Re: Steel and Gunpowder

Brandt let out a laugh. He pushed a fresh brass cartridge into the open breech of his rifle. "They are already tripping over their own feet! The rebels are routing!"

It certainly looked like it. The snowy slope was covered in fallen bodies. The Spanish charge had been shattered by the wall of lead.

The survivors of the first wave scrambled backward. They slid down the ice to get away from the deafening thunder.

Down on the frozen lake, Baron von Reischach yanked the reins of his warhorse. He dodged a fleeing mercenary.

The old noble’s sharp eyes darted past the white sulfur smoke billowing from the ridge. He listened.

The booming thunder suddenly stopped.

A well-trained Jaeger in the Swabian army takes about ten seconds to reload a Pattern-3 rifle.

He has to pull the iron bolt back, eject the spent brass, insert a fresh cartridge, and push the bolt forward.

When an entire line of shooters fires in quick succession, there is an inevitable window of silence where everyone is trying to reload at the same time.

Reischach heard that silence. He saw the Jaegers reaching into their pouches instead of pointing their iron barrels.

"They need time to breathe!" Reischach’s voice boomed. "Hide behind the dead! Take cover, you cowardly dogs!"

The panicked rebel army instantly obeyed. The seasoned mercenaries threw themselves face-first into the deep snow. They pulled the corpses of their fallen brothers over their own bodies to act as fleshy meat shields.

The snowy slope suddenly looked lifeless. It denied Brandt’s shooters a clear target.

"Curse them," Hans grunted. He leaned forward.

"Hold your fire!" Brandt shouted to the Jaegers. He waved his hand. "Do not waste your cartridges on the dead! Wait for them to stand up!"

But Reischach had no intention of making his men stand up. He spurred his horse back toward the open timber gates of the fortress. He raised his broadsword, pointing it directly at a cluster of wooden pens built near the defensive walls.

"Unleash the hounds!" Reischach roared.

The doors of the kennels were thrown open by the rebel guards.

Suddenly, dozens of heavy war dogs burst out of the city gates. They were alpine mastiffs. They were bred for aggression, starved for two days, and trained to tear the throats out of armored men.

"Oh, you have got to be joking," Voss muttered.

"Dogs!" a young Jaeger screamed. "They are sending the dogs!"

A hungry mastiff is low to the ground. It moves at incredible speeds, darting unpredictably over the ice and snow.

Trying to hit a sprinting dog with a rifle from a hundred paces away is like trying to catch a fly in the dark.

"Shoot the beasts!" Brandt barked. He raised his own gun and fired down the hill.

The conical bullet kicked up a spray of snow two feet behind a sprawling black hound.

A ragged volley of gunfire popped off from the Swabian line. A few dogs yelped and tumbled into the bloody snow. But the vast majority of the pack simply leaped over the dead bodies on the slope, ignoring the noise.

They closed the distance incredibly fast. Their jaws snapped wildly as they charged the ridge.

As if the dogs were not bad enough, a loud horn blew from the watchtowers of the rebel fortress.

Standing on the high timber platforms were dozens of Reischach’s best crossbowmen.

They finally loaded their heavy iron bolts onto their weapons. They aimed high into the gray sky.

"Shields!" Voss screamed. "Bolts coming down!"

"We do not have shields, General!" Hans shouted back. He ducked low behind a small rock.

"Then pick up the ones the dead dropped, you lazy fool!" Voss roared. He rushed forward and grabbed a blood-stained steel shield from a fallen Spaniard at the edge of the ridge.

The men holding the new steel maces abandoned their straight lines. They scrambled to pick up the shields scattered across the edge of the battlefield.

They formed a tight, overlapping wall of steel just seconds before the sky darkened.

The deadly bolts rained down on the ridge. The sharp iron tips struck the heavy shields, ringing out like hammers on an anvil. They stopped only inches away from the faces of the soldiers.

Several Jaegers in the back, caught trying to reload, screamed as bolts buried themselves into their shoulders and legs.

"The shield wall is handling it!" Hans grunted. His shoulder pressed hard against the steel as three bolts slammed into his shield. "But the dogs are almost here! The shooters behind us cannot hit them, and we cannot swing our maces while holding this wall against the bolts!"

Brandt bled from a shallow graze on his cheek. His eyes were wide. "General Voss! If those hounds get into the rifle lines, the men will break! They will tear us apart while we are reloading!"

"We are not going to stand here and get chewed on!" Voss yelled. "Brandt! Tell the shooters to fix bayonets and brace!"

"What are you doing, General?!" Hans shouted over his shield.

"I am pulling the shield wall!" Voss laughed. He kicked his stolen shield away, entirely exposing himself to the open air.

He raised his mace high above his head.

"With me!" Voss roared.

Without waiting for the next volley of bolts to fall, Voss leaped over the edge of the snowy ridge.

He charged directly down the bloody slope. He ran headfirst into the pack of vicious war dogs and the hidden rebel soldiers.

"AAAAAAH!" Voss screamed at the top of his lungs. He raised his mace.

"AAAAH!" Hans echoed. He threw his shield aside and charged blindly after his General. He swung his mace like a madman.

The hundreds of soldiers armed with the unbreakable steel maces did not hesitate for a single second.

Seeing their commander charge down the mountain, they threw away their shields and let out a deafening roar.

Down in the valley, Reischach watched as Voss abandoned the high ground and threw his men into a chaotic melee charge.

As Voss’s boots slammed into the icy slope, the first black mastiff leaped at his throat. Its jaws were wide open.

Voss swung his mace in a sideways arc. He sliced the hound out of the air before it could touch him.

Right beside him, Hans brought his mace down on a mercenary who had tried to stand up from beneath a pile of dead bodies.

"Smash them!" Voss yelled. He kicked a dead body out of his way as he continued charging down the hill. "Break their helmets!"

Up on the ridge, Brandt quickly reorganized the surviving shooters. They fixed their long bayonets to the ends of their rifles. They stepped forward to fire carefully over the heads of Voss’s charging men. They picked off the rebel crossbowmen in the watchtowers.

Voss breathed heavily. His mace dripped with fresh blood as he carved a path through the snow. He got closer and closer to the frozen lake.

He could see Baron von Reischach, sitting on his horse, screaming at his men to hold the line against the sudden counter-charge.

Voss smiled. He dodged a clumsy swing from a Spanish pikeman and drove the heavy iron head of his mace straight into the man’s face.

They were pushing them back. The Swabian army was winning the mud fight. But as Voss took another step forward, his boot hit the edge of the frozen lake. He looked down at the clear ice beneath his feet. He saw the cracks spreading outwards from the thousands of heavy, struggling boots fighting above.

Voss stopped swinging. He looked up at the smoking mountain behind the city. He looked down at the thousands of men fighting on top of a giant sheet of frozen water. And he looked at his own men...

They carried hundreds of pounds of highly explosive black powder in their pouches.

"Hans..." Voss whispered. His eyes widened. "If we fire our artillery on this lake... what happens to the ice?"

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