Chapter 201: The Alpine Fog

"How... what is holding that ice together?" Voss whispered. His eyes were wide.

The flawless trap had entirely failed. The five thousand screaming rebel mercenaries were sprinting across the exact center of the frozen lake. Their boots slammed against the fresh ice.

But instead of shattering and swallowing them into the freezing depths, the ice held firm.

"General!" Hans roared. He grabbed his mace with both hands. "They are crossing! They are already at the bottom of the hill!"

"Jaegers! Halt the retreat! Form the line! Prepare for volley fire!" Brandt shouted. He drew his mace and waved it wildly in the air. "Form up! Stand your ground!"

But it was too late. A sweeping shower of bolts rained down from the sky. They whistled over the heads of the charging rebels.

Several Jaegers screamed as the black bolts pierced their wool coats. The soldiers dropped into the bloody snow.

"We cannot hold them here!" Brandt yelled over the deafening noise. He ducked as a bolt shattered against a pine tree right next to his head. "They are right on top of us! If we engage in close combat now, they will slaughter us with their numbers!"

"So what is the brilliant plan now, General?!" Hans shouted. "I thought you said Baron von Reischach was a frog in a well!"

"The frog has really thick legs, alright?!" Voss barked back. His mind raced to find a way out of the disaster. He looked at his disorganized men. He looked at the sprawling wave of exiles closing the distance. If they stayed, they died.

"Run!" Voss screamed at the top of his lungs. "Forget the formation! Everyone run back to the clearing! Get to the traction engines!"

The Swabian army abandoned the snowy slope.

The elite Jaegers turned their backs on the enemy. They broke into a desperate sprint through the icy pass.

They left their dropped coal crates and empty supply buckets behind. They kicked up sprawling clouds of white powder as they ran for their lives.

"COWARDS! DO NOT LET THEM ESCAPE!" Baron von Reischach’s voice boomed from the back of the rebel charge. The old noble rode his heavy warhorse.

He whipped the reins to push the beast up the steep, snowy slope. "KILL THEM ALL!"

Voss, Hans, and Brandt ran at the very back of the Swabian crowd. They acted as the rear guard.

Every few seconds, Voss had to turn around and swing his mace to block a thrown spear or a flying bolt. The freezing wind burned their lungs. Their heavy boots slipped constantly on the treacherous ice.

"Keep moving!" Voss yelled. He grabbed a stumbling young Jaeger by the collar and threw him forward to keep him from being trampled.

Though the rebels had an immense advantage in numbers and momentum, a crucial detail of warfare prevented the Swabian army from being wiped out in the snow.

The Spanish vanguard wore heavy steel breastplates. They carried long, awkward wooden pikes and thick steel shields. Furthermore, Reischach’s Austrian loyalists wore thick winter furs that were still wet and frozen from falling into the lake the day before.

Only Baron von Reischach and a few of his top knights had warhorses. The rest of the rebel army was on foot.

Thus, the Swabian soldiers had a huge speed advantage. Their fitted charcoal wool uniforms were lightweight. The short iron rifles allowed them to sprint much faster than the bulky, exhausted mercenaries.

Slowly but surely, the four thousand Jaegers began to pull away from the screaming mob. They put precious distance between themselves and the Spanish pikes.

"I cannot breathe," Hans gasped. His chest heaved as he pushed through a thick cluster of snow-covered pine trees. "General, my lungs are going to burst! Are we almost there?!"

"I can smell the coal smoke!" Voss yelled back. He jumped over a fallen log. "Just a little further! Push your lazy legs!"

They burst out of the tree line. They sprinted down the final rocky slope. The wide, flat clearing stretched out before them.

Parked in the freezing snow were the heavy Swabian supply wagons and the three immense traction engines. Their iron boilers hissed softly in the cold air.

The Jaegers flooded onto the flat, snowy clearing. They panted heavily. They collapsed onto their knees in exhaustion.

"We made it!" Brandt gasped. He leaned heavily on his rifle as he looked at the steep mountain trail leading up the narrow gorge behind the engines. "General Voss! Give the order! Let us get the men up the trail and push further into the pass before they catch up!"

Voss ran halfway across the clearing. His boots sank into the wet, freezing snow. He looked at the traction engines. Then he looked back at the narrow, winding trail they had to climb.

"We cannot climb the trail," Voss said. His voice dropped into a dark, serious tone.

"What? General, are you out of your mind?! The pass is right there! We are standing next to it!" Hans yelled.

"Look at the rocks, Hans!" Voss pointed his mace at the narrow gorge connecting the clearing to the upper peaks. "The trail is only wide enough for two men to walk shoulder-to-shoulder! To squeeze four thousand panicked men up that mountain will take at least an hour! If we try to climb now, we will be stuck in a sprawling bottleneck on the rocks. Reischach will just shoot us in the back while we wait in line!"

"Then what do we do?!" Brandt asked.

"We stop running," Voss said calmly. He turned his back to the gorge and faced the tree line. "We fight."

"Brandt!" Voss commanded. "This is a flat, wide, perfect clearing! Form the lines! I want three ranks deep! Shoulder-to-shoulder! Load your weapons and fix your bayonets!"

The Jaegers did not hesitate. They formed a sweeping grey wall along the snowy clearing.

Just as the final soldier cocked the hammer on his rifle, the tree line exploded.

Thousands of screaming rebel mercenaries burst out from the snowy path. They poured onto the upper edge of the clearing. They looked like a wild, frightening wave of steel, fur, and pure rage.

Baron von Reischach rode out from the center of the mob. His warhorse stomped heavily in the snow.

He looked at Voss’s army. They stood with their backs just a few feet away from the steep, impassable rocks of the gorge.

Reischach lowered his broadsword. He let out a booming laugh that echoed over the roaring wind.

"Look at you!" Reischach laughed. He pointed a finger at the Swabian commander. "You ran all the way to the rocks like frightened children! There is nowhere left to run, Voss! The great Swabian army is pinned against the mountain! Are you going to fight us on the open snow? Hahahaha!"

The entire rebel army began to laugh with him. They banged their swords against their steel shields.

They outnumbered the Jaegers. The flat clearing offered no high ground or cover. To the old Austrian noble, this looked like the easiest slaughter in the world.

"He still does not understand," Voss whispered.

A slow smile spread across his face as he looked at the Spanish pikemen. They stood still on the open, flat snow without any cover whatsoever.

Voss slowly raised his mace high into the air. He locked eyes with the laughing Baron.

Up on the edge of the snowy path, Baron von Reischach finally stopped laughing.

The noble pulled hard on the reins of his warhorse. His eyebrows knit together in confusion. He looked at the Swabian soldiers standing on the flat, snowy clearing.

"They are not running!" Reischach bellowed.

He raised his broadsword and pointed it at the gray line of soldiers.

"Form the wall! Lock your shields! We march them into the rocks!"

The Spanish mercenaries in the front row slammed their heavy steel shields together. They overlapped the iron-rimmed edges to create a wall of metal.

The men behind them raised their shields over their heads. This protected the army from any falling projectiles.

By locking their shields together and marching forward in unison, the soldiers became a heavy battering ram. The men in the second and third rows pushed against the backs of the men in the front. They drove the entire mob forward like a solid wall of muscle and steel.

It was designed to push the enemy backward, crushing their bones and breaking their lines.

The rebel army began to march slowly across the flat clearing. Every time they took a step, five thousand men beat the flats of their swords against the back of their steel shields.

"Look at them," Hans muttered. He stood next to Voss and gripped his mace tightly. "Are you sure our bullets can punch through all that overlapping metal?"

"They can punch through the steel," Voss said. His eyes were locked on the slowly approaching shield wall. "But Reischach is being smart. He is moving them slowly to keep the wall tight. If they charged wildly like they did on the icy slope, there would be gaps. But right now? There are no gaps."

Voss knew he had to maximize his firepower. A flat clearing was the worst place for a shield wall to attack an army with rifles.

There were no trees to hide behind. There were no snowy ridges to use for cover. The mercenaries were wholly exposed in the open.

"Brandt! Form the three-rank firing line!" Voss commanded loudly.

"First rank, kneel in the snow!" Brandt roared. "Second rank, crouch slightly! Third rank, stand tall and brace!"

The front row dropped to one knee. They rested the wooden stocks of their Pattern-3 rifles against their shoulders.

The second row bent their knees. They aimed their iron barrels right over the heads of the first row. The third row stood straight, aiming over the second row.

Thus, a single, incredibly dense wall of four thousand iron barrels pointed directly at the advancing enemy. Every single gun had a perfectly clear line of sight.

"Pull the bolt! Load the brass! Close the breech!" Brandt chanted the familiar loading drill.

"They are getting close, General," Hans warned. He took a half-step backward.

"Wait," Voss whispered. He raised his mace high into the air.

The Spanish shield wall marched forward.

The faces of the furious mercenaries were barely seen through the tiny slits between their locked shields.

Reischach was riding behind the wall. He screamed at his men to keep their shields tight.

"Hold the line!" Brandt shouted to the kneeling Jaegers. Some of the young soldiers were sweating despite the freezing cold. Their fingers shook slightly on the metal triggers.

Fifty paces.

"Now!" Voss roared. He slashed his mace downward with all his strength. "FIRE!"

"FIRE!"

The entire clearing exploded.

Four thousand rifles discharged at the exact same fraction of a second.

The deafening thunder of the Swabian gunpowder drowned out the howling wind and the rhythmic beating of the Spanish shields.

A blinding flash of orange fire erupted from the Swabian line. It was instantly followed by a suffocating cloud of white sulfur smoke. The sweeping volley of conical bullets slammed into the rebel shield wall with the force of a hurricane.

The high-velocity lead punched right through the steel and thick leather. It tore into the flesh and bone of the men holding them.

Entire sections of the tight shield wall instantly collapsed. Hundreds of rebel mercenaries were thrown backward onto the snow, screaming in pure agony.

"Reload! Do not stop!" Voss yelled into the thick smoke. He coughed as the sulfur stung his lungs.

"Cycle the bolts! Fast, you lazy fools!" Brandt screamed. He kicked the snow to motivate the men.

The white smoke slowly began to clear in the freezing alpine breeze.

Voss squinted. He expected to see the entire rebel army broken and running back toward the trees.

But as the smoke lifted, Voss’s grin vanished.

"What the hell..." Hans whispered. His jaw dropped open.

The rebel army had taken sweeping casualties. Hundreds of men were lying dead or dying in the bloody snow. But the shield wall had not broken. It had quickly reformed. The men in the back stepped forward over the bodies of their dead brothers to fill the gaps.

And they were still moving forward.

As Voss looked closely at the front row of the newly formed shield wall, he realized why the immense volley had not stopped them...