Oksamit: переводы

→"A fresh attack is going in now, Holiness."

→"Then they'll be heavy!" Vroxhan glared at him, then slammed his fist on a map of the Temple with a snarl. "What of the heretic leaders?"

→"I didn't question His will," Surak said with dangerous emphasis. "I only observe that men enraged by betrayal can accomplish things other men cannot. Our losses will be heavy, Holiness."

→"We acted in the name of God, Lord Marshal!" Vroxhan snapped. "Do not dare presume to question God's will!"

→"I hope you're right, Holiness," Surak said grimly. "High-Captain Therah reports the heretics took at least two thousand casualties, and they're still driving forward, not even pausing to regroup. It would seem," he faced the high priest squarely, "their outrage at our treachery is even greater than I'd feared."

→"God will strengthen our men," Vroxhan promised.

→"The heretics have carried the gates, Holiness."

→* * *
"What's happening, Lord Marshal?" Vroxhan demanded edgily as a panting messenger handed Surak a message. The lord marshal scanned it, then crumpled it in his fist.

→"We will," Sean promised grimly, and opened his eyes. "Pass the word, Folmak. They're coming in from the east and west."

→"Hang on, Lord Sean!" Tibold said urgently.

→"I see 'em, Harry."

→"Sean, you've got more men coming at you, too," Harriet warned.

→"Let them come!" the ex-Guardsman exulted. "We hold the gate now. They can't keep us out, and I'll take them in a straight fight any day, Lady Harry!"

→"Watch it, Tibold!" Harriet's voice cut into the circuit. "The men you routed just ran into their reinforcements. You've got ten or twenty thousand fresh troops coming at you, and the survivors from the gates are rallying behind them!"

→"I know, Tibold." Sean closed his eyes, and tears streaked his face, for he was tied into Brashan's orbital arrays. The smoke and chaos made it impossible to sort out details from orbit, even for Imperial optics, but he didn't need details to know thousands of his men lay dead or wounded.

→* * *
"We're through the gate, Lord Sean!" Tibold shouted into the com. "We're through the gate!"

→Two hundred of the Twelfth Brigade were still on their feet to join it.

→The Guard's officers did everything mortal men could do, but mortal men couldn't stop that frenzied charge, and what had begun slowly spread and accelerated. A stubborn withdrawal became first a retreat, then a rout, and the Malagorans swarmed over any man who tried to stand while others fought their way meter by bloody meter up the stairs on the wall's inner face. The last of the pikemen, abandoned by their fellows, turned to run, and the baying Malagoran army swept into the city.

→More Malagorans charged through the gate tunnel, and still more. The space between the wall and the pikes was a solid mass of men, each fighting to get forward to kill at least one Guardsman before he died. The casualty count was overwhelmingly in the Guard's favor, but the Malagorans seemed willing to take any losses, and at last, slowly, the pikes began to crumble. Here a man went down screaming; there another began to edge back; to one side, another dropped his pike and turned to run; and the Malagorans drove forward with renewed ferocity as they sensed the shifting tide.

→The impact staggered the Guardsmen. Their longer weapons gave them a tremendous advantage in this headlong clash, but the Malagorans rammed onward, and more and more of them swept out of the tunnel. They overwhelmed the front ranks of pikes, burying them under their own bodies, and the Guard gave back—first one step, then another—before the stunning ferocity of that charge. They weren't fighting men; they were fighting an elemental force. For every Malagoran they killed, two more surged forward, and every one of those charging maniacs fired at pointblank range before he closed with the bayonet. Behind them, other men with lengths of burning slow match lit fuses, and powder-filled, iron hand grenades arced through the smoky air to burst amid the Guard's ranks. Here and there, their front broke, and Malagorans funneled forward into the holes, bayonets stabbing, taking men in the flank even as the Guard's charging reserve cut them down in turn. There was no end to the flood of howling heretics, and Guardsmen began to look over their shoulders for the reinforcements they'd been promised.