"For Bohemia!"
The silver bell on his stirrup jingled throughout the charge, its ringing audible even over the cavalry's battle cries. It was Second Lieutenant York's ancestral talisman, yet now it sounded as harsh as a death knell.
York pressed close to his mount's sweat-soaked neck, clearly feeling the tremors in the seven-year-old Arabian Horse's muscles... not from fear, but from the battlefield instinct burning in its blood.
The breastplates of his comrades to the left gleamed like cold fish scales in the twilight. The iron hooves of three hundred warhorses churned the frozen ground into rolling black waves.
Three hundred cavalrymen equipped with breastplates, Sabers, and Spring Guns would surely tear through the enemy lines like a sharp blade through soft butter.
That was what York thought, and just as he was savoring the prospect of victory and a bright future...
The sky split open.
At the first cannon blast, York thought it was thunder, until he saw the cloud of blood erupt three hundred paces to his left.
A charging warhorse suddenly burst into scattered chunks of flesh. Its rider's upper body was still spinning through the air, his curved blade still held in a slashing posture. The dull thud of solid shot punching through flesh reached York half a second later, like Death snapping his fingers beside his ear.
York froze. The cavalry second lieutenant, who had left military academy two years ago and considered himself somewhat experienced in battle, went pale. Utterly at a loss, he looked around without even realizing it.
Fortunately, York was not the cavalry company's commanding officer, and his fear did not disrupt its operations.
"Spread out! Skirmish line! Don't bunch up!"
The colonel bellowed himself hoarse, but his voice was instantly swallowed by the second volley of cannon fire from ahead.