Chapter 4

North-Western Germania

Ky crept through the snow-covered forest, Vandili and Istvaeones tribesmen moving with equal stealth on either side of him. A dozen men in total, they were the ones who’d shown the best marksmanship with the new muskets over the last three weeks of training. Each was seasoned in fighting and hunting in the thick Germanic woods, and five knew this very area like the back of their hands.

It was easy to see their skill with each slow, precise step. Only Ky’s augmented hearing could make out the crunch of snow under their heavily padded boots, which were quiet enough to be drowned out by the sound of the breeze rustling through the snow-capped trees.

The Carthaginians, on the other hand, seemed to be making no attempt to hide their presence. Even without his drone, soaring above the treetops, Ky would have known where the supply-laden wagons and the assigned guards were, a few hundred yards ahead. Horses stomping, loudly complaining men, and the clanking of metal marked their position for the world to hear.

There were about a hundred of them in total, with maybe fifty guards and as many laborers and drivers moving supplies needed for one of the nearby Carthaginian forces his Germanic allies had been shadowing.

A handful of minutes later, Ky could see them himself through the dense foliage. Five carts were slowly being moved by straining four-horse teams, pulling hard at their traces, hauling the laden vehicles over ruts and divots in the horse path. Two soldiers flanked either side of each cart, with the remainder split evenly in front or behind the small supply convoy. They looked miserable in the cold, and by their light brown skin tone, Ky pegged them as conscripted men from the Middle East or North Africa, making them particularly unprepared for working and fighting in these conditions.

Ky understood the reasoning behind sending conscripts far away from areas they were familiar with, to help maintain discipline, but if they were smart they should have swapped Germanics with those areas they controlled near the Ural Mountains, to at least keep from fighting at a disadvantage. Of course, a society like the Carthaginians had other priorities than those Ky would have in their place.

Ky held up a hand, stopping his well-spread-out team. They’d trained for the last week on how to operate as a unit, which had been easier than Ky expected. They were used to fighting like this and weren’t the screaming barbarians that the Romans in his legions had pegged them as. Ky only had to learn their hand signals, which for him and Sophus had been child’s play, to be able to lead them.

After giving one last appraising glance at the convoy, he signaled for five of the men to hold where they were while the rest moved laterally, spreading out to where the wagon train would be in a few minutes. After keeping two men with him, Ky sent the remaining five to where the head of the column would be in a few minutes at their current pace.

Waiting, he glanced at the man nearest him. Wulfram, an Istvaeones under-chieftain, was a towering German with fiery red hair and a beard to match. The man gave Ky a nod in answer to the unspoken question. The tribesmen were ready.

Ky gripped his rifle, noticeably different from the muskets designed after the Napoleonic era patterns due to its slightly longer length and thinner barrel. Kneeling, he raised his rifle, holding it unnaturally steady, as if it sat on a shelf. His allies followed suit, albeit without the same aptitude. Ky could feel their eyes on him as he looked through the trees and the drone simultaneously, Sophus drawing lines marking when the Carthaginians would cross into his trap. The group targeting the rear of the convoy was slightly off and would be partially blocked from their target by the rear wagon, but there was nothing to do about it now.

The crack of his rifle exploded like thunder, shattering the relative stillness of the forest, followed by a dozen muskets firing almost as one. Ten guards in total fell dead, struck by the deadly hail of lead balls erupting from the trees. Only two of his men missed, which was about what Ky had expected. Even with muskets, at this range, it didn’t take a marksman to kill someone.

The harnessed horses shrieked, rearing at the cacophony of gunfire, a sound the beasts had never encountered before. Their handlers fought to control the panicked animals as chaos descended upon the makeshift road.

Guardsmen scrambled for their weapons, but the coordinated volley had caught them completely by surprise. Not that it mattered. Spears and shields offered little defense against Ky’s modern firearms, especially not at this range. Seconds passed while the confused men tried to figure out what was happening. None of them had been among the mostly dead men who they’d fought near the river two months ago, and hearing tales about firearms is very different than experiencing them firsthand for the first time.

The second volley ripped into more guardsmen. Slightly worse accuracy this time, with only eight falling. The tribesmen had their blood up, and excited men tended to have lower accuracy.

By the time Ky and his men had reloaded and a third volley ripped through their targets, the Carthaginians had finally worked out where the attack was coming from. Between the wall of smoke starting to build between the tribesmen and the Carthaginians and the long tongues of flame leaping out of a dozen weapons at once, it shouldn’t have been difficult to work out.

Several of the remaining guards propelled arrows blindly toward the gun smoke, but their shots went wild. Ky had anticipated as much, and his men were well concealed behind dense foliage. Still, two tribesmen cried out as arrows found their marks, though neither injury seemed immediately life-threatening.

A handful of the guards, not armed with ranged weapons, regrouped, rallying with shouts and gesturing angrily with spears as they attempted to launch a counterattack. Their courage was admirable but misplaced. Muskets erupted again, cutting the would-be attackers down before they’d advanced more than a few paces. The rest wavered, exchanging panicked glances, unwilling to share their comrades’ fate.

With the bulk of the guards dead or wounded, the survivors abandoned any thought of a second charge. Their only hope lay in escape or defense. The guards and the mostly unscathed laborers scrambled behind the wagons, using the vehicles as makeshift barricades. The few armed with bows loosed another futile volley, more to distract their attackers than out of any real hope of inflicting damage.

They, however, didn’t move before yet another volley of fire exploded into their midst, killing even more guards. Only ten guards remained, plus roughly fifty unarmed laborers and wagon drivers. Ky watched the guards take up defensive positions behind the wagons through the drone footage as he reloaded, considering their positions.

One of the injured tribesmen had already picked his musket back up, an arrow sticking out of his side, giving Ky eleven men. He was starting to formulate a plan to surround the Carthaginians and demand their surrender when his new allies took the decision out of his hands.

Ky cursed under his breath as the tribesmen surged forward with a roar.

“Hold,” he called out in the Anglii dialect, the language the selected men all shared.

They ignored him completely, crashing through the foliage, axes, and bayonets held high. The guards rallied, bracing to meet the oncoming tide of fur-clad barbarians while the laborers and wagon drivers shrieked, some running and others diving under the wagons, hoping for some kind of cover. The lead horse team apparently decided the sight of screaming warriors was too much and bolted down the path, taking the wagon with it. The men unlucky enough to seek shelter under that particular wagon were then trampled or crushed to death by hooves and wagon wheels, leaving mangled bodies behind.

Ky emerged from the tree line, rifle raised, but there was little he could do now except wade into the fray. The tribesmen fell upon the guards with a fury, fueled by years of privation and abuse suffered at the hands of the Carthaginians. Axes and bayonets clashed with spears and shields.

Wulfram leaped forward, his massive axe swinging to hack a guardsman’s shield in two, following through to bury the blade in the man’s chest. He wrenched it free, roaring triumphantly, only to jerk as a spear caught him in the thigh. The red-bearded German stumbled but remained standing as Ky brought up his rifle and fired, sending the assailant tumbling backward into the trees on the other side of the path.

In a matter of moments, the guards were all cut down. Ky could see that one other tribesman had been hit, this one fatally with a spear in the chest, but that was the extent of the Germanic losses. The guardsmen had fallen to a man.

Then they moved on to the laborers, who were shown no mercy as they were cut down without a chance to flee or beg for their lives. Ky shoved through the combatants, trying to halt the slaughter, but it was a losing battle.

In minutes, the fighting was over. A few of the unarmed men managed to surrender, and a few more made it into the trees, running for their lives, but more than eighty men lay dead. Bodies and wreckage littered the forest floor, staining the snow and mud crimson. The tribesmen stood amid the carnage, chests heaving, weapons and furs splattered with gore.

Seeing there were no more men to kill, they raised their axes and muskets into the air, shouting their triumph. Ky was never one to back down from a fight, but after the guards were dead, this stopped being a battle and became a massacre. He knew he’d have to accept some brutality, fighting in a war in this time period, especially this war where one side had brutalized the other for so long, and he knew he would be hard-pressed to find a single combatant without a score to settle.

“Let me look at your leg,” Ky said to Wulfram, pointing at the bleeding appendage.

“It’s nothing,” the tribesman said, slapping Ky on the back. “Enjoy the victory. We slaughtered them like animals, and these supplies will feed several villages through the winter. Today is a great day, and your weapons have proven to be as powerful as you promised.”

“It won’t always be this easy,” Ky said. “They’re still shocked when they hear firearms for the first time. As they get used to fighting against them, they’ll realize the limits of the damage we can do and how long it takes us to reload. Had they charged after the first volley, we would have only been able to get off one more round, and then we would have been engaged by three times our number in hand-to-hand combat. Even your warriors, as great as they are, wouldn’t stand up to those numbers.”

“Then we bring more men,” Wulfram said. “You said the best thing we could do to contribute to the war, if we didn’t want to fight in your silly lines, is to raid their supplies and smaller units when we find them. We will do that. With your muskets, we will slaughter them by the hundreds. Their gods will weep at the sight.”

“These weapons aren’t magic, Wulfram. Give yourself more room; don’t try to wipe them out every time. It worked this time only because of their surprise. Unless you have superior numbers, hit them and fade away. Even with these guns, you can still lose if you’re overconfident.”

“We’re not afraid to die,” he said, puffing out.

“I know that, and I’m not doubting your bravery. I’d prefer, however, that you didn’t die. To paraphrase someone from my homeland, instead of dying for your people, I’d rather you make those bastards die instead.”