by Eric Flint
"I think it's lightening a bit." She pointed toward the west. "See that patch there?"
Eddie chuckled. "Nice try. But if you think a maybe-just-a-tiny-bit-less horrible set of storm clouds—in exactly the wrong direction, too—is going to get me into that cockpit, you are out of your mind. Insane. Mad. Crazed. If Caroline Platzer were here, no doubt she'd have some elaborate way of saying the same thing."
He leaned still farther back in the rocking chair—which wasn't rocking because Eddie put his feet up on the counter that ran all the way around the top floor of the airfield's control tower. Big glass windows ran all the way around, too, which provided a splendid view of the storm. Which, since Eddie could observe it in dry comfort, was actually rather enjoyable to watch.
"Sit down," he urged Gretchen. "Have some more tea."
But Gretchen was far too frustrated to follow that advice. She was the sort of person who, once she'd made up her mind to do something, wanted to do it. Now. Not tomorrow. Not the day after.
Now.
All the more so, since Tata's daily radio reports indicated that Dresden was coming to a boil. With the elector dead and the USE's emperor completely absorbed by his campaign in Poland, there was a power vacuum in Saxony. Then word came that Kresse and his little army of irregulars—the same people who had killed John George—had left the Upper Vogtland and were marching on Dresden. That army wasn't even so little anymore. The militias of many of the villages and towns that Kresse passed through or nearby were joining him.
That news—which Tata and Joachim Kappel had seen got spread widely—had panicked many of Dresden's patricians, prosperous burghers and officials. They'd fled the city, just as the same class of people had fled Amsterdam before the cardinal-infante could begin his siege.
The whole situation sounded much like Amsterdam. There might even be a rough equivalent to Fredrik Hendrik, the prince of Orange with whom Gretchen had been able to negotiate and maintain something of a tacit alliance. Or truce, at least. Gustav Adolf's appointed administrator, Ernst Wettin, had arrived in the city already. Tata's first reports indicated that despite being the prime minister's younger brother, Wettin didn't seem at all inclined toward confrontation.
But that was probably going to be a moot point, soon enough. The Swedish general Báner was also coming to Dresden. More slowly, because he was bringing an army with him.
There'd been a powerful army at Amsterdam, too. But the commander of that army had been Don Fernando, a man with imagination and great ambitions and, somewhere in his core, a very real streak of decency.
None of which was true of Báner, by all accounts Gretchen had heard. He was coarse, pigheaded, narrow-minded, and seemed to have no ambitions beyond being feared by those he wished to fear him.
He was also on record as saying that the most suitable use for a CoC agitator's head was to serve as an adornment for a pike head. And he was bringing a lot of pikes to Saxony.
"I have to get to Dresden!" she said. For perhaps the twentieth times in two days. If this kept up, she'd have to use a horse, even if she wasn't much of a horsewoman. Or a boat, maybe, except the Elbe was flooding.
Dresden
Tata and Joachim Kappel had taken over the Residenzschloss a week earlier, once it became clear the CoC was now the most powerful force in the city. Dresden's official militia had shattered into pieces after a big portion of its officers fled the city. Many of the rank-and-file militiamen had joined the CoC outright. Many others had simply retired into their private affairs. Yet another portion of the militia—perhaps a quarter of its original number—had reorganized themselves into something they called the Dresden Defense Corps. They were maintaining a studied neutrality concerning the city's political affairs, insisting that they were simply and solely a body to defend Dresden from any attackers.
Whether the definition of "attackers" included Kresse's forces from the Vogtland, now just two days from the city's walls, remained to be seen. But for the moment, Tata and Joachim were willing to keep the peace with the DDC.
Tata and Joachim had developed a very good working relationship. Kappel was the organizer, the "inside man." Tata had much better skills than he did at dealing with people outside the ranks of the CoC. She had become the public face of their movement in the city, far more widely known than he was.
Partly, of course, that was simply due to their very different appearance. Tata was a pleasant-looking young woman, not threatening in any way. Kappel . . .
Eric Krenz had put it this way, in front of both of them, "If the forces of reaction ever need a poster boy for the wicked and vicious instigators of bloody-handed riot and revolution, Joachim, you're their man."
The jest had been close enough to the truth to make even Kappel laugh. He was a man in his early forties who was not simply ugly but frighteningly ugly.
Their enemies in Dresden had taken to calling him "the troll."
So did children on the streets.
So did his own CoC cadre, for that matter.
It had been Kappel who first broached the idea of seizing the elector's palace, but it had been Tata who came up with the formal rationale.
She understood, as Kappel often did not, that you had to be careful not to give people the impression that you were simply high-handed. Even when you were being high-handed. In fact, especially when you were being high-handed.
So, the official explanation for the seizure of the palace: They needed its vast expanse, its many rooms and resources, in order to take care of the troops, wounded in brave battle with the enemy.
Say no to that, if you dare.
Eric Krenz had been the one who first suggested the idea. Tata had initially dismissed it as just a typical Eric Krenz ploy to improve his creature comforts. Of course he'd want to recuperate from his injuries in a palace bed!
But she'd gotten to know Krenz well enough by then to realize that he had a habit of couching serious ideas and proposals within a frivolous and casual shell. Why he did that was a mystery to her, but she'd come to recognize the pattern.
So, she'd given it a second thought. It hadn't taken her long then to realize what a cunning idea it was.
Two days later, all the recuperating soldiers in the city were moved into the palace. As a mere afterthought, a casual side effect, a stray feather in the wind, the CoC moved in as well. Within a short time, the palace had become their fortress.
Krenz did wind up in a palace bed. But Tata insisted that he had to share it with Lieutenant Nagel.
Who, for his part—he was a very odd young man—kept making peculiar remarks about hidden mothers and sightless men and the iniquity of fate.
Eric had been very disgruntled. Mostly, Tata thought, because having to share a bed with Nagel created obvious difficulties for his campaign to seduce Tata.
Which was part of the reason she'd done it, of course. She hadn't made up her mind yet and didn't like to feel unduly pressured. Krenz could be relentless, in his insouciant sort of way.
In a different part of the city, Noelle Stull was also studying the sky, and looking almost as disgruntled as Gretchen.
"This sucks," she pronounced.
"What are you talking about?" countered Denise Beasley. "I think it's way cool. Dresden's where all the excitement is. Or is gonna be, anyway. You watch."
She and Minnie Hugelmair were perched on a divan in the main room of the house, playing cards. Noelle had no idea which particular game they were playing. She'd been only passingly familiar with up-time card games. These down-time games were incomprehensible. The two teenagers were using Italian cards that Eddie had gotten for Denise as a gift. The cards were round, not oblong. And instead of the familiar four suits of spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds, they had five suits: swords, wands, cups, coins and rings.
"How is it ‘cool'?" Noelle demanded crossly. "I want to get back home."
"Why? We're moving to Prague soon anyway. And that so-called ‘home' you rented in Magdeburg was a tiny little dump."
It was a very nice house, in most respects. The departure of so many of the city's upper crust had left a lot of vacancies—and Noelle was operating with Francisco Nasi's money here in Dresden, not her own. But she'd expected to be here for only a short time, to oversee the preparation of the airfield while Eddie flew back to get Gretchen. She hadn't anticipated getting trapped in the city by a storm.
A very nice house in most respects, yes. But not all—and not the most critical.
"My apartment in Magdeburg may have been tiny—"
"Smelly, too," Denise chipped in.
"Cockroaches everywhere you looked," was Minnie's contribution.
"—but it had plumbing."
That shut them up. With few exceptions, even the wealthiest residences in Dresden still had traditional seventeenth-century toilet facilities. The use of such facilities started with the verb "squat" and went downhill from there.
In contrast, buildings in Magdeburg were less than five years old, with very few exceptions. The sack of the city by Tilly's army in 1631 had destroyed almost everything. And since most of the construction that came later had happened after American influence started to spread, and given the CoCs' well-nigh-fanatical observation of sanitary measures, even the most wretched living quarters in Magdeburg had access to running water.
And sewers.
"You think my apartment smelled bad, Minnie? How d'you like the aroma out in the streets here? Should I open the window to remind you?"
"Don't rub it in," said Denise. "Besides, I bet the rain's washed most of it away by now."
"Yeah, I bet it has—right into the river. Where we get our water from. Can we say ‘typhus,' girls?"
"She's going to keep rubbing it in, isn't she?" said Minnie.
Denise whooped and swept up the pile of cards on the cushion. Apparently, she'd won something. A hand? A game? A trick? Who knew?
Noelle's grandmother had warned her that cards were an instrument of the devil. Here, she figured, was living proof.
Chapter 34
The Warta river, between Gorzów and Poznań
The reports had been accurate. Hidden within a small grove of trees, Lukasz Opalinski looked onto the Warta. Just as the Cossacks had said, there on the road running by the river was one of the huge American war machines. An "APC," it was called, whatever that meant. Lukasz had forgotten to ask Jozef Wojtowicz what the initials stood for.
The thing was enormous, even bigger than Lukasz remembered from the battle of Zwenkau. It looked every bit as terrifying, too.
Or would have, had there not been one critical difference. At Zwenkau, the APCs had been moving almost as fast as horses. Faster, on good terrain. This APC wasn't moving at all. The rain-soaked road had given way as it passed, and the machine was now stuck.
It must have slid down and sidewise, Lukasz figured. The rear axle and its grotesquely fat wheels—those were called "tires," if he was remembering Jozef's account correctly—were off the road entirely, hanging out over the river.
Hanging into the river now, almost. The swollen waters of the Warta were not more than a foot below the tires. What was worse, those same swollen and rushing waters would be undercutting the riverbank. Before too much longer—a day, perhaps; not more than two—the APC would fall completely into the river.
Judging from the expressions on the faces of the machine's crew, who were standing around staring at the APC, they'd come to the same conclusion. They had placed ropes to tether the machine, but eventually those ropes would give way.
Judging from the marks in the mud, they'd tried to use those same ropes to haul the APC to safety.
With no success, obviously. All they had at their disposal were a half dozen horses, from what Lukasz could see. That wasn't nearly enough in the way of draft power to move something as immensely heavy as the war machine. On a dry, flat road, perhaps. But not here, in this pouring rain, on this soil.
No, for this you needed oxen. Lots of oxen.
Happily, since Lukasz had learned from Koniecpolski to trust the reports of Cossack scouts, if not the Cossacks themselves, he had brought oxen with him. He'd expropriated them from a nearby landowner, who'd objected at first but then seen his Polish duty after Opalinski pointed out that with as many Cossacks as he had with him he could easily just rustle the cattle. A process which, sadly—Cossacks being Cossacks—could get out of hand and result in the unfortunate demise of the landowner and his family and retainers after the most hideous travails along with the crops destroyed, the livestock slaughtered, the house burnt to the ground, the flowers in the meadows trampled, the . . .
The oxen weren't with him any longer, of course. They were now at least five or six miles back, and moving slowly as oxen always did. But nobody was going to be moving quickly here, so much was obvious.
This was a backwater in the war, now. The armies had passed on to the south. Gustav Adolf must have left this APC behind, secure in the knowledge that it was too far behind the lines to be at risk. Even if a passing unit of Poles did stumble across it, what could they do besides slaughter the crew and the soldiers he'd left as guards?
There weren't many of those soldiers. Just a platoon, large enough to frighten away bandits.
There was something profoundly satisfying to Lukasz in the thought that Poland was going to capture its first APC with the descendants of draft animals used by the Babylonians.
Southwest of Poznań
He'd miscalculated, Koniecpolski realized. He'd simply underestimated how much the rain-soaked terrain would slow down his own troops. His army had a much larger percentage of cavalry than Gustav Adolf's. A large enough number, in fact, that he'd taken the risk of dividing his own forces in order to maneuver with cavalry and artillery alone—the latter being the Polish equivalent of flying artillery, except they were armed with small sakers instead of volley guns.
He'd left his infantry behind to hold Poznań while he circled around Gustav Adolf's troops in order to attack the northernmost column of Torstensson's USE forces. That was their First Division, under Knyphausen's command. Koniecpolski's Cossacks reported that Knyphausen's column had become dispersed by the difficulties of crossing swollen streams in the area they were passing through. He'd decided that if he moved immediately, taking cavalry and flying artillery alone, he could hammer them badly. By now, with casualties, desertion, illness and the inevitable straggling caused by a march under very difficult conditions, Koniecpolski didn't think Knyphausen had more than seven thousand effective troops. The number was probably closer to six thousand, in fact.
He could bring twelve thousand hussars, giving him an almost two-to-one numerical superiority. He'd decided the risk was worth it. He was more afraid of the USE's army than he was of the Swedes and Hessians. It was a slower-moving army, true, because it was so heavily based in the infantry. But slow as that army might be, it was immensely powerful if any commander ever got the entire army on a single battlefield, as Torstensson had against the French at Ahrensbök. Almost all units of the USE Army had been equipped and trained with rifled muskets by now, for one thing. And those odd-looking volley gun batteries had proved very effective on every battlefield they'd made an appearance.
They'd be the most effective soldiers Gustav Adolf had when it came time for sieges, too. Koniecpolski had always assumed—and still did, despite his recent successes—that any war with the USE would soon enough become a war of sieges and attrition. The Swede had simply become too powerful to hope to defeat him on the open field except under ideal weather conditions such as these.
Koniecpolski hadn't gotten a clear account yet of what had happened at Zielona Góra. His units stationed in the city had had only one radio—not surprisingly, since the Poles had few radios to begin with—and it had somehow been lost or destroyed in the fighting. So the reports he'd gotten had been pieceme
al; and, to make it worse, were coming from the sort of men who were the first to flee a battlefield. Koniecpolski had learned long ago to discount much of what such men reported. Invariably, the enemy force had been immense in number, armed with impossibly powerful weapons, which had a rate of fire that would have depleted all of Europe's gunpowder stores within an hour.
Still, although Stearns had managed to take the city with surprising speed, he had to have suffered significant casualties in the doing. Taking cities was a costly business. His division had taken the brunt of the fighting at Zwenkau, as well. By now, the Third Division had to be in fairly bad shape. Not demoralized, probably. They'd won all of their battles, after all. But even soldiers with good morale can only take so much of a beating before exhaustion sets in; an exhaustion that was as much mental as physical.
Let those other bastards do the fighting for a while. Damn shirkers.
That was the attitude that would inevitably spread through the ranks. The one exception would be if their commander was the sort of rare individual who could instill a great sense of pride in them. What his nephew Jozef had told him the up-timers called esprit de corps, a French term which the Americans had stolen, as they so often did. When it came to language, they were a tribe of magpies.
In that event, the situation changed. Units which developed a sense of themselves as being special, an elite, the ones who could always be counted on in a crisis—such units would remain dangerous even after suffering heavy casualties.
But was Stearns such a commander? As inexperienced as he was?
Koniecpolski didn't think so. From what he could see—all of it, admittedly, at a distance and filtered through the reports of others—the American general had simply blundered his way to success. A courageous commander, yes; by now that was quite evident. But such a commander would wear out his own men, soon enough.
So. Those were the parameters of the grand hetman's calculations. He'd effectively destroyed the Hessians and he'd stymied the Swedes. One of the USE's three divisions had to be worn out by now. If he could shatter a second division, he'd have created the best possible conditions Poland and Lithuania could have hoped for. The war that followed would be the sort of protracted affair that a people defending their own lands would fight tenaciously, and the invaders would grow weary of soon enough. The great danger had always been that Gustav Adolf could successfully wage a rapid campaign.