Sturm Country (Musket Men Book 9), page 24
And still they came. Even if they had wanted to stop, they probably couldn’t. There were just too many riders behind them pushing to get through into the pass. But those who did realize something was wrong undoubtedly came to the wrong conclusion. Their experience led them to worry about arrows and spears—things that could be overwhelmed if they just put enough bodies into the challenge. But a ditch was not like that—especially not a deep one like this.
So, the enemy kept coming, and kept dying, the animals starting to form a hill of writhing broken bodies spilling out into the wide area that the musket men had painstakingly excavated.
Ansgar had thought they’d catch a dozen horsemen at best, but it wasn’t until the hill of the dead and dying got high enough to begin to impede exit from the gate that the Southies accepted something was terribly wrong and pulled back.
“Tamp!” Lieutenant Bell shouted and the men around him securely packed the lead ball down the barrel of the gun and into the black powder. Ahead of him Gunner and three other men were doing bayonet work to keep the Southies back.
“Replace!” Bell ordered and his men immediately slipped the ramrods back into their places beneath the barrel.
“Now let’s go kill some Southies!” Bell shouted.
He led the way, stepping up beside Gunner just as a Southie rammed the muzzle of a blunderbuss axe against his chest and pulled the trigger.
Tiny lead shot bounced off the musket man’s breastplate—defensive armament that the earl insisted the men holding the top of Puoco Firme wear—knocking the lieutenant down without killing him.
Gunner tried to pivot to help him, but a quick blow from the barrel of the Southie’s weapon to the side of his head, staggered the sergeant so that he stumbled away from his superior.
The Southie stepped forward and reversed his weapon, preparing to chop down hard on Bell before he could get back to his feet to defend himself.
Gunner saw Bell go down out of the corner of his eye as the first Ghulam reached the summit of the hill. He tried to turn and help him, but a solid blow from the barrel of the Ghulam’s weapon sent him staggering away from the lieutenant.
He used his musket to knock another blunderbuss muzzle up into the air so that it didn’t fire directly into him. Shot rang off his helmet, but didn’t kill him.
Gunner rammed the man in front of him through the heart, pleased that he went down immediately. Then he looked for another man to kill.
Ruus stuck a wick into a barrel of black powder and lit it. This is what Gunner did at the Sea Gate and it was super effective. He grunted as he tried to lift the barrel as Gunner had done, but found that it was too heavy for him.
It occurred to him that putting the wick in the barrel before he moved it to the wall had been extremely foolish. But instead of yanking out the wick, he dragged the barrel over to the edge of the summit and rolled it up and over the short broken wall.
It bounced down the hillside before spectacularly exploding.
The Ghulam mulazim saw the black powder barrel explode and take the middle out of his assault. His platoon was one of two pulled from the main attack on the wall to give some backbone to the northern traitors who had allied with them and the regular army infantry. The daring use of the atypical weapon really impressed him. These musket men did not quit. They were almost like Ghulam. They had held back the regular infantry and now they were holding their own against the best soldiers in the world.
At least for now they were.
He heard another blunderbuss fire and smiled. It wouldn’t be long now.
A second barrel bounced on the hill above him and he ducked down as it exploded. When he looked up again, he saw that there were no longer any men directly ahead of him.
He rose into a crouch to move higher up the hill when a musket ball impacted with his breastplate. Unlike the tiny pieces of shot that the Ghulam’s weapons fired, this was a piece of lead slightly smaller than the tip of his thumb. It penetrated his armor and knocked him over backward.
Even through the ghadab, the wound hurt him. But he wasn’t dead yet. He’d still have his chance to kill the northerners.
Bell shook his head, trying to clear his vision, as the Ghulam soldier raised the axe above him. A private charged forward with his bayonet, forcing the enemy soldier to shift his attention to him. As he swung at the young northerner, Bell scooped up his own weapon and stabbed the soldier in the ass.
The wound clearly surprised the man for he swung back around toward Bell, opening himself to the private’s bayonet.
Bell clambered to his knees and shot the man in the head. Then he used the weapon to push himself onto his feet and started reloading again.
Gunner wondered if they could possibly have enough powder for Ruus to keep using it this way. He understood that they brought a lot of extra supplies and they had captured even more, but—
He feinted with the bayonet at another soldier and then clocked him on the head with the stock of his weapon. He fell and Gunner quickly finished him off. A cannon rolled up beside him and fired, deafening Gunner as he quickly and efficiently reloaded his gun.
It would be really nice if Sturm could get them some help.
Chapter Fifty-Two: A Small Mistake
Forte Firme and Puoco Firme, Al-Andalus, Kriegsturm
The Pink Moon, Day 25, Year 1197
Jiniral Darwish didn’t understand what was happening. He couldn’t even hear any weapons firing from the south side of the wall, but somehow his cavalry could not get through. Another cannon fired from the tower, ripping another furrow though his too densely packed men. It was maddening. He had to win this battle and begin restoring his honor. If he failed, the high sheik would have him beheaded and his family would be disgraced.
The muskets on the eastern end of the wall had changed their strategy—dropping horses to block the way back up the road to the north. They were effectively trapping Darwish’s remaining soldiers down here in front of the wall where the cannon could continue decimating them.
Trapping them?
Darwish felt a grave horror well up inside him when he realized what he had been thinking.
He wasn’t the one getting trapped, was he? His whole strategy had been to trap the enemy.
Another sixteen-pound gun fired from the tower of Forte Firme and Darwish suddenly understood the truth. Every minute he stayed in the face of the guns was costing him the men he desperately needed to fight the war. Even if he won tonight, he was losing.
“Retreat!” he shouted, waving his hands back and forth to catch the attention of his men. “Retreat! Fall back! We can’t stay here!”
A musket ball penetrated his back and he realized that attracting attention to himself in these circumstances wasn’t the wisest of tactics.
As he died, Jiniral Rahid Darwish heard the horns of the Granite Knights, the ancient enemies of Ahl Alnaar Ashomal. They must be preparing to charge out of Forte Firme and complete his humiliation.
Chapter Fifty-Three: Sturm Front
Forte Firme and Puoco Firme, Al-Andalus, Kriegsturm
The Pink Moon, Day 25, Year 1197
Sturm took a few seconds to enjoy the sight and sound of Knight Captain Leandro Lima leading a hundred fully armored knights out through the gates of Forte Firme to sweep them clear of all the land before the wall. The horses were as fierce and deadly as the men who rode them, barreling soldiers over with their strong chests and trampling any who fell with iron shod hooves. On their backs, the knights of stone hacked and hewed with their swords as they spread out to cover all the open ground between the slopes of Puoco Firme and the wall blocking the north end of the pass. Soldiers who managed to evade the first horses were cut down by the second or third line. But most—feeling helpless in the path of a nightmare that featured in so many of their stories of wars past—turned and fled. Some tried to climb the side of Puoco Firme, but the slope was far too steep to permit such an evasion. Others ran toward the wall, where Sturm’s pikemen and musket men mercilessly cut them down. But most fled down along the wall until the road swerved north, trying impossibly to run faster than the horsemen who were reminding them why Al-Andalus was forever closed to them.
The moment the knights had passed, Sturm got his men moving again. “Musket men in ranks facing north on the road,” he shouted. “Major Russel, you and the pikemen will secure the wall and the entrance to Forte Firme. We’ve won this part of the fight boys, but the battle isn’t over yet. Now move! Move! MOVE!”
His men sprinted to join him and in very little time Sturm had three companies—all that were not injured or assigned other duties guarding the gate to the south or the walls of Forte Firme—of the best soldiers in Kriegsturm lined up in columns, ready to march wherever he led them.
Cannon fired from the top of Puoco Firme reminding everyone that their brother soldiers were still fighting there. “Those are our men up there!” Sturm shouted to his soldiers. “And we’re not going to leave them to win the day on their own!”
A cheer, inarticulate at first, roared up around them and then the men began to shout that damn nickname Caldor had given him. “Sturm Front! Sturm Front! Sturm Front!”
This one time, Sturm didn’t mind. It would let the defenders on top of the hill know they were not fighting alone and warn the enemy that death was coming for them.
Kulunil Khouri, proud officer of the Ghulam, lay in front of the wall covering the pass with a broken hip, ankle, and shoulder. He’d survived the cannon and the musket fire, trying to rally the men to clear the wall, but the charge of the cursed Granite Knights had defeated him. He’d been knocked down and trampled by the northern order that came closest to mirroring the strength and discipline of the mighty Ghulam.
At least they had been the closest—now with these new musket men on the field with weapons that out-performed the blunderbuss axes? The whole Ghulam order of battle needed to be changed to account for the long range of Sturm’s musket companies. Unfortunately, that might well prove to be a task for Ahl-Alnaar Januban. If Sturm’s threats were real, the high sheik of Ahl-Alnaar Ashomal was in serious trouble. But he had always been by far the weakest of the leaders of Ahl-Alnaar. He and his ancestors had never recovered from the conquests of High King Harold. Even when they had pushed Kriegsturm back out of Ahl-Alnaar proper three decades ago, the high sheiks had not succeeded in reasserting their dominance over the tribes of the Veldt. If those tribes didn’t unite now?
Khouri shivered.
The ghadab blessedly dulled the pain, even if it couldn’t overcome the actual injuries. He would now have to suffer the indignity of capture and ransom—but the information he could bring his brothers about these new weapons—
“What have we here?” a northern voice asked.
“He looks wealthy, Sergeant Lasser,” another said.
Khouri raised his voice. “I am Kulunil Khouri. You will be wise to take means to preserve my life. I will make a very valuable hostage for your masters.”
“Oh, southerners,” the sergeant shook his head mockingly as he turned toward one of the men with him. “Do you think their soldiers really listen to such crap?” He turned back toward Khouri. “We aren’t the ones who would profit from your ransom. It’s sad, but you died in the battle leaving us to plunder your corpse.”
“But I am not dead,” Khouri wondered if perhaps his mastery of the northern tongue had failed him.
“Yet,” Lasser corrected him. “You’re not dead yet.”
Then the northerner lifted his pike and put an end to the Ghulam officer.
Sturm led his men up the north road, sweeping around the base of Puoco Firme. He’d had to stop twice to clear minor pockets of—well it wasn’t precisely resistance. It was more like junior officers trying bravely to restore some order to their routed men. The knights were out ahead of them. From the looks of things, the southerners had held some cavalry in reserve, but the fleeing soldiers had confused them. Some had started attacking the infantry while others tried to ride clear of them so they could use their bows more effectively against the knights. But whatever the enemy cavalry’s intention, all they had really succeeded in doing was to mire themselves down so the knights on their warhorses could reach them.
Now the southern cavalry wasn’t fighting anymore.
As for the rest of the fleeing soldiers? Sturm didn’t think that many of them would survive very long. A strange thing happened when an army in enemy territory suffered a string of defeats—even in enemy territory as friendly to Ahl-Alnaar as southern Al-Andalus seemed to be. Defeat made the peasants start to think about what would happen if the invaders didn’t win. How would they prove to the old authorities that they had actually been loyal throughout the invasion? Well, few things proved loyalty so effectively as the graves of a few dead enemy soldiers and a handful of trophy weapons.
He reached the spot at the base of the hill where the enemy was making its ascent. Remarkably there was still a battalion or two of soldiers nervously waiting for their turn to face Gunner’s muskets and Ruus’ cannon. Sturm called a halt about a hundred yards away from them, causing the frightened men to jump with fear at the sudden appearance of the enemy.
“First rank, take aim!” Sturm hollered, wishing he could see the faces of the men who were suddenly backing away from them.
“Fire!”
The enemy broke on the first volley. The sounds of the defeat by the wall and the ongoing battle at the top of Puoco Firme must have already brought them to the brink and that first line of musket balls pushed them over the edge. But simply allowing a couple of thousand men to run away mostly unscathed was asking for trouble later, so Sturm decided to whittle them down as much as possible.
“First rank, kneel! Second rank, aim, fire!”
At the rate of roughly a volley every four seconds, Sturm emptied a total of six volleys—some six hundred shots, into the fleeing men. Then he reloaded his men’s weapons and turned to face the hill. Just as he began to give the order to advance, more of the enemy began to spill off of it. The defenses at the top joined by new musket men at the bottom had been too much for them. Sturm fired into each group as they tried to flee past until they stopped fleeing.
The musket and cannon fire at the top of the hill had also dwindled to a halt. Two words kept drifting down the slopes toward him.
“Sturm Front! Sturm Front! Sturm Front!”
He took a brief moment to enjoy the victory, then organized his men by platoons to begin scouring the countryside for prisoners and discarded weapons.
Epilogue
Forte Firme, Al-Andalus, Kriegsturm
The Pink Moon, Day 26, Year 1197
A couple of hours after dawn, a dirty and bedraggled prisoner was dragged into the tower of Forte Firme and thrown at Sturm’s feet, bringing a look of surprise to the earl’s face. “Why General Luther Dekker,” he acknowledged him. “I’ve been wondering what happened to you.”
“I’ve been gathering information on the Southies,” Dekker told him as he stood up and straightened his clothing.
“Don’t even try,” Sturm warned him. “We’ve found the bodies of dozens of regulars on the slopes of Puoco Firme. You finally went public with your treachery.”
Dekker grimaced. “I was always loyal until you gave me no other choice?”
Sturm glared at him. “So, it’s my fault, is it? Tell me, what exactly did I do that forced you to betray our high king?”
“You messed everything up!” Dekker snarled. “You caused Ahl-Alnaar to invade, you idiot!”
“I did this?” Sturm was not surprised by the accusation—it had been the running theme of all of his opponents in Al-Andalus. But he was curious as to how Dekker would justify the charge.”
“You just didn’t understand how things were done in Al-Andalus,” Dekker bitterly retorted. “Everything could have been worked out if you’d shown a little patience and a little respect for the way things work down here.”
Sturm stared at him for several seconds before shaking his own head in disgust. “I can’t tell if you actually believe that or not. But I suppose it doesn’t matter. You, General Dekker, are accused of having actively supported an invading army, commanding troops for them, and firing upon loyal defenders of Kriegsturm. How do you plead?”
Dekker didn’t blubber. Instead, he bargained. “I have a lot of information regarding the siege of Torre de Força and conspirators against the crown.” He broke off as Sir Leandro Lima strode into the room. “There’s one of them now.”
Sturm didn’t even try to mask the disgust he felt at the accusation. “You actually expect me to believe that Sir Lima conspired to help a southern invasion.”
“It’s actually true from his perspective,” Lima shocked Sturm from saying. The knight took a seat beside the earl. “I was invited to a meeting that was called after the festival to discuss how to handle the conflict between you and Joachim Adler. By the time everyone arrived for the meeting, Adler was dead and Jiniral Darwish had invaded. I assumed that the subject would change to how strongly the various knights and lords would support you against Ahl-Alnaar, but I was wrong. Contar Afonso Borges had a plan to bring all of those men over to Jiniral Darwish’s side. I had to go along with them in order to get out again.”
