imagine what damage that concerted fire had done to their careful lines. Now came the sporadic flashes and bangs of their return fire, and she knew that they would be running at speed across dark ground towards the camp, in a desperate gamble that they would get to the enemy in time.
‘Reload!’ Emily shouted, feeling her voice grate hoarsely. ‘Reload! I want a second round before they get here. Reload!’ Her own hands were already going through the drill: powder, ball, wadding, ramrod. How many times had she done this before, in practice or for real? Beside her, Mallen’s movements were as easy and automatic as her own.
In amidst the occasional shot from the running Denlanders, she could hear the drumming of their boots upon the ground. Close, getting closer.
She was now reloaded, and she had to assume that her men were as well. The Denlanders were just pale shadows in the camp’s lamplight. A musket shot splintered the crate beside her, as she brought her gun up.
‘Ready!’ she called, hearing other officers yelling the same order all along the line. ‘Fire!’
At virtually point-blank range, the salvo of gunfire from the trench and the barricade stopped the Denlanders dead. Their entire front line was scythed down in a hail of shot and smoke, and in the aftermath they were fleeing, running away, desperate to get out of range before the Lascanne soldiers could reload again.
She heard herself give out a great whoop of triumph, and saw some of her men start to move forward to fire again. ‘No, no! Stay behind the barricade!’ she bellowed at them, even as shots started to fall amongst them, taking down half a dozen of the boldest.
‘Back! They’ll come again!’ she shouted. So much of war involved shouting at people.
‘They’re coming now,’ Mallen told her, squinting into the dark. ‘Skirmish order.’ Even as he said it, the shots started, scattered but regular, punching into the barricade four or five at a time, and encouraging the Lascanne soldiers to keep their heads down.
‘Everyone reload, if you haven’t already,’ she called out. ‘Ready for another round.’
‘Now,’ Mallen said. Her voice echoed his whistle, giving the order to fire again and feeling her throat ache with it. The Lascanne soldiers put their guns to the barricade and fired en masse, even as three or four of them were hit by the Denlander sharpshooters. She hoped these shots had done as much damage as the last, but the advancing Denlanders were coming in as a staggered, scattered body, and she knew many of her soldiers’ shots would have passed between them. Again she was shouting for the reload, desperate for that second shot.
‘Going to be tight,’ Mallen observed. She tried to concentrate on her musket, but she was holding her breath, watching her men out of the corner of her eye as they primed their own guns with shaking hands. The staccato rattle of the Denlander weapons was still sending splinters spraying all around and, even as she looked up, one incautious soldier was slammed back from the barricade, clutching his shoulder. Another man grabbed him beneath the armpits and hauled him roughly away, which made him scream far more than the shot had.
Steady. And, as she glanced towards Mallen, men along the line started firing, not in unison but piecemeal. ‘Hold!’ she called, but her men had caught the disease and their shots speared into the Denlanders in twos and threes, killing individual men but letting the advance live. Emily cursed and fired her own shot as the ghostly shapes of the Denland men emerged out of the night. Even as she fired, she saw flickers amongst them, then the sudden flare of shuttered lanterns opened at half a dozen points.
What in the world are they doing . . . ?
‘Get down!’ Mallen was shouting, but for once she did not heed him, for her attention was taken with the slow-spinning sparks that the Denlanders had hurled forward, whirling in tight loops as they coursed in long arcs towards the trench and the wall. The lamplight caught one and she had a brief glimpse of something metal with a trailing, burning cord.
Then there was an explosion that she felt through her feet and something struck her an almighty blow, picked her up and lifted her off her feet, casting her to the ground behind Mallen. Her head rang and for a moment she was seeing double. There were further explosions down the line, shattering crates and boxes