Devil in the Countryside

by Cory Barclay

  Peter reached back to smash him again.

  Heinrich jabbed his knee into Peter’s groin. The big farmer went down in a heap, grabbing his crotch and rolling to his side.

  Heinrich scooted away from Peter and went to his knees. He snagged a large rock from the ground and jumped on Peter, rolling him onto his back. Heinrich’s mind flashed with rage and everything got dizzy around him.

  He found himself lifting the stone in the air, ready to shatter it on Peter’s face, and all he could see was the farmer’s eyes—shocked and horrified.

  “I’ve got her!” a shout echoed from somewhere in the woods.

  Heinrich spit blood on Peter and lifted the rock, then—

  “I surrender!” Peter shouted, raising his hand and his stump into the air.

  Heinrich’s senses came whooshing back to him and he managed to steer the rock and smash it on another stone just inches from Peter’s face.

  Peter gasped. “Just don’t hurt my sister, please!”

  Heinrich huffed and tried to gather his breath. He rolled off Peter’s stomach and fell to his back, heaving. Blood dripped into his mouth, nose, and eyes.

  Tomas appeared from the trees, Katharina Trompen’s body slung over his shoulder.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  GEORG

  The sun burst through the clouds and signaled a new day in Bedburg. Despite the murders and scared townsfolk, the prior months had been relatively peaceful. But now that peace was shattered.

  Smoke and screams filled the sky.

  Count Adolf von Neuenahr, Calvinist commander of the Protestant forces, had besieged Bedburg throughout the night. He blasted the stone walls with dozens of cannons that were set up high on a hillside to the northeast of town.

  Still, Adolf had not sent any foot-soldiers to charge the town. The defining battle of the Cologne War was being decided by a violent onslaught of cannons and catapults.

  As morning came, Count Adolf ceased his assault.

  Georg stood on the eastern ramparts of Bedburg. He stepped over a dead body and looked over the side of the wall. He shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand, and surveyed the wreckage in the countryside.

  Adolf had split his regiment into three separate companies. One company was on the eastern hillside, guiding the artillery; another, below the hillside, hidden by trees; and the third company was a bit further south, in the deeper part of the woods.

  Georg looked at the crumbling infrastructure of Bedburg’s walls. It’s only a matter of time before he sends soldiers to charge this shoddy excuse for a barrier.

  The town wasn’t prepared for such a violent attack. Their walls were small and weak. Their army was big enough, but scattered around different entrances of the city. Their palisades were made of cheap wood. People feared a rear attack from the western and southern parts of town.

  All of these factors made the battle seem hopeless, and it looked as though Bedburg was doomed to be handed over to the Protestants.

  “What do you see?”

  Georg turned and watched as a tall man with a pointed beard and mustache walked in his direction. The man had the air of a leader, and Georg gave him a salute.

  “Well, sir, if I may speak plainly—”

  “Please do.”

  Georg pointed out toward the horizon. “Their artillery is protected by the company beneath the hill, but I think their southern battalion is lingering too far from their encampment. They’re lost in the woods.”

  The man stroked his beard and nodded. “A fine observation. What do you suggest?”

  Georg bobbed his head from left to right, thinking. “If it were up to me, I’d round up a fast group on horseback and attack that lingering company. I’d go through the woods to the south, out of their sight, and then head north along the Peringsmaar’s embankment. Attack them with a hit-and-run to keep the men honest, so they can’t diverge too far from their camp. That way, at least in my mind, we’d keep them from spreading and flanking the southern and western gates.”

  The tall man said, “And could you lead such a group?”

  Georg stammered. He was still crusted in blood from the night before. He looked menacing, and did not have the air of a leader about him. “Me?” he asked, pointing at his own chest. “You don’t even know me, sir.”

  “You’re Georg Sieghart—‘The Savage,’ as they call you—are you not?”

  Georg looked at the man with a sideways glance. “How do you know that?”

  “Duke Farnese has told me about your endeavors on the field of battle. He told me to look for you—that you’d be here. You seem to have a mind for strategy, and you certainly look the part of a savage, if you don’t mind me saying.” The man gestured at Georg’s bloody garb.

  “Not at all,” Georg said, smiling. So this is Ferdinand of Bavaria, he thought. Older brother of Archbishop Ernst, and one of our greatest generals.

  Georg had never met the man, but he’d heard of Ferdinand’s many successes in battle. He looked at the general in a new light, and could see the steely eyes of a hardened commander—and the stalwart face of someone who was used to having things go his way. Besides a collared gable around his neck, he wasn’t adorned in flashy armor or special accoutrements. He looked like most other soldiers, except maybe a bit older, with just a wisp of dark hair on his otherwise bald head. It was his face that showed his experience and stature.

  “How many men would you need to head up that southern side? I figure you could at least scare the bastards.” Ferdinand smiled. “It shouldn’t be too hard given your current appearance.”

  Georg chuckled and faced the ground.

  “I have a mind to set Commander Baumgartner against the two center companies,” Ferdinand said. “It would be nice to have a flanking group to keep that southern company busy and away from Baumgartner’s sides.”

  Georg thought for a moment, and then looked below at the soldiers on the battlefield. There were hundreds of men in the woods, and the battle would be a guerrilla fight—dangerous at best, suicide at worst.

  Ferdinand seemed to notice the doubt in Georg’s eyes. “I wouldn’t ask you to stay on the field, Herr Sieghart. A toe-to-toe fight with those folks would be foolish. Just a quick skirmish—either you scare them into following you, or you scare them back to their main regiment.”

  “I could do it with a hundred smart men,” Georg said with confidence in his voice.

  “Done,” Ferdinand said. “That company has at least double that . . . are you sure you just need a hundred? You seem to be missing the use of your left arm.”

  Georg looked down at his arm. It dangled uselessly at his side.

  “You should get that bullet wound checked out, before it festers.”

  “I can do it with a hundred men,” Georg repeated.

  Ferdinand threw up his arms. “Very well—I can’t argue with that. I’ll put you in charge. Wait for an hour, until that company is having their morning meal, and then I’ll order Commander Baumgartner to strike. Be ready to do the same.” The general strolled away without another word.

  “As you wish, my lord,” Georg whispered under his breath, but Ferdinand was already too far to hear.

  And just like that, Georg had become a commander in General Ferdinand’s army.

  I’m assuming he gave me my position out of necessity, rather than merit, Georg thought. As he doubted himself, he wondered how many able-minded commanders the Bavarian general actually had at his disposal.

  Does the Bedburg garrison—with its Catholic soldiers and Spanish mercenaries and reinforcements from Cologne—actually have the manpower to defeat these bastards?

  He stared at the faces of the young men he would lead, and he couldn’t help but feel guilty. My plan was so hasty . . . what if it doesn’t work? Many of these men will never see another sunset. In fact, there’s a chance none of us will.

  He hadn’t led a raiding party in years, and he hadn’t been referred to as “Sieghart the Savage” in just as long.
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  He shook his head and pushed the thoughts of doubt from his mind. He wouldn’t back down from this challenge. He would make General Ferdinand proud, to the best of his abilities.

  I will not be a coward any longer.

  The sun rose higher in the sky, and the hour spent gathering the soldiers passed quickly. He had a hundred men at the southern wall, mounted and ready to go. They were a hodgepodge of a group—each man had a patchwork of armor and weapons. Georg would not be leading a highly-trained and cohesive unit, like he was used to.

  He had sixty arquebusiers and forty pikemen. He assumed that many of his men were Spanish mercenaries—not because of what they wore or how they looked, but because they were more interested in the spoils of war than the actual outcome.

  That’s probably why they agreed to go on this mission in the first place.

  After the hour expired, Georg led his group out of the southern gate. The walls of the town hid them, and they made a wide circle to get to the eastern woods. They galloped around the woods and came to the embankment of the Peringsmaar Lake.

  His plan was to surprise the southern Protestant company, hit them quick, and then flee, hoping to draw them away from their main army. He expected artillery fire to start soon after they hit the Protestants, and he prayed that his group’s horses were fit and fast.

  As he made it to the southern bank of the Peringsmaar, Georg gave a signal. His horse broke into a full gallop, with a hundred other horses doing the same. They barreled over small dunes and rocks as they trudged up the coastline.

  In the distance, Georg saw men on horseback. He immediately knew something was wrong. They weren’t part of the southern company—they were too far from their main army.

  That’s a scouting party, he thought.

  There were twenty men, and Georg hoisted his gun in the air. “Route them!” he shouted to his men. They broke off into a ragged ‘V’ formation. “Don’t let them escape—they’ll warn the larger company!”

  Georg knew that if even one of these men managed to make it to the southern encampment, his entire preemptive strike was blown.

  The Calvinist horsemen, seeing Georg’s approaching force, wheeled around, trying to flee up the coastline. The scouts turned in their saddles and shot at Georg’s party.

  Georg closed in on one of the fleeing men and aimed his gun. He waited for his steed to settle, bounced up on his saddle, then—as his rear fell back on his horse—leveled his gun and fired.

  The man went down with a scream and toppled off his horse.

  Bullets whipped by Georg’s face. He holstered his gun and unsheathed his sword from his belt. He squeezed tight to his horse with his knees, unable to hold the reins with his left hand. A less-experienced rider would have fallen in seconds.

  Georg brought himself alongside another fleeing scout, and could see the man’s scared, blue eyes. He was no more than eighteen years of age.

  Georg slashed at the young man’s back. He gave a primal scream and lifted his bloody sword in the air as the man fell from his horse.

  One of Georg’s men flew by and leaned forward in his saddle. He stopped abruptly as a bullet found his neck, and he went flying backwards, off his horse. His steed kept moving.

  Georg rode beside another enemy. This one had an arquebus, and the man aimed his gun at Georg’s face.

  The hunter’s eyes went wide as he ducked low in his saddle.

  The scout’s gun erupted in smoke. The bullet whizzed by Georg’s shoulder, combining with the noises around him to create a piercing ringing in his ears.

  Georg leaned forward and stabbed, sticking the man beneath the ribs. He didn’t wait to see if the man lived or not. As he rode past the wounded man, he realized he was running out of real estate on the bank of the lake. They were coming to a hill—the same hill he and Heinrich had originally climbed when they first spotted the Protestant army.

  Georg scanned the battlefield: A few of the Protestants were ditching their horses and jumping into the woods. Then more of the horsemen followed.

  “Shit,” Georg said under his breath. We don’t have enough time to stop them all.

  As he kept scanning the field, he saw something and cursed. He noticed black dots on the hillside—a group of infantrymen were charging down and screaming. A red banner was erected somewhere in the middle of the group.

  This was the southern company that Georg had been looking for. Now the enemy had the higher ground, and they poured over the hillside in alarming numbers.

  Georg tried to keep himself from panicking, but his heart felt like it was going to leap from his chest. His horse kept charging forward, but many of his men were too scared to follow.

  The men at the top of the hill crouched into a long line and leveled their guns.

  Then they fired on Georg’s group, as a single unit. The rest of their scouts retreated behind their line.

  Smoke drifted into the sky, and horses and soldiers fell all around him, in unison.

  Georg’s horse whinnied and reared up on its hind legs. He gazed over his shoulder, at his men, and the situation looked dire.

  Georg’s steed was hit in the stomach while it was on its back legs, and it started to topple to the ground.

  The hunter pitched over his saddle, falling to the rocky ground. He moaned and rolled onto his back, spitting out sand. He crawled to his feet and shouted with a raspy voice, “Fall back! Retreat!”

  Another round of gunfire shot off and, a moment later, another round of soldiers screamed as they fell. One of the men was staring at Georg and was about to say something until the side of his head suddenly exploded.

  Georg took the reins of the dead man’s horse and leaped onto the saddle. He wheeled the steed around and kicked it in the side.

  He and his remaining soldiers headed south.

  The Protestants did not pursue.

  As the wary, demoralized group made their way back to Bedburg in defeat, Georg realized he’d lost sixteen arquebusiers and thirteen pikemen—nearly a third of his force—in a matter of seconds.

  He cursed himself. He’d failed his general, and he knew the rest of the Catholic army would suffer because of his misjudgment.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  DIETER

  In a dark cellar of Bedburg’s jailhouse, Dieter and Sybil listened to cannon-fire striking the walls of the town. The rumbling shook the foundation of the jail, and dust rained down from the ceiling, covering Dieter and Sybil in a sheet of dirt.

  The explosions and yelling above-ground seemed to go on for hours. Dieter had no idea if it was night or day, or if Bedburg still belonged to the Catholics. He figured that a Protestant soldier might come down the stairs at any moment, either to kill him and Sybil, or to release them. He hoped it might be Pastor Hanns Richter who would come to their rescue.

  Sybil kept staring out from the bars, to the cell across from them. A small figure stayed hunched in the shadowy corners of the chamber.

  Sybil became agitated when she overheard Investigator Franz’s plan to arrest her father for the murder of Margreth Baumgartner. “I know my father and the investigator disliked each other, but there’s no way Investigator Franz could ever do such a thing. It’s all false!”

  Dieter didn’t put much faith in the lawman’s integrity. He also knew that a father would go to any length to protect his child—even if it meant killing. But why go after Margreth, and not Johannes? It made no sense to him.

  Dieter remembered Peter’s confession. It was Johannes who caused his family so much grief. Margreth was just a noisy nuisance.

  Dieter’s head started to ache, and he couldn’t think about Peter or Heinrich or Johannes or Margreth any longer. He put his hand on Sybil’s shoulder and said, “I’m going to marry you when we get out of this, Beele.” He noticed that the girl was still focused elsewhere. “I’m going to take care of your—of our—child.”

  “How are you going to do that? And what makes you think we’ll get out of here?” Sybil asked
coldly.

  Dieter was baffled, but he smiled nonetheless. “I converted to your faith,” he whispered. His smile quickly faded as he registered the second half of Sybil’s question. How in God’s name can I talk of marriage and children when we’re sitting in this frigid cell?

  They hadn’t been given any food, and they’d been in custody for hours. They were starving, parched, and a big lump was starting to form on the back of Dieter’s head. It was tender and painful to touch, but he didn’t complain. For Sybil’s sake, he tried to stay positive.

  Every once in a while, Ulrich would amble by them and smile with a dark look on his face. He wouldn’t say anything, but his presence was enough to make Dieter shiver.

  When the small figure in the shadows of the other cell started sobbing quietly, Sybil’s eyes turned soft. She squinted, as if she recognized the face.

  Finally, the prisoner lifted his head for a split moment, to wipe away his tears.

  “M-Martin?” Sybil said with a shocked look.

  The prisoner’s head perked up, and the person crawled out of the shadows and into the dim light. His face was grimy and scruffy, and though he was still just an adolescent, he looked more like a man than a boy.

  “Beele?” said a small voice. It was indeed Martin Achterberg—Bishop Solomon’s former altar boy; murderer of his own father; the boy who Sybil had been arranged to marry, years ago.

  Judging by his filthy face and tunic, it looked like Martin hadn’t been let out of his cell in months.

  “My God, it is you!” Sybil exclaimed.

  “Quiet in there, bitch!” Ulrich shouted from across the hall.

  Sybil looked back through the bars and whispered, “How long have you been in here, Martin?”

  “I’ve lost track of time,” Martin said, shrugging. “No one will tell me anything, and I haven’t eaten in days, I think. Why don’t they just kill me?”

  Dieter frowned, suspecting that he knew the answer. He’d seen Martin leave Bishop Solomon’s chambers numerous times, at the strangest hours. He tried not to imagine what sort of horrors took place in those chambers.