----------------------------

  Ignite

  ----------------------------

  The cry of the lookout was shrill and warbling, the young woman's voice cracking as she tried her best to make sure every ship in the damn fleet heard her panicked cry.

  "Sails on the horizon, two points off starboard! Six, seven, eight- more! Hard to get a proper count, Cap'n!"

  The exhausted sailors of the Waverake were roused to life by the pronouncement, peeling themselves off the deck where they had fallen asleep but a few short hours before. It had been a frantic two day's journey back from their raiding, Admiral Nora managing every ship in the fleet as if she were personally standing at their helms. Most captains would have deeply resented such micromanagement, but not this force. They had made a near impossible pace under Nora's command, leagues slipping past as they were born south by the southernly trade winds. Yet still the quiet fear remained among every member of the crew. It was not tempered by their success over the enemy Magecraft, which had finally caught two cannonballs through its hull the night before, forcing it to retreat for repairs. They feared that they would be too te. That the Sporaton fleet, so often thought of yet never truly seen, had been lurking just up the coast from the capital's walls, the now-stricken Magecraft a clever feint.

  That fear had risen and fallen as often as the waves beneath the ship, following the coming and going of news. Rumors and scuttlebutt were the way of a ship, and with the Admiral known to possess a crystal linked to Tulian, more than one idler had spent their off-hours sitting as near to the captain's cabin as they dared, hoping to be the first to share any news, even if it was of the city's fall. None had caught a word, but that didn't stop them from loudly prociming otherwise.

  With the lookout's shriek, they now knew the truth of it: the Sporaton fleet had not been close enough to seize the city in their absence. But it had been a narrow thing. The sighting came with the fleet but a handful of leagues from Tulian's walls, mere hours of sailing left before they'd have reached safe harbor.

  It would be a chase now. The wind was blowing directly astern, driving both fleets towards the city on as near to a direct course as could be asked for. Ignite did not know if they would reach the enemy fleet before they reached the city. Admiral Nora had altered her captured prize ships considerably, learning from the lines of the otherworldly USS Constitution, and he suspected there existed few ships (outside the Carrion Navy) whose sailing qualities were as fine. They were sturdy, steady vessels, their mixture of square and teen sails dragging their now-coppered hulls through the water with a lively eagerness. However, in a chase such as this, oars were often the determining factor, something the gargantuan Waverake could not rely upon. She was purely beholden to the wind, which, while steady, was presently little more than eleven or twelve knots. She was a fine ship, but she was no magecraft. She couldn't outrun the wind which drove her.

  Thankfully for Ignite, these abstract concerns weren't within his official purview.

  "Marines to the spar deck!" He yelled, the words cracking over the growing chaos. "All Marines, action stations, armed and armored!"

  The frantic flurry that was building on the Waverake's deck reached a fever pitch as his hundred Marines added their bodies to the press, some running for the belowdecks armory to equip their armor, those that had already been on duty instead breaking for the lockers which contained the vessel's muskets. Ignite reached this second position first, producing the enchanted key which would disarm the gunpowder bomb that waited just inside the thick door. Ignite did not approve of the trap, seeing as it was made by apprentice artificers who had first id eyes on bckpowder a handful of months ago, but the Admiral had insisted.

  He tossed the pike-muskets to each of the Marines as they approached, leaving them to grab a powder horn for themselves. After conferring with Gunner Balon, it had rather quickly been decided that throwing packets of bckpowder across a wooden deck should be considered poor practice.

  When the Marines finished assembling on the forecastle, Ignite called out.

  "Time!"

  "Just under six minutes, sir!" Sergeant Madz barked, his orcish rumble carrying well over the shouting of the sailors.

  "Acceptable, but room for improvement remains."

  The Marines called out as one, smming their heels together as they took up a formal rest position. "Sir, yes sir!"

  Ignite stomped down the line with military formality, inspecting their kits with a dagger eye. Every Marine was equipped as he had ordered. They were protected by Carrion-inspired armor, not as protective as those of a ndsman Knight's suit, yet far more practical for work on the heaving ocean. Each piece was attached loosely with leather straps, leaving gaps that, while easy to exploit, allowed a Marine to cut the armor free with a few quick slices of their obsessively-sharpened belt knife. They held the muskets at their shoulders, pike tips– bayonets, as Evie's letter had named them– gleaming wickedly above their heads. A powder horn dangled off each Marine's hip, a rge leather pouch filled with paper cartridges sitting beside. Crucially, unlike any of the Tulian Army's soldiers, each Marine had been afforded a pistol which sat snugly off the hip opposite their ammunition. The wood-stocked flintlocks were hacked down to size from the smithing yard's rejects, muskets that had been determined too poorly built to be rifled as the Champion's decree had ordered. Their long-range deficiencies, worsened considerably once the things had been sawn in half, still left them perfectly adequate for the close quarters of a boarding action.

  He eyed each of these weapons as he passed the soldiers, ensuring their maintenance had been performed as was proper. Evie's instructions had been precise, and he had disseminated heavily abridged copies of her instructions to each Marine. Many had joined the Navy illiterate, but rectifying this had been one of his first orders upon joining the Waverake. Literacy was a requirement of Carrion sailors one and all, and he intended to follow the best of his former people's practices.

  He reached the end of the line and turned smartly on his heel, drawing in his breath. "Marines, load and stand ready! Sergeant Madz, keep them busy, run them through fire drills while the fleet closes. Sergeant Dal, task those not drilling with the spreading of sand across the spar deck."

  The two sergeants snapped off salutes and sharp affirmations. Ignite moved toward the helm, to learn from the Admiral how she expected the engagement to progress, but was promptly stopped by Sergeant Dal appearing at his elbow, looking conflicted.

  "Yes, Sergeant?"

  "About the sand, sir," he said. "I mentioned it just once before, but there's no need for it. Per the Cap'n's orders, that is. She has the firefighting foam the Champion made, y'see."

  "The sand is not for fires, Sergeant," Ignite patiently expined. "It is for keeping our footing once the deck has been slicked by blood."

  Sergeant Dal paled slightly, then took to his assigned task without another word.

  The Admiral, predictably, was surrounded by a swarm of attendants. Ignite was not the only officer who needed to know the woman's pn for the upcoming engagement, and he was far from the most important amongst them.

  Rather than address each officer's questions individually, Captain Nora took a step back from the crowd, silencing them all with a sweeping gre.

  "We will attack the enemy in arrowhead formation, the Waverake at its tip. Once battle is met, confusion will reign, and whatever orders I give now will be rendered irrelevant in a matter of moments."

  She locked eyes with the officers in turn, the mad cerulean sheen each of them knew so well suppressed by the stern set of her jaw.

  "Our duty is to suffer all the blows that the rest of the fleet would not survive. The Waverake will engage as many of the enemy as is possible. She will engage them as often as possible, for as long as possible. We will attack their Magecraft, attack their mundane ships, attack their crews, attack their rigging and their hulls and every other aspect of their ships, and will continue this without cessation. We will do so with every weapon avaible to us, from cannons and muskets to sabers and pikes. We will be offered no quarter, and we will offer no quarter. We will fight until the end. You have no questions. Dismissed."

  Ignite saluted and turned smartly away, the first to do so in the stunned silence. It was no less than he had expected from the mad captain. She was not a woman of half measures.

  --------------------------

  A stern chase between two equally matched foes was a matter of many, many hours. Ignite spent the earliest part of the day running his Marines through loading drills, firing a spray of shot into the sea every half minute or so. He did so as dry-firing initially, as it felt like a waste of powder, but Gunner Balon soon came up to him and objected. Balon had first pointed out to him that they were past the point of such concerns. By the flop-hatted Gunner's reckoning, if the Waverake finished the day with even an ounce of powder left in her stores, she would have failed in her duty. Secondly, it took two volleys from a hundred Marines to equal the powder of a single cannon shot. He ran the numbers aloud for Ignite, proving that this left them powder enough for the Marines to fire a volley every thirty seconds, day and night, for three straight days. Ignite's concerns for frugality soon faded from his thoughts.

  And, if he were truthful, the drilling was also a matter of no small ego. The Tulian fleet was slowly gaining on their Sporaton opposites, first their masts being visible from the ship's maindeck, then their hulls, until finally he could see the whole of their fleet spread on the horizon. In turn, they could see him, and further, they could see the occasional puffs of smoke that rose after each volley. They had doubtlessly heard of the Champion's peculiar firearms, and as was tradition on naval vessels, invented tall tales that were far more hideous than reality. He enjoyed knowing that they could see his Marines preparing for battle, and took satisfaction in what he imagined to be a great deal of trepidation inspired by their drills.

  He called a halt to the practice when the distance between the two fleets closed to only a single league. Loading muskets was not the most exhausting of drills, but he still wished to give the Marines a moment of rest before the fight. A single league was a distance in which the enemy might now decide to turn and engage them, and he would have them ready for that eventuality.

  He could also now discern their chosen formation with the naked eye. Despite being the swiftest vessels, the Magecraft had fallen to the rear of the formation, guarding against the Tulian Fleet's crawling approach. There were two lines of ships arranged in an inverted crescent formation, a more gentle, sweeping curve compared to the sharp Tulian arrowhead. Should the Waverake drive directly up the enemy center, it would require them to pass enemies to their left and right for quite some time, allowing a simple course change from either side to bring their rams to bear into the tempting, ft walls of the Waverake's amidships hull. A suicidal tactic by every traditional measure.

  Until cannons had changed the equation. Now the enemy's inverted crescent was inviting the Waverake to embed itself amongst the enemy like a shark burrowing its head into a whale carcass, frothing the water with wild abandon as it ripped its targets to bloody shreds.

  He wondered if the enemy recognized this. He wondered if this Admiral Scheer, who had thus far dispyed excellent strategic acumen, was luring them into some kind of trap. He also wondered if their victory was about to come far easier than anticipated, and he also wondered about a million tiny other things, because he had so very much time to wonder. A stern chase like this was a tepid, anxious affair. The fleets had perhaps two knots of difference in their speed, meaning the closing rate between vessels was not that of a crashing melee, but a leisurely stroll through the gardens.

  It took so long, in fact, that the dark walls of Tulian were eventually called out by the lookout, and a half hour ter, they rose up from the horizon to be in Ignite's view. It seemed the enemy was making a break for the capital, intending to fight from within the shelter of its harbor. That would have been a nasty affair, trying to force their way through the narrow mouth of the city walls.

  Thankfully, the range had closed to a mere half mile by that time, and Captain Nora ordered Gunner Balon to begin using the cannons mounted at the front of the bow– aptly named chase guns– to begin lobbing shots towards the enemy. At this range, with the rolling of the ship and its constant heaving to and fro as the shifting wind caught the sails, Ignite knew there was next to no chance of a successful shot. Fortunately, the enemy had no way of knowing this.

  The first booming report of the long 24-pounder echoed out over the waves, followed shortly thereafter by a great spray of white some few hundred feet off the central Magecraft's port side. By sheer happenstance, the shot straddled the distance between two of the Magecraft, making it difficult to determine who was its target, so that both might feel equally threatened.

  A second shot rang out a moment ter and nded much closer to the lead Magecraft, a feat which led to much satisfied crowing from Gunner Balon, who was down below personally aiming each cannon. Perhaps Ignite was wrong in his estimate that a hit was impossible at this range. Given enough time, if the shots continued to close in on the enemy in such fashion, they very well may have been able to cause irreparable damage at this extreme range.

  They would never know, because it seemed the same thought occurred to Admiral Scheer. Fgs were run up the central Magecraft's mast, acknowledgement signals rising up from the rest of the Sporaton fleet shortly thereafter. That at least confirmed Admiral Scheer had taken the traditional pce of command, at the center of his fleet, rather than hiding among their fnks. While Captain Nora busied herself trying to decrypt the enemy's coded signals, Ignite jogged down the lines of his Marines, instructing them to strike down as many officers as was possible on that central Magecraft should they come into grips. If they killed enough, surely one corpse amongst the pile would belong to this mysterious Admiral.

  Captain Nora's decryption efforts were interrupted by the enemy fgship's signal fgs being hauled down, the universal symbol for a fleet to execute the given order.

  Fifteen magecraft heeled sharply to port, their trimaran pontoons digging deeply in the sea as their rudders bit chunks from the waves. They stopped at an oblique angle to the Tulian fleet, tacking deeply into the southern wind as only a Magecraft could. Their speed slowed severely as a result, but the closing rate skyrocketed. A battle that a moment ago was an hour or more away was suddenly bearing down on them with arming rapidity.

  The mundane ships of the Sporaton fleet, Ignite noted, continued onward, heading inexorably towards the city. He suspected that the hired mercenaries were stationed on those vessels, then. Men of fortune who, as their character dictated, sought to easily take the capital while the Tulian fleet was mired in a melee.

  Cowards, Ignite thought, spitting a wad of phlegm upon the deck.

  Unfortunately, it was not a wholly impractical tactic. Even if Nora succeeded in defeating the enemy Magecraft, an unopposed nding from those mundane ships would make the fleet's lives hellish. They could burn Tulian docks and prepare defenses, or simply begin ransacking the city as they pleased, fleeing to join up with the main Sporaton forces. He suspected they would do the tter, of course. Mercenaries, those who fought for coin instead of people or pride, were little better than pirates. Often, the two overpped considerably.

  Cowards. Ignite spat again, watching the ships depart.

  That was the st moment he could spare to grander strategy. As the gap between fleets narrowed, so did his responsibility, until he was nothing more than a Marine Sergeant once more.

  Ignite stepped up to the prow's gunwale, resting a hand on the holster off his hip. He slid his eyes from vessel to onrushing vessel. The Marines watched him silently, muskets held at the ready. The enemy command ship was unlikely to be the first to board, he decided. Too risky for such a cautious Admiral. The two ships fnking it were either crewed with the cream of the Sporaton crop or their fleet's most repugnant members, depending on the Admiral's command style. Some preferred to guard themselves with their best, while others kept the most disobedient on a tight leash, forcing them to improve or have the fgship always present to correct their failures. He had always respected the Admirals who did the tter. And based on what he had seen, he respected this Admiral Scheer.

  "Load shot and ball," he snapped. There was a rumble as the Marines leapt to the order, tearing open paper cartridges with their teeth and dropping them down the muzzle of their muskets. They loaded in twenty seconds, and the instant the st musket returned to a shoulder, he spoke again. "Take gunwale positions at the starboard amidships."

  The Marines bolted, thundering away from the prow. Up above, the Tulian sharpshooters– longbow-wielding hunters the Captain had hired, who'd never respected that Ignite was technically their commander– hurried them along with whoops and jeers. It seemed they thought he was running from the fight.

  "Open fire at a hundred feet," he said as the troops took their positions up on the tall gunwale. It had confused him at first, a head-height railing running the length of the ship, but with musket in hand, all was clear. The Marines stood on empty boxes along the line, just their heads and the glittering mouth of their muskets exposed.

  "Who're we firing at?" One woman called, no doubt looking at the empty stretch of water which ran out from beneath the hull.

  "The enemy!" Ignite snapped. Despite the deep irritation in his tone, many of the Marines ughed. "They will present themselves, and you will shoot them down. Silence on the deck."

  This st order was perhaps the most ughable, as there was a constant din of minor chaos rumbling at all times. The Waverake was by far the most complicated vessel ever constructed, and while its crew had trained endlessly under Nora's steady hand, their first engagement would invariably involve mistakes. Sweaty palms dropped ropes too easily, while sailors distracted by the sight of the enemy repeatedly missed their cues. It was a problem that only experience could solve, and those among the crew who survived would emerge a far finer sailor for their trials.

  Ignite himself took to pacing behind his Marines, sharply correcting anyone who dared to look over their shoulder at the Magecraft. He did not technically need to, as naval battles at range were not the sort of affair where adroit reactions were necessary, but he kept at it regardless. Best not to allow their fear to grow.

  A sharp boom shook the deck, followed a breath ter by another, then another, then another and another, the rolling reports growing. The 24-pounders on the gun deck fired in sequential order as the the enemy came into view of their gunports. There was a great crash of wood and continuously rising wails of agony from the port side, but Ignite did not turn around. He did not allow his Marines to turn around. They stood as statues, staring off the starboard gunwale at empty ocean. Thick smoke began to drift ahead of the vessel in their peripheral vision, opaque as a solid wall.

  Ignite watched that cloud intensely. All his Marine's eyes were drawn to it, and this time, he did not correct them. He waited. And waited. The seconds grew long.

  His heart gave an unsteady lurch as the front of the cloud burst open, a Magecraft appearing, heeling sharply into the wind as it shot from port to starboard. The two chase guns boomed as one, one fat ball flying harmlessly through the gaps in the enemy's rigging, the other just barely clipping the gunwale, sending a spray of wooden shrapnel across the deck.

  "Shoulder muskets!"

  The Magecraft completed its crossing of the Waverake 's bow and began to heel sharply to starboard, swinging through the turn as only a Magecraft could. In moments its iron-capped ram was pointed directly at the Waverake's hull, poised to nd directly amongst his Marines. They knew better than to try and hit the bow now.

  "A hundred feet!" He roared. "Marines will fire at a hundred feet, no more!"

  Beneath their feet, there was a rumbling. The rumbling of wooden wheels on wooden decking, multi-ton behemoths being dragged into position.

  He tore a Marine out of their pce in the line, stepping up on the box they used to see over the gunwale.

  The distinct orange glow of a mage's shield rose in the center of the enemy deck, two figures sheltered within. One robed figure held a staff before them, eyes closed in concentration, while the other's hands were glowing above their head, spell readying itself. Ignite had seen the deaths of those caught by mage-fire. He had seen them rolling in agony, failing to extinguish the fmes, sucking in breaths that scorched their lungs. Most had eventually pulled their belt knife, plunging it into their own chest, neck, or eye. Others... Ignite had to do them the favor himself. He often wondered if his sword was more familiar with the blood of friend or foe. The mages on that ship, men and women like them, were the cause for that question.

  He felt his lips split in a macabre grin, the lone spot of white on his onyx face.

  Eight cannons roared in one voice, vomiting smoke and sparks. He watched the mage's shield shatter, the body of the one holding the staff torn in two, splitting with the ease of a rotting rat. Their hips were flung across the deck, painting a great red smear some twenty feet long, while their torso dropped out of the air where they stood, face empty of expression before it smmed against the wood. The mage who had been channeling the spell looked down dumbly at their companion, hands still aglow.

  "Fire!"

  A hundred Marines pulled the trigger, near every shot aimed at one foe. Shot pierced through the cloud which was billowing up to obscure the enemy vessel, uncountable little dots of deadly lead denting the smoke. The Marines fired shot and ball, a close-range load which involved pcing a half-dozen lead pellets in front of the single rger ball which would normally be fired from a musket. Its range was extraordinarily short, but its effect...

  When the wind carried the smoke away from the Magecraft, Ignite searched for the remaining mage. They were hard to spot. What was left of them had been scattered across a dozen feet of decking, much of them coating the sailors who had been standing nearby. The entire Magecraft looked to have been left to rot in a field of locusts, holes torn across its every surface. The smallest of the impact sites were no rger than a thumb, a quarter inch deep, while in one spot on the deck, Ignite got a brief gnce of ocean; a cannonball had torn through the upper deck, continued through the hold, and crashed out the bottom.

  The Marines were staring beside him, a range of emotions crossing their faces. They had used their muskets for practice, yes, and occasionally to intimidate, to cow vilgers or trading vessels, and on rare occasions they had even fired them at a living being, but never like this.

  "Load shot!" Ignite suddenly bellowed, shaking himself from his reverie. The helmsman had been shot away, but the Magecraft's momentum was still carrying it onward. "Load, load, load, or I'll damn you before the gods do!"

  The Marines's paralysis was shattered by his words, their hands flying to their ammunition pouches. Down below, Gunner Balon had begun a simir mantra to his cannoneers, if decidedly more profane.

  Suddenly, everyone aboard stumbled as the ship was thrown hard to starboard. Captain Nora was ughing wildly, never a good sign, and Ignite heard the masts groan under the stress of their shifting load. The Waverake was a ponderous vessel by any standard, yet with her hold lightened and the wind blowing in off her stern, even she managed to carve a sharp line through the waves.

  Without the helm manned, the Magecraft couldn't adjust, and its ram hit at a poor angle, scraping along the hull. Ignite heard the snap of open gunports being sheared off by the ram as it raked down their hull, though Balon thankfully had the sense to have not to run the cannons out before the impact.

  Just before Ignite was about to shout the order for himself, he heard a shout for grapples to be thrown. Ropes arced up from the Magecraft's considerably lower deck, enchanted metal seizing the gunwale with a fervor. Several Marines drew their knives and began to hack at the ties binding the two ships together, but Ignite called out at them.

  "Leave the grapples! They've saved us the trouble! Finish loading shot if you haven't already, form ranks five paces back!"

  As one coordinated mass the Marines marched away from the shelter of the gunwale, some still ramming paper cartridges down their barrel as they walked. Ignite watched the grapples snap taut as they began to bear weight, the grunts of enemy Marines echoing up from below.

  Another broadside roared out behind them. Eight cannons shook the air with their report, adding to the already acrid sulfur scent. Even with the wind sweeping the smoke ahead of the ship, enough lingered behind that a dim haze was dulling the sunlight. His Marines did not flinch at the cannonfire, nor did they turn around to look at the progress of the portside battle. Ignite himself gnced backward only briefly, confirming only that his Marines were unneeded, then returned his attention to the gunwale.

  The boarders hesitated at the top of the rope. They had expected Ignite to meet them with pike and shot, preventing them from gaining the deck outright. They sensed a trap.

  They were right.

  At some hidden signal, every Sporaton Marine leapt over the gunwale, scrambling to get their feet on solid decking as fast as they could.

  "FIRE!"

  A hundred muskets cracked, pouring shot at point-bnk range into the enemy. There was a sound like hail striking a metal roof as the smaller lead pellets struck armor, an undercurrent to the boom of bckpowder and tearing of rger balls shearing through steel.

  Bodies dropped onto the sand Ignite had prepared along the gunwale, pouring blood.

  "FORWARD!"

  The Marines took five quick steps up to the gunwale, two ranks of bayonets lowered. Of the thirty or so Sporatons that had thrown themselves onto the Waverake, two had survived the first volley intact. One man managed to parry the first thrust of a bayonet, only to die to two quick jabs into his neck. The other only stumbled backward, blinking dumbly, clearly deafened. She was struck down with the butt of a musket, helmet bouncing off the gunwale.

  "Cut the survivor's throats and throw them overboard!" Ignite yelled. He drew his sword, leading by example. One of the Sporatons was writhing in agony on the sand. Ignite bent forward and swiped through the man's neck, then grabbed the corpse by the colr and heaved it over the side, where it dropped bonelessly onto the enemy ship.

  The Marines took to this grim task with a feverish eagerness. Whether it was because they were gd to finally strike back against a Magecraft or because they wanted their enemy's pain to end, Ignite couldn't tell. Nor did he care, so long as they did as ordered.

  "Load shot!" Ignite yelled as the st body dropped overboard. The Marines began pulling paper cartridges once more, and while they loaded, Ignite leaned over the gunwale, inspecting the enemy Magecraft.

  A second wave of Marines had been preparing themselves to go up the ropes, but, understandably, seemed cowed by the rain of bodies that had subsequently crashed onto their deck. He heard one woman spewing abuse at them, calling them all cowards, and searched her out. Her armor was finer than the rest, and he took her for a Sergeant.

  Ignite pulled Kate from her holster, resting his arms on the gunwale. As he was only a single soldier, the enemy took no particur notice of him, and allowed him to watch without response. He took this opportunity to run through Evie's six part checklist on proper shooting stance.

  His right elbow was locked, fingers wrapped tightly around the revolver's grip. His left hand wrapped around the fingers of his right, not resting below them, as felt more natural but was the worse positioning. He clicked the hammer back with a thumb, revealing the notch. Right eye closed, he slid the sight's front post into that notch, careful to make sure it was properly aligned on the left, right, and top. He tracked the woman carefully, moving his hands with the swaying of the two ships, and began to slowly pull the trigger. By Evie's expnation, he should be surprised by the–

  The revolver bucked in his hand, a nce of pink fire jetting through the comparatively small puff of smoke. The woman dropped to a knee, a hand reaching for the hole in her chest as her mouth silently opened and closed, and then she fell onto her side.

  Ignite stepped back under the cover of the gunwale as archers began swinging towards him. He holstered Kate, the heat of the barrel warming his thigh.

  Five shots left.

  "Marines! Ready muskets!"

  There was a rattle of wood and metal as muskets were leveled over the gunwale, a jagged line of steel aimed down at the enemy vessel.

  "Take aim!"

  The Sporaton crew, hearing this, began to flee, running this way and that, a press forming at the stairs to the hold.

  "FIRE!"

  The crack of musketry tore through the air, drowning the enemy in a wave of lead. Blood sprayed in horrific volumes, coating the deck. What little organization had remained among the enemy's number colpsed utterly, the few survivors dragging their ruined bodies towards some imagined safety.

  There was none to be found. With both mages dead and the captain struck down in some volley or another, the Magecraft began to shudder. Light began leaking from its boards in a far-too-familiar fashion, the enchanted vessel coming apart at the seams.

  "Cut grapples!" Ignite yelled. The Marines flung themselves at the ropes with a fervor, sawing as quickly as they were able. It wasn't likely that the sinking Magecraft would truly be capable of dragging the massive Waverake down with it, but no one wanted to find out otherwise. They had far too much fight left to end up entangled with a sinking vessel.

  --------------------------------

  Sara

  --------------------------------

  With the Royal Army at six hundred yards distance, the 1st Combat Engineers were running back to the center of the formation, grabbing new piles of goods. Of all the various innovations Sara had introduced over the st few months, these had to be the st she had expected to py a major role in the fate of a nation. The 1st Combat Engineers distributed them anyway.

  The Sporatons were nearing the final marker, and none of them seemed to know it. The fnking wings of the Royal Army began to jog, a deep rumble passing through the earth as they rushed ahead of their centerline to begin the envelopment. Sara itched to send her troops forward, to stop their advance. But she couldn't afford to weaken her line more than she already had.

  "Rifles, forward!"

  They hadn't had time to rifle every musket in the few days before she'd unched this final assault, but they'd gotten pretty damn close. Maybe two thirds of the army now held rifled muskets, Springfield Model 1840s, which could– in theory– hit a human-sized target at five hundred yards. Next to no one in the army save Evie actually had the skill required to do that, of course, but when you were aiming for an entire army, missing your shot got considerably harder. She'd agonized over the range to engage, whether or not to conserve ammo, and a million other factors, but in the end, she'd decided she needed to thin the enemy's numbers as efficiently as possible.

  Those with rifled muskets pressed forward, lining up just behind the row of improvised wooden stakes. The front rank knelt down, the second rank standing behind them, ready to aim over their heads, with a third standing slightly offset behind them, muskets hovering over their shoulders. Aside from the armor, it looked exactly like Sara imagined a Civil War army to look like.

  Besides the orcs. With most every orc in her army standing a foot or more taller than their comrades, she'd added a fourth rank of exclusively orcs to the firing line, who easily aimed over the heads of the humans and catfolk. It was one of a few tactics she'd developed that she thought might be unique to this world, something impossible to achieve back on Earth. She was certain there was still far more she could be doing that simply hadn't occurred to her.

  The Sporaton Army's fnks broke the five hundred yard mark, but she didn't give the order to fire. The cannons continued to roar, coating the center of her army in an impenetrable haze, but that was it.

  Graf had seen her muskets before. He'd seen what they did to their targets. But those had been smoothbores, intentionally hobbled. He hadn't seen what the rifles could do. Maybe his spies could have warned him of their strengths, but knowing and seeing were two different things.

  So she held the musket's fire. The Sporatons would only get to experience their first volley one time, and like a good Champion of Amarat, she wanted to make sure their first time was one hell of a show.

  Somewhere in the line, a single musket cracked, causing several soldiers nearby to pull their own trigger in sympathy.

  "Hold fire!" Sara snapped, casting her voice directly into the ears of the soldiers responsible. "Fire when I say, not a fucking second earlier!"

  Beside her, Evie had found an emptied supply crate to stand on, squinting down the sights of her rifle. Out of the corner of her eye, Sara caught the feline's finger begin to gently squeeze, a slow exhale rolling from her lips.

  The crystal-tipped hammer smmed forward, sending the rifle bucking against her shoulder. A puff of smoke obscured the area, which Evie waved away, searching for her target.

  A grim smile bloomed. She scratched another tally on her musket's stock. It was the fourteenth.

  Lieutenant Shale called for a ceasefire from her cannons as the center of the Sporaton Army broached the four hundred yard mark, the wings marching fifty yards ahead of the core. Sara's army was curving backward in response, forming a gentle semi-circle, preparing for its inevitable encirclement. She didn't want them in a full box formation. Not yet. She needed to keep as many guns on target for as long as she could.

  "Ready muskets! Set range three hundred yards!" Sara called. The order was repeated up and down the line, Sergeants mirroring her words even as her voice echoed over the field. Muskets were checked and double-checked, sights slid to the appropriate range. Her army may not have been full of sharpshooters, but with twelve thousand targets ahead of them, missing was a faint chance.

  Shale's voice joined Sara's, directed at the cannoneers.

  "Load canister!"

  The cloth-wrapped packages were brought forward. Her army hadn't fired canister shot in anger before, but Sara had seen it tested. A shudder rolled through her.

  "Keep holding!"

  Sara watched her army shuffle in pce, muskets wavering. The entire army itched to fire so badly it was a testament to their incredible discipline that they held firm. The first volley had to count. It had to show the enemy everything that was in store for them. It would set the tone for the rest of the battle. The cracks that finally broke them would begin with that first shot.

  Three hundred yards.

  "Aim!"

  Twenty four hundred muskets rose, stocks pressed firmly against shoulders. Without the constant report of the cannons, the battlefield almost felt silent. Shale stood behind the Napoleons, leaning forward, practically salivating as she gripped a firing string in one trembling palm. Her eyes were wild, and somehow, Sara knew her own expression wasn't far off.

  A deep, thrumming beat rose out of her chest. It shook the air with the force of the cannons, each boom striking the sky itself. She felt her skin begin to glow, boiling smoke peeling off the runes which came afire across her body. The music began low and light, barely audible. There were barely any lyrics to this song, and the one that mattered most was whispered right at the very start. Sara felt her hair raise as the quiet plea slipped across the fields of Tulian.

  "May god have mercy on you."

  The world shook as she threw everything she had into Champion's Inspiration, roaring bass and thudding power tearing out into the world. The entire army leaned forward as the spell gripped them, adrenaline and anticipation spiking across every soul. The Sporaton army wavered, recoiling from the noise more than they had any cannonball.

  "Fire," she whispered.

  Eight cannons and six hundred muskets fshed in one pure detonation. The world was consumed by light and sound, her chest crushed by an astounding pressure. It was less a volley, more of a single, momentous explosion, her Champion's Inspiration ensuring every st weapon fired in the exact same instant.

  The Sporaton Army staggered, stumbling.

  Sara's eyes widened at what she saw.

  Sparks of shattered lead and spraying light warped the air, hundreds of musketballs crashing into mage shields– shields that shouldn't have been there. The visage of the Royal Army shimmered and warped under the assault, limbs stretching to inhuman proportions as the mage's spells failed to compensate for the overwhelming blow they had just suffered.

  And between the fshing images, Sara saw something worse.

  The deep gouges in the enemy line, where cannonballs had torn through, were briefly filled, unharmed soldiers appearing in the empty gap before flickering out of existence.

  It was an illusion.

  Graf had fooled her.

  He hadn't been chained by some idiotic King's orders. Suffering the earlier barrage was a ploy, luring her into a false sense of security. The shields had never been brought down. If she'd known they still stood, she could have focused them down, smashed them to pieces. Instead she'd spent fifteen minutes bombarding an enemy who hadn't suffered a single casualty.

  The moment had passed. There was only one thing left to do.

  "Second rank, FIRE!"

  Another volley shrieked through the air, smashing into the increasingly visible shields. The Royal Army staggered once more, the real troops beneath the illusion flinching as they instinctively braced for the swarm of lead to rip them apart. The shields held again, however, and at the shouts of their commanders, they resumed their march.

  "Third rank, FIRE!"

  This volley finally had an effect. The shields, weakened by each successive impact, had shrunk, rather than shattered. Her troops couldn't see through the powder fog to aim at the gaps, but with so many shots being fired, it was inevitable that some would get through.

  "Fourth rank, FIRE!"

  Lead churned blood and soil as bullets finally struck home, tearing chunks from the front ranks of every line no longer hidden by a shield.

  When she was a kid, Sara had thought that movies were accurate when it came to showing someone got shot. She knew guns were powerful, that they struck with incredible force. When she'd imagined someone getting shot, she imagined their head snapping back, their body jerking from the force of it. She'd even thought that someone getting shot with a shotgun would involve them getting blown off their feet, knocked several feet back.

  Now she knew better.

  The front ranks of spears dropped bonelessly, their body empty of life. They did not spasm, or fling their arms up in the air, or even scream. They just hit the ground in a loose pile, limbs all askew. It wasn't dramatic. It was the end of a life, nothing more.

  Then Sara's first rank finished reloading, and with another barrage of rolling thunder, another row of spears dropped, and a few seconds ter, the second rank reloaded and leveled their muskets, sending a spray of lead into the same exposed ranks of spears.

  All across the front lines, her troops had found gaps in the enemy's invisible protection by sheer volume of fire. Now lead poured into those gaps in waves of murderous lead, ripping everything to shreds.

  The enemy froze. She couldn't bme them. They were barely in bow range, yet they'd just watched the entire front half of their unit get torn to ragged shreds. Sara could see them wavering, staring at the field of flesh that y before them. The field of flesh that they would have to climb over to continue on.

  And then the cannons finished adjusting their aim, and the choice was taken from them.

  Canister shot. Dozens of lead balls packed between two metal ptes, shoved down the mouth of a cannon. Each ball was twice the size of a normal musket ball, and with a cannon's power behind it, they passed through flesh like air. The Napoleons swung their barrels around, each pointed towards a different gap in the enemy's protection.

  Sara and Shale had learned from their testing that the canister shot fired in a wide cone, such that many of the shots would've gone over the heads of the enemy. Shale hadn't liked that. The artillery Lieutenant wanted better. So instead she aimed the Napoleons at the ground in front of the enemy, intending to take the conical shotgun bst and ftten it into a pne of ricocheting lead.

  Sara heard Shale ugh wildly, tearing the string from the first cannon.

  The lines of hesitating troops disappeared.

  First dust leapt into the air, then blood. It was as if the entire front row of the exposed enemies had been fsh-boiled, a mist of red thrown up to hang thickly in the air. The horrific variety of wounds was beyond Sara's ability to describe. Pieces of body were stolen away by invisible harpies, cws digging into jaws, knees, hands. Often entire limbs were ripped free. The spears fell in a wave, bowled over like a giant's boot had swung through their number. In thirty brief seconds, more death came to the Royal Army than hours of the previous battles had taken from them.

  The few soldiers that were left standing between the shields stumbled to a stop, eyes wide. They looked to their left and saw corpses. They looked to their right and saw corpses. They looked behind them, and there was no one there. Just bodies.

  They turned, and they ran.

  Sara's army threw up a blood-curdling roar at the sight, spitting venom and spite even while their hands flew through the motions of reloading. The army wasn't firing as one anymore, volleys crackling out as soon as each squad was finished reloading. She was subjected to an endless torrent of profanity pouring into her skull, and through her Blessings, she parsed it all. Even the closest elements of the Sporaton army were included in the deluge, and soon she was getting an appraisal of the battle that any army's commander would have killed for.

  Her troops were practically choking on their bloodlust. They'd known their weapons were good, that they would wreak havoc on the enemy. They hadn't expected this. Many were ughing hysterically, half in awe at the death they were dealing, half in horror. Even through the fury of battle, the hundreds that had just dropped dead at their feet began to nauseate them. She was gd for that. They should hate this. They should be proud of what they were fighting for, but they should hate this.

  The Sporatons, shockingly, took a different view of events. Those that were nearest the edges of the shields began shoving into the shoulders of those deeper within, shirking away from the horror they had just barely escaped. Prayers to nearly every deity were muttered across the entire army, while those closest to the mages whispered fearfully to one another, watching the straining faces of their protector for any sign of impending failure. Hidden Knights shouted, prodded, and shoved the troops forward, refusing to let their pace fall. They knew better than anyone that the longer the Royal Army was at range, the worse it would be for them. They needed to close the distance as soon as possible.

  "Left fnk, pull back!" Sara yelled.

  The wing of her army responded immediately, folding backward as they prepared for their inevitable encirclement. She'd originally intended for both sides to fold in at the same time, but she'd been struck by an idea.

  The enemy cavalry still hadn't revealed themselves. She dug her knees into Trot's side, moving behind the line to get a better angle through the smoke with her spygss.

  On that distant hill there stood a small collection of cavalry. Perhaps a dozen or so, watching the battle's progress. They'd only revealed themselves once the cannons had switched to canister, knowing Shale was far too occupied with savaging the spears to spare long-ranged shots for the Knights.

  Sara felt her mind racing. Evie had mentioned how expensive the Knight's equipment was. How long it took to raise and train a Knight's steed, how much specialized effort went into constructing their armor. Losing as many Knights as they had was already a considerable blow to Sporatos, well out of proportion with the supposedly small scale of this conflict.

  Graf's goal was to prevent wars. To ensure that peace sted as long as possible. To do that, he needed deterrents, and the Kingdom of Sporatos had no better deterrent than their powerful array of Knights. If at all possible, he wouldn't want to risk losing more of their precious number.

  Sara took a deep breath, her decision made.

  "Right fnk, advance!"

  Many of the commanders snapped their heads towards her in confusion, but she ignored them. This wasn't the pn. But they were well trained, and after the briefest hesitance, they sent their troops forward.

  While the curving embrace of the Royal Army continued its advance, her own army began to take on the appearance of a misshapen S, the right fnk dangerously exposed.

  "Master?" Evie asked. "What are you doing?"

  "Improvising," she replied, twisting in her saddle. She found who she was looking for a moment ter, and snapped her finger at them, pointing to the right fnk.

  "You! All of you, with the right fnk! Get ready to sweep down the middle!"

  The cannoneers assigned to the short-barreled weapons hopped to attention, taken by surprise, but no less eager to follow orders. They hadn't opened fire yet, and they had spent the battle watching the other cannons with rampant jealousy. They threw their shoulders against the cannons to turn them in pce, hurrying to follow the advancing right fnk. The Royal Army was only a hundred yards away, and the enemy's shields had begun to flicker and spasm, losing their cohesion.

  Despite that, her attention went back up to the cavalry on that hill. She couldn't distinguish their features from here. She wondered if Emeric and the King were among their number, or if they'd joined the main army in disguise.

  She expected she'd soon find out.

  ----------------------------

  Ignite

  ----------------------------

  Two Magecraft had been sunk. One by Ignite's Marines, who'd sughtered the crew nearly to a man, and a second by repeated broadsides from Balon. A cannonball in the first barrage had smashed the sprinting Magecraft's helm to pieces, leaving the ship uncontrolble. Its charge had turned into a hapless circle, rudder wedged hard to port as it was systematically disassembled by repeated broadsides. The ship sunk before the onboard Mages even had a chance to destroy it themselves.

  The rest of the Sporaton fleet, unfortunately, hadn't focused on the Waverake. The remaining Magecraft darted in and out of the Tulian arrowhead, running through the fleet with spellfire bzing.

  Ignite recalled his Marines to the center of the deck as Nora began sending up signal fg after signal fg, coordinating the fleet's resistance to the marauding Magecraft as best she was able. He could barely follow her shouted orders, much less the complicated array of signals that transmitted them, and those few commands he understood seemed nonsensical. Still, he knew the rest of the fleet would obey. They had all seen what Nora was, and no one would dare question her judgement, no matter how bizarre her conclusions. He did his best to keep his Marines out of the sailor's way as Nora began hauling the Waverake around, moving to the aid of the ships in greatest distress.

  Unfortunately, they had their choice of vessels to aid. The spellfire of the Magecraft was as deadly as ever when it nded on an individual, but for the first time in history, there was something that could be done against the hellish fmes. The Champion's firefighting foam, a mixture primarily composed of thered animal fat, was spat freely and frequently from the pumps and hoses she had introduced. The liquid bubbled up into a stinking pile wherever it nded, and even if it did not fully extinguish the enchanted fires, the way the bubbles expanded across a rge area prevented the fmes from spreading.

  That wasn't to say they weren't enduring casualties. The rest of the fleet was suffering terribly, sails afire here, hull bzing there, and next to no response avaible to them beyond the foam, which only stalled the fires, rather than extinguish them. The Magecraft were barracudas in their midst, too fast to catch, slipping out of range before any normal response could be made.

  Thankfully, normality had fled the world months ago.

  The Waverake's carronades, the short-barreled 32-pounders which had once littered the fgship's spar deck, had been distributed amongst the fleet. Nora had learned her lesson from the lone Magecraft's nightly raids. A single, overwhelmingly powerful ship would not win their battles. The enemy was too smart to engage their greatest weapon head-on.

  The 32-pounder carronades were short range weapons compared to the 24-pounders which poputed the Waverake's gundeck, but so were a mage's spells. Ignite watched as one Magecraft attempted to skim past a refitted dromon, a burgeoning glow building on the center deck, only for a jet of fire and smoke to preempt the spell, vomited forth from the dromon.

  There was a fsh of light as the Mage's shield shattered, then a gout of randomly flung fire roaring up into the air. Ignite watched the liquid fme shoot skyward in a great arc, drifting in the wind as it reached its apex, then begin to fall.

  Great globs of fire fell back onto the Magecraft which had flung it, sails bursting into a great confgration. The Tulian dromon quickly deployed its oars, dragging itself away from the Magecraft as quickly as it was able. If the two hulls touched, the fmes would undoubtedly leap between the two vessels, burning them both to the waterline.

  Simir stories repeated themselves across the fleet. Magecraft tried to do as they had for centuries, shooting past their opponents to wash them in fire, only to find themselves coming under an assault which they could not answer. There were not enough carronades to equip the entire Tulian fleet, and thus many of the ships suffered their fate without retort, but enough possessed cannons to force the Magecraft to falter in their assaults. They began to sail further and further away from their targets, weakening the effect of their spells, ignorant of the fact that it wouldn't matter; even the short range carronades outranged their spells by a factor of two.

  The Magecraft which had inadvertently lit itself afire began to shudder, the smoke boiling off its hull dimming the glow which signaled its imminent destruction. It was the third Magecraft lost in this single engagement, and the sight had everyone aboard the Waverake roaring their approval.

  One of the Magecraft off the Waverake's port side suddenly heeled away from its chosen target, likely recognizing the carronade which was tracking its approach. Instead it sailed on past, using its magically-enhanced momentum to throw itself against the wind, sails furling.

  Ignite realized what was happening in an instant. It was aiming to cross just behind the Waverake's stern, where no cannons sprouted. The mages would be able to unload their spells without fear of cannonfire.

  "Marines to the stern!" Ignite yelled, in nearly the same moment that Nora hollered, "Get yer ass back here, Ignite!"

  His Marines thundered to the rear of the ship, taking up a thick-pressed line behind the helm. Nora ordered the foam pumps to drag themselves over to the stern, including sending some into her own cabin, so that they could fight the fires from within should they chew through the hull. The Waverake's stern was by far the weakest part of the structure, being a ft surface built of the thinnest wood across the ship. Should the Magecraft successfully press its attack, it would be disastrous.

  "Discharge your weapons! Load ball!"

  The Marines aimed their muskets over the railing, firing off a random spray of lead pellets which briefly churned the blue ocean white. As soon as their weapons were empty, they began shoving lead balls down the barrel, repcing the short-range shot with longer range lead balls. Ignite kept his eye on the Magecraft, judging the range.

  "What do you think of capturing her?" Nora asked.

  Ignite nearly leapt out of his skin. The Captain had whispered directly into his ear, standing a hair's breadth behind him as she looked over his shoulder.

  "Capturing her?" He asked, forcibly composing himself. "I hope to survive her."

  "Y'think too small, Ignite," Nora whispered. Her voice was sultry, filled with a desire most reserved for the privacy of a bedroom. "There's no record of a mundane ship capturing a Magecraft. It would make us legends."

  Ignite bit back his first response, which would have been I prefer to live. Instead, he asked a question that was only slightly less rude.

  "Is that an order, ma'am?"

  She chuckled darkly, sending a shiver down Ignite's spine. "No. But if you think it possible, I'd like you to give it a shot."

  "Understood, ma'am," Ignite replied, gritting his teeth. Boarding a Magecraft would be as close to suicide as he had gotten since the day his own ship had fallen out from under him.

  He had no time to formute a pn, unfortunately. The Magecraft was skimming atop the waves, maintaining a gentle curve which kept it pointed for the Waverake's stern, even as Nora threw the rudder as hard to port as she could. The Waverake was simply too bulky to get its guns on target in time.

  "Aim for the mage!" Ignite yelled, grabbing his own musket off his shoulder and joining the line. His hundred Marines were packed in like sardines at the rear of the ship, barely able to get every musket to bear on target. "Open fire at a hundred yards, then load shot! All aim for the mages, repeat, all will aim for the enemy mages!"

  His voice, strengthened from years of yelling at Carrion recruits, carried perhaps too well. He watched the enemy mage's shield grow more opaque, the spellcaster's equivalent of hunkering down to suffer a great blow. All but the most essential crew of the Magecraft crowded down the stairs to the hold, sheltering from the upcoming barrage.

  Betedly, right as the ship broached the hundred yard mark, Ignite realized that this was the enemy fgship. The enemy admiral was likely aboard.

  Gods damn us all, Ignite thought as he took aim. I may truly have to board it, then.

  Without need for his order, the Marines opened fire. It was difficult to impossible to properly aim whilst on the rolling deck of a ship, hence why the Champion had never issued the Navy with rifles.

  But as she had told him, quantity was a quality of its own.

  Wooden decking popped and cracked as bullets rained down on the enemy ship. Somehow, despite the direness of his circumstances, Ignite's first thought was that he would be drilling the Marines hard once they recovered from the battle. A half-dozen shots had missed the enemy vessel entirely, digging into the waves. Unacceptable.

  Then reality struck. The mage's shield had shimmered under the impacts, but it hadn't fallen. He could now see that there were two figures within, the second of which was preparing their spell.

  "Load! Load, load, load!"

  The Marines practically flew through the motions, but it wasn't enough. Twenty seconds to load was too long. The mage's spell would be ready by then, the range closed. In a fit of desperation, Ignite drew Kate, aiming at the mage, as if a single shot from a revolver would somehow succeed where a hundred muskets had failed.

  As he pulled the trigger, he was startled by the deep boom of a cannon's report. Wooden fragments tore out from the Waverake's stern, a single iron cannonball tearing through the air. It didn't strike the mages, instead flying over their heads to strike the mast just behind them, throwing shrapnel every which way. The mages flinched as sharp slivers of wood impaled themselves into the orange shield, nearly sliding through to pierce them through.

  The brief dey was all they needed. The Marines finished clicking the hammers back on their muskets, pans filled with powder.

  "Independent fire!"

  Muskets rattled in a brutal staccato, each soldier foregoing a volley to spend an extra few seconds taking careful aim. The orange shield began to flicker, then waver, causing the second mage to abandon the channeling of their spell, instead raising their hands to reinforce their protection.

  Down below, Ignite heard Gunner Balon screaming shrilly.

  "Loose cannon! Loose cannon! Watch your goddamn feet, it's coming down!"

  There was a low rumble from belowdecks as, presumably, a cannon trundled its way down the gundeck. A fsh of understanding passed through him. Balon must have dismounted one of the cannons, turning it to shoot through the rear of their own ship in a desperate gamble. Now unsecured, the multi-ton sb of iron was speeding down the length of the gundeck, carried this way and that by the rocking of the ship, crushing anything in its path.

  He shot that blindly, Ignite realized. No one could do that. He has to have a Skill for it. A bckpowder Skill.

  Even now, in the midst of perhaps the most important battle of Ignite's life, the world continued to shift around him. A part of him wondered if he would ever find his feet in this new reality the Champion was constructing, or if he would spend the rest of his life stumbling through it like a ndsmen on the open ocean.

  Yet again, he tore himself from his contemption. The surreality of it all could not be confronted in the midst of battle.

  Though the Magecraft had not raked them with fmes, it was still coming on hard. The two mage-aimed musket volleys had rgely spared the enemy Marines, and he could see them readying grapples. He took a deep breath.

  "Marines, ready to repel boarders!"

  "All hands, ready to repel boarders!" Nora called, echoing his words. She was standing at the helm, both hands on the wheel, as mad a smile as ever sshed through her crooked lips. He nodded his thanks to her as the rank and file sailors ran to retrieve pikes, briefly abandoning their duties to line themselves along the gunwale. They filled the gaps his Marines could not, allowing him to focus his efforts.

  The Magecraft proved itself worthy of being an Admiral's fgship as it maneuvered to board. The stabilizing pontoons which sprouted from its sides skimmed the wavetops with an elegance nearly befitting a Carrion vessel, their enchanted reinforcements allowing them to maintain a thin, spindly frame. When someone saw a Magecraft for the first time, they might think those pontoons were a weak point, prone to snapping.

  That was a deadly mistake. The portside pontoon crashed into the rear port side of the Waverake, spinning the smaller vessel as it nestled up against the Tulian fgship. The ship's momentum swung it into a spider's embrace, the length of its hull pressing up against the stern of the Waverake. Grapples flew, and while some were batted away by quick-thinking Marines, enough nded that the two vessels were locked into pce. It was a well-selected position, as none of the cannons could fire directly at the Magecraft during the boarding action.

  Unfortunately for the enemy, nothing could change just how much higher the Waverake's uppermost deck stood over the waves. The main portion of the Magecraft's deck was ten feet below Ignite and his Marines, and without the fore or aft castle that would have been on a Pirate's Bane, they would have to climb to reach the deck. Not that he intended to offer them such an opportunity.

  "Your swords, Marines! Prepare to board!"

  A hundred muskets cttered to the deck, discarded wherever the Marines stood. They drew their sideswords, thin, short stabbing weapons inspired by the Carrion spatha. He was gd no one had been fool enough to order him to discard the weapons entirely in favor of firearms. Bayonets and pistols were all well and good, but so long as humans fought eye to eye, a true bde would always have a pce.

  "Marines, over the top! Over, over, over!"

  The troops seized the very grapples which the enemy had ensnared them with, throwing themselves over the gunwale. He heard a great shout of surprise from the massing enemy, who no doubt hadn't anticipated a hundred soldiers to begin leaping down onto their heads.

  Ignite joined the st wave of Marines, grabbing a fistful of thick rope as he kicked his legs over the side. His armor rattled against his skin, twisting and pinching, the leather straps which bound it creaking through the acrobatics. He paid it no mind. The armor that he had received upon promotion to a Sergeant had served him well for the st decade, and should he have his way, it would be another decade before he repced the smallest buckle.

  His feet hit the deck with a thump, embedding him in the rear of the melee. The ear-splitting crack of musketry had given way to the ringing csh of steel on steel, armor and bde vying for dominance.

  Ignite closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, savoring the scent of sweat, blood, and sea breeze.

  Home at st.

  His eyes snapped open. He shoved his way through the press of Marines, knocking them aside like stalks of wheat, seeking the fight. He was no longer a Carrion Sergeant, but that did not mean he thought it any less abominable to lead from the rear.

  He tugged the final Marine from his path with hardly a thought, the sight of their helmet repced by a shocked-looking Sporaton soldier. It seemed he hadn't expected his opponent to get hauled away like a pup being dragged back to the litter.

  His shock turned to pain as Ignite's sword dug into his armpit, wriggling within, searching out a vital artery. He dropped shortly thereafter, Ignite's sword ripping free with a spray of blood. The next soldier took his pce, blinked in mild surprise at the sight of Ignite's onyx skin, then took her stance.

  Ignite stabbed her through the neck and took a step forward, shoving her body onto the soldiers behind. Behind him, the cannons roared yet again, a shifting breeze adding a sulfurous odor to the scents of battle. Ahead, the mages began to prepare a new spell.

  --------------------------------

  Sara

  --------------------------------

  The enemy charged. They did so from far away, much farther than they normally would have, but it wasn't like Sara had given them a choice. The Sporatons threw up a ragged, forced cheer as they were ordered into a sprint, running forward with spears brought forward.

  Sara took a deep breath.

  This has got to be the stupidest fucking order I've ever given.

  "Deploy folding chairs!"

  The st rank of her army, those fifth in line and still wielding smoothbore muskets, grabbed the chairs the 1st Combat Engineers had distributed. They popped them open, shoving their wooden legs into the dirt for stability, and hauled themselves up. The orcs ahead of them ducked slightly, clearing their line of sight.

  When she and Hurlish had toured the burning vilges with folding chairs at the start of the war, she hadn't expected the things to make such an impact.

  But they had. Oh gods, had they.

  The people were obsessed. Carpenters across Tulian had been bombarded by requests to replicate chairs that could be so easily moved, and for the first time, innovation spun entirely out of Sara's control. In a matter of weeks the lumber stocks of Tulian were being whittled into stools, wn chairs, audience chairs, and everything between, everyone preferring their own version, and wanting so many of them that she'd had to ration their lumber supply lest all their cooking fuel get turned into fucking folding chairs. It made sense to a certain degree, but only just. Sure, they were great for working in the fields, letting a farmer rest their back without a long trek back to the farmhouse, and sure, with the added strength offered by Csses, they weren't even an obstacle to tie on your back through the long hours of work. And she'd grown up in America. She was no stranger to strange fads and the public's bizarre purchasing habits. But she still found herself shocked by this one. As it stood right now, if she were to make an honest fg of Tulian, it would be a musket leaning against a folding chair. Of all the earthly inventions she'd brought to the fore, the people fucking loved folding chairs most of all.

  When she'd asked her commanders how she could get the st ranks of her army to engage without weakening her line even further, nearly everyone of them had looked down at the very chairs they'd been sitting on for the meeting.

  And so it was, and she could not emphasize this enough, goddamn folding chairs that formed the final lynchpin of Sara's battle pn. The Sporaton charge broached the fifty yard mark, just within the range of the smoothbore musket-shotguns, and like magic, every remaining member of her army popped up, shotguns at their shoulder. The troops already knew what to do. She'd given them the order the previous evening. When the enemy started their charge, they were to hold their fire, waiting until the final moments before contact.

  Fire and smoke consumed the field in a roaring confgration, every soldier firing. They couldn't miss. It was just impossible. There were ten-fucking-thousand targets in front of them, all packed into neat, dense rows, and they had shotguns.

  Magical shields jumped and leapt under the impact, folding in on themselves. Even without cannonfire, the impacts couldn't be fully negated. Mages abandoned their general protection of the army in favor of preserving themselves, creating pike-nosed shields that only covered those immediately around them.

  It was exactly the moment Shale had been waiting for.

  The cannons leapt with an exuberance and joy that nearly matched their commander, tearing great gaps through the brown-coated spears. This was no targeted assault. There was no finesse to it. In an instant the ground was strewn with dead, hundreds upon hundreds struck down in a single moment.

  By fate or fortune, somehow, there were survivors. The entire center of the Sporaton Army had been sughtered, but a few still stood. Sara could count them at a gnce. One was a Knight who had been driven onto their back by the force of the impacts, the brown tabard which had hid them among the commoners torn to shreds. The enchanted runes which covered their breastpte were utterly ruined, sparking and spitting smoke as the Knight tried to regain their feet. An alert Sergeant spotted this and directed his rifles toward the figure. The once-lucky Knight was ripped limb from limb by the resulting volley.

  Several of the survivors weren't Knights, however. Four commoners dotted the field of the dead and dying, standing in pce, coated head-to-toe in blood. Their reactions varied. Two turned and sprinted away immediately, stumbling over bodies, overwhelmed by pure, animalistic instinct to flee. One looked about himself, knees wobbling, then threw himself to the ground, scrambling under the bodies of others for cover. The st woman simply froze in pce, doing nothing more than slowly leaning to the left and right, like a pnt swaying in the breeze. She was clearly in shock. Sara wished the woman would do something, anything, but she didn't. She just stood there, blinking dumbly, until Sara had to tear her eyes off the sight.

  Because the Sporaton cavalry had seen the path which had been opened before the cannons. They had begun to emerge from behind the hill, already in formation for a charge. No one stood between them and the cannons, and all across the line, Sara's troops had been engaged by the enemy. She had no reserves, no one to bring forward to protect the artillery.

  Almost no one. She gnced down at Evie, looking for her girlfriend's permission. This was the moment. Sara hadn't been in the fight yet, not personally. She hadn't risked herself. If they were going to flee, to live to fight another day, this was the st chance they would have.

  Evie's eyes flicked up to hers. They held one another's gazes for a single, brief moment, one that seemed to st an hour.

  Then a razor smile split Evie's face, rapier fshing into existence.

  Sara dug her heels into Trot's side, howling with delight.

  ThatSharkPerson