.45 Caliber Soul
Chapter 8 – Meeting EngagementRaphael and I bounded down the hill. "Cavalry!" I shouted, "Cavalry coming this way!"
When we reached the bottom of the hill, Mitsurugi, Xianghua, and Talim had their weapons drawn. Sister Nadeza was taking Zilenka out of the papoose-thing on Talim's back. "Kids, down off the horse," I directed. "Talim, you stay with them."
"They are coming," Mitsurugi announced.
I whirled around. The cavalry had stopped at the crest; with a shout from the officer leading the detachment, they drew sabers and started down the hill, spread out in a single line, at a trot. They were maybe a hundred yards off.
Raphael and I got directly between the kids and the approaching cav. I gestured to Mitsurugi and Xianghua; they positioned themselves on either flank, a little further out, forming a classic lazy-W defense. Mitsurugi was on the left flank, his sword out in front of him in a two-hand hold. Xianghua, on the right, stood with her arms slightly out to her sides, sword point down, almost like she didn't quite know what to do. Was she losing her nerve? I wanted to do something to protect her, but there was no time.
Raphael had his musket at the ready; I had the .45 out with the safety off. "We're gonna hold fire until they're about thirty or forty yards out. I wanna make it count."
"I understand," he said.
"On my command."
At sixty yards off, they increased their pace.
"Ready!" I raised the .45 in a two-hand hold. The cavalry was fifty yards away.
Forty-five yards. "Aim!" I pointed the gun at a trooper who was heading directly for me, and got a good sight picture.
The next two minutes were an eternity:
Forty yards now. I aim for the center of mass.
Thirty-five yards. "Fire!" I squeeze two shots off; "double tap," just like they teach you on the firing range at Fort Bragg. The trooper I'm aiming at seems to slump in the saddle. I hear a soft pop as Rapahael's musket discharges, and a fraction of a second later, a horse shrieks and rears.
I adjust my aim to the left, pick up another trooper, fire two more. My target falls backwards out of the saddle.
Aim to the right, pick up another target, two more shots, did I miss? He's at an off-angle, lead him a little more, another shot, the horse stumbles.
One of the cavalrymen is almost on top of Xianghua. I fire one round at him—miss!—and the slide locks open. I back up a pace or two—Raphael has his sword out, and I want to give him room to work—eject the empty magazine, and reload.
Xianghua just stands there looking timid until the man coming at her is right on top of her, his saber beginning to swing forward. She makes this move, like a dancer's spin, twirls out and away from him. She's so quick, he can't correct his aim. The saber cuts through thin air a foot away from her. As that happens, Xianghua does this sort of jump-flip and speeds up her rotation, and suddenly her sword is coming around behind the rider in a furious arc. She lands her blow square in the middle of his lower back. He groans and pulls back on the reins reflexively before he falls out of the saddle. The horse slows and sort of stops in the middle of the melee, not sure what to do with itself.
That move, it was mesmerizing. Pretty, even, like classical ballet.
I'd love to watch more, but people are trying to kill me. I glance to my left as I ram a fresh magazine in and thumb the slide-lock out of engagement; Raphael is fencing with the officer, holding his own despite the disadvantage of being dismounted; Mitsurugi is doing a fair imitation of a tornado, whirling around and keeping three of the bad guys tied up; two other hostiles are down. Left flank seems to be under control.
Two bad guys still live on the right. One is working around the outside, using a riderless horse as a screen, to come around at Xianghua; the other is angling toward Talim and the kids. Xianghua can take care of herself. I start to engage the one threatening Talim. He's holding a pistol instead of a saber; he sees me, reins the horse to a stop, and fires.
It hits me square in the chest.
I'm wearing a Kevlar vest with ceramic plate inserts, standard issue for those of us in the 1/93rd Infantry. It's designed to stop a modern 5.56 or 7.62 round at fifty yards, and I can tell you from direct personal experience that it lives up to specification.
Seventeenth-century ballistics are no match for twenty-first century materials science. I barely feel it. Must have a really low velocity, like a paintball round.
I return fire. The other guy is not as well protected as me, and I have a better weapon. Down he goes.
Behind me, I hear a horse scream.
What happened to the guy coming at Xianghua? She's still standing, sword at the ready, but the bad guy is not there.
I look around. Mitsurugi has just taken down another horse and rider. The bad guys have noticed all the casualties, and they're withdrawing. Four on horseback, one other, his horse shot out from under him, running after them; three riderless horses trailing behind in obedience to some primal herd instinct.
Engagement over. Seven bad guys down, no friendly casualties. Everybody had fun, nobody got hurt. Good day at the office, as we say.
Mitsurugi even taunted the retreating enemy: "My name is Mitsurugi! Remember it!" Like I said before, he was one serious dude.
Xianghua was smiling. I understood the feeling. Winston Churchill once said that there was no thrill quite like getting shot at and missed, and he was right. Guess when it's a sword, and it misses you up close and personal like that, the effect is even greater.
Sister Nadeza and the kids were all right; a little scared, but undamaged. Talim had been between them and the nearest hostile, her blades at the ready, but fortunately she had not needed to use them.
Mister Ed appeared completely unbothered by the whole affair. Of course, he's a horse, and they don't usually get all that emotional.
If those guys we'd just held off were a rear-security patrol, they'd fall back on their base and report our position, and we'd have more of them in the area before too long. Worse yet, if they were outriders, providing flank security for a moving column, they and their friends could be back real soon. Either way, we needed to be somewhere else and right quick.
I retrieved my empty magazine and reloaded. We packed up the kids and resumed the march. A few hundred yards further on, we crossed a small stream. Beyond that, the land began sloping up again. We got partway up the hill, and then turned to follow along the slope, which put us back on a roughly northwest course like we wanted to be—after deviating north from our base course for an unknown distance.
It was another mostly cloudy day, and the fog was slow to lift. Eventually, I could see enough landmarks to narrow it down to one of two small valleys. Both ran in the direction we wanted to go, ascending toward what looked like high passes through the Danube-Oder divide. Either one would get us where I wanted to go.
By mid-afternoon, the weather was beginning to look really ugly. Solid overcast, with a front of dark clouds moving east up the valley toward us. The wind cold and gusting. It looked like we were in for some serious thunderstorms. I started looking around for someplace we could shelter, in case the weather got worse.
As we neared the top of the pass, I could see what looked like a large gray outcropping of rock above it on one side. "Look, Sister!" Citrad exclaimed, pointing. "The Tower of the Wolf!"
"Tower?" I said. It may have looked like a rock outcropping at first glance, but once you studied it closely enough, you realized it wasn't a natural feature, but something artificial.
"It is an old castle," Sister Nadeza explained. "It is said to have been built by the Emperor Charlemange, to hold the pass against the Magyars, but it has not been used for many hundreds of years."
If I was remembering Western Civ correctly, Charlemange was crowned emperor in about the year 800 or so. "We can hole up there until the storm passes. Does it still have a roof?"
"I do not know."
"We cannot go there," Georg protested, "it is haunted."
"There's no such thing as ghosts," Rickena admonished him, maybe a tad too sharply.
"Those are just old peasant tales," Sister Nadeza said. "God will watch over us even if they are true."
Georg was still looking apprehensive. "If there's any ghosts there," I suggested, "they'd be the ghosts of men who guarded the pass long ago, right?" Georg nodded, ever so slightly.
"Yes," Sister Nadeza said, deftly catching my drift. "Those men protected our people. Their ghosts would mean us no harm." That seemed to satisfy him, and we continued on our way.
Of course, it wasn't long before we had something new to worry about.
Talim saw it first; cavalry, thirty plus, coming up the valley after us, almost like the storm was driving them our way. We might make it to the castle ahead of them, if we hustled, but just barely.
Too bad the castle wasn't garrisoned by ghosts after all. We could use the help.
. . . to be continued . . .