Eric Flint - Time spike

Hulbert did take a moment to survey the battle, to see how it was going. "Battle, my ass," he muttered. "This is a turkey shoot. Iknew we could have handled it on our own." "Quit bragging," said Bailey. He aimed, and fired again. "Even if you're right." Rod estimated there were somewhere between four and five hundred Spaniards in the little army they were facing. That meant the numerical odds were worse than two to one, abstractly. But that was reckoning "numbers" by a crude head count. Once you factored in the force multiplier that the repeating rifles gave the prison guards, the odds switched drastically. In the same time it took a conquistador to fire and reload one of their matchlocks, a guard could go through a ten-round magazine-aiming every shot, not just blasting away. Measuring by firepower instead of men, the advantage was actually five to one in favor of the prison guards. That wasn't even counting the Cherokees and the U.S. soldiers, who were also firing. Much better than five-to-one, actually, since you also had to factor in the much greater accuracy of the modern rifles. A sixteenth-century matchlock wasn't accurate beyond fifty yards, if that far. A number of shots had been fired by the Spaniards since the fighting started, but Rod was sure that if anyone on his side had been hit, it was pure bad luck.

They were all sheltered behind trees and logs, and the Spaniards were out in the open. At least one person in charge over there seemed to have finally realized it, too. Out of the swirling chaos of hundreds of conquistadores caught completely by surprise, somebody was managing to bring some order and discipline to a group of about thirty of them.

And then-ruthless bastard, but smart-he was moving the group behind the tied-up villagers, using them for a shield. Several of the guards were now yelling at the captives to lie down, but those poor people were even more frightened and confused than the Spaniards. Most of them were children. Besides, throwing yourself to the ground when you were tied to the person next to you by a rope around the neck was a good way to get strangled unless everybody did it in unison. "Fuck,"

Rod hissed. Bailey was looking off to the right, where Watkins and the Cherokees had taken position. "What the hell… Rod, what are theydoing?" Hulbert looked over. Sergeant Kershner and his squad had moved out into the open area surrounding the village, and were forming up into a line. Then, at a shouted command from Kershner, they started marching around to the side. "They're going to get behind the Spaniards, so they can't use the villagers for a shield. Jesus. Talk about raw guts." Seven men against perhaps thirty-and Kershner's men were armed with muzzle-loading muskets, not semiautomatic rifles. As firearms, shot for shot, their Harpers Ferry Model 1816 flintlocks were considerably superior to the Spaniards' matchlocks. But they couldn't be reloaded all that much more quickly. Once those U.S. soldiers fired a volley, they'd be dead meat if the Spaniards charged.

All they'd have to counter the Spanish halberds and swords would be nineteen-inch bayonets. Rod's low opinion of the conquistadores as a military force did not extend to sneering at their ability to use edged weapons at close range. In that situation, they'd be murderous.

"Come on," he said. He rose and waved his hand at the rest of his platoon. "Follow me!" He started trotting. Not directly toward the looming confrontation between Kershner's men and that one group of Spaniards, but in a looping route that took him around the still-milling mass outside the village. He thought he and his men could get there before the Spaniards charged Kershner after that first volley was fired. But it soon became clear his crude flanking maneuver wasn't going to work. The problem wasn't any shrewd countermove on the part of the enemy, it was just the sheer chaos of the situation.

Ragged groups of conquistadores were peeling away from the big mob in the center-that was just a killing zone by now-and heading toward the shelter of the trees. Some of them were confused enough to run toward Rod and his men instead of away from them. "Oh, fuck." Rod stopped and gestured for his platoon to come to a halt. They were going to have to fire what amounted to their own volleys just to clear a path.

Kevin Griffin gave Geoffrey Watkins a sly little smile. "Itold you he'd be strong-headed." Watkins didn't respond. He was chewing on his lower lip, trying to decide what to do. On the one hand, he didn't have that many more men than the Spanish group Kershner was going at.

And the muskets they had weren't much better. On the other hand…

"Let's go," he growled. "I don't want to have to listen to my niece yelling at me for the next year or two." Griffin chuckled. "She yells pretty good." He stood up and waved the Cherokees forward. Andy Blacklock was trying to decide what to do also. His battle plan had worked just about the way he'd hoped it would, until those Spaniards started using the villagers for a shield. Now, what had been a completely one-sided fight-not even a battle, so much as huge firing squad in action-was likely to become a hand-to-hand melee. Up close, he was quite sure the Spaniards would be a far deadlier opponent. But he didn't see where he really had much choice. So, he too rose and waved his people forward. Then, when they were more or less lined up, they advanced on the enemy in a formation that wasn't much better organized than the shattered Spanish army. The training that prison guards got did not include battlefield tactics. It sure as hell didn't include precision marching. "Go, Salukis!" Brian Carmichael shouted.

Within two or three seconds, more than half the guards in Andy's platoon were shouting the same slogan. Then many of the guards in Hulbert's platoon started doing the same. Just before they stopped, more or less lined up, and started firing into the mob of Spaniards at close range. And most of them kept shouting the slogan as they fired.

"This is nuts," Andy muttered to himself. But the shouting was contagious, and it impelled everyone forward at a much quicker pace.

"Go, Salukis!" he shouted. "Go right at 'em!" Whether it was the strange slogan-which couldn't have made any sense at all to de Soto's men-or simply the sight of dozens of guards in blue uniforms charging at them after they'd already seen half of their own forces gunned down, or whether it was Hulbert's platoon's deadly close-range fire coming from another angle, Andy would never know. Nor care. All that mattered was that the Spaniards broke. Not more than a dozen shots were fired from their matchlocks, and they were off and running. A goodly number of them threw their heavy guns away as they ran. "Halt!

Halt!" he shouted. "Goddamittohell, come to a screeching fucking STOP!

Right now!" After a second or two, his people obeyed him. Andy pointed at the fleeing Spaniards. "Shoot them. Now. While they're still in range." That was just murder, really. Andy had read a little military history and knew that what he was doing came under the euphemism of "pursuit," even if his people were standing still and just shooting.

But what the term really meant waskick 'em when they're down and keep kicking until they're meatpaste. It didn't occur to him, until the shooting had almost stopped because there weren't any enemies still in sight, to wonder what had happened to Kershner and his squad. "I knew they'd break," Kershner told Watkins calmly. "These men might have been soldiers once, but they're nothing but killers now. One good volley taking down three or four of them, and they ran." Geoffrey still thought the youngster was probably a lunatic. But… The Spaniardshad broken. By the time Watkins and Griffin and the Cherokees arrived to save Kershner and his men, they didn't need saving. They'd just been reloading their muskets. He looked at the villagers. By now, they'd managed to get themselves all on the ground, out of the line of fire. So far as he could tell, not one of them had been shot. That was a minor miracle, in itself. "Cut them loose, Kevin." Griffin nodded and trotted over to the villagers. They flinched, when they saw him pull out his knife, but relaxed once they realized he was just cutting the ropes away. "Now what?" asked Kershner. Watkins surveyed the scene. The open area around the village was piled with bodies. Piled high, in some places. You could literally walk across it stepping only on Spaniards, except for a few clear patches here and there. This had just been butchery-and it wasn't over yet. "Captain Blacklock said he doesn't want any prisoners. But I don't think he's really got the stomach for it. Do you?" Kershner's blue eyes scanned the field. "I'm Swabian, you know. Wasn't born there, but I know all the stories. For centuries, men just like these slaughtered and murdered and pillaged and raped back and forth across my people's lands. Any time some villagers got their hands on some of them, they didn't take any prisoners either. So, yes, I've got the stomach for it." He turned to his men. "You heard him, boys. This is what bayonets are for."