falling. Squatting down and investigating in the darkness with his free hand, he discovered another dead body. He’d stumbled over one of the man’s legs.
After a few more seconds of groping, he found a big arquebus lying next to the man. That confirmed his guess as to what had happened. The captain-damned idiot-had led his men into a plundering expedition instead of attending to his duty; he’d been shot dead by the shop’s owner; his men had fired back and killed the owner. Then they’d dragged their commander’s body out of the street and placed him against the wall of the shop.
And then what?
He rose and resumed his slow progress toward the light. As he got near, he saw that the light was spilling from the floor above. What he’d seen from a distance was the crack in the door that led to the stairwell.
Slowly and carefully, making no sound, he opened the door enough to pass through. Then, waited for a few seconds, listening for any noise coming from above.
Nothing. That he could detect, anyway. There was quite a bit of noise filtering into the shop from the street outside. A city being sacked is anything but quiet. Whatever noise might be coming from above was drowned out.
But von Haslang didn’t think there was any. He had a sense for such things, from his years of war. Whatever had happened in this shop was over. The whole place had a dead feel to it.
He went up the stairs, still moving slowly and carefully. Once on the landing, he spent another few seconds listening.
Still nothing. He started moving from room to room. As was often the case with small shops, these were the personal living quarters of the shopkeeper and his family.
The family was all dead, too. A wife, at a guess; two sons of teenage years; a girl perhaps eight years old. The boys had been killed immediately, shot dead. The woman and her daughter would have died later, after much torment. They’d both had their throats cut.
Several empty bottles of liquor were lying about. Those would have been looted from the shop below. The few possessions of the family had also been ransacked, not that there would have been much to steal.
Despite the empty bottles, the killers hadn’t been completely drunk. Soldiers sacking a city didn’t usually murder the women they raped. Their men, yes, as a rule; but they’d keep the women for concubines. This had been done to eliminate witnesses.
Not witnesses to the atrocity itself. Duke Maximilian and General von Lintelo would be quite indifferent to that matter, and any of their soldiers would know it. But they wouldn’t be indifferent to gross dereliction of duty-and these men had been given an important mission. At which they’d failed completely, because of their own lust and greed.
For that, they’d hang-if they were found out.
But would they be? Did anyone besides Captain Andreas von der Felt know which soldiers he’d taken with him? Anyone, at least, whose word could be taken as good coin.
Probably…not. Von der Felt was well-known for committing atrocities, and such officers transmitted their attitudes to their men. Captain von Haslang strongly disapproved, and his reasons were military as well as moral. Units which behaved in that manner invariably became coarsened, and the coarseness spread over time into all areas of their conduct. Who in their right mind would take the word of a murderer, rapist, arsonist and torturer for anything?
Not he, for sure. Not even General von Lintelo would.
So, the guilty men would probably go undetected and unpunished. And an important mission had failed in the process.
The colonel sighed, slid the pistol back in his belt, and headed back down the stairs. He was beginning to get a bad feeling about this whole campaign-and he was a man who trusted his instincts.
Chapter 8
Tom and his soldiers got out of the city without any problem. He even had time to order the gate destroyed, after making sure no civilians would be caught in the blast. That was a pointless gesture, perhaps. By the time the USE army or the SoTF’s National Guard could get back to Ingolstadt, the Bavarians would have had plenty of time to repair the damage. But blowing up the gate made Tom feel better anyway.
It made his troops feel better, too. They gave an impromptu cheer when the explosives went off.
“ We’ll be back, you bastards! ” shouted one soldier.
And that was the key to it. Destroying the gate wasn’t a pointless act of vandalism, it was a statement. A symbol, you might say. The Bavarians had taken Ingolstadt, yes. But they wouldn’t keep it.
Now, though, Tom had to make a difficult decision. Where should he take his rump regiment?
There were only two viable options: retreat north to Amberg, the capital of the province, or march down the Danube to Regensburg.
Amberg was the safest destination. The city was garrisoned by a full regiment. The regiment was a mercenary unit, but Tom didn’t think there was much likelihood it had been suborned also. Most of the soldiers in Amberg’s garrison had been recruited in the Upper Palatinate, many of them from nearby towns. They’d been stationed in the capital long enough to develop ties with the local population, too. The chances that they’d agree to betray Amberg on behalf of the Bavarians were slight to the point of being nonexistent. Duke Maximilian had a reputation for savagery.
Amberg was well-fortified, too. With Tom’s men added to the existing garrison, they’d be able to withstand any Bavarian siege long enough for Heinrich Schmidt to come down from the State of Thuringia-Franconia with most of the National Guard.
Regensburg was a riskier proposition. On the positive side, there was no chance at all that the garrison at Regensburg had turned traitor. That was the Iron Regiment, a unit of the regular USE army made up entirely of volunteers, most of them also recruited in this province. It was one of the few such regiments that hadn’t been sent into Poland or Bohemia.
Regensburg was also well-fortified, but the defenses had a weakness because the city was right on the Danube. Most of Regensburg was on the south bank of the river, with just a small and not-well-protected enclave on the north. The enclave wasn’t even legally part of Regensburg, but was a separate town. Tom couldn’t remember the name of it. That town couldn’t be held against a large and determined enemy, but losing it wouldn’t by itself threaten Regensburg. The Danube was wide enough at that point to require a great stone bridge to get across, and the bridge could be easily defended.
Except in winter. The river froze over, enabling enemy troops to cross without using the bridge or needing the use of boats. Doing so had dangers of its own-no soldier likes to cross an iced-over river against enemy fire-and there were occasional thaws that might weaken the ice. But it made Regensburg’s bridge less of a defensive barrier than it was most of the year.
Tom decided he had enough time to try reaching Bamberg on the radio. This was really a decision that should be made by the president of the SoTF and his top officers. They’d known for months that if hostilities broke out with Bavaria again, the brunt of the fighting would have to be borne by the province’s National Guard. Between the war with Poland and the domestic turmoil in the USE itself, the only units of the nation’s army that would be available were the troops Tom had pulled out of Ingolstadt and the Iron Regiment in Regensburg.
But…
Nothing. No reception at all. Small radios like this one were chancy at any distance, except during the evening and morning windows. Tom could only hope that his original message had been received.
He’d have to make the choice himself. The road they were on, coming out of the east gate, was the road to Regensburg. If he decided to march for Amberg, he had to cross over now to the northern route. He couldn’t delay the decision. The next road they’d encounter which would enable them to head for Amberg didn’t intersect this road for another ten miles down the river. By then, they’d have covered about a fourth of the distance to Regensburg anyway. They’d do better to just keep going than try to backtrack.
There were several small roads before then, but they wouldn’t be of any use. Five hundred men with their gear-even infantry, much less artillery-could not march down narrow country lanes without slowing down almost to
