The cannon roared, a thunderous bellow that shook the ground beneath my feet. Smoke curled thick around us, filling the air with the sharp sting of sulfur. I stood there, one of many, my musket clutched tight in hands numb from the December cold. The mud clung to my boots, dragging me down, but we moved forward. Always forward. The Emperor had commanded it.

Ah, Napoleon. He had passed us not long before, on his white horse, his gray coat and bicorne hat so simple yet so imperial. His presence was electric, his voice steady as he called us to glory. "Mes enfants," he said, "the victory is ours if we take it!" His words stirred something deep within us, a fire that burned brighter than the frost biting at our faces.

The enemy waited—the redcoats, their lines precise, their bayonets gleaming like needles in the pale light. Their muskets cracked in disciplined volleys, and men around me fell, their cries swallowed by the chaos. There was no time to mourn, no time to think. The order came to fix bayonets, and we obeyed. The steel caught the faint sunlight, terrible and beautiful, as we braced for what was to come.

Then the charge—Mon Dieu, the charge! We roared as one, a tidal wave of flesh and steel surging toward the enemy. My heart pounded louder than the cannon fire, and the world blurred until only the point of my bayonet mattered. The clash was raw, brutal, a storm of blades and cries. I remember the resistance as my bayonet struck, the warmth of blood splattering my face, the way my opponent's eyes went wide before he crumpled. There was no time to feel, only to survive.

When it ended, hours or moments later, silence fell like a heavy shroud. The battlefield was a graveyard of smoke and bodies, the air thick with the smell of death and gunpowder. I stood there, trembling, my uniform smeared with mud and blood, my soul heavier than my musket. Victory, they said. The officers spoke of honor, of duty, but I saw only the cost. Men who had laughed and sung that morning lay still, their songs silenced forever.

Napoleon rode among us again, his eyes scanning the broken remnants of his army. He spoke of sacrifice, of France, of the glory we had earned. But I saw the weight in his gaze, the burden of so many lives spent for his dreams. The drums began their mournful rhythm, calling us to march. Always forward. Always onward.

As we moved, I glanced back at the field, the faces of the fallen etched into my memory. Their eyes stared into nothing, and I whispered a prayer, a promise to remember. Ahead, the horizon was hidden in mist, the future uncertain. But still, I marched, for the Emperor, for France, for the faint hope that one day, perhaps, this endless bloodshed would end.

"Onward," I muttered to myself, my voice lost in the drumbeat. "Toujours en avant."