he finally said, "that even before we fought so close with Hanny's section at Puebla, half his men started out in the Third as infantrymen alongside me. Good lads, most of 'em, an' they've made us mighty proud. Still think of 'em as ours, in a way."

Barca's whole six-gun battery started moving faster almost at once, and soon the straining horses were doing most of the work by themselves. Hanny was guiding his lead team a little farther from the road, where the ground was firmer closer to the trees. "That should do it, sir! Thanks, First Sergeant!" he called back, voice sounding absurdly youthful. He was young too, maybe the youngest man in his section-with the possible exception of one or two recent native recruits they'd picked up along the march. Barca, McNabb, and Visser continued to observe while the new commander of A Battery's 1st Section fell back from the lead and climbed up on the left-side horse directly in front of the splinter bar attached to the limber pulling "his" Number Two gun.

"He's an officer now," McNabb said lowly. "There might still be a few suitable horses in the artillery reserve," he added dubiously. They'd captured quite a few horses, former Dom officer and lancer mounts, but they generally made poor draft animals. Besides, the dragoons, the Rangers, and Mr. Lara's lancers invariably snapped up the best ones. The artillery got the dregs; animals still strong enough to pull and which might be ridden-at least while constrained by their harness-but little more. Doms used large, plodding "armabueys"-basically a cross in appearance between giant horned toads and armadillos-to pull their own supply wagons and guns, so captured animals actually accustomed to that sort of labor were of no use to Colonel Cayce. Armabueys were simply too slow. A former artilleryman himself, Lewis Cayce was convinced the agility of horse-drawn artillery had tipped the scales in his favor more than once. Finally, and for that same reason, the artillery was in constant competition with the baggage train when it came to acquiring appropriate beasts. Officially, the artillery took precedence, but it didn't always work that way.

Barca just shook his head. "He'll never take a horse for his own. He still commands his section as the gunner on Number Two. I haven't changed that because both his guns are always together, and frankly, he's the best gunner in the battery. Maybe the whole army. No doubt he'll replace me when I fall-that's been my recommendation to Major Olayne-and he'll have to let someone take his place then," he related matter-of-factly as if his own death was inevitable. "Until then, however, I won't interfere with how he runs his section."

The sound of battle was growing in volume and intensity by the time Elijah Hudgens's battery finally appeared behind them, abruptly trapping itself in the same loblolly that captured Barca's guns. "Have your men give them a hand as well, if you would," Barca suggested to First Sergeant Visser, "then move on along. One of the new batteries armed with captured tubes on our carriages is still back there somewhere, but don't wait for it. It'll have to manage its own passage." He looked at McNabb. "Is that acceptable, Sergeant Major?"

"Aye," agreed McNabb. "The new lads try hard enough, but they aren't yet worth the powder they burn. Small use they'll be in this fight. I'll ride up with ye, if ye've no objection."

Barca nodded, and the two men urged their horses toward the front, quickly outpacing the rushing infantry and even Barca's freed battery. In just moments, it seemed, they emerged from the dense forest bordering the road and came to a vast stubbled plain. The ground was quite clearly cultivated, but there was no telling what grew there since it had been harvested down to the ground. The earth was very dark, rich and inconveniently soft, however, and already churned into a muddy quagmire where 2nd Division, Capitan Ramon Lara's lancers, Coryon Burton's dragoons, and Dukane's battery of howitzers had passed and deployed. At the moment, they had the whole field to themselves, opposite an equally rapidly deploying mass of Dom infantry wearing bright yellow coats with black cuffs and facings, as well as black leggings and tricorn hats.

The enemy had marched right up the road to meet them and had no cover, no advantageous terrain. The only such feature conveniently near was a strand of woods angling diagonally away a few hundred yards to the north, likely following the path of a large creek or small river tumbling down the mountains the Allied Army was descending. At any rate, it extended outward from the very forest the Allies were spilling from as well.

Beyond the quickening panorama of war in the immediate vicinity was a truly stunning sight. Huge tended fields, bordered by high walls of stones probably cleared and stacked by slaves over the centuries, paralleled the road and stretched as far down the long slope to the valley below as could be seen. Scattered fairly thickly along them, often incorporated into the walls, were countless stone huts surrounded by smaller enclosures, many confining livestock. There were goats and cattle and sheep, of course, but also larger bipedal creatures like Har-Kaaska's bizarre mount. These looked vaguely like giant feathery lizards with a duck's head-though the "bill" wasn't hard like a duck's. Other strange beasts were visible as well, many they'd already encountered, but some they never had. Most striking of all, except for the Dom army scrambling to oppose them, of course, not another human soul could be seen.

"They've been waiting for us," Barca observed, "and already cleared everyone out."

"I hope that's all they did tae 'em," McNabb somberly replied.

The land was dotted with armabueys, standing placid and apparently abandoned, still hitched to wooden-wheeled carts. Shaggy buffalo-size creatures with horns on their faces and colorful bony frills protecting their necks were still burdened by long trunks of trees or other heavy objects they'd been dragging, but they were less patient than armabueys and aimless ragged gouges marked the ground away from the road where they'd rampaged to get rid of their loads. Even a few walls had been knocked down. Most amazing of all were some stupendous woolly beasts with ridiculously long, whiplike tails and necks. These "serpientosas" had been encountered before, used by locals to move extraordinary loads, but none had been remotely as large, perhaps thirty-five paces from noses to the tips of their tails. Most were much farther away in the direction of Texcoco, standing in clusters around large clumps of trees. The high, bright white walls of Texcoco itself were recognizable ten miles or more farther down the long slope, but only because they contrasted so sharply with the dark earth all around. If there were any people still there, they were much too distant to see.