I twisted the bayonet free from the Austrian's throat with a wet, sucking sound, arterial blood spraying across my face in a hot, sticky mist that tasted of iron and salt. He dropped to his knees, gurgling horribly, both hands clawing at the ragged hole as crimson bubbled from his mouth and nose in thick frothy ropes. Around me the ridge had become a slaughterhouse. Men stabbed, clubbed, and screamed in the snow—Italians and Germano-Hungry soldiers locked together like rabid dogs. One of my comrades drove his steel into an enemy's eye socket; the eyeball popped with a wet squelch, gray jelly and blood leaking down the man's cheek as he convulsed and pissed himself. Another Austrian swung a rifle butt that caved in a boy's skull from my platoon—brains and bone fragments exploding outward in a pink-gray spray that painted the snow like abstract art. A Germano-Hungry sergeant had his belly ripped open by two bayonets at once; he screamed as his intestines uncoiled in steaming gray loops, slipping through his fingers while he tried to stuff them back inside.
We fought like demons until the last of them broke.
"Push! They're running!" our lieutenant roared, voice hoarse from screaming.
The Germano-Hungry line shattered like glass. Men threw down weapons and fled down the far slope, slipping and sliding on blood-slick ice and loose rock. We rose from the carnage like ghosts and opened fire—rifles cracking in a ragged, vengeful volley. Retreating backs jerked and fell; one soldier took a round through the spine and dropped face-first, legs still kicking uselessly as his lower body went dead. Another spun as bullets tore through his guts, intestines spilling out in long slippery ropes while he crawled, screaming for his mother in German. We kept shooting until the slope was littered with twitching bodies, the snow running red for fifty metres downhill, the air thick with the coppery stench of fresh slaughter.
"Advance! Don't let them regroup!"
We surged forward again, boots crunching over the fresh corpses, bayonets still dripping. Cordina was so close now we could see its church spires and the smoke curling from its chimneys against the jagged mountains. The city sat in a perfect natural pass—vital for moving troops and equipment to the front lines. Whoever held Codina could pour supplies through the Alps like blood through an open artery. If we kept it, the entire Italian front would breathe easier.
Street-to-street fighting was pure hell.
We poured into the outskirts under covering fire from our own machine guns. Doors were kicked in, windows shattered with rifle butts. In one narrow alley an Austrian squad waited for us—rifles blazing at point-blank range. Three of my men went down instantly, chests punched open in wet red explosions, blood misting the air as they crumpled. I dove into a doorway and fired back, my round punching through an enemy's eye and out the back of his skull in a red-gray spray that splattered the wall behind him. We cleared house by house: bayonets rammed through doors, grenades tossed into rooms, the wet thuds and screams of bodies hitting floors. In one upstairs room I found two Austrians hiding; I shot the first in the stomach so his guts spilled across the carpet in glistening coils, then bayoneted the second through the throat until blood fountained over my hands.
By nightfall Codina was ours. The last pockets of resistance either surrendered with hands raised or died in the gutters, bodies piled like cordwood against the walls. The city was a wreck—windows blown out, streets cratered, the smell of smoke and death thick in the air—but we held it. The officers were already shouting about clearing the roads for supply columns. Commonwealth planes had tried to help earlier in the day, but their bombs fell on our own positions as often as the enemy's—high friendly fire turning whole blocks into smoking craters filled with Italian dead and mangled horses. Their pilots were useless up here; the mountains made everything look the same from the air.
Now we had to defend it.
Germano-Hungry counter-attacks were coming—everyone knew it. Empire mages too. We had maybe two hours before the first probes hit. My battalion split up fast under frantic orders: one company to the northern ridge, another to the eastern gates, mine to the central square and the rail yard. We dragged sandbags from ruined houses, overturned carts and wagons for barricades, set up machine guns in upper windows and on rooftops. Some locals—Italians who hated the Austrians with a passion—grabbed rifles from the dead Germano-Hungry soldiers and joined us, eyes fierce, hands shaking with rage. "For Cordina! For Italy!" they shouted. We welcomed the extra guns, even if half of them barely knew how to aim.
It wasn't enough.
The mages came at dawn.
Their glowing flying machines appeared over the peaks like vengeful angels of death. Enchanted bullets streaked down, curving and exploding on impact. One defence post vanished in a fireball—men inside torn apart, limbs flying in bloody arcs, torsos shredded into red mist that rained down on the street below. Another blast collapsed a barricade; sandbags burst open, bodies inside crushed and pulped under falling stone, blood squirting out from the cracks like juice from a crushed fruit. The civilians who had joined us died screaming—one old man had his head blown clean off, neck stump fountaining blood in rhythmic pulses; a woman beside him was cut in half at the waist, her upper body flopping forward while her legs stayed standing for one horrible second before toppling.
Then the Germano-Hungry infantry poured in.
They came in endless grey waves, supported by mechanized walkers and rifle fire. The real battle for survival began—house-to-house, alley-to-alley, bayonets and bullets in the choking smoke. Men died screaming in doorways, guts spilling across cobblestones; others were bayoneted against walls, blood running down the stone in thick rivers. I fought until my arms burned and my bayonet was red to the hilt, stabbing, shooting, clubbing anyone in grey.
But I could see it was lost.
The enemy numbers were overwhelming. Our barricades were crumbling under the weight of their advance. Reinforcements were days away—if they came at all. I watched another wave crest the eastern gate—hundreds of grey uniforms, mages hovering above them like death's own heralds. My platoon was down to eight men. The civilians who had helped were all dead or dying in the street, bodies torn open by enchanted rounds and bayonets.
I didn't want to die for a useless cause.
When the next German assault hit the square and our last machine gun fell silent in a spray of sparks and blood, I raised my hands high.
"Surrender!" I shouted, voice cracking over the roar of battle. "We surrender! Cease fire!"
The others followed. Rifles clattered to the ground. The Germano-Hungry troops closed in, bayonets still dripping, eyes hard and victorious.
The fight for Cordina was over.
And so was mine.