Inside the arsenal.
One rebel soldier after another was struck down.
"Leon, we can't hold out much longer."
The man called Leon was of medium build. His full name was Lev Bronstein. "Leon" was the French variant of "Lev," much like Enrique in the Romance languages and Henry in French.
"If you can't hold them, fall back. Those Cossack gunners are too accurate. Let them enter the factory buildings before engaging them."
Leon wore a worn military overcoat, with a thick, dense mustache on his upper lip and a goatee on his lower chin. He wore pince-nez glasses, the very image of a Jewish intellectual. It was hard to imagine that someone like him could be the leader of the rebels.
Artillery was a technical branch. A good gunner either came from an artillery academy or had been fed shells on the battlefield.
In peacetime, an artillery battery of the Tsarist Russian Empire only had one chance a year for live-fire training. Once the war began, they were immediately bombarded to pieces by the large-caliber heavy artillery of the German states and the Knightly Order.
Thus, these Cossack horse artillerymen were not actually that exceptional. Their effectiveness came partly because they were professionals, and partly because they were equipped with French-made 75mm rapid-fire guns. At close range, those guns fired quickly and accurately, far surpassing Russia's domestically produced artillery.
One of the rebels could not help asking, "But how do we deal with that man in blue robes? He has a magic shield. Alexei shot him three times, and it did nothing."
"Even anti-magic bullets didn't work?"
Leon raised a brow. Alexei was a close friend he had met while exiled in Siberia. Later, they had fled to France together, where Alexei became a Magic-infused Gunsmith. He was already one