You know what I didn’t ever need to see? Long pikes skewering floundering soldiers as they tried to escape from a river. The story of this game, over and over, was hunger. The image of fishermen with spears was inescapable. The helplessness of it…

  Well. If they had succeeded, the people here would be the helpless ones. My people would be the helpless ones, with myself just one of that mass. There is some trope about this- being kind to your enemies is being cruel to yourself? Something like that.

  Well. I physically was not capable of being kind to these people, and just as a matter of logic, I had no reason to be either. I looked over the scene at the riverbank with a glance, then fell back. I wasn’t going to do anything to stop it, but I didn’t have to bludgeon my brain watching it either.

  Like knowing there are starving kids in Akron, and for just eighty six cents a day… and then you change the channel.

  I gave my face a quick slap, Home Alone style. I mustn't mope. “Why do you think she has the matchlocks lined up over there? I’m betting on something nasty crawling out of the water near the docks and flanking us.” I asked Versai.

  “Makes sense to me, Tower Master. Though from what I can tell, their so-called priests haven’t emerged yet.”

  “Do they still have any intact boats?” I tried to remember. I was pretty sure they were all sunk by the time the pikes really got stuck in.

  “Not really, but they haven’t all been blown to pieces yet either. And sooner or later someone on the Ko’Ras side is going to figure out that there are a hell of a lot of them, and the pikes can only cover so much frontage.”

  “A depressingly valid point. So why isn’t she moving the crossbows around to the side to keep shooting?”

  Othai had just moved the crossbow unit back, maintaining the checkerboard formation but still aimed broadly at the river.

  “I don’t know. Candidly, my Lord, despite my father being who he was, even small unit tactics made my head hurt. There was a reason I applied for a transfer the second they promoted me to Squad Leader.”

  “Well, it clearly worked out for you.”

  “Yes. I… enjoyed being the Queen’s Bodyguard. It wasn’t always fun, but it was meaningful and satisfying.” Versai smiled, and even with the awful sounds, the smile seemed to make the world come to a stop. Just for a moment, but it did.

  Versai’s pretty person aura is a thing to be feared. Total immunity appears impossible. I can only endure with a firm heart. In this life, my love shall only be for 2-D women. 3-D Devils begone!

  There was a ululating shriek from the river, the same sound raised by several voices. I could hear water thrashing violently.

  “Pikes, fall back one hundred paces, fighting retreat. Crossbows, volley fire. Matchlocks, eyes front.”

  The voice of command. I was working on it. Othai had mastered it. It was the nearest thing to the Bene Gesserit Voice I have ever heard. She said move, and I swear they were moving before their brains could have consciously processed the order.

  I still didn’t get the formation, though. It seemed to be pulling in too many directions. I’d now fought enough battles to be considered a veteran, I think. I understand the importance of concentrating your forces. So why am I not getting what is essentially a three-piece puzzle?

  The Ko’Ras troops finally made the river bank. Must have felt like scrambling up out of Hell. The crossbow unit set them straight back, their glowing bolts ripping through the half drowned men.

  I frowned again. Volley fire. I don’t know how accurate a medieval crossbow was, but they were within, what, a hundred feet? Maybe two hundred? Aimed fire would make infinitely more sense, wouldn’t it? What am I not seeing?

  There was another ululating scream- and then I understood what Othai was up to.

  Monsters came scrambling over the slope. Pious looking iron masks covered their faces, but they were moving on four eerily human hands. The unnatural bends in the limbs and their odd hopping movements were similar to the monsters we butchered every night. If a little smaller, and somehow, creepier.

  They had timed their appearance perfectly- right after their expendable human troops ate the bolts for them. Except Othai didn’t have the whole squad on aimed fire, like some stupid newbie commander who was stupid and dumb would have. She had them in two ranks, volley firing. The front rank had just shot. Now, as the monsters appeared, the bonus motivated second rand locked in and fired.

  The bolts went smashing in… and didn’t kill them. I’m not sure who was more surprised, the ambushed monsters, or the crossbowmen. They responded promptly and properly however. The first rank loosed. This time I saw a couple of the priest go down. There were only seven, so this was major progress.

  “You cannot win. Even if you kill us, your death is already certain. Verton has already fallen. Genuda has already fallen. You simply are too blind-”

  There was a charm to the voice. The surviving priests spoke in perfect synchronization, their voices just different enough to form an inescapable disharmony. You couldn’t stop listening to it, even as it grated on your soul.

  Well. You couldn’t if you were a weak-willed sort.

  “GENUDA! CHARGE!” Othai roared and led the pikes forward. The spear point of her Halberd aimed squarely at one of the monsters before her. The crossbow troops swore and got off one more volley before the pikes crossed their line of fire.

  The monsters were pretty badly shot up. Apparently that wasn’t a good enough reason not to counter-charge the pikes. They… I’m not sure what to call that kind of movement. Skittered or galloped or some other word that conveys movement other than walked or ran or any other recognizably human thing. They rose up on their hind legs, metal faces leering, trying to get under the pikes. Trying to shove them up and over.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  It could never be enough, and it wasn’t. The pikes stabbed them into bloody rags. Othai made a point of personally beheading each one with her halberd, then kicking the heads far away from the bodies. I wanted to clap. Finally! Finally someone who really understands about finishing a job.

  The clash was short and brutal. More of the invaders were coming over the lip of the riverbank, only to be eaten up by the wall of pikes. Then once they reached the edge, it was back to stabbing those still trapped in the river.

  I wondered why none of them were trying to get to the other bank. It was steep, but we didn’t have any people over there. It looked like none of them were even considering it. It took me a couple of minutes, then I got it.

  There was a sickly logic to it. I was here. And the monsters always went straight at the Tower Master. They had their mission objectives that took priority generally, but since I was standing here on one of those objectives, they would come for me.

  Which did lead to an interesting point. I felt my eyes pulled almost magnetically back to the matchlock troops, all still resolutely with their backs to us. Guns trained firmly on the village. Radz was still bombing the river too.

  What if an invasion force popped out at the docks, but instead of turning north like they had in the past, they turned due south instead? What if…

  “Crossbows, move to support the Matchlocks. Pikes, retreat twenty paces and reform. Pikes up. Right face! Now wait for it. Wait for my order.” Othai had this well in hand.

  Othai had better luck with her summoners than Versai had. Versai pretty much never made it past the third day. Othai made it into the twenties on occasion. That meant she had a lot longer to learn how the monsters operated, and in a much wider range of conditions. She just couldn’t communicate any of that to me.

  Didn’t mean she couldn’t use it though.

  Something awful burst out of the water near the village. I could just see them hopping ashore. Some lept out of the water and onto the docks, others scrambled up the smooth sides of the riverbank.

  A vile parody of a knight or a centaur. Humanoid up top, carrying billhooks and wearing armor. Below the navel they were some sort of amphibian, something between a frog and a salamander with those all too human hands for feet. Soft, rubbery skin, dark greens and greys speckled with black. They came ashore, and rather than the usual mad rush, they formed ranks.

  I could feel my face tightening. Not the first time I had seen monsters move in formation. Not even the most complex formation I had seen. It was the first time I had seen them wait, though. The monsters I knew constantly advanced. These took a minute to organize themselves.

  Was it some remnant humanity trapped in that nightmare form? Was there another priest or high level monster hidden nearby? Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Pausing to organize meant having a concept of timing. It meant understanding coordination on some level.

  They wouldn’t just feed themselves into a prepared defensive position. They would flank, retreat, attack at a better time, attack a different target, something. Anything other than charge straight down the barrel of a gun.

  Othai was maneuvering her troops. The crossbows moved up and planted their shields, leaving a gap between themselves and the matchlocks. The pikes marched forward between the two formations and planted themselves, forming a solid wall of spearheads.

  The matchlock troops shifted over, planting themselves under the long pikes. So now the enemy could charge the pikes with the matchlocks firing away out in front of them. Or they could charge into the planted shields of the crossbow unit, opening themselves up to an attack from the side by the pikes and muskets.

  Or they could just move around, make a wide loop and force us to reposition. That would break us out of formation, leaving us wide open to a devastating charge. That’s what I did in Shogun II anyway. Yari Ashigaru were stupid OP for the price, but that Yari Wall was their only real move and once cavalry got behind them, they were dead.

  The AI in the Total War games was famously… unsophisticated. Even for a “Normal/Normal” noob like myself. With a little practice, it was shockingly easy to bait the enemy into a trap.

  “My Lord? One of those things about pikes that you didn’t know? These Pikes will be many times more effective if you stand exactly where you are and don’t move an inch. Everyone works harder when they know the boss is standing directly behind them. Of course, you may have your own plans.”

  I blinked and looked again at the formation. She had planted her troops directly between me and the enemy.

  “How many of them do you think there are?”

  “Four hundred and one, my Lord.” Her voice was clipped. “Each capable of traversing almost any terrain at speed only slightly slower than a galloping horse. Each indifferent to pain. Each supported by a hellish vitality that lets them shrug off wounds that should kill them many times over. Or so I would suppose, based on the evidence of my eyes, my Lord.”

  They were still coming out of the water. Four hundred and one seemed like an awfully specific number. I kept an eye on them. In just a few minutes, a little over two hundred were on the riverbank. None more emerged from the water. I had a hard time interpreting the body language, but I’d say they looked… confused. And mad, obviously. But confused too.

  “Radz rained death.” My smile wasn’t anything nice to look at.

  “Yes, my Lord. She surely did. MATCHLOCKS! WAIT FOR MY ORDER!” Othai wasn’t smiling. There was a hunger in her too, no less than the monsters.

  “This is a nice bit of dirt I’m standing on. It’s mine now. Fight your battle, Commander Othai. I’ll be right here.”

  “Yes, my Lord!” Muskets, by ranks- FIRE! Crossbows, the second those freaks pass that fallen tree, by ranks, loose!”

  How the hell her orders reached anyone’s ear over the roar of black powder, I don’t know. It did, and the second the frog-centaur-horrors passed the long fallen tree, the pavise crossbows got stuck in too.

  I read somewhere that the Revolutionary war era muskets shot balls that were, roughly, .70 cal. No standardization in those days, but it was about that. Ma Deuce is only .50 cal. Cops used to carry .38 until things slipped into the godless metric of that Austrian Glock and his heathen nine-mil.

  No idea what caliber Genudian Matchlocks fired. But they tore fist sized chunks out of the enemy as their glowing white musket balls passed through. I’d bet it was closer to .70 cal than nine-mil.

  God, the noise! The stink of black powder, even though I never saw them reload or reach for a powder horn. There were little clouds of smoke that quickly cleared after each volley- I knew that wasn’t historically accurate. You see, I had a dark history. One that linked me irrevocably to this black powder era, and seared its miseries on my brain.

  Like so many children, I… I was forced to go on a family weekend getaway to Fort Ticonderoga.

  Don’t weep for me. I am but one of thousands. Of millions. Weep for those who are yet to suffer while cowards sit in silence and do nothing to stop the generational trauma.

  Did you know that Fort Ticonderoga is a modern recreation? The original collapsed and was broken up for building materials. Did you know that the people who rebuilt it rebuilt it completely wrong?!

  It was always designed as a tourist attraction- “Come see the fort that never stopped anybody!” Oh they modeled it on period appropriate fortifications. Just not ones that had anything to do with what was actually originally built there.

  There was not a single kawaii mascot. Not a single Gundam. Not even a token store-brand Godzilla for the defending troops to fight off. Just… stone. Stone and grass. A few displays of dead stuff belonging to dead people. Horrible.

  On the plus side, really the only plus side, they did a really decent job with the cosplay.

  The cosplayers, branded with the unlovely name ‘reenactors,’ played the fife and drum, fired their black powder flintlocks and even fired (once) a cannon. All blanks, for some namby-pamby “we don’t want to kill people” reason. But whatever their moral failings, the sheer noise of it was incredible. We were well back, and it still made my ears hurt.

  The Genudan mercenaries made my ears hurt. They hurt the enemy a lot worse, though. It was almost spiteful. The pikes all extended over the heads of the matchock troops, Even with the lousy ammunition of the era, it wasn’t too likely to fly straight up as it left the barrel. The front rank kneeled and fired, the second rank fired from the shoulder.

  No bayonets I noticed. I guess they didn’t need them.

  The crossbows volley fired as well, sending sheets of bolts hissing and ripping along the riverbank. They were catching the frog-knights at a bit of an angle, and while they weren’t killing them in one, or even two, shots, five tended to do the trick.

  The matchlocks weren’t one-shotting either, actually, which was alarming. I saw one of the frog-knights get its head smashed open by a bullet and it kept right on coming. They did go down eventually. I just couldn’t figure out the secret to it. I didn’t dare ask Othai. The look on her face scared me.

  The frog-knights did make it to the pikes, some of them. They smashed the pikes to the side with their billhooks, but there were always more pikes behind those and physics tends to win those little debates. The frog-knights got skewered, then shot. Then the pike was sharply yanked out, and readied for the next monster.

  I don’t know what expression Othai was making when she hacked into the monsters. If ecstasy can be furious, maybe it would look like this. I’d never seen her like this on any other battlefield. She would hook their billhooks to one side, then hack into their necks with the axe head. Stab into their guts. Ripping open their sides and snapping froggy ribs as she went. Washing away hate with blood.

  It took a while, but there was only one possible outcome, absent a surprise attack. But there couldn’t be one. Not with Miuki watching from above, signalling troop movements. Nor with Radz happily blowing up whatever splinters of the boats still floated well enough to be targeted. And while the Frog-Knights were tough, and strong, and fast, they were brutally outnumbered.

  Their bodies littered the field. They built little walls and abbatis in front of the pikes. The enemy was dead. Standing above them were the bloody pikes of Genuda.