"Tom Purdom-Dragon Drill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Purdom Tom)

formation.
***


The thing struck at the center two more times. By the end of the fourth attack, the grenadier company
had lost almost half its men -- including a third of its sergeants and two officers.
Von Wogenfer gestured at Colonel Basel-Derhof while the tail of the monster was still thrashing above
his head. "I believe it's time we sent in the reserve company, mon ami. If you will give the orders..."
Basel-Derhof spurred his horse forward. His big, unforgettable voice rang across the formations. The
grenadiers massed around the princess jerked to attention. They about faced in response to their
captain's orders and snapped into a march.
It was one of the most difficult maneuvers an army could perform. A battered, limping unit had to
vacate its position at top speed without yielding to fear and turning a retreat into a panic. The infantry
forming one face of the square had to open a gap they could pass through. A second unit had to march,
without hesitation, into the very place where men had been killed and crippled while it watched.
Von Wogenfer straightened in the saddle as he watched them step through the drill. Their erect heads
and vertical muskets would have been an impressive sight if you had watched them execute the maneuver
on the parade ground -- but here they were doing it in the face of the enemy... as a thing that killed and
slashed climbed into the sky and positioned itself for another descent.
He caught a brief glimpse of Costanze Adelaide as the monster approached the top of its climb. She
was leaning forward, with her full weight on the stake, and methodically moving her wrists up and down
as she rubbed her bonds against the wood. Then the blue mass closed around her. And the bolt began its
fall.
He pulled his snuff box out of his pocket and turned back to Alsten. "Do you see why your father
values discipline so much?"
The boy's eyes were locked on the dragon's approach. He looked confused -- as if he had been jolted
from a dream -- and von Wogenfer turned away from him without waiting for an answer.
Von Wogenfer had shared many intimacies with his fellow officers, but there was one thought he had
never revealed. He had developed an irrational respect for the soldiers he commanded. They were the
worst, he knew. They were recruited from the leavings of the civilian population: from the lazy, the
criminal, the unemployable. Most of them would be stealing and raping -- or begging in the public
squares -- if they hadn't been bludgeoned or connived into putting on uniforms. Half of them would have
been running like peasants by now if they hadn't known they were maneuvering under the eyes of officers
who would shoot them down before they had finished the first step. But none of that seemed to matter
when you saw them execute the kind of maneuver he had just witnessed.
The act sanctified itself. The motivation was irrelevant.
The monster released another scream as it closed with the formation but this time it seemed to him he
could detect a different quality in the sound. A hundred shaken men had surrounded the stake when it
had finished its last strike. Now two hundred straight, unwounded grenadiers stood there again.
The great claws struck. The long underbelly blocked out the sun for the fourth time and he noted the
bloody lines marked by the bayonet points. Here and there he could even see bruises and round, red
patches where musket-balls had struck home.
His heart jumped when he realized it was turning away without rising. It landed about a hundred and
fifty paces in front of the formation and stared at its adversaries with its wings draped along the ground.
"It's tiring!" Alsten said. "We're wearing it down! We may not be hurting it, but we're wearing it
down."
The two guns crashed as soon as the artillery officers realized they had a steady target. A shriek of
pain -- or was it rage? -- clawed at the air. The animal twisted on itself, like a dog biting at a flea. It
pointed its head at the sky, still screaming, and von Wogenfer stood up in the stirrups and peered at its
thrashing body. It had obviously taken a cannon ball on its left side, but it had reacted by turning that side