Musket for a King

by Todd Shryock

  “Henri,” Niklas called to me. “Come, let’s help Karl to the doctor.”

  We pushed past the musicians to Karl, who lay unmoving.

  “Karl?” Niklas gently called out.

  A low groan was all that came from the prone form.

  “Help me get him up, but don’t touch his back,” Niklas said.

  I moved to one side and took his arm, placing it around me as we lifted him. I grabbed him around the waist to avoid touching his bloody back that was chewed to pieces.

  “Karl, it’s us, Henri and Niklas,” he said. “We are going to take you to the doctor where you can recover from your wounds.”

  Karl lifted his head slightly, his eyes struggling to open. He mumbled something unintelligible, but managed to support some of his weight with his legs, relieving me of some of my burden.

  We guided him through camp, the other soldiers watching him go, muttering angry oaths at officers and anyone with authority as we passed. If there was no food, what were we supposed to do?

  The doctor met us at the door of the cottage he was using as his headquarters and instructed us to lie Karl on his stomach on a table. I watched as the doctor sprinkled a powdery substance across his back.

  “Return to your unit,” the doctor ordered. “There is nothing more you can do here.”

  “Will he survive?” I asked, realizing how badly wounded he was.

  The doctor looked at Karl and shrugged. “He should, unless it becomes infected. I may have to bleed him to remove the impurities from his blood. Now go.” He motioned toward the door.

  Niklas and I made our way back to our campsite in silence.

  As we rejoined our company, Jannick stood to greet us. “How is he?”

  Niklas took two long strides toward him and throttled the man by his collar. “He’s nearly dead, thanks to you!”

  “What are you talking about? Jannick yelled, trying to escape Niklas’ grasp as those nearby started to take interest in the scuffle. A good fight was always of great interest.in the otherwise boring routine of camp.

  “You left him behind! We don’t leave anyone behind!”

  “We got separated coming through the pickets!” he responded, earning him an even tighter grip from Niklas.

  Jannick squirmed free, pushing the other man away. Niklas’ face twisted in anger and he took another step forward, his arm cocked back, but Simon grabbed him.

  “Niklas, no!” Simon implored him. “If Zorn sees this … ” he let his voice trail off, the unspoken part known to all.

  Niklas struggled against his restraint for a moment, then relaxed. “I should call Zorn here myself and tell him you were the other one.”

  “We stick together!” Jannick argued. “When we start turning each other in to Zorn, we are all finished.”

  “You didn’t stick together with Karl last night, did you?” Niklas retorted.

  Jannick looked away. “We got separated.”

  “So you said,” Niklas retorted. “You should have gone looking for him.”

  “There was no time,” Jannick said, his voice relaxing now that the threat of a fight was gone.

  Niklas spat. “If you weren’t such a fool, you would have never gotten caught.”

  “What do you know of what happened last night?” Jannick challenged, his voice increasing in volume again as he stepped forward, causing Simon to tighten his grasp on Niklas once more.

  “Your stupidity is obvious,” Niklas said. “The farmer knew you by your uniforms. You should have stripped to your white waistcoat and removed your shakos before entering the house. He would have had no way of knowing whether it was one of us or one of the Austrians. Instead, you practically told him what unit the two of you were in -- and with Karl’s hair…”

  “And how is that my fault? It’s his damn hair.”

  “Which was another reason to think about what you were doing instead of just kicking in the door,” Niklas snapped. “Karl is unique looking. With the uniform, it was all too easy. Next time, think about what you are doing before getting your comrade beaten and maybe killed.”

  “What happened is not my fault!” Jannick insisted as several other soldiers looked on.

  Niklas shook his head and sat down. “Keep telling yourself that.”

  Chapter 3

  For three days, we marched hard from before dawn until just before darkness. Rests were few and far between, and despite our hardships, Sergeant Zorn was ever vigilant, always ready to pounce on the first poor soul who lagged behind or marched out of step, his black hickory cane always held at the ready.

  At the end of the third day, a halt was called. I had no idea where we were or why we were going there. The usual rumors went through the lines as we marched and passed through villages that looked just like the ones before them: We were headed toward Vienna on a great flanking march. We were heading off a great Russian army advancing from the east. We were trying to catch up to the Hapsburg king, who was fleeing with a corps of his best troops, and who Napoleon had promised a hundred acres and a barony to any man who brought the king in.

  Niklas told me to ignore the rumors, because they were never right and many men took great pleasure in making up the most fantastic possibility and seeing if it would spread through the army. Personally, I didn’t care where we were going as long as there was someplace to lie down and sleep, for the long marches had sapped the energy from my legs and caused aches up and down my body. Little food was provided during our march, though I managed with several slices of bread and three apples I bought from one of the villagers we passed. Most of the inhabitants fled ahead of our approach, taking with them as many of their belongings as possible and hiding the rest, but a brave few tried to profit from us, usually to their benefit.

  As the column ground to a halt and the order went out to make camp, Sergeant Zorn approached. “Muller, you are on picket duty. Report to Lieutenant Gauschlaub.”

  My heart sank as I thought my legs would give out from under me. Standing picket duty for several hours was the last thing I wanted, but I didn’t dare argue. I moved off toward the lieutenant at the side of the column as my comrades looked upon me with great pity.

  The lieutenant was a dour man who seemed to hate all humans, regardless of rank. There was much speculation that he subsisted on a diet of sour apples and unripe cherries, leading to his disposition, but I knew our quartermaster could never deliver such fare on a regular basis.

  Our small group moved off several hundred yards, with the lieutenant pointing out where the rallying point was and the general location of the picket line. We were instructed to load our muskets and fire a shot if we saw the enemy. The password was “gingerbread,” which just reminded my stomach that it had had little to enjoy in recent days.

  “You,” the dour lieutenant said, pointing at me. “And you and you,” he added, continuing to pick men out of our group. “I want you on outposts one hundred paces forward of the picket, toward the village. If you see the enemy moving through the village, fire your shot, fall back to the picket line and hold there until forced back to the rallying point. If attacked, you must buy time for the rest of the camp to take up arms. I will be positioned at the rallying point with the reserve.”

  And with that, he promptly left, leaving the three of us to take whatever positions we felt best.

  “You take a spot in those trees by the road,” one of the men said. “We’ll take up position to the right, as the ground to the left is quite marshy.”

  I said nothing, loading my musket and then slowly moving off as the other two men fanned out across the field as the light started to fade.

  Carefully, I advanced down the road and veered off into a small copse of oak trees. The village was still several hundred yards away, but I could clearly make out buildings. There was no sign of the enemy, but a few wisps of smoke drifted from several chimneys, so I knew someone was there and probably eating a warm meal.

  After observing the village with the utmost care, noti
ng any likely avenues of approach and making sure I knew where the village buildings ended so that when darkness came, I would know what was what, I found a decent sitting spot against one of the oaks, laid my musket across my lap and wrapped myself in my coat to ward off the damp chill in the air, which smelled of rotting leaves.

  Not long into my watch, I wondered how I would be relieved. The lieutenant had been in a great hurry and had left the assignment of our outposts to us, but we were the only ones who knew where we were.

  Darkness slowly drew across the fields and dropped the village into shadow, and a few lights shone through windows. I wondered if enemy soldiers were cooking juicy rabbits inside in the comfort of a heated room and was half tempted to creep up and take a look, but the mere thought brought an image of Karl’s back to my mind, and I quickly pushed temptation aside.

  An hour passed, and I heard something or someone shuffling down the road behind me. Getting to my feet, I brought my musket to bear on the two figures advancing toward me.

  “Who goes there?”

  The two figures stopped, surprised by my presence. Were these enemy soldiers who had wandered into our lines in the darkness?

  “Second battalion, light infantry,” one of them said. The voice was familiar.

  “What’s the password?”

  “Gingerbread.”

  I relaxed. “Approach.”

  The two figures got close enough that I could make out a little of their faces and knew from their general shape who they were. The thin nose and general stench identified them as Jonas and Leon Kuhn, two men I did my best to avoid.

  And it became readily apparent they knew who I was, too.

  “Henri,” the taller one said. “Is there anyone beyond you?”

  “No,” I answered. “I’m the last outpost.”

  “Good.” The two figures started to push past me.

  “Where do you think you are going?” I asked, the grip on my gun getting tighter.

  They stopped, one turning to face me. “To town,” Jonas said, a long pause following. He then took another step forward, his face only a few inches from mine. “We’re hungry and need something to do. Keep your mouth shut, got it?”

  I didn’t say anything as I debated whether I could shoot one of them and then chided myself for not attaching my bayonet. I also didn’t want to risk raising the alarm across the entire army for the sake of these two scoundrels.

  Jonas took my silence as understanding and moved on, his brother beside him, the two silhouettes fading into the night.

  “But the enemy?” I blurted out after them.

  “Not here,” Jonas said, his voice distant. “Keep quiet,” he added, repeating his warning.

  I relaxed my grip on the musket unsure what to do. Giving up, I sat back down, deciding that the best course of action was to plead ignorance. If they were caught, I never saw them. They must have crossed the lines elsewhere, I would tell them.

  A half hour passed when I heard glass breaking and a commotion from the village. Had the enemy arrived? I stood, my dull senses suddenly renewed, my musket held before me.

  Several men were yelling, and then a woman screamed.

  My eyes strained to see something, but there wasn’t enough light coming from the village to make anything out beyond the bulky shapes of the houses.

  The woman screamed again.

  I tilted my head first to one side and then the other, trying to pick up any sounds that would tell me what was happening. Minutes passed, but only silence came forth.

  Starting to relax, I partially lowered my musket when I heard someone approaching on the road.

  “Who goes there!” I demanded, raising my musket once more.

  “Shut up, Henri,” Jonas said as he came closer. “You saw nothing.” The two brothers didn’t even slow down as they passed, cutting off the road not far behind my position to cut across a field.

  I watched them disappear into the darkness and then looked back to the village. What had happened there? I was tempted to creep forward to take a look, but didn’t dare leave my post.

  Not a quarter-hour later, I heard someone calling out behind me in a soft voice. “Wurttembergers? Show yourself.”

  The voice was German, with no accent, and was coming from the direction of our lines, so I assumed it to be safe. “Here,” I said, keeping my musket up just in case.

  “We’re supposed to relieve you,” the voice said. I didn’t recognize it or the shape of the two men who were with him.

  “Finally,” I said, lowering my gun. “The other two are out there someplace,” I said, vaguely waving toward the field to my right.

  “Anything happening?” one of them asked.

  I considered telling them that two of our men slipped through, but then decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. “No, all quiet.”

  “Enemy pickets?”

  “If they’re out there, I haven’t seen them.”

  “Hmm. Too bad,” the man said. “I was going to make some trades with them. Perhaps someone in the village has something of value they would like to part with.”

  “I wouldn’t go there, for the lieutenant told me he thinks the enemy is possibly occupying it. You might get captured.” It was a lie, but I didn’t want them discovering whatever it was the brothers had done there, and if they had been stealing, the villagers might not be so kind to the next man who wandered in.

  “Good to know,” was all the man said.

  I shouldered my musket and made my way through the darkness until I was challenged by one of our pickets.

  “Gingerbread,” I said before he could even ask. “Which way to camp?”

  “Through the two big trees there and over a slight rise. You’ll see the fires from there.”

  I pushed through the sparse woods, managing to fend off attacks from low-hanging branches, roots and a host of other greenery that seemed determined to poke out an eye or draw blood with a sharp edge, until I was back in camp. There, I found myself a hopeless refugee wandering about, asking for the location of my battalion and then my company.

  By mere luck, I stumbled upon them after a short while and joined Niklas, Simon and Jannick around a fire that warmed my chilled hands. Niklas handed me a couple of slices of bread.

  “I managed to save you something,” he said without looking over as I first stacked my gun with the others and then plopped down beside him.

  I ate the bread and found it relatively fresh for once, washing it down with water from my gourd.

  “Is the enemy about?” Simon asked.

  I looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping, then lowered my voice before answering. “The only enemy I saw were not wearing white coats.” I paused until the others were all looking at me. “The Kuhn brothers passed my outpost on their way to the village. I heard a commotion and screaming, then they returned.”

  Niklas shrugged and went back to staring at the fire. “That’s what they do,” he said. “They sneak off into towns, beat up villagers and steal whatever they can find, then sell it to us for a hefty profit.”

  “Yeah, they’ll buy their own barony by the time the war is over,” Simon said.

  “Do they ever get caught?” I asked.

  Jannick laughed but said nothing. Simon added, “They are professionals. They don’t get caught, because they were practicing before ever getting conscripted into the army.”

  “No enemy is good,” Niklas said, changing the subject. “That means they have withdrawn before us, but it probably means another march tomorrow.”

  ***

  Once more, we were up before dawn, but our position in the line of march was now toward the back, leaving us waiting for over an hour before we could fall in to the proper position. The sun was now up and spilling bright orange light across the valley we occupied.

  “Reminds me of home,” Simon said as he fell in to line.

  I looked at the scene with the mix of small copses and gently rolling fields, cut by a jagged stream that
wasn’t sure which way it wanted to go so made a random path through a marshy meadow until deepening a bit as it ran past the village. Home was a long way away, but Simon was right, this did look a lot like it -- other than the thousands of armed men forming a long line along the road with horses of every size and color dragging wagons and guns, creating a noisy rumble of war that was on the move.

  Our battalion filed down the road, entering the village I had watched from afar the night before. The Kuhn brothers were in the rank behind me and to my right, but I was too afraid to look at them. Sergeant Zorn prowled the ranks, looking for anyone who was out of step, his walking stick in hand as a reminder of what would happen to anyone who lost the cadence.

  The village was smaller than it had looked from my outpost, with maybe a dozen buildings. Some of them had been stripped of doors and shutters, leaving them hollow hulks with no inhabitants.

  The line slowed as we approached a small wooden church. Lying out front were three bodies, and everyone was looking to see what had happened.

  “Move it!” Zorn ordered. “Or you’ll join them!”

  The pace picked back up, but as I drew closer, I got a good look at the bodies. There were two men, who by the looks of them might have been brothers. Their throats were slashed, with their eyes bulging in a disturbing stare of death. The third body was that of a woman, probably my age, with dark curly hair that matted against her pallid face. Her shirt was punctured in several places with stab wounds, and her skirt was torn, exposing one of her blood-spattered legs.

  “She was pretty,” Simon said solemnly, remorseful that such a beauty had met such a bitter end.

  Guilt started to take me. I glanced down the line, only to see Jonas giving me a hard stare. I quickly looked away, suddenly realizing this was their handiwork; because I let them pass both ways, they worked their crimes on the local populace with deadly results.

  I was starting to like army life less with each passing day.

  Chapter 4

  We stood in line formation looking across a field, a French battery deployed to our front, their limbers and wagons to our rear. Somewhere to our right was the first battalion and somewhere to the left in a patch of woods, our jagers -- sharpshooters who usually operated in open order or skirmish formation. The day was warm, the sun bright as the breeze flicked the weeds and grass at my feet, cooling the sweat that dripped down my neck.