Decian stood beside his war-mount in the staging area, half a mile behind the forward line. The low rumble of artillery rolled across the morning air; a constant, rhythmic percussion that hadn't stopped for months. Smoke choked the air among the broken trees where his cavalry waited, five hundred troopers dispersed in loose formation within the skeletal remains of what had once been a forest. The Western Campaigns had stripped this land bare. Nothing green remained, only shattered trunks and cratered earth.

  He raised his field glasses and looked toward the front. Through the haze, he could make out his advancing infantry, two cohorts pressing against the freshly built Theocrat fortifications under House Testa’s banner. Methodical. Bloody. Inevitable. The enemy position would fall. It was only a matter of time.

  The radio on his belt crackled to life.

  "Tribune Testa, report." Legate Kasio's voice cut through the static.

  Decian unclipped the handset, his rebreather hissing softly as he spoke. "Infantry is advancing on the primary sector, sir. I currently have three thousand troops moving in, with my cavalry standing by for assault support. I estimate two hours until breach."

  "Unacceptable. Alpha-1-3-7 needs to be controlled within the hour." A slight pause passed. "Prepare your cavalry for a flanking charge. I’ll deploy a walking barrage with smoke in fifteen minutes. Hit their eastern trench line as the barrage is finishing and collapse their flank: the position needs to fall."

  Decian's jaw tightened behind the mask. He looked back at his wing. Their mounts — massive destriers bred over millennia for shock assaults — pawed and snorted beneath steel barding, breath misting in the cold morning air. Chests and flanks protected under armor plating designed to turn glancing shots and deflect bayonets during the crush of close combat.

  "Sir, the infantry can take the position—"

  "Follow your orders, Tribune. Strata do not hesitate."

  “Sir, my regiment’s cavalry is not full stre—”

  The line went dead.

  His grip nearly crushed the handset before he clipped it back to his belt. Exhaling through his rebreather slowly, he mounted his horse and faced his troops. Twenty-five cavalry squadrons looked back at him. Over half the riders coming from House Testa directly, spread across dozens of branches. Thirty drawn from Branch Accardi. He could see them in the formation. His uncle Lucius, a grizzled lieutenant in the second squadron, the Accardi banner flapping in the wind above his head. His younger brother Marcus, barely twenty years old, mounted near the center in the twelfth squadron, the fire of Strata blood clear in his eyes. His elder sister, Livia, sharp as war-steel, mounted with his squadron in the vanguard. Cousins he'd grown up with in the homelands spread throughout. All of them scattered across the ranks like seeds in a field about to be burned.

  The math was brutally simple. Cavalry assaults into fortified lines produced catastrophic results, even with a barrage as cover and an infantry presence. Fifty percent castulites were within standard acceptance parameters.

  But Strata nobles are measured by how they bleed. Refusal would not be caution.

  It would be drift.

  Decian unclipped his mask and raised his voice, projecting over the growing roar of artillery in the distance. "Riders of House Testa! Form up for eastern flank deployment!"

  The formation shifted, moving into place while constricting into columns. Lances came down. Shields came up. Each trooper tightened their saber belt, checked their revolver in the swivel holster seated on their thigh, and secured their carbine into its saddle scabbard. Every one of them wore the same stone-faced expression; focused, controlled, ready.

  Couching his lance, he moved his mount toward the front of the formation. He could see the smoke screen billowing up along the eastern line now; the barrage had started. His hand rose, signaling the advance.

  At the last second, he hesitated.

  The weight of the moment pressed down around him — thirty names, thirty faces, thirty members of his branch who could die because he gave the order. Not members of his House from distant branches. Not commoner levies. His blood. His family. The people who had taught him to ride, who had sat across from him during House feasts, who had stood beside him during his Exustus trials.

  His mount shifted beneath him, feeling the tension in his grip.

  Then the moment passed.

  "Riders!" Decian’s voice cut through the air like a bullet. "Honor your names! ADVANCE!"

  The wing surged at the drop of his hand.

  Five hundred warhorses launched forward in a rolling thunder of hooves and steel. Decian leaned into the charge at their head, his horse’s muscles bunching and releasing beneath him as the formation accelerated through the broken forest. Re-clipping his mask into its strap, he triggered the inhalant port. Chemical fire flooded his lungs; sharp, metallic, immediate. His heartbeat spiked. The world sharpened. He could feel the stimulant coursing through him already.

  Smoke clustered ahead. The wing hit it at full gallop, visibility collapsing into a dense gray haze. He could hear the squadron leaders shouting commands over the pounding of hooves against cratered earth. The formation pressed forward, lances leveled, shields locked tight against their right arms.

  Keeping their speed, they burst through the rear lines of the infantry. Both cohorts broke into orderly ranks without hesitation, soldiers pressing to either side as the cavalry thundered past. Decian caught glimpses of exhausted, bloody faces watching them charge forward into the smoke.

  The Theocrats' eastern flank appeared ahead as the barrage lifted and the haze cleared.

  Wood palisades, reinforced sandbags, and barbed wire, all wrecked by the barrage. Machine gun nests dotted throughout. Rifle barrels coming up into firing positions from shell-shocked enemies.

  Muzzle flashes erupted along the line, sending rounds whistling through the air. A rider to his left jerked backward and fell, trampled instantly by the horses behind him. Another mount to his rear screamed and collapsed, legs shattered by a burst from a gun nest. The formation reformed into wedges and spread out along the line, troopers closing the gaps of the fallen.

  Decian's grip tightened on his lance as he locked it under his arm. Fifty yards. Thirty. Twenty.

  His destrier gathered itself, hind legs bulging, and jumped.

  The world tilted as it cleared the barrier and smashed wire. Decian felt the weightless apex of the leap, then the bone-jarring impact from the horse crashing down into the trench. On the landing, he drove his lance through a Theocrat’s stomach, the shaft splintering on impact and tearing from his grip. Around him, he could see the rest of the vanguard slamming into the wide forward trench with a blinding wave of steel and fury. Lances shattered against bodies. Horses screamed and reared. Men died in the crush.

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  Now fully immersed in the melee, Decian drew his saber.

  A Theocrat lunged at him with a bayonet. He shifted his mount to the left, feeling the enemy's knife swing in the wind where his face had been a moment before. He responded with a heavy slash that caught in the soldier's throat. Another rushed from the side. Pulling his revolver with his off-hand, he fired twice. The man took both shots to the chest and went down hard. Decian's mount reared suddenly, iron-shod hooves crushing a third foe attempting to drag him from the saddle.

  In the brief reprieve, he caught movement in his periphery; his sister was fighting farther along the line, her saber flashing red as she cut through two defenders in rapid succession. Suddenly, her mount stumbled on a corpse. She pitched forward and fell hard from the saddle, disappearing into the press of bodies. Livia. Before he could search for her, a Theocrat officer advanced, slashing his sword in a deadly arc.

  Decian parried the strike, riposted, and drove his own blade into the man's skull with a savage chop. The stimulant sang in his blood, every motion crisp and inevitable. He could see everything. The angle of incoming attacks, the flash of armor on the midmorning sun, the rhythm of the melee flowing around him like water.

  The rest of his regiment poured into the breached trench line minutes behind the cavalry, flooding forward with bayonets fixed, laying down suppressive fire as they moved. Troopers around Decian began dismounting, dropping the useless cavalry shields, and slapping their horse’s flanks to send them back toward friendly lines. He slid from his own mount and let it retreat. Saber and revolver in hand, he moved deeper into the trench.

  Before he could get far, the counterattack came.

  Heavy infantry — armored in steel trench-plate — surged into the flank of the Imperial push with discipline. Hitting the front of the wing before half the riders could dismount cleanly. Mounts panicked and kicked, unable to retreat through the press of bodies. The formation buckled inward under the pressure.

  Decian waded into the chaos, rallying his troops to push the Theocrats deeper into their own lines. His saber took a helmeted soldier across the jaw, snapping the man's head sideways. He fired his revolver point-blank into another enemy's chest, the round punching through armor at close range. A Theocrat swung a trench club at his head. Decian ducked low, came up inside his guard, and fired a round into the gap under his armpit — the heavy folded with a wet gurgle escaping through his lips.

  Around him, his family died. His cousin Marcellus went down with a bayonet under his cuirass, eyes wide with shock. Another cousin — Helena from the eighth squadron — took a club to the skull and crumpled into the mud without a sound.

  Following their commander's lead, the Imperial infantry crashed forward with renewed weight, driving into the Theocrat counterattack ruthlessly. The enemy advance halted under the pressure and broke. They fled farther into the trench network, abandoning the position.

  The melee dissolved into pursuit and cleanup. Decian stood in the blood-slick mud, breathing hard through his rebreather, feeling the stimulant fade. The cold clarity remained, but the edge of invincibility was gone. He heard a voice he recognized in the distance — his uncle Lucius spewing insults at a group of Theorats running from his blade — before it abruptly cut off.

  Turning in the direction of the sound, he saw Lucius on the ground, the banner of Branch Accardi fallen beneath him. Blood pooling around his body. A lone Theocrat heavy was standing over him, raising his short spear to claim the kill.

  Decian grabbed a discarded rifle from the ground and put a bullet through the western dog's throat before the blade could come down. The man collapsed, choking through his destroyed windpipe.

  Closing the distance between them, Decian knelt beside his uncle's body. Gone. The thought was cold and flat. He reached down and pulled the Accardi standard from beneath Lucius, the fabric heavy and dripping crimson in his hands.

  He stood and climbed onto the shattered remains of the trench wall, boots finding purchase on splintered wood and torn sandbags. House Testa's banner was already planted nearby, held by a surviving infantry captain whose armor was streaked with mud and ash. Grabbing the House banner, Decian raised the Accardi banner beside it, holding both standards in one hand. His saber, battered and notched from the fighting, hung loose in the other.

  The position was secured. Sector Alpha-1-3-7 belonged to the Empire.

  Below him, the trenches were filled with the dead and dying, Imperial and Theocrat alike, their bodies tangled together in the mud. What remained of his cavalry stood at attention among the carnage, filthy and silent, waiting for orders.

  Decian scanned the faces. Too few looked back at him.

  His brother, Marcus, stood among the remnants of the twelfth squadron, his helmet dented, the fire in his eyes reduced to a smoldering ember. A handful of cousins could still be seen. But the gaps were everywhere.

  Livia wasn't there.

  His eyes swept the formation again, searching for her sharp features among the survivors. Nothing. He started to step down from the wall—

  A shell screamed overhead.

  The impact slammed into the ground behind him, propelling him to a knee. Theocrat artillery coming from their reserve lines, finally covering their retreating infantry. More shells followed, walking fire across the captured position. He dropped into the trench as shrapnel tore through the air. Something slammed into his helmet.

  The world tilted. Sound faded. Darkness closed in.

  Canvas. Smoke. Cordite. The familiar smells hit him before he opened his eyes.

  Decian's head throbbed beneath fresh bandaging. He could see his mask sitting on the field table beside him, the inhalant port still open. Looking around slightly, he noticed his cuirass hanging from a peg on a tent pole, the rebreather unit still attached at the base. Recognizing the furniture of his command tent, he pushed himself upright, the motion sending pain through his skull.

  "Tribune."

  His adjutant — Cassia, from a minor branch of the House— stood near the entrance holding three folders. She crossed to him and set them on the table.

  “Casualty reports,” she said, stepping away.

  Decian opened the first — the First Cavalry Wing.

  Forty-three percent casualties.

  He scanned for the branch breakdown.

  Branch Accardi: 9 KIA, 6 critical, 2 stable.

  Seventeen out of thirty.

  The names followed. Lucius Accardi Testa | KIA. Marcellus Accardi Testa | KIA. Helena Accardi Testa | severe skull trauma, Critical condition.

  Then, near the bottom of the critical list: Livia Accardi Testa | collapsed lung, internal bleeding, Critical condition.

  His hand tightened on the paper. He stared at her name for three heartbeats before he set the report aside and opened the second. First cohort. Twenty-two percent casualties. Then the third. Second cohort. Twenty-four percent.

  Cassia's voice cut through the silence. "I'm sorry, cousin. They are not my blood, but they’re my House, and I mourn them as you."

  Decian didn't look up.

  "Legionary cohorts from the 52nd took over the advance," she continued, shifting back to an operational tone. "Our regiment is to stay stationed on secondary lines for now. House command's been notified of our situation. Reinforcements are coming; we’ve been ordered to hold position until they arrive."

  Standing, he lifted the cuirass over his head and began to strap it on. Finally, he reached for his mask, attaching the tubing and clipping it into place at his collarbone.

  "Get the regiment assembled."

  As he left, he grabbed the revolver hanging in its holster near the entrance flap.

  They were formed up in a nearby staging area. Trooper and soldier alike assembled in battered ranks. Blood was still caked on their uniforms. Some leaned on rifles. Others stared with hollow eyes.

  Decian stood on the raised platform, the twin banners planted beside him. His revolver hung across his chest, seated in its holster.

  "The position was secured," he said. "The First Cohort took twenty-two percent casualties. The Second, twenty-four percent. The First Cavalry Wing suffered forty-three percent." He paused. "You’ve all served well."

  The barking of the artillery lines carried by on the wind.

  "Never forget those who fell today."

  Another pause.

  "We hold here until House command sends reinforcements. Dismissed."

  The regiment snapped to attention and saluted their commanding officer. Twenty-six hundred fists crashed into armored chests beneath the caste marks inked into the left side of their necks — hands closed in a fist.