In the Shadow of Lightning

61

Despite all his careful planning, Demir’s flanks began to buckle. Kerite’s infantry were just too well-trained, their forgeglass too strong, and it made them inexorable as their charge turned into a bayoneted shoving match between them and the Foreign Legion. Demir snapped off orders, sending signal after signal, messenger after messenger. His cavalry charged from the side, but Kerite’s troops managed to turn and face them, firing a volley before presenting bayonets, forcing dragoons and cuirassiers alike to withdraw.

It was a bloody morass, shouted orders above the sound of men and horses screaming in pain, punctuated by the staccato of musket shots from either side. The air was choked with powder smoke, causing Demir’s head to spin. From his vantage point he could see his flanks tremble against Kerite’s might, and the center begin to crack. Infantry began to look over their shoulders, searching for a way to run.

Every one of them knew that to run was to die, and yet there was no overcoming the base instinct when they caught a whiff of a losing battle.

“Glassdamnit,” Demir called, “get those cuirassiers regrouped for another charge! Don’t let the dragoons get caught up with the infantry, I want them harassing from horseback. Halfwing, turn your mortars to the west. Give me shelling at two hundred yards!” He swore again, pacing the top of the barrow as the small honor guard of Ironhorn soldiers fidgeted nervously around him.

“They need more hammerglass in their spines,” Tadeas growled. “That center is going to fold!”

“I know,” Demir snapped at his uncle. He had nothing left. No reserves, no tricks. It was a slog between soldiers now, and it was clear that Kerite was winning. Out across the battlefield he caught sight of her flag, far to the rear of her soldiers, held in the middle of a group of officers on horseback. One of them, he imagined, was Kerite. As he stared at her, aloof and distant, he realized that he did have one trick left. He had himself. “Get the Grappo flag,” he told Tadeas, “and draw your sword.”

A couple of hundred soldiers. A handful of engineers. That was all he had left. Not nearly enough to turn the tide of a battle. He cursed the self-defeating thought. This was still a knife’s edge. All he needed was a breeze to send it in either direction. “Ironhorns!” he shouted. “Horns ready, hooves steady!”

“Horns ready, hooves steady!” his honor guard bellowed back.

Demir drew his sword and did the one thing that good guild-family Ossan officers weren’t supposed to do: he entered the melee. They barreled down from the barrow, slamming into the back of their own troops like hammering a brace into place to steady a cracking roof joist. A handful of short-range grenades soared over his head, exploding among the rear ranks of the Drakes. Demir was shoulder-to-shoulder with the soldiers now, the scent of mud and death burning through the powder smoke in his nostrils. He threw his sorcerous senses wide, searching for enemy glassdancers, then tossed his glassdancer egg into the air over his head.

He only shattered it into two pieces, firing them both in the same direction and guiding their path by feel rather than sight. They sped along, occasionally lagging in his mind’s eye as they tore through flesh. The sorcerous light on the edges of his senses suddenly winked out. He spun the glass shards, kept them moving. Another glassdancer died.

He was so focused on his glass that he didn’t see the enemy bayonet until it was inches from his eye. He jerked to one side and felt it slice down his cheek and snag his ear, tearing a pained scream from him. He let go of the sorcery carrying his egg and stabbed with his smallsword, ramming it through the chest of the mercenary immediately in front of him. He felt hands on his shoulders, pulling him backward, and then Tadeas stood between him and the enemy, sword swinging.

Demir pressed one hand against his face, the cool air biting at the gash. He reached out his senses to find his glassdancer egg shards once more, using them to cut through a swath of enemy troops. Messengers yelled reports from behind him, forcing him to focus on a dozen different things at once.

His response wasn’t enough. Even with the Ironhorns, they couldn’t quite push back Kerite’s troops. One side was going to break at any moment and Demir could sense it would be his. He swore and shoved and stabbed, urging on the infantry around him.

A bright light suddenly blinded him. It was just a flash, there for a split second, but he found himself reeling backward as he tried to blink the memory of it from his vision. A moment later thunder like nothing he’d ever heard split the air, rumbling over every other sound on the battlefield. He gasped, trying to pinpoint the source – and he wasn’t the only one. Even Kerite’s infantry stumbled from the light and sound, looking over their shoulders.

It took just a few moments for Demir to realize that it came from the Forge. Even from miles away, he could see that the distant rocky headland glowed with orange flame, steam shooting up into the storm still raging above it. Demir’s stomach twisted. It could only have been Thessa’s phoenix channel, and no one could survive a blast like that.

Demir swallowed the lump in his throat, looking around at the soldiers from both sides still reeling and confused. It was as if the fight had been snuffed out of all of them at once. He could use this. He thrust his sword in the sky and he bluffed. “Ossa! Our secret weapon is here! To victory!” He turned to the soldier next to him, screaming with every ounce of confidence he could muster until the victorious joy passed to the next man, then the next, then the next.

“To victory! To victory! That weapon is ours! To victory!” The call raced up and down the lines, putting steel into the Ossan soldiers, who finally began to overwhelm Kerite’s infantry.

In that moment, mere yards from the closest mercenaries, he could see the confidence die in their eyes, and they broke.