Oathbreaker, Book 1: The Knight's Tale - Colin McComb

I will not recount here the full particulars of what happened next. Let us say that the
Siullans had lured us into precisely the kind of ambush to which our massive armies were so
vulnerable. They had laced the ground in the hills surrounding the Gaurin Plains with a network
of caverns and tunnels over the years in preparation for an eventuality such as this. Explosive
charges awaited detonation under our feet, with iron bulwarks between blast areas to protect the
men and women lurking in wait for the signal to attack from below. It was deadly in its ingenuity
and astonishing in its foresight.
The Siullans struck at night. I suspect their first move was to send an assassin to climb
the lines into one of our heavy dirigibles. The sudden fiery crash of the airship into the heart of
our army was the signal for the detonation of the explosives in the caves, and that detonation was
the signal for the ten thousand in the caves to rise up and murder us in the tents where we plotted
the next day’s action. Our guards were wary, but many of them were taken completely by
surprise. The screaming slaughter was the final signal for their army to rush the lines of the Third
Army. It seemed they had no intention of survival. They wanted us to suffer as much as possible
before their republic went the way of all who opposed our Empire.
The dirigible crash was frighteningly close to Hawkins’s tent, close enough that the great
flaming struts of the flying machine set the tents afire with their shrapnel, close enough that the
shock waves knocked the supports out from under the pavilions. Those inside the tents of the staff
were trapped under the material, and many of them roasted or suffocated in the choking smoke
within the canvas folds. I had had enough presence of mind to equip myself with a wrist knife,
which I carried and still carry at all times, and it saved my life.
When I had cut a hole through the canvas, I looked upon a scene from the first of Hell’s
blasted plains. Twisted, blackened struts skewed at crazy angles. A rolling, roaring landscape of
fire and smoke lit the air from all sides, and shadows cast from the flames cut like knives through
the soot and ash that billowed from the ground. Screams rose from the tents all around me as the
canvas took fire and turned the tents’ interiors into ovens, waxy fat running liquid from the seams
of the blazes. Figures silhouetted against the light raised dripping swords and plunged them into
their victims with unimaginable ferocity, howling their vengeance upon us.
I dug my sword from the smoldering canvas and sought to save the people I could save.
Those in the midst of flames were clearly too far gone. I sought first those who were still
struggling in the fallen tents that were near combustion, and those whose tents were flickering
with the beginnings of inferno. Around me, other quick-thinking soldiers did the same. I must
have saved a good twenty of the staff, junior officers and attachés, before I came on Hawkins’s
Colin McComb Oathbreaker, Book 1: The Knight's Tale
13