Musket for a King by Todd Shryock

Author:Todd Shryock [Shryock, Todd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-08-20T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

We moved forward at the quick-step, equipment jingling as the thunder from the guns finally ceased, allowing us to clearly hear ourselves for the first time in hours. The smoke grew thicker as we got closer to the bridge. Soon, we would break into a run and charge across to our doom.

A quick whistle chirp sliced through the air and the rank in front of me suddenly stopped, causing me to run into them and the men behind me to run into my rank. Curses were uttered as we untangled ourselves and attempted to dress our lines.

“Why the hell have we stopped?” Simon demanded.

“First battalion has stopped,” Niklas said, stepping to the side of the column to try to see what was happening.

I noticed now that our cavalry was just off to my right, lined up down a narrow street, ready to follow us across. As the smoke started to dissipate, I saw our guns lined up in a long row along the river bank, their positions dotted with a dead or dying man, a shattered gun lying in splinters nearby.

The village across the river hung like a gray ghost across the far edge of the water. The enemy was there somewhere, waiting.

Two quick chirps of a whistle and the drums beat again, but this time we moved off at a normal march, our sense of urgency lost.

“I told you the battle was over,” Jannick said, boastfully.

We moved across the bridge, a large stone arch with a makeshift center made of wood planks and some complex bracing, installed by the sappers to repair the damage done by the Austrians to slow our advance. As I stomped across the center, I saw the water through the cracks in the boards, and saw several dark stains on the wood where the sappers had paid in blood for their progress.

We slowed again near the end of the bridge as our leading ranks came close to the first battalion, which had stopped again.

“Good god … ” Jannick said, looking to our left.

The breeze picked up, clearing the lingering smoke from the village and the far bank, revealing the Austrian gun line, or what was left of it, anyway.

Guns and broken wheels littered the ground, interspersed with wrecked caissons and dead horses. The brown-coat wearing artillerymen were scattered about, some of them in pieces. I saw a wrecked gun not far from the bridge, a pair of legs leading up to a jumbled pile of gore, the rest of the body shredded by our cannons.

The village fared little better. All the buildings along the waterline were full of holes, looking like dirty gray Swiss cheese, the thin stone walls and wooden frames providing little cover for the Austrian soldiers sheltering inside. A whitecoat hung from a window, his hand tangled in his musket strap, the gun caught across the window frame. Blood dripped off of him, giving the poor soul the look of an animal caught and hung to drain.

Grass was blackened and smoldering

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