The Eastern Front(119)

For a moment, Jönsson felt a fierce yearning for some of his own lunatic ancestors. A field full of berserks charging the other way would be nice, right about now. Swinging great swords, wearing nothing but bearskins, biting their own shields in a fury.

Not much different from hussars, really, except for the wings and not being quite as dumb.



"Again!" Koniecpolski roared. "No mercy on the Swedes!"

Three times he'd sent the hussars against the front ranks of Gustav Adolf's army since the rain began. Three times they'd been driven back. But each time, they returned with renewed fury rather than despair. The hussars were suffering heavy casualties, but they could sense their enemy weakening.

Meanwhile, Koniecpolski kept the Cossacks in the fight. He'd never let them rest once since he first launched them at the enemy's flanks. They couldn't get around those flanks, of course, because the Swedes were backed up against the lake. But they could keep Gustav Adolf pinned where he was.

The Swedish king was completely on the defensive now. He was outnumbered, unable to maneuver, and had lost all of his advantages. The superb rate of fire of his artillery had vanished. There was no way to reload a cannon quickly in a downpour. The same for reloading a musket. Rifled or smoothbore, it mattered not. The rain equalized everything. The men handling breechloaders in the Swedish army could still maintain a fairly decent rate of fire, but there weren't that many of them. And as for the accuracy of the rifles, what did it matter if you could hit an enemy soldier at three hundred yards? You can't shoot something you can't see. Between the rain and the gunsmoke, this battlefield was almost as obscured as it would have been in a fog.



A gust of wind cleared aside the gunsmoke, allowing Gustav Adolf to see most of the field for the first time in ten minutes.

He felt a little shock of horror. A gap had opened up between the Västergötlanders and the Green Brigade. It wasn't a huge gap, but hussars wouldn't need much to start rolling up the lines.

Outnumbered as he was, he hadn't kept much of a reserve, and he'd already used up what he had. He'd sent Colonel Hepburn and his men to shore up his right very early in the battle. What he'd had left was just the Orange regiment. Ten minutes ago, he'd sent them to bolster Winkel. They couldn't be called back in time.

Whatever was to be done, it had to be done now. The gap had been created by the Green Brigade, which had bunched itself up from the confusion of the battle and the never-to-be-sufficiently cursed rain. Their ranks needed to be spread out again.

He couldn't spot the brigade's commander. He might have been killed already.

The Swedish king spurred his horse and charged forward. In five minutes, he could salvage the situation.



Anders Jönsson did mutter profanities out loud this time as he raced after Gustav Adolf. No reasons not to, now that the king couldn't possibly hear him. Not with the rain and the gunfire and, most of all, the blood rushing through Gustav Adolf's own ears as happened to idiot berserkers.

The Scots came behind him, mouthing their own profanities. Some of which were no doubt Celtic, which was a bit absurd given that the ancestors of those men had once charged into battle stark naked and painted blue.





Chapter 38



The commander of the Green Brigade was dead, as a matter of fact. So was the officer who would have replaced him in command. Both of them had been too far forward when a hussar charge drove over them.

The colonel in command of the Västergötlanders had also been killed. But the two officers who were next in command were not even aware of the fact. They were at the very front, holding the first ranks steady.

So, the young captain whom they'd left behind to keep an eye on things—yes, it was foolish to do so, but men do foolish things in the chaos of a battlefield—was the only officer in the regiment who spotted the gap that had opened between them and the Green Brigade.

He, too, was horrified at the sight. Immediately, he commanded the nearest company to follow as he raced to set things right.

Which they did—thereby opening another gap. The captain hadn't intended to move more than one company. But he hadn't told any other to stay in place, either. Seeing the first company move, the captain in command of its neighbor concluded that he had to move also. As his company moved, yet a third—and then a fourth—was pulled in its train. It wasn't until five of the regiment's eight companies had shifted their positions that the two officers in command realized what was happening.

But by then, it was too late. Gustav Adolf was still closing the first gap when two hundred hussars found the second. They poured through in a flood.



The rain that the Swedish king had cursed was all that saved his army, then. Koniecpolski's view of the battlefield was even more obscured than Gustav Adolf's, because the rain was being driven from the west. So he never spotted the sudden disaster that had fallen upon his enemy. He knew nothing about it, in fact, until he got reports after the battle from the hussars who had survived to tell their happy tale.