XXIII

“Fire!” Emilia Vos Turi barked, and the thunderous report of musket fire answered her call. The entrenched troops were under heavy fire from the white coats, and the hastily constructed earthworks while sturdily built could only do so much for her men. Already a haze hung over the battlefield the result of a combined Helheim-Kurtz barrage, and the lazy swamp wind was doing little to brush it away, giving everything a sort of atherial glow to it as the sun overhead attempted to breach the growing gloom that seemed to shroud the battlefield. She grabbed a messenger that sprinted past her location by the lapels on his jacket and turned him to face her. “Report!” she barked and the man blanched slightly before following orders.

“Ma’am, the west side is suffering heavy losses, a section of the earthenworks have collapsed after a concentrated fire, they are requesting backup as well as engineers to help repair the damage.”

“Shit, go to Sergeant Vlaskes and tell him to take the fourth Corp and seal up that breach!” she ordered and then practically shoved the man away in the direction of the Sergeant. She ran, half crouched to the other end of the wall, grabbing a spare musket from a wounded soldier who was kneeling down reloading the things for his fellows. The man had taken a shot to the shoulder, which no doubt made it next to impossible to shoot, but the man was still doing his duty reloading so that the men in his section could keep up a constant barrage against the attacking whitecoats. She lay against the slight slope of the earthenworks and looked over the wall, searching for the black hat of one of the officers, through the haze she couldn't make out the rank of any of the soldiers so she simply put a shot through the head of the nearest rifleman. She paused, surveying the battlefield one more time before lowering herself back down and swapping muskets with the man, this one was sticky with blood on the grip but she ignored it.

Mage fire slammed into a section of the wall, causing it to explode and erupt in a flash of green and white, hurling men and rocks every which direction. Emilia ducked as the debris rained over her location. When the smoke cleared enough to see she sighed in relief, the mage was far away, likely because the Kurtz only had one or two and they were acting as the armies sole siege breakers seeing as they had no artillery, meaning they were much too far away to truly be effective. The explosion had only taken a foot or two of the wall, and while it had tossed several men with the impact all but one was getting back to their feet. The fallen man would never be getting back up unfortunately, anyone could say as much just at a glance, seeing as he had been in direct contact with the explosion. A large section of stone jutted out from the ruined mess that had been his face as he lay spread eagle some 20 feet back, where he had been flung by the explosion.

“I need engineers up here!” she shouted, glancing at the earthenworks wall they had constructed, an explosion like that could have caused cracks in the hastily constructed wall and any number of shots could easily cause that section to collapse, just like on the west side. She grabbed her gun and surged back up the wall, this time taking the time to aim and fire at a Kurtz officer, this one made it easy, sitting atop his horse waving a saber in the air as he commanded his troops. “We can win,” she growled, as she slid back down the wall. She glanced up at the three Airships that hovered in the sky some distance away, each one held more than enough troops to crush her men, she knew this, but she also knew that battles were often won or lost by the troop's morale. At this moment the Kurtz men must be feeling good, what with a numerical advantage and superior technology on their side, but if even one of those damned things were to go up in flames. The thought of so many deaths did not please her as she assumed it would, after all, they would not be honorable deaths, not fought on the battlefield and won or loss fighting men on equal standing, but death via burning or falling from the sky? She shook her head and absently handed the musket back to the wounded soldier.

As she turned she saw that woman approaching. it wasn't that she hated Isi, she knew she had no right to do so, but it still grated her to see that Adrian had replaced her with this… Isi was striking, and this was not simply because she had dark skin and bone white hair, which were visually something Emilia had never seen before. This was due to the fact that she was the first Skaeling Emilia had ever seen, seeing as most of the tribals stayed in their own lands, never venturing out unless they were captured as slaves by the Kurtz. No the striking thing about her were those amethyst eyes that seemed to glow almost like they had an inner light of their own, that and the fact that despite her small stature she still seemed to exude a presence that demanded you pay attention to her. She was wearing an officer’s uniform, likely one of Adrian’s with the sleeves and legs rolled up to allow it to fit her better, in her arms she carried a musket, though not one of Helheim's, this one was one of the Kurtz axe guns, the shorter heavier musket seemed to fit in her hands better. Following in the woman’s shadow was Sergeant Torin if she remembered his name correctly.

The large man had to duck as he moved so he did not provide the enemy with a nice target, strapped to the end of his arm was a rifle, the leather contraption holding the thing snugly as he moved after the Skaeling woman his other hand holding the stock so that it didn't bump against his legs. As they neared her the man crouched down, placing the butt of the musket on the ground. Isi looked at Emilia in the eyes before turning and climbing the wall. She scampered up the thing with a speed that rather impressed Emilia. And laying the rifle on the ground she sighted down it and fired. The enemy was so thick that there was no way the woman had missed and so Emilia didn't even bother to climb up and look, though as she watched Isi started to wave her hands, each one glowing a deep dark purple that bled to white. Within seconds an explosion rocked the very earth. Emilia could feel it even through the soles of her boots, a good sized plume of smoke rose up into the sky and for the briefest of moments the musket fire halted as everyone took in the destruction. The only sound was the screams of the wounded, though this impromptu cease-fire only lasted a moment or two. Emilia ran up the earthen works to see what had happened and was not surprised to see a good thirty meters of ground blackened and torn up, there had to have been at least a company if not two that had been decimated by that sort of explosion. She glanced at Isi and found the girl smiling at her, though she didn't miss the weary look in her eyes nor the sweat that beaded her brow. In her haste to see the carnage, the Skaeling had wrought Emilia had forgotten to grab a replacement rifle, and not wanting to waste the opportunity she pulled out the tin of reagents she kept in a pouch around her neck.

Her fireball was less spectacular than the strange magic Isi used but it was still extremely effective, easily killing a score of men, and wounding more than three dozen more. Emilia followed Isi down as she slid down the earthenworks. When she got to the bottom Isi was already loading another musketball in with a deftness that rather surprised her. “Normally,” she took a breath and looked at Isi. “Normally I would tell you that we don't want you here, but obviously you are an asset, so will you follow my orders?” she stared into Isi’s eyes the other woman and was slightly surprised when the other woman crossed her arms and shook her head. “No?” Emilia asked, to which Isi nodded. “No, you are not going to follow my orders?” Isi nodded again. She narrowed her eyes at Isi, “If you are not going to follow my orders then I don't want you on my battlefield, I have more than enough to deal with at the moment without you complicating it anymore, Sergeant, please escort Mistress Isi off of the battlef-”

“I can’t do that Ma’am,” Torin said, and he did look rather apologetic, “My commanding officer has made her the temporary commander in his absence, so I, unfortunately, take orders from her.”

“You cant even understand her orders! She doesn't speak our language!”

“I don’t understand most orders I have been given by my superiors, still do ‘em though, and when I get it wrong I can say it was because they left it up for interpretation.” his smile made Emilia want to smack him across the face, but she resisted the rather tempting urge.

“What are you doing here Sergeant?” she asked, reaching her hand out for another musket. “If you haven't noticed I am currently attempting to keep an enemy that outnumbers us four to one from crushing us, so if you could explain why you have come here that would be much appreciated.”

“I'm just following the commander,” he said, gesturing to Isi, “don't look at me.” Emilia narrowed her eyes at the other woman, who in turn crossed her arms and gave her a defiant look. Emilia didn't need to understand the woman’s language to know what she was attempting to say, she could read it in her body language.

“Do you really want to do this now?” she asked with a sigh as she deflated slightly. Isi nodded, and uncrossed her arms. “Fine, here is how it is,” Emilia paused and looked at the Sergeant who was aside from the wounded soldier the only man in hearing distance. “Sergeant if you could give us a moment,” she said, but he didn't move, he gave a sort of apologetic but not really smile and she looked at Isi, who nodded and turned giving Torin a shooing motion with her hands, nodding he gave them space, as did the wounded man. “I don't like you, I think the reason Adrian is with you is to spite his father, and I think when he has accomplished that he will leave you behind so that he can marry a Helheim woman.” she narrowed her eyes at Isi, “that is what you expect me to say isn't it?” Isi gave a noncommital raise of the shoulders, a sort of half shrug. “That is the sort of response you will get from court, should we ever make it back to Helheim and Adrian decide he wishes to take part in it, but the truth of the matter is that I don't like you, even after all of these years I find the idea of Adrian being with another woman to be, troubling.”

“Ish token nalima has,” she said, cocking her hip to the side, from the look on her face she was mocking Emilia, and so she responded as such.

“Yes, I know petty of me seeing as I am with his younger brother, haha I get the irony, it doesn't change the facts of how I feel, it is not logical, it is emotional, however,” she paused as a musket ball impacted the section of wall they were behind, causing a loud whizz as it ricocheted off into a different direction. “However, I do not think he is going to leave you, whether I like it or not, he seems committed and Adrian is driven if nothing else, nor do I think he is only with you to annoy his father, I have seen that look in his eyes before.” her own eyes grew slightly distant as she remembered something. “As such,” her eyes snapped back to Isi “I am going to have to learn to live with it, so I will live with it that is, where we stand is that I don’t like you but I can respect you, can we work with that?” she stuck out her hand, and after only the slightest pause Isi took it and shook. “Good, now how many more times can you do that little trick? You know, the one where tons of enemy combatants die painfully and spectacularly?” Isi held up three fingers. “Four-time huh? I can work with that.” Isi waved her three fingers in front of Emilia’s face as though she thought the other woman hadn't seen, they both knew she had and Emilia simply smiled. “Four it is, let us hope we can hold out for however long we need to before your fiance decides to light the fireworks…”