Chapter 42

The night after the scout had been killed, the King and Tostig talked about strategy. The King was interested in this land and was leaning toward adding all of Marion’s land to his kingdom. The thing that impressed him most was that the house that he was staying in wasn’t much more than an average house in the area, yet it had running hot and cold water, clear glass in the windows, and had many books, most of which made no sense to either the King or Tostig. Their alchemist friend was able to read the books and explain what each book was. There seemed to be books on everything from medicine to books for children, and the King was impressed by the amount of knowledge in this one house, even if he thought that most of it was ridiculous. After the King had enjoyed a hot bath, he went to bed. Usually, he would have taken a whore to bed with him, but every civilian had left before he had arrived. Not fucking a bitch before bed left him feeling something akin to indigestion, but he figured that after his victorious army beat Marion’s army, he would take her for his whore.

The following day, the sun started rising when large amounts of gunfire outside awakened Hardrada. He bolted to the window, and what he saw terrified him. The enemy cavalry had surprised his forces and was slaughtering them. He tore out of the house he was staying in without putting his armor on and started to organize his troops. Fortunately, his troops were all battle-hardened, and they hadn’t been routed because they would have been slaughtered if they had. With the King rallying his forces, the enemy cavalry was forced to retreat, and their retreat quickly became a rout. Some of the cavalry had been cut off by his men and were cut down. They had only managed to catch 50 or so of the enemy cavalry. When the cavalry realized what was going on and wouldn’t be able to retreat, they fought to the death, trying to take out as many invaders as possible. The King was deeply impressed with their skill and courage. He was equally disturbed to find that ten of the 50 dead were women who had fought just as fiercely as the men.

Watching the enemy retreat, the King saw two riders emerge from the enemy lines. One was flying a white flag with red crossed bars through it. The alchemist had told him that this was the flag that Marion had adopted and that she called it the flag of St. George. Whoever these men were, the enemy rout had halted in its tracks and quickly reorganized. The king started working furiously to get his troops in formation. At first, he was planning on leaving some of his soldiers back to guard the boats, but the raid had killed a large number of his men, and he would now need every man he could get.

Hardrada positioned himself on his left flank, closest to the river, and Tostig on the right, nearest to the marsh. It didn’t take long to get everyone into formation, and they started advancing toward York. Once the troops cleared the village and got out into the open countryside, Hardrada heard a distant crack and could see Tostig had been killed. The crack sounded like a gunshot, but nobody could see any smoke, and even his alchemist didn’t know what had happened.

The king ordered his soldiers to double-time to try and engage with the enemy forces before more of his men were killed. Every minute or so, Hardrada would hear that crack again, and another one of his other commanders would be killed. By now, they were 800 paces away from the enemy lines. Looking ahead, he saw large billows of smoke erupt from the enemy position, and then he heard a strange whistling sound. He listened as the whistle got closer and watched as a large amount of earth was thrown up in front of them. Before Hardrada had time to think, the smoke erupted again from the enemy lines. This time, those things hit his men, and he watched as a number of his men just disappeared. Hardrada lost all the color in his face. His men would be slaughtered if he stayed out here too much longer. He was close enough to quicken the march, and this time, the enemy overshot. They were only about 400 paces from the enemy lines, so the king ordered his musketeers to shoot at anything ahead of them. The enemy infantry made themselves known almost immediately after his men got into position.

Hardrada then realized that he had walked into a trap, and the cavalry raid did just what the enemy commander wanted it to do. It had forced Hardrada to launch his attack early. He watched as the front rank of soldiers raised their guns. There were thousands of them, and they were all dressed identically. Suddenly, they all disappeared behind a wall of smoke. Hardrada became sick when he saw the results of the enemy fire because almost all his musketeers were mowed down, and many regular troops were killed. Within seconds, another smoke cloud erupted, and more of his men were mowed down. They might not even make it to the enemy lines if things continued at this pace. What surprised him the most was that the front line of enemy troops fired again, which was much faster than his own could fire. Then he felt something hot hit him in the leg and went down.

It was now time to finish this battle. Luke had been watching the enemy lines getting thinned out very quickly by his troops. He turned to his cavalry and ordered them to charge. Luke was pleased that his new cavalry commander was doing well despite being in command for only about 30 minutes. Her cavalry quickly overwhelmed the remaining enemy forces, rode to Riccall, and managed to capture all the enemy ships before they could escape. Now, all that had to be done was to mop up any opposing troops who had escaped the trap. The dragoons swept the village, going from room to room. Anyone they found who didn’t surrender immediately was cut down. After the town was cleared, the prisoners were rounded up and marched back toward York. There was work to do, and Luke’s troops were looking forward to watching these arrogant foreigners digging mass graves for all their dead and individual graves for all of Marion’s dead soldiers.

As Luke’s cavalry had swept the town and signaled that the coast was clear, Luke ordered the medical corps to work on saving as many of the wounded as possible. After that, Luke ordered the artillery to get ready to march because they had to get up north as fast as possible. He would only be sending part of them, though. Luke had reports that King Godwinson was approaching fast and didn’t know how the king would react to Marion. The last thing Luke wanted was to take any unnecessary chances. After Luke issued all the relevant orders, he rode to the marsh and called for Gabriella as he watched and listened. He called twice more before seeing the glint of glass and smiled as he rode over. Gabriella and her spotter stood up.

“You must be more careful about the sunlight and that scope, darling. I saw it glint in the sun, which gave you away.”

“Okay, Luke. I will be more careful from now on.”

“Oh, one more thing, Colonel, you two were never in this marsh, and if anyone asks, neither of you knows anything about shots coming from the marsh.”

“But...”

That was as far as Gabriella got before the look on Luke’s face told her to shut up and not argue. She quickly realized that Luke wanted to keep her abilities hidden for as long as possible. She and her spotter started to make their way back through the marsh while leaving as little evidence as possible.

As the prisoners dug mass graves, the wounded were cleared off the field and taken straight to the new hospital. Alice was very proud of her hospital as she should be. It was four stories tall and had the world’s first practical elevators. These were used to move patients, equipment, and supplies between the floors. All the windows were covered in two-pane glass windows, and the building even had central heating and a primitive but effective cooling system. Hardrada had been one of the wounded picked up and now was looking around in amazement at all the sights and sounds. He started protesting about waiting; after all, he was a king. Alice just happened to be walking through, so she dealt with him.

“What is all the complaining about?”

“I’m the King of Norway,” Hardrada hissed. “Why am I still waiting to have this bullet taken out of my leg?”

Alice leaned over and checked his tag.

“Let me explain something to you. I don’t give a fucking rat’s arse if you’re the King of Norway or the god damned fucking Pope. When you come in here, the severity of the wound determines the order in which you are worked on, and your wounds are not that serious. This is My hospital, and I make the rules here.”

With that, Alice continued on her rounds while Hardrada lay there stunned. Nobody had ever talked back to him. Finally, after hours of waiting, it was his turn to be operated on. He watched as he was taken into a spotless, well-lit room. Alice was the one to work on him. The only reason he knew it was her was that some of her red hair was sticking out from under the strange hat she was wearing. The operation started when a nurse poured a liquid over his wound, numbing it, and he was amazed at how good it felt. Alice then used a probe to find the bullet. The king had been lucky in that the bullet had missed the bone. In 20 minutes, Alice was done, and one of her nurses finished by stitching the wound closed and putting a dressing on it. Hardrada was taken to a recovery ward, where he could look around at all the other wounded men, all of whom were his. Along the walls, there were guards posted to keep the prisoners from getting any wild ideas. Before long, he felt tired and fell asleep.

In the field, Luke oversaw the 1st brigade, 1st division, and one battalion of dragoons preparing to head to the Lake District. A division had 12,000 soldiers in it, commanded by a major general. It had four brigades with 3,000 soldiers, each commanded by a brigadier general. One brigade was cavalry, and the division commander would assign cavalry wherever needed. The other three were primarily infantry. Each brigade had three regiments with 1,000 soldiers, each commanded by a colonel. They were then broken down into two 400-soldier battalions under a major and a 200-strong artillery company under a captain. Each battalion was broken into four companies of 100, each commanded by a captain. Each company had three platoons of 30 soldiers commanded by a lieutenant and a heavy weapons squad of 10 soldiers commanded by a sergeant. The heavy weapons squad had the crew-served weapons (i.e., mortars and machine guns when they became available). Each platoon had three squads of ten soldiers commanded by a sergeant. The cavalry had their artillery in the form of quick-firing 75mm guns that were light enough to keep up with the cavalry and, in emergencies, disassembled to be carried by horseback. So far, Luke had one whole division at his disposal and one brigade of what would eventually become the second division as soon as the soldiers came out of training. Luke knew the army would have to be reorganized once automatic weapons arrived.