by Eric Flint
Von Dantz fired again. The bullet grazed the back of Anse’s boot, and tore off the heel.
Jesus! Given the kind of guns he was using, von Dantz was turning out to be a goddam John Wesley Harding.
Then again, Harding got killed. With a modern rifle, at a range of less than fifty yards, Anse couldn’t possibly miss.
He fired.
He missed.
A garrison soldier standing just behind von Dantz stumbled backward, flinging aside his musket. He’d been struck in the shoulder by Anse’s shot.
Von Dantz was pulling out another pistol. If he’d been using a revolver instead of wheel-locks, Anse would have been dead already.
Settle down, you idiot!
He jacked another round into the chamber, and forced himself to draw a real bead instead of just jerking the trigger.
Von Dantz was bringing up the pistol. Anse fired.
This time, the bullet hit von Dantz squarely, right in the chest. He was dead before he hit the ground.
By now, the gunfire in the street was almost deafening. The garrison soldiers were grouped in the center, shooting back at the shops from whose windows they were being fired upon.
Anse glanced back at the still-open door to Blumroder’s shop. He decided he’d be safer lying prone in several inches of snow than trying to crawl back into the shop. The mercenaries were paying no attention to him, since he wasn’t moving and they were taking a murderous fire from the shops.
As inconspicuously as he could, he jacked another round into the chamber.
There was no lack of targets for him, of course. On the other hand . . .
Right now, the enemy was ignoring him. Most of them probably thought he was dead. If he fired, on the other hand, they would notice him—and lying in the open, right out on the street, he was a sitting duck. More precisely, a prone duck.
He didn’t think they were going to last much longer, anyway. Somewhere around a dozen of them had already been killed or wounded. Von Dantz and Horton had been idiots, leading their men straight into the street the way they had. The gunmakers and their apprentices and Jaeger were shooting from behind shelter—good shelter, too; the thick, sturdy walls of seventeenth-century German manufacturing shops—and they had an open field of fire. As battles went, it was completely one-sided.
So . . .
True, it was inglorious. Even ignominious. On the other hand, youth and its excess of testosterone were several decades behind him.
Anse laid his head down, and played dead. The situation wasn’t critical and he wasn’t Alvin York, anyway—as he’d just proved, by missing his first shot at von Dantz at point blank range.
Besides, he consoled himself, he’d read once that after the battle of New Orleans was over, several hundred “dead” British soldiers had risen from Chalmette Field. Most of them completely uninjured. Veteran soldiers all-elite soldiers, even—they’d quickly realized that their commanders had led them into a bloodbath that they didn’t have a chance of winning.
He was pretty sure the same thing had happened on just about every battlefield in history, at least since the invention of gunpowder.
Tradition, as it were. Inglorious as it might be.
He still felt like a damned fool.
* * *
Fortunately, it was all over within thirty seconds. The garrison soldiers broke, and began running away. Not slowing down any, either, as they neared the safety of the next street over. The gunmakers of Suhl were in a fine fury, and kept firing on them the whole way.
Anse peeked up. Then, rose.
Blumroder came out of the door, smiling.
“You are a brave man, Herr Hatfield. And what is better, a very sensible one.”
Anse gave him a look that was none too friendly. “I guess you’ve proved you’re brave enough, yourself. We’ll just have to see how sensible you are.”
Blumroder’s smile faded. Some, at least, if not enough to suit Anse.
A woman, followed by a man, came out of one of the shops further up the street, carrying a musket. She marched over to one of the corpses lying in the snow, aimed the musket, and fired. Brains that had already been spilled were scattered still further.
The man with her went to another corpse. Aimed, fired. A dead man died again.
That both men had already been dead wasn’t in question. In fact, it looked as if they’d each taken several bullets during the fighting. Those had already been the most shot-up corpses on the street.
“Hey!” said Anse. He didn’t approve of mutilating corpses, and if this got out of hand . . .
Blumroder put a hand on his arm. “It is a personal matter, Herr Hatfield. The people in that shop were looking for two men in particular. It seems they found them.”
“Oh.” After a moment, Anse shrugged. It was a pretty crude form of justice, but . . .
What the hell. If he didn’t feel any particular guilt over playing dead in the snow—which he didn’t—he had no business getting all huffy and puffy about proper judicial procedure. As long as it doesn’t get out of hand, at least.
The woman and the man, methodically and stoically, reloaded their weapons. Then, fired again.
“That’s enough!” he called out. “Genug!”
The couple raised their heads and looked at him. After a moment, the man nodded. The woman took a bit longer to make her decision. But she, too, turned and went back into their shop.
“Okay,” Anse said. He looked up the street, in the direction of the garrison’s compound. It was out of sight, but it wasn’t more than a quarter of a mile away.
“Okay,” he repeated. “I guess we’d better finish it.”
Blumroder began shouting orders. Within a minute, dozens of gunmakers, apprentices and Jaeger were out in the street, lining up in a remarkably good military formation.
Perhaps not that remarkable, really. One of the things Anse had learned in the twenty months since the Ring of Fire was that a lot of his preconceptions of “law-abiding, orderly Germans” were myths. Or, maybe not myths so much as transposing the reality of a much later Germany onto the seventeenth century.
The truth was that, in a lot of ways, Anse felt quite at home among Germans of this day and age. Germany—"the Germanies,” rather—was often a raucous and freewheeling sort of place. Just like good and proper West Virginians, most Germans who weren’t dirt poor owned guns and knew how to use them. Most towns and many villages had a militia, just as surely—and with just as much civic pride—as they had their own printing presses.
True, there were differences. Already, Germans had a devotion to bureaucratic regulations and legal fussiness that precious few up-time Americans ever did. Outside of Washington, D.C., at any rate. Still, Germans of the seventeenth century had a lot more in common with the frontiersmen of pre-Civil War America, in terms of their basic attitudes, than they did with the regimented populace of a much later Prussia. The Jaeger would have found the old Mountain Men sadly rootless, but other than that, they wouldn’t have had much trouble understanding them.
Anse led the way. Thankfully, nobody made any wisecracks about dead men lying in the snow being miraculously resurrected. After a while, he realized that very few of them had even noticed.
Rau had, of course.
“Very nice—what is that English word?—’dive,’ I think.”
“And what would you have done?” asked Anse crossly.
“Diven, of course. Only an idiot wouldn’t.”
“Dove,” Anse corrected. “Or maybe it’s ‘dived.’”
“Amazing that you aren’t all idiots. Speaking an idiot language the way you do.”
* * *
To Anse’s relief, no further battle was necessary. As they neared the compound—a wooden fortress, basically, much like the forts put up by the nineteenth century American army—he discovered that the routed garrison had already been intercepted by the city’s militia before they could reach the shelter of their compound.
What must have happen
ed, clearly enough, was that after Noelle gave the city authorities copies of her documents and explained the situation, they’d called out the militia. The militia would have mustered behind the city hall and had managed to get between the fleeing mercenaries and the entrance to the garrison compound.
Just as clearly, the garrison hadn’t put up any resistance. After the bloodbath on the gunmakers’ street, all the fight had been knocked out of them. They’d simply submitted to arrest.
The militia officers were standing there with their men. Those would be the ones who hadn’t been in the gunmakers’ street, and Anse hadn’t already enrolled in his impromptu posse. Someone would have to sort that little problem out later, Anse thought. But, for the moment, the officers clearly had that look which proclaimed: awaiting further orders.
Lieutenant Ivarsson emerged from the compound’s gates. Smiling very cheerfully.
“Good day, Herr Hatfield. How delightful to see that the new garrison commander has come to pay a visit.”
Anse frowned at him. “Meaning no offense, but where have you been?”
Ivarsson jerked a thumb over his thick shoulder. “Inside, of course. Once von Dantz and Horton took out most of the garrison, that is. I thought it would be imprudent to make an appearance earlier.”
Anse looked up at the walls of the compound. A couple of very nervous-looking soldiers were stationed up there. Holding their weapons, but carefully not pointing them at the militia outside the gates.
“Where’s Felder? And what’s more important—where is Noelle Murphy?”
Ivarsson’s smile seemed as cheerful as ever. “The former commander of the garrison is sitting in his office. Waiting—eagerly, I assure you—to be relieved of his command. Fräulein Murphy is there with him. She is quite unharmed.”
There was something very suspicious about that smile.
“I wouldn’t think Felder—”
“Oh, certainly!” Ivarsson made an expansive gesture with his big hands. “At least, after I explained to him that he might—just barely—be able to persuade General Kagg that he simply couldn’t stifle the mutiny led by the dastardly Captain von Dantz. If I put in a word for him.”
Dastardly, no less. Ivarsson’s English was really quite good.
“I believe he was also helped in seeing his proper course of conduct by Fraülein Murphy’s presence. Although she is unharmed, she is rather furious, in her quiet sort of way. There were threats made, it seems, of a most lascivious variety. 0nce I removed the guards placed over her, I returned her pistol. She assures me that in the close quarters of Captain Felder’s office, she can’t possibly miss.”
Anse laughed. “This, I want to see. All right, Lt. Ivarsson, please lead me there.”
* * *
Noelle did, indeed, seem irate. At least, in her rather prim-and-proper manner of expressing most emotions. Her face was pale, and the pistol leveled at Felder didn’t seem to waver at all.
“You okay?” he asked.
Her face got pinched. “Well. Yes. I suppose. They were very insulting. Well. That’s not quite the right word, I guess. Filthy motherfuckers!”
The pistol did waver a bit, then. Quiver, rather, from the restrained fury of the slender hand that held it.
Felder’s face was at least as pale as hers. His eyes had never once left the barrel of the gun, not even when Anse and Ivarsson came into the room.
“Felder?” Anse asked.
“No, not him,” Noelle hissed. “Although he’s still responsible. Some of his men. The two he had guarding me.”
Anse turned to Rau, who was standing just beyond the door to the captain’s office. “Track ‘em down, Jochen.”
“Shoot them?”
“No, that’d be illegal. Just see to their discipline.”
Rau made something that might charitably be called a salute, and left. Anse turned back to Felder.
“You, asshole, are leaving here tonight. Under armed guard.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Corporal Rau’s guard, to be exact. I strongly recommend you behave yourself. I’ll have Ms. Murphy write a letter to General Kagg and President Stearns. If you’re lucky, you might keep your commission. I hope not, but I’m used to being disappointed in life.”
Now, he turned to Ivarsson. “The big problem—”
Ivarsson was shaking his head before Anse even started talking. “That will not work, Herr Hatfield. You will need Corporal Rau in Suhl, to serve as your adjutant while you assemble a new garrison. The existing garrison is now useless, here. I will lead them out—perhaps I should say, what is left of them—and take them to Grantville.”
He nodded toward Felder. “I will take him with me, also. Under armed guard, since that is your wish.”
He gave Felder that same cheerful smile. “I do not believe Captain Felder will object. That would disappoint me, and, alas, I do not share your stoical attitude toward disappointment.”
Ivarsson looked all of his size, that moment. Felder seemed to shrink still further in his chair.
Anse thought about it. With the entire garrison gone . . .
In the real world, that meant the new “garrison” would just be the existing Suhl militia. That was, the master craftsmen and their adult sons, those journeymen and apprentices who were from Suhl’s citizen families. Not most of the Jaeger, since few of them would be citizens of the town.
Granted, the militia would make a far better force to maintain order than Felder’s mercenaries had been. But they’d be completely unreliable if it ever became necessary to crack down on the town’s gunmakers. Most of them were the town’s gunmakers.
Not to mention that over half of the city council consisted of master gunsmiths.
A return remembrance of that long-ago, overly-rich, eight-layer chocolate dessert attacked his stomach.
But all he said was: “All right. That’s how we’ll do it.”
January 27, 1633
Gretchen Richter came into Suhl five days later, early in the evening, through the middle of a snowstorm. Not quite a blizzard, but awfully close. When she marched into Anse’s headquarters—Felder’s old office—she looked like a walking snowball.
Insofar, at least, as a snowball could resemble a very large and good-looking bat, coldly furious at having been summoned from a much warmer clime.
“Where are they?” were the first words out of her mouth, as she started brushing the snow off of her heavy parka. She seemed entirely unconcerned with the mess she was leaving on the floor of Anse’s office.
Anse didn’t try to play dumb. “We’ve got two of them under guard, here in the stockade. We’re pretty sure the other four scampered back to their villages.”
“Two will be enough. Where is Blumroder’s shop?”
Anse cocked his head, eyeing her skeptically.
“Don’t be stupid, Herr Hatfield.” Gretchen edged aside, allowing Anse a view of the doorway. Jeff Higgins was standing there. Just behind him, Anse could see the dark figures of several other men. One of them was Jorg Hennel, the others he didn’t recognize.
“I brought my husband with me, as you can see. Surely you don’t think he would be a party to any illegal violence.”
The look Anse gave Jeff Higgins was almost as skeptical as the one he’d given Gretchen. There wasn’t much left of the shy geek Anse could vaguely remember from the days before the Ring of Fire. A lot of the fat had been lost, replaced by muscle—and Higgins was a big man. What was more important was that his mental attitudes had been largely transformed over the past twenty months. By reality, by combat—and, probably most of all, by being married to Gretchen.
It didn’t help any that Higgins was carrying a shotgun. It might very well be the same shotgun he’d used, not so long ago, to gun down a number of Croat cavalrymen in close-range fighting.
Suddenly, Jeff grinned. And if it wasn’t what you could call a shy grin, much less a geeky one, there wasn’t any menace in it, either.
“C’mon, Anse, lighten up,” he said. “G
retchen’s mission here is purely educational.”
Anse grunted. “Educational,” under the circumstances, was not entirely reassuring. Just a few days earlier, with the help of half a dozen Jaeger, Jochen Rau had “educated” the two soldiers who’d subjected Noelle Murphy to their leering attentions. Both of them had been so badly beaten they’d had to be taken out of Suhl on litters.
Fell down the stairs, Rau claimed.
Still . . .
“Okay,” he said. “As long as there’s no violence. I’ll have Corporal Rau release the two CoC prisoners. Then he can guide you to Blumroder’s shop.”
He rose to his feet. “No, hell with that. I’ll do it myself.”
* * *
By the time they arrived at Blumroder’s shop, night had fallen. Blumroder himself ushered them into the main room of his living quarters. His wife and children—two sons and a daughter, all of them in their late teens or early twenties—were present, along with all four of his apprentices and the two Jaeger he still kept around as guards.
Once Gretchen, Jeff, Anse and the three CoC members came into the room, it seemed as packed tight as a shipping crate. It didn’t help any that Gretchen forced the two CoC culprits—Hennel was the third one—to come to the center of the room.
She got right down to business. Turning to the two chastened CoC members, she pointed a finger at Blumroder.
“You will apologize to Herr Blumroder for trying to kill him.”
Apologies babbled forth like a bubbling brook.
Gretchen now faced Blumroder.
“You will accept the apology.”
She still looked like a half-frozen bat out of hell, and just as pissed. Blumroder didn’t babble, but he did nod his head. He didn’t even hesitate, for more than a second.
“That’s the end of it, then,” Gretchen pronounced. Turning back to the CoC miscreants, she jerked her head toward the door.
“Now, get out. Remember what I told you. From now on, you will listen to Jorg. And I’m leaving two other members of the CoC here also. One from Jena, one from Rudolstadt. Both are experienced, and good organizers. You will listen to them also.”