Morgarten (Book 2 of the Forest Knights)

by J. K. Swift

  “My thoughts exactly, my lord,” Franco said.

  “And I want my knights to be part of it,” Landenberg said. He squished his helmet onto his head and gave it a slap, which made it ring. Steam poured out of the breathing holes in its long, metal snout.

  Franco looked at Leopold. “With all due respect, the Sturmritter can do it alone, my lord. Perhaps Sir Landenberg’s forces can ride them down as they run.”

  “Not bloody likely,” Landenberg said.

  “Stop it,” Leopold said. “There will be more than enough Schwyzers to go around before the day is out. But remember this: each of your knights carries shackles enough for three men. Our goal is to get workers. We kill no more than necessary. Is that clear?”

  “What about Melchthal?” Landenberg said.

  “Yes, by all means kill him. And the Hospitaller as well. For that matter, kill every man who stands on that hill defying us. An example should be made. But stop there. Is that understood?”

  Franco could not see Landenberg’s face behind his mask, but when he spoke he could hear pure joy echo in his words.

  “Perfectly, my Duke.”

  “Now, Captain Roemer. Take your force in for a frontal charge, but at the last, wheel around and take them in their left flank. I would like to see how quickly they can move their formation.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  It was the exact strategy Franco had himself been considering. Of course he would never have presumed to say anything unless the Duke had asked for his input. The front of the hill was too steep for a cavalry charge, but the approach to the rebel’s left flank was much less so.

  “Landenberg. You will follow after Captain Roemer has crested the hill, and attack directly from the front. That should scatter them to the winds.”

  “Yes, my lord!”

  It was a good plan. Franco was beginning to grow a healthy respect for Leopold’s war skills. Perhaps he deserved the nickname people were calling him recently: the Sword of the Habsburgs.

  “Today, gentlemen, we will teach these rebels what it means to defy God’s Divine Order!”

  Landenberg drew his sword and cheered. Other knights close enough to hear Leopold also let out some shouts and raised their weapons.

  It was a good plan, Franco thought again. But as he stared back at the hill and saw the Hospitallers in their blood-red war tunics, he did not feel much like cheering.

  ***

  Seven men wide. Seven men Deep. To bide time, the square must hold.

  Thomas watched the Sturmritter, perched atop their huge war horses, pull away from the vanguard. They came to a complete halt on open ground and remained motionless, like statues carved from mountains. Then, with their lances pointed straight up, they eased their mounts forward into a walk. Their timing and rhythm were impeccable; their movements exact copies of one another. Even the tall, blue feathers that crested each man’s helmet seemed to sway in the wind to the same beat.

  Thomas thanked God above that his forces commanded the high ground. Even still, it was intimidating to see such a perfect formation. A quick look at the men’s faces around him, and Thomas knew his side was on the verge of losing this battle before it ever began.

  He stepped out from the square and turned his back on the knights preparing to charge, and addressed his men.

  “They are peacocks,” he shouted. “Peacocks on horses, nothing more. They ride a fine show, but they cannot top this hill without their mounts stumbling. And once they do, their lances will be useless, and those plumed heads will be well within range of our axes.”

  He hefted Pirmin’s ax into the air, and heard Urs let out a guttural holler. Max banged the flat of his sword against his own long-handled ax. They were used to these pre-battle pep talks. They knew the value of making noise to summon the battle furies and subdue fear. Fear that would otherwise rise up and consume even the bravest of men.

  Anton whooped and other voices joined in.

  Behind him, Thomas imagined the Sturmritter pushing their destriers into a trot. He did not look back.

  “Those peacocks have come into our lands uninvited. Unwanted. And make no mistake, they mean to harm you and yours.”

  Thomas had to pause to let their shouts die down.

  “Once they have killed you and me, they will march on Schwyz. After they have slaughtered your animals, burned down your homes, and raped your women, they will enslave anyone who manages to escape the initial butchering. Will you allow that?”

  The men howled in outrage.

  “Was any man here born to be a slave? Are you the fathers of slaves?”

  “No!” Thomas clearly heard Sutter’s voice over all others. Men slung the foulest of insults at the army before them, and screamed their defiance.

  Thomas felt the ground shake with the approach of a hundred war horses. Still, he did not look back.

  “I ask you again, because today you have a choice. Whereas tomorrow, you will not. Will you allow this?”

  “NO!” The answer came as one deafening shout, as united as the Sturmritters’ charge.

  Thomas held up Pirmin’s ax again and shouted, “And neither will I! God have mercy on their souls!”

  The men went wild and waved their own weapons high in the air. Thomas turned in time to see the Sturmritter break into a gallop. They couched their lances, and as one, slowly lowered the deadly points until they were horizontal with the ground. Each man’s knee brushed against the man’s next to him. It was a perfect conroi in the making.

  Thomas felt the earth tremble at his feet.

  Chapter 26

  Erich sat with his legs dangling over the edge of a small rock bluff. High above the Confederate army’s position, he had a perfect view of the battlefield, so long as the clouds did not get any lower. Boots scraping on stone made him turn, and he saw the bald head of Reto push through the trees. He stopped well back from the cliff’s edge, but tried to lean forward to get a better view.

  That was the problem with men such as Reto, Erich thought. He wanted everything, but was willing to risk almost nothing to get it.

  “Are the men in position?” Erich asked, turning back to the world far below.

  “They are.” Reto tipped a wineskin to his lips, swished the liquid around in his mouth, and then spit it onto the rocky ground to Erich’s left. It stained the rocks there a rusty red. “But some of the men are grumbling. Been asking when they will get paid.”

  Erich pulled one leg up from the overhang and turned to look at Reto.

  “You mean you have been wondering,” he said. “Most of them have been with me long enough to know the answer to that question.”

  Reto took another drink as he stared back at Erich. “All right, then. I will not deny that. But I know I am not the only one.”

  “You will get your pay, along with everyone else. And the second you do, I want you gone.”

  “Some of the men might want to come with me,” Reto said.

  “You are welcome to any who do,” Erich said.

  He turned away and dropped his leg back over the ledge. As he did so, a fist-sized rock tumbled off into the abyss. He watched its long, silent descent until it disappeared from sight, and then Erich pushed himself to his feet. He stood there for a moment, with the tips of his boots hanging over the void, and watched as Leopold’s cavalry began their charge.

  It was time, he thought. Time to risk everything.

  ***

  As per Leopold’s command, Franco led his men thundering straight at the hill. The men on top formed into a tight square and braced themselves for a head on attack that would never happen.

  Franco raised his lance, pulled his destrier in a tight, right hand turn and galloped toward the enemy’s left, curious about what he would see waiting for him behind the hill. Sure enough, as his mount started powering up the gentle slope to the side of the hill, a loosely formed mob of rebels appeared before him. They milled about, and seemed surprised to see the knights bearing down on them from thi
s direction.

  He released his reins and, guiding his horse with only his knees, pointed at the group on low ground. They would have to take this group first, and then climb the hill for the second. He shouted the command to change targets and, like a great flock of migrating birds, the Sturmritter adjusted their course without a single falter in the warhorses’ strides.

  “Lances!” Franco commanded. The knights’ weapons came down once again, their iron-tipped points aimed straight ahead. The small group of rebels, who only seconds before appeared to be on the verge of fleeing, formed up into a square with what looked like short spears held before them.

  The maneuver bothered Franco on some instinctual level. He remembered the Hospitaller, and his beautiful, but poorly trained mount. Why would a man ride a horse into battle that he could not control? Especially, a man trained by the Knights of Saint John. Some of the greatest horsemen in the world had come from their ranks.

  The answer, of course, was he would not.

  Franco reached up his hand and threw open his helmet visor.

  It had been a diversion. The Hospitaller was drawing all eyes to him, because there was something he did not want Franco to see.

  The men hiding behind the hill, perhaps?

  The warhorses of the Sturmritter bore down on the rebels at full speed, their hooves tearing up great divots of the soft, grass-covered ground. The enemies’ faces began to take shape. Franco flipped his visor back down. Impact was seconds away. Only thirty yards of grass separated the Sturmritter from their targets.

  Thirty yards of grass that did not stand?

  It was cut, and as Franco stared at it, very wet. As though brought there from somewhere else….

  “Bog!”

  Franco drove his legs back, commanding his horse to stop, but the animal’s blood was up. It was bred for war, and once at full charge, stopping was the last thing on its mind. Desperate, Franco grabbed the reins and yanked on them, pulling his mount’s chin to its chest. He slowed, but not much.

  Several knights shot past Franco, and as soon as their horses’ front legs sank into the mud, he heard a series of sickening cracks and whinnies of terror shot through with pain. The momentum of their mounts’ rear ends carried them forward and over, spilling riders and horses everywhere. Packed so tightly together, there was little the knights following could do but trample their comrades, or try to leap from their saddles.

  Franco fought to stay seated and save his horse from breaking its legs as it sloshed through three-foot-deep mud and over slippery rocks. He thought he was going to make it to solid ground, when an out of control knight speared his lance deep into his horse’s flank. The horse fell, and rolled, with Franco still in the saddle.

  He lay there thinking he should get up, but the mud was warm, comfortable, and a great weight was on his leg. He felt quite content to remain where he was.

  Until he heard a scream. And another.

  He turned his head toward the sound, just in time to see a peasant swing a long, heavy ax into the head of one of his men as he attempted to stand.

  Unlike the others, no scream came from his lips.

  ***

  Thomas watched from the top of the hill as Noll’s square charged the disoriented Sturmritter as they attempted to free themselves from the wetland marsh. Several were already on a firm piece of ground, and one of them blew a horn, summoning them all to that spot. They were recovering much faster than Thomas had anticipated. If enough of them managed to regroup, Noll would be in trouble. Thomas hated to give up the high ground so early in the battle, but the Sturmritter were far from finished.

  “Square, left face!” Thomas shouted.

  Every one of the forty-nine men lifted his ax to point at the sky and then pivoted to the left.

  “Forward, slow.”

  As they began to walk, the first row lowered their axes to stomach height and the next row, slightly staggered from the row in front, aimed theirs slightly higher. The rest kept them pointed up.

  “Three man front!”

  The last three rows of seven men broke away from the square and ran to form a new front line beside the first. Thomas checked to make sure the line was straight, then he tightened his grip on Pirmin’s ax.

  “Forward. Full!”

  Every single man let out a loud battle cry and the formation charged down the hill. They crashed into the knights, driving them back onto the marshy ground where their heavy armor became more hindrance than help.

  Thomas pulled one of the few knights still mounted out of his saddle with the hook on the back of his ax and then speared him through the eye slits. He saw Sutter and one of the Rubin boys bring down another knight in a similar fashion. To his left, Urs exchanged blows with a knight covered in mud, but Thomas had to look away to bring his ax down onto a knight’s arm as he attempted to crawl out of the marsh. Pirmin’s ax slid into his armor’s elbow joint and removed it cleaner than a surgeon’s cleaver. He staggered back, screaming. A crossbow bolt appeared in his eye and he fell over. Thomas looked for Urs again. He was gone, but a dead Austrian knight lay on the ground.

  The screams became fewer, the sense of movement less. Men from Noll’s square appeared, and Thomas knew the Sturmritter would not ride again. The thought saddened him, but that did not stop him from bringing Pirmin’s ax down upon another one’s head as he tried to crawl away.

  His feet felt wet. Thomas thought he might be standing in blood, but when he looked down the earth was hidden by a thickening layer of mist.

  Then it started to rain.

  ***

  Leopold’s anticipation changed to confusion when he watched the Sturmritter go down. Then horror took over as he watched the two small squares of Schwyzers charge. A mist hugged the ground where they were, and blotted out some of the action, but the wind carried the screams of horses and men to his ears, leaving little doubt as to what was happening.

  The Sturmritter, the finest knights in the known world, were being slaughtered to the man.

  “God have mercy,” Landenberg said.

  Leopold turned on him. “Why are you still here?”

  Landenberg did not seem to hear Leopold. He could not tear his eyes away from the axes rising and falling in the distance.

  “Landenberg!”

  “I, uh, I was waiting for Franco to appear on the hill. Only, he… never did.”

  “Get as many cavalry to the front as you can. We will hit them in the open, before they can climb back onto that hill.”

  Landenberg shook his head, his eyes still locked on the dying men in the distance. A riderless Sturmritter warhorse, its eyes wide and nostrils flared, trotted past him looking for a new herd.

  “Hornman!” Leopold called out and a young man ran to his side.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Call up the rear guard cavalry as well.”

  The young soldier put his horn to his lips. The sound echoed all the way down the mile-long line of Habsburg forces.

  Leopold took a deep breath and looked to where the rebels were reforming into squares.

  “Now that you have sprung your trap, Thomas Schwyzer, let us see how you manage the rest of us.”

  Chapter 27

  “Form up! Form up!” Noll called out again.

  So engrossed were his men with the grisly task of killing the last few armored knights flailing about in the marshland, that he had to run around and cuff several of them so that his orders registered. When they looked at him with eyes wild, but vacant, their blood-splattered features twisted, Noll hardly recognized them. He remembered Pirmin talking of how the battle furies could consume a man during times of war, and lend him strength. He watched the huge, but usually gentle, form of Hans Gruber run bellowing into mud up to his knees, grab a staggering knight by the plume on his helmet, and wrench his head around in a circle, throwing him back into the sucking muck from which he had just managed to free himself. He pinned the Austrian on his back with the butt end of his ax, and stomped on his helm
eted head over and over, driving it deep below the water’s surface. Gruber kept stomping long after the peacock feathers disappeared. Whether the man died from the crushing impact of the young man’s blows, or drowned, Noll had no idea. But, he had long since ceased his struggles by the time Noll reached them.

  “Gruber!”

  He kept stomping until Noll shoved him from behind. The young giant whirled around and Noll jumped back, not liking the way Gruber leveled his ax in his direction.

  “Gruber, what is wrong with you? Form up!”

  The big man blinked. Noll had to yell again before the man looked around sheepishly and, seeing half of his square already standing in the field, began wading through the mud to join them. Thomas’s complete square stood there already. Noll saw Max and Urs, moving around the battlefield, shouting at members of Noll’s square to form up ranks. Their red tunics made them clearly visible amongst the earth-covered dead and dying.

  A minute later, Noll stood in the front line of his completed square. He could not remember the last time his lungs had worked so hard. But he felt strong and eager for whatever came next. Intermittent shouts and snarls erupted from his men telling him that they felt the same way.

  Noll looked at the enemy for the first time since re-forming ranks. At least two hundred cavalry trotted toward them. Another five hundred milled about in a disorganized mass at the front of the army, trying to get into some semblance of attack formation. Behind them, tightly packed infantry, and more mounted knights stretched along the road and disappeared around the bend.

  “God Almighty,” Noll whispered.

  “Ruedi, Max,” Thomas shouted. “Take up rover positions on Noll’s square. Anton, you and I will be ours.”

  “Aye, Cap’n.”

  Ruedi, crossbow in hand ran to stand to the left of Noll’s square, while Max, his sword drawn went to the right. Normally, they would have seven to ten rovers per square, fast men with swords whose task it was to dart in and out of the enemy ranks, doing as much damage as possible when the two fronts collided. But, Noll reasoned, since this was a stalling mission, Thomas must have decided he would rather have the squares themselves as strong as possible.