At first, it seemed like a fluke.

  Silence. Utter silence.

  No man dared speak. No man dared move. Breath was taken shallow and careful, as if the sound of lungs filling might be enough to shatter whatever fragile balance had settled over the fort.

  The enemy had been named, but not yet seen.

  Horses neighed somewhere beyond the works, uneasy and restless. An infant cried, the sound sharp and sudden before it was quickly smothered. A Blemmye shifted its weight farther down the line, and the earth answered with a low groan as timbers creaked and mud resettled beneath its step.

  Such silence could kill. If not the man, then the heart, or the soul. It lingered too long, gave fear time to grow roots. Silence like this eats at hope long before powder and ball ever do their work.

  “Make the boys sing,” I told Brandt.

  He knew my meaning.

  His ugly mug smiled once more.

  “DRUMMERS! TO ARMS!”

  The beat changed.

  Away from the drum of danger and death, and into something steadier. A rhythm meant to be followed. A rhythm with life in it. Life was needed now, before the plunge.

  Twenty cannons lined the parapet. Thirty more, more or less, waited in the trenches below. Powder and ball gathered from every corner, stacked and guarded like treasure. I had never commanded such a battery.

  And still, it felt thin.

  Against Gustavian arms, nothing ever felt sufficient. Discipline marched with them, and discipline kills cleanly. As their full weight closed in, ordered and certain, it became clear what kind of hell waited for us.

  The silence stretched tight.

  Men shifted. Hands tightened on ramrods and pikes. Sweat gathered despite the cold. Waiting pressed harder than any charge.

  The noise could not come fast enough. Movement. Sweat. Blood. Anything to tear us free from this wretched stillness.

  And, thankfully, it came. But not as I expected.

  The silence was broken from behind me—from the stair that climbed to the parapet. Heavy strikes answered one another there, slow and deliberate. Each thud carried weight enough to travel through stone and bone alike. There was no need to turn to know who climbed.

  Gotthard had come.

  He bore his immense club with him, a wretched thing of rusted iron, split wood, and caked earth. It dragged history with it. I held no illusions about what that weight could do when set to purpose.

  “The struggle cometh,” he said. His voice rolled low, gathered from deep places. “Brass shall roar, and men shall fall. We stand with thee, Edelmer, in unity.”

  He did not look at me as he spoke. His gaze rested somewhere beyond the walls, fixed upon the same held breath that bound us all.

  “And yet,” he continued, the sound grinding like stone under frost, “thou hast given us no charge, nor direction in thy striving. What sayest thou, Commander?”

  Then his form turned. Fully. His eyes, sunk deep in flesh and time, settled upon me—thoughtful, piercing, unyielding.

  “Whence are we to make our stand?”

  Calm found me then.

  No—we did not have enough men. That truth had been weighed and measured already. But we had Blemmye.

  “Sir,” I said, “I trust you to make your own calls. Your people are your charge. I ask only that you aid us in our need.”

  He gave no answer in words.

  Gotthard lifted his club, setting its weight, readying it without ceremony. Then he laid a hand upon my shoulder. The pressure was immense, yet steady—something ancient in it.

  “God be with thee.”

  And with that, he turned away, already moving toward the work that awaited him.

  A rap at my shoulder pulled me back from the calm Gotthard had left behind. Brandt had leaned closer to the fortress wall, head cocked, his good ear pressed toward the marsh.

  “Their drums come,” he said. “I hear them.”

  As the weight of Gotthard’s retreat faded down the stair, I heard it too.

  Similar to ours. A drum is always a drum. Yet their rhythm betrayed itself at once—shortened, clipped, stripped of flourish. Beyond marsh, river, trees, and low hills, the sound gathered and multiplied. A field of beats, layered and exact. They spoke their master’s language plainly: precise, fast, shaped for killing.

  “No cannon is to be fired from the trenches. This must be heeded.” I caught Brandt by the cuff of his buff coat and pulled him close, forced his eye to meet mine. “Make certain they know their station. There is no command more important.”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Some of his steel left him when he saw my face. It did not last long. He nodded, that crooked, cocksure nod of his. “Aye, sir.”

  He turned at once, stalking the wall, and bellowed with the authority only a truly sour bastard can summon.

  “NO CANNON FIRES WITHOUT CAUSE! UNLICENSED SHOT WILL BE PENALIZED BY HANGING! FOLLOW THE DRUMS AND THE TRUMPETS!”

  Hanging was not licensed either, but I did not correct him. Clarity mattered more than legality now. Brandt had a gift for being understood.

  I looked south.

  The trenches ran far beyond Kesselbruck, clawing along riverbanks and roads that once led home. I could see pairs of soldiers moving at speed—blue and red together—running messages, hauling powder, correcting some small error that might yet decide everything. A song had risen in the Blemmye tongue, low and heavy, and farther down the line other giants answered it in turn.

  I looked north.

  There the trenches ended where the ground gave up, collapsing into craters of mire and stinking earth. The river split and wandered, merging with the rot that had always haunted this border. Women and civilian men hurried toward the fort. Mothers and fathers, bearing food, water, last touches, last words. Gestures of care delivered in haste, before the world broke and speech became a luxury none could afford.

  As I studied the northern defences, movement caught my eye. Vollmer ran along the wall toward me, gaze locked, pace too quick for comfort.

  Vollmer never runs without cause.

  He slowed only long enough to steal a breath for decorum, then spoke.

  “We have spotted movement. Riders close to the far hill, above the Gustavian camp. Their drums are close—too close. We must expect cannon soon.”

  So. The barrage was coming.

  “If we fire early,” I said, keeping my voice level, “we lose our chance to weaken their battery by counter-fire. Let them deploy. We are ready, are we not?”

  He knew the sense of it. I saw it in his jaw, the way it set even as his eyes betrayed the weight of the thought. Few men accept the role of cannon bait with ease. Still, he saluted and turned back to his duty.

  It was time.

  “MESK!” I roared.

  I moved northward after Vollmer, needing my own eyes on what crept toward our deaths. My voice rippled through the fort. The quiet changed character. Silence was no longer the order of the day.

  Mesk came at once. The stamp of his boots behind me, the stiff salute, told me enough. He placed the instrument in my hands—my farseer.

  I knew he understood its weight. The man had been tempered hard, drawn tight by duty and fear alike. Had half my command been wrought to such steel, victory might already have been written.

  I gave him a nod. He left.

  I raised the cracked glass to my eye.

  And I saw.

  My God Lord, I saw.

  Down the road across the river they came. Rank after rank, blue and black pressed together into something that looked less like an army and more like a moving wall. Light cavalry screened them, riding loose and wide, trickling ahead into the ruined tents and scorched ground that marked our last clash. Ghosts walking through their own dead.

  Their men were well covered. No cannon on our walls could reach them cleanly. Distance robbed us. Terrain bent the angles wrong. The fort’s old stone refused to swivel its guns where my eyes wanted them. Powder sat useless, hungry, waiting for a better sin.

  No cannon among them.

  The Gustavian officer had been right. The hill would be their fire position.

  Or the guns were further back.

  Or further north.

  Or they had crossed the river to the south, quietly, patiently, already laughing at us.

  All truths could live together. All could kill us.

  Damn me, and my post.

  My brow furrowed. Heat rose in me, and dread followed close behind.

  Was this where my men were to die? Was this where the people of Kesselbruck—men, women—would be spent beneath my command, squandered by my own hand?

  I closed my eyes. Pressed a palm to my face. Held my breath until it burned. I forced myself to stay whole while the earth carried the weight of a thousand marching feet, while horses whined that sharp, killing sound that only trained beasts make when blood is near.

  Then a roar tore through it all.

  Somewhere south along the line, a voice broke—hoarse, shrill, yet full of iron. I could not make out the words, only their force. Other voices answered it at once, the sound rolling across mire and trench alike, gathering men into one breath. Steel rang. Armor clattered. A last, ragged song before the measure of strength was taken and paid for in flesh.

  My men were ready.

  And so, I would be too.

  “MEN OF ERDEN’S EDGE!” I roared. “THE KILLING HOUR COMES! ANY MAN THAT CROSSES THAT RIVER IS TO BE ENDED! ANY CANNON THAT DARES TARGET US SHALL BE RENDERED DOWN! STEEL BEFORE SHAME!”

  The sound tore at my ears. My throat burned. Yet my feet were firm on the stone, and something in my chest lifted and held.

  “FIRE BEFORE FLIGHT!”

  The answer came ragged and full. Officers. Men. Voices breaking, voices finding shape. Even the ground seemed to take it up, a low answering tremor beneath boots and wheels.

  There would be no flight.

  I saw the horses before I saw the cannon.

  On the potholed hill across the river they laboured into view—horses straining in harness, men heaving at wheels, iron-bore barrels revealing themselves piece by piece. Thirteen I counted, clearly. Clustered. Not yet set. Still raw with possibility.

  Their infantry did not yet show themselves.

  Instead, one man rode out ahead of the rest. Alone. Mounted. A white flag lifted high as he made for the broken bridge.

  There it was. The final courtesy. The last invitation to surrender what we had chosen to hold.

  They were decent enough to offer it. Decent enough to smile while they prepared to peel the skin from our bones.

  Through the farseer I caught his face. The flag was white. The man was not. Resolve sat heavy in his posture, in the way his horse was kept steady, in the certainty of his approach.

  Force was already decided.

  The formality was for the record.

  “MUSKETS AND PISTOLS READY! AXES, SWORDS, AND PIKES READY! HOLD EVERY INCH!”

  “Ayes!” rolled back across the mire—boys and men together, one sound rising from mud and fear and will.

  “SHARPSHOOTERS,” I called, and my arm cut the air in a single, final arc, “END THEIR FARCE!”

  There was no hesitation.

  Our best had been chosen long before this moment—Grenzlander and Gustavian alike—men who knew how to breathe once and never again until the work was done. Masters of shot. They bore the title as a burden, not a boast.

  Three short blooms of smoke burst from the line.

  The horse screamed, blood already darkening its flank as it bolted away to die somewhere nameless. The rider pitched forward, the white flag folding beneath him as he struck the ground. Cloth, man, and courtesy fell together.

  And with that, it was done.

  The Battle of Erden’s Edge had begun.