“These crazy dogs are really attacking up the mountain!” roared Zoltan from the front line. “Send a message to Wallenstein, and then receive them the way they deserve!”
The imperial soldiers shouted their response, but whether it was one of anger or fear, Lukas couldn’t say. The ones in the front line started loading their muskets, while others rolled the cannons onto their bases as the Swedes moved closer and closer. The hair on the back of Lukas’s neck stood on end.
The battle had begun.
Along with a few other companies, the Black Musketeers were stationed at the outer wall, which fell off steeply into the valley. A trench lined with pointed stakes had been dug in front of them. The Musketeers’ well-known banner served as point of reference—a black dragon with flames spewing from its wide-open mouth. This flag was as large as a ship’s sail and fluttered in the morning breeze.
What thoughts were going through my father’s head just before a battle like this? Lukas wondered as shivers ran through his body. Was he afraid, too?
“All together against death and the devil!” Zoltan roared suddenly, raising his sword.
The Musketeers loudly returned their eternal battle cry: “To hell and beyond!” Lukas, Giovanni, Jerome, and Paulus all joined in the response, making Lukas feel not quite so lonely and wretched.
What followed next was an earsplitting thunder as the cannons before and behind Lukas were fired. The noise was so loud that after a few moments he was sure he’d gone deaf. Then he heard a strange, high-pitched whistling in the air.
“Take cover!” shouted Paulus alongside him. “Incoming cannon fire!”
Instinctively, Lukas threw himself against the muddy base of the wall, and just moments later a twenty-pound cannonball flew by overhead. It landed somewhere behind them, followed by piercing screams. When Lukas turned briefly, all he saw was red chaos, clumps of earth, and severed limbs. The cannonball had made a breach in their lines like a reaper through a wheat field. He threw up.
“Return to your positions!” Zoltan commanded.
Lukas was still lying at the bottom of the trench, trembling. He couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. Zoltan was in all seriousness commanding him to get up, even though the cannonballs were still whizzing over them! When he looked into the stern, almost furious face of the commander, he knew as always there would be no mercy. Giovanni, Jerome, and Paulus had already gotten back on their feet.
“Damn it, you cowards, start beating the drums!” Zoltan was screaming. “Move your ass, Lukas, or I’ll personally toss you to the Swedes as cannon fodder. Do you understand? This is war, not a kids’ game.”
Lukas nodded and tried to hide how he was trembling. He banged the drum, and at once he realized what Zoltan intended. The muffled, monotonous rumble had an almost hypnotic effect, helping the soldiers retain the necessary calm in the chaos of battle.
In the meantime, the Swedes had advanced to within a hundred paces of the fortifications. Lukas could now make out individual faces, among them anxious young men, but also cold-blooded veterans who ran toward the wall, screaming and waving their swords.
“Musketeers, load and aim!” Zoltan’s next command rang out.
Everywhere along the walls, the men now rose with their muskets. Fuses were lit and held to the priming pan; then there was an explosion and all around Lukas the flash of a hundred muzzles. At the same moment, there was a piercing scream, and it took a while before Lukas realized it came from the throats of thousands of soldiers.
The Swedes were storming the walls.
What followed now was a single, horrible slaughter. The Swedish soldiers tried to scale the earthen walls, more than six feet high, and were pushed back again and again by the men atop the walls with pikes, swords, and daggers. Cannonballs were still flying overhead, and the explosions of the muskets merged with the shouts, the drums, and the clatter of sword blades into one deafening din.
By now, Lukas had cast aside the drum and was fighting for his very life. Paulus had just driven a Finnish soldier clothed in furs back into the ditch full of sharp-pointed stakes. Giovanni and Jerome were now fighting a handful of Scotsmen, who looked strange and frightening in their kilts and wearing blue war paint on their faces. Lukas himself had to fight off a tall Swede who had gotten as far as the wall. With a broad smile, the man swung his sword, barely missing Lukas, who ducked beneath the blow and then lunged forward. He caught the Swede beneath the elbow, sending him screaming and waving his hands through the air back into the ditch.
But now the next Swedish soldier approached from the side. Lukas felt a dull pain as a sword handle struck him on the temple; then, stumbling backward, he saw out of the corner of his eye his opponent raising his arm to strike the coup de grâce.
Now it’s over, he thought. The amulet wasn’t able to save me after all, but at least now I’ll see my mother and father . . .
Suddenly, Jerome appeared in front of him, his rapier flashed forward like a snake, and the Swede vanished from sight with one last piercing scream. Stunned, Lukas rose to his feet.
“Thank you,” he gasped.
Jerome nodded grimly. “The next time it’s your turn to save my life,” he replied tersely before turning to fend off the next attack.
Still only half conscious from the blow to his head, Lukas fought off attacks from all sides. To his right and to his left, his friends fought, sometimes back-to-back, and together they resisted the waves of Swedish soldiers. The battle seemed endless, and soon Lukas didn’t know if it had been hours or days.
Not far from them stood Zoltan, like a huge boulder in the surf, holding the smoke-stained banner of the Black Musketeers rammed into the mound of earth. He was carrying a two-handed sword and swinging it in every direction to protect the banner from all comers.
“All together against death and the devil!” he roared again.
“To hell and beyond!” the Black Musketeers responded.
The sense of community gave Lukas additional strength. His shirt was torn, his trousers smeared with mud, and bloody welts covered his skin, but even though the Musketeers fought like devils, the number of Swedes did not lessen, but grew more and more. They were no longer just fighting at the walls, but behind it, behind bushes and trees, in forest clearings and ditches. Everywhere there was a thundering and flashing of weapons, the forest was in flames, and the whole mountain seemed to spit out fire—and above it all stood, like a watchful eagle, the old fortified tower. Lukas knew that if the enemy succeeded in taking the tower, they could bombard the entire encampment below, and the battle would be lost.
But was it already lost? The Swedes came storming from all directions toward the mountain, and some of the forward fortifications were already in enemy hands.
At that moment Lukas saw a single Swedish soldier ducking under Zoltan’s deadly blows as he swung his sword around. The man was armed only with a dagger, but quickly circled directly behind the commander, who had not noticed him, apparently because of the noise.
“Watch out!” Lukas cried out.
Without another thought, he lunged toward the surprised soldier and threw him to the ground. The soldier let out a Swedish curse and tried to stab Lukas, but when the tip of the dagger had almost reached Lukas’s throat, the man suddenly winced, blood flowed out of the corner of his mouth, and he rolled limply to one side.
“One for all and all for one,” Giovanni declared. He stood over Lukas, his sword raised and smeared with blood. “Do you remember our motto?”
Behind Giovanni, Paulus and Jerome now appeared, gasping for air, as well as Zoltan, the black velvet of his doublet ripped and his beard disheveled. A deep wound ran across his forehead. Together they had defended their outpost for the time being, but the next attack would be coming soon.
“It looks like I was wrong about you boys,” Zoltan grumbled, wiping the blood from his forehead. “I can hardly believe that a bunch of puny kids saved my life. Just the same, I have a job for you.”
; Another cannonball flew over them, and Zoltan spoke louder so they could hear him over the noise of battle. “You can see for yourselves that the enemy has breached our lines and will overrun the entire camp if we don’t get reinforcements soon. Wallenstein must be warned immediately, and all of my messengers are dead or severely wounded. Even if I wished it wasn’t so, we really need you now.” He pointed at the top of the mountain where the old defensive tower stood, encircled by swirling clouds of gunpowder. “The general commands the troops from the old castle. All four of you will go as a group so that at least one of you gets through, and you better watch out that—”
Right next to them, another cannonball landed, breaching part of the wall. Clumps of earth as large as a child’s head came raining down on the boys. Lukas dived into the ditch, and for a moment he was buried by the falling soil. Then he shoveled himself out with his hands and took a deep breath of the air polluted by the clouds of gun smoke. Alongside him, Paulus, Jerome, and Giovanni were coughing up dirt and dust.
“Where . . . is Zoltan?” Lukas gasped.
Paulus staggered to his feet and looked around. “No idea. But if he’s dead, we should at least carry out his last order. Come along now, before the rest of the wall here collapses around our ears.”
They ran along in the ditch for a while until they got to another breach. A single bloody arm projected from a pile of earth, the hand raised as if in a final salute. Lukas paused briefly but had no time to examine the horrible spectacle. Giovanni tugged at him to keep him moving forward.
“There’s nothing you can do to help him now,” he said as they hurried past. “He is already with God.”
“Or in hell,” Lukas mumbled. “Who is to know?” All this slashing and killing suddenly seemed so senseless, and he felt a vast emptiness opening up inside him. God could not have wanted this, but if God was not on their side, wasn’t this whole war a great evil?
The boys were wandering in a labyrinth of partially collapsed trenches, earthen walls, and natural ravines somewhere in no-man’s-land. Cannon and musket balls continued landing around them, raising clouds of dust so that they had trouble following each other. Other soldiers came running toward them now with torn shirts and bleeding faces scorched by gunpowder. Lukas could hear the commands they shouted to one another and was shocked to realize they were Swedes.
“The enemy has advanced farther than we assumed,” Paulus whispered. “Well, fortunately we’re all so caked with dirt that even my mother couldn’t say whether I was friend or foe.” He winked at Lukas. “Just keep your mouth shut, and you’ll pass for a tiny Swede.”
They turned a corner and came upon another deep trench that had recently been abandoned by the soldiers. Only a few smashed muskets lay on the ground, and there was not a soldier in sight. The noise of battle also sounded distant and muffled here.
Through the clouds and gun smoke, Lukas thought he saw at the end of the trench the outlines of a mountaintop with the ruins of a tower. The old castle! His heart started pounding.
“Ha!” Jerome exclaimed. “We made it! Now all we have to do—”
He stopped short as an avalanche of stones and dirt poured over him. With a hoarse cry, Jerome fell to the ground and attempted to protect his head with his hands as more stones came raining down. Overhead, at the edge of the trench, the faces of Kaspar, Karl, Max, and Gottfried appeared, holding clumps of dirt in their fists. It was clear the four servants had intentionally triggered the avalanche.
“Well, look at this. I knew we’d meet again,” Kaspar hissed. “Now we’ve got you! You took our jobs away from us.”
Lukas saw that Kaspar had pulled out a scratched pistol and was pointing it at him, Giovanni, and Paulus. Jerome still lay half-conscious under the clumps of dirt.
“Listen, Kaspar,” Lukas said, struggling to sound calm. “We have one last important task assigned to us by Zoltan. The Swedes have overrun our fortifications. We must get to Wallenstein to warn him. So please—”
“Splendid! Then we’ll do that for you,” said Kaspar, who had now climbed down into the trench with his companions. “For you, this is the end of your trip.” He sneered as he fumbled with the pistol in his hand. “So, which of you shall I take in my sights first? You, you, or . . . you?”
“You have only one shot, Kaspar,” Paulus replied coldly. “So just think about it carefully. Afterward I’ll smash you into pulp.”
“You’re right, big fellow. I think I’ll take you, and then—”
Kaspar broke off as a figure approached from the south part of the trench, where the imperial troops were said to be. It was an especially large soldier, and he quickly drew closer.
“Damn.” Kaspar squinted to get a better view of the man through the haze of gunpowder, then he calmed down visibly. “His armament appears to be that of a Spanish mercenary—one of us. But don’t get your hopes up too soon. Once he’s gone, you’re next.”
Lukas didn’t know what astonished him the most: the fact that Kaspar had spoken of a Spanish mercenary or the appearance of the man, whose clothing looked more and more familiar as he approached. When he was just a few steps away, there was no longer any doubt.
The same helmet, the same baggy black breeches . . .
Lukas cringed. It was one of the Spanish mercenaries who had waylaid them at Lohenfels Castle and had abducted his mother and sister—a henchman of Waldemar von Schönborn! He even thought he recognized the face. A scar wound its way like an ugly worm across his right cheek. Lukas felt like screaming, but was choked by the horror of it.
This mercenary was the same one who shot his father with the crossbow.
“God be with you!” Kaspar said obsequiously, raising his hand in a peaceful gesture as he lowered his pistol and walked toward the Spaniard. “It feels good to find a loyal Catholic here on the battlefield. We’re just now wiping out these heretical Swedish dogs—”
The mercenary had pulled out his sword almost casually and rammed it into Kaspar’s belly. An expression of disbelief spread across Kaspar’s face, and his mouth opened in one final question.
“But . . . ,” he whispered.
With a sweeping motion, the man stuck his bloody sword back in its sheath and continued past Lukas and the other servant boys as Kaspar sank to the ground, lifeless.
“You accursed rat, you will regret that!” cried Karl. He jumped up, reached for a pistol that lay at the bottom of the trench, pointed it at the mercenary, and fired.
It was a well-aimed shot at close distance, and Lukas watched as the bullet penetrated the mercenary’s doublet right between the shoulder blades.
But then, something very strange happened.
The man just kept striding forward.
He didn’t stagger; he didn’t even quiver. It seemed he hadn’t even felt the shot. Suddenly, he turned around, and eyes that looked like glass marbles stared back blankly at the terrified boys. Then he turned around again and stomped up the hill toward the old fortress.
“What in God’s name was that?” Giovanni gasped.
One of the frozen! The thought shot through Lukas’s head. God be with us, the Spaniard is a frozen one!
He thought about everything Senno had told him. Was it possible this Spanish mercenary, the murderer of his father, was invincible? A frozen one? Someone who had made a pact with the devil in return for eternal life? A witch?
Someone was shaking Lukas. It was Paulus, trying to shout over the renewed reports of the muskets. “Listen, whatever just happened there, we have to continue! But Jerome’s injury is more serious than we thought at first. A large rock hit him right on the head.” He pointed back to where their own camp was located. “I’ll take him to the field doctor, and you keep moving forward with Giovanni, do you understand?”
Lukas nodded as if in a trance.
Paulus took him by the shoulders and shook him again, while Giovanni had become impatient and already marched ahead a few steps.
“This is the way up the hill to the old f
ortress!” Giovanni called to Lukas, pointing forward. “We can only hope we don’t meet that monster again.”
Together they ran along the trench, where they soon saw more shouting and fighting mercenaries. They stumbled over corpses and burning remains of palisades, onward toward the top of the mountain. Lukas felt empty and exhausted. His shirt was torn, he was almost deaf from the constant noise, but above all, he kept seeing before him the face of the Spanish mercenary.
Empty eyes, like glass marbles . . . frozen . . .
Suddenly, they reached the end of the trench, and before them lay open land sloping steeply upward, with a pitched battle in progress. Everywhere around them men were fighting with swords, sabers, daggers, pikes, and bare fists. Up on the hilltop, Lukas could now see the defensive tower with a flag on top riddled with bullets—a red lion on a blue background.
Wallenstein’s banner.
“We’ve got to get there,” Giovanni shouted at him, “then we’ve made it!”
They were about to rush up the hill when Lukas saw a large figure about fifty yards from them. It was the Spanish mercenary, marching steadily up the hill as if being pulled along by a string. Now and then men charged him or shot at him, but the broad-shouldered man continued forward unperturbed. Now, finally, Lukas thought he knew where the mysterious Spaniard was headed.
“He’s going to attack Wallenstein!” Lukas cried, half out of his mind. “This monster means to kill the general, and there is no one who can stop him. He is invincible, we’ve seen it ourselves!”
Giovanni paused, wrinkled his forehead, and rubbed his nose—signs that he was concentrating on something—as he closely observed the mercenary.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he mumbled, “but he may not be as invincible as we think.” He pointed at the old watchtower. “We mustn’t waste any time. You run ahead and warn Wallenstein, Lukas, and I’ll look after our friend here.”
Without further ado, Giovanni dashed off across the battlefield toward the Spaniard. Lukas could see his friend picking up a torch and something else, but then he was swallowed up in the clouds of smoke.
Book of the Night Page 14
