The Price of Valor by Django Wexler

rounds already. “I’ve tried to be even-handed.”
    â€œSome details
do
seem to fall inordinately on my men,” Sevran said, then hastily added, “Not that it isn’t your right to assign duties as you like, of course. But it isn’t helping morale.”
    â€œI’m not sure what you mean.”
    â€œLatrine duty, for example.” Sevran spoke with the air of someone inching across a crumbling bridge. Winter wondered if he thought she was testing him. “My men have been assigned to digging the latrine ditches for the last three camps. Cleaning the horse lines, too.”
    â€œLieutenant Cytomandiclea draws up those orders,” Winter said, frowning. “I’ll speak with her. That does seem unfair.”
    â€œThank you, sir,” Sevran said. “That will help a great deal.”
    â€œI’d also like to try some joint drill between the battalions tomorrow morning,” Winter said. “I have some tactical ideas that will need some practice. Can you pick your best company and bring them out to meet me?”
    â€œOf course, sir. I think that’s an excellent idea.”
    â€œGood. Then I’ll see you in the morning, Captain.”
    Winter accepted his salute with a nod and ducked out of the tent.
That wasn’t so hard.
Sevran looked as though he was willing to work with her, and he could help her keep the lieutenants in line. As long as the rankers didn’t cause trouble, a few blue-blooded officers weren’t much of a concern.
This might actually work.
    *   *   *
    This,
Winter thought,
is never going to work.
    Weak sunlight shone down through a layer of clouds on the square of packed, furrowed earth designated as a drill field.
    â€œAll right,” she said. “Let’s try again.”
    â€œClose
up
!” Folsom bellowed. Winter had borrowed the leather-lunged lieutenant for his volume. “Skirmish line,
forward
! Main line,
loading drill
!”
    One company of the Royals was drawn up in a three-deep line, about forty yards from end to end. At Folsom’s command, echoed by Lieutenant sur Gothin and his two sergeants, the men began going through the manual of arms, lowering their muskets from their shoulder to the ground, opening an imaginary cartridge, and sliding the ramrod in and out of the barrel. When they’d brought their weapons back to the ready position, sur Gothin shouted, “Fire!” and a hundred empty locks clicked closed. Then they began the pantomime again.
    In the meantime, a company from the Girls’ Own, led by Abby Giforte, was going through a very different drill. They’d spread out in pairs, each ten yards or more from the next, raggedly spaced and a hundred yards up from where the Royals had formed their tight formation. There they pretended to fire by turns, one woman loading—much easier outside the shoulder-to-shoulder press of the line—while the other aimed, pulled the trigger, then switched off.
    So far, so good.
The loose skirmish line that Janus had improvised at the Battle of Midvale had confounded the regulars by depriving them of a solid target, and in the weeks since Winter and the other commanders had expanded the idea into a workable set of tactics. The problem was that while their loose formation protected them from massed infantry volleys and artillery, the skirmishers couldnever stand up to a determined bayonet charge, and without any way to form square they were vulnerable to being ridden down by enemy cavalry.
    That was, in theory, where the Royals came in. Winter’s hope was that the two halves of her regiment might complement each other; the Girls’ Own could disperse to fight in its own style, and fall back behind the solid wall of the regulars’ line when danger pressed too close. It was this second part, the falling back, that had proven to be the problem.
    â€œGo ahead,” Winter said to Folsom.
    â€œSkirmish line,
fall