Henrik's magi-car hit the elven trench at full speed.
The damaged prow punched through the near wall. Then the ground vanished, and the car dropped into the ditch.
We fell with it.
The car stopped dead.
Henrik slammed against the steering bar. Mud sprayed from the rear tires. The crumpled prow had buried itself too deeply to climb out.
"Leave it!" I shouted. "Out!"
Henrik tore the restraint strap from his waist and vaulted over the side.
An elf rose from the mud ahead with a curved sword in both hands.
I shot him through the chest.
The copper ball punched through cloth, ribs, and whatever thin armor lay beneath. Gold sprayed across the trench wall. The elf folded backward without finishing his swing.
Henrik came over the prow behind me. His greatsword cleared its sheath with a rasp.
The other three magi-cars passed over the trench in quick succession.
Dorn's vehicle hit the near lip at an angle and vaulted across. For one breath, all four wheels left the ground above us. The armored car landed beyond the trench hard enough to shatter its front suspension, but the drive still held.
Britta followed over the same gap. Her blackened prow clipped Dorn's rear quarter, spun sideways, then found traction again.
The fourth car smashed directly through an observation platform. Wood burst apart around the copper wedge. One support beam crashed across the rear compartment and tore away the canvas, but the driver ducked beneath it and kept going.
They drove straight toward the western installations.
The elves had almost no fortification behind their trench. A few shaped-wood shelters stood along the reverse slope, with two taller observation towers farther east. Open-sided tents and low storehouses filled the ground beyond them.
The arrogance was almost beautiful.
The first defenders to meet us came with swords.
Blades flashed with the speed I remembered too well. Some wore campaign coats. Others had been resting in loose shirts and trousers. One was barefoot.
None cast a spell.
They saw humans carrying steel, so they answered with steel. They still believed using their magic against us would grant us too much honor.
Either way, the mistake lasted less than a minute.
Henrik intercepted the first pair.
His greatsword crossed from right to left in a brutal horizontal arc. One elf threw himself flat. The other tried to catch the strike on his curved blade.
The blade held, however Henrik's weapon continued through the elf's ribs and threw the body into the trench wall. The second defender rolled to his feet, already cutting for Henrik's exposed back.
Britta shot him through the throat.
The mechanical crack split the air. The elf staggered, both hands flying to the hole beneath his jaw. Gold ran between his fingers.
Britta stared for half a heartbeat.
"Forward!" I shouted.
She moved.
The sound of rail-pistols spread along the trench.
Crack.
Crack-crack.
Each report marked an elf who had shown too much of his body.
A defender climbed the far wall and raised his sword. Dorn fired into his abdomen. Another leaned around the ruined observation post and took a copper ball through the cheek. A third tried to sprint between shelters. Three Knights fired at once. Two shots missed. The third struck between the shoulder blades and threw him forward.
The elves learned quickly.
They began dropping behind the trench wall whenever one of us raised a pistol. Fighters who would have crossed open ground without hesitation now crawled through mud to keep their heads below the lip.
Shouts traveled eastward in their language.
I could not understand the words, but I understood the warning.
The humans had a new weapon. Do not expose yourself. Do not let them point it at you.
They would adapt. Give them an hour and they would raise stone screens, shape covered passages, or weave a ward that stripped momentum from every copper ball before it reached them. Give their scholars time to examine a captured pistol, and they might understand the mechanism well enough to counter the weapon entirely.
We were going to keep pressing our advantage. I intended to spend every second of it.
An elf came at me from the left.
His sword moved low, cutting for the inside of my knee. I turned my leg away, caught the blade against mine, and forced it toward the ground.
He released one hand from the hilt and struck my throat with the heel of his palm.
The impact would once have crushed my windpipe.
Now it snapped my head back and little else.
His eyes widened.
I caught his sword wrist and pulled him into me. My forehead broke his nose. He stumbled. I drove my blade beneath his ribs and up through the heart.
Another elf lunged over the body.
His point struck my coat beneath the collarbone. The cloth tore. The blade slid across my skin, opening a hot line instead of driving through my chest.
Body Reforging had made my bones dense enough to survive a Titan's strike. Skin tissue had been remade along with them. An ordinary sword could still cut me, especially in the hands of someone strong enough, but the easy killing thrust the elf expected never came.
I trapped his weapon beneath my arm.
He tried to wrench it free.
I fired into his stomach.
At arm's length, the copper ball passed through him and buried itself in the trench wall. He folded over the wound. I kicked him away, turned, and drove my sword through the neck of the next defender before he reached Henrik.
I remembered the last time I had fought in trenches like these.
Every elf had been a disaster. Every exchange had required everything I possessed.
That was gone.
My sword found openings before the elves completed their attacks. Mana Breath sustained my speed. Their curved blades scraped my reinforced body where they once would have opened arteries.
And whenever an elf created distance, I shot them.
They seemed weaker.
The technique was still there. The speed was still there. But it was missing experience. After their last assault failed, they might have pulled the experienced fighters off this front and left whoever could be spared.
To make matters worse, the rail-pistol erased the most dangerous part of fighting them. They no longer needed mages to attack at a distance.
Any elf that stepped back.
I raised the pistol.
They died.
A shout traveled along the elven line. Different from the warning before, they were repeated by several voices.
The defenders disengaged almost together.
They dropped into the trench, rolled behind shattered wood, and spread their hands.
"Spells!" I shouted. "Take cover!"
Fire bolts streaked low across the trench.
One struck Henrik's shoulder and burst across his coat. He turned with the impact, letting the flame roll over his back instead of catching his face. Another bolt hit the copper prow of the wrecked car and spread across the plate in a bright sheet.
A spear of ice cut toward Britta.
She ducked behind the remains of an observation post. The projectile punched through the wood above her head, showering her with splinters.
The spells were small.
Lethal to a person, but controller. Nothing like the large-area attacks they had used against us in open ground.
"They don't want to destroy their own position!" I shouted. "Stay close! Keep pressure on them!"
Henrik tore the burning coat from his shoulder and threw it into the trench.
"You heard him!" he roared. "Push!"
We advanced before the elves could settle into a casting rhythm.
Rail-pistols cracked beneath the hiss of fire. Copper balls struck the trench walls, shelter supports, bodies. One direct-caster raised a curved screen of packed earth, but three shots hit the same section in quick succession. The first cratered it. The second cracked it. The third passed through and struck the elf behind it.
The defenders were reacting as individuals. Some cast. Some ran. Some tried to organize the swordsmen around them. Others stared toward the western camp, waiting for orders that hadn't arrived.
I could not understand what they were shouting to each other. I did not need to. The disorganization was obvious. Their entire strategy had always been built around attacking and oppressing. The moment they had to defend, there was no clear path. No process to follow.
I ran east along the line.
An elf rose three paces ahead and thrust both hands toward me. Pale blue light condensed between his palms.
I fired.
The rail-pistol clicked.
Empty.
The elf's expression changed.
I threw the sword.
The blade struck him across the mouth. His spell discharged upward, carving a blue line through the clouds. I crossed the distance before he recovered, ripped the sword free, and opened him from hip to opposite shoulder.
My left hand found the ammunition pouch.
The breech snapped open. Three copper balls dropped into the loading groove. I pressed the first forward, seated the others behind it, and closed the housing.
Henrik guarded my right side with a greatsword while I reloded.
"Loaded."
Henrik moved, and I moved with him.
The camp sat just below the trench. The magi-cars were already in it.
Dorn drove through the first shelter. Wood supports exploded beneath the armored prow. The roof collapsed over the vehicle and slid off behind it in a tangle of pale branches and woven fabric.
Elves ran from the surrounding quarters.
Some wore partial armor. Most did not. Another had both arms full of folded cloth until Britta's car crushed through the rack beside him.
The drivers abandoned the vehicles near the western installations and along with the knights hit the camp from three directions.
Fire caught among the shelters.
Smoke rolled low across the ground as the Knights overturned supply racks and put copper balls through anyone who tried to stop them.
The towers were harder to burn. Their living surfaces resisted flame until Henrik split one support at its base. The tower leaned. Three Knights threw their weight into the fractured side.
It came down across the camp.
The platform struck a storehouse roof and crushed it flat.
For ten minutes, the elves failed to form a coherent response.
Wendt's volunteers crossed the seized trench behind us.
The first soldiers came over carrying shovels and timber instead of swords. They ignored the bodies. Ignored the spells passing overhead. Teams of four stripped braces from the destroyed observation posts while others dragged sandbags into the breach.
Thom came behind them.
"Kaspar!" he shouted.
I climbed the reverse slope and pointed toward the eastern side of the captured camp.
The rise narrowed there before dropping into a shallow depression. One flank overlooked the old trench. The other faced the open ground from which any elven counterattack would have to come.
"There!" I shouted. "Dig into the east face! Use the tower wreckage for overhead cover. Copper plates along the front!"
Thom followed my arm.
"First team, mark the trench! Second and third, move the timber! Everyone else, sandbags forward!"
The soldiers ran.
Shovels bit into the shaped earth. Picks broke the hardened surface. Timber came forward from the wrecked positions. Copper plates were dragged from the abandoned magi-cars and leaned against the growing earthworks.
We had seized the ridge.
Now we had to survive long enough to make that fact permanent.
The ground trembled.
At first, I thought an underground formation had activated. Then a second pulse passed through the ridge, stronger than the first. Dirt shook from the roots of the fallen observation tower.
The fighting changed.
Elves who had been retreating stopped.
Some turned east.
Others dropped behind the trench wall as though they knew what was coming.
"Cover!" I shouted.
The Knights spread. Wendt's soldiers threw themselves into the shallow earthworks.
I climbed onto the crushed prow of Dorn's magi-car and looked east through the smoke.
A group of elves advanced along the packed path behind the trench. Officers and direct-casters moved around a single figure at their center.
He looked young.
Raven-black hair framed a smooth face. His campaign coat was fastened with dull silver clasps, clean except for mud at the boots. He walked without haste, studying our position.
Mana gathered over his right hand.
Fire twisted inward from the air, compressing instead of spreading. The sphere grew from fist-sized to the width of his shoulders. Then larger.
Heat struck me across the distance.
The ground around the elf blackened.
Behind me, someone whispered, "God."
The black-haired elf lifted the enormous ball of fire above his head.
And looked directly at me.