Sturm line musket men bo.., p.18
Sturm Line (Musket Men Book 5), page 18
Aunt Tilda was crying and Sturm feared that meant another of his family members had been either killed or hurt. But there was nothing more that he could do for them then what he already was—fighting to keep the bastards from getting inside where they could overwhelm them.
At the other window, Gunner was fighting every bit as viciously as he was. Caldor, despite his injuries, had joined Ruus and all of Sturm’s adult male relatives in the back of the house, holding those windows.
It was unlikely that all of them could hold. Uncle Carsten, Uncle Emil, and Karl didn’t have the experience to win this battle. But they were Sturms by birth or marriage and they were not going to go down with out giving it their all.
A man grabbed the barrel of Sturm’s gun and pulled hard, almost yanking it out of Sturm’s hand. One-handed he reached out to Rolf and accepted Wiebe’s reloaded musket from him, pointed it left-handed at the man’s face and pulled the trigger at point blank range.
He tossed Wiebe’s musket back to Rolf and kept fighting with his bayonet.
“What the hell is wrong with them?” Hart fumed. “It’s only a few Old Eisenlanders!”
“They’re not getting through the windows, Dad!” his son, Sig, said. “Maybe we can find an axe by the woodpile and break down one of the doors.”
“That’s not going to help us enough,” Hart worried. “We have to kill them! We can’t let them talk and tell everyone that we were with Engel trying to murder them.”
“You think they’d believe them?” Sig wondered. “They’re just a bunch of Old Eisenlanders.”
If the boy had been standing closer to him, Hart would have slapped him on the backside of the head. Sturm was an earl now. It didn’t matter if local people thought he was lying. The high king was definitely going to believe what he said.
“Maybe we could burn the house down,” Sig’s friend Werner suggested.
Hart liked that idea, but he worried that burning the house down might not be enough. All of this musket fire had to be attracting attention, and with the promise of Sturm’s high wages, the local people couldn’t be counted on to mind their own business. He needed to drive them out of the house and do it now.
“You don’t have to set it on fire,” he decided. “We just need to clog up the chimney so that smoke fills the house.”
“We can do that, Dad,” Sig promised. “Come on.”
Hart watched as Sig and his two friends ran toward the house to carry out the plan.
He hoped it would be enough.
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Decisions
Near Tief Graben, Eisenland, Kriegsturm
The Cold Moon, Day 21, Year 1196
Solstice Night
Graf Steffan Lamm’s bowels churned as he hurried his horse down the road toward the Sturm place. Hart had always been a problem, but he hadn’t really believed he could possibly be this big of a fool. Who did he think he was going to blame this crime on? Brigands? Like the brigands that no one could find when Sturm’s parents had been killed?
With a sudden increase in his personal horror, Lamm abruptly understood that Hart was responsible for those deaths too.
It was simply too much. If Sturm died, the high king would execute him. If Sturm lived, the crazy Hero of Steil Pass would probably come after him with a bayonet. And if somehow Lamm arrived in time to help Sturm—because helping Hart still led Lamm directly to the high king’s executioner—then angry Settlers would resurrect the Night Riders to come after him. He was trapped between Surt and Naar with no possible route to safety.
He didn’t know what to do and with the Sturm house just up around the bend, he was running out of time to decide.
“Be strong, my Lord,” Vicar Gunther advised.
Lamm glanced over at him and even though it was dark on the road with only a few torches and lanterns lighting their way, he felt certain that the vicar understood his dilemma.
“Wotan judges us not only by how we live, but how we die,” Gunther reminded him. “Keep your head high and do what you know is right. You aren’t alone tonight, and you won’t be tomorrow either whatever may come.”
Lamm opened his mouth to answer but his tongue was so dry he couldn’t make a sound.
They rounded the bend and saw a battlefield far worse than he had imagined. There were horses everywhere, and for the first time this solstice, the clouds had parted enough for the moon to show the devastation ahead of them. There were dozens of men in the field, mostly attacking the house, but there were also even more bodies sprawled across the land ahead of them. He had thought they were coming to fend off a few militiamen-turned-Night-Rider-brigands, but they had ridden into a full out war.
“Wotan protect us,” Vicar Gunther murmured.
“He will,” Lamm prayed he was right. “But first, we have to prove we are worthy by helping the Sturms.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Smoke
The Sturm House, Eisenland, Kriegsturm
The Cold Moon, Day 21, Year 1196
Solstice Night
Smoke began to billow out of the fireplace and Sergeant Benedict Gunner immediately understood what was happening. One of Hart’s men had gotten onto the roof and put a coat or a blanket over the top of the chimney. He had actually been in a situation like this early in his career. It had been a stupid thing. A sergeant from Sturmkuste who hated everyone had confiscated a rural home in Oosten Graanland for the night and forced the family out into the pigsty. Normally, the army men would have been the ones to take the outer building, but the sergeant didn’t like the look of the owner of the small farm and took the better accommodations. Gunner had awakened to the sound of coughing and the smell of smoke everywhere. Just like now the foul stuff burned the eyes and choked the nose and throat, but Gunner had learned a very important lesson that night. The smoke was not near as bad by the floor as it was by the ceiling.
“Everyone crouch down,” Gunner commanded. “The air is better down low and with the windows open, they’re not going to be able to smother us.”
He did himself as he had instructed and continued to keep watch out the window. They were enjoying a lull in the fighting while Hart’s men regrouped. Several were firing muskets at the house to keep the people inside from getting too comfortable, but the walls were strong and the men barely knew how to hold their muskets. They were not Sturm’s men. They could not fire two shots a minute. In fact, they would probably be lucky to get off one shot in twice that time.
Gunner took advantage of the lull to do the same thing, but unlike the men outside, he had his personal time down to twenty seconds. It took three seconds longer with the bayonet in place.
He let his eyes play across the interior of the building. Else and Henna had moved on from old Mrs. Sturm to Frederick, who’d showed some balls in helping Caldor. He hoped they both survived. Not only did he like them—especially the old woman—but it would absolutely crush Sturm if his visit home got a couple of his relatives killed.
He rubbed at the water in his eyes that was definitely caused by all this damned smoke. There was nothing he could do about the injured now. It was his task to make certain that no one else got hurt or killed.
He glanced at Sturm who was doing a better job than Gunner was at watching out the window.
Outside, it looked to him like the bastards were getting ready for another charge.
That was fine with Gunner, because he was ready to kill a few more of them.
Chapter Thirty-Nine: No Going Back
The Sturm House, Eisenland, Kriegsturm
The Cold Moon, Day 21, Year 1196
Solstice Night
“We did it, sir!” Werner and Gert reported in a rush of excited words. “We used a horse blanket. That smoke has probably already filled the building. They’ll have to come stumbling out soon and then we’ll have them.”
Hart heard the words, but what he focused on was the man who hadn’t come back with the two fellows. “Where’s Sig?”
“He stayed on the roof,” Gert explained. “He said he was going to take a shot at Sturm when he came out of the house?”
“And why didn’t you two stay with him?” Hart demanded as he stepped past Gert to look at the snow-covered roof of the house to see if he could spot his son.
Beside him, Gert’s face exploded as a musket ball hit him on the bridge of the nose.
Hart spun about in shock, looking for the marksman, as Werner screamed and dropped to the ground beside his suddenly dead friend.
Hart searched the snowy ground with his eyes but there was no one within a hundred and fifty yards of him. No one but a handful of his men. Could one of them have shot Gert by mistake? He wasn’t facing the house. He—
A whooping shout erupted from the Tief Graben side of the property and nearly two dozen horsemen came charging out of the woods toward Hart’s men. It all happened in a moment and Hart’s people were taken completely by surprise. He hadn’t posted any sentries there because he hadn’t imagined that the Sturms could actually put up a fight.
“Kill those men too!” Hart shouted, but the shock of the sudden assault was breaking a lot of them. They were starting to run, trying to get away from those horses and into the woods.
Even as Hart watched, he saw the figure in the lead raise a sword over his head and bring it crashing down on the head and shoulders of one of his men. That didn’t look like some Old Eisenlander. That looked like the—
“Constable Hart!” One of his men shouted. “The graf is leading those men! What do we do, sir? The graf is leading that attack!”
Hart took another step toward the newcomers and a musket ball struck the man who had just spoken to him. Hart whirled around again, eyes wide, as he belatedly realized that the both this shot and the one that had killed Gert were intended for him.
He whipped about again to search for his assailant, but even with the help of the moon he couldn’t see anyone between him and the tree line three hundred yards away.
He knew he couldn’t stay here now—not with the graf turning on him and some unknown assassin taking shots at him. But he also knew that he couldn’t just leave. The Sturms had to die. He couldn’t let the men break and run away until the Sturms had all died.
“With me, men!” he shouted. “First we kill the Sturms and then we teach the graf who’s really in charge of Tief Graben.”
Chapter Forty: Minister Brandt’s Stand
Near Tief Graben, Eisenland, Kriegsturm
The Cold Moon, Day 21, Year 1196
Solstice Night
“Minister,” the cheerful voice of Pankraz Schroeder caught Brandt by surprise as did the strong hand coming down on his shoulder. “I’m so glad we have this opportunity to speak in relative privacy.”
“We are, um, preparing ourselves for battle, so to speak,” Brandt reminded everyone. They were hurrying down the road toward the Sturm place with three inches of snow on the ground and most of them had a torch in their hands and this really wasn’t the best time, he felt, to talk to the older brother of the girl he’d been trying to get out of her dress for the last several weeks.
“And that is why I wanted to talk with you,” Pankraz said. “You have told us a lot about your faith in Wotan and I admire you for it.”
“You do?” Brandt asked. He had not expected the man to start with praise. After all, if Brandt had a sister and someone like himself were trying to get under her skirts, he would have felt a bit more hostile about the situation.
“Indeed, I do,” Shroeder assured him. “Wotan the warrior! Wotan the ruler! Wotan the womanizer.”
“Ah,” Brandt responded.
“Exactly,” Shroeder told him. “Ahhhh.”
They walked on for a moment in silence while the other men forgot their fear of Night Riders for a moment to focus on Brandt and Pankraz.
“Do you know why I decided to come with you tonight?” Shroeder asked. “I didn’t sign on with Sturm. I don’t owe that man anything.”
“No,” Brandt admitted. Then he reached deep inside himself and made the sort of answer that he thought his idol, Marshal Sturm, would make in his place. “I don’t know, but I ask that if telling me involves you beating the hell out of me for admiring your lovely sister, that you wait until after we rescue Sturm to do it.”
“And let you get away from me?” Shroeder asked.
Brandt stopped walking so he and Shroeder could face each other man-to-man. Admittedly, Schroeder was a lot more man that Brandt was—six foot six and what must have been nearly three hundred pounds of muscles. But Wotan faced down giants without backing away.
“Listen to me carefully,” Brandt said. “In fact, all of you please listen to me. I realize I am not the sort of man a small community like Schotter wants for its minister. I worship Wotan, not Baldur and not Tyr.” He chuckled. It was a slightly forced sound, but only slightly. “We all know that your sisters and your daughters really aren’t safe with me. I want them all, and I’m going to keep testing their virtue.” He found a more genuine laugh. “And I regret to admit to you that so far, they have all proved more resolute than I wanted them to.”
That got a chuckle, perhaps even a relieved chuckle, from a good many of the men who had followed him into the night.
“Am I right to be this way?” Brandt asked. “To be honest, I don’t know. Maybe, in most times, Minister Roth is right. We’re just supposed to timidly get along, bowing our heads and obeying our betters, even when they’re arrogant treacherous curs like the Settlers.”
He returned his gaze to Schroeder and stared into his eyes by the light of the torches. “But these aren’t normal times. Surely you can all see that. Wotan is with us again, stirring the clouds of war and this is not the time to bow our heads and hope the trouble passes.”
He glanced around at the others. “You see that, don’t you. You knew Marshal Sturm when he was growing up. You know what he’s trying to do for the Eisenlanders and Old Eisenlanders of Tief Graben. You know what he did against Anjou and what he’s being called to do again in Al-Andalus.”
His voice began to rise as he got into his sermon. “And I tell you now, it is Wotan inspiring him to these deeds, just as surely as it is Surt and Narr driving those who seek to stop him. And tonight, we are called to decide the course of our whole lives. Are we men of Wotan—brave and steadfast and in the right? Or are we toadies of Tyr and Baldur who don’t care what happens around us so long as it is quiet.”
“You’re making a good speech, Brandt,” Pankraz Schroeder told him, “but what does any of that have to do with keeping you away from my sister?”
“Only this,” Brandt told him. “If Sturm dies tonight, you’re stuck with me. But if we can save him, whether he takes me into his service or not, I swear I will leave Schotter and seek my future elsewhere.”
Schroeder grinned. “Now that’s a promise I can get behind. That’s a—”
The whole group of them broke off as a half dozen men came bounding up the road on horseback from the Sturm place. When they caught sight of the score of men from Schotter, the riders reined up and one of them shouted, “You lot, what are you doing there? Clear the road I tell you! Clear the road!”
Anger flushed through Minister Bramwell Brandt’s body, mixing with the zeal for Wotan that had caused him to speak his impromptu sermon. He stepped out in front of the others. “Who are you?”
“We’re the constable’s men,” one of them shouted while another said, “Don’t tell them who we are, Lyle.”
“I don’t care if a bunch of Eisenlander worms recognize me,” the first man growled.
“You’re Night Riders,” Brandt realized “You’ve just come from attacking the Sturm family, but from the sound of the muskets in the distance, it sounds like you’ve run away instead of finishing them off.”
Lyle Haas drew his sword. “The only people who can testify that we were there are the group of you.”
He kicked his horse hard in the ribs and it charged forward, but the rest of the Night Riders didn’t immediately follow him, just like none of Brandt’s men stepped forward to help him.
Brandt fumbled with the musket someone had pressed into his hands as they marched out of town. He didn’t even know if it was loaded. Despite all of his talk he had never fired one before. But he watched with avid interest as the recruits had shown what they could do at Hirschfeld and he tried to duplicate the important parts right now.
He raised the gun toward the charging horseman, wishing that the muzzle wasn’t quivering so badly. He cocked the hammer back until it clicked. His finger found the trigger. Lyle Haas was almost on top of him as he closed his eyes and fired the weapon.
The kick was so bad it knocked him over and his eyes flashed open as he fell back into the snow.
The horse charged past him through the twenty men from Schotter.
“He got him!” Pankraz Schroeder shouted. “Now let’s get them!”
To Brandt’s astonishment, his congregation from Schotter charged past him up the road, not running away but racing to battle.
Brandt rolled onto his knees and saw the body of Lyle Haas lying facing up in the snow fifteen feet away from him.
Brandt finished standing and approached the man. He wasn’t quite dead yet, but he obviously would be soon. His sword lay on the ground a couple of feet from his right hand.
Brandt picked it up and charged forward to help his men.
Chapter Forty-One: Fire
The Sturm House, Eisenland, Kriegsturm
The Cold Moon, Day 21, Year 1196
Solstice Night
Sturm rubbed at his burning eyes with one hand while trying to see what was happening outside. Muskets continued to fire, but not all of them were ending with the sound of a tiny lead ball hitting the house. In addition, there had been a surge in screams and shouts further out in the yard. Could someone have rallied to come help them? With the smoke burning his eyes, he just couldn’t tell for sure.
Rolf finished reloading Wiebe’s gun and crouched against the wall waiting for Sturm to need it, but Sturm figured he would wait to shoot until someone got close to the window again, or made a run at the door with an axe. He wasn’t certain how much ammunition they had left, and with the darkness and the smoke and the natural inaccuracy of the musket at long range, he didn’t think it made sense to fire if he wasn’t certain of his target.
