Брайан Макклеллан - Sins of Empire

The second of Vallencian’s merchantmen crushed the forecastle of another warship, while the third cut behind yet another Dynize ship, destroying the rudder and crushing the rear windows of the aft-castle.

Fighting seemed to grind to a halt as men from both sides stopped to watch the terrible collisions. Vlora gained the edge of the wall, firing her pistol at an officer in a longboat below her, then shaking her head as she felt something snap within her.

At first she thought it was something physical within her – a bone, or a ligament, or just about anything that could go wrong. When she didn’t feel any pain, she looked around her, searching for the source of that snap. It took her several moments to realize that something had changed.

The Dynize, for the first time all afternoon, suddenly wavered.

It wasn’t immediate. Slowly, like a flame exposed to a gradually stiffer breeze, the Dynize offensive seemed to flutter and flex. Their shouting became uncertain, their momentum stalled. Minutes passed as the fighting grew more desperate and then, across the water where Olem’s troops still barely held the end of the causeway, Vlora saw a Dynize soldier throw down his musket and flee back toward the beach.

He was joined by others and then, like a candle being blown out, the entire Dynize army routed.

The Riflejacks and garrison seemed to get a second wind, redoubling their efforts and giving chase. The Dynize soldiers reached the water, some of them clamoring into the few remaining longboats while others realized the hopelessness of trying to swim away and turned to organize a defensive. It was too late, and Vlora’s men hit them from behind, forcing them back into the ocean.

Vlora watched Dynize soldiers in their heavy breastplates drown by the score, unwilling to comprehend the horror of such a fate. She looked toward the wreckage of Vallencian’s ship, knowing it would be days before she would be able to mount a rescue, and took a deep breath.

Somehow, some way, they had managed to win the day.

Styke drew his carbine one-handed, sighting along it for half a second before pulling the trigger. He was past the puff of smoke a moment later, and accompanied by the crack of a hundred other carbines as the lancers and cuirassiers opened fire on the front line of the Dynize infantry.

The Dynize, falling into a defensive formation, fired back a single volley. Styke felt a bullet slam into the meat of his left shoulder and pushed away the sharp, sudden pain, rotating his arm to make sure it would still work. Behind him horses screamed and fell, and he holstered his carbine without looking back and took his lance in hand, lowering it at the now-reduced Dynize front line.

Amrec leapt a wounded infantryman and Styke lowered his lance, tearing out a Dynize throat with the tip and driving it into the face of the next Dynize. He kept his grip tight, aiming true until the lance was snapped just past the haft. He threw the useless weapon at an infantryman trying to bring his bayonet to bear on Amrec’s chest, then drew his heavy saber, swinging it with enough force to decapitate a Dynize officer.

He spurred Amrec forward, unwilling to give up his momentum, and plowed through the front eight rows of infantry until he was among the Dynize who had not yet been ordered to lower their weapons. The Dynize scrambled to defend themselves, officers shouting and swearing while they attempted to halt the vicious charge.

Styke hazarded a glance over his shoulder. Jackal was still right behind him, along with the Riflejack bannerman, but Ibana and a huge number of his remaining lancers had disappeared in the chaos. He gritted his teeth and bent from his saddle, slashing beneath the arm of an infantryman, then waved his sword. “Forward, you dogs!” he roared. “Forward!”

His cavalry continued to plow onward. Styke caught sight of a Dynize Privileged, white gloves raised above his head, a scarf wrapped around his face to protect his nose from the powder smoke. Styke angled Amrec toward the Privileged, determined to run him down before he could do any real damage, only to watch him tumble from his saddle with a bullet wound through his chest.

Two-shot, it seemed, was still hard at work.

Styke forced his way through the press, Amrec leaping and kicking with the nimbleness of a Gurlish racing horse. They plowed through three more lines and then suddenly he was free, riding across open farmland behind the Dynize position. He pulled Amrec around and watched as a few hundred of his cavalry managed to extricate themselves from the tangle.

He spared a glance in either direction, satisfied to see the flash of fire and lightning, along with the bloom of powder smoke, as the Blackhats and their Privileged tore into the Dynize flanks. The strategy, it seemed, had worked. The Dynize attention was split between both cavalry and skirmishers, and they didn’t appear to have any Privileged left to answer those accompanying the Blackhats.

Styke counted to forty to allow enough of his cavalry to emerge from the Dynize ranks before waving his sword over his head. “Form up!” he bellowed, and spurred Amrec back into the fray before the Dynize officers could turn their lines around to face him.

He rode roughshod through the confused Dynize columns as they attempted to fight both riders and the sorcery on their flanks. Halfway through he spotted Ibana, jacket bloody with a broken lance in one hand and a smallsword in the other, having formed up several dozen unhorsed cavalry into a loose circle, which was in danger of being overrun by the Dynize. Styke led his remaining cavalry straight to them.

A Dynize bayonet caught Styke on the thigh just as he reached Ibana’s men. The pain came quick and hot, and he snatched the musket out of the startled soldier’s hands and swung it around, cracking it across the man’s head with enough force to break the stock. Another bayonet was thrust toward his face, barely missing his eye, and then a musket stock, swung like club, slammed into his cheek. He reeled back, seeing stars, and swung his saber blindly.

Lightning struck so close that it almost turned Styke and Amrec into a pillar of ash. Fire followed it a moment later in a column as thick as a man, crashing down from the heavens, zigzagging its way through the Dynize ranks. Infantry cooked instantly in their armor, and Styke’s nostrils were filled with the smell of burned flesh and hair. As suddenly as he’d been close to overwhelmed, the field around him was empty of enemies.

He wheeled Amrec around, looking wildly. The Blackhats, their numbers greatly reduced, had managed to make it all the way around the Dynize flank and come up behind them. One of their Privileged was bleeding from a gunshot wound, but the fingers of them both continued to twitch and gesture, raining death among the Dynize. The fire and lightning spread outward from Styke’s position in the center, bringing ruin to the entirety of the Dynize infantry with startling speed.

Styke slid from his saddle, watching the Privileged work, and limped over to Ibana. She knelt by the side of a Riflejack whom Styke did not recognize, holding the man’s hand as he writhed in pain. The better part of the Riflejack’s left arm had been taken off by an enemy sword, and the rest would have to be amputated.

Styke looked around at the carnage, wondering if he would be sick from the sudden feeling of elation that rose within his chest. The smell of the dead, the wind in his hair, the blood on his steel: It made him feel vibrant and alive like nothing in the world had ever done for him. He thought about the guards at the labor camp and all the men he’d allowed to beat and belittle him just to try to reach parole.

“I shouldn’t have stayed,” he said, breathing deeply of the smell of sorcery and burned corpses. “I should have fought my way out years ago.”