Sturm country musket men.., p.12
Sturm Country (Musket Men Book 9), page 12
Sir Leandro Lima, Knight Captain of the Granite Knights, stared at the back of the surprising earl of Fortaleza as he strode off to command the force that would relieve their brothers at Vigilância Sul and realized he was feeling an emotion he hadn’t enjoyed in decades.
Hope.
How had this man inspired him with hope? His plan was audacious but the basic math of their problem hadn’t changed. Sturm had brought about twenty-five hundred men south with him but the invaders already in Al-Andalus had an army of thirty thousand and would be recruiting more from the treacherous Southies who lived in this land. What was more, he was about to open a second front by assaulting the troops besieging Vigilância Sul. That meant that the numbers against them were about to get even worse.
So why did he feel hope surging in his breast—hope and extraordinary pride?
He turned back to the fort his men had just liberated—the fort that Earl Sturm had just returned to the capable hands of his order—and realized that something was missing.
“Why hasn’t our banner been raised over Forte Firme?” he demanded.
“It’s still dark, knight captain,” one of his men explained. “No one can see it yet.”
“Raise it anyway!” Lima ordered. “When the sun rises, I want the whole world to know that the Granite Knights have just struck the first real blow in this war.”
As the man ran off to do his bidding, Lima smiled, suddenly confident that he and his men would be striking more blows. It was time for Ahl-Alnaar to be reminded of what it meant to go to war against the Granite Knights.
Chapter Eighteen: Baron Spero
The North Gate, Cidade Fortaleza, Al-Andalus, Kriegsturm
The Pink Moon, Day 10, Year 1197
Major Wilhelm Hart, reluctant Governor of Cidade Fortaleza, rode out the North Gate with a handful of men as escort to meet another group of reinforcements arriving to support his nephew in the war against Ahl-Alnaar. He had come personally, as he always did, because it was important to establish the chain of command immediately and make it clear that they were not going to treat the southerners as they had in the years before the festival. So far, he had been faced with quite a bit of incredulity, but no real opposition. But the odds were that that would change one of these days. There were a lot of self-important asses in the world and they couldn’t have been so lucky that all of them had been killed when the Southies went mad and started eating people.
“It’s about time!” the leader of the roughly three hundred pikemen strode forward toward Wilhelm. “I cannot believe you have kept me waiting for more than an hour outside of the city. Do you know who I am, major?”
Else had told Wilhelm the man’s name when she informed him that he had arrived, so he used it in his greeting as he dismounted. “Baron Spero, in the name of my nephew, Earl Marshal Sturm, please permit me to welcome you to Cidade Fortaleza. I am certain you can understand that having just put down a rebellion and having an invading army in the south, extra precautions must be taken when armed men arrive—even when it is their evident intention to support the earl in the defense of Al-Andalus.”
Spero refused to concede that point. “Watch the way you talk to me, major. I am not used to being treated in such an uncouth fashion!”
Wilhelm offered a tight smile which he knew conveyed no warmth. “That was my polite voice, baron. If you would like to get into a pissing contest with me—let’s start it now. The province is at war. Do you want to come into the city and see the role that the earl has planned for you? Or do you want to find out who’s pecker is bigger right here and right now?”
The baron blanched, obviously shocked that Wilhelm had not instantly backed down. “Are you threatening me?”
“No, I am offering you the confrontation you appear to want. I was perfectly respectful to you. For reasons I cannot fathom, you chose to pretend I was not. So, if there is a problem, let’s resolve it now, because we are at war and I will not tolerate any dissension in my chain of command.”
“Your chain,” Spero sputtered. “You think I am in your chain of command? You’re only a major!”
“While my rank is major in the earl’s personal militia,” Wilhelm clarified. “My title is Governor of Cidade Fortaleza.”
“Says who?” the baron demanded.
“Says Earl Marshal Sturm who is second only to the high king in Al-Andalus—and has been given full civilian and military authority during this crisis. Now, I welcome your contribution to the defense of the realm and I am very pleased with the speed with which you mobilized these men and brought them to the city. It is a very good beginning.”
“You can’t be the governor!” Spero protested. “You’re obviously an Eisenlander. Where is your chain of office?”
Wilhelm sighed. “Sir Faust was right, I see.”
“What?”
“I left the chain at the earl’s house,” Wilhelm explained. “Everyone still alive in the city who matters knows who I am and it didn’t seem necessary to wear the damn thing. If you really need to see it, I’ll get it out for you when we reach the earl’s estate.”
The baron opened his mouth to retort, then hesitated as Wilhelm’s word sank in. “Did you say everyone still alive? Did that many people really die in the riots?”
“They weren’t riots,” Wilhelm corrected him. “Somehow, Adler and Ahl-Alnaar switched all the flowers for the Festival of the Midnight Bloom so that they sprayed forth raw ghadab rather than the golden pollen they usually eject.”
The man’s face twisted with horror. “Raw ghadab?”
Wilhelm realized that this hot head might draw the not-unreasonable conclusion that all of the Southies still represented a danger. “The poor southerners in the city had no idea it was going to happen. The vast majority were already undressed for their rites. None of them even had weapons to hand. But the ghadab turned them all into ravenous berserk cannibals.”
“Cannibals!” the baron repeated. “I had heard something—but I didn’t believe it.”
“Believe it, Baron Spero,” Sturm suggested. “And be grateful that our southerners are smart enough to realize that Adler and Ahl-Alnaar chose to do this to them. They are so angry they have become the earl’s firmest supporters as we take the war to the invaders.”
That got the short-sighted reaction Wilhelm had expected of the man. “You think the southerners are on our side?”
“Not all of them,” Wilhelm cautioned, “but here in the city, yes. I’ll explain everything to you back at the earl’s estate. Sir Faust will join us there as will Grandmaster Carvalho. He suffered a heart attack defending the barricades, but he’s recovered enough to speak with us now.”
“I had no idea,” the baron confessed. “How bad was it really?”
“More than ten thousand dead and at least ten thousand orphans,” Wilhelm told him. “Most of them were southerners but far too many were among our fellow northerners. Oh, and then we had to put down a battalion of Ghulam.”
“Ghulam!” Spero exclaimed. “Those stories were real?”
“I have no way of knowing what stories you have heard, baron,” Wilhelm told him. “But we’ll give you a full briefing. In return, please begin to think about who else may be coming from the north to help us and in what numbers.”
The baron nodded.
“Oh, and I’m going to have your men led to the south side of the city—”
“You will not command my men!” Spero objected.
Wilhelm ignored him. “—where they will form a training company. Everyone is getting additional training, baron. Perhaps you think your men are already the elite company of the high kingdom?”
The baron remembered his snobbish sense of self-importance. “I really don’t appreciate your tone, Eisenlander.”
“And I don’t appreciate you wasting my time before you even know the state of affairs in the city and the south,” Wilhelm answered.
Both men glared at each other for several seconds before Wilhelm attempted to conclude the meeting. “So, what’s it to be, baron? Are you going to come attend the briefing?”
“I will,” the baron confirmed.
“Then let’s get moving,” Wilhelm directed.
Chapter Nineteen: Vigilância Sul
Outside Vigilância Sul, Al-Andalus, Kriegsturm
The Pink Moon, Day 11, Year 1197
Boom!
The sound of the cannon shot echoed down the pass as Sturm reviewed his men, making certain that they were ready for their first real battle since incorporating the regular army pikemen into their formation. A cannon fired every fifteen or thirty minutes. The shots were probably intended to keep the defenders of Vigilância Sul from getting any rest. They certainly weren’t part of a serious effort to break open the fortress. Clearly, the southerners had decided to starve the fort out rather than expend the resources necessary to demolish it.
That was a mistake Sturm was going to make them regret in just a few more minutes.
He had marched his men two miles down the pass that first night when they had retaken Forte Firme. Then he pushed them very hard the next day, covering an additional thirty miles to get them close enough for today’s assault. In doing so, he had overtaken Caldor, so his force was as complete as it was going to get for this phase of the war.
Vigilância Sul was only half a mile or so ahead of them, out of sight behind the next bend in the trail. Sturm had organized his men in files fifty men across with four ranks of pikemen in the lead followed by fifteen ranks of musket men, each carrying a weapon loaded with double measures of powder. Behind them came the rest of his pikemen and in the rear, much to the outrage of Brother Vicente, came Caldor’s cavalry and the Granite Knights.
The cavalry had a critical role to play in the coming days of the war, and he refused to risk them here just to assuage the pride of the prickly Peosan monks.
“The regiment will advance,” he ordered, and the entire mass of men began to stride forward with even the regular army soldiers immediately catching the proper stride. They rounded the bend, coming into view of the long wall blocking off southern access to the pass where absolutely no one took note of them.
It always amazed Sturm when something like this happened, and yet, in his career he had found it quite common. The southerners knew they controlled the northern end of the pass and they could see their army spread out around the southern end. They had men on the walls, but all of their attention was focused toward Vigilância Sul to make certain that the knights did not try and retake the fortification from them. Since there could be no other threat, they weren’t really watching the north which allowed Sturm’s men to rapidly close the distance toward them. One thousand yards, eight hundred, seven hundred fifty...
A shout went up as someone to the south must have casually glanced in their direction and seen death approaching.
“Double time!” Sturm ordered and the whole regiment increased its pace.
Ahead of them, southern soldiers began to shout and point, probably realizing that the wall they were standing on was not designed to defend against people coming south from the northern end of the pass.
Panic began to engulf them. Many men quickly got down off the wall and fled through the open gate, but twenty-five or thirty men tried to get themselves organized. They got down off the wall and quickly began to form themselves a line where they strung their bows and prepared to fight Sturm’s men.
Six hundred yards, five hundred.
A cannon abruptly fired from within Vigilância Sul. As he couldn’t see the target of that fire, Sturm assumed it was aimed at the south side of the wall, probably into cavalry trying to get itself organized. A gaping hole marred the wall where the gate used to be, so the cavalry would have a clean run to them—once the twenty-five archers got out of the way.
Four hundred yards, three hundred.
The men were getting winded, but he only needed them to run a little bit longer.
Two hundred fifty yards.
“Normal time,” Sturm ordered and the entire regiment immediately slowed to a walk. They were still outside of the range of the archers, so he let them advance another fifty yards while they caught their breath.
None of the archers shot an arrow at them at this range, which bespoke good discipline despite their small numbers.
Two hundred yards.
They were technically in range now, but it was not a very effective range, so he kept the men advancing.
One hundred seventy-five yards.
Fifteen horses with archers on their backs charged through the gate toward Sturm and his men, swerving gracefully around the group of archers in the road, then coming together again as they sped toward them.
“Regiment halt!” Sturm ordered. “Pikes kneel and ground your weapons.”
They did so with very good discipline, making him proud, but the cavalry had used that time to close within one hundred and forty yards.
“First rank, take aim. Fire,” Sturm shouted.
Fifty muskets boomed and a cloud of acrid smoke filled the air above them. One hundred something yards ahead, eleven horses stumbled and fell, as did all fifteen riders. Whether or not they were all dead was not clear, but they weren’t in a position to threaten him anymore.
“First rank to the rear and reload,” Sturm commanded. “Pikes stand. Regiment advance.”
They began moving forward again, but the archers who had mobilized to stop them began to turn to each other and jabber uncertainly. While an officer tried to restore discipline, Sturm used the time to close the distance to roughly one hundred and fifty yards. “Second rank!” he bellowed.
Most of the archers broke and ran, smart enough to see that they had no chance against a foe who could kill them from fifty yards outside their own maximum range.
“Take aim. Fire!”
The archers fell, even as another group of horsemen came through the gate.
Sturm grimaced. He didn’t want to drop those horses where they could block his own cavalry from getting out into the southern countryside. He decided to let them advance and see what happened.
At one hundred and twenty yards, he gave the order to fire again, expending the ammunition of two more ranks to drop another fifty men.
He could hear the confusion on the far side of the wall while the cannon in Vigilância Sul fired again. The way in front of them was clear.
He grabbed a musket man and told him to run back to Brother Vicente and tell him that he was authorized to advance through the gate and disperse the enemy. Then, while the man ran to do as he was told, Sturm sent two platoons of musket men to man the wall and ordered the rest of his men to form two columns—one to either side of the road.
Almost the moment the road was clear, Vicente and his knights raced forward. Sturm saluted them as they passed and held the gesture until Caldor and his men had followed the knights through the gate. Then he got his infantry, still in columns, back on the road and started after them, even as his platoons on the wall began to fire at the enemy.
Major Roel Caldor grinned fiercely as he led his men through the gate and into the southern countryside. This was what life in the army was supposed to be like—fast horses and even quicker action. Ahead of them, the weird granite knights with their medieval weapons and tactics, had already crushed the initial opposition forming to defend the gate. There were at least a hundred dead southern horse archers with lances having burst through their bodies. Riderless horses ran in every direction, adding to the chaos.
He had one of his pistols in his hand as he searched the area for targets. The objective here was to kill as many southern soldiers as possible while he and his men moved against the enemy cannon to prevent the Southies from using them against Sturm and his men. The only problem was that the knights were slaughtering everyone before Caldor and his men could get to them.
He found a group trying to rally and led his men in close and fast, firing pistols at point blank range to increase their chances of clearing the saddles.
Behind him, columns of infantry led by the pikemen began to clear the gate.
Caldor pulled his second pistol and charged down on a group of cannoneer trying to turn a big thirty-two-pound gun toward Sturm’s musket men.
A pistol shot dropped their officer and then his saber was out slashing at the rest of the crew as he rode through them. His men continued fanning out behind him.
The southerners had been caught completely by surprise.
This battle was over before it really started.
Sturm nodded with satisfaction as his pikemen took possession of the cannon and his musket men swarmed the hundreds of caravan wagons waiting, as he had predicted, for their chance to enter the pass. There frankly wasn’t a particularly large force here maintaining the siege and he didn’t expect there to be many survivors.
He would take possession of the cannon, the army supplies, and the goods in the caravan. The cannon would be shipped north to bolster the defense of Forte Firme as would a good portion of the supplies. But the rest would serve to support his new forward base as Caldor and Vicente turned their attention to demonstrating to Ahl Alnaar just how foolish they had been in testing the resolve of Kriegsturm.
