Musket for a King

by Todd Shryock

  Niklas nudged me. “Come on, let’s look for food while the rest of the men recover.”

  I didn’t much feel like foraging through the remains of the village, partly because I was worried about what horrible sights we might find inside, but also because I wasn’t hungry and didn’t feel like I would ever need to eat again. The image of Simon filled my head; one moment standing there beside me, the next a pile of bloody gore on the ground.

  It just didn’t seem right. or even possible.

  I followed Niklas down a side street like an old dog follows its master, neither caring nor understanding where we were going, just glad to have some purpose. He paused from time to time to look in an open door or window. Dead Austrians lie about in random places, having been injured near the river and then crawling back into the streets to die. Some were so horribly shot up that I wondered how they managed to get as far as they did.

  “Here,” Niklas said, declaring a particular door as worthy of entering. I didn’t ask why, I just followed him in after he shouldered it open.

  The house was only one room wide, with narrow stairs leading up to a bedroom and a narrow hallway leading to a room in the back. “Check upstairs,” Niklas said, grabbing my arm before heading for the kitchen. “Be on your guard. Could be wounded or skulking Austrians hiding here.”

  I nodded and checked my gun, taking a moment to reprime the pan and then fixing my bayonet on the end of it. Niklas moved carefully down the hall, his gun raised, as I crept upstairs. There was a small landing and a wooden slab of a door with two holes in it that looked to have been made by a musket ball or something bigger. I saw sunlight on the other side, but was afraid to put my eye too near the hole for fear of an Austrian bayonet greeting my curious look.

  Gripping my musket, I kicked at the door, which slammed open, hit the wall and then slammed into me as I tried to get through. Cursing, I pushed the door aside, this time more gently, and stood ready to fire.

  I needn’t have bothered.

  The small bedroom wall was riddled with holes like a moth-ridden cloth, the window shattered and pieces of the mullions strewn across the floor. Two bodies lie on the floor, their white clothes soaked in blood, holes torn in their flesh. Flies crawled across their skin and a sack of flour that lie between them.

  The sack was soaked in blood, but not so much that the contents couldn’t be salvaged.

  I glanced around the room -- a bed shot to pieces, a few wooden boxes holding some meager belongings -- and figured we must be facing the river and the artillery barrage that would have peppered all the houses along it with lead.

  I moved toward the Austrians, but slowed my steps, for I saw one had long braided hair and a feminine face. A woman! The white clothes were not a uniform at all, but an apron over a blouse, but all was so bloody and shredded, she looked like all the other dead Austrians. My eyes moved to the other body and the truth started to reveal itself. A man, but not a soldier. Just someone in the wrong place when the shooting started. It looked as if he had positioned himself to try to shield the woman from the death that shot through their walls.

  I took another step, my gaze focusing on the sack of flour. Part of me screamed to go back down the stairs, to turn and run, to never come back, but that part was overpowered and I found myself moving ever closer to the sack.

  The form was the wrong shape for flour and a round shape appeared near one end. I knew what it was but yet didn’t want to believe it. No, god would not let something like this happen! It could not be a child! Please god, no!

  A sense of hope entered my heart. Perhaps the child was alive. Perhaps that’s why Niklas was guided to pick this building. Yes, I’m an angel sent to save the only survivor of this poor family.

  I knelt, rolling the child over.

  Small, cherubic cheeks and gray-blue eyes greeted me, a half-smile on his face.

  I smiled in return.

  How could he be so quiet?

  The eyes didn’t blink or move. The mouth was frozen. The tiny hands stiffly making fists.

  His chest was mostly gone.

  I stumbled backwards, crashing into the wall, as if hit by the same ball as the child, and slumped to the floor.

  I closed my eyes, but the child’s blue-grey orbs stared at me from beyond, the frozen mouth forever asking me, why?

  My eyes were screwed shut as tightly as I could make them, but the face of the baby wouldn’t go away. I covered my head with my arms, trying to block the image out, screaming for it to go away as I thrashed on the floor in misery.

  Why? it asked.

  I screamed amid my tears. I had no answers.

  Simon joined the baby, his head gone, but his voice still spoke to me.

  Why? he asked. Why me and not you?

  “I don’t know!” I screamed in the darkness. “I don’t know!”

  I sobbed and curled up into a ball, wishing the world to crash down upon me and end my suffering.

  The headless body of Simon pulled at me, trying to drag me up by the collar.

  I screamed and thrashed about, but he was too strong, pinning my arms down as I continued to cry out for mercy.

  “Henri!” his voice demanded. “Henri!”

  The horror was unbearable, the dead clawing at me and asking me questions for which I had no answers.

  “Henri!”

  I looked at the face of Niklas, momentarily pausing my cries.

  “Henri,” he said more calmly.

  I realized that it was his voice calling my name, not Simon.

  “Niklas?” I rasped.

  He nodded.

  “The baby … ” I said, afraid to look past him toward the body.

  “The baby is gone,” he said. “It rests in God’s arms now, along with his mother and father.” His words were soothing, like those of a minister, taking the unfair and spinning it into something that was preordained and acceptable.

  “Gone,” I repeated.

  He nodded. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here.”

  I allowed him to pull me to my feet, and he kept himself between me and the bodies of the family. Spinning me around, he grabbed my coat and led me out the door onto the small landing, then retrieved my musket, slinging it over my shoulder.

  “Are you okay?” he asked?

  I managed a nod, but it was a lie. I wasn’t okay. Everywhere I went, people were dead, killed in horrible ways, their bodies torn asunder with no mercy, not even for the innocent.

  “Some fresh air will help. Can you make it down the stairs?”

  I looked down the narrow wooden stairs, convinced they led directly to the heart of hell. I deserved no better. With one hand on the wall, I carefully made my way down, Niklas behind me, his hand on the strap of my pack to steady me. When I reached the bottom, I looked back up at the bedroom door. I felt them in there. I sensed their presence. I sensee their sadness.

  “Come on,” Niklas said, leading me to the door.

  I resisted.

  “What?”

  I looked at him, his face smeared black from gunpowder, sweat leaving small clean streaks down to his jaw where the water dripped off onto the floor. “I don’t want to take their food,” I said. “It doesn’t seem right.”

  “They didn’t have any. Don’t worry about it.”

  The answer was a little too quick. I knew it was a lie, but I told myself it wasn’t. He went back out on the street and waited. I looked up at the bedroom door, knowing the family was still there, lying in their own blood. They went to bed happy and woke up to horror. I only hoped they died at the same time. I started seeing images of the baby shot first, the mother screaming, but then Niklas called me again.

  “Henri,” he said calmly. “We need to go.”

  I looked at him, back to the door, then back to him. “Okay,” I said so quietly that I barely heard myself. Stepping out onto the street, I felt slightly relieved, but I sensed the dead watching me. They knew who I was now. There would never be an escape for me.

&nbs
p; Why? They asked.

  I didn’t know.

  We moved down the street, Niklas looking for food as I looked for my sanity, with neither of us having much luck. I followed him into a wide two-story house that showed minimal damage. “Wait here,” he said, unslinging his pack, tossing it onto a wooden table near the door and wiping the sweat from his brow. He disappeared down a hall, heading for a room in the back.

  I leaned against the wall, trying to clear my head. My gaze drifted down to the pack on the table, its top flap hanging open because the strap was undone. Inside, I saw the glint of something metal. Curious, I moved the flap out of the way.

  Inside was a canteen with an ivory square depicting a hand coming down from the heavens toward a broken chain.

  It was Zorn’s canteen.

  I looked down the hall, but Niklas could not see me. I heard drawers being opened and things dumped onto the floor, so I carefully flipped the flap back down on the pack. Had Niklas killed the sergeant? How else would he have gotten it?

  Niklas returned, a pair of small onions in his hands. “Not much, but we’ll take it, right?”

  My face must have revealed my concern.

  “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  I hesitated, unsure of what to tell him. “When you put the pack down, the flap came open.”

  He studied me, looking for a reaction. If he was expecting me to mourn Zorn, he was wrong. Grabbing the pack and securing the flap, he slung it onto his back. “I found it on the field,” he said. “Zorn must have dropped it during the battle.”

  He turned to the door.

  “Is he dead?”

  Niklas stood unmoving, then slowly turned his head. “That’s what I heard.”

  “You didn’t see him?” I asked, trying to picture Niklas killing Zorn in the confusion of the battle.

  He shook his head twice and moved outside, leaving me alone. I sensed more ghosts moving about, so I rushed to catch up to him as he moved down the street toward our encampment.

  We walked in silence all the way back. As we approached the men of our battalion scattered about, Niklas stopped, staring ahead. “There are always two paths,” he said. “One is right and one is wrong, and sometimes it’s hard to know which is which.” He pointed to Gebhard, who sat with his back to a wall, his knees drawn up under his chin, rocking back and forth, two men trying to console him as his glassy eyes focused on nothing. “But no matter what, you have to keep moving on whatever path you have chosen. If you don’t,” he nodded toward Gebhard, “it all catches up to you and won’t let you go.”

  He continued walking, leaving me watching Gebhard. I approached the man, hoping a familiar face might break him out of it, while really hoping to occupy my mind with something other than phantoms.

  “Gebhard?” I said.

  He kept rocking.

  “Been like that for an hour,” one of the other men said. “Doesn’t matter what we do, he won’t respond.”

  I knelt down to try to get into his field of vision, but his eyes stared right through me. “Gebhard?” I gently placed my hand on his arm. “Gebhard?”

  His lips quivered. “I went across the bridge,” he whispered, pausing his rocking. “I went across the bridge.”

  “I know, Gebhard, we all went across the bridge.”

  “I went across the bridge. Now I want to go home.”

  “That’s right, Gebhard, you get to go home now.”

  “I can’t,” he said, tears running down his face.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “I can’t go back across the bridge.” He sat still, the emotion draining from his face, then he started rocking again, responding to no one.

  I stood up, the two men looking at me for guidance. “What should we do with him?”

  Taking a deep breath, I said, “Take him to the surgeon.”

  The men got under each arm and lifted him up, carrying him off. I knew the surgeon couldn’t do anything for him, but there was nothing left to be done. Locating Niklas sitting along a wall looking up at the sun, his eyes closed, I moved to join him.

  Hearing me approach, he opened his eyes. “Gebhard?”

  I shook my head and sat down. “He stopped moving down his path.”

  Niklas nodded knowingly and closed his eyes. “Never stop moving.”

  “Yeah,” I said, leaning against the wall. “Never stop moving.”

  “Jannick is missing,” he said cautiously, unsure of how I would react. “No one has seen him. Some think he is dead.”

  I said nothing, choosing instead to close my eyes. Within a minute, I was asleep.

  Dreams of headless families kept me from truly resting.

  ***

  I awoke to the sound of marching feet. Opening my eyes, I saw the first battalion marching past us back toward the bridge. The men’s heads hung low, many sported bandages on their limbs and a few had to be helped by a comrade.

  “A sorry looking bunch,” Niklas commented.

  “Like looking in a mirror,” I said. All of us were filthy, and we looked more like a rabble of bandits than an elite unit of our crown prince’s army.

  As the first battalion filed by, word was passed that we would assemble and fall in behind them. Getting to my feet and slinging my musket onto my aching arms, I watched as the last of the other unit marched on. “Hey!” I said, nudging Niklas with my arm. “Look!”

  At the end of the column were the two Kuhn brothers, both riding in a small cart with several other wounded men. They scowled and mouthed some curse in my direction.

  I started toward them, but Niklas grabbed my arm.

  “What are you doing? They’ve escaped the provost!”

  Niklas looked at the two brothers pulling away. “Somehow, I doubt that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Come on, let’s check with the captain.”

  The men were already falling into line as we made our way to the captain as he swung himself up onto the horse, looking as if he barely had the energy to sit in the saddle.

  “Captain?” Niklas asked, drawing the man’s eyes to him. Dark circles under them showed he had slept little recently.

  “What is it, corporal?” he said, half disinterested.

  “The two men who were robbing our dead -- the Kuhn brothers. We saw them go by with the wounded of the first battalion. I thought they were under arrest?”

  The captain looked back to the assembling men. “They were, but the first battalion took heavy losses and needed every man it could get. I transferred them to the first.”

  “What?” I exclaimed, earning an arm-bar from Niklas to keep me from approaching the captain’s horse.

  “But sir, those men … ” Niklas protested.

  “Are needed in the army and have been reinstated in the first battalion.”

  “But … ”

  “That is the end of the matter,” he said. He looked down at Niklas. “One other thing. With the death of Sergeant Zorn, you are being promoted to sergeant.” He pulled a set of sergeant’s stripes from his saddlebag and handed them to Niklas. “And name someone of your choosing corporal.”

  Niklas took the stripes and stared at them as if he had never seen such a thing in his entire life.

  “That’s all sergeant. Now get the men into line so we can get moving.”

  “Yes, sir,” Niklas muttered, still looking at the stripes.

  I stared hard at the captain, wanting to knock him off his horse, but his tired eyes were watching the men assemble for the march.

  Niklas grabbed me by the arm and led me away. “I’m naming you corporal,” he said once we were in line.

  “I don’t want to be corporal. I don’t even want to be a private.”

  “Well, you are a corporal. I’ll give you my stripes once we’ve stopped for the night.”

  “Then let us keep marching until the war is over, never stopping,” I replied.

  Niklas ignored me as he fell into line with the others. I stood a
part for as long as I dared, then gave in and fell into the column with the other survivors. The drums rolled, and then beat a steady cadence. The column moved forward, leaving the village -- and many of our friends -- behind.

  Chapter 12

  For two days, we marched along the river, crossing and recrossing, until I thought our purpose was to drain it one bootful at a time. Perhaps that was the emperor’s plan -- use up his German allies to sop up the water so that the French might cross downriver without getting wet.

  My sleeve now sported two stripes, which somehow made me slightly better than the rest of the men. Being in charge of mostly nothing wasn’t very hard, for the men I had been close with were gone now, either dead or dying a miserable death in the regimental hospital, alone. Niklas was the last person I still considered a friend. Sure, there were other men in the battalion I knew, but I didn’t care to know them any more than necessary to give them commands. Why go through the pain of losing another friend?

  Our new sergeant did his best to take his added responsibilities seriously, but the spark was gone from his eyes. The more I watched him, the more he started to look like poor old Gebhard.

  That night, the captain approached Niklas and I as we made our coffee over the fire.

  “Sergeant, I have something for you,” he said.

  Niklas rose and accepted a walking stick from the captain.

  “Black hickory,” the captain said. “The badge of office for a sergeant. We have some fresh recruits coming in, and you’re going to need it.” And with that, he was gone, fading into the twilight to that place that only officers enjoy -- a place with food, wine and a warm bed.

  Niklas sat down, the hickory walking stick across his lap, running his hands down its length.

  “I guess you are a real sergeant now,” I said.

  He placed the stick aside. “I suppose.”

  “You have Zorn’s canteen and his stick,” I pointed out, choosing to be difficult, though I didn’t know why. “Does that make you Zorn?”

  Niklas looked up, annoyed, then looked back to the fire. “I’m not Zorn.”