11

ERRIS

The Battle of Villecours, Left Flank

Sarresant Territory, Near the Coast

Hold, men!” she cried, wheeling her saber above her head. “Hold the line! Hold for Sarresant!”

Beside her, musket shots streaked through the meager protection of a guttering Shelter binding. Men fell. The smell of blood mixed with the screams of the dying. And still the enemy approached.

She’d started the day’s action with the first company of Field-Captain Regalle’s artillery but had long since committed herself to plugging gaps in the lines of the 9th Infantry. They protected the Sarresant army’s left flank, and the enemy was probing them, testing for weaknesses. They had fought for the better part of the morning, hotly engaged for the last hour.

A column of enemy muskets advanced past the safety of their makeshift fortification, trotting forward onto the deadly ground between their lines. Ox shit on a plate. These were fresh troops, and her right flank was already engaged. Had the enemy already committed reserves to this attack? How many of the Gods-damned Gandsmen were there on this battlefield?

“Hold, men,” she called once more. “Prepare for action. Hold fire until they’re on us.”

The men beside her went through the steps to reload with practiced efficiency. Tear the cartridge, pour the powder and ball, ram it down the barrel, set the cap, cock the hammer. A good soldier could fire three shots per minute. A far cry from the six-shot revolvers carried by the officers, but accurate to five hundred paces or more on a clear day, whereas her pistol was good for close-up work and little else.

She turned and called another order over her shoulder. “Sights to three hundred paces.”

The infantry captains took up her order, repeating the command up and down the line. The sharpshooters, men who had earned four and five stripes on their sleeves, stood twenty paces up the hill behind them. She’d committed the rest of her reserve to filling the lines. She trusted the sharpshooters to fire through the line, in spite of the risk of hitting their own. It was an edge, and she needed every advantage on offer.

Cannon fire whistled overhead as the enemy came into range. Gand soldiers howled and collapsed, but still they pressed on, a seemingly endless wave of red coats closing across the open field.

“Volley at three hundred paces,” she called out, waiting for the enemy line to approach. Twenty more paces. Ten. “Fire.”

A rippling thundercrack went off along her line, ringing a high-pitched whine in her ears. At this range Sarresant soldiers were deadly accurate, and through the musket smoke the front rank of the Gandsmen fell as if they had choreographed it for a dance. Still they came. Gods damn it, there were so many.

“Reload,” came the order from her officers.

She made a quick estimate of the numbers on the opposite side of the field as she watched the outline of enemy soldiers advancing through the fog of her volley. She’d take a single Sarresant marksman over a half dozen of their counterparts from Gand, but those were about the odds they faced today, if she had to guess. At least the odds that were left to them after the morning’s disastrous charge into the enemy center. Gods-damned virgin-blooded fool, whoever ordered that massacre. She held now along the left flank to try to provide cover as the Sarresant army retreated and regrouped. At least those were the orders high command sent by courier two hours past. She had other ideas. But for now, her position was being charged by at least a regiment of fresh reserves.

“Second volley,” she called. “Fire.”

Another belch of smoke and flame, and another rank of Gandsmen fell to decorate the grass. This time they were close enough to hear the screams. Two hundred paces. Closer. The enemy stopped to drop to a knee and send a volley into her line, musket shot knifing through the air around her as men screamed and fell.

She called another order over the top of the chaos. “Bayonets!”

The call was repeated, accompanied by the shink of metal being drawn and affixed to the barrels of their guns. From the look of it the Gandsmen were reloading to prepare another volley. Good. No better time to strike than when the enemy would be distracted ramming powder down their barrels.

“Charge!”

She bared her teeth, letting loose a battle cry picked up by her soldiers as they rose from behind their fortifications and swept toward the enemy line. A few stray shots rang out from enemy soldiers who’d been quick to reload. But no concentrated fire, and if she was lucky, little time for them to aim. Roars came from behind as Regalle’s heavy guns spat out their last shots before her charge impacted the enemy line.

One hundred paces. Fifty. Close enough she could see fear in the Gandsmen’s eyes, facing down hundreds of screaming-mad Sarresant soldiers led by a commander who’d decided an old-fashioned mêlée was preferable to letting them threaten to sweep past her flank.

The lines collided.

Tethering Body and Life, Erris tore through the enemy’s front rank in a flurry of blood and steel. She danced ahead of the bayonet palisade, ducking as a pair of fresh-faced Gand soldiers lunged at her together. One of them she parried with her saber, shoving herself backward behind the other one’s guard. She channeled leyline energy, punching the second soldier in the mouth. Without the binding she might have broken some teeth. With it she caved his skull in around her fist, soaking her forearm in blood. In the same motion she shoved off the second soldier’s body and spun toward the first, landing a deep cut, dropping him where he stood.

She went to work, an elegant dance from soldier to soldier. Her steel flashed around their bayoneted rifles, almost too fast to see. A cry went up in the Gand tongue: “Fullbinder! Fullbinder!” The least of their worries. She couldn’t maintain bindings at this strength for long without tiring, but she didn’t have to. As planned, the ground started to rumble shortly after the infantry lines entangled.

The cavalry had arrived.

A simple hammer-and-anvil technique, her infantrymen taking on airs of a desperate unit on its last legs, spread thin, making a show of plugging the lines with reserves. First bait the enemy into coming close enough for a charge, then the cavalry of the 14th could wheel around and trample their back line. The fresh reserves complicated things, but she’d overestimated enemy morale. They broke easily enough.

The Gandsmen scattered, making for the hills across the sparsely wooded grasslands where the forest broke to the east. Like as not they would re-form and return to the battlefield in time. By then she would have long since executed her plan.

“Excellent to see you hale and whole, sir,” Lance-Captain Pourrain called down to her with a salute, one of his horsemen trotting up beside them holding Jiri’s reins.

“Let’s hope Vicomte-General Carailles is worth more than his usual tepid shit today,” she said, grinning as she swung up into the saddle. “Nice work on the approach there; using the sun’s glare was fine thinking.”

Pourrain bowed his head, acknowledging the praise.

She patted Jiri’s neck, her mount in good spirits to have her rider once more. On a lark, she channeled a quick binding of Life into Jiri, eliciting a soft whicker. Ah, but it felt good to be whole again.

“Let’s send another rider to the general,” she said. “There’s more bloody work to be done, but all of this is for naught if he isn’t in position by the time we arrive.”

“Very good, sir.” Pourrain gave another salute, riding to carry out her orders.

They were moving again, infantry in tight ranks at a double-time march behind the cavalry. It was no easy feat, maneuvering so many men and horses into the tree line, but she trusted her unit commanders. By now the main body of the enemy army would be pressing forward to harry the shattered lines of the Sarresant forces. Discipline or no, she’d never known men in the grip of battle lust to give up a chase easily. No matter that the Gandsmen’s right flank had faltered and they had no presence in the trees along the eastern line of battle. If the Gods willed it, a few advance scouts were all that stood between her and a covered approach to the Gand reserves. And, unless she missed her guess, the enemy’s command tents.

The preparations at Yves-sur-Raignon had been a disaster. Three days’ fortification and the enemy ignored them with a march along the eastern route toward the coast, exactly as she’d predicted. By the time the lords-general realized the enemy intended to avoid their little trap, the Gandsmen were halfway to Villecours. An admirable turning of the tides. For nigh on three seasons now, the Sarresant army had fought a defensive campaign despite operating in Gand territory, using just such tactics as the enemy now deployed against them. Maneuver in the open, refusing to commit to an engagement until you placed yourself in between the enemy and some important strategic objective. Then dig in and force them to attack over unfavorable ground. Simple, but effective. And now the enemy had cut them off from the port city of Villecours, second in importance only to New Sarresant itself here in the New World.

Unthinkable, to lose Villecours. But that was precisely what they faced with the enemy led by this new commander. Alrich of Haddingston, who could talk to the Gods. No time now to worry over the unknown. If her plan worked it wouldn’t matter whom or what the enemy commander could talk to.

The birds chirped a greeting as her men tracked through the woods, a column of horses and infantry four abreast. Their lines weaved through the foliage, staying tightly together, as she’d ordered. They would engage as soon as they arrived if Vicomte-General Carailles was in position when he received the signal. For all the general’s bluster in the command tent, he knew to trust her scouting reports and deployment “recommendations” during an engagement. She Gods-damned hoped he did anyway. They’d never crack the Gand reserves without a distraction.

“We’re in position, sir,” Lance-Captain d’Guile said with a salute as she approached the tree line.

“Very good, Captain. How are the battle lines disposed?”

D’Guile gave her a grim look, which she took as answer enough. She nudged Jiri forward and withdrew a spyglass from her saddlebag, surveying the plains where the main action had commenced earlier that morning.

Gods take them all. Had the Gandsmen kept half their army in reserve?

Ten thousand men if there were a hundred, arrayed in neatly divided lines beneath a row of low hills. Infantry, almost all, muskets sprouting from their shoulders like weeds in a flower bed. She’d guessed the disposition of the enemy line from studying the maps, and gotten their placement right, if not their numbers. Carailles’s men—the remainder of Sarresant’s 1st Division—were in place near the base of the hills, and hers were here, hidden in the trees. A swarm of red coats between them was a ripe apple tucked between their jaws, if swallowing it didn’t burst their bellies in the attempt.

She gave the order to raise the signal. Flags went up under the cover of trees, angled so the vicomte-general’s men could see, and the Gand army could not. And now they waited.

As she had “recommended,” Carailles’s soldiers had approached in the open, giving the enemy reserves plenty of time to deploy to meet them. All that remained was for Vicomte-General Carailles to order the charge, to pull as many as possible away from the center, where, sure enough, she could see the banners of their command tents. With the reserves committed to action, her men could sweep around, striking at the very heart of the enemy’s command.

Time stretched on, moments sliding toward minutes. What was he waiting for? She ordered the signal flown again, and it was. Go, you sack of pig shit. Attack!

Her heart sank.

He wasn’t going to give the order.

The lines wavered, a deadly game of waiting for the other side to cross the threshold where engagement was an inevitability. Any moment now, Carailles’s courage would wilt into an order to retreat, rather than attack. It was coming. She could see it, sense it, feel it coming like an oily sickness spreading over her skin.

She couldn’t let it happen. Her men were exposed; safe for now behind the cover of the tree line, but positioned like a wedge between the main lines and the enemy’s reserve. Without the distraction of Carailles’s attack to screen her movements, the enemy would have ample time to collapse, squeezing her brigades like a grape in a winepress. She had to act. She needed to do something to save her men, to save the battle and any hope of victory.

In the distance, she saw a glimmer of gold in the center of Carailles’s lines. A shining light like a beacon, beaming from where his soldiers sat in the open field. It was as if a leyline had overflowed onto the battlefield, leaking energy into her normal vision.

She’d never seen anything like it.

Guided by instinct, she slid her eyes shut, and it was there: an unfamiliar pattern of leyline energy, gold light pulsing like a beating heart, bright enough to overshadow the twisting grid of lines beneath the earth. She bound it, tethering herself to the source in one smooth motion.

Her eyes slid into another body.

“What should we do, Vicomte-General?” came a whining voice at her side. “Shall I give the order to fall back?”

“No.” She heard herself say it, but the voice coming from her throat was deep and baritone, a man’s voice. She squinted, the battlefield in front of her coming into focus. The same flags, the same lines of soldiers, but from another vantage, as if she had leapt across the field.

She said it again. “No.”

“Sir?” the aide asked, full of bewilderment. “Sir, your eyes—”

“We attack,” she said. “Attack! Order the charge! Do it now!”

As soon as she said it, the strange golden binding slipped away from her, and she felt her vision settle back into her own familiar form, resting atop Jiri’s saddle.

Her senses snapped into place together, an overload of sensation all at once. What had happened to her? The golden light …

“There! They’re attacking, sir!” Lance-Captain d’Guile pointed. Battle cries echoed across the plain as the two lines charged toward each other.

“That’s our signal.” Fog cleared from her mind at the sight. “Attack! Charge!”

Her soldiers flowed out of the forest, an arrow of men and horse pointed straight at the enemy command tents.

She tethered full-strength Body and Life bindings through herself and Jiri, holding a Death tether at the ready to slice through any defenses from the enemy line. The reins went slack in her hands, and she let Jiri fly. The rest of her cavalry surged in a storm of hooves, but Jiri danced on water, carrying her ahead of them in a furious dash. Let the men see her, let them take heart as their commander streaked ahead, her saber held aloft and glinting in the midmorning sun.

Across the plain they’d already been noticed. Companies of the enemy’s reserve were trying to split off from their skirmish with Carailles’s 1st Division, where the vicomte-general’s men tied them down. A pittance of defenders had been left around the command tents, and it was to them she turned her full attention.

Her saber streaked, flashes of cold steel empowered by Body striking down the frontline soldiers as Jiri crashed through them like a bolt of white lightning. Her Death binding sliced through a feeble attempt to block her path with Shelter, and she crashed into their camp. Jiri reacted with impossible agility, leaping tents, cookfires, and sentries alike as they struck deep, searching for Major General Alrich of Haddingston. A swarm of enemy soldiers trailed behind them, unsure whether to chase after her intrusion or turn to meet the horde bearing down upon their camp in her wake.

There. The command tent. Jiri saw it the moment she did, changing direction, racing with the full power of her long stride.

Heartbeats before they arrived, a man lifted the tent flap and looked out. A man in a general’s uniform, his eyes awash with golden light.

Jiri trampled the tent, but not before her saber took the enemy general across the face. Blood coated the end of her blade as she completed her follow-through, trailing droplets scattering to the wind. The enemy commander never even raised a weapon, made no defensive posture. Had he even been trained to combat?

Together, mount and rider thundered through the remainder of the camp, turning to survey the rest of the engagement.

Her men continued to swarm over the defenders in the tents, but the enemy soldiers had broken. There was a bond between men and their commander, unspoken but real, and she’d snapped it. The Gandsmen knew it, sure as sunrise, watching her forces swarm through the command tents. And knowing what he’d meant to them, how their fortunes had changed under his command, the Gand soldiers reacted with a mix of violent rage and despair. Both enemies of discipline. Even so, the Gandsmen had the advantage of numbers. This battle was not over yet.

Spurring Jiri back toward her lines, she called out the order to withdraw.