The Saxon Uprising(146)

Thorsten spotted a small knot of horsemen off to the left. Cavalry were always a volley gun unit’s main target. His response was almost an automatic reflex—as was the response of his gun crews.

“Aim left!” he screeched. But most of the gun crews were already doing so.

“Fire!”

Banér’s head came off. No fewer than three balls struck his neck, passing just below his chin.

His left arm came off also, which would have killed him from blood loss anyway. Three more bullets did for that. And four more struck his chest, two of which penetrated the chest wall.

John Ruthvenn’s wounds were even worse. So were those of his adjutant.

One of Banér’s adjutants was also mangled but the other, oddly enough, was completely untouched. Battles were freakish that way. He hadn’t lagged or been off to one side, either. He’d been right in the middle of the little group, not much more than an arm’s length from the general.

His horse, on the other hand, was worse hit than any human. The poor beast went down as if he’d been in a slaughterhouse. Still unhurt but trapped beneath his mount, that adjutant would surrender a few minutes later when the Hangman Regiment took the field.

He was the one who would identify Banér later that day. He had intended to keep silent, lest the enemy’s morale be boosted. But then he saw that USE troops had stacked the general’s body onto a mass of others, in preparation for an eventual mass grave, with his severed head tossed onto the pile afterward. They obviously had no idea who he was. So, finally, the adjutant spoke up. That so great a man should suffer such an indignity…The thought was just unbearable.

Jozef and his men reached the siege lines just as the first retreating Swedes began entering them from the other side. The two hours that followed were as savage as combat ever gets. It was all knives and grenades—and helmets used as clubs, sometimes.

Jozef was wounded twice, both flesh wounds, one on his thigh and the other a gash on his ribs. Neither was too serious once he staunched the blood loss. One or the other might get infected, of course, but he’d worry about that afterward. If he had an afterward.

Not all of his Poles were so lucky. Szklenski and Bogumil were both killed in the fighting. He’d miss Ted, for all the man’s occasional annoying traits. Bogumil, he wouldn’t miss at all. He didn’t like the man any more the day he died than he had the day he met him.

Kazimierz would lose a leg by late afternoon, and lose his life by noon of the following day. Waclaw lost an arm, but survived.

Eric Krenz survived also, but his peculiar friend Friedrich Nagel did not. The same grenade that left a rather dashing little scar on Krenz’s cheek tore his fellow lieutenant’s throat apart.

Within two hours, most of the fighting was over. The battle in the trenches had become a stalemate, with the men from Dresden holding the inner lines and the Swedes holding the outer ones. Trying to push further, in either direction, was now tantamount to suicide.

Then the Hangman Regiment showed up, in superbly good order. How they managed that in a snowstorm was anyone’s guess.

The colonel in command of the regiment had his volley guns brought into position where they could fire right down the line of trenches. “Enfilade,” the French called it, if Jozef remembered correctly.

Two volleys of that and the Swedish mercenaries began surrendering wholesale. Especially once other regiments from the Third Division started appearing out of the snowfall.

By early afternoon, it was all over. Toward the end, a big man appeared on a horse and the troops started cheering him wildly. He seemed more puzzled by the applause than anything else.

Eventually, Jozef realized he was looking at Mike Stearns.

Gretchen Richter came out of Dresden shortly thereafter, over-riding the protests of her assistants.

They were worried about her safety. She was worried about her husband.

She walked right by him, as Jeff stood talking to his officers about handling the huge numbers of captured enemy soldiers. Didn’t give him more than a glance.

Some big, confident, obviously martial sort of fellow. No one she knew.

It was only when she heard his startled exclamation of her own name that she turned around. And even then, took a second or two to recognize him.

Thereafter, things went splendidly. The two of them, in their embrace, got a round of applause from the troops that matched the one Stearns had gotten.

“Okay,” said Denise. “I’m bored stiff. And my leg’s getting cramped.”

“The shooting seems to have stopped,” Minnie ventured.

Noelle was still inclined toward caution. “I think we should wait another hour.”





Chapter 48