“I am officially in charge, Mr. Johnson. Mr. Hatfield. So there won’t be any further discussion of the matter.”
And, with that, she marched to the door. At her imperious nod, one of Pat’s apprentices opened it for her. A moment later, she was gone.
“Oh, hell’s bells,” said Pat.
* * *
Jochen Rau walked up to Anse. "Wili and Hennel are on their way to Grantville. We couldn’t get a truck. Horton has one, but he’s got it in the garrison compound. That’s where the radio is, too.”
“Damn.” Anse shook his head.
“So Wili and Hennel they took the best horses we had.” Rau grinned. “One of them was von Dantz’s.”
Anse chuckled. “So we’re adding horse theft to the bargain, huh? Well, why not?”
He sent Jochen over to the tavern where he’d found Lt. Ivarsson. “See what he’s up to-and, if you can, try to get him to come here.”
* * *
Rau returned less than half an hour later. “Ivarsson’s gone,” he said. “Nobody seems to know where he went.”
Anse muttered a curse under his breath. “What the hell is he playing at?”
Rau just shrugged.
* * *
An hour later, it started snowing. By nightfall, three inches of fresh snow had covered the town.
January 22, 1633
The business started not long after daybreak. The sky had cleared and the air was very crisp. The snow covering the streets muffled the sounds of moving men, but mercenary soldiers-this garrison, for sure-were usually not given to maintaining silence. So Anse could hear them coming a good two minutes before the first ranks came around the corner and started down the street.
By then, Anse had shifted his headquarters from Pat’s factory to Blumroder’s shop. He’d done that, partly, because Blumroder would be the immediate target; partly, because Blumroder’s Jaeger were the men he relied on the most, outside of himself and Rau. But, mostly, simply to keep driving home the basic political point he was making.
Blumroder might be a conniving double-dealer-depending on how you looked at it-but he still had rights, until and unless they were removed from him legally. So, Anse would make his defense of those rights as visible and obvious as possible.
Von Dantz, surprisingly, was in the lead. Anse had expected to see Bruno Felder, since almost all of the soldiers following von Dantz were part of the Suhl garrison.
“You think von Dantz carried out a little mutiny of his own?” Anse wondered.
Standing next to him, looking through the same slit in the shutters, Blumroder shook his head. “I doubt it. Felder controls the paychest, and I don’t think von Dantz is rich enough to buy a garrison.”
Rau was at the next window. “Even if he is, he didn’t bring enough money with him,” he pointed out.
Anse decided they were right. Which meant . . .
His headshake was simply one of disgust. “Felder must have decided to straddle the fence. He let von Dantz-Oh, that son-of-a-bitch.”
Anse had just spotted Johnny Horton, following von Dantz. “He let von Dantz and Horton call the shots. Let ‘em have his garrison, but didn’t come out himself. Stinking bastard.”
Blumroder shrugged. As well he might. “Mercenary captain” and “man of principle” were not terms that were too often associated with each other, in the here and now. Often enough, mercenary captains were really more in the way of what could be called military contractors rather than what Anse thought of as “soldiers.” Petty politics came naturally to them.
On the street outside, von Dantz halted his men when they were still forty yards from Pat Johnson’s factory-more than fifty yards from Blumroder’s shop next door. Apparently, he’d finally noticed that the shops on the street were shuttered and that the residents in the gunmakers’ quarter looked to be willing to fight it out.
Von Dantz was close enough that Anse could see his face. For once, the arrogant captain’s expression had some hesitation and uncertainty in it. Anse wondered what combination of emotions had led him to follow this course of action. By now, even a man as obtuse as von Dantz should have figured out that he was treading on very thin ice, politically speaking.
Ambition, of course. If he could demonstrate to his superiors that he had a flair for decisive action, he might get promoted. Anse had the feeling that General Kagg was far too intelligent a commander to be much impressed by simple “decisiveness.” But Kagg had only recently come into command here, and von Dantz had no experience serving under him. If Anse remembered correctly, von Dantz had done most of his service under the Swedish general Baner-who had a reputation for being mule-headed and was not much given to subtlety.
Still, there had to be more to it than that. Anse couldn’t really know, of course, but he suspected that a lot of what was involved was simply festering resentment, finally boiling to the surface.
The up-timers grated on von Dantz, pure and simple. And if, here in Suhl, there was an up-timer even more hot-headed than he was, von Dantz would use him as a cover to vent his built-up frustration.
John Horton. Anse despised Johnny Horton. But why hadn’t the army just detailed him off to go back to teaching math at the high school? Now-nearly a sure thing by the time this day was over-they’d be permanently down one more teacher that Grantville couldn’t really afford to lose.
But his personal attitude toward Horton was neither here nor there. What really mattered, under the circumstances, Anse thought-was pretty critical, in fact-was that whatever happened there could be no accusation made afterward of favoritism based on origin.
He crooked a finger, summoning the Jaeger he’d already guessed was the best shot among them. If nothing else, from the easy way he held the rifle Pat had leant him, the hunter was apparently familiar with up-time weapons.
When the man came to the window and stooped to look through the slit, Anse pointed at the distant figure of Horton.
“You see him? The one in the camouflage outfit standing maybe five feet to von Dantz’s left?”
The Jaeger nodded.
“If any shooting starts,” Anse said harshly, “I want him dead.”
The Jaeger studied him, for a moment. Then, smiled thinly, and nodded again.
Von Dantz’s men were now starting to push forward around him, losing any semblance of a disciplined formation. There were perhaps three dozen of them, Anse estimated, which would be most of the entire garrison.
He took a slow, deep breath.
“Okay. I guess I oughta give them a formal warning.”
“Why?” asked Rau, smiling even more thinly than the Jaeger had. “Just shoot them.”
Anse didn’t bother arguing the point. It’d be useless anyway, given Jochen’s attitudes. The man was in the NUS army-in fact, most of the time he was a very good soldier-but he did not and never had looked at the world from what Anse would consider a “proper military viewpoint.”
There was no point delaying the matter, much as Anse was tempted to. He went to the front door of Blumroder’s shop. After he passed through-making sure to leave it open behind him-he stepped forward three paces.
“Captain von Dantz!” he shouted. “Lt. Horton! I am now in command here in Suhl, and I order you-”
“Get fucked, Hatfield!” John Horton hollered back. His beefy face was almost bright red, either from anger or the cold, or both. “You’re nothing but a warrant officer! As the ranking American here-”
“There’s no such thing as a ‘ranking American,’ Horton,” Anse snarled. Under the circumstances, he saw no point in maintaining military protocol. “All there is, is legal authority under the laws of the New United States. Which I have, and you don’t. Ms. Murphy would have showed you the documents.”