The Eastern Front(121)

And that was it. Anders shot him out of the saddle, too. Three shots, two in the back of the cuirass and one in the head.

The last shot was an act of pointless anger. Pointless, because the Pole was already mortally wounded. Anger, at the hussar's cowardly strike at a defenseless man.

So Anders Jönsson thought, anyway. And since he was the man with the .40-caliber automatic in his hand, his was the opinion that mattered.

Justified or not, that last shot—the time it took, more than the round expended—left Jönsson vulnerable. The next hussar lance came at him, not the king, and almost slew him. All that saved his life was his armor; which, not surprisingly for the personal bodyguard of Europe's premier monarch, was the finest armor available.

The lance slid off and Jönsson shot the man dead as he passed. Two shots, both in the neck. The Pole stayed in the saddle, though. Again, the ingrained reflexes of an excellent horseman. He wouldn't come out of that saddle until his mount returned his body to his own lines, and it was removed by human hands. Gently, almost reverently.

The Scots arrived, forming a perimeter. Just in time, because the hussars were still coming. By now, many of them had deduced the king's identity. The ferocity with which Anders had defended Gustav Adolf was enough in itself, even if they didn't recognize his features.

Stanislaw Koniecpolski was not the only Polish soldier who thought the king of Sweden had outlived his welcome. It would have been hard to find one who differed, in fact.

They had their chance to kill him, here and now. They intended to do so.

Anders had used up eight rounds. That left five in this magazine. But he had three more magazines and enough time to swap them out.

He did so—just in time to shoot a Pole who'd gotten by the Scots and was aiming his lance at the king's body. Gustav Adolf was now sprawled on his side in the muddy soil. He was unconscious and bleeding, both from his head and the wound in his side. Not bleeding profusely enough to pose an immediate danger to his life, though, so Jönsson continued to concentrate on the hussars.

That last Pole had gotten close enough to his target that Anders had used four shots to put him down—and again, with the last shot being fired in anger. He found it infuriating that the hussars were still trying to kill an obviously helpless man.

Had their histories been reversed, he might have had some sympathy for them. Might even have agreed with them, actually. For all Wladislaw IV's posturing and loud claims to being the rightful heir to the Swedish throne, it was not him—nor his father Sigismund III Vasa before him—who had invaded Sweden and laid waste to its lands, after all. The destruction and plunder had gone entirely the other way.

Three times the bastard had invaded and ravaged Poland. There was not going to be a fourth.

The Scots were crumbling. There weren't enough of them to hold off this many hussars.

Jönsson made a quick decision. He'd do better on the ground. He slid off the saddle and took position guarding the fallen king, almost straddling him.



And there he stayed, until a company of Småland cuirassiers arrived and finally drove off the Poles.

He'd emptied two magazines in addition to the eight rounds fired from the first. He'd just loaded the last magazine when a Polish lance finally put him down. Even then, with his blood pouring out of a severed femoral artery, he shot down his killer. He spent the last minute of his life lying across Gustav Adolf's body, shooting any hussar who came into his sight.

He would have died from blood loss, anyway. But a Pole he didn't see rode up and drove his lance all the way through Anders' body. The hussar was actually trying to kill Gustav Adolf, but since most of him was covered by the huge Jönsson, he saw no option but to try to slay the king through the bodyguard.

He succeeded in the second, but not the first. The Pole reversed his grip on the lance and rose up in his stirrups in order to drive the lance straight down with all his might. The lance missed the sternum, passed between two of the ribs, cut open the right ventricle of the heart and almost made it through Jönsson's entire torso. But there was just too much muscle, too much mass. The king beneath was quite untouched.





Chapter 39



The rain was starting to let up. In the distance to the west, Koniecpolski could see patches of clear sky. By evening, the storm would have passed completely. And with it, his great advantage over the Swedes.

The latest hussar charge had been driven back also, although this one had come close to shattering the enemy. If they'd been able to widen that gap just a bit more, a bit faster . . .

But there was no point dwelling on what might have been. Once again, his men had been repulsed—and they were finally showing the effects. The grand hetman had been in enough battles to know that he'd driven his cavalry almost to the breaking point. They'd done all he asked of them. The time had come to accept that he'd accomplished all he could this day and not drive into ruin. He hadn't destroyed the Swedish army, as he'd hoped to do. But he'd hammered them badly. Added to the destruction of the Hessians, he'd leveled the odds a great deal in Poland's favor. The intelligent thing to do now was return to Poznań. From here on, this was going to be a war of sieges.