Krenz just looked stubborn. He could do that superbly well, when he was of a mind. "I read it," he persisted.
"No, what you read was that in the regular artillery, they only use one or two riders on the near horses. Yes, fine, you could get around that, if you were assigned to something like a six-pounder or twelve-pounder battery. As bad a horseman as you are, no sergeant in his right mind wants you guiding a horse team. The manual's insistence that the gunners who aren't riding must stay on foot except under special circumstances like fast maneuvers is because they don't want lazy gunners riding on the limbers, like so many of them will do if the officers or sergeants aren't watching. That's because they're likely to get injured if the limber hits a hole or a rock and jostles them hard enough."
He might as well have been talking to a brick wall, from the expression on Krenz's face.
Thorsten sighed. "Still don't get it, do you? When we actually go out on a campaign-especially the one we're training for, where we have to keep up with the ironclads-you will be riding a horse. Everybody will. There's no way we could keep up otherwise."
Alas, when he wanted it to be, Eric's capacity for self-justification was an endless cornucopia.
"Oh, that's nonsense, Thorsten. I heard one of the up-timer sergeants in the infantry-not more than two weeks ago-saying that a properly conditioned man on foot can travel longer and faster than a horse over long distances. He said they even had some tribe of savages in their old country-'Apashoes,' or something like that-who could make a hundred miles a day on foot."
Thorsten silently cursed Paul David Willcocks. Though now in his mid-forties, with no excuse for the childish habit, the up-time sergeant who served the volunteer regiments as a special trainer had the incorrigible practice of regaling his soldiers with tales from his former universe, many of which Engler thought were probably what the up-timers called "tall tales." But whether true or not, Willcocks never seemed to give any thought at all to whether the stories were appropriate for a training sergeant to be blathering to his men.
"Apaches," he corrected. "Yes, I know, I've heard the story. Here's what else is true. Since you now seem besotted-and when did this magical transformation take place?-with proper military doctrine. Apaches were light infantry-as light as it gets-detached into small units. A dozen men, perhaps. They didn't have to worry about keeping hundreds of men moving on a single road, and they weren't carrying any equipment worth talking about. You, on the other hand, unless you used horses, would have to carry several hundred pounds of gear, powder and shot. You couldn't even pick up your share and take one step, much less outrun a horse. You couldn't outrun a tortoise. Even in the infantry, the average soldier in the regiments has to be able to tote fifty pounds on campaign."
Since Krenz was obviously still willing to argue, Thorsten had broken it off. "Never mind," he'd said, waving his hand. "Be as stupid as you want. But if you fall off your team horse a few weeks from now and get turned into sausage by the wheels of the limber and the wagon, don't claim I didn't warn you."
Now that the joyous day of I-told-you-so had finally come, Thorsten wasn't actually worried that Eric would fall off his mount. Given the white-knuckled way he was grasping the pommel, Krenz would probably manage to stay in the saddle even if he and his horse were both swept up by a tornado. In any event, Thorsten had made sure the least skilled horseman in his battery was riding the third of the near horses, the one closest to the limber. The "wheelers," as they were called-the other two on each side would be the "swing" and the "lead" horse-were the biggest and steadiest horses on each team. Even if Eric did fall off he'd manage to land on the limber instead of under it.
Of course, Engler knew he probably wouldn't be able to bask in the sunshine of just retribution for more than a few weeks. They were setting off on the expedition with six horses assigned to each gun or wagon, when four would be plenty and, in a pinch, the volley guns were so light they could be hauled by two. That was because it was inevitable that some of the horses would fall by the wayside as time went on. Lamed, ill, killed or wounded in action. So, sooner or later, Eric probably would be able to start walking or riding on the limber.
Captain Witty had told Thorsten that they could expect, at best, to lose one horse in ten over the course of the expedition-and that was assuming they didn't fight any major actions. That was the average for a good cavalry unit. In reality, Witty thought their losses would be closer to one horse in four. Most of the men in the volley gun batteries were only passable horsemen, and the price for their inexperience and clumsiness would mostly be paid by the horses themselves.
As it happened, Captain Carl Witty was thinking about the matter himself, that very moment. And his thoughts were every bit as acerbic as that of his master sergeant.
"Let's hope they get better as time goes by," he grumbled to his second-in-command.
Lieutenant Markus Reschly-"Mark," now, since he'd adopted the up-time abbreviation of his name-was a more cheerful man by nature than his commander. Smiling, he said, "Oh, they're bound to. Training exercises are one thing; a real campaign, quite a different matter. They'll learn."
"Yes, I know. But how many horses will they grind up while they do? Horses are not cheap."
From the blank look on the young lieutenant's face, it was clear as day that he'd never once thought about that aspect of the problem. That was a bit odd, actually. Had Reschly been one of the usual volunteers, Witty wouldn't have expected him to understand that whatever else war was, it was also an economic enterprise. But Reschly was one of the traditional sort of mercenaries, of whom there were plenty in the USE's new army, especially in the officer corps. Witty himself was another, from Switzerland.
Reschly came from the Moselle valley, a region that produced both horses and mercenaries. Plenty of the former and, if not as many as Switzerland, a fair number of the latter. Mercenaries usually understood the economics of war quite well, especially mercenary officers who had to bear a lot of the cost out of their own pockets. And Markus came from a traditional mercenary family, too.
On the other hand, Reschly was still very young. And although he was officially a "mercenary" it had become quite obvious that he'd used the family tradition, along with a decent amount of training in the skill of arms, to wrangle himself a position in the USE's Army for primarily ideological reasons. If most of the volunteers came from the German lands heavily influenced by the pestiferous Committees of Correspondence, the new USE Army was drawing enthusiasts from all over Europe.
Which was a damned nuisance, as far as Witty was concerned. Not even in the most ill-disciplined mercenary company he'd ever served in had he encountered such a disputatious lot of soldiery. True, the men maintained a tight discipline over themselves when it came to the usual problems of drunkenness and thievery. Much better than mercenaries would. But they were quite prepared to argue about almost anything else. Gloomily, Witty foresaw the day when these idiot "democrats," as they liked to style themselves, would insist on the right to vote whether or not to have a battle-or even a charge.
He consoled himself with the thought that the pay was as good as that of most armies in Europe, and there was that one great benefit on the side. Among the many peculiar ramifications of the up-timers' notion of "democracy" was that they considered it outrageous to expect soldiers-even officers-to pay for their own military equipment. That was to be provided by the state, it seemed.