The Wings of Mercury - Chapter 26

Northern Wistla River

A cascade of animals running down the river, away from the alien chugging sound, preceded the sight of the metal behemoth coming round the riverbend, smoke puffing away out of its three metal stacks, making so much noise that it would be impossible for the ship to sneak up on anything.

Even with the noise and the fear it caused the local wildlife, Captain Leodgar was happy with his charge. He’d even admit, to himself if not others, that it was an ugly beast. A flat button with an elongated triangle jutting out of it, rounding off at the top, a dark brown where the steel had already started to change its colors. It was low in the water and dark, but to Leodgar, it still felt sleek and dangerous.

And that was riding inside of it. He couldn’t imagine what others would think, seeing the row of cannons sticking out the side, waiting for their first target. He’d considered this day for the weeks since he’d been given command of the ship for its terrifying journey along the coast and into the mouth of the Wistla river for its long journey into the continent.

The curiosity and mild confusion had not been what he’d expected, but it was what he was getting.

The enemy force was where the mounted scouts sent from the Consul’s army had said they’d be. According to their local guide, this was the first crossable ford north of the council’s army, at least in the fall. There were apparently other spots in the height of summer when the river dropped to its lowest point, but the enemy missed their moment to have access to those.

Leodgar had been watching the area he’d been told they’d be through the spyglass as his vessel rounded the bend and they came into view. Instead of charging forward or running away, the men had paused, as if confused by what they were seeing and trying to figure out what to do next.

By the time he’d pulled even with them and slowed the engines, the majority of the men had dismounted and formed into lines, apparently guessing correctly that his boat was a new form of Britannian warfare. Of the roughly seven hundred soldiers coming toward the ford, five hundred had been infantry, who’d dismounted and formed tight firing lines before starting forward, along with two small cannons, each being pulled by a single horse, following along either side of the infantry formation. The remaining two hundred cavalry hung back, perhaps letting the infantry spring this trap and save themselves the pain.

If so, they were smarter than their friends on foot.

“Load shells and prepare to fire, but hold. Wait for my command,” he called down to the gun deck below, hearing the gunner captain relay his words to the men working each cannon, which was more like the ones on board navy ships than those now being used by the legions.

Leodgar allowed himself a smile. This iron monstrosity wasn’t the only thing being tested today. Although the consul had gotten the first shipment of the new shells, he’d been loaded up with them as well before sailing out of Britannia and, as far as he was aware, the legions had not actually deployed them in combat yet.

Although their inventor, Hortensius, had been kind enough to give Leodgar a demonstration before he sailed, the Germanic still wasn’t sold on having stack after stack of powder-filled metal tubes with charges just waiting to go off. He also wasn’t convinced that these things would really do what he was told they would when used in combat and not on a predetermined range.

But they said use them, so he used them.

Finally situating themselves out, the infantry began moving forward. Leodgar watched and waited, listening to the water hitting the metal hull, estimating when they would enter the correct range to begin.

And then they crossed the imaginary line, where they were far enough to allow multiple salvos if they decided to come forward, but close enough they would have to endure several before they made it out of range.

“Open fire!”

The men had been standing by, constantly watching the range and updating, cannons loaded and fuses at the ready. The order was barely out of his mouth when the first cannon roared. The Isarna shuddered as her guns spoke, belching flame and smoke. Leodgar tracked the first shell’s arc through his spyglass.

The shell struck dead center in the eastern formation. Nothing happened for the briefest of moments, enough for him to think about nothing happening and to wonder what went wrong. Before he completed the thought, however, a follow-on series of tremendous booms sounded, as the place where the shells landed burst into a ball of fire, sending men … and parts of men, lying in all directions.

And then the next shell went off, and then the next. He had five cannons on each side, and all five impacted along the enemy line, only to explode moments later. The orderly eastern lines dissolved into chaos as men were flung about like rag dolls.

And then his cannons finished reloading and fired again, more shells slamming into the tightly massed men. Even away from the explosion, men fell as the shards of metal from the shell became bullets, ripping across the open ground and into unarmored men.

“By the gods,” muttered Leodgar, lowering his spyglass.

He’d seen the demonstration, but this... this was something else entirely. He’d seen rifles fired and marveled at their destructive ability, unheard of ten years ago. This was another whole level of death.

Leodgar was again surprised by the enemy. Instead of running for the hills, the men who survived closed up their ranks, forming up again over the bodies of their fallen comrades and marching forward.

It was impressive, or it would have been if not for the few who tried to run. Wild men who threw their weapons on the ground and made for the rear only to be cut down by what Leodgar guessed were officers placed there for just that sort of moment. A brutal system that certainly made for men brave in the face of combat, but would ultimately backfire on them.

“Keep firing!” Leodgar ordered. “Don’t let up!”

The gun crews needed no encouragement. Sending more shells toward their lines before his command was even finished.

The enemy must have gotten as close as they needed, because horses carrying the two much smaller cannons came charging up and turning around, unhooking quickly, leaving the guns in place to begin firing as the horses were pulled back, out of the danger area. It was a quick movement, and very well timed.

And futile, although the enemy didn’t know that. His ship may not be invulnerable, but those were very small caliber pieces, smaller than any of those carried by their own legions and would throw a comparatively small shot. Seeing how quickly they could move and deploy, he could see the value of the cannon, able to keep up with mounted infantry, but he felt relatively safe in his metal box.

He wasn’t convinced his ship was invulnerable, and given round shot by ship-sized weapons, he worried the metal would not be enough to prevent penetration, but he wasn’t facing that here. He, in turn, not having to carry his guns, had large shipboard cannons, allowing him to fire the largest primed shells available.

It was not an even match-up.

A puff of smoke erupted from one of the enemy guns. Moments later there was a loud clang as the round connected. From this side, he couldn’t even see where the rounds hit.

The infantry must have also finally gotten to range, because they stopped and let loose a volley, creating more pings, although none enough to really reverberate like the cannon shot did. They, however, had a little more luck. A gunner screamed from below where a shot must have found a lucky opening, getting a bullet through and into one of his men. Leodgar hoped the man was not too badly hit, but he had to trust his subordinates to deal with it. For now, his attention was focused on the guns, which fired another salvo, which again banged off the hull.

“Silence those two guns,” he called out.

If the rifles could get a lucky shot, so could the cannon. They may not be able to get through the hull, but they could break something, like one of the smoke stacks, which would require the boat to stop and repair before continuing its patrol.

His men’s training did them well, although it was a lot easier to hit a target with an exploding shell than solid shot, since for these shells, close was good enough. After four rounds, they got close enough to the first gun, landing a few steps away, the blast pushing the small cannon in its side and shredding the men working it.

The other cannon fared even worse as a shell hit almost directly on it, setting off the cannon’s small supply of powder, making a much larger display as the barrel flung high into the air, sailing end over end, until it crash-landed right behind the enemy infantry. Close enough to spook several of them, but not close enough to do Leodgar’s job for him.

The enemy paused, clearly rethinking things. They looked on the verge of breaking, and Leodgar was about to put them out of their misery when their cavalry decided they’d seen enough. They were not foolish enough to tackle the ugly thing in the water and were going to try and make a run for it across the ford.

Leodgar knew from having just sailed over it that it had a deep section in the middle that would probably be easily fordable in the summer but would leave them up to their necks now.

It had been a tight fit for him, so much so that he could hear the protective casing of the propeller scraping against the ground as he’d passed through and knew that, following this engagement, he would have to have the mechanics he brought with him look at it for possible repair.

On horseback, however, they might just make it across.

“Rotate portside! Bring the other broadside to bear and load canister,” he ordered.

It seemed unlikely the cavalry knew he could get around so quickly; otherwise, they may not have tried to make the attempt. But what they saw was that there was almost no wind, he had no sail, and the ford was far enough that he would not be able to get his gun on an angle from his current position.

They had gone into a full gallop when the ship began to swing into its spot, pivoting and bringing the full broadside to bear. They were committed, hoping they could get across before his guns opened up.

Their hopes, however, did not come true.

The riverboat’s guns roared to life once more, but this time instead of explosive shells, they vomited forth a hail of lead balls and scrap metal. The effect on the tightly packed cavalry was catastrophic.

Horses screamed in terror and agony as the canister tore through their ranks. Riders were thrown from their mounts, some bisected by the brutal fire. Those who weren’t killed outright thrashed in the bloodied waters of the ford, drowning in the water, unable to stand or crushed by the panicking beasts.

The cavalry’s charge faltered, and then fell apart completely as a crash of musketry exploded from the tree line. The Britannian infantry who met them at the mouth of the river and sailed down holding on the outside of the boat had been dropped off just before they crossed into this stretch of river, hurrying into place while the Isarna opened the engagement.

Leodgar hadn’t been sure they would have gotten into place in time, but he was happy to see they had. Even with his salvo, there had still been a chance that some might have made it across and into the Britannian rear.

That one volley had ended that chance permanently.

And then a second volley crashed out, hammering into the horses and men. The few dozen survivors still on their horses had had enough. They turned and fled, abandoning their fallen comrades and the infantry still in the field to the mercy of the river and the Britannians. They galloped back towards the distant hills, giving up the fight for good.

Leodgar turned his attention back to the infantry, which had begun to move forward again. To do what, he did not know. They’d seen how quickly his boat could swing around. Did they think he could not reverse course just as quickly? They were almost to the river bank and were forming into a firing line again.

They only got a single volley before his ship traversed again.

“Canister!”

His men were good. They had already anticipated him, the first cannon firing almost as soon as he ordered it. It took one broadside to break them. They had already been decimated by the explosive shells. The canister finished them.

The orderly ranks dissolved into chaos as men began to flee in all directions.

The few officers in their rear ranks who tried to reestablish control were literally ripped to pieces by their own men. Some made desperate attempts to reach their horses, left behind when they’d dismounted to form their firing lines. Others simply ran for the hills, throwing aside weapons and equipment in their haste to escape.

“Cease fire,” Leodgar ordered, seeing no need to expend more ammunition on a routed enemy.

The death was breathtaking. Nearly two-thirds of the enemy force lay dead or wounded, their bodies scattered across the field and floating in the river.

To say the enemy’s flanking attempt was over would be an understatement.

***

Eastern Germania

Ky, Bomilcar, and a horde of messengers and aides stood in a low concrete bunker far back from the front trenches. Bomilcar strained through a looking glass while Ky half-watched directly, his eyes bringing hordes of men well across the open field between his trenches and the far hills, and half through the drone floating above them.

Row after row of the enemy stretched across the open field, accompanied by a fair number of horsemen and dozens of batteries of cannon. It was a formidable force, well outnumbering his own, well armed and ready. As he watched, the wall of men began to move forward like some giant carpet being unrolled, steady and straight.

“They’re very confident,” Ky noted.

“Overconfident. We’ve beaten them in every stand-up fight, and they see our defensive works. They can’t be so foolish as to think they can just roll right over us.”

“I think they are thinking they can do exactly that. Besides, numbers often play out. They’re not the Carthaginians, but clearly they think their size can carry them past obstacles. And it might. This is a good design, but until we get our weapon more advanced and increase the rate of fire, it is not the slaughterhouse I would be.”

Bomilcar gave him a look, clearly wondering what the hell Ky was talking about, but Ky didn’t explain. He’d seen images provided to him by Sophus of the devastation of trench warfare in the early nineteen hundreds, and he’d hoped to avoid it, but the accuracy and rate of fire for the rifled muskets were too much for tight-packed firing lines to be a workable solution, but their rate of fire and how cumbersome they were precluded some of the more mobile techniques that followed on from them.

So trench warfare it was, even though Ky knew that if this proved successful, the enemy would copy the strategy and the war would bog down into static lines coupled with costly attempts to break through them.

“They’re in range,” Ky said as the enemy appeared on a pre-set line in his drone feed. “Explosive only for the time being. The first ranging.”

They had predetermined eight ranges, going so far as to test shots and mark off elevation to ensure the rounds landed exactly where they needed them.

The artillery emplacements were not far behind the command bunker, and moments later came the distinctive thud of artillery pieces coming to life. It seemed as if the entire Britannian line followed the trajectory of those sailing over the trenches and plunging toward the rows of men marching toward them, falling in the distinctive arch that marked the howitzer as something different than the traditional line-of-sight cannon.

The first impact was breathtaking as almost a dozen rounds landed at the same time, rippling in a wave of tremendous explosions, tearing into the enemy’s forward ranks. Men were thrown into the air and buried under mounds of earth ejected as blackened craters appeared. For a moment, the advance seemed to waver.

But only for a moment.

Ky cursed under his breath as the enemy reformed almost instantly, marching forward again as if they hadn’t just lost dozens, maybe hundreds, of men. The next volley hit with the same force, and the effect was the same. The enemy soldiers kept moving, absorbing the losses, seemingly without question.

The artillery had created gaps in their formations, but those gaps were swiftly closed, new bodies filling in the spaces left by the dead.

“They’re pushing through,” Bomilcar said.

“I can see that. We didn’t think this was going to break them.”

“I’d hoped it would slow them a bit. They have to know they can’t sustain those losses forever.”

“They don’t need to. They’re hoping to close the distance, get close enough where we can’t fire into them without risking our own troops. Once they reach our trenches, they’ll rely on their numbers to overwhelm us in close combat.”

“Their artillery is moving up, shouldn’t we…” Bomilcar said, watching the enemy, only to have his concern manifest before he could finish the sentence.

A line of smoke erupted from across from them as their artillery fired, sending a wave of solid shot toward the Britannian line. The effect was impressive, with spots of dirt and debris shooting into the air as each hit, but the actual damage was minimal. The rounds that got close to the trenches skipped off and landed in the rear. One got close enough to embed itself in the rear of a trench, showering men with dirt and splinters, but otherwise leaving them unscathed.

It was possible they would kill some of his men that way, but only with a lucky shot and even then, it would only be a few. Ky was more focused on what his men were doing. The individual officers had been instructed when to let their men fire and that they were to fire as quickly as they could manage aimed shots. What this meant in practice was that the first round was going to be a volley, and then become more and more scattered the more the men fired, with some reloading faster, some aiming slower and taking longer to fire. This was a target range, not a set piece battle.

The trench was set up with interspaced firing ledges where a man would step up, fire, step back, and begin reloading while the next stepped up and fired. While they had enough men to do this four times, which was theoretically long enough for the first man to have reloaded and be ready to go again, the ledges were spaced out much further apart than the traditional firing line, essentially giving them one man for every three men the enemy had in a given length. And the enemy had two rows behind that. Ky had wanted to put the ledges closer to allow for higher volumes of fire, but the numbers just didn’t work out. There weren’t enough legionnaires to man the whole length of the line in as tight of a grouping as he would have liked.

Which meant when the enemy stopped and lifted their muskets, a volley much heavier than anything the Britannians would be able to produce, let loose. Even with the artillery, there were still a staggering number of men in the field, and the weight of fire was some of the most impressive Ky had ever seen in practice.

It was also completely wasted.

Although a few men were hit here, the legionaries had been ready and for the most part ducked down as the enemy unloaded, sending their fire harmlessly ahead or crashing into the fall behind the legionnaires. It was completely ineffectual.

Then his men opened fire.

It wasn’t as thick as the enemy’s fire, but they had nowhere to hide. Whereas only one percent of their bullets hit anyone, probably forty percent of his found their target. Men fell in droves, sliced off the land as a farmer scythes wheat.

And then the next group took their spot on the ledge and fired. And then the next.

It wasn’t as thick as the volleys they’d delivered in the last engagements, but it was unanswered by the other side, and they knew it. This, if anything, caused more unease in the enemy ranks than the shells, that were still landing amongst them, did.

Their officers must have seen it too, because after only two volleys, trumpets blared and their ranks started forward at the double time, charging toward the trenches.

Had they made a straight run of it, the enemy would have still easily overrun his legionnaires in the trenches. The numbers were that far on the enemy’s side, since they had been able to concentrate while Ky had to spread his forces out.

They had gotten within a dozen steps of the trench when they ran into Ky’s first obstacle. He didn’t really know what they thought it was, but they were certainly not ready for their first introduction to barbed wire. Men screamed as the barbs pierced their skin and cut them. They found their clothes and weapons tangled in the mass of coiled, thin metal pulling at them, the wire wrapping around them.

Attempts to dislodge it or push the wire out of the way ended in bloodied hands now unable to hold a rifle. The whole time with the men behind them, who were still being shot by rifles and some even hit with shrapnel from the artillery, pushed them, wanting to be to safety, sending their friends in the front falling into the twisted metal.

It became a mess of wire and bodies, the entire advance faltering to a halt.

The few that managed to get lucky and scrape and fight their way through the wire found the third element of Ky’s defense, as their foot pushed down on what might have felt like a soft piece of dirt, until they were thrown back as the ground itself exploded.

They had no way of knowing that just beneath the ground, put in a shallow dugout divot, was a wooden box filled with shrapnel and gunpowder and a flimsy thin top with a pin in it. When enough weight was applied, the pin would puncture into a percussion cap, setting off the simple mine. Legs were blown off and men shredded by the small metal bits crammed on top of the gunpowder.

That was enough. Between wire, mine, and rifle, they’d had enough and began to retreat.

Still, it was more orderly than Ky would have wanted. They were beaten, but not broken or routed. And Ky needed them broken.

“Hold fire until we see what they’re doing,” Ky ordered.

His cannon could still reach their artillery, but they had pulled their guns back as well, so that they would be at perhaps longish range. The arc of his guns, with a parabolic arc, gave his weapons actually shorter range than their direct line fire. That would change as he could up the caliber of his weapons and get a better quality gunpowder to fire it, but with black powder, there were limits to what he could do.

He also didn’t have unlimited ammo to throw at the enemy. Hortensias had worked wonders to produce an impressive number of these fused shells, but they’d had only a month and a half of production time, and even a miracle worker to do enough.

“Do you think they are considering pulling back and attacking elsewhere?” Bomilcar asked.

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. I think they try and push through one last time. They took heavy losses, but they still have an overwhelming amount of men. I think they try and compress that down and force through.”

“That would be a death sentence.”

“Maybe,” Ky said again, but he wasn’t sure.

If they were going to retreat, it seemed most likely that they would do move soon. The longer they stayed, the more the odds were in favor of another attempt.

He was surprised when, instead, the artillery opened up again.

“What are they doing? They can’t seriously think their artillery’s going to do any better than the last time.”

Ky didn’t answer right away, because something was different this time. A lot of the rounds buried themselves in the field well in front of the Britannian trenches, a few impacted the back of the trench, but the majority hit just in front of the trench, among and near the barbed wire.

The more cannon that opened up, the more that impacted the same perhaps two-hundred meter stretch of trench. The ground erupted as shots ripped through the barbed wire defenses, sending sharp, twisted coils into the air. Worse, a chain reaction began as several of the mines detonated, triggered by the artillery strikes landing near them. Those mines set off other mines in a cascade.

“They aren’t trying to hit our men at all,” Ky said. “They’re clearing a path for another assault.”

“Really?” Bomilcar said, staring hard at the area being impacted, which had so much debris and smoke that it was difficult to see what was happening without Ky’s advantages.

“Yes. And I think it’s going to work,” Ky said before turning to a messenger. “Signal the reserves. Four centuries forward now. They’re to hold in the communication trench.”

The messenger sprinted off without a word, leaving Ky and Bomilcar to continue watching the battlefield. The methodical destruction of the barbed wire was relentless. Every few seconds, another mine detonated, taking out another stretch of wire and softening the ground for the next assault.

Ky unsheathed his sword as he headed to the door, only to stop as Bomilcar grabbed his arm.

“We can’t afford to lose you, Ky. If you go out there, you’re putting the entire command at risk.”

“This is the moment, Bomilcar. The battle rests on this. If they break through now, we’ll be overrun. We hold them here, or it’s over.”

The two men looked at each other. Ky could feel his lictore watching him, but he’d made it clear in battle he was a commander, and they could not keep him from danger.

With a nod, Bomilcar released him.

“Direct the artillery,” Ky said. “We need to lay down fire right behind this next wave, break up their reinforcements before they reach the trench.”

Bomilcar nodded and gave a quick salute, that Ky returned before turning and leaving the bunker for the communication trench.

Ky reached the communication trench as the reserve centurions came running up. The pounding along the front lines was loud, forcing Ky to scream as he gathered their officers.

“We hold here for the moment. Stack rifles and pull swords. This will be close-in work,” Ky said.

When they made their move, the trenches were going to be backed. Rifles made good melee weapons in a pinch, but with that many people, getting room to swing when it was shoulder to shoulder would be tough.

The gladius, though, was perfect for the situation.

The officers went to get the word passed and the rifles stacked while Ky watched the enemy from the drone feed as the enemy started forward again. The artillery kept its barrage, even after the wire was all but whipped out, because it kept the men in that section off their ledges, heads down to avoid the waves of death pounding just in front of their lines. His men to either side were still able to put fire into the infantry, who were moving at double time, but not enough to hurt them seriously.

By the time the enemy artillery silenced, their infantry were only a few short meters from the trench. Close enough that when the men in the trenches uncovered themselves and climbed up on their firing trenches, they saw legs and bayonets, pushing them back as the enemy swarmed into the trench. As predicted, the amount of people in this section made it all but impossible to swing a rifle. Some men dropped theirs entirely, choosing to grapple, kick, and punch as the fighting became chaotic and brutal.

Ky was watching behind them, before he committed his reserves, to the field where more enemy were coming up. Bomilcar had done his duty as a hail of death fell upon them. Not just explosive rounds tearing gouges out of the earth and ripping men to pieces, but the timed fuse airburst rounds, which were even more effective in tight packed groans, the shrapnel coming down like rain, killing all who it touched.

The second wave, who were coming in packed together, aiming for the cleared section of trench line, were a perfect target. The plan might have been good, allowing them to break into the trench, but they wouldn’t do it a second time, not having exposed themselves so badly to artillery fire.

“Let’s move!” Ky shouted, taking off at impressive speeds, letting the men follow behind him as best they could.

He could hear his lictors shouting, wanting him to slow down, so they could stay with him, but he could see his men fighting and dying, and he wasn’t going to let them do it alone.

Ky turned the corner of the main trench line and accelerated, bounding and dodging past men waiting for their turn on the firing line or heading toward the fight in the trenches, as they consolidated down into the melee.

Ky cleared the top of the trench as he leapt high in the air, coming down in the middle of the fight. The men around him looked shocked at his sudden appearance.

The quarters were tight. Ky couldn’t do any bigger slashing moves and kept his gladius close to his body, stabbing out with short thrusts. For most of his men trying similar moves, they were limited in the damage they could do, as it was hard to get enough leverage into the sword with so little room to work.

Ky did not have that problem; his sword punched straight through the astonished man who’d been staring at him, mouth agape, at his sudden appearance.

Ky knew this was a dangerous position. With men this close in, he wasn’t going to be able to block well. The only solution to that was to kill fast enough to clear his own space.

Ky’s superior abilities transformed the confined area around him into a charnel house. His gladius moved with precision, each thrust finding a new target and ending another life. Men crumpled before him, most probably not even knowing where the blow that killed them came from before they were gone.

Ky did not fight with the sword alone. He reached out to any enemy he could find, striking out hard enough to fracture skulls or crush windpipes, sending them down gurgling, scratching at their throats trying to get air. A few, he even lifted and tossed out of the trench with one arm, sending the men hurtling over the lip of the trench, landing in broken barbed wire, to be trampled underfoot.

Within moments, Ky had carved out a small clearing around himself. The narrow confines of the trench were now strewn with broken bodies. Blood made the ground treacherous, although this was the kind of place Ky was literally bred for, his genes altered to allow him to do what evolution had not.

Behind him, he could hear the shouts of his reserves as they poured into the trench, tearing into the outer wall of fighting, killing their way to him. The advantage in numbers had suddenly shifted, and the enemy knew it. It took only a few minutes for the tide to turn. The initial surge of enemy soldiers had been blunted, and now the weight of Britannian reinforcements was beginning to tell. They weren’t giving up easily though. They fought and battled with everything they had, but the Britannians had the momentum now.

“They’re breaking!” Ky shouted, seeing the first men begin to pull themselves out of the trench and run for their lives. “Push them out!”

What was one or two became a flood as they began to scramble back up out of the side and run away. Their reinforcements, men who’d just gone through the wall of death created by the artillery, saw their nearly deranged comrades coming the other direction, many covered in blood, looking like they had traveled to the depths of the underworld.

Which in a way they had.

The reinforcements only needed a push to send them running with their broken comrades.

“Rifles!” Ky bellowed. “Cut them down!”

All along the trench line, Britannian soldiers snatched up their discarded rifles and stepped up to the firing ledges, now backed by the reinforcements. While runners were sent to retrieve stacked rifles, the extra men made themselves busy reloading weapons and doing what they could to increase the volume of fire into the new wave coming toward them.

The enemy fell by the dozens, still being hammered by artillery and now hit by a steady and increasing wall of bullets. They had had enough; their lines collapsing as they trampled the officers who’d been pushing them forward from the rear, running past their artillery and on into the hills.

Their lines were broken.

Now all that remained was to clean up the dead.