"The enemy's opening fire from that far away!?"
As the crackle of gunfire reached him, Captain Rachel, who had been looking back and scolding his soldiers to hold formation, whipped his head around toward the scattered flashes and banks of white powder smoke ahead.
Captain Rachel estimated the distance between the two sides and was immediately astonished.
"They're more than seven hundred paces from me. Who do they expect to hit by firing now?"
Indeed, events unfolded just as Captain Rachel had expected. From the open ground ahead, he clearly heard the splatter of dirt as Lead Bullets struck the earth.
Then he looked back at the soldiers behind him. There was a little unrest in their orderly ranks, but no one had fallen, nor had anyone cried out in pain or injury.
Clearly, the enemy had fired that volley in a high arc, but their angle had been too low. Every bullet had landed short of his ranks.
Yet Captain Rachel's smile had barely appeared before his expression grew grave. The enemy had missed, but he found little cause for pleasure.
For while smiling, Captain Rachel had suddenly thought of a problem.
If he kept leading his men forward, they would soon reach the ground where the enemy's Lead Bullets had just fallen.
The longbowmen under his command had a maximum range of three hundred paces. Even with lighter arrows, they could not reach four hundred and fifty paces.
Yet the enemy's gunfire could easily reach six hundred paces. The only reason it had failed to hit his men was that his infantry were currently about six hundred and eighty paces away-a difference of eighty paces.
That was the main reason the enemy's first volley had missed.
With such a vast disparity in range between the two sides, even