Chapter 93: Duke Charles
"Then let’s stick to the heavy bronze," Eckhard said, slowly drawing his broadsword from its scabbard.
He turned to look at the line of cannons spread across the ridge... his four thousand men were standing in perfect, entirely silent pike and shot squares behind the artillery, waiting for the iron hammer to fall.
"Captain Ragnar!" Eckhard shouted over the howling wind.
The mercenary stepped out from the front line of the central pike block, offering a bloodthirsty grin. "Yes, Marshal?"
"Tell the gunners to cover their ears," Eckhard ordered flatly.
He turned his broadsword toward the distant stone keep, pointing the steel tip directly at the iron gates.
"Open fire."
However, nothing could have prepared the young Swabian farm boys for the absolute, earth-shattering noise that followed.
Dieter screamed the command to the artillery crews.
Twenty-one burning matchcords were simultaneously pressed into the heavily primed touchholes of the bronze twelve-pounders.
The entire ridge erupted in a blinding flash of orange fire and thick, suffocating white smoke.
The sheer concussive force of twenty-one cannons firing at the exact same moment shook the mud beneath Eckhard’s boots, deafening everyone on the ridge for several seconds.
Down in the valley, the result was incredibly devastating... the solid iron cannonballs ripped across the open air and slammed violently into the Savoyard fortress.
Traditional medieval sieges usually took weeks, sometimes months, of slow, tedious bombardment to weaken a stone wall...
But Konrad von Frundsberg’s cannons were forged with highly advanced industrial math, cast perfectly smooth to deliver maximum kinetic force.
The upper half of the eastern watchtower exploded in a shower of pulverized rock and screaming militiamen.
Massive chunks of shattered stone rained down into the courtyard below, instantly crushing several of the defenders.
"Reload!" Dieter screamed, coughing through the cloud of sulfur hanging over the ridge.
"Swab the barrels! Damn it, keep the powder dry!
I want another volley in three minutes!"
Down on the battlements, the Savoyard defenders finally snapped out of their terror.
"Return fire!" a desperate garrison captain screamed from the surviving western wall.
"Crossbows! Wall guns! Shoot the bastards!"
A disorganized volley of heavy crossbow bolts and crude, primitive wall-cannon fire shot up toward the ridge.
Most of the projectiles fell harmlessly short, sinking into the mud... even so, war was never one-sided.
A stray lucky iron ball from a Savoyard wall gun smashed through the upper branches of a pine tree and slammed into the front ranks of a Swabian wheellock square.
Two young farm boys were instantly ripped apart.
A veteran Reiter standing nearby took a crossbow bolt directly to the shoulder, knocking him flat onto his back with a sharp cry.
"Hold the line!" Ragnar roared, marching straight toward the recruits who were suddenly staring at the mutilated bodies of their friends.
He grabbed a boy by the collar and shoved him back into formation. "You stand your ground! If you run, I will cut you down myself! Let the cannons do the work!"
Eckhard watched the casualties fall, his jaw tightening, but he didn’t countermand the order... this was the brutal cost, you couldn’t conquer a Duchy without spilling a little blood.
"Keep the pressure on the main gate, Dieter!" Eckhard commanded, ignoring the crossbow fire whistling through the trees around them.
"I want that oak splintered into kindling!"
For the next three hours, the Swabian artillery didn’t stop... they didn’t rest.
The noise was a continuous, rolling thunder that echoed for miles across the western mountains!
Inside the keep, Count Philibert was hiding in the cellars beneath the church, covering his ears as the very foundations of his home shook, dust raining down on his velvet robes with every single impact.
Then, just past the third hour of the morning, a different sound echoed through the valley.
It was the highly satisfying groan of twisting iron and shattering oak.
"Marshal!" Dieter shouted, wiping a layer of black grease from his forehead, pointing down into the valley. "Look! The hinges!"
Eckhard stepped to the very edge of the ridge, squinting through the dense clouds of gunpowder smoke.
The main gates of the Savoyard keep were gone... the repeated, concentrated impacts of the Swabian twelve-pounders had utterly obliterated the heavy iron crossbeams.
What was left was a gaping, smoking hole leading into the undefended heart of the courtyard.
The Swabian gunners on the ridge suddenly let out a deafening cheer, raising their wheellocks into the air.
Thus, the impenetrable fortress was broken... it had taken a single morning.
Eckhard slowly drew his broadsword higher, his scarred face twisting into a ruthless smile.
He looked back at Captain Ragnar, who was already licking his lips in pure anticipation.
"The gate is destroyed," Eckhard declared, "Form the Reiters into a wedge! March the pike and shot squares down the slope!"
Ragnar eagerly slammed his fist against his steel breastplate. "We march, Marshal! Shall we leave anyone alive for the ledgers?"
Eckhard looked down at the smoking gates, he raised his broadsword high into the morning air, ready to order the final, bloody charge into the courtyard.
But as he prepared to scream the command to the four thousand men waiting behind him... a sudden, incredibly fast rider broke through the eastern treeline, his horse heavily foaming at the mouth.
The rider wore the black armor of the Swabian Reiters, but his face was pale with terror as he galloped toward the Marshal.
"Marshal Eckhard!" the rider screamed, throwing himself off the horse before it stopped. "Stop the charge! You must halt the army immediately!"
"What are you babbling about, soldier?! The gate is open!"
The rider fell to his knees in the mud, gasping for air, looking back over his shoulder toward the eastern mountain pass.
"It’s the east, Marshal..."
"They aren’t in Burgundy... Duke Charles didn’t march his army to Burgundy..."
"Then where exactly is the Duke’s mercenary army?" Eckhard demanded, stepping toward the scout.
The rider swallowed hard, "They are right behind us..." the scout whispered.
The scout remained on his knees in the mud, gasping for air.
Marshal Eckhard stood on the ridge.
The ringing in his ears from the twelve-pounder artillery barrage was slowly fading, only to be replaced by the horror of the scout’s words.
"Behind us?" Eckhard repeated, "Are you certain, boy? Isolde’s shadow-walkers swore that the Duke of Savoy had marched his treasury of mercenaries westward into Burgundy."
"It was a feint, Marshal." the scout choked out, pointing a shaking finger toward the dense pine forests to the east.
It was a trap... a devastatingly patient trap.
Eckhard turned his face back toward the valley below. He looked at the ruined gates of the border fortress. H
e saw the panicked peasants running along the battlements with rusted pitchforks, terrified by the Swabian cannons.
"Look at them." Eckhard muttered, "The people in this town... the local border barons and their miserable militia. They clearly don’t know that their own Duke’s army is sitting right over the ridge."
Captain Ragnar stepped up beside the Marshal, "What do you mean, Marshal? Why wouldn’t the Duke tell his own border guards that he was waiting to spring a trap?"
"Because if he had told them, they wouldn’t have panicked," Eckhard deduced. "They wouldn’t have taken the Fugger silver bait so greedily. They genuinely believed their army was marching in Burgundy, so they acted like greedy, isolated lords. Duke Charles sacrificed his own border keep just to make sure Lord Konrad’s spies bought the lie."
"...It wasn’t just the Duke of Savoy, Duke Charles doesn’t have the sheer tactical brilliance to orchestrate a counter-espionage campaign against Isolde’s shadow-walkers... someone else fed him the information. Someone who knows exactly how Lord Konrad thinks."
Dieter wiped his greasy hands on his leather apron. "Who"
"Friedrich," Eckhard spat the name like it was a mouthful of sour wine. "...It has to be him."
Eckhard began pacing through the mud, "That fat Bishop Tomas who arrived at our gates with the Bavarian Duke... he must have sent a fast rider or a ciphered bird the moment he realized our courtyard was empty. Friedrich knew we were gone, and he coordinated this entire ambush with Savoy."
However, knowing who set the trap didn’t change the reality of the metal jaws snapping shut around them...
Eckhard stopped pacing and looked down at the scout. "Get off your knees and give me the hard math, soldier. What are their numbers? What is marching through that eastern tree line?"
The scout swallowed hard, forcing himself to stand. "Nearly seven thousand men, Marshal. It’s the entire Savoyard treasury. Thousands of heavy, armored cavalry leading the vanguard, followed by blocks of Swiss pikemen. They are moving fast. They heard our cannons fire, and they are closing the net."
"..."
"Seven thousand?"
"We are caught between a stone fortress and seven thousand mercenaries. If we stay on this ridge, we die. So we don’t stay."
Ragnar’s grin slowly returned. "We push forward?"
"We push forward," Eckhard confirmed, "The town is broken, and disorganized. We push the army into the courtyard, and we use their own stone walls to defend against the Duke’s approaching cavalry."
"But the rear guard." Dieter protested, "...it will take at least an hour to funnel four thousand men and the supply wagons down this muddy slope and through that broken gate.
The Savoyard cavalry will hit our rear long before the last man is safely inside the walls!"
Eckhard turned to the young apprentice. "That is why Lord Konrad built the new toys,"
Though the bronze cannons were stuck facing the valley, the smaller, highly experimental carts were waiting untouched in the rear of the Swabian formation.
"Dieter," Eckhard ordered, "Uncover the Gatling carts. I want all twelve rotating volley guns pulled to the very edge of the eastern tree line."
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