Smoke and dust swirled in the air. Calleroses yelled, twisting out of their saddles. Horses screamed, their legs collapsing out from under them. Several tumbled and rolled over their riders. Their combined wails were swallowed under the horses charging behind them.
“Second rank!” a Lazornian calleros shouted, his voice cracking. “Fire!”
The second rank of musketeers fired. Again, the air was filled with smoke, lead balls streaked through the air, and men and horses fell. The difference this time was that Necrem didn’t flinch. His ears didn’t ring. Despite his eyes watering from the burnt powder, he kept them open, watching and waiting.
The added bodies littering the ground tripped some of the horses that had escaped the deadly hail. They crashed headfirst into the dirt and rolled over onto their sides, throwing the lucky calleroses off yet crushing the rest. Regardless, the head of the calleroses’ charging column was blunted, and those coming in behind had to slow and guide their horses around the mass of corpses.
“Pikes!” the Lazornian calleros rushed out of the ranks, sword waving behind him. “Charge!”
Hundreds of roaring voices lifted around him as everyone sprinted forward. Necrem had no choice. It was either be swept up or be trampled. Yet again, he was running with a long, unwieldy pike stretched out in front of him and into a gray cloud of smoke with little to nothing telling him what awaited on the other side or what was coming through it.
He squinted his watering eyes against the haze, angled his shoulder to ram anyone he ran into, and tightened his grip on the pike’s shaft. He burst through the smoke and—
His pike slammed into a man’s gut with the wrenching screech of metal prying metal. The calleros stared wide-eyed through his visor’s eye slits at him. He was hobbled over, propping himself up on his sword from dragging his left foot behind. The armor on his boot was twisted and mangled. Despite having rolled in the dirt, the calleros’s armor still had a shining polish to it.
Calleroses always did want their armor to shine.
Necrem’s blow tore the calleros off his feet, driving his pike farther into the man. His sword flew out of his weak grip as he gargled under his vizor and doubled over around Necrem’s pike. Necrem charged a few more feet, carrying the calleros, and then slammed him into the ground. He twisted the pike as he was taught to pull out a spear.
“Rules!” the calleros wailed, one hand grabbing the pike’s shaft while the other reached up at him. “Mercy!”
Necrem froze. Hearing a man wail like that made his hands shake, sending the tremors down the shaft of his pike.
“Unhorsed calleroses!”
Men let out crazed yells as they charged from the smoke. Pikemen stormed into the carnage, finding calleroses on the ground and wildly stabbing them with abandoned. A maddening glee was on many of their faces.
Necrem turned back to the calleros pinned under him. The man clawed at the pike’s shaft, unable to push back against his strength. A swift twist and pull wrenched the pike out. The calleros gasped and gripped his side.
Necrem held the pike up, watching him writhe on the ground. The man curled in on himself, bringing his knees as high as his armor would allow. His shaking body made his plates clink together. Tears streamed out of the man’s pleading eyes staring up at him.
Any other man, Necrem would have felt something for. Pity. Regret. Perhaps even disgust for himself. But this was a calleros. The memory of Eulalia that night clawed its way back from the man’s curled posture and weeping expression, the same as hers.
You gave none to her.
Necrem lifted his head. The charge had passed him by. While some soldiers fell on injured calleroses with vengeful abandon, the others climbed over and charged around the bodies of the dead horses to attack the calleroses still riding in. Lances and pikes clashed. Swords hacked and slashed. The pikemen were eager to knock every calleros out of their saddles while the calleroses pressured their reluctant horses to the pikes to run down or hack any man they could.
Why should any of them have mercy.
“No,” Necrem replied coldly. He drove his pike between the rim of the calleros’s breastplate and helmet. The steel head crushed the man’s windpipe and speared through his neck before he could scream. He held his pike in place until the calleros twitched his last.
***
“La Dama!” Fuert Ribera’s voice was a graveling drawl. The elderly calleros held his head back, his Adam’s apple sticking out of his scrawny neck and wobbling with his every word. “La Dama Mandas, I, Cal Fuert Ribera, beseech you, please order your men to lay down their arms and surrender. They have fought valiantly in your defense, and you have shown them more dignity than . . . I have seen from many by staying with them.
“But this fight is over.” Ribera lowered his head. The bone-white wisps of mustache framed his long face as his grim gaze cut over the distance at her. “Please, surrender. Under the Rules of Campaign, you and your general staff will be taken into my custody and your soldiers will be disarmed and detained until such time as terms are agreed upon.”
Recha and her remaining guard were surrounded. Ribera and his calleroses had moved in closer.
Despite all the killing, the glory-seeking calleroses throwing away their horses by trying to run over her pikemen to get to her and her men holding their lines, Ribera still held his numeric advantage.
Over half of the remaining enemy calleroses stood in ranks, forsaking their horses to face her pikemen and guard on foot. They held their lances like spears, and behind their ranks sat the rest of their compatriots remaining mounted. Ribera sat in the center of such a line, with an additional rank of mounted calleroses behind him.
They’re not going to risk any more of their horses, Recha easily surmised. First comes those on foot, and once they force open a gap, those behind will charge in to break our square. However, . . .
“Marshal Ribera!” she yelled. “If you permit me, I will address you in the rank I believe that is rightfully yours.”
Ribera held her gaze, unmoved. A few tiny, shimmering dots on his leathery-tanned face hinted that he was sweating under the Easterly Sun’s oppressive heat.
Recha blinked streams out her eyes and dripped droplets from her lashes but refused to wipe her face or look away.
Finally, Ribera nodded.
“Marshal Ribera,” she said, “I thank you for your compliments. More so about my men than myself. They deserve it.” She glanced around at them. She could only make out the back of most of their heads, all facing away from her and toward their side of the square. Those too weak or injured to stand sat or lay hunched near the flag. On her horse, she couldn’t tell if they were watching, but she was certain they were all listening. “But as for your demand, I cannot accept it.”
Ribera’s mustache twitched. A brief flicker that instantly disappeared. “Field Marshal Vigodt, well fought, sir. Both this day and the other.”
“My compliments, Marshal Ribera,” Baltazar replied with a respectfully nod. “And well fought to you, as well, sir.”
“If I may ask,” Ribera said, “one marshal to another, is there any chance you can advise your marquesa on changing her mind? To some, they would find that . . . not our place. However, men such as we, who have commanded real battle and seen the aftermath, have a duty to advise our lieges of when the battle is over. Do we not?”
Baltazar’s horse snorted and shook its mane, as if agitated from Ribera’s question. Baltazar, however, sat a few paces to her left with his back to her. His helmet obscured his face. A few of the soldiers around him threw nervous glances over their shoulders up at him.
“We have many duties,” he replied. “And while I would voice my advice regardless, I must respectfully disagree with yours, Marshal Ribera. This battle is not over.”
“That would only lead to more blood.” Ribera scowled. His bushy eyebrows drooped over them, making him look . . . tired, despite keeping straight in the saddle. “Why prolong this?”
“Sometimes,” Baltazar replied, “that blood is needed to determine who the real victor is.”
Ribera’s scowl melted. A placid reflection crossed his face. He pushed himself up in his stirrups and stiffly turned, gazing out at the ongoing battle below.
Recha’s ear twitched at a timely spaced, repeated roar of musket fire. The volleys were in coordination and good order, not the kind made in panic or desperation. She couldn’t see them behind the enemy calleroses’ heads, but she knew her armies were still holding, still fighting.
If they’re still fighting, she reasoned, there’s still a chance we’ll be reinforced. And if Ribera sees them coming—
“Marshal Ribera!” she shouted.
Ribera remained standing in his saddle, surveying the area without a hint of acknowledgment.
Recha drew herself up. She scowled angrily and took a deep breath. “Marshal Ribera! You attend a marquesa when she addresses you!”
Ribera snapped around. His steely glare could melt stone, yet Recha held it.
“Very good. I want you to understand,” she explained, “that I’m not rejecting your offer out of stubborn pride or personal vanity. I hold you as an honorable man who would keep his word. Nevertheless, I have thrown away all conventions of the Rules of Campaign. From the very first battle, I neither honored them or anyone who tried to claim them. I will not now submit to them now that I’m cornered.” She snickered. “Nor will I submit to Borbin under any circumstances!”
She lifted her pistol for Ribera and everyone to see. “I had it decreed at the start of this battle that I will only uphold the Rules of War. I will not barter my men’s lives away for my own. I will not barter the submission of my marc for my own freedom. Try and seize me, and I will fight until you have no choice but to kill me. Should all my men throw down their weapons and beg me to throw down mine, I will kill myself! I will not yield!”
Her thumb, pressing hard on her pistol’s hammer, jerked on reflex. The loud clicks made everyone around her—her guards, the soldiers, and Cornelos—flinch. A grin split her face. She couldn’t smooth it back or regain a calm composure.
She might have lied a little. There was some stubborn pride and some personal vanity in refusing to surrender. Yet, mixed in with the two was her own heart’s determination. She poured it out in gasping blasts of honesty. At least, it kept Marshal Ribera’s attention on her.
“Did you not hear what I had decreed before?” Her breaths came out short and hard. Her heart drummed in her chest. “Victory or death! Those were my terms at the start of this battle. And I will uphold that decree until the end. No matter what amount of blood it takes, those are my only terms!
“If you can’t match them, if you, Marshal Ribera, the White Sword of Orsembar, cannot stand the blood, then it should be you who throws down your weapons! You’ll be treated as prisoners of war, to be held and confined with the honors your station deserves, just as your grandson now enjoys, until this war is over. But if none of you Orsembians can do that, then I only have one thing to say to you.”
A tremor ran up her spine to the tips of her fingers. Her pistol shook in her grip, and she kept her finger away from the trigger so as not to squeeze it. Every hair on her head stood up. The corners of her grinning lips quirked and jerked. She felt a vibration in her throat, threatening to make her burst in a giggling mess.
“What are you waiting for?” she yelled before being overwhelmed. “Come and get me!”
Her lungs burned. Her heavy breathing was all she could hear. Sweat burned her eyes, forcing her to blink rapidly. The salty droplets flung off her lashes. That vibrant clawing in the back of her throat still warned she was the verge of bursting into uncontrollable giggling or tears. Or both.
I must look crazy, she guessed. Her sweaty visage coupled with her unbridled grin and shaking in her saddle. All of that and her screaming, she had to look a sight.
Ribera was frozen in his saddle. The heat around him was unbearable, yet the seasoned marshal appeared colder than any True Winter. His tiredness evaporated, and his facial features were sharpened edges, staring right back at her.
He silently raised his sword. Glints of sunlight reflected off his blade’s polished, white scabbard in defiance of the dust. He raised it high in the air and held it there. The calleroses around him tilted their heads toward him, watching.
Here it comes. Recha lowered her pistol, hands still sweating, but her grip on its handle was solid.
Ribera brought his sword down in swift swoop.
The swish of slicing air in the hushed silence made her scalp crawl. She gripped her saddle horn, bracing herself. She expected the calleroses to rush in from all sides, bellowing like madmen.
Instead, the enemy inched forward. Their heavy footfalls stomped and scraped across the hardpacked dirt. They mimicked footmen without the need for officers shouting for them to keep their lines straight or step together. Their lances wobbled, closing the space between them and her soldiers’ pikes.
The closer they got, the smaller their steps became. The heads of their lances and the heads of her soldiers’ pikes wavered back and forth, aligning with each other but also avoiding touching the other.
“Ha!” a calleros to her left yelled. He lunged. Pike and lance crashed together then slid apart.
Another battle cry came behind her. Metal clanged against metal from a lance head striking a shield. More shouts and grunts erupted around her, some from her own men making preemptive strikes. They grew to a boil. Yelling, cursing, and taunting, each man working himself up—
“Have at them!” an Orsembian shouted.
“Come on!” a Lazornian spat.
Every man charged, Lazornian and Orsembian alike. Pikes batted against lances. Swords clashed against both blades and shields. Men threw themselves at each other with little restraint.
In moments, angry, curse-ridden battle cries became cries of pain as men were impaled on pikes and lances. Duels between swordsmen devolved into slamming into each other’s faces with either the pommel of their swords or rims of their shields.
An Orsembian calleros pushed through the square’s first rank and blindly charged into a pike held up at an angle by an injured Lazornian sitting on the ground, no longer able to stand. The Orsembian took the pike in the gut, dropping his sword in a struggle to pull himself free. The injured pikeman lunged forward from where he sat, plunging the pike deeper into the calleros. When the calleros toppled, he took the pikemen’s pike with him, pulling it out of the wounded soldier’s grip. Too weak to retrieve it, the pikemen simply crawled back farther into the square.
Although, its protection was shrinking by the minute. As furious as the first attack had been, the Orsembians’ answer was just as ferocious. The initial attack hadn’t bought them any ground and now the front ranks of the square were all being pushed back. At least, those left standing were.
“Guardsmen of La Dama!” Cornelos suddenly yelled. He held his head at a high angle and sat leaning back, as if to stick out his chest despite his breastplate hampering the pose. “Even if we are overwhelmed, so long as the Savior guides you to draw breath, strike down anyone who means harm to our marquesa! Don’t let a single enemy lay a finger on our La Dama!”
The guardsmen surrounding her shouted in unified reply, lifting their swords in the air. Several soldiers surrounding them joined in, as well. Rank and actual troop assignment didn’t matter here. They were all pretty much her guardsmen. After all, they were fighting and dying because she refused to surrender, and they still stood beside her.
Regardless, she frowned at Cornelos.
He looked this way and that, turning in his saddle at every yell. Finally, he noticed her. “What?” he asked.
“You need to work on your speeches,” she said. “That was too personal.”
“Too personal?” Cornelos flinched at the clang of swords near him. The square was still holding, though, and he turned back.
Recha arched an eyebrow. “Our marquesa? Our La Dama?”
Cornelos’s face flushed. It was already reddened from the Easterly Sun, and the added blush almost turned his face purple. “I was . . . rallying your guard! As Commandant de La Dama, it was part of my duty. I wasn’t thinking about what I was saying!”
Recha held her frown for as long as she could. She held her breath until her nose wrinkled and air escaped her twisting lips as she burst into gasping laughter.
Cornelos stared at her dryly, his face darkening more. “You were teasing me? At a time like this?”
Recha threw her head back and wiped tears out of her eyes, cursing her emotions for running amok at a time like this. “It seemed like . . .” she stuttered, catching her breath, “like a good idea. With everything—”
Movement caught her eye. “Cornelos!”
Cornelos spun in time to meet the Orsembian rushing him through a gap in the ranks. He swung his sword in a wide arch to knock away the calleros’s lunging thrust. The enemy managed another swing that Cornelos also parried before a Lazornian soldier intervened. The Orsembian clashed blades with the man, yet his sword was held there, leaving him open. Cornelos drove his sword into the man’s shoulder and into his body from above.
“Secure the line!” he demanded the soldier, gesturing to the opening in the ranks with his blood-streaked sword.
“Tighten your ranks!” Baltazar ordered over the symphony of battle cries and clashing weapons. “Don’t let yourselves be drawn out! Stand together and face them as one!” The field marshal was an unmovable rock in the sea of upheaval around them.
The ranks obeyed, inching back while staving off the enemy’s attack. The enemy themselves continued their onslaught, driving forward to claim every step her soldiers gave up. Several charged in.
An Orsembian slammed into the shield of one of her soldiers. The enemy’s fury was too great and he was too close. Her soldier had no choice but to drop his sword, pull out his dagger, and stab at his attacker’s eye slits in his helmet and neck.
A pikeman waved his pike wildly between two calleroses, swatting away their lances. The calleroses stepped closer every time the pikeman’s attention was diverted to the other until—
One of the calleroses lunged. The pikeman reacted too slowly. The lance speared his hip. Twisting in the pain, he could do nothing to parry the other lance. It took him in the neck, and together, the calleroses pulled him out of the square.
That left an opening near Baltazar.
“Baltazar!” Recha yelled, pointing at the hole. “Get over—”
The yell of men and horses snapped her around. That wasn’t the only hole in the square. Another of her fallen soldiers had created one to her right, and two of the waiting Orsembian calleroses remaining on horseback leapt into it. A couple of her soldiers jumped out of the way. A poor injured soul screamed as the raging hooves crushed him.
Her guardsman beside her met the first calleros, sword stroke to sword stroke, the uproar giving him plenty of warning. The second calleros kicked his horse to get around his compatriot to join the fight when a pikeman aimed too low and speared the horse instead of the enemy. Undeterred by the beast’s screams, the pikeman drove his pike deeper into its chest until the horse reared, ripping the pike from his hands.
The calleros was thrown into the air. His impact on the hard earth rang out over the battle. The horse continued to scream, becoming a greater danger to everyone as it collapsed, writhing and kicking. Men scrambled to get away from those lashing hooves.
The fall of his compatriot’s horse threw the other Orsembian calleros off balance. Her guardsman was likewise forced to keep control of his horse instead of attacking the enemy, but the Orsembian was too distracted to react when a soldier leapt up, wrapped his arms around the man’s waist, and pulled him from his saddle. The calleros flailed out with his sword wildly, to no avail, and a dagger stabbed under his helmet ended him.
Recha hissed sharply, watching. That’s about to be this entire battle!
“Baltazar!” she screamed, twisting back around. “Get over here!”
Baltazar was dueling another Orsembian on horseback. The enemy pressed him, swinging blow after blow. Baltazar focused on parrying, unable to wheel his horse with the square’s tight courters and risk the soldiers or their formation.
“Baltazar!”
Recha kicked her horse without thinking. The steed jolted forward, bumping into Cornelos’s. The dense square denied them any space to move and, in frustration, drive, or panic, Recha’s horse reared.
She yelped, throwing herself forward. She squeezed her right leg wrapped around the saddle’s pommel as tightly as she could. She seized it for good measure with one hand. Her other hand flew into the air, keeping her balance.
She kept in her saddle, yet when her horse came down, her pistol’s ammunition spilled from her lap.
“Savior dammit!” she hissed, hastily grabbing everything she could catch. She grabbed her pouch of lead shot and thumb of power, but her cleaning kit slammed into the dirt below. Worse still, when she pulled her meager catch up, the shot pouch opened and spilled half of the small, lead balls.
“Recha!” Cornelos cried, getting his own horse under control. “What are you doing?”
She fumbled to preserve her remaining ammunition, pressing it in her lap, and then growling back, “Baltazar needs—!”
An Orsembian calleros came screaming through the square. His horse snorting. His sword waving above his head. Cornelos clenched his teeth and jerked his horse’s head sharply to the side, barely wheeling it to meet the charge. The horses slammed against each other. They bayed, snorted, and nipped at each other. Their swords clashed, scraping their blades together.
More wild yells announced other calleroses charging into the square. Some forced their way in, whereas others were repulsed by the ends of pikes or being impaled on them. The fighting grew more desperate with each successful incursion.
The defensive square was losing its shape.
Recha swung back toward Baltazar to catch him make another successful parry and, in a flash, his blade sliced his opponent’s reins. The Orsembian flailed backward, losing his balance. He reached for his saddle horn and took a sword thrust in his side from an intervening soldier.
“Fight!” Baltazar encouraged, letting his opponent slide from his saddle with a second look. “Fight for your lives, men! Just a little longer!” He swung his sword down into the slowly devolving melee.
A little longer?
A pain-laced shriek that suddenly cut short snatched her attention. Another Orsembian calleros was charging in, leaning forward in the saddle, lance couched under his arm at full tilt, his head down. His face was concealed behind his visor, set on his target. In the short span, the distance was easy to judge and his target easy to see.
The lance was aimed straight at Cornelos’s back.
Cornelos was still dueling with the other Orsembian. If she called out to him, the distraction would give his current opponent an opening. She turned to her other guardsman beside her, but he wasn’t in his saddle. Instead, he was locked in a fight of his own, punching and stabbing at an Orsembian who had fought his way into the square on foot.
Two of her soldiers threw themselves in front of the charging calleros and were thrown aside themselves. The charging horse slammed into both. Its rider’s kicking spurned it on, and the impact didn’t slow it.
Cornelos!
Recha’s mouth went dry. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.
Soldiers scrambled out of the horse’s way. The pikemen were too desperate to keep the square from collapsing. None could make it in time.
The lance aiming for her Companion’s back brought an image to the front of Recha’s mind. Sebastian’s pale, clammy face. The gaping hole in his back where he’d been impaled.
Not again!
Recha turned her horse, throwing her arm up, and everything slowed. The world around her shrank as she stared down her arm and the barrel of her pistol. The drumming of the incoming hooves matched her breathing. The calleros’s head lifted slightly.
She squeezed the trigger.
The hammer sprung, and sparks flew.
Pow!
The powder’s ignition was louder than the demolition of the mountainside to her ears. The flash of burnt powder turned the world white. Her pistol’s kick gently ran up her arm.
The puff of powder drifted up like a curtain, unveiling the Orsembian calleros tipping farther and farther back in his saddle, his head snapped back. The farther he fell, the more his horse slowed, its head being pulled back by the reins. The animal snorted and shook its head, and its rider’s grip slipped. The calleros spilled off his saddle, rolling to the side with his lance dragged along with him.
Recha watched him fall. Her arm stiff as a pike, her tensed muscles spasming but unable to move. Every quick, sharp breath sucked in burning gulps of powder. The calleros hit the ground with a thud, his lance falling on top of him. As he rolled onto his back, Recha saw the small hole punched through his visor above his left eye slit.
“Huh,” she grunted.
She looked around, her wider surroundings coming back to her quickly. Several soldiers stared up at her. The calleroses in front of the square, mounted around Ribera, shifted in their saddles, regarding her. The fight continued against the other sides of the struggling square. Cornelos was still locked in his duel. However, for that moment, she held the attention of everyone at the front of the square.
“Victory or death!” she shouted.
“Victory or death!” some of her men repeated then charged the nearest enemy with renewed vigor.
The enemy answered. Several more calleroses charged their mounts into the square. Her soldiers on the edge moved to let them in then closed the holes to keep others from following. It preserved the square for a little longer, trusting their comrades inside the square to deal with the enemy they had allowed in.
“Recha!” Baltazar wheeled his horse toward her. His dark grimace was heart rendering.
As was the sight of an Orsembian calleros decapitating one of her soldiers in a downward, arching sweep of his sword as he kicked his horse.
Recha sniffed sharply and finally dropped her arm. Her sweaty hands grappled with her pistol, turning it up to reload. Her thumb repeatedly slipped on her powder charge’s plug. Growling in frustration, she took the cork-like plug in her teeth and wrenched it out.
Come on.
She glanced up as she tapped powder down her pistol’s barrel. The calleros was still approaching, kicking a wounded soldier’s feeble attempts to stop him, undeterred to finish the man to get to her.
Come on! Come on!
She filled her charge pan then closed it. She fumbled for a lead ball next. Desperate, she spilled the few she had left in her lap to get one and shove it down the barrel.
Got to pack it. Come on! My musketeers can load and fire two shots a minute, why can’t—
The calleros lunged his mount forward. Instead of his sword, he came at her with his hand stretched out.
Recha recoiled, snarling and jamming her pistol’s ram rod home. Don’t you—
Baltazar charged in from the left. His sword would have taken the man’s head had the Orsembian not leaned too far forward in his attempt to grab her. The whoosh of air from his slicing blade struck her face.
The Orsembian pulled his hand away, easily switching the reins with his hands as he rolled up to parry Baltazar’s back stroke. Both men wheeled their horses with each other, kicking up dust in the center of the fighting. Recha pulled hers away to avoid one of them running into her or the wayward reach of their flashing swords.
Baltazar furiously lashed out at the younger calleros. He put weight behind every stroke. His sword clanged and pinged loudly off the Orsembian’s. While Baltazar darkly grimaced, the younger man’s sweaty visage was one of earnest concentration. Every parry left him reeling in his saddle, yet he kept his sword up to turn Baltazar’s next attack, lest he lose a limb or his head.
Reload! Recha reminded herself.
Her ramrod was left sticking out the pistol’s barrel, and she rammed it in a few more times to make sure everything was packed in tight.
Charge. Powder. Shot. Where’s the wad? She frantically looked through her remaining kit in her lap. Savior! Where is my wad?
The wad was a small bit of cloth packed in after the shot to make sure neither it nor the powder poured out of the barrel. The only cloth in her lap was her dress.
Savior forsake it! I’m just going to have to—
“Ah!”
Recha shot her head up at the pained grunt, and she went numb.
The Orsembian’s sword was lodged under Baltazar’s left arm.
Baltazar’s arm pressed down on the blade from above, holding it from going any deeper. His eyelids trembled in a pain-stricken wince, exposing his clenched teeth. His body started shifting sideways, threatening to slide out of the saddle. The Orsembian held his sword in place, neither pressing the attack nor withdrawing. His face was a mask of concentration, but his gray eyes were wide, as if surprised his thrust had struck.
A painfully hiss escaped between Baltazar’s teeth, snapping Recha back to reality.
“Papa!” she screamed. Her pistol was up the next instant.
Her scream jarred the Orsembian back, as well. He gaped in surprise at her gun aimed at him and jerked back. He pulled his sword out from under Baltazar’s arm, its tip and several inches red with blood, to raise his arms in front of his face.
“At this range”—Recha cocked the hammer and aimed—“that won’t save you!”
She squeezed the trigger. The hammer fell, sparks flew, and powder flashed.
But there was no ignition. No kick. No shot!
The mere whiff of powder blew away instantly, leaving both her and the Orsembian staring at one another.
A misfire!
Goosebumps ran up her arm, adding to her reeling inside. A flash in the pan at a time like this!
“The field marshal!” someone yelled as a horse cried.
Baltazar was leaning sideways, pressing his left arm tightly to his side and pulling his horse back with his sword arm. The mount had no choice but to follow his rider and, in a sideways stagger, bend his knees and drift to the ground. As the horse eased down, Baltazar slid out of his saddle, releasing the reins and collapsing on the ground. His horse sprang up once freed.
Recha’s face burned. Her breaths became louder and louder. Her lips peeled back in a snarl. She looked between the Orsembian and her pistol. He seemed distracted, looking over her shoulder.
He’s . . . ignoring me!
It would take too long to prime it again. She recalled what Sebastian had told her when he’d first given it to her. She had made the comment about it for one shot and useless after that.
“Well,” he had replied, “then use the pommel. Swing it hard enough, and you might put a dent in someone’s skull.”
She turned the gun in her fingers, gripping it by the barrel. She reeled back and swung with a scream.
The Orsembian blinked, remembering she was there.
The silver butt of her pistol struck him across his cheek, the end of the pommel hit bone. To her frustration, the blow left him shaking his head instead of sending him out of his saddle. It infuriated her! She pulled back and swung over and over.
Metal pings rang out from her pommel striking the rim and then the top of his helmet. The calleros yelped and brought his forearm up to fend her off as he struggled to sheath his sword, the movement making his intention clear.
“You’ll never take me!” she spat, changing the angle of her next swing.
The Orsembian peeked out from his guarding forearm and took her pistol’s pommel on the bridge of his nose. Recha grinned at the sound of crunching bone and his head snapping back. As he recoiled, she kicked his horse, sending it bolting forward with its rider off balance. She laughed at the sight of the horse bucking the Orsembian out of his saddle and sending him flying backward.
She was denied the joy of seeing him slam into the ground as everyone surged around her. Men ran into her horse, forcing her to focus on keeping it under control unless she would be thrown, too. Everything grew louder—the shouting, weapons clashing, the charging horses—
Charging horses?
Recha’s ears twitched. There was no mistaking it. The rumble of charging hooves filled the air. And it was growing louder!
She turned over her shoulder in time to see Lazornian calleroses crashing into the backs of the Orsembians blocking the path to the main battle beyond. Lances and swords cut a bloody path into the enemy, and in their center, waving his sword above his head and cussing with every breath, was Ramon Narvae.
“Cut every one of these frickin’ sons of bitches down!” he bellowed.
The thumping of crossbows releasing echoed behind her. Men were rushing up the lane to the southside of camp, toward the infirmary. It was a mass assortment of walking wounded with swords and pikes; camp workers with pikes, shovels, hammers; a random calleros charging with them on horseback; and Viden in their red robes, sending crossbow bolts into the backs of the Orsembians blocking that path.
The Orsembians’ attack broke.
Recha swiveled around to catch a glimpse of Ribera. The marshal again proved his rational nature by doing the only thing one could do in this situation. He calmly wheeled his horse around and, along with everyone he could gather, fled.
“After them!” Recha yelled, pointing her pistol after the withdrawing banner.
Some of the Narvae’s calleroses did break through to pursue while most joined the fight against those Orsembians who couldn’t get away. There was no need to send them all, though. With Servco covering the mountain trek, Hiraldo’s calleroses in-between, and Narvae’s in pursuit, Ribera had no escape.
“Recha!”
She tiredly turned. Her shoulders slumped, unable to keep straight with the pressure of death no longer closing to keep her edge up.
That is . . . until she saw Cornelos wrapping strips of cloth around Baltazar’s armpit and shoulder. Baltazar winced with every pull of cloth, and even from her distance, Recha could see him struggling to breathe.
“Papa!” she cried, leaping from the saddle. The little of her pistol’s ammunition and kit left went flying, but she didn’t stop to care, shoving her pistol into her dress’s belt.
She sprinted over and collapsed beside him. Baltazar’s face was drenched. His short, heavy panting rang in her ears. A pool of blood soaked the ground under his arm, and it was growing.
“He needs a surgeon,” Cornelos said, wrapping as fast as he could and packing more cloth under Baltazar’s armpit. “He may have nicked an artery. Press down, Field Marshal. Hard!” He shoved Baltazar’s arm in and pressed the wadded cloth into his side.
Baltazar grunted and hissed. His head rolled around on the dirt as he curled his arm and held it against his side.
“Stretcher!” Recha yelled. “The field marshal needs a stretcher!”
The fighting around them drowned out the demand. She pushed herself up, but Baltazar grabbed her wrist and pulled her back down. He reached and took her by the back of the neck, pulling her down.
“Ramon . . . made it?” he grunted.
“Yes,” she replied frantically, patting his breastplate. “Yes, he made it, Papa. You rest here, and I’ll get you to the surgeons—”
“No!” He squeezed and shook her neck. “The battle comes first! I gave orders to the armies. Look for Hiraldo and Priet pressing against Borbin’s flanks. If Ross is still holding, then there is only one order to give.” He opened his eyes, glaring up at her with raging fire. “Attack, Recha! Attack!”
Recha shook her head. “Yes. Yes, I’ll give the order, but first—”
“No! Now!” Baltazar threw her off. “Go, Recha! Attack!”
Recha scrambled away, Baltazar’s urgent order ringing her ears. Clawing her way on hands and knees, she came up, sprinting to her horse.
“Marshal Narvae!” she screamed, digging out her eyeglass and pulling herself up into her saddle with a tired groan. “Marshal Narvae!”
She extended her eyeglass and stood in her saddle. She brought the glass up as Narvae rode up.
“La Dama!” he replied, out of breath. “Good to see you’re still alive. Where’s the field marshal—?”
“Baltazar’s wounded, but he’ll be fine.”
Or he better be, she prayed, scanning the field the best she could.
“But right now, I need dispatchers!” she demanded. “Baltazar left orders and, wounded or not, the armies need them.”
“Calleroses! To me!” Narvae shouted.
The clomping and skidding of hooves announced them gathering around her.
“What are their orders, La Dama?” Narvae asked.
“To Generals Galvez, Ross, and Priet”—she grinned, unable to tear her eyes away from the sight through the glass—“attack!”