Horton stepped forward, pushing past von Dantz. He had his rifle in his left hand, and was pointing his finger angrily at Anse.
“I’m warning you, Hatfield! We’re here to arrest a traitor. Dead or alive, it don’t matter to me at all. You’ve got ten seconds to get out of the way or-”
A shot was fired, by one of the garrison mercenaries. Anse never saw where it went. He didn’t think it was even aimed at anything. Just someone too nervous, in a situation that was too tense.
Immediately, a fusillade of shots rang out from the shuttered gun-maker shops. Four of the garrison soldiers fell, and several others were sent reeling.
Horton started to bring his rifle up to his shoulder. A bullet caught him in the ribs. He half-spun, dropping the rifle. His face turned toward Anse.
“Hey, what-” he started to say. Another bullet struck him in the jaw. There wasn’t much left of his face, by the time it fell into a snowdrift.
But Anse wasn’t paying attention to Horton, any longer. Von Dantz raised his pistol and fired at him. Astonishingly, the down-time weapon was accurate enough for the bullet to knock Anse’s cap right off his head. Anse was sure he’d-literally-felt the bullet parting his hair.
That was frightening. Anse sprawled into the snow, hurriedly bringing up his rifle for a prone shot. Once he got von Dantz in the sights, he saw that the German captain had drawn out another pistol.
Von Dantz fired again. The bullet grazed the back of Anse’s boot, and tore off the heel.
Jesus! Given the kind of guns he was using, von Dantz was turning out to be a goddam John Wesley Harding.
Then again, Harding got killed. With a modern rifle, at a range of less than fifty yards, Anse couldn’t possibly miss.
He fired.
He missed.
A garrison soldier standing just behind von Dantz stumbled backward, flinging aside his musket. He’d been struck in the shoulder by Anse’s shot.
Von Dantz was pulling out another pistol. If he’d been using a revolver instead of wheel-locks, Anse would have been dead already.
Settle down, you idiot!
He jacked another round into the chamber, and forced himself to draw a real bead instead of just jerking the trigger.
Von Dantz was bringing up the pistol. Anse fired.
This time, the bullet hit von Dantz squarely, right in the chest. He was dead before he hit the ground.
By now, the gunfire in the street was almost deafening. The garrison soldiers were grouped in the center, shooting back at the shops from whose windows they were being fired upon.
Anse glanced back at the still-open door to Blumroder’s shop. He decided he’d be safer lying prone in several inches of snow than trying to crawl back into the shop. The mercenaries were paying no attention to him, since he wasn’t moving and they were taking a murderous fire from the shops.
As inconspicuously as he could, he jacked another round into the chamber.
There was no lack of targets for him, of course. On the other hand . . .
Right now, the enemy was ignoring him. Most of them probably thought he was dead. If he fired, on the other hand, they would notice him-and lying in the open, right out on the street, he was a sitting duck. More precisely, a prone duck.
He didn’t think they were going to last much longer, anyway. Somewhere around a dozen of them had already been killed or wounded. Von Dantz and Horton had been idiots, leading their men straight into the street the way they had. The gunmakers and their apprentices and Jaeger were shooting from behind shelter-good shelter, too; the thick, sturdy walls of seventeenth-century German manufacturing shops-and they had an open field of fire. As battles went, it was completely one-sided.
So . . .
True, it was inglorious. Even ignominious. On the other hand, youth and its excess of testosterone were several decades behind him.
Anse laid his head down, and played dead. The situation wasn’t critical and he wasn’t Alvin York, anyway-as he’d just proved, by missing his first shot at von Dantz at point blank range.
Besides, he consoled himself, he’d read once that after the battle of New Orleans was over, several hundred “dead” British soldiers had risen from Chalmette Field. Most of them completely uninjured. Veteran soldiers all-elite soldiers, even-they’d quickly realized that their commanders had led them into a bloodbath that they didn’t have a chance of winning.
He was pretty sure the same thing had happened on just about every battlefield in history, at least since the invention of gunpowder.
Tradition, as it were. Inglorious as it might be.
He still felt like a damned fool.
* * *
Fortunately, it was all over within thirty seconds. The garrison soldiers broke, and began running away. Not slowing down any, either, as they neared the safety of the next street over. The gunmakers of Suhl were in a fine fury, and kept firing on them the whole way.
Anse peeked up. Then, rose.
Blumroder came out of the door, smiling.
“You are a brave man, Herr Hatfield. And what is better, a very sensible one.”
Anse gave him a look that was none too friendly. “I guess you’ve proved you’re brave enough, yourself. We’ll just have to see how sensible you are.”
Blumroder’s smile faded. Some, at least, if not enough to suit Anse.
A woman, followed by a man, came out of one of the shops further up the street, carrying a musket. She marched over to one of the corpses lying in the snow, aimed the musket, and fired. Brains that had already been spilled were scattered still further.
The man with her went to another corpse. Aimed, fired. A dead man died again.
That both men had already been dead wasn’t in question. In fact, it looked as if they’d each taken several bullets during the fighting. Those had already been the most shot-up corpses on the street.
“Hey!” said Anse. He didn’t approve of mutilating corpses, and if this got out of hand . . .
Blumroder put a hand on his arm. “It is a personal matter, Herr Hatfield. The people in that shop were looking for two men in particular. It seems they found them.”
“Oh.” After a moment, Anse shrugged. It was a pretty crude form of justice, but . . .
What the hell. If he didn’t feel any particular guilt over playing dead in the snow-which he didn’t-he had no business getting all huffy and puffy about proper judicial procedure. As long as it doesn’t get out of hand, at least.
The woman and the man, methodically and stoically, reloaded their weapons. Then, fired again.
“That’s enough!” he called out. “Genug!”
The couple raised their heads and looked at him. After a moment, the man nodded. The woman took a bit longer to make her decision. But she, too, turned and went back into their shop.