of captain in the regular U.S. army-had spent much of the past winter in the machine shop. He had become quite familiar, even comfortable, with American notions of precision and accuracy.
Finally, the gunners got it right. The next salvo of cannonballs hammered straight into the earthworks sheltering Tilly's batteries. Those earthworks had already taken a beating from the traditional guns. Now, with the flat and powerful trajectories of the new cannonballs adding their own force to the bombardment, the enemy fortifications were beginning to come apart.
'Take a while, still, to smash them up,' stated Torstensson. He smiled grimly. 'But they won't be doing any shooting themselves, that's for sure.'
He turned, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted to the orderly waiting on the slope above. An instant later, the man was spurring his horse toward the king's position upstream.
Torstensson went back to overseeing his guns. 'Up to the Finns, now,' he said. Cheerfully: 'But those sullen savages won't be able to whine about their covering fire. Not today!'
He bestowed a look of approval on Tom and Heinrich. 'Splendid pieces!' His eyes then moved to the very attractive American woman standing at their side. A similar thought crossed his mind, but he left it unspoken. Lennart Torstensson had already come to the same conclusion as Tom Simpson's own mates. Not a good idea, irritating a man who could probably
An idle question came. He leaned over and murmured to Tom: 'I'm curious. What would be your weapon of choice? In a duel, I mean.'
The very attractive woman's husband replied instantly.
'Ten-pound sledgehammers.'
'Now, now!' bellowed the king. On the marshy ground below, Swedish engineers led hundreds of soldiers in a rush to the river bank. The 'rush,' needless to say, was a slow and sodden kind of thing. The terrain was bad enough, even if the soldiers hadn't been hauling a multitude of freshly cut logs.
Despite the marshy ground, the engineers were soon throwing a crude bridge across the water. The work was not suicidal, due to the heavy covering fire of Torstensson's guns, but it was still dangerous. Within five minutes, several of the engineers had been wounded or killed. Gustav scowled unhappily. Tilly's men were simply sticking their arquebuses over the ramparts and firing blindly. But an occasional round, he supposed, was bound to find a target.
The king heard the American girl whisper something to Mackay. The Scotsman passed the remark along.
'Your Majesty, Julie says that most of the damage is being done by some skirmishers in the woods.'
Gustav squinted at the line of trees. The term 'sniper' was unknown in that day, but all armies had contingents of lightly armored skirmishers using hunting pieces. Those weapons, since they were not part of the line and were not concerned with rate of fire, were rifled. Their accuracy was still not great, but it was not laughable either.
'She is certain?'
Mackay nodded. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he added: 'She is also offering to-ah, the expression she favors is 'take them out.' '
The king smiled thinly. 'You are afraid I will be offended by such an offer? My royal dignity insulted?'
Mackay pursed his lips. The king's smile widened.
Then, disappeared entirely-replaced by a ferocious scowl. 'Well, I am-and it is!' He shook himself like very large dog. Still scowling: 'But not half as much as seeing my engineers struck down.'
The scowl faded. With royal dignity, Gustav turned to Julie and gave her a small bow. 'If you would, Miss Sims. I would be much obliged.'
Julie stooped, dug into the backpack she had brought with her, and hauled out the spotting scope and the binoculars. A moment later, Mackay was festooned with the optical equipment.
'Call 'em out, Alex,' Julie commanded. She brought the rifle up.
As he watched the ensuing slaughter, the king of Sweden was not sure which disturbed him the most. Seeing the casual ease with which a young American girl from the future struck down men at a third of a mile-or the casual ease with which her Scots fiancй of the time assisted her in the task. The first introduced a very bizarre and rather frightening new world. The latter opened the entire book.
Crack!
'Left fifty paces! By the tree! Red feathered hat!'
Crack!
Like steel pages turning.
As evening fell, the Finns surged onto the nearly completed bridge. There were three hundred of them, volunteering in eager anticipation of the ten rix dollars promised as bonus. Each man carried a bundle of damp straw which, set alight, soon covered the end of the bridge and the opposite riverbank with thick smoke. Under that concealment, the work of finishing the bridge was done and the Finns charged onto the opposite bank. Hastily, they began erecting new earthworks, turning the spit of land into a fortress.
Tilly ordered his guns to begin a desperate attempt to destroy the new bastion. Desperate, because after hours under Torstensson's counterbattery fire, there was not much left of the Catholic artillery.
'Damn those Swedish guns!' he roared. 'They're even worse than they were at Breitenfeld!'
Through the night, under cover of darkness, smoke and Torstensson's batteries, the king led his army across the bridge onto the spit.
From there, through the course of the day-April 16-the Swedes used their numbers to establish a solid position along the entire bank. Gustav Adolf had successfully forced the river. There remained only two choices for Tilly: retreat, again-or launch a final assault.
He chose the latter, and led it himself. Late in the afternoon, atop his white charger, Tilly thundered down the slope. Thousands of cavalrymen and infantry came in his wake.
The struggle which followed, for all its brevity, was no mean affair. Gustav led his own cavalry in a countercharge and the Swedish infantry, at many points along the line, clashed head-on with their Bavarian counterparts. Had the battle been restricted to those forces, Tilly might still have won.
But, it wasn't. Throughout, from their position on the opposite bank, Torstensson's guns kept up their deadly fire. Now exposed on open ground, Tilly's men were being butchered.
'Damn those Swedish guns!' snarled Tilly again. And so, too, came a bitter self-reproach:
It was the old general's last thought. One of Torstensson's cannonballs shattered his thigh. His valiant charger staggered under the blow but kept its feet. Slowly, unconscious from shock, Tilly toppled from the saddle. In the years to come, men who saw would say it was like watching a tree fall. A great, gnarled oak, finally come to the end.
As Tilly's men carried him to the rear, Aldringer took command. But Aldringer fell within minutes, wounded in the head. By now, the imperial forces had suffered four thousand casualties, and the men lost heart. Night was falling, and they took advantage of the darkness to retreat back into their fortified camp near the Danube. The next day, under the command of the elector himself, Tilly's army retreated to Ingolstadt. Maximillian of Bavaria had had enough of Gustav II Adolf.
'Let Wallenstein try to handle him,' he snarled. 'Let bastard Bohemian deal with bastard Swede!'
When Gustav heard the news of Tilly, he sent his own body-surgeon into the enemy camp. 'Do what you can for the old man,' he commanded.
'Won't be much,' grumbled the surgeon. 'Not from the description of the wound.' But he obeyed.
Torstensson was not entirely pleased. 'Let the butcher of Magdeburg bleed to death,' he growled. The savage expressions on the faces of the other Swedish officers surrounding Gustav made clear their agreement.
The king said simply: 'Last of a line. A great line, for all its sins.' Then, as if struck by a thought, he turned to the young girl standing a few feet away.
'And what do you think?' he demanded. The girl responded with a shy smile.
'I think you're a nice man,' came her reply.
Gustav II Adolf was quite taken aback. 'Nice man,' he muttered, as he walked away. He shook his head. 'Nice man. What kind of thing is that to say-
