Chris Evans - A Darkness Forged in Fire

It was going to be a slaughter.

The skirmishers kept up their harassing fire, though they were not completely unscathed. Two wounded soldiers were already making their way back across the bridge, one holding a bloodstained handkerchief to his thigh, the other cradling an arm with an arrow protruding from it. Konowa looked past them and saw another soldier fall to the ground, his musket sliding from his hands. Konowa willed the soldier to get up, but he knew that he was dead. Lorian strode over to his body a moment later and grabbed the soldier by the shoulder, turning him over. He then stood and continued to command the remaining skirmishers. Lorian himself continued to present a tempting target to the elfkynan bowmen, who were in a less festive mood than their brethren, but though the arrows rained around him, the RSM remained unhurt.

Konowa calculated the speed of the skirmishers and the advancing elfkynan and knew there wasn't much time left. The skirmishers would soon be back across the river, the brown water the final barrier between the Iron Elves and the elfkynan wild with the thought of finding the Eastern Star and ridding themselves of the Calahrian Empire once and for all. Konowa closed his eyes for a moment and tried to flow his senses out across the river, searching for the Star. He still wasn't sure if he truly believed it was real, not like the acorn that weighed cold and heavy against his chest, but watching the elfkynan approach gave him pause. They certainly appeared to believe in it.

Konowa opened his eyes after a few moments, detecting nothing but the usual chaos. He saw rather than felt the splitting of the elfkynan forces, the bulk of the rebels' army coming straight at Luuguth Jor, while two smaller columns were beginning to bend to envelop the village and fortress from either side. Expecting this, Konowa had deployed two platoons of C Company at the gap in the trees. He would have liked to have done the same on the other side, but with no gap in the trees those troops would be at too much risk of being cut off. Instead, he placed two more platoons from C Company through the gap and facing west. When the elfkynan column got across the river to the north and then swung around the trees thinking they would surprise the regiment, they'd be in for a rude awakening.

An arrow fluttered by Konowa's face just a few feet away, bouncing off a mud brick and coming to rest at his feet. He bent and picked it up, twirling it in his fingers, noting that the fletching was rudimentary at best, the tip just sharpened and not even fire-hardened. He concentrated for a moment and burned the arrow with frost fire in a matter of seconds. There was no screaming in his head, no anguish, only a slight unpleasant feeling of regret that he quickly pushed aside.

"Cavalry, Major!"

Konowa looked up to see a squadron of elfkynan riders galloping hard for the river, then making an abrupt turn and racing parallel to it in an attempt to get behind the skirmishers and cut them off. If it weren't for the tall grass and uneven ground they would have ridden straight through them. As it was, if they succeeded in herding the skirmishers together, the soldiers would be easy pickings for the closing main elfkynan column.

"Hold your fire-wait until the first horse gets to the bridge," he ordered, wishing he had his musket in his hands instead of his saber.

With no resistance, the horsemen continued to race along the bank, their mioxja making a high, keening sound as they waved them over their heads. The lead cavalryman was still a good twenty feet from the bridge when a musket fired from somewhere off to the left. At only fifty yards wide, the river was little more than a big ditch, and hitting a target as large as a horse, even one cantering across their line, was not difficult. The ball struck the rider's front shoulder, throwing him over the horse's neck as it stumbled to its knees.

"Front row, by volley…fire!" Konowa shouted, unleashing eighty musket balls at once. There was the staccato ripple of seventy-nine hammers sparking seventy-nine pans within half a second of each other, followed by the sharp crack of balls leaving muzzles, the familiar shower of sparks and expanding plumes of gray smoke that rolled forth a few feet before losing their impetus and beginning to blur and rise into the brightening sky.

The effect was immediate and devastating. Twelve horses took the brunt of the shot, the musket balls punching through their hides. Seven riders were also hit, a musket ball plucking one rider off his saddle with a clean shot in one ear and out the other. Screams of dying and wounded horses and dying and wounded elfkynan filled the air, and following cavalry slowed and bunched as they were forced to navigate through their fallen comrades. It was the moment Konowa was waiting for.

"Second row, to the fore! First row, to the rear, reload!" Konowa shouted, hearing his commands echoed up and down the line as sergeants hurried their men. The hollow rattle of ramrods in musket barrels reminded Konowa of battles past and he smiled, a thin-lipped baring of his teeth that would have terrified anyone looking at it.

"Front row, by volley…fire!"

Sixty muskets fired this time, but the effect was unknown, as the smoke from the second volley mixed with the first and with the fog that still hung over the river, obscuring the far side of the bank. A thin gust of wind moved enough of the smoke a moment later for Konowa to see again, and he counted at least another ten riders fallen, along with several horses. Confusion reigned on the far side, and the cavalry were now milling about, unsure whether to press on or fall back. It was time to make up their minds for them.

"The cannon will fire on my command, and don't you bloody well miss…fire!"

Twin cracks snapped the air. Loaded with canister shot, little more than a tin can filled with fifty musket balls strapped to a round wooden plug by thin metal bands, all of which sat on a flannel bag filled with powder, the canisters burst apart with the force of the blast as soon as they left the cannon. Their shot tore through the hanging smoke and fog and spread out to spray an area thirty feet wide on the other side of the river. The head and neck of one horse simply disappeared in a red mist. Seven more stumbled and fell, two of them rolling over and down into the river, taking their screaming riders with them. One rider stood amid the carnage with his left arm completely shorn away, a stream of blood arcing out of the gaping wound at his shoulder. Instead of running away, he was shaking his right fist in the air, still clenching his mioxja, and shouting curses at the Iron Elves.

He was either very brave, or very foolish, and either way Konowa admired him, which made it a shame that the trooper would be killed with the next volley. Konowa was about to shout for the first row to fire again when he heard the elfkynan cavalry blow retreat on a horn, its plaintive cry calling the survivors back. The cavalry trooper swayed on his feet, but refused to move, still shouting, though his remaining arm had now dropped to his side.

Konowa's attention was pulled away as the massive frame of Private Hrem Vulhber came into view, easily dwarfing the rest of the soldiers as they picked their way through the dead and dying. Lorian was close behind, still walking tall and shouting orders to the skirmishers even as the elfkynan army pressed down on them. He waved at Konowa and signaled with his halberd that the skirmishing line was still in good order and able to fight. The steel point of the weapon was stained red, mute testament that at least one rebel had gotten a little too close.

Konowa cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted across to him, "Get your men across the river, Sergeant Major! And make it look good!"

Lorian gave a thumbs-up and shouted new orders to the skirmishers. Their controlled retreat suddenly became a mad dash for the river and the sole means across it. A cheer rose from the elfkynan line marching after them, thinking that the siggers had finally broken and were running away.