Simone flinched at the cannon shot, shoulders drawing up for a moment as she tried to cover her ears with her occupied hands. Bits of plaster fell onto her and Dorothy, bouncing harmlessly off them. Chancing a peak out of the window, Simone gasped. Even with the haze rolling through the battlefield the carnage was clear. Hecht's orders got the pair moving again, and after a quick prayer for Herman, she and Dorothy followed behind their sergeant. 

Switching to her carbine like the rest of the dragoons, she rushed to the bridge. The scent of gunpowder and viscera filled her nose as they neared, the Rhaetians already returning fire against the cannon crew. Simone took cover behind a low wall, resting her barrel on it as she scanned the treeline for where to shoot. Spotting a short man with a broad mustache scrambling for cover, she took her shot. With the movement, range, and sheer nerves she couldn't tell if she hit home, but the soldier fell a few steps later. 

Ducking back into cover to reload, adrenaline made reloading difficult, especially as a bullet ricocheted off a stone a foot from her head. Powder, wadding, ball, a simple order but by the time she got the pan filled with powder again, Kraus had started his charge, and she couldn't rightly risk firing back into the melee. Keeping an eye out on their flanks, both girls let out a cheer as the gun crew was wiped from the battlefield and reinforcements filled the town. After less than half an hour of combat, their first battle was over.

Minutes later, once it was clear the fighting had ended. Before the blood had cool in the streets, the two girls had found their horses again. They walked them upstream of the bridge to wash them of the muck of the battle and inspect them for injury. "You know, I feel like one of us shouldve spotted the cannon," Dorothy said, bringing over a bucket of riverwater to scrub with. 

"Yeah we walked right into that," Simone replied, doing her best to remove some poor soldier's skill fragments from Mandel's back without actually touching them. She glances downstream. "Thanks for having my back."

Dorothy nodded. "Same to you." She got to work scrubbing down her own horse, a dappled mare named Ingwer. "Too bad about Herman. I liked him."

Simone sighed and reflexively placed a hand on her own belly. "Yeah, he used to go easy on me back home. Certainly deserved more than to be taken out like that."

"At least it was quick. From what I saw they are still dragging dying Canaries from the water. Certainly deserve it for what they did to that family."

Simone took a deep breath, turning back to Mandel to hide her twinge of knotted emotions. "Fuck the Canaries," she says. Scrubbing Mandel's flank, she adds "May our jaws clench around their necks, and make us heroes worthy of an aria by Materna." With that she rinses her horse off with the bucket of water and heads back to the river to refill it. "Now if we could find some soap for my breeches," she grumbles.