Eric Flint - 1636:The Saxon Uprising

Without speaking, the orderly helped the general put on the rest of his clothes. The adjutant arrived seconds later.

"I warned them, Sinclair! I warned the fucks! Which one of them started it?"

The Scot officer's face was pale. "Sir, I'm not-"

"If you don't know, find out! I intend have whoever started this brawl shot dead! No, I'll-"

"Sir, I really don't-"

"-have them hanged! Hanged, you hear me? If need be, a whole fucking company!"

"Sir, I think it's the enemy!" Sinclair shouted desperately.

Baner stared at him, as if he'd gone mad.

Sinclair pointed to the window. "Listen, sir! That's too much gunfire to be coming from a brawl between companies."

Still wide-eyed with disbelief, Baner stared at the window. An instant later, he rushed over, fumbled at the latch, and threw the window open.

The sky was lightening with the sunrise but he still couldn't see very far because of the snowfall. The sound of gunfire was growing, though, and Sinclair was right. That wasn't a brawl between drunken soldiers.

But-

"No sane man launches an attack in the middle of a snowstorm!"

He and Sinclair looked at each other. Sinclair shrugged. "He's a rank amateur, sir. You know the old saying."

Baner had always thought that saying was inane, actually. The opponent a great swordsman fears the most is the worst swordsman. Blithering nonsense. Still…

Stearns might be mad, but this could get dangerous. He had to get out there. His soldiers would be muzzy with sleep and confused. They'd no more been expecting this than he had, and the snowfall would make it difficult for his officers to get the men into proper formations. Everyone would be half-blind.

So would the enemy, though-and, just as Sinclair had said, they were rank amateurs.

Choose to fight real soldiers in a snowstorm, would they? He'd show them where children's games left off and real war began.

You couldn't see a thing beyond thirty yards or so and volley gun batteries didn't blast away at nothing. Not batteries under Thorsten Engler's command, anyway. And he wasn't nervous, either. They'd trained with the sled arrangements, and had actually come to prefer them over wheels, in some ways. They were easier to bring to bear, for one thing. Their biggest drawback was the recoil, which could be a little unpredictable, but that wasn't a factor in the first round. And it was usually the first round fired by volley guns that was the decisive one.

Finally, he could see shapes ahead. Those were the shapes of men, too, he was sure of it.

But they weren't coming forward, they seemed to be just milling around. And now he spotted horses among them.

They'd caught a cavalry unit off guard then. Still trying to mount up.

Splendid. Ten more yards and they'd fire.

The sleds moved fast, too. It was just a matter of a few seconds before the entire battery started coming around.

By now they were only fifteen yards from their nearest enemy soldiers and they'd been spotted themselves. One of the Swedes who'd managed to get up onto his horse fired a wheel-lock pistol at them. In their direction, rather. Thorsten was pretty sure the shot had sailed at least ten feet over their heads. Confusion, surprise and a snowstorm do not combine to make for good marksmanship.

Happily, good marksmanship didn't matter that much to a volley gun battery.

He glanced back and forth. All the guns he could see had been brought to bear. Good enough.

"Fire!" he screeched, in that high-pitched tone he'd learned to use on a battlefield. Not even the heavy snow coming down could blanket it.

Only two guns in one of the batteries hadn't been brought in line yet, but their fire came not more than three seconds later. Twenty-five barrels to a volley gun, six guns to a battery, six batteries to a company. Subtracting a few misfires, almost nine hundred musket balls struck the enemy just a few yards away.

That was equivalent to the fire from an entire regiment-except an entire regiment couldn't fire its muskets all at once. Not on that narrow a front.

Thorsten couldn't see most of them, but the clustered units his volley gun battery had just fired upon were two of the four companies of the Ostergotland Horsemen. That first murderous volley killed and wounded dozens of them, including the commanding officer Colonel Claus Dietrich Sperreuter. The rest were sent reeling backward-where they collided into the other two companies and cast them into further confusion.

"Reload!" Thorsten screeched.

As orders went, that one was superfluous to the point of being asinine. His men had already started reloading before he finished taking in his breath. What else would they be doing on a battlefield? Picking their teeth?

But it was tradition. Elite units took traditions seriously, as pointless as they might be.

The term "elite" was no empty boast, either. The company was ready to fire again in ten seconds-a better rate of fire than even musketmen could manage.

"Fire!" he screeched.

This time, all the guns went off together. There were misfires, here and there, but not many.

Again, almost nine hundred balls hammered the milling cavalrymen. Thorsten's men still hadn't taken more than a couple of dozen shots fired in return and so far as Thorsten could tell, all of them had gone wild.

Dozens more were killed and wounded. The one company that had started to form up was shredded again, its captain thrown out of the saddle by a ball that struck him in the head. He survived the shot-just a crease, he wasn't even stunned-but after he landed on the ground his horse stepped on his head and crushed it into the hard soil beneath the snow. He survived that, too, although he was no longer really conscious. Then his horse and another trampled his ribs before they stumbled off, away from the guns.

He survived that as well. But three ribs were broken, he was now bleeding internally, and everyone who looked at his body assumed he was dead. Engler's soldiers did too, when they passed by.

So, a while later, he died from hypothermia. He'd never managed to get his boots on. He died in his socks-and both of them had holes. His had not been a wealthy family and the Swedes had been late with the pay.

Again.

Thorsten gauged the enemy, as much of them as he could see. Then, decided to take the risk. Instead of ordering another volley, he ordered the guns moved forward.

"Ten yards up!" he screeched.

Jeff Higgins heard the screech, although he couldn't make out the exact words. In the half-blindness of the snowfall, his volley gun company had gotten separated from the regiment and charged ahead. He'd been groping his way forward with the infantry battalions, trying to find them before it was too late. The volley guns were murderous but they were a lot more fragile than the gunners themselves liked to admit. If they got caught between volleys by cavalry-even well-led infantry that could move quickly-they were dead meat.

Engler was particularly oblivious to that reality, damn him. How could a man who planned to become a psychologist behave like a blasted lunatic on a battlefield? If Jeff didn't find him and reunite the volley gun company with the regiment's infantry, things were likely to get very hairy. The Hangman was light, when it came to regular artillery, so they relied a lot on the volley guns.

He heard another screech. Again, he couldn't make out the words, but it sounded closer.

The words had been: "Come into position!"

Thirty-six volley guns swiveled on the snow, gliding easily on their Bartley rigs.

"Come on!" Jeff shouted, raising his sword and waving it. He detested the thing almost as much as he detested horses, but it was just a fact that an officer leading a charge had to wave a stupid sword around. Waving a pistol just didn't do the trick, not even a big down-time wheel-lock.