Chapter Text
A cannon roared to their left, and the sound arrived almost as a physical shove. The ball struck ahead with a wet crack of splintered wood, spraying mud into the trenches.
Rain poured in sheets, finding every seam in wool and leather, running down collars, turning the earth into a sucking mire that refused to release a boot. The field below the ridge had once been pasture; now it lay churned into brown ruin, wagon-ruts and broken stakes scored between bodies fallen at angles no living man chose.
Athos kept his men moving.
“Hold your line,” he shouted over the crack of muskets. “Do not bunch. Space.”
The Spanish guns stood farther back beyond the open dip. The reserve was not yet engaged. It waited for the moment the French line tired, safe from sudden push, close enough to speak when needed.
Above them, on the ridge, silhouettes clustered around horses: the generals and their aides, sheltered by distance, with cloaks still clean at the hems. Orders came down as if the field were a map laid flat on a table. “Hold!” a voice called from behind. “Hold your position!”
Athos lifted his hand — palm down, two fingers cutting once through the air — and his men closed by instinct, angling to move and fire without striking one another. Porthos’s shoulder brushed his as they advanced through the mire.
D’Artagnan came up on his left with mud up to his knees. His hair was plastered to his brow, and the blood from a cut above his eye made him blink more than he liked. “They’re trying to wheel the right flank,” he said.
A volley flashed ahead, a line of fire behind smoke. A man behind Athos fell into the mud. He did not turn. If he turned for every fall, he would never move again.
Another order came down. “Captain! Fall back to the marker— reform!”
Athos’s jaw tightened, picturing the white flag on the ridge. Reform. Repeat. Let the artillery chew them down from a distance until the generals decided they had had enough.
He glanced once across the field. In the hollow beyond the churned ground, dark wagons and limbers stood beneath canvas. Men moved under cover, keeping the powder dry and cutting fuses. The reserve.
“You’re thinking it,” d’Artagnan said, too quiet for anyone else to hear.
Athos did not answer at once. He watched another cannon discharge, watched the ball plough a furrow through mud and bodies alike. Behind them, Porthos cursed as he wrenched his boot free of the mire. “If I ever see another field, it will be too soon.”
“Try not to die,” Athos told him. “You’d be unbearable about it.”
Aramis’s eyes flicked to the ridge as he reloaded the pistol. “We’re about to be told to fall back again.”
“We’re about to ignore it,” d’Artagnan said with the bright recklessness that had survived five years of war by becoming sharper instead of duller.
“Are we now?” Aramis grinned, firing once more.
Athos’s gaze remained on the hollow. “Aramis,” he said. “Stay with Porthos. Hold. If we do not return, you fall back with the line.”
A shout came again from behind, furious now. “Captain! Fall back!”
Athos did not turn. He lifted two fingers instead and pointed forward. D’Artagnan moved with him at once.
They slid down the slope into the open, leaving the broken shelter of the line. The field widened around them: a bleak expanse under rain, smoke, and the constant low thunder of guns. Mud dragged at their legs.
“Left!” d’Artagnan hissed.
Athos angled without looking as a cannonball tore past where they had been. They reached the shallow dip and dropped into the wet earth.
D’Artagnan wiped blood from his eye with the back of his wrist. “If Tréville were here, he would hang us himself.”
“Good thing he’s not here, then.”
They crawled the last stretch to the rise. Athos looked over. The Spanish reserve stood closer than it had seemed from above: wagons nose to tail beneath tight canvas, men moving in short bursts.
Athos drew the flint and steel from his coat as d’Artagnan slid a keg forward.
They crossed the final stretch in a blur of rain, smoke, and Spanish curses as the first man finally saw them. D’Artagnan surged past him, struck the nearest artilleryman and drove him down. A pistol fired; Athos did not stop. He slammed the first keg against the wheel of a limber, wedged it in, and yanked the fuse free with his teeth. The rain tried to soak it. He shielded it with his hands.
Steel struck flint, and a spark caught.
Ahead, d’Artagnan forced the next keg beneath the canvas where powder lay stacked.
A Spanish soldier lunged at Athos with a short sword. Athos pivoted and caught the blade on his own. The man stumbled into the mud, and Athos did not finish him. There was no time.
“Now!” Athos said.
D’Artagnan’s eyes met his, and then they both turned and ran. A musket cracked behind them. The ball struck earth near d’Artagnan’s heel, but he did not slow. They reached the dip and threw themselves down.
For one heartbeat there was only rain and breath.
Then the world behind them became light and came apart.