Grenadiers! Come and seek your color!

By the time General Courbet had reformed the auxiliaries from their shattered rout, the Saderans had decided to launch their own attack. Heavy columns of Imperial legionaries streamed down the hill on the Saderan right while less disciplined militiamen went forward all across the rest of the line. Northern cavalry supported the legionaries on their flank. Saderan skirmishers screened the militia line but were absent where the legionaries advanced.

"The militia are a diversion," Ney decided. He looked to Captain Barbier who stood ready to deliver his orders. "They won't break our regulars, and they know it. They're just trying to tie us down while the legionaries smash through what remains of the auxiliaries. Then they'll roll up our line like a Persian carpet."

Colonel Feraud's cavalry were on the far end of the French left. They'd spiked the Saderan guns, but they hadn't been able to hold their ground. Now they reordered their line and awaited the Northerners opposite them.

To the right of Feraud's cavalry were the auxiliaries. They'd taken a heavy beating. At least half their number were either dead, wounded, or had simply run from the field. The rest didn't look eager. They had fled twice now, and fleeing was an easy habit to fall into.

Ney shook his head. "The auxiliaries won't hold them, and if we lose that flank we'll never be able to stem the tide again." He gave Barbier a serious nod. "Order the reserve forward. They need to blunt that assault or we're all done for. And have Colonel Delon soften the Saderans up while they advance."

"Sir." Barbier snapped a salute and turned.

Ney looked back to the advancing legionaries and fought the urge to ride forward.

Once, he'd been a private in the bitter cold of Russia. Once, he'd stolen food from serfs and battled Cossacks in the rearguard.

Now, he was a captain of the Young Guard. Now, he commanded the reserve of Marshal Ney's army. Now, he fought fairytales and Romans.

Jacques Duclos wondered just how the hell he'd gotten here.

He watched the Marshal's aide riding to him and knew that it was time for them to go forward. From his position at the head of the reserve, he had a perfect view of the battlefield, and he could tell that things were going poorly. The aide halted his horse in front of Jacques.

"Captain Duclos, the Marshal is ordering your command to the front. You are to reinforce General Courbet on the left and repel the Saderan assault there." The aide was stern and straight to the point. He saluted sharply.

Jacques saluted back. "Understood, captain."

The aide nodded and turned his horse. Dozens of cannons boomed at once as if to punctuate his departure. Red streaks appeared in the distant Saderan formations.

Jacques stepped out ahead of the Ninth Company's formation and turned to face the entire reserve. "The Guard goes forward!" he roared at the top of his lungs.

The Ninth Company roared back, as did the grenadiers of the reserve. Men stretched and checked their kits for the last time.

"All companies, march!"

Six hundred bayonets glittered in the sun. Drummers pounded their instruments all at once. The reserve moved forward.

Jacques led them at an angle, toward the far left of the auxiliary line. The benefit of an almost entirely flat countryside like that of the Saderan heartland was that it made maneuvering very easy. He moved the reserve at an angle for less than it took a priest to say weekday mass then reached the back of the French line and turned them to march perpendicular to it.

Through the gaps in the companies to his right, Jacques could see the Saderan force coming. The militia made a bad show at marching, uneven and out of sync. The legionaries to their left were better, but Jacques could see they were experiencing their own private hell. French cannons rained fire on the legionaries, and men were dying. It gave Jacques some measure of hope.

Astier took a good look at the legionaries. "That's a lot of professionals," he said with a whistle.

He was right. There were maybe ten thousand well-armored, well-disciplined Imperial legionaries taking part in the assault. They were marching against an auxiliary force which now only numbered somewhere near three thousand. Jacques had just over six hundred men to even the odds.

But Jacques had a confidence even he couldn't understand. His six hundred were the elite of the army. And the legionaries…

Everytime Saderan legionaries fought Frenchmen they were beaten like a drum.

"We have this," Jacques said, grinning.

Vidal chuckled softly. "Someone woke up well."

They marched to the end of the French line and passed Colonel Delon's artillery battery. A deep boom sounded out every other second as thirty-six teams of gunners worked to unload round shot into the distant foes. Men yelled at each other over the noise. The great iron and bronze guns jumped back with each shot, and crewmen hauled them into place, cursing. Gunners sighted targets. Officers dictated objectives. Men placed wagers.

The guns roared on and on.

Iron cannonballs arced across the field then skipped up from the ground into formations of men. With each hit, they tore open deep gashes in the tightly packed blocks. Entire columns were blown apart by single shots. The distant screaming was drowned out by Delon's cannons and shouting French gunners.

Jacques's men passed them and began marching along the backs of the auxiliaries. They were in poor shape, having been battered by Saderan guns and run from them twice. Men stood with hollow eyes and distant stares. They stank of blood and piss.

The reserve reached the end of the auxiliary line. A few hundred yards to the left was Colonel Feraud's cavalry, but for Jacques's purposes this was where he needed to be.

"Form line! Two ranks!" he called, then started running up and down his column to make sure each company understood. "Form line just left of the auxiliaries! Two ranks each! Stretch it thin!"

There was some confusion, of course, but they were the elite for a reason, and Jacques's orders were quick to materialize.

A long and thin line assembled itself with practiced ease. Men stood in two ranks rather than the typical three, because Jacques didn't have a lot to work with, and he wanted to maximize his firepower. They certainly weren't going to win this with bayonets.

It also made their line longer, and that made the oncoming legionaries seem less intimidating. Colonel Feraud's cavalrymen had to reposition themselves to accommodate the newly formed line.

"Men!" Jacques called out. All the nervous muttering and whispered confessions that came in the face of battle died away.

Something was forming in Jacques's head. He had confidence, that was certain. Hope as well. Excitement. He was rarely excited when commanding men.

Jacques raised his fist.

"The best way to do this is with firepower. When the Saderans come at us, we'll open up on them at a distance. Don't worry about wasting shots; legionaries don't shoot back. We need to send them as much lead as possible before they reach us. When they get close, forget about volleying and just shoot as fast as you can."

There was an approving grumble from the ranks.

"Shoot enough of them and they'll run," he said. "Then we win."

Jacques had six hundred men. There were ten thousand marching at them.

"Drink water!" he ordered.

Jacques checked his pistol and loosened the Elban sword in its scabbard. He took a long drink from his canteen. There wouldn't be time once the shooting started.

No one asked how the hell they were going to stop ten thousand men.

No one suggested they fall back.

The legionaries ahead were marching quickly. Many were hunched over, ducking from the cannonfire they were receiving. One end of the line was even trailing away. They'd lost their uniform march under the pressure of bombardment.

Jacques drew his sword and held it up. "The Ninth Company's record is five shots in a single minute!" he shouted.

Ninth Company men roared back.

"I will give a hundred Francs to the man who beats it!" Jacques called.

Everyone roared.

"Here we go," Jacques said.

Three hundred yards from the approaching legionaries, Jacques raised his sword again and men around him tensed. The recommended range for musketry was one hundred fifty yards. A level musket shot with a normal charge wouldn't even go more than two hundred fifty yards. Soldiers, however, had long learned certain tricks to push that limit, and Jacques wanted every advantage he could scrape up.

"Make ready!" he shouted. The call quickly spread down the line as captains and sergeants repeated it.

Six hundred men cocked their muskets.

"Present!"

Musket barrels came down to point at the legionaries. The men held them slightly angled up rather than level.

"Fire!"

Jacques's sword went down and a heartbeat later six hundred muskets discharged together. Smoke spouted forth, creating a great cloud encompassing the entire line. The noise was deafening. The acrid smell of gunpowder filled the air.

In the distance, maybe three dozen legionaries dropped from their formations with sudden grimaces of pain. Three dozen out of ten thousand. But the effect was immediate regardless. Men panicked to see the great wall of smoke and their comrades falling from such a distance. Combined with artillery fire, the musketry ended their quick march. The legionaries flinched. There was a certain discipline required for men to march closer to the wave of firepower reaping them, and many evidently didn't have it.

They inched forward, no longer so eager.

"Reload!" Jacques called, echoed by a dozen others. Hands went to cartridges, ramrods went up and down.

When every man he could see was reloaded, Jacques repeated his orders. Hammers were cocked. Musket barrels went down.

Fire.

Reload.

Repeat.

The smoke became thicker and thicker. Jacques's eyes watered slightly as the Saderans became harder to see through the cloud. With each volley, the legionaries moved closer, and Jacques's men became more accurate. The number of legionaries who dropped with each volley rapidly increased dramatically as they went from three hundred yards to two hundred.

"Make ready!"

"Present!"

"Fire!"

Again and again.

Jacques was secretly impressed by the rate of fire they were managing. He counted four shots in a minute, better than most men could shoot individually without the constraints of volley orders. And each volley meant more dead Saderans.

Colonel Delon's guns never let up either. A fresh salvo tore through the Saderans, plowing into the tightly packed ranks and knocking men down like toys.

Blood flowed over the green fields. Iron-clad bodies littered the grass with men ripped apart by cannonfire or pierced with musketry.

Their discipline was admirable, but they slowed regardless.

One hundred yards, and the muskets became truly deadly. Each volley cut through the first ranks of Saderan legionaries, dropping men in scores. Those behind shuffled over their dead with grim determination. Their shields were worthless. Their armor was ineffectual. They could do nothing but advance and face death.

To the right, French artillerymen switched to canister shot.

Waves of lead balls eviscerated the legionaries. Some formations simply stopped existing, the canister leaving only a handful still standing. Many more were pale remnants of what they had been mere seconds before.

Seventy-five yards out, and Jacques cried, "Fire at will!"

Chaos overtook the line. The order spread quickly; officers and NCOs repeated it at the top of their lungs. Men began to fire away at their own pace. A rolling crackle went up and down the line, spewing smoke and bright flashes. Reloads became rushed as individuals competed with each other to fire as quickly as possible. Musket barrels became overheated; the French blazed away without stop. The fire was constant.

Saderan legionaries tumbled to the ground one after the other. They were bleeding men and officers. It seemed no one was in control of their columns. A constant flow of corpses dropped from their advance, punctuated by the occasional waves of death that followed a discharge of canister.

Fifty yards, and Jacques drew his pistol. He fired blindly and had no clue if he'd hit anything. It didn't matter, because there was so much firepower pouring into the Saderan legionaries that their ten thousand had diminished to six thousand and their crisp columns had become ragged mobs of stragglers.

Twenty-five yards. It seemed like nothing would stop the Saderans. Some at the front went into an all out sprint and were shot dead before they could make it ten feet. Others kept their slow shuffle, unwilling to make themselves targets but equally unwilling to retreat.

Twenty yards.

Fifteen yards.

A guttural growl came from his right. Out of the corner of Jacques's eye, he saw General Courbet charging with his sword in hand. Behind him, the entire line of auxiliaries stormed forward. Men who had been routed twice went to face their enemy a third time. The growl grew louder.

"Bayonets! Bayonets!" Jacques shouted above the shooting. "Charge! Follow the auxiliaries!"

The French went forward. Their thin line fractured, unable to keep cohesion as they ran. They plunged forward after the auxiliaries, bayonets ahead.

The auxiliaries collided first. It was a mass of steel and flesh. Swords and bucklers were everywhere, cutting and bashing against spears and shields. The legionaries were tired, demoralized, and out of formation. All they had was numbers.

Numbers weren't enough.

The French pressed in with their bayonets, and the legionaries broke. They scampered back, cohesion and willpower lost. Many dropped their shields. Their mobs broke apart.

"Halt and reorder!" Jacques quickly demanded. His men, untouched and unbloodied, stopped in their tracks and formed an uneven line. It wasn't clean, but it was done quickly.

"Fire at will!"

If the Saderans needed any further urging to run, there it was. Lead raced after the legionaries, dropping men as they ran. The auxiliaries halted to avoid entering their field of fire. Grenadiers and tirailleurs picked targets carefully.

To their left, Colonel Feraud led his squadrons forward. Two squadrons charged the Northern cavalry opposing them, and the Northerners fled before they could hit them. The rest went straight into the retreating legionaries with sabers raised to begin their bloody work.

"Good Christ," Astier gasped. "I was almost out of cartridges."

Vidal discharged her musket and shouldered it. "That was my last one," she said, exhaustion in her face.

The musketry gradually ended as cavalrymen obscured their targets and the distances grew. A collective wave of fatigue swept over the Frenchmen, and they practically collapsed where they stood. Several men emptied their canteens over themselves.

Jacques blinked. He found that his face was covered in powder. He hadn't even been using a musket.

Jacques stumbled out to the front of his men. They looked at him expectantly. He tried to think of something heroic and uplifting to say.

He grinned.

"Did anyone beat five shots a minute?"

The failed Saderan assault was the last action of the day. Both armies were exhausted, and the Saderans moved back to their defensive posture, unwilling to risk another assault. Ney had no fresh troops to commit by that point and so also wasn't willing to go on the offensive. As darkness fell, both sides settled in for the night.

"General Brunelle has succumbed to his wounds," General Courbet reported. "The surgeons tried to save him, but he'd already lost too much blood. His body is being prepared so it can be buried in our world."

Ney's officers were gathered in his command tent to discuss the way forward. There was a collective silence at Courbet's words. Everyone looked down.

"A brave man," Ney finally said. "Let's make sure his sacrifice is not in vain." He looked to Colonel Delon and asked, "How fairs our ammunition? Do we have enough for tomorrow?"

Delon nodded. "We can keep up moderate fire tomorrow, but that's all. I expect we'll have burnt through our roundshot by next evening."

Ney gave a nod back and turned to General Rousseau and General Messier. "How do the regulars fair?"

"They blew through their cartridges skirmishing today," Rousseau answered, "but we have plenty of spares, enough for at least three more days of hard fighting if it comes to it."

Messier nodded in agreement. "Low casualties as well; only a few hundred hit and a couple dozen will be able to return to the field tomorrow. We brutalized the Saderan skirmishers pretty badly, though. I don't expect we'll see them again."

Ney gave another nod. He took a deep breath and looked to General Courbet. "And the auxiliaries?" he asked, expecting the worst.

Courbet shook his head slowly. "I'm still collecting the numbers, but it looks like somewhere near two thousand dead. Another thousand fled the field, but we've managed to collect most of them and put them back into their units. That leaves a little under four thousand ready for tomorrow."

"Better than I expected," Ney admitted. Finally, he turned to Colonel Feraud and asked, "The cavalry?"

"Covered in glory," Feraud reported. "Minimal casualties, and we drove off two of Zorzal's cavalry contingents. My only complaint is that my saber arm is a tad sore after butchering those legionaries." The colonel grinned in a way that made Ney somewhat uneasy considering the day's events. "We'll be ready to kill again tomorrow."

Ney bit his lip. "Good." He sighed and looked over all his officers again. "Is there anything else for today?"

No one spoke up.

"Right well tomorrow we'll try the hill with the auxiliaries again. It should be easier with the guns spiked. If that fails, we'll try something else."

There was a collection of nods.

"You're all dismissed. Get some rest tonight."

As it turned out, two different men had beaten the Ninth Company's record of five shots in a minute that day. They were grenadiers from different companies, and their officers vouched for them. Both had managed six shots, one every ten seconds, an astounding rate of fire that pushed the very limits of musketry.

Jacques congratulated both of them in front of the whole reserve. He gave them each a hundred Francs, an enormous sum which was only possible for Jacques to give because he had not collected his monthly pay from the quartermasters since he'd first been made a captain.

There was a lot of cheering and claps on the back. Then the men were dismissed so they could celebrate.

The reserve bivouacked together, partially out of practicality but also because they had a certain bond. They were the elite of the army, and they'd fought side by side. It was enough to make fellow soldiers into friends.

Someone produced three pigs. They must have been stolen from some farm nearby, but no one cared much about their origins. The pigs were butchered and thrown into great cauldrons of soup with barley and whatever vegetables had been scavenged from the countryside.

Soup was served to rings of men sitting around fires. To Jacques, it felt perfect because they were all there. Not Boulet, killed at Italica, and not Kapsner, killed by a Saderan lance. But Flandin was there, smiling widely, drinking soup broth and sitting in a chair he'd produced from some farmer's home. Malet was there, leaning against the chair, making a joke, and Laurent was quietly sharpening his bayonet. Astier had a spoon in his hand, waving it wildly as told some anecdote about Russians he'd heard from a lancer in Poland, and he had the attention of two laughing grenadiers. Vidal was smiling along, occasionally adding to Astier's story with her own anecdotes and making eyes at Jacques in between.

Jacques watched them all, and he thought of all the others. Captain Courbis. Tullia Bato. Lelei. Lagos. Chaucer.

Christ, he even missed Chaucer.

"Tomorrow," Jacques said, and everyone stopped. He found that there was a lump in his throat. His eyes were a little wet.

Vidal put a hand on his knee.

"Tomorrow I want to go home. And I want everyone here to be with me," he choked.

The fire crackled. He wiped his eyes.

"So do I," Astier said. He looked deep into the fire.

Vidal nodded. "That would be nice," she whispered.

"It's something like family, isn't it," Malet muttered. "This company."

"No one dies tomorrow, alright?" Jacques said.

Astier chuckled lightly. "Well that settles it then; we're not allowed to die tomorrow. Captain's orders."

Everyone laughed. There was wonder in that sound. Laughter.

Laurent looked up from his bayonet. "Damn, there goes my plan."

More laughter, and everyone was suddenly celebrating again. Astier went back to his stories. Malet did an impression of Prince Zorzal. Vidal leaned against Jacques's shoulder. A cauldron of soup was emptied. The night carried on. There was laughter and smiles. Singing and joy.

Jacques was happy.

Gallio could hear the singing and laughter. It drew him the way a flame drew moths on still summer nights. He walked from his bedroll and listened to the sounds of Frenchmen.

Bluecoats.

Laughing.

Singing.

Joy.

Gallio listened and listened. And hated.

They had not sacrificed. They had given nothing. They used their muskets and their cannons, and they let others die for them.

The auxiliaries were not equals to them. Bluecoats cared only for their own. Yet they had persuaded the auxiliaries to die for them. To sacrifice blood and sweat. To lose friends so Bluecoats might live. Bastards, all of them.

Gallio was going to die tomorrow.

There was nothing left for him.

He didn't have Placus, and he didn't have Marcus. His home was a pile of ash because of the Bluecoats and their endless warmongering. He was full of anger, and he had been used. They had all been used. Now he just wanted to die well.

Gods take all the Bluecoats. They could rot in whatever cursed realm they came from. He didn't care. Someone would kill him tomorrow, and then he was going to cut his way to hell.

Maybe then he could be with his friends again.