She looked up and down the shattered column in shock. For two hundred paces the ground was littered with the dead and dying. People were shouting for their loved ones, kneeling beside the victims and hacking at downed Baasgarta and ulvgaeds. She couldn't process it, it was too big. It was as if her mind was a moth bumping against an invisible wall of reality and recoiling, over and over. She reloaded the Big 14, hardly knowing what she was doing. When a wounded Baasgarta tried to raise himself to his knees she shot him in the back without even a passing thought.
Suddenly the wall between her and the world vanished and her mind snapped back into function. She began to move among the wounded, tending to them as she could. After a time the platoon of medics from the battalion were there as well. Weeping dwarves were gently separated from their dead. Walking staves became the poles of litters. The mortally wounded were given fatal injections of extract of poppy, except the Baasgarta. The medics simply slit their throats and moved on.
“Deandra!” she heard a voice call. She had just finished tending one of the last of the wounded. She felt soul-sick and exhausted. She waved tiredly to Engvyr and Taarven as they rode up. She and Engvyr embraced, then separated again more quickly than either would have liked. She wanted to cry, to babble, to tell him what she had seen and done but she had no words. She looked deep into his eyes and knew that they were not needed.
“Well,” Taarven said, “I don't think they'll try that again anytime soon. There must be nigh a hundred of them dead.”
She looked up and saw Ynghilda had ridden up next to Taarven. For all that the dwarves had made a good account of themselves they had lost several times that number. The Steadholder's face might have been hewn from ice as she stood over the remains of so many of her folk, staring after the goblins. Deandra’s heart went out to the older woman. Hundreds of Ynghilda's people, people that she had known, had loved all dead in minutes. She couldn't imagine what the older woman was feeling.
Following the direction of her gaze Deandra saw that the Baasgarta cavalry had pulled up about four hundred paces away, beyond the reach of the soldiers' smooth-bore weapons. Two companies of infantry had formed up between the cavalry and the column of refugees.
Ynghilda said, “Just out of range, they figure. Engvyr, shall we teach them different?”
“With pleasure,” he said as he stepped to his pony and unsheathed his long-rifle. He loaded the weapon and peered at the enemy, then carefully adjusted his sights and shouldered the gun.
“Ready,” he told Ynghilda, “See the banner-man? You take him; I'll take the fella on the left.”
Ynghilda raised the big 12-bore to her shoulder and aimed.
“Got him.”
“Shoot,” Engvyr said and their rifles spoke almost as one. The targeted pair were hammered from their saddles. There was confusion among the Baasgarta and they quickly moved off another few hundred paces.
“Well, that was pointless,” said Ynghilda, “But ever so satisfying.”
“It bought us a bit more breathing room at least,” Taarven said.
Horns sounded again up and down the line as the sergeants shouted, “Ten minutes, people! Moving out in ten minutes!”
“Well, no rest for the wicked,” Ynghilda said. She touched hands briefly with Taarven and moved off towards the end of the column. Engvyr kissed Deandra and mounted his pony.
“I guess we'd best be about our business as well. Stay safe, love,” he said, meeting and holding her gaze for a long moment.
“You too. Both of you.”
They touched their hat-brims in farewell and rode off. She sighed heavily as she recovered her soiled, bloody ruck-sack and joined the reforming column. Soldiers were piling up their dead to one side of the road and her eyes shied away from the grisly sight.
They marched away from the site of the slaughter in a much tighter order than before, screened by the infantry now marching on their flank. Deandra took her turns carrying the litters or carrying small children for the dwarves.
She looked back and saw a thick cloud of dense black smoke rising into the sky from the piled dead. She should not be able to see the flames from this distance but the smoke near the pile was shot through with yellow-white flames. Work of the battlemages she supposed. At any rate their dead would not fill goblin stomachs tonight.
Not long after that there was a cry that traveled up the long column, and she turned to see. People were pointing into the distance where a dark column of the main body of the Baasgarta army had come into sight across the valley. People stopped to stare as rank after rank emerged from behind a shallow hill. A murmur of alarm rippled up and down the column, then the sergeants started shouting to keep moving.
The ground rose faster now and the hills began to close in from the sides. They would reach the pass itself just ahead of the oncoming army, but what then? The infantry would be able to hold the superior Baasgarta force for some time, but eventually their sheer numbers would allow them to press forward. As the pass narrowed to a mere hundred feet it seemed strangely unfamiliar, the sides steeper and covered in more brush than she remembered. Silly, she chided herself, you've been this way but the once, and that many years ago.
She heard volleys from the massed guns of the infantry battalion behind them now. The hail of bullets must be murderous in the narrow pass but the Baasgarta pressed forward. The volleys degenerated into sporadic shots as the goblins closed in and the Dwarves were forced to engage with pikes and bayonets.
The pass narrowed further as they climbed and the exhausted refugees began to quicken their steps. The sound of battle grew louder, becoming a roar that filled the pass. Suddenly Deandra realized that they were over the top and starting to descend. The walls of the pass opened out rapidly as the ground fell away before her. A line of soldiers stood across the road and were steering the column of refugees to the side. That's odd, she thought, I didn't realize they had sent so many soldiers ahead…
Deandra saw Grael Makepeace engaged in conversation with an army officer. Other members of the militia were gathered a little further down the road. She left the refugee column and walked over to Grael, wondering what was happening.
“It's almost time,” the officer said to Grael as she approached, “If you could form your people up on either side of the pass the infantry can retreat between them if need be.”
Grael nodded, and began yelling instructions down the hill to the militia. Deandra’s heart fell as she realized the infantry were being pushed back though the pass. These soldiers and the militia were preparing a last stand, but once the Baasgarta got out onto open ground they would spread out and crush them with sheer numbers before turning on the refugees. We have lost after all, she thought. But neither the officer nor Grael acted like men preparing a suicidal last stand, and the soldiers seemed relaxed as they unslung their rifles.
Rifles?!
The soldiers were carrying long-rifles like the one Engvyr used. She looked at them sharply and realized these troops weren't part of the heavy infantry company from the valley. Examining them more closely she saw that they all had a stylized number three on their shoulders picked out in blood-red thread. They were from the elite 3rd Rifles- her husband's old regiment!