Recha’s hands refused to stop shaking. They were as incessant as needy children, demanding to hold something. To do something!
When Sir Oso stepped out between the battle lines, she had ordered water served to her, fearing she would spill it if she poured herself. Her trembling hands shook half the cup out, anyway.
She tried pacing with her hands folded under her armpits. However, the pacing made everybody nervous, Baltazar included, watching her out of the corners of their eyes as more companies formed up in the camp.
When Sir Oso’s angry roars reached back to them, she had fetched her riding crop. She twisted and bent the hard leather with every punch Sir Oso threw. A tremor ran down the back of her spine, down her legs, and into her heels. She couldn’t sit down. She bounced on the balls of her feet, watching Sir Oso rip a breastplate apart with his hands and demand the Orsembian calleroses face him.
What are you going to do, Orsembians? she teased, biting her lower lip. You have a challenge. Calleros or not, do any of you have the honor to face a man unhorsed and without weapons?
She conceded fighting a man as big as Sir Oso without a weapon would be insane. However, no more insane than the Bravados itself. It made no sense to her why the marcs allowed such a waste. Something to shake the morale of the side that loses a calleros to go into the background negotiations. Pathetic.
She growled when the calleroses left the field, denying her the opportunity for a spectacle. It didn’t affect any of her plans, though. That had always been the most likely possibility, save for the calleroses disregarding the challenge and answering with weapons. It turned her stomach to watch them leave the field in utter disregard of the challenge after all their bluster in demanding one.
Sir Oso’s furious bellow followed. Her whole battle line joined.
Cowards! Cowards! Cowards!
It buzzed in her ears and, unbeknownst to her, she began slamming her riding crop against the command table in time with the chant, and the drums, and pikes pounding.
Cornelos took her by the wrist, startling her. He respectfully took it away, shooting warning looks across the tent.
Recha didn’t have to ask. Baltazar wanted her to stop. The command tent’s walls had all come down. More companies were steadily moving out onto the field. The fury of the forward battle line was what those men needed, but the companies in reserve needed order to not tip their hand too soon.
Then came Harquis delivering her message.
She was too far away to make out the details, and it happened too fast for her to reach for her eyeglass. She knew what had happened, though. They had told her everything she was going to get out of them and, as promised, she had let Harquis have them when she was done.
She screamed fire in time with the officers. The thunderous eruptions of over a thousand muskets at once sent her jumping up and down, yelling, “Into them!”
Baltazar seized her arm. “Recha!” he growled lowly for only her to hear, eyes flashing like thunderclaps. “Don’t. Do that. Again. If one officer mistook that as an order for all-out assault, we could lose the entire army in an undisciplined charge.”
That was how she ended up being forced to sit at the table, hands still shaking, and with no need for her eyeglass. She could make out the battle just fine.
Their initial charge was a success. Sir Oso had offered the perfect distraction, along with striking the first blow against the Orsembians’ morale. Then came Harquis’s executions afterward. A blow to their confidence in their leadership, followed up by a blow to their courage with a shocking demonstration. And there was little more shocking than Harquis’s methods. The volley fire had riddled the Orsembian front lines with gaps from wounded or dead men, leaving them vulnerable when the pikes marched into them.
The Orsembian battle line bulged backward against the longer reach of the pikes. First on the right. A couple in the center. More musket balls tore up their cohesion, and by the time the swords had moved in, the enemy was breaking. Disorder spread from the disorganized front ranks, and companies broke apart.
Ripples spread to the neighboring Orsembian companies as one retreated or broke apart. Within ten minutes, there were five gaps in their line. In twenty, half were in retreat; some in fighting order and others running fit to be routed. In twenty-five, the entire Orsembian line took to their heels.
Recha would have been on her feet again had she not seen a second Orsembian line moving to take the place of the first. Neither she, Baltazar, or any other officer needed to rush messages down to the front. The generals and the other officers on the line must have spotted them, too, because, within five minutes, her companies went to chasing the retreating soldiers to reforming ranks to resume their steady, measured advance at the enemy’s reinforcements.
The initial attack and rush were over. The slogging struggle commenced.
Recha’s hands still demanded something to do. She propped her elbows on the table and interlaced her fingers in front of her face yet, still, they quivered.
Battle has commenced. Officers are rushing around everywhere. Camp workers are being called to every task imaginable. While I, the marquesa herself, am relegated to just sit here like a spoiled child! She reached into her pocket and pulled out her pistol.
“Cornelos,” she called over her shoulder, “can you bring me my cleaning kit?”
Cornelos jerked, eyeing her pistol. “I’m not sure this . . . is the best time—”
“Cornelos.” She squinted back at him. “I need something to do. Please bring me my cleaning kit.”
He swallowed and took a step back. Then he nodded without a word and marched off into the organized madness revolving around the command tent.
Recha bit the inside of her cheek, watching him go. She might have been too forceful but wasn’t in the mood to be told what to do by her direct subordinate.
She pulled out her handkerchief and pistol’s loading pouch, laying them out on the table. There was no breeze threatening to whisk her handkerchief away, so she left it spread out without having to weigh it down. She turned up her pistol’s steel cap and tapped out the fine black powder into a neat pile in the middle of handkerchief, likely ruining the thin cloth.
“Recha,” Baltazar said lowly.
She turned her head up. Baltazar stood beside her, dispatches in hand, eyeing the upturned pistol in her hands.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Recha shot a sideways glance at her pistol then back up at her field marshal, replying, “Cleaning.”
Baltazar raised an eyebrow.
“And keeping myself busy,” she quickly added.
Baltazar frowned, puffing up his mustache and giving her pistol a squinting glare.
“Field Marshal!” a staff officer yelled.
Baltazar snorted and gave her a sharp nod before seeing to whatever new situation had arisen. Everyone else around them were going about their duties, fixated on the battle below them. The command table might as well have been the only quiet place left in camp. The tranquil eye of the tornado.
Once he was away, Recha was alone again, but she could still overhear the reports.
“We’re losing visibility of the front, sir!” the officer reported.
“What?” Baltazar snapped.
“It’s the musket fire, sir. The smoke is lingering over the line, and the forward observers are having difficulty making out the enemy’s movements behind their secondary line. They say each volley is adding to the fog.”
Baltazar tossed the dispatches on the table, stomping his way around it to the front of the tent. He pulled out his eyeglass from a loop in his trousers and put it up to his eye.
Recha could make out the front from where she sat, a mass line of men, pushing and shoving each other. Their banners and different colors differentiated them from being a crashing mob of bodies. Above them hung a dense gray cloud, stretching from end to end of the mountain walls of the eastern passage.
Taking this moment of being unsupervised, Recha set her pistol on table as gently as she could to avoid noise and cautiously stood up. She picked up her eyeglass on the table, got a bearing on where Baltazar was scanning, and brought the glass up.
The fighting mass came alive the second she did. Her pikemen dueled an array of Orsembian company formations. Some matched pikes with pikes in a frantic duel for each to get inside the other’s reach before the other side could strike back. Others made do with spears in desperate attempts to fight the Lazornians’ longer reach, and many failing, never getting close enough with their spears before a pike struck them down. Those who managed the best deployed shields.
In that pushing, crashing struggle, sporadic volleys went off, aiming to break up the cohesion of an enemy company’s ranks for the pikemen to smash. Each volley added to the hovering smoke cloud, which indeed blocked out what was going on behind the Orsembians’ second line. Recha thought she could make out shapes. However, in the constant, sometimes orderly, sometimes chaotic, movement of battle, they could have been anything.
“Send orders to all company commanders of the second line,” Baltazar instructed, which the staff officer hurried to write down, “upon rotation, all musketeers are to hold their fire unless absolutely necessary to eliminate the haze.”
The staff officer scribbled down the order until his hand paused mid-writing. “The second line, sir? What of those in the front?”
“The front lines will be rotating soon,” Recha explained without thinking. The companies on the front line had been engaged for close to the thirty minutes. She knew a company in combat shouldn’t be on the front for longer than forty; otherwise, they would start to tire, and the men in front ranks would become exhausted and unable to withdraw to rest. And in the pitch of battle, an exhausted man was a dead man. “By the time the order reaches the front, the second line will already be rotating in. If the orders aren’t given to them, then it will have to be repeated and a waste time.”
She swallowed, realizing what she had done. Cautiously, she moved her eyeglass slightly to the side to peek around the brass rim, while keeping her other eye firmly closed. The staff officer stared at her, holding his pyrite aloft the small parchment strip in his hands.
Baltazar still studied the battlefield. When he finally broke his attention from his eyeglass, it was the staff officer he turned to.
“You heard the La Dama!” he snapped. “Issue the order!”
The staff officer jumped, hastily saluting with a sharp nod. “Yes, Field Marshal!”
Recha watched him run out of the tent.
Baltazar kept his back to her, scanning the battle line again as that order and a host of others trickled down to the front by dispatch riders or bugle calls.
“I”— she struggled with the words but knew it was better to say them now than later—“didn’t mean any—”
“You didn’t,” Baltazar grunted. “There was nothing to offend. And, more importantly, you were right.”
Recha tapped the eyeglass against her forehead. “Then why did you yell?”
“Officer had his orders and wasn’t moving. We don’t have time to waste like that.” He scanned the battle line again, a deep growl resonating in his throat. “Damn smoke. At the worst time, too.”
Recha crookedly smiled at the sense of being vindicated, yet that slipped away when she looked through her eyeglass again. The smoke wasn’t clearing, and worse, more sporadic volleys added to the lingering haze. She knew why Baltazar was on edge, another insight from growing up in his household.
A battle line is at its most vulnerable when rotating, she recalled.
Exhausted, bloodied men pulled back while the relieving company filtered through their lines to take their place. For a moment, the fighting company lost the support of their rear ranks, and more pressure was placed on those in the front to hold until the front ranks of the new company joined them. If the enemy pressed their attack at the right moment, or the front ranks were struck by their exhaustion while the two companies were bleeding through each other, it could spell disaster for both.
Whistles screamed and bugles sounded. Here and there, companies from her second line marched up and began to filter through the front line. The process would likely take twenty minutes to finish for the entire line, as only every second company switched out at a time. No two companies fighting side by side could be relieved at the same time to reduce any weakness to the front.
“Your cleaning kit, La Dama.”
Recha jumped, snapping her head back to wheel around at Cornelos.
Cornelos dropped the silver case on the table with a clamor, raising a startled hand.
Recha blinked at her pistol’s cleaning kit, the silver case holding various small, thin steel brushes, cloths, and oils to keep Sebastian’s gift in proper order.
“Oh,” she grunted, “thank you, Cornelos. I’ll use it in a moment.”
“Hmm?” Cornelos hummed, arching an eyebrow.
Recha arched her own back at him. “I’m behaving.”
She didn’t wait for a retort and resumed checking the battle line again. One last look to make sure the rotation was going . . .
Their far right was losing ground.
When they’d first attacked and crushed the Orsembians’ original line, her line had marched into the eastern passage, using the cliff faces to cover the flanks. On the far right, the farthest three companies were inching back, their musketeers putting up volley after volley, obscuring whatever they were facing on the other side.
Yet, no matter how much shot they poured out, the companies still inched back.
“Papa!” Recha yelled. “Something’s happening on our—”
“Far left flank is faltering!”
What!
Recha wheeled her glass, going too far and moving it in a long arch to find the battle again. Just like the far right, the companies on the left were frantically trying to hold their ground, firing volleys as fast as they could and striking out with their pikes. Their intensity made rotation impossible, and they were being threatened with being pushed back into the secondary line or dislodged from against the steep ridge slope on their flank.
The smoky haze thinned over them, and Recha’s eye widened to see rank after rank of Orsembian infantry piling behind their line. Where Recha’s companies were around twenty ranks deep, she counted the enemy ranks to be nearly twice as that before the haze obscured their true numbers.
“They’re deploying oblique formations against both our flanks!” Baltazar roared, snapping his eyeglass shut. “Stop all rotations across the line! Send orders to General Galvez to move all the companies he has on the left to bolster the companies engaged! He’s ordered to hold, understand? He cannot let the Orsembians dislodge him from the cliffside for any reason!”
A pair of riders hopped onto their mounts. Their horses’ hooves kicked up clouds of dust as they bolted onto the field.
“But Papa!” Recha yelled. “The far right!”
“Can wait!” Baltazar snapped.
Recha jerked back, her mouth falling open, but he was moving before she could disagree.
“Ramon!” Baltazar marched off to the other end of the tent. “Get me another rider! General Priet needs to move!”
Recha turned her head, following him. The corner of her right eye twitched in a frustrated spasm as he stormed into a crowded group of staff officers surrounding Narvae, pointing at the battlefield.
In a huff, she gathered up her things on the table, hurriedly poured as much of the priming powder she could back into her pistol’s pan, then slammed it shut. She stuffed the weapon in her pocket, turning on her heels—
Cornelos grabbed her shoulder, pulling her short. “Please, Recha,” he softly implored. “Baltazar has everything in hand. You don’t have to . . .”
Recha seethed, breathing heavily through her nose. Every hair on her head stood on end, and her glare narrowed more and more the longer he held her arm.
Hesitantly, Cornelos released his grip, visibly swallowing.
“Stay,” she ordered, snatching her eyeglass as she turned again to follow her field marshal.
Baltazar was ordering another rider, pointing out into the field in a sweeping motion to the right. “He needs to prepare to form a screening line,” he instructed, in mid-explanation. “Once he’s in position, we can give the signal for the far right to give ground and siphon off the pressure, understand?”
“Give ground?” Recha cried. She couldn’t believe what she’d heard—Baltazar Vigodt returning ground to an enemy.
Staff officers spun around and hastily gave her space. The rider stiffened in surprise upon seeing her.
Baltazar, however, slapped the rider’s chest. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, Field Marshal!” the rider yelped.
“Off with you!” Baltazar waved, and Narvae delivered the rider a shove on the back for good measure to send the rider sprinting to his mount.
Recha’s head spun, and the rider was away before she could say anything.
“Find Feli,” Baltazar said to Narvae, both standing with their heads together. “If Borbin, or Ribera, is throwing this much pressure on us already, the men down there can’t pull back to rest where we plan. Tell him—”
“Baltazar,” Recha demanded.
“One moment,” he replied, lifting a finger to her and returning to his instructions.
“Tell Feli to move the cook fires, water barrels, and powder supply closer, about”—he pointed to the middle of the field, at least twenty yards forward from where a line of wagons carrying barrels of water, black powder being put into resupplied bandoliers, and cooks wearily tending pots over small fires stood—“there.”
Recha tapped her foot.
“That’s mighty close to the rear line,” Narvae said, squinting. “If something happens . . .”
Recha’s grip tightened around her eyeglass, the brass work biting into her palm.
“The faster the men are cared for and resupplied, the faster they can get back into the fight. If Feli has the same concerns, then you tell him—”
“Field Marshal Vigodt!” Recha snapped. “I demand to know why you’re ordering to give ground on one of our flanks?”
Every staff officer around the tent stopped what they were doing to stare at her. Those around Baltazar and Narvae took a few steps back. Baltazar kept his focus on the battlefield, unmovable as stone, yet his mustache puffed up.
Recha’s stomach grew queasy with each passing second, having only the distant sounds of battle to keep the silence from becoming awkward. She held her ground, though, waiting, demanding with her very presence an explanation.
“Get it done, Marshal Narvae,” Baltazar calmly ordered. “The rest of you, to your duties.”
Quick, snapping salutes followed without a single reply uttered. They were all eager to step away. A few jogged into the camp, while Narvae made a quick march with a pair of officers trailing to keep on his heels.
Recha remained determined and stood her ground. I’m not going to be shut out. Promise or no, this battle is more important. She bit her tongue, wanting to scream but determined to keep her dignity. I won’t be sent to watch from a corner.
“With me,” Baltazar finally said, cold as steel. He brushed past her, eyes never leaving the battle.
Recha frowned and watched him walk to the center of the tent.
“What do you see, Recha?” he demanded, holding his hands out toward both far flanks.
Recha’s brow furled. She took in the battle again. Hiraldo was moving. Companies were being driven in behind the three on the line, adding their numbers to a swelling column of men. The more men who joined the press, the less ground was lost. And where the two sides clashed, men were pressed and packed in so tightly that she couldn’t discern where the battle line was.
The far right was a different story. They were losing ground, and no great rush was being made to add more companies to slow it. Instead, while a few companies were placed behind the third company on the front line, others were being pulled back, angling themselves around the edge of the ridge and into the southeast passage.
“I see us doing all we can to save one flank,” she replied, stomping up beside him, “but preparing to surrender the other. We should be saving both.”
Baltazar turned his head, finally breaking away from the battle below. His face was tight, every muscle strained, showing the outline of his cheekbones and veins on the side of his head. Every whisker in his mustache stood on end.
“That is a tactical response,” he replied, sharp and low, snapping his head back around to the battle. “Not a strategic one. The enemy’s aim is not to dislodge our flanks”—he waved his eyeglass at the two flanks—“but to smash our center!” He wielded his eyeglass like a baton, jutting it out toward the center of their battle line. “Their oblique formations are threating our flanks and threaten to encircle our front line if they dislodge them, but the enemy outnumbers us three to one! We can hold the flanks but look at the effort Hiraldo’s having to put into holding the left.”
The press was tighter than ever. Men desperately fought and shoved, and still more companies were being waved in to add their bodies to the world’s biggest shoving competition. The holes those companies left behind in the second and third battle lines stood out like a beacon.
“We’re weakening the rest of our lines,” Recha said.
Baltazar hummed with approval. “Just the left flank. But if we do that for both flanks, we’ll weaken the entire line. Our rotation schedule is already behind because of this attack. Once the center is weak enough, I suspect the enemy has a third formation to thrust into it.
“A break there with the pressure boiling at our flanks will ensure the entire front line is lost. What would remain of the second will be caught in a rout if discipline cannot be maintained. Likely, half the defending companies on the flanks would have the strength to withdraw. We could lose an entire army’s worth of companies by the time we recovered. We would have to draw up defensive positions in our passage with the men we had left, and that would be it.”
He grimly turned to her. “We would never have the initiative again, Recha.”
Goosebumps ran down her arms. Her eyeglass slipped in her sweaty grip, and she had to press it against her hip to keep hold of it.
Checking on the battle, her companies on the far right were pulling back. Rather, they were backing away like creeping open a door. “So, we’re giving up one flank to protect our center and prevent a disaster?”
The corners of Baltazar’s lips curled. “I don’t recall ordering the flank surrendered.” He extended his eyeglass and peered at the far right. “Fighting men on a line are like water. They flow in waves and crash upon one another. If they fight another line that resists or repels them, they will be cautious and slowly increase the pressure. But, if they find an opening, a break in the enemy’s line, they will rush forward without hesitation. That mentality has won many battles. However, it can also lead men to slaughter. Look.”
Recha hung on to every word, captivated. She had heard Baltazar talk of battles and tactics many times, yet this time, there was a taste of blood to his words.
She jerked her eyeglass up, taking moments to find what he was hinting at.
The Orsembians were rushing against the ridge, squeezing through with the Lazornian far right no longer holding against it. The Lazornian front companies were angled, protecting their flank and forcing the Orsembians to attempt to rush around them to have any chance of attacking the rear of the front line.
That chance was nonexistent. General Priet had elements of the second line connected with companies of the far right, creating another line, a funneling corridor for the Orsembians to rush through, like cattle into a stockyard. That new battle line ran all the way to the end of the ridge and into the mouth of the southeast passage, waiting for the Orsembians who made it through the gauntlet.
Once an element of an Orsembian company made it around an engaged Lazornian company, musketeers of the waiting Lazornian company delivered volleys into the rushed enemy. Orsembians fell in rows, and the remaining men in the company had to stop rushing through the gap and engage the Lazornians or never make it through.
On and on it repeated. The crushing oblique formation, those columns upon columns of Orsembians were filtered through the gap between General Priet’s new flanking line and the ridge face.
“They think they’re winning,” Recha said breathlessly, her lips twitching as she watched the repeated slaughter and filter of the enemy’s numbers.
“They will for a time,” Baltazar agreed. “The more men they send in that pocket means less down the rest of the line. And any enemy that makes it into the southeast passage will have no place to go, no relief or supply. We just need to—”
He grunted sharply. “Savior dammit! Who gave that order?”
Recha jumped, nearly fumbling her eyeglass. She pulled away and saw Baltazar grimacing with exposed clenched teeth, the veins in his neck bulging out.
“Bugler!” he bellowed. “Sound off to hold the line! Stop the rotations, dammit!”
“Rotations?” Recha swallowed, shaking her head back and forth but not seeing any as the bugler let out several sharp, blasting notes.
“The center!” Baltazar waved, fuming. “The damned center! Messenger!”
Recha raised her eyeglass. Three of the center companies on the front line were in the process of rotating, files of men blending, some back and others forward, moving through the gaps in the lines to exchange places. The fighting was tepid there, compared to the flanks. Each side kept their distance, thrusting and dueling each other with their pikes and spears.
In watching their process, Recha angled her eyeglass down to see how many companies they held in reserve. The third battle line was still intact, waiting to fully take the second’s place once fully rotated. Her eyeglass stopped upon a column of men, three companies deep, all under black flags.
The former sioneroses are in the center. They haven’t been ordered to move since the Bravados.
A line of sweat ran down the back of her neck.
Sir Oso was also—
“Rush as many riders down to the center as we have!” Baltazar ordered. “Stop that rotation! Go!”
Five dispatchers raced away to their mounts. A couple of the horses felt their riders’ urgency and took off in a gallop before they were fully in the saddle, waving their arms in the air for balance as they thundered through the camp.
“Will they make it in time?” Recha asked.
Baltazar frowned grimly. “No.”
“New enemy oblique column advancing toward our center!” a prophetic lookout yelled.
True to Baltazar’s deduction, another long column of Orsembian infantry marched toward the center. Their forward companies engaged suddenly broke off, scrambling back in disarray to withdraw.
Fortunately, the Lazornian company commanders saw what was approaching and didn’t rush to pursue. The miserable rotation suddenly halted as men scrambled to jut out as many pikes as they could before the new enemy advance made contact. The enemy in the front, however, weren’t wielding spears or pikes.
They wielded halberds.
Recha twisted both her hands around her eyeglass as she watched the Orsembian hack at her men’s pikes, closing the distance to hack then push against their bodies. Her soldiers resisted, throwing away chopped pikes to draw swords and daggers to get in close with their attackers. Men with shields moved up, and musketeers fired volleys at point-blank range, adding more smoke to obscure the field.
Nothing could obscure her center line was starting to bow backward.
“Papa,” she gasped, struggling for breath yet unable to look away. “Papa, we must do something!”
The company in center was on the brink. Men backed up in good order, only to trip over others who suddenly lost their feet. Exhaustion was striking with the Orsembians bearing down on them, and any man who fell was crushed underfoot.
“We’re committed on both flanks,” Baltazar said softly, as if going through his options in his head as fast as we could. “Too late for withdrawal, and we’d be crushed if we don’t. A calleros charge will hardly hamper their advance.”
The center companies were starting to pivot out of the way of the oncoming tide, desperate to keep their formation yet unable to hold the line for long. The one at the precise center was down to a quarter strength.
“General Ross will have to engage.”
The center company was collapsing. Wounded men struggled to retreat, limping away, using their pikes as overly long canes.
Recha followed them back to the sioneroses. “Order the center reserve to engage!” she implored, tearing her eyes away from the battle.
Baltazar wasn’t watching the center anymore. Instead, he was scanning the entire width of the field and their camp, as if doing calculations in his head. His furled, sweaty brow and darkening face told he wasn’t liking the results.
“After what happened in the last engagement . . .” He shook his head. “They should withdrawal and give General Ross room to maneuver. Dispatch!”
“No!” Recha grabbed his arm. “They’re right there!” She pointed out into the field. “They’re the closest units to counter while we reorganize. They must engage!”
Baltazar frowned, a glint of pain in his eyes. “A few days drilling and new armor doesn’t mean they can stand against Borbin’s best. They didn’t the last time.”
Recha’s body trembled. “But—”
“Field Marshal!” a lookout cried. “Our center reserve is moving without orders!”
Baltazar grimly brought his eyeglass up. “The company officers probably ordered the withdrawal after—”
His mouth dropped open. His face began to lighten. Another day of firsts for Recha—seeing Baltazar Vigodt speechless.
She brought her own eyeglass up and sniffed sharply.
The former sioneroses, three companies in a long column, were moving.
Forward!
And a few paces in front of them, even at a distance, strode a big, big man.