1636_ The Saxon Uprising - Eric Flint [166]
Johan Banér was awakened by the sound of gunfire. He came awake instantly.
“Fucking bastards! I warned them!”
He began pulling on his pants, calling for his orderly and his adjutant. The orderly arrived first, piling into the little room on the upper floor of the house. He’d have been sleeping just outside, in the hallway. The hallway was small and narrow, too, as you’d expect from a village home that wasn’t quite a hovel but came close.
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.
Banér 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, Banér 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.”
Banér 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