Since Sir Alaric will perish if we continue on the current path, here's how he can survive leading the Forlorn Hope.
Chapter V
In which KHARANGIA FALLS.
You gathered your volunteers together at eight-thirty. More than a few had come forward in response to your call for volunteers, certainly enough to form a sizeable group of fighting men.
Cazarosta had appeared five minutes later. With him were his own contingent of Dragoons, men from his own command and almost mirrors of their commander; gaunt of face and hungry of expression, their lean figures coiled tight as steel springs, their eyes burning like hot coals, lit by thoughts of blood and fire: fighting men…
No: killing men.
At eight-fifty, you and your small party moved into position at the head of the assault trenches. Parties of sappers and scouting officers stepped aside as your determined little band made their way forward. Most gave you grim looks laden with equal parts approval of your bravery and pity for the ordeal before you. Other men, the more foolish ones, gave cheers of encouragement, thinking only of the glory you are likely to win on this day, not the suffering you must endure to achieve it.
At nine-fifty, the bombardment finally stopped. For the first time in a month and a half, the army's siege guns lay silent in broad daylight. Slowly, the shroud of pulverised rock and dust began to blow away in the limp early autumn breeze, revealing the gaping wound in Kharangia's walls, the solid stone face shattered, the rubble core which filled up the bulk of the wall spilling out like guts from an open wound, over the lip of the stone and into the ditch dug between the wall itself and the edge of the glacis.
Your men waited as the echoes of the mighty guns faded away, and the dust clouds unravelled and thinned until they were indistinguishable from the overcast sky. The assault was to begin at ten o'clock, close enough behind the heels of the bombardment to give the enemy scant time to assemble their defences.
At ten o'clock, a bugle was supposed to sound ordering your men forward as the spearhead of Havenport's grand assault.
It is now eleven-thirty.
[X] So my moment of glory shall be delayed a few hours, what of it?
You are not overly worried. After all, it is not as if the assault can be called off. Not unless Havenport wishes to throw the King's entire grand strategy into disorder.
You look down at yourself, checking your sabre and pistols for the hundredth time. You look over your other equipment as well, hoping that…
[X] …my decision to wear my armour and bane-runed sword was the right one.
Well, of course, you did. You were, after all, going into an extremely dangerous situation where you would be shot at by who knows how many determined defenders. In fact, you cannot see how wearing armour impervious to musket fire from all but the closest ranges could do anything but help your chances of survival.
So there you stand, at the head of your men, clad from head to toe in shining steel plate, feeling all but invincible.
Still, the bugle does not sound. It is almost a quarter to noon now. Behind you, the trenches bubble with men in the burnt orange and particoloured cloaks of the Kentauri Highlanders, waiting for the signal to follow your small party into the breach. They have been waiting almost as long as you, and still, the signal does not come.
At least you have not spent this time idle. You have made yourself busy.
[X] I reordered my men to make the best use of their personal skills.
In the end, it might not have made much of a difference. What use is a man's skill with his hands if he is cut in half by grapeshot before he can even crest the glacis? Still, you tried your best to ensure that every man could do his utmost. It might not make much of a difference, but the difference it could make may be just enough.
"Campos!" You called out, spying a familiar face: Lieutenant Blaylock's troop Sergeant, the senior NCO in the party, and one of the few who had served with you since your very first command.
"Sir?" The Sergeant replied as he stepped forward, his expression expectant. "Need something?"
"Get their attention," you said. "There are some things I'd like to sort out."
Campos had the other Dragoons ready in moments. You picked out other familiar faces and called up their records in your mind. Their entries in the books had included each man's previous occupation, and you had put that carefully memorised knowledge to fine use. You picked out two of your men, a sullen young redhead and a stout-chested Callindrian. "Barrell, Leggero; you were poachers, were you not?"
You pointed at the carbines slung on their backs. "Any good with those?"
The redheaded boy stammered nervously at the mention of poaching, leaving the other to answer.
"We was hunters, sir," Leggero replied, his tone insistent, "and I could take the head off a coney from six hundred paces."
"Excellent, then the two of you shall cover the rest of us as we cross the ditch and assault the breach."
There were others that had applicable skills too. You assigned ex-quarrymen to climb up the steep side of the ditch first and former thugs and toughs to be the first to engage the enemy up close. After a few minutes, you were sure you would get the most out of your men.
Now, it rests upon you to make sure that proves enough.
A distant sound shakes you out of your thoughts: two long, drawn-out peals of brassy music, then those same two notes, repeated in rapid succession, once, twice, three times.
There it is, the call to battle.
You draw your sword and wave it over your head, letting the bright steel catch in the cloud-shrouded sun before the runes upon its blade flare to life and the blade bursts into flame. "Forlorn Hope! Forward!"
With anxious haste, you and your small group of men clamber over the tops of the assault trenches. Within seconds, the distant parapets of Kharangia's walls blossom in a sheet of white smoke. The belated crack of distant musketry fills your ears, joined by the shining of lead bullets flying through the air around you and the hollow smack of those same bullets kicking up craters in the open ground. Not one Antari ball strikes home, and you thank the Saints for the foolishness of your enemies; at three hundred paces, a man firing a smoothbore musket would have almost no chance of hitting another man. At such a range, the Antari would be better off hurling live chickens at your grey-green-clad vanguard.
The next volley, though…
The next volley will come when you are much closer, for unless your foe is entirely unschooled in the process of reloading, you will not have the time to reach Kharangia's walls before the Antari are ready to fire again.
Indeed, the enemy manages to fire again when you are just fifty paces short of the ditch. Their second volley is more ragged than the first, but at a little more than a third of the range, it is far more effective.
Four of your men fall, but not all of them are dead. One man thrashes as he hits the ground, crumpling slowly, holding himself up with the fleeting strength in his arms. They scream as they fall, and some do not stop screaming even after they hit the ground.
Some of your men turn to you, their expressions questioning, uncertain, fearful. If you leave your wounded out in the open, they will very likely die, but can you really spare the men to carry them back to safety?
[X] We must leave the wounded and press onwards.
"Dragoons! Advance!" You shout, even as some of your men begin to falter and gravitate towards the fallen forms of their comrades.
"I said advance!" You repeat, this time directing your voice entirely at the handful of men now preparing to haul one of the wounded dragoons back.
One of them looks up at you, his features a mask of anguish. "He's still alive, sir! Please!" The stricken man moans in pain as his fellows begin to pick him up.
"I cannot spare any of you, not even to carry the wounded back," you answer, trying to keep your voice as even as possible. "We must leave him."
The others now look up as well, their expressions ranging from shock to anger. "But sir! We can—"
"You will leave him, sir!" You shout, your frustration getting the better of you. "You will leave him, and you will advance this instant, for I shall not stand here waiting for you to remember your duty whilst the enemy makes ready to fire again!"
One of the men says something under his breath that you were clearly not meant to hear. The others take one look behind them and then stand back up, their eyes full of hate not for the enemy who had struck their fellow down but for you who had ordered them to leave him behind.
The other wounded are being left, as well. Cazarosta is making sure of it, his cold glare stopping any man who might think otherwise. From twenty paces away, he looks up and meets your eyes. Perhaps he has recognised that you have made the same decision as him, for he nods to you, a subtle admission of approval, before putting his eyes forward and continuing the advance.
The glacis looks deceptively benign as you and your men approach it: a shallow, gently sloped surface of stone rising to the edge of the fortification ditch. The angle of its slope, designed more for deflecting cannon balls than repulsing infantry, is certainly no real obstacle. Still, you have a premonition of great danger in the back of your head as you lead your men forward.
You are perhaps fifteen paces away from the foot of the slope when your premonition solidifies into a gentle but insistent tugging on the edges of your mind. You focus on the stone surface in front of you.
Then you see it. The faint traces of blue, the rippling tinges of colour in the corner of your mind's eye, the seals of red wax set into cleverly concealed recesses in the stone surface.
The entire glacis is riddled with banefire traps. The second your men set foot on the stone surface, they will be incinerated by a triggered burst of eldritch flame.
You must call your men to a halt; only banebloods can see the flickering lines of pale fire that trace across the stone. To the baneless like your enlisted men or deathborn like Cazarosta, the glacis before you must appear perfectly safe.
You suppose you must lead them through the thin lanes of safety between the bane patterns, being the only one capable of seeing the peril. Yet such a course of action would almost certainly single you out as the greatest target as you picked your way across the exposed glacis.
Perhaps you could think of some other way…
[X] I lead the rest of the party through the safe lanes.
"Dragoons! Form up behind me and follow my steps exactly; all our lives may depend upon it."
It only takes a few moments for your men to shuffle into a rough file behind you. As soon as you find them ready, you begin to move forward, carefully skirting the patterns of banefire which trace their way across the face of the glacis. Step by step, you slowly work closer to the far edge of the sloped surface. The gaps between the tangle of wards and magickal snares are narrow, a pace from one edge to the other at their widest. You keep towards the centre as much as possible and hope that your men do not misstep or slip on the smooth stone.
You are almost at the edge now. The faint glow of banefire is all around you, filling the edges of your mind's eye with a green tint and tugging your thoughts in every direction. The men behind you will have to work their way through the nightmarish maze as well, guided by their own baneblooded officers, but that, at least, is not your problem.
You are only a few steps from the lip of the glacis when the Antari open fire. Musket balls slam into the stone around you, leaving the smooth blocks pockmarked. You feel some great force send you reeling backwards. Your ears are assailed by a sharp metallic ringing, and your entire body vibrates like a tin drum. You stagger down the shallow slope half a step before catching yourself and regaining your balance.
Only a moment later do you realise that you had been hit by almost half a dozen Antari musket balls and that your marvellous bane-hardened armour stopped them cold. With a renewed feeling of security, you urge your men onwards with a wave of your blazing sword, leading them over the glacis and into the ditch beyond.
The ditch itself is quite shallow, perhaps only one and a half times the height of a man. Still, as unused as you are to balancing in plate armour, you land more heavily than you had hoped.
Thankfully, you do not land on the stone that would have originally made up the bottom of the dry moat but instead on a soft bed of who knows how many years' worth of rubbish and sewage. You'll have bruises, you get the distinct impression that one of your ribs has been broken, and the foul-smelling ooze splashed all over your armour is most unpleasant. Still, you suppose it could have been much worse.
The dull crack of a musket shot rings out from the wall just moments after you land. Two more soon follow in rapid succession. It seems that the Antari are abandoning any attempt at volley fire now.
Your dragoons do not hesitate to respond. A carbine fires from the lip of the glacis. There is a sharp shriek from the top of the wall as one of the distant enemies slumps over the parapet. Another shot comes a moment later, and a second enemy pitches backwards.
The enemy continues to shoot back, but now their fire is furtive and even more inaccurate. Only one or two of your men do not make it over the top of the glacis and into the ditch.
As soon as the last of your men make it down, you begin to move forward, wading through the marshy, knee-deep muck, carbines, and pistols held high to avoid the viscous, inky material that pools around your high boots with every step.
Enemy fire comes from all sides. From the massive bastions to your left and right, the Antari assail your small party with an unceasing hail of musketry. From ahead, yet more defenders unload their muskets directly into the face of your men.
All around you, the black sludge is churned into frenzied sprays by the impacts of lead balls. With every passing moment, more of your men fall. Some are killed instantly by lucky shots to the head or heart. Others expire slowly, painfully, screaming as they crumple into the muck to be devoured by the dark sludge. You must keep moving forward - you have no choice. You cannot exactly climb back up to the glacis now. So you forge onwards at the head of your rapidly diminishing force into the storm of enemy fire.
It takes the barest glance around you to realise just what fearful losses the Antari have inflicted upon your men. Still, you have at least two dozen dragoons on their feet and ready for action, and only the breach itself lies before you now.
Your men, and the breach. Nothing else matters now. As far as your immediate concerns go, nothing else exists. The main body of Havenport's army is far behind you, the city which they are marching to take far beyond. As far as you are concerned, they might as well be in Takara or Kian.
There is only the dull shape of the breach rising out of the powder smoke before you, the small group of men with which you must take that breach, and the enemy fire which rains down from every direction. It is a pocket miniature of darkness and death, and the only way out is forward.
"Dragoons! Into the breach!"
The first of your men scramble up out of the ditch and onto the piles of rubble and broken stone. In a previous life, they were quarrymen, lumberjacks, scouts; men used to climbing uneven ground, the men you have chosen specifically for the task.
A shout of alarm rings out from the top of the walls. The Antari respond quickly. Dark figures scramble out of the shadows of the wall, some with swords and the clubbed ends of their muskets, others with bayonets, but they are too late. Your best climbers have already regained their footing in the pit of the breach, and they meet the defenders with sabres at the ready.
You haul yourself up with the rest of your men. By the time you catch up to the first wave, two of your advance guard are dead, their bodies strewn among the sabred corpses of the Antari.
Yet despite your losses, the men are cheering, and why would they not? The Antari have been beaten back! The breach is taken! Now all that remains is to—
Suddenly, one of your men points dead ahead. "Sir! What's that?"
You look past the man's finger to see an object resolving itself in the powder-smoke; the outline is hazy, and its exact measure is obscured by the clouds of smoke, but there is no mistaking that basic shape.
A cannon, not ten paces ahead, and just about to fire.
"Down!"
You make a colossal racket as you dive for the ground; greaves, sabatons, faulds, tassets, all clattering together with all the noise of an exploding pewter shop, but it is nothing compared to what comes next.
The world around you explodes in a cataclysmic eruption of flame and thunder. A storm of lead tears through your men, for the Antari are not firing round shot but canister: a battalion's worth of musket balls fired out in a narrow cone, perfect for butchering men at close range.
Your armour rattles and rings as the musket balls strike it. Most bounce off, but a bare few strike at just the right angle to punch through, for at this close range, even bane-hardened plate is not impervious to such weaponry. Pain explodes through your body as it is pierced by three musket balls at once and bruised by half a dozen more.
It is when you pick yourself off the ground, your ears still ringing, that you realise how fortunate you were to be wearing your armour, for your men have no such protection, and those who were caught standing in the path of the Antari killing gun are dead to a man. Some are all but vaporised, ripped apart by a dozen or more musket balls. Others leave more recognisable corpses, if only by the shreds of grey-green still covering their tortured carcasses. Those of your men still alive quickly take cover, their faces filled with terror. Victory had seemed so close, only to be snatched away by that butcher's gun. Now all of their anxiety, all of their fear has returned to them at treble strength. There is little fight left in them. Cazarosta and the survivors of his contingent clear out of the cannon's line of fire as well, though the scarred officer's angular features are far more composed than those of your men and the men around him.
In the smoke-filled beyond, you see the Antari begin the process of sponging out and reloading the gun. Before long, it shall be ready to fire again, to meet any renewed attack with yet more flame and death. Before anything else, the gun must be taken out of action.
How will you do it?
[X] I'll go forward and personally vanquish the enemy gun crew in close fighting.
If it is to be done, then it is best you do it yourself.
You advance alone upon the Antari cannon. It will be long moments before it can be made to fire upon you and your men again, and you have no intention of letting that happen.
One of the shadowy outlines of an enemy gunner points at you as you close on them. The figures shift in the powder smoke. It is clear that they fully mean to defend themselves.
Perhaps they would have been able to stop a lone Dragoon officer. Even untrained and nervous as they were, their numbers alone would have made them more than a match for one armed only with pistol and sabre…
…but against a fully armoured Knight of the Red, they stood little chance at all.
The fight, if you could even call it that, did not last longer than a few seconds. One of the gunners brandished a rammer at you, holding it like a polearm. With one sweep of your blazing longsword, you cut it in half. With your next, you did the same to the man holding it, the bane-hardened blade slicing through skin, flesh, and bone as if it were a block of warm butter.
After that display, the other Antari did not linger. Within moments, their fleeing shapes were fading into the powder smoke as your men rushed forward to secure the abandoned gun.
The breach is yours. Now you must hold it.
-
You barely get a moment's peace before the counter-attack comes: a wave of new figures emerging from the smoke. These men carry muskets and swords; no half-trained gun crews, these, but proper soldiers. Even from this distance, it is clear that they outnumber you. At least five or six dozen of them are coming out of the smoke, shouting their battle cries as they charge the breach you have but just taken.
At least you shall not have to hold them for long, for behind you comes a more welcome sound: the pipes of the Kentauri Highlanders. They must be at the glacis by now, and in a few minutes at most, they shall be at your back, fresh and bloodthirsty, in numbers that the Antari could not stand against.
Until then, you must hold the breach with your dozen or so dragoons, and you've precious little time to figure out how to do it, for the first of the enemy are naught but a few dozen paces away.
What are your orders?
[X] We'll have to pull back to more defensible positions immediately!
[] We must stand and fight where we are.
[] We counter-charge; it's the last thing they'll expect!
"Dragoons!" You shout. "Fall back and take cover!"
There is no other way. Your current positions leave your men over-extended and scattered, so they must fall back to better positions if any of you are to survive.
You have not retreated more than three steps when a distinctive shape catches your eye. The cannon! The damned thing has already cost your men dear. You cannot allow the Antari to reclaim it and inflict yet more losses; the gun must be disabled.
Thankfully, your knightly arms make it a simple enough task. You raise the blazing blade of your longsword over the cannon like a headsman with his axe. A single downward swing is enough to chop halfway through the iron barrel.
Your job done, you make an expeditious retreat, for the Antari are at your heels. The enemy quickly retakes the gun, but you know they will find it of little use now.
It is a small blessing, but you will need every one you can get, for the Antari counter-attack is at hand, and you have run out of places to retreat to. Now you must stand and fight.
You know there cannot be more than seventy or eighty of them, but to your eyes, the mass of armed men piling into your beleaguered Dragoons seems beyond number. Though your Dragoons fight on with the ferocity of desperate and cornered beasts, though your arms grow weary unto numbness as you parry and thrust and slash, there are always two more rushing to replace a fallen foe.
One by one, your men begin to fall, brought low by sheer numbers. Your thin grey-green line becomes a contracting knot. Your breathing grows ragged, your vision begins to blur, and the enemy blends into a shapeless mass of snarling faces and whirling blades. You must rest, you must recover, but there is nowhere to go, nowhere to run.
You are not even given a minute of peace before the enemy rushes you again. Carbines fire from your left and right as the resurgent tide of Antari charges out of the choking, bitter smoke; only a few, for many of your Dragoons have lost their guns in the fighting, while others have been too exhausted to reload them. The impulsive volley has little effect.
The Antari, on the other hand, have plenty of muskets to spare. At twenty paces, they bring their weapons to bear and thunder forth their own ragged volley at your battered, bleeding men.
You hear a high shriek as one of your Dragoons falls; another is on the ground, his lifeblood gurgling out of his gasping mouth.
Then the Antari are upon you, and you know you cannot win. There are so many, you are so few, and one by one, your men fall.
To your left, even Cazarosta seems hard-pressed as he fights off three attackers at once, the last of his contingent dead at his feet. You look to the other side in time to see the man on your right die screaming as an Antari blade buries itself up to the hilt in his gut.
You parry the bayonet thrust of one foe only to be sent reeling backwards by the clubbed musket butt of another. You tumble onto the uneven stone, not half a step away from a long drop down the front of the wall. You feel blood well up in your mouth as one foe presses close and kicks open your visor with a poleaxe raised for the killing stroke….
Then the Antari staggers backwards, weapon falling out of his nerveless hands as the straight blade of a basket-hilted broadsword buries itself into his chest.
All around you, the foe is being put to flight, for clambering over the lip of the breach are tall, fresh men in their dozens wearing the burnt-orange jackets of the Tierran line infantry and the particoloured cloaks of the Kentauri Highlanders.
The man who saved your life grabs you by the shoulder. "Major Neille, Highlanders, at yae service," he says as he one-handedly hauls you onto your feet.
"Captain Castleton, Dragoons, at yours," you reply wearily.
"I must congratulate you on an action well-fought, Captain," Neille says, extending his hand. "'Tis our turn for it now if you've nae objection."
You shake your head. Today, you have more than fought your fill. "By all means, Major. It's your field now."
Pleasantries dealt with, the Kentauri officer quickly turns back to his own men. He twirls his basket-hilted broadsword over his head with an energy you can only envy. "Highlanders! At mae heels! 'Tis time fer murder!"
In any other regiment, such an exhortation would have been considered barbaric. However, the Highlanders have no trouble echoing their officer's shout with the greatest enthusiasm. "Murder!" They cry, bright swords a-glancing as they charge off into the smoke.
You strain to stay on your feet. The day's exertions have left you with precious little strength left, yet you and the survivors of your force must keep the breach secure. Ahead, you hear the shrieks of battle and the crackle of musketry, the ringing of steel upon steel, and the bright, clear skirl of the pipes as the Highlanders press their attack, driving beyond the breach in the walls and deep into the city itself.
Not ten paces in front of you, Cazarosta leans against the stone on the opposite side of the breach. He presents a fearful sight, exhausted as you are, his tunic torn, his left arm slashed open, his entire form coated with a filthy grime made of blood, sweat, and powder, the residue of hard battle.
He is a major now, just as you are, or will be, for not even the stigma of deathborn-bastardry can rob an officer of a promotion won from leading a Forlorn Hope. The deathborn officer meets your gaze and favours you with a slight nod. Is it a gesture of gratitude? Perhaps it is merely an acknowledgement of the simple fact that the two of you have somehow both managed to survive.
The afternoon seems to run by you in fits and starts as the hours pass; your exhausted body stands automaton-like, your eyes too tired to offer you anything but hazy tableaux set to the thunder of guns and the last moans of dying men. At some point, you realise it is no longer cloaked Highlanders pouring through the breach but men in grey-green, your own Dragoons. For a brief, hazy moment, you think you see Sandoral with Lanzerel by his side, leading your squadron into the fray, but your eyes refuse to focus, and you cannot know for sure if it is fact or mere delusion.
Then, behind them, more men in the burnt orange of the line infantry, an unending stream of them, press into the fight until finally, in the distance, the sound of fighting stops, and the sounds of cheering, of looting, of a furious army despoiling a supine city begin.
Finally, you have no more strength left, not even to stand. You slump to the ground as the smoke of powder is joined by the smoke of burning houses, as the moans of the nearby dying are joined by the screams of distant human suffering.
The sky rumbles with a sound far too loud to be cannon. Cold, wet pinpricks land upon your face; the first drops of the long-awaited autumn rains, here at last.
It matters little. The rains have come too late.
Kharangia is fallen.
And with that thought in your mind, you fall into a deep, exhausted sleep.
