Sturm front musket men b.., p.17
Sturm Front (Musket Men Book 2), page 17
Chapter Fourteen: Viser’s Command
East of Fort Ster, Oosten Graanland, Kriegsturm
The Sturgeon Moon, Day 10, Year 1196
Five hundred cavalry came sweeping down on Captain Viser’s position without warning.
Fortunately, he had decided to rest his men in the square formation as the most versatile should he be called upon to act quickly. Viser thought of himself as an intellectual, destined to be a general or even master general one day because of his extraordinary grasp of tactics and strategy.
When he had first heard that a mere lieutenant had gotten the master general’s personal permission to explore the development of new musket tactics based on the ability of his men to quickly reload, he had not scoffed like his fellow officers. While it had seemed improbable to him that any real gains could be made by shaving off a few seconds of loading time, he was a true student of this new age of science and he decided to observe before coming to any conclusions. So, he had gone on several occasions to watch the young man’s progress and while he still had serious doubts as to its widespread usefulness, he just didn’t see anything wrong with teaching his men to prepare for battle faster. What was more, he would rather drill his men in something useful than simply march them around or find make-work tasks to fill their days.
Then the news from Steil Pass came and he immediately reevaluated his position. Unlike his fellows who focused on the high sloping walls of the canyon as the reason for Captain Sturm’s success, Viser had focused on the other thing that distinguished Sturm from his peers. His men could fire two volleys per minute. That had to be important as they held those walls and the Angies sent a reported fifteen thousand men to pull them down.
When word went out that Master General Albrekt had promoted Sturm again and that the new major was looking for men to help him finish developing his doctrine, Viser had angered his own major by volunteering himself and his company.
Muskets were the future of warfare and if Steil Pass hadn’t proved it, the last few days certainly had.
“Form square!” Viser shouted just to get his men up and ready to fight. Then he grabbed a private and said, “You sprint to Major Sturm and tell him we have cavalry coming. Make sure you yell the news to Sergeant Ruus as you run past.”
Then the boy was gone and Viser was striding toward the interior wall of the western end of his square. There they were, coming in hard, but he still had a couple of minutes. “There are two ways this can go down boys and both end in Angie death and agony.”
The men cheered.
“Shut up!” he quieted them, before continuing. “The first is that they try and break us and come straight in. Thanks to our pike company, we’re more than ready for that, but I don’t think that’s what they’re going to do. They’re just trying to reconnoiter us to see how bad a problem they have and I want the first rank of every side of this square ready to fire if they ride past—even if they’re at extreme range. Understand?”
The men cheered again and now the enemy was almost up to them, four hundred yards away and picking up speed. “All pikemen kneel! West first rank, take aim at the horses!” Viser ordered as he watched the range fall.
“That’s it, you bastards,” he muttered. “Come and get it.”
As he had predicted, the horsemen swerved around his formation, coming no closer than two hundred and fifty yards. That was definitely outside of effective killing range, but horses did not wear armor and they were big targets. “West first rank, fire! North first rank, south first rank, take aim at the horses.”
Animals screamed and a couple went down even as the muskets from the other two sides of the square rose.
“Fire!”
This time he judged that they dropped perhaps ten total horses—not great, except that he knew that they had injured far more of them.
Then the enemy commander made what Viser predicted would be a fatal mistake. Angered by the injury to his animals and doubtless thinking that most of Viser’s men were now effectively unarmed. He gave a command and half—only half because those passing on the far side of the square couldn’t hear his commands—half of his cavalry turned in to assault the south wall of Viser’s formation.
“Perfect!” Viser smiled as his lieutenants backed the first ranks up and replaced them with the second rank.
Since the cavalry was willing to come to him, he felt confident waiting to shoot his second volley. On the north side of the square, the Angie officer in charge of those horsemen must have seen what the other half of his group was doing and he too swerved to come in on the attack, except that he had passed much further to the east than those on the south side had done and so the rear flank of Viser’s square would also have a shot at him.
But how to give the separate orders? This was a problem that they had not encountered in practice. Viser could not functionally control action in four different directions. Fortunately, he had other captains in this battalion. “Captain Jeffers, you will take command of the muskets in the north and east ranks.”
“Yes, sir!” Jeffers shouted.
The cavalry was getting very close now. It was time to start firing.
“All pikes will form the hedgerow!” Viser ordered.
The deadly ends of the twelve-foot pikes dropped until the points were about three and a half feet off the ground—perfect for spearing a horse.
“North second rank, take aim! Fire!”
A black cloud of smoke billowed above the square as one hell of a lot of horses and riders crashed to the ground.
“North second rank, two steps back. North first rank, take aim! Fire!”
More horses dropped and fully half the attacking cavalry was down on the north side of the square. Only half of the remaining cavalry continued in toward the Kriegsturm muskets and those pulled pistols—a notoriously inaccurate weapon especially at range and on the back of a charging horse. Furthermore, it had to be obvious to all of the northern enemy cavalry that Viser’s men were reloading. They didn’t want to get too close to those guns, realizing that even if they got off their tiny shots one hell of a lot of muskets would be firing at their backs while they rode away, or worse yet, passed in front of one of the other sides of the square.
Men flinched when the cavalry fired their tiny guns, but few were wounded, and nobody fell down screaming or obviously dead.
On the other side of the square, muskets fired and horses screamed, telling Viser good things about the tide of that battle.
His first rank was almost reloaded but there really wasn’t much to shoot at anymore. Still, it didn’t hurt to try.
North second rank, pivot east!” Viser shouted.
He especially liked this maneuver. It swung the line around like a saloon door. His second rank, fully reloaded, stepped past the pikes who helpfully raised their weapons even though Viser had forgotten to tell them to, and his men swung out into the open space so they could see the riders hurrying on to the east.
He stopped them before they had completed the maneuver and got off one more shot into the horses’ flanks, sending another couple of dozen to their graves.
Sturm’s men were already in their square before the cavalry reached them, and based on the sound of musket fire, it was obviously a weakened force that passed by. Unfortunately, they passed his formation at about four or five hundred yards to the side—far too great of a distance to waste any musket balls on.
He held the men in readiness until the enemy passed out of sight.
“Alright, Ruus,” he shouted. “How much longer do you need to blow those cannon to hell?”
“Twenty minutes, sir!” the sergeant shouted back. “We’re just setting the fuses.”
“Set them faster!” Sturm told him. “We’re marching west in fifteen minutes.”
He put Ruus out of his mind and started organizing the march west. The biggest problem now were his wagons—he had a lot of wagons which carried his powder, ammunition, food and water. He sent men running to bring them while he worried about the next enemy force that would come his way.
At one point, he thought Gunner intended to come up and talk to him, but evidently the sergeant changed his mind because despite a serious look he stayed away.
Ruus wasn’t ready in fifteen minutes, but then, neither were the wagons.
He glanced up at the sun, then remembered that he had bought another watch back at Overzein. He took it out of his pocket. It wasn’t quite seven-thirty yet. Most of the good he had done here would be reversed if he didn’t destroy those cannon.
“Ready, sir!” Ruus shouted.
“Really?” Sturm heard himself ask.
“All I have to do is light the fuses,” Ruus told him. “Then I think we have about ten minutes.”
“You think?” Sturm prodded him.
“I’ve never done this before,” Ruus reminded him. “I sure wish we could stick around to watch.”
“That would be a remarkably bad idea,” Sturm informed him. “Now let me finish clearing these wagons so you can set the cannon off.”
Chapter Fifteen: Two Fronts
East of Fort Ster, Oosten Graanland, Kriegsturm
The Sturgeon Moon, Day 10, Year 1196
Sturm looked over the aftermath of yet another battle with pikemen. It was only a battalion this time, but he’d destroyed a whole regiment an hour earlier. This one had been protecting more of the giant siege cannon which Ruus was busy rigging to blow up. This last battalion had never even been able to threaten them. His men were simply too skilled in his doctrine for a mere thousand pikemen to endanger them. He wasn’t certain that a thousand of anything could really hurt them now if they had time to get into their formations—except maybe musket men. Musket men had the same range as his men and while they probably could win a duel because of Kriegsturm’s faster reloading speeds, enemy muskets could certainly kill a lot of his men.
“Why do you think we haven’t encountered any muskets yet?” he asked Gunner,
“Hard to say, sir. Most of a modern army is composed of pikes. It probably shouldn’t surprise us that we keep running into that type of soldiers.”
“There were guarding another twenty of the big siege cannon,” Sturm noted. “They have to be bringing them to Overzein. It suggests that Ster and probably Hadrada have already fallen,”
“That’s the way I reckon it too,” Gunner admitted. He hesitated, clearly wanting to say something,
“Spit it out,” Sturm told him.
“It’s not really my place, sir,” Gunner hedged.
“Spit it out,” Sturm repeated. “That’s an order, sergeant!”
“We need to get off the road soon, sir,” Gunner told him. “I realize we have a lot of daylight left, and I’m not telling you we shouldn’t use some of it, but if we stay on the road, eventually, we are going to get killed.”
When Sturm didn’t answer him, Gunner screwed up his face added, “We’re just one understrength regiment. We can’t take on the whole Angie army by ourselves.”
“Not all at once,” Sturm agreed, but the twinkle in his eye made it clear that he wasn’t convinced of that fact.
“Think about what’s happening right now,” Gunner told him. “Survivors of our earlier battles are running east and west and telling everyone that we’re here. Hell, they’re probably telling them that there are four or five regiments out here tearing up the soft underbelly of the Angevin army. They have to stop us. And that means that whole regiments are getting new orders. Come find the Sturm Front and kill him. We have to get off the road before a cavalry battalion find us and stays far enough away to track us wherever we go. Once that happens, we’re done. Do you understand?”
“I figure we’ve destroyed forty big siege guns and maybe seven or eight thousand pikemen—plus the cavalry. That has to make a difference,” Sturm argued.
“Think it through, sir. You’ve already accomplished that. Think about the future and what else we can do if we’re smart about it.”
Sturm nodded. “You’ve made your point, sergeant. Let me consider it.”
As they finished talking, Lieutenant Caldor came racing up from the east on his horse. “We have trouble, major.”
Sturm spared a glance for Gunner. “Tell me.”
“A mixed regiment has turned around on the road and is coming back toward us—pikes and musket men,” Caldor informed him.
“The musket men may make this a bigger challenge than we’ve been facing,” Sturm said. “They have the range to hurt us—especially if they stand back and fight smart.”
“That’s unlikely, sir,” Gunner said. “Standard doctrine for the Angevins will send those musket men first to open up the way for their pikemen. If they have any brains, the musket men will take down our own pike and that will cause us trouble.”
“Understood,” Sturm told him, trying to decide if this would change his own tactics.
A cavalry sergeant rode up to them from the west and saluted. “Sir, there are a whole lot of musket men coming from the west—maybe as much as a whole regiment.”
“Well, that does make it interesting, doesn’t it,” Sturm said.
Both cavalrymen reported that they thought Sturm had at most twenty to thirty minutes.
“That really makes it interesting. I need all my officers, plus Sergeant Ruus here and I need them here yesterday.”
Men came running. When they had assembled, Sturm said, “We have regiments approaching us from both sides of the road. Here’s what we’re going to do.”
“Sergeant Ruus, you’ll be setting off the cannon you’ve prepared in five minutes—understand? Five minutes—not a minute longer. I want every wagon off the road and out toward those trees as far as you can get. Then I want the teamsters to abandon the wagons and run deeper into the woods. Don’t completely run away, but if the Angies stop to mess with our wagons—which I want them to do—I don’t want any of our teamsters killed. The regiment will assemble on the western edge of this battle field in four minutes—that includes you Ruus so get those fuses ready.”
“Sir, I can’t finish destroying these cannon that quickly.”
“I know you can’t, Ruus, but get those fuses lit and make sure they’re long enough to let us get away. Understand?”
“No,” Ruus told him.
“You don’t have to,” Sturm said. “Just do it. You’ve got about three minutes now.”
He looked at the rest of his officers. “What are you waiting for?’
Men ran.
Only Gunner and Caldor stayed behind.
“We’re going to advance on the musket men in the west at double time and take them out. I hope that the remains of this battle will slow down the regiment coming from the east, maybe we’ll even get lucky and Ruus’ exploding cannon will take out one or two. But even if it doesn’t delay them, we’ll have bought a few minutes by advancing to the west. We need to hit those musket men hard. We really don’t have a lot of time.”
Both men nodded. Neither looked happy. But then, Sturm wasn’t happy either.
This was the hand they were dealt. What mattered now was not whether it was fair or not but how they played their cards.
Chapter Sixteen: Hammer Blows
East of Fort Ster, Oosten Graanland, Kriegsturm
The Sturgeon Moon, Day 10, Year 1196
Double time was a ground eating pace that most Kreigsturm soldiers could keep up for about a mile without seriously winding themselves. If they hadn’t been wearing sixty-pound packs and carrying twenty-pound weapons, they doubtless could have gone a lot farther, but Sturm was happy with that mile and dropped them back down to normal walking speed so that the approaching Angie musket men wouldn’t realize that they were in a hurry. He didn’t want them to think about anything but coming to blows with his men. If they decided to try some sort of holding action, Sturm and his men could be in real trouble.
So, after a mile he ended double time, but kept the men marching in column toward the west. His battalion led the way, followed by Viser’s, followed by the pikemen. No more than a quarter mile later, the enemy musket men came into sight. There was a creek about six hundred yards to the right—not close enough to have an impact on the coming battle—and trees beyond it. There were also trees to the left of the road, but again they started about four hundred yards away. That was closer to being a problem but not really. There was room for his men to spread out in ranks. For now, he kept the pikemen behind his lines, wanting the Angie musket men to see only what they expected.
Each man was loaded with a double measure of powder which he figured would come as a surprise to the Angies.
They began to spread out as well, sunlight glinting off their bayonets, deciding to match his formation so that when the two regiments charged, Sturm’s men couldn’t get behind them. They probably figured he’d adopted the long line for the same reason.
They were about to discover they were wrong.
At two hundred fifty yards, Sturm ordered his first rank to take aim and fire.
Acrid black smoke billowed out before his men and roughly nine hundred musket balls shot out across the field, buffeted by the air as they traveled, but—thanks to the double measure of powder—having the velocity to injure and kill when they impacted enemy bodies up the road. With the double-measure, it was even probable that the balls would penetrate breast plates. Some would be deflected, but by no means all.
The Angevin line shook under the impact and at least a hundred men fell. That wasn’t a lot given the overall size of the Angie force, but it happened seventy-five yards further out than the enemy probably thought it could.
He switched his ranks and let the captains begin the reloading mantra while his second rank brought up their guns. Waiting for this second shot was always difficult for Sturm, but he thought it was important for the enemy to fear those fifteen second intervals when death would spit toward them.
To their credit, the Angies hadn’t lost more than a moment or two recovering from his first blast. They continued forward at a ground consuming pace that was supposed to intimidate Sturm and his men. The unstoppable tide, they called themselves, but they were about to learn that Kriegsturm could now put an end to them.
