The Crimson Campaign

Taniel focused on the Kez lines. The rat-tat-tatting of their snares seemed to echo in his brain. He opened his third eye for a moment, watching as the earth was bathed in glowing pastels, splashes of sorcery covering every part of the battlefield.

“You ready to die with us, Two-Shot?” the second soldier asked, breaking Taniel’s concentration. It wasn’t phrased as a threat. Just a question.

“No, not particularly.”

“We’ve been falling back every day. Sometimes twice. Every time the damned Kez advance like this. And each time, we lose three hundred men or more.”

Taniel couldn’t believe that. “Every time?”

The man nodded solemnly.

“Falling back…” Taniel craned his neck. The artillery had been wheeled away by now, back to the next row of trenches and earthen barricades. “Stupid bloody fools. We have to hold. We can’t let them push us back like this. We’re practically hemorrhaging troops.”

“I don’t know what an ‘hemorg’ is, but we’re bleedin’ men something fierce. We can’t hold. We tried, but can’t. Nothing stops those Black Wardens. No matter how many we kill, there seems to be more.”

“You’re awfully calm,” Taniel said.

“Something peaceful about that, I think. Knowing you’re going to die. That lad over on your other side — ”

Taniel took a glance. The kid next to him didn’t seem old enough to shave. His hands shook so hard his musket was swaying from side to side.

“ — that lad doesn’t have the same opinion I do.”

“It’s just the jitters,” Taniel said. “We all get them.” Taniel glanced at the Kez. A hundred and fifty yards. He reloaded his rifle, lifted it to his shoulder, and fired.

“Not you,” the first soldier said. “I heard you put a round in a Privileged’s eye for your first kill.”

“That I did. But I learned to shoot from Field Marshal Tamas himself.” He paused. “They teach you to shoot at targets,” he said to the young man beside him. “It’s different when you realize there’s a man on the other end, shooting back at you. I was sitting two miles away. I had surprise on my side. But, lad, you take a deep breath and pull that trigger. Fire straight and true, because you might not get another shot.”

“Lad,” Taniel had said. The boy was no more than five years his junior.

Taniel loaded his rifle while he spoke, set, and fired. Another officer dropped.

The boy looked at Taniel. His hands hadn’t stopped shaking.

“I don’t think your pep talk helped much,” the first soldier said.

“Quiet down on the line!” That was Major Doravir. She had her sword raised above her head, a pistol in the other hand. “Aim!”

The Kez were almost in musket range. There were thousands of them. Rank upon rank upon rank. Taniel could see now why it was impossible to hold the line. He remembered the Battle of South Pike and how they’d almost lost the bastion a dozen times. They’d been guarding a pass from an enchanted bulwark only a hundred paces wide. Here, with nothing but earthworks between them and the Kez, it would be next to impossible to hold.

“Fire!”

The front line and much of the second of the Kez offensive fell beneath the volley. The Adran infantry began to reload.

Before a second volley could be fired, the Kez lines came to a stop. The new front line dropped to their knees and lined up their shots before firing.

Taniel threw himself behind the safety of the earthworks. He pulled the young soldier down with him and listened to the volley, and then the thwap of musket balls ricocheting off the dirt. The young soldier struggled to get back up. Taniel held him down.

“Line fire,” Taniel said. “They’ll fire that shot, then the next before they charge. You wait…”

The second volley sounded. Taniel counted to three before he let the boy back up and came up himself, ready to fire.

The Kez charged with a mighty roar, their bayonets leveled.

“Fire at will!” came the call.

Taniel took a deep breath of the smoke from the powder. It made his head buzz, his blood pump faster. His hands weren’t shaking from mala withdrawal anymore. His body had found something so much better. He poured a bit of powder onto the back of his hand and snorted.

The Kez reached the bottom of the earthworks and began the steep climb. Taniel rose up high enough to fire down at them, when he spotted a Privileged about a hundred yards away with her hands twitching up sorcery. Taniel adjusted his aim and pulled the trigger.

The woman went down in a spray of blood, clutching at her throat.

Kez infantry poured over the earthworks like a flood breaching a levy. Taniel thrust his bayonet into a man’s stomach, cracked another soldier across the face with the butt of his rifle. He leapt onto the rise to keep them from coming over, swinging and stabbing.

He barely heard the call for retreat.

“Hold!” he screamed, knocking a grenadier off the earthworks with his rifle stock. “We can hold!”

The young soldier who had been beside him went down with a bayonet through his chest. Taniel leapt off the bulwark to his aid, skewering the Kez infantryman like a side of beef.