The young man stared up at him. "But, sir."
"Son, if you don't move, your friends will die. Come with me, and we might save a few."
Hodge's eyes focused distantly for a moment, then he wiped away tears and stood, bringing his musket to hand. "As you say, laughing's better. Lead on, sir."
Owen felt ridiculous. Dressed in his Altashee leathers, one musket over his shoulder, another in his right hand. He thumbed the firestone, rotating it. He felt it grind. The musket had been loaded and never fired. With Hodge at his back, Owen marched into the gap as Ryngian drummers started in.
"Hodge, grab two more muskets." Owen bent to get himself a third. "Sixty, forty, and twenty, then it's steel on steel."
"Yes, sir."
Just looking at the Ryngians gave Owen gooseflesh. The enemy formed a solid wall of blue coats with white facings, silver-white buttons, and tall bearskin hats with silver crests. When he'd faced them in Artennes Forest he'd joked that one should aim for that badge. No need to aim now. At that range he couldn't miss, but even killing two with every shot wouldn't slow them.
The drums began a steady beat. Cannons roared from behind him. Balls slammed into the formation, plowing red furrows through it. The Platine just closed ranks, drawing closer, ever closer, step by step, their iron will and discipline revealing why they were the masters of the battlefield. An officer shouted an order and the front rank lowered muskets to the hip, then thrust them forward. Bayonets at the ready, they came on, with the second rank's bayonets gleaming at shoulder height.
"You still with me, Hodge?"
"Got a couple more, sir."
Owen looked to his side. Two other men, one bleeding from the shoulder and the other wounded in the thigh, raised their muskets. "If you can find an officer, drop him."
More cannonballs hammered the Tharyngian forces, but the Norillian cannon were slow to reload. They might get one more volley in before the Ryngians overran Owen's position. More Ryngians filled the gaps, leaving the line seamless. A hundred yards. Eighty. Owen raised his musket. Seventy. Sixty.
His thumb brushed the firestone. The musket spat fire. A second later the other three soldiers shot. Three Ryngians went down, their bodies instantly hidden behind the advancing line.
Then the drumbeats sped up, hammered more quickly.
The Ryngians charged.
Owen brought a second musket to his shoulder. Seeing a man with a sword shouting orders, he shifted right and tracked. He aimed for the badge, then invoked a spell. Gunsmoke hid the line, but it blew away quickly and the officer had vanished.
The solid wall of blue raced on and Owen braced himself to receive the charge.
Then a volley roared from behind him and the Ryngians staggered. Unstone and the Third had come to plug the gap. The first two Ryngian ranks went down, but rest of the Platine came on hard. Owen screamed defiantly and met their charge. He parried the first thrust, then drove his own bayonet home, plunging it deep into a man's belly. The soldier vomited blood and sagged. Owen ripped the bayonet free and swung the butt up, catching another soldier in the face, shattering bone and scattering teeth.
The first wave passed by him, intent on the Third. The Ryngians flowed into the gap beyond Owen, leaving him free in the rearward ranks. Soldiers there weren't yet prepared to meet the enemy in the sea of blue coats before them. Owen's lack of a bright red uniform bought him a heartbeat before they realized he was the enemy.
One man lunged. Owen parried the bayonet wide. He brought his musket butt up with a stroke that should have snapped the man's head back. Unfortunately his target stumbled, ducking beneath the attack. As Owen's blow slipped past the man's shoulder, the Ryngian whipped his musket's butt around and caught Owen square in the stomach. Owen, his gun lost, sprawled on the ground.
The Tharyngian rose up on one knee, raising his musket high for a killing thrust.
Then another bayonet stabbed forward, catching the Ryngian high in the chest. Hodge! The bantam Private yelled as he thrust, driving the other man back. He yanked his bayonet free and a single geyser of blood shot into the air.
Owen rolled to his feet and grabbed the dying Ryngian's musket. He spun it around, leveling it at another Tharyngian soldier. He thumbed the firestone. The musket roared. The soldier fell, his waistcoat growing dark. Another butt-stroke, another lunge and, with Hodge beside him, Owen broke through to the back of the Ryngian formation.
For a heartbeat he felt relief, then he glanced toward the river and felt as if he'd again been struck in the stomach.
The First Cavalry battalion had collapsed. Its colors fell as bluecoats swarmed. The best Tharyngian troops in the world had taken the Norillians in the flank. The scions of Norillian nobility loved playing at parade or riding down fleeing infantry. War had been more a sport for them than a serious pursuit, but the Ryngians had brought them blood and fire. Such intensity had never been inflicted on them before. Not for the first time did it occur to Owen that horsemen on foot had surrendered the smarter part of their partnership. Fleeing soldiers, their panic infective, ran headlong into their Second battalion, destroying any hope of defending against the pursuing Platine battalion.
And to make matters worse, a Ryngian sloop had appeared on the river drawing parallel to the cavalry position. It had run its cannons out. Nothing could save the Norillian right, and once those men had been scoured from the field, nothing could stop du Malphias from winning the day.
Chapter Sixty-Four
August 1, 1764
La Fortresse du Morte
Anvil Lake, Mystria
T he ship's cannon-sixteen pounders every one-erupted with fire and iron. They'd been loaded with grapeshot and lit off inside thirty yards of their target. All four spoke in unison. A hail of hot metal jetted from the billowing smoke clouds. Men vanished in a bloody mist. Balls sailed through them, their speed unabated, tearing legs off or blowing open chests, revealing hearts as red birds fluttering furiously in shattered ivory cages.
Nathaniel Woods and a company of Mystrian Ranger sharpshooters crouched at the gunwales. "Officers first! Officers first!" He turned to the Summerland boys. "Run those guns out again, boys. Give them another taste of Hell!"
The sharpshooters poured more fire into the Platine battalion's flank. Scattered return shots splintered oak planking. Thomas Hill brought the bow swivel-gun around and pounded the battalion's back ranks. Nathaniel twisted, tracking a man with a saber and braid. He caressed the firestone.
Gunnery crews hauled on ropes and ran the reloaded cannon out again. The sloop rolled as they fired. Where there had been ranks of blue-backed soldiers now existed a red swamp dotted with bone and dying things writhing in the mire.
One of the fortress' batteries fired at the sloop. Grapeshot mostly rattled off the hull, though a few balls careened over the deck. Several men went down-two clearly dead and one with a long splinter through his leg.
Nathaniel ran to the bow, reloading as he went. He cranked the lever forward, sealing the bullet into the barrel, then steadied the rifle on the gunwale. If it's a duel you want…
The smoke cleared, revealing a gunner standing on his cannon's carriage, hand shielding his eyes from the sun. Nathaniel dropped the sights on him, then invoked magick. The rifle boomed and bucked. The gunner staggered back, holding his stomach, before pitching down into the fort.
Without thinking, Nathaniel cranked the lever to the side, flipped the gimbaled chamber up, dropped another round into it, and worked the lever to send the bullet home. By the time he aimed again, a loader was just shoving the ramrod into the gun. Another man held a small cylinder full of grape. Nathaniel hit the firestone again.
The loader, his ramrod still stuck in the cannon's throat, hung draped over the gun. The sloop's swivel-gun roared and grapeshot scattered another cannon's crew. The remaining two cannon fired back, killing three more on deck, while the sloop's guns tore deeper into the Tharyngian formation.