Eye of the sturm musket.., p.23
Eye of the Sturm (Musket Men Book 11), page 23
He pulled his weapon free and promptly shot a man aiming his bow at him. Then he was moving forward with his men coming up behind him.
“Bell!” Sturm shouted. “Reload and send the men in after them.”
The lieutenant nodded in recognition of his orders and began to fix his own bayonet on the end of his weapon.
Behind Sturm, a new group of nomads hit his western flank. It was a good plan, coming at him from all directions, but the tight side streets weren’t nearly as friendly to the enemy as these broad avenues were. While the pikes held them back, the muskets kept firing and reloading, brutally punishing the enemy for coming against them.
He turned to judge the rear where the assault had begun. He’d taken more casualties there than he had in the front, but he’d trained his officers well. They’d fixed bayonets and charged into the enemy just as he had done. They were in no danger of losing.
He returned his attention to the front where even now the nomadic horsemen were starting to flee further up the avenue.
He’d taken casualties, but he’d won.
Sheik Kan heard a cheer as he lay in the road where the Alkhudar had just trampled him as they charged forward killing his men. The acclaim did not come from the enemy soldiers, a dying part of his brain noted. It came from the southern city dwellers—men and women who shared a faith with him and nothing else—looking out of windows at the battle and screaming in delight as his people died.
As his life drained away, he found himself dwelling on the irony that in defeating his attack, the northerners had just found a way to make the city dwellers love them. While the north was the bogeyman of legends, it was the Göçebe Insanlar that the men and women of Madinat Alharir truly feared. In fighting Kan’s people, the enemy had found common cause with the worthless worms.
As his consciousness drained away with his blood, he wondered what that bode for the future.
Chapter Sixty: Closing the Gate
Bir Eamiq (The Deep Well), Madinat Alharir, Disputed Territory
The Strawberry Moon, Day 13, 1197
Despite his orders to Wagner, Caldor immediately attacked when he saw the nomads bottled up in confusion as they each struggled to be the next man through the gate and into the next district. Later he would justify his action by explaining that he was worried that if he pulled back, the nomads would turn on him with their superior numbers. But in truth, he didn’t think through his actions that clearly. The enemy was ahead of him and facing away and he charged in and began to kill them with his saber and pistols.
The enemy must have thought he had a much larger force behind him than the hundred-plus men whooping and hollering as they followed him into combat. A great shout went up among the nomads and then, rather than turn and fight, they struggled even harder to be the next man through the gate which was more than fine with Caldor. He just kept cutting and stabbing with his sword as they cleared the Sweet Spring of the bulk of the enemy,
Sheik Emre heard the shouts of his men behind him and wondered who could be attacking him. There were the men on the wall guarding the Royal Well, but he was certain they had been content to stay where they were and let him and his brother warriors have the rest of the city. So, who did that leave to assault him?
Ultimately, it didn’t matter. Whoever it was had caught his rear when it was at its most vulnerable and now drove them forward into the rest of his army causing confusion that would make it difficult to counterattack. He began to break a force off from the main army in order to keep them intact and ready while the muddle of warriors near the gate sorted themselves out.
“Why are we waiting here, Sheik Emre?” A warrior asked. “There is a whole city to ravage.”
“First, we kill the enemy,” Emre reminded him. “After that, there will be plenty of time for fun.”
Faust led his men through the gate into the Deep Well and immediately broke them off into groups of five hundred. He didn’t actually have all of his men—many of those who had broken off when they entered the city had not yet linked up with him again. But he had at least three thousand of them and he used them now to advance up different streets in the direction of the fighting. It was one of the big advantages of the muskets and the pistols. The sound of them firing was like a beacon leading Faust and his men in the right direction.
They swept forward for more than ten minutes before they caught sight of the first nomads in the Deep Well. Much to Faust’s disappointment, the warriors did not charge forward into his lines. They did not even fire upon them with their bows. Instead, the scouts took one look at the approaching northerners and raced back the way they had come, doubtless to inform their leaders that trouble was coming.
“There are many men with pikes coming, Sheik Emre,” the scout reported.
“How many men?” Emre wondered. They must be coming from the Royal Well to be where they were but this suggested that the northerners had many more men than he had first suspected if they would risk them in open battle out from behind their walls.
“At least a few hundred,” the scout informed him.
“A few hundred pikemen is not a significant problem,” Emre sought to calm him.
“But there are more coming up the streets beside them,” another scout warned.
Emre frowned. This was beginning to sound more serious. If the Alkhudar were advancing up more than one street it suggested both great numbers and an understanding of how much better it would be if they could engage the Göçebe Insanlar along multiple fronts.
He wanted to take the force of several hundred men he had raised and attack the enemy driving his cavalry into this district, but there was still a confusing muddle of tribesmen between him and the gate and he decided to deal with the pikemen first. He had four or five hundred men himself. With their bows, he could turn their tactics against them and decimate these invaders one street at a time.
He led his men through the city past one of the many plazas with turreted towers in it. Then he caught sight of the northerns approaching and exhorted his men. “Brothers, we will rain arrows down upon the northerners and drive them back the way that have come.”
His men cheered with commendable enthusiasm and he led them across the plaza and past the street with the northerners in a long and graceful line. As they passed the open street, each warrior loosed an arrow toward the enemy and then rode away.
A horrific boom shook the air in the plaza and men screamed in terror and agony. Emre whipped around in his saddle to see a horrifying spray of blood fountaining up above eight or ten of his warriors who had just been shredded by—
Fear gripped Emre’s heart as he broke off his own line of thoughts to look up at the turreted tower in time to see a second cannon fire, ripping apart more of his long beautiful line.
A new shout arose—this time from the Wotan-worshippers as they charged down their street and into the plaza to drive their long, wicked pikes into Emre’s horsemen.
A third cannon fired and took another swath out of his lines,
More pikemen entered the plaza, not from behind the first group but from another street. In under a minute, Emre had lost at least a hundred men and still the pikemen were coming.
He needed to attack, but his men were already scattering, fleeing to get the range they needed to—
The first cannon fired a second time and Emre gave up the fight in this area and called on his men to retreat with him.
Caldor regained his senses when his men finished clearing the Sweet Spring side of the gate. “Quickly,” he ordered. “Get the portcullis down and the gate closed again. Then get to the top of the wall with your muskets.”
Even as he spoke, he acted on his own commands. He dismounted his horse and wrapped the reins around a piece of fencing doubtless built for exactly that purpose, and ran up onto the wall with his musket. Directly on the other side, nomads still turned this way and that in confusion. Cannon were firing deeper inside the district and the shouts that Caldor could hear had a distinctively northern flavor.
“Sturm Front! Sturm Front! Sturm Front!”
“Hurry!” he encouraged his men even as he took advantage of the opportunity to begin reloading his pistols. Within a couple of minutes, he had a hundred men on the wall holding muskets.
“I don’t like the idea that these nomads think it is safe to loiter in the Sturm Front’s city,” Caldor announced and the men grinned. “What do you say we show them they’re not welcome?”
The men cheered and then began to chant, “Sturm Front! Sturm Front! Sturm Front!”
Below them, the nomads began to look at the wall just in time for Caldor to tell his men to aim and fire.
Fifty nomads dropped and the rest began to run. Fortunately, there were still enough near the gate when the major’s men finished reloading for Caldor to kill fifty more.
Faust’s men finished driving the nomads out of the plaza and started chasing them up the streets. Faust wasn’t certain what to do about the cannon. He could see the men operating them were Southies because the obvious officer standing in view while he calculated the damage he had done was one of the southerners. He decided to try and talk to him.
“Do you speak northern?” he shouted up the wall.
“Sturm Front!” the man shouted back with a very heavy accent.
“Is he asking me if I am the Sturm Front or telling me he supports him?” Faust wondered. But either way, this man did not appear hostile. Perhaps helping to drive off the nomads had won Faust and his men a little bit of friendship this morning.
“Sturm Front!” he shouted back and the man waved.
Faust went off to help his men finish the battle.
Chapter Sixty-One: One Careless Action
Bir Malakiun (The Royal Well), Madinat Alharir, Disputed Territory
The Strawberry Moon, Day 13, 1197
Sweat still poured down Sturm’s brow as he walked into the outer room of what used to be High Sheik Rami’s elaborate bedroom suite where he tried to ignore the gaudy display of gold and jewels which decorated everything. He figured he would sell those off to build real walls and properly fortify the city, but that was a task for tomorrow. For the rest of the day, he wanted to try and forget the heat and get clean again.
He set his musket against the wall as Gunner, Ruus, Zane the Voice, and the ever-present Medi followed him into the room. He’d had an impromptu meeting with many of the leaders of the Clear Well. They were a mixture of stone masons, carpenters, weavers, dyers, sword makers, basket weavers, potters, silver and gold smiths, jewelers, scribes, engravers, tailors and seamstresses, shoemakers, leatherworkers, and Wotan alone knew how many other professions. He had made his pitch to them. The markets of the north, protection, and low tariffs in exchange for their loyalty. And in the wake of the attack by the nomads, the people appeared willing to give him a chance.
Their feelings would probably all change tomorrow, but for the moment, Sturm had won another victory in his effort to actually rule Madinat Alharir.
“I need a beer,” Sturm told them even as an ex-slave hurried into the room balancing a tray with several silver cups on it. “But I’ll settle for this crummy wine the southerners drink. We have to toast Ruus on his promotion.”
He drank deeply even as Gunner snapped, “Damn it, Sturm! You know you aren’t supposed to be the first to drink anything. What if it’s poisoned?”
Sturm found a smile for his friend. “You don’t truly expect me to use you as a taster, do you?”
Zane the Voice screamed, “Gun!” and for a terrible confused moment, Sturm had no idea what he was talking about. Then he saw it all even as his hand reached on its own into his pocket for the little pistol he carried as a last defense against assassins. Medi, the man Sturm had freed from slavery, had picked up Sturm’s musket from where he set it against the wall and was expertly lifting and aiming the weapon to fire on him.
Ruus dove across the room at the southerner but he wasn’t going to make it in time. Gunner had already leveled his own musket at the man betraying Sturm, but even firing from the hip, he wasn’t going to beat Medi to the punch. His own tiny pistol came out of his pocket and pointed—
Medi fired and a horrible blinding pain exploded in Sturm’s left eye and then he saw nothing.
Chapter Sixty-Two: Respect
The Hall of Wotan, Eternity
A low throbbing sound slowly dragged Sturm back to consciousness and he found himself standing—leaning really—against the frame of a mammoth door—large enough that giants—literal giants—could walk through without ducking their heads.
He tried to straighten up but a wave of dizziness forced him to reach forward to steady himself against the iron-reinforced wood, but even as he touched the barrier, the whole door swung inward causing him to stumble through the frame into the hall behind.
The light in this place was strange, illuminating without actually showing anything, but Sturm got the impression that the space beyond the door was filled with people—an awful lot more people than had formed the mobs of southerners who had rioted in Madinat Alharir these last few days.
He took another step forward, trying to figure out where he was and how he had come to be here. His name was Marshal Sturm—of that he was certain. He was a lieutenant, no a captain, no a major in the high king’s army—but he couldn’t actually hold a rank that lofty could he? He was only a man of modest means and influence from Eisenland. Except that something in that thought wasn’t true anymore if he could only figure out what it was.
He took another step. The low dull thrumming noise grew louder the further he advanced into the room, but he still couldn’t quite make it out. Crazy as it seemed, it sounded to him like a great many someones were shouting something, or maybe chanting a name. “Sturm Front! Sturm Front! Sturm Front!”
He stepped forward and a voice called out to his right. “Attention!”
He pivoted about to see who was speaking even as his back went ramrod straight from long ingrained reflex. “Wiebe?”
It was Wiebe, he thought, but that was impossible. Wiebe had been at Steil Pass with him. He was the lieutenant who had panicked and begged a chance to redeem himself. He had lit the powder that stymied the Angevin advance, blowing himself up to do it.
Wiebe and nearly two hundred other men who had also stood with Sturm in that little strip of hell were dressed in perfect Kriegsturm uniforms as they saluted him with parade ground perfection. “It’s very good to see you again, Captain Sturm,” Wiebe told him.
“You’re alive!” Sturm shouted and took a step forward to embrace the man who somehow had blown the black powder without being ripped apart by it.
Except that Wiebe stood shaking his head, rejecting Sturm’s words. “No, sir, none of us are alive anymore. We died following you and serving Wotan.”
“But that means?” Sturm whispered and the rest of his too short life slammed back into his mind. The march on Hekt, his first night with Else and Henna, the defense of the city, the battle at the Musket Club, the siege of his grandmother’s house where he had finally avenged the murder of his parents. And then there was the war against Adler, the frantic battle against the berserk cannibals, his counter attack against Jineral Darwish’s invasion, and the campaign into Ahl-Alnaar Ashomol that had resulted in his conquest of Madinat Alharir. Every blow he had struck, every shot he had taken, every command decision he had made, and every wound that he had suffered in the service of his high king hammered powerfully back into his mind.
Then he saw that the company who died under his command at Steil Pass was not alone. Behind them and to both sides stood a great many others and not all in Kriegsturm uniforms. There were militiamen from Hekt and civilians who had manned the barricades in Cidade Fortaleza. And so many others who fought against Ahl-Alnaar with him in Southern Al-Andalus and on the long road south to Madinat Alharir. There were even, he was pleased to see, southern brothers of the Granite Knights standing proud and respectfully in their armor. He dared to think for a moment that every single man true to the Rule and the Law who had served with him or under him was here to welcome him home.
“I am in Wotan’s Hall,” he realized, his voice choked with awe.
“And well-earned is your place here,” an Angevin accent assured him.
He turned and found a man he did not know stepping toward him in the uniform of an Angevin officer. “Captain Cotillard, my Lord,” the man introduced himself with a crisp salute. “I commanded the Angevin cannon that last day in Steil Pass.”
“But we fought each other,” Sturm reminded him, drawing a smile from the captain.
“That does not matter here.”
“What does matter,” a Kriegsturm officer explained as he too stepped forward and saluted, “is that we lived our lives according to the Rule and the Law of Wotan and we died bravely in his service.”
“Major Classen?” Sturm asked, remembering the pikeman who had helped him develop his musket doctrine.
“I see you got your silly guns to work,” the major teased him before growing abruptly serious. “And with them saved our high kingdom multiple times. We are all so very proud of you.”
“Not all!” a voice bellowed across a throng that Sturm suddenly realized might be hundreds of thousands of men strong.
“You’re soft, Sturm,” another voice thundered. “I do not believe you have the right to be here.”
Sturm frowned as he turned and saw two men whose portraits he had seen at many places in the palace of High King Torben: Harald the Conqueror and Wilhelm the Scourge.
“Fortunately, it is not your decision to make, half-brother,” Jacob Adler, First Earl of Fortaleza announced as he stepped out of the crowd of heroes of the past to confront the second high king of Kriegsturm.
“Everything this so-called Sturm Front accomplished will crumble to dust,” Wilhelm the Scourge raged at Sturm’s ancestor, “because he failed to secure his victories by purging his enemies from the land.”
