"I shall be happy to direct you, madam, so long as I am allowed to ensure your safety," you reply. "I must insist upon providing you with an escort."
"Then one may continue to insist, sir," the Countess replies archly. "If one shall not be of any substantial assistance, then I have no choice but to take matters into my own hands. Good day, sir."
She puts her spurs to her mount before you can even muster a reply. Within moments, she is already galloping for the river, out of reach and out of earshot.
Well, that could have gone better.
-
Not a half-minute later, the foreboding calm of the quiet morning is broken. From deep behind the Antari lines, you see a bank of fire and smoke rise from the enemy's guns. The sound of the opening cannonade reaches you a second later, the low, rolling beat of a distant storm.
Before you and to your left, the near riverbank explodes with scattered plumes of mud and water as it is flayed by a ferocious volley of heavy iron balls. Your own guns remain silent; positioned far back so as to be able to cover as many crossings as possible, the batteries of the King's Army do not have the range to strike back against the faraway Antari artillery, nor do the massed heavy cannon of the Northern Fleet, poking uselessly out of the open gunports of ships as they lie in the distant harbour.
Yet though the enemy strike these opening blows with impunity, they do not strike with efficacy; when the splashes of water settle, you can see the massed battalions of the King's Army almost entirely unharmed. Khorobirit may have sought to protect his guns by leaving them so far to his rear, but by doing so, he has rendered them close to useless.
Still, the Antari continue their bombardment. With every minute, Khorobirit's gunners empty more and more heavy shot uselessly into river beds, open ground, or the breastworks which shelter the line battalions. Only a few lucky hits mark the orange-clad ranks of the Tierran Line Infantry.
For what feels like half an eternity, the cannonade continues, volley after volley of unopposed but entirely ineffectual fire. By the time forty minutes have passed, the furious bombardment seems to have done little but kill or maim perhaps a dozen men, splatter the uniforms of a few dozen more, and waste a truly prodigious quantity of shot.
Then the guns fall silent, only to be replaced by a new sound. All along the far bank, the air trembles with the din of a thousand war horns, each united in a single, rumbling note. No sooner do the horns fade, the banners rise, the sabres twirl, and the far-off drums begin to rattle.
Only now does the grandiose, half-jumbled, half-ordered mass of Khorobirit's army begin to settle into movement, a great bear rising from hibernation, a colossal apparatus of war making the ground tremble under its waking throes.
The might of the League of Antar advancing to war.
-
The Antari host marches towards the river but not as a single mass. Even as the great crowds of infantry and massed ranks of horse slowly make their way forward with a deliberate ponderousness, swarms of horsemen spring forward, rushing for the crossings at a rapid pace. Some fall behind, forming a screen around the main bodies of the Antari army. The rest rush ahead at a gallop, riding into the far bank, splashing along the water of the Kharan as they probe the river for the location of the all-important crossing points.
Again, the air fills with the low reverberations of distant thunder, but now it is a battery of Tierran guns that are the cause; in moving forward so rashly, the Antari scouts have placed themselves within range.
Plumes of mud and churned river water rise from the far bank. The guns of the King's Army fire considerably lighter shot than their Antari counterparts, but their barrels are longer and their crews more experienced. The first round of fire brings down one horseman and sends half a dozen of his comrades to flight. Another battery fires now, more distant, likely behind Baron Redmarch's brigade on the centre-left. This time, their shot lands amidst a scouting party almost a third of the way across the river, sending up great plumes of water around the unfortunate Antari, who immediately turn tail and fall back, unharmed.
The enemy try to probe your brigade's crossings, as well, but instead of answering with cannon, Khorobirit's scouts are met with the sharp cracks of rifle fire. Horsemen, made tiny by distance, tumble from their saddles as the green-jacketed Experimentals shoot down any man who even gets within arm's length of the riverbank.
Yet for all that is sent against them, the bold-hearted Antari on light-footed horses rush forward, braving the heavy guns and deadly rifles of your army to get just far enough to mark the locations of each crossing with long, brightly coloured lances. They shove them deep and point-first into the shot-scarred mud of the riverbank before falling back behind the cover of the mobs of infantry which follow behind them.
Now, it is the Antari foot that advances. Banners held high, the fingertips of Khorobirit's army creep forward into the muddy water, the first ranks of the peasant levies; that great horde of illiterate, stubborn, and unyielding manhood whose predecessors had filled out the bulk of every army raised on the Calligian continent since the host of Saint Stanislaus himself.
It is in the example of those predecessors that they follow now. It is in an age-old way they advance into battle, carried by bonds of loyalty to their noble-born masters, following Khorobirit as their ancestors followed Eugen of Antagia and Stanislaus of Octobirit before them.
It is in an age-old way that they are about to die.
-
Even from a kilometre away, you can feel it, the distant pull on your mind as the forward elements of the Antari infantry wade along the river crossings.
You can feel it build even as you see the clouds of steam begin to rise from the water around the enemy vanguard, even as the first of the Antari slow, stop, and begin to fall back.
Yet it is too late. The pulling on your mind surges for the barest instant. Before you, the river crossings burn with green fire as the patterns of baneseals, carefully buried under the mud of the riverbed, burst into incandescent heat, triggered by the presence of life within its deadly killing field.
Flash-boiled by the sudden flare of banefire, the water explodes into gouts of scalding steam. The forward edge of the Antari advance devolves into panicked chaos as the killing mist sears exposed flesh. The unfortunates caught within the searing cloud only scream louder and louder as the seconds pass, until at last, they die in gurgling, choking agony, their bodies splashing limp into the water, to be carried towards the sea before the sight of their wide-eyed compatriots.
Yet even as the front ranks of the Antari foot die in agony, their leaders force those behind them to go forward, marching through still-steaming, blood-stained water; only now, they advance with fresh urgency, pushing aside the bodies of their dead predecessors and trampling those still left alive in the silt of the river bottom.
In the entrenchment before you, the heavy guns speak, rocking back on their carriages as they empty bellies of smoke and iron at the enemy.
Your eyes follow the dark dots of the cannonballs as they careen past the Tierran infantry towards the advancing Antari vanguard, flying low across the ground with a ponderousness which is all too deceptive.
As far as you can tell from your untrained eye, the gunners have laid their pieces perfectly. Each iron shot skips against the earth of the riverbank once before bouncing up again, slamming into the enemy infantry at head height.
The effect is extraordinary. Even from your distant vantage point, you can see the twelve-pound balls make their deadly progress, sundering body and limb as they tear through the peasant mass, ploughing great furrows of broken and staggered men.
Yet for all of their destructive power, the guns seem to have done little damage. Within seconds, the Antari are moving forward again. The killed and the maimed are swallowed up by the mass of yet-living, the cannonballs swallowed up entirely by the Kharan and the rivers of men which now ford it, their passage of no greater weight than that of a handful of pebbles.
-
You are ripped out of your thoughts by a low, rippling reverberation: the splintering crackle of musketry made dull echo by the vagaries of distance and terrain. The sound comes from your far left.
You turn to see drifts of white smoke rising from the positions of Castermaine's brigade as his distant infantry make first contact with the enemy, emptying their volleys into the leading edge of the peasant masses before them. Puffs of smoke from within the Antari bloom in reply, their distant pops rendered soft and muzzled by a far-too-great stretch of creation.
From more than five kilometres away, the first clash looks like a battle in miniature, all of war's fury transplanted into abstract blocks of smoke-spitting soldiery, packed so close together that individual soldiers are difficult to tell apart from each other.
Then, a fresh volley of musketry, still echoing, still muffled, but sharper, much sharper. It comes from the positions of Tollmark's brigade, adjacent to your own. They too have made contact with the enemy.
A moment later, your ears seem to fill with the rattle of battalion volleys, some ragged, others crisp; some are far to the left, others close and almost right ahead of you. All along the line, the crack of infantry muskets fills the air as the Antari close into range.
-
Within moments, the sound of the battle becomes a jumble of echoes and gunshots. The isolated white drifts of smoke turn into great sheets of acrid, breathable debris. At Blogia, the very sun had been blotted out by the powder-smoke. Today, it is only thanks to the stiff morning breeze that you can see any of the battle at all.
Even so, you can snatch nothing but glimpses in between the heavy veils of powder-fog; a battalion there, falling back by companies as they bleed the enemy for every pace of ground, and there, a handful of Antari falling back across the river, firing wild parting shots as their orange-coated adversaries cheer and reload for the next rush.
So intent are you upon watching the battle ahead, that you do not even notice the sound of hooves approaching from behind until Lord Renard pulls his bay mare up against Thunderer with an obviously nervous officer—his brother—in tow.
"Go on," your Lieutenant whispers to the Cornet. "Say what y'came here for. Ain't becoming t' let a colonel's badge give pause to a Findlay, wot?"
The younger officer closes his eyes and takes a breath before nudging his own horse forward. "His Grace's compliments, sir," he begins in the half-stilted, half-frantic tone of a man too terrified of the words in his mouth to relax. "He wishes me to convey to you the news that Lord Hugh reports First Battalion, 5th of Foot to be heavily pressed by the enemy, and that you are to provide one of your squadrons as reinforcement, if you deem it acceptable to do so."
The Cornet's last words come out as a rapid jumble. The young officer's face is nearly beet red, whether it be from embarrassment or the fact that you did not see him take a single breath in his entire report, you are not quite sure.
In any case, you have more pressing matters before you. While Hartigan's battalion might need aid at the moment, deploying one of your squadrons to assist him would mean you would have fewer men at your disposal later.
To your side, both Lord Renard and his brother await your reply with bated breath. Will you send someone to answer Hartigan's call for aid? If so, whom?
1) I shall send Garret and Fourth Squadron.
2) Cazarosta and Third Squadron will go to Hartigan's aid.
3) I shall go myself.
4) I cannot spare the men this early in the battle; Hartigan will have to make do.
Personal Information
As of the Spring of the 611th year of the Old Imperial Era.
Age: 23
Rank: Lieutenant-colonel (Brevet)
Wealth: 304
Income: 15
Soldiering: 75%
Charisma: 43%
Intellect: 5%
Reputation: 20%
Health: 65%
Idealism: 67%; Cynicism: 33%
Ruthlessness: 39%; Mercy: 61%
You are a Knight of the Red, having the right to wear bane-hardened armour and wield a bane-runed sword.
You have no decorations as of yet.
Unit Information
Sixth Squadron, Royal Dragoons
Senior NCO: Staff-sergeant Hernandes
Discipline: 39%
Morale: 44%
Loyalty: 46%
Strength: 82%
