A Perverted Path to Victory

Sara Brown

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No one could accuse Sara of the crime of subtlety. She’d worked damn hard to keep that true. As she heard Evie’s half of the Powdered Lead leap out of cover with a furious roar, she switched up her Champion’s Inspiration.

When I came back from Luang Prabang

I didn't have a thing where my balls used to hang

But I had a wooden medal and a fine harangue

Now I'm a fucking hero!

The Vietnam-era protest song boomed out over the battlefield, filling the air with anguished reverberations of a war a generation and universe away. The Powdered Lead around her, familiar from the endless days of marching to the beat of Sara’s songs, picked up the tune, adding their own voices as they loaded their muskets.

And now the boys all envy me

I fought for proper democracy

With nothing but air where my balls used to be

Now I'm a fucking hero!

“Get ready for a charge!” Sara yelled, casting her voice across the disparate squads hidden in the treeline. The rebel army had begun to pour down the road properly now, their troops splitting into distinct groups as they charged towards Borek’s army. They were setting up a staged series of defenses, spikes and trenches being dug at a furious pace. If they were allowed to complete their work, Borek would be forced to assault line after line, the rebel army pulling back to further defenses after every successful breakthrough.

The gunfire from the Powdered Lead petered off as they began affixing their bayonets, preparing to mimic Evie’s charge on the right flank. Sara watched with keen eyes as a young messenger sprinted up to the enemy formation, doubtlessly relaying what had happened to their opposite number facing off against Evie. Sara petulantly kicked her Champion’s Inspiration a tick louder, making it harder for the enemy commander to hear the report.

Mourn your dead land of the free

If you wanna be a hero, follow me!

Mourn your dead land of the free

If you wanna be a hero, follow me!

The original song didn’t have quite the same lyrics; lots of things in it wouldn’t have made sense to a Tulian or Imperial soldier. But when Sara had drunkenly played it in a bar, it hadn’t been long before the inebriated crowd of soldiers had fit their own words to the rhythm, creating their own rendition.

One and 20 cannons thunder

Into the mighty wild blue yonder

For a patriotic ball-less wonder

Now I'm a fucking hero!

Sara snapped her gun closed, two pounds of lead and blackpowder stuffed down the barrel. She took a quick inventory of her troops, making sure they were ready, then took a deep breath.

“Give ‘em lead, give ‘em steel! Charge!”

Sara broke from the forest line with a whoop, leading from the front. She was wearing her diplomat armor for the most part, with the slight exception of having replaced the curvy breastplate with its wartime blacksteel equivalent. It was a bit of a mixed statement, considering her original intention to only wear black armor when Tulian was at war, but Evie had forced her into it. Self-defense was more important than pretty little political messages.

Mourn your dead land of the free

If you wanna be a hero, follow me!

Mourn your dead land of the free

If you wanna be a hero, follow me!

The enemy had seen their charge coming.

It didn’t matter.

Sara hit the ranks of musketeers a full ten seconds before the rest of the Powdered Lead. She felt two shots scrape off her chestplate, leaving grey streaks of lead on the magical armor. Either one would have seen a normal soldier dead.

The rebels didn’t stand a chance.

Sara’s shoulder landed in the chest of an unarmored musketeer, sending them flying backward, knocking over the two soldiers behind them. She could tell by the wet crunches that all three were dead before they hit the ground.

Her greatsword flipped open as she skidded to a stop, five feet of enchanted blacksteel bobbing before her. She was in the dead center of the enemy line, surrounded on all sides.

Bloody smoke began to leak from her skin.

Sara laid into the closest troops with a furious bellow. The formation collapsed in on her, cohesion ruined as dozens of soldiers desperately tried to bring their muskets around to point at her, searching for a shot that wouldn’t have them gunning down their fellow soldiers.

In Luang Prabang there is a spot

Where the corpses of your brothers rot!

And every corpse is a patriot

Every corpse is a hero!

A haze fell over the battlefield as the Powdered Lead caught up to Sara, unloading their rifles into the enemy ranks at point-blank range. Sara was swamped in sulfur smoke as she fought, visibility reduced to no more than a dozen feet.

Mourn your dead land of the free

If you wanna be a hero, follow me!

Mourn your dead land of the free

If you wanna be a hero, follow me!

It was ugly, bloody work. None of the half-trained garrison troops stood a chance against her. It didn’t matter what they had, be it knives, swords, or spears. She was too fast, too strong. Those few who managed to thrust a polearm towards her found it bouncing off her armor, the haft grabbed before they could pull back for another thrust. She snapped the reinforced wood to kindling, then swept her sword through the offending soldier.

Even when she found someone wearing metal armor, it barely mattered. None of it was enchanted. If her sword didn’t crush through outright, the dent from even one of her swings was more than enough to maim or kill.

Sara felt her gorge rising as she fought. The panicked screams of the rebels were soon joined by the blood-mad yells of the Powdered Lead, every last word caught and memorized by her Blessings.

Even when they outnumbered her mercenaries four-to-one, the rebels had made too many mistakes to save themselves. They’d approached too close to the treeline, thinking too highly of their new muskets. They hadn’t understood that, for all the power of blackpowder, its mere existence didn’t make steel any duller. If their commanders had stayed further away, maybe two hundred or three hundred yards instead of a hundred, they might have been able to retreat, or take a defensive stance, or best of all, rejoin the bulk of their army.

Sara tore her sword out of a woman’s gut, flinging intestines across the grass.

All around her, the fight raged on. She spat out the foulest curse she knew as she laid into the bloodshed, carving chunks from the poor fucking infantry some damn fool had put her up against.

Why won’t they BREAK?! Sara demanded of herself as she tore through their ranks. Run! Run for your fucking lives already!

She knew why, of course. Her little force of mercenaries were outnumbered four-to-one, forming the dense, violent core of a far larger tangle. The enemy closest to the slaughter could not retreat, kept at bay by those behind them, while those on the outskirts could only recognize that they surrounded the Powdered Lead, which meant, surely, they were winning.

This is why Graf fights like he does, Sara realized, a moment of clarity piercing through her fury. All that matters, the only thing that matters, is ending the battle. Nothing else comes close.

Sara took a deep breath.

End the battle. Whatever it takes.

“Break!” Sara screamed, spittle coating the inside of her visor. She stabbed another man straight through the sternum, then braced her arm against the pommel of her sword, heaving the soldier skyward, almost as if they’d been hooked on a fisherman’s line. Blood fell in monsoon torrents across her body as she held the corpse as a living banner, every gurgling, jerking twitch of the dying man forcing him to slide further down the blade.

“BREAK, GODDAMMIT!”

Sara’s sword swung down hard. The spasming soldier, who had very nearly reached the hilt of her blade, was thrown entirely off it, sailing over the heads of his comrades. He hit the ground some fifty feet behind their lines, spraying the intervening distance with his blood.

“RUN!”

Sara tossed her sword to the ground, pounding her chest with both fists. The knuckles of her gauntlets were dented as they crashed against the blacksteel, every slam louder than the gunshots.

“FUCKING RUN ALREADY!”

She sprinted forward, unarmed, and caught one woman’s head between her hands. The first impact audibly cracked something in her skull, but before she could collapse, Sara twisted, turning her head a hundred and eighty degrees. The woman’s dead, twisted face stared at her comrades.

Then Sara jerked upward, ripping the head off her shoulders.

“FUCK ALL OF IT!” She struck one soldier with the head. “YOUR STUPID!” She slammed the head into another soldier’s skull, shattering both. “FUCKING!” The final crash was little more than chips of bone and viscera clutched between her bloody fingers. “BRAVERY!”

They began to run. Everyone. Imperial Rebels and Tulian mercenaries alike, all were fleeing the circle of grass she had painted crimson.

But still the fight continued. To her left and right, some of them hadn’t seen. They hadn’t realized just how fucking hopeless it was.

“God-fucking-DAMNIT!” Sara roared, throwing her gun off her back. Not her rifle, but Hurlish’s custom job, the one with a barrel thick enough to fit three fingers down. She snapped it open and shoved a jingling cartridge in, following it with a half-pound of blackpowder.

Not all ammunition was made equal. Flechettes– miniature steel bolts in the vague shape of an arrow– were one example. Her dad had said the US thought they’d be some Vietnam-era wonder weapon in a shotgun, but they’d proved nearly useless in actual combat. There was no way to impart a stabilizing spin to the half-dozen individual darts when held in a shotgun shell, which meant they tumbled end-over-end, less accurate than even purely circular lead pellets.

But when you were the Governess of a magical nation, you could afford certain enchantments. Tinvel’s old artificery design, once intended to stabilize a shell in flight by tying an invisible ‘string’ to the base of a projectile, hadn’t been able to so much as twitch the massive cannon rounds they’d been designed for. Tiny steel flechettes, however? When the Imperial Rebels were packed far too tightly, giving Sara an angle of aim down the entire length of their formation?

The stock barely brushed her shoulder before she pulled the trigger.

For a single instant, Hell breached the world of man. Dozens fell dead.

Sara didn’t bother to watch her own troops surge forward to finish off the survivors. She turned the other way as she broke open the gun, dumping unburnt powder onto her boots. She loaded another round, snapped the gun closed, stood, and fired.

And with that, the skirmish was over.

The enemy broke, the precious few alive to do so throwing down their weapons as they ran.

The mercenaries, howling their victory, began to give chase.

“Hold!” Sara roared. “Hold fast! Let them run!”

If it had been anyone else in charge of any other army, that order would have been damn hard to follow. Victory was almost as intoxicating as defeat, when delighted rage taking the place of animalistic terror.

Thankfully, between her Blessings and the Powdered Lead’s well-honed loyalty, her troops managed to cool their blood. Though clearly reluctant, they reined themselves in, returning to the line.

Sara gave herself a quick once-over, checking for wounds. She was immediately glad that Evie had forced her to wear her blacksteel breastplate; at least three musketballs had scraped off the front, any one of which would have pierced the thin steel of her diplomat’s armor. The red mist which surrounded her in battle was fading, taken away in pieces by the wind, but it hadn’t stopped leaking from her skin yet.

She wondered what her soldiers thought about it. The visible outpouring of her rage, her loss of control. She wondered what they really thought. Not what they said to one another when they thought she couldn’t hear, but what was kept privately in their own minds.

“What’s the plan, ma’am?” A sergeant asked.

Sara jerked, startled, but hid it well enough. Even without looking at him, her Blessings told her exactly who the man was. Sergeant Jahn was one of the few officers who’d earned his rank after joining the Powdered Lead, rather than inheriting it from his stint in the Tulian Army. He was an ambitious sort, clearly intending to strike for even higher ranks, which this question was doubtlessly a ploy to help aid him in.

Really? What’s the plan? What do you fucking think?

She silently pointed towards the enemy army. A group was emerging from the press. Covered head-to-toe in enchanted steel, some of them wielding blacksteel blades, the common soldiers parted around them like water around a boulder. The group was led by a number of Warriors on Krapeu, the crocodilian beasts hungrily snapping their jaws, iron muzzles laying in the grass behind them.

“Brace for impact,” Sara said, kneeling as she swung her gun off her shoulder. “That’s the plan.”

“Form square!” The sergeant yelled. “Form square on the Governess, you bastards!”

The call went up and down the line. Sara ignored it all. Flipping her visor open to better catch the fresh air, she spent the brief respite checking over her gun.

Those flechette rounds were damned expensive. Between making the flechettes themselves, packing the bags just right, and having each little piece enchanted by an artificer, Tulian’s industries could have made fifteen rifle-muskets for the same cost, and with a fraction of the time invested. Because of that, she and Hurlish had only ever test-fired them twice.

Once satisfied the gun was undamaged, she loaded a different, more traditional piece of ammunition into her shoulder-cannon. One and a quarter pound of lead, six hundred grains of blackpowder sitting behind. The two-foot barrel of the gun was just long enough to give the chunky slug a touch of spin, keeping it vaguely on track as it flew through the air. It was far from a sniper rifle, but it would do the job.

Sara took a deep breath as she clicked the gun closed, pulling the hammer back. An anti-cavalry square had formed around her while she’d worked. It was one of the first formation drills a Tulian soldier practiced, and they knew it by heart. They hadn’t needed more than a minute to fall into place, bayonets bristling in every direction, the wounded dragged into the center of the wall.

A quarter mile away, the Krapeu began to paw at the dirt.

Fucking finally, Sara thought, jerking her visor back down to hide a toothy smile. Someone worth killing.

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Evie Brown

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This is an asinine battle.

Evie’s contingent of the Powdered Lead were sitting astride their bikes, loading and firing as rapidly as they were able in the awkward stance. Every time the enemy got close enough for their more inaccurate weapons to become a threat, the Powdered Lead would shoulder their muskets and pedal a few hundred feet further away, keeping out of range of the enemy. Though they were outnumbered heavily, such that even a single well-aimed volley could devastate their ranks, Evie wasn’t going to allow it.

Absolutely asinine.

It was like a children’s game. It was laughably easy to outpace sprinting soldiers when one was riding a bicycle across flat fields of grass. It was a tactic that only worked because of their rifled musket’s superiority to the enemy smoothbore weapons, affording them a range twice that of their opponents.

The devastating efficacy of the stupid trick wasn’t long for the world, she knew. Once the rebels discovered the principles of rifling, this little gimmick wouldn’t be half as useful. True, she’d be able to ride in and out of danger whenever she desired, but she would have to be in danger herself to constitute a threat. That was a far cry from harassing the enemy with impunity, like she was now.

And this wouldn’t work in the slightest against even the present Sporaton army, Evie reminded herself. The enemy garrison, as was true of nearly every Imperial force Evie had met, lacked any true equivalent to Knights. The few times lone Warriors had tried to ride her force down on a Krapeu, they had immediately become the victim of a withering volley from every soldier under Evie’s command. The poor fools had either been torn apart by leaden hail or, if they were smart, turned back before the bullets could overwhelm their armor’s enchantments. None had actually succeeded in closing the distance. That was a fate the Sporaton Knights, between their steed’s enchanted armor and massive numbers, wouldn’t be forced to endure.

“Get ready to relocate!” Evie called out. The rebels were nearing the effective range of their shoddy muskets, which seemed to be about a hundred and fifty yards, give or take a few dozen. If the Powdered Lead hadn’t been spread out as loose skirmishers, she suspected the rebels’ weapons could have found success from even further. “We’re heading towards the walls once more! We’ve drawn them far enough away from the center, so we’ll be working our way around to fire into the bulk of their army!”

Confirmations of her order went up and down the line. Graf’s tutelage hadn’t prepared her for constantly justifying orders to her subordinates, but she’d adapted. Soldiers who knew not only what was expected of them, but why it was expected, had proven far more capable. Graf had achieved that level of competency via rigorous admissions standards and brutal training regimens, making even the commonest member of the Night's Eye the equivalent of a Sporaton officer. In Tulian, both strategies were a luxury Evie didn’t have. Explaining her reasoning to the troops ensured that, should she be separated from them due to injury or circumstance, they would be able to follow through on the objectives she had set for them. Given the chaotic nature of this fast-paced, bicycling mercenary battalion, it was an eventuality she needed to prepare for.

Evie squinted. Across the battlefield, she could see an excellent example of why it was important for junior officers to be able to act independently.

Sara’s contingent of the Powdered Lead were locked into square formation, Krapeu-riding Warriors bearing down on them, foot soldiers in tow. Evie could see little of her wife’s formation itself, on account of the constant spew of blackpowder shots. So fast was their fire that they seemed less like a group of soldiers and more like a fallen thundercloud, lances of pink fire taking the place of white lightning.

Unlike those who had come for Evie, however, the Warriors trundling towards Sara were not stopping. The air before them shimmered and sparked, an invisible mage’s shield protecting them.

“Change of plans!” Evie yelled. “We’re moving now! We’ll be placing ourselves to the southeast of the Governess’s square, where we won’t be firing into our allies! Mount up!”

Wood and metal rattled as musket slings were tightened and bikes brought up. It didn’t take more than a few seconds before the Powdered Lead were ready to ride.

Save for one man. Evie glanced at Mui, smirking.

“Having some difficulty, Sergeant?”

The catfolk man cursed as his foot slipped off the pedal once more, his entire body wobbling left to right.

“It is… not as easy as I had hoped,” he said distractedly, focused on the effort of finding a comfortable way to sit on the bike seat. Evie could have told him to give it up, as there was no comfortable way to sit on a metal plate when riding over the jittery, bumpy terrain, but she didn’t. He’d figure it out soon enough. At least he remembered enough of his brief lessons that he could actually ride the thing.

“Move!” Evie yelled.

An inglorious chorus of squeaks and squeals filled the air as the Powdered Lead began its ungainly forward trot. Evie always thought it was an awfully shabby looking movement when two hundred soldiers pushed themselves along with one foot on the ground, the other on a pedal, at least until they gained enough speed to hop onto their seats, pedaling properly.

Then it was downright intimidating. She knew Sara thought bicycle troops looked ridiculous, relying as they were on what her old world considered a children’s toy, but Evie saw something different. She saw two hundred men and women armed to the teeth, moving at the speed of cavalry using nothing but a tool that required only a fraction of the expense and training required to raise and stable a warhorse.

Musketballs thumped uselessly into the dirt around them, throwing up puffs of dust as the enemy commander called for their pursuing troops to unload at Evie’s formation as fast as they were able.

Clever, she begrudgingly admitted. They had recognized Evie intended to bypass them entirely, riding to the aid of Sara and her soldiers, and so were throwing everything they could into one last-second volley.

It still wasn’t enough. The Powdered Lead pulled away at five, ten, fifteen miles an hour, a long column of bicycles squeaking into the distance. Evie was in the lead, the head of the swerving snake at her back. She glanced behind herself in search of Mui and found him some ways back, having swerved to one side to let the other Powdered Lead troops overtake him. He hadn’t gotten the hang of riding while standing, which meant he was trying to keep pace while still sitting on the seat.

Evie couldn’t pay him any further mind. She focused ahead, focusing on getting her troops into position. To her right was the high wall of the city, left unoccupied after the garrison had sallied out, while her left held the bulk of the rebel army, who were still trying to squeeze into the road to meet Borek’s forces. Behind her were the rebel musketeers she had abandoned, while the elite Warriors lay ahead, marching under mage-shield as they neared Sara’s formation.

Anti-cavalry squares were not a new concept to Evie. In Sporatos, it was known that they were one of the simplest, most effective ways for the common peasant to ward off lightly armored cavalry. When pikes were pointed in every direction, haft set firmly into the dirt between every soldier’s feet, a battle became a test of wills instead of strength. The cavalry would charge forward, daring the peasants to hold their ground, while the peasants shouted encouragement to one another, bolstering their bravery.

Those who broke first, died first.

Either the thundering hooves of onrushing horses would terrify the peasants to the point of abandoning their defense, allowing them to be run under by iron horseshoes and flashing swords, or they would stay strong, forcing the cavalry to wheel away at the last moment, lest they run their horses onto a wall of pikes. It was the ultimate test, the very thing most commanders of any worth constantly trained their spearmen to be ready for.

Of course, if the peasants were being charged by armored Knights, it didn’t really matter. They’d die either way. Even Graf had admitted there was little use in training peasants to fight Knights. Only lighter cavalry, the unlanded riders who could not afford true armor, were worth preparing for. This was how wars had been fought for centuries.

It seemed that for all that blackpowder had changed the world, this most ancient tactic of battle still had its place. At least for a little while longer.

As she rushed onward, Evie watched the exchange, analyzing events even as they unfolded.

When Sara saw that the enemy mage’s shield was strong enough to resist any volume of small-caliber rifles, she ordered a cease-fire. The powder fog was pulled away by a gentle breeze, revealing a wall of glittering bayonets, mercenaries arranged in ranks three deep, the first two ranks pressing their rifle butts into the mud.

Evie would have had faith in that defense under normal circumstances. Against unarmored cavalry, the Tulian soldiers would have doubtlessly reigned supreme. They were now veterans of two wars, and they would not be broken so easily.

But would their bayonets hold strong against the Krapeu? The crocodilian beasts were not horses. At up to thirty feet long from head to tail, they could crush the entirety of Evie’s torso between their hissing jaws. Their green scales were thick and battle-scarred, a tapestry of failed attempts to fell the beasts written across their hide. Evie did not think they would survive a direct shot from a rifle, not to the flattest part of the head or chest, but she did not think they were half as fragile as horses, either. A single wound would not send them into a panic, that much was sure.

Evie’s uncertainty was mirrored in Sara’s tactics. Evie could see her wife towering over most of her soldiers, her height exceeded only by the orcs placed in the rear line of muskets. She was staring hard at the enemy Warriors, her lips moving silently. The distance between the two forces had closed to little more than a few hundred feet, with the rebel Warriors still marching under the slow mage shield.

If they’d brought muskets with them, they could be firing with near-impunity, Evie realized. Why didn’t they? Simple inexperience, or a limit of the mage’s spells? Perhaps they consider firearms a peasant’s weapon, improper for the peerage’s use?

Whatever it was, the thought was concerning. Sara’s choice to split their forces was even riskier than she’d initially believed. They would have to discuss the possibility of someday facing an enemy who was, in effect, assaulting them from within the shelter of a mobile fortress. It was only a matter of time until a mage created the necessary spell.

Gods be damned, we need our own combat mages. The things we could do with them…

Evie’s bicycle Company was about a minute away when it started. The Warriors, resplendent in their ornate, bronze-flecked armor, began to pound their blades against their own armor, creating an awful racket. The Krapeu at their core began thrashing their bodies left to right, heads and tails whipping hard enough to be weapons in their own right, leaving their Warriors barely holding on atop their frenzied mounts. Then, deep within the wall of elite soldiers, Evie caught her first glimpse of their mage. With dark skin and black, curled hair, the energy floating off her robes faded as the woman began slowly lowering her hands.

The Warriors’ racket reached a blood-curdling apex as an animalistic howl, leaping into the charge behind the gargantuan Krapeu, whose claws threw clods of soil as they burst into a galloping sprint.

The Warriors charged.

The shield faded.

“FIRE!”

That single word smothered the world in thick cotton, torn from Sara’s lungs with force enough to flatten every blade of grass for a hundred yards. Evie’s hearing was replaced by a dull, distant ringing, even the thick wax shoved deep into her ears not enough to protect from her wife’s voice. She could not even hear the gunshots when the Powdered Lead’s weapons erupted with perfect synchronicity, burying their lines in an avalanche of white smoke. A hurricane of lead spat forth, chewing through metal and man alike.

The Warriors stumbled, their lines rendered jagged and uneven as random individuals were cut down, but they did not stop.

Evie leapt off her bicycle, tucking into a roll that bounced her to her feet, legs already pumping. She held a fist up to signal her troops to halt as she abandoned them, ceding authority to the next in command. The battle had begun too soon, and only she was capable of reaching the melee in time.

Not every Warrior fell to the next Champion-guided volley. Sparks flew, blood poured, and soldiers died, but those who survived persevered, their heads filled with dreams of being the lone hero whose blade ended the day coated in Divine gore.

Unbidden, uncontrolled, and unknown to her, Evie’s lips peeled back into a feral grin, baring her fangs to the world.

When it came to foreign perceptions of the Divine Champion’s prowess, the strength of her and her companions in battle, most could be divided into two categories.

The first and most common were those strangers who had only heard of Sara and her wives. That sort thought little of Evie. They knew of her exotic heritage, her beauty, her privileged upbringing, and they assumed her a trophy. A woman under the Champion’s thrall, both subject and subordinate to Sara’s awesome beauty.

Those who had met them? The few diplomats and similar ilk who had traveled to Tulian personally? They saw things differently. Against all their expectations, they came away thinking little of Sara. A crude, easy-talking, beautiful, and salaciously promiscuous woman was something they had seen before. Sara made sense to them. But when they looked in Evie’s eyes? They recoiled, horrified by what stared back. They could not make sense of her off-kilter face, her eyebrows, lips, and nose all a collection of portraits hung a few unnerving degrees from perfectly level. They did not know that her imperfections were scars courtesy of a cursed, undying Knight, but they could feel something of the truth, if only a sliver. These strangers, these diplomats and foreigners, they dismissed Sara as a threat outright, assuming Evie was the blade at her side, the thorn on a Divine Rose.

The truth, as was so often the case, lay somewhere in the middle.

Evie watched the fallen cloud and counted breaths, waiting with impish glee.

Sara’s blacksteel armor ripped out of the powder haze, trailing tendrils of white smoke and crimson fog, her enchanted blade raised high, heated to a cherry glow by blue lightning crackling off its edge.

A Krapeu met her halfway, head twisted and jaws spread wide, its rider’s glaive swinging down from on high.

Evie laughed in delight.

Sara’s left hand released the hilt of her blade, a single fist blurring forward to crack the Krapeu across its lower jaw. The beast’s entire head was knocked aside from the force of the blow, stumbling it.

Evie didn’t understand why so many fools thought of Amarat as a gentle Goddess.

With the same motion that threw her punch, Sara’s neck leaned aside. The Warrior’s glaive slipped past her common helmet to strike the blacksteel over her shoulder, bouncing harmlessly off.

The Warrior pulled back for a second thrust, thinking Sara would stand and fight, only to find her missing. She’d never stopped sprinting past the Krapeu, dragging her glowing blade along its hide as she went, tearing a gash some ten feet long through the creature’s scales.

Of course, Amarat still wasn’t a Goddess of battle.

Just as Sara lifted her sword for a killing blow, aimed to swipe through the Krapeu’s spine, the creature’s thick tail swung.

Sara was hit by the heavy meat of the limb, thrown off her feet entirely as she sailed a dozen feet through the air, barely keeping hold of her sword when she struck the soil, rolling another dozen feet further.

Even before she stopped skidding, Sara was back on her feet, roaring her fury. Two Warriors stopped their charge to turn towards her, raising long sword-bladed spears in challenge.

Sara still hadn’t regained her footing before she threw herself among them. The two Warriors leapt back in shock, trying to regain the distance they needed to use their polearms.

Sara grabbed hold of one Warrior’s weapon, letting herself be dragged across the gap. Her greatsword’s enchantments flashed as she readied the weapon, folding the weapon into a shortsword, holding it high in her right hand, prepared to swing at the Warrior whose spear she still held, leaving them defenseless.

The second Warrior dropped their swordspear and drew one of the bulging, single-edged swords the nobility of this land preferred, flinging it upward in a desperate bid to protect their comrade from the incoming swing.

Only to find an armored elbow embedding itself in the meat of their open helmet, Sara having kicked off with her opposite leg as she ignored the first Warrior entirely, tackling the second to the ground.

Sara’s arms became a blur as she straddled her victim’s chest, arterial blood painting the sky with every double-fisted blow.

The first Warrior managed to drag her off a moment later, but it was already too late. There was nothing left of their comrade’s head save for a red, muddy crater.

Evie lost track of what happened next. She was nearing the battle herself. Shots were whipping past to the left and right, the Powdered Lead she’d abandoned carefully picking off those who were not too close. The entire rolling wall of Warriors and Krapeu finally slammed into the infantry square just as Evie reached the edge of the battle, uncaring of the way her smile spread even wider.

The familiar weight of her Hurlish-crafted rapier fell into her palm, its steel polished to a mirror sheen.

This was not where she thrived. Not anymore. She did not have the Skills to keep track of the whirling melee as so many others did. If she fell into the thick of things here, against Irregulars of equal or, truthfully, even lesser Level than herself, she would be overwhelmed and taken down. She was a woman of the Duel, not the battlefield.

Thankfully, she was also behind the enemy, whose attentions were firmly focused elsewhere.

Leather rasped as fifteen inches of blacksteel slid from her chest holster. She lifted the revolver in her offhand, rapier in the other, and pulled back the hammer. A single notch taken from the steel became aligned with a metal bead at the end of the barrel, bouncing in time with her adrenaline-soaked heart.

Evie took a deep breath. Held it for a moment. Then let it out.

She pulled the trigger.

A half-inch pellet of lead tore its way through the spine of a Warrior atop her Krapeu, felling the soldier. The beast felt its rider go slack and, without an ounce of hesitation, craned its neck around to latch its jaws around the woman’s leg, tearing her from the saddle. It shook its head like a dog who had caught a rat, repeatedly slamming the woman’s limp body against the ground. The Warriors nearest the beast leapt away, relieving pressure against the mercenaries they had been facing as the beast began to lay into friend and foe alike.

The Krapeu ignored everyone, preferring instead to use its forelimbs to begin peeling the steel armor off its rider, digging its snout into the bloody feast within.

Evie’s revolver floated over to the next rider and fired again, killing them. Then to the next. Then to the next.

Six shots.

Six seconds.

Six riders dead.

Evie holstered her revolver just as the first few Warriors realized what was happening, turning around to investigate the sound of far-too-close gunshots at their back. Ahead of them, right at the point where bayonet met spear, the riderless Krapeu began wreaking indiscriminate havoc.

Evie lifted her rapier, taking three calm, measured steps backward, giving herself room. She pointed one slender finger at the Warrior who had first noticed her, as if taunting them.

The Warrior laughed, flourishing their spear confidently. A rapier against a spear was not a fight most in her position would ever ask for, and this man knew it. She could not see his face beneath his helmet, but she recognized it in his posture. He was eager for this fight.

Evie smiled at him.

The moment he stepped out into the open, he dropped bonelessly to the ground. Two shots landed in his gut, one in his chest, and another blew open his right knee. Three more thumped into his body after he’d already fallen dead, making his corpse jerk obscenely.

Hitting a man-sized target at a hundred yards was child’s play for an experienced rifleman.

The other Warriors charged Evie as one. She floated backward across the battlefield, drawing the distance out, and all the while, shots kept pouring into the Warriors. Some skated off enchanted armor, others tore straight through, but all were heard and reacted to, stumbling the entire mob.

And they were a mob. Graf would have been disgusted at the sight. None of these Warriors were accustomed to fighting in groups of equal skill, accustomed to nothing other than wading into battle on their lonesome, slaughtering inexperienced, incapable troops. As they charged her, shoving and jostling in their haste, she decided in an instant that these were not the Imperial elite. These were Warriors of some description who happened to be living in the city when the call for capable soldiers had gone out. Veterans, yes, powerful, yes, but nothing more. They were what Sara might call “shock troops”: those who won the day through tenacity, aggression, and superior equipment, rather than pure, unquestionable superiority.

In short, they did not know what to do against an enemy who didn’t piss themselves in terror.

One of the Warriors reached Evie through the fusillade. She knocked aside their first jab with their spear, then their second, third, and fourth, and only when they pulled the weapon back to gather their breath did she lunge forward, rapier extended.

Through the holes in their helm, she saw the Warrior’s eyes widen in astonishment. They twisted their spear in front of themselves, using the wood to just barely knock the tip of her rapier off course, sending it skating off their breastplate rather than into the weak neck chainmail she had been aiming for.

Before they could recover their stance, Evie pulled her rapier into her chest and, with all the unthinking ease of a seamstress placing another thread among thousands, pierced their eye through.

The Warrior dropped, replaced by another for the brief instant before a shot slammed into their helmet. The enchanted steel did not fail under the blow, shattering the bullet into a colorful cone of glowing lead. The power of the impact was still enough to knock the Warrior’s head aside, leaving them teetering and dazed.

Evie completed their fall with a sharp backhand, knocking the Warrior to the ground. The back of the woman’s legs were protected only by thin leather, the type of armor meant to be used in a line of battle.

Evie swiped her blade through both of the woman’s calves. She felt the harsh scrape of her blade scoring a line in each bone, skritch-skritch, severing muscle and tendon.

The woman screamed in agony, tried to stand, and fell. In a certain way, she reminded Evie of her younger self. Much like a toddler who had been struck across the temple by their mother’s fist, the woman heaved out an agonized sob, crawling away as fast as she was able.

Evie forgot about her as she stepped over the crawling woman, holding her arms out in welcoming embrace to the remaining Warriors. She let her smile beam out at them.

They flinched.

The gunshots moved away, the distance between Evie and her opponents too close for the Powdered Lead to risk. Ten cowered before one, even though any two of them could have killed her. The moment stretched long. Behind them, the Powdered Lead were holding strong, if only just, against the onslaught of the other Warriors.

“Well?” She asked, raising her voice over the din of battle. “Who wishes to try their hand next?”

She could not have timed her question better, for it was that exact instant that Sara’s shoulder crashed into the rearmost Warrior, her wife’s helm broken and discarded, a guttural roar spewing blood and chips of broken teeth into the open air.

The Warriors spun to the new threat, raising their weapons.

Pathetic, Evie thought. Do none of you trust your comrades to deal with a single woman?

She emphasized their error by sending her rapier through the nape of a Warrior. It stuck fast in some bit of metal, and so she flicked to one side, throwing their entire body to the ground in a crumpled heap.

Sara leapt to her feet, standing over the corpse of the Warrior whose spine her tackle had snapped. She was smeared in blood, flies already buzzing around her, picking at the viscera which clung to her like a second skin.

In Evie’s later recollections, that was the moment the battle broke into a hazy blur.

She saw flashes of Sara, her countenance rendered hazy by the volume of smoke which poured from her broken and battered armor. She was injured in a dozen different places, but none of them were life-threatening.

Her wife did not fight like anyone else on this particular battlefield. She was too brutal for a Warrior. Too inelegant for a Knight. Too furious, even, for a common soldier. And above all else, Evie knew, she was certainly no duelist.

She didn’t care who she fought. She flew from one fight to the next without restraint, all but physically leaping onto her opponents. She seemed to have another set of eyes searching for distraction and weakness, which afforded her the opportunity to abandon every exchange without warning, always taking someone nearby off guard with a brutal impact. She used her fists and the flat of her blade as often as she did the sword’s cutting edge, constantly using its enchantments to shift from a three-foot shortsword to a monstrous five-foot greatsword, the likes of which no Imperial soldier had ever seen before.

She was not flawless, of course. She was constantly grabbed, cut, punched, and knocked aside. But always, always, she kept moving. It was as if her lungs had no need of air, her body no need of rest. She was consumed by a constant sense of absolute, unstoppable momentum, giving the impression that trying to stop her onslaught would be as mad an act as trying to charge down the muzzle of a cannon.

Evie followed after her, aiding her one-woman cavalry charge. She stood at Sara’s back, acting more as a menacing presence than any true bodyguard. The enemy could not decide which of the two madwomen to engage, and their hesitation was costing them. Every soldier who strayed too far was cut down by a hail of precision bullets, the Powdered Lead practically salivating as they waited for each opportunity.

It was simultaneously the most precarious situation Evie had ever been in and the most powerful she had ever felt. The fact that she and Sara were quite literally surrounded by elite soldiers, yet lived still, was a miracle made possible only by the advent of firearms. They came in fits and starts, each miniature volley tearing one bastard or another to bloody pieces. If it wasn’t the support of the rifles, she and Sara would have been dead a dozen times over.

As was often the case with battles, the breaking point came without warning. One moment, Evie’s back was pressed to Sara’s, her rapier held threateningly ahead of her.

Then, somewhere within the psyche of her many opponents, something snapped.

The field was abandoned in short order. The Warriors, to their credit, retreated as one. It could not be called a rout. The honor guard which was still protecting their mage became their rallying point, some of the presumably higher-ranked Warriors calling for those who still lived to retreat.

They disentangled from the Powdered Lead rapidly, sprinting towards shimmering safety. The mage had to shrink their shield for a time to allow the Warriors entry, prompting a furious volley from both halves of the Powdered Lead as they tried to cut the woman down, but it didn’t bear any fruit. The mage was powerful and clever enough to shift between protecting first a wide area, to only themselves, then back to a wide area, all without ever weakening the strength of her spell.

Evie took some small satisfaction in seeing the way the mage’s arms were beginning to tremble with the effort, however. Exhaustion was plain on the woman’s face, sweat dripping in rivers from her brow.

“If only we had our artillery,” Evie said aloud.

“Heh,” Sara grunted. She spat a wad of blood to one side. “That’sh what we’ll be shaying in every damn fight we don’t have ‘em.”

Confident the Warriors were retreating, Evie finally let herself turn her attention to her wife.

Sara was in a terrible state. She had ruined her gauntlets yet again, the repeated blows of her fists twisting them into a mangled mess that was far beyond salvaging. The many lacerations her shattered armor had allowed to crisscross her body were individually of little concern, but in aggregate, it wouldn’t be long before blood loss rendered her unconscious.

“Drink,” Evie ordered, pulling a potion from her belt. It was one of Selliana’s own brews, far more powerful than a common alchemist’s work. They had only a limited number of them, but these circumstances justified its use.

“Thanksh,” Sara mumbled, accepting the potion. As her lips parted to drink it, she saw that her wife had lost more of her front teeth than remained, leaving her smile an ugly, snaggle-toothed thing.

So it is possible to harm the beauty of Amarat’s Champion, Evie mused. Then she looked Sara up and down again, reappraising the statement. Well. To those of more traditional sensibilities.

Not every spouse would find beauty in the sight of their partner covered in the blood of their enemies, limbs trembling with the aftereffects of barely constrained bloodlust, but Evie most certainly did. Even with the support of almost four hundred riflemen, what Sara had done during that battle would have earned her an unquestioned Knighthood in Sporatos. Likely a landed Knighthood, at that. It was an accomplishment worth recording in scroll and song.

Sara tossed the empty potion bottle aside, shivering as its effects began to work on her, then turned around, jogging back to the Powdered Lead lines.

The mercenaries had not escaped the battle without casualty. At a rough glance, Evie estimated there were three to four dozen Tulian soldiers laid out on the soil. Most were still alive, thank the gods, but they were teetering on the edge. Several had lost limbs to the maddened Krapeu, while others had been victims of the Warriors themselves, more common bladed wounds digging into their skin. A great number showed signs of their steel armor being broken through entirely, the strength of their enemy rendering the unenchanted metal little more protection than wooden plates.

Sara, still dripping blood, ran over to the most wounded of the soldiers and pulled a roll of bandages from her bag, beginning the battlefield triage process.

Evie left her to it. She whistled loud and long, waving her contingent of the Powdered Lead forward. They rode over on their bicycles and, already knowing what she wanted of them, began establishing a cordon around their wounded comrades, protecting them from further encroachments. Those facing the larger rebel army began loading their guns, firing off the occasional shot, though they were at the very edge of their equipment’s effective range. Evie considered reprimanding them for it, but decided against it. It would be good practice, she supposed.

Their blackpowder budget was paid by the Imperials, after all.

In the distance, she heard the beginnings of a dull thumping. It was a sound like a cloth-wrapped pot being struck by a mallet, the sharp crash muffled by the intervening distance.

Looks like General Borek got our cannons into position.

The Garrison of Ta-Pet’s gamble had failed, then. As smart as it had been to sally out from the walls, their entire plan of battle had been based around reaching a bend in the jungle road before Borek. So long as they used the curve to avoid the artillery having a clear shot on their forces, they could utilize their superior numbers as traditional Imperial doctrine dictated.

That had failed. In her mind’s eye, Evie could see what was happening. The Powdered Lead’s Napoleons were pouring straight shot and canister into the tightly-packed rebel forces, every detonation reaping a horrific toll in death. Pressed in by the impermeable jungle, there was nothing they could do but stand there and take it. They would have mages, of course, specialists capable of putting up some brief resistance, but the Powdered Lead artillerists had an absolutely laughable quantity of ammunition, and with the Imperials at their side, the support of friendly mages.

The battle was won.

She left the defense of the wounded soldiers to her officers, returning to Sara’s side. She was tourniqueting a woman’s severed wrist, whispering words of encouragement as she did so.

“Can you hear the cannons?” Evie asked.

“No,” Sara said tersely.

“They are firing even as we speak. It is only a matter of time until the enemy breaks entirely.”

“Good.” Sara jerked the knot tight one last time, apologized to the woman for the pain, then moved to the next in line. “Now the real shit starts.”

“Oh?”

Sara jerked her head to the city, where the gates were being hastily lowered. It seemed whoever was in charge of the walls had seen the tide of battle turning for themselves.

“Borek’s army is about to march into that city. And we’re going to have to keep them under control.”

Evie licked her lips. She did not consider that duty the Powdered Lead’s responsibility in any way whatsoever, but she wasn’t going to argue. She hadn’t expected anything else from Sara.

She sighed. “I will begin briefing our troops on what is expected of them. I expect that you wish us to prioritize the protection of poorer regions of the city over the wealthier?”

“Yeah. And Evie?” Sara looked up from her patient, a dangerous glint in her eyes. “Make sure they get a full load of ammo before you send them into that city.”

Evie nodded demurely, even as she cursed to herself. From one powder keg to another. It was going to be a hellish evening.

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