"A breach! They've torn open a breach!"
The young second lieutenant who had risked standing to observe the battle shouted a warning to his company commander, his voice cracking as he pointed south, toward the belt of steel thorns forcibly ripped apart amid smoke and dust.
Twisted Cheval de Frise and broken barbed wire lay scattered across the ground, exposing the two trenches behind them like gashes into hell.
Lennart stood, his heart sinking, but an almost savage ferocity instantly took over his face.
He had expected this all along, and he believed that even if those Retalian tin cans could tear through the barbed wire, they would never get past the line he held.
Because he was a Bagnian, an honored halberdier drawing double pay.
"Get the hell up, halberdiers! Time to work!"
Lennart's roar thundered over the knights' desperate battle cries outside the wall and the cracks of his own side's muskets.
He did more than shout. Lennart himself was the first to straighten behind the breastwork, lifting his heavy halberd in one hand. Its sharp blade pointed skyward at an angle, reflecting a bone-chilling gleam in the sunlight.
The hundred and fifty halberdiers behind the wall were still pale, but the sight of their commander standing like a rock, and the fury of his roar, spurred them to grit their teeth and straighten from their crouched or slumped positions.
They tightened their grips on their halberds, sweat soaking the cord wrapped around the cold wooden shafts. The heavy heads trembled slightly, but no longer from fear alone. That trembling now held the tension and ferocity of men about to thrust for their lives.
Lennart did not even bother looking at the Retalian knights pouring toward the breach like a tide. His eyes remained fixed on the edges