Castaways in Time by Adams Robert

In garrison or fort, powder stores were usually kept partially or totally below ground in a heavily timbered pit, but so high was the water table here that this could not be done without serious risk of spoilage, so the volatile stuff had been stacked in the center of the compound and covered against the mist and rain with waxed—and consequently highly inflammable—canvas sheeting. Foster shuddered every time he looked at the incipient disaster, but there was no other way to handle the situation.

In the two hours between the first attack and the second, Foster sent a hundred of his cavalrymen out to strike the tents ranged about that had not already been burned or shot down, aware that they would dispatch any wounded Scots without orders from him. The wounded, those capable of the task, he set to casting pistol and musket balls and refilling powder flasks. Then, with the wagoners and his remaining troopers, he set about emptying every wagon and opening every sack, box, chest, cask, and bale.

After an hour, they chanced across the loads for the swivels, the containers bearing markings clearly indicating that the contents were for 6-pdr. sakers.

First, there was the distant but fast-closing wail of the chaunters, backed by the incessant, nerve-fraying droning; then, boiling up out of the fog, seemingly impervious to the wet chill of the night, the numberless rabble of Highlanders bore down upon them from all sides, heralded by their deep-voiced shouts and curses and, as they neared, by the slap-slap of their bare feet on the wet peat.

Foster had solemnly promised to personally shoot any man who fired prematurely, and such was his reputation with the Royal Army that no single weapon was discharged until his little Irish wheellock spat. By then, the bunches of clansmen were close, deadly close, some only fifty yards distant, and the double-charged swivels wrought pure horror in their tight ranks. While the guns were reloaded, the best musketeers loosed at the Scots still charging, being handed fresh, primed muskets by those poorer shots assigned to load for the shooters.

The swivels roared double death again, canister this time as the Scots were closer, and then the horsepistols joined the muskets in covering the reloading. Once more did the swivels bark, before the mob of Highlanders faded back into the mists that had spawned them. Not one attacker had come closer than twenty yards.

But they tried once more, only a half hour later, and with equally disastrous results. But that was enough for even the stubborn Scots. Foster and his little command were unmolested for the remainder of the night, while, dim with distance, the clash of steel, the shouts and screams, an occasional drumroll or bugle blare, and the ceaseless caterwauling of the bagpipes testified to the ongoing battle.

Under the bright, morning sun, the wagon fort lay secure. But for hundreds of yards in every direction from it the earth was thickly scattered with corpses clad in stained and rent tartan. Closer in, the dead lay in windrows and, closer still, in mangled heaps of gray flesh. Exhausted pikemen stumbled about among them, blinking to keep red-rimmed eyes open, driving their leaf-shaped points down with a grunt in the mercy stroke wherever there was sign of remaining life.

Reichsherzog Wolfgang—his fine armor dented, his boots and clothing slashed and stained—leaned against a wagon wheel, chewing salt bacon and taking in the scene. Foster stood beside him, feeling sick.

“Gross Gott, Bass, such a battle never before have I to see. Fighters those Schottlanders be, by the Virgin’s toenails, but no brains have they got, ja. Lost vas the day for them ven your squadron their right ving routed. Lost most certainly vas the day for them ven you disrupted at a crucial moment for their central attack the reinforcing. Und vhile your jungen behind them galumped, that fool of a king held back his reserves until far too late it vas to anything save mit them.

“Und now, this” He waved one bare, bruised hand at the carnage. “Vasted are your talents, mein freund, vasted. Such a Soldner vould you make, ja Consider it you must vonce these vars vun be.”