1635-The Tangled Web

by Virginia DeMarce

Utt grinned. "Those things. On a lot of those things, we let Hartke and the other down-timers train us up-timers. I figured that until the whole regiment was equipped with modern guns, they probably knew more about how to handle the available weapons than I did. Two-way OJT—on the job training for the actual campaigning. Among other things, I've had all the infantry guys also taught to ride and got them horses, so they can double as dragoons at a pinch. It's not cavalry, but I have more mobility than I would have otherwise. That's a big consideration when your manpower is so limited. There's no point of dreaming of mechanization over here when the big campaigns will be on the eastern front."

  Brahe nodded, this time thoughtfully.

  "Then also . . . Well, other things started when we hired this boy named Pierre Biehr. He was a would-be university student who ran out of tuition. We hired him to teach school for the Barracktown kids, but then he started working with the regiment on music training. That went pretty well. I started to think about organizing other kinds of indoor training in the winter, during bad weather. Why let them laze around in the barracks just because it's sleeting out? And why does everyone who trains soldiers have to be one? Turns out young Pierre has two older brothers and two older married sisters, everybody looking for a job. The oldest sister's husband was an unemployed drawing-master in Frankfurt-am-Main. I brought him up for one winter. Now almost every man who was already in the regiment that winter can not only read a map decently—he can also draw a reasonably good one. Not like a surveyor would, but by counting his steps to estimate 'how far' and recording what his eyes see. Sure, topo and trigonometry and GPS would be better, ideally, but they fall into the category of the push for the perfect driving out the 'adequate for the immediate purpose' and leaving you with the 'nothing at all.' I could come up with a poster: 'Fulda Barracks: the home of it'll do for now.' "

  He looked at Brahe. "Are we going to get any sleep tonight?"

  "We should probably try." Brahe tossed his wine into a vase of dried flowers and corked the bottle.

  "Margarethe is locked in," Tata said. "Friedrich hugged her and kissed her. Then he went with Sergeant Hartke, down to sleep at Colonel Utt's quarters in case he needs them during the night. Tante Kunigunde is sleeping in the room with her and Papa locked the door. Mama will see to it that she stays here. If she is completely unreasonable, Mama will take her back to Fulda by force and turn her over to Dagmar. That will settle the issue."

  "It should." Eberhard laughed. "If it doesn't, Dagmar can always call on our dear but indomitable sister Antonia in Strassburg for reinforcements. Kiss me goodnight, sweetheart. This could be our last featherbed for quite some time."

  "Our last featherbed, but not our last bed." She snuggled down under the duvet. "I'm coming with you."

  Eberhard yawned. "I know."

  Sarreguemines, Lorraine, March 1635

  "Thank God that we're finally indoors for a change." Deveroux looked around the comfortable inn in Sarreguemines. "How much farther?

  Butler spread his best, now rather tattered and water-stained, map on their unwilling hostess's dining room hutch. "We've come probably close to three-fourths of the way to Merckweiler. There should be about fifty miles to go. It's fairly easy riding as far as Bitche, not too bad to Niederbronn, but from there on east . . ."

  "Merckweiler has a lot more defenses than Wietze did." Geraldin twirled his dagger. He had become attached to it. In that other world, without the Ring of Fire, he would have used it to stab Wallenstein. "I'd feel a lot more comfortable if we had better information."

  "Of course they do." Butler scowled with disgust. "The USE was complacent at Wietze. Over here, they aren't worrying about us, specifically, in regard to the Pechelbronn oil fields, but they're damned well worrying about Bernhard. Worrying about the French. Worrying about whether Duke Charles of Lorraine will do something stupid. Worrying and doing something about it."

  Geraldin stuck the point of the dagger into the table. "Brahe left two regiments behind when he took the Province of the Upper Rhine last year. They've had time to build some decent fortifications."

  "They shouldn't have any up-time weapons, though. I haven't even caught rumors of up-time supplies coming across the Palatinate to them."

  "Where and how would we hear rumors? No one can understand a word that the local people say. What a godforsaken dialect." Dennis MacDonald helped himself liberally to their hostess's wine. "Not even our guide can understand the peasants."

  "Two regiments are what Brahe left. How many men will still be in the garrison after winter quarters? I haven't heard that they've sent any reinforcements across, either." Geraldin pulled the dagger out again. "If he's lost as many men as we have . . ."

  "The regiments were at full strength when he left them. Infantry, and they spent the winter indoors, so . . ." Deveroux started to doodle calculations on the paper in front of him. "If we distribute our available men this way . . ."

  Anna Marie von Dohna looked up from her embroidery. "Before we left Euskirchen, the mayor's wife said something to von Sickingen's wife Ursula who passed it on to me. The mayor still gets the newspapers from Cologne smuggled in."

  Butler looked at her with annoyance. "We're not interested in the society columns."

  She shrugged and went back to what she had been doing. She had made the gesture. For once, she had tried to be a sturdy prop, as the book of Proverbs said that a wife should be to her husband. Ferdinand of Bavaria's obsession with censorship did not strike her as intelligent. Maybe he even censored himself. In any case, he had not told her husband. If Walter and the others really did not want to know that the count of Hanau-Lichtenberg was scheduled to make a ceremonial inspection of the new industries associated with his Pechelbronn oil fields, and that it seemed likely that he might arrive there accompanied by a significant escort before Deveroux could reach Merckweiler, who was she to insist?

  "The crucial thing, if this is going to work, is that after the raid, we have to arrive at Germersheim at the same time. Nearly the same time, anyway—not a week apart, much less two weeks." Butler grabbed the paper on which Deveroux was scribbling. "Then across and toward Bruchsal. Damn, but I wish Bernhard's cavalry wasn't sitting there south of Strassburg going 'Nyah, nyah, nyah.' It would be so damned much easier to go south in the Rhine bottoms on the left bank."

  "Germersheim? That was taken by the imperials in 1622. The last I heard, there weren't a dozen families left, huddling in half-rebuilt sheds and shacks. Have they built Bruchsal back? In 1622, it was destroyed completely."

  "No. That's why I want to cross into Swabia there, if we can. No major, entrenched opposition on the either side of the river. This part of the Palatinate was thoroughly scoured and the USE hasn't had it long enough to rebuild much. We'll be going through wasted landscapes—no forage. No hay. Some new grass, maybe, in fields that get sun, but mixed with weeds and a lot of underbrush. No peasants who have been hoarding food through the winter. That's why losing the baggage train—such as it is—would be a disaster."

  "Why not Speyer?"

  "The garrison's too strong. Could Brahe possibly have grabbed the left bank for the USE at a more inconvenient time? Coming west last year wasn't half this bad."

  "If we don't get across at Germersheim, then we will have to go south looking for a ford. Probably as far as Hagenbach."

  "I sure wish we could cross on a bridge. Wouldn't that be nice?"

  "If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. There's no such thing as an undefended Rhine bridge. There's hardly any such thing as a Rhine bridge at all—the channels are too unreliable. There's no such thing as an undefended Rhine ferry. There's probably no such thing as a decent undefended Rhine ford, especially not in the spring when the water is rising and the channels are realigning themselves. You never can predict where a new channel is going to cut through."

  "Stop complaining."

  "Look, Deveroux. You and Geraldin are taking more than half of our fighting strength. Dennis and I will have
the whole supply train and support personnel to move with us. If we get stranded at the Rhine crossing, we'll be sitting ducks for any USE garrison forces that peek out of Speyer or Landau long enough to spot us. Coordination, that's the key. If, in that other world, Ferdinand coming from Austria and Fernando coming from Italy managed it over far greater distances to triumph at Nördlingen, then in this world, over far shorter distances, we can pull off a coordinated operation, too."

  MacDonald lifted his head. "If you say 'coordination' one more time, I'm going to puke."

  "You look like you're going to puke anyway."

  "We'd better write this out," Heisel said.

  "Use as few words as possible." Brandt shook the little transmitter. "I think the 'battery' they put in this 'tuna tin' is dying. How can something that is not alive die?"

  "They just mean that it stops working." Heisel printed carefully:

  Irish dragoons east to Merckweiler.

  Intend kill oil Pechelbronn.

  Deveroux. Geraldin. Horses.

  Five days food saddlebags.

  Small arms only.

  Then Germersheim.

  He frowned. "That's as short as I can make it."

  "Do we need another line? Gruyard is going with them, along with Taaffe and Carew, the other chaplains. They're expecting to take enough casualties out of this project that their men will be needing confession and last rites. The general and Utt are greatly concerned with Gruyard."

  Heisel shook his head. "Better save the battery."

  Province of the Upper Rhine, March 1635

  "For a girl who has never followed an army before, you've done great, Tata." Eberhard patted her bottom appreciatively.

  "Ooooh, not there. I feel like there's nothing left between my skin and the bones I use for sitting. If I have to ride in that wagon much longer, even with a cushion between me and the board, the skin will be gone, too."

  He peeked over her shoulder. "There's still a reasonable amount of you left."

  "That's very reassuring. It wasn't so bad until we got to Kaiserslautern, but when the general heard that we were too late to prevent the raid on Pechelbronn, the pace he's kept up ever since has been insane. Wahnsinnig. Why is he going so fast? Didn't the reports say that there was some damage, but the garrison and the count of Hanau-Lichtenberg's bodyguard are 'mopping things up'?"

  "They're mopping locally, collecting the wounded and taking them prisoner, interrogating, and the like. Most of the garrison at Merckweiler isn't mounted, though. Those are infantry regiments. Brahe hadn't taught them to ride and mounted them, the way Colonel Utt has done for us at Fulda Barracks. Hanau-Lichtenberg's men were on pretty horses suitable for going on a leisurely trip with parties at the other end, not for extended hard riding. Deveroux is on the run, trying to rejoin Butler, wherever he may be. Our guy with the radio—assuming that he's still alive—is with Deveroux, so all we know about Butler is that he's probably somewhere between southeastern Lorraine and Germersheim."

  "Which means that we are going somewhere fast?"

  "Southeast, toward the Rhine, all the while praying that someone shows up with better intelligence."

  "Lieutenant Friedrich Württemberger, Fulda Barracks Regiment mounted scouts, reporting back."

  Passwords and other formalities accomplished, which took a while, Friedrich finally made it to his brother and Colonel Utt. The condensed version of his information was that there were a hell of a lot of people cluttering up the road ahead of them, about seven miles farther on.

  "Wagons stuck in the mud on the road. Wagons that pulled out onto the verge to try to pass those—stuck in the mud. Wagons that pulled out into the abandoned fields to try to pass those—stuck in the mud even worse, some of them up to the beds. Horses unhitched and being held by small children, occasionally getting spooked by all the noise and mess. Horses that didn't get unhitched in time, also stuck in the mud, some of them squealing, which is no help for the people trying to hold the unhitched horses."

  Brahe winced.

  "I went around—as close as I could get and still keep out of sight. I'd say that the whole mess is nearly three miles long and close to a half-mile wide."

  Jeffie Garand laughed. "A genuine down-time traffic jam, in other words."

  "What about the dragoons?" Sergeant Hartke asked.

  "The dragoons are up ahead of the mess, heading southeast as a rapid pace. That's mainly what churned up the road to the point that the first wagons got stuck, I think. In my opinion, sir, there is no place for our forces to go around the baggage train and overtake the dragoons. Just me—one man and one horse—I got off and led him part of the time. There's no hard surface out there. Just old, uncultivated stubble fields that this spring weather has turned to muck."

  Bruchsal, Diocese of Speyer, proposed Province of Swabia, March 1635

  The combined Swedish/SoTF camp was finally settling down for the evening. As soon as he escaped what appeared to be the perpetual staff meeting in Brahe's tent, Derek Utt started the final paragraph of his long-neglected letter to Mary Kat. "So we 'captured' Butler's camp followers." He dipped his metal-nibbed pen into the inkwell once more.

  What we really did was leave a small unit of soldiers, just to keep order, and several medics behind with Butler's camp followers. There's sickness among them. Pestilence. According to them, they didn't have it when they left Euskirchen, but picked it up while passing through Lorraine. One of the down-time medics believes that it's plague. He was very loud-mouthed about thinking that it's plague. If he was wrong, it was bad for him to panic people like that. If he was right, it's worse. We left almost all our chloram behind with them. We radioed. Fulda is sending plague fighters. Pray for us all.

  In Brahe's tent, the meeting was still, to some extent, going on, in spite of the official adjournment. Brahe, still, occasionally wanted a "Swedes only" consultation.

  "This time last year," Botvidsson pointed out, "Horn wouldn't have dared to come far enough north to meet us in Württemberg. He was much too preoccupied with Bernhard. Now . . . With any luck, Bernhard has granted us the luxury of doing a pincers movement on the Irishmen. Seems peculiar to have him on our side, though. Not exactly on our side, but . . ."

  "If I have a choice," Brahe said, "a choice of having Bernhard the grand duke of the county of Burgundy or whatever grandiose title he may be giving himself by now as my ally, even sort-of, and Bernhard once duke of Saxe-Weimar as my enemy, I will not dither. I will take him as my ally any day, on any terms."

  "Presumably, the king has reached the same conclusion."

  "The enemy of my enemy . . ."

  Nürtingen, Duchy of Württemberg, March 1635

  The palace, which had been used as a retirement home for dowager duchesses, probably had not been in the best of condition even before the war. Now, twenty years after the last permanent resident died, it was in a wretched state. The most recent widow had been left with small children, so had stayed in Stuttgart before the war drove her away. Now she was dead and her daughters lived in Strassburg.

  Moritz Klott, aide-de-camp, secretary, and, as he had learned from the up-timers, gofer, thought that General Horn should make the best of it. At least they had a roof over their heads, even if it did leak. However . . .

  "I knew it," Gustav Horn ranted. "For as long as I have been assigned to this theater of operations, which is now nearly three years, Konrad Widerhold, with all the remains of the Württemberg forces he could gather, has been operating as an integral part of my army. Now, although we have not met up with Brahe and Utt yet, just because he knows that they are bringing the young dukes of Württemberg down into Swabia, what do I have?"

  "I don't know, General." The liaison Bernhard had sent to work with Horn, an uncouth Lower Austrian who called himself Raudegen and had been promoted to colonel by Bernhard simply on the grounds of his ruthless efficiency, shook his head.

  "That was a rhetorical question." Horn waved a piece of paper. "I have a petition from Wider
hold to be permitted to place himself under Duke Eberhard's command."

  He beckoned to Klott. "Take a letter. To Nils Brahe, administrator, general, et cetera. You know the titles and forms of address. Dear Nils:

  Read this damned petition from Widerhold (attached). Do you really want a captain in the forces of the State of Thuringia-Franconia to have what amounts to a full regiment and part of a second under his direct command, Nils? Is that what you want? For that matter, is it what Colonel Utt wants—to have one of his captains in charge of a force larger than his own? What were you thinking to bring those boys back into Swabia?

  "Continue with the 'yours sincerely' and all that at the end." He waved the secretary out and looked back at Raudegen. "What's next?"

  "There is plague to the southeast, coming up from Marseilles, moving toward this region. The grand duke is instituting all possible preventive measures. The three Paduan physicians . . ."

  Raudegen's voice went on, floating past Horn's ears. "Instituting strict quarantine at the borders . . . the up-time nurse . . . small capacity for manufacture of chloramphenicol will probably not prove to be sufficient . . . universities of Basel and Strassburg . . . all possible resources . . ."

  Horn rested his forehead on his hands. "May God preserve us all."

  Bretten, Baden, April 1635

  "Damn," Deveroux said. "We have to get south. We have Brahe on our tail. South and east. Every scout I send out says that Horn is blocking us. Pforzheim is blocked. Leonberg is blocked. He's turned the whole Stuttgart area into a garrison. The damned Swede seems to have thrown every man in his regiments into the screen. What's he trying to do?"

  "Herd us north," Geraldin said pragmatically. "Keep us from passing across into Bavaria. Push us north, right into the Franconian border, if he can. Then let the USE troops take us."