Devil's Battle (Artillerymen, Band 3) - Softcover

Buch 3 von 4: Artillerymen

Anderson, Taylor

 
9780593200780: Devil's Battle (Artillerymen, Band 3)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593200780 ISBN 13: 9780593200780
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

Marooned on a deadly alternate Earth, Colonel Lewis Cayce and his soldiers find themselves outnumbered and outclassed in this riveting adventure set in the world of the New York Times bestselling Destroyermen series.

After being stranded on a very different and more perilous Earth, Colonel Lewis Cayce led his small army of displaced Americans, natives of the Yucatán, and Jaguar Warriors to defeat the biggest host the Dominion general Agon could assemble. Most unexpectedly, General Agon came to recognize the inherent evil of the Dominion and its depraved Blood Priests and turned on his former leaders.

Awkwardly at first, Lewis Cayce and Agon join forces to press their common enemy back toward the dark heart of the Dominion in the Great Valley of Mexico. But more Dominion troops have been drawn from the west to stop the Allied march on the Holy City, and a grueling race has begun. Worse, the Gran Cruzada—a vast Dom army that was marching on the far Californias to eject yet another heretic foe—might’ve already been recalled to face Cayce’s soldiers.

Time has become more precious than ever, and before Lewis Cayce can even try to implement his plan for total victory, he and his force must brave their greatest challenge yet: a brutal fight against a larger, better-trained army whose commander has a gift for strategy to rival Cayce’s own. The struggle to keep all his soldiers alive—new friends and old comrades alike—will test Cayce like never before, and, win or lose, nothing will be the same.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Taylor Anderson is the New York Times bestselling author of the Destroyermen novels and the Artillerymen novels. A gunmaker and forensic ballistic archaeologist, Taylor has been a technical and dialogue consultant for movies and documentaries and is an award-winning member of the National Historical Honor Society and of the United States Field Artillery Association.

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Chapter 1

July 1848

Colonel Lewis Cayce, formerly of C Company, 3rd US Artillery, and now commander of what he still referred to as his Detached Expeditionary Force as well as the entire "Army of the Allied Cities of the Yucatán," stood ramrod straight in his best (only, actually) dark blue frock coat. Carefully tailored to be stylishly tight and therefore, in his mind, unfit for combat, it could barely contain his wide, strong shoulders. A burgundy sash encircled his narrow waist beneath a freshly whitened leather sword belt, and his treasured, privately purchased and lightly embellished M1840 artillery officer's saber hung at his side. Like his belt plate and gilded shoulder boards, as well as the single row of brass eagle buttons down the front of his coat, the saber's polished steel scabbard gleamed brightly under the late-morning sun in a cloudless blue sky. Lewis's often sullen orderly, Corporal Willis, had even bestirred himself sufficiently to put a shine on the scuffed and battered black leather knee boots he wore, as well as the abbreviated brim of his 1839-pattern "wheel" hat. The latter had faded considerably, but Willis had reshaped and restuffed the saucerlike top with fresh horsehair so it stood tall and crisply round on Lewis's head like a big, blue mushroom.

Otherwise, the colonel's brown hair and full beard had been neatly trimmed by Mistress Samantha Wilde, a lovely, remarkably capable Englishwoman stranded on "this" Earth alongside roughly six hundred surviving American soldiers. Despite his curmudgeonly persona, Corporal Willis was devoted to his colonel and wouldn't deliberately harm him, but his ability to manipulate tools was reckoned roughly on a par with otters', and it was preferred by all that he not bring sharp implements too close to the army commander's face. Samantha was an artist with scissors, and along with growing into the once-unimaginable authority (if not title) of assistant field quartermaster for the army, she'd become like a sister to Lewis.

His uniform for the day was completed by a new pair of sky-blue trousers-without the red artillery stripes-just arrived, along with a great many other supplies at this newly opened port by ship from the principal Allied city of Uxmal. Except for the dark blue hats, sky blue was the dominant uniform color of the entire combined army. It was mostly composed of infantry, after all, whose trousers and jackets were both that color, with white branch trim. All officers wore dark blue frock coats for dress occasions, but only mounted troopers had dark blue jackets-dragoons (yellow trim), lancers (red collars and cuffs), riflemen (white trim like the infantry), and Rangers (no trim at all). The mounted artillery had red trim, of course. That's what Lewis preferred in the field. But everyone in the army wore sky-blue trousers and for this event, in front of the whole army-that part that was present-Lewis wanted it plain he was "of" them all, not just his cannoneers. Now he gazed forward, gray eyes peering through lids narrowed against the sun, taking in the scene before him.

"Gran Lago is quite impressive for what amounts to a 'frontier' city," murmured the beefy, florid-faced Colonel Andrew Reed beside him. He was another "regular" from the "old army" originally sent to join General Winfield Scott's campaign against the Mexican dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Most believed General Scott had surely managed without their comparatively meager participation in that other war on another world, but the good people of Uxmal and other remote cities across the Yucatán Peninsula would probably already be dead or enslaved if . . . something (Reverend Harkin still maintained it was God) hadn't brought them to this one instead. Reed was Lewis's second in command and had assumed responsibility for the infantry, largely in regard to training and organization as new regiments of "locals" were formed. That duty had fallen to others now that he directly commanded 1st Division.

"It's almost as large as Uxmal, in fact," Reed added, tone a little tight as always of late. His implication was that this relative backwater of their sworn enemy on this world was on a par with the best they had. Lewis knew that wasn't true on so many levels, but it might seem that way at a glance. Reed wasn't shy; he had plenty of courage, but the farther they advanced from their new "home" in the Yucatán toward the heart of a far more numerous enemy that inspired righteous fury and superstitious dread in equal measure, the more uncomfortable he'd become.

Lewis nodded at his words, ignoring the sentiment. "Yes. And more important, we took it largely intact."

Situated on the north coast of what should've been southeastern Mexico, Gran Lago stood on a narrow land bridge between the Gulf of Mexico and the great, brackish lake it was named for. Villas on expansive estates easily employed the slaves and lowborn freemen so it wasn't surrounded by the miles-deep slums Lewis had been told to expect around principal enemy cities. It therefore had a picturesque, almost Mediterranean quality, durably constructed of cut stone, plastered coral, and well-kept adobe. All had been freshly whitewashed after the recent calamity and in honor of this day. The buildings-particularly the high, stepped pyramid and the walls surrounding it and the gathered onlookers and formations of troops on parade in the center of the city-gleamed almost painfully bright.

One of the easternmost outposts of the "Holy Dominion," Gran Lago was well positioned to guard against the approach of monsters or invaders from "La Tierra de Sangre" beyond, and would've done so admirably if sufficiently defended. But the Dominion and the depraved Blood Priests who increasingly controlled it were arrogantly oblivious to the necessity for defense. Virtually all the troops for hundreds of miles not already called to participate in an even more distant campaign against a longer-standing enemy of the Dominion had been so intent on conquering the previously unaggressive and decidedly nonexpansionist cities of the Yucatán that Lewis was able to move his forces wide around them and force them to attack him here. There'd been action along the way, to be sure, but that only honed his already blooded and ever more professional army.

The great Battle of Gran Lago had broken more than the Dominion's Eastern Army of God. It broke the-apparently-long-strained and dwindling faith of its commander, General Agon, and many of his surviving troops. There'd been other contributing factors, of course, but Agon's defeat had clinched it. The Dominion was ruled by a twisted, comingled perversion of Christianity and older, darker faiths, born of a collision between Spaniards arriving in this world aboard a Manila-Acapulco galleon at least two centuries before, and descendants of Mayan, Aztec, and perhaps even more ancient castaways. With neither group able to dominate the other, a bizarre, unholy, monolithic "compromise" faith emerged that would suffer no dissent to exist. A totalitarian theocracy arose with the formation of the "Holy Dominion," ruled by thirteen "Blood Cardinals" (one was supreme over the others), who were chosen by virtue of their blood ties to the founders. They insisted that God (in his underworld heaven) required suffering and blood sacrifice as a price for grace and salvation. Perhaps most bizarre of all, the suffering of his son, Jesus Christ, was proof-and held up as the example for all to emulate. Those who wouldn't compromise the most basic tenets of their Christian or even old pagan beliefs were hunted to extinction or hounded into exile. That was the origin of the Americans' very recognizably Christian allies in the Yucatán, in fact.

General Agon and the Eastern Army of God had suffered above and beyond what should've been required for salvation....

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Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593200780
ISBN 13 
9780593200780
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
480
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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