From either side of her came the blast of close-up musketry, and smoke billowed all around. Only twenty yards separated the two sides, and at that distance the fire was murderous. There weren’t enough windows for more than a dozen of the enemy to fire, against several hundred of the Girls’ Own, but they had the advantage of better cover and a safe place to load.

Beside Winter, a stout older woman—one of the Docks people, she vaguely remembered—crawled the last few feet to the fence, musket in her hands. She pushed herself up onto one knee, shouldered the weapon, and aimed, but a Deslandai musket cracked and the woman spun away, clutching a bloody, shattered hand. Winter snatched up her musket and put it to her own shoulder, sighting on a yellow-orange shape. The weapon delivered its well-remembered kick to her shoulder, and she had the satisfaction of seeing the Deslandai drop out of sight with a scream.

More Girls’ Own soldiers were reaching the fence, putting out a steady fire that made the Deslandai reluctant to risk standing at the windows. Glancing over her shoulder, Winter could see bodies sprawled along the path they’d taken, but only a few. Their position was not one that could be maintained for long, though, not with Deslandai reinforcements on the way.

Now, Jane. Smoke was boiling along the fence, filling the space under the apple tree. Now, now, now.

Hoarse shouting rose from the other side of the farmhouse, and Winter caught both men’s and women’s voices raised in battle cries. The sound of firing from that direction suddenly intensified.

“Hold fire unless you’ve got a clear shot!” Winter shouted to her own men. “Abby, your squad, with me! Over the fence!”

Abby gestured, and two dozen women, bayonets already fixed to their muskets, surged to their feet and clambered over the waist-high barrier. Balls zipped around them, thok-thok-thoking in the dry earth. A tall, gangly young woman took one high in the chest and flopped forward over the fence, hanging across it like a sheet set out for drying as her blood gushed across the whitewash. The women who’d remained behind fired at every sight of yellow-orange, and the wood around the windows of the house was rapidly being torn to splinters by misses and ricochets.

Having cleared the fence, Winter led Abby’s squad at a dead run across the open ground under the tree, smoke parting around them like a wake. There was a side door in the center of the farmhouse wall, and she aimed for that, throwing herself flat against the plaster wall. Abby was right behind her, along with another redheaded girl Winter didn’t know who wore sergeant’s pips. The others spread out along the wall, out of sight of the windows.