Chapter 95: The Stolen Armor
Fighting angry border lords was one thing, but firing upon the Holy Roman Emperor’s favored son, a man carrying the blessing of the Vatican? That was damnation.
However, Marshal Eckhard did not lower his broadsword.
Eckhard had served the von Frundsberg house for two decades.
He had watched both Konrad and Friedrich grow from arrogant boys into dangerous men.
He knew exactly how Friedrich rode... the young holy champion sat in a saddle with a rigid, aristocratic posture, holding his reins with a light, highly trained grip.
The man sitting on the white horse right now? He was slouched forward.
His broad shoulders were uneven, and he held the reins like a common butcher holding a cleaver.
Eckhard let out a harsh, laugh that shattered the silence of the Swabian rear guard.
"That isn’t Friedrich, you idiots..." Eckhard roared, "Look at him. Look at how he sits on that horse like a sack of wet grain!"
Dieter blinked, "But... the golden cross. The Imperial armor."
"It is a decoy." Eckhard spat, turning his back on the Bohemian army to look his recruits.
"Friedrich is still sitting in his northern castle. He sent these Bohemian dogs to do his dirty work, and he gave their captain his spare suit of armor just to scare you into dropping your weapons!"
Even so, the reality of the battlefield remained grim...
A fake Friedrich was still leading seven thousand heavily armed Bohemians straight toward them, and the Swabian artillery was compromised.
The twelve-pounders were stuck facing the wrong direction, their wheels buried deep in the mud.
And the twelve Gatling carts, their best defense against massed infantry, were smoking heavily, their brass barrels glowing a cherry-red.
"Marsha~!" the Bohemian captain shouted from the tree line.
It was an unrefined eastern accent, proving Eckhard entirely right.
"Surrender the ridge, and we will only cut off your right hands before sending you back to your heretic lord!"
The Bohemian infantry began to march forward... they moved in a slow wall of steel.
Thousands of boots marching in unison through the mud.
Eckhard turned immediately to Dieter.
"How long until the barrels cool?!" Eckhard demanded.
"Ten minutes!" Dieter panicked, pulling the cooling levers on his cart.
"...Maybe fifteen! If I turn the crank right now, the heat expansion will detonate the powder pans! The brass will shatter like glass, Marshal!"
"We don’t have ten minutes," Eckhard stated.
He looked down at the mud beneath his boots. "Use the mud! Use your drinking water! Piss on the barrels if you have to, but get those guns cold!"
Dieter’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t hesitate. "You heard the Marshal!" he screamed. "Pack the barrels with freezing mud! Cool the brass!"
The mechanics began scooping up handfuls of dirt and slapping it onto the glowing hot barrels.
Though the mechanics were working as fast as humanly possible, the Bohemian wall was closing the distance with speed.
Eckhard drew his wheellock pistol and stepped out in front of the Gatling carts.
He looked at the two hundred Swabian farm boys who had been left behind as the rear guard... they were outnumbered thirty to one, and they knew it.
"Form two lines!" Eckhard roared, his broadsword gleaming as he pointed it toward the approaching army.
"First rank kneels! Second rank stands!"
"You do not look at their numbers! You look at the dirt in front of you! You lock your mechanisms and you wait for my word!"
The farm boys scrambled into the mud, their hands shaking as they leveled their wheellock rifles.
The clicking of two hundred iron firing mechanisms echoed down the thin line.
Sixty paces... fifty paces.
"Look at them shiver!" the fake Friedrich laughed loudly from atop his horse, raising his poleaxe high into the air.
"They are broken! Bohemians! Break their lines! Leave no one alive for the ledgers!"
The slow march of the mercenaries erupted into a bloodthirsty charge... seven thousand men screaming at the top of their lungs, their poleaxes lowered to butcher the Swabian recruits.
"Hold!" Eckhard screamed, pacing behind his men. "Hold your fire! Let them get close!"
The farm boys could see the whites of the mercenaries’ eyes, could see the spit flying from their shouting mouths.
"Marshal!" Dieter screamed from the rear. "The carts are clear! The brass is cold!"
A blood-chilling smile spread across Eckhard’s face.
"First rank... FIRE!" Eckhard roared.
A hundred wheellock rifles discharged at the same moment... the sheer volley of lead ripped into the front ranks of the charging Bohemians.
Because the mercenaries were packed so tightly together, the Swabians didn’t even have to aim.
The lead balls shattered wooden shields, pierced chainmail, and tore through flesh and bone.
Dozens of Bohemians dropped into the mud, their screams lost in the chaos.
"Second rank... FIRE!" Eckhard immediately ordered.
Before the mercenaries could even step over the bodies of their fallen comrades, another hundred rifles unleashed hell.
The second volley shattered the momentum of the Bohemian charge, forcing the infantry block to stutter and halt just twenty paces away from the Swabian lines.
The fake Friedrich furiously yanked his horse’s reins, trying to push his men forward.
"Keep moving, you cowards! They have to reload! They have nothing left!"
Eckhard stepped aside, revealing the twelve Gatling carts sitting just behind the infantry lines.
"Turn the cranks," Eckhard commanded.
Dieter and the mechanics yanked the levers backward.
The Gatling carts woke up once again...
Clack-bang! Clack-bang! Clack-bang!
The twelve volley guns poured an uninterrupted, completely merciless storm of lead into the stalled Bohemian ranks.
The front three lines of the Bohemian army were simply erased in a bloody mist... mercenaries were cut in half, their poleaxes flying into the air.
The fake Friedrich didn’t even have time to scream before a dozen lead balls slammed into his stolen Imperial armor, turning his chest into a ruin of steel and bone.
He was thrown from his white horse, dead before his body even hit the mud.
Hundreds of men died in a matter of seconds... the surviving mercenaries in the rear ranks, watching their comrades get shredded into bloody meat, dropped their weapons and turned to flee back into the eastern pine forests.
"Halt fire!" Eckhard ordered, watching the shattered remnants of the army run for their lives.
Dieter slowly stopped turning the crank, his chest heaving as he gasped for air.
The young apprentice looked out over the devastated battlefield... there were easily five hundred bodies piled in the mud, their blood turning the snow.
Eckhard wiped a speck of blood from his cheek, letting out a long breath.
Konrad’s weapons had proven their superiority yet again... he turned his eyes back down the muddy slope, looking toward the captured Savoyard keep in the valley below.
He expected to see Ragnar’s black banners flying proudly from the battlements.
The Swabian pike squares were inside the courtyard... but there were no black banners flying from the walls.
Instead, a fire had broken out in the inner keep, and the distinct sound of Swabian wheellocks firing in uncoordinated bursts echoed up the ridge.
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