Captain Tane Bayder. 11 Sextilis, 1582 AAA. Trackford.

“At the strife of Camlann, in the year 537 in the reckoning of the old world, Arthur did fight the forces of the rebel Medraut, and slew many of them, and put the rest to flight, and killed Medraut himself with a single terrible thrust of his slaying-spear through his mail shirt. Before expiring, though, Medraut struck a dolorous stroke with a treacherous sea-wolves knife through Arthur’s belly”

Bran the Wise, The Conquest of Anwwn.

Why the hell did it have to be Trackford? Bayder thought to herself as she ducked yet another chunk of thrown brick. Of all the cities in Carfane that could have been under occupation, it had to be this dirty, crowded, riot strewn hellhole. Kasilisk had it in just as much for Commonwealth troops, of course, but at least they did it with angry pamphlet readings rather than by pelting sentinels with brickbats and “snowballs” that were more like chunks of ice, and the buildings were much nicer than the dreary, disordered masses of grey, rotting wood and red brick that formed Trackford’s urban landscape.

“Cap?” Bayder twisted in her saddle as Gryff, her company Lieutenant rode up behind her. He was a short, heavily built man, with blonde mutton chops and moustache, and he was pointing into the crowd.

“Yes?”

“Those Billmen up there, it looks like they’re getting pissed. We should break them out before they decide to do it them-“

Gryff swore loudly and viciously as a chunk of ice skipped off his breastplate.

Bayder saw that the man who’d thrown it, more of a boy really, had run out from the front of the mob to get a better throw. She spurred forwards, her brown gelding instantly accelerating to a canter, and sent the man scrambling back to within the mass of humanity that constituted the mob ahead of them. Her mount’s hooves skidded on the half-frozen mess of mud and manure that caked the streets as she reined in to a halt and trotted back up to Gryff. She continued the conversation as if nothing had happened.

“Agreed. Get the troop ready to charge at the trot, with batons on my signal” She stood up in her stirrups, trying to get a better look at the billmen. One was jabbing at the crowd, trying to force them back with his hooked polearm, while the other tried to shield himself with the shaft of his weapon.

One of them is a fighter, the other just wants to stay alive. Good to know.

Half her company formed six wide and six deep in the street, drawing the assortment of basket hilted singlesticks and wooden batons they carried. Good for both training and riot control, standing orders were to always carry them within the city. The other half was back at quarters, under the tender ministrations of Quartermaster Bydevere.

Bayder centered herself in the front ranks of her troop, right besides the Cornet, Sace Cale, the short young woman nervous as she shook out the squadron banner from the tip of her lance. The mob must have realized something was about to happen, because more of them were shoving towards the Horse Grenadiers, onto the street they were deployed on.

Bayder lifted her whistle, blew it once, and spurred forwards. The whole troop rode forwards fast and hard, moving boot to boot with singlesticks and batons held ready like backswords. All the fight went right out of the outraged crowd when they saw the solid mass of flesh and metal and leather coming right at them. Even up on horseback, Bayder could feel the vibrations of the horses advancing. Her heart beat faster and her vision took on a strange clarity, as it always did when about to charge.

The mob broke and ran, their backs turned to the horsemen, almost tripping over each other to avoid them.

Some fool rushed out of the mob with a hatchet, aiming to attack the horses. He didn’t get a chance to swing, as the Horse Grenadiers rode straight over him, pounding him into the mud.

Bayder bellowed for the troop to keep moving, to not get bogged down, and her subalterns and corporals joined in the yells, mixed in with someone in the mob screaming, not in anger but in fear this time.

Tane barked out “Halt, circle up on the billmen!”, and the troop followed, reining in their horses to a walk and surrounding the sentinels with admirable speed. Bayder took stock of the situation. The mob was swarming back in, surrounding them once again, and this time they were good and pissed from the man who’d gotten ridden over. Bayder couldn’t tell if he was dead or just stunned-he lay motionless on the ground- but either way, it wasn’t good. They were getting rapiers, cutlasses and the long chopping knives that had become fashionable lately out, and the mood had gone from semi-jovially tormenting outnumbered sentries to getting ready for a real fight.

“No more Queens!”

“Carfane free from Tyranny!”

“Farmers before Wooses!”

“Lobsters go home!”

The mob was chanting their slogans in unison, narrowing down from a litany of yells until the entire throng was bellowing “Sod. Off. Lobsters.” over and over.

“Oi, Cap, someone’s got a musket. Permission to try and take him out?”

Corporal Haynes had ridden up besides her, pointing to a man in the crowd who was waving a rusty old fowling piece.

She answered with “permission denied” to Haynes, and then bellowed out “Do not fire unless fired upon!” to the whole troop.

If they want a bloodbath, let the blame be on them.

Bayder barked out “Morgan!”, and the company Grey Witch leaned over. “Yes?”

“That guy who got ridden over? He still alive?”

She shut her eyes, using her third eye to examine his soul. “Yes, he’s still breathing.”

“And that hostile with a musket? Can you drop him?”

“No, too much risk I’ll get the wrong shade.”

If this had been a battle, she could have cooked the lot of them and been done with it. Bloody crowd control.

She barked orders for Corporal Carrow and five other men to dismount and secure the Taxation office. She couldn’t risk the mob deciding to settle for burning the tax records, probably wiping out the investigations of dozens of local smugglers and local miscreants.

Carrow’s Lance(1) quickly dismounted, grabbed their muskets and pistols off their saddle holsters and shoved open the door, bellowing orders to the people inside. The rest of her group were forming up again, with four now riderless horses-the other two were ridden by the billmen, clearly awkward on horseback-at the centre of the group. Horses were herd animals; they would run with the rest of the herd.

Another volley of brickbats and ice chunks came in, along with at least one axe. Her horse stamped and reared as a snowball skipped off his head. Someone raced up to her, trying to grab at her reins, his friends moving behind him, only to be struck across the face with her baton. He stumbled back, clutching at his bleeding nose and screaming bloody murder. His friends turned and fell back, into the safety in numbers that the mob presented.

“Sod off Lobsters!”

“Butchers!”

“Farmers before Wooses!”

“Carfane free from tyrants!”

There was a jarring crack and the buzz of a musket ball flying past her head.

For a brief moment, she saw the world in slow motion, her mind shifting from the frustration of riot control to the terror of coming under attack from an unknown quarter.

“Shooter!”

“Left, he fired from our left!”

“Jesus!”

“Kept Moving! Do not fire without orders! Morgan, wards up!” Tane barked, moving quickly to restore order. The last thing she needed was a breakdown in discipline in the middle of a riot.

“Mindbreaker!” Morgan yelled.

“Brace for witchcraft!” Tane shouted without thinking, and Sace and Gryff and her corporals echoed it, Sace’s voice almost comically girlish against the leather lunged bawling of her other officers.

Shit, shit, shit. All it took was one enemy witch warp-spasming one of her troopers, and she’d have a repeat of the original Trackford massacre on her hands.

She ran through the drills she’d done to protect her mind from witchcraft, trying to use the link between mind and soul to fortify her soul. The only problem was that it was rather hard to concentrate on that, while also keeping an eye on the rest of her troopers and the mob ahead of them. “Witch is in that tall red building to our left!” Morgan grunted, clearly under the strain of holding a hostile witch’s tendrils off.

She glanced across, saw someone drawing a pistol, heard Corporal Haynes bellowing “hold fire!”, a second muzzle flash and puff of smoke; heard the crack of the musket shot, a series of rapid pops as her troopers let fly with a ragged pistol volley, aimed at nothing in particular, and beneath it all civilians screaming.

“Cease fire, cease fire!” she roared, followed by “Wheel left, on me!”, riding across the front ranks, trying to block their line of fire and get them to wheel on her.

“You heard the fucking captain! Wheel left!” Gryff yelled.

“Morgan! We got someone who’s mindbroken?” Tane asked.

“No!” she answered, calm under pressure as always.

She spurred her horse around towards the red brick building. Her horse grenadiers wheeled cleanly behind her, moving to engage the witch. The mob that was between them and the shooters position, though, was even denser, and they were actually pushing forwards, hurling bricks and planks of wood at them.

She could feel the pressure building at the back of her mind; Morgan was only barely holding the witch’s attempts at mindbreaking back.

The pressure suddenly subsided.

“You got him!” Tane yelled at Morgan.

“Not me. Third witch”

What?

The only other friendly witches would be with the Marine corps troops who were blocking the southern end of the lane they were on, nearly two hundred yards back. Well out of the reach of all but the best spellcasters.

“Morgan! Do you have the witches signature?”

“Yes!”

“Is the witch immobilized?”

“Tilting got her, I think. The musketeer too”

“Good”

If someone else has put down the witch, that means we can get out of here before the group on tailor’s street regroups and traps us here.

She stood up in her stirrups, scanning the square for a way out. The mob on the northern end of governor’s lame was pressing forwards; another part of the mob was still blocking Tailor’s street. The south end, though was almost clear, except for the blocking detachment of marines.

“About face! Gryff; you take command! Head for the marines!”

There was no time or room to turn by wheeling or countermarching; they simply turned around, the bringer-ups now the file leaders, and Lieutenant Gryff now leading the company from the front while she followed behind.

As they turned, the mob took that as a sign of defeat and began to surge forwards, their mindset changing from that of dogs fighting a rival for territory to one chasing down a fleeing victim. Someone tossed a stick at her face; she slapped it away with her baton, then wheeled off, her horse briefly galloping to catch up to the rest of her company.

She could barely see what was going on ahead; the armoured backs ahead of her blocking the view, but she could hear screaming and the thud, gunshot loud, of a horse slamming into someone. Another musket shot rang out; she winced as she heard the metallic clang of it bouncing off a backplate, the force of the bullet slowed by Morgan’s wards to the point where it couldn’t even dent good quality armour.

She cantered past a civilian lying on the ground, struggling to stand, with bloody hoofprints leading away from her.

Horus, Christ, Mithras…

They swept past Tailor’s street, and she noticed the pikes, bills and helmets poking up from behind the mob. After that, they were pounding down Governor’s lane, with the few civilians still on the street scrambling out of the way.

She heard a faint yell of “get clear!” from up ahead, and then red coated marines in the corner of her vision, flattened against the walls of the buildings. The Grenadiers slowed to a walk and then halted. She followed suite, unused to not having to set the unit’s pace. The marines swept back in, forming in three deep close order across the width of the street, dagger bayonets fitted across their musket barrels.

“What the fuck happened back there?”

Tane looked down at Captain Artorius Ap Glyn, a short, wiry man with a cutlass in one hand and a pistol in the other, his face a mixture of concern, confusion and excitement.

“Sharpshooter. Fucking witch. Some of my grenadiers tried to open up without order”

“Shit”

“Yeah. Gotta get the company together. I’ll explain what happened tonight”

She trotted to her company, barking orders for the grenadiers to get back into regular order rather than the reversed formation they’d been in. The years of seemingly pointless parade ground exercises payed off, as she quickly got the company back into order, waiting in reserve to move up and support the infantry. The mob was being pushed back onto Governor’s lane by now, towards the north end of it. The only escape from the trap created by Artorius’s marines blocking the south end, and the pikes pressing down through Tailor’s street.

She turned back to face her half-troop. “Anyone injured?”.

“Yeah, I got shot, but the backplate skipped it”. Aurene Slach. One of the Valadian mercenaries in her company.

“Get it looked at by the surgeon anyway. Reload discharged arms!” Tane said.

She took note of who reloaded.

Andros. Gywn. Cessene. Herrel went for his pistol, then stopped when he saw that she was watching.

Tane didn’t relish the thought of having to punish her troopers. They’d done their best in a difficult situation. But she had to make it clear to her troopers that orders had to be followed, no matter how much pressure they were under, and to the Carfani that the Commonwealth soldiers weren’t above the laws of army and nation.

The pikemen were clearing the street, their armoured backs to her. They had their pikes held high, driving back the crowd by shoving shoulder first.

She watched and waited, in case they needed cavalry support. It didn’t look like they would.

Finally, an officer from the pike company came jogging back to them, telling her and Artorius that the mob was dispersed and they were free to go.

She turned the half-troop around-no mean feat in the tight confines of the street-and headed off for quarters. She stayed alert. Once word that her troops had opened fire spread, they could be a target for riots or another attack by a witch.

The cavalry rode down from Harrow’s Hill, into Dockside, unimaginatively named after the docks and wharves it adjoined. If the architecture in Oldtown, surrounded by walls and hills, was uninspiring, the buildings of Dockside were downright desultory. It was a mess of sagging wood, cramped lanes, and muddy, icy streets. Flophouses, brothels and taverns lined the streets, alongside warehouses and the occasional workshop. The people here were sailors and stevedores mostly, from the local fishing fleets and merchant ships(that doubled as smugglers), the commonwealth navy, and even a few men from a Fusangese trading Junk. The others were the people who served them; tavern workers, hawkers of cheap trinkets, singers, and whores.

On her horse, armoured in leather and metal and surrounded by loyal soldiers, Bayder felt a faint feeling of disdain for the masses around her.

Bloody hell, I’m thinking like a goddamn proper noble again, not a bastard who got lucky with a rich father.

They reached their quarters, a winesink that had had it’s stables and boarding rooms taken over for the use of her Grenadiers. The owner had been reluctant to turn it over to the army, but she had been persuaded with a fat bag of silver and the fact that the presence of soldiers would “protect it from arson”. It stank of mildew, and the gaudy blue paint it had been adorned with was badly peeled. She worried for the integrity of the roof, what with the immense load of snow over it. Bayder was glad she had separate quarters.

She wheeled around in front of the grenadiers.

The rest of the company, most of them out of armour and not carrying any weapons but their swords, came out to watch, along with the assortment of farriers, armourers, surgeons, laundresses, grooms and pages that kept the company functioning.

“Well, that was something. Andros, Cessene, Gywn, Herrel. If I order you not to fire, that means do not fire. I don’t care if you were coming under fire. Do that on a battlefield and you’d waste your shots outside effective range, potentially getting us all killed. As it stands you might very well have killed innocent bystanders. You’re confined to quarters for your own safety and on half pay, and there’ll be worse if it turns out anyone was killed.

Cessene and Gywn barked out a loud “Yes Ma’am” from their position in the first rank, while Andros looked very pointedly at his horses neck and Herrel looked distinctictly sheepish.

“Madoc, Valt, at least try to avoid running over innocent bystanders in future, even if said innocent bystanders attack you with a hatchet and I’ve spent the last two years telling you to run over any infantry stupid enough to get in your way.”

Some of the soldiers laughed nervously.

“Alright then. Bydevere, record the pay deductions and punishments on the company logs. Sace, get the banner stowed. Gryff, set sentinels for the quarters. Officers, dismissed”

She suspected she was going to have a long day ahead of her explaining this.

1: The cavalry equivalent of a squad. 3-10 troopers under a corporal or lance-corporal. Based on the historical “lance fournie”, a medieval tactical unit with a man-at-arms supported by pages, light cavalry and mounted archers.