The Privileged whirled, watching his companion fall, right as a bullet tore through the base of his spine from the opposite direction. Another bullet killed the captain of the Privileged’s guard, while two more bullets downed nearby officers.
Vlora allowed herself a victorious smile, glancing across the valley to where Taniel hid on the hillside opposite her. Somewhere to his left were Davd and Norrine, but Vlora didn’t take the time to pinpoint them before turning her gaze back to the battle.
The Dynize faltered, the courage their bone-eye supplied suddenly gone. Some tried to flee back down the column, though there was no space for them to go, while others abandoned their horses and took cover in streambeds and ditches. Vlora found Olem standing with her rear guard, keeping them in check so that they held their ground. More than a few of them would want to press an attack, but Vlora had no interest in taking a single step back toward Yellow Creek.
The trap had drawn out the brigade’s Privileged and bone-eye, and Vlora pulled a mirror out of her pocket, flashing it toward Olem. He nodded toward her, giving an order to pull back. Let the Dynize stumble over their dead and wonder when the next ambush would come. In the meantime, the Riflejacks would march double time to catch up with the capstone and continue their sprint toward the coast.
Vlora was just about to climb down from her perch when her preternatural senses picked up something she did not expect – not up here. It was the sound of hooves on gravel, as well as the jingle of cavalry kit. It was, alarmingly, coming from behind her.
She swung her rifle around and over a branch, shifting her position so that she could face toward the crest of the ridge behind her. To her surprise, she saw well over a hundred Dynize cavalry in their shining breastplates mount the ridge and fall into line. She swore to herself angrily, wondering what damned goat track they had found to be able to flank the Riflejack position. The dragoons hadn’t just been buying time for their Privileged – they’d been buying time for their cuirassiers as well.
The charge was not an ideal one – through a screen of trees that hid the cuirassiers from the Riflejacks, across a tiny streambed, and then over a rocky field. Not ideal, but certainly possible, and with success it might be able to shatter her rear guard.
The cuirassiers finished falling into line, and their officer raised his sword.
“Piss and shit,” Vlora growled. She dropped her rifle to the ground, hoping it wasn’t damaged in the fall, and awkwardly pulled her pistol. Just as the officer lowered his sword, she pulled the trigger, floating a bullet fifty yards and, with an extra flare of powder, put a neat hole through his breastplate.
None of his cuirassiers seemed to notice him fall as they plunged over the lip of the ridge, charging through the screen of trees without a word, while the attention of the Riflejacks was split between shooting dragoon stragglers and preparing to pull back.
Vlora shouted for Olem across the valley, but the noise was lost among the screams of men and horses down on the road. She swore again, reaching out with her senses, and set off the powder carried by the six closest cuirassiers. The kickback of the sorcery almost knocked her off her branch, but the blast had the intended effect – causing the cuirassiers to falter, and Olem and the rear guard to look toward their left.
With her rifle dropped, Vlora could do nothing but watch as Olem shouted, waving his sword in the air as he kicked riflemen into a loose line and gave the order to fix bayonets. It came not a second too soon, as the Dynize cuirassiers slammed into the reeling Riflejacks. Vlora’s heart leapt as Olem went down beneath the swinging sword of a cuirassier, and the line was broken by the sheer power of the charge.
Taking her eyes off the fight, she glanced beneath her and leapt from her hiding spot, hitting the rocky ground hard and rolling into a crouch. Fetching her rifle and leaving her hat behind, she sprinted toward this new battle, fearing the worst.
She reached the road in time to see the last of the cuirassiers pulled from his horse and butchered by angry riflemen. The length of their entrenchment was a scene of chaos, with horses and soldiers dead and dying in a hundred-yard swath. She could see in an instant that the cuirassiers had simply brought too few men. With an extra hundred they might have completely dislodged the rear guard, and even without them their charge had been devastating. Her rear guard was still reeling from the hit, officers attempting to organize their men back into ranks in case the dragoons mounted another attack.
A dragoon charge did not come. Vlora found Olem lying in the mud, blinking at the sky, his brow caked in blood. She dropped to her knees beside him, overcome by relief when his eyes immediately focused on her. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“I … I think so. Caught a horse’s knee to the face. Does it look bad?”
It did. “You’ve had worse.”
Olem struggled to stand up, and Vlora put her arm beneath his shoulder to get him back to his feet so that they could survey the damage. “The dragoons are pressing,” Olem commented.
“Too many dead clogging the road,” Vlora responded. “They won’t be able to mount another charge at this point. All their cards were in that cuirassier charge.”
“Pit, that scared the shit out of me. Damned good thinking, detonating some powder. Otherwise they might have hit us before we even saw them.”
Vlora didn’t feel as if she’d added much of anything to that fight. They should have seen that possible flanking maneuver and been ready for it. Frankly, she was furious with herself for overlooking it. “Looks like our boys are pretty mauled. We need to grab our wounded and fall back, double time.”
“Agreed.” Olem pushed Vlora away, testing his footing, then headed down the road shouting orders as if he wasn’t still bleeding heavily from his forehead. Vlora grabbed a nearby infantryman, pointing at Olem.
“Find the colonel a surgeon. Make sure he gets stitched up within five minutes,” she ordered.
Vlora spotted Taniel coming down the side of the opposite valley from her, his rifle slung over one shoulder. He stopped beside a dead cuirassier, watching one of the horses panicking in a nearby bush, before finishing his walk toward Vlora. “Those cuirassiers just came out of nowhere,” he commented. “I was so focused on the battle, I didn’t see them until you caused a ruckus with their powder.”
“I barely saw them in time myself, and they were right behind me,” Vlora responded. “I’m lucky one didn’t spot me and put a bullet in my back.” She shook her head, staring bleakly at the carnage one more time. This was supposed to be a way of discouraging the Dynize – clog the road, kill a few hundred of them, draw out their sorcery support, and then flee. Instead, the Dynize had managed to flank them in mere minutes. “Whoever is in command isn’t someone I want to play games with.”
Taniel remained silent.
“Pit,” Vlora said softly. “Now we have wounded to haul.”
“They’ll slow us down less than the capstone.”
“Yes, but we can ditch the capstone if we need to.”
Taniel seemed surprised. “You’d really do that?”
“Burt has the rest of the godstone. The cap won’t do them any damned good. If we need to drop it, we drop it.”
“It might do them some good,” Taniel said hesitantly. “It’s still potent old sorcery.”
“It’s not worth the lives of my men,” Vlora insisted.