Munter was eager to run, shaking off the cobwebs of the day and letting the cool evening air stream past, but I had to rein him in to a canter. The palace grounds were small by the measure of a galloping horse, and the cobbled paths were still wet with stubborn puddles from the constant rain besides. Even slowed, we ate up the ground moving away from the stable until we reached the perimeter wall and had to turn, following it to the gate and hoping we could make it through.

The sound of iron-shod hooves rang out loudly as we rode along the inside of the wall, and after a minute I reined a complaining Munter in to a walk and awkwardly dismounted, trying not to kick or dislodge the prince behind me. He made to follow me, but I held up a hand to forestall him.

“Stay mounted, your Highness,” I whispered. “We may need to move quickly again.”

Reins in my left hand and arquebus in my right, I led the horse as slowly as I could, the gate in sight only tens of metres away. Clear of the gate we’d be loose in the city, and I could only hope the Torreans had not yet managed a full investment of the palace. In any case, there would be more room for error and evasion out there than inside the citadel.

We had only advanced another few steps when my fears came true and I heard the tramp of boots approaching from the gate. Struggling a little with the restive gelding, I pulled Munter closer in to the wall where the shadows were still noticeably darker in the deepening evening. Before his bulk could press me against the wall I slipped out to his other side, gently pushing him further against the wall and praying he wouldn’t choose to nicker at me.

The sound of feet reached a crescendo as a group of Torrean infantry hurried through the gate. The majority rushed on towards the stables, where the gouts of flame and reports of gunfire had tailed off, but to my dismay a group remained behind to hold the gate.

Almost terrified even to breathe, I passed the reins up to His Highness. “Just hold him still, sir, don’t move.” I hissed to the prince, the instinctual urge to be quiet battling with the need to make myself heard over the background keening.

Prince Franz nodded, his pale face flashing against the darkness of his hair in the shadow, and I crept away from the wall. Ornamental hedges lined the pathways, separating them from carefully-tended lawns that had been mercilessly torn up and splattered with gore in the fighting, and I trusted to them to hide me from sight.

What I saw as I peered over the lip towards our exit was not promising. Although they already carried lanterns that would make it a little harder for them to see anything coming in the quickly-dimming light, the infantry at the gate were on the alert, formed up in ranks with flintlocks in hand. There were only perhaps ten of them, but ten was far more than enough to completely ruin any chance I could make it out.

While I stared in dismay a gentle breeze stirred the grounds, carrying with it the smell of powdersmoke, the whinnying of horses, and the clear call of a silver bugle. Wait, horses? A bugle? My head snapped around to my left, staring down the path the Torreans had followed. I could still make them out, now spread into line formation and advancing more slowly, but it was what I saw beyond them that captured my attention.

In the twilight, silhouetted against the orange lantern light spilling from the stable, a troop of cavalry was wheeling about with lances high. The bugle called again, and I heard the thunder of hooves as the last remainder of the dragoon battalion of the Queen’s Guard, 2nd Company, bore down on the hapless footsoldiers.

The arquebusiers fired, muzzle flare and smoke obscuring the oncoming charge, but the cavalry emerged from the smoke undaunted, scattering the infantry like ninepins. The horses slowed but didn’t stop, splashes in the lamplight glittering like sparks around them and the riders lifting their lances high once again.

A trooper raised his voice -- I broke into a grin, recognising Otto’s baritone -- in a battlecry.

“Immerland! Immerland!”

We were too diminished for the response to be deafening, but to my tired heart it may as well have been. It took all I had not to scream out with the rest:

“The Queen and the land!”

I rose to my feet from the puddle I’d been kneeling in and hurried back to the prince, not worrying overmuch about noise. The sound of hooves masked the sound of my own boots pounding as my brothers-in-arms swept past, a wedge tipped with the shining steel of twenty borrowed half-pikes.

The men in the gate fired a volley and a man cried out and a horse stumbled, but like the Immer in flood the charge would not be stopped and the dragoons tore through the gateway like a ramrod down the barrel of a fouled gun.

I tore myself away from watching to take the reins from the prince’s hands and mount up, again having to awkwardly avoid kicking him on the way. I kicked Munter’s flanks and we were away, cantering around the corner through the gate and out into the city. All around the gate the other Mourners were dismounted, readying their arms and preparing to fight a retreating action. Though I hadn’t been part of the charge, my heart swelled with pride.

“The Queen and the land!” I finally called out as we rode through. Captain von Holzt grinned at me and raised his scimitar, the white facings on his collar and cuffs stained grey by powder and grime and the blade of his sword dripping black in the lamplight.

“The Queen and the land, gefreiter!” He called back, before returning his attention to the rest.

I spurred Munter into a gallop, His Highness gripped onto my pack for dear life, and we ran recklessly down the the street into the gathering night. The wind of our passing whipped about my face and I had to suppress the urge to whoop for joy, feeling the rush of invincibility.

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A light appeared in the road ahead, and as we neared it I saw it to be a lantern on a roadblock with a few stunned sentries. Riding the high, I wrapped the reins around one wrist and brought my arquebus up from where I’d braced it across the saddle in front of me, straightening my back and guiding the horse with my knees. I sighted down the barrel and pulled the trigger.

The flintlock coughed hoarsely and a spray of orange fire and sparks left me halfway night-blind, but there was no kick. For a long moment we galloped headlong on before it hit me: close on everything had spilled from the barrel since I loaded it so long ago in the kitchen.

The adrenaline rush left me for the cold clarity again and I watched the barricade loom nearer, only maybe forty paces out. Two of the sentries were raising arquebuses, I could see if I looked from the corner of my eye where the flash of the priming pan hadn’t blinded me. Good range for an arquebus, I thought. Though a smaller gun might miss. A smaller gun!

The first arquebus flashed and I heard something whine past overhead as I leaned over in the saddle reaching down to pull one of the dragonets free of its cradle beside the saddlebag. Praying Wagner’s charge was still loaded properly, I brought the flintlock up, pulling it to full cock with my other hand as I did so and fired without aiming, as soon as it was pointed roughly the right way.

The dragonet roared, spitting fire fit to blind a man but I knew it was not loose powder this time: the gun had kicked like a mule, jarring my wrist awfully. I tried to blink the flare from my vision as the smoke blew past my face, but the roadblock was close, too close.

I screwed my eyes shut for a second and shouted, “Hold tight, your Highness, sir!”

Then I kicked Munter again, the gelding’s powerful haunches coiled and sprung, and we were soaring over the makeshift wall and I was praying he would not break a leg when we landed.

Luck or the Heavens smiled on us, and when we hit the ground with a jarring impact and a spray of mud Munter kept running. A Torrean sergeant stood before us with a half-pike braced, but I drew my scimitar with a cry and he broke, unwilling to face cavalry alone in the dark. I could not blame him.

Then once more we were free, galloping unchecked through the city. Over Nachberg Bridge, over the Immer roaring below us in a foamy springtime flood, past the cathedral with its towering Gothic spires and stained glass. Scimitar in hand, the little dull light cast by the rising moon catching on the silver of my buttons and cockade and the fire in Munter’s eyes, any Torreans left between us and the open fields dared not challenge me.

At first my shoulderblades itched, fearing for the prince behind me and any unseen pursuers, but as stone houses gave way to timber frames and the cobbled road gave way to packed dirt the fear faded, giving way to a more measured exhilaration than the addictive rush of the charge or the desperate panic of the infantry line.

Wagner had meant no exaggeration when he called Munter fast, the bay gelding’s long legs eating up the distance as the last twilight of the sun gave out to the motley silver of the moon. As Nachberg passed behind us, the last hovels giving way to freshly-ploughed springtime fields, I released my death grip on the reins -- though I was not pulling at the bit! -- and allowed myself to relax a hair.

Sheathing a scimitar one-handed on a galloping horse in the dark was no easy task. I fumbled with it for some time, struggling to catch the scabbard itself and not the belt or my coat. My other hand was filled by the reins and holding the arquebus and dragonet pinned down balanced across the saddle’s pommel. I eventually managed, freeing up my sword hand to return the dragonet to its harness on my side, a substantially easier process. The infantry scimitar was a fine weapon, but the height and angle at which it hung were intended for a man on foot to draw it, as might be guessed by the name. Managing it on horseback was a trickier proposition.

Judging that my shenanigans had taken long enough and not wanting to exhaust him, I reined Munter in to a jolting trot.

“That should be the worst of it, your Highness,” I spoke over my shoulder. “Gentle ride to Kurnich the rest of the way, sir.”

There was no response, and I had a flush of absolute panic. Had a bullet gone badly astray and hit him earlier? Did I miss a blow struck at my back? Surely not, he had not cried out.

“Your Highness?” I tried again.

“Very-- Very good, gefreiter,” The prince said, his voice quavering, and I felt a rush of combined relief and pity. Relief that His Highness wasn’t hurt, that I had not fallen at the first hurdle, but then pity for him. For me, the thunder of the guns, the smell of the smoke and blood, and the fear of death were what I had trained for. This last fortnight, they had been my constant companions.

For Prince Franz, they were new and terrifying. I could just barely recall the first time I practiced platoon drill with live rounds, the deafening echo of a hundred guns in the training yard, and how the younger Soldat Friedrich Schreiner had been overwhelmed and weak in the knees. Add in the terror of receiving fire, and it was no wonder the boy was struggling.

I grappled with how to deal with the situation for a few minutes. I was not the greatest one for dealing with children, or in the case of His Highness more charitably a very young man. The soldier’s two great comforts of knowing we had all enlisted to stand in the fire for Queen and country (or at least it was a great comfort to me, although it had been the subject of some argument with Otto after he had indulged in a little of the other comfort) and strong drink were of very little use here.

I finally settled on offering an encouragement for our current trip.

“The Torreans don’t have cavalry here, your Highness, sir, so once we’ve made some distance we’ll be able to make camp for a spell, sir. I fear we must still ride for much of the night lest they gain ground on us while we pause, sir, assuming they are chasing us, but it shall be gentler after this.” I said, hoping we were indeed correct that the enemy had no cavalry. Professor von Schentel had been quite certain that animals loathed the unnatural creatures that had emerged from the rifts between worlds alongside the Torrean infantry, so it seemed a fair guess.

“I see. Thank you, gefreiter.” Prince Franz’s voice still shook, but he needed less time before answering, and I took that for a good sign.

Breathing in deeply, I gazed up at the sky. Night had come in full while we rode, and myriads of stars gazed back down at me in the cracks between long combs of cloud. I realised with a smile that the barking of gunfire was not the only noise we had left behind us: the omnipresent demonic screaming of the last two weeks had also faded, leaving only the far more pleasant chirping of crickets and occasional call of a wakeful bird.

The night air was cold, chilling my face as the sweat of battle dried from it, but it had a purity to it that I welcomed. Out here on the open road, carrying the future of the Empire riding pillion behind me, alone against whatever might come, I felt safer and freer than I had in weeks, and I offered a brief prayer of thanks to the Heavens.