Two of Clubs

Keywords - Upright: sustained fire, pinned and losing ground  ·  Inverted: the barrage spending itself, silence as opening

Upright

Heavy, mechanical, and it's still coming. The assault didn't stop and it made things considerably worse.

It keeps coming. Not a shot but a schedule of them - mechanical, patient, indifferent to cover that is being chewed away a handspan at a time. This is the wrong end of superior position: no answer to make, no gap to use, ground and options both shrinking. Staying put is a slow way of losing. So is moving. That is the and.

Inverted

No engine carries infinite ammunition. The volley's intensity is a promise about its end: quarrels run out, strings fray, crews tire on a rhythm that can be counted. The barrage that owns this moment is spending the next one - and the first long silence will belong to whoever planned for it. Be mid-sprint when it falls.

In Play

Upright. The wall's arbalests keep Sera's company pinned in the ditch through the whole gray morning - by noon the ditch is shallower, and two ladders are kindling.

Inverted. Sera counts the volleys slowing - the crews are into their last sheaves - and when the lull finally comes it is long, and the ditch empties in a rush.