Musket for a King

by Todd Shryock

  I laughed hysterically at the fools, standing there, waiting to be shot.

  Steady, beating thunder rolled up behind me.

  “Skirmishers to the rear!” Zorn shouted.

  I didn’t want to leave, but the mass of the battalion was steadily marching forward, drums beating and flags waving. I moved to the side, then slipped through a space in the ranks. The Austrians fired at the advancing mass, dropping several of our men, but we were an unstoppable force.

  As our battalion moved closer, clumps of men began to flee the white line. Shots rang out in random places along the line, but their courage failed. Within seconds, the entire line dissolved and individual men fled, casting aside muskets and packs -- anything that might slow them down.

  The skirmishers followed the battalion forward. I stopped when an enemy soldier rolled out from under the advancing mass, a hole in his forehead explaining his death. Ignoring the gray goop I saw inside his head, I rummaged through his forage bag, finding a few potatoes and a small piece of salted pork, quickly stuffing them into my own bag lest anyone try to take them from me.

  Glancing around, I saw that we had become like vultures, swooping in after the feast to collect the crumbs. Food was the first priority, but money was a close second. If you had money, you could always procure food, either from the sutlers that followed the army around or from the well-hidden stocks of villagers.

  As the battalion moved on, more victims were revealed, and I raced from one to the next, trying to claim the bounty before one of my comrades.

  The next man who appeared was one of ours. His face looked familiar, but I never knew his name. A hole centered on a damp spot on his jacket revealed his cause of death, but I stood over him, unmoving. It did not seem right to rob a fellow soldier from your own battalion, especially when the young man had such a sad look on his face, as if he were thinking about all the things he would never do at the moment of his passing.

  I was knocked aside, stumbling nearly to the ground. When I turned to see the culprit, I saw Leon Kuhn, a maniacal smile on his face that only grew bigger when he pulled four coins from the man’s pocket. When he saw me looking at him, he paused.

  “He don’t need ’em anymore,” he said laughing. “What? Do you think his feelings are hurt?”

  He pocketed the coins and began rifling through the man’s forage sack. Having seen enough, I turned and moved to catch up to the rest of the battalion, which was now halted near the Austrians’ previous position.

  As I approached the battalion, a familiar voice filled my ear.

  “Skulking as usual, I see!” Zorn yelled out, moving to intercept me, brandishing his cane. “Get back in formation, you coward!”

  I accelerated enough to stay out of his reach and pushed my way through the ranks, moving to one side or the other, hoping my weave would shake my pursuer like a deer loping through trees. When I looked back, Zorn was nowhere to be seen, most likely in pursuit of easier prey.

  Pushing and squeezing through the ranks, I finally saw my company and worked myself into the line.

  “Henri!” exclaimed a voice beside me.

  “Simon!” I answered with equal enthusiasm.

  We embraced momentarily. “I thought you might be dead,” I said.

  “No, not me. Just got separated in the smoke. Glad to see you are okay.”

  “Indeed,” I said. Looking to the front through several ranks of men, I couldn’t see anything happening. “What are we about now?”

  Simon shrugged. “Whitecoats ran off and no one seems to be in any hurry to follow them.”

  “I say we go back and shoot those French gunners,” a man said from behind me, which drew several murmurs of agreement from those nearby.

  “I can’t disagree with that,” Simon said, his voice growing sterner as he spoke. “We probably lost more men to their guns than we did the Austrians.”

  “We can’t hardly just march back and shoot them,” I said, knowing the number of officers about.

  “You don’t have to be so direct about things,” an older man said. “This is war. People get shot all the time, and no one can tell which direction the ball came from. Muskets don’t care; they’re just as happy to kill a man in blue as a man in white.”

  I looked at Simon, concerned about the mutiny I was hearing about. My emotions must have shown on my face, for he looked at me and shook his head. “Just soldiers talking,” he said.

  “Sometimes it’s more than talk,” the older man said. “I’ve seen it happen. Unpopular officers tend to get shot more often than the good ones, and if you check, you’ll find they tend to get hit in the back more than the front. But maybe it’s just a strange coincidence.”

  Several other men chuckled at the suggestion.

  I faced front and relaxed, glad that no one was currently shooting at me.

  Chapter 5

  For days, we marched. Back and forth, through the same landscapes we had seen before, past the same empty buildings, the same hollow-eyed villagers and the same barren fields.

  “A familiar act in a familiar play,” Simon said as we marched.

  I didn’t know much about plays, but knew what he meant. “Yes, doomed to repeat the same thing until we grow mad.”

  “You would think that with all the marching back and forth we would eventually pass our supply wagons coming or going,” Simon said wistfully.

  “They don’t need to move at all,” I pointed out. “They could just park in the middle and feed us each time we marched past.”

  The dust was thick and the April sun was hotter than normal as the long line of soldiers and horses plodded on. On occasion, I was forced to put my nose in the collar of my coat to have a chance at a breath of clean air, so instead of inhaling dust, I was flooded with my own stench, which was only slightly less offensive than the air around me.

  “I don’t see why we need all this marching anyway,” Simon said, shifting his musket in the vain attempt to find a comfortable way to carry it. “Why can’t the Austrians just stay in one place? Why are we chasing them all over Europe just to fight them? They have to be tired, too, right?”

  “The generals need to prove how much smarter they are than us, remember?” Niklas added, who seemed less fatigued than the rest of us, his musket slung over one shoulder.

  “Wouldn’t they prove themselves all the smarter if they could figure out a way to fight each other without all this marching about?” I asked.

  Niklas cracked a smile, his thumb hooked under the strap on his musket. “Now, now, you can’t impress the ladies if you don’t march to exotic locations.”

  “I suppose not,” I said.

  We continued down the road, three of us on either side of the track as artillery and supply caissons trundled between us.

  “Watch yourselves, Zorn coming,” someone said from several rows back.

  Our backs stiffened and we matched our steps, breaking from the casual gait we had been enjoying.

  “Look proper, boys, the crown prince is coming through!” Zorn yelled. “I expect you give him a proper reception, and woe be to the man who doesn’t do his patriotic duty by cheering the son of our glorious king.”

  “Your glorious king,” Simon muttered. “Our undertaker.”

  Zorn didn’t hear him; if he had, Simon would have found himself lying in the ditch.

  I looked over my shoulder and saw a group of men on horses cantering up between the lines, cheers and raised muskets following them as they went.

  As the prince approached, I saw his thin moustache and the braiding on his uniform and the fine gray horse he rode. His generals and aides were packed around him, each vying to be closest to him, their own braid not quite as impressive, their horses not quite as powerful.

  “Hurrah for the king!” I called out. “Hurrah for our prince!” I said, raising my musket in salute.

  The prince kept his eyes forward and his chin up, riding as if on an empty country road in the summer, and the cheers faded away as he
moved on.

  “Inspiring figure,” Simon said sarcastically.

  I looked nervously for Zorn, but satisfied that the cheers met his standards, he had fallen back along the column to walk with one of the other sergeants.

  “He could have at least waved or something,” I answered, knowing I was safe.

  “That is beneath him,” Niklas said. “Acknowledge us scum while walking on the road? Never. If you take Vienna, he might allow you a curt nod, but nothing more.”

  I chuckled, knowing there wasn’t much exaggeration to the statement.

  ***

  As usual, our supply wagons were nowhere to be found. Oh, to be a wagonmaster, with food always at your back and when the balls started flying, you were safely in the rear! With all the marching, the men were grumbling more than usual, and many, despite Zorn’s insults and threats, fell out of the march, exhausted, where they were left behind. A detachment at the end of the long column of the army would sweep them up, assuming they didn’t cast off their army accoutrements and head for home.

  My forage sack was empty, the meager contents long since gone. The uniform hung off my shoulders like that of a scarecrow, covering my aching feet and knees. Every time the army stopped, more men disappeared, leaving the ranks to search for food. At some point, any man’s hunger will overcome any fear he has of the lash.

  I was at that point. My stomach hurt and I could hardly move my legs.

  “Come on,” Niklas said when we stopped for the day. “We must see what we can find.”

  In days prior, I would have argued against the risk, the image of the whipping still in my head. But no, not tonight. Tonight I would eat.

  We made our way through the forming camp and through a small wood and into the fields beyond. Several farmhouses sat in the distance and we set them as our destination, weaving around marshy ground and around fences until we came upon a narrow track leading toward the dwellings. The track climbed a small rise, and from our vantage point, I saw at least a dozen others from our battalion making their way in clumps of two and three toward barns and houses across the landscape. Farther off, I made out tiny figures from other units as we spread out across the land, like locusts in green jackets. By morning, anything not hidden well enough would be gone.

  We approached the house, a sorry-looking wooden structure that appeared to lean slightly to one side, a couple of windows on the lower level, with one on what had to be a loft level.

  “Should we shed our jackets?” I asked, remembering what Niklas said before about not being recognizable.

  The look on his face told me the answer. His face was gaunt and his eyes sunken into his head, the constant hunger turning his normally cheery disposition to a simmering anger. “No,” he snapped. “There are many of us about.”

  Without slowing, he kicked in the door, knocking aside the small piece of wood that served as a lock inside, the splintered remains scattering across the floor.

  Inside, the room was lost in shadows, a wide-eyed farmer with a bald head standing with his hat in his hand in front of a low-burning fire.

  “Food!” Niklas demanded.

  The man nervously shook his head. “No food,” he said, “Soldiers already take.” I didn’t recognize his accent, but his words were clear enough.

  Niklas raised his musket and pointed it at the man’s head, repeating his demand. “Food,” he said, his voice calm, conveying the fury he was holding back.

  The man started to shake his head and Niklas’ arm tensed.

  A woman came wailing from the shadows, causing me to raise my weapon. She grasped the barrel of Niklas’ gun, pulling at his uniform as she cried out, “Noooooooo!” “No shoot!”

  Niklas shrugged her off, partially lowering his gun as I relaxed, but stayed alert.

  “Then bring us food,” he demanded.

  She muttered something in a foreign language and scurried off to one side, pulling something from a burlap sack, handing us each an apple. “There, now you go,” she said, motioning toward the door.

  Niklas snorted, tossing me the apple, which I slipped into my forage bag with my own. “More food.”

  “Soldiers come,” she pleaded. “No more food,” she said, her palms held out to the side, her creased face showing the toll of years of hard work in the fields.

  Niklas slammed the butt of his rifle onto the floor, causing a loud crack, which greatly startled the farmer and his wife. “Food!”

  “No food,” they both pleaded.

  “Watch them,” he said to me as he shoved the woman toward her husband and began going through every drawer and shelf along the wall, much to the woman’s dismay. She started to move toward Niklas, but the motion of my musket caused the man to grab her by the arm and pull her back.

  Niklas began overturning pots and furniture, looking for anything. “Where is it?” he muttered, as the woman grew more upset with each second of the search. I watched the man carefully, his eyes going between Niklas and myself, darting first one way and then the next.

  Floor boards were pried up as Niklas looked for their hidden cache, causing the woman to start to sob.

  The man glanced upward, leading my eyes to the loft, which because of the lack of a ladder in the room, had escaped my notice. Of course!

  “What’s up there?” I demanded, pointing to the loft.

  The man’s eyes went wide. “Nothing up there.”

  Upon hearing my demand, Niklas stormed back and looked up. “Where’s the ladder?”

  “No ladder,” the man said.

  In a rage, Niklas grabbed the man by the collar. “Where is the ladder, you scoundrel? Where is it?” He rammed the barrel of his musket under the man’s chin and pushed him against the wall. “Get me up there or I’ll shoot you in the head!”

  The woman clutched at Niklas to try to stop him, but I grabbed her and pulled her aside, pushing her away, threatening her with my musket. If they had food, I was going to have it, for if we didn’t eat tonight, a slow death on the road was sure to find us on the morrow. If that meant killing these two, so be it.

  A dragging noise came from the loft and the ladder slowly appeared over the ledge until it tipped and slid down to the floor.

  The man began shaking his head, crying, his wife joining his sobs.

  “Come down from there!” Niklas demanded.

  A figure climbed down the ladder, and we realized why the farmers were so worried. Standing before us was a rosy-cheeked teenage girl. I stood, mouth agape, enthralled by her rosy cheeks, her ice-blue eyes and her wheat-colored hair. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.

  My trance was interrupted by the old woman inserting herself between me and the girl, her hands clawing at my jacket, her sobs distorting her words. I did not understand what she was saying, but understood her meaning.

  Niklas looked to me. “What do you think?”

  “She’s beautiful,” I stammered.

  The girl said nothing, standing quietly before us, her eyes wide.

  He laughed. “Do you want her, Henri?” he teased.

  Her simple dress did not adequately hide the curves beneath and my heart began to race at the thought.

  “If you want her, you can have her,” he said. “I won’t stop you.”

  I looked at those eyes and tried to imagine the hidden beauty beneath that simple cloth dress.

  The woman wailed and the farmer stepped toward us, causing Niklas to half-raise his rifle in warning, which made him pause.

  “Make a decision, Henri,” he said. “We need to get what we need and get back to camp.”

  The woman tugged on my coat, drawing my attention to her. I saw the same ice-blue eyes and pity welled-up from within me and suddenly I felt ashamed of the thoughts that had so recently been bouncing around in my head.

  “The devil,” I muttered. “Let’s get the food and get out of here.”

  Niklas chuckled, though I failed to see what was amusing. “That’s okay, Henri, I didn’t think you wer
e like that, but considering we’ll both be dead in a month, I wouldn’t hold it against you if you took some liberties with the beauty here. We can still use it to our advantage.”

  Niklas changed his demeanor to an angry madman, and grabbed the farmer by the collar, pulling him in close. “Food!” he shouted in his face. “Food, or we take her instead!” he pointed first to his empty forage bag and then to the farmer’s daughter. His threat was clear.

  The farmer looked at the old woman and began issuing instructions to her, pulling her from my coat and pushing her toward the end of the room, his harsh words telling me he was cursing her for her slowness.

  “Go with her,” Niklas said. “If she pulls a knife, shoot her.”

  I found it hard to believe that the woman had the courage to knife me, but I took his advice and stayed on my guard, watching carefully as she found a spot where the wall met the floor and felt around until she hooked the end of the board and pulled it back.

  The farmer said something that I figured was telling her to hurry up. She knelt down on the floor and reached under the floor and began pulling out potatoes, small sacks of flour and a jar of dried meats.

  “Well?” Niklas called to me.

  “We’ve got some good stuff,” I said, greedily stuffing it all into my bag until I was yanking items out of her hand as soon as they appeared. I nudged her, demanding more, and the hand kept appearing with more food.

  She began to beg off, telling me I needed to leave them something.

  “She says that’s all they can give us,” I said.

  “More!” Niklas shouted so loudly that everyone in the room flinched.

  “Shouldn’t we leave them something?” I asked, not wanting to be responsible for their starvation.

  “Henri, I guarantee that is not the only spot they have food hidden. There are probably several goats and a sheep hidden in the woods somewhere. These people know how to hide things, and besides, we’re leaving their daughter’s virtue intact. Isn’t that enough?”