Chapter 94: As the Smoke Clears
Dieter’s eyes widened. "You want me to hold off a seven-thousand-man heavy cavalry charge with twelve untested machines?"
"...?"
"When their arrogant knights ride out of those pines thinking they have caught us off guard, you turn those cranks and you do not stop until the barrels melt into slag. Understood?"
"Y-Yes, Marshal!" Dieter shouted, sprinting off toward the rear guard.
Eckhard turned back to Ragnar... the mercenary captain was vibrating with adrenaline.
"Ragnar," Eckhard said, "Take the first two thousand men. Form the wedge. Run down that slope and clear that courtyard. I don’t care if they throw pitchforks or holy water at you. Kill anyone who holds a weapon, secure the battlements, and get those gates ready to barricade."
"Consider the keep ours, Marshal," Ragnar laughed.
He spun around, raising his two-handed sword into the air.
"Pike blocks! Forward march!"
"...We are taking their beds for the winter!"
The fear of the ambush was instantly replaced by the ruthless momentum of Konrad’s training.
Two thousand hardened mercenaries and eager farm boys began storming down the steep ridge, their eighteen-foot pikes lowered like a bristling forest of steel.
They moved with speed, pouring toward the ruined gates of the fortress.
Meanwhile, at the rear of the Swabian lines, the canvas tarps were thrown off the Gatling carts...
Eckhard walked toward the eastern flank, he watched as Dieter’s mechanics hitched the horses and locked the iron swivel bases into place.
The rotating clusters of musket barrels gleamed in the light... the ground beneath Eckhard’s boots suddenly began to vibrate.
It was a deep tremor coming from deep within the eastern pine forests.
The sound of thousands of armored warhorses charging through the mud.
"Prime the powder pans!" Dieter screamed, his hands gripping the rotating crank.
"Wait for my signal! Do not fire until they clear the trees!"
Eckhard drew his wheellock pistol, his thumb pulling back the hammer... he stepped up beside Dieter’s cart, his eyes locked onto the gaps between the trees.
And then, the first wave of lancers burst through the tree line, their destriers covered in steel barding.
But as Marshal Eckhard squinted through the morning mist to see the banners fluttering above the charging knights, his heart suddenly stopped, and a dread washed over him.
These weren’t Savoyard border mercenaries... these were the absolute elite shock cavalry of the Pope’s allied forces.
Why was the Duke of Savoy’s vanguard flying the black and white crosses of the Teutonic Order?
However, the initial shock only lasted for a few seconds before the logical arithmetic of the battlefield took over his brain.
"Seven thousand men..." Eckhard muttered to himself, "How in the world does a Duke field seven thousand men while his main army is supposedly in Burgundy?"
The answer was simple... he didn’t.
This host tearing through the eastern forest wasn’t just the Duchy of Savoy pulling a clever flanking maneuver.
This was Friedrich von Frundsberg.
Konrad’s holy brother had actually done it...
He had sent the Teutonic Order to secretly reinforce the Savoyard trap.
They had used the wedding in Swabia as a diplomatic smokescreen while marching their elite heavy horse straight into the western mountains.
After hearing such words of panic from his own scouts, a normal medieval commander would have immediately ordered a full retreat.
Facing a unified charge of Teutonic Knights was widely considered a suicidal endeavor.
But Marshal Eckhard commanded the Swabian forges...
A slow smile began to stretch across Eckhard’s face.
If he managed to survive this ambush... if he actually managed to slaughter a vanguard of Teutonic Knights and break the back of Friedrich’s holy crusade in a single morning... what would Lord Konrad give him?
Konrad was a man of extreme, rewards... Eckhard knew the ledgers perfectly.
If he delivered the shattered, bloody helmets of the Pope’s finest knights to Konrad’s desk, the Viscount wouldn’t just give him a chest of Fugger silver.
He would shower him in unimaginable wealth... Mmaybe Konrad would even elevate his status.
With the Duchy of Savoy broken, Konrad would need a loyal man to govern the newly conquered lands.
"He would make me a vassal..." Eckhard whispered, "He would actually give me Savoy as a vassal state!"
Thus, the terror of the holy cavalry charge evaporated, instantly replaced by a burning sense of honor.
He wasn’t going to die in this freezing mud... he was going to become the ruler of a sovereign Duchy!
"Marshal Eckhard!" Dieter screamed, pulling the veteran out of his glorious daydream.
The apprentice was gripping the crank of the Gatling cart, "They are at fifty paces! They are going to run us down! Give the order!"
Eckhard snapped back to reality... the ground was quaking beneath his boots.
A wall of three hundred Teutonic knights, encased in steel armor, was bearing down on their fragile line of twelve wooden carts.
The knights had lowered their iron-tipped lances, confident that they were about to crush a vulnerable artillery crew into the dirt.
"Hold your nerve, Dieter!" Eckhard roared, raising his wheellock pistol toward the charging wall of steel.
"These arrogant bastards think we are holding wooden sticks!"
"Show them what Swabian iron can do! Turn the cranks!"
Even so, Dieter didn’t hesitate for another fraction of a second.
All down the defensive line, the other eleven Swabian mechanics mirrored his exact motion.
The twelve Gatling carts suddenly woke up...
Clack-bang! Clack-bang! Clack-bang!
The rotating clusters of musket barrels spat a continuous storm of lead into the charging Teutonic vanguard.
The front line of the Teutonic charge vanished in a horrific cloud of dirt, shattered lances, and bursting blood.
Massive, two-ton warhorses screamed in agony as their legs were swept out from under them.
Knights in full plate armor were thrown from their saddles, crashing into the mud only to be trampled by the panicked horses charging behind them.
"Damn it, keep cranking!" Eckhard laughed wildly, firing his own pistol into the mess of the vanguard before quickly drawing his broadsword.
"Don’t let the barrels stop!"
"...melt them if you have to!"
Though the noise was deafening, the Swabian mechanics kept their heads down behind the thick iron shields of the carts, their arms burning with lactic acid as they continuously fed the rotating death machines.
The Teutonic Knights, entirely unprepared for a weapon that fired without pausing to reload, tried to pivot their heavy warhorses away from the slaughter... but they were packed too tightly.
The second wave of knights slammed into the corpses of the first wave, destroying their own momentum.
Eckhard risked a glance back down the slope behind him... down in the valley, Captain Ragnar was executing his part of the plan perfectly.
The Swabian pike squares had poured through the gates of the Savoyard keep.
Eckhard could hear the fdistant screams of the garrison militia being overwhelmed by Ragnar’s veteran mercenaries... the fortress was secured.
"We hold the keep!" Eckhard shouted over the continuous roar of the Gatling carts.
"...keep pouring lead into the trees!"
"Break their spirit!"
The continuous barrage lasted for three bloody minutes... finally, Dieter let out a gasp and stopped turning the crank.
The rotating barrels of his cart were literally glowing a dull cherry-red in the morning air.
"Marshal!" Dieter coughed, waving his hand through the cloud of white gunsmoke.
"The brass seals are expanding!"
"If I keep cranking, the chambers will detonate in our faces!"
"Halt the fire!" Eckhard commanded immediately, seeing that the other carts were in a similar state of catastrophic overheating.
"Pull the cooling levers! Let the air hit the barrels!"
The roar of the twelve volley guns slowly ground to a complete halt... the sudden silence that followed was jarring, broken only by the groans of dying horses and wounded men lying in the mud.
The morning breeze slowly pushed the cloud of white smoke away from the eastern tree line.
Eckhard stepped forward, he expected to see the fleeing remnants of a broken cavalry vanguard.
But as the smoke finally cleared, revealing the shadows of the pine forest, Eckhard’s victorious smile vanished.
Standing just beyond the tree line, organized and unfazed by the slaughter they had just witnessed, was an endless wall of infantry.
Thousands upon thousands of Bohemian mercenary halberdiers... they had patiently waited for the Swabian guns to overheat.
However, it wasn’t the number of Bohemians that made the old Marshal’s blood run cold...
Riding at the very center of the massive infantry line was a man mounted on a white warhorse.
He wore heavily polished, immaculate Imperial fluted plate armor, and his chest bore a golden cross.
Eckhard had seen that armor before... he had seen it in the grand courts of the Swabian Diet.
"God save us..." Dieter choked out, "Marshal... that is Lord Friedrich! The Pope’s champion is here... We are dead!"
After hearing such words, panic began to rapidly spread through the reserve lines.
The young Swabian farm boys, who had just survived the Teutonic cavalry charge, began to lower their wheellock rifles.
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