Re: Steel and Gunpowder

Katarina slowly pushed herself up from the floor, refusing to cower any longer.

She stood right beside Konrad, her eyes completely locked on the Marshal above.

"What do you see, Eckhard?" Katarina called out.

Even so, it took the old veteran a long moment to answer.

When he finally lowered the brass spyglass, his face was stripped of its usual confidence.

He looked down at Konrad, and for the very first time since the Bohemian slaughter, the Marshal actually looked overwhelmed.

"It isn’t a simple vanguard, Lord Konrad," Eckhard shouted down. "And they aren’t flying Bavarian colors."

"Then who are they, and how many are there?"

"The numbers are massive..." the Marshal reported, raising the spyglass back to his eye to confirm the math. "I am counting at least 5,000 men marching in a tight formation. Maybe more. They are filling the valley road."

5,000 men? It was an entire army. If Eckhard had taken the bulk of the Swabian forces to the northern woods to crush the Bavarian trap, that meant Konrad was sitting inside the keep with barely three hundred men to hold off an entire invasion force.

"Give me their exact weapons, Eckhard," Konrad demanded. "Are they just cheap mercenary pikes?"

"No, My Lord." Eckhard replied. "Their front lines are heavily stacked. They have hundreds of heavy steel crossbows. Behind them... damn it... I am seeing flashes of slow matches. They have organized ranks of muskets and early wheellocks. At least a thousand guns. And the center is packed with pike squares."

You didn’t just casually hire 5,000 mixed-arms veterans without a completely massive, endless supply of raw gold.

"Lord Konrad..." Eckhard shouted. "They brought a siege engine."

"What kind of engine?" Konrad asked.

"It is massive..." the Marshal squinted through the lenses. "It is rolling on reinforced iron wheels. It looks like a heavily armored battering ram, covered in wet hides to stop our fire arrows. They are dragging it toward the main gates."

Konrad had planned for assassinations. But an unknown army of 5,000 highly equipped men dragging a siege engine to his front door? It was an unaccounted variable that threatened to crush his revolution into dust.

Cellini let out a nervous laugh. "Well, Viscount... it seems your wedding has attracted everyone in the Empire who wants you dead."

"Shut up," Konrad snapped.

If that heavy siege engine actually hit the main iron gates, the doors would buckle.

And if five thousand men poured into the courtyard while they were still dealing with the bleeding Vatican assassins... the Swabian bloodline would end today.

Konrad turned his eyes toward Duke Wilhelm. The fat lord was still cowering on the floor, weeping into his ruined velvet robes.

"Wilhelm," Konrad said. "If those aren’t your men... and the Vatican assassins are bleeding out on my floorboards... who has five thousand guns and a siege engine parked on my lawn?"

Duke Wilhelm sat in a puddle of spilled wine and the blood of the Vatican assassins he had allowed into the keep.

He looked up at Konrad, his eyes darting toward the ruined balconies where the Pope’s Hounds were taking their final breaths.

Seeing his assassins slaughtered in a matter of minutes had finally shattered whatever treacherous resolve the Duke had left.

"Speak, Wilhelm," Konrad commanded. His thumb rested on the iron hammer of his wheellock pistol. "I am out of patience. Who is marching on my gates?"

"They are... they are mercenaries, Konrad." Wilhelm stammered, his voice cracking. "The Pope hired them. Cardinal Morone emptied the Vatican’s silver ledgers to buy them from the southern companies. He gave them the muskets. He gave them the siege engine."

Katarina, standing still beside her husband despite the mud and blood covering her wedding dress, narrowed her eyes in disgust. "You sold us out to a foreign army, Father? You let the Vatican march 5,000 Italian and Swiss mercenaries into the Empire just to steal a seat at the Emperor’s table?"

"I was supposed to control them." Wilhelm cried out. "The Pope promised me they would solely act as a defensive shield. They were supposed to march behind my Bavarian vanguard to secure the trade roads once Swabia was broken. But... they must have seen what happened in the northern woods."

The Pope was not a fool... the Vatican hadn’t trusted Duke Wilhelm to handle the Swabian industrial threat by himself.

Cardinal Morone had secretly funded an independent mercenary army to shadow the Bavarian forces.

When Marshal Eckhard’s Swabian halberdiers ambushed and crushed the Bavarian vanguard in the pine forests, the Pope’s mercenary commanders didn’t engage. They saw the Swabian main army committed in the woods, realized the main keep was under-defended, and marched straight for the Swabian gates to finish the job.

Thus, the true scale of the Vatican’s holy decree was revealed.

"They let my army fight yours, and now they are coming to slaughter the survivors." Konrad murmured.

"Exactly, Viscount!" Cellini chimed in from the floor. The Florentine artist looked amused by the disaster. "Right now, there are 5,000 men out there who get paid a massive amount of gold if your head ends up on a pike."

"Shut your mouth, Italian, before I put a bullet in it," Konrad growled, shifting his focus away from the pathetic Duke and the arrogant artist.

He needed to organize the defense, and he needed to do it seconds ago.

Konrad looked at his Marshal. "Eckhard! Get down here right now!"

The veteran scrambled down the stairs of the balcon. He hit the floorboards running, his broadsword already resting on his shoulder. "Give the order, Lord Konrad!"

Even so, several excruciating minutes had already passed since the war horn had sounded. The enemy was already in the outer valley.

-

"We do not meet them in the open mud." Konrad commanded. "If they have an armored siege engine, they are going to drive it straight down the main causeway and try to smash the outer gates."

"They will splinter the wood in three hits, My Lord," Eckhard warned.

"Then send the runners to the artillery crews on the inner ridges. I want the remaining twelve-pounder cannons rotated away from the northern woods. Aim them down the main valley road. I want lead shot tearing through their marching lines before they even reach the drawbridge." Konrad stated.

Eckhard gave a nod. "I will have the gunners light the fuses immediately!"

"And the infantry." Konrad continued, pointing his finger toward the main entrance of the keep. "Gather every single halberdier and pikeman we have left in this hall. I want a wall of Swabian steel formed before the main outer gates. Three ranks deep."

"Captain von Richter!" Eckhard bellowed across the hall.

Lukas, covered in the blood of the assassins he had just slaughtered, rushed forward. "Yes, Marshal!"

"Take the surviving veterans! Form the pike lines in the main courtyard, facing the outer gates!" Eckhard ordered. "Do not let a single mercenary cross the threshold!"

"Lock the keep down." Konrad added. "Get the peasants down into the cellars. Close the iron gates of this hall. We defend ourselves with every single bullet we have left!"

The Swabian veterans moved.

Out in the courtyard, Konrad could hear the shouting of the Swabian captains as they assembled the pike squares.

Minutes passed... Konrad stood near the center of the ruined Great Hall, his wheellock pistol fully loaded and primed.

Duke Wilhelm was still shivering in the corner, guarded by a highly amused Cellini.

Then, the first strike occurred.

The deafening roar of a Swabian twelve-pounder cannon firing from the high ridge shook the dust from the rafters of the Great Hall.

It was instantly followed by a second, and then a third...

The Swabian artillery had engaged the Vatican’s mercenary army.

"They are rushing the gates!" Eckhard shouted from the cracked window, peering through his spyglass. "The siege engine is on the main bridge! The musketeers on the walls are opening fire!"

A crackle of small arms fire erupted outside. Hundreds of Swabian and Vatican guns exchanged highly lethal volleys across the battlements.

Black powder smoke began to drift into the Great Hall through the shattered glass windows.

Konrad tightened his grip on his pistol. His eyes were locked on the doors at the end of the courtyard.

He could hear the terrifying squeal of wheels rolling over the bridge. The battering ram was in position.

Konrad raised his weapon, thinking:

If the iron hinges held, the Swabian cannons would eventually break the mercenary army in the mud...

But if the Vatican’s armored ram shattered the gate on the next swing, how many thousands of trained killers were about to pour into his home?

However, the Vatican forces outside were making an arrogant assumption.

They thought they were attacking a traditional, flat-walled medieval castle. They assumed that if they just pushed their ram straight up the main causeway, the Swabian defenders would only be able to shoot at them from the front.

They were wrong... nearly two months ago, right after securing the silver trade routes, Konrad had ordered his masons and engineers to tear down the old outer walls of the valley entrance.

He had spent a fortune replacing them with an advanced defensive structure. He had built a star fortress.

It meant there were no blind spots. When an enemy army marched straight up the middle to hit the gates, they were stepping into a perfect crossfire.

The Swabian cannons and musketeers positioned on the angled star points were currently firing directly into the exposed flanks of the mercenary lines.