A Vector for Friendly Blood

A lathered bay gelding scrambled up the scree, spraying gravel against my bruised right knee before the courier hauled its curb-chain flat.

Dust clung to the rider's dark wool tunic, caking the yellow frogs of the dispatch corps. He did not dismount. His hand reached into his leather satchel and thrust an oblong tin tube toward Captain Larbi-ani.

"From Ordnance Staff," the rider rasped, coughing dried phlegm into his gauntlet. "Immediate indirect fire. Five rounds per gun, high-angle deflection over the western red ridge."

Larbi-ani took the tin, thumbing open the cap. Inside lay a strip of heavy vellum stamped with an oval wafer of cobalt beeswax. The blue seal of Colonel Smail-bara.

"Pointer," Larbi-ani snapped, holding the parchment against the desert wind. "Log the numbers."

My knee throbbed as I stepped to the carriage wheel. The scent of hot mineral grease and scorched cordite from our first volley still hung thick over the bronze tubes. Down in the sunken draw, dead coalition lancers lay sprawled where our grape had caught them. The baggage column creaked westward below our ledge, mules braying beneath wicker baskets of hardtack and salt pork.

I took the vellum. The ink was fresh, the lines ruled with an iron straightedge:

Azimuth 214 degrees. Elevation eleven degrees, forty minutes. Deflection channel: Stake Four, coupled across all four twelve-pounders. Target: hostile skirmishers deploying along the dry tamarisk terrace.

I held my boxwood rule against the parchment. A spotter does not simply point tubes; he checks the geometry of the ground against the ink on the sheet.

"This azimuth points into our own retreat perimeter," I said.

Larbi-ani wiped sweat from his gray stubble with his cuff. His blue coat was stiff with dried salt along the seams. "The dispatch comes from Colonel Smail-bara. Skirmishers have crested the tamarisk terrace to cut off our rear caissons."

"Captain, the terrace sits at azimuth 208," I said, showing him my slate. The chalk lines were blunt and exact. "Azimuth 214 sits six degrees south, past the dry wash. The only formation moving through the wash at six o'clock is our own light horse picket—the 7th Chasseurs guarding the flank."

"Ordnance coordinates are verified by staff triangulators at headquarters," Larbi-ani cut in, his jaw tightening. "They have three semaphore stations operating on the ridges. You do not correct an imperial colonel from the seat of a gun trail, Pointer."

Beside the caisson, Gunner Mourad-bara spat a black lump of charcoal paste into the scree. He had spent twenty years handling line guns, and he knew the temper of staff officers.

"Blue wax never smells of powder," Mourad muttered in his raspy baritone, wiping his cordite-scarred forearms on a greasy hemp apron. "Gentlemen write in blue because red would remind them ink costs blood."

"Silence on the line!" Larbi-ani snarled. He tapped his saber pommel. "Belkacem, set the stake. We limber in twenty minutes. If the coalition vanguard takes that ridge before we reach the dry riverbed, the entire rear guard dissolves. Lay the battery on the colonel's mark."

I turned back to Stake Four.

The tourmaline crystal was still warm from the four rounds we had thrown into the lancer vanguard. An amber shimmer pulsed inside the deep green hexagonal core, trapped heat from absorbing the kinetic recoil. Worse, beneath my palm lay the vernier plate I had inspected moments earlier: three silver teeth sheared away with a cold chisel, forcing a three-degree southward bias under normal spring tension.

If I entered Smail-bara's stamped coordinates without compensation, the mechanical flaw would compound the error. The shells would plunge straight into the hollow of the wash where the imperial picket held the trail.

"I am adjusting five minutes for thermal drift," I called out, reaching for the brass vernier clamp.

"Touch only the assigned numbers," Larbi-ani warned, stepping onto the limestone shelf beside me. "Not one hair of an arc off the stamped dispatch. You broke protocol once today with that boot of yours. If you falsify an Ordnance order, I will have the provost hang you from an axle-tree before dawn."

His eyes were bloodshot, hollowed out by three days of retreat across sun-baked scrub. He was not a murderer; he was an exhausted officer terrified of being shot for insubordination. In the imperial service, a misplaced decimal on a targeting form was treason, while forty dead soldiers in a draw were merely listed as operational expenditure.

"Elevation eleven degrees, forty minutes," I called aloud. "Azimuth 214."

I seated the brass vernier needle against the damaged rack. My thumbs pressed the cold brass screws. To keep my crew from hanging from limber-poles, I tightened the collar down precisely where the blue wax commanded. The damaged teeth pulled the needle into the sheared notch.

"Battery laid," I said.

"Load high-explosive common shell," Larbi-ani barked. "Five rounds per piece. Battery fire by pairs, on my whistle."

Mourad shoved the wooden sabot down Gun One's bronze bore, his oak rammer striking home with a muffled thud. Powder-boys sprinted from the ready-chest, haversacks slapping against their ribs. The smell of sulphur and vinegar rose from the wet cleaning sponges.

"Pair One!" Larbi-ani shouted, dropping his sword. "Fire!"

The twin bronze twelve-pounders roared.

The shockwave slammed into my chest, punching the breath from my lungs. A sheet of white flame split the dusk, instantly sucked into the green prismatic lattice of Stake Four. The tourmaline rod shrieked—a high, glass-grating vibration that set my teeth on edge. Kinetic recoil flowed from the gun carriages through the iron link-chains, driving into the stake's bronze ferrule. The soil shuddered under my boots as the invisible deflection corridor bent the trajectories northward over the jagged limestone crest.

Two seconds. Four seconds.

Across the ridge, two miles into the blind basin, muffled thuds rolled back across the hills. Pale orange plumes of dirt and burning charcoal rose against the purple twilight.

"Sponges!" Mourad bellowed. "Swab out! Pair Two, stand clear!"

I dragged my spotting telescope from its leather sheath, extending the brass tubes with a scrape of sand. Bracing the barrel against an iron wheel-spoke, I peered through the split-glass lens at the distant smoke rising above the red scrub.

The dust cleared in the lens.

No coalition cavalry rode in the draw. No enemy skirmishers broke from the tamarisk trees.

Through the trembling optics, I saw the blue-and-white pennants of the 7th Imperial Chasseurs.

They had been caught in column of twos on the narrow shale ledge. The first pair of high-explosive shells had landed dead center among their horse-lines. Torn carcasses of mounts and riders lay scattered across the trail. Men in blue tunics were dragging wounded comrades into the ditch, while loose horses galloped in terror along the slope.

Before I could shout, Larbi-ani blew his brass whistle.

"Pair Two," the captain shouted, "fire!"

The second salvo hammered out. The tourmaline stake flared cherry-red along its vertical axis, cracking the rock beneath its ferrule.

"Stop!" I lunged toward Larbi-ani, grabbing his sleeve. "Captain, stop the battery! Look through the glass! Those are our own pennants! It is the 7th Chasseurs!"

Larbi-ani wrenched his arm from my grip, his face pale with sudden fury. He did not look at the telescope. He did not look at the smoke.

"Get your hands off me, Pointer!" he hissed, drawing his service pistol half an inch from its holster. "We fired the numbers stamped by the Ordnance Corps! The staff gave the coordinates! If there are friendly cavalry on that ridge, they violated march orders!"

"We blew them off the shale," I whispered. My throat felt thick, choked with ash. "The coordinates were calibrated to kill them."

Mourad stopped his rammer in mid-air, dark eyes wide beneath his scorched brow. Around the guns, the crew went dead quiet, the only sound the wind whipping dust through the scrub.

Larbi-ani leaned close, his breath hot against my cheek. "You keep your mouth shut, Belkacem. If one word of friendly fire leaves this ledge, the provost marshals will flay the skin from our backs. The guns fired on hostile infantry. That is what goes into the logbook."

He turned toward the horse-teams. "Limber up! Move those carriages! Night march to Wadi-Malik begins now!"

As the gunners scrambled to hook the trails to the limbers, I stood alone beside the cooling stake.

I unclipped the tourmaline rod, slipping it into its padded lambskin sleeve. Then, as Larbi-ani walked toward the picket lines, I dropped to one knee in the dirt.

The blue-wax dispatch slip lay by the trail-spade where the captain had dropped it.

I folded the parchment twice, sliding it deep into the wool pocket of my spotter's coat alongside my chalk slate. Smail-bara's blue seal pressed hard against my ribs. A receipt for forty dead horsemen, written in the hand of high command.