Archer greeted her with a salute, which she waved away. Two of his guns were pulling into positions, their teams dragging them in tight half circles to get the barrels pointed the right way and detaching them from their caissons. Cannoneers pushed the guns forward, clear of the ammunition-carrying wagons, and stood ready beside the pieces.

“Can you knock that thing to pieces?” Winter said, nodding at the barricade.

Archer looked at it and raised a contemptuous eyebrow. “With a popgun. Shall I get started?”

“Please. Where’s the rest of your battery?”

“Coming. It sounded like you were in a hurry, so we doubled the teams on these two.”

“Thank you,” Winter said. “You’ve got howitzers, don’t you?”

“A pair of nine-pounders. We won’t need them to blast through wagons, though.”

“There’s a battalion or so waiting in cover.” Winter pointed to the building she’d just come from. “Put somebody up there to direct your fire. You should have a good view. Try not to damage the buildings more than you have to.”

“Artillery isn’t always a precise science,” Archer said. “But I’ll do my best.”

*   *   *

The first shot through the barricade was carefully aimed, and the results were suitably spectacular. A big four-horse wagon that formed the base for a rickety tower of crates and barrels took the six-pound ball near the top of its frame and practically exploded with the impact, bringing the whole stack crashing down along with a pair of unfortunate Patriots. The next shot hit a barrel that must have been full of flour, because it blew apart in a puff of white. As the cannoneers found their rhythm, balls slammed out with the regularity of clockwork, blasting bits and pieces of wood into the air and drawing the occasional scream from the defenders.

Here and there, a blast of musketry marked where some Patriot could no longer stand the tension. Winter’s troops were all well out of range, and she’d forbade any return fire. The Girls’ Own settled for shouts and jeers, and raucous cheering whenever some section of the makeshift barrier collapsed in a particularly impressive fashion.

Before too long, Sevran sent word that the Royals were ready and waiting at the end of the causeway, and the rest of Captain Archer’s battery began to appear. First came two more six-pounders, which Winter dispatched to the ends of the line to spread out the destruction. Then four big twelve-pounders rolled up, which Archer deployed level with the front line of Girls’ Own. From that distance, two hundred yards or so, they could fire canister, spraying the barricade with buckets of hard-hitting musket balls. The sound of impacts on the wood of the barricade was like a burst of rainfall, just after the thunder of the main blast faded away, and the soldiers cheered at the clouds of dust and flying splinters these raised.