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  Sara

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  She hadn't been bluffing when she told the soldiers that they'd been trained for retreat. Though she'd never openly admitted it, the constant mock battles they'd trained for over the months had always been designed to end in a ndslide defeat, one that required the losing side to either make an orderly withdrawal or be wiped out entirely.

  Now the fruits of her bor were being harvested.

  The Sporaton army oozed through the gaps of Fort Midwich like diseased pus, thousands upon thousands of soldiers forced into narrow columns as they slowly took the field beyond. It was an organizational nightmare for the enemy commanders, trying to get so many different squads and regiments to coordinate colpsing into a thin line, then retake their formation once on the other side, and then begin a rapid advance to clear the way for further troops to follow. She could imagine the furious bellowing of purple-faced sergeants, their troops scattered to the winds in the chaos, made all the worse by the constant crack and thud of shrapnel shells raining down from above.

  Sara had a very limited number of the new shells, having found the right mixture of fuse material literal days ago, but there was no better time to use them. Though traditional cannonballs might have simir effect upon the enemy, what with how packed in they were, any shot which went even the barest shade wide would smash into the fort's walls without effect.

  And the enemy's reaction was gratifying in its own way. She could imagine the thoughts of the common soldier, of the officers above them. They'd gone into this war privately fearing the Champion's powers, of what the legendary creature would unleash upon them, and they'd been appropriately over-awed when they found themselves subjected to musket and cannon fire. But they'd thought that was it; that the Champion had id down her cards, her hand empty, and now it was all to py for.

  The shells changed that. Sara watched the eerily stalwart marching of the spear levies first waver, then tremble in bizarre synchronicity, a wave of horror rolling through them, and then that impossible discipline had finally snapped.

  Sara was almost baffled; there was no reason for it, no single moment to cause such a reaction. All the same, troops suddenly rushed and ran and cwed forward, physically climbing over their fellows in their animalistic rush to escape what y behind them, deaf to the calls of their commanders. They didn't rout, not fully, but that was mainly because doing so would involve rushing directly towards Sara's army, and seeing muskets resting on their shoulders, even the dullest soldier could guess how that would go. Instead they threw themselves to the ground with their hands over their heads, curled up in balls, cowering like rats who had spotted the shadow of a hawk.

  But all good things must come to an end, and this one sooner than most. After only a few minutes of cannonfire, Sara was forced to call for a ceasefire. She was out of shrapnel shells, and the Tulian Army itself was far from organized, her own sergeants going through much the same process as their Sporaton opposites. The only reason they seemed better-off at the moment was because they'd had slightly longer to get things into shape.

  That, and Evie. The feline was marching up and down the lines with her tail shing like a whip, hissing reprimands at anyone she determined to be even slightly out of pce. They were pnning for a fighting retreat, and Evie was one of very few with the formal training required to know just how difficult that would be. Anyone with so much as a toe out of line would receive a harsh rebuke, and those who were distracted or outright in the wrong spot would find themselves bodily dragged out of line, thrown in the appropriate direction.

  Meanwhile, rather than joining the organizational efforts herself, Sara entrusted the work to her commanders. Champion's Inspiration would have to be her sole contributor, for now, because she had something more important to work on.

  "How're the cannons holding up?" She asked, jogging up to Colonel– no, Lieutenant– Shale.

  "Beautiful!" The woman replied, smearing powder across her forehead as she wiped sweat from her brow. "No signs of fracture, heat tolerance is exceptional, and the troops have been swabbing 'em proper after each and every round."

  "Not what I meant, Lieutenant," Sara said. "Are they ready to move? Are the gun carriages well made?"

  "They've done well so far," Shale said, patting one of the wheels on its thick wooden spokes.

  The carriages which carried the twelve-hundred pound guns were surprisingly complex pieces of kit, perhaps even more so than the cannons they bore. Even with an exact illusory replica made avaible for the carpenters, it had taken a half-dozen failures before producing a single working example. Though it didn't look it to a yman's eye, bancing the cannon's load was uncompromisingly critical. If the center of weight was even a few inches off, the whole thing would topple at the slightest jostle, leaving a priceless bronze cannon stuck in the mud.

  "We lost two of those carriages on the way to the fort," Sara reminded her. "We can't afford that happening on the way back."

  "We've got a few spares," Shale said, "but we won't even need those. I'm certain of it."

  Sara forced herself to let out a long breath. There wasn't any point of putting people in charge if she wasn't going to take their advice.

  "What about the oxen? Are they behaving better?"

  Shale sent the animals a far less encouraging expression.

  "After a fashion. Don't fight with their buddies anymore, but I'll be damned if I can get 'em to go any faster than a walk."

  Sara quietly swore, working through the math. Her army, on a good day, could cover twenty miles. That was assuming the weather and roads were decent enough, which was a big damn assumption in Tulian, and that pace would leave the troops utterly exhausted at the end of the day. For a non-Irregur it was a brutal pace, but one she'd have to make if she wanted to stay ahead of the Sporaton army.

  The problem was born from the fact oxen could barely cover five miles a day. Even without carrying a literal metric fuckton of weight, they were slower than a walking soldier, and no amount of whipping or prodding could change their stubborn minds. The entire army would be pinned to their plodding pace, and the Sporaton forces, even when dragging the massive supply chain that stretched back to their homend, would rapidly overrun them.

  If she had draft horses, things would be different. Pulled by a team of those, the cannons could have reached the capital in half the time the army would take, though she had no intention of sending off her trump cards unescorted. The problem was, the number of horses in the army numbered slightly over a dozen. There was Trot, Sara's horse, stabled alongside the steed Evie had never bothered to name, and a handful of other horses that some of the better-off soldiers had brought themselves. The harsh Tulian climate, seesawing every six months between biblical flood and arid drought, (and in all months patrolled by voracious predators), was absurdly hostile to a healthy popution of horses. Donkeys were far more common, and while they pulled the civilian supply carts, they were far too temperamental to work together as was needed for the cannons. Her army might literally contain every st riding horse in the nation. She'd mostly been pnning to relegate the precious animals to scouting duty, to warn her of an incoming Sporaton cavalry raid, but...

  "Do you think we could train the horses we have to pull them?"

  "The hells would I know?" Shale asked. "I've never trained animals. Before you put me in charge of this stuff, I was the only carpenter in a vilge that hadn't seen horses since the storms."

  "What if we just had riders on each of them, instead of a full fancy rope setup?" Sara asked.

  "Again, I don't know a damn thing about horses."

  "It could work."

  "Oh, you're not talking to me, are you?"

  Sara turned away with a frown, trying to spot where the various horse-riding scouts had ended up through the chaotic fields. They were spending their time with the common soldiers for now, waiting until there was a great enough separation between the two armies for their services to be useful. Even the few soldiers who'd owned horses, vaingloriously hoping to use them in battle in some capacity, had begrudgingly agreed that scouting was a far better use of their resources.

  By the time Sara had argued the riders into submission to sacrifice their horses for the cannon's sake, the army was ready to march. Sara ran a mental thumb down her record collection, selecting which song would best accentuate Champion's Inspiration. For a time she'd tried to tell herself that the specific song didn't matter, that she was simply using the ability for its magical elements, but that was no longer the case. Word of her deliberating over each song had somehow gotten out to the troops, and now she knew they put great stock in the content of her songs and what they implied for her pns. Never mind the fact that she told them her pns; they liked to think they had an "in," some secret understanding of their leader's psychology that they could hold loftily above their squadmates.

  With that in mind, she made a choice that would have been fairly reprehensible in her old world, yet fairly mundane in her current one. "We'll Have Our Home Again," by the Pine Tree Riots. Sara had discovered the song by chance some few years ago and added it to her rotation, enjoying what she thought to be a revolutionary, anti-authority stance, all the way until she pyed it for a few friends and found out it was a favorite of internet ethno-fascists. Where Sara understood the line "In our own towns, we're foreigners now" as a statement on the dehumanizing nature of militant police autocracy, others had taken it as a dogwhistle for white poputions being overwhelmed by immigrants. Nasty shit, and when she'd looked at the comments beneath videos for it, she'd sworn it off.

  That didn't mean it wasn't a baller song, however. With the only instrument coming from boots stomping on wood, she'd always imagined it being sung by a chorus of rebels in some underground shelter, waiting for the moment to spring their trap. She didn't know the band's actual political affiliation, but considering their name evoked an early American anti-royalty riot, she (perhaps optimistically) assumed they were closer to her side of the fence.

  And so it was with that thumping tune pounding out of her chest that she joined the rest of the army's horse riders, four horses to a cannon. They didn't have the complex harnesses that would let the horses easily pull evenly on the load, but they had jerry-rigged an approximation of it, and after a few awkward false starts, she and the others got the cannons moving.

  As if they'd been waiting for her and her alone, the army lurched into motion. Five thousand soldiers in glittering armor began to abandon Fort Midwich, following a narrow, packed dirt road. The entire teeming mass began to uncoil like some massive snake, with only five troops abreast fitting on the trail that would lead them forward. With five thousand soldiers and nearly a thousand camp followers, civilian wives and husbands, and opportunistic merchants waiting in tow, it would be quite a while before the entire column reached its full extent.

  The cannons, naturally, were to be at the centermost portion of the column, with the greatest concentration of musket-wielding troops tucked before and after them. After what they'd achieved in the battle, nearly every soldier in her army had decided they owed their lives to the cannons, and would defend them to the st. There was a near religious fervor surrounding them, in fact. She imagined a medieval Christian army back on Earth would scorn her soldier's love for the cannons as outright idotry, what with how they respectfully bowed their heads as the weapons passed. In a world ripe with esoteric magical artifacts, it was far more understandable for mysticism to develop around things like the cannons.

  An attitude that the newly-minted Lieutenant Shale was doing nothing to dissuade, Sara noted. Even while Sara jerked and sawed at the reigns as Trot pulled too far ahead or too far behind of the other horses, Senses of Amarat let her hear the Artillery Lieutenant marching up and down the lines.

  "If the enemy charges us, you shoot when you're ordered, and stay the hell out of the way until then, understand?" She cried, repeating the speech every time a new group came into earshot. "You've seen what these things do to the enemy, and I promise you all, you DON'T want to feel a load of hot iron in your spine! If you hear us yelling 'loaded!', the next thing outta my mouth'll be 'firing!', and for those of you that think you've got a tight enough ass to bounce cannonballs, feel free to stand strong! The rest of you, drop to your goddamn stomachs and cover your ears!"

  Sara's amused chuckle was cut short as Evie's horse, who was being controlled by a nervous volunteer, briefly entangled its ropes with Trot's. She and the man riding him quietly cursed as they fought to untangle the leather straps before things got worse. The st thing she wanted was a cannon stuck in the mud mere minutes into the march.

  They got it sorted when Evie, who was marching protectively beside Trot, got the knot undone. Sara heaved a sigh of relief and thanked the catgirl with a hand ruffling through her braided hair, rubbing at the base of her ears.

  The other rider raised an eyebrow at her, then pointedly looked the opposite way. Sara felt herself flush, stomach twisting in embarrassment. She'd gotten too used to people not knowing about certain quirks of feline anatomy; namely, the fact that she'd just done the equivalent of grinding her knee against Evie's crotch in front of the entire army. The fact that Evie had eagerly shoved into the touch hadn't done much to muddy the dirtiness of it, as by this point the woman's inability to feel shame was bordering on a mental disorder. Evie would have happily marched naked if she thought Sara would enjoy the sight.

  Sara quickly pulled her hand away, dusting it off against her pants like she'd done something dishonest. After so long in her new home, she'd have thought she'd be getting the hang of things like that. Evie had a disarming effect on her, something her girlfriend acknowledged with the slow, satisfied swiping of her tail. Damn woman knew exactly what she'd done.

  Oblivious to her embarrassment, the army marched on, a great silver python worming its way across the ndscape. Behind them, the disorganized Sporaton army continued to trickle through the holes they'd poked in Fort Midwich, a perfect image of abject chaos. Organized for battle, they now had to transition to the march, and it wasn't going quite as poorly as she had silently prayed for.

  Oh, the King could have set off in pursuit immediately. Sara had started her march before them, but that didn't mean she was in the clear. They were still within the grasp of the Sporaton Army. Though she put on a show of keeping her head forward, she felt as if her entire spine was being pricked by needles and pins. If the King threw caution to the wind and unched a charge, he would catch them in a commander's worst nightmare. Her army extended beyond uselessness, civilians mixed in throughout, commanders out of contact and with no battle pn prepared. No amount of muskets or training would have stopped that one-sided sughter; the Sporatons could have been nakedly wielding wooden clubs and still swamped them under.

  But to do that, the King would have to be bold. Reckless, nearly. By ordering her troops into a run, Sara would have been able to extend the pursuit for a time, at least until the cavalry made it through the walls, and that would drag the Sporaton Army hours' march away from their camp. Even if the King crushed her army on the field, his supply line would be exposed. If there was one thing the military manuscripts of this world emphasized the most, it was not abandon your supplies. Twelve thousand soldiers would starve in days, desert shortly thereafter, and the entire army would colpse. To charge after Sara now was a high-risk, high-reward tactic, a decision that would end with the war's end, no matter who came out on top.

  And if Sara had learned anything about the King, it was that he was traditional to a fault. His advisors could beg, plead, and rage, but he would not take the risk. Why should he? With the Tulian Army on the retreat, in the open field, the war was already won. Deying it would be no great sin, not if it meant he could shore up any weakness, real or imagined.

  Unless the humiliations she had repeatedly heaped upon him had finally worn him down. Unless Graf had finally won the King's ear properly, becoming the army's commander in all but name. Unless the cultists which advised the King recognized the same opportunity she did, and used whatever nebulous leverage they had over the man to force him to take the risk.

  But there was no point thinking about that. If it happened, it would be the end of the war. Shale would shove stoppers down the cannons and detonate them, the rest of the soldiers would snap their muskets and light what remained abze, and then her entire army would scatter, every man for themselves. Most would die in the rout, run down and gutted, and those that remained would spend weeks in hiding, their numbers slowly whittled down. Evie would whisk Sara and Hurlish out of the country, either fleeing to Carrion vessels or the fractured western kingdoms, whichever she determined best in the moment.

  But that would only happen if the Royal Army managed to catch her. A week's march to the capital, a week being harried by a force three times her size, supplemented by cavalry to which she had no answer.

  She allowed herself the smallest, briefest gnce behind herself. The Sporaton army was still pouring out of the wall, and when she saw their posture, it filled her with a relief nearly ecstatic. They were forming defensive lines, setting posts into the soil, preventing her from counterattacking to retake the fort. There was no sign of the cavalry, not yet.

  One day, then. One day to gain the best lead she could. Come morning, the race to the capital would begin. A hundred and thirty miles of marching through the brutal heat, weaving around hostile jungles, harried by enchanted cavalry and the ponderous beast of an army they supported. If she got caught by the Royal Army out on the field, she would be annihited. There were no ifs, ands, or buts about it. They would be surrounded, cut-off, and any attempt at a breakthrough would be met with the thunder of hooves and fsh of sabres.

  Sara pushed Champion's Inspiration just a tick louder, fighting the urge to dig her heels into Trot's ribs.