My moment of hard-earned shuteye was interrupted a moment later by another pair collapsing to the ground on my other side. I couldn’t bring myself to open my eyes, but the closer one spoke into the relative silence.

“I always said I should have been a hussar.”

“Otto,” I greeted him. “You and what horse?”

“I know this very fine gentleman just a league or two outside the city who sells very fine horses, I tell you what. Eighteen gulden for a beautiful warhorse, fully trained.”

“And how much in bribes to avoid being hanged for horse thievery? Besides, you don’t even have eighteen gulden.”

We both chuckled, but without much energy. The hussar routine was something we’d been doing since I first met Otto after enlisting, and every time he tried to come up with a fresh specious solution to the problem of his lack of a good horse.

“Well, look on the bright side,” I added. “We’re a dragoon battalion! I’m sure you’ll get a chance to prove yourself soon.”

He managed a snicker at that. “An infantry battalion with some well-fed nags that never leave the paddock is what we are, Schreiner. Sooner kiss the Queen than lead a charge, I say.”

I finally pried my eyes open through the steadily crusting sweat and dirt to aim a weak punch at his shoulder.

“Show the proper respect to Her Majesty, soldier, long may she live,” I chided, but my heart wasn’t in it.

On his other side, Wagner made up for it by swatting him in the face with his hat.

“An’ show the right respect to the horses, man.” He said, reseating his hat. “They’re proper noble beasts as anyone could want, nothin’ wrong with them.”

Otto spluttered as we chuckled together. Both of them loved horses, but Wagner was more down-to-earth and found ways to organise that his chores were in the stables where he could work with them and care for them. Otto, I knew, just dreamed of the freedom of running wild across the battlefield instead of walking slowly into the mouth of hell with the rest of the infantry.

Despite my annoyance with his idiom, I had to concede he was correct: a dragoon battalion had the potential to move extremely quickly, but fundamentally served either as very light horse or, more usually, as ordinary foot in battle. Being stationed in the capital made both rapid manoeuvers and light horse questionable at best and downright idiocy at worst.

“Say, Otto, do you even have two kreuzer to rub together at the moment?” I idly asked, putting off another question I wanted to ask for a bit.

“You calling me a wastrel?”

“Well, you do spend a lot of nights out on the town when you can get away with it.”

Otto scoffed. “We can’t all live off loyalty and honour like you do, Schreiner. A man has needs! I’ve never even seen you drink more than a pint, it’s not natural. Cools the body in summer and warms the soul in winter.”

“Ain’t sure the amount of beer you drink is natural either, Otto,” Wagner chipped in. “Nor what the chaplain would say about it ‘warmin’ the soul’.”

“Ah, shut it, you two,” He groused, and we all chuckled. “So I’m light of purse at the moment. Maybe we get a bonus after all this is said and done.”

We fell silent for a bit, and I let my eyes sag closed. I didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to think about the abattoir outside, but I had to.

“Sergeant Dietrich?”

“What, gefreiter.” The sergeant sounded as exhausted as I did, and I almost flinched. The man’s endurance was almost solid enough to stop bullets by itself. I had never heard him sound so tired, and I almost didn’t ask.

“The squad. Is it just… Who did we…” I trailed off.

“What you see is what you get, gefreiter,” Dietrich said, resigned. “Schmid, Klein, and Fischer didn’t make it.”

I cast around for something to say, but came up empty handed. I just sighed and slid a little lower down the wall. There wasn’t anything to say, really. That was life in the infantry. I wanted to blame myself, to say I should have done something better, but really what was there? Should I have fired at different patches of smoke? Could I have reloaded in a few seconds less and fired a few more shots? None of it really mattered, and it just left me numb instead.

I just sighed again.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Immer, man, did a bullet give you a puncture?” Otto joked. “You sound like a dying bellows.”

“Not the time, Otto.” I didn’t have the will to punch him again; I just slumped further.

I was distracted again my something bouncing off my chest. I pried my eyes open to see Wagner leaning forward, his scimitar in his hand with juice running down it, and a third of an apple lying in my lap collecting gunpowder grime. Otto was already taking a bite of his.

“Eat up, gefreiter, now ain’t the time to go soft. They held the line, same as us. Queen and country, so long as the Immer flows, right?”

I resisted the urge to sigh again, and scooped up the piece of apple. It didn’t look terribly appetising, but anything I tried to wipe it with would just make it worse and I couldn’t deny I was hungry.

“Thanks, Wagner,” I said around a mouthful of apple. “You just feel so useless, you know?”

“We were standing in the same line, lad,” Dietrich said. “We all know. Only thing to do is to get up and keep going.”

Once again, we lapsed into silence. This time, no-one broke it -- until a few minutes later, when what sounded like a clap of thunder resounded from somewhere higher up in the palace. In the aftermath, it took me a moment to place what had changed, but when I realised it seemed obvious: the appalling shrieking that had wailed through the city since this morning had stopped.

Finding a rush of new energy, I jumped to my feet and ran to the middle of the room, trying to get a good look at the sky over the city square through one of the windows. The palace building was ancient, predating the large-windowed, vaulted Gothic styles, and the thick walls were only pierced by arched windows higher up the walls. Its might as a fortress usually stilled wagging tongues gossiping about how outdated Immerland was, but it was undeniably far less elegant than the palaces of Jaren or Torrea.

I finally caught a glimpse of the clouds, and my heart sank. The glow was weaker and the clouds were washed in less of that unearthly light, but the red line still divided the sky. I walked back to the wall and slumped down again.

With the noise gone, I realised there were no sounds of combat from outside. The gatehouse must have held, and the battalions on the wall must have repulsed the bizarre monstrous escalade.

I was about to comment on it to anyone listening, when some movement caught my eye -- an unfamiliar officer hurrying through a set of doors at the rear of the hall, and engaging Major von Staffen and his staff in an animated discussion. I stared, trying to discern if they were talking about something good, bad, or neither, and strained my hearing in case I could catch a few words. No such luck: with the bang and the vanishing of the scream, a quiet hubbub of conversation had started up again in the room, soldiers who had been too tired to talk finding a little breath.

My curiosity did not have to wait long to be sated, as the conversation finished quickly, and Major von Staffen turned to face the rest of the room. He took a deep breath, and then began to speak in a booming parade-ground voice that filled the room effortlessly. Addressing a hall was nothing compared to making himself heard over the thunder of cannons or the screams of a charge.

“Men! Today has not been easy, nor has it been pleasant, and I am afraid it is far from over. But you have fought with more valour than anyone could ask, and I am beyond proud to say I am part of the 2nd Battalion of the 2nd Company of the Queen’s Guard.”

Otto scoffed quietly. “Pssh. Didn’t see you in the line out there.”

“He was right behind us the whole time,” I whispered back. “Now shut it, this is important.”

“A great deal has happened. This morning, mages of the Torrean Royal Army opened a tear between this world and another. In that world, massed columns of the Torrean army were waiting to march through directly into our city, to strike directly at our heart. From this world as well came the terrible creatures you have been facing.” He paused for emphasis.

“In fact, according to His Excellency the Scholar in Residence Professor von Schentel, I would not be remiss in saying that today, you stood shoulder to shoulder against the very demons of hell, and you did not break.”

The hall broke out in some desultory cheers, but the wound was still too fresh. In a few weeks or months it would be a powerful boast, but right now the men were only remembering waves of flame scouring their brothers or bodies hurled like macabre bowling pins through living ninepins.

I also noted his phrasing. Would not be remiss, not would be correct. But perhaps it was close enough.

“His Excellency has contrived a countermeasure,” the Major continued, “But unfortunately only a temporary one. This magic has been lost for centuries and forbidden for longer; the last time it was used was the last time the Temple of the Heavens reached out to directly intervene beyond the Freibergen. He has closed the tear, but not sealed it, and it is only a matter of time before the Torreans can reopen it to release more of its unnatural cargo.

“We will send to the Freibergen for aid, but even the Temple Guard has to march or ride from place to place. Until they arrive, we will have to hold the palace as best we may by the strength of our own arms, and by the skill of our own mages.

“Our saving graces are two: firstly, that the city itself is, in the main, safe. If the Torrean force sets to looting and pillaging, we will fall upon them while they are disordered and destroy them; and if only a few of their soldiers break ranks to loot, the citizenry are Immerlanders to the marrow and will defend their homes.

“Our second saving grace is that we have the finest fortress, garrisoned by the finest infantry, this side of the Freibergen! We turned their first onslaught, as we will turn the next, and the next, until they break or the Guard arrive. Immerland!”

He raised his fist high.

“Immerland!” We cheered back, some raising their fists, some beating the butts of their arquebuses against the floor or rattling their scimitars against them.

I leaned back and sighed. We were, it seemed, in it for the long haul.

“Hear that?” I said to Otto. “Finest infantry, like I always say.”

“Except the Temple Guard. Finest infantry this side of the Freibergen, he said.”

“Oh, shut up. The Temple doesn’t count. Finest infantry on the continent!”