Musket for a King

by Todd Shryock

  He disappeared from sight, and the men around me visibly relaxed.

  “So what if I have to go?” I asked Niklas.

  “You make a dash to either side and hope you get back before the sergeant notices.”

  “And if he does?”

  Niklas frowned as he thought of the consequences. “Depends on just how foul his mood is. You might just get hit with his cane a dozen times, or he might single you out for the lash for falling out of the march without permission.”

  “He thinks he’s making us tougher,” Simon added from down the row. “But I don’t see how making us piss our pants helps kill Austrians.”

  We marched for another hour, my feet growing sorer with every step, when finally a halt was called. I don’t know how far we walked, but I was pretty sure I had never walked that far in one day before.

  “Glad that’s over; my feet are hurting,” I said to Niklas.

  He slapped my shoulder. “Henri, this is just a break. We are not done marching yet.”

  I looked at him. How could we possibly go any farther?

  Niklas found a tree just off the road, took off his pack and laid his musket on it before sitting with his back to the trunk. “I suggest you sit down or go take a piss.”

  The other men in the column had scrambled off either side of the road, looking for a tree or soft spot in the grass, and within a minute, what had been an orderly column looked as if it had been blown to pieces by a windstorm, with men and equipment sprawled everywhere. From my higher vantage point, I could see men from another column doing the same farther back, and beyond them were the tiny figures of horses making their way down a hill we had descended a half hour ago, like a tiny army of ants searching for a picnic.

  I stepped off the road and simply collapsed, not caring about comfort, for anything that allowed me to be off my feet would be fine. Some of the men pulled out small clay pipes of every size and shape, while several drifted off to sleep, their mouths half open in exhaustion.

  Taking my canteen, which was nothing more than a gourd with a cord tied around it, I pulled out the cork and took a deep drink of the musty water within.

  “I’m hungry,” I said to Niklas, whose eyes were now closed, though I didn’t think he was asleep. I had nothing in my haversack, and my stomach was starting to protest as much as my feet. No one was eating, and the others around me ignored my question.

  “Are you new?” another lad asked me. A mop of red hair hung from under his shako, his smile wide and shining white in the sun. His bottom was a little wider than his top, making him look like a red pear laying in the sun, with pants that seemed a little too small and hung a little too low.

  “Yes, I’m new. My name is Henri.” I held out my hand.

  He shook it vigorously a few times too many. “Karl. Karl Werner. Only been here myself a month or so.”

  Karl looked to be about the same age as me. In fact, most of the soldier lounging around me were teenagers, with some older men mixed in here and there. Some were in their twenties, but few beyond that. My eyes fell on one older man, who had to be in his thirties. His face was a bit gaunt, and his eyes had a permanent tired look to them. Even now, as he lay on the grass, his head propped up on his pack, he looked as if he were rapidly aging, destined for death, perhaps by nightfall.

  “That’s Gebhard Beck,” Karl said, following my gaze. “He’s been around pretty much longer than anyone. He was with the unit when we were still fighting the French, you know, before Napoleon.

  “Before then, too,” Niklas added, his eyes never opening but obviously attuned to my conversation. “He’s been in the army so long, he’s probably laid in the exact same field a dozen times over the years. It’s just a matter of which way he was marching. East to fight the Austrians or west to fight the French.”

  A few men moved farther away from the column to answer nature’s call. “If you need to go, I suggest you go now,” Karl said. “In most units, you can fall out on the march to do it, but not this one. Sergeant Zorn doesn’t like stragglers.”

  “Sergeant Zorn doesn’t like much of anything,” Simon said.

  “Especially Italians,” Niklas added, a smirk crossing his face.

  Simon started to protest, then thought better of it, choosing instead to pick absently at the trampled grass in front of him.

  “Who volunteered you?” Karl asked.

  “My lord,” I said. “He got paid if he signed up enough boys, so he signed me up.”

  “Me too!” Karl said excitedly, as if it were some special bonding experience. “One day I’m beating the bush for game for the local gentlemen, the next I’m in a depot getting a uniform.”

  “Too bad they couldn’t find one that fit,” Niklas said, his eyes still closed.

  “Funny,” Karl said. His countenance changed to a more serious look.

  Following his gaze, I saw him staring at two men, one in his mid-twenties and one several years younger, but both had a similar look with their light brown hair and thin noses. They were selling small morsels of food -- or trading them for anything the other soldiers had that they deemed valuable.

  I could tell they were rough customers and not to be tangled with.

  “Jonas and Leon Kuhn,” Karl said quietly. “Brothers.”

  “Bandits,” Niklas added, causing Karl to flinch.

  “Some say they were highwaymen who were pulled from jail to be put in the army,” Simon said. “Stay away from them.”

  “Yeah,” Karl added. “They are just as likely to kill you as the Austrians.”

  “Especially if you have something they want,” Niklas said. “They’ll take it from your body and sell it. Those boys love the war. Back home, they would hang for most of the things they do. Here, it’s applauded.”

  Karl shook his head. “Disgusting, those two. More beast than man.”

  A drum roll up the column brought a collective sigh from the men as the devil of a sergeant somehow materialized from the ether to hound everyone back into line.

  I fell in, despite the protestations of my feet, which were currently arguing with my stomach as to which hurt the most.

  The column jolted forward, pulling me along in its wake. Sergeant Zorn was busy snapping at someone further down the line, allowing us to march in peace for some time. Most of our energy was gone, and little talking occurred, each man lost in his own thoughts. On occasion, the column slowed, then stopped, then started again for no apparent reason. Niklas mentioned it was always like this at the back. I had no real idea, for at the depot, there were only twenty of us, not the six hundred or so in my new battalion.

  A few hours into the march, a horseman went charging past us down the side of the road.

  “Not good,” Niklas said, shifting the weight of his musket.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Whenever messengers start charging back and forth, it can only mean the enemy is near.”

  Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance ahead of us.

  “See,” Niklas said. “Cannons.”

  Not ten minutes later, first one horseman, then another a minute behind him, went charging back toward the front of the column, shouting for us to move aside as he rode through.

  The men around me began to look to either side of the road, gripping their muskets a little tighter as we continued forward.

  “Henri, you stick with me until you learn what to do,” Niklas said. “Have you ever fired a gun before?”

  “Of course,” I replied. “I could bring down a partridge at twenty yards.”

  Niklas licked his lips and grimaced. “This doesn’t handle the same way as your fowling piece at home,” he warned. “The kick will be unlike anything you have ever felt, so it’s best to just let it push against you.”

  “Okay,” I said, wondering how much different it could really be.

  “If we get called to skirmish, we work as a team. Did they teach you that in training?”

  I recalled one day of skirmish training that th
e one-armed officer seemed bored with. “Yes, one man doesn’t fire until the other is loaded, correct?”

  “Yes,” Niklas said. “And as soon as you see an Austrian, shoot him. If you wait, he will shoot you. If we stay in formation, just do whatever everyone else does.”

  “I’ll be all right, because I know all the horn calls of the musician -- we spent a lot of time on those,” I said.

  Niklas shook his head as the column came to a halt. “We use drums out here. Horns are for parade and camp. It’s too hard to blow an accurate signal while on the move and you can’t hear them once the cannon start up anyway.”

  The drum beat somewhere to the front, and the column lurched forward at a quick pace.

  “Deploy left, follow the man in front,” Niklas said.

  We moved forward as before, but I could see the head of the column moving to the left of the road across an open field. I reached a spot where a lieutenant was standing with his sword drawn, pointing to follow the others, where I turned and exited the road, Niklas still to my right. I only went a few steps when the man in front stopped and faced right, so I did the same. I was in the third line, and felt quite safe and happy that I was not in the front.

  Another drum beat and the officers began to yell, “Third line, skirmishers forward!”

  The third line faced left and quickly filed off around the end of the column, moving forward and fanning out as we went, Sargent Zorn directing us back to the right to screen the mass of the column waiting behind us.

  “Forward!” he yelled, once satisfied with our positioning.

  “Follow a few steps behind me and slightly to the left,” Niklas said quickly as he checked his musket, which reminded me I needed to check mine.

  I looked at the flint, which looked good, and pulled a cartridge from my cartouche.

  “Load!” someone yelled from down the line, and each of us stopped to do so. I bit off the end of the paper cartridge, poured a little of the powder into the pan, then dumped the rest into the end of my musket, along with the ball and the paper. Pulling the ramrod from under the barrel, I jammed the contents into the bottom of the barrel and replaced the rod, noticing I was the last one to finish loading.

  “Remember, it’s a musket, so you’ll get better range and a heavier shot,” Niklas said, starting to move forward in a slight crouch. “Don’t fire until I tell you I’m ready. And the kick will be harder than you’re used to.”

  “Okay,” was all I could muster as I moved forward, slightly bent, mimicking Niklas’ pose, but I don’t think he heard me.

  The ground was open, covered with brown and yellow waist-high grass, with dried brown seedpods on the tips, and sloped down into a shallow ravine before climbing toward a row of trees. A half-dozen small houses -- really no more than huts -- were off to my left.

  “Push to the trees,” Sergeant Zorn shouted, running up and down our skirmish line.

  I silently wished he was in front as I cocked my musket. Forward we went at a slow walk, my eyes looking for the enemy I knew was out there, grass swishing around my legs.

  Wiping my right hand on my pant leg, I regripped my gun and kept moving to keep pace with Niklas.

  “Movement in the trees,” someone shouted from my left, sending my attention to the tree line. Figures in whitecoats could be seen moving about, guns in hand. That’s when I realized that those men up there wanted to kill me, and my steps hesitated and I could suddenly hear my heart in my ears. What was I doing here?

  “Move it!” Sargent Zorn yelled from behind me, giving me a shove that nearly sent me to the ground. “There will be no skulking in this battalion!”

  Regaining my composure, I pushed forward until I was close to Niklas again.

  “If they’re wearing whitecoats, they aren’t much to worry about,” he said over his shoulder. “If they are wearing gray or green, watch out.”

  I wasn’t sure why the color of a coat mattered, though I supposed that some experience with a gun might be mandatory for certain units. While my coat was green, I didn’t consider myself an expert at skirmish warfare, unless of course we were skirmishing against partridges, at which point I would be a general for sure.

  A loud crack drew my attention back to the trees ahead. A puff of white smoke revealed the culprit, but from that range, his hope of hitting anything was quite slim.

  “Keep moving!” Zorn yelled. “Those farmers can’t shoot and will panic when you approach.”

  Glancing up and down our staggered skirmish line, it certainly looked to me like most of what we had were farmers or maybe game wardens for the local lords back home. How were our farmers better than theirs?

  Another crack, another puff of white smoke. Even with the best fowling piece, I knew they were well out of effective range. Hitting someone at that distance would take an act of God.

  On we went, through the grass, the random blossom of smoke following each crack, which grew in frequency as we moved forward.

  As we started to crest the near edge of the shallow ravine, men in white rose and began to fire. The men in the trees had only been firing to keep our attention from their advanced skirmish line.

  Crack! Crack! Crack! the muskets fired, men frantically reloading. Like us, they worked in pairs, one not firing until his partner was loaded again.

  I raised my musket, choosing a target that I was sure had just sent a lead ball whizzing past me, then stopped. Niklas hadn’t fired yet.

  The rest of our line dropped to one knee and fired away.

  I moved up beside Niklas and watched as the hammer snapped forward, but nothing happened.

  “God help me,” he muttered in anger, recocking the gun and repeating the process. Again, no spark.

  I stepped forward, too excited to contain myself any longer. The barrel of the musket shook slightly as I chose my target once more, but this time, his musket was leveled at me. A plume of white smoke spilled out, followed by a loud crack. Something hissed by my ear.

  “He nearly hit me,” I said in disbelief as my adversary began to reload.

  Niklas was still talking to himself, trying to get his musket to fire. He took a new flint from his cartridge box and began to replace the old one.

  I could wait no longer.

  Leveling the barrel and compensating for being on higher ground, I aimed at his knees. I pulled the trigger, and the hammer snapped forward and sparked the powder in the pan.

  An eruption of fire and smoke was instantly followed by what felt like a mule-kick to my shoulder that half spun me around.

  Peering through the smoke, I could see my target lying in the grass, his shape contorted, unmoving.

  “I got him!”

  “Reload, you idiot!” Niklas yelled, his new flint nearly in place.

  Hurt by his harsh words, I began to slowly reload, pulling another cartridge from my cartouche. It didn’t take me long to realize why he wanted me to cut off my celebration. Lead was whizzing all about now, and men on both sides lay on the ground. This was no one-on-one contest, as I would soon learn.

  “Forward!” the sergeant yelled. “Push them out of there and up the hill. The supports are advancing behind us.”

  The skirmish line began moving forward in fits and starts. One man would run forward a half-dozen steps, then fire. His partner would take the lead, and upon hearing the other was ready, fire.

  I and a hundred others repeated this process as we moved down into the shallow ravine, the Austrians falling back before us.

  I was in the lead when I reached the spot where my adversary lay, his form twisted on the grass, a bright crimson stain over his left breast.

  “Quickly, Henri, check him,” Niklas said as he moved up beside me, his eyes on the retreating enemy.

  “Oh, he’s dead,” I said, realizing the severity of my actions. The man was probably no older than I was, his mouth half open as if to speak, his eyes blue and wide. Why had I killed him? I began to feel guilty for my sin.

  “No,” Niklas said wi
th disgust, kneeling beside the body. He yanked the soldier’s haversack from under him and peered inside. A half-gnawed loaf of bread was flipped to me, which I awkwardly caught with my left hand by pinning it against my body. Now I held my musket in one hand and a half loaf of bread in the other, a true warrior to be feared if ever there was one.

  “This is our kill!” Niklas protested in my direction.

  Before I could speak, one of the Kuhn brothers -- Jonas, I think, the older and uglier one, brushed past me to kneel at the body, knife in hand. “First one to get it, owns it,” he sneered. With more precision that a regimental surgeon, Jonas slit every seam on the interior of the man’s coat until he found what he was looking for: two silver coins sewn into the lining.

  “That’s rightly ours,” Niklas said.

  “Want to fight me for it?” Jonas asked nonchalantly as he pocketed the coins.

  Niklas said nothing.

  I continued to stare at the dead man’s face as a musket ball hit the ground nearby and kicked up dirt and small stones onto my leg. Who was he? Why was he here?

  Niklas and Jonas had parted, rejoining the battle while I stood stupefied by the ordeal of the dead man before me.

  Something hit me across the left leg, crumpling me to the ground. “I’m shot!” I cried out.

  A hand grabbed me by the collar and pulled me back to my feet, the sergeant's voice in my ear. “What did I tell you about skulking?” he said in a threatening tone.

  It was only then that I realized the pain in my leg came not from an enemy ball but from a slash from Zorn’s walking stick. Before being told and before he could do any more damage, I took off at a run toward Niklas, musket balls now buzzing about like angry insects as we grew closer to the enemy’s nest.

  “Are you ready?” he asked as I approached.

  “I’m ready!” I exclaimed, ready for anything. It was then I realized that the other men had their bayonets fixed to their muskets, but I did not. Had I missed a command? I pulled the bayonet free from the end of the musket -- it was stored in reverse under the barrel -- and attached it over the end, ready for action. Niklas fired and nodded for me to move forward.