Tale of The Broken Sword

Chapter One : On the Other World

3 years later.....

20th June, AD 1656

200 metres in front of the Cordia Line

It had been raining for so long that Sergeant Everent Clauvis Griswall had thought that the world had been condemned to be God's own toilet. Weeks ago, he had been dry and warm at one point in his life before the battle had even started. All he knew now was the cold slick of the everlasting rain and the horrors of the War.

As he walked across the sodden trench, he approached an intersection and glanced both ways along it. Every one of the soldiers stared up at him, their eyes devoid of anger or hope. Everent knew that curiosity showed only in the fact that they'd raised their heads at all.

"Heads up, men," he said as he trudged through the mud. "Put a smile onto it."

The soldiers went back to huddling under their gear, trying to preserve the tiny bits of warmth that would stave off the coldness of the rain. The water streamed down their faces before landing onto their coats as if they were little more than statues, waiting for the call of duty to defend this piece of land or worse, charge across it with nothing more than bayonets and sticky grenades.

The last of the ammunition came in mere hours ago, but it was lost during an ambush on the way towards the Line. Now that their purpose of firing a gun diminished with the loss of their own supply, the soldiers literally gave up hopes to win this battle, let along the War itself. The Empire had been cunning enough to send saboteurs deep into the country several years back. That was when the Aurelian Government suspected that nothing would've happened on the line considering that it was heavily guarded.

Then, it all happened. Nearly forty-percent of the Line was blasted to bits by the Empire's Engineer Corps and several high-ranking officers of the Council had been secretly assassinated or even defected to the other side. In short, the entire nation was caught off guard by its enemy. Even if the Cordia Line was heavily damaged, the Aurelian Shock Troopers was more or less the nation's saviour. They helped to push the Empire's Imperial Grenadiers back to the Line while supply lines are being established to help the soldiers in the front lines.

But without supplies, the whole army is just a dead weight.

Like right here, right now.

Finding a ladder of wet iron propped up against one wall, Everent climbed it and peeked out over the edge. Tracer fire zipped over his head as he peered out over the no-man's land that separated his Shock Troopers from their Empire foes.

Artillery fire flashed in a distance, silhouetting the battered edges of the horizon with a bright flash enough to burn through the rain and the fog. Gray smoke crawling with tendrils of a foul yellow drifted across the battlefield, curling around the miles of barbed wire and into the countless trenches that crisscrossed the muddy landscape.

Something would happen soon, Everent knew. The Empire's artillery would tire of trying to smoke them out of their holes and would come storming across the sodden battlefield to give it a shot by hand. The only question was when.

The sky flashed above Everent, then stayed lit. He looked up to watch a flare scudding beneath the clouds like a trapped sun hunting for its way out. Then, a blast of the Aurelian's G70 artillery guns snuffed it out like a match in a storm.

The sergeant heard the Empire's own big guns let loose of its nearly yard wide shells. He knew it took three men just to carry one of those loads, much less slamming into the breech of one of those enormous artillery guns. The fact that the Empire's Imperial Grenadiers could manage it so quickly spoke loudly of their dedication and training.