Eric Flint - 1636:The Saxon Uprising

Yes, it was asinine. Nothing but a pointless tradition left over from the days when illiterate men went into battled armed with nothing but oversized swords and blue paint. But the Hangman was an elite unit and elite units take tradition seriously.

Thankfully, Jeff was a big man and had big hands even for a man his size. So he probably wouldn't lose his grip on the sword more than twice before the battle was over.

Somehow, it never occurred to him that he might be dead or maimed before the battle was over. He never thought of that, in the middle of a battle. He'd only think of it as he tried to sleep afterward, when sometimes he'd get the shakes.

He heard another screech. He might finally have been close enough to make out the words but the screech was immediately drowned by a thunderclap. Nine hundred volley gun barrels going off at once made the term "noisy" seem inadequate if you were anywhere nearby.

That third volley-again, at point blank range-destroyed the Ostergotland Horsemen. Most of them survived, as men somehow do on a battlefield. Most of them weren't even injured. But as a fighting formation, they were done. On this battlefield today, at least. The survivors raced to the rear, insofar as men could race through heavy snow and insofar as they could tell where "the rear" was in the middle of a heavy snowfall.

The sun was still invisible. It would remain invisible through that day and most of the next. But there was now enough light that a man could distinguish, approximately, between east and west. And, that done, determine which way was north-which is where they wanted to go. Back into the siege lines.

Miserable they might be, those trenches, but they weren't as miserable as being savaged by musket balls fired by an unseen enemy.

Not more than one soldier in five of the Ostergotland Horsemen had caught so much as a glimpse of the men who'd been killing them. Not more than a dozen had gotten a good look at them. Of those dozen, only two were still alive.

One of them was now hiding under the carcass of his horse, trying not to scream because of a broken leg. He was playing dead in the hopes that none of the enemy soldiers passing by would spot him. They were likely to cut his throat if he couldn't offer ransom, which he couldn't. His had not been a wealthy family, either, and the Swedes had been late with the pay.

Again. Dresden, capital of Saxony "Where? Where?" Jozef demanded, as soon as he came onto the platform around the tower.

Eric Krenz pointed to the south. "Over there. Somewhere. It's hard to be sure, exactly."

Wojtowicz peered into the snowfall. You really couldn't see anything worth looking at. From this high up in the Residenzschloss, you couldn't even see the city's own walls.

Gretchen Richter came onto the platform, followed by Tata.

"So what is happening?" she asked.

"We're not sure," replied Friedrich Nagel. He was standing next to Krenz. Both lieutenants had their uniforms on, but neither one had finished buttoning up their outer jackets. Like Jozef himself, they must have scrambled out of bed in response to the distant gunfire.

Suddenly, Jozef saw a flash. A dim one, but it was definitely a flash. Followed, a moment later, by a muffled boom.

"That was an artillery piece," he said. "Pretty big one, too. Probably a twelve-pounder."

He looked at Eric and Friedrich. "Does the Third Division have any field ordnance that size?"

They both shook their heads. "Biggest we've got-unless something got added after Zwenkau-are six-pounders."

So. Baner's forces. And from the flash, not more than a mile from the trenches the Swedes had dug.

Jozef came to a decision. "Now," he said. "We should sortie now."

Krenz and Nagel looked at each other. "Are you sure?" asked Eric.

"No, of course I'm not sure. I wasn't expecting a battle to start in the middle of a fucking storm. That must have been your general's doing. He's insane, by the way. But now that he's gone and done it, we should take advantage of the opportunity."

He leaned over the railing, pointing to the south-his arm angled downward. He was actually pointing at the enemy's siege lines, which couldn't be seen because of the snowfall.

"We should seize their own lines now, before they can retreat back into them."

"If they retreat back into them," said Friedrich, a bit dubiously. "I thought the idea was to wait until we knew they were coming back."

"Yes, it was." Jozef was suddenly sure of himself. "But they will, they will. If your blessed general was mad enough to attack them in the middle of a storm, he's mad enough to drive them back into their lines. So let's be there to deny it to them, shall we?"

Krenz and Friedrich looked at each other again.

"He's got a point," said Eric.

"He's right about Mike Stearns, too," said Gretchen. "I won't tell you what to do. I'm not a soldier and don't pretend to be one. But I think Wojtowicz is right."

"Okay, then," said Nagel. "Let's be about the mad business."

If nothing else, the noisy labors of Denise and Minnie had expanded the hiding place in the root cellar enough for all three of them to fit into it.

Barely.

There would have been room to spare, though-that racket had gone on for days-if a third of the space hadn't been taken up with barrels.

"What…?"

Minnie pointed to the one Noelle's arm was lying across. "That's got food in it. The two you're crammed against on the other side are water barrels. And these two"-she patted the two barrels stacked on her left-"and the two over there by Denise-"

Her friend brought up a…fuse?

"These are the gunpowder barrels," Denise said cheerfully. "If those fucks find us and want some excitement in their lives, they'll get it for sure. Pussy kaboom."

Noelle made a face. "That is so gross."

"Not as gross as the alternative," Minnie said phlegmatically.

"Well. No." She stuck out her hand. "But I keep the fuse. The two of you are too-too-too-"

The teenagers were grinning at her now.

"Too too-ish," Noelle finished lamely.

The Saxon plain, near Dresden Jeff finally caught up with the volley gun company just after they fired their fourth volley. By now, so far as he could tell-which was not much-they were mostly shooting at shadows. Whatever enemy they'd been facing seemed to be on the run.

"Next time, wait," he growled at Thorsten.

Engler gave him a cold smile. "Yes, sir. It's difficult, though, as slowly as the infantry moves."

"Very witty, Captain. My better half is amused. My other half, though-that's the one in charge right now-is not. If I have to get official and make it an order, I'll do it. Next. Time. Wait. How's that?"

Engler nodded. "Not a problem, sir. Honestly, we had no intention of getting separated. By the time we realized it…"

Jeff waved his hand. "Yeah, I know. By then, you'd come upon the foe and, being volley gun maniacs, he was yours for the taking. Also for the official record, my congratulations. Whoever you were fighting, you obviously pounded them into dog food. Now let's see about moving forward. Do you have any idea where the rest of the division is, by the way?"

Not until Jeff spoke the last sentence did it occur to him that he might fairly be accused of the same fault for which he'd just criticized Engler. Just as the volley gun battery had done with its regiment, so the Hangman had gotten separated from the other regiments and…

Done what, exactly? Where the hell were they? Ahead of the division? Behind it? Off to the side? If so, which side? They couldn't very well be to the east of the division, because they'd been over by the left flank when the attack began.

He started chewing on his lip.

"If you'll permit me the indiscretion, sir…"