The watchmen who formed Jena's constabulary trailed after Gretchen like minnows after a shark. The Chief of the Watch scurried at her side, trying to match her striding steps. His hands fluttered with protest.
"There must be an investigation!" he exclaimed. "An investigation!"
"Absolutely!" boomed Gretchen. "My husband will insist!" She smiled down at the short, portly Chief. "You remember him, perhaps? The large man on the motorcycle? With the shotgun?"
The Chief of the Watch had seen him, in fact. And he could guess-not that he wanted to-as to the meaning of the strange terms "motorcycle" and "shotgun."
"A very short investigation," he muttered. "Only a formality."
"I think not!" boomed Gretchen. "My husband will insist otherwise!"
Again, she smiled. "And I, of course, must obey his every wish."
Finally, Julie's face gained an expression. She blushed with embarrassment, hearing the cheers coming from below in thick German accents. Then, blushed deeper still. The American soldiers now climbing up the ridge were cheering themselves. Julie! Julie!
Frank managed to sigh and grin at the same time. "So, niece of mine. How does it feel-being cheered yourself, for once, instead of leading them?"
"Feels great," came the immediate response. Julie was now grinning herself. Then, catching sight of one of the faces coming up the slope, the grin faded.
"Oh, damn," she grumbled. "I was afraid of that. Chip's sulking again."
Frank looked away. "He's good at that. I've noticed."
Julie cast a suspicious glance at him. "Are you criticizing my boyfriend, Uncle Frank?"
"Me? God forbid. Nothing else, I've got too much sense to tell a young lady what kind of man she oughta latch onto."
The suspicion was replaced by a mischievous little gleam. "God forbid, my ass!" Then, Julie sighed. "Oh, hell. I'm beginning to think-I don't know. Maybe Chip's a little-I don't know. Too young for me. Too immature. What do you think, Uncle Frank?"
"Not for me to say," was the reply. "Not for me to say."
"God forbid," agreed Julie. "God forbid."
When Gretchen's husband arrived back at Jena, leading the triumphant American army on his motorcycle along with his friends, he did not demand a full investigation into the circumstances regarding the death of one Max Jungers at the hands of his wife.
Not at all. He more or less demanded, instead, that a fair piece of Jena be turned into rubble. Offered to do it himself, in fact, insofar as the very frightened Chief of the Watch could interpret his snarling phrases. And his friends, apparently, were offering to help.
So, when they arrived, did the Americans riding in the awesome APC. So did the Americans marching alongside the thousands of captured prisoners and their camp followers.
So did the Scots cavalry-with the sole quibble that all of Jena would look better, loose stone piled on charred beam.
The Chief of the Watch-all of the town's notables, in fact, who had gathered hastily by now-had no difficulty at all understanding the Scotsmen. The Scots accent was heavy, but their command of German was excellent. And whatever slight misunderstanding there might have been was promptly cleared up by the German contingent in the American army, who added their own cheerful recommendations. Most of which involved the sort of gruesome details which only hardened mercenaries can send tripping so lightly off the tongue.
Fortunately-danke Gott!-the American commander was a less irascible sort of man. Slightly.
"Bad," muttered Mike angrily. "Very bad!" He glared at the cluster of frightened notables. "One of our women molested-after not more than a few hours in this town? Just visiting old friends and distant relatives?"
He snarled. "Very bad!" Then, visibly restraining his fury: "But- No doubt the town itself was not responsible."
Heinrich interpreted. A small sea of nodding heads greeted that last sentence. Mike responded through clenched teeth.
First, to Heinrich: "Interpret precisely!"
Then, to the notables: "This scoundrel. Jungers, his name? He has friends? Accomplices?"
Eagerly, the notables offered up the sacrificial lambs. Names were named. Faces described. A particularly disreputable tavern mentioned-specified-described in detail-its location precisely depicted-offers of help to find the way The APC rumbled down narrow streets, followed by perhaps a hundred American soldiers. The large and well-armed husband stayed behind, surrounded by several hundred equally fierce-looking friends and comrades. Fortunately, he seemed preoccupied with comforting his timid, trembling, terribly upset wife. So, at least, the notables interpreted the beautiful young woman's shaking shoulders and heaving chest. The husband's broad smile, of course, was nothing more than a man trying to settle his wife's nerves.
By the time the APC reached its destination, the tavern had long since emptied. Not even the owner of the ramshackle stone building had stayed behind.
Wise choice. The Americans-in and out of the APC-put on a splendid display of firepower. The large crowd of Jena's citizens who watched were most impressed. And even more pleased. The tavern's reputation was well deserved.
So, the incredibly rapid rifle fire which shattered all the windows and pockmarked the soft stone walls was cheered exuberantly. The Claymore mine mounted on the APC's front armor which blew the heavy wooden door into splinters was greeted with gasping applause. And the piиce de rйsistance-the grenades lobbed into the interior which turned a tavern into so much wood-and-glass wreckage-produced squeals of glee and even, here and there, some dancing in the streets.
When it was all over, everyone's good mood had returned. The notables as much as the Americans. It was not surprising, therefore, that the town's high and mighty were quick to accept Mike's new offer.
Perhaps-in addition to trade and commerce Perhaps-and the value of exchanging knowledge and pooling printing facilities -and, of course, now that he thought about it, perhaps a closer joining of forces to protect everyone against the ravages of the coming winter -it occurred to the American leader -perhaps -that Jena could use a bit of help, patrolling the streets and keeping the ruffian element under control.
Wunderbar!
As they left town, one of Jena's now-fawning notables made so bold as to ask Mike a question. Heinrich interpreted again.
Mike looked up at the banner flying from the APC. It was a modification of the U.S. flag. The same thirteen red-and-white stripes. But the blue field in the corner contained only a single star. A small one, for the space, nestled in the upper left.
"We call ourselves the United States," he explained.
The notable conferred with Heinrich, making sure that he hadn't misunderstood the plural. Again, he asked a question.
"Oh, there's just one state. At the moment." Mike pointed to the single star. "That's Grantville, and the surrounding area."
He beamed down at the notable. "We expect to add others. I think Badenburg and its countryside will be joining us soon. Certainly hope so!" Again, he pointed to the flag.
"Then there will be two stars."
Again, the beaming smile. "You grasp the logic?"
And there he left the notable. Staring at the flag, as it passed slowly out of sight.
Chapter 40
When they got back to Grantville, the town was in an uproar. So was Badenburg and the entire surrounding area.
A huge army had just passed through, the day before. Gustav Adolf's Swedes, moving like the wind.
"He went right through Thuringia," Rebecca explained to Mike and Alex. She had been waiting for them outside the high school, where the emergency committee was about to go into session. "He captured Erfurt on October 2, without a fight. That city belongs to the elector of Mainz, you know."
"Not any longer, it doesn't sound like," mused Mike. He frowned worriedly. "That bothers me, being caught by surprise like that. A lot. I screwed up. We had most of the army out of town. If-"
Mackay interrupted. "And what else were you going to do, Michael? The mercenaries attacking Jena had to be dealt with. That was a given."
The Scotsman shook his head firmly. "This is what war is like, man. You think you can predict everything? Cover all the possible dangers? Ha! You'll be doing well if you're right half the time."
Alex stared to the south. His own face showed none of Mike's fretting and self-condemnation. Rather the opposite, in fact. "The king must have caught everyone by surprise," he said admiringly. "Not the custom, to maneuver that quickly. Especially after a great victory. Most armies would have spent months resting on their laurels."
Mike was still frowning. Mackay studied him for a moment, before adding softly: "You must be willing to face something squarely, Michael Stearns."
Mike's eyes came to him. Mackay continued. "You simply don't have enough men, Mike. And that will not change. Not soon enough, at least. You can certainly defeat a force much greater than yours, in any battle for which you are prepared. But-"
His hand swept in an arc. The broad gesture indicated not simply the hills in the immediate vicinity, but the entire region. Rolling, hilly, heavily wooded Thuringia. "You can not guard against everything. Especially an opponent which can move quickly. I have said this to you before, but I will repeat it. Do not think for a moment that these slow and clumsy tercios are all you will ever face. Or that all of your enemies will line up so neatly for your rifles. I wouldn't. The Finns wouldn't. The Croats wouldn't."
Mike sighed. "I know, Alex." He took a deep, slow breath. "There's too much of a tendency, for us, to think we can handle everything with our modern weapons. Or new ones we could design, if we devoted enough resources to it. But you're right. That road leads to folly."
He smiled whimsically. "Probably wouldn't work anyway. Be a good idea for us to keep Little Big Horn in mind. Not to mention Vietnam. Hardware will only get you so far."
Mackay's face was blank. The names meant nothing to him. But Rebecca nodded. She had been devouring books on American history for months.
The whimsy faded from Mike's face, along with the smile. His expression became almost bleak. "And even if it did succeed-"
"That would be even worse," stated Rebecca, completing the thought.
"Yes," said Mike firmly. "Win the battles and lose the war. This world does not need another set of conquistadores. I want to bring America into it-my America-not some English-speaking version of Prussia."
Mackay's face registered confusion. "Prussia? The Prussians aren't-"
Mike chuckled. "Not today, Alex, no. Sorriest Germans around, this day and age. But just stick around for a couple of hundred years." The bleakness in his face deepened. "If we don't succeed-you'll see all of Germany under a boot heel, soon enough."
"And worse," whispered Rebecca. Her father had never been able to finish Morris Roth's book on the Holocaust. She had.
Mike shook his head, as a horse shakes off flies. "Over my dead body," he muttered. "What we need is a political solution."
He gave Mackay a shrewd glance. "You'll be reporting to Gustav Adolf soon, I imagine."
The Scots officer nodded. "Yes. Not sure when, though. There's no point in galloping all over the countryside until the king sets up quarters somewhere. But soon, yes."
"Put in a good word for us, Alex, if you would. I'd just as soon not get the Swedes on our backs."
Mackay smiled. "I shall," he replied firmly. "The best word possible." Beneath his lips, his tongue ran over his teeth. "Got no choice," he chuckled. "You've got the only dentist I know of."
Ed Piazza emerged from the door. "The meeting's about to start," he announced.
Mackay turned away. Although he often attended those meetings, he would not on this occasion. The Americans, he knew, were coming to a turning point. Like any family, they needed a moment of privacy.
"Good luck," he said.
"What was that about?" asked Rebecca, as she and Mike walked down the corridor to the committee's conference room. "Is Alex having some problems with his teeth?"
She grimaced. Rebecca's own teeth had been in splendid condition, by the standards of the day. But she had still spent a few hours in that torture chamber. Luckily, she had moved on the matter very quickly-before the anesthetic was entirely gone.
"Poor man," she sympathized.
Mike laughed. "Poor man, my ass! There's nothing at all wrong with his teeth, Becky, other than cosmetics. It's his heart that's the problem."
Startled, she glanced up at him. Mike was grinning very broadly. "Oh, yes. The Scotsman is a smitten man. I know." He reached his arm around her waist and drew her close. "I recognize the symptoms."
It didn't take Rebecca more than two seconds to understand. She tucked her own arm around Mike's waist, and matched his grin. "Poor man," she concurred. "Mind you, I am a bit surprised. I thought he would be scared off. Once he saw past those magnificent knees."
Mike shook his head. "Not Alex. A very substantial fellow, he is."
"Do you think-?"
"Who knows? Her uncle thinks well of him. And even her father, it seems. But God forbid the girl should listen to the voice of wisdom and maturity."
Rebecca snorted. "What woman in her right mind would listen to such?" She smiled slyly. "This requires feminine sagacity."
They were at the door, and relinquished the embrace. Rebecca paused before entering. "I will speak to the lady," she announced.
Mike eyed her skeptically. "And say what? Your own words of wisdom?"
"Absurd," she replied. Idly, her fingers stroked her hair. "I said nothing of 'wisdom.' Only sagacity."
She swept through the door. Over her shoulder: "You would not understand, Michael. You do not read enough poetry."
"Not any," grumbled her fiancй. Thereby, quite unknowingly, proving her point.
Once he entered the room, Mike pulled up a chair and sat down at the conference table. Glancing around, he saw that the entire committee was already gathered except Frank Jackson.
"Frank will be along later," he explained. "Along with Gretchen Higgins. They're seeing to the new prisoners." He turned back to Rebecca, who had taken her usual seat next to Melissa. "I'd like to start the meeting with a report on the Swedish movements."
Rebecca clasped her hands on the table, as she always did when giving a report. Then:
"Gustav Adolf left a garrison in Erfurt-after stripping the town clean of all its hard currency-and marched straight south. He passed through Arnstadt on the seventh. Yesterday. He did not stop, however. According to reports from some of the hunters, he was driving his army very hard. By now they must be south of the Thuringenwald."
Rebecca's face was creased with worry. "The Swedes have stripped the entire central province of the bulk of its stored food. They paid for it, mind you. There was no looting." She laughed harshly. "Except for the archbishop's gold in Erfurt, of course, which is what they used to buy their provisions."
Willie Ray Hudson snorted. "Great! So everybody in central Thuringia's got a pocket full of money and no food. Except us, and Badenburg. We were apparently too far east for the Swedish quartermasters to reach in the time available."
"And winter's a-coming," muttered Nat Davis.
Mike held up his hand. "Later for that. I want to get filled in on the political situation first. Who did Gustav leave in charge of Thuringia?"
"Well, most of it officially belongs to the Saxe-Weimar brothers," said Rebecca. "But Bernard, according to reports, is staying with the Swedish army." Again, that harsh laugh. "It seems he has developed a bit of a military reputation and finds that profession more interesting than taking care of the people he supposedly rules."
"What a surprise," sneered Underwood. "Goddam noblemen!"
Mike grinned at him. "Hey, Quentin-it's okay by me. The fewer noblemen hanging around here the better, as far as I'm concerned."
Rebecca cleared her throat. "Wilhelm, on the other hand-he is the oldest-stayed behind. He has set up his headquarters in Weimar. But the word is that he will not be staying long. He is supposed to recruit eleven thousand men. Field Marshall Banйr is to raise an equivalent number in Erfurt. Added to the forces Banйr already has, the Swedes think that should be enough to go after Pappenheim while the king himself continues south after Tilly. Pappenheim is apparently running an independent operation now."
Mike did not press Rebecca for an explanation as to the sources of her information. He didn't need to. Her father and uncle were both experienced spies, and by now they had created a network throughout central Germany. The network was broader than that, actually. Working through the Jews scattered all over Europe, the two brothers had informants penetrating large parts of the entire Holy Roman Empire.
He tapped his fingers on the table. "It sounds as if Wilhelm will be leaving soon also."
Rebecca nodded. Mike's finger tapping turned into a decisive little rap. "So. The long and the short of it is this."
His eyes slowly scanned the room, while he held up his fingers one at a time.
"One. The war has now moved south of Thuringia, over to the other side of the Thuringenwald. Two. Official 'order' has been restored in Thuringia-and is about to be removed again. Three. Most noblemen in the area-the ones active in political life, anyway-are either gone or going. The Catholic ones will have fled and the Protestants are seeking fame and glory with the Swedes. Four. The economic situation in the province is going to be desperate in a few weeks. Five. On the other hand, the area is flush with hard currency."
He turned to Rebecca. "That about sums it up, I think." Again, she nodded.
Now, Mike slapped the table top with his palm. The hard, cracking sound matched his voice.
"Wonderful! Couldn't have asked for anything better!"
Everyone was staring at him. Mike laughed gaily. "And will you look at you?" he demanded. "Problems, problems-that's all you see."
He clenched his fist and held it half-raised. "Now's the time," he stated firmly. "While the cat's away, the mice will play. The war's come and gone until next spring, at the earliest. Probably next summer. The only thing that's going to matter between now and then-six to eight months-is who can keep this province's people alive. Alive-and by God well!"
Quentin Underwood was the first to see Mike's point. That was not surprising. As often as he and Underwood clashed in the committee meetings, Mike had found that his former mine manager usually had a better grasp of economic realities than anyone. Moreover, unlike most of the Americans, Quentin's hardheadedness did not lead him to flights of fancy concerning American military supremacy. As a young man serving aboard an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea, he had gotten a good lesson in the limits of hardware. The technological disparity between the aircraft which flew off that carrier and the men they bombed in the forests below had not been substantially different from that between Grantville's Americans and seventeenth-century Germans. Once before, in another universe, Quentin Underwood had seen machinery defeated by men. He intended to be on the other side of that equation, in this new world.
"You're right!" he exclaimed excitedly. "And the timing couldn't be better, from our point of view. We're set."
Underwood began counting on his own fingers. "First, we're out of the woods on the power plant. The coal's been coming in for the last week."
Bill Porter nodded. "Enough of it for the time being, anyway. Once that steam locomotive gets finished, we'll be flush. We should be free and clear until next summer, when critical parts might start going. And by then the new power plant should be ready to go on line."
Underwood continued. "Second, we've got more food coming in than we'll need ourselves." He chuckled dryly. "It's kind of amazing how many little farms there were tucked away all through these hills and woods. Every one of which is now eager to sell their produce, since we've brought some security and stability back into southeast Thuringia."
Willie Ray snorted. "What's so surprising about that? Think farmers are stupid?"
Quentin ignored the quip. "Three, the machine shops are roaring full blast. Three shifts, round the clock-seven days a week."
Nat David grinned. "Had to start hiring lots of German help. Take me awhile, training them to be modern machinists. But I'm only hiring men with metal-working experience and there's a lot of them in this area. Biggest problem I've got is a shortage of metal."
Ed Piazza picked up the thread. "Not much longer, Nat. Uriel Abrabanel just told me there's at least four suppliers ready and willing to start shipping in raw material-as soon as we can come up with the hard currency." He laughed dryly. "Credit's not real big in Germany, this time of the millennium."
"We'll fix that," growled Underwood. He glanced at Mike questioningly.
Mike smiled and turned a lazy eye on Rebecca. She straightened a little in her chair and said softly:
"To sum up, the economic situation looks very promising. With electrical power guaranteed and the town's production facilities in full operation, our only problem is the shortage of hard currency and the primitive state of banking and credit in Europe at this time. As to that-"
She sat up very straight. "My family has been discussing the matter-my very extended family-and has come to a decision. My uncle Uriel will stay in Badenburg, since he is well situated there. But several of my relatives will be arriving here soon, including three of my distant cousins. Their names are Samuel, Moses and Francisco. Samuel's father is a prominent banker in Italy. Moses' father is a financial adviser to Emperor Ferdinand in Vienna. And Francisco's grandfather is Don Joseph Nasi, who was formerly-"
Mike laughed. "The Ottoman Empire's effective foreign minister! And the nephew of Doсa Gracia Mendes, who transferred her business-Europe's largest banking and gem-trade concern-from Portugal to Turkey after the expulsion of the marranos. Did quite well, I understand."
Everyone except Rebecca was goggling at Mike. He shrugged. "I listen to my National Security Adviser, folks. That's why I spend so much time with her."
Rebecca clasped her hands demurely. "He is a good student, too." She smiled. "Very attentive."
A little chuckle went up. Rebecca's smile became wintry. "When the Spanish expelled the Jews, most of them went to Istanbul. The Ottomans welcomed them, you see, especially since many of the Jews who came were experts in science and technology. Gun manufacturing, among other things. Sultan Bayazid is reported to have said: 'You call Ferdinand a wise king, he who impoverishes his country and enriches our own?' "
"There's a lesson here," murmured Piazza.
Rebecca turned her eyes toward him. "There is, you understand, a condition."
Piazza snorted. "I should hope so! Citizenship, rights, liberties, the works."
"More," said Rebecca firmly. "We Jews must be allowed to break out of the economic ghetto in which Europe has forced us. Moneylenders can get rich, but they live on the sufferance of princes."
"Not a problem," growled Underwood. "Matter of fact, if any of your relatives has got some capital to put up-for which they'll get stock and a working partnership if they want it, me and Ollie Reardon and Greg Ferrara have been thinking about-"
Bill Porter looked alarmed. "Quentin, we need the coal-"
"Relax!" snapped Underwood. "I wouldn't be doing much of it myself. I've got relatives too, you know. My son-in-law's-"
Ferrara chimed in. "I wouldn't be doing much either, except giving some technical advice. But we really do need to start building a chemical plant. Sulfuric acid is about as basic for modern industry as steel"-for a moment, his face looked aggrieved-"even though most people don't realize it, and-"
Mike rapped the table with his knuckles, in first-class schoolmaster form. Melissa grinned. "Later!" he said. "Enough!"
The hubbub settled. "Christ, let you eager beavers get started on all your pet business schemes and we'll never get anywhere!" His smile took the sting out of the words. In truth, Mike favored most of those schemes. But he was also a firm believer in the old saw: First things first.
"The first thing-in fact, the key thing," he said forcefully, "is to resolve the political issue. I think it's time to call the constitutional convention-and then have another election. This 'temporary emergency committee' has gone as far as it can."
Silence fell on the room. Nat Davis puffed out his cheeks. "Are we ready for that?" he asked uncertainly. "I haven't really given it much thought, to be honest."
Melissa snorted. But the sarcastic remark about to issue from her lips was cut short by James Nichols.
"We're ready, Nat." James glanced at Melissa, Ed and Willie Ray. "Actually, the subcommittee finished drafting our proposal last week. Everything got put on hold because of the crisis in Jena. But-yeah, we're ready."
Hudson nodded. Piazza reached into his briefcase and began hauling out stapled sheets of paper. He gave Mike a questioning glance.
"Pass 'em around, Ed. It's time."
The ruckus started long before anyone got through the material. Mike was not surprised-talk about mixed blessings!-to see that Underwood led the charge.
"I don't like this crap!" snapped Quentin. "Not one damned bit! Why'd you waste your time on this silly shit about at-large elections? Why the hell aren't we-"
As always, Melissa charged into the fray as eagerly as Underwood, and just as bluntly. "Screw you, too! At-large elections are way better than geographic representation-in the lower house, at least."
Mike intervened before the usual Melissa-Quentin fracas could reach thermonuclear proportions. "Cut it out! Both of you!"
Sullen silence fell over the two disputants. Mike suppressed a sigh. Each in their own way, Quentin and Melissa were invaluable, but there were times…
He decided to start with Melissa, since even though he basically agreed with her it would help to keep the issue focused. Concrete, not abstract.
"Whether or not at-large as opposed to residential representation is better or worse in the general scheme of things is neither here nor there. This isn't a constitution for thirteen colonies scattered across half a continent. It's a constitution for one geographically small colony, about as concentrated and packed with people as Holland. Or Calcutta. And we're not in the same situation as the Founding Fathers were in 1789. We're still back in 1776. Our revolution's just starting."
So much for generalities. Now he shifted his attention to the real problem, which was Underwood. "Quentin, you're letting sentiment get in the way of practicality. I had pretty much the same reaction, when I first heard about this idea. But the more I thought about it, the better it sounded. We're in a completely fluid situation here. People move constantly from one place to the next. You know that as well as I do. How can you register somebody to vote in a refugee center? When-hopefully-they'll be living somewhere else in a few weeks. The big advantage to at-large elections-"
No good. Nat Davis and Greg Ferrara were barging in now, hollering on the side of what Mike called "sentiment." Mike's attempt to remain Washingtonian lasted about three minutes. Thereafter he was bellowing with the rest of them.
All except Rebecca, of course. She adopted what might be called a Shakespearean stance. Or Oxfordian. Such, at least, seemed the best interpretation of her occasional muttered remarks:
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow… last syllable of recorded time… sound and fury, signifying nothing…
"Are you all finished?" she demanded, perhaps half an hour later. The surliness in her tone-which, from Rebecca, was unheard of-brought everyone up short.
"Children!" she snapped. "Squabbling over your toys!"
She glared around the room. "What difference does it make? You have your Bill of Rights-no quarrel there. You have your citizenship requirements-no quarrel there either. You have your elections and all the other trappings of democracy-any arguments over that petty matter?"
Silence. "So what is it then?" In a little singsong: "'I think we should register people at-large. I think we should register them by residence.'" She took a deep breath. Then:
"Who gives a shit?"
Dead silence. Rebecca never used that kind of "Ha! As I said-children."
At that moment, the door opened and Frank Jackson entered the room. Behind him came Gretchen.
Rebecca pointed dramatically at the new arrivals.
"Ask them!" she commanded. "Go ahead!"
After the issue was explained, Frank spoke first. "Don't much care," he said, shrugging. "Six of one, half dozen of the other. So I figure since Mike'll be running the show-he's got my vote anyway-let him have what he wants."
Gretchen was terser still. "Vat he says," she stated, pointing at Frank.
Gretchen and Frank's remarks, combined with Rebecca's profanity, had produced a sharp break in the room's tension. The members of the committee stared at each other, for a moment. Then, collectively, they heaved a sigh and relaxed.
Mike cleared his throat. "Look, I'm not trying to make pronouncements about abstract political principles. I'm just trying to give us a political system that does the best job for our current needs. We can always hold another constitutional convention later, when circumstances change. Remember what I said. We're at the equivalent of 1776, not 1789. The Constitution which our old United States adopted came out of years of experience and discussion. After the revolution, not at the start of it. So let's give ourselves the same breathing room. For now, I want to keep our eyes focused on the struggle ahead of us. Today. Right now."
Mike nodded toward Gretchen. At Frank's quiet insistence, the young German woman had taken a seat at the table. "The reason I asked Gretchen to sit in-which I plan on making a permanent thing, by the way-is because later on in the meeting I want you all to hear her report. As far as I'm concerned, the work that Gretchen's started is going to be a lot more important, in the long run, than any victories we win on a battlefield. Or whether we register people to vote at-large or by residence."
He almost laughed, seeing the simultaneous looks of discomfort which came over the faces of Melissa and Quentin. Each in their different ways, both people were a bit aghast at the way Mike and Rebecca were shaping Melissa's original proposal. Melissa was upset because practice was proving to be a lot messier than theory. And, she already understood, was going to be a lot bloodier. Her semiromantic idealism about the "underground" was now in the firm grip of a woman who had no romanticism about it at all. Just a determination to win, driven by an iron will.
Quentin, of course, had never been fond of the theory in the first place. He found himself in the peculiar position of helping to lead a revolution-a task for which, temperamentally, he had no sympathy at all. By nature and habit, Quentin Underwood was a man of the establishment.
Mike turned his eyes upon him. Quentin and Melissa formed the poles of the committee. Both of them were often unhappy with the way Mike drove things forward. But Melissa's support, at least for the moment, was a given. If nothing else, she had no alternative. Quentin, on the other hand Underwood heaved a sigh. "Oh, hell. All right, Mike. I'll go along with at-large elections, much as it rubs me the wrong way."
The victory was only half won. Mike gave Underwood his own sharp eye. "Not good enough, Quentin. Not good enough by half. 'Going along' is one thing. Standing up and being counted is another. We've already decided to call for new elections for delegates to a constitutional convention, since that voice-vote 'election' a few days after the Ring of Fire was too casual and too far back. You're bound to be elected one of those delegates, Quentin. But how are you going to run?" Mike pointed to the proposed constitution in front of him. "Based on that platform? Or someone else's?"
He didn't bother to specify the "someone else." There was no need.
Underwood returned Mike's stare with his own. Everyone else in the room found themselves holding their breath. They had reached a decisive moment, they suddenly realized, without anyone other than Mike-and maybe Rebecca-seeing it coming. For months, the group of people in that room had worked together as a team. But In the universe they had left behind, Quentin Underwood-capable, narrow-minded, intelligent, stubborn, energetic, hard-driving manager that he was-would have been a natural ally of John Simpson. Establishment. Tory through and through. Would he break ranks now?
"Cut it out, Mike," growled Underwood. "Do I look like an idiot? If Simpson was running this show, we'd have been dead by now."
Suddenly, he grinned. That cheerful expression was not seen often on Quentin's face.
"So. You thought up a name yet?"
Mike's face was blank. Quentin's grin widened. "For our political party, dope. Gotta have one, if you want to be president of a revolution-in-progress. None of that above-the-fray Washington business for you, young man!"
Blank.
"What a genius," chuckled Underwood. "Leave it to a UMWA mi-li-tant." The chuckle grew into a soft laugh. "This calls for managerial skills. I think we oughta call ourselves the Fourth of July Party."
"Fourth of July Movement," came Melissa's immediate riposte.
And that, of course, startled another wrangle. But Rebecca wasn't reduced to quoting verses. The argument was sharp, short-and ended in an overwhelming victory. Everything else against Melissa.
Fourth of July Party it was. The announcement was made the following morning, along with the declaration that the constitutional convention was to go into session.
Simpson protested immediately, even though he had been calling for the convention for weeks. "To bridle the Stearns military dictatorship," as he had often put it.
No matter. The iron heel of democracy was on Grantville's neck. The victim of that tyranny reacted as could be expected.
Politicking! Whoopee!
Chapter 41
"Americans ae a daft breed," stated Lennox. Firmly, he drained his mug; and, just as firmly, set it down on the table. "No daft enough, howe'er, t'keep brewin' they sorry excuse f'r beer. So I will make allowances."
The man sitting across from him at the large table, Moses Abrabanel, ignored the remarks. He was gazing about the main room of the recently opened and jampacked Thuringen Gardens. He seemed in a bit of a daze. So did the man sitting next to him, his distant cousin Samuel. For all their relative youth-both men were still short of thirty-they were experienced negotiators and men of affairs, accustomed to navigating the corridors of power in Vienna and Italy. At the moment, however, they seemed like country rubes.
Smiling, Lennox glanced to his left. Balthazar returned the smile with one of his own. Clearly enough, the two "old America hands" were enjoying the discomfiture of the newcomers. Moses and Samuel had arrived only a few days earlier, and were still in a state of semi-shock.
Some of that was caused by their own folk. The small number of Jews who had settled in Grantville over the past months had acclimatized with a vengeance. To a degree, that was expected. The Jews were all Sephardim who, unlike the Ashkenazim of eastern Europe, had a long tradition of cosmopolitanism. The saw "When in Rome…" might have been invented by them.
Still It was hard to know what startled Samuel and Moses the most. Perhaps the open manner in which Grantville's practicing Jews were overseeing the construction of their new synagogue. The temple was being built in the rehabilitated shell of an abandoned building right in the middle of town. Perhaps. But The night before, Michael Stearns had spent hours in Balthazar's living room, engaged in a frank and freewheeling discussion with the two Abrabanel representatives as well as Balthazar himself. This, of course, was as it should be. But Rebecca had spent the hours with them-and participated just as fully as anyone else.
So much was bad enough. Then! When the discussion was finally ended, Rebecca's father retired for the night-with his two young male relatives firmly in tow. Rebecca, on the other hand, had remained behind.
Unchaperoned? Shocking! Her father permits this? And a gentile! Shocking!
Remembering the expressions on his relatives' faces, Balthazar hastily drained his own mug-more to quench his outright laughter than his thirst. Moses and Samuel would have been considerably more shocked, he knew, if they had wandered into the living room a few minutes later. They would have found Rebecca planted in Michael's lap, engaging in a most unseemly form of American behavior. For all his own cosmopolitanism, Balthazar himself had been shocked, the first time he accidentally stumbled across his daughter engaged in that particular practice. He had not intervened, although he did speak to Rebecca the next day. But she had defended herself vigorously and, under the circumstances, Balthazar had let the matter pass. He allowed that the American term for it had a certain rough charm. "Necking," they called it.
But most of Moses and Samuel's discomfiture was caused by the Americans themselves.
First and foremost, of course, was the manner of American female dress. Much of which was prominently displayed at this very moment in the Thuringen Gardens.
Samuel was trying not to ogle a young woman standing at the bar nearby. The woman was exchanging words with Rebecca, a discussion which seemed to amuse both of them. Given the shapeliness of her figure, brazenly displayed in tight-fitting blouse and pants, the task was clearly straining the young man's will.
Lennox came to the rescue, in a manner of speaking. "Nae that one, laddie," he said, shaking his head in solemn reproof.
Flushing, Samuel looked away. "She is married? Engaged?"
"Nayther, at t'moment." There was an interruption, as one of the barmaids arrived and plunked a pitcher of beer on the table. "On the house," she said in thickly accented English. "Compliments of the campaign." Then she was off, plowing through the mob. The woman was stout and well past her youth. Like most of the barmaids at the Thuringen Gardens, she had been hired for her tenacity and determination as well as her experience. She was a former tavern-keeper herself, accustomed to maneuvering through rowdy throngs-and glad to do it again, now that she was earning more money than she'd ever dreamed of.
"At t'moment," repeated Lennox. He gave the young woman in question a brief inspection. "Th'lass 'as risen soom in status lately, as it 'appens, an' her former young man took it puirly. So 'e was unceremoniously given t'boot."
He saw Rebecca give the woman a little nudge with her elbow, after glancing at the door. Smiling thinly, Lennox turned away and refilled all the mugs. "Bu' I daresay there'll be another along soon." His eye caught motion, heading toward him. "An' speak o' t'devil."
Mackay pulled up a chair next to Samuel and dropped into it. He seemed exhausted.
"Beer?" asked Lennox, pushing a mug toward him.
"Yes." The word was almost hissed. "Please!" Alex was having a bit of difficulty talking. His mouth seemed stiff. But not so stiff that he wasn't able to drain the mug at one quaff. Wordlessly, he extended it for a refill. Lennox obliged, and the refill went the way of its mate.
Mackay lowered the mug. A slight shudder rippled his shoulders. "There's a man who'll never lack for work," he commented grimly. "Worse comes to worst, the Inquisition would treasure his talents."
Lennox grunted. "Bad again, eh?" Mackay shrugged. Lennox shook his head. "Madness, what men will put theyselves through. D'ye think 'tis worth it, lad?"
"Do find another chair, would you?" murmured Balthazar to Samuel. "I think the young lady is coming for a visit."
Lennox turned his head. Sure enough. Julie Sims was bouncing over with her inimitable stride. He was amused to spot Rebecca moving away through the crowd. Like a snake in the grass, having made her strike. Treacherous Eve!
"Hi, Alex!" Julie called out. Samuel hastily arose and offered her his chair. Smiling, she accepted, while Samuel went in search of another.
The smile, transferred to Mackay, became very wide. "Daddy tells me you've been coming to see him," she said, without preamble. "So lemme have a look."
After a moment's hesitation, Mackay open his mouth. Slightly. Julie shook her head firmly. "Come on, Alex. Show me."
Wider. The head shaking continued. Wider. Continued. Alex sighed. Gaped.
Julie half rose and inspected his teeth from close range. Nothing casual about that examination, either, as you might expect from a dentist's daughter.
She sat back down. "Looking good," she announced. The smile thinned, and the amusement in her eyes was replaced by something very warm. "That must hurt an awful lot," she said softly. The statement was not one of commiseration, however. It was more in the way of an assessment. The look which accompanied the words seemed to belong to someone much older than eighteen.
"It's crowded in here," she announced abruptly. "Would you like to take a walk?"
"Yes," replied Alex. "I would."
After they were gone, Moses said tentatively: "She seems a bit on the bold side."
Lennox snorted. "She's got more counselors an' advisers th'n fuckin' Emperor Ferd'nand hisself. No tha' she needs 'em." He cocked an eye at Moses; there seemed to be a twinkle there. "Ye'd be bold too, lad, if ye c'ld drop a man at four hundred paces wit' ae single shot." He sipped on his beer contemplatively. "Which, as it 'appens, I saw 'er do not so long ago. 'Bout a doozen times."
And there, of course, was another source of amazement. Neither Moses nor Samuel was personally familiar with firearms. Few Jews were, in that day and age. By law, most realms which tolerated Jews also forbade them the practice of carrying arms. But they were quite familiar with gun-handling men. Moses and Samuel had each been chosen for this mission because of their experience with mercenary armies, as well as their command of English. It had not taken them more than a few days, after arriving in Grantville, to drastically revise the far-flung Abrabanel family's initial estimation of American military capability.
Revised-up. Way up. Moses and Samuel soon realized that the striking power of the Americans, dependent as it was on their dazzling motor vehicles, was somewhat limited in range. But anywhere within reach of the rapidly expanding network of roads surrounding Grantville, they had little doubt that the Americans could shatter any but Europe's largest armies.
True, thought Samuel and Moses, the Americans remained vulnerable to cavalry raids. Neither the imperial Croats nor the king of Sweden's Finns would collide head-on with American firepower. But raids are not conquest. Should the Abrabanel family make the decision to-here, another peculiar American term, invest-in Grantville, their fortune would be secure enough.
"Deadly faeries," murmured Lennox. He started to add something, but was interrupted by a shout coming from the platform at the other end of the huge room. The platform was designed for musicians, but today it had been taken over by the political campaign which was hosting the festivities.
The Fourth of July Party was about to start its first rally. Mike Stearns was climbing onto the platform and advancing toward the microphone.
And that, of course, was the principal source of the newly arrived cousins' amazement. Again, Lennox and Balthazar exchanged the knowing glance. Old America hands.
Lennox refilled all the mugs. "Brace yeselves, lads. Ye've never seen ae folk so enchanted wit' speeches."
He settled back in his chair. "Ae daft breed."
Chapter 42
Mike started his speech by going straight to the point.
"There's only one issue in this campaign. Forget all the blather about at-large election. And why is Simpson so worked up about what he calls the 'principle' of residential election, anyway? Back in the old days, what with his globe-trotting and his villa in Spain and his penthouse in London, I'm sure he never cast anything except absentee ballots."
The large crowd in the Gardens laughed. Mike waved his hand, as if brushing aside an insect.
"But that's all a red herring. The only thing Simpson really cares about is the same thing I care about-the franchise." Again, he made that brushing motion with his hand. "Oh, sure, there's other stuff. Lots of it. Our refugee policy, our economic policy, our foreign policy-you name it, and Simpson and I are on opposite ends. But all that's for later. This election is for delegates to the constitutional convention. The convention won't be deciding matters of policy. It will settle something far more important, which is simple. Who decides in the first place? Whatever policy is implemented, by whatever person or party-who gets to decide which person or party holds office? That's the franchise, and the franchise is ultimate power. And that's the issue. The only issue."
Mike turned from the microphone and glanced at Rebecca, standing toward one side of the stage. She came forward, holding two documents in her hand, and passed them to Mike.
The first document which Mike held up was a few pages, stapled together.
"This is our proposed constitution." He nodded toward a group sitting at a nearby table. "Ed, Melissa, James and Willie Ray drew it up, and the emergency committee as a whole approved it."
A call went up from one of the tables in the back. "Underwood, too?"
Mike nodded. "Yes. Quentin's running for delegate based on this proposal."
A little murmur went up from the crowd. More than a little, actually. The news of Underwood's allegiance was significant, and everyone knew it. In times past, as manager of the largest working mine in the area, Quentin had been the proverbial "big man in town." The biggest, in truth. Unlike many of the town's businessmen, Underwood was not an independent proprietor. But his actual power and influence had been far greater. No locally owned small business in Grantville had had anything like the payroll of the mine, nor the purchasing power of its manager.
Some of the UMWA members in the tavern were not exactly thrilled by the news. They were more accustomed to seeing Underwood on the other side of a picket line. But none of them were stupid, and all of them were accustomed to thinking in tactical terms. First things first. Better the manager-home-grown boy, comes down to it-than that stinking out-of-town miserable CEO son of a-
Harry Lefferts summed it up: "Bet Simpson's dick turned into a pickle when he heard that."
His packed table erupted in laughter. "That leaves him all the little old ladies and the used car dealers." More laughter. "Oh, yeah-I forgot. I hear the temperance people are backing him one hundred percent, too." Uproarious laughter now. The town's alcohol consumption, never low, had reached epic proportions with the massive influx of German refugees. "Temperance," for seventeenth-century Germans, meant no beer with breakfast.
On the stage, Mike was continuing. He held up the other document Rebecca had given him. It constituted a very thick bundle.
"And these are the amendments demanded by Simpson and his crowd." His expression exuded sarcasm. "If you can use the word 'amendments' to refer to something four times longer than what they're supposedly amending. Their delegates are running on this proposal-because it is a different constitution altogether. You want to know what it is? Really? It's a Jim Crow constitution, that's what."
He began thumbing through the sheets and reading portions of the amendments. "'Absolute command of English, ascertained by duly appointed election boards… includes satisfactory literacy, ascertained by the same boards.'" Mike scanned down; chuckled. "This one's my favorite: 'aspirants for voting rights must demonstrate a sound knowledge of American history, to the satisfaction-'"
He dropped the sheets onto the floor, as if they were unclean. "I'm sure I couldn't pass those tests-not given by the kind of 'boards' Simpson has in mind. Jim Crow boards, that's all they'd be." He grinned. "I imagine they'd even flunk Rebecca."
"Yeah?" demanded Lefferts in a booming voice. The young miner rose-well, staggered-to his feet. "Put Simpson on Becky's talk show then! Let's all watch her clean his fucking smartass clock!"
The tavern erupted with laughter and applause. For weeks, Rebecca's thrice-weekly roundtable discussion had been the most popular of all the TV shows. Hands down.
"She offered!" came a woman's voice. The crowd craned their necks. At a table near the side, Janice Ambler stood up. "She offered-eight times," repeated the TV station's manager. "Simpson turned her down."
On the side of the stage, Rebecca was hanging her head in embarrassment. Then, hearing the loud cheer which went up in the tavern-and continued, and continued-she force herself to raise it. She was learning, slowly, not to assume an automatic pose of modesty when her prodigious intellect was publicly praised. But she was still unaccustomed to such praise, after all these months. So she was unable to control the flush in her cheeks. Fortunately, with her dark complexion, the involuntarily reaction went largely unnoticed.
Lennox spotted it, of course, as did Rebecca's relatives. Her father sipped his beer complacently. Lennox grunted. "Did I mention they was daft? Praisin' female brains in pooblic!" He guzzled his own beer. " 'T'will all end badly-mark my words."
Mike was giving a peroration now, but Lennox's words drove over it at his own table. "Ye can ignore t'is portion o' t'speech, lads. 'Tis a lot o' silly business 'boot t'grand tradition o' West Virginians an' how they seceded from a sorry lot o' aristocratic secessionists when t'slave-owning bastids attempted to undermine t'will o' America's 'onest an' stalwart yeomanry-"
His summary made no more sense to the Jewish diplomats at the table than what they could grasp of Mike's own speech. But if they missed the specifics of the thing, they did not fail to grasp the essence of it.
"The man is serious about this," muttered Moses. His eyes roamed the huge room, scanning the crowd packed everywhere. For all their easy intermingling, Moses could easily distinguish the Americans from the Germans, and both from the Scots. Others were unknown to him. A small party of men at one table, acting very ill at ease, he found impossible to place.
"Mennonites," whispered Balthazar. "A few hundred of them arrived just two weeks ago. The Americans gave them a grant of unused land in the foothills. Those are their elders."
"Deadly serious," stated Lennox. He wiped beer from his lips. The gesture carried an unmistakable aura of satisfaction. "T'man's daft, lads, but make no mistake 'boot one t'ing. He is a faery, right an' true."
"Will he win this contest?" asked Samuel.
Lennox gave him a cold gaze. "Didna ye hear me? A faery, I said."
At the same moment, if in a different way, Underwood and Henry Dreeson had come to the same conclusion.
Leaving the Chamber of Commerce meeting, Underwood remarked: "That went better than I'd expected."
Dreeson smiled. "Not me, Quentin."
The former-and-still mine manager eyed him skeptically. "I know that bunch, Henry. They're about as conservative as dinosaurs. Hell, they even make me look like a wild-eyed radical."
The town's mayor shook his head. "That's not fair, Quentin. Dinosaurs are extinct, and that's one thing those boys don't intend to be."
They came out onto the street, and took a moment to button up their jackets. November had come in chillier than they were accustomed to.
Dreeson looked up and down the street. "Look at it, Quentin. Notice anything different?"
"Sure! The street's packed with people. Business is booming." Underwood glanced up at the row of old, multistory brick buildings lining both sides of Grantville's small downtown "main drag."
"I can remember when half of those buildings were vacant," he mused. But the statement was accompanied by a scowl. "Still-the place is a lot rowdier, too. Dan and his deputies are really earning their keep now. He told me the other day he's starting to feel like Wyatt Earp or Bat Masterson, trying to keep a Wild West boom town under control."
But Dreeson's eyes were elsewhere. He was watching a small mob of children romping through the street. With only an occasional bus coming through, Grantville's streets had become pedestrian avenues.
"I was thinking about the kids," he said softly. "It broke my heart, Quentin. All those years, in this town I was born in, grew up in, and love so much. Plan to die in. Seeing so many of the young people leave, like they do-did-all over Appalachia."
The elderly mayor drew in a deep breath. The cold autumn air seemed to invigorate him. "Damn and blast Simpson and all his Cassandra screeching." Dreeson nodded back toward the building they had just emerged from. "Sure, they're nervous. Nervous as hell. But they'll back us up. Business is booming, even if it is crude. And the kids are back. In droves."
Two other people, walking down a different street, were also finding the chill air invigorating. Or, perhaps, it was simply their own company.
"It won't be easy, Alex," said Julie. She stopped at a corner and turned to him. Her hands were tucked into the pockets of the jacket she had put on as they left the tavern. Julie's expression was severe, in the excessive manner of a girl trying to be a mature woman. "I don't need another twitchy boyfriend."
The Scotsman's freckled face was twisted by a wry smile. "I trust you'll allow me the occasional lapse?"
Taking Julie's chuckle for an affirmative, the smile became much less wry. "I'm not a boy, Julie, despite my looks. I've seen more ruin and destruction in my life than I care to think about. I think it gives a man-me, at least-a certain perspective."
The smile vanished, replaced by his own excessively severe expression. "For my part, you must understand that I am sworn to the service of the king of Sweden. No matter what you may have heard about mercenaries, I take that oath seriously. So-"
Julie took her right hand out of the pocket and placed fingertips on his lips. " 'Nough. I understand. You don't need a fretting female. You'll be gone a lot, and may never come back."
He took her hand in his own and kissed the fingertips. Then, taking them gently away: "Not willingly. But mine is a risky profession. No way around that."
They set off again, now walking hand in hand. Julie's steps, as always, had a certain bounce to them. More than usual, perhaps.
"You'll allow me the occasional lapse?" she asked.
Her first lapse came less than two minutes later.
"Tomorrow?" she exclaimed.
Mackay shook his head. The expression combined regret, apology-and stubbornness.
"I must, Julie. I was in Jena when the king passed through Thuringia, so I was unable to report. I can delay no longer. Gustav Adolf has established a temporary headquarters in Wьrzburg. But I don't know how long he'll be there. He's moving very fast, while the imperialists are still off balance. So I must be off-"
"Tomorrow!" she wailed.
If the horde of children who burst around the corner and swarmed past them some time later thought there was anything odd about two people embracing in public, they gave no sign of it.
Probably not. They saw a lot of that, these days.
Chapter 43
November was a whirlwind.
The first storm of winter, when it hit, seemed but a minor distraction. No one in Grantville or the surrounding area was worried about surviving the winter. Not any longer. Even with the influx of new prisoners-turned-immigrants from the battle at Jena, there was more than enough food and shelter.
"Shelter," of course, was often crude. The area surrounding the power plant had become a small town in its own right. The power plant's steam provided a ready source of heat, which was piped through a crazy quilt of hastily erected log cabins so closely packed together that they constituted a seventeenth-century version of a housing project. But, for all its primitive nature, the housing would keep people alive during the winter. And the crowded conditions provided another incentive-not that Germans of the time needed one-to quickly seek work which could provide the wherewithal to move into better quarters.
The problem, actually, was more a shortage of good housing than the wages to pay for it. Grantville had become a classic boom town. The coal mine was running full blast by now, using hordes of pick-and-shovel miners in place of the absent modern equipment. So were all the established industries, especially the machine shops. Even the school's technical training center had become a production facility-and the students, most of whom were now German youngsters, learned their trades all the quicker for it.
New businesses and industries were springing up like mushrooms. Most of them were of a traditional nature. Construction, of course, occupied pride of place. But the Thuringen Gardens soon had competitors, and lots of them, even if it was still the largest tavern in town.
Food, in the end, turned out to be much less of a problem than Mike and his people had feared. In addition to the grain stocked up during the fall, two new sources of provender had turned up.
The first was trade. In the mysterious way that these things happen, coursing through the consciousness of a nation's masses far below the notice of its political and military overlords, word had spread throughout Germany. There was a place…
A market for food, textiles, metal, minerals. Almost anything, it seemed. Paid for with hard currency-gold and silver-if you so desired. Or, if you were smarter, with wondrous new products. Fine metalwork; strange, silky garments; most of all, ingenious toys and dolls and devices made of some substance called "plastic." Luxury goods! Grantville's pharmacies and knicknack stores, oddly enough, proved to be the town's biggest trade asset. In weeks, they unloaded half-useless toys and gadgets which had cluttered the shelves for months.
Some of the German traders-the smartest ones-moved their base of operations to Grantville. And found, soon enough, that investing in manufacture was even more profitable than trade. The way was led by Georg Kleinschmidt, the merchant who brought in the first shipment of nails and spikes. Seeing the massive amount of wood construction going up, he cheerfully abandoned trade and sank his new small fortune into building a nail factory. His partner was Keith Trumble, an American car dealer. The American, realizing that his former business was a lost cause, provided his offices and small showroom as the facilities. While his fellow car dealers moaned and groaned, and flocked-small flock-to Simpson's campaign rallies, Trumble greeted the new reality with good cheer. Making nails was harder work, true; and dirtier. But at least he didn't have to tell lies anymore, or dicker with his customers. There was a line at the door every morning.
The other source of food brought pure joy to West Virginians. Fall was deer hunting season. But in seventeenth-century Thuringia A license? What is that?
Limits? None. Except, of course, that it is strictly forbidden to hunt on land owned by the aristocracy, which comprises most of the forests and all Fuck the aristocracy. They don't like it, let 'em try to arrest us.
The game in the Thuringenwald was plentiful. And the deer were quite unaccustomed to rifles which could hit a target at several hundred yards.
Julie Sims alone brought in enough venison to feed hundreds. But that feat-in her eyes, at least-was eclipsed by her new boyfriend's. The day after Alex returned from Wьrzburg, Julie took him hunting. She carried her beloved Remington.308, but Alex satisfied himself with a double-barreled shotgun loaded with slugs.
Julie scoffed at his choice of weapons. But Mackay was not fazed. He had no chance of equaling her marksmanship, anyway. And, truth to tell, he was not concerned with deer. Mackay, unlike Julie, was familiar with the forests of his time. He brought the shotgun along in case When the boar charged out of a thicket, Julie stood her ground. But she fumbled, trying to bring the long-range rifle to bear. No matter. Mackay dropped it at five yards-bang bang-cool as could be. Julie didn't stop talking about it for weeks.
Her bragging precipitated the first duel in Grantville's modern history. Her former boyfriend, Chip, still sulking and nursing his romantic wounds-well, injured pride; he had the amorous instincts of a bullfrog-took umbrage.
Fueled by too much beer on one particular evening, Chip saw fit to challenge Mackay on the floor of the Thuringen Gardens. The Scotsman, a gentleman even if he was not legitimately born, naturally accepted. He probably would have done so even if he hadn't consumed more than his share of the Gardens' excellent home brew.
The confusion began immediately. Chip, a football player raised on a twentieth-century American diet, was much larger than the little Scotsman. So, boldly, he advanced and felled Mackay with a fist.
Not even bothering to inquire as to the challenged party's choice of weapons!
Mackay, outraged by the American's uncivilized conduct, immediately made his choice of weapons. He sprang up from the floor (a punch in the face?-to a man who has faced a dentist?), drew his saber and began chasing Chip through the premises.
Progress was slow, both for pursuer and pursued. Chip, needless to say, scampered through the crowd as if he were scrambling for the goal line. Which took a lot of scrambling, since the crowd grew rapidly as word spread into the streets. Fight! Fight!
Mackay, fortunately, did not use his saber to clear a path. Still polite, for all his inebriation and murderous purpose, he asked the avid onlookers to step aside. Finally-this took perhaps two minutes-he cornered Chip in the area of the Gardens given over to the pool tables.
Chip, of course, was now armed. He took a mighty swing at Mackay with a pool cue. Alas, he quickly discovered that a pool cue is a truly pitiful weapon to use against an experienced cavalryman-even on foot-armed with a saber. The pool cue was transformed into toothpicks in a matter of seconds.
The end seemed near.
Fortunately, one of Dan Frost's deputies intervened. Unfortunately, the deputy was Fred Jordan who, it transpired, had imbibed perhaps too much of his Scottish friends' attitudes (along with German beer, inasmuch as he had been off duty). So he took it upon himself to rule Mackay's choice of weapons legal and legitimate and ordered the duel to continue-with the proviso, of course, that Chip be provided with a saber.
More confusion emerged. Chip did not possess a saber. A dozen Scots cavalrymen immediately offered the use of their own. Confusion was now rampant, propelled by Chip's cries of outrage and indignation. The bold young man, it developed, also lacked the knowledge of a saber's use.
Mackay-ever the gentleman-immediately switched his choice to pistols. Adding insult to injury, he offered to match his wheel lock against any modern sidearm of Chip's selection. At any range the American chose.
By now, sobriety was beginning to arrive. By now, Alex was in a cold fury. By now, Chip was not. Young Chip, belatedly, was realizing that the braggadocio of a former high-school football team captain was no match for the serious intent of a professional soldier.
Wheel lock against a modern pistol? At any range? Given those two men, the outcome was a foregone conclusion.
"He's trying to kill me!" wailed Chip.
Unkind words were muttered in response, here and there in the huge crowd which was now packing the Gardens. Many of them-again, insult piled onto injury-by the Americans in the crowd. Good riddance was a particular favorite. So were: Pride goeth before a fall and Look before you leap.
By the time Dan Frost arrived, the betting was running in favor of the Scotsman. But Dan put a stop to the whole thing immediately. City ordinances, he explained, expressly forbade dueling.
Mackay, ever the law-abiding man, immediately proposed transferring the locale of the duel to the woods, beyond the city limits. The odds began running heavily in his favor.
But Mike arrived then, and made a general ruling. No dueling, period. Anywhere in American territory.
"As you say, my lord," was Mackay's response. Bowing stiffly, he stalked off, never casting a glance at his erstwhile opponent.
The opponent, for his part, spent the next several days in an attempt to extract honor (if not glory) from his own part in the affair. To no avail. Not even his closest friends on the former football team sided with him.
"Cut the bullshit," said Kenny Washaw, the high school's former tight end. "And grow up, while you're at it. Or you'll wind up flipping hamburgers the rest of your life."
"What there is of it," added the former left tackle. Steve Early, that was. Unkindly: "Which won't be much, you keep picking fights with guys who carry sabers and spend hours in a dentist's chair without anesthetic. I don't care how little they are."
Simpson, of course, tried to make an issue out of the "duel." Another example of the lawlessness brought on by the Stearns regime!
But it fell flat. No one had actually gotten hurt, after all, saving Mackay's black eye. And, once again, Simpson misjudged his audience. Hill people have their own sense of justice-humorous, but grim for all that-which runs heavily toward bragging about the shrimp in the family tree who showed the local bully who was who and what was what.
Then, the memory of that little fracas was swept aside by the arrival of the Abrabanel representative from exotic and far-off Istanbul. Half the town turned out to greet him. Well, the American residents.
Some of them, of course, were there in an official capacity. But most of the crowd was, for the moment, utterly uninterested in general matters of high finance and foreign policy. One question-and one question only-was uppermost in their minds.
Grantville's supermarkets had run out of coffee weeks ago. To the shock and horror of its American residents, it was discovered that in that day and age coffee was almost unknown. Could only be obtained, in fact, from one source.
Turkey.
So, a somewhat bewildered Don Francisco Nasi found that his first item of business, upon his arrival, was negotiating the establishment of a coffee trade.
But he was not that bewildered. Francisco was younger than either of the other representatives of the Abrabanel family who had recently arrived. He had just turned twenty-six. Yet it soon became clear that he possessed in full measure the talents of his grandfather and the illustrious matriarch, Doсa Gracia Mendes, who had created the fortune of their branch of the Abrabanels.
In the week following his arrival, in the course of almost nonstop negotiations with Mike and the committee, Francisco led the Abrabanel representatives with a firm hand. Perhaps because of his upbringing in Moslem Turkey, Francisco was much less taken aback than either Moses or Samuel at the undoubtedly outlandish character of the Americans and their new society.
"Who cares?" he demanded. The slim and handsome young man scanned the faces of the other Jews gathered in the Roths' living room. The Roths themselves were absent. Politely, they had felt it best to let the Abrabanels discuss family matters in private.
Francisco gazed at Rebecca, for a moment. There was, perhaps, a faint shadow in his eyes. Even in far off Istanbul, they had heard of the beauty and intelligence of Dr. Balthazar's daughter. Francisco had been enjoined by his family to seek a bride also, in this journey.
But, if there was a shadow, it was gone quickly enough. Francisco was a seasoned diplomat-a budding statesman, in truth, for all his tender years-not a lovesick shepherd. He had never found it difficult to look truth in the face. And the cold-blooded Machiavellian in him saw the other side of the matter. The Americans would soon be bound by ties of blood, as well as trade and statecraft. Francisco believed in ties of blood, as much as he believed in the sunrise. They had kept his family going for centuries.
"Face reality," he commanded. "Where else, since the Almoravid dynasty ruled Sepharad, have we had such an offer?" He reached for his cup, and sipped the precious coffee he had brought with him.
Then: "Nowhere. Not the Ottomans, even. We have done well in the empire, of course. Very well. But we still exist only on the sultan's sufferance." He snapped his fingers. "A new sultan-"
He left the words unspoken. There was no need. "There is a time for boldness, too," he stated. "This is such a time."
He turned to Moses, who had proven to be the most hesitant of the representatives. That was not surprising, of course. His branch of the family lived in the heart of the Habsburg beast.
"You may stay in the shadows," Francisco stated. "The Americans are not seeking material goods from the Catholic domains anyway. Just a loan-which you can easily supply in secret."
"They insist on absurdly low interest," grumbled Moses.
Rebecca began to speak, but her father stilled her with a quick hand on her arm and a cautioning glance. Let Francisco handle it. Your interests are compromised.
Francisco finished his coffee, and shrugged. "So? Take advantage of their offer, then. Invest. I intend to do so myself. We have been moneylenders long enough."
Moses and Samuel exchanged a hesitant glance. "It is-not customary," complained Samuel.
"No, it isn't," replied Francisco. Harshly: "What is customary is for Jews to lend money to princes, or serve the Christian aristocracy as their rent collectors. Then, when the princes are done with their wars-or the peasants rise up in rebellion-it is the Jews who burn."
He placed the cup down so forcefully that it almost broke the saucer. "Enough, I say! I have the full backing of Turkey's Abrabanels." He was polite enough not to add: who are the largest and richest branch of the family. "Whatever your decision, I have made ours. We will take all necessary precautions, of course. No reason to publicly tweak the noses of the Christian rulers. But we will provide the Americans with the support they ask. Hard currency, loans, trade, investment."
Francisco paused, and made his own final decision. "More. We will begin to immigrate here. I will stay myself."
That announcement froze everyone. Francisco was the rising star in the Abrabanel firmament. Guaranteed, if he stayed in Istanbul, a life of power and luxury and splendor.
Perhaps he read their minds. He smiled. "Until the next sultan…"
The smile vanished, replaced by a look so stern it seemed quite out of place on his young face. His eyes moved back to Rebecca.
"There is a condition," he stated stiffly.
Rebecca inhaled so sharply it was almost a hiss. She knew full well Francisco's other purpose in coming to Thuringia. It would have taken no genius to deduce it, even if her father had not been notified in advance.
She found herself struggling fiercely to keep anger out of her own stiff face. She was almost shocked, then, to realize how much she had internalized the American way of looking at things. If this man thinks he can demand-
Francisco, as if realizing her thoughts, shook his head. "When is your marriage to Michael Stearns to take place?" he asked.
The question caught Rebecca off guard. "I-we-" she fumbled. Then, quietly: "We have not set a date."
"Set it, then," commanded Francisco. "That is my condition."
Rebecca stared at him. For one of the few times in her life, she was quite at a loss for words.
Francisco's stern expression softened. "Please, Rebecca. Do it now. For all of us." He spread his hands, as if to explain the obvious. "I believe in ties of blood."
Moses and Samuel, true to their cautious instincts and training, made no final pronouncements that night. But it was obvious to all that Francisco had settled the matter.
The meeting broke up soon thereafter. Rebecca had to leave. Her roundtable discussion show was on the air again that night. Francisco walked her to the door, and offered to accompany her to the school.
Rebecca hesitated. She had no desire-none at all-to offend Francisco. Or to bruise his sentiments further. So, for a moment, she fumbled with the explanation that Michael always walked her Again, Francisco was a mind reader. "He seems a magnificent man," he said gently. "We Turkish Sephardim, you know, are quite accustomed to marrying outside the faith."
Rebecca's smile lost its shy hesitance. "Thank you, Francisco. For whatever it may be worth, had the circumstances been otherwise, I would have been quite happy to become your wife. I think you are quite magnificent yourself."
He nodded, with all the aplomb of a courtier raised in the formalities of the Ottoman court. "I thank you for that, Rebecca Abrabanel."
Rebecca cast hesitation aside. "But I have a cousin in Amsterdam. She is very pretty-very intelligent, too-her name is-"
Francisco held up his hand. "Please! Allow me a day or two to wallow in my heartbreak." A chuckle took all the sting out of the words. Then a thoughtful expression came to his face.
"Besides," he mused, "it would be best to leave that aside, for the moment. I am here now, to stay. Perhaps I should give some thought to following your own example. Ties of blood."
Hesitation-to the winds!
"Even better!" exclaimed Rebecca. "There is a young schoolteacher-Gina Mastroianni-very good family, as Americans count such things-a good friend of mine, she has become-she is even prettier than my cousin-smarter, too, in all honesty-and-"
Francisco was laughing aloud, now. "Be off!" he commanded. "Later!"
Obediently, Rebecca skipped down the steps. But, by the time she reached the bottom, a new enthusiasm had come. She turned around.
"Be sure to watch the show tonight, Francisco! There will be a great opportunity to invest! Watch!"
"How does she get away with it?" grumbled Piazza. As usual, he was attending the roundtable discussion as part of the live audience in the recording studio.
Sitting next to him, Mike grinned. "What's the matter?" he whispered. "Think the TV executives we left behind-not to mention the sponsors-would have choked on this show? Not suitable for a popular audience?"
Piazza grunted sarcastically. He started to reply, but fell silent. The show was starting.
"Welcome to tonight's roundtable discussion," began Rebecca. She was practically bouncing in her chair from enthusiasm. "Tonight's show, I think, will be grand!"
She introduced the participants with a quick pointing finger. "Most of you, of course, already know Greg Ferrara from his many appearances on the show. Next to him is Ollie Reardon, the owner of one of Grantville's machine shops. And next to him is Jerry Trainer. Jerry is Quentin Underwood's son-in-law and was studying for a degree in chemical engineering before the Ring of Fire-ah-interrupted his education."
A little laugh went up from the audience. "But he finished enough, I'm quite sure!" said Rebecca firmly. She broke off for a moment, translating the introductions into German. When she resumed in English, her enthusiasm seemed to rise.
"Tonight we're going to discuss their proposal for building a chemical factory, and they will explain the importance of it for our future." Bouncing like a puppy, now: "Especially sulfuric acid! Isn't that grand?"
"How does she get away with it?" demanded Piazza. "The worst of it is-don't take this bet!-she'll keep the whole damned audience."
And, indeed, she did. The German audience, anyway. Some of the Americans turned away from their TV sets. But not one German.
A half hour into the show, watching Greg Ferrara at his blackboard explaining the critical importance of sulfuric acid to practically all industrial chemical processes, a German farmer turned his head to the man sitting next to him in the Thuringen Gardens. His neighbor at the table, a German coal miner, had his eyes glued to one of the elevated TV sets scattered throughout the huge tavern.
"Sounds dangerous," commented the farmer.
The miner snorted. "More dangerous than a coal mine? And with the wages they're talking about?" He emptied the pitcher into his mug and looked around for a barmaid. "Besides-"
He spotted the woman he was looking for. "Gesine-bitte!" He waved the empty pitcher. "Und a telephone!"
A minute or so later, Gesine appeared with a fresh pitcher and a cordless telephone. The coal miner accepted the second as easily as the first. He was an "old America hand" himself, now. Telephones were easy.
When the call-in section of the show started, the coal miner was the first one to be sent through. In the studio, Rebecca listened carefully to the man's question, carried over the loudspeakers. Since most of the question had been asked in German, she translated.
"He wants to know if you'll be offering employees the option to purchase stock."
"Oh, sure," came Ollie Reardon's immediate response. "Got to do that, these days, or you can't hire anybody." The machine-shop owner spotted Mike in the audience and grinned. "And we're not even going to try to stop the UMWA from organizing the place. Don't need any extra wars."
The audience laughed.
"And she's getting away with it again," muttered Piazza. But he was laughing himself.
Later that night, Mike wasn't amused in the least.
"You don't have to let anyone tell you what to do, Rebecca," he growled. Sitting on the armchair across from her, he began to clench his fists. "Especially not about this."
On the couch, Rebecca shook her head. "I am not concerned about that, Michael. Only about you. How do you feel-yourself?"
He looked away. For a moment, his eyes roamed the interior of the living room of his family's house. After the show, they had come here-at Rebecca's request-rather than the Roths' house. Mike's mother, sister and brother-in-law had already gone to bed. So had the German family which occupied what had once been Mike's bedroom. Not needing the space, Mike had set himself up in the small room which had once served his mother for her sewing.
He brought his eyes back to her. "It was your desire to wait, sweetheart. You wanted time."
"Yourself," she commanded.
The half-clenched fists opened. "Oh, hell," he whispered. "I wouldn't have waited a day."
She smiled. "Good. It is settled, then. We will get married as soon as possible." Half-eagerly; half-timidly: "Tomorrow?"
He was still frowning. Rebecca made a little fluttering motion with her hand. "Enough time!" She almost giggled. "Even for me!" Then, seriously: "And Francisco is right, Michael. I also have a responsibility to my family. They will be risking much. I know it is hard, sometimes, for you to understand this. But we have survived, in part, because we can also be cold-blooded when necessary."
The term "cold-blooded" went very poorly with the warmth-the heat-in her voice. "Tomorrow," she whispered.
Mike heaved a deep breath, almost clenching his fists again. He did press them very firmly into the armrests.
"No," he said forcefully. "Not until after the election. The convention is about to take its final vote, and we're going to win-hands down. I'll call for immediate elections. Give it-say, a month for campaigning. No, six weeks would be better. Then we can get married."
"Why?" Rebecca demanded. She slid forward to the edge of the couch, her whole posture pleading. "Why so long?"
Mike's expression, for all the love so obvious in it, was set like stone. "Because, sweetheart, I will see you-finally-elected to office in your own name. Before you take mine."
Rebecca groped for the logic. When she found it, she burst into tears.
Mike rose and came to the couch, enfolding her in his arms. "Not so long," he whispered. "Six weeks. Maybe two months."
But Rebecca was already wiping away the tears. She turned her face into his neck and pressed open lips against him. "I love you," she whispered. "And we will not wait two months. Not for everything."
She rose and extended her hand to him.
"I have never seen your bedroom. Show me."
Chapter 44
Everywhere, the whirlwind.
A new nation would be born that winter. Three days later, the convention would ratify the new constitution-without amendments-by a seventy-eight percent majority. Mike would announce new elections with the same blow of the gavel with which he closed the convention. The election "season" would last through December, but it was more in the nature of a triumphal parade than a contest. With the franchise now extended to most of Grantville's German residents, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. After the way in which he had conducted his campaign against the constitution, Simpson had alienated every German in the area except the pure halfwits. Now, he even lost a large number of his American supporters. Sensing the tide, they bowed to the inevitable.
Mike's decision to allow weeks for the campaign proved to be a wise one. The conclusion was foregone, true-and had been from the first day. But Mike knew the difference between "winning" an election campaign and forging a political structure. The weeks of constant campaigning allowed him and his supporters time and opportunity to sink real roots in the new nation's budding growth.
The process proved complicated and contradictory, as these things do in the real world. The Fourth of July Party was really more of a coalition than a political party. Over the weeks, the different underlying factions had time to sort themselves out. Which, from Mike's point of view, was all to the good. "Unity" is a splendid word, but not when it comes at the price of clarity. That there would be political factions in the new United States, just as there had been in the one left behind in another universe, was as certain as the sunrise. Better to have them out in the open, where the public could gauge their programs, than hidden away in murky shadows.
His own position was somewhat peculiar, and more than a bit awkward. Mike now commanded a personal allegiance-especially from the "new" Americans-which would have allowed him, had he so chosen, to force through anything he wanted. Whatever else they disagreed on, Melissa Mailey and Quentin Underwood-the publicly recognized leaders of the Fourth of July Party's respective "left" and "right" factions-were both heard, on more than one occasion, to grumble about "Bonapartism." But not even Melissa or Quentin used the term seriously. No one who knew Mike Stearns was really worried about "a whiff of grapeshot." So, much like George Washington before him, Mike tried as far as possible to stay out of the immediate factional fray. And he accepted compromises, as a prospective president, that his younger persona would have sneered at.
At one point in the campaign, that brought him in serious collision with his own power base. The UMWA, now as always, formed the heart of Mike's support. Early in the campaign, the union voted overwhelmingly to demand that a law be passed requiring the unionization of all businesses employing more than ten workers-of which there were now quite a few, and obviously more to come.
Mike was initially inclined to agree, but Rebecca convinced him otherwise. "Most of our citizens are now Germans," she argued. "They do not understand what you mean by a 'trade union.' They think of it as a guild. And a guild is a very different thing altogether. It is very oppressive."
She was right, and Mike quickly saw the logic. He had noticed himself-and been uneasy about it-that the UMWA's support was coming entirely from the older, established German craftsmen. The young men-not to mention the young women-were implacably hostile to the proposal.
He tried to explain it to the UMWA at a local meeting. "Guys, our new people think of this idea as a way of imposing master-craftsman rule over the apprentices. That's why we've had so few young people knocking on our door. They want out. They're not looking at the thing from our perspective, they're-"
No use. Frank supported him. So, to his surprise, did Harry Lefferts and most of the younger miners. But it should not have surprised him. Unlike the middle-aged miners who formed the majority of the UMWA, Harry and the other young miners had made a lot of friends among young German workers and understood their viewpoint. But the local union was adamant, and Mike's public refusal to support their proposal produced a considerable strain in relations.
The strain lasted for months, until events proved Mike was right. Soon enough, the arrogance of some of the new "captains of industry" triggered off a rapid change in attitude among young Germans. Once again, the UMWA was back in full swing, organizing new shops like mad-and this time, with Mike's full support. Which, of course brought him into a clash with Underwood and his faction.
So be it. Such is the whirlwind which brings new societies onto the historical stage. Forging a nation does not happen in a test tube. It happens in the real world, sweeping real people into the political arena for the first time, bringing with them all the accumulated baggage of centuries. Turbulent, chaotic, confused-messy.
So be it. Mike was not dismayed. Not in the least. A basket full of puppies is messy too. Which is simply nature's way of saying: Alive and well.
Even the new political structure was messy. Half-formed, half-shaped, a thing of big paws and big ears and precious little in the way of real flesh.
The new constitution allowed for an upper and lower house-the Senate, and the House of Representatives. Like the original Senate, the upper house gave representation to states as such, regardless of comparative population. The only difference was that each state got one senator instead of two. But the "upper house" was more fiction than fact. The "United States" still contained only one state-Grantville.
So there was only one Senate seat open in this election, although, of course, everyone was hoping for a future expansion. If nothing else, it seemed almost certain that Badenburg would soon be adding another star to the flag. And the students in Jena-with the tacit support of the town's poor quarters-were already demonstrating in the streets. The students were even chanting the name of their future Senator: Jeff Higgins. The fact that Jeff did not technically reside in Jena, for all the frequency of his and Gretchen's visits, did not concern them in the least.
Nor did it need to. The convention had decided that apportioning seats by residence, in an area as geographically small but densely populated as Grantville and southern Thuringia, would be absurd-at least for the moment. So all elections, for all seats, were held "at large."
Mike came in with eighty-seven percent of the votes for president. Except for Rebecca, every single member of the emergency committee was elected to the House by a similar landslide. To her astonishment-and chagrin-Melissa got as many votes as anyone.
"So much for my standing as a rebel," she was heard to mutter. But she consoled herself with the thought that Quentin had gotten-by half a percentage point-a higher margin than she. So she was still the underdog, in a manner of speaking.
And Rebecca? Her contest was a moot point. Simpson and his followers didn't even try to run against her. She was elected unanimously, as the sole Senator of the United States.
But that night in his bedroom, weeks earlier, Mike had been swept up in a very different whirlwind. From the months of ever-growing physical intimacy, he and Rebecca had become quite familiar with each other's bodies. So there was little in the way of surprise or discovery, beyond the act of intercourse itself. Which, even for the virgin Rebecca, no longer held much mystery-and no fear at all. But their first night in bed was still a whirlwind.
Or just the wind itself. Beginning with a tornado, perhaps, but settling, as the hours passed, into something as steady and unvarying as the trade winds.
As dawn crept through the curtains in his window, Mike reflected that his grandfather had been right after all.
"Anticipation," he murmured. "God, that was great." He pressed Rebecca's nude form against him, reveling in the sensation.
"Hmm?" she murmured drowsily. Neither of them had gotten any sleep. Her eyes half-closed, Rebecca kissed him. Reveling herself, not so much in the sensation as the knowledge that it would be hers for a lifetime. "What did you say?"
"Anticipation," repeated Mike happily.
Rebecca's eyes opened all the way. "What nonsense!" she exclaimed. "You did not anticipate anything at all."
She rose on her elbow, grinning down at him. "It was so amusing, watching you rummaging through your dresser with such frantic abandon."
Mike's answering grin was embarrassed. "Well…" Justify, justify: "I wasn't expecting-you didn't give me any warning-I thought I might have some old ones lying around-"
"Oh, marvelous!" she laughed, slapping his chest playfully. "I have seen those things! They look grotesque enough even when they are new!"
Sheepishly, Mike shrugged. "I was just trying to protect you-"
She silenced him with a very passionate kiss. They weren't that tired. One thing quickly led to another.
"It does not matter, anyway," she whispered later. "Even if-" Happy chuckle. "In two months, nothing would show. And even if it did, I am sure I would not be the first bride in Grantville waddling down the aisle in a loosened wedding gown."
She laughed, very happily. "Hillbillies! You have no respect."
Part Five
And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
Chapter 45
Striding out of the Schloss, the enormous palace of the Archbishop-Electors of Mainz which he had appropriated for his own use during these past winter months, Gustav II Adolf caught sight of the Rhine. The flow of the river-clear, clean, simple, straightforward-brought a certain relief to his spirit.
He stopped abruptly, to admire the sight. Behind him, his little escort of advisers stumbled to a halt. Fortunately for them, none of the advisers actually collided with the king. There would have been no royal repercussions, of course. Gustav was not that kind of monarch. But as enormous as he was-and the king had gained considerable weight during the months of physical idleness and diplomatic feasting-it would have been somewhat like running into an ox. Startled king; bruised adviser, sitting on his ass. Contemplating the futility of trying to move the king of Sweden when he chose otherwise.
"No, Axel," said Gustav firmly. He did not take his eyes off the Rhine. "Let Wilhelm and Bernard Saxe-Weimar rant and rave all they want. I am not sending an expedition to Thuringia."
"Wilhelm is not 'ranting and raving,' " demurred Oxenstierna. "He is simply expressing concern over the situation in his duchy. You can hardly blame him."
Gustav scowled. "I don't care how polite he's being-which his brother certainly isn't! The answer is still no."
The king rubbed his hands briskly. There was no snow on the ground, but it was still only mid-March. The temperature was chilly. "I've gotten soft and tender," grumbled Gustav. "All this easy living in the south!"
Just as briskly, he turned and faced his advisers. They were all Swedish, except for Sir James Spens.
To Axel: "No, no, no. In this, the dukes of Saxe-Weimar are proving to be as petty as any German noblemen. In their absence-protracted absence, let me remind you-the people of their principality have seen fit to organize themselves to survive the winter and the depredations of the war." Half-angrily: "What were they supposed to do, Axel? Starve quietly, lest the tranquility of the dukes be disturbed?"
Oxenstierna sighed. His long-standing, half-amicable quarrel with the king of Sweden on the subject of aristocracy had intensified over the past year. And the chancellor of Sweden was losing the argument. For a moment, trying not to grit his teeth in frustration, Axel silently cursed his German counterparts. With friends like these, who needs enemies? In truth, the chancellor did not really disagree with his monarch on the specifics of the matter. Axel wouldn't wish the German nobility on a pack of dogs, except as provender. Still "Gustav," he said firmly, "the issue is not petty. And it can't be shrugged off as another instance of aristocratic fatuity. For all intents and purposes, power in southern Thuringia-every single report agrees on this, whatever else they are in dispute over-has been seized by a republic." His lips tightened. "They even chose the Dutch United Provinces as the model for their own name. The 'United States,' if you please!"
The king began to speak, but Axel held up his hand. The gesture was not peremptory-there were limits, even with Gustav II Adolf-but firm for all that. The monarch acceded politely to the wishes of his chancellor, and held his own tongue for the moment.
"The issue is a general one," continued Oxenstierna. He snapped his fingers. "I care that for southern Thuringia. But what if the example spreads? Or simply starts to panic the surrounding principalities? We have enough problems with nervous German allies as it is. Let the Protestant princes start fretting over revolution, and the yoke of the Habsburg empire will start seeming more like a shelter than a burden."
Standing a few feet away, Torstensson snorted. "As if the Saxons or the Prussians needed an excuse to be treacherous!"
Oxenstierna cast the artillery general a quick glare, but Torstensson stood his ground. More-he pushed back. The young general snapped his own fingers. "And I care that for the tender pride of the German aristocracy. Any one of those noblemen"-he glared himself-"and I do not except the Saxe-Weimars or Hesse-Cassel-will abandon us quickly enough, given the opportunity."
A small murmur of protest began to arise from the other generals. "That's not fair, Lennart," said Banйr. It seemed a day for scowling. A fair example now adorned the face of the field marshal. "Bernard is an arrogant ass, sure enough. But Wilhelm is another story."
The king intervened, before the dispute could get out of hand. Let the personal character of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar assume center stage, and hot tempers would invariably result. For all the undoubted military ability which the young duke had demonstrated over the past year, the Swedish generals found him insufferable as often as not. Arrogant ass was the mildest of the epithets which Gustav had heard his officers use.
"All of that is also beside the point," stated the king. To Banйr: "Johann, I share your personal estimate of Wilhelm. I think quite highly of the man, as it happens." Gustav gave Axel a quick, half-humorous glance. "Wilhelm is the one exception to my general condemnation of the German breed. If I didn't know better, I'd swear he was a Swedish nobleman."
A little laugh went up. With the exception of the Scotsman, all of the men standing in that little group near the Rhine were members of the Swedish aristocracy-and proud of it.
It was also, apparently, a day for finger snapping. Now the king added his own thick-fingered version. "That for this whole argument." He glanced again at Oxenstierna-and this time, with no humor at all. "I do care about Thuringia, Axel. For two reasons."
Solidly, stolidly: "First, because I am a Christian before I am anything else. My title, my lineage, my trappings-all these came from the hand of God, and no other. I have not forgotten, even if other monarchs have, that the Lord gave us that power for a purpose. Let others ignore their duty, I shall not. If a king or a prince or a baron cannot see to the needs of his folk, then he is not fit to rule. It is as simple as that. God's punishment on such men is evident in all the pages of history. Where are the Roman emperors now?"
The foregoing words, pious and heartfelt, had been spoken with neither heat nor pride. The next words, Gustav II Adolf spoke fully erect, his pale blue eyes alive with his own lineage. In that moment, peering at his subordinates down a majestic and powerful nose, the immense man was every inch the king.
"Secondly, because I am Vasa." The name of Sweden's ruling dynasty rolled across the flagstones of the terrace. For an instant, it almost seemed as if the Rhine rippled in response.
"Vasa!" he repeated. The name was both a reminder and a challenge. A reminder to himself, a challenge to Gustav stared at his underlings. The gaze was not a glare. Not quite-there was too much iciness in the thing. A glacier does not glare; it simply is.
"Do not forget," he said softly.
Under that gaze, his subordinates did not flinch. But they did seem to shrink a little. The Vasas had established their rule over Sweden by many methods. Among those, of course, had been political and military skill. But there had also been-proven time and again-their instant readiness to break the aristocracy to their will.
Gustav Adolf had been named after his grandfather, the great Gustav Vasa who founded the dynasty and created the modern nation called Sweden. His grandfather's contempt for nobility was a matter of historical record-as was the result of that contempt. The Swedish aristocracy had been broken, bridled, disciplined. Accepted back into royal favor only after they demonstrated their willingness to work alongside the new dispensation. In Gustav Vasa's realm, the four estates had all been listened to-the peasants and the citizens of the towns as much as the nobility and the clergy. If anything, Gustav Vasa had favored the rising middle class-and been rewarded, in return, by a state treasury flush with silver, a powerful fleet and army, and Europe's finest, if not largest, munitions industry.
Vasa. Upon his accession to the throne at the technically illegal age of seventeen-made possible by a special dispensation of the riksdag, the Swedish parliament, engineered by Oxenstierna-Gustav II Adolf had agreed to a compromise whereby some of the privileges of the aristocracy were restored. And he had kept his promises. Unlike his grandfather, who favored commoners, Gustav II Adolf generally appointed only noblemen to high office. Yet, beneath the surface, the reality remained the same. The power of the dynasty rested on Sweden's people, not its aristocracy-and the latter knew it as well as the former.
Vasa…
"It is settled," stated the king. "Thuringia will be left in peace, to manage its own affairs. If Wilhelm and-ha!-Bernard can make an accommodation, excellent. But it is their business, not ours. I will not send a single soldier to enforce the will of Saxe-Weimar on the province."
"We already have soldiers on the scene," pointed out Torstensson mildly.
Gustav cocked his eye. "Mackay?" He shrugged. "A few hundred cavalrymen."
Spens began to speak. The king shot him a quick glance, and the Scottish general closed his mouth.
The king's eye moved on to Oxenstierna. Having made his point, Gustav would now sweeten the thing. "I will speak to Wilhelm personally, Axel," he said. "I will give him my assurances that, regardless of what happens in Thuringia, the family of Saxe-Weimar will not be abandoned by me." He chuckled harshly. "Who knows? Wilhelm, unlike his younger brother, is sagacious enough to realize that being the duke of a petty principality is not, all things said and done, the highest goal to which a man might aspire in this new world."
He clapped his hands, announcing a change in subject. The clap turned into another brisk rubbing of the palms. To ward off the cold, of course. But the motion also conveyed a great deal of satisfaction. So does a craftsman gesture, contemplating a new masterwork.
"And now, gentlemen-Tilly! The latest report indicates that the old man is stirring again. He's left Nцrdlingen and is moving against Horn at Bamberg. Wallenstein, meanwhile, is also back in business."
Torstensson laughed. "Big business! Has ever a mercenary general in history gotten such a contract? Who is emperor and who is lackey now, I wonder?"
His laugh was echoed by the other generals. News had recently arrived of Wallenstein's terms for accepting Emperor Ferdinand's plea for help. After Breitenfeld, the Habsburgs had been desperate, and Wallenstein had driven a devil's bargain. The Bohemian general had the emperor's formal agreement that he was in exclusive command of all military power in imperial lands. Wallenstein had also been granted civil power over all imperial territory in the possession of Ferdinand's enemies-including the right to confiscate lands and do with them as he wished. That meant booty on a gigantic scale, for all his officers. Mercenaries and adventurers could become landed noblemen overnight, in the event of victory-and why not? Hadn't Wallenstein himself set the example, in the early years of the war?
Gustav continued. "All accounts have Wallenstein assembling a huge new army. You can imagine what wolves are gathering around his banner!"
General Tott grunted. "They'll make Tilly's men look like gentle lambs."
The king nodded. "When that army moves, they will ravage everything in their path. But they will not move for weeks yet. I propose to deal with Tilly first."
He began issuing orders, facing each man in turn.
"Axel. I want you to return to Alsatia. We've got enough of a force there to keep the Spanish Habsburgs from getting ambitious. And take Bernard with you." He chuckled, seeing Oxenstierna's grimace of distaste. "Please! He is a very capable military commander, after all. And I'd much rather have him there than stirring up trouble about his precious Thuringia."
"Which he hasn't even bothered to visit in years," muttered Torstensson.
As if his low voice were a cue, the king turned to Torstensson next. "Lennart, you'll be staying with me in this campaign. Tilly will be using the tributaries to block my advance up the Main. I expect we'll see a lot of gun work, to clear the fords."
The young artillery general frowned. "My guns are getting pretty badly worn, Your Majesty." Scowling: "The ordnance facilities in these blessed Rhenish archbishoprics are a joke."
Spens cleared his throat. The king seemed to ignore the sound, except that his next words came in a bit of a rush. "Don't worry about that. I think I've found a new supplier. I expect to have new guns arriving within a month or two. The ones you have should last that long."
Torstensson nodded. The king turned to General Tott next.
"Return to the Weser. Keep an eye on Pappenheim. Our Saxon allies will help you readily enough with that." Another nod. Then, Banйr:
"And you, Johann, I want back on the Elbe. That'll keep our Prussian friends half-honest, if nothing else. But I also need you there in case the Poles get ambitious or Wallenstein decides to move directly on Saxony."
The immediate measures taken, the king went back to rubbing his hands. "That's it, then." To Spens: "Stay behind a moment, would you, James?"
The signal was clear enough. Within seconds, the Swedish officers had all left, hurrying to set their new orders into motion.
Gustav examined Sir James Spens silently. The Scotsman occupied a peculiar position in the king's forces. He was, simultaneously, the Swedish ambassador to England as well as the English ambassador to Sweden-and one of Gustav's top military commanders in the bargain. The multiplicity of functions indicated the king's high regard for the man, but of those functions it was Spens' military position which was paramount. In truth, there was not much in the way of diplomatic exchange between Sweden and England. The island, for all its official Protestantism, had maintained an aloof and standoffish attitude toward the war raging on the Continent.
When all was said and done, Sir James Spens was Gustav Adolf's man. Like most of the Scotsmen who figured so prominently in the Swedish service, Spens' allegiance was highly personal. Unlike the Swedish officers, Spens had no ties of family or class to dilute his loyalty to the Swedish crown. For that reason, Gustav often used him in matters which were of a delicate political nature.
"I am concerned about the continuing allegations of witchcraft," stated Gustav forcefully. He waved his hand. "Yes, yes, James, I realize that the reports come from tainted sources. For the most part. But I am still concerned. There are so many reports."
Sir James shrugged. "What would you, Highness? Do you expect Catholic mercenaries thrashed by a handful of Scots and their American allies to praise the military prowess of their opponents? Witchcraft is the easiest thing in the world to shout from the rooftops. And the hardest to disprove."
Gustav stroked his massive nose, thinking. "I'm well aware of that, James. Nevertheless, the thing is odd."
The Scottish general chuckled. "Odd? Say better-fantastic. A colony of Englishmen from a future America find themselves planted in the middle of Thuringia? It's a thing of fable! The tales of Rabelais and Sir Thomas More come to life."
Still stroking his nose, Gustav muttered: "You believe Mackay still, then?"
Spens nodded firmly. "Absolutely. I've known him since he was a lad of five. I took him into my service more from my own high opinion than from the fact his father is an old friend."
He studied the king intently for a moment. Then: "You were there when he gave his report at Wьrzburg, Your Majesty. Not three months ago. Did he strike you as a liar-or a witling?"
"Neither," came the instant reply. "'A most promising young officer,' I called him last year. Axel was quite sarcastic about it, given my unfamiliarity with the young man. But that was my impression then, and certainly nothing since has predisposed me otherwise."
He sighed heavily. "But I am concerned, James. I have more than enough problems as it is. Treating with mysterious colonists from the future-a fable, as you say!-is a bit much to add to the brew." His voice trailed off into an inaudible mutter.
The Scotsman said nothing. From long experience in Gustav's service, he knew the king was talking to himself now. Gustav II Adolf was no more immune to hesitation and uncertainty than any man. He was simply much better at dealing with it than anyone Spens had ever met.
As always, the process was brief. Within a minute, the king had stopped stroking his nose and was standing erect.
"So be it. God's will, clear enough. Is Satan so powerful he could transplant a colony from the future? I think not!" He went back to rubbing his hands. "Besides, one cannot fixate on the problems. There is also the opportunity."
Spens took the moment to fortify the king's resolve. "Corpus Evangelicorum," he murmured.
Gustav smiled faintly. "You are the only man I know besides myself, James, who manages to say that phrase without lifted eyebrows."
Spens returned the smile with a grin. "And why not? I think a north European Protestant confederation under the leadership of Sweden would be a splendid solution to the war. And much else. Sweden gets its long-sought Baltic supremacy, the Holy Roman Empire gets its peace, and the north Germans-finally-get a chance to build a real nation instead of a princes' playground."
The king cocked a quizzical eye. "You do not share the general presumption that the result would be a Swedish tyranny?"
"What nonsense! Forgive me for saying so, Your Majesty, but there is simply no way in the Lord's green earth that a million and a half Swedes could maintain a genuine tyranny over ten times that many Germans. Not for long, in any event."
He shook his head. "I've lived in Sweden. You're a practical lot, comes to it. I imagine a Swedish-led north European confederation would soon enough resemble Sweden itself. Which is the best-run kingdom in the world, in my humble opinion."
"Mine also!" exclaimed Gustav cheerily. "And not such a humble opinion, either."
He clapped Spens on the shoulder. "Good enough, James. We'll stay the course. Who knows? Thuringia may well be destined to play a role in all this. But send another courier to Mackay immediately. You heard Lennart. We're going to need those new guns more quickly than I'd thought. It'll be interesting to see if Mackay's boasts about the manufacturing talents of his new friends are justified."
Spens nodded. The king continued. "Also make sure to pass along my congratulations to him. The Dutch money is rolling through very nicely. Yet another reason to leave Thuringia in peace, eh?"
"Is it not?" agreed Spens lightly. He cleared his throat. "If I may be so bold, Your Majesty, I think a promotion is in order as well as congratulations. Mackay now has a full thousand cavalrymen under his command, wearing your colors."
"So many?" Gustav shook his head with bemusement. "Well, then-of course. Colonel Mackay, from this moment forth! Nothing less!"
He and Spens shared a small laugh. As they began walking away from the palace, the king added: "And also tell him to escort the new guns to me as soon as possible. In person. I want to talk to him." Gustav hesitated, then shook his head firmly-almost vehemently. "No! I want more." He reached out with his hands, as if groping in the dark. "I want something more tangible than simply a personal report. I want-"
Grope, grope.
"An American?"
"The very thing!" exclaimed the king. "I want to see one of these fabled folk!"
Chapter 46
Ollie Reardon, the owner of the machine shop, wasn't sure if he was amused or aggravated. Both, he decided.
"Why is he wasting time cutting the outside of the barrel?" demanded Mackay. The Scots officer was practically dancing with impatience. "We don't have time for cosmetic adornment!"
Studying the work being done at the lathe, Ollie pursed his lips. The lathe operator, Jack Little, had been a machinist for longer than Alexander Mackay had been alive.
Guess which one of them knows what they're doing? But for all the irritation in the thought, Ollie decided to explain. Politely.
He pointed to the large casting. The butt end of the future cannon was held in the lathe's jaws; the front, already center-drilled, was held steady by a live center projecting from the tailstock. The two trunnions were rotating so rapidly they formed nothing more than a blur. Soft bronze could be machined at a much higher RPM than steel. Jack was making a very shallow cut a few inches long near the end of the barrel-a skin cut, as it was called.
"There's nothing cosmetic at all about what he's doing. He needs a machined surface for the steady rest. Unless the end of the barrel is held steady, it'd take forever to drill out the internal diameter. Just holding the casting at one end, the chatter would be ferocious."
Mackay frowned. "What's a steady rest?"
Ollie suppressed a sigh. He pointed to a fixture sitting in a rack at the end of the lathe's ways. The fixture, which could be swung apart on a hinge, formed an open circle some ten inches in diameter. Three adjustable columns ending in ball bearings projected into the center at 120-degree intervals. Two of them would cradle the piece from below; the third, from directly above.
"That is," he growled. "You set it on the ways, clamp it down, and then bring the bearings to ride on the machined surface which Jack's cutting right now. Steadies the piece and holds it true for the next operation, which, on these three-pounder barrels, is drilling out the bore." The precisionist soul of a machinist surfaced. Frowning: "We really ought to be reaming it, for the finish cut-we'll use a boring bar for the six-pounders-but those cast iron cannonballs are so sloppy and uneven there's no point. We'd be trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."
Mackay flushed. "I see." With obvious embarrassment, he tugged at his short beard. "I see," he repeated.
Next to him, Julie grinned. "Any more questions, big shot?" She turned to Ollie and shrugged. "You got to make allowances. He's still trying to adjust to his magnificent new status."
The grin widened. "Colonel Mackay, no less. And he only just turned twenty-three!"
"Stop it, girl," grumbled Alex. "I was only-"
Ollie clapped him on the shoulder. "Congratulations on your promotion, by the way. I'm sorry I wasn't able to make it to the celebration at the Gardens yesterday, but-"
A little salt in the wounds, here. "I was here till midnight, making sure we were set up to run the new castings. No time for me to be carousing all night."
Mackay's embarrassment deepened. He had caroused all night. His grumpy attitude this morning was the direct result.
"Sorry," he muttered. Then, rallying what was left of his dignity: "Well, since everything is obviously under control, I think I'll be on my way."
Ollie let no sign of his relief show. In truth, he liked the Scotsman, and was willing to forgive the man being an occasional fussbudget. Besides, Ollie understood as well as Mackay what was riding on this first shipment of new guns to the king of Sweden. So, politely-even affably-he escorted the Scotsman and his girlfriend to the door.
Memory of something he'd heard this morning suddenly surfaced. "Oh! And congratulations on your engagement, also."
Julie beamed happily and showed off the new ring on her finger. "Nice, isn't it? Alex found it in Eisenach, when he was there last week."
Mention of Eisenach caused Ollie to raise an eyebrow. He hesitated, wondering if he should ask "There's no big secret about it, Ollie," said Mackay. "Eisenach's almost certain to come in. They're just dancing around for a bit, waiting to see what Gotha decides." The Scotsman snorted. "And they're dancing around waiting on Erfurt, and Erfurt is dancing on Weimar. But it should be all over soon enough."
"That'd give us-what? Six stars on the flag, instead of two?"
Julie butted in before Alex could speak. "Eight, I bet! Word is that Mike and Becky's trip to Saalfeld and Suhl was a big success too!"
Ollie started. "I didn't know they were back. Saalfeld, huh? That'd give us a boost on the chemical side, what with the mines in the area. And-"
Mackay, his voice filled with satisfaction, completed the thought: "And that would almost certainly bring in Gera. The United States would have all of Thuringia's major towns, then. In the south of the province, anyway. Every last one."
But Ollie's mind was already elsewhere. "I'm thinking about Suhl. That town would give us control of the entire Thuringenwald. And what's probably more important is that it would stabilize our ordnance industry. A hundred years ago, you know, Suhl was the biggest armament center in Germany. Still has a lot of capacity left." He pointed over his shoulder with a thumb. "We got those castings from Suhl, as it happens. Be nice to see them part of the family."
Less than a year ago, the Scots nobleman Alexander Mackay would have been astonished to see a manufacturer and a former schoolgirl discussing matters of foreign policy. Today, he didn't even take notice of it. On that happy note, Alex and Julie left the machine shop and entered the street.
Immediately, another discussion on foreign policy erupted. Mackay launched a preemptive strike before Julie could raise the subject anew.
"You are not going-and that's final."
"Ha! We'll see about that! You don't get to make that decision-Colonel, sir!"
The two lovers glared at each other as they worked their way down the street. Their progress was slow, partly because they were immersed in the argument, but mostly because the street was very crowded. By April of 1632, Grantville's population density bore a closer resemblance to Calcutta than the small town in West Virginia it had once been.
The preemptive strike having failed, Mackay launched his next salvo.
"Impossible," he stated. "Your father would insist on a chaperone. For that matter, I'd insist on a chaperone. And there's-"
He stumbled for a moment, trying to force words through Julie's ensuing sarcastic remarks about his drastic change in attitude on the subject of chaperones-which he certainly hadn't been concerned about the night before; quite the contrary! Hadn't it been he who found that deserted Rally, Scotsman! "-no other woman be going," he concluded.
Julie looked smug. Mackay felt the pit opening beneath him.
"I don't like it," growled Mike. "Not one bit."
Rebecca said nothing. She simply sat there on the couch, relaxed, hands clasped in her lap, and returned her husband's scowl with a patient smile. Three months of marriage had brought a deeper intimacy into their relationship. Intimacy-and a much better knowledge of each other's habits and foibles.
So, where the fiancйe would have argued, the wife simply let the husband argue with himself.
It wasn't much of an argument. The advantages to her proposal were blindingly obvious.
"I don't like it," he repeated. "You're pregnant and it's wartime. God knows what you'd run into."
Blithely, Rebecca ignored the issue of her pregnancy, other than running her hands down her waist to show that it was still as slim as ever. But the rest seemed to call for a response.
"Michael, all reports agree that Tilly has fallen back on the Danube. The Lower Palatinate and Franconia are firmly in Swedish hands, as is most of Wьrtemburg. We would encounter nothing on our way to Gustav Adolf's camp except for a few bands of stragglers and deserters. None of whom, as you well know, pose any threat to the expedition. Not with Mackay's cavalry and Tom's dragoons as an escort."
Silence. Rebecca decided to add a sweetener. "And since your sister insists on accompanying Tom," she added, smiling, "I would be chaperoned. So you would not even have to worry about my fidelity."
For all his fretting, Mike couldn't stifle a laugh. "What a relief! Boy, will that help me sleep easy at night."
The humor broke the tension. "All right," he sighed. "I agree it's the best response. I'd like to go myself, of course, but-"
Rebecca was already shaking her head. "That is impossible. I know you do not like to hear this, Michael, but the fact remains that your personal authority is key to our negotiations with the other cities in Thuringia. We must weld them into the new nation quickly, before the war takes another turn. For the worse, quite possibly. You have stressed that necessity over and again. In this day and age, diplomacy is a thing between specific persons, not abstract political entities. Without you-here-none of the cities will be confident in any negotiations."
Mike's fears made a last feeble sally. "The same could be said if I'm not there to meet-"
Again, Rebecca was shaking her head before he finished the thought. "We are not negotiating with the king of Sweden, Michael. We are simply making an appearance." She smiled. "I suspect Gustav Adolf simply wants to make sure we are real, and not figments of a deranged Scotsman's imagination."
Mike smiled. "Or he simply wants to make sure we are not witches." His eyes, examining his wife, were full of love-and, truth be told, immense satisfaction. "Witches," in seventeenth-century Europe, were not something out of a Walt Disney movie. They were not beautiful stepmothers. They were hideous crones. Which Rebecca was most certainly not!
Accurately reading the look in her husband's eyes, Rebecca decided the moment was right to bring up another matter. "In that respect, I think we should add another person to our party. Ed Piazza will bring assurances of middle-aged male sagacity and stability. Tom Simpson, of course-especially accompanied by his pretty young American wife-will bring the appearance-the reality, I should say-of martial strength and vigor." Modestly: "I will do what I may." Then, raising her eyes to the ceiling as if a thought had just come to her: "But I think-something more-"
Mike grinned. "Cut it out, you schemer."
Rebecca lowered her eyes and studied her husband. Michael often insisted that she was smarter than he was. Rebecca thought he was wrong. Quite wrong. True, there was no comparison between their respective intellects, measured in what might be called "book learning." But Rebecca had not been reared in the poisonous doctrine of "IQ tests." She measured intelligence by the concrete standards of her own time-in that respect, at least, she had not acclimatized to American notions. A man's mind could not be separated from the man himself.
"I love you so much," she whispered. Then, ruefully running fingers through her thick black hair, she confessed her sins.
"Mackay'll shit a brick," predicted Mike. He scratched his jaw. "But-you're right. If there's any person in the world who could convince Gustav Adolf that we're not witches, it'd be a high-school cheerleader. Especially that one."
The happy thought was replaced by another. "As long as he doesn't see her shoot. And how are we going to keep her from bringing that damned rifle along?"
The doting husband scowled at the brilliant wife. "So, genius. Any bright ideas on that score?"
Silence.
"Ha!"
Chapter 47
The king was convinced of one thing within five minutes. Try as hard as he might-and he did, for he was a conscientious man as well as a pious one-Gustav II Adolf simply could not imagine the girl named Julie Sims as a witch.
"Impossible," he muttered under his breath. His eyes moved away from Julie and settled on the other two women sitting at the table. Even in the light thrown out by oil lamps and candles, their features were quite visible. The abandoned farmhouse had been set up as a temporary headquarters, and the modest interior was very well lit. Gustav normally satisfied himself with nothing more than was needed to read and write dispatches-and perhaps his beloved Grotius and Xenophon, if there was time. But when he heard that the American delegation had arrived at his camp, he had hurriedly requisitioned as much lighting as was available.
He wanted to see these people.
After his eyes left Julie, he squinted at the slender blond woman sitting next to her. The leader's sister, they said. But he did not spend much time on that examination. Cut from the same cloth as the youngest, obviously. Also pretty, also-not a witch.
His eyes lingered for a moment on her husband, standing next to her. The man was not sitting for the simple reason that none of the rickety chairs in the farmhouse could be trusted to support his incredible bulk.
Precious little of it fat, either, came the thought. For one of the few times in his life, Gustav had met a man who was obviously bigger and stronger than himself. He was finding the experience a bit disconcerting. Also a bit comical. The king's reaction to the man named Thomas Simpson, once he recognized it, almost made him laugh. Much as he imagined a male seal might react, encountering a male walrus for the first time.
He suppressed the thought firmly. They were not beasts, this was not rutting season-and the man, in any event, was being a model of decorum. His eyes moved to the other man sitting at the table. The other American, that is. Alexander Mackay was also sitting at the table, as was a man named Heinrich. But those two were familiar to Gustav. Mackay in person, Heinrich by type.
It did not take the king more than a few seconds to assess the American. His name was Ed Piazza, and he was a type of man quite familiar to Gustav also. High-placed adviser, counselor, factotum. Cut from the same cloth as Axel, Gustav imagined-whatever the difference in origin.
Finally, his eyes came to rest on the central figure in the American delegation. And that she was the central figure, the king did not doubt for a moment. Gustav II Adolf was as experienced a diplomat and politician as he was a general. At the invitation of his father, Charles IX, he had sat in meetings of state since the age of eleven. He had long ago learned to read the subtle signs which indicated power and preeminence.
He was fascinated by her. Part of his interest, of course, was due to the woman's sheer beauty. But only a small part. Gustav was by no means immune to such things. His illegitimate son, product of a passion for a Dutch lady during his rambunctious youth, was serving as an officer in this very camp. But-certainly by the royal standards of his day-Gustav II Adolf was not given to lechery.
Partly, his fascination was due to the fact that the woman was obviously a Jewess. Gustav was familiar with Jews, to a degree, though they were rare in Sweden. But his interest was not so much in her faith as in her position. A Jewish adviser, yes-though court Jews of that sort were invariably male. But a Jewish co-ruler?
Now, that was interesting! Mackay had explained this to him, once, in a letter. But Gustav's mind had not really encompassed the reality until this moment. Freedom of religion…
"I am skeptical," he pronounced. "I am opposed to the Inquisition and all its works, mind. Nor have I placed any burdens on Catholics in areas I have conquered-beyond squeezing the coffers of the bishops. Or Jews, for that matter. But I do not believe a realm can remain stable without an established Church."
The woman named Rebecca Stearns replied. "Experiment with it then, Your Majesty. Use us as your laboratory. We will accept any religious minorities you find troublesome."
Seeing the surprise in the king's face, Rebecca smiled. "The American approach is the opposite, Your Majesty. We believe stability is found in fluid motion. Which lasts longer-the mountains or the sea?"
He stared at her. Abruptly: "You consider yourself an American? You were not born there, I am quite certain. England or Holland, judging from the accent."
Rebecca nodded. They had been speaking in German, since the king's spoken English was poor. "Both," she replied. "I was born in London but spent much of my girlhood in Amsterdam."
She gestured at her companions. "I only encountered this folk a year ago, when they-when my husband-rescued my father and me, yes. I consider myself an American now."
"Ah."
A smile came to her lips. "In most things, at least. Not all." The smile widened. "But, then, that is true of most Americans-the majority of whom are now people who were born and raised in this time and place."
"Ah." Mackay had told him this, also. And-again-the king had not quite believed. But now, seeing the ease of a Sephardic woman in her new identity, Gustav realized that his Scots officer had spoken the simple truth.
Can it be done? he wondered. He mused, for a moment, on the woman's earlier words. Which lasts longer-the mountains or the sea?
Gustav was a man of Scandinavia. He knew the answer.
Now, his eyes went to Mackay himself. The Scots officer had taken a chair next to the open-faced, pretty girl named Julie Sims. The king did not miss the subtle proprietary hints in the postures of both young people, and found himself smiling broadly.
"And you also, I see, Alexander."
There was perhaps a slight flush in the Scotsman's freckled face, but the officer's eyes remained steady.
"I am sworn to your service, Gustav II Adolf of Sweden." The words were spoken in a clipped, almost hostile manner. No, not hostile-simply challenging. The king understood the concept of honor which lay beneath. Quite well. Perfectly, in fact.
He raised a hand in a gesture which was not so much placatory as reassuring. "I am pleased to hear it, Alexander. Not that I doubted, mind you." He ran the hand over his short-cropped blond hair. "But, over time, loyalties can change. All I ask, if you find that happening, is that you give me your resignation. Until then, I ask no questions."
Mackay nodded stiffly.
The next few minutes were taken up by a discussion of the Ring of Fire. Gustav had already gotten a description of it from Mackay-in more than one letter-but he wanted to question the Americans themselves. So, with Rebecca acting as his interpreter, he asked many questions. And he listened very carefully to the responses.
The questions were firm, the responses were not-and it was that, more than anything else, which finally convinced the king. Within a very short time, Gustav was certain that the Americans, for all their mechanical wizardry, were as mystified by their situation as anyone else.
He was immensely relieved. All his deepest fears vanished. And began to be replaced with the first calculations for the future.
No witchcraft. Mackay was right. As for the rest-
Gustav swiveled in his chair and glanced at the two men standing toward the rear of the farmhouse. They had remained there at his request. Gustav had wanted to make a private assessment of the Americans, before pursuing anything else. But the matter had taken much less time than he expected, and he was satisfied that he could press onward. What he had thought would be a mystery, had proven otherwise. Or, rather, had proven to be the familiar mystery of divine providence.
With a little wave of the hand, he summoned the two men forward. As for the rest-
Who are we to question God's will? And who else could create such a Ring of Fire?
Which was quite as it should be. Gustav felt a rush of warmth for the Americans sitting across the table from him. They too-even this most outlandish folk he had ever heard of-were God's creatures, after all. Able to marvel at His handiwork, but not to understand it.
"As it should be…" he murmured.
The two men arrived at the table. "Sit," he commanded. With a pointing finger, he introduced them. "Wilhelm of Saxe-Weimar, the eldest duke. And Lennart Torstensson, my artillery commander."
Torstensson was obviously on the verge of bursting into speech, but Gustav restrained him with a sharp glance. First things first.
"You have created a difficult situation for me in Thuringia," the king said abruptly, speaking to the Americans. "Wilhelm here is one of my few reliable German allies, and you seem to have expropriated his duchy out from under him. This is-very awkward."
The Jewess cast a quick glance at Saxe-Weimar. Then, squaring her shoulders, she began to speak. But Wilhelm interrupted her before she was able to utter more than a few words.
"Please! I do not wish to add to the king of Sweden's problems." Wilhelm gestured with his head toward the door of the farmhouse. "Tilly's army is encamped less than two miles away, on the opposite bank of the Lech. The king intends to force the crossing tomorrow. This is not the time for political wrangling among his allies."
The last sentence produced a sudden stillness. Silence. Then, within seconds, it brought a pronounced easing of tensions at the table. The duke of Saxe-Weimar had now stated openly what had heretofore not been addressed. The fact that no one-not the king, not the Americans-had challenged the statement proved its truth. The new American regime was now accepted-in word as well as in deed-as an ally of Gustav Adolf. The nature of that alliance, of course, had yet to be determined.
Wilhelm continued. "May I suggest that we therefore leave aside, for the time being, any discussion of the future status of the province." He squared his own slender shoulders and looked directly at Rebecca. "I ask two things only. The first-"
He stumbled to a halt. For an instant, his features seemed to twist slightly. Chagrin? No-shame.
"I have been told that there was no starvation in the province, during the past winter. This is true?"
After Rebecca translated, the middle-aged American male cleared his throat. He began to speak, in halting German. The Jewess aided him past the rough spots. "No one has starved. Actually-by our best estimate, which is admittedly very crude-we think the population of southern Thuringia has quadrupled. Since we arrived a year ago."
The statement was met by blank, wide-eyed stares from Wilhelm and the two Swedes at the table. Quadrupled? In central Germany? During this war?
Hastily, almost apologetically, Piazza added: "Not natural increase, of course! Well, some. But there were so many refugees from elsewhere."
Wilhelm's shoulders slumped. He wiped his lowered face. "Thank God," he whispered. "That much is not on my soul, at least."
He raised his head. "That is my first request, then. Please do your best to continue providing that shelter and comfort. As for the second-"
He managed a smile. A thin smile, true, but a genuine one nonetheless. "I would appreciate it if you would do nothing-take no public stance-which forces me to make public defense of my rights. As the king says, that would be-awkward."
The Americans exchanged glances. It was obvious to Gustav that they were groping for a response. And equally obvious-this took not more than five seconds-to whom they turned for leadership. Soon enough, they were all staring at Rebecca, waiting for her to speak.
Gustav found a certain satisfaction in seeing, once again, that his keen political eye had not failed him. But he found a much greater satisfaction-a reassurance, in truth-in the fact that it was a person in their delegation who was not born an American to whom they turned. Mechanical wizards, yes. Wizards, no.
Rebecca spoke softly. "I cannot say anything specific, Duke. Not here, and not now. I do not have the authority. But this much I can say: the legal documents which guide the United States-we call them the Constitution and the Bill of Rights-are not…" She hesitated; then: "Let me put it this way. They are concerned with the positive, not the negative. They establish rights and responsibilities, rather than take them away. If you see what I mean."
Simultaneously, Wilhelm and Gustav smiled.
"How diplomatic," murmured the king happily. "Such a nice turn of phrase."
He cocked his head at Saxe-Weimar. "Wilhelm?"
The duke made a little gesture with his hand, wriggling fingers, to accompany the wry twist of his lips. The combination was subtly comical. "As you say, Your Majesty. A nice turn of phrase, indeed. I imagine we can spend quite a bit of time parsing that phrase."
He glanced at the door. "More than long enough, I should think, to see Tilly and Wallenstein done for." He brought his eyes back to Rebecca. "Afterward…"
"Is afterward," said the king firmly. "Good enough!"
He turned now to Torstensson. "All right, Lennart," he growled. "Spit it out."
Lennart was speaking before the king even finished. Unlike Gustav, he was fluent in English.
"How did you manage it?" he demanded. "Those bores are perfectly identical!" Scowling: "It's impossible! Absurd, even-I don't have cannonballs to match that precision."
Piazza smiled and leaned over. Rummaging in a bag at his feet, he brought out some sort of peculiar instrument.
"Ollie thought you might ask." He extended the instrument to Torstensson. The thing, for all the evident precision of its manufacture, vaguely resembled a sort of clamp. Hesitantly, the artillery general took it in his hand.
"It's called a micrometer," said Rebecca. Quickly, drawing on her own briefing from Ollie, she explained the basic workings of the gadget. "Precision screw-each turn of the barrel records precisely one-fortieth of an inch-point-oh-two-five inches, as machinists prefer to say-each little mark-see here? how it matches against this other?-measures exactly one-thousandth of an inch-"
"One thousandth?" choked Torstensson. He rotated the barrel back and forth, staring at the matching lines. "How can you make something this precise?"
"We can't," replied Rebecca. "Not easily, at least-although our experts think we could, over time, make something equivalent."
Now it was her turn to grope for words. "To do so would require machines which we do not have. And machines to make those machines-which we also do not have. The Ring of Fire brought only what was available in the town of Grantville. Sooner or later, many of our machines and instruments will wear out. They cannot be replaced, not directly. The computers, for instance, presuppose an entire electronics industry-"
She broke off, realizing that she was using meaningless terms, and went directly to the point. "We call it gearing down." She pointed to the micrometer in Torstenson's hands. "With that-which will last a very long time, if it is not abused-we can make simple cannons which are far more precise and accurate than guns made anywhere else. And there are other items we can make."
Tom Simpson interrupted. His German, though not up to Rebecca's fluent standards, was much better than Piazza's. "Rifled muskets, for instance, using Miniй balls. Possibly some simple breechloaders." He chuckled. "There's quite a wrangle going on, among the gun buffs. Some want a Ferguson, some a-"
He broke off, seeing the renewed looks of incomprehension. Those terms, also, were meaningless. "Never mind," he said. "The gist of it is this. We can't recreate the world we left behind. But we can make things which are far in advance of anything here and now."
Smoothly, Rebecca took over. "That's part of it, Your Majesty." Half-apologetically: "Not to speak ill of your own munitions industry in Sweden, of course, but we can provide you with a much closer supply of good ordnance. Better ordnance, in all truth."
All traces of apology vanished. "And money."
Those words-truly magic!-brought dead silence to the room. Money was the essential blood of warfare, far more than pikes, horses, guns and powder-or even soldiers. For the Swedes, especially, the perennial shortage of cash was their biggest handicap.
"How?" demanded the king. He cocked his head skeptically. "I assume you are not offering a direct subsidy?"
Rebecca laughed softly. "Please, Your Majesty! Do I look like Richelieu?"
"Not in the least," muttered Torstensson. The young artillery officer was having a harder time than his monarch keeping his attention focused on Rebecca's mind.
Rebecca ignored the admiring remark. She pressed on: "A subsidy, no. But we can serve you in two other ways. First, southern Thuringia is rapidly becoming an economic center for Germany. Very rapidly, given the chaos in most of the Holy Roman Empire. Construction, manufacturing, commerce-all these are growing by leaps and bounds. The end result, among other things, is that we can provide your army with most of the supplies you need-"
"Food, too?" asked Torstensson. "And what about horses and oxen?" The professional soldier's mind had come back in focus.
Rebecca nodded. "Both. I might mention that American seed and livestock is better than the German, and they have begun a careful breeding program to preserve the strains. And we can offer you much better prices than you could get anywhere else-especially for the ordnance."
She gestured at the micrometer, still in Torstenson's hand. "Our metal-working methods are not simply more precise, they are also much faster and more efficient than anything you could find anywhere else in Europe. Or anywhere in the world, for that matter."
She hesitated for an instant, thinking. Then: "Gunpowder itself, for the moment, we cannot supply directly. Nor textiles, in any quantity. But because of the stability we have brought to the area"-she gave a quick, half-stubborn/half-apologetic glance at Wilhelm-"merchants and traders are pouring in. We cannot supply gunpowder or textiles, but we can definitely serve as a conduit for them. And, again, at a better price than you would find elsewhere."
Gustav rubbed his nose. "What you are proposing, in essence, is that Thuringia-your part of it, at least-can become my supply center and depot. Sweden's arsenal in central Germany."
"Yes," stated Rebecca firmly. The king gave her a shrewd look. She shrugged. "We understand that this will probably bring the wrath of the Habsburgs down on our heads."
Tom Simpson chuckled. "They'll be in for a surprise, if they try to hammer us under."
Mackay frowned. "It's not that simple, Tom. A cavalry raid can do a lot of destruction, even if it does no more than pass through the area. And it's a lot harder to stop."
The huge American got a mulish look on his face. Mackay tightened his jaws a bit. "Listen to me, Tom! If I were your opponent, I assure you I would be a lot harder to counter than one of Tilly's clumsy tercios."
Rebecca interrupted the developing quarrel with a sharp gesture. Gustav, watching, was impressed at the instant obedience the gesture produced. There was more to the woman's authority, he realized, than simply the fact she was the wife of the American commandant. Much more, he judged.
The king spoke again. "You mentioned a second form of financial assistance."
Rebecca's head swiveled back to him. For a moment, she stared with dark eyes. Gustav realized that the woman was judging him now.
When she spoke, her words were clipped, abrupt. "Are you familiar with the Abrabanel family?"
Gustav nodded. "Quite familiar. My assistant, Sir James Spens, has had any number of dealings with them in the past."
"Sir James?" exclaimed Rebecca. "I know him! Not well, myself. But my father thinks quite highly of him."
Gustav's eyes widened. "Your father?" Belatedly, he realized that he had not inquired as to the woman's maiden name.
"Abrabanel. My father is Balthazar Abrabanel."
The king laughed and clapped his thick hands. "Well-no wonder you're such a marvel! Balthazar for a father, and Uriel for an uncle." He grinned at her. "What was it like, being raised in such an atmosphere of cunning and intrigue?"
She grinned back. "Very nice, actually, Your Majesty. You know my father and uncle?"
Gustav shook his head. "Not personally. Only by reputation." He eyed her with renewed respect-and understanding.
"Am I to understand that the entire Abrabanel family has decided to throw its lot in with the Americans?"
Rebecca nodded. "Even the Turks. Especially the Turks, actually. Don Francisco Nasi has been residing in Grantville-our capital-for a number of weeks now. He has announced he plans to stay permanently."
Again, silence filled the farmhouse, while that news was absorbed. The Europeans in the room-Swede, German and Scot alike-understood the implications immediately. They were not peasants, for all that they might share some of the general prejudice against Jews. Those men, especially the king, were familiar enough with banking to know what Abrabanel allegiance to the United States provided. Put bluntly, the finest financial network in the world.
"Loans," mused Gustav. His gaze sharpened. "Interest?"
Rebecca's response came with a smile so broad it was almost a grin. "Five percent, annual interest. For a war loan. Four percent for anything else."
The king almost choked. "Five percent?" His pale blue eyes were practically bulging. "Annually?"
Rebecca shrugged. "The Americans-" She broke off; then, with a little laugh: "We Americans, I should say, have convinced the Abrabanels that a large and steady business is preferable to the occasional windfall." She repeated, very firmly: "Five percent. For you, that is. For Gustav II Adolf. Others will find the rate higher."
She looked away, brushing her thick hair with light fingers. Demurely: "Quite a bit higher, I imagine."
Suddenly, the king was roaring with laughter. "Five percent!" he hallooed, rising, almost lunging, to his feet; shaking his great fist at the heavens.
"That for Richelieu!"
Gustav lowered his fist. His own grin was matched by Torstensson's and Mackay's. Even Wilhelm, he saw, was smiling widely. The king of Sweden took a moment to admire the man's spirit as well as his brains. For all intents and purposes, the duke of Saxe-Weimar had just heard a death sentence passed on his hereditary claim to Thuringia-and he was quite intelligent enough to realize it. Once let a Thuringian republic establish its financial and commercial dominance, and the province's nobility would be lucky if they managed to maintain as much power as the Dutch. Even the mighty Spanish Habsburgs had broken on that rock, for well-nigh a century. Yet the man was spirited enough not to quail at the prospect.
And why should he? Wilhelm of Saxe-Weimar was also sworn to the service of the king of Sweden. A monarch who was not known to be miserly toward his trusted subordinates-and a monarch whose prospects had just received a mighty boost.
Gustav swiveled his head toward Torstensson, as if to bring the artillery commander under a gun himself.
"Corpus Evangelicorum," the king stated boldly. "What say you now, skeptic Lennart?"
Chapter 48
Rebecca and Ed Piazza remained in the farmhouse the next day, while Gustav Adolf prepared to move against Tilly. They would spend the entire day, and the next, working with the king's quartermasters to organize the new Swedish logistical base.
The rest of the delegation went with the Swedish army. Tom and Rita and Heinrich, who had spent the previous weeks working with the machine shops to get the cannons ready, went with Torstensson. Insofar as the new United States had anything resembling an "artillery officer corps," those three were it. Mike and Frank had urged them to take whatever opportunity they might find to get acquainted with the artillery practices of the current day-the best of which, by universal acknowledgment, was embodied in Torstensson's Swedes.
"The key is the hostlers as much as the artillerymen," Torstensson informed them, as they watched the Swedish guns being brought into position. "My horses and wagons are owned by the artillery stable."
The information meant nothing to Tom and Julie, but Heinrich started. Unlike the two Americans, he was quite familiar with the practices of the day. "You mean-?" He pointed to the hostlers guiding the horses forward and unhitching the cannons.
Torstensson nodded. "Army men. Mine-all of them, to a man." His lip curled in a magnificent sneer. "Not a single one of them is a misbegotten wretched coin-counting-" The rest trailed off into muttered obscenities.
Heinrich chuckled. He turned to Tom and Julie and explained.
"Every other army I know uses civilian contractors to handle the horses and wagons in the artillery train."
Tom's eyes widened. "That's crazy!" he grunted.
As always in the field, whenever possible, Tom spoke in German. Torstensson, hearing the words, grinned. But his humor vanished at once, seeing the American guns being brought up to the earthworks. A moment later, he was bellowing new orders, seeing to it that the new cannons were properly placed. Right in the center of the line, under his watchful eye.
Torstensson intended to test those guns today. He had had his men selecting cannonballs since daybreak. He wanted to take advantage of those perfect bores by using the best cannonballs in his arsenal, the ones which were the roundest and made the best fit.
"Half again the range, I'll wager," he said softly, staring at the enemy entrenchments across the river.
Gustav Adolf was studying the same entrenchments, from a position further up the river. Trying to, at least. His myopia made the exercise a bit pointless.
His bodyguard, Anders Jцnsson, was standing to his right. One of Anders' unofficial jobs was to serve as his king's eyes. He leaned over and whispered: "Tilly's got all his men in those woods beyond the marsh, just as you expected. I can't see a one by the riverbank itself."
Gustav nodded. The gesture was more one of frustration than agreement, however. He wished he could see for himself.
He heard a feminine sound. The American girl-Julie Sims-was clearing her throat.
"Uh, sir-uh, I mean, Your Majesty-uh-"
He turned and peered down at her. She and Mackay were standing to his left. The girl herself was right at his elbow.
"Yes?"
Again, she cleared her throat. Then, in halting German: "Why don't you wear spectacles, sir? I mean, Your Majesty?"
Anders hissed. A few feet behind, the Scottish bodyguards stiffened.
There was going to be a royal explosion!
For an instant, the king felt his hot vanity surging to the fore. But there was something about the innocent, open, pretty face which disarmed the fury. Gustav restrained himself.
"Impossible!" he barked. "I tried, once. The spectacles flew off my nose at the first clash of the sabers."
Julie tried to speak again. But she had apparently reached the limit of her German. She whispered hurriedly to her fiancй. His face a bit pale-like all of Gustav's soldiers, Mackay was well aware of the king's sensitivity on this subject-the Scotsman translated.
"She says that she didn't mean normal spectacles, Your Majesty. She was referring to the kind of sports spectacles that-" Here, Mackay stumbled himself. How to explain a basketball game?
He managed, more or less, and in the process described to the king of Sweden the special goggle-style spectacles which young American athletes wore.
Gustav's eyes widened. "Impossible!" he repeated. "Absurd!"
His temper was rising, now. He glared at the impudent girl. The glare transferred itself to the peculiar firearm in her hands-then, to the telescope mounted upon it. Despite his irritation, the king recognized the superb craftsmanship embodied in both the firearm and the optical piece.
The girl seemed quite properly abashed by now. Perhaps in an attempt to mollify the royal outrage, she held up the weapon. "Would you like to look?" she asked.
Scowling, Gustav took the weapon and held it up for inspection. Despite the peculiarities of the thing, its use was clear enough. A moment later, he had the butt nestled against his shoulder and was peering through the telescope.
His annoyance vanished at once. "Marvelous!" he exclaimed. The clarity of the image was far better than anything he had ever seen through a telescope. He spent perhaps a minute, gaily swinging the rifle back and forth, before settling to serious business.
The next few minutes were devoted to a careful inspection of his opponent's position. The Swedish and the Bavarian armies were located on opposite banks of the Lech, just south of the small river's confluence with the Danube. Here, the river passed through a low, marshy plain, flanked by higher land on either side. Tilly had marshaled his forces in the elevated woods beyond the marsh. Clearly enough, the old Catholic general was confident that the boggy terrain on the river banks would impede any Swedish advance badly enough to prevent a crossing. His flanks were well anchored by fortifications, and he had his own batteries drawn up in the center. It was, to all appearances, a well-nigh impregnable position.
But The king smiled grimly, as he studied a particular stretch of the river through the telescope. Directly opposite the high ground where Torstensson was positioning his seventy-two guns, the Lech made a wide loop. The river's meandering course had left a spit of land projecting toward the Swedes on the opposite bank. If a strong force could be moved across the water, onto that spit, under the cover of the Swedish guns, the king would have his bridgehead.
The king lowered the rifle. "Just as the Finns reported," he murmured to Anders with satisfaction. He turned to Julie and handed back the weapon.
"Splendid telescope," he said. "Though I found that peculiar flaw a bit distracting."
Mackay translated. Julie frowned-insult her scope!-and demanded an explanation. Mackay translated. The king explained:
Those two black lines meeting right in the center of the eyepiece.
Mackay translated. Julie-royal temper be damned-growled her response. Mackay translated.
The king erupted anew. "Nonsense!" he bellowed. Waving a great hand angrily: "That's five hundred yards!"
Imperiously, he pointed to Mackay and spoke to Julie. "Give this braggart that gun!" To Mackay: "Now-sir. Make good your boast!"
Mackay swallowed. Then, explained. The king's eyes bulged. Her?
Mackay nodded. The stare was transferred to-to-this-this impudent female!
Julie had had enough. She hefted the rifle. "Tell that fathead to pick his target," she snarled.
Mackay translated, more or less. He did not include the term "fathead." Gustav II Adolf glared at the enemy across the river, selecting his target. He couldn't see well enough, alas, so the king was forced to rely on Jцnsson.
"There's a very fine-looking officer near that one grove, Your Majesty. Dramatic fellow, judging from his posture."
Mackay began to translate, but Julie's German was good enough to understand the gist. The rifle was into her shoulder, her eye at the scope.
The king, watching, began to hiss. For all his indignation, Gustav was far too experienced a soldier not to recognize the casual expertise with which the girl Crack! The flat, unfamiliar sound startled the king. His head swiveled to Anders. The bodyguard's face seemed a bit pale.
"Well?" demanded Gustav.
"Dead on, Your Majesty. Right through the heart, I think. Hard to tell, at that distance. But he's down for good, that's certain."
"Nonsense! Luck! Another!"
Anders called out another target. A few seconds went by. Crack.
"Another!"
Crack.
"Another!"
Crack.
"Ano-" Gustav fell silent. The silence lasted for well over a minute. At the end, he heaved a sigh. Then, suddenly, he broke into a smile.
"Ah, Mackay-" The Scotsman, face very pale, stared at his sovereign. The king, for his part, was staring at Julie. Still smiling.
Julie was not smiling. She was glaring at Gustav with grotesque disregard for all proper etiquette in the presence of royalty.
"I believe I have offended your fiancйe," he said. "Under the circumstances, it might be best if you explained to her the provisions of the dueling code. Can't challenge a ruling monarch. Simply isn't done. Besides-"
He chuckled. "Explain to her that as the challenged party I would have the choice of weapons. Sabers, for a certainty!"
When Mackay translated, Julie's ill humor evaporated instantly. For a moment, she and the king of Sweden exchanged grins. Watching, Anders thought of a chipmunk and a bear beaming in mutual approval.
But he kept the thought to himself. He even managed not to smile at his king's next muttered words.
"Witchcraft-nonsense! What woman needs to be a witch, when she can shoot like that?"
A moment later, Torstensson's guns began to fire, and his amusement vanished. Anders knew the king's plan for the coming battle. No one had asked his opinion, of course-he was merely a bodyguard-but the veteran had a firm one nonetheless.
Gustav II Adolf proposed to force a river in the face of a powerful fortified enemy, in defiance of all established military wisdom of the day.
Madman!
"Too high!" bellowed Torstensson. "Still too high, damn you!"
The gunners at the American cannons swore angrily. Again, they fumbled at the-cursed newfangled!-things which the Americans called elevating screws. They were accustomed to adjusting the tangent elevation by simply levering up the breech and inserting quoins. Admittedly, the new system was quicker, and certainly much easier. Probably more accurate, too. But the gunners did not have the hang of it yet, and they kept overshooting. Some of that inaccuracy, of course, was due to the simple fact that the American guns, with their tight-fitting balls in perfect bores, had a greater range than they were accustomed to. As was the custom of the day, "aiming" was simply a matter of gauging the distance and the angle of the barrel.
Tom turned to Heinrich and whispered, "Remember, when we get back, to talk to Ollie about setting up some kind of sights and elevation lines."
Heinrich nodded. He did not need an explanation of the terms. The German mercenary-former mercenary; like Tom, he now held the rank of captain in the regular U.S. army-had spent much of the past winter in the machine shop. He had become quite familiar, even comfortable, with American notions of precision and accuracy.
Finally, the gunners got it right. The next salvo of cannonballs hammered straight into the earthworks sheltering Tilly's batteries. Those earthworks had already taken a beating from the traditional guns. Now, with the flat and powerful trajectories of the new cannonballs adding their own force to the bombardment, the enemy fortifications were beginning to come apart.
"Take a while, still, to smash them up," stated Torstensson. He smiled grimly. "But they won't be doing any shooting themselves, that's for sure."
He turned, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted to the orderly waiting on the slope above. An instant later, the man was spurring his horse toward the king's position upstream.
Torstensson went back to overseeing his guns. "Up to the Finns, now," he said. Cheerfully: "But those sullen savages won't be able to whine about their covering fire. Not today!"
He bestowed a look of approval on Tom and Heinrich. "Splendid pieces!" His eyes then moved to the very attractive American woman standing at their side. A similar thought crossed his mind, but he left it unspoken. Lennart Torstensson had already come to the same conclusion as Tom Simpson's own mates. Not a good idea, irritating a man who could probably lift one of those marvelous cannons.
An idle question came. He leaned over and murmured to Tom: "I'm curious. What would be your weapon of choice? In a duel, I mean."
The very attractive woman's husband replied instantly.
"Ten-pound sledgehammers."
Not a good idea.
"Now, now!" bellowed the king. On the marshy ground below, Swedish engineers led hundreds of soldiers in a rush to the river bank. The "rush," needless to say, was a slow and sodden kind of thing. The terrain was bad enough, even if the soldiers hadn't been hauling a multitude of freshly cut logs.
Despite the marshy ground, the engineers were soon throwing a crude bridge across the water. The work was not suicidal, due to the heavy covering fire of Torstensson's guns, but it was still dangerous. Within five minutes, several of the engineers had been wounded or killed. Gustav scowled unhappily. Tilly's men were simply sticking their arquebuses over the ramparts and firing blindly. But an occasional round, he supposed, was bound to find a target.
The king heard the American girl whisper something to Mackay. The Scotsman passed the remark along.
"Your Majesty, Julie says that most of the damage is being done by some skirmishers in the woods."
Gustav squinted at the line of trees. The term "sniper" was unknown in that day, but all armies had contingents of lightly armored skirmishers using hunting pieces. Those weapons, since they were not part of the line and were not concerned with rate of fire, were rifled. Their accuracy was still not great, but it was not laughable either.
"She is certain?"
Mackay nodded. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he added: "She is also offering to-ah, the expression she favors is 'take them out.' "
The king smiled thinly. "You are afraid I will be offended by such an offer? My royal dignity insulted?"
Mackay pursed his lips. The king's smile widened.
Then, disappeared entirely-replaced by a ferocious scowl. "Well, I am-and it is!" He shook himself like very large dog. Still scowling: "But not half as much as seeing my engineers struck down."
The scowl faded. With royal dignity, Gustav turned to Julie and gave her a small bow. "If you would, Miss Sims. I would be much obliged."
Julie stooped, dug into the backpack she had brought with her, and hauled out the spotting scope and the binoculars. A moment later, Mackay was festooned with the optical equipment.
"Call 'em out, Alex," Julie commanded. She brought the rifle up.
As he watched the ensuing slaughter, the king of Sweden was not sure which disturbed him the most. Seeing the casual ease with which a young American girl from the future struck down men at a third of a mile-or the casual ease with which her Scots fiancй of the time assisted her in the task. The first introduced a very bizarre and rather frightening new world. The latter opened the entire book.
Crack!
"Left fifty paces! By the tree! Red feathered hat!"
Crack!
Like steel pages turning.
As evening fell, the Finns surged onto the nearly completed bridge. There were three hundred of them, volunteering in eager anticipation of the ten rix dollars promised as bonus. Each man carried a bundle of damp straw which, set alight, soon covered the end of the bridge and the opposite riverbank with thick smoke. Under that concealment, the work of finishing the bridge was done and the Finns charged onto the opposite bank. Hastily, they began erecting new earthworks, turning the spit of land into a fortress.
Tilly ordered his guns to begin a desperate attempt to destroy the new bastion. Desperate, because after hours under Torstensson's counterbattery fire, there was not much left of the Catholic artillery.
"Damn those Swedish guns!" he roared. "They're even worse than they were at Breitenfeld!"
Through the night, under cover of darkness, smoke and Torstensson's batteries, the king led his army across the bridge onto the spit.
From there, through the course of the day-April 16-the Swedes used their numbers to establish a solid position along the entire bank. Gustav Adolf had successfully forced the river. There remained only two choices for Tilly: retreat, again-or launch a final assault.
He chose the latter, and led it himself. Late in the afternoon, atop his white charger, Tilly thundered down the slope. Thousands of cavalrymen and infantry came in his wake.
The struggle which followed, for all its brevity, was no mean affair. Gustav led his own cavalry in a countercharge and the Swedish infantry, at many points along the line, clashed head-on with their Bavarian counterparts. Had the battle been restricted to those forces, Tilly might still have won.
But, it wasn't. Throughout, from their position on the opposite bank, Torstensson's guns kept up their deadly fire. Now exposed on open ground, Tilly's men were being butchered.
"Damn those Swedish guns!" snarled Tilly again. And so, too, came a bitter self-reproach: I should have listened to Wallenstein.
It was the old general's last thought. One of Torstensson's cannonballs shattered his thigh. His valiant charger staggered under the blow but kept its feet. Slowly, unconscious from shock, Tilly toppled from the saddle. In the years to come, men who saw would say it was like watching a tree fall. A great, gnarled oak, finally come to the end.
As Tilly's men carried him to the rear, Aldringer took command. But Aldringer fell within minutes, wounded in the head. By now, the imperial forces had suffered four thousand casualties, and the men lost heart. Night was falling, and they took advantage of the darkness to retreat back into their fortified camp near the Danube. The next day, under the command of the elector himself, Tilly's army retreated to Ingolstadt. Maximillian of Bavaria had had enough of Gustav II Adolf.
"Let Wallenstein try to handle him," he snarled. "Let bastard Bohemian deal with bastard Swede!"
When Gustav heard the news of Tilly, he sent his own body-surgeon into the enemy camp. "Do what you can for the old man," he commanded.
"Won't be much," grumbled the surgeon. "Not from the description of the wound." But he obeyed.
Torstensson was not entirely pleased. "Let the butcher of Magdeburg bleed to death," he growled. The savage expressions on the faces of the other Swedish officers surrounding Gustav made clear their agreement.
The king said simply: "Last of a line. A great line, for all its sins." Then, as if struck by a thought, he turned to the young girl standing a few feet away.
"And what do you think?" he demanded. The girl responded with a shy smile.
"I think you're a nice man," came her reply.
Gustav II Adolf was quite taken aback. "Nice man," he muttered, as he walked away. He shook his head. "Nice man. What kind of thing is that to say-to a king?"
Part Six
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears
Chapter 49
Cardinal Richelieu set the letter down on the bench in his garden. For several minutes, sitting next to it, he stared down at the detested thing.
Since he had been appointed head of the Royal Council on August 13, 1624, the cardinal had pursued a consistent policy in foreign affairs. Officially, of course, he had expressed his full support for the Counter-Reformation and the assault on Protestantism. Such was necessary, if nothing else, to retain the allegiance of the Catholic fanatics led by the Capucin Father Joseph and those organized in the secret society called the Company of the Holy Sacrament. But, underlying that pious surface, was Richelieu's true aim: strengthen France. And that meant, first and foremost, humble the Habsburgs-especially the Spanish branch of the family, who ruled the greatest military power in Europe.
All in ruins…
Without lifting his head, he asked the man standing nearby: "It is true, Etienne?"
Etienne Servien nodded. He was one of the cardinal's intendants, the special agents who maintained Richelieu's iron rule over France. Officially, the intendants were nothing but minor functionaries, appointed directly by the crown. In reality, they were the cardinal's private army of enforcers, spies, dictators by proxy. Servien had just returned from a protracted mission. First, to Vienna; then to Brussels; and along the way "Yes it is," he said. "I spent a week in Thuringia myself, Cardinal. Most of it in Grantville. It's all true."
"Witchcraft?"
Servien shrugged. "My opinion? No. Not, at least, in minor things. I spoke to many of the German residents, and none of them believed the American arts were more than those of superb mechanics. Several of the ones I spoke to have begun learning those arts themselves, in fact. As to the thing in large? Who knows? They call it the Ring of Fire, but no one seems to understand what it was. Divine intervention is the accepted explanation."
The cardinal's eyes moved to a bed of flowers. Beautiful things. For a moment, he pondered the Lord's handiwork.
But not for long. Richelieu believed in few things, beyond France and its glory. Establishing French supremacy was his lifelong ambition, and his beliefs were yoked to that purpose. Absolute monarchy, of course, was necessary to that end; as was religious conformity. Beyond that The Lord's handiwork is what I say it is.
"Witchcraft," he stated. "Sorcery, pure and simple. Satan's hand clutches Thuringia today."
Servien bowed. "As you say, Cardinal."
Richelieu patted the letter with his fingertips. He was tempted to crumple the thing in his fist, but the cardinal was not a man to ignore reality. No matter how detestable.
"Very well," he said. He rose to his feet, adjusting the great robes of office. "We will accede to the Spanish request."
Demand, he thought sourly.
"Take the silver to Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, Etienne. Make sure he understands the conditions of his new service."
Servien's face twisted into a grimace. "He's a hothead, Cardinal. Unruly."
Richelieu waved his hand impatiently. "We can deal with Saxe-Weimar's undisciplined nature on a later occasion. For now, I simply need him to move his forces aside so that the Spanish troops have a clear line of march on Thuringia. He can manage that easily enough, even with Oxenstierna in the vicinity. There is so much chaos in Germany today that Bernard can justify his movements a hundred different ways."
The cardinal began pacing slowly through his garden. Servien walked by his side.
"There will still be no way to keep the tercios hidden," remarked the intendant. "Not marching all the way from the Spanish Netherlands."
Richelieu shrugged. "That hardly matters. From the reports, I suspect the Spanish will be defeated in any event. Probably all the better, if their approach is foreseen. It will distract attention from the real blow."
Servien's eyes widened. "Wallenstein has agreed?"
"Yes. I received his letter three days ago. He expects to be locked with the Swedes very soon now. Probably at Nьrnberg. A siege will last for months. More than enough time to use his Croats for this purpose."
The grimace returned to the intendant's face. "Cardinal, I've seen those works. The thing they call a 'power plant,' in particular, is built like a castle. There's no way a cavalry force will be able to reduce them. Not significantly-not in a raid, for sure."
Richelieu smiled faintly. "I am not concerned with that." Shaking his head: "You worry too much about the mechanics of war. A paltry business, that. Money, Etienne-that's the key. I could tolerate the king of Sweden, armed with his fancy new weapons. I could even tolerate a rich new republic-a little republic-in central Germany. We've managed to live with the Dutch, after all. Given time, given that they remain small, I expect we'll consume them soon enough."
He walked on a few paces before continuing. "What I cannot tolerate is Swedish power dominating central Europe, standing on financial bedrock. A poor Sweden will never be dangerous. Obnoxious, yes; dangerous, no. A rich Sweden-rich from its new connection with this bizarre United States-is a different matter altogether. Better a powerful Habsburg dynasty than that. Whatever else, the Habsburgs can always be counted on for disunity."
He stopped abruptly, and scowled at an inoffensive rose bush. "I cannot touch the Abrabanels in Turkey. Not even-as you know-in Vienna."
Servien nodded. That had been part of his recent mission. To convince Ferdinand II to dispense with his court Jews, and execute the Abrabanels in particular. But in that purpose, the intendant had failed.
There had been no condemnation of Servien in the cardinal's words, however. Richelieu had not expected a Habsburg emperor to destroy his court Jews in the middle of a war-certainly not at the urgings of his French enemy.
The cardinal continued: "I may be able to have the Italian branch eliminated. Hard to say, especially dealing with Venetians. But they are the least important, in any event. The key is destroying them in Thuringia."
The intendant began to speak again-another demurral, judging from his expression-but the cardinal waved him silent. "Yes, yes-I know the Croats won't be able to kill all of them. Not in the time they'll have. It doesn't matter. They will savage the place so thoroughly that whatever Abrabanels survive will soon enough take their business elsewhere." His thin lips grew thinner: "Jews, you understand."
Servien nodded. "Half the greedy Germans will pack up also. Half, at the least." His own lips grew thin: "Merchants. Manufacturers. Rats in a granary set on fire."
"Yes." Richelieu leaned over and sniffed the roses. "Exactly."
"That still leaves us a mess with the Spaniards," muttered Servien. "We'll have let them into Germany."
"Please, Etienne!" The Cardinal continued his sniffing. "Give me a moment to enjoy God's handiwork, before you spoil the rest of my day."
Several weeks later, in his fortified camp outside Nьrnberg, Wallenstein did crumple a letter.
"Idiot," he hissed. He tossed the message into the fire. The roaring flames in that great fireplace-as ever, Wallenstein had appropriated the largest mansion in the area-consumed the paper in an instant.
The imperial army's top commanders were standing as far away from the fireplace as possible, while staying within speaking range of Wallenstein. In the heat of a July evening, they found the flames oppressive. Absurd, even. But Wallenstein always insisted on a fire, no matter the time of year.
"Idiot!" repeated Wallenstein. He clasped his hands behind his back and stared at his officers. His next words were spoken in savage, sing-song mimicry: "'Kill all the Jews in the town.'"
Piccolomini barked a laugh. "Ha! Easy to say-for a cardinal! What does that shithead think we're dealing with? Unarmed civilians in the Inquisitor's chambers?"
Next to him, General Sparre sneered. "And how in God's name are the Croats supposed to find them?" he demanded. "Especially in that grotesque place! Read the street signs? The ignorant bastards are illiterate."
"Wouldn't matter even if they weren't," muttered General Gallas. He lifted his heavy shoulders. The gesture was not so much a shrug as a twitching off of insects. "Does Richelieu seriously think you can order Croat cavalry to kill selectively?" He snorted. "They might spare the dogs. Probably not. Jews are dogs, after all-ask any Croat."
The salon echoed with coarse laughter. The huge portraits on the walls, mediocre for all their size and splendiferous frames, stared down with disapproval. The disapproval was odd, perhaps. The obscure line of petty barons who had-involuntarily-given up their ancestral mansion for Wallenstein, had been noted for little beyond coarseness. But such men, when they pose for a provincial artist's work, almost invariably frown. An attempt at grandeur, perhaps; or simply holding in their bladder.
Wallenstein strode over to the table at the center of the salon. The table was quite out of place in the room's furniture. It was a great, heavy kitchen table, wrestled into the salon by soldiers on the day Wallenstein took possession of the mansion. The chairs and couches which had already been there were fragile and fancy things, imported from Vienna. They were even more fragile now, but no longer very fancy-not after Wallenstein's officers had spent the past days inflicting spurs and spilled wine upon them.
The table, on the other hand, was more than sturdy enough to support cavalry boots and flagons, as well as the huge map which covered most of its surface.
When he reached the table, Wallenstein spread his hands and leaned over the map. His officers gathered around him. After a minute or so, Wallenstein stretched out a long, bony finger and pointed to a spot.
"There? A demonstration."
That would be Piccolomini's task. The Italian general leaned over and studied the area indicated.
"If it's just to be a demonstration, yes. Anything more-"
Wallenstein shook his head. "Please. I am not a cardinal, who thinks war can simply be counted in coins. He may choose to shrug off the accounts, but I do not. Every army which has gone straight at the Americans has been broken like a rotten twig. And those accounts come from Tilly's veterans, not a pack of stinking monks and priests." He resumed his study of the map. "I do not expect you to actually take Suhl. This is just a feint, to draw off some of their forces."
The generals around the table relaxed. Not the least of the reasons Wallenstein had become the greatest military figure in the Holy Roman Empire was that he commanded the allegiance of his own men. If for no other reason, because he did not ask mercenaries to attempt the impossible. All of those officers had personally heard the reports. Impenetrable steel vehicles, without even horses to be slain; a preposterous rate of fire; rifles which could kill unerringly across a third of a mile; even some kind of gun which could pour out bullets like a rainspout.
"Simply a demonstration," Wallenstein repeated. He gave Piccolomini a sharp glance. "A genuine demonstration, you understand? They'll get suspicious if there's no contact at all. There must be a reasonable number of casualties."
Piccolomini shrugged. "I can spare a few hundred. I'll use those Swabian fucks. They've been nothing but a pain in the ass since they got here, anyway. Do them good to be bled."
Wallenstein nodded. Keeping his right forefinger on Suhl, his left forefinger moved across the map to the west, coming to rest on the spot marked "Eisenach."
"The Spaniards should manage to take Eisenach. If they fail, they can retreat into the Wartburg."
General Gallas sniffed. "I still can't believe the Americans haven't stationed a garrison in the place. Old as it is, the Wartburg's still the strongest castle in Thuringia. Idiots."
Wallenstein shook his head. "I do not share your attitude, I'm afraid. If the United States is not stationing a garrison there-so obvious!-there must be a reason for it. And I think it would be foolish to assume the reason is simple incompetence."
"Short of troops, probably," mused Piccolomini. "Every spy we've sent into the area reports that they maintain only a small permanent army." He sniffed himself, now. "Merchants and bankers-and, God help us, manufacturers. That's what they are, nothing more. I don't care how fancy their weapons are, they don't think like soldiers."
Wallenstein rose to his full height. He was a tall man, very thin. Now at the age of forty-eight, his dark hair had receded to form a widow's peak. A long and prominent nose was offset by high cheekbones and, beneath a slender mustachio and above a goatee, a mouth whose lower lip was so thick and out-jutting that it suggested Habsburg bastardy. It was a forbidding face, cold and unexpressive. The face, combined with the stature, gave Wallenstein more than a passing resemblance to the popular image of Mephistopheles.
"I don't think like a soldier either," he said. His dark eyes scanned the officers around him. Coldly: "That's why you work for me, not I for you."
The officers did not bridle at that cutting remark. Partly, because it was the simple truth. Mostly, because bridling at Wallenstein was dangerous. The Bohemian general-military contractor was a better term-would tolerate discussion, argument, even quarrel. He gave short shrift to officers who couldn't learn to accept his authority. And when it came to "short shrift"-there, too, Wallenstein did not think like a soldier. The man had the soul of an assassin, not a duelist.
"It doesn't matter," he stated forcefully. "Whatever the reason-whether it's incompetence, lack of men, or, as I suspect, because the Americans know something we don't-it'll be the Spaniards who make the discovery. Not us."
His officers nodded in unison. The collective gesture exuded all the satisfaction of mercenaries who expect to collect their pay while others do the dying.
Wallenstein leaned back over the table. Again, his two forefingers spread wide. "The Spaniards, in force, at Eisenach. Piccolomini, you here-in a solid demonstration at Suhl. That should be enough to draw aside all significant opposition. Then-"
He removed his finger and slashed up the map with the edge of his right hand. "The Croats-right through the heart of the forest. The hunters we hired assure me there is a good trail, passing through uninhabited terrain. The Croats should get within striking distance before they're even spotted. Nothing to oppose them but the town's constabulary."
He leaned over the table and reached for a smaller map. Grasping it between thumb and fingers, he drew the map to cover the larger one.
"Here," he said, pointing. He cocked his head at Gallas, under whom the Croat light cavalry served. "Make sure the Croats understand. The main blow is to fall here."
Gallas studied the place indicated on the map. It was a very good, very detailed map of the town-small city, now-called Grantville. Dozens of spy reports had gone into its making, over the past few weeks.
Gallas' face was creased with a slight frown. "Not the town itself?"
Wallenstein shook his head. "No. Oh, certainly-make sure a sizeable force of cavalry ravages the town, as best they can." He chuckled harshly. "If they can butcher a few Jews, so much the better. But the main blow must come here."
He leaned back and, once again, stood erect. "Cardinal Richelieu can prate about money and bankers and Jewish financial wizards all he wants. That place is the heart of the United States. I have studied all the reports and come to that conclusion. That is where this new serpent lairs, and that is where it hatches its offspring."
Again, he stooped; and, again, pointed with a devil's finger.
"There. Raze it to the ground. Kill everyone. Even the dogs, if they find any."
His own laugh, when it came, was as coarse as that of any of his officers. "Who knows? Might be a Jew in disguise."
Chapter 50
"I don't like this," growled Gustav Adolf softly. He gave the letter in his hand a little flick of the fingers. "Not in the least."
He raised his eyes and peered at Torstensson. "Lennart, can you think of any good reason Bernard would be engaging in such maneuvers? That far to the south?"
The young artillery general started to make some sarcastic remark-wanted to admire his reflection in Lake Geneva-but restrained himself. He could sense that the king was genuinely concerned. He nodded toward the letter in Gustav's hand.
"Axel has no suggestions?"
Gustav shook his head. "No. But he's worried, I can tell."
Standing on the walls of the redoubt which the Swedes had built where the river Rednitz entered Nьrnberg, Torstensson turned and stared to the northwest. The king copied the movement. Both men were groping in their minds, trying to visualize the terrain in the Rhineland. What could Bernard of Saxe-Weimar be thinking? There was no logical reason for him to have moved his troops as far south as Cologne.
Their eyes passed over, but ignored, the huge complex of fortifications which surrounded the city. Most of those fortifications were crude earthworks, and most of them were new. Like the redoubt itself, they had been erected hastily over the past month.
As soon as he entered the city on July 3, Gustav had used the labor of Nьrnberg's inhabitants to build those fieldworks. The citizens had not complained-not in the least. Nьrnberg had allied itself to the king of Sweden, and they were well-nigh ecstatic to see him make good on his promise: Nьrnberg will not be another Magdeburg.
Gustav Adolf had arrived not a moment too soon. The huge army which Wallenstein had assembled in Bohemia was marching on the city. Sixty thousand strong, that army was-the largest force ever put into the field in the course of the long and brutal war. Tilly's Bavarian troops, now under the direct command of the Elector Maximillian, were marching to join him-perhaps another twenty thousand men. And Pappenheim, whose Black Cuirassiers had spent the spring and early summer in Westphalia, was reported to be coming as well. Pappenheim's route was unclear, but the Swedes assumed he would take advantage of Gustav's withdrawal to Nьrnberg to march through Franconia. If so, Nьrnberg was threatened from three sides: Wallenstein from the northeast, Maximillian from the south, Pappenheim from the west. An army of one hundred thousand men was about to threaten Nьrnberg with the fate suffered by Magdeburg.
While the inhabitants of the city frantically erected their fortifications, under the direction of the Swedish engineer Hans Olaf, Gustav had led his army back into the field. For days, the Swedes had maneuvered against the oncoming enemy forces, slowing their advance and buying time for Nьrnberg. But on July 10, at Neumarkt, the Bavarian and imperial armies had finally merged.
Although he was outnumbered four to one, Gustav had continued to challenge Wallenstein to meet him in the open field. Wallenstein had declined. The Bohemian military contractor preferred the surer, if slower, methods of siege warfare. Steadily, surely, inexorably, his enormous army had moved into positions threatening the city. But, by then, the feverish program of fortifications had erected a new wall around Nьrnberg, replacing the inner walls of the city. Gustav's line of defense, hastily erected but well designed, was too large for even Wallenstein to surround.
So, the Bohemian had been forced to "besiege" Nьrnberg by erecting what amounted to a "counter-city." Through the rest of July, Wallenstein's men had been set to work erecting a gigantic armed camp a few miles to the southwest of the city. Using the Bibert River as a central water supply, Wallenstein had erected fieldworks with a circumference of a dozen miles. The strong point in those fieldworks, directly facing the Swedes, was a wooded hill on the north. That hill was called the Burgstall. It rose some two hundred and fifty feet above the Rednitz river, flowing past its eastern slope. In effect, the Rednitz served as a moat, and the wooded hill was capped by an ancient ruined castle named the Alte Veste. Wallenstein had turned the Alte Veste and the entire Burgstall into a fortress. Palisades and ditches sprouted like mushrooms on the hill, with clear lines of fire for the heavy guns positioned on its slopes.
Then-nothing. Time after time, Gustav had sallied from Nьrnberg, challenging Wallenstein to open battle. Wallenstein declined. "There has been enough fighting," he told his generals. "I will show them another method."
Cold-blooded like no man of his time, Wallenstein's method was simple. Hunger and disease, soon enough, would strike both armies. Men would die in the thousands, and then the tens of thousands-and he had a lot more men than the king of Sweden.
"Treason," whispered Gustav. "It can only be treason."
Torstensson frowned. He detested the younger duke of Saxe-Weimar, true. But-treason?
"I can't-" The young general hesitated. "I'm afraid I can't see the logic of that, Your Majesty." He pointed to the west. "It's true that Bernard's left the door open for the Spaniards, if they choose to come through. But even if that's his purpose, what's the point? The Lower Palatinate is still blocked. For a Spanish army to threaten us, they'd have to-" He stumbled to a halt, his eyes widening.
The king nodded. "March through Thuringia," he concluded grimly. "Which, of course, would be an incredibly roundabout way of threatening Nьrnberg. But what if they have no intention of coming this far? What if, Lennart, their purpose is not to march through Thuringia, but simply to attack it?"
Torstensson's head swiveled. He was staring north, now, instead of west. "Maybe," he mused. "That, at least, would make Bernard's maneuvers sensible-assuming he is committing treason." Torstensson squinted. "But, even so-what's the point?"
The artillery general's shoulders twitched. The gesture was more an expression of exasperation than a shrug. "I have never seen the Americans in action. But judging from every report we've gotten-and I've heard Mackay myself-they can shatter any army which comes at them directly. Especially those hide-bound Spanish tercios."
The king snorted. "Yes. But ask yourself this, Lennart-has anyone told the Spaniards?"
Now, Torstensson's eyes were very wide. Like all of Sweden's top commanders, Torstensson was privy to the complex and tortuous diplomatic maneuvers which his king had been forced to engage in over the past two years.
"Richelieu," he murmured.
Gustav nodded. "That would be the conduit, sure enough. Richelieu has the money, and the patronage, to offer Bernard an exceptional price for turning his coat. Alsace, probably, to replace his precious Thuringia. Or Lorraine. A word to the Spanish-who have been chafing to get into Germany for years, on any pretext-and there we have it. An open road for a Spanish army from the Low Countries to strike at Thuringia."
"But Richelieu's been trying to keep the Spanish out of Germany since he took office," protested Torstenson. The protest was feeble, however. The quick-witted artillery general was already working through the logic. He began stroking his beard, thinking aloud: "Hostility to Spain has been the keystone of his foreign policy, true enough. But now that your position in central Europe has become so strong, he may be thinking of a counterweight."
"Precisely. And ask yourself-why has my position grown so strong?" Gustav made a little dismissive gesture with his hand. "Not my army. Richelieu is a money man, not a soldier. To him, bullion rules the world."
Torstensson's beard stroking grew vigorous. "Yes. Yes. Thuringia's the key to that, too. As long as the Americans hold it firmly, we have a secure logistics base and a reliable source of cash. It's made us completely independent of any foreign pursemasters." His lips pursed. "Well-it will, I should say. Take a few months before everything settles in. But Richelieu is a man to think ahead, if ever one lived."
He dropped his hand from the beard and turned to face his king squarely. "But I still don't see what Richelieu hopes to accomplish. Unless he simply wants to see a Spanish army battered and bleeding."
Gustav grinned humorlessly. "He certainly wouldn't lose any sleep over that." The king shrugged. "I don't understand the logic myself, Lennart. But I can smell it. Something's up."
He paused for a few seconds. Then, slowly, a wicked smile began spreading across his face. His blue eyes seemed to dance and sparkle.
"The very thing!" he exclaimed. He planted his hands on his hips and, grinning now, said to Torstensson: "I believe we should send a small expedition to Thuringia to investigate. And I know just the man to lead it!"
Torstensson frowned. "Who? One of the Scottish colonels? Or perhaps-" The meaning of that wicked gleam in his king's eye finally registered. Torstensson's own eyes almost bulged. "Not-"
"The very man!" cried the king gaily. "Captain Gars!" He clapped his hands. "He'll be ecstatic at the prospect, too-I can assure you of that. Captain Gars is every bit as sick of this miserable siege as I am. And there's plenty of time for him to go and come back before anything happens."
The king turned his head and glared at the distant Burgstall. "You know as well as I do, Lennart, that Wallenstein has no intention of offering me battle. That spider intends to just sit there-for months, if need be-while everyone dies around him. He counts men like a spendthrift counts coin."
Again, he clapped his hands. "Yes! Plenty of time for Captain Gars to carry out the task. More than enough."
Torstensson was scowling ferociously, now. "Your Majesty," he protested, "you haven't used Captain Gars for anything of that nature in years!"
The king matched the scowl with one of his own, even more ferocious. "What?" he demanded. "Are you saying you have no confidence in the man?"
Torstensson started. "Well-no. Of course not!"
The king's gaiety returned. "Done, then!" He gave Torstensson's shoulder a hearty pat. "Done! Captain Gars it is."
The decision made, Gustav moved at once. He turned to his bodyguard, Anders Jцnsson. "You heard?"
Stolidly, Jцnsson nodded. The king continued: "Get Captain Gars a cavalry detachment, Anders. A good one. The captain is partial to the Vдstgцta, as you know. And make sure he has plenty of Finns and some Lapps."
Gustav grinned cheerfully. "And I do believe I'll assign you to the captain as well, Anders." He waved a thick hand in the direction of Nьrnberg. "There obviously won't be any danger to me, in the midst of these great fortifications. Will there?"
Stolidly, Jцnsson shook his head.
"Excellent," said the king. He began walking away briskly, heading for the stairs leading down from the redoubt. Almost bouncing with enthusiasm, it seemed. Over his shoulder: "Captain Gars will be so delighted!"
When he was gone, Jцnsson and Torstenson stared at each other.
"Captain Gars," muttered Jцnsson. "Wonderful."
Torstensson's expression was a mix of concern and amusement. "Do take care of him, Anders, will you?"
The response was stolid, stolid. "That madman? Impossible."
Chapter 51
"What the hell are they doing, Heinrich?" demanded Tom Simpson. The big American captain was peering over the top of the parapet which had been erected across the road leading into Suhl from the south. The hastily built field fortifications were positioned at the northern edge of a large meadow. The meadow was about two hundred yards long and slightly less than that in width. A small stream ran through the center of it, bisecting the road.
His commanding officer shrugged. A pair of binoculars was slung around Heinrich's neck, but he was not using them. The oncoming mercenary soldiers were already entering the meadow, and in plain view.
Tom raised his own binoculars and scanned the meadow. After a few seconds, he lifted the eyepieces and began slowly studying the woods which covered the hills beyond.
"I don't like it," he muttered.
Next to him, Heinrich smiled. If he had any professional criticism of his inexperienced junior officer, it was that Tom insisted on finding complexity where, more often than not, there was none. "Too much football," he murmured.
Tom lowered the binoculars and peered at him suspiciously. "What is that supposed to mean?"
Heinrich's sly smile widened. "What it means, my friend, is that you keep thinking you are on a playing field. Facing enemies who are working out of a fancy play book."
Except for the English phrases "playing field" and "play book," Heinrich had spoken the last two sentences in German. The language made the English sports terms particularly incongruous-which was exactly what Heinrich had intended.
Tom snorted. "And what do you know about play books? Every time I've tried to explain football, you either fall asleep or order another beer."
Like Heinrich, Tom now also spoke in German. His command of the language had improved faster than that of any adult American in Grantville. It could not be said that Tom was fluent yet-not quite-but he was already able to participate in any conversation.
"That's because it's too intricate," retorted Heinrich. His hands zigzagged back and forth. "This one goes that way, that one goes this way"-his forefinger made a little twirling motion-"the other one runs around in circles to confuse the opponent-ha! It's a wonder you didn't all collapse from dizziness."
Tom grinned. "Not my problem. I didn't go anywhere except straight ahead-right into the guy in front of me."
"Excellent!" cried Heinrich. He slapped Tom on the shoulder with his left hand while he pointed at the meadow with his right. "Then you shouldn't have any difficulty with this. They come straight at us-good soldiers!-and we knock them flat. What is to understand?"
Tom's grin faded, replaced by a scowl. "Dammit, Heinrich, it doesn't make sense! They have got to know by now-"
Heinrich cut him off. "No, they don't! Tom, listen to me. You have no experience with these mercenary armies. Those men"-he jerked his head toward the meadow-"have probably had no contact with Tilly's. And if they did, they would have ignored anything a stupid Bavarian had to say."
He could tell that Tom was not convinced. Heinrich chuckled. Pointing now with his chin, he indicated the woods beyond the meadow. "What? You think there are cavalrymen hidden in the wood? Bringing their clever maneuver to fruition. Waiting to pounce when the time is right?"
Tom hesitated. Heinrich smiled. "Double reverse? Is that what you call it?"
"All right," the American grumbled. "Maybe you're right." He lifted his head over the parapet again. Softly: "We'll know soon enough. They're starting to cross the stream."
Lazily, Heinrich raised his own head and studied the enemy. "Swabians, I think. Sorry ignorant bastards."
Tom's lips twitched. "All of them?"
"Every Swabian ever born," came the firm reply. Then Heinrich's own lips moved. Twitched, perhaps. "I'm from the Upper Palatinate, you know."
"As if you haven't told me enough times. Funny thing, though." Tom's heavy brows lowered. "I was talking to a Westphalian just the other day, and he swears that everybody from the Palatinate-Upper or Lower, the way he tells it-is a natural born-"
"Westphalians!" sniffed Heinrich. "You can't believe a word those people say. They're all goat-fuckers, for a start. Bastards, too, every one of them."
Tom started to make some quip in response, but never spoke the words. For all the relaxed casualness in Heinrich's stance and demeanor, Tom understood the sudden squinting of his eyes. During their badinage, the German veteran had never taken his gaze off the enemy. Tom envied him that relaxed poise. Personally, he felt as tight as a drum.
"Seventy yards," Heinrich murmured. "Good." He raised the whistle hanging around his neck. But before blowing into it, he gave Tom a sly smile.
"How do you say it? Oh, yes-play ball."
The whistle blew. An instant later, three hundred U.S. soldiers rose from behind the parapet and began pumping lead slugs into the Swabians.
Five minutes later, the gunfire ceased. Heinrich swiveled his head. The sly smile was back.
"How do you say it? Oh, yes-blowout, I believe."
Tom made no reply. He appreciated the humor, but couldn't really share it. Unlike Heinrich, Tom Simpson was not a veteran of a dozen battlefields. He kept his eyes firmly focused on the enemy soldiers stumbling in retreat, so that he wouldn't find himself staring at the corpses mounded in an innocent meadow. Or a pleasant stream, suddenly running red.
"Why'd they do it?" he whispered. Again, his eyes ranged the woods beyond. "Shoulda had cavalry. Tried a flanking attack or something."
The reply was a given. "Swabians. What do you expect?"
As it happened, there were horsemen in those woods. But they were not Wallenstein's cavalry. They were Lapps, in service to the king of Sweden. Gustav Adolf believed, quite firmly, that Lapps were the best scouts in Europe.
He was quite possibly right.
The Finn who was in command of the Lapp scouting party reined his horse around. "Interesting," he said. "Come. Captain Gars will want to know."
Captain Gars raised himself off the saddle, standing in the stirrups. His head was cocked, listening for the sound of gunfire coming from the north. But there was none. The gunfire he had heard earlier that day had not lasted for more than a few minutes.
"How many?" he asked gruffly.
The Finnish scout waved his hand back and forth. "The Swabians, maybe two thousand. The other side?" He shrugged. "A few hundred, no more. Hard to say, exactly. They fight like skirmishers."
The last sentence, almost barked in his rural-accented Finnish, was full of approval. The scout, like most Finns and all Lapps, thought the "civilized" method of warfare-blast away, standing straight up, practically eyeball to eyeball-was one of the surest signs that civilization was not all it was cracked up to be.
He finished with a grin: "Smart people, these Americans. Whoever they are."
Captain Gars grunted. "It's all over, then?"
The Finn snorted. "It was a bloodbath. If the Swabians weren't so stupid they'd have run away after a minute."
"No chance they can take Suhl?" The scout's only response was a magnificent sneer.
Captain Gars nodded. "Not our concern, then. But this other-"
He twisted his enormous body in the saddle and looked toward the small group of Lapp scouts sitting on their horses a few feet away.
"Two thousand, you say?" As with the Finn himself, the captain spoke in Finnish. Few Lapps knew any other language beyond their own.
The head Lapp scout grimaced. "We guess, Captain. They follow narrow trail. Way ground chewed, must be two thousand. More. Maybe."
"And you're sure they're Croats?"
Again, the Lapp grimaced. "Guess. But who else? Good horsemen."
Captain Gars peered into the distance, looking slightly east of north. The Thuringenwald was a dense forest in that direction. Largely uninhabited, by the Lapps' accounts. The kind of terrain that good light cavalry can move through unobserved, as long as they carry enough provisions. The Lapps had spotted the trail less than two miles ahead. If their assessment was accurate-and Captain Gars thought Lapps were the best trackers in Europe-a large body of cavalry had broken away from the army marching on Suhl, moving into the forest east of the road.
Croats were good light cavalry. The best in the imperial army. Captain Gars decided that the Lapp was probably correct. Who else would it be?
The captain was not familiar with this particular area of the Thuringenwald. But, even given the roughness of the terrain, he estimated that a cavalry force of that size could pass over the crest of the low mountains within two days. Certainly not more than three. In straight-line distance, the heart of southeast Thuringia was not more than forty miles away.
Or Saalfeld, possibly, if the Croats angled further to the east. But the captain did not think Saalfeld was their target. Saalfeld could be approached far more easily from the opposite direction, following the Saale river. With the king of Sweden's army concentrated in Nьrnberg, there was nothing impeding Wallenstein from sending an army directly against Saalfeld.
There was only one logical reason for a large cavalry force to be taking this route.
"They're planning a surprise attack on Grantville," he stated. "A major cavalry raid. Not to conquer, but simply to destroy."
Sitting on his horse next to the captain, Anders Jцnsson heaved a sigh. He had already come to the same conclusion. And, what was worse, already knew for a certainty what Captain Gars would decide to do.
"We'll follow them." The words seemed carved in granite.
Anders appealed to reason. "Two thousand, the Lapp says. We've only four hundred."
"We'll follow them," repeated the captain. He glared at Jцnsson. "Surely you don't intend to argue with me?"
Anders made no reply. Surely, he didn't.
Captain Gars spurred his horse forward. "And move quickly! The enemy is already half a day's march ahead of us."
Chapter 52
Mike decided to take out the field guns first. His confidence as a military commander had grown enough that he didn't wait to check with Frank. The Spaniards, in the manner of the day, were moving the artillery into position ahead of the infantry. Smoothbore cannons firing round shot needed a flat trajectory to be effective in a field battle. There was no way to do that with a mass of infantry standing in front of them. Mike understood the logic, but he still found the idea vaguely absurd.
"Talk about being exposed," he muttered. He lowered the binoculars.
"Orders, chief?" asked his radio operator.
Mike grinned. "I'm never going to get used to that expression coming from you, Gayle." He extended his hand and took the radio.
"Harry, this is Mike. Move out the APCs. Take Route 4 and then turn south onto Route 26. The Spanish are positioning the field guns east of the road. You can cut right between the artillery and the infantry."
Harry Lefferts' voice crackled out of the radio. "What about the cavalry?"
"We'll worry about them later. Frank can hold his ground easily enough, even if he doesn't use the M-60. We've got a chance to nail the artillery right now."
Lefferts' response, like the entire exchange, was sadly lacking in military protocol.
"Gotcha. Will do, chief."
In the distance, coming from the grove northwest of that stretch of Eisenach's walls, Mike could hear the sound of the APC engines firing up.
His grin came back. "And I'll sure as hell never get used to it coming from Harry."
Gayle matched the grin. "Why not? Ain't you just the proper budding little Na-po-lee-own?"
"Give me a break," snorted Mike. "The day I become a military genius is the day hell freezes over." He handed the radio back to Gayle. "Call Frank and tell him about the change in plans. I want to go talk to Alex."
Gayle nodded. Mike turned away from the redoubt's wall and hurried toward the stairs leading to the compound below. By the time he reached the level ground where the cavalry was waiting, taking the wide stone steps two at a time, Mackay and Lennox were trotting forward to meet him.
After Mike explained the new situation, Alex grimaced. Lennox scowled. Mike found it hard not to laugh. The Scotsmens' expression combined varying amounts of amusement and exasperation.
On the part of Lennox, mostly exasperation. "Soft-hearted Americans," he grumbled. "Ye'd do better-"
"Enough," commanded Mackay. "General Stearns is in command."
Lennox subsided, but it was plain enough that he was not a happy man. Mike decided to explain.
"I realize we'd have a better chance of smashing the whole army if I waited. But our first responsibility is to ensure the safety of Eisenach. Without those guns, the Spaniards don't have a chance in hell of breaching the walls."
Lennox refrained from making the obvious rejoinder. They don't have a chance in hell anyway. Alex tugged at his beard. "I assume, then, that you'll be wanting us to chivvy the bastards after the APCs rip up the guns?"
Mike nodded. Alex's beard tugging grew vigorous. "And are you still determined…?"
"Yes," came Mike's firm reply. "Drive 'em toward the Wartburg, Alex. And don't expose your men more than you need to. I want to keep our casualties as low as possible."
It was plain enough from his expression that the young Scottish officer was not happy with Mike's plan. But he refrained from argument. Alexander Mackay most definitely did not think Mike Stearns was a "military genius," but he also believed firmly in the principle of command.
A moment later, Mackay and Lennox were starting to issue orders to the cavalry. Within seconds, the marshaling area was a beehive of activity. The packed earth was rapidly chewed up still further by a multitude of stamping hooves.
The Eisenach militiamen staffing the gates were the only foot soldiers in the area. But they were able to start working the gate mechanisms from within the protection of the stone gatehouse. Mike was out in the open. He scampered back toward the stairs and started climbing them-again, two steps at a time. Being on foot in an area where a thousand horsemen were moving their chargers into position was not anywhere he wanted to be. Squash. Oops. Sorry 'bout that.
Once he was back at the redoubt wall, Gayle offered him the radio again. He cocked an eye. "Problems?"
"No," replied Gayle. "Except Frank told me to tell you that you're a soft-hearted wimp."
Mike smiled. He brought the binoculars back up to his eyes. "Yeah, I know," he murmured. "It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it."
As he studied the Spanish tercios beyond the walls of Eisenach, Mike's smile faded. There were six tercios in that army-approximately twelve thousand men, he estimated-along with two thousand cuirassiers positioned on either flank. It was not a huge army, by the standards of the day, but it was sizeable. Big enough to have turned the farmland across which they marched into barren devastation. Mike could see the burning farmhouses in their wake. Fortunately, the inhabitants had long since taken refuge within Eisenach's walls. But the destruction was still savage enough.
The Spanish infantry was 500 yards away. The Spanish commander had brought his infantry to a halt just short of the road, while he moved his artillery into position across it. Clearly enough, he intended to begin his attack on Eisenach with a cannonade.
That road ran north to south, just west of the city. It was now officially designated as U.S. Route 26. Route 4, the road along which Harry was now leading the ten APCs, intersected Route 26 about two miles to the north. The Americans, following their own traditions, had insisted on giving a proper nomenclature to all the roads in the new United States-which now included all of southern Thuringia from Eisenach to Gera. The native Germans thought the custom was bizarre, but they went along without complaint. Compared to everything else about the Americans, numbering roads was small potatoes. And the Germans had noticed that roads which were given "official status" were invariably widened and properly graded. Graveled, too, more often than not. So the farmers were happy enough with the change. Easier on their carts and draft animals.
"Soft-hearted," mused Mike, speaking to himself. "No, Frank, not really. It's just that I know the cost of being anything else."
He lowered the binoculars and turned his head to the northeast. Not more than three seconds later, he saw the first of Harry's APCs thunder from behind the low hill which had hidden their approach.
"God, I'm sick of this," he muttered.
Gayle misunderstand his frown. "Something wrong with the APCs?"
"No, Gayle," Mike replied softly. "Nothing at all. Harry'll rip right through 'em." He glanced at her. "That's what I'm worried about."
It was Gayle's turn to frown. Clearly enough, she didn't understand.
And that's what I'm worried about the most, thought Mike. He brought the binoculars back to his eyes, focusing on Harry's blitzkrieg attack. Give it a few years. Cortez and Pizarro, coming up. Hidalgos true and pure.
"Fire!" shrieked Lefferts, riding in the armored cab of the lead APC. His words, carried over the CBs to all the APCs coming behind, produced an instant eruption. On both sides of the armored coal trucks, the rifles poking through the slits began firing. Most of those weapons were bolt-action or lever-action, but a goodly number were semiautomatics. The rate of fire which they produced fell far short of automatic weapons, but it still came as an incredible shock to the Spanish soldiers gawking at the APCs.
The U.S. soldiers on the right side of the trucks, facing the Spanish infantry, were simply trying to fire as many rounds as rapidly as possible. Aiming was a moot point. The front ranks of the tercios were less than thirty yards from the road. At that range, firing into a mass of tightly packed men, almost every round hit a target.
The soldiers on the left side of the trucks, facing the field guns, did take the time to aim. They needed to kill the gunners and the rammers, who were individual targets rather than a mass. But since the range was just as short-shorter, in the case of the bigger guns-aiming was not difficult.
The voice of the radio operator in the rearmost APC came over the CB in Harry's vehicle. "We're into the zone!" she cried.
Harry immediately issued new orders. "Stop the column!"
The drivers of the ten APCs braked to a halt. All of the vehicles were now "in the zone"-positioned right in the middle of the Spanish army, with clear lines of fire on both sides. The APCs were facing south on Route 26. The Spanish infantry was now separated from the artillery by the armored coal trucks. Now that the vehicles were no longer moving, the rifle fire intensified and became more accurate.
The result was a one-sided slaughter. Several of the tercios managed to get off coordinated arquebus volleys, but the gesture was futile. Even at point-blank range, the thick steel of the APCs was impervious to slow-moving round shot. The Spaniards might as well have been throwing pebbles.
The tires were somewhat more vulnerable, but not much. Few of the Spanish bullets hit the tires, anyway, and those only did so by accident. The Spaniards had no experience with American vehicles at all-most of the soldiers were still gawking with confusion-and never thought to shoot for the tires. Even the few bullets which did strike the tires caused no real damage. Coal truck tires were not, to put it mildly, fragile and delicate; and, again, the slow-moving round shot of seventeenth-century firearms was poorly equipped to rupture them.
There was one American fatality. By sheer bad luck, a bullet came through one of the firing slits and hit the man positioned there. He died instantly, his head shattered by the.80-caliber round.
The damage wreaked by the U.S. soldiers, on the other hand, was horrendous. Within a minute, those artillerymen who had not been shot down were sprinting away from the guns, seeking nothing more than refuge in the distant woods. Seconds later, the soldiers on that side of the trucks stopped firing. There were simply no more targets available.
On the other side of the APCs, the firing continued. By their nature, tercios were so tightly packed that it was impossible for men in the front ranks to simply run away. The soldiers standing behind them formed an impassable barrier. Moreover, these were Spanish pikemen and arquebusiers. Spanish infantry were universally acknowledged as the best in Europe. Even by the standards of the time, those men were ferociously courageous. Stand your ground and take it was as ingrained in them as their native tongue.
Three of the tercios even managed to launch pike charges. Stumbling over corpses, the Spaniards leveled their fifteen-foot spears and lunged onto the road.
The charges had no chance of destroying the APCs, of course. That would have required grenades, which the Spanish soldiers did not carry. But the pikemen might still have disabled the vehicles as effective military instruments, by the crude but simple expedient of sticking pikes into the firing slits and forcing the U.S. riflemen to retreat against the opposite walls.
But they never got that far. As soon as the first ranks of the tercios stepped onto the road, the Claymore mines positioned along the sides of the APCs erupted. A hail of cannister and shrapnel literally wiped them off the road. In an instant, hundreds of men were dead and dying.
That stunning blow was too much, even for Spanish soldiers. The men who survived stumbled back. By now, the pikemen and arquebusiers behind them had begun to retreat, leaving space for the front ranks to follow. Within two minutes, chased along by continuous rifle fire, the entire Spanish infantry was in headlong retreat.
When Mackay's cavalry sallied from Eisenach, the retreat became a rout. The Spanish cuirassiers, as brave as the foot soldiers, launched a countercharge. But the effort was futile. As soon as the Spanish cavalry emerged in clear view, Frank ordered his infantrymen to open fire. Those U.S. soldiers were stationed in rifle pits and behind palisades a hundred yards in front of Eisenach's walls. They were firing at exposed horsemen from a range of two hundred yards. Before the lead elements of the Spanish cavalry could reach Mackay's oncoming charge, they had already been bled badly.
Mackay hit them like a hammer. Although Mackay's forces were still technically part of the Swedish army, they were for all practical purposes the U.S. cavalry-and had been equipped accordingly. Most of his horsemen-the big majority of whom were now Germans, not Scots-had been equipped with an American revolver or automatic pistol. Matched against the wheel locks and sabers of the Spanish cavalry, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. The Spanish cuirassiers were shattered within less than three minutes. The survivors raced away, stunned by the firepower they had encountered.
Mackay could have given pursuit, which would have produced yet more carnage. But he held back his forces. He had his doubts about Mike's battle plan, but he was too well trained to break discipline.
Fifteen minutes after the APCs opened fire, the Battle of Eisenach was over. The broken Spanish tercios and their cavalry escorts were retreating in complete disorder. While Mackay and his men chivvied them toward the distant Wartburg, the U.S. soldiers in the APCs dismounted and took possession of the Spanish field guns. Before another fifteen minutes had passed, the gates of Eisenach were wide open and hundreds of conscripted farmers were starting to hitch up the captured cannons and haul them into the city.
The Spanish commander, meanwhile, had managed to bring a semblance of discipline back to his army. It did not take him long to reach the obvious conclusion. They had been half-destroyed in a field battle. It was time to seek shelter within fortifications.
Where?
Where else? The ancient castle called the Wartburg was in plain view, perched atop a hill to the south. The Spaniards had already taken possession of it, in fact. On the march in toward Eisenach, cavalry units had investigated the castle and found it deserted. The Spanish commander had been dumbfounded at the news. Were these Americans utterly insane, not to garrison the strongest fortress in the region? But he was more than happy to take advantage of his enemy's stupidity.
Through his binoculars, Mike studied the retreat of the Spanish army until he was satisfied that they were definitely making for the Wartburg. By the time he finally lowered the eyepieces, Greg Ferrara and the leaders of his special artillery unit were gathered around him on the redoubt.
"We're a go?" asked Ferrara.
Mike nodded. "They should be forted up by nightfall. We'll start the special effects at midnight. Come dawn, we'll start lobbing the bombs."
That announcement produced instant frowns on the three young faces peering at him. Larry Wild, Jimmy Andersen and Eddie Cantrell, plain to see, were not pleased.
Hell hath no fury like a wargamer scorned.
"No," Mike said. "I am not starting the bombardment until daybreak."
"We should take advantage of darkness," complained Jimmy. "Create more confusion."
Mike forced down his scowl. But he couldn't restrain the sigh. Is there anything in the world as bloodthirsty as a kid?
"That's exactly what I'm trying to avoid, Jimmy," he said forcefully. He pointed to the retreating Spanish army with the hand still holding the binoculars. "Those men may just be so many toy soldiers to you, but they're not to me. They're people, dammit!"
The three youngsters flinched from the genuine anger in Mike's voice. Mike drove home his point. "It's going to be bad enough as it is. At the very least, I want to make sure that men trying to surrender can do it. Not get destroyed simply because they couldn't find their way out of a castle in pitch darkness. Do you understand?"
There was no response, beyond sulkiness. Chagrin, mixed with frustration.
"Get going, boys," commanded Ferrara. The three youngsters scampered off the redoubt with great eagerness.
Mike muttered something. Ferrara cocked at eye at him. "What did you say?"
Mike shook his head. "Never mind."
Ferrara left, then. Mike stared at the Wartburg. The grim castle seemed to return his gaze with its own baleful glare.
"Hidalgos true and pure," he muttered again. "There has got to be a better way."
Chapter 53
"Are you sure?" squeaked Julie. "I mean, like-positive?" Her next words came in a rush. "I thought I just had a flu or something. It's been going around, you know. Bad one. Sick to my stomach, that's all. I woulda gone to Eisenach except Alex insisted I see you and Mike backed him up. Wouldn't let me go." She glared at the doctor, as if to say: This is all your fault!
James Nichols managed to keep a completely straight face. It was not easy. The face of the young woman perched on the chair in the examining room was a study in contradictions. Anxiety, chagrin, apprehensiveness-all of these warred with outrage and indignation.
"Those things are supposed to work," she snarled.
James opened his mouth. Julie drove right over him. "They are!"
Again he tried to speak. Julie drove right over him.
"Alex is going to kill me," she moaned. "I promised him we had nothing to worry about!" She pressed her hand over her mouth. Mumbled: "What am I gonna do?"
James thought he could get a word in edgewise, now. "Julie, you're supposed to use a diaphragm with contraceptive-"
"The stores ran out!" she protested. Imperious demand: "What was I supposed to do?"
Abstain, came the whimsical thought. But James squelched it. The likelihood of someone as vigorous as Julie Sims abstaining from sex with her fiancй ranked somewhere below the proverbial snowball in hell. And James was hardly in a position to criticize. Leaving aside his own reprobate youth, his relationship with Melissa was neither platonic nor blessed by the sanctity of matrimony.
On the other hand, he thought wryly, Melissa was fifty-seven years old. For them, contraception was a moot point.
"Oh, Jesus, he's gonna kill me," Julie whimpered anew. Now she pressed both hands over her mouth. Gargling sounds emerged.
James managed a paternal frown. "Why?" Hrmph, hmrph. "I should think Alex is the one to be worrying. Your father-not to mention Frank!-aren't exactly going to be-"
Julie gargled protest through her hands.
"I didn't quite catch that."
She took the hands off her lips and opened them wide, cupping them around her mouth as if to impart a secret.
"It was my idea," she hissed. Seeing the expression on the doctor's face, Julie laughed. The sound was perhaps a tad hysterical. Well, semihysterical.
"You think it was Alex? Ha! That proper fellow? Oh, God!" The laughter swelled. Yes, definitely semihysterical. "It took me weeks to wear him down!"
For a moment, her eyes grew dreamy. "He's such a sweet guy," she whispered. "It was a nice change, not having to fend off the sweaty mitts."
Julie slumped in her chair. "He's gonna kill me." The words carried all the gloomy surety of a Cassandra.
James cleared his throat. "You do have a couple of options. The first is an abortion." Hastily: "I don't do abortions myself, but Doctor Adams can handle that. So can Doctor Abrabanel, for that matter. At your stage of pregnancy, it's not a difficult procedure."
Julie gave him a sharp glance. "If it's so easy, why can't you do it?" Then, seeing the stiff look on his face, she giggled. "Don't tell me!" Giggle, giggle. "Boy, I bet that was a donnybrook. When you told Melissa, I mean."
James shrugged. "Wasn't a donnybrook at all. She has her principles, I got mine." His own eyes got a bit dreamy. "We get along pretty well, all things considered."
Abruptly, Julie shook her head. "Abortion's out anyway. I don't approve of it myself. So what's the other option?"
"It's obvious, isn't it? Get married."
Julie was back to wailing. "He's gonna kill me!" Her hands went back over her mouth. Gargle, gargle.
James scratched his head. "I don't get it. The way I heard it, he's been trying to get you to set a date."
Again, the hands popped open. "He has!" she hissed. The hands closed. Gargle.
"So what's the problem?"
Julie took a deep breath, sucking the air through her fingers. Then, slowly, eased it out. She removed the hands, dropped them into her lap, slumped her shoulders, and heaved a sigh worthy of Cassandra. Unheeded, again.
"You don't get it. It's the principle of the thing. By the time-" Her eyes narrowed, as she did some quick calculations. "By the time we got married-couldn't be sooner than next month, at the earliest-maybe not till September 'cause he's gotta go right away to see the king of Sweden as soon as he and Mike get done whipping those Spanish clowns-"
Calculate, calculate. James was struggling to keep a straight face again. He wasn't sure which amused him more-Julie's insouciant assumption that the Spaniards would be trounced, or her blithe reference to her fiancй's familiarity with royalty.
"Yeah," she concluded. "That's what I thought. We couldn't get married until sometime in September." She puffed out her cheeks and cupped her hands a foot away from her belly, in a parody of a pregnant woman.
"For Christ's sake, Julie! You can't possibly be serious. That early in the second trimester? Nothing would show at all."
"It would six months later!" she snapped. "Big time!"
James shrugged. "By then you'd be married. So who cares? Wouldn't be the first time-"
"That's the whole point!" Wailing: "You know how sensitive Alex is on account of he's illegitimate! You know! He's told me once, he's told me a thousand times: 'No child of mine will ever be bastard born.' " Even in her despair, she managed quite a good rendition of Mackay's Scottish accent.
Julie's logic had completely eluded James, by now. "I don't get it," he muttered. "If you're married when the child is born, then he-or she-isn't-"
"It's the principle of the thing!" she wailed. "Don't you understand? And nobody can get hung up on principles like a damn Scottish Calvinist!"
She was no longer even slumped in her chair. Just puddled in it, like a quivering blob of anxiety.
"He's gonna kill me," she squeaked. "I'm dead."
James' struggle for dignity collapsed, finally. He just couldn't resist. "Make sure you tell him at five hundred yards, then."
Julie's ensuing words were not uttered in a squeak. Rather the opposite. James consoled himself with the thought that he had, as was a doctor's duty, elevated his patient's spirits. In a manner of speaking.
Shortly thereafter, he ushered Rebecca into the same examination room.
"Julie seems out of sorts," she commented. "Is something wrong?"
James' lips twitched. "Nothing serious." He helped her into the chair.
"Oof!" said Rebecca. She gave the doctor a quick smile. "Thank you. I feel so awkward."
She gazed down at her belly. "Philosophically, I do not approve of this," she pronounced. "It seems such a foolish way to go about the matter. By the time a woman can get accustomed to her condition, it is gone." Her dark eyes grew very warm. "Soon."
James nodded. "Six to eight weeks. Can't be sure with a first pregnancy."
Rebecca lifted her head, smiling. "We did not waste any time, did we, Michael and I?" She broke off, laughing softly. "It will be such a scandal! The baby will be born barely seven months after we were married."
The thought did not seem to disturb her. Not in the least. James grinned.
"There seems to be a lot of that going around, these days."
It didn't take Rebecca more than two seconds to make the connection. In a movement which bore an uncanny similarity to Julie's, she clapped her hands over her mouth.
She laughed softly. Gargled.
"Poor Alex!" she mumbled through her fingers. She took the fingers away and cupped her hands around her mouth. "Julie will kill him," she hissed.
James threw up his hands. "Women! I can't follow your logic at all!"
He stalked over to his own chair and sat down in it heavily, then glared at Rebecca. "Explain your reasoning, if you would."
Rebecca dropped her hands into her lap. Her brow furrowed.
"Is it not obvious? Julie will be convinced that Alex will be furious with her because I am quite certain-I know none of the details, mind you, but I do know Julie-that she convinced him pregnancy was not to be feared."
Rebecca ran fingers through her hair, thinking. "Yes, that would certainly be the way it would have happened. Alex is too much the gentleman to have urged the thing upon her. She would have been the seductress, not the seduced one. Then-"
Thinking, thinking. "Of course, it is obvious. She will now tell Alex, convinced that he will lose his temper. You know how Julie is! By the time she tells him, she will have worked herself into a fury because she will be convinced that Alex will be furious with her. Like a firearm, primed and loaded. Alex, of course, will say something wrong. Under the circumstances, that is a certainty, since anything he says will be wrong as far as Julie is concerned. Then-"
She beamed. "The logic is impeccable. Julie will kill him. Hopefully, of course, she will only slay him with words. Since, I trust, she will not have given him the news at five hundred paces."
Seeing the expression on the doctor's face, Rebecca frowned. "Is something wrong, James?"
Nichols shook his head. "Nope. I'm just glad you're on our side." He snapped his fingers. "That for Richelieu!"
Gretchen leaned over the bed and kissed Jeff on the forehead. She could feel the fever through her lips, but was not concerned. Not any longer.
Jeff's eyes opened. Smiling, Gretchen sat on the bed and bent her head down. Her lips began to part.
Jeff twitched his head aside. "Don't!" he protested. "You might catch-"
"Nothing," she whispered. She took his face in strong hands and turned it back to her own. The kiss which followed was gentle. But it was also lingering, and not platonic in the least.
"Nothing," she whispered. "Nothing but a fever. I just returned from seeing Dr. Nichols. He assured me that you have none of the symptoms of the plague."
"Even so-" Jeff tried to push her away. He was too weak to succeed in that task. His wife did not push easily. "The flu is bad enough, Gretchen! You don't have my resistance to it!"
She rose slowly and shrugged. Gretchen understood the medical logic behind her husband's words. Dr. Nichols had explained to her at considerable length. People of her time did not have a built-up resistance to strains of disease carried by those born in the future.
She began to disrobe. Gretchen understood the logic, but she did not agree with it. She had her own way of reasoning, which was more tough-minded. Much more.
"Best I develop it, then," she murmured. Now nude, she slid under the sheets and pressed herself against her husband. Her movements were gentle, not passionate. But they were no more platonic than her earlier kiss. Since Jeff had contracted influenza, two days earlier, she had been forced to sleep with the children. Her husband had insisted. Now, she practically wallowed in the sensation of his body against hers.
Feebly, Jeff tried to protest again. Gretchen put her hand over his mouth. "Be quiet," she whispered. "I will contract this disease sooner or later, anyway. So why not get on with it?"
Jeff sighed and closed his eyes. His fears for his wife were warring with desire for her nearness. Desire won. He enfolded her in his arms and drew her closer still.
"Oh, yes," Gretchen murmured a few minutes later. "There's something else. Dr. Nichols tells me I am definitely pregnant."
Jeff's eyes popped open.
"What, husband? You are worrying again? It happens, you know." She snuggled closer. "I will be fine, and the baby also. And look at it this way-at least there will be no scandal. Our baby will not be born at a questionable time."
She chuckled. "Unlike some others, I suspect."
Captain Gars drove his men well beyond sundown. Only when the last glimmer of dusk faded, and the forest was black with the night, did he relent.
"Make camp," he growled, climbing down from his horse. His movements were stiff and heavy. The past two days had been brutal, as hard as the captain had kept up the pursuit. And if his men thought the notion of four hundred cavalrymen pursuing two thousand was bizarre, they kept their thoughts to themselves. Captain Gars was not one to listen to reason.
"No fires," he commanded. "Not following Croats. Eat the food cold."
None of his soldiers complained. Captain Gars was not one to listen to complaints, either. And besides, he was sharing the same cold food and sleeping on the same naked ground.
When the men were settled down, Anders Jцnsson approached him. The captain was sitting on his bedroll, staring at nothing.
"And tomorrow, Captain? What then?"
Captain Gars lifted his head. "Tomorrow we will rise before sunup. There is no time to lose. The Croats will reach Grantville by mid-morning at the latest."
He paused, thinking. "I am certain, now, of their plan. Everything makes sense. The Spaniards that Saxe-Weimar let through, the seemingly pointless attack on Suhl. Diversions to draw off the American army. The Croats are the thing. They will strike a town filled with women and children. Their purpose is pure slaughter and destruction."
Jцnsson frowned. "To what end?"
The captain shrugged. "Ask someone else. That is the way men like Wallenstein and Richelieu think. I am skeptical of such reasoning, myself." He smiled faintly. "But then-what do you expect? I am a madman. It is well known."
Chapter 54
The witching hour started at midnight. From loudspeakers positioned at five places surrounding the Wartburg, music suddenly blared forth. A wooded hill in seventeenth-century Thuringia was blessed with the popular tastes of a much later era.
Harry Lefferts' tastes, anyway. Somehow-Mike never was clear on the exact chain of command involved-Harry had gotten himself appointed DJ for the occasion.
He began, naturally, with the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil," then, followed with "Satisfaction" and "Street Fighting Man."
So far, so good. The arguments started thereafter. To the disgust of the teenage American soldiers in the army, Harry, despite his own relative youth, turned out to be a Classic Rock enthusiast. He followed the Stones' openers with various selections from Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Doors.
Then "I can't believe this antique shit," hissed Larry Wild. The young "artillery specialist" was making the final adjustments to one of the catapults, working in the light thrown out by an electric hang lamp. Greg Ferrara was directing the work. The crew which would actually fire the contraption was standing nearby, next to the portable generator.
Larry's voice was bitter, aggrieved-betrayed. "Bob Dylan?"
The strains of "Positively Fourth Street" finally ended. Larry heaved a thankful sigh, as did Eddie Cantrell. But the third member of the "special artillery unit" did not share their relief.
"It's gonna get worse," predicted Jimmy Andersen gloomily.
Sure enough. Southwest Thuringia, at that very moment, was rocked with Larry and Eddie shrieked in unison. "Elvis Presley? You gotta be kidding!"
Alas, Harry turned out to be a devotee of the King, so the torment of the special artillery unit was protracted. By the time the first catapult was assembled and ready, they were trembling with outrage.
Then, torment became torture. Over the loudspeakers, Harry announced he was taking requests. Instantly-despite all of Greg Ferrara's squawks about military discipline-the trio scurried through the woods, bound and determined to bring reason and sanity back into the world.
Not a chance. By the time they reached Harry's impromptu "music HQ," the small clearing was thronged with soldiers eagerly calling out their requests. The noncommissioned ranks of the U.S. army were still primarily composed of middle-aged UMWA members, and Harry cheerfully bowed to their veteran wisdom.
Larry and Eddie groaned. Jimmy staggered and reeled.
Reba McEntire?!
Desperately, as "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" echoed across war-ravaged central Europe and added to that poor land's agony, Larry and his friends tried to rally support among the soldiers who now formed the bulk of the U.S. military.
No use. Many of those soldiers, of course, were youngsters like themselves. But, by August of 1632, the ranks of the U.S. army were primarily filled with Germans, who, as it developed-especially the younger ones-had become something in the way of country-western fans. They liked Reba McEntire just fine, thank you.
Ferrara finally managed to drive his underlings back to work. Feverishly-anything to keep their minds off the pain-they worked their way around the hill, readying the other two catapults. But then, done with that immediate task, the youngsters could bear it no longer. Despite all of Ferrara's protests about the "chain of command," they marched in a body to the army's central HQ, determined to bring their complaints to the very top.
And, again, met the stone wall of officialdom.
"Sorry, guys," said Mike. "Can't help you." He glanced at his watch, turning his wrist to bring the dial into the light thrown by the gas lantern hanging at the entrance to the field tent. "Yeah, what I thought. It's two o'clock in the morning. The preliminaries are over. Time for the main program."
He grinned down at the three aggrieved youngsters. "All that other stuff," he waved, "was just the warm-up. Now we'll get to the real psychological warfare."
They stared up him, uncomprehending. Mike's grin widened.
"Becky put it together," he explained.
At that moment, the sounds of a very different music erupted over the hillside. The three boys standing in front of him flinched.
"Jesus," whined Jimmy. "What is that?"
A few feet away, Frank Jackson laughed. "And you thought your stuff was 'out there'!" Frank shook his head. "Forget it, boys. Becky's about ten times smarter than you, and she's got all those centuries to pick from."
He cocked his head, listening. "Horrible stuff, ain't it?"
Mike pursed his lips. "It's pretty good, actually. If you listen to it in the right frame of mind."
Frank chuckled. "That's just the accommodating husband speaking, Mike. Like me pretending nuoc mam don't taste like rotten fish."
Jackson twitched his head. "I hope there ain't much of this selection. Gross violation of the rules of war, what it is."
Mike smiled. "Just a few minutes. Even Becky'll admit that a little of Berg's Wozzeck goes a long way."
To the Spanish soldiers in the Wartburg, the eerie cacophony of Wozzeck seemed to last a very long time. The soldiers crammed into the castle were filled with anxiety. For two hours, now, they had been subjected to that incredible aural bombardment. For the soldiers standing on the ramparts, it had been even worse. The blinding glare of the spotlights which Ferrara and his teenage "tech warriors" had jury-rigged, sweeping endlessly back and forth across the castle, added visual assault as well.
As always with Spanish armies, the troops were accompanied by officials of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Ten priests, now standing on the ramparts alongside the soldiers, hissed their fury.
Fury-and fear. The Spanish branch of the Inquisition, which answered only to the crown of Spain, was an order of magnitude more vicious and unrestrained than the Papal Inquisition. But they were by no means mindless thugs. The Spanish Inquisition had developed secret police techniques to a level of sophistication which would not be surpassed until the Tsarist Okhrana of the late nineteenth century. By the standards of the seventeenth century, they were considered the unrivaled practitioners of what a later age would call "psychological warfare."
They had just met their master. Their mistress, rather. It was a pity, perhaps, that they did not understand the historical irony involved. A young woman from the cursed race which the Inquisition had hounded for two centuries was about to pay them back in full measure. Her own intelligence, coupled to the entire musical tradition of a later Western world, would complete the task which rock and roll and country-western had begun.
The selection from Wozzeck ended. As the next piece began blaring in the night, the Inquisitors heaved a small sigh of relief. At least this music-whatever it was-had some logic.
Their relief lasted not more than a minute. There is a logic to Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, true enough. But it was not a logic which appealed to them. Neither did the grinding, ominous strains of the same composer's "Bydlo" from Pictures at an Exhibition.
Rebecca built from there. Grieg's short, sharp, thunderous "In the Hall of the Mountain King" came next. As the popularity of that portion of Peer Gynt grew, over the years after its composition, Grieg himself had come to detest the thing. "The worst kind of Norwegian bombast," he once called it. But on that night, the savage Nordic triumphalism of the piece served Rebecca's purpose well enough.
Tremble, lords of the dungeon! Trolls and Vikings are at your door!
A Russian variation on the theme followed. The heroic choral strains of "Arise, ye Russian People" from Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky filled the air, succeeded immediately by the driving fury of "The Battle on the Ice." On the ramparts of the castle above, the Spanish variation of the Teutonic Knights suffered, in their minds, the same disaster which had befallen the butchers of Pskov centuries earlier on the real ice of Lake Chud.
The Inquisitors tried to dispel their own growing terror by driving their soldiers into action. Shrieking and bellowing, they forced shivering Spanish arquebusiers to the ramparts. Dragging them by the neck, in some cases, ordering them to fire at the Satanic music and spotlights.
Given the inaccuracy of arquebuses, the command was foolish enough. Given the accuracy of the weapons in the hands of the devils in the darkness, it was sheer folly.
"Take them out!" commanded Mike. He studied the ramparts through the binoculars. The spotlights were now focused on the priests and soldiers lined along the battlements, illuminating them clearly. "Aim for the inquisitors!"
Alexander Nevsky ended, immediately replaced by the conclusion of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto no. 3. The wild exuberance of the music from the third movement served as a backdrop for the rambunctious enthusiasm of the U.S. snipers. Julie Sims was not among their number, true. But if Julie was the best sharpshooter in the U.S. army, there were many other very fine ones. Within two minutes, all of the Spanish soldiers had retreated from the battlements. They left behind twenty of their own dead-and seven inquisitors.
"A daft breed," grumbled Lennox. He and Mackay had tried to seek shelter from the auditory storm in the HQ tent. To no great avail, as loudly as Harry was playing the music. "A guid thing I slept earlier. Get nae sleep now."
Alex shrugged. " 'Tis better than rap music."
Lennox snorted. "Anyt'in' is better'n tha' crap!"
Another piece blared over the loudspeakers. Lennox flinched.
Mike, seeing the motion out of the corner of his eye, turned his head and grinned.
"That's from something called The Rite of Spring," he explained. "Becky's real fond of it."
"Glad she's no my wife," muttered Lennox under his breath. "Even if t'lass does look like Cleopatra."
Mackay smiled. He stepped forward, coming alongside Mike at the tent's entrance.
"I'm curious," he said. "Rebecca's been with you lunatics for not much more than a year." Alex gestured into the darkness with his chin. "So how has she managed to learn so much of your music?"
Mike shrugged. "Beats me. Her father helped, of course. Balthazar's gotten to be a fanatic about classical music. Says he's sick to death of stupid lutes." He hesitated, torn between pride and a desire not to seem like a doting husband. But, since he was both proud of his wife-fiercely proud-and a doting husband, the struggle was brief.
"I don't know, Alex. How she managed that, along with all her reading, and everything else? I just don't know." His chest swelled. "The only thing I know for sure is that Becky's the smartest person I've ever met. Or ever will, I imagine."
Mackay nodded. "True enough. Still-"
He froze. "What is that?"
Mike listened, for a moment, to the sound of Leontyne Price's powerful soprano. Then, laughed. "Don't you like it? It's called the 'Liebestod.' By a guy named Wagner."
Alex pursed his lips. "Incredible voice, I grant you." He grimaced. "But it sounds as if the poor woman is dying."
"She is." Mike turned his head, staring at the battlements above. Gaily: "And she takes her sweet time about it, let me tell you."
And so it went, through the night. The program which Rebecca had prepared followed the "Liebestod" with a whole dose of Wagner. She detested the composer, as it happened-as much for the histrionics of his music as for his personal vileness and anti-Semitism. But she thought the music suited the occasion. So, striking their ears like lead mallets, the Spanish soldiers forted up in a German castle were assaulted by the ultimate in Teutonic bombast. "The Ride of the Valkyries" came next, followed by all of the orchestral grandiosities from the Der Ring des Nibelungen: "Entry of the Gods Into Valhalla," "Wotan's Farewell," "Siegfried's Funeral March" and-last but not least-the "Immolation of the Gods."
When it was over, Frank Jackson sighed with relief. "Good thing they lost World War II," he growled. "Can you imagine having to listen to that shit forever?"
Mike snorted. "You think that was bad?" He glanced at the eastern horizon. The first hint of dawn was appearing in the sky. "Try listening to Parsifal, some time."
He raised the binoculars and studied the battlements. They were still shrouded in darkness, except where the spotlights flashed across the walls. There was not a soldier in sight.
"Becky made me do it, once. All five hours of the damned thing."
Jackson frowned. "Why? I thought you told me she hated Wagner."
"She does. She just wanted to prove her point."
A new, very different strain of music came over the loudspeakers. Mike glanced at his watch. "Perfect timing," he said softly. "What the French call the 'piиce de rйsistance.'"
Frank cocked his ear. "What is it?"
"According to Becky, this piece of music captures the heart of war like nothing else ever composed." Mike stepped out of the tent and strode into the clearing beyond. Seeing Ferrara standing nearby, he signaled with his hand. The former science teacher nodded and turned to his youthful subordinates. Partners in crime, rather.
"Time to start the fireworks, boys." Grinning, Larry, Eddie and Jimmy scampered off, each headed for one of the catapults-and the rocket stands which stood near them.
Mike returned, walking slowly and pausing at every step. He was listening to the music. By the time he got back to the tent, Frank's face seemed strained.
As well it might be. Shostakovich's Symphony no. 8 was well underway now, blasting the horror of a war-ravaged Russia of the future across the war-ravaged land of today's Germany. Stalin had wanted a triumphalist piece, to celebrate the growing tide of Soviet victory over the Nazis. But Shostakovich, though a Soviet patriot himself, had given the dictator something quite different-the greatest symphony of the twentieth century. And if the piece as a whole transcended the year 1943, the third movement did not. It was a pure, unalloyed, cold-eyed shriek. Terror and agony and heartbreak, captured in music.
The first rockets sailed from their launching pads and began exploding over the ramparts. The explosive charges in the warheads were not designed for destruction so much as for show. Instead of splattering the castle with shrapnel, they shrouded the Wartburg with sparkling dazzle. A glaring, flaming accompaniment to the Symphony no. 8-a visual promise, added to a musical one. This is what awaits you, soldiers of Spain.
Dawn arrived, and the third movement screamed into silence. The last rockets flared in the sky.
Silence. Stillness, at last. Mike waited, studying his watch. He and Rebecca had decided on five minutes of peace. A "tension-builder," she had called it.
When the five minutes were up, Mike gave the order and the catapults began to fire. An ancient design, coupled to modern materials, hurled cannisters onto the battlements of the Wartburg.
These first missiles, though they contained a small explosive charge, were still part of the psychological campaign. They burst over the castle and showered leaflets onto the thousands of soldiers huddled inside the walls. The leaflets were written in Spanish and German, calling on the soldiers to surrender and promising good treatment to those who did.
Over the loudspeakers, Spanish-speaking soldiers in the U.S. army called out the same terms of surrender. Food. Water. Good treatment. No atrocities. Recruitment-at good pay-for those who choose to join the army of the United States.
When the catapult barrage ended, the voices calling over the loudspeaker were replaced by more music. Rebecca had selected these pieces also; choosing, this time, for a different purpose. The Spaniards had been given one alternative. Now, the other.
The tranquil strains of "Morning Mood" from Grieg's Peer Gynt filled the dawn. To Mike, and Frank, and Mackay and Lennox, and all the U.S. soldiers surrounding the castle, the music came like a balm. They could well imagine its effect on the Spaniards.
"Morning Mood" faded away. In its place came music even more serene, spreading with the daylight. Like peace and hope, after the night.
Frank seemed transfixed. Gently, seeing his friend's face, Mike said: "Becky thinks this is the most beautiful piece of music ever written. Though she admits it's a matter of taste."
"She's got good taste," whispered Frank. "Makes me think of a bird, soaring through the sky."
Mike nodded. The Lark Ascending, by Ralph Vaughan Williams, had been inspired by the composer's own beloved English countryside. But it filled the air over central Germany as if it belonged there.
"As it does," said Mike softly. "As it does. Here-and everywhere."
He turned his head, looking to the east. There, somewhere under the rising sun less than a hundred miles away, his wife would be in their kitchen. Rebecca was an early riser. Mike knew that she would have already prepared breakfast for her beloved father, even though she was moving more slowly these days due to her pregnancy. The German family which had once lived in Mike's house had found new lodgings, and Balthazar had moved in with them. He and Mike's invalid mother got along well, and Balthazar wanted to spend the rest of his days watching his grandchild grow up.
"Here-and everywhere," Mike repeated. His voice was very soft, and very loving.
The Lark Ascending faded away. Frank cleared his throat. The sound was regretful. More like a sigh than anything else.
"They won't surrender," he said. "Not yet."
Mike shook his head abruptly, banishing thoughts of love and tranquility.
"No, they won't," he said harshly. He turned to face the castle. "But I don't think it'll take much. Just a touch of the fire."
As it happens, Mike had misjudged. Rebecca had risen much earlier than usual, that day. Melissa had asked her to come to the school early that morning, to discuss something before classes started.
So, at the very moment when Mike ordered the catapults to start firing again, Rebecca was walking along Route 250. She had just left the outskirts of the town and was enjoying the solitude and the tranquility of early morning.
Others were not enjoying the morning.
When Jeff awoke, he discovered that his fever had broken. But he still felt lousy. His whole body ached.
Gretchen came into the bedroom, carrying a bowl of porridge. She was already dressed, wearing, as always, her beloved blue jeans and sneakers.
"Eat," she commanded, driving down her husband's protest. "You will need your strength today." She smiled. "You'll have to fend for yourself until evening. I promised Dan Frost I'd help teach his new batch of recruits."
Gretchen's smile twisted, became slightly derisive. "German girls! Still don't really believe a woman can use a gun."
Jeff had wondered why Gretchen was wearing her bodice and vest. She usually preferred a simple blouse, especially in warm weather. He eyed the heavy garments, looking for the pistol. He couldn't spot it. Gretchen's pregnancy was still not showing in her belly. But Jeff thought it was definitely showing itself in her already impressive bust.
It was a happy thought. Gaily, Gretchen slapped his head. "And stop staring at my tits! What a scandal!"
Four hundred West Gothlanders, Finns and Lapps were also not happy that morning. Captain Gars had roused his little army long before daybreak, and driven them ever since. The pace he was setting, on horseback through an unknown forest, varied between recklessness and downright insanity.
But they uttered no protest. There would have been no point. Captain Gars was not one to listen to the voice of caution, and he had a will of iron.
A madman. It was well known.
The car pulled up alongside Rebecca. James leaned out of the window. "Want a ride?"
Smiling, Rebecca turned. "Good morning, James. Melissa." When she spotted Julie Sims, sitting in the back seat, her smiled widened. Not too much, she hoped. "Julie." Rebecca shook her head. "No, thank you. I am enjoying the walk."
James nodded. He had expected the answer. As one of the town's two doctors who could drive a car, James was exempt from the ban on private motor vehicle operation. He always drove Melissa to school and would spend the morning there attending to the medical needs of the students. Often enough, he had passed Rebecca walking alongside the road, offered a ride, and had the offer declined. Rebecca liked to walk.
"See you later, then."
As the car pulled away and disappeared around a bend in the road, Rebecca's smile became a wide grin. Now that Julie could no longer see her, she made no attempt to hide her amusement.
Poor girl! So frantic, when there is so little need.
Julie, she knew, would have spent the night at Melissa's house. In her anxiety over her unexpected pregnancy, Julie would have gone to Melissa for advice and comfort, talking so late into the night that Melissa would have invited her to sleep over.
Melissa and James' house, now. The doctor had moved in with her months ago. The prim and proper schoolteacher was making no attempt any longer to disguise their relationship. And if that indiscretion scandalized the town's more prudish residents-not to mention the bigots-it had the opposite effect on others. Over the months, Melissa Mailey's status among her students and former students-especially the girls-had undergone a sea change. She had become something of a surrogate mother. Or, perhaps, a beloved aunt. Relaxed, confident, serene-approachable, in a way the schoolmarm had never been. Her house had become a haven and a refuge for such.
Rebecca resumed her morning promenade, still smiling. James had grumbled to her, once, that he sometimes felt he was living in a boarding home for wayward girls. But Rebecca had not missed the warmth and affection under the gruffness. Julie, she knew, was a particular favorite of his. Last night was not the first time she had slept on the couch in their living room.
Rebecca made her slow way along the side of the road, full of good cheer. Even her waddle pleased her. She would be glad enough, of course, to resume her former svelte figure when the time came. But for all things there is a season. She was looking forward to being a mother.
She breathed in the clean air. A line from one of her father's favorite plays came to her. It fit her mood to perfection. So much so that she shouted it gaily to the hills around her:
"O brave new world, that hath such people in it!"
After he finished his breakfast, Jeff rose from the bed. He was feeling a bit energetic himself. He was sick of being sick, and wanted to do something. Anything.
Staring out of the trailer's kitchen window, his eyes fell on the dirt bike parked outside. Grew thoughtful.
The decision came within seconds. He wasn't foolish enough to try riding in rough terrain, as poorly as he still felt. But a little spin would do him some good. He scurried about and got dressed for the occasion, not forgetting the leather jacket.
By the time he went out the door, he had already decided on his destination. The school was only two miles away, a quick and easy run on the best road in the world. Jeff thought it would be nice to drop in on Ms. Mailey. Just to say hello, before he came back to his cursed sickbed. Why not? Dr. Nichols had told Gretchen that he wouldn't be infectious anymore.
He had already straddled the bike when he remembered something. For a moment, scowling, he almost decided to leave it behind. Rules and discipline be damned!
Habit dies hard. The bike was now, officially, the property of the U.S. army. Jeff was a soldier in that army, even if he was usually on detached duty working with Gretchen and her less-than-official underground. But he was still required to carry a firearm when using a military vehicle.
Better safe than sorry. Some busybody might spot him. Jeff hurried back into the trailer, got the shotgun, and stuck it into the bike's saddle-holster. An instant later he was roaring off, enjoying the breeze.
On the steep slope above Route 250, hidden in the trees, four Croat horsemen stared at the road below. They were the advance scouts for the oncoming imperial cavalry, send ahead to study the approaches. There had been a half dozen of them, in the beginning. But now that the town's layout and the school had been examined, two had already returned to report. The others had been about to follow. But then, spotting movement on the road, they had moved forward to investigate.
One of the horsemen took his eyes off the woman and scanned the road. "She's alone," he murmured.
One of his companions nodded. The gesture was quick, eager. "A Jew bitch too, by the look of her." His hand fondled the hilt of his saber. "Two for one," he chuckled savagely. "We can spill her big belly after we're done."
Chapter 55
"Light 'em up!" commanded Ferrara. His words were carried over the radio to all three catapults. Almost simultaneously, three cannisters were flung into the air. Propelled by the relatively gentle motion of the catapults-gentle, at least, compared to a cannon-the cannisters soared through the sky in a looping trajectory. The catapults had been specifically designed for this purpose. The fragile cannisters could not withstand the shock of gunpowder-and nobody wanted to be in the vicinity when their contents were spilled.
The missiles cleared the walls of the castle with no difficulty. The timed fuses went off just before the cannisters landed. Each cannister contained five gallons of napalm. Hellfire erupted across the fortifications and the thousands of soldiers huddled within.
Greek fire was back-with a vengeance.
"Fire at will!" shouted Ferrara. The next round of napalm was lobbed a bit more raggedly. The three different crews had practiced with the devices, but there was a slight difference in their proficiency. Again, hellfire spread across the battlements of the castle. By now, the upper fortifications were a raging inferno.
A man appeared on the walls, burning like a torch. It was impossible to tell, from the distance, whether he committed suicide or simply stumbled to his death from sheer agony.
Watching, Mike winced. He could already hear the swelling shrieks of the Spanish soldiers burning to death inside the castle.
"That is some nasty shit," muttered Frank. "Been so long I'd half forgotten."
A new voice came over the radio, instantly recognizable. Hilda was the only German woman who had so far enlisted in the U.S. army and made it past Frank's screening. Since her English was good, if heavily accented, she had been assigned to serve as a radio operator.
"The main gate is opening! Main gate is opening!"
Mike raised his binoculars. Sure enough, he could see the heavy gate starting to swing aside. A moment later, waving pikes and arquebuses, a mob of Spanish soldiers surged through.
That gate was the only entrance to the castle from which large bodies of men could issue quickly. For that reason, Frank had positioned the M-60 to cover it. The men manning the machine gun didn't wait for orders. There was no need. Frank's instructions had been crystal clear: If they come out armed, kill 'em.
The M-60 stutter-stutter-stuttered. The packed mob of soldiers were cut down as if by a scythe. Stutter-stutter, stutter-stutter. Stutter-stutter-stutter.
Mike lowered the binoculars and looked away. In less than a minute, the M-60 had left a small hill of bodies. The gate was almost blocked by the corpses. The Spaniards who survived had stumbled back into the castle.
He watched another cannister of napalm explode over the battlements. The entire castle now resembled a bonfire. The resemblance was an illusion, more than a reality. The Wartburg was stone, not wood, and the lower levels of the castle would still be untouched by the flames.
An illusion-so far. Even stone castles will burn, if given enough of a start. Not the walls themselves, of course. But all castles are full of flammable substances. Wooden beams, furniture, tapestries, textiles-with enough napalm, the interior of the castle would be a firestorm within an hour. Nothing at all would survive. Over ten thousand men, thinking they had found a haven, had discovered instead a hideous deathtrap.
Mike opened his mouth, about to issue the command to cease fire. Then, seeing Frank's cold eyes on him, he fell silent.
No choice. The Spanish army trapped in the Wartburg still outnumbered the U.S. forces by a large margin. Until they surrendered-marched out, unarmed-Mike could not afford to ease up the pressure. So, tightening his jaws, he said nothing.
Burn and burn and burn. The first men started popping out of the castle; stumbling through a multitude of exits, even scrambling down the walls. Most of them were unarmed. The few who still carried weapons dropped them quickly enough, when they heard the voices shouting at them in Spanish. They had no thought but survival-anything to escape the holocaust which the Wartburg had become.
Now, dozens of unarmed Spaniards started pouring out of the main gate, pushing aside the mound of corpses by sheer weight of numbers. Then hundreds.
"It's done," said Frank. Mike nodded and gestured at Ferrara. A moment later, Ferrara passed along the order. The catapults stopped firing.
Mike stared at the burning castle. There was no way to stop the conflagration now. By the next day, the Wartburg would be a gutted ruin.
He tried to find humor somewhere. Whimsy, at least. "You know," he mused, "that's probably a historical monument, in the world we came from. Makes you feel a little guilty, doesn't it?"
"Not me," snorted Frank. "A castle is a castle is a castle. Just a robbers' den, far as I'm concerned. Thieves braggin' about their thievin' great-grandfathers. Good riddance to the whole lot."
Mike didn't know whether to laugh or sigh. In the end, he laughed.
"What can I say? You're right."
When Rebecca saw the horsemen charging out of the trees, her jaw dropped. Sharp terror held her frozen. Part of her mind was paralyzed, but the rest had no difficulty understanding what was about to happen. The grinning savages racing their horses down the slope were not even bothering to unsheathe their sabers. They would keep her alive, for a while.
Rebecca Abrabanel, the Sephardic maiden of a year ago, would have still been standing in the road, petrified with terror, when the Croats took her down. The Becky Stearns of the present, heavy with child, was rummaging in her large handbag within seconds, whispering thanks to her hillbilly husband.
Mike had insisted that she learn to use a gun. Obediently, Rebecca had tried. Tried, and failed. Failed, at least, insofar as accuracy was concerned. Whatever her other qualities, even her husband had finally agreed that she couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.
So be it. There are guns for barns, too. Harry Lefferts had been delighted to provide her with one. "A gift for a pretty lady," he called it, with Appalachian gallantry.
When the first Croat was ten yards away, Rebecca hauled the sawed-off shotgun out of the handbag. At five yards, she cut loose with the first barrel.
Five yards, with a sawed-off twelve gauge loaded with buckshot.
She missed. Completely. Didn't even scratch him.
The horse, on the other hand, was killed instantly. The pellets ripped the beast's throat wide open. Its legs buckled, spilling the rider.
An animal as big as a horse, moving at that speed, has too much momentum to be stopped by any handheld firearm. Squawling with anger and fear, Rebecca managed to dodge the horse. But her now-ungainly figure could not avoid the rider. He plummeted into her shoulder, knocking her to the pavement.
The impact dazed her, but she managed to hold onto the shotgun. Lying half-sprawled on the road, she shook her head. Her long black hair spilled loose and free. For a moment, her only thought was a sharp fear for her unborn child.
That fear was driven out by another. She felt a hand seize her hair. An instant later, with a vicious jerk, she was hauled to her feet.
Off her feet. The Croat was a powerful man, and filled with rage. He didn't quite understand what had happened to his comrade, but he had no doubt who was responsible. He started hauling Rebecca onto the saddle.
"Fucking Jew-bitch!" he shrieked.
Rebecca didn't understand his language. She didn't need to. She still had the shotgun.
The Croat's fury fled, then. Replaced, not by fear but simple astonishment. He stared at the hard object pressed into his groin. He had time to recognize it as a firearm of some kind, before Rebecca pulled the trigger and blew his testicles off. Along with his penis, his lower intestinal tract, his bladder, and a portion of his spine.
Her hair released, Rebecca collapsed back onto the pavement. She landed on her posterior. Again, the impact dazed her a bit-and then, flattened by the leg of her victim's skittering horse, she was momentarily stunned. Her eyes were still open, and she could see. But her mind could not process the data.
She saw that the horseman on the other side was blinded, his face splattered with blood and flesh. The Croat was clawing at his face, trying to clean away the gore. Out of action, for the moment.
The first horseman, the one whose mount she had killed, was just starting to move, groaning. Also out of action, for the moment.
The other Croat, the last of the four, was not. He was preoccupied, true, bringing his startled horse under control. But the mount was a warhorse, accustomed to the sound and flash of battle. The Croat reined him in. Then, snarling at Rebecca, drew a wheel-lock pistol from its saddle holster. He was not thinking of rape, any longer. He was just going to kill the Jew-bitch.
Rebecca still had the shotgun in her hand, but both barrels had been fired. She twisted on her hip, desperately searching the pavement. There were more shells in her handbag. When she spotted it, lying by the side of the road, she was flooded with despair.
Too far. She could hear the clatter of the Croat's horse, as he guided it toward her. He was about to shoot. Despair was washed aside by simple sadness. I so enjoyed my life.
Her mind grew dull, now that there was no hope. The adrenaline was wearing off, and she had taken a brutal hammering. She was simply waiting, like a stunned ox, for the sound of the final gunshot. She was so dazed that she never noticed the much louder sound that was filling the road.
The Croat did, however. He was no longer even thinking about Rebecca. He was just staring at the bizarre vehicle racing toward him.
Fury unleashed. Chooser of the slain.
Now, it was a savage horseman's turn to be frozen in place. It was not the mount itself which produced that terror, but the man atop it. The Croat had never encountered spectacles on a killer. The better to see you with.
When Jeff heard the first gunshot, he was simply puzzled. Puzzled, and a bit outraged. That had been a shotgun. Twelve gauge, by the sound of it.
What idiot's firing a shotgun by the side of the road? he wondered. The school buses will be coming through any minute!
The second shot went off just as he was rounding the bend, and everything became clear at once. He didn't recognize the woman lying on the road, nor did he recognize the horsemen. Not Scots, for sure, but who they were he did not know.
Nor did it matter. The uncertain boy he had once been, not so very long ago, had done well enough on his first battlefield. That boy was gone, long gone. Replaced by a man who was no longer a stranger to violence. And, perhaps more important, was married to a woman whose soul was tempered steel. Not married for long, true. But more than long enough for Gretchen to have rubbed off. Mercy be damned.
He raced down the final stretch. He saw one horseman firing his wheel lock at him. Jeff had no idea where the bullet went.
At the last second, he almost laid the bike down bringing it to a skidding stop. The horses, terrified by the strange noise and sight, whinnied and skittered. The two men still mounted were completely preoccupied with staying in the saddle.
Almost leisurely, Jeff dismounted and drew the shotgun. The magazine was full, loaded with slugs. He glanced at the woman, and recognized her immediately. He held out his hand, palm down, and made a little patting motion.
"Stay down, Becky!"
The man on the ground was rising to his feet. Jeff decided to take him out first. He pumped a round into the chamber and brought the shotgun to his shoulder in one easy motion.
Clickety-boom! The Croat was back on the pavement, dead before he landed.
The two men still on horseback had brought their mounts under control. The one who had fired at him earlier was drawing a new wheel lock. The other already had one in his hand.
Jeff grinned, as savagely as might Harry Lefferts. "It's called rate of fire, motherfuckers!"
Clickety-boom! Clickety-boom!
Two bodies landed on the asphalt with sodden thumps. The horses raced off. Jeff glanced at Rebecca to make sure she was unhurt. She smiled feebly, then lowered her head. He decided she would keep, until he made sure of the enemy.
He strode toward the men lying on the highway. One of them was clearly dead. The slug had blown his chest apart. The other Jeff wasn't quite sure. Mercy be damned. Clickety-boom!
He turned away and hurried toward Rebecca. By the time he reached her, she was starting to rise. Then, she collapsed back to her knees.
Now deeply concerned, Jeff tilted her face up. Rebecca's dark eyes seemed very wide. Dazed looking. He thought she was in shock. She was mumbling something, but he couldn't make out the words.
Jeff hesitated, unsure what to do. She needed medical attention, clearly enough. The closest place for it was the school, not half a mile away. And Dr. Nichols would already be there. He and Melissa always showed up early in the morning. But how was he to get Rebecca there? She was obviously in no condition to walk.
For a moment, longingly, Jeff looked at his bike. Then shook his head. In Rebecca's dazed state, that would be sheer folly. She'd fall off, sure as shooting.
Again, she mumbled something. This time, he understood the words.
"Stop the buses," she was saying. "Stop the buses."
Jeff's uncertainty vanished. Of course! The school buses would be passing through any minute. They'd be jampacked, of course, as many kids as there were in town nowadays. But room could certainly be made.
He half-helped, half-hauled Rebecca to the side of the road. She was shaking her head, still mumbling: "Stop the buses, stop the buses." Then, after covering her with his jacket-you were supposed to do that with people in shock, he knew-Jeff hesitated again. What else should he do, besides wait for the buses?
His eyes fell on the bodies littering the road. "The kids don't need to see that," he muttered. Quickly, he went over to his bike and rolled it to the side. Then, he hauled the bodies off the pavement and rolled them down the far slope toward the creek. Not completely out of sight, but as close as he could manage in the time available.
As he was finishing with the last corpse, he heard the sound of the first bus approaching. He scrambled up the bank and lunged into the road, waving his arms. His efforts were wasted, however. The bus was already coming to a stop. The driver had spotted Rebecca on the side of the road.
Hurriedly, Jeff lifted her up and half-carried her to the bus. The driver had opened the door and was calling at the children to move back, make room. As Jeff heaved Rebecca onto the step leading into the bus, she held out a hand and tried-feebly-to block him. "No, no," she mumbled. "Stop the buses."
Jeff shook his head. The gesture combined worry with amusement. "Boy, are you out of it! I did stop the bus, Rebecca. I'm putting you on right now."
Still, she tried to block him. But Jeff was having none of it. "She needs to see a doctor-now!" He carried her into the bus by main force and set her on a seat made vacant by the driver.
"Get her to Doc Nichols right away," Jeff ordered, ignoring the driver's babbled questions. "I'll explain later."
He hopped out of the bus, turned, and waved his arm vigorously. Move, goddamit!
The driver obeyed. The door closed with a hiss and the bus rumbled into motion. Jeff hurried over to his bike. By the time he started it up, a line of buses was coming down the road from town. He preceded them into the school's parking lot as if he were leading a parade.
As hundreds of schoolchildren started pouring off the buses, Jeff plunged through the entrance. Half running, he made his way through the corridors. He was at the clinic less than a minute after parking his bike.
Rebecca was already there, perched on an examination table, with Nichols in front of her. Jeff's leather jacket was draped over a nearby chair. As he started pulling it back on, Jeff heard someone behind him. He glanced back and saw that Ed Piazza and Len Trout were coming through the door, their faces full of concern. Trout had replaced Piazza as the school's principal months ago, given Ed's general responsibilities. But, at his insistence, Piazza had kept using his old office.
The driver, Jeff realized, must have spotted the bodies. Not to mention the blood and gore all over the highway. He would have charged right into the principal's office and told them.
But, for the moment, Jeff's concern was all for Rebecca. He turned back. To his surprise, he saw that she was staring at him. He was even more surprised to see that the dazed look was gone. Instead, her eyes were filling with tears.
"Oh, Jeff," she said softly, "why did you not stop the buses?"
His face must have shown his confusion. Rebecca shook her head sadly. "I wanted to send them all back to town, where they would be safe."
Jeff's jaw started to sag. Rebecca wiped the tears away with a trembling hand. Then, straightened her shoulders.
"Never mind," she said firmly. Her eyes were now dark with purpose. Not dazed in the least. "What is past is past."
Startled by the iron in her voice, Nichols stood erect. Rebecca glanced at him, then Piazza, then Trout.
Her eyes came back to Jeff. For a moment, they softened. "Thank you for saving my life, Jeffrey Higgins. Now, we must see to the lives of the children."
"Oh, Jesus," whispered Jeff.
Rebecca nodded. "Yes. They will be coming soon."
Captain Gars took his eyes off the trail for a moment, glancing at the sky. It was a very brief glance. Driving a horse down such a trail required concentration.
"Now," he growled. "They'll be starting the attack now." He cocked his head, shouting at the men following.
"Faster!"
Chapter 56
As she watched Julie's energetic rearranging of the chairs in her classroom, Melissa Mailey found herself laughing.
Julie's head popped up. "What's so funny?" she demanded. Then, seeing the way Melissa was looking at her: "You're laughing at me!"
Melissa brought fingers to her lips and forced silence upon herself. "Am not," she mumbled.
"Are too!"
As she studied the aggrieved expression on Julie's face, Melissa tried to think of a way to explain. A way that would make sense to an eighteen-year-old who was only a few months removed from being a schoolgirl. It was difficult. Melissa wasn't sure that anyone under the age of fifty could understand it. But she decided to try.
"I just thought it was funny, seeing the eager way you were helping me. When I remembered how hard it was to get you-any of you-to do the same thing when you were still in school."
To Melissa's surprise, Julie understood at once. The young woman's face broke into a smile. "Oh. That's not so hard to figure out. Back then you were Miz Mailey. Today you're-" The smile became very shy. "Now you're Melissa."
Melissa Mailey tried to fight down a sudden surge of maternal warmth. Tried and failed. Her eyes started to tear. In what seemed an instant, Julie was across the room and hugging her.
"I like you so much better this way," Julie whispered.
Melissa returned the hug with one of her own. "So do I," she said softly. "So do I, Julie."
For a few seconds, Melissa treasured the embrace. She had no children of her own, and never would. But, since James Nichols had come into her life, she had found herself changing in ways she would never have imagined. Her view of the world was still the same, at bottom, but it was so much less-brittle. After half a lifetime living among West Virginians, Melissa Mailey had finally adopted them for her own.
Melissa stroked Julie's hair. "Don't worry about Alex," she murmured. "I keep telling you-"
She broke off. Tensed. The sound of babbling voices-frightened voices-was coming from the corridor outside the classroom.
Julie heard also. She straightened and turned her head. "What's going on?"
James Nichols surged into the room. He gave Melissa a quick smile, but his eyes were focused on Julie.
"Can you handle a.30-06 semiautomatic?" he demanded. "We've got two of them, but they're the only rifles in the whole damned school."
Melissa gasped. So did Julie. Melissa's gasp came from shock. Julie's, from sheer outrage.
"Is that a joke? I can shoot anything!"
James Nichols was, by nature, a smiling man. It was one of the reasons Melissa loved him. But she had never seen such an incredible grin on his face. "Those poor bastards," he laughed. "Did they ever pick the wrong day to piss off pregnant women!"
The steel pillars holding up the weather awning in front of the school's main entrance were not really load-bearing structures. The bus knocked them aside like so many sticks. By the time Jeff slammed on the brakes and brought the bus to a halt, the awning had collapsed onto the bus' roof.
Jeff didn't bother removing the keys from the ignition. Even if they got into the bus, the Croats wouldn't know how to drive it. He hopped out and took a quick look at his handiwork. It didn't take him more than a few seconds to decide that the main entrance was almost completely blocked off.
Good enough. They'll pay hell, trying to charge through a school bus.
The bus gave a little lurch. The driver of the next bus wasn't taking any chances on leaving gaps. He had deliberately bumped his bus into the rear of the one Jeff had positioned in front of the door.
A moment later, the same bump was repeated. Repeated again. The drivers of the third and fourth buses were doing the same. Then the fifth driver, and the sixth.
But Jeff didn't wait to see the results. He plunged through the big doors of the entrance and raced toward the principal's office. Rebecca had set up her HQ there, despite the relatively cramped space, in order to take advantage of the communication facilities in the school's administration center.
When he charged into the office, Rebecca was talking on the telephone.
"One moment, Dan," she said calmly. Rebecca raised her head, eyes questioning.
"We're set!" said Jeff.
Rebecca nodded and resumed her conversation. "We have now blocked off the entire front of the school with a line of buses. We shall be doing the same with the rear entrances. The students and faculty in the technical center are moving equipment to block the entrance to their building. That will leave only the glassed-in walkway between the school itself and the technical center as an easy access route. We have no way of blocking that, but we will try to improvise obstructions on the inside."
She fell silent, listening to something the police chief was saying. Then: "No. We are evacuating the auditorium completely. We will collect as many students as possible in the classrooms on the second floor. But there is not enough space for all of them, so we will put the older students in the gymnasium."
Again, she fell silent for a few seconds. Then: "Not much, Dan. Two rifles. Eleven pistols and revolvers in the personal possession of teachers. And Jeff has his shotgun and-"
She gave him a questioning glance. Quickly, Jeff flashed his fingers. "He says he has fourteen rounds left."
She paused, listening to something Dan was saying. Jeff could hear Dan's loud voice coming over the telephone, ringing in her ear. Grarr! Grarr! Grarr!
Rebecca shrugged. "Yes, I know. It is a pitiful arsenal. A stupid oversight on our part. In the future, we shall certainly do otherwise. But we have nothing else at the moment, except"-her lips quirked-"a plentiful assortment of kitchen utensils and baseball bats."
Suddenly, Jeff saw Rebecca stiffen. "No! Dan-you cannot! They will certainly be attacking the town also. Until we know where the attack is concentrated, it would be pure folly for you to bring an expedition here. These are Croats, Dan. The best light cavalry in the imperial army. They will not line up for you neatly like a tercio. If they see you coming, they will set an ambush. They will swarm any caravan of vehicles on the open road. And you do not have any APCS. They are all with the army in Eisenach. Wheel-lock pistols are quite capable of butchering people trapped in an automobile. And if you emerge, you will be sabered and lanced. As long as we are behind walls-here as well as in town-we have a chance."
Grarrgrarrgrarr.
"Dan, that is stupid! Think. What good is a rescue attempt that never arrives? You will all die for nothing. What you must do is smash the Croats attacking the town first. Then you can send a rescue expedition."
Grarrgrarrgrarr.
Rebecca's lips tightened. "Dan-listen to me! They are coming-now. Get off the telephone-now. See to the town! We will hold them off here as long as possible. Do not make any attempt to rescue us until you have defeated the Croats in the town!"
With a motion as decisive as her voice, she placed the telephone back on its cradle. Immediately, she turned to Jeff.
"The most dangerous place will be the gymnasium. We will not be able to keep the Croats out of the ground floor of the building for very long. The buses will slow them down, and make a mass charge impossible, but-"
Jeff nodded. "They'll smash in the windows to the cafeteria, first thing. There's enough space between the buses and the wall to move single file. Once they're in the cafeteria, all bets are off."
He glanced at the large vestibule beyond the administration office. The door to the cafeteria led directly into it. From there, the enemy would be able to reach the gymnasium as well as the administration center itself. To reach the classrooms on the second floor, they would have to use the stairwells. Jeff could hear the clattering sound of desks and cabinets being moved into place, blocking those access routes. The obstructions could be removed, but there were enough sidearms-and the two rifles in the hands of James and Julie-to make that a bloody business for cavalrymen trying to force their way up a flight of stairs.
But there was no way to block the gymnasium, beyond locking the heavy doors. The doors and locks were solidly built, true. Impossible to break through simply with shoulders or boots. But the Croats would smash them in soon enough. There were simply too many ways they could improvise a battering ram.
Jeff grimaced ruefully. He had provided them with battering rams himself, he realized, by knocking down the pillars supporting the weather awning. He drove the thought aside. The fog of war, Clausewitz called it. The friction of a battlefield, where actions produced unintended consequences.
"Will do," he announced firmly. He hefted the shotgun. "This is the best weapon for that area, once they break in."
He gave Rebecca a stern look. "You're going upstairs. Now."
She nodded. "Yes. I had thought to remain here, where we have communications-"
"No way, Rebecca! Once they break through, this office is a death trap!"
Ed and Len Trout charged in. Both of them were holding pistols. "They're coming!" shouted Piazza. "From the north, over the ridge. One of the kids just spotted them."
"Hundreds of 'em," growled Trout. "Over a thousand, probably."
Ed marched forward and took Rebecca by the arm. "Let's go. You're going upstairs, young lady-this second!"
Unresisting, Rebecca allowed herself to be led away. Her eyes remained on Jeff. Soft, dark, gleaming with sorrow and apology. She had condemned him to death, and knew it.
He gave her a cheerful grin. Made the attempt, anyway.
"Relax, Becky! It'll be okay." He propped the butt of the shotgun on his hip and tried to assume his best Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western imitation. The good, the bad and the ugly-all rolled into one. With spectacles.
Rebecca's eyes teared. "Hidalgo, true and pure," she blessed him.
Once they left the office, Piazza gently handed Rebecca over to Trout.
"Get her upstairs, Len. I'll stay with Jeff and the kids in the gymnasium."
"No."
Ed was startled. He stared up at the tall, balding figure of the school's former vice-principal. Trout was glaring down at him.
"I'm the principal of this school now, Ed, not you." He jerked his head toward the stairs. "Upstairs. Becky and the teachers will need you up there."
Jeff was emerging from the office. Trout started walking toward him. Over his shoulder, repeated in words of iron: "Upstairs, Mr. Piazza."
Ed stared at him, his mouth half open. Rebecca placed her hands on his shoulders, turned him, and started moving him toward the stairs.
"Come along, Edward." She managed a little smile. "We are in a school, you know. We dare not disobey the principal."
Piazza's mouth was still open when Jeff and Len Trout entered the gymnasium. A moment later, hearing the heavy locks sliding into place, he closed his lips. "Jesus Christ," he whispered. "I've known Len Trout for twenty years."
The sentence was like an epitaph.
"We'll give the bastards another Matewan," Dan snarled. "With cherries on top."
He pointed to the bridge over Buffalo Creek. The bridge was now blocked off by one of the school buses which served the town as its public transportation. "Get the recruits over there, Gretchen. You stay with them, you hear? As long as you're there, they won't lose heart."
Gretchen nodded and started bellowing orders. A few seconds later, her 9mm gripped in her hand, she was leading the young Germans who were being trained as new police officers onto the bridge. There were eighteen of them, four of whom were female. All of them were armed with shotguns and revolvers and, like Dan and Gretchen, were wearing bullet-proof vests.
The bridge and the three-way intersection next to it was the center of Grantville. The intersection formed something in the way of a small plaza. The buildings on all sides were two and three stories tall. People were still pouring into those buildings from all the houses and trailers on the north side. Many of the men and some of the women were carrying rifles and other firearms.
Fortunately, Rebecca's warning had come in time to evacuate the part of town directly in the path of the oncoming Croats. It had also enabled the police force to organize the citizens into an impromptu militia. True, most of the able-bodied men and women were with the army in Eisenach or Suhl, but there were still plenty of people who could use a gun-especially firing from within buildings. Rebecca's plan still grated Dan Frost's soul, but he had bowed to the logic of it.
The police chief turned to Fred Jordan, one of his deputies. Before he even asked, Fred was answering. "They're all in place, Dan." Jordan swept his outstretched hand in a half-circle, indicating the buildings lining the intersection. "Got deputies in every one. They'll organize the other people with guns. Biggest problem we're having is keeping the hotheads from charging right off to the school."
Dan nodded. He studied the intersection for a few seconds. "Good enough. All we need is something to draw their attention and suck 'em into the ambush."
He was already marching toward the intersection before he finished speaking. For a moment, Fred was rooted in place. Then, realizing what the chief intended, he started hurrying after him.
Hearing his steps, Dan turned around. "Get out of here, Fred," he said quietly. "Take position in one of the buildings. We don't need two people for this."
Fred started to squawk a protest, but Dan waved him down impatiently. "Do as I tell you, dammit!" His face twisted into a wry grin. "As long as this town seems bound and determined to make me Wyatt Earp, I may as well do it up right."
Lowering the radio, Mike's face was ashen. "Oh, Christ. We've been suckered."
Frank Jackson, Harry Lefferts and Alex Mackay were gathered around him. Frank turned his head and glared at the Spanish prisoners being herded into a makeshift "prison camp." The camp was nothing more than a large stretch of farmland below the Wartburg's hill. The prisoners were held in place not by fences but by the crude expedient of guns pointing directly at them. Even the guns did not surround them completely. The area to the west of the prisoners was bare and open. But the three catapults were standing by, ready to lob hellfire into their midst in case of any trouble.
"All this?" Frank demanded. His voice was choked. "They sent an entire fucking army-just to get a clear shot at Grantville?"
Mike sighed. "Yes, Frank. That's exactly what they did. That-and the army that marched on Suhl. Just diversions, that's all."
Silently, Mike cursed himself for an incompetent fool. He glanced at Mackay. "It's not as if you didn't try to warn me," he muttered.
The Scottish colonel shook his head. "You are missing the point, Mike. The problem is not that you made a mistake." He pointed to the Spaniards. "That is an army. Had you not come here to meet them, they would have been no diversion at all. They would have sacked Eisenach and poured into Thuringia. And if Heinrich and Tom hadn't done the same in the south, Suhl would now be burning."
Half-angrily: "So what else could you do?"
Mike said nothing. Again, Mackay shook his head. "You must face a reality. You are simply too small, Mike. Half of Europe-no, two-thirds of it!-is now arrayed against you."
He jerked his head toward the prisoners. "The Spanish army is perhaps the most powerful in the world. On land, at least. If they ever get over their obsession with reconquering Holland, God help the rest of Europe." Pointing to the southeast. "And now Wallenstein has amassed that huge army outside Nьrnberg. A hundred thousand men, he must have by now-a force equal to the population of Thuringia."
He shrugged. "And if you defeat all of them, then what? Can you march into Spain and Austria and crush the Habsburgs in their lair? And what about Richelieu, and the power of France? They are also now your enemies, clearly enough."
He waited. Mike was silent. Mackay moved his stare to Frank and Harry. They, too, said nothing.
"If you do not destroy the Habsburg dynasty-and the French, and the Papacy and the Poles and the Russians, for that matter-they will remain an ever-present threat. And you have no way of doing that. Before too long, the ammunition for the M-60 will be gone. Within a year, even with your capacity for reloading, you will run out of ammunition for your modern rifles. Long before the Habsburgs will run out of money and soldiers. Then what? How long can you hold Europe at bay, even with your technology? The powers arrayed against you can gear up while you gear down-and they are immeasurably larger than you are."
Silence.
Mike heaved a sigh. "Yeah, Alex, I know. I've been thinking about it a lot, lately." He managed a rueful smile. "It's about all I think about, in fact."
"Well, think about it later," snapped Frank. "We've got today to deal with. What do you want to do?"
Frank's question broke through Mike's paralysis. He stared at the Spanish prisoners for a few seconds. Then:
"Let 'em go. All of them except the officers and the priests. We can keep those locked up in Eisenach for a few weeks. March the rest of them straight west for maybe ten miles and then send them on their way. Tell them we'll kill any who turn back."
Jackson started to protest but Mike waved him silent. "We haven't got time to mess around with them, Frank!"
Alex was nodding his agreement. "I can leave you Lennox and a few hundred cavalrymen to ride flank. The rest of my men and myself will start back to Grantville." He left unspoken the obvious: Not that cavalry can get back in time to do any good.
Mackay's support crystallized Mike's determination. "Right. Frank, you and the infantrymen stay here, until you're sure the Spaniards are gone for good. Harry, gather up the APCs and cram as many men into them as possible. We're heading back right now."
He glanced at his watch. "Even on that road, the APCs can make it back in three or four hours. So let's go!"
He left unspoken the obvious: Not that three or four hours will be in time either.
Chapter 57
Most of Grantville's residential areas were south of Buffalo Creek. The Croats had begun their approach to the town on that same side of the creek. But their commanders, wanting to maintain surprise, had crossed the creek miles downstream and circled to the north. There, in the uninhabited hills between the town, the school and the power plant, the imperial cavalry had been able to move unseen.
Almost unseen. They did encounter a small crew of tree trimmers, engaged in clearing foliage away from the power lines. Croat light cavalry were superb woodsmen, so the tree trimmers were caught by surprise. The three men in the crew were butchered within seconds. The cavalrymen were prepared to linger over the woman, but an officer arrived and demanded dispatch. For all their well-deserved savage reputation, the Croats were not undisciplined freebooters. They made only token protest before decapitating her.
Once they reached the northern outskirts of Grantville, the commanders of the cavalry detachment sent against the town-about a third of the entire force-ordered the charge. Whooping their war cries, seven hundred Croats began pouring through the small streets, lancing and sabering Three dogs, a cat, and Mrs. Flannery. As pigheaded and irascible as she had been throughout her eighty-one years of life, the widow had refused to evacuate. The Croats found her standing in her yard, shrieking the same imprecations at them which she had visited on her neighbors for decades. The cavalryman who cut her down even hesitated for five seconds, he was so bemused by the sight.
For a few minutes, the Croats' attack was delayed as the cavalrymen smashed into the deserted houses, looking for victims. Kill everyone, they had been told. Especially Jews.
The qualifier, as Wallenstein's officers had foretold, was pointless. The Croats had only the vaguest notion of how to distinguish Jews from gentiles, and they were not, in any event, a soldiery given to making fine distinctions. As far as they were concerned, the operative phrase was: Kill everyone.
But there was no one to kill.
"Empty-again!" barked the officer, as he led his men out of yet another house. His commanding officer was waiting on the street outside, perched on his horse. While the officer made a hurried report, his men amused themselves with vandalism. But even the vandalism was petty-smashed windows and sabered furniture-since the cavalrymen were under orders not to linger.
The commander's snarl was ferocious. "They've been warned." He pointed to the center of town, whose taller buildings were clearly visible not more than two hundred yards away. "But they can't have gotten far. Gather the troops!"
It was the work of another few minutes to round up the soldiers from their futile house-wrecking. By the time the Croats reassembled, several of the homes were starting to burn. But even the arson was petty. The cavalrymen had been expecting a lightning strike aimed at massacre. They had brought little in the way of incendiary supplies and were not given enough time to set proper fires.
"Charge!" the commander bellowed. The order was relayed to the separate detachments gathered in the streets. Seven hundred Croats pounded toward Grantville's center, shrieking with murderous fury.
The fifteen hundred Croats surrounding the school were also shrieking, but theirs was a frustrated fury. Coming down onto the school from the ridge to the north, they had found no easy access into the buildings. Nor had they expected any. Their scouts had already reported that the school's vulnerability was on the south side.
Then, after circling, the Croats discovered the buses blocking off the entrances. For a moment, they milled around in confusion, hundreds of horses stamping their hooves on unfamiliar pavement. Within a minute, the large parking lot south of the school was covered with soldiers, staring at the bizarre yellow contraptions barring their way.
The officers gathered in a knot around the general commanding the entire expedition. Angrily, the general was stroking his mustachioes, examining the unexpected barricade.
"There must be a gap!" he snarled. "Between those-those things-and the building. Dismount and-"
James waited until the officers had gathered. He and Julie were positioned at the open window of a classroom on the second floor, facing to the south.
"I'll take the guy in the middle," he said, sighting down the barrel of the.30-06. "You take-"
Julie started firing. Crackcrackcrackcrack. By the time James took out the general-a perfect shot, right in the middle of the sniper's triangle-four of his officers were already dead.
Julie ejected the magazine and slapped in another. Crackcrack. Two more. Crack. Another.
The sole surviving officer spurred his horse into motion. It did him no good at all. Julie tracked him for not more than a second.
Crack.
"Jesus Christ," whispered James. He turned his head and stared at the girl next to him.
She responded with a glare. As she started reloading her rifle, she chanted in a little singsong: "'Can you handle a.30-06 semiautomatic, Ju-lie?' "
Nichols grinned. He extended his own rifle to her. "Tell you what, Julie. Why don't you do the shooting and let me reload for you?"
"Good idea," she growled.
Captain Gars heard the first shots just before he reached the road. A wide road, it was, paved with some peculiar substance. Perfectly flat. The finest road he had ever seen in his life.
He turned his head to the northwest, listening. Anders Jцnsson drew his horse alongside.
"Not far," stated Anders. Captain Gars nodded. He reached down and seized the hilt of his saber in a huge hand. Anders sighed. The captain, obviously enough, had no intention whatsoever of using his wheel-lock pistols. Saber, as always.
The rest of the Swedish cavalry was pouring onto the road. Captain Gars drew his saber and lifted it high. "Gott mit uns!" he bellowed, and spurred his horse into a gallop.
Within less than a minute, four hundred West Gothlanders, Finns and Lapps were thundering down what had once been-and was still named-U.S. Route 250. Heading west, following a madman.
"Gott mit uns!"
"Haakaa pддlle!"
The Croats hit Grantville's downtown like a log hits a saw.
As soon as his horse debouched onto the main street, the commander spotted the figure of a lone man in the plaza to the east. The man was standing still, facing them. One hand was holding an object-a weapon, perhaps-while the other was planted on his hip. He seemed to be wearing some sort of uniform, with an odd-looking breastplate, and his hat had a certain "official" air about it.
The open target was irresistible, after the frustration of the past quarter of an hour. The commander drew his wheel lock and waved it forward. "Attack!"
As he led the charge, some part of the commander's mind noted that the entrances to the buildings had all been blocked off by various means. The sight filled him with good cheer. Blocked doors meant that people were hiding inside. Like chickens in a coop, waiting for slaughter.
Dan hefted the pistol in his hand, watching the oncoming cavalrymen. For a moment, he was tempted to draw the weapon in his holster and shoot two-handed. The notion appealed to his sense of history. Sid Hatfield, by all accounts, had fought so at Matewan. A weapon in each hand, as he gunned down the company goons from the Baldwin-Felts detective agency.
Firmly, he suppressed the notion. True, family legend claimed that Sid Hatfield, the sheriff who led the coal miners in their shoot-out with the company goons at Matewan, had been a distant relative. But Dan was skeptical of the tale. Practically everyone he knew claimed to be related to the Hatfield clan, the West Virginia half of the famous Hatfield-McCoy feud.
Still, Dan was tempted. Whether or not Sid Hatfield was a blood relative, he was most certainly an ancestral spirit. Company goons or Croats, his town was under attack.
But that was in the old days, when police officers were not really professionals. So Dan resisted the amateurish whimsy, and brought up the.40-caliber automatic in a proper two-handed grip. The first line of horsemen was forty yards away.
The first wheel locks were discharged at him. Dan ignored the shots. As inaccurate as the weapons were, especially on a galloping horse, he would only be hit by blind chance.
As he started squeezing the trigger, Dan forced another thought out of his mind. That was a much more difficult struggle. Dan disapproved strongly of cruelty to animals, and he was especially fond of horses. Still Professional.
He emptied the twelve-round clip, methodically mowing down the horses in the front of the charge. Most of his shots struck the cavalry mounts in the chest or throat, killing several of them outright. Even those horses that were only wounded stumbled and fell, spilling themselves and their riders. Then other horses, uninjured by bullets, began stumbling over the corpses. Within half a minute, the charge had piled up like water hitting a dam.
Long before those thirty seconds expired, however, the street had become a charnel house. As soon as Dan's first shot went off, the deputies and armed citizens in the upstairs windows began firing their weapons. The range was point-blank, and the street below was packed with horsemen. Due to their excitement and fear, many of the citizens-and not a few of the deputies-missed practically every shot they fired. It hardly mattered. It was almost impossible for a bullet not to hit something.
Screaming rage and terror, the Croats tried to return fire with their wheel locks. But the contest was hopelessly one-sided. Not only were the wheel locks inaccurate, but the men firing them were mounted on pitching horses. Any shot which struck home did so by pure luck. The residents of Grantville perched in the upper stories of the downtown buildings suffered only eight casualties. None were fatal, and only two of them were actual bullet wounds. The rest were cuts caused by shattering glass and splintered stone. And one freak concussion: when a heavily framed velvet portrait of Elvis, shot loose from the wall, landed on the head of a woman huddled below.
Dan had planned to retreat, as soon as he fired off his first pistol. But now, seeing that the charge had been stymied, he stood his ground. Carefully, almost gently, he laid the empty automatic on the street next to his feet. Then he drew the pistol from his holster and started shooting again.
One of the officers who had been in the forefront was just now rising to his feet, shaking his head. The man was still dazed from his spill. He stumbled, and fell to his knees. His head came up, staring at the uniformed man who had so shockingly-one man!-shattered the charge.
Dan would have passed him up, if the man had managed to lose his hat. But Croats treasured their headgear-none more so than officers-and the hat was firmly attached by a drawstring. It was a very fancy, elaborate hat, replete with feathers. A commander's kind of hat. Even the bullet which came in between his eyes and blew out the back of his head didn't dislodge the thing.
Again, methodically, with a proper two-handed grip, Dan began killing the dismounted cavalrymen who had been in the first rank. He had intended to save a few rounds to cover his retreat. But by the time he came to the last few rounds, he saw that retreat would be unnecessary. Downtown Grantville, like a giant-scale Matewan, had become a death trap for arrogant outsiders. Already, he could see the Croats beginning their retreat.
Rout, rather. There was no discipline or order in the mob of horsemen galloping off to the east. Just five hundred panicked cavalrymen, leaving two hundred dead and wounded behind, driving down a road which led to no destination they knew. Just-away.
Dan heard the engine of the bus blocking the bridge start up. He spun around.
"Goddamit, Gretchen-wait for me!"
Gretchen had positioned all the German police recruits in the bus, ready at the windows to cover Dan's retreat if necessary. Then, seeing the way the battle was going, she ordered the driver to start the bus.
The driver was an elderly man, confused and frightened by the situation. Seeing that he was useless, Gretchen seized him by the scruff of the neck and manhandled him out of the bus. Then, scanning the large crowd which had gathered south of the bridge, she bellowed: "I need someone who can drive this thing!" She repeated the words in German.
"I can! I can!"
Gretchen recognized the voice even before her little brother forced his way through the mob. Hans was grinning from ear to ear. "I can drive anything!" he called out proudly, racing toward her.
Gretchen hesitated. Her brother loved to drive and was very good at it-measured, at least, in his ability to get from one place to another in a minimum amount of time. But he had an extremely nonchalant attitude toward what the American driving instructors called "defensive driving." His operating motto behind the wheel was: You can't live forever, anyway, so why not get where you're going?
Her hesitation was brief. Time was of the essence, and she could think of no one who would get the bus to the school quicker. "All right," she growled. "But be careful." Even to her, the words sounded absurd.
Hans clambered aboard and flung himself eagerly into the driver's seat. "Where to?" he demanded, starting the engine.
Scowling, Gretchen studied the main intersection. The plan which Dan had developed, to pursue the fleeing Croats directly, was obviously impractical. The street was so littered with the bodies of horses and men that it would take a quarter of an hour-at least-to clear a pathway. Already, she could see that the buses which Dan had held waiting a few blocks away were arriving on the scene, ready to load the deputies and other armed men in the buildings. But until the obstacles were removed, her bus was the only one which could go into immediate action.
She was about to order Hans to follow the road just south of Buffalo Creek, running parallel to the street down which the Croats were retreating, when she spotted Dan racing toward them. The police chief was supposed to ride one of the other buses, but he had obviously reached the same conclusion as Gretchen.
For a moment, so great was her furious determination to punish the invaders and protect the school, Gretchen almost left him behind. But she managed to restrain herself. Dan Frost was the best pistol shot in town, for one thing. And she'd never hear the end of it.
"Wait a moment," she said. In the few seconds it took Dan to reach the bus, Gretchen hurriedly explained her new battle plan to Hans and the recruits.
As soon as Dan came aboard, Hans closed the door and sent the bus lurching ahead. Dan grabbed the upright post by the door to keep from falling.
When he saw Hans at the wheel, the police chief hissed, "Oh, shit."
"He can drive anything," stated Gretchen firmly.
The bus careened around the corner. Frantically, Gretchen grabbed the overhead rail. "Anything," she repeated. Not as firmly.
Hans took the next turn like a charging cavalryman. The rear right wheels of the bus hammered over the curb, half-spilling the recruits out of their hastily taken seats.
"Oh, shit," repeated the police chief. He was now holding onto the upright with both hands. His knuckles were white.
On the next turn-whang!-Hans massacred a stop sign. "Anything," prayed Gretchen. "Gott mit uns."
Chapter 58
Harry Lefferts was so distracted by the news coming over the radio that he almost lost control of the vehicle. The road down which the column of APCs was racing, Harry's in the lead, was very far from a modern highway. The coal truck's front tires hit a huge pothole and Harry hastily fought the sudden skid.
Mike held his breath but didn't say anything. Once he was sure that Harry had the vehicle back under control, he leaned forward and returned the radio to its bracket.
"So the town's okay," he sighed, with some relief, but not much. And that little relief vanished almost instantly. In truth, Mike had not been too concerned about the town. Between Dan and his police force, and the fact that the town's residents were heavily armed, he had expected the enemy to be driven off readily enough. Grantville had become a seventeenth-century German version of a Wild West boom town. The Croats had simply discovered what the Dalton gang or any number of old American outlaws could have told them: "Treeing" a town is a lot easier said than done.
Harry echoed his worried thoughts. "What do you think about the school?"
Mike rubbed his face. "I don't really want to think about it. They don't have many weapons. And even if they've blocked off the entrances like we were told, that still won't hold off the Croats for more than a few minutes."
Silence followed. Halfway between Eisenach and Grantville, a column of APCS drove to the east. All the men and women in those vehicles-crammed with every soldier who could possibly be fit inside-were silent. There was nothing to say. The fate of their children was out of their hands.
The horde of Croats milling around on the parking lot south of the school was bellowing like a herd of enraged bulls. Enraged-and terrified. Many of them were already dismounting, and the rest were frantically trying to force their horses away from that hideous window.
For a time, they had tried to return fire. But it was hopeless. Twice they had managed, by sheer weight of hastily "aimed" pistol volleys, to drive the terror away. But destruction returned, almost at once. Four rounds to a magazine, fired as rapidly as James could reload. And while the school only had two rifles, there had been plenty of ammunition.
Crackcrackcrackcrack. Crackcrackcrackcrack. Like Death, wielding his unstoppable scythe, reaping men with each sweep like so many fistfuls of grain.
A few of the Croats, by now, understood that the murder was being rained upon them by a demon. A monster taking the form of a girl. A pretty one, too, to make the horror worse. But not many. Those Croats who were foolish enough to spend time studying the window usually died within seconds.
As he kept reloading and swapping the rifles, James Nichols was almost in awe. Abstractly, he could understand what he was seeing. The girl had trained for the biathlon, after all. The emphasis in that sport was on short-range shooting, not long-distance. And there was an absolute premium on firing quickly and moving to the next target. But the doctor still knew that he was in the presence of something truly special.
Julie Sims' face held no expression at all, beyond concentration. None. She was completely in the zone. A pure killing machine. At that short range, even shooting rifles she had not sighted in, she never missed. Not once.
To James Nichols, watching, it was almost like a religious experience. An angel had materialized, and declared every man within a hundred yards to be hers by God's will.
The scythe swept again. Crackcrackcrackcrack. The angel of death reaped and reaped.
Coming out of a side road, the bus careened onto U.S. Route 250 just behind the last fleeing Croats. They were approaching the eastern outskirts of the town. The school was two miles away.
Dan had already used a shotgun butt to smash out the front window on the opposite side from the driver. "Step on it!" he commanded. Then winced.
"Hallooooo!" shrieked Hans, shoving the gas pedal to the floor. The bus surged ahead, rapidly gaining on the Croats.
"God help us," muttered the police chief. He braced himself in the stairwell of the bus and brought up the shotgun. Behind him, Gretchen stood ready with another. Behind her, perched in their seats, all the German police recruits had their own shotguns ready.
Seconds later, the bus came within range and Dan fired. Another angel of death began sweeping its scythe.
Hans was forced to slow the bus while he steered around-and over, often enough-the bodies littering the highway. But he was able to speed up again soon. The panicked Croats had now left the highway and were desperately trying to escape the terrifying machine behind them.
Those who fell off to the north side of the road made their way to safety. The area there was wide enough to allow them to escape. But those who drove their horses off the south embankment found themselves in a death trap.
Buffalo Creek paralleled Route 250 not more than thirty yards away. As soon as he saw the road was clear of corpses, Hans stepped on the gas again. Within a minute, the bus was pulling alongside the mob of imperial cavalrymen pounding along the bank of the creek, looking for a ford.
By then, Dan and Gretchen had a recruit positioned in every window on the right side of the bus. At Dan's command, the recruits started blasting away with their shotguns. The Croats were driving their horses much too fast-along treacherous ground-to even think of returning fire with their wheel locks. And there was nowhere to escape.
Hans slowed down again. The bus rolled up the road at thirty miles per hour, while the recruits poured slugs and buckshot into the Croats stumbling their horses down the creek bed. The result reminded Dan of a photograph he had once seen; old, sepia images of buffalo herds slaughtered by hunters firing from a train.
Now desperate, the imperial cavalrymen drove their horses into the creek and tried to force their way across to the wooded hills on the opposite bank. But there was no ford here. True, since the Ring of Fire the water level had dropped considerably, but Buffalo Creek was still more in the way of a small river than a stream. A number of Croats drowned in the attempt, as did an even larger number of their horses.
Dan let them go. It was plain enough that these enemies had been whipped senseless. They had no thought at all beyond making their escape. He was much more concerned for the school, still a mile away.
"Step on it!" he commanded.
Hans did; Dan went back to muttering prayers.
A large number of Croats had finally pushed their way into the narrow space between the buses and the front wall of the building. They were packed like sardines, but at least here they were safe from that incredible rifle in the upper window.
It was the work of but seconds to smash in all the windows of the cafeteria with pistols and sabers. A moment later, the Croats surged into the school building.
Captain Gars led the charge up the slope toward the school, Anders Jцnsson by his side. He could see hundreds of Croat cavalrymen milling around in apparent confusion.
"Not too late," he grunted. He grinned at Anders. "Good, no?"
Then, waving his saber: "Forward! Forward!"
Behind him thundered the battle cries:
"Gott mit uns! Haakaa pддlle!"
Some of the imperial cavalrymen wasted time searching the kitchen. But most of them poured out of the cafeteria into the vestibule. From there, led by subofficers, they began fanning out.
Some of them charged down the corridor leading to the technical center. But they immediately encountered an obstruction. Other Croats, by now, had smashed their way into the glassed-in walkway between the school proper and the tech center. Within seconds, they were trying to force the door into the center itself.
Trying, and failing. The door had been blocked by the simple expedient of backing a fork lift against it. Outside, the imperial cavalrymen slammed their shoulders into the door with futile fury.
The cry went up: "Find a battering ram!"
Other Croats charged up the stairwells leading to the classrooms on the upper floor. They could hear the shrieks and screams of frightened children coming from above, and knew that their target was finally within reach.
But at the top, they encountered barricades and men armed with pistols and revolvers. Flurries of gunfire erupted-sharp crack versus the boom of wheel lock.
One of the schoolteachers was shot in the arm. Ed Piazza, firing over the barricade with his pistol, was also struck down. A heavy wheel-lock bullet punched between two filing cabinets and ricocheted into his chest, shattering his ribs and penetrating a lung.
Instantly, Melissa was kneeling at his side, desperately trying to staunch the flow of blood. To her relief, Sharon Nichols pushed her way forward carrying a first-aid kit. Between the two of them, they fought to save Ed's life while yet another schoolteacher took up the pistol and entered the bloody fray at the top of the stairs.
The battle was brief. The gunfights, again, were entirely uneven. The Croats coming up the stairwell were in the open, completely unprotected, and the disparity in rate of fire was impossible to overcome. Wheel-lock pistols took even longer to reload than arquebuses, whereas the schoolteachers were wielding automatic pistols and revolvers.
Soon enough, the Croats retreated to the vestibule, where they vented their frustration wherever possible. A dozen Croats charged into the library and began smashing the furniture, the computers, and spilling the books. Others visited the same wreckage on the administration center. Still others, in the vestibule itself, went at the huge display case lining the west wall. Smashing glass instead of skulls, spilling athletic trophies instead of blood, and carving photographs instead of faces.
Other imperial cavalrymen, meanwhile, had been slamming shoulders and boots into the wide doors on the northeast side of the vestibule which led into the gymnasium. They could see through the cracks of the doors, and knew that their prey awaited them beyond. But the doors were too solid to push through.
Again, the cry went up: "Find a battering ram!"
Julie spotted the motion of the oncoming new cavalry at the same time as she heard them shouting. Something about those battle cries seemed familiar to her-quite unlike the screeching of the Croats.
But her mind was entirely on her shooting. She had a fresh magazine in the rifle. Julie brought the iron sights to bear on the huge man leading the charge, and started to squeeze the trigger.
Stopped. There was something She lifted her head and peered. Julie's eyesight, as might be expected in a sharpshooter, was phenomenal-considerably better than 20/20.
"Jesus Christ," she whispered. "I don't fucking believe it."
The corner of her eye caught motion. A band of Croats-perhaps ten in all-had also spotted the new threat and were charging to meet it.
Julie swung the rifle. Crackcrackcrackcrack.
"Switch!" she squealed. James had the other.30-06 in her hands within seconds. The angel of death went back to the field, reaping with a fresh scythe.
Desperately, Anders tried to drive his horse ahead of Captain Gars, in order to shield him from the oncoming Croats.
No use. The captain always rode the finest horses in Europe.
The madman! cursed Jцnsson.
Captain Gars raised his saber, ready to strike. "Gott mit uns!"
The first rank of charging Croats was suddenly hammered aside, falling from their saddles like so many dolls. Neither the captain nor Jцnsson understood what had happened. They had heard a sound, like a great tearing of cloth, but did not recognize it as rifle fire.
No matter. Other Croats were upon them. Captain Gars matched saber against saber in his usual style. Sheer strength and fury smashed aside his opponent's weapon and then, in the backstroke, took the imperial cavalryman's arm off at the shoulder. The arm fell one way, the Croat was flung off the saddle to the other. He would bleed to death soon enough, never recovering from the shock.
Anders, as always, began with his wheel locks. Four of them he possessed; one in each hand, two in their saddle-holsters. He used them all in the first few seconds, desperately trying to protect Captain Gars from the Croats encircling him.
The wheel locks now fired, Anders dropped them and took up his saber. There was no time, in this furious cavalry melee, to reload and crank the firing mechanism on the clumsy weapons.
Captain Gars struck down another Croat, then another. His powerful blows fell like the strikes of an ax. But he was almost surrounded now.
The great tearing sound ripped through the sky again. And, again, Croats were smashed off their saddles. Anders could see the blood erupting from their chests, and suddenly understood that they had been shot in the back.
From above, somewhere. His eyes ranged up, and immediately spotted the window. The window, and the figure standing in it.
Anders, unlike the captain, had good eyesight. When he understood what he was seeing, he lapsed into blasphemy.
"Jesus Christ," he whispered. "I don't fucking believe it."
Next to him, in the sudden pause in the action, Captain Gars grinned savagely. His eyes swept the scene, taking in what he could. Which was not much, given his myopia.
"It goes good, eh?" he demanded.
A broad smile spread across the face of Anders Jцnsson. "Very good, Captain Gars. I believe an angel is watching over us."
Upstairs, Julie squealed again. "Switch!"
In the years to come, the Vдstgцta would speak with awe of Captain Gars' final charge against the Croats. Like a Titan, he was, smashing aside the savages like so many toys. The Finns, more superstitious, would claim that his saber had become a magic sword-striking down enemies long before they were within range.
The Lapps kept their opinion to themselves. They were only nominally Christians, and had found that it was unwise in the presence of devout Lutherans to speak too freely of their tribal spirits. One of which, quite obviously, had ridden the captain's shoulders that bloody day.
Only Anders Jцnsson and the captain himself understood the truth. Anders, because he had seen the angel for himself; the pious captain, because he recognized her handiwork.
"Gott mit uns!" he bellowed again, resuming the charge. And, indeed, God went before him. Slaying every Croat who stood in the captain's way, as if a mighty hand shielded him from harm.
The vestibule was so jammed with cavalrymen that it took a full minute to haul the awning support into position. Then, shrieking curses and commands, another full minute to clear a space for the impromptu battering ram.
Finally, the ram went to work. Boom. Boom. The doors began splintering.
When the bus was a hundred yards from the driveway leading up to the school, Croat cavalry began pouring down the slope.
Away from the school. As if they were panicked.
Dan leaned forward. "What the hell-?"
An instant later, he was shouting new orders. Gretchen saw to it they were carried out. Police recruits were again perched in the windows, their shotguns and revolvers in hand. Screaming with unprofessional rage, they began their new slaughter.
When they reached the driveway, Hans almost overturned the bus making the turn. But he never lost his good cheer. "Hallooooo!" he shrieked, driving the bus straight through the horde of imperial cavalry pouring away from the school. He crushed several Croats under the wheels and almost overturned the bus again, driving over the corpse of a horse. But the recruits were back at the windows in seconds, blasting away on both sides, wreaking havoc and carnage. Gretchen, in a fury, slammed open the rear window and started firing her automatic at the Croats fleeing toward Route 250 and Buffalo Creek. She only missed twice.
Once he reached the parking lot on top of the slope, Hans slammed on the brakes. Dumbfounded, he stared at the scene.
Equally dumbfounded, Dan stared with him. The entire area in front of the school was a cavalry battle. Bands of Croats were engaged in a desperate struggle with bands of other soldiers. Saber against saber; wheel lock against wheel lock.
The police chief had no idea who the other soldiers were. But he didn't care. He could recognize an ally when he saw one-and his allies were winning.
"Shoot the Croats!" he roared.
As if his voice were a signal, all of the Croats still on horseback in front of school suddenly broke. As it happened, they still outnumbered their Swedish and Finnish opponents-by a considerable margin-but it mattered not at all. Captain Gars' hammer blow from the rear, coming on top of their own frustration, had broken their spirit. Within a minute, leaving hundreds of dead and wounded behind, the imperial cavalry was in full rout. Many more men died or were crippled, spilling from horses driven too recklessly down the slope.
They were sped on their way by gunfire from the bus, but not for long. With Dan leading from the front, and Gretchen driving from the rear, the police recruits stumbled out of the bus and began racing for the school entrance. It was obvious enough, just from the sounds of shouting, that there were still enemies within.
Captain Gars and Anders, with dismounted Vдstgцta and Finns following, moved down the narrow space between the line of buses and the side of the school. There were still dozens of Croats in the cafeteria, but none of them were looking at the broken windows. They were all piled against the door to the vestibule, eagerly awaiting their chance to join the charge into the gymnasium. From the splintering sounds accompanying the booming battering ram, the slaughter was finally about to begin.
Inside the gymnasium, Jeff stood alone in the middle of the floor. He hefted the shotgun in his hands, staring at the big double doors. The doors were starting to splinter, and he didn't think the lock was going to last more than a few seconds.
Len Trout was still finishing the task of shepherding the students onto the upper rows of the tiers of benches. Only one set of benches had been lowered: the one against the north wall of the gym, farthest from the doors. The principal had crammed as many students as possible onto the top rows. A line of the oldest boys was standing guard on the lower benches, armed with nothing better than baseball bats.
"All we can do," muttered Trout. He turned and strode to the center of the gym, taking position next to Jeff. He levered the slide on the automatic and checked quickly to make sure the safety was off.
"All we can do," he repeated.
Jeff said nothing. He couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound melodramatic and corny. So he decided to spend these last moments of his life simply thinking about his wife, and hoping that their unborn child would enjoy the world as much as he had.
The lock on the door gave way and the doors slammed open. Murder poured into the room, shrieking death and destruction.
"Gott mit uns!"
Captain Gars' battle cry signaled the attack. With the captain and Anders leading the way, the Vдstgцta and Finns surged through the windows into the cafeteria.
The Croats still in the cafeteria were caught completely by surprise. By the time they spun around, Captain Gars was upon them, like a grizzly bear savaging his prey, with another roaring at his side. Between them, the captain and Anders cleared a path to the door. The Croats who fell away from that berserk saber charge were swarmed under by the captain's soldiers.
"Gott mit uns! Haakaa pддlle!"
"That's it, Julie," said Nichols, handing her the rifle. "You've got a fresh magazine. The rest of the ammunition is gone."
Julie leaned the empty.30-06 against the wall, seized the other, and charged for the door. By the time she got to the corridor, she was already shrieking her own battle cry.
"Make way! Make way! Goddamittohell-clear a path!"
In her frenzied drive through the mob of students and teachers in the corridor, Julie did not actually use the gun butt to hammer herself a path-though the claim would be made afterward, by students knocked down by her charge. But the truth was quite otherwise. A hundred-and-forty-pound cheerleader was simply doing an excellent imitation of a fullback twice her size.
James followed. For all his concern-he knew the damned girl was heading back into action-he couldn't restrain a smile. Then, as he neared the end of the corridor where Julie was frantically clambering over the barricade at the stairwell, he caught sight of Melissa's pale face and the smile vanished.
She saw him at the same time. "Oh Jesus, James-hurry. Ed's been shot!"
"Get those fucking buses out of the way!" bellowed Dan Frost. When he saw Hans squirrel into the lead bus through a broken window, he cursed under his breath. That bus was the one which Jeff had planted directly in front of the school's main entrance.
"Not that one, Hans! It's blocked by the others."
He started toward the bus, pointing with his finger to the ones further down the line. "You gotta move those others first before you can-"
Hans had his own ideas about how to move a bus. His theory leaned very heavily on kinetic energy, and gave short shrift-no shrift, actually-to repair costs. Half a minute and much wreckage later, the bus pulled away. The entrance to the school was open.
Croats began pouring out, desperate to escape the furious charge of the Swedes coming through the cafeteria. But by the time they emerged, Dan and Gretchen had already formed the police recruits into a new line, standing to one side, shotguns reloaded and ready, leaving an apparent path to freedom and safety.
It was a firing squad, for all practical purposes. Of the hundred or so imperial cavalrymen who managed to get out of the school building before the Swedes and Finns cut them down, less than half ever made it out of the parking lot.
When the firing ceased, Dan and Gretchen led the police recruits into the school. Tried to, at least. But there was no way to force themselves past the men who now filled the vestibule. Captain Gars' Vдstgцta, those were, still following the madman.
Coming down the stairs, Julie met four Croats coming up. The Croats were not even looking at her. They were coming up the stairs backward, frantically trying to fend off twice their number of Finns.
The scythe swung-crackcrackcrackcrack-and her way was clear. The Finns at the bottom of the stairs, gaping, simply moved aside. There was something inexorable about the way the young woman came down the stairs, trampling over the bodies she had put there. Christianity was more than nominal, among Finns, but they still retained memories of their pagan traditions.
No man in his right mind will stand in the way of Loviatar, Goddess of Hurt, Maiden of Pain.
Jeff blew the front rank of Croats into bloody shreds. Rate of fire. At that range-less than fifteen yards-the heavy shotgun slugs punched through the light armor of the imperial cavalrymen as if it were tissue paper.
Frantically, he started reloading the shotgun. Len Trout stepped in front of him and leveled the automatic. Again, the Croats charging into the gymnasium encountered that incredible rate of fire.
But Len was no marksman. For all his courage, he was not an experienced gun handler. Half his shots missed.
Five Croats went down, true, even if three of them were only wounded. But there were still more than enough to drive through the hail of pistol bullets. Less than a second after he fired the last shot in the magazine, the first saber cut Len Trout down. A head wound, bloody but not fatal. But the next saber slash almost removed his head entirely, hacking halfway through his neck.
Trout's killer died himself, then. He and all the men at his side. Jeff's shotgun was reloaded and back in furious action. Rate of fire. Clickety-boom, over and again, coming so fast it sounded like thunder.
And now the shotgun was empty, and it was over. Jeff still had a full magazine's worth of ammunition left in his pockets, but he would never have the time to reload before the Croat sabers arrived.
The first Croat charged up, saber held high. Jeff went to meet him. The Croat had time to be amazed at how quickly the big man in front of him moved, before the butt of the shotgun shattered his jaw.
A saber cut into Jeff's right shoulder, knocking him to the floor of the gym. Instantly, his entire arm and side were soaked with blood. The muscle was cut through to the bone. Only the tough leather jacket had kept that sword stroke from amputating his arm entirely.
Half-dazed by the shock, Jeff stared up at the man who had slashed him down. Snarling, the Croat raised the saber again.
Then, to Jeff's amazement, the Croat's head exploded. Cut in half, rather, by a saber which descended like the hammer of an ancient war god. The Croat was driven to his knees. A twist of the powerful wrist holding the saber broke the blade lose from the skull and cast the victim aside.
Jeff found himself staring at a huge man, grinning down at him. Immense, he was. Tall, broad, heavy as an ox. His pale blue eyes, peering down over a powerful nose, were gleaming like glacier ice.
Captain Gars led the charge into the gymnasium, still roaring his battle cry. Anders was at his side, roaring the same. Not half a step behind came dozens of the Vдstgцta and Finns. Walls which had once rung to the sound of cheerleaders' slogans now shook with the fury of the Northmen.
Gott mit uns!
The captain himself cut down the Croat who had been about to kill the young American on the floor. Then, standing over him like a protective idol, he bellowed commands to his soldiers. It was the work of less than fifteen seconds to drive the rest of the Croats to the rear wall of the gymnasium.
Led by Anders, the Vдstgцta flooded the area in front of the tiered seats, protecting the students. At the captain's command, his Finns moved forward against the enemy.
At the end, the surviving imperial cavalrymen-perhaps twenty in all-tried to surrender. They received the traditional Finnish terms.
Haakaa pддlle!
Julie and Gretchen reached the broken doors of the gymnasium at exactly the same time. Dan Frost was a few steps behind.
As soon as she saw Jeff, Gretchen raced to his side. By now, several of the students trained in first aid were clustered about him, removing his jacket and staunching the wound. Gretchen forced her way through, knelt, and cradled his head in her lap. Weeping as she had not wept in years.
"S'okay," her husband mumbled. He even managed a wan smile. "S'okay, sweetheart-honest. Nothing but a little flesh wound." Then his eyes rolled up and he fainted.
Julie stood in the doorway, staring at Captain Gars. Her eyes seemed as wide as saucers.
The captain was also having a wound tended to. Nothing major, to all outward appearance. But at Jцnsson's insistence, the captain had removed his buff coat and blouse. His upper body was bare and exposed. Very pale-skinned he was, with a carpet of blond hair on his chest. Thick muscle bulged under layers of fat.
"You see?" he grumbled. The captain pressed the heavy flesh aside, exposing the cut along his ribs. The gash was shallow, and perhaps three inches long. Plainly enough, it would soon be nothing but a minor blemish on a torso which was already heavily scarred. Captain Gars seemed utterly oblivious to the blood soaking his hip.
"It's nothing," he insisted. Anders sighed with exasperation and handed him a scarf. The captain pressed the cloth against the wound.
Motion caught his eye. Captain Gars turned his head and squinted at the person coming toward him. When the figure finally came into focus, he grinned.
Julie covered the last few steps in a rush. A moment later, equally oblivious to the blood, she was hugging the huge body of the captain fiercely. Much like a chipmunk might embrace a bear.
The captain seemed startled, at first. Then his fierce warrior's face softened. After a few seconds, he was returning the embrace. A bit gingerly, at first. Afraid, perhaps, that he might crush the girl in his arms. But then, as he felt the muscle beneath his hands and remembered the sheer force of her spirit, the embrace grew warm and tight.
"Iss all right," he murmured, in his thick and awkward English. "I not bad hurt."
Julie's head popped up from his chest. Craning her neck, she glared at the captain.
"You could have gotten killed!" she squealed. "What are you-crazy?"
"Yes," stated Anders gloomily. "The captain is a madman. It is well known."
When Rebecca came into the gymnasium a minute later, Julie was still hugging the captain. And still chastising him for his reckless folly; loudly, and in no uncertain terms. Captain Gars himself didn't seem to know how to handle the situation. Apparently he was a man unaccustomed to being scolded. But Anders Jцnsson and all the Vдstgцta were grinning from ear to ear.
Finally! Someone to call the madman to his senses!
Rebecca burst into soft laughter. Dan Frost, standing next to her, was frowning with puzzlement.
"I don't get it," he hissed. "Does Julie know that guy from somewhere? They say his name's Captain Gars."
Rebecca choked off the laughter. "Oh, yes. They've met before."
She stared at the immense man in the center of the room. Her own eyes softened.
"What a lunatic," she murmured. "He has not done this in many years. Not since he was a young man, according to the history books." Again, she laughed.
Dan was scowling fiercely. "I still don't-"
"Captain Gars," said Rebecca. "To the best of my knowledge, he is the only king in history who ever actually did it outside of fable. Travel in disguise, I mean, assuming the pose of a simple soldier. The books claim that he scouted half of western Europe in that fashion."
The police chief's eyes widened. His jaw sagged.
"Oh, yes," chuckled Rebecca. "Captain Gars. Gustavus Adolphus Rex Sueciae."
Part Seven
Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Chapter 59
By the time they reached Grantville, Mike had reached his conclusion. He didn't much care for it, in many ways. But he knew it was-by far-the best alternative.
If nothing else, listening to Harry Lefferts' monologue during the drive from Eisenach had convinced him. Once they got word over the radio that the imperialist raid had been driven off, with light casualties, everyone in the relief column had been able to relax. Cheerfully, enthusiastically-even gaily-Harry had spent the last two hours explaining all the many ways in which the United States could be made safe from any future invasion or attack.
Barbed wire. Land mines. Fortresses along every approach bristling with Gatling guns-we can make 'em, Mike, I'm telling you!-and napalm catapults. Greg says we can make phosphorus bombs too-way better'n napalm! A much bigger army-universal draft, goddamit!-and a massive expansion of the military college which they had already decided to launch. Oh, and lots more. Observation balloons, and powered hang gliders for recon. Even poison gas, maybe.
Outside of the poison gas, Mike had no particular problem with any of Harry's specific ideas. But, taken as a whole, he understood the inexorable logic involved.
Festung Amerika! Fortress America, and everything that went with it.
When the relief column reached the center of Grantville, driving slowly through the cheering crowd, Harry stopped the APC. He turned to Mike, smiling broadly.
"So, chief-whaddaya think?"
Mike did not return the smile. "What I think, Harry, is that your proposal is just Simpson all over again. Only bigger."
Harry's smile vanished, replaced by a look of bewildered outrage. The young coal miner detested Simpson!
Mike couldn't help but chuckle. At that instant, Harry reminded him of a small boy, accused of liking girls.
"Think it through, Harry." Mike listened to the roar of the crowd, for a moment. Even through the steel plate armor, the sound penetrated easily. There was nothing about that sound that Mike disliked, in and of itself. It was just the roar of a triumphant nation, saluting its soldiers. Nothing to fear-as long as it ended soon enough.
But if it went on, and on, and on…
Festung Amerika. But there was not enough room for America in a fortress. Certainly not one as small as Thuringia. Not Mike's vision of America, at least. Soon enough, Fortress America would need to expand. The militarist logic would inevitably guide that expansion. Living space, to be seized from its neighbors. Everything else would follow, like a glacier moving to the sea. Drang nach Osten. Amerika ьber alles!
It was obvious that Harry still didn't understand. Mike began to sigh with exasperation, but forced himself to control his impatience. Like a schoolteacher, explaining things again. And again. And again-as long as it took.
That image brought a smile to his face. Yes!
He bestowed the smile on Harry. "Didn't you wonder? Why Wallenstein sent most of his Croats against the school-instead of the town?"
Harry frowned. "I dunno. He's a murderous bastard, from what everybody says."
Mike shook his head. "No. I've been reading about him, in the history books. He wasn't-isn't, I should say-a sadist, Harry. Not at all. He doesn't eat babies for breakfast. He's just utterly cold-blooded and, without a doubt, the smartest man on the other side. Smarter than Richelieu, even."
Someone started pounding on the door of the APC. Demanding that the soldiers emerge, so that the crowd could greet them properly.
Nothing to fear. As long as it ended soon enough.
Mike started unlocking the door. "Think about it, Harry. Think long and hard. The reason Wallenstein wanted to destroy the school more than anything else is because he understands us better, I think, than we often understand ourselves. He knows what's really dangerous."
Now unlocked, the door was swung open from the outside. A sea of cheering faces appeared, and the sound of applause became almost deafening.
Before he climbed out of the APC, Mike gave Harry a glance. The young miner still didn't understand. But, apparently, Harry didn't much care. Whether he understood or not, Harry Lefferts did know who he had confidence in.
"So, chief," he shouted. "You got another plan?"
Mike grinned. "I think I do, as a matter of fact." He turned and started climbing out of the truck. Before his feet touched the ground, a multitude of hands had picked him up and were carrying him around the intersection in gleeful triumph.
Mike returned the applause with waving hands and a big grin. A man could get to enjoy this, he thought. Like a snake, digesting its prey.
He turned his head and stared to the east. The school was in that direction, not far away. He was burning with impatience to get there. To see his wife, of course. He knew that Rebecca was unharmed-she herself had been the one to make the last radio call-but he still wanted to hold her, and hold her, and hold her.
Beyond that I've got to talk to a captain. And hope-and pray-that he's every bit the madman that everyone says.
Chapter 60
"You are insane," growled Gustav Adolf. He waved his heavy hand in a circle. "Your mind is as jumbled as this room."
The library was still a scene of semiwreckage. The students had not finished rearranging the books when Mike had arrived at the school and immediately insisted on a private meeting with "Captain Gars." There were now only three people in the room: Mike, Gustav and Rebecca. All of them were seated on armchairs arranged in a half circle.
The king glared at the tall man sitting across from him. Blue eyes locked against blue eyes. "A madman!"
Mike's German was more than good enough to understand. He didn't wait for Rebecca's translation before matching the royal glare with one of his own.
"Am I?" Snorting, almost sneering: "Or is the true madman a Swedish king who thinks he can establish a Corpus Evangelicorum in central Europe? A Protestant confederation-when most of his Protestant allies are unwilling and his own conquered territory consists mainly of Catholics?"
After Rebecca translated, Mike stretched out his hand and swept it south by west. The fact that his finger was actually pointing at bookcases in a library did not prevent the monarch from understanding the gesture.
"What do you propose to do with Franconia?" he demanded. "Or the 'Priests' Alley'?"
The king was silent. Mike pressed on. "Or with the Palatinate-both the Upper and the Lower? Or with Swabia and Wьrttemburg?"
Gustav's heavy jaws tightened. "There must be an established church."
Again, Mike didn't need to wait for the translation. He shrugged his shoulders. "For a Corpus Evangelicorum, well and good. As long as it's restricted to Lutheran north Germany. Pomerania and Mecklenburg you control directly. Brandenburg-Prussia and Saxony are technically your allies. If you can convince them to join, Lutheranism is not an issue."
Mike waited for Rebecca to translate. The king glowered at the use of the word "technically," but issued no verbal protest. What was there to say?
Mike continued. "But how do you propose to establish Lutheranism as the official church of central Germany? Most of which, except for Hesse-Kassel and Thuringia, is Catholic."
The king was now glaring fiercely. Mike matched the glare. "And we control Thuringia. And we will not accept an established church. The separation of church and state is one of our fundamental principles!"
Glare.
Glare.
Rebecca managed not to laugh. Just barely. Melissa had once explained to her the "modern" notion of the so-called alpha male. At the time, Rebecca had found the logic of the argument highly suspect. But now, watching her husband and the king of Sweden, she admitted that the concept had a certain validity. Other than the fact that they were matching wills over power rather than females, the two men in the library reminded her of nothing so much as a pair of bull walruses during mating season.
She decided to intervene with the voice of feminine reason. Rebecca wasn't quite certain where Michael was going with his argument-they had barely had time to exchange an embrace and a few words before he insisted on this private meeting with "Captain Gars"-but she thought she could guess. Many times-many times-Michael had spoken to her of his greatest fear. That the new United States he was trying to forge would become another of Europe's tyrants instead of a school for humanity's future.
"Perhaps-" She cleared her throat. "Perhaps a compromise might be possible."
Two pairs of glaring blue eyes were now transferred to the female in the room. Rebecca managed to bear up under the burden. Quite easily.
"Yes, I think so." To the king, in quick, velvety German: "You must remember, Your Majesty, that my husband is accustomed to the clarity and simplicity of his traditional political arrangements." To Michael, in quick, hissing English: "Get off your high horse!"
Neither man quite understood what she had said to the other. They were suspicious, but…
Rebecca struck while the iron was confused.
"Yes, a compromise! In those principalities of the future realm-let us, for the moment, simply call it the Confederation of Europe-which are directly ruled by the Vasa dynasty as such, Lutheranism will of course be the established religion. But in those principalities-"
Mike and Gustav both erupted. Mike with a loud snort, the king with words.
"Nonsense!" bellowed the king. "The principle of monarchy cannot be compromised! Intolerable!"
Rebecca glided through his outrage unscathed. "Well-of course not. But, Your Majesty, remember that the principle of monarchy resides in your personage as Gustav II Adolf Vasa, King of Sweden. Not-"
She slid in the knife: "-in your persona as Captain Gars."
The king's jaws snapped shut. Michael goggled at her.
"Captain General Gars, I should say," Rebecca continued. "The title will naturally be hereditary, running through the Vasa line of Sweden. But since the captain general, as such, is not a king…"
She let the words, and the implication behind them, trail off into silence. Michael, unaccustomed to the arcane logic of feudalism, was confused. But the king, after a moment, began to smile. The blue glare in his eyes faded, replaced by thoughtfulness. He did understand the logic.
"Hm," he mused. "Interesting. As a purely military figure, the captain general would have no personal prestige bound up with any particular church. A monarch derives his authority from the hand of God, and must naturally support God's lawful church. But a captain general could-speaking abstractly, for the moment-leave strictly religious matters to the parsons." A bit sourly: "And priests, of course."
Mike had been able to follow the German exchange well enough. "And the rabbis," he insisted.
Gustav cast him another glare, but it was brief. He waved a thick hand. "Yes, yes-surely. Once the principle is established, the rest follows."
Rebecca twisted the blade. "And I do think it is time-long overdue, in fact-for Captain Gars to receive a promotion."
Gustav burst into laughter. "Scheming woman!" For a moment, he stared at her admiringly. His eyes drifted down to her swollen midsection. "If the child is a girl," he chuckled, "I assume you plan to name her Circe."
Rebecca laughed. After a moment, so did Michael.
The king began stroking his big nose. "Hm. Hm." The stroking stopped. The glare returned.
"But what about this other nonsense!" he snapped. "This preposterous idea that only the lower house-the estate of the commons, if you will!-has exclusive control over taxation and the state treasury?" His voice rose to a bellow: "Absurd! Utterly unreasonable!"
Michael snapped back: "Bad enough I'm willing to give you a stinking House of Lords, just to keep your lousy noble allies! You want the worthless parasites to decide how much they get taxed, too?" His own bellow was as impressive as the king's: "Not a chance! Power must remain in the lower House! Let the damned nobility be satisfied with their frills!"
Bellow.
Bellow.
The king of Sweden roared like a lion, defending the divine right of kings and the principle of aristocratic precedence. The president of the United States snarled like a tiger, insisting on the primacy of the popular will. Royalty must rule, not simply reign! was matched with Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute!
It went on for quite some time. On and on. Several hours, in fact.
Now and again, Rebecca's voice slid through the verbal maelstrom, like a blade between ribs. The roars and bellows would fade, replaced by hms and wellIgottathinkaboutthats, until they resumed their former fury. But, always, the ground would shift a bit.
Outside the library, the vestibule quickly became packed with the other members of the U.S. government. Within an hour, every elected official living in Grantville had arrived at the school. The crowd became so large that it was necessary for most of them to gather in the cafeteria. At periodic intervals, Representatives eavesdropping on the raging quarrel in the library would give hurried reports.
At first, Melissa and her supporters gathered around one table, while Quentin and his faction collected at another. But eventually, as if by unspoken agreement, the two of them met privately in the vestibule.
"I'm worried, Quentin," admitted Melissa. "I think I understand what Mike's trying to do. If the United States is part of some great Confederation of Europe, we'll have breathing room. It'd buy us time to grow and-" She groped for words. "And teach. Instead of turning us into a garrison state."
Quentin nodded. "Yeah. And if I'm following the latest twist and turn in the debate, Mike just got half of Franconia added along with the rest of Thuringia. I think he's shooting for all of it, too." For a moment, his eyes grew a bit dreamy. "Be one hell of an expansion in the market, that's for sure. Every business in the U.S. will start growing by leaps and bounds. The railroads alone-" He broke off, scratching his chin worriedly. "Still-"
"Still-" echoed Melissa. She sighed heavily. "But it sounds like he's trading political principles for military security and economic expansion."
She sighed again. "Well, that's not fair. He hasn't budged an inch on the Bill of Rights. Mike wouldn't. Not on that. But I'm worried he'll give so much else away in return that-"
Quentin snorted. "Mike?" He laughed drily. "Melissa, I used to negotiate contract provisions with that pigheaded SOB. Not to mention about a million grievances."
The mine manager scowled. "I'm not worried about that. Mike negotiates like a pit bull. He'll give you your leg back, sure-after he's swallowed the meat. It's just-" He heaved his own heavy sigh. "Oh, hell. It's just that I'm a conservative, and I don't approve of radical changes. And what Mike's proposing-" He threw up his hands. "I mean-Jesus! I don't care what you call it-a friggin' king?"
For a moment-a rare moment-he and Melissa shared a common outrage and a common opinion. Then, simultaneously, they burst into laughter.
"Well," chuckled Melissa. "Look at it this way, Quentin. If you and I can manage-somehow-to get along, then maybe those two can do the same." She peered through the glass doors of the library. Gustav and Mike were now on their feet, standing nose to nose, roaring and raging and gesticulating wildly.
"Testosterone!" sneered Melissa. Her eyes fell on Rebecca. "Thank God for feminine reason."
Quentin snorted. He began to make some sarcastic remark. Then, as his own eyes fell on Rebecca, the remark went unsaid. The snort became a chuckle. "Believe it or not, I agree with you." Glowering: "Just this once."
It was done. The initial round, at least.
Gustav Adolf was now sprawled on his chair, relaxed and at ease. "Axel will be furious with me," he said, smiling ruefully. "He will accuse me of being a half-witted peasant, swindled by a Gypsy."
Mike glanced at the doors of the library. Every inch of the glass seemed to be filled with faces.
"I'll probably catch hell myself," he admitted. "They'll be calling me the new Benedict Arnold. Selling out my country to a foreign crown."
His eyes came back to meet those of the king. They did not seem noticeably chagrined, either of them.
"Don't care!" snapped Mike. "If I have to, I'll call for new elections and run against all of them." Half-savagely: "And I'll win, too!"
The king grunted. The sound was full of satisfaction. "Spoken like a Vasa!"
The future hereditary Captain General of the United States matched stares with his future President. There was a richness to that silent exchange. Acceptance of future quarrel-bitter quarrel, often enough. Recognition of mutual necessity. Understanding that the road would be full of pitfalls and controversy. Respect-even admiration. And, underlying everything, a shared desire to end a continent's torment and shape a better world out of its ruins.
"Thank you for saving our children, Captain Gars," said Mike softly.
The king nodded heavily. His eyes seemed to twinkle. He turned to Rebecca. "Your husband is such a scoundrel, you know. He thinks I don't understand his scheme. He thinks I will continue to safeguard his offspring, simply by giving them a world large enough for them to grow. Grow straight and strong, as big as giants."
Rebecca smiled, but said nothing. The king chuckled. "And you as well!" He clapped his hand to his forehead in a histrionic gesture. "The poor Vasas of the future! They will toil away, sweat pouring off their brows, shielding this monster growing in their midst."
Rebecca smiled, said nothing. The king grimaced like a thespian. "Oxenstierna will denounce me for a fool! He will accuse me of attaching a parasite to the body of Sweden and its Confederation. Corpus Evangelicorum, feeding the worm within! I'll never hear the end of it!"
Rebecca smiled, said nothing. The king returned her smile with one of his own. And, this time, there was nothing histrionic in the expression at all. It was a gentle smile; calm, and confident.
"So be it," pronounced Gustav II Adolf. "An unborn child is also a parasite, if a man wishes to see things in that manner. But I do not."
He planted huge hands on his knees and rose slowly to his feet. Now standing erect, the king of Sweden seemed to fill a library for schoolchildren like a giant in his own right. And, like a giant, he roared his simple challenge-to himself as much as to his world.
"Vasa! Always Vasa!"
Chapter 61
Alex Mackay and his cavalrymen arrived in Grantville the next day. Immediately, upon learning that his beloved fiancйe-crazy girl!-had been involved in the thick of the fight at the school, Alex went in search of her. Desperate to assure himself that she was truly unharmed.
But his betrothed was hiding from him. "He's gonna kill me when he finds out I'm pregnant," she moaned. "I'm dead."
"Leave the matter to me," intoned her new protector. "No harm will befall you."
Nor did it. When Alex finally found Julie, hiding behind the huge form in the library, the king of Sweden set him straight.
"Won't tolerate such behavior on the part of one of my officers," gruffed Gustav, in blithe disregard of his own not-entirely-reputable history. "Bastardy is a shame before God!"
As it happens, Alex was not angry with Julie at all. He was quite delighted at the news, in fact. But he had no time to reassure his betrothed. The king marched him directly to the parson and oversaw the rest of the preparations himself. Karen Reading was quite overwhelmed by his presence. Overwhelmed-and ecstatic. Her bridal shop had just gotten a royal boost.
They were married the following day. The king himself stood in the groom's party. For all the impromptu nature of the event, most of the town showed up for the wedding. Julie and Alex were quite popular, which accounted for some of the crowd. But most of them came to get a glimpse of Gustav Adolf. Or Captain General Gars, to use what would soon become his correct title whenever the king of Sweden visited the United States in an official capacity. Word of the negotiations was spreading rapidly, and everyone wanted to make their own assessment of this mysterious new figure in their political pantheon.
On balance, they were quite impressed. The more so when it was announced that the Captain General had given his finest horse as a gift to the groom, and an actual title to the bride. Julie Mackay, nee Sims, former cheerleader, sharpshooter in the U.S. army, was now also the baroness of a small domain somewhere on the edge of Lappland in northern Sweden.
The king also promised her a pair of skis. "You will need them," he assured her, "if you ever plan to visit the place. The hunting is excellent, incidentally. But I do not propose to provide you with a new rifle. Anyone else, but not you. Your rifle is already the best in the world."
A week later, Axel Oxenstierna arrived in Grantville. Just as Gustav II Adolf had foreseen, his chancellor was apoplectic when he heard the king's new political plans. Axel ranted and raged, desperately trying to convince his monarch that a Confederation of Europe with a republic planted at its center-don't think I'm fooled by this Captain General rigmarole! and you gave them Franconia also?-would assuredly be the death knell-sooner or later!-for the aristocracy of Europe.
But the king refused to budge. After two days, he took Oxenstierna to visit a place in Thuringia. A place called Buchenwald.
"In another universe, Axel, this will be a place of slaughter." Gustav's heavy jaws clenched. "And by no means the worst!" He pointed to the east. "The real killing will take place in Poland and Russia. At places called Auschwitz and Sobibor and Treblinka."
He glared at his chancellor. "In that universe, my new president's grandfather will be forced to fight his way into this place, that a handful might survive. And do you know why?"
Now, the king pointed to the northeast. "Because in that universe, chancellor of Sweden, I will die. Less than three months from now, at a battlefield called Lьtzen." His lips quirked. "Leading a perhaps reckless cavalry charge."
The brief moment of humor vanished. Gustav took a deep breath, resting his hands on the pommel of the saddle. His eyes scanned the entire landscape; unfocused, as if he were looking in his mind's eye at all of Europe. "My death will end any chance of rescuing Germany from the clutches of the princes. You will try, Axel-strive well, and mightily-to salvage what you can. But it will not be enough. Germany will be doomed to the centuries which came after, and the world will be doomed to that Germany."
He sat erect in the saddle. "Not now! No longer! Not in this universe!"
His next words ended any further argument. "I understand God's will, Oxenstierna. It was for this purpose, in His mercy, that He created the Ring of Fire. This, and no other. Only a blind man, or an impious one, could fail to understand that now. So I will hear no further words on this subject. Do you understand, chancellor of Sweden? I am Vasa!"
Axel bent his head. Accepting, if not the wisdom of his king, the will of that king's soul.
Accepting the will, of course, did not mean accepting all the fine points. So, in the weeks which followed, Axel Oxenstierna-Sweden's canniest diplomat-immersed himself in the final negotiations. And, by the end, found himself in much better spirits. True, he disapproved in principle of the entire scheme. But Oxenstierna was a practical man, also. And he had discovered, in the political shrewdness of such men as Ed Piazza-now recovering from his injuries-and Francisco Nasi and the Abrabanel brothers, as well as Michael Stearns and especially his wife, a new asset for the cause of his king.
So, although he remained dubious of the final outcome, Oxenstierna could still console himself with a certainty.
Tremble, lords of Germany. A new breed has come into the world.
A month after her wedding, Julie would use the best rifle in the world. As the armored column of the United States smashed its way through the imperial fortifications which Wallenstein had erected on the Burgstall, Julie took out Wallenstein himself.
The king of Sweden did not approve, of course. By the semifeudal military protocol of his day, deliberately targeting an enemy commander was considered low and foul. But the Captain General was already beginning to accept some of the attitudes of his U.S. soldiery. To whom it seemed far more sensible-not to mention moral-to shoot the commander of a vicious army like you would a rabid dog.
So, the Captain General made no protest while Julie and her spotter went to work.
"It's a good one thousand yards, girl," muttered Karen. "This Wallenstein character sure as hell don't believe in leading from the front."
Karen could make out the figure easily enough through the spotting scope, standing on the battlements of the Alte Veste.
"Are you sure it's him?" asked Julie.
"Yep. There's a portrait in one of the books in the school library. I musta studied it for an hour, memorizing his ugly face. That's him, all right."
Reassured, Julie studied the enemy commander through her scope. He was an ugly bastard. Reminded her of a cartoon version of the Devil. "Wind?" she asked.
"Hard to tell," muttered Karen. "Nothing here, but on top of that hill?" She shrugged. "Start by figuring no wind. I'll try to spot where the first bullet hits."
Silence followed, while Julie gauged the elevation. The shot was at the outermost limit of the rifle's range. It would require her utmost skill and concentration. She blocked everything out of her mind-the sound of the APCs smashing through the lower fortifications, the fiery flares of napalm clearing the side trenches-everything except the devil in the distance.
As always, squeezing the trigger, her shot came as a bit of a surprise.
"Four feet off!" cried Karen. "Nine o'clock! That's wind! Elevation's dead on!"
Julie had seen it herself. One of the officers standing to Wallenstein's right had been struck down by a bullet in the chest. Wallenstein himself, his mouth open, was staring at the man's body.
Julie adjusted for the wind. Wallenstein's head came back around, staring directly at her. His mouth was still open.
The sniper's triangle. You're dead, motherfucker.
The only thing that saved Wallenstein's life was the extreme range. The shot was perfect. But, traveling that distance, the bullet slowed enough to go transonic. It began to tumble, and missed by inches. Wallenstein's jaw was shattered, instead of his throat.
The imperial general's head spun, spraying teeth and blood on his subordinates. He staggered into General Gallas' arms.
"Damn," growled Julie. She jacked another round into the chamber. Fired again.
That shot splintered Wallenstein's shoulder. Gurgling with pain and fear, Wallenstein tried to shout orders to Gallas: Put me down, you idiot! But he could not get the words through his mangled mouth, and Gallas was too confused to understand what was happening. Wallenstein's frantic attempt to force Gallas to the ground brought the general's own head into the path of the next bullet. Now finally in the safety below the battlements, Wallenstein stared at the pieces of Gallas' brains scattered over the stones.
Good riddance was his last thought, before pain and shock dragged him into unconsciousness.
A thousand yards away, sighing regretfully, Julie lowered her head and muttered a few curses. The Captain General knelt by her side and consoled her with a heavy hand on the shoulder. Due to the sports spectacles which Julie had presented him as her own gift, Gustav's eyesight was good enough to have followed the action.
"No matter," he said. "He will not be there to rally his men. All that matters."
The Captain General raised his head and studied the battle. The U.S. armored column had now broken through the outer fortifications on the lower slope of the Burgstall. The M-60 in the lead APC was shattering the counterattack coming down from the Alte Veste. Thousands of Swedish cuirassiers and Finnish light cavalry were pouring into the breach. For a mile on either side of the armored thrust, Swedish pikemen and arquebusiers were launching a massive charge. The Captain General smiled, seeing the U.S. infantrymen at the fore of that charge. Even from the distance, he could hear their incredible rate of fire.
"No matter," he repeated. "Wallenstein's army will break-and very soon. We are on the verge of an even greater victory than Breitenfeld. Trust me, girl. I am experienced in these things."
Julie raised her head and glared at him. "And I suppose you're going to lead another idiot cavalry charge?"
Gustav II Adolf, King of Sweden and the Baltic Territories, newly crowned Emperor of the Confederated Principalities of Europe, and Captain General of the United States, shook his head.
"Please! Do I look like a madman?"
When Mike returned from the Alte Veste that evening, the Captain General ordered him to return home. He would brook no argument.
"I command the armies of the United States in the field!" he roared, driving over Mike's protest. "That was the agreement!"
He settled down, a bit. "Besides," he gruffed, "there is no further need for you here. The battle is won-decisively. And you have a situation at home. We just got word over the radio."
Mike's face paled. The Captain General chuckled. "Relax, man! It happens. A bit early, in this case, but that is not so unusual in a first-" The rest of the words went unheard. Mike was already racing out of the command tent, looking for his vehicle and official driver.
Hans got him back to Grantville in record time, even on those roads. The pickup, of course, needed extensive body work afterward. But they were still late. The baby had been born many hours earlier.
"Relax, fer Chrissake," said James, as he trotted alongside Mike down the corridor of the town's new hospital, trying to keep up with the frantic new father. It was a long corridor. The hospital had only been completed two months earlier, and its builders had planned for the future. Halfway down, Mike almost trampled Jeff as he emerged from one of the wards, his arm in a sling. Gretchen, coming right behind her husband, called out a greeting. But Mike only responded with a vague wave of the hand.
"She's fine," the doctor insisted. "No complications at all. So's the baby."
James gave up. "It's a girl, by the way!" he shouted after Mike's retreating back.
"Isn't she beautiful?" whispered Rebecca, cradling the sleeping baby in her arms. "Kathleen," she murmured.
That was the name they had agreed on, if the child was a girl. But Mike had been thinking about it during the endless drive back from Nьrnberg with ferocious concentration, trying to keep his mind on future hope rather than today's fear.
"No," he said, shaking his head. Startled, Rebecca looked at him.
Mike smiled. "We can call our next girl Kathleen. But this one-" Gently, he stroked the tiny head. "This one I'd like to name after a promise kept. So let's call her Sepharad."
Rebecca's eyes filmed with moisture. "Oh, Michael," she whispered. "I think that would be wonderful."
She reached up her free hand and drew Mike's head down. But halfway through the kiss she started laughing.
"What's so funny?" he demanded.
"Sepharad!" she exclaimed. "It's such a splendid name. But you know they'll be calling her Sephie before she's two months old."
Laughing, laughing. "Hillbillies! You have no respect."
Author's Afterword
The town of Grantville and the characters who populate it are purely fictitious. But Grantville, along with the nearby consolidated high school, is inspired by the real town of Mannington, West Virginia, and its surroundings.
Many years ago, I lived in northern West Virginia (Morgantown, to be precise), and I revisited the area in preparation for this novel. I'd like to thank the many people there who provided me with their help. I'd especially like to single out Paul Donato and Dave James for the hours they gave me, both at the time of my visit and in many phone calls later.
Paul is the principal of North Marion High School, which is the model for the high school which figures so prominently in 1632. He took the time, on a day when the school was closed due to a winter storm, to give me an extended tour of the high school and its facilities. Although I did not hesitate to make whatever changes were needed to fit the plot, the high school in the novel is true in essence to the one which really exists-down to the television station and the decor of the cafeteria. And yes, North Marion High did win the West Virginia AAA state football championships in 1980, 1981 and 1997-along with a number of other athletic and academic awards. The great trophy case which the imperial cavalrymen shatter in frustration toward the end of the book really exists, and it is just as large and impressive as depicted.
In a day when public high schools never seem to get any notice or attention until something goes wrong, let me take the time here to remind everyone that the vast majority of America's high schools are alive and well. As a boy, I attended a consolidated rural high school-Sierra Joint Union, near Tollhouse, California-and it was much of a piece with North Marion in West Virginia. Public schools, and high schools in particular, remain the principal forges of America's youth. Let others whine about their shortcomings and faults, I will not. You can have your damned playing fields of Eton, and all the other varieties of that exclusionary "vision." I'll stick with the democratic and plebeian methods which built the American republic, thank you.
Dave James is the chief of Mannington's small police force, and he was very helpful to me in preparing the material for the novel. Beyond the specifics he provided me concerning the police department, he was also a fount of information concerning the town and its environs.
In addition, I'd like to thank Herb Thompson, the manager of the power plant near Grant Town, for his explanation of the workings of a modern power plant. Also: Billy Burke, the WV State Executive Director for the USDA's Farm Service Agency; David Adams and Amy Harris, respectively the manager and a pharmacist at one of Mannington's largest drug stores; and Mike Workman, a former coal miner and currently a professor at West Virginia University.
It's a bit awkward for a writer to thank his publisher, without seeming like a sycophant. But simple honesty requires to me to thank Jim Baen. Jim gave close editorial attention to this novel from beginning to end, and his many suggestions and criticisms helped to improve it immensely. In particular, I owe him a debt of gratitude for restraining me when my emotions ran a tad too high. The historical villains of this story were every bit as vile as I depict them, and I sometimes found it difficult not to give them their just desserts in gory detail-down to a splendid scene involving a guillotine. But 1632 is a sunny book, when all is said and done, and Jim helped me to remember that.
Beyond that, the mentioning of specific names becomes difficult. There are just too many of them. But I need to thank, in general, all the many people who participate in Baen Books' very active chat room (www.baen.com/bar/ - "Hang Out at Baen's Bar") and who responded to my request for input. And, in particular, I want to thank Pam ("Pogo") Poggiani for reading the manuscript and helping me ferret out the factual or historical errors which are such a potential menace to writers of alternate history. Any errors which may remain are entirely my responsibility. There are at least a dozen which are gone, thanks to Pam's eagle eye.
Leaving aside possible errors on my part-which I strove mightily to avoid-the historical setting of this novel is accurate. The town of Badenburg is my invention, as are all the German characters, such as Gretchen Richter, whose social class puts them beyond the reach of history's notice. The rest of the places mentioned are real, as are all of the major historical figures such as Gustavus Adolphus and his generals, Axel Oxenstierna, Tilly and Wallenstein and their generals, John George of Saxony, Cardinal Richelieu and Emperor Ferdinand II. The Scottish officer Alexander Mackay is fictitious, but the prominent role of Scotsmen in Gustav Adolf's army was very much as I depict it. Likewise, while Rebecca and Balthazar and all the other specific members of the Abrabanel family who figure in the novel are my creations, the Abrabanel family itself is not. The Abrabanels were, indeed, one of the great families of the dispersed Sephardic Jews of Spain and Portugal.
More generally, the American characters who populate 1632 are all figments of my imagination. But I like to believe they are a faithful portrait of the American people. Part of the reason I chose to write this novel is because I am more than a little sick and tired of two characteristics of most modern fiction, including science fiction.
The first is that the common folk who built this country and keep it running-blue-collar workers, schoolteachers, farmers, and the like-hardly ever appear. If they figure at all, it is usually as spear carriers-or, more often than not, as a bastion of ignorance and bigotry. That is especially true of people from such rural areas as West Virginia. Hicks and hillbillies: a general, undifferentiated mass of darkness.
The second is the pervasive cynicism which seems to be the accepted "sophisticated" wisdom of so many of today's writers. (Not all, thankfully.) I will have no truck with it. Of all philosophies, cynicism is the most shallow and puerile. People may choose to believe that no young man like Jeff Higgins would ever make the decision concerning Gretchen which is portrayed in the novel. Yet that episode, like many in the book, was inspired by real life. A young American infantryman, who encountered a prostitute caring for her family during the Italian campaign in World War II, made exactly the same decision-and, like Jeff, made it within hours. Do not ask me his name, or where he came from, because I do not remember. I ran across the story in a history book which I read as a teenager. The specifics I forgot long ago, but I never forgot the incident. He may have been a boy from West Virginia or Kansas-but he could just have easily have come from the mean streets of New York. If there is one human characteristic which truly recognizes neither border, breed nor birth, it is the courage to face life squarely.
As for the coal miners who are central to the story, people may think the portrait unrealistic. That is their problem, not mine. I never had the honor of being a member of the United Mine Workers of America. But in my days as a trade-union activist, I had many occasions to work with the UMWA and its members. I know the union and its traditions, and those traditions are alive and well. That is as true of the Navajo miners in the southwest and the strip miners in Wyoming as it is of the Appalachian core of the union. I began this book by dedicating it to my mother, who comes from that Appalachian stock. Let me end by rededicating it to UMWA Local 1972 of Sheridan, Wyoming, especially to Dan Roberts and Ernie Roybal; and to Maurice Moorleghen, who came up from District 12 in southern Illinois to lend a hand.
Eric Flint East Chicago, Indiana August 1999
THE END
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