Django Wexler - The Shadow Throne

The valley floor was broken by a small, rocky streambed, too shallow to be an obstacle. The slopes of the hills were all knee-high grass, tall enough to conceal an ankle-breaking rock, but not enough to provide any sort of cover. As the volunteers moved forward, the friendly guns started up again, raising fountains of dirt at the edges of the enemy lines and among the cuirassiers. Orlanko’s cannoneers were concentrating on trying to knock out Janus’ artillery-a difficult task at best, requiring precision gunnery-while their opponents went for the far more tempting target of the densely packed heavy horsemen.

As the volunteers descended, reaching the relatively flat ground of the valley floor, the drums of the regulars became audible. The steady clomp-clomp-clomp of the cadenced march, like the ticking of some enormous clock, grew until it was louder than the cannons. The wall of blue uniforms made an intimidating sight, each with musket held against the shoulder just so, officers on horseback behind them with drawn swords, battle flags flapping in the breeze. Their own troops, brown and gray with black armbands, made a pathetic comparison. The range closed steadily.

At seventy-five yards, Winter called for a halt. The ragged line of volunteers grew more ragged still, as each company commander judged the moment for himself. The girls stopped, eyes glued to the steady advance of the blue line as if they were watching an oncoming avalanche.

“Ready!” Winter shouted. Jane and Abby repeated the order. Muskets came up to shoulders, and hammers clicked.

“Aim!” They’d stressed this in training. An ordinary infantryman, packed shoulder to shoulder, could normally fire nowhere but straight ahead. In the looser formation, they would have to make their shots count. On the other hand, it was hard to miss. The advancing regulars were slightly below them, fifty yards away, a wall of blue stretching out of sight in both directions.

Muskets started to crackle, somewhere else along the line. Winter swung her arm down before the roar made her inaudible. “Fire!”

It wasn’t a proper volley, discharged in a single deadly blast. The sharp reports were spread out over a half minute, as individuals stepped forward, found their balance, or lined their weapons up on target. Pink-white muzzle flares were instantly blotted out by billowing clouds of smoke. The pall was not yet thick enough to obscure the enemy, though, and Winter could see the effect of the shots. Men went down, all along the line, crumpling sideways in heaps, falling backward, tumbling out of rank or clutching suddenly at their wounds. The neat perfection of the oncoming regulars dissolved, for a moment, then reformed like the surface of a lake closing over a hurled stone as the line continued its relentless advance. The soldiers stepped over the dead and wounded, closed their ranks, and came on to the beat of their drummers.

“Load!” Winter shouted. Most of her girls were already working on it, fumbling with cartridge pouches and ramrods. She heard squeaks and curses where someone had dropped a ball or spilled the powder. The rattle of ramrods in barrels mixed with the beat of the drums as the regulars approached. “Fire at will!”

No point in readying another volley. Muskets were already firing to either side, and each member of Winter’s company brought her weapon up as soon as it was ready and sighted through the shredded smoke. Muskets began to flash again, and more blue-coated regulars fell. Winter could see her people making mistakes-firing too high, or before they’d brought the musket level, so the ball raised a miniature burst of earth and grass only a few yards on. At least one ramrod, left sticking out of the barrel, went pinwheeling out like a stick hurled for a dog.

Here it comes. Winter kept her eyes on the enemy lieutenants, walking or riding behind their soldiers. It was too loud to hear the orders at this distance, but she could recognize the gestures. And everyone in the volunteer line could see the regulars halt, their first rank kneel, and the muskets come up to their shoulders.

“Down!” Winter screamed, with all the lung power she could muster. At the same time she threw herself forward, spread-eagled in the grass and pressing her face into the dirt. From the sudden lack of fire to both sides, she thought her command had been followed- God, I hope they have the sense to follow-

A real volley rolled out from the regulars, tight and precise, hundreds of simultaneous musket blasts coming together into a wall of sound that rolled over Winter like a wave and set her ears to ringing. She could feel it, through the ground, along with the thwack, thwack, thwack of balls hitting the earth. On her stomach, she made a hard target, but she was hardly invulnerable, and it took a few moments to convince herself that she hadn’t been hit. She pushed herself up on her elbows and raised her head, but the enemy was still invisible inside the roiling fogbank of their own discharge.

“Up!” Winter shouted. “Fire at will!”

She could hear Jane and Abby repeat the command, which eased her mind a fraction, but now the shrieks and curses rising from the battlefield were not only coming from the enemy. It was impossible to tell, from a scream of pain, whether it came from a man or a woman, but when Winter climbed to her feet, not everyone in her company did likewise. Whether those who remained still were wounded, dead, or simply frozen in terror, she had no way of knowing.

Muskets fired again, and the smoke was closing in. The rest of the line became vague figures in the fog, periodically outlined against pink-white stabs of flame. With their first volley spent, still under fire, the regulars had gone from organized volleys to the old soldier’s standby of shooting off rounds as fast as they could manage, at whatever they thought they could hit. Winter’s company, and the whole line of volunteers, were doing likewise.

This was where the real killing began, the two forces working each other over at close range like boxers drawn into a clinch. There was nothing for Winter to do but shout “Hold and fire! Hold and fire!” over and over, until her throat went raw and her voice was a ragged croak. Every breath tasted of powder smoke, and her heart slammed painfully hard in her chest.

The irony of the battlefield was that neither side could see what effect their fire was having on the enemy, who was hidden behind the billowing smoke, but both could easily tell how badly they themselves were being hurt. Winter, stalking back and forth between smoke-shrouded figures, heard balls zip and zing as they went past, and watched silhouettes crumple and fall around her. A girl two yards to her front gave a quiet “Urk,” dropped her musket, and doubled over. Another screamed, clutching her leg and rolling back and forth in the grass. Other figures passed her by, shuffling wounded to the rear, or unhurt and running away-there was no way to tell.

The enemy, she knew, was having it worse. They had to be having it worse. Her own people were spread out, able to kneel, or to step forward out of their cloud of smoke and take aim at enemy muzzle flashes. The regulars, trapped in their line, could only load and fire blind, while their tight-packed ranks made for a wonderful target. But there were more of them, more muskets that could be brought to bear and more bodies to throw into the grinder.

“Pull it back!” Winter said. “Back up the hill! Open the range!”

She started backward, not running but walking slowly, keeping her face toward the enemy. Jane was still shouting- thank God -and the girls of the company followed. They emerged from the gray-white fogbank one by one, like ghosts, muskets clutched with white knuckles darkened to black by powder grime.