Vol 6, Chapter 23

"He's gone, damn it!" I swore and kicked the hollow cannonball.

My toe throbbed in protest.

Just as I feared, black powder was ill-suited for this kind of ammunition. A second chance to end the war was gone, and I doubted the Duke would grant a third.

Heat shimmered over the trenches, and fires still burned in places. The scorched earth smoked, gray concrete was blackened with soot. Orderlies dragged out bodies charred pitch-black, dragonfire—truly lethal, fiercer than napalm. One after another, the wounded hobbled toward healers, most of them simply those who had been nearby the positions. Nearby, soldiers were spreading the canvas of a fallen balloon. One of the gunners tried to lift the gondola with the barrel of his pneumatic rifle to pull out the soldier pinned beneath. No doubt there were broken bones, and he was in a hurry… but really, he ought to have treated such rare, scarce weapons with more care.

"Should we prepare for a counterattack?" Kurt's voice pulled me from my thoughts.

"No. It makes no sense," I cut him off.

Since yesterday, the enemy's forces had only grown. Without artillery preparation, there was no point in even trying. Not to mention all the light cannons had been shipped off to the Goblin Forest, while the heavy cannons on the hills… would hardly be useful. If loaded with grapeshot, their spread would grind our advancing troops into the dirt just the same as the enemy. Cannonball would be far less effective against enemy infantry. And then there was his cavalry, which he could spring on us mid-march. Against regular cavalry, rifles might suffice. Against chimeras—without cannons, it was folly.

But the main point… there was no sense in it. The moment we advanced, the Duke would simply fly away. We might crush his army, but he would raise another. And another. Until he died, we would be forced to gnaw through his lands for years, building defensive line after defensive line… Or resign ourselves to sending in regiment after regiment, suffering thousands of losses, hoping that barely trained peasants with muskets could die at a tolerable exchange rate. That is, taking with them to the grave enough of their equally barely trained peasants, only armed with axes and spears. And what was "tolerable"? One to five? One to ten? No census had ever been taken. Even my own mobilization resource I knew only approximately and that, only thanks to Tamilla's meticulousness. What then of the Duke's?

And again, even if we managed it, even if our army shattered peasant hordes again and again, even if we laid rails and solved supply… it would still be rivers of blood. Every man killed by our bullets was still our loss. That man would no longer grow food, no longer work the factories. By the time we reached the Duke and leveled his last castle, all we'd inherit would be scorched, depopulated lands. What use were they to me, when our own north was already sparsely populated?

Even the lands we already had could still be settled and resettled. If only we had the food.

Food was a problem, thankfully a somewhat more distant one. I had heavy doubts we would again be able to buy grain from the south so easily next year…

A shiver ran down my spine, ice clamped the back of my head.

I bolted uphill, shoving soldiers aside. They turned in confusion, glancing about for the source of the strange sensation. Orderlies froze, even the wounded fell silent for a moment. Silence.

Intuition thundered like an alarm. I burst out at the artillery positions. The battlefield lay bare as a palm, drenched in blood. Grass painted crimson, scarlet puddles beneath heaps of bodies torn apart by grapeshot… shrinking, the grass regaining its green color.

The blood wasn't evaporating. It was simply disappearing. On the edge of hearing came invocations to the One, barely audible over the drums of my heart. My gaze skimmed the remains. Where? The priest wasn't rising to his full height—he meant to die usefully.

The Abyss. At this range, I could only tell he was somewhere below.

"Astarot!?"

No answer. Ringing emptiness.

"Fire all batteries! Into the sector! Grapeshot!"

The nearest cannon belched flame, steel chains straining to absorb the recoil and keep it from rolling back too far. The crash and the ringing in my ears disoriented me. Metal balls punched through bodies, tossing sprays of blood. The neighboring hill also vanished in smoke—even without orders, the gunners joined in. Guns on the lower tier roared, and even from the trenches came ragged musket fire. Thick smoke swallowed the view, hiding how the heavy shot churned remains into earth.

My guts still shook from the blast, but the loaders were already cracking open a chest, hauling out a powder bag. The cannon, still hot from battle, was swabbed hastily, only as long as it took two men to carry the charge to the muzzle. The tray. A tightly bound sack of grapeshot. They rolled the gun into position as the gunner pricked the bag and poured powder into the touch pan. The aimer didn't even try to aim, through the dense smoke there was nothing to see anyway.

Bang! The cannon spewed grapeshot in roughly the same direction. The hill shook.

I listened inward. Slowly, the foreboding ebbed away.

It let go. It seemed we had made it in time.

"Cease fire! And tell them too, to cease fire," I ordered with a smile, waving toward the neighboring hill that was still shooting.

The cannonade faded, replaced by cheers, but… I kept smiling and congratulating everyone while inwardly I remained grim. Yes, the battle was over, we had repelled not just an assault but even a dragon raid—losing only a balloon, a couple dozen men, and a heap of powder.

Yet, having nearly been struck down by a god, I understood clearly: there was no point in hoping to win by numbers. The Duke still had a trump card that allowed him to trade lives more profitably than us. Even the wretches who threw themselves uselessly at our defenses were laying the groundwork for an even stronger strike. One that I could neither shield myself from, nor protect others against.

Oh yes. The Duke was not nearly as foolish as he looked. He had chosen the perfect tactic. Why bother training soldiers well, if they would serve you just as faithfully after death? The worst part was, there was no defense against it. Magical attacks could still be countered with stronger magic, banished to the Abyss, weakened with isolite, or quenched through clerical techniques. But a Church strike could not be deflected.

The Abyss. We had spent three times more powder to kill a single priest than to kill several thousand men. Such waste did not sit well with me. Perhaps I would have to increase nitric acid production. I need… I need…

Damn.

"Kurt! Burn the bodies. No, wait. Prepare the pyres, but do not light them until nightfall. Abyss!"

I paced the dugout nervously. Night was approaching. Five or six hours until sunset. We were strong while we could see the enemy, but blind us and our firepower would drop sharply. We needed patrols, sentries, and above all a better source of light than torches and bonfires. The Duke still had more than enough forces to keep attacking.

But what was truly frightening was not that he could creep up in the dark and finally press into melee, where he had the advantage. That was nothing.

The real terror lay with those vile fanatics whose rituals resembled blood magic more than holy rites. How did it work? Could he simply butcher everyone in his camp and flatten our defenses to the ground? How close did they need to be to the blood? What if we failed to kill the priest invoking divine wrath in time? How great would the damage be?

So many questions, so few answers.

What if he struck at night? What if he didn't need to stand shoulder to shoulder with his attackers? One inconspicuous man in our rear, waiting until the first ranks were ground into the dirt, then using their blood to sweep us away.

So flamethrowers were what we needed? I saw no other way to render blood useless right in the middle of battle. We needed oil. Which meant we needed drills and pumps. But we also needed light, and we needed it tonight.

"Send for Falcon. Let him fly to Eagle's Cliff and bring aluminum and copper. As much as possible, as quickly as possible."

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◆ Fortifications, Corporal Bubble's POV. ◆

Darkness fell. The pyres burned down. Smoke from enemy corpses still drifted in the air. Bubble almost pitied those poor wretches—they had simply been unlucky. He could easily imagine himself in their place.

Who better than them, who had lived under Baroness Bathori, to understand the Duke's peasants? Life in that barony had truly been miserable. The bloodthirsty bitch would not allow them to leave their villages, and every week she gathered blood from young girls. To be fair, she had little concern for taxes, often turned a blind eye to hidden tithes, and never took the very last…

Until she snapped.

At first she took the girls. As servants, or so they were told.

When it became clear that the girls never returned, and grumbling began, the Baroness showed her true face. She began taking children.

Even now, recalling it was unpleasant, but what surprised him was that his comrades' lives had been better than he thought. Yes, some lords squeezed peasants for every last stalk of grain, driving many into mercenary work. But forbidding them from leaving their village was not the norm everywhere.

Everywhere except for the refugees of the First Duchy.

If greedy lords squeezed the last stalk of grain from their peasants, the First Duke wrung people dry to the last drop. Elsewhere peasants paid a tithe from their own harvest, but in the First Duchy there was no such thing as "their own" harvest. All of it belonged to the Duke, who merely allowed the peasants to grow it and doled out rations from what was collected. Where craftsmen elsewhere might be lured with lowered taxes, sometimes even gifted land for a house, the First Duke forced them to work for food and executed them if they tried to flee. Already vast, his Duchy grew even larger and stronger by these means. Even all-pervading corruption seemed only to fuel its growth. The Duchy was rotten to the core, yet paradoxically remained monolithic.

If in another duchy a blacksmith could go bankrupt and be left without work or livelihood, in the First Duchy he always worked: until his death.

If in another duchy peasants whose food had been seized as tax starved to death, in the First they always received rations and kept working, hungry, exhausted… but alive.

It was a place no one could escape. A place where ordinary people never even thought of escape. They didn't even know life could be otherwise.

Bubble could not hate those who charged the guns in a futile attempt to kill them. He could only pity them.

That was why he understood, and why he winced when others said the peasants could have simply refused to join the army, refused to fight them. Did those people really have a choice?

"A light mage wouldn't hurt right now. Can't see a thing past the bonfires," came Noah's voice from behind. His uniform hung on him like on a rack; he had lost much weight during his time in captivity.

"Yeah, right. Those only exist in fairy tales. Better hope our lord comes up with something, he promised to," one of the soldiers replied.

"Why just fairy tales? In legends. That's no joke, that's history!"

"Ha. Maybe there are shadow mages too, starry sky mages, or chamber pot mages?"

Noah waved a hand, unwilling to argue.

"Smells good though. I could use a ham mage. Haven't had meat in ages. Once, on a hunt, I…"

"Quiet!" Bubble cut them off. "Look, the far bonfire just went out."

"Hm. It did. Maybe it just burned down?"

In the firelight, dark figures appeared. One… then another… and another.

"Alarm!"

Check the priming pan. Cock the trigger. Aim. Fire!

Reload. Behind him Kurt's orders rang out. Messages sped toward the artillery posts while hands worked on instinct. No time for pity, he could pity the enemy after the battle.

An explosion boomed directly overhead. Bubble reflexively looked up. New stars burned in the sky, bright, blindingly bright to eyes accustomed to the dark… they fell slowly, majestically downward.

A meteor shower…

Right now Bubble could believe in starry sky mages.

Light spilled onto the battlefield. Dim, like moonlight, but still light. Fewer enemies than before, fewer than had been in the evening. What were they even counting on? Surprise?

Guns thundered from the hill. Grapeshot whistled overhead, mowing down whole ranks of attackers. Bubble raised his reloaded musket and took aim at an enemy tangled in barbed wire. Fire! The recoil kicked his cuirass like a horse, the heavy bullet punched through the frail body, spraying blood from its back.

Or did it? Bubble blinked. Not a drop fell to the ground, though he had seen it…

Flash.

Blinding light seared his eyes. His temples clenched like in a vise. Dropping the musket, he fell from the firing step into the bottom of the trench.

A roar, thunder, howling… he couldn't tell what he was hearing. Couldn't tell what he was seeing. Frost locked up his body, his breath freezing as it left his throat.

Finally, it ended. Blinking furiously, he clawed his way out of the trench. A green haze clouded his vision. He didn't even know which way he crawled, only that he couldn't stay still. His hand brushed against something that crumbled. Rust. Barbed wire?

Exhaustion forced him to stop. Strength seemed to pour out of him. The green haze, however, receded, allowing him to see his surroundings. But even seeing, he couldn't comprehend what he was looking at.

Rows of barbed wire had collapsed into rust. The forward trenches looked as if they had been built not weeks ago but centuries. The ground was covered in frost. Snow fell from the sky.

Enemy bodies looked as though they had lain in a graveyard for centuries. Bones wrapped in skin. Yet to his surprise, one body still bled. A simple man, kneeling among mummies. A sword jutted from his back, its tip protruding from his chest. Drops of blood trickled down the blade and fell onto earth already blanketed with snow.

"Noah!" Bubble rasped.

"I'm here."

"Praise the On…" Bubble faltered. After today he could no longer say that. His tongue refused.

Swallowing, Bubble finished awkwardly:

"Praise the Lord, you're alive."

At the very least, they had survived another attack.

That was already something.