The Tangled Web(97)

"There's someone in there, all right. What now?" Heisel began to pile his equipment on a stump in the coppice behind the yellow house.

"I don't want them heading down the road toward Ulrich," Eberhard said. "It's our job—one of our jobs, anyway—to take care of him. Among other things. Kolb, go make a noise, maybe ten yards that way, loud enough that whoever is in that house is sure to hear it. Make some kind of a noise that a deer thrashing through the underbrush wouldn't make. I want to spook them. Heisel, right after that, throw the first stink bomb. Use your own judgment about the best target."

"How about I just throw a good-sized rock at the shed? Then when they come out to see what that was, I hit the shed with one stink bomb and the back door of the house with another one?"

"Sounds like a good plan." Eberhard certainly hoped that it was a good plan, since he didn't have another one.

Ten yards away, Kolb utilized one of his few civilian talents, acquired some years before when he was attached to a unit of Swiss mercenaries. He yodeled.

Heisel threw the rock. He hit the shed, too. Baseball had extended to Mainz by 1634 and he was a pitcher. He didn't hit the shed because he was a pitcher. He had become a pitcher because he could hit almost any target with anything he threw. He regarded throwing strikes or balls over something as big as home plate as a mildly entertaining hobby that endeared him to the other men in the regiment.

At that point, unfortunately . . .

Two dozen men from von Sickingen's garrison at Nannstein were in the yellow house. So far, so good. Unfortunately for "the plan," nobody ran out at random to check the yodel or the shed. Following a previously practiced tactic, they left the house through the front door and slid into the trees on either side of the road.

"Clusterfuck," Heisel said. He just loved the sound of that up-time expression. "They're riflemen. Jäger. A couple of them will be behind us before you can fart."

"What the hell did you expect? We're in the middle of a goddamned forest. It's bound to be full of poachers. Where there are poachers, there are game wardens." Kolb cleared his throat and spat a puddle of phlegm on the ground.

"They're headed down toward where we left Ulrich." Friedrich didn't bother to keep his voice down. "We've got to get after them." He started to break ranks, only to be hauled back roughly by Heisel.

"Slowly," Eberhard said. "We've got to get behind them, but stay together and be careful." He turned around and pointed. "You, and you. Hide behind the shed and watch out for the ones Heisel thinks will come up behind us. He's probably right."



Ulrich sat on his horse in the middle of the narrow mud road, waiting. He couldn't see what was happening in the village, behind the houses. He even hadn't really intended to be in the middle, on the grass verge that was slightly elevated between the ruts made by the passage of farm carts back and forth, but his horse had a mind of its own. Given the least inattention upon his rider's part, the gelding would move off dust onto grass.

He had no idea where the first rifle shot came from. He looked around. Merckel's horse was down. Merckel had come off cleanly and was picking himself up. A second shot came out of the trees, perhaps five yards ahead of them, from the right. Ulrich opened his mouth to order the men down, but there were three more shots before he could say anything. One came directly from his left, he was pretty sure. One of the soldiers came off. His horse, grazed on the withers, ran straight down the road toward the village.

"They're all along, on both sides of us," one of the soldiers yelled.

Just then, von Damnitz and the men with him came up behind them on the road, riding too fast to stop before they had rounded the curve and come into sight of the riflemen. Von Damnitz was senior in rank to Ulrich. He was senior in rank to anyone else in the party on the road, so Ulrich turned to him for direction.

Instead of issuing orders, von Damnitz froze in place, yelling "Don't retreat." The men who were with him bunched up, making it impossible for Ulrich's small party to turn and head back down the narrow road, away from the village.

"Don't retreat" didn't last long. Von Damnitz went down. His horse, panicked, forced its way along the shoulder of the road and followed Merckel's horse toward the village.

Horses being horses, the rest of them, who were not trained cavalry mounts, since nobody had expected this little company to mount a cavalry action, concluded that since two horses were running away, they probably knew something that was bad for the herd. Ulrich managed to control his gelding, but six of the horses, with the men mounted on them, headed right into the line of fire.