Alistair Ashworth walked into the command tent, vibrating with nervousness. His golden curls and his dimples that so charmed the girls back home would be no help to him here. He saluted sharply.

  It was to be his first time in combat.

  Commander Talbot, barrel-chested and grim, with a huge handlebar mustache, stood across the camp table from him, looking at the map. A collection of other officers were gathered as well, coordinating before the battle.

  "Cornet Ashworth," he said in a booming bass voice. Alistair straightened until he thought his spine might snap. "Good to see you with us today. You're the youngest Cornet we've had graduate from the academy at Dorton, but I hear good things about your dedication to Arden, the army, and the king."

  "Long live the king, sir!" he said, almost managing to keep the squeak out of his voice.

  Talbot's mustache quirked, though whether due to smile or smirk was impossible to tell.

  "Good lad. Now." He gestured at the map and addressed all the officers. "Our mandate is to clear the path for the railway to get through to the east. We've tried negotiating with these Laiqarians, but the local savages have taken exception to our presence. Our task today is make an example of them. We're going to destroy their army to the last man."

  Alistair's brow crinkled.

  "Wouldn't it be better to simply run them off, sir?" he asked. "Rather than killing them all?"

  One of the lieutenants cuffed him.

  "Don't open your mouth to the Commander," he growled.

  Commander Talbot held up a hand.

  "He's young, and doesn't understand." He looked at Alistair. "It's a mercy, lad. These savages only understand power. If we take a light touch now, we'll be fighting Eastern magicians the entire way to the Sheik River. If we act decisively and crush them, they'll leave us be, for fear of what they know we can do. A little cruelty now will save us a lot of cruelty in the long run."

  Alistair rubbed his face where he had been struck.

  "I understand, sir. I'm sorry for speaking out of turn, sir."

  "Good lad. Now, you'll be taking command of the southern flank. Our troops are armed with the latest Laurence-Atwood rifles. They're breech-loaders, so our troops can fire a volley three times a minute. I assumed you've been trained in the deployment of mass fire?"

  Alistair saluted.

  "Yes, sir!" he cried. He wanted to ask more questions, but his eyes slid over to the lieutenant that had cuffed him, and he held his tongue.

  "Young Ashworth, things move fast out here in the Eastern Reaches. Promotions can happen quickly. Prove yourself in these battles, and there may be a lieutenancy in it for you."

  Alistair's eyes went round.

  "So soon, sir?"

  Commander Talbot's mustache quirked again.

  "We lack good commanders out here in the east," he said. "A keen eye and a sharp spirit will take you far. But above all, we look for loyalty and dedication to the orders of the king."

  "Long live the king!" Alistair cried.

  "But the balance of the equation is the risk," Commander Talbot continued. "Make no mistake, these savages will gut you before you can blink. They don't understand our gentlemanly rules of combat."

  "Understood, sir!"

  "Good lad. Now all of you, take your positions and rally your men. We'll join the battle as soon as the sun clears the horizon."

  Cornet Alistair Ashworth stood high on his walking-platform. It had a round standing area, six feet wide, and a cargo trunk affixed underneath. It stood on dozens of thin brass legs that moved like a spider's, keeping the platform balanced. It chuffed and hissed as the steam engine poured power into the device.

  Alistair surveyed his men from his perch on the machine. They looked up at him.

  He'd been worried about this part of his first battle most of all. As an untried Cornet, how could he put steel in the spines of the men he led? He'd thought through dozens of speeches and rallying cries, but now, as he stood before them, he found himself relaxing. He discarded all the stiff, awkward speeches he'd prepared and spoke to the soldiers directly from his heart.

  "Men," he said, his strong, clear tenor carrying across the field. "Arden is the pinnacle of mankind. We represent the greatest, strongest, and most civil society in human history. Our progress benfits all mankind. We are brave, and strong, and good."

  His voice lowered, and the men leaned forward to hear him.

  "However, the forces of ignorance stand against us. These eastern savages cannot understand the great good that we bring to their land. If they did, they would welcome us eagerly. But in their ignorance, they would stop progress at their very borders! They would choose to live in squalor and superstition and blindness. But try as they might, they cannot stop the mighty men of Arden! Today we fight for the glory of Arden! We fight against these backward brutes! Today we march for a brighter future!"

  The men roared in approval, shaking their rifles.

  "Join me on the front! To progress! To victory!"

  He wheeled his walking-platform with a screaming hiss of steam and charged to their position. The troops marched after him to a lively beat.

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  Commander Talbot stood on the edge of their camp, watching the energized men march to battle after Alistair.

  "What a useful young man he's turning out to be," Commander Talbot said to himself. Then he went back inside.

  The wind gusted fitfully across the plains of western Laiqar as two armies faced each other down.

  On the east side, the soldiers of the city of Marivah waited, their heads wrapped in white linen. The men at the front carried long spears with wicked points. Interleaved with the spearmen were archers with short horn bows. Behind them was an unbelievable mass of swordsmen, all armed with thick curved sabers.

  On the west side, hundreds of yards away, stood the strictly regimented ranks of the Eastern Expeditionary Force. There were three formations of men: one in the center, and two smaller flanking formations, north and south, angled inward toward the the soldiers of Marivah. Row upon row of Ardenian troops, dressed in their navy blue uniforms, armed with rifles held upright, a forest of steel arrayed for the battle.

  Alistair looked through his spy-glass at the opposing troops. Their formation was disorganized, but their approach was clear.

  These wretches expected the Ardenians to rush at them, then they'd use their archers to soften their ranks. Once they closed, the spearmen would use their long spears to break the Ardenian front, allowing the swordsmen to rush into through gaps in the Ardenian formation and join the battle. At that point, the savages' overwhelming numbers would cut the Ardenian formation to pieces.

  But Alistair knew something the barbarians didn't.

  "That's a lotta savages," he heard someone nearby mutter.

  Alistair scoffed.

  "There's nothing to fear, men!" he cried. "These backward barbarians have never seen anything like our technology! Their archers will be dead before they're in range! Remember the words of the poet: 'Whatever happens/we have got/the Atwood rifle/and they have not.' These wildmen stand no chance against us at all!"

  In the rear, a bugle sounded, two short blasts.

  "Time to prepare!" Alistair cried. "All ranks, load!"

  In his formation, the men opened the breeches of their rifles, and began packing in bullet, wadding, and paper cartridges full of gunpowder.

  "Port arms!" he cried. The soldiers angled their rifles across their chests. From his walking-platform, Alistair nodded, noting with satisfaction the perfect sea of arms.

  From the rear the bugle sounded again, two short blasts and one long one.

  "Front rank!" Alistair cried. "Present!"

  Across the formation, men seated butt stocks to their shoulders and leveled their long rifles at the Laiqarian mass.

  "Front rank, fire!"

  The formation roared, and the formation was occluded by a sudden sea of acrid white smoke. The front ranks of the spearmen of Laiqar fell where they stood. The steady breeze quickly tattered the cloud of smoke.

  A cry of dismay went up from the Laiqarians, but the cry quickly whipped up into a frenzy, a battle cry. They began charging toward the Ardenian army.

  "Front rank, recover arms! Rear rank, present!"

  The troops in the front knelt and began reloading their rifles while the troops in the rear took aim.

  "Rear rank, fire!"

  The rifles roared again. The charging soldiers cried, their numbers thinning under the hail of rifle bullets.

  "Rear rank recover arms! Front rank, present!"

  Back and forth, the troops of Arden lanced rifle fire into the charging horde of Laiqarans. Spearmen and soldiers fell by the hundreds as they surged to reach the troops of Arden. The losses to the Liaqarians were ghastly. Yet on they came.

  Alistair triggered one of the controls on his walking-platform, raising himself higher to better see the oncoming horde. Even in the face of withering rifle fire, the savages charged on.

  "Fix bayonets!" he cried.

  Up and down the line, Ardenian troops drew long blades, screwing them to the ends of their rifle barrels. Now,, each rifleman had their own spear: a six-foot long rifle with a wicked 18-inch blade fixed. Not as long as the Liaqarian spears, but still a sobering weapon.

  "Brace!"

  The Ardenian troops set themselves, grounding their rifle butts in the dirt of the field, aiming their bayonets at the oncoming soldiers.

  The two armies met with a long, rattling crash. Laiqarian saber troops died by the dozens on the initial contact as riflemen fired the last shots from their rifles directly into the faces of the oncoming horde. Many more were pierced through by the long bayonets. But more, ever more, rushed in behind, shrieking and ululating and chopping with their thick blades.

  The Laiqarian soldiers behind the front pushed forward, adding their strength to the mass trying to push through the Ardenians. The riflemens' front line looked impossibly thin to hold back the shoving mass of the enemy.

  Alistair's walking-platform whistled steam as he turned it toward the rear.

  "Stormcasters!" he barked, raising his voice above the dust and din. "Load and set!"

  Behind the mass of rifle troops, groups of engineers clustered around a line of small catapults, no taller than eight feet. With exceeding care, they opened boxes stuffed with straw. Nestled in each box was a storm-bottle: a complex brass device wrapped around a glass orb. Within the orb was an actinic blue glow. It was so bright that even in the glare of the day, the engineers had to squint their eyes and avoid looking directly at it.

  They carried their storm-bottles to the catapults and carefully laid them in the cups.

  "Stormcasters, arm and charge!"

  All along the rear line, engineers twisted the small activation knob on the devices, then quickly winched the catapult, adding tension to the siege engine until each frame fairly vibrated with energy.

  Alistair considered the tightly pack masses of the enemy before him. He drew his sword and pointed at the Laiqarians.

  "Stormcasters, loose!"

  The crack of dozens of catapults firing sounded up and down the line. Pinpoints of actinic blue light arced into the air, sailing high.

  Alistair watched one of the orbs as it flew over his head, then fell into the tightly-packed crowd of enemies.

  As it hit the ground, it crackled and exploded, shredding flesh and flinging bodies into the air, sending them over the heads of their compatriots, to fall back into mass. It cleared a radius of nearly five yards.

  After the initial explosion came a thunderclap, so loud that it made Alistair flinch. Crazy tendrils of electricty shot out into the crowd, running from man to man for dozens of yards. Some of those struck were were able to shriek with pain. Others simply stiffened and fell over. Many froze with every muscle knotted, tightened to its outermost extent, jaws clenched so tight that they cracked their own teeth before collapsing.

  "Stormcasters, recover arms! Troops, advance!"

  Ardenian riflemen jabbed with their bayonets, pushing the Laiqarians back into the large gaps left by the stormcasters. The Laiqarian line wavered.

  Alistair ordered another round of storm-bottles lobbed into the Laiqarians. More explosions and lightning holed the dense mass of the enemy.

  The soldiers faltered and began to fall back. The Laiqarians further back stopped pushing forward, and their front line wavered. Ardenian bayonets stabbed mercilessly into the soldiers. Swordsmen at the rear of the Laiqarian army began running back toward their own lines.

  "Press forward, men!" Alistair cried.

  The gaps in the Laiqaran's line barely had time to collapse as the troops of Arden rushed them. Troops in the rear had the breathing room to reload and begin firing at the Laiqarian soldiers again. More storm-bottles fell among the enemy.

  The Laiqarians broke utterly and began to rout.

  Alistair stood high on his walking-platform. It presented him above him men, gleaming in his dark navy and brass uniform.

  His brow creased at the massacre. Screams and pitiable weeping and smoke and the smell of blood filled the air. He struggled within himself for a moment.

  "A little cruelty now," he muttered to himself, "will save a lot of cruelty later."

  Alistair steeled himself and flung out a hand at the retreating army.

  "After them!" he cried. "Teach these savages the cost of defying Arden!"

  His troops roared and followed his command. Storm-bottles continued to tear holes in the Laiqarian mass, and rifles fired steadily into their backs, grinding away their army. The Laiqarians were in a full panic now. They dropped swords and supplies, shoved and tripped over their compatriots, some even striking or stabbing their own countrymen in a blind hysteria, in a desperate bid to escape, to live.

  Alistair closed his eyes as the butchering continued.