He didn’t have one of the fancy guns the soldiers had, but he did have an ax he used to cut wood for the walking wall. If nothing else, he and his peers could use their axes against the Poles. And they would, he knew. Nobody wanted the Poles in charge again. The boyars were bad enough.
So he stood in the shadow of the wall, waiting for the inevitable rush of men trying to get inside. Then he swung the ax, the blade flat because he didn’t want it to get stuck in bone or armor. The Pole dropped to the ground and Ivan swung at the next one. Misha was swinging just as frequently. Some of the Poles got past, of course. An ax doesn’t have much chance against a sword, a pike, or even a flintlock pistol.
Still, they kept swinging.
* * *
“Get a message to Izmailov,” Boyce shouted across the breech. “Send a man, now!”
Hampstead grabbed the nearest man and sent him inside Rzhev. “Tell the general we need more men. And we need them now, if he doesn’t want the Poles up his backside!”
In a sense, Boyce’s trick had worked.
* * *
To the Poles it did look like one more weird Russian maneuver using the golay golrod, but their commander thought that this one had backfired. It was clearly poorly planned and not drilled nearly enough. At least, not at the place the Polish force had attacked. It might work better at other points along the line, but that didn’t really matter. They had a breech and poured everything they could into it. The unsupported peasants at other places along the wall were not attacked. And the maneuvering to bring forces to the breech cost the Poles time.
* * *
“Back to the walls,” Izmailov roared. “These pigs are well stuck.”
Janusz Radziwiłł was dead, and most of his officers. The remaining force inside Rzhev were rounded up and under guard. “Back to the walls,” Izmailov roared again. Tim gathered the men he’d been leading and headed back to the breech in Rzhev’s walls.
* * *
“There’s nothing there but peasants and sticks,” Gosiewski shouted. “You’re not turning back from peasants, are you?”
The Polish forces pushed toward the breech again.
* * *
“Here they come!” Tim’s voice cracked on “come.”
But it didn’t matter that he was only seventeen. The men followed him readily. Nor were they the only group. Russian troops were turning over their prisoners to anyone handy and heading back to the walls. Unit cohesion ceased to exist. But by then most of the Poles in Rzhev were unarmed and most of the citizens of Rzhev weren’t.
Suddenly Tim stopped dead in his tracks. They had reached the outer wall but the Poles weren’t actually coming at them. They were nowhere near the breech. The Poles were crossing in front of them, not preparing to attack. He looked around trying to make sense out of the confusion and chaos that was battle.
Rzhev had been retaken. The volley guns and cannon that had been preventing resupply were no longer needed in that role. They hadn’t been moved in preparation for the battle because the general didn’t want the Poles across the Volga making a dash to reinforce Rzhev while the assault was still going on. But now, what purpose were the volley guns serving? He turned to find a man with an AK3 near him.
“Can you hold here with what you have?”
“I should be able to. Besides, more men are coming all the time. What you have in mind?
What Tim had in mind was far above his authority. “Never mind. You men! Stay here.” Then Tim ran. By going inside the inner wall, he shortened the distance he had to travel considerably. It still took him ten minutes to reach the volley guns. And considerable shouting to get them to pull away the wall section. “The general’s orders! Bring the volley guns and follow me.”
Of course, they weren’t the general’s orders; they were Tim’s orders. And if the general decided to make an issue of it, Tim was going to be in a great deal of trouble. But somewhere during the battle the career of Lieutenant Boris Lebedev had decreased in importance. What was vitally important was getting the volley guns where they were needed.
Tim stood on the volley gun platform, which was being pulled by two steppe ponies. It wasn’t a grand gesture; he needed the height to see over the wall to locate the breech. “That way!” He pointed. “Another hundred yards.”
Tim and the gun crew were inside the inner walking wall. Just on the other side of it was a mob scene, packed with Poles slowly pushing back. The Russian defenders were spread along the wooden trench made by the two walls. Carefully, they lined up the volley guns at points where wall sections met.
That was when Tim realized the flaw in his magnificent plan. The golay golrod were made up of wall sections that could be latched together. But the latches here and now were on the other side. They couldn’t open the walls. They knew where the latches were; there was one near the top one and near the bottom. Tim cursed himself for a fool. “We’ll have to move the volley guns to where we control the walls.” He climbed back up on the gun platform and looked over the wall again, almost getting shot for his trouble. “Over there.” He pointed back the way they’d come. “Three wall sections.”