“Abraham? Are you...? Is this hurting you?”
“Hurting?” He blinked, focusing, and shook his head. “Just... tired. So tired.”
“You should rest. At least for a few minutes.” She felt suddenly guilty for bringing the girl over.
He snorted, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms. “A few minutes won’t make any difference. A week wouldn’t be enough.” He looked up at her. “I will do what I can. It’s just... worse than I ever imagined.”
“I know,” Raesinia said. “I’m sorry.”
“You did not force me to come here,” Abraham said. His hands tightened into fists. “Sometimes I wish I could fight like Alex. I could have gone with her and Winter.”
“Sothe is with them,” Raesinia said. “She’ll keep everyone safe.”
“I believe it,” Abraham said solemnly. Then, abruptly, he held up a hand.
“What’s wrong?”
“The guns have stopped.”
It was true. There were still screams from the cutter’s tent, and the more distant sounds of fighting on the other fronts, but the endless thunder of the cannonade had gone quiet. After a few moments, cannon picked up again, closer and louder. Those were Archer’s guns, Raesinia knew. Marcus had ordered the gunners not to waste ammunition trying to knock out Janus’ batteries, so if they were firing—
“They’re coming,” she said. “I have to go. Are you all right here for the moment?”
Abraham nodded, eyelids already drooping. Raesinia ran back around the cutter’s tent and up the hill, following the tracks they’d cut this morning, now a churned mess of stones and mud. She detoured around the boulder and the command post and headed for another vantage she’d discovered, a stump at the top of the trench line, high enough above Archer’s guns that she could see past the smoke.
Sure enough, down on the plain, tight-?packed columns of infantry were moving in for the assault. Smaller guns accompanied them, their sharper reports like the yapping of excited dogs. Archer’s batteries returned fire, solid shot arcing over the heads of the Second Division soldiers in the trenches to descend screaming on the plain, bouncing in wild, devastating arcs. The advancing troops were Murnskai, their white uniforms a vivid contrast with the dark earth. Whenever a ball struck, it mowed through the column, carrying away several men and leaving more broken bodies lying on a stretch of ground that was already littered with corpses.
As Marcus had said this morning, Janus was well aware that his attackers were never going to be able to win a firefight with defenders hunkered down behind breastworks. This time, four battalion columns came in at the double, breaking into a charge as soon as the first shots rang out from the trenches. They made no attempt to form into a line and maximize their firepower, but remained concentrated, relying on the momentum of thousands of bodies to carry them forward. The heads of the columns started to shrink, men falling faster and faster as they got closer to the trenches, but they kept coming. The neat formations, with one company behind the next, started to dissolve, producing a dense mass of men with bayonets fixed, huddling together against the deadly lead rain.
The Girls’ Own, who held the first trench, didn’t wait to receive them. They fired a last volley and ran, scrambling up onto the unprotected hillside. Volunteers farther up the hill continued to shoot, but the Murnskai could see their enemy fleeing and came on all the faster. Some of them stopped to fire, and blue-?uniformed women tumbled and went down across the hill. The fastest crested the breastwork and jumped down into the trench their enemies had vacated.
Somewhere down below, Cyte gave the order with her customary good timing. Raesinia couldn’t hear it, but she saw the effect. The Third Regiment, de Koste’s troops, leapt up from their trenches farther up the hill and counter-?charged, firing as they went. The Murnskai soldiers fired back, but soon discovered that the trenches, steep ?walled on the downhill side, were a gradual slope facing the other way and gave no protection at all from incoming fire. The men in white were no more eager to receive a bayonet charge than the women in blue had been, and they broke before contact, only a few stragglers being cut down with cold steel. De Koste’s men continued to fire into the fleeing Murnskai, and Archer’s guns thundered again, harassing them as they went.
Cyte had suggested the tactic, and they’d been using it all day, with the soldiers digging frantically to repair and extend their trenches even as the cannonballs fell like rain. Raesinia had watched it work three times now, smashing everything Janus had sent against them. But he seemed to have an endless supply of fresh troops to renew the struggle, while every time more of the defenders were hauled away to the horror of the cutter’s station or the growing lines of corpses.
As though the thought had summoned them, Raesinia saw more enemy soldiers coming, a long line of them, pushing over the blue-and white-?coated bodies that littered the plain. This new group was a motley bunch, with some representatives from both armies, but many in civilian clothes. Raesinia frowned at them. Does Janus have his own volunteers? Then, Winter’s story running through her mind, she suddenly understood.
Red-?eyes.
Raesinia jumped off the stump and started down the hill before she was quite aware of what she was doing. I have to warn Cyte. The bodies of the Beast were not like ordinary men and women—?they knew no pain and showed no fear. They would never break, never run, only keep coming until they were dead. And if they get too close, they can take our soldiers for their own.
The regiments had been exchanging duties with each attack. The retreating Girls’ Own had halted, now occupying the highest point on the hillside, just below the artillery. Someone recognized Raesinia despite her filthy state, and a cheer went up as she went by. It was passed on to the volunteers, in the center, men and women from the streets of Vordan without even uniform jackets to call their own. They’d started the day armed mostly with swords, spears, and a few shotguns and hunting pieces. Now most of them had muskets, looted from friendly and enemy dead. They shouted and hurrahed as Raesinia ran, her legs feeling wobbly underneath her. Would they still be cheering if their queen took a tumble and rolled down the hill?