He searched the breadth of the dragoons for an officer’s epaulets. He found them quickly and rested his carbine against his shoulder. A deep breath. Let it out. Squeeze the trigger.
The bullet caught the young officer in the throat. He was thrown from the saddle, and Tamas was instantly on to the next target.
For the next couple of minutes, his powder mages fired at will, each bullet finding a deadly mark with few exceptions. The Kez vanguard drew closer.
“Better mount up, sir,” Olem said, not a hint of nervousness in his voice.
Tamas could read the dragoon formation. They spread on the eastern side of the road in columns six deep. They would hit the First Battalion’s flank, driving them away from the possible protection of the city of Hune Dora’s walls. The dragoons would strike hard and fast, avoiding entanglement, and be back out of range of conventional musket fire within a few moments. They would be able to pull back around behind Hune Dora’s walls, shielding them from powder mages, and then sweep an attack against the column’s flank.
Tamas saw carbines lifted to shoulders. He swung up into his saddle and cleared the barrel of his carbine.
“Watch the wall,” he said to Olem. “Let’s go.”
Arbor’s First Battalion slowed to a crawl. Every other man suddenly stopped, whirled, and lowered to one knee. Tamas could hear Arbor scream the order to fire, and a cloud of powder smoke rose in the air. Fifty or more dragoons fell. The soldiers leapt to their feet, reloading as they resumed their march.
Tamas galloped toward the rear guard and drew his curved cavalry saber.
The dragoons let loose with their carbines, leaving their own clouds of powder smoke like a memory behind them.
The line of soldiers staggered. Some fell, some limped along, crying for help. None of them broke to tend to the wounded.
They’d been trained well.
The dragoons holstered their carbines in the saddle. Pistols were drawn, aim taken.
The second line of Adran soldiers turned, knelt, and fired.
A cloud of smoke went up from the dragoons as they returned shots with their pistols. They were out of the cloud only a moment later, swords drawn, as they came in for the charge.
Arbor’s First Battalion turned to meet the charge. Their sword bayonets were fixed on the ends of their muskets, making the weapons long enough to act as pikes. Tamas cursed. Their formation was too loose…
The dragoons’ thunderous charge was upon Tamas’s soldiers.
Horses screamed as they were impaled upon sword bayonets. Men fell from their mounts. Adran soldiers were cut about the neck and face by straight-edged cavalry swords. The lines of infantry and cavalry met, disappearing in a bloody tangle.
Tamas leaned forward, urging more speed out of his charger, Olem right beside him. Across the field of battle, opposite him where the old walls of Hune Dora turned around a hill, another cavalry charge appeared.
Gavril was at the head of these cavalry. Two hundred cuirassiers in the dark-blue pants and crimson coats of the Adran heavy cavalry raced across the prairie just as the tattered remains of the Kez dragoons extracted themselves from the First Battalion.
Though still outnumbered three to one, Gavril’s cuirassiers hit the dragoons with the force of an artillery shell. The collision was audible, the yells of the dragoons turning desperate at the sudden appearance of an enemy at their flank. Somewhere in the midst of the tangle a Kez trumpet belted out a desperate retreat.
A moment later and Tamas hit the fray himself. He swung his cavalry sword out and across, neatly severing the carotid artery of a Kez dragoon. He whirled in the saddle, barely catching the sword strike of another dragoon. He reached out with his senses and detonated a powder charge in the dragoon’s breast pocket and immediately urged his charger forward, looking for the next target.
The last of the dragoon vanguard extracted themselves and fled back toward their brigades.
A cheer went up among Tamas’s men. It carried from the First Battalion down the column and on to the Ninth Brigade, which was already safe inside the forest.
Tamas caught his breath as his charger picked its way through the bodies of men and horses to join Gavril. “Rein in your cuirassiers,” Tamas shouted to Gavril. Gavril nodded and gave the orders.
“The main body of cavalry will be here in an hour,” Tamas said, gasping, his heart still pounding, the powder smoke stinging his eyes and reminding him that he was an old man.
Gavril brought his mount close to Tamas and lowered his voice. “What will we do with the dead and wounded?”
Tamas examined the field of battle. There were at least a thousand dead and wounded, counting the Kez and Adrans together. The Kez couldn’t have retreated with more than three hundred of their men. There was no way Tamas could march with his wounded.
“Arbor!” Tamas said, searching. “Olem, find Arbor.”
A few moments later, the old colonel joined him on the field. He had a new cut on his cheek and powder burns on his sleeves. He’d seen action himself, it seemed.
“Sir?”
“Status of the First Battalion?”
“Fine and kicking, sir. We gave ’em pit. No exact count yet, but I lost no more than two hundred men.”
Two hundred men from Tamas’s best battalion. Almost a fourth of them. It was a staggering victory against almost twelve hundred dragoons, but Tamas couldn’t afford to lose a single man, let alone two hundred of his very best.
“Pack up your wounded. Send them up the column. Strip the battlefield of everything useful.”
“Permission to slaughter the horses, sir?” Arbor said. “We need the meat.”
“Granted. Give your men a battlefield burial. I wish we had more time, but I mean to be off this prairie when the rest of the Kez get here.”
Arbor gave a brisk nod and headed off, giving orders.
“A battlefield burial, sir?” Olem asked.
“Something we did on the march in Gurla. When another army pressed on us after a fight, we’d wrap our dead in their canvas tents with their names marked on the canvas and hope the enemy had the decency to give them a proper burial.” Tamas sighed. He didn’t like battlefield burials. The dead deserved more respect than that.
“Did they?”
“What?”
“Did they give them a proper burial, sir?”
“Four times out of five… no. They’d leave them to rot in the Gurlish sun.”
Tamas swung out of his saddle and knelt down beside a wounded Adran soldier. The man stared into the sky, teeth clenched, his knee a bloody mess. A single glance told Tamas that the leg would most likely have to be amputated. Until then, how to move the man at all? Tamas drew his knife and held the handle to the wounded man.
“Bite down on this,” he said. “It’ll ease the pain a bit. Olem, have a few boys check the city. Maybe there are some abandoned wagons. Gavril, have your men catch any of the unwounded Kez horses. We might need them.”
He looked toward the southern horizon. Soon enough, fifteen thousand cavalry would breach that hill.
It took four whole days of searching and over a thousand krana in bribes before Adamat found where Field Marshal Tamas had stashed Borbador, the last living Privileged from Manhouch’s royal cabal.
It was funny, Adamat decided, that he was using the field marshal’s own money to try to undo his orders.
Colonel Verundish stood beside him. She was a smart-looking Deliv woman in her fifties, her ebony skin a complement to the dark blue of her Adran uniform, with straight black hair tied back.
“He’s here?” Adamat asked.
“He is,” she confirmed.
They stood on a bluff at the very northernmost district of Adopest, where the rows of houses abruptly gave way to farmland. Here, the streets didn’t smell so much like shit and soot. Here, there were fewer factories and people.
Not a bad place to live. If Adamat survived long enough to retire, maybe he could move his family out here.