The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [86]
The trolljrmen, who had been caught off-guard by the sharpsie attack, managed to bear the ambushers to the ground, hammering at them with heavy fists and relying on their thick, scaly skin to protect them from tooth and knife.
While the assault had slowed, it had not stopped. Lobstermen led the gendarmes through the narrow streets of Old Bank, while sharpsies abandoned their makeshift barricades to engage in half-hearted flanking assaults on the large force. They brought their incendiary grenades with them, but the riflemen, using their flux-ground greenglass lenses, could spot them with ease, and were generally able to pick them off before any of the phlogiston explosives could be thrown.
The Lobstermen pushed on against what appeared to be a flagging enemy force. Sharpsies were sniped at distance, ground down beneath the hammering of cudgels and tromping feet of the marines and gendarmes, or hacked to pieces by their swords. After the first initial attempt to hold the invaders, the sharpsies panicked and fled through the streets of Old Bank, while the Committee’s army pursued, roaring with victory.
The rout was another ambush. The sharpsies weren’t retreating; they were regrouping, leaping out of the street and scaling the complex, Gorgon-Vie architecture onto rooftops. They consolidated the bulk of their number on the roofs around Vlytze Plaza, where High Street met Corimander, and when the gendarmes and Lobstermen reached it, they fell on their attackers with the reckless abandon that only the knowledge of impending doom could bring.
Gendarmerie soon found themselves hemmed in on all sides by the towering buildings of the district, while slashing knives and sharp teeth dropped on them en masse from above, a wave of hundreds of sharpsies, furious and full of bloodlust. The gendarmes defended themselves with swords and cudgels, with rifles and pistols, but they found themselves trapped, packed in, unable to maneuver.
The sharpsies, with so much experience as butchers and herdsman, had turned Vlytze Plaza into a slaughterhouse. Their dexterous feet gripped heads and shoulders as they ran about on top of the flailing crowds, hurling themselves teeth-first at the most likely targets. The Lobstermen attempted to rally, but soon found themselves as equally disadvantaged as the gendarmes. Their own speed and strength was of little use when they had nowhere to move, and the nimble sharpsies had pegged them as targets immediately. They attempted to overwhelm the bone-armored men, using their own bodies to tangle up weapon arms while their fellows brought knives to bear on the joints between bleeding bone plates.
Still the sharpsies found it difficult to gain advantage, as more gendarmes appeared from every street, freed up from their battle with the Dockside Boys. The sharpsies were also unable to use their favorite weapon—their incendiary grenades—now that they were locked in close-combat with their adversaries. The battle had become a bloody, brutal stalemate; two opposing forces, equally matched and unable to retreat, attempting to simply grind each other down.
That was when the first shells landed. There was a whistling scream, and a deafening explosion as a house by the square collapsed, hurling rubble among the fighting men. Another scream, and another explosion, this time in the square itself, and men and sharpsies disappeared in an explosion of blood and limbs.
Edgar Wyndham-Vie had commandeered the Imperial frigate Revenge. He had maneuvered it up the Stark, and had turned the long guns on the ship’s deck towards Vlytze Square. His men had reluctantly begun to fire on their own