The next morning the muster sounded almost simultaneously in both camps, and the great maneuvers in preparation for battle began.

Aria hadn't been able to eat for more than two days, but she forced herself to have a frugal breakfast with her Legates, who instead didn't miss the opportunity to try everything the farms in the area had to offer.

While Basil and the others finished eating, she went to the stables to try to calm the tension, where her beloved Zephyr was waiting for her.

"Did you sleep well, my friend?" she said, stroking his muzzle. "Today will be a long day."

After she had saddled him, she rode alone to the front line, where the artillerymen had set up their cannons during the night.

Until a few years ago, there was not a single general, including herself, who thought those heavy, cumbersome weapons were of any use.

Daemon had shown everyone that this was not the case, and the very fact that Aria had decided to take as many of them with her as possible was proof that in one way or another the Free State had left a mark on Erthea's history that would outlive its creators.

Moreover, for a few months those strange devices that allowed one to see at great distances, the spyglasses, had also started to be used in the Imperial army, and even the most fanatical nationalist could not deny that they were very useful.

The battlefield featured a slight slope in favor of the enemy, and a dirt road that ran east-west flanked by a low stone wall.

In other times, Aria would never have dreamed of taking the initiative on such risky terrain, with over a mile of open ground and an obstacle in the middle to slow down the march, but unfortunately, there was no more time.

They had to defeat Daemon immediately, and with as few casualties as possible, because if the initial estimates of Union forces were confirmed, they would already be at a dramatic disadvantage with their current numbers.

"Consul. May I speak to you?"

"... What is it, Eilon?"

Eilon rarely used such a formal tone when it was just the two of them, so Aria half expected what her attendant and devoted friend would have to say.

"I don't think we should attack."

"We have no choice. With every passing minute, Medici is getting closer to the Castle. His Majesty has invested everything in this expedition. If Western Eirinn were to fall to the Union, we would have neither the economic nor military strength to retake it."

Aria picked up a dandelion, staring at it as the wind blew its petals away.

"It's been five years since you saved me. Back then, you told me that I wasn't just your slave, but your friend. And as your friend, I feel compelled to tell you that perhaps it's not in our best interest to attack now. I know that the events of the last few weeks have troubled you. I can see it in your eyes. But I fear the anxiety that grips you could push you into actions that you would later regret."

"Are you saying I can't be objective? That the fact that Daemon has turned my own people against me with his machinations and honeyed words prevents me from thinking clearly? I'm not as childish as you think."

"That's not what I meant. You always try to appear strong. You have to, your role demands it. The soldiers have faith in you, and they expect you to lead them to victory. But precisely because you have to be what they expect, I fear that you are stifling what you truly feel."

"What I feel and what I believe has not changed. Daemon has to be stopped. His ideas may be right, but they brought us to this. I too want to change the Empire, but if we all thought like him our world would always be at war."

"Forgive my frankness, but wasn't it already like this, even before Sir Haselworth started his Revolution?"

In other times, Eilon would never have dared to speak like this to Aria; but he knew that his mistress needed now more than ever someone who would tell her openly what he thought.

"It was said that the Holy Wars would be a new beginning. The war to end all wars. Instead, the peace that followed that conflict lasted only a handful of years, and was signed with the blood of my people. Torian expansionism, the power struggle in Xi-Zian and its constant state of war with Volkova, the Union rebellion, the Flor War, the Barons' revolt. Princes and nobles wage war on each other for all sorts of reasons, but it's always the people who pay the price. Sir Daemon has been shouting to everyone that this isn't right, and that even the common people deserve to find happiness in this life. Can you really blame your people for believing his words?"

Aria looked down, catching the contradiction in her own words.

"All this talk will be for naught if we fail at what we came for. We must defeat Daemon and then head west immediately."

"We haven't heard from General Orestes. If he could have made it through the Jovtan Valley, we might have a little more time."

"I have faith in Orestes, and I know that he will win in the end. But we must do our part. We will advance along this ridge, break the line, and send the rebel army into rout, after shooting at them with everything we have. The cavalry charge will finish the job by chasing the fugitives. We will defeat Daemon, regain control of Eirinn, then head west and stop the Union army before it can reach the Castle. Today, we will show everyone that the Saedonian Empire is no longer a wounded old lion. It is a ferocious beast that mercilessly bites anyone who dares challenge it. But I cannot do this if those around me do not trust me. Do you trust me, Eilon?"

The garuda looked into her eyes.

"I will always have faith in you, My Lady. And as long as I breathe, you will know that I am by your side."

"Thank you, my friend."



Even though almost two days had passed since the last battle, it would have been foolish to field the legions that had already fought.

Aria had therefore chosen to keep Basil's troops in reserve, deploying her veterans of the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Legions in the front line; the Ninth covered the right flank, the Twentieth the left. The cavalry was further back, but it was quite clear that this time Aria did not seem inclined to use it to the last; too much ground to travel in the open, with the concrete risk of being mowed down by rifles.

"We'll form as long a line as possible," Aria had said at their last meeting. "The wider our front, the thinner Daemon will have to make his. I want our troops to advance in a scattered formation, constantly changing direction. This will confuse them, and force them to constantly change positions. Once we have passed the wall, we will charge forward and engage the enemy directly in their trenches. The archers will proceed twenty paces behind the infantry, stopping just behind the wall and providing additional support. As soon as one of the enemy front points gives way, we will send in the reserves and break the line. Is everything clear?"

"Yes, Consul."

On the other side of the front the Free State army was arranged in much the same way as last time, except that this time the centre was occupied by the Third Corps, with the Fourth and Fifth on the right flank at the edge of the woods and the two cavalries on the opposite side.

For the first time, Aria was nervous, and the thought of going into battle made her hands shake.

As was tradition, she, Basil and the Legates drank a glass of cider and toasted the impending victory.

"Tonight, we'll toast over the corpse of that damned brat," Basil said. "This will be the best hangover of my life. With all due respect, Consul."

But the other Legates didn't seem so optimistic, and some were as nervous as she was; it was difficult not to be in front of all those guns pointed at them.

The fact that they also had cannons at their disposal did not make them feel any more at ease; because if Daemon had demonstrated the power of artillery, it was equally true that a weapon was only effective if you knew how to use it.

Before Daemon came along and changed the way war was conducted, cannons had always been considered inaccurate and unreliable weapons, only good for blowing holes in fortresses.

Aria had long searched for someone who had some experience using them, and remembering her years at the Academy, her old friend Darius had come to mind.

His father was an armorer, as well as the personal swordsmith of the Imperial family, and he had passed on what he knew to his son; it was enough for him to read the reports of the battles of Mistvale and Giants' Mouths to understand and master Daemon's revolutionary way of understanding artillery.

But since he came from the common people, and had entered the Academy only thanks to a recommendation from His Majesty himself as a personal favor to a friend, he couldn't hope to reach a command role.

Aria had therefore granted him a field promotion to Prefect, valid however only for battle.

Throughout the journey from Maligrad, Darius had been busy trying to figure out how to make the cannons he would command in battle work as best as possible, selecting a good number of interesting elements over time and subjecting them to tough trainings.

However, there was a gulf between understanding something and knowing how to put it into practice, and this became clear when the two armies began exchanging cannon fire at the start of the battle.

Even using the weapons recovered at Faria, the imperial troops' fire was slow and often imprecise; the cannonballs bounced poorly, and it was a matter of trial and error to find the right height, wasting time and ammunition.

Like all members of his race, Eilon was no longer able to fly; but unlike the harpies, who were still slow and clumsy on the ground, the garuda ran as fast as felines, so no one better than he could perfectly fulfill the role of messenger.

"Nothing good is going to come of this," Darius told him when Aria sent him to check on the cannonade.

"You've been shooting for almost an hour now, but it doesn't seem to be getting any results. Why?"

"The guns are jamming, and my boys are not expert marksmen."

"The Consul's orders are clear. We must take out at least half of those guns and inflict as many casualties as possible on the infantry; otherwise our army's advance will result into a disaster."

"We're trying, but it seems to be no use. Most of them are hiding behind that hill. We're forced to shoot blindly, and as far as we know, we're doing nothing to them."

"Keep shooting. We must not give the enemy a break. But keep some ammo. We will need them to cover the advance of the infantry."

But even after Eilon had reported, the mood of the more optimistic Legates didn't seem to be affected.

Aria tried to remind herself what was at stake, that she had beaten Daemon once, and that one way or another she would do it again.

"Sound the advance."

To the beat of the drums, the legions abandoned the clump of trees where they had taken refuge to escape the rebels' fire, quickly arranging themselves and forming a front almost two hundred meters long.

"Long live the Emperor!" Aria shouted, riding ahead of her men, and was greeted with loud cheers. "Long live Saedonia! Gaia is with us! My soldiers! Attack!"

The front line then moved forward, marching to conserve energy, while the Imperial guns covered their advance by continuing to fire.

A recruit would have trembled with fear at the thought of having to travel all that way in the open; but fear was now behind them, and an Imperial soldier accustomed to fighting like them would have gone into the attack even naked and without weapons in order to fulfill his duty.

Strangely enough, the rebel guns fell silent immediately after the advance began. This confused the officers leading the units quite a bit, as they expected to be greeted by a hail of bullets, but Aria, Basil, and everyone else also didn't know what to think.

"I don't understand. Why aren't they shooting anymore?"

"Maybe they've run out of bullets. We should seize the opportunity and speed up the advance."

"No, we can't tire our men out prematurely."

"Besides, we risk the front fragmenting."

The second line of archers and auxiliaries began their advance as planned twenty paces behind the first, and in an almost surreal atmosphere both lines covered the entire first mile without being hindered.

Eilon, despite being in front of the Officers, did not give up on saying what he thought: "Consul, something's off. Look, they have not abandoned the cannons. They certainly have something in mind."

Basilio, who was already in a bad mood for being put in the rear, blurted out: "I've told you a thousand times to mind your own business, you stupid animal! What do you want to know about strategy?"

In other times Aria would have listened to Eilon and behaved more prudently, but the haste, the tension and the fear of appearing weak in the eyes of her officers pushed her to ignore her orderly.

"Let's move on."

The rebels continued to not respond to the legionaries' advance, though they remained close to their weapons and kept low to avoid the Imperial cannon fire.

The low wall that ran parallel to the road between Arendt and Ysen was less than three feet high, but since it had no openings, it was necessary to climb over it.

And when the first rank of soldiers from the front line reached it, all hell broke loose.

The rebel guns fired almost in unison; with their targets practically stationary, it was like a lethal target practice where there was no way to miss.

The metal balls bounced off the sloping ground, mowing down five or ten enemies each, and once they reached the low wall they shattered it, causing an explosion of rocks that flew in every direction.

Even worse, Daemon had positioned some cannons in the woods to the right, out of Aria's sight, and after remaining hidden the entire time they suddenly began to fire as well, taking the legionnaires on their flanks and killing hundreds of them.

"Damn, that's why he waited until the last!" Aria thundered, unable to understand how she hadn't immediately realized something so obvious.

But the Imperial legionaries were not the type to give up so easily. And even after losing many of their comrades, with the front ranks of each cohort annihilated, they continued to advance, urged on by their officers, and once past the low wall they increased their pace to reach the enemy lines as quickly as possible.

At that point, there was only a long field of tall, soft wheat between the two armies. A moment after the first Imperial line entered it, a long trumpet blast sounded from the rebel ranks, and thousands of riflemen appeared among the ears of wheat like an army of ghosts.

The legionaries, taken by surprise, tried desperately to close themselves in a tortoise-like formation, and the rebels, arranged in two lines, unleashed a rain of fire against them. But even this was not enough to bend them, and moved by an admirable determination they quickly reformed their lines and continued to advance.

The riflemen had time to fire a couple more shots, then retreated, giving way to their regular infantry comrades who intercepted the imperials by engaging them in hand-to-hand combat. However, thanks to the sloping terrain, they simply had to retreat higher, managing to target the enemy's second lines without running the risk of hitting their allies.

In the meantime, the archers had arrived near the wall, trying to support the infantry with their arrows, aiming mainly at the cannons and the same riflemen. Unfortunately, at that point they were an easy target for the batteries on the sides; and for each of them who managed to shoot an arrow, three others died before even having nocked them.

Soon a thick, dark smoke from rifles and cannons covered the plains, so much so that just by looking at the banners Aria and the others could get an idea of how the battle was going.

The red, white and blue flags on one side, the golden lion banners and the war emblems on the other; each time a banner was lowered, it was a sign that a cohort or brigade had surrendered and was fleeing.

First disappeared the two-faced dragon from the First Cohort of the Fourth Legion; then the crowned eagle of the Third Cohort of the Sixth; then the shield of the Fourth Cohort of the Fifth.

On the other side, however, the flags folded, trembled, in some cases disappearing behind the smoke, but almost all remained raised.

The roar of explosions and fighting echoed for miles, but as the minutes passed, the more the shouts, the incitements and the exultations seemed to come from only one of the two sides.

No one could have spoken of cowardice, and no history book in the centuries to come would ever diminish the valor of the legionaries, because they gave everything trying to break through until the last.

But giving your all in the hope of prevailing and commiting suicide in a desperate assault knowing it would all be for nothing were completely different things.

The rebels were simply too strong, too organized; but above all, too motivated.

Like a wave breaking on the rocks, the imperial tide slowly began to ebb, and one by one, the cohorts abandoned the battle. At first it seemed like a disorderly flight, but when it became clear that the rebels had neither the will nor the strength to attack, it became an orderly retreat, with the soldiers sadly returning to their starting positions, walking among the bodies of their comrades who had died during the advance.

Eilon watched the scene coldly, almost disinterestedly, as if he knew that this would be the only possible conclusion from the beginning.

The complete opposite of the officers, starting with Aria herself, who instead seemed unable to believe their eyes.

The archers were the last to leave the field, while cheers rose from the rebel ranks, along with taunts and unflattering epithets.

"What's happening?" Aria muttered, her hands shaking. "Why's this happening?"