Eric Flint - 1636:The Saxon Uprising

Jeff gave Engler a sour look. "The formality'll kill me, just from shock. Spit it out, Thorsten."

"I really don't think there's much chance we're anywhere except in front of the rest of the division, sir."

Jeff had been coming to the same conclusion.

Fine. Now what?

Mike Stearns had been doing the same thing as Jeff-except he was searching for a whole regiment, not just a volley gun battery.

Jeff's regiment, damn his irresponsible geek heart. What had possessed him, to race ahead like that?

The radios were turning out to be almost useless. Mike could get in touch with his regiments, yes. But what good did that do when nobody knew where they were to begin with?

Christopher Long rode up. "That way, I think, sir." He was pointing a bit to the right, in the directions where Mike thought Dresden probably was.

What idiot had thought launching an attack in the middle of a snowstorm was a good idea?

By now, even Johan Baner had run out of curses. He could still manage one every two minutes or so, but the pleasure had entirely vanished from the exercise.

This was turning into a nightmare. He was still quite confident he could rout the rebels-if he could find his blasted army. More than bits and pieces of it, anyway.

The problem, insofar as Baner could reconstruct what had happened, was that one or another unit of the Third Division had punched a big hole in the middle of his line. "Line," at least, if you could dignify a string of camps set up to ride out the storm by the name.

The Ostergotland Horsemen had been at the center of that hole. Somehow they'd been routed, and in their confused retreat had precipitated panic among their neighboring units. That, in turn, has led to the whole center starting to unravel.

Whatever else, Baner had to put a stop to that. If he could stabilize the center, he was sure he'd win this bastard of a battle. By now, Stearns' soldiers had to be even more disorganized than his own.

They probably were, in point of fact, on the level of the division itself. But it didn't matter because all of the regiments had stayed intact, even if none of them were really quite sure where the rest of the army was.

So, it devolved into a brawl, a pure melee in the snow, USE army regiments matched against whatever Swedish units they stumbled across. It took a while, half an hour to an hour of savage struggle with heavy casualties on both sides, before the mercenaries began to yield.

But yield they did. They simply didn't have the stomach for this sort of fight. Drifting at first, and then moving faster and faster, they headed back toward the lines around Dresden.

In the middle of all this, Mike Stearns and his staff stumbled around trying to make sense out of senselessness.

They never succeeded. They never even came close.

Somehow, though, none of them died.

Quite.

Early on, Anthony Leebrick was struck in the leg by a stray bullet, just above the ankle. Although he didn't know it, then or ever, the ball had been fired by one of his division's own infantrymen and had struck him by sheer mischance. A lot of men were killed or wounded in that battle from friendly fire. Most of them were mercenaries working for the Swedes, since they were more confused and directionless than the oncoming USE troops, but by no means all of them.

It was a nasty wound, in the way that such wounds so often were, when gun battles were fought with muskets. The balls were slow but heavy, and shattered bones if they struck them full on-as this ball did.

Stearns ordered him taken to the rear by two of the adjutants who accompanied the staff officers. Leebrick lost his foot in a surgeon's tent, but he survived. Men usually did if the amputation was of a lower extremity, so long as they didn't get infected-and the Third Division's sanitation practices were just as good among the surgeons as anywhere else.

Christopher Long was struck twice, again by stray bullets-although these were both fired by the enemy. The first ball caused a minor flesh wound on his left shoulder, which he had bound up and then ignored. The second wound, however, he couldn't ignore. That one struck him in the ribs. A glancing hit, it didn't penetrate the heavy buff coat he was wearing in lieu of armor. But it must have been a canister ball, twice the weight of a musket ball, because it broke at least two of his ribs. He tried to keep going but the pain was excruciating. Within minutes, over the young colonel's protest, Stearns had him taken to the rear as well.

That almost killed him. The two adjutants guiding him completely lost their way. The three men wandered for hours in the snowfall, with no idea where they were. None of them being sailors, none of them had thought to bring a compass. What soldier needs a compass?

Eventually, they came across a village. It had been deserted for weeks, and was not much more than ruins. But they were able to find some shelter in a house that had been only half-burned and one of the adjutants had some food on him.

There was no shortage of water. The snow drifts came as high as six feet in places.

Ulbrecht Duerr's wound came from a saber cut. A cavalryman from the unit of Courland cuirassiers came out of nowhere, shouting and swinging his blade. Duerr brought up his pistol but only had time to use it as a shield of sorts. Fortunately, it was a great heavy down-time saddle-holstered wheel-lock, not a dinky little up-time pistol. So the only damage he suffered was a broken finger that got caught in the trigger guard before the pistol was flung into the snow.

That hurt like the devil, of course, but the immediate problem was that Duerr was right-handed-and he'd just lost the use of his right hand. So, forced by necessity, he drew his own sword and fought left-handed.

And won. Blind luck, really. The cuirassier got overly rash and swung a great blow that missed and dragged him half out of the saddle. Seeing his chance, Duerr drove the point of his sword into the man's exposed throat.

Tried to, rather. His strike missed also but came much closer-and he wasn't off balance. So, at the end, he was able to turn the missed stab into a slash with the part of his blade just above the handguard.

Which was like a razor, because although Duerr was slapdash when it came to keeping his blades sharp, that portion of a sword's edge almost never gets used. The man's carotid was severed as neatly as you could ask for. Off the saddle he went entirely, and bled to death in a snowbank.

Thereafter, Duerr withstood the pain of his broken finger rather cheerfully. At his age, besting an opponent left-handed! He'd be able to brag about that until his dying day.

Which might be today, of course. Still, bragging rights were bragging rights.

Mike Stearns got his own bragging rights that day. He had two horses shot out from under him.

Not one. Two.

Both times, by stray shots coming from nowhere. It was that sort of battle.

Neither shot struck him, and he was able to leap clear the first time a horse went down. But the second horse went down abruptly and his left leg got caught under its body. Luckily, none of the tack or weaponry came between his leg and the horse, just the horse itself. That big an animal put a hefty bruise on his leg, but nothing worse.

He might not have gotten up on the third horse an adjutant found for him, except that he found walking hurt too much.

What moron had thought fighting a battle in a snowstorm was a good idea?

Right around the time Mike was painfully dragging his leg from under that second horse, Johan Baner finally found his missing center. Not the Ostergotlanders-they were long gone. But most of John Ruthven's infantry regiment had been rallied by its commander and was getting into formation.

"Good work, John!" Baner shouted, as he rode up. "Now let's-"