“Come on, she looks nervous,” Idrian said, tugging Tadeas by the shoulder. The pair walked to the crown of the hill, flattened days ago by the artillery crews and now filled with a number of cannons and mortars. Neat, pyramid-shaped stacks of ammunition stood beside each weapon. The crews were off having an early dinner, but their commanding officer stood alone among the big guns, waving to them eagerly.
Idrian and Tadeas joined her. “Everything okay?” Idrian asked.
Halfwing paced around a stack of cannonballs, a piece of sightglass in her ear and a looking glass in her hand. She paused, turned toward the north, and pointed at a copse of trees on a hilltop about a mile away. “I swear,” she said, “I just saw a Grent dragoon in those trees.”
Idrian took her offered looking glass and raised it to his one eye, peering through until he found the trees. It was a tight bit of landscape, all thorns and overgrown olive trees forgotten for a hundred years or more. There really wasn’t much to see – a man might be able to scramble his way into that mess, but a man and a horse?
“We should already have scouts in those trees,” Tadeas said. Idrian handed him the looking glass. Tadeas looked in that direction, then did a general sweep of the surrounding hills. “In fact, we should have a lot more scouts than I can see right now.”
Idrian looked toward the sun. It was almost six o’clock, with the winter darkness not far off and the evening already growing noticeably colder. He felt a knot form in his stomach. “Is Kerite making her move?”
“Glassdamned hard to tell,” Tadeas responded, “and if she is we shouldn’t be the ones figuring it out. Stavri should have hundreds of scouts sweeping these hills, keeping us abreast of everything. Kerite shouldn’t be able to break camp without us knowing.”
“And what was our last report?” Halfwing asked. She wrung her hands, looking nervous. Artillery officers were a strange breed, one that Idrian had never quite gotten used to: completely unfazed by massive explosions and pieces of iron moving at impossible speeds, but ready to flee at the slightest change of plans. Considering how much work it took to prepare a single artillery battery, he didn’t blame them for the latter.
“The last report,” Tadeas said, still sweeping the distant horizon with Halfwing’s looking glass, “was that Kerite had made camp and was conducting practice drills. No communication. No betrayal of her plans. That was around noon.”
The itch behind Idrian’s godglass eye only grew more severe. Maybe Halfwing had imagined the dragoon, or even spotted a single Grent scout hiding out in that copse. Maybe Kerite was still several miles distant, running her troops through their paces for a morning battle. That was what any traditional commander would do. But Kerite wasn’t a traditional commander.
“Give me that glass,” he said, taking the looking glass from Tadeas. He fixed it back on that copse, then slowly moved it down the side of the hill. What he saw then made his blood freeze: there was a woman in black Ossan uniform, mostly hidden by the tall grasses, crawling her way down the side of the hill. Once Idrian had found the soldier he could see the trail of broken grass behind her. The grass was bloody, there was no mistaking it. “Halfwing, get your crews back to their stations.”
“What’s going on?” Tadeas asked.
Idrian handed him back the looking glass once more. “Look down the hill from that copse. Glassdamned Kerite is killing our scouts.” He was running before he’d finished the sentence. “Braileer!” he bellowed. “Prepare my armor! I–” He was cut off by the sight of something out of the corner of his eye. Turning, he watched as a whole company of dragoons suddenly emerged from behind the trees, coming over the hill and thundering directly toward their position.
Tadeas was already screaming at the top of his lungs. “Sound the alarm! Kerite is upon us! Every soldier to their post!”
The dragoons swept down the hill and across the valley, and rode hard to flank the artillery battery before Tadeas’s troops were in position. Idrian was half in his armor, Braileer fiddling with the buckles, when they heard the first mine go off. Idrian counted four more in quick succession, their blasts mixed with the bone-chilling sound of screaming horses and then followed by an irregular exchange of gunfire. By the time he returned, joining Tadeas in a commander’s dugout just below the artillery, the hillside was covered with at least fifty dead or wounded dragoons. The rest had already turned tail, withdrawing beyond the range of the Ironhorns’ muskets.
They wore orange-and-white Grent uniforms. Kerite, it seemed, had sent her Grent employers to do her dirty work.
The small victory turned sour in Idrian’s mouth as he realized that, without Mika’s mines, those dragoons would likely have overrun the hilltop before a proper defense could be mustered. It was a masterful flanking maneuver. He might have pointed out how well Mika’s positioning had worked to Tadeas if not for the fact that infantry now poured over the hills to the west. Those directly across from the Ironhorns wore the orange and white of the Grent, while those attacking their opposite flank flew the blue-and-green mercenary flag of Kerite’s Drakes.
Idrian searched for Braileer, only to find the young armorer hurrying toward him carrying his hammerglass buckler and smallsword. “You,” Idrian told him, “haven’t seen open battle yet. Keep your eyes on me at all times, but don’t follow if I break rank. This isn’t street fighting – no hanging on my heels to watch my back. Remain here with Tadeas. Be ready with bandages and extra cureglass if I’m forced to retreat.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Good. Don’t die. I’m starting to like you.” Idrian found a lump of wax in his pocket and handed half of it to Braileer. Below the Ironhorns, the Ossan forces sounded the alarm, soldiers scrambling over each other to reach their positions while cartloads of glass were expedited to a spot just behind the front lines, where glassdancers readied themselves for the battle.
“We should have bloody well known better,” Tadeas swore. “Attacking right at twilight. Glassdamned Kerite caught us with our pants down. This is gonna be bloody as piss.”
It was the last thing Idrian heard clearly before stuffing wax into his ears, mere moments before the first cannon fired over his head. The blast shook him to the core, making his muscles hurt, and the sorceries mixing in his helmet allowed him the visual dexterity to follow the cannonball as it arced across the valley and slammed into the center of the Grent formation. The ball did not skip as it should, embedding itself into the hillside, and he could hear Halfwing’s muffled shouts as she ordered corrections. Within moments the entire artillery battery was thumping away.
The glassdancers began their own attack just moments later. Sheets of glass, squares wider than a man was tall, shot from the hillside, propelled by invisible sorcery like kites high into the air, where they broke into sword-sized shards and began to fall on the Grent infantry. Each sheet could kill a whole platoon if undefended, but when the shards came to within a dozen feet of the infantry’s heads they were redirected harmlessly away by Grent’s own glassdancers.
The Grent infantry moved at an astonishing pace, barely fazed by either the glassdancers or the artillery attacks. Not even a glassdamned waver, and that alone made Idrian nervous.
The Grent closed to within firing distance of the Ossan line, where they pulled up suddenly and let off a withering barrage at the still-addled Ossan soldiers. Black smoke rose from both sides. A trumpet sounded, and breachers suddenly burst from the Grent formation. Idrian felt his eyes widen in astonishment as he counted – ten, twenty. He lost track at thirty and there might have been four times that many. They crossed the hundred yards between the two armies at a sprint that would make a racehorse jealous. In moments they were among the Ossan infantry, engaging Idrian’s fellow breachers at close quarters.