First six pages of the second part of Unicorn Dragoons, written from the perspective of the vampire Mildgyd as our intrepid team of unicorn cavalry escort her to an important meeting with a local duke. 

First draft unedited. 

Part 2: In The Tower's Shadow. 

Mildgyd was the vampire chosen to accompany them. There were five vampires riding with the whole formation, but of them all she was the one with the most experience moving in such social situations. A scion of the Von Crowley line her normal haunt was in the countryside around the great city of York where a great host of King's Thanes kept the Fyrd raised and ready to hold back any Scottish incursions into English soil. Of course with so many armed men led under the command of noble families always jockeying for power there was a great deal of court intrigue that every vampire both couldn't avoid getting involved and yet could also not let themselves be drawn in too deep lest the suddenly find themselves a part of a rebellion or some other kind of open warfare against those that should be their allies. Used to all that, convincing one Duke to stay home and continue to enjoy himself shouldn't be too difficult. Honestly the most difficult part of this mission was probably going to be living long enough to reach the Duke while traveling in the midst of suspicious and hostile unicorns. 

Mildgyd hadn't been eager to join the company on their mission. Not entirely anyway. Like all vampires she loved humans and looked forward to any chance to draw near to a group of them. The attraction was built into the runes carved in her flesh, to find the scent of human blood to be an exciting and precious thing rather than hungering for it as so many other creatures do. Such a fundamental longing left her in two minds about any long term mission. On the one hand it was a chance to know and befriend a new group of men, on the other it meant leaving her usual guard with whom she was highly familiar already. She was needed though, the best suited for a mission that had to be undertaken, so she would do her best. 

"You don't have to cling so tightly to my mane." Deagscield said from beneath her. His voice was a deep and powerful one, but his words had a clipped almost annoyed tone to them. "I am not going to drop you so you can stand up straight."

"Sorry," she apologized, "I know you wouldn't let anything happen to me, but we are going so fast it's disconcerting."

"You call this fast?" The unicorn scoffed which was unbelievable they must've crossed some twenty miles in the last hour at least, a journey a normal horse might have made in half a day if it had pushed itself hard, and the unicorns showed no sign of fatigue despite the ground eating pace. 

"As fast as I've ridden on the ground in my life." Mildgyd answered honestly. "I feel as if the wind will yank me out of the saddle any moment."

"None of the others has such a fear," Deagscield pointed out and indeed the other riders were all completely unaffected by the rushing winds around them. They stood up straight on their mounts, and didn't bother with using any hand holds at all. Several of them were checking or cleaning their weapons, one or two others were reading. All were conversing freely with each other, turning from side to side, sometimes even completely around in their saddles to face the man they were addressing. The men were completely at ease with the speed they moved at and had total confidence in their mounts to carry them safely. Easy for them to feel so, the unicorns actually cared about their welfare. 

"You said this was the fastest you've gone on the ground? Have you gone sky riding before?"  Deagscield continued curiously. 

"I was carried by a griffin once or twice." Mildgyd explained. "The Earl of North Yorkshire has on occasion demanded my family move about the shire with him at considerable speed."

"So you’re more used to airiel speeds then?” Deagscield asked rather mecheviously. 

“I didn’t say that!” Mildgyd panicked, “I didn’t say that at all! I only rode a griffin twice at most and it scared me nearly half to death and-”

“Sergeant!” Deagscield called back to the formation ignoring his passenger’s mounting protests. “The good lady says she doesn’t mind if we go a bit faster, she’s taken rides with the sky core before so she knows what it’s like to really move.”

“Ah excellent!” Sergeant Holt answered as Mildgyd froze as she realized just what was about to happen. “I was hoping we could pick up the pace a bit. We’re still close enough to the battle for rumor to have overtaken us and I would like to get out of that range as quickly as possible. We’ll keep to a standard pace. Thirty on at fast, fifteen off, fifteen on but slow.”

As he spoke, Holt broke off his conversation with his corporal and turned back to face in the same direction as his unicorn. He locked his boots in his stirrups and stood up slightly while arching his back forward. Unicorns did not wear bridals, they rode where they wanted to and preferred to have full use of their mouths and teeth as they did. Instead their saddles ran further up their backs and had an additional series of straps about the base of their necks, this supported a pair of heavy and stiff leather loops which could be grasped tightly for added stability when a unicorn really got moving. Hold grabbed both of those loops in front of him after he had made sure that all the rest of his gear was tightly packed down. 

The other riders were doing much the same. The unicorns had slowed while these preparations were made, but now had an air of excitement about themselves. They all but danced as they trotted on, eager to fully let loose and run to their heart’s content. Corporal Leofflad rode over to Mildgyd side and set a series of straps around her legs that would hold her to her stirrups. 

“Lean forward mam if you would.” Leofflad instructed. “Our men know how to manage the wind currents as they run, but it can be a bit overwhelming for first timers. If you would grab hold of these loops in front of you. Not those deary, the ones all the way in the front. Yes now just lay down close to Deagscield’s neck and should all be good. Deagscield if you feel her slipping, you let us know at once so we can tie her down safely.”

“Of course mam.” Deagscield agreed. Mildgyd was still a bit too stunned at what was going on to say anything herself, so she was soon lying all but flat on the unicorn’s back and feeling a growing sense of dread in her gut. 

“Um…” She finally managed. “What exactly are we going to do? Aren’t we already going fast enough.”

“Oh this has been a good pace for us so far.” Deagscield explained. “But it’s hardly the fastest we can go, and the Colonel said he wanted to get you to that tower as fast as we can. So we’re going to gallop for a while, then walk for a bit afterwards to cool off, then trot along a bit further to stretch back out and then go for another gallop and repeat.”

“Ah!” Mildgyd exclaimed somewhat calmed. “I am familiar with that tactic, we often do so with the rest of the cavalry. One mile at full speed, one at a walk, one at half speed. It’s the best way to cover ground quickly and safely.”

“Yes that is how regular horses do it.” The unicorn scoffed. “They’re such strange animals. I don’t get how they can be satisfied with running for such short periods. We unicorns measure the pace by time rather than distance.”

“Time?” Mildgyd asked, growing apprehensive again. 

“Yes you heard the Sergeant.” Deagscield explained simply. “We’ll start with a thirty minute gallop, then a fifteen minute walk and so on. This road looks well maintained so we should be able to cover about forty miles in the next hour.”

“I’m sorry wh-” But Mildgyd was interrupted. 

“The Team will advance at full pace!” Regnaldor called out from ahead of them, and with Holt nodding in confirmation, the team took off. 

Their trott became a run, became a gallop, and finally became very nearly a flight. The ride itself was surprisingly smooth, since the unicorns spent most of their time leaping over the ground in absurdly long strides, touching the ground only long enough to spring forward again. The men riding them rose and fell rhythmically, stretching their bodies out to catch and cut the wind as unicorns reached the zenith of their jumps. They created a kind of downforce that helped the unicorns come back to the ground faster and not waste too much speed to wind resistance. The men fell back down again as their mounts hit the ground and so absorbed what shock there was. 

Of course Mildgyd had neither the practice nor inclination to match such movements. She clung desperately to Deagscield’s neck and the ground raced past her. Deagscield’s pace suffered somewhat from this as he spent more time airborne than the others did, but three unicorns had formed up in front of him and were matching him stride for side, cutting through the wind for him and pulling him along in their backdraft. So he still managed to keep pace with the rest of his fellows. 

And what a pace they kept. In what seemed like no time at all Mildgyd saw a mile marker rush past. Perhaps a minute and a half later she saw a second go by, then a third not long after. The group had crossed three miles in less than five minutes. The speed was frankly absurd for anything walking on the ground on the power of its own legs. Even more absurd she knew because each unicorn carried a full grown man or a woman who had pressed herself to get into fighting shape, along with their equipment and perhaps two days of supplies. Most absurd of all, they were going this fast while carrying her. 

She had known unicorns were fast, she had even known how they were so fast, but to actually move at such speed was another thing altogether. She could feel the mana crackle in the air around her. As creatures irrationally aligned with the elements of Weight and Decay, a unicorn’s soul was formed with certain bound spellcrafts, abilities that they could activate or suppress at will. When a unicorn wished it could weigh almost nothing, and that weight would return at will as well. Light as feathers when they pushed off the ground, yet somehow still dragging themselves forward with all the friction offered by their three quarters of a ton of mass. At the same time mana rejuvenated their strength and ensured they lost almost no stamina as they ran at their full speed. So quickly engaging and disengaging magick even for such simple spells would’ve taxed even an Elven archmagister to their very limits, but for naturally magical creatures like unicorns it was almost all instinct, done as easily as breathing. It was wondrous to behold, it was terrifying to be carried by it. 

Mildgyd stopped looking for mile markers not long after the fourth swept by even faster than the third had. She could hardly stand the sight of the world around her rushing by so quickly. She looked forward instead and that was even worse somehow. The road they rode over was well maintained like all works in the empire. It was flat for the most part, well built up, free of debris, and fairly straight. But it was made for ponderously marching armies, lazy farmer carts and great merchant trains. Not for a team of unicorns all but flying over it at breakneck speed.  

That was not a turn of phrase she appreciated in retrospect. There were ruts cut into the road by centuries of wagon traffic. There were dips where larger stones had come free, and bumps where they had come up. They were not large obstacles, but they were impossible to see until a unicorn was almost right on top of one. So when she looked forward she would see a small flaw in the road, no harm to any normal traffic but more than capable of bringing unicorn and rider to a disastrous end if hit the wrong way, appear just a moment before they would be right under foot of a rushing rider. Then the unicorn would jerk to the side in a move that should’ve sent it thundering to the ground, or somehow manage to lengthen the amount of time it spent airborne to jump right over it and then continue on as if nothing had happened at all. 

Her heart froze as she watched Llywelyn and Scuralet clear such an obstacle, a set of multiple wheel ruts where a farmer’s wagon had joined the main roadway for several generations. A half dozen ruts were cut in the ground, any one of which was just large enough to catch Scuralet’s hoof for just long enough to throw off his gait and trip him. Scuralet somehow managed to land with his legs stradling either side of the ruts. His hoofs touched the ground for less than an instant before he was springing through the air again, while Llywelyn smiled and laughed enjoying the reckless speed of the mad dash. 

Mildgyd couldn’t take the sight any longer. The speed was too great, the risk to grand. Any of a hundred things could go wrong and bring man and beast to ruin far beyond her powers to fix even if she could bring the men at least back as revenants. That wasn’t alway guaranteed, if the body was mangled enough, particularly if the skull was split and the brains within reduced to pulp than trying to make the corpse into a revenant would likely kill her or close to it, and no soul would ever be convinced to return to such a ruined form. And even still men lived their lives, so precious and brief with such reckless abandon. For little more than the joy of speed, and the freedom of the open road, these men threw themselves on the mercy of chance and the skill of creatures that not more than six hundred years earlier, would’ve gleefully devoured them all and glutted themselves on their blood. So she ducked her head down and closed her eyes tight so that she would not have to see them press on in joy and danger. 

She did not know how much time had passed when disaster struck. Yet it was not any unicorn that came to harm from the dangers of the road or ill chance, but herself that was suddenly under threat due to her own negligence. Her hat had come loose, as had her face wrappings. This would inevitably happen during any long horse ride as the rhythmic gait of any beast would slowly work such clothing free of its binds. Normally she would’ve adjusted it to put it back in place by now, but since she was trying her best to ignore the world around her, she had not noticed it grow slack and had not thought to check it as she would’ve normally. So all at once it all went wrong. Her hat was caught by the wind and pulled from her head, with it went her head wraps, so that now her naked flesh was exposed to the sunlight that poured down on them all from the clear open sky. 

The sun was the center of Existence and Decay in the world.  It was the magical source of life and the driving force of change and entropy. Its light therefore was a kind of magical awareness that flooded the world and forced things to hold to the fundamental principles it represented. And her existence spat in the face of all that the sun represented. She was human, and she was not. She should be dead, but she was not. She was a creature manufactured by Uncertainty and the driving will of humanity to rise above the endarkened and rebel even against their demonic masters. The light hated her for what she was, and now it had found her. The all pervading presence of the sun, untainted by reflection, glass or shadow struck her full in the face so that Existence itself now strove against the Uncertainty of her being. Her body was paralyzed as the world struggled to decide if she was dead or not, and her skin felt like it was burning under the sun’s touch. She couldn’t even scream, and she had about two or three minutes or so before the magick that sustained her broke apart and tore her in half. 

“Something’s wrong!” Deagscield cried out in a piercing voice that cut through the roar of the passing wind, as he felt his passenger go even more rigid on his back, he couldn’t look back though, not at the speed he was running at. And slowing down from this speed without falling in a tangled mass of limbs took time he might not have. 

“Her face is exposed!” A rider called out at the top of his lungs, but Mildgyd could only barely hear him. In a moment an arm wrapped around her head, and yanked it away from Deagscield’s neck and into the cold, hard surface of a soldier’s cuirass. Somone had ridden over next to Deagscield, leaned across the gap between two unicorns that could only come so close together without risking tripping the other up, and grabbed her head to shield her from the sunlight. A second arm joined the first and then she was free.  

The soldier had managed to block enough of the direct sunlight from reaching her that she was able to act. Chanting the principles of Lost Places, Zeno’s Paradoxes of motion, and the math equations that proved that the sum of all positive integers was negative one twelfth. The energy of Uncertainty filled her as mana was diverted by her soul to split time itself in two. She was alive, and she was not. She was a monster, and she was human. She was, or she might not be, but it was not the sun choice to make her one or the other. 

Her muscles untensed. The paralysis faded. She grabbed a spare heavy cloth from within her dress and quickly began to wrap it around her face and head. The arms that shielded her moved only slightly to let slip the linen beneath them. She blinded herself in the process, but she was now safe from the sun’s touch once more. And fortunately enough, Deagscield was finally slowing down as well. 

“What happened?” Holt demanded, it still sounded like he was at the head of the team, he was alarmed, yet also frustrated.

“Are you alright mam?” Leofladd asked, she sounded much closer and there was genuine concern in her voice. 

“Her head scarf and hat came off.” Llywelyn answered, by God he sounded like he was right over top of her. Was he the one who had grabbed her head to save her? Had she just had her head shoved into his chest protectively?! She hoped this panic was still mostly from her near death experience. “She took the sun directly to the face, but I don’t think for very long though.”

AN: first six pages of a light novel I’m working on, alternative historical fiction where a variety of magical races coexist with humanity. Story follows a soldier fighting for England as part of a division of Unicorn Dragoons.

First draft unedited

Part 1: To take a Crossroad. 

“Wheel and Fire!” Captain Ethelred called as the calvary closed in on the coronelias. At his order the cavalry turned sharply away from the wall of pikes arrayed before them and rode in an arc slowly away from the formation. As the horsemen turned they lowered their arquebuses and fired into the dense ranks of men. Each man on the edge of the formation fired his shot, then turned back in toward the center of the formation allowing another man to skirt out to the front and take his shot. 

Llywelyn was second in his squad to take his shot near the apex of the arc.  Holding his gun at a slight angle to ensure sparks from the pan fell into the barrel, he felt the quick rattle of his wheellock turning against the pyrite. One moment the powder in the pan flashed as it ignited, the next the gun thundered and rocked back against him. The ball flew faster than human eyes could follow and took a pikeman in the throat dropping him dead. 

As he rode back away from formation, he set the but of his gun in a holster at his side and set to loading the gun. First a quick sweep of his ramrod to crush any sparks still in the gun. Second he poured a measure of black powder down the barrel. Third, a wad of cloth to hold the powder in place. Fourth he set the bullet down the barrel of the gun and pushed it back tightly into place with a few tamps of his ramrod. This left the black powder packed tightly at the very back of the gun where sparks from the pan could ignite it. Meanwhile the wad of cloth was jammed up around the ball of the shot itself, keeping the whole concoction exactly where it was meant to be, so long as he didn’t shake the gun vigorously against the ground or anything idiotic like that. 

“How much longer are we going to keep cutting at these fools like this?” An impatient voice called out from just beneath him. 

“Those pikes are still much too thick to have at them yet.” Llywelyn responded as he came back around to the front of the formation. He still wasn’t ready to shoot yet which was annoying, but not unexpected. Two more members of his team took their shots on this pass, next it would be his turn again. “I wouldn’t want to see your pretty hide stained red quite yet.”

To complete his preparations he took the gun out of catch at his side and held it closer to his chest. He pulled back the lock’s dog, which held the pyrite in place for the spark to catch, and locked it away from the wheel so it could be rewound. Pulling a small spanner from his chest pocket he turned the wheel’s spring until it was wound tight one more. Then finally he poured just a bit of powder into the pan and put the dog back into its spot. His gun was now ready to fire again. About forty seconds had passed since his first shot, and since he was quite yet back to the front, he took the time to refill the measure he had used to load the gun with fresh powder from his horn. 

While he had been busy loading his team had been slowly cycling their positions around as each man took his turn to fire. Now once more he was second from the front. Next to him, a fellow soldier: Gareth took his shot almost as soon as he came around to face the enemy. He then slipped back, and once again Llywelyn rode at the edge of the formation. He raised his gun, turned it at an angle, waited for a moment when he was almost completely airborne as his steed raced forward at quick gallop, then fired again. This shot hit a pikeman in his cuirass but the heavy bullet punched through the armor. The man was still standing when he was swept out of Llywelyn’s sight, but with a clean shot to the chest, he would not stand for long. 

“Musketeers are coming forward.” The voice beneath him noted. 

“I see them.” Llywelyn affirmed as he pulled back deeper into the formation, letting another man from his team take their shot. 

“But they’re not coming out of the pike wall!” The voice added in growing frustration. 

“Formation pull back!” Captain Ethelred ordered, and the cavalry followed his lead, breaking off almost at once. A few last shots called out as those with the last clear sight of the enemy emptied their guns, a few more shots came from the Arquebusers amongst the coronelias chasing after them, but the cavalry were already out of their limited range. 

The Guals called after them angrily, daring the horsemen to at last try their luck in a charge. Llywelyn just smiled to himself at their growing frustration. The great combined arms formations, uniting the staying power of heavy pikes with the killing power of gun lines, were designed to stop the determined knight charges that had dominated the battlefield for almost the last thousand years. But they weren’t up against heavy armored, clumsy knights. Here they faced light and nimble dragoons designed to skirmish and raid such massive formations and slowly grind them down. Even then, the pike squares normally had a fair chance to hold off such assaults, as most dragoons lacked the firepower to break their armor as they had to make due with just pistols. For most dragoons the difficulty of managing their mounts, keeping an eye on the enemy, keeping up with their own formation and loading the guns was simply too much to reasonably expect a soldier to do. So instead of carrying one heavy gun and reloading as they rode, they carried a few smaller pistols which they prepared to fire long before closing on the enemy. Most dragoons don’t ride mounts that can think for themselves though. 

One of the many advantages that made unicorn cavalry the undisputed masters of mounted warfare. 

Oh sure centaurs could also carry muskets into battle and inflict not inconsiderable casualties on a formation like this. But against them the great ten company Tercios and these smaller three company coronelias could put their musketeers out in front of their pikes and match volleys with the centaurs and still have confidence that if the centaurs charged they could pull back behind the pikes in time to be safe. Unicorns offered no such hope. 

The formation came to halt well outside of the range of the infantries guns and rested a moment. The unicorns pranced back and forth in place still full of restless energy. The smell of blood was in the air and their predatory instincts told them the pounce for the kill. But it was still much too soon yet. Their riders spoke reassuring calming words into their ears while stroking their mains or rubbing their sides. 

“Just another pass or two and they’ll be ready to break.” Llywelyn said to his mount Scuralet after he had mastered himself. 

“We should’ve been done by now.” Scuralet noted with a shake of his head. “The captain is being too cautious, we could’ve easily made another pass or two just then. The rest of the band is counting on us to clear the cross roads for them. The longer we wait the closer they come and the less we will seem like bandits to these Gauls, my brother-husband.” 

“It has not been so long as you think,” Llywelyn stated plainly. “Not a man in that formation will see the rest of the band pass this way. And bandits wouldn’t be willing to take the same risks as trained fighting men.”

“I hardly think bandits would try their luck against a full thousand soldiers either.” Scuralet objected. 

“Sure they would.” Llywelyn joked. “There’s good loot to be found on soldiers. Weapons, armor, supplies and the soldier’s pay, all prime targets for enterprising reavers. Why it's a wonder more armies don’t get held up everywhere they go.”

“Probably all the spears and guns put more sensible people off.” Scuralet concluded. 

Llywelyn scoffed at the notion, and began to reload his arquebus. The pikemen pulled back their dead and reformed their ranks. Some of the musketeers had pushed up near the front, but their commanders were urging them back out of the pikes way. It seems the enemy colonel was still willing to try and just wait them out. Not that he had many options at this point. 

Earlier in the fight he had tried to send out more men to skirmish with them, it had not gone well. A few teams had taken it in turns to ride forward a bit and take shots into the musketeers. With men moving at speed a few scattered shots had little hope of hitting any of the riders. They would’ve needed a full volley to have any real chance at getting some kills. While the rest of the formation held back just out of range, one team had finally succeeded in baiting out a full round of shots. 

Although shaped like horses, unicorns in truth share many qualities with large predatory cats, more flexible forearms, more spring like muscles around the back legs, and retractable claws behind the hoofs that can dig into the soft ground for simply incredible traction. When the order to fire came out, the team drawing their fire had dug their heels in and sprung backwards in a maneuver that would’ve broken a horse’s legs, which had quite effectively dodged the hail of bullets that had been tracking their movements. At the same time the rest of the formation went from a near total standstill to dead gallop in less than two full strides. The musketeers barely had time to drop their guns and draw swords, much less load and fire another round. The pikes managed to rush forward in time to keep their men from being more than badly mauled, but the musketeers hadn’t been willing to try skirmishing since. 

All the enemy colonel could truly hope to do now was bear it out and hold his ground. It was not the worst strategy. Every man that fell filled the air with the smell of blood, so the longer the fight went on the more likely a unicorn would give into their own blood lust and try to rush the pikes. Plus the pikemen were fairly well armored and could endure a hit or two, so his formation couldn’t be broken with just guns alone as he certainly had more pikes than the horsemen had bullets to kill them. If he gave no sense of faltering and giving in, then certainly a formation of brigands, even one desperate enough to attack soldiers, would give in and retreat. 

“Patricians to me!” Captain Ethelred called gathering the largest unicorns to his sides, with them came the formation’s officers. They held a brief conference with the Captain gesturing at the enemy, his hands rushing out and then splitting away to either side. Llywellyn guessed that a change in strategy would be shortly coming. He finished loading his arquebus, refilled his gunpowder measures, judged his powder horn to still be more than half full, counted the number of bullets he still had and finally eased his heavy saber from its scabbard. No sooner had he finished than his team’s sergeant and corporal came back to them, while their sister team closed in to hear them as well. 

“We’re going to have a go at running around the pike square.” Sergeant Holt, a hulking man with blazing red hair and sunburnt cheeks, told them while the two large patrician unicorns nuzzled over the team’s mounts, checking them for injuries and quietly asking after their riders. 

“We’ll come at the enemy head on then split into two groups.” Corporal Leofflad, a somewhat heavy set woman with her golden hair tied up underneath her helmet continued. “Our team will swing off to the left and circle round, while the sergeant takes his team around to the right. Take your shots at a measured pace, no more than two shots into each side. Hold your guns at the ready once reloaded and wait for your unicorn to find a chance to take you to the front to make another shot.”

“Keep your dust cloths up over your face men, it’s going to get pretty messy out there with all of us running around out there.” Regnaldor said in a somewhat feminen voice from beneath the sergeant. 

“And if any of you young bucks managed to run into anyone else out there and get yourselves trampled to death then I will have some very harsh words for you all when we are done today.”  Gicelbyrue a far more aggressive voice threatened from beneath the corporal. “And if any of you should somehow manage to drop one of my men out there, you had best just go ahead and throw yourselves on the pikes, because what I will do to you will be far, far worse.” 

The rest of the unicorns straightened up at this admonishment and made firm denials that they would let anything of the sort happen to their brother-husbands and sister-wives. Both patricians, mare and stallion more than two hands taller than any of the other unicorns in the two teams, gave their teams another look over. Their firm stares soon bled over to ones of pride and affection. Gicelbyrue even nipped playfully at the ear of one mare when she stepped forward a bit to make her protests all the more forceful. She whickered at him and fell back. Regnaldor pranced around Llywelyn’s team a bit before pushing herself against Scuralet’s side and nuzzling his head, laying her neck overtop of his in a kind of hug determined to match and one up Gicelbyrue’s display of affection. 

The riders patted their mounts necks and assured them they had every confidence that the unicorns would carry them through the fight. Llywelyn came to attention and saluted his sergeant while rolling his eyes as the patrician made her affection well known. The sergeant scoffed and turned in the saddle, squeezing his legs as he did to urge the larger unicorn back away from Scuralet, who for his part almost followed after her evidently enjoying the attention. Llywelyn like wise nudged his mount back to his place who quickly ducked his head in embarrassment which the whole team enjoyed a brief laugh over. 

Shortly thereafter the Captain began to lead his team forward with his first lieutenant and her team right behind him. The whole formation quickly fell into line, patricians on the outside with their teams riding in ranks towards the center. For a while they advanced at no more than a trot, much to the annoyance of many unicorns who longed to lunge out ahead and join the fight, but none dared outpace their patrician at their sides or the captain out in front. Sixty yards from the enemy, their pace accelerated suddenly and the front ranks began pouring fire into the center of the enemy pike wall once they had closed to forty. 

Billows of thick smoke blocked all sight of the enemy for a time. Each team took another stride closer to the enemy to see clearly before they took their shots and turned suddenly to one side or the other. Before long Llywelyn found himself charging through those acrid clouds and came to face the enemy less than twenty yards away now. The sight caused his heart to skip a beat for an instant. 

As the unicorn blessing ran out to either side of the pike wall, the defenders watched them rush past out of the smoke at thunderous speeds. Without even thinking more than a few had turned their pikes ever so slightly to one side as they followed horsemen rushing around them. Usually such small movements would not count for much, but with rank after rank pouring fire into the center of the pike wall, the formation had thinned considerably and suddenly there were not enough pikes before them to hold back a determined charge, and the pikes to the side were out of place to cover the gap. 

It was the narrowest of gaps. Completely useless to any normal cavalry attack, the moment a horse ran forward rather than to the side, the pikes would close and only death would await them. But they rode no normal horses. 

The sergeant and the corporal had spotted it as well, rather than peeling off to the side they sprang forward in a great leap. Scuralet was right behind them, and the rest of the team scarcely a stride behind. Llywelyn took a wild shot, more concerned with not hitting his team’s patricians than aiming at a single target, he still managed to hit a foe though. Immediately he took the gun in one hand, holding the heavy stock forward, while he drew his saber with his other. 

The pikes started to swing back, but the fifteen foot long heavy spears could never turn quickly even in the best of times. And not every pike turned, many of the enemy men were still mesmerized by the rest of the blessing thundering around them. Only a handful bared their way, where they should’ve been a near solid wall of wood and steel. Unicorn horns, heavy sabers and guns swung like clubs battered at the great spears to turn them aside as the patricians pushed forward. They got past the pike tips and now threw themselves to the side to keep the rest of the pikes from swinging back into place.

A narrow wedge had been driven into the spear wall, and Scuralet rushed through the clear way like a bolt of lightning. He leapt the last stride, and pounced on the soldier before him. His claws could find no purchase on the man’s armor, but almost two thousand pounds of rider, armor and unicorn coming down on the man all at once shattered his collarbone and crushed him to the ground. Llywelyn slashed with his saber at one man to his right, caught him in the throat with a mortal blow, while also swinging his gun wildly as a club smacking another man in the head. The pikemen around the three victims pushed forward as hard as they could trying to hold Scuralet back, using the dead and dazed bodies of their comrades as shields against further advance. Llywelyn thrust his saber into another man’s eye while Scuralet bit down on a hand raised to push him back. None of the pikemen could bring a real weapon to bear against either of them, but if they could hold for just a few seconds, other men to their sides would drop back and bring their pikes to this point in the line to drive the pair off. 

They would never get that chance though. While Llywelyn was still pulling back his saber for a third strike, the other members of his team and sister team crashed in behind him. Two more unicorns joined at his side, kicking, biting and clawing, while their riders fired point blank into the faces of the defenders, shooting two dead, burning the rest with the hot acrid smoke. The rest of the teams hit along a more broad front forcing more defenders to move their pikes away from the point of attack. The formation was stretched to its breaking point, and then the lead patricians of the next pair of teams came charging in with the greater mass and more deadly speed. The wall of men before them buckled, and then broke, a dozen men fell to the ground and were trampled over, the rest leapt back to avoid a similar fate. The great square had been breached.