These Dynize were new to her – their dress and customs as alien as anything she’d ever seen. But she’d spent her life with arrogant generals, and Bar-Levial would fit in at a military ball anywhere in the Nine. “Like any good general, I would prefer my men live to see their homes again.”
“The words of a coward.”
Vlora seethed inwardly. “Why are you in such a hurry? Why force a battle tonight?”
“A friendly contest.” Bar-Levial smiled. “I shall see you on the field of battle, Lady Flint, and I will take your head back to my emperor.”
“No,” Vlora replied. “You will do no such thing.” She turned her horse around and rode back to her line, trying to calm herself.
Olem caught up to her a moment later. “That was abrupt.”
“Levial’s not going to budge, and their scouts are heading toward our lines. Besides, he was pissing me off.”
She glanced over her shoulder at those scouts. She could guess what they saw from their vantage point – around two thousand riflemen, dug in and braced for the onslaught of a superior force. The Dynize would take heavy initial losses before rolling over those riflemen with ease.
It was precisely what Vlora wanted them to see. But if the scouts moved forward another half mile, it would force her to change her entire battle plan.
“Do we have eyes over the ridge?” she asked.
“We do,” Olem said. “They’ll let us know the moment anyone attempts to move on our flank.”
“Good.”
Vlora had not yet reached her own lines when she heard the sound of a trumpet. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the entire Dynize Army shift, the lines spreading out even farther to fill the entire valley, before lurching forward at another signal.
“He really is in a hurry,” Olem commented.
“He said something about a friendly contest. Any idea what that means?”
Olem shook his head.
Vlora reined in her horse and turned in the saddle. She raised her arm high, pointing toward the ridge and the Dynize scouts moving along it. “I think it’s time we blind them.”
A shot rang out, quickly followed by another. Smoke rose from a copse of honey locusts near the ridgeline behind her own forces, and two Dynize scouts toppled from their horses. Two more followed, then another two. The shots continued every fifteen seconds or so, and Vlora watched with some satisfaction as the remaining scouts realized they were being picked off and fled toward the main body.
Vlora finally reached her line, retreating behind the earthworks that suddenly seemed so insignificant. She eyed the two thousand men she’d picked to hold this first line of defense. Their faces squinted against the morning sun, looking to her for leadership. That in itself always seemed more intimidating than the enemy armies.
“Aim for the center of the chest,” she shouted. “Those breastplates might be able to deflect a glancing shot, but they’re designed to stand up to softer bullets fired with inferior powder. These poor fools weren’t at the Battle of Landfall. Let’s show them what they missed, shall we?”
A cheer went up, rifles lifted into the air, then the line went deadly silent as the men crouched behind their earthworks and double-checked their weapons.
Vlora remained on horseback, pulling even farther behind the line, while Olem rode along the ranks shouting encouragement. The Dynize plodded onward, and every so often an officer would fall into the dirt, a victim of Vlora’s powder mages firing at will from their vantage.
Vlora searched for the general’s bodyguard as the front lines reached a quarter of a mile away from hers. She found the gaudy cuirassiers and Bar-Levial and had a brief moment of morbid curiosity. In an age of canister shot and sorcery, was it poor sportsmanship to aim for the enemy officers? Perhaps. But this was war. Kill or be killed. Bar-Levial wanted so badly to take her head to his emperor, and Vlora decided not to risk giving him that chance. With a single thought, she set off the powder of every one of the cuirassiers. The sorcerous kickback nearly knocked her off her horse, and she bent double to catch her breath.
The conflagration caused the Dynize lines to waver as the sight of their general’s bodyguard being blown to pieces by their own powder no doubt made a few mouths go dry. Cheers rose from Vlora’s own men, but she just smiled coldly and hoped that one of those charred corpses belonged to that orange-lacquered prick.
The Dynize kept on. A disciplined army didn’t run just because their general died. This was just the beginning.
At two hundred yards, sergeants along Vlora’s lines gave the order to open fire. Dynize fell to the hail of bullets, but soldiers just moved up to take their place, and the army churned forward.
Another volley followed, then another. The Dynize reached a hundred yards. Vlora drew her pistol, aimed at a random officer, and put a bullet in his brain with a nudge of her sorcery. Seventy-five yards. Fifty yards. The Dynize stopped, the front line knelt, and they opened fire.
Anyone not hunkered behind their earthworks was cut down. A second Dynize volley fired and then a trumpet sounded, and like a slow wave rushing toward the beach, the Dynize infantry charged.
“Fall back!” Olem bellowed.
The Riflejacks leapt to their feet and fled, running flat out from the Dynize charge. Vlora watched, amused at the sight of the Dynize chasing her men, as if the two armies were playing out some coordinated game. As her men approached, she kicked her horse into a gallop, rushing along ahead of them. Her horse leapt a shallow ditch and she turned once again to face the enemy.
The valley was eerily quiet. Riflejacks ran. Dynize charged. The smoke cleared and no bullets were fired. Her men, fresher than the Dynize, widened the gap and then suddenly began to disappear, leaping into the same shallow trench that she’d just crossed. When they’d all reached that spot of safety, a voice cut the silence. “Companies, ready!”
A second line – two thousand more riflemen – rose from behind an earthwork of sod collected from the valley floor. A few yards behind them a third line emerged from hiding, and then a fourth and fifth behind that, composed of the Landfall garrison and volunteers from the refugee militia. Each line braced itself, aiming carefully as the enemy closed the distance.
“Fire!” Olem bellowed as his own horse cleared the ditch.
The first line fired and ducked. There was a pause of six or seven seconds, then the command came again. The second line fired and ducked, and the orders continued until ten thousand bullets had been sent into the enemy in the course of less than thirty seconds. Thousands of the Dynize were swept beneath the hail. Vlora leaned forward in her saddle, silently urging the enemy to break. The field was suddenly obscured by powder smoke, and when it cleared, she leaned back in her saddle, shaken, as she watched the Dynize flood forward, climbing over the corpses of their companions.
Olem returned to her, choking on powder smoke. “Even without sorcery, these bastards are tough,” he coughed.
Another volley hit the Dynize lines, and a few moments later they finally reached Vlora’s ditch, only to be met with a wall of fixed bayonets from her original front line.
The field dissolved into chaos. On her side, individual captains tried to keep some sort of sustained volley fire, while others gave a “fire at will” order. On the Dynize side, soldiers crouched behind piles of corpses to shoot back, their captains rallying them with swinging sabers and then falling when a powder mage shot them in the head.
“Kresimir,” Vlora breathed. “They’re still not breaking.”
“Even after that pummeling they outnumber us,” Olem said. He squinted toward the ridge. “Only a handful of their companies are wavering. No sign of either of our cavalry. Should we bring our reserves to bear and try to crack them?”