By the time we reached the gates, it was pandemonium. The grounds were blanketed in the omnipresent powder fog of the battlefield and volley fire had degenerated to ragged waves rippling across the field.
The palace gates were too heavy and ceremonial to have been closed on short notice, so the breach had been filled with bodies. A full battalion of the 2nd Company -- the Mourners, dressed in black hats and coats with dark grey facings and accents -- was deployed in a triple line across the gateway, pikes bristling from the third rank and Major von Staffen staring over the infantry from horseback, shaking his head and shouting at intervals.
Above them all, more smoke decorated the walls like cloud banking against a mountain as the remaining two battalions of Mourners rained death into the streets from loopholes and battlements. Further out along the wings, a battalion of the more prestigious but less fearsome 1st Company stood ready on the walls, with two more standing by in the courtyard. If the invaders broke through the gate, they could look forward to advancing into a hail of bullets not only from the face, but also from above as they passed through the gatehouse.
The only mercy for them, as far as I was concerned, was that the palace stood in the middle of the city and obviously could not be armed with cannon emplacements, for fear of the harm it would do the populace.
Nevertheless, the Mourners seemed pressed. As we sprinted in past the hail of enemy fire, Sergeant Dietrich shouting to the nearest allied sergeant all the way, I saw why: the creature we had encountered out on the flank was not alone. Bodies much too large to be human were scattered across the killing ground, many far closer to the Guard than any human infantry could reach against the firepower of three battalions.
A bestial scream sounded out, and in a moment something with too many arms, each too long, hurled one of the fallen like a broken toy. It flew just ahead of us like a cannon ball, smashing into the lines and reducing two full files to a tangle of limbs, straps, and probably broken bones.
I gulped, mouth suddenly dry and the taste of powder resurging. In the distance Major van Staffen shouted hoarsely over the sounds of battle and the still-unceasing tortured hum from the sky for the ranks to close, and we stepped into the gap.
Everything felt at once more familiar, and as unfamiliar as everything today had been. I was in the second rank, another soldier on every side and someone yelling orders behind me, a most familiar situation. But with the clouds of gunsmoke I had yet to even see the enemy properly, save for enemies that didn’t match with anything I had ever seen before, nor anything we had trained for, and rather than giving battle on the field we were packed into the city, no sign of the enemy until they appeared under your nose.
I fell into the mindless rhythm of war. Fire a round, reload, wait for the order, fire again, reload. When someone fell, close ranks. Pray not to be hit by cannon fire -- or the hurled corpses or firey blasts that passed for it on this hellish battlefield. The world shrank down to moving the arquebus through the motions, feeling the kick against my shoulder and the burn in my arms, the rain trickling down my face and the spray of powder from the arquebus of the man behind my right -- at some point I had stepped into the front rank.
A giant feathered thing twice my height emerged from the smoke bare yards in front of me, tufts of black puffing from it as lead balls pummeled it. In a daze, I raised my arquebus, raised it, raised it, until the beast was nearly on top of me and I was looking at its beak lined up with the top of my breech pin. At this range even an arquebus could hardly miss, and when I pulled the trigger it dropped.
My fingers alternated numb and burned: when I fumbled for a cartridge in the pouch they felt as cold as winter icicles, but the barrel of my flintlock was hot enough the rain hissed when it hit it and every time I slipped the paper and ball into the muzzle or withdrew the rammer I singed my fingertips.
Eventually I felt I was reaching further into my cartridge pouch than usual, and some academic part of my mind that was watching the carnage from a clinical perspective noted that standard doctrine was to fire one or two, rarely more than four, volleys before closing to a charge.
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If Colonel von Weider and Major von Staffen hadn’t ordered a charge, it meant they believed it would break our ranks before the enemy’s -- by panic or by being shot down. And seeing the monsters on the other side, who could blame them?
I paused my thinking to tear the top off another cartridge and spit it aside. A ball punched through the folds of my coat, missing my legs by inches, but I was well past worrying about the enemy fire. It hadn’t hit me yet. I primed, closed, poured powder, slipped in the bullet, rammed -- so much fouling had built up in my arquebus I was beginning to fear I would soon be unable to ram another shot through -- returned the rammer, recovered, fired.
The enemy was facing us on our home ground, in a defensible position even if we did lack artillery support. The simple arithmetic of war demanded they strike a decisive blow, unless they truly outnumbered us by so much they could afford to wear us down in open combat like this. I glanced to my left and to my right, seeing the ranks standing far thinner than they had when I had begun firing.
Of course, the enemy had not charged to force the breach either. Instead, monsters ran across the field continually, most falling to fire from the battalions overhead before reaching us, but some getting close enough to lash out and devastate the ranks. It was a testament to the discipline of the Mourners that our line hadn’t broken yet.
Or, I mused through a wry smile and a mouthful of nitre and char, everyone else was as detached as I was and it simply hadn’t occurred to them to rout.
In any case, the seemingly unlimited supply of crimes against nature that was breaking against our lines worried me. If the thunder of guns and biting of smoke hadn’t deafened and blinded my emotions as much as my senses, I suspected I might be terrified. Simply presenting more men than your enemy had cartridges was no way to wage a war, but it was starting to seem that that was how the invaders were going about it -- and the worse part was that it was working. The ranks were thinner all the time.
Another thought struck me as a cartridge slipped through my numb, dust-and-rain-covered fingers. I was hearing gunfire from behind me, which was certainly not supposed to be happening, as I could see the enemy directly ahead and there should only be the 1st Company behind me, ready to drown the gate in lead when we fell back. I almost turned around to look back, but another rational part of my brain chided me that that would be a truly stupid thing to do, and I kept my eyes forward.
A moment later, I heard the bugle calling over the cacophony, although it felt very distant. It took me a moment to place the signal, but it seemed very obvious in hindsight: retreat, in good order. Sergeant Dietrich realised at the same moment as me -- how long had he been standing there at my side with a flintlock? He always carried a sergeant’s half pike -- and after a moment’s pause, bellowed the command at the same time as it echoed up and down the line.
Approximately as one, the dazed, bruised, battered and bleeding 2nd Battalion of the 2nd Company of the Queen’s Guard Regiment turned and marched back through the gate we had been standing in and holding for what felt like hours.
To my dismay, the scene on the walls showed carnage as well: the battalion of the 1st that was deployed to the wings on the wall was repelling what looked like an escalade -- an assault on the walls up ladders -- being executed by climbing creatures, ape-like or spider-like or something in between. The lines were holding, but it was bloody battle and there was little opportunity to bring massed fire to bear on the creatures without simultaneously enfilading the rest of the defenders on the wall.
Out of the fire and into the frying pan we marched, accelerating to the double as the ranks of the 1st Company wheeled into the courtyard from the edges to form a chevron bristling with a fresh mass of pike and guns.
More soldiers were still busy fortifying the grand entrance hall of the palace, ornate furniture being used to build barricades and sacks filled with sand piled shoulder-high everywhere they could. Major von Staffen, somehow unscathed despite having spent the last vision of hell perched on horseback above the ranks and defenceless, called orders and chivvied and we somehow formed into a column and filed into a grand dining hall, denuded of its furniture but blessedly also devoid of enemies, gunsmoke, or giant creatures defying the natural way of things. Even the keening cry was a little quieter.
Von Staffen dismissed us and the column dissolved. I collapsed against the wall, taking a swig from my canteen to try to wash the powder from my mouth. The first mouthful I spat out on the marble floor next to me, heedless of decorum, and then I drank greedily. When I wiped my face, my already-filthy hand came away smeared with yet more grime, probably from the flash pan.
Sergeant Dietrich slid down the wall to sit next to me, followed to my surprise by Bauer, still pale and with one sleeve sodden with something darker than rain, but still walking.
I let my head fall back against the wall and groaned.
“Heavens help us all.”