by Eric Flint
“No, your plan seems good. But I think we need Corporal Rau mounted tomorrow. Can you ride?”
Rau nodded, but had a disgusted look on his face as he went toward the door. Anse had to smile, because he knew Rau hated horses.
After a quick supper, cooked by Wili and Gaylynn at the fireplace, the party spread out their bed rolls. Gaylynn walked over to where Anse was sitting near the door. “Which shift do you want me to take?”
“Well, Jochen and Nils are going to take the first watch and they’ll wake Wili and me for the second. So you and the captain can have a full night’s sleep. Speaking of which, if you want you and Noelle can have the loft to sleep in. That’ll give you a little privacy.”
Gaylynn looked around the single room of the ground floor and nodded. “Thank you, But I don’t want you thinking you have to look out for me. I can take care of myself if it comes to a fight, so none of this ‘take care of the helpless woman business’. And tomorrow night I’ll take a turn on watch.”
“Gaylynn, the loft is where I’d want you and your rifle anyway, if something goes down. You’ll a better field of fire, especially after Jochen makes a firing point up there.”
It was five hours later, by Anse’s watch, when he was awakened by Jochen Rau shaking his shoulder. He looked around the room by the dim light thrown out by the fireplace and saw that everything seemed normal.
“Anything happen?”
“No one has come near the house, but there has been a lot of traffic on the road. People moving quietly in the night, all heading to the north. Ivarsson is out by the wagon keeping watch, waiting for you. We have been taking turns outside.”
“Fine, I’ll go relieve him. You wake Wili and get some sleep.”
When Anse went outside, he discovered he had been right in his weather prediction. There was a light snow falling, blanketing the area with pleasant noiselessness.
He found Nils Ivarsson huddled near the wagon, wrapped in a blanket. “I got it. Go on in and get some sleep.”
The Swedish officer rose to his feet. “If Rau didn’t tell you, there have been people on the road all night. A couple started to walk over to the wagon, but when they saw we were keeping watch they went on. They were mostly family groups, as near as I can tell.”
Ivarsson gathered his blanket about himself and headed for the house.
Anse stood there asking himself why on earth people would be moving at night this far into the NUS. It was miles from the border. They hadn’t even crossed the ridge of the Thueringerwald yet. Actually, they were barely into the mountains. Tomorrow they would be traveling along the main trade route between Erfurt and Nurnburg, which had had quite a bit of ordinary commercial traffic. There was just no obvious reason for people to be traveling by stealth here in Thuringia. Why weren’t Rau and Ivarsson questioning what they saw? Or had they just become so inured to moving refugees that they didn’t ask any more?
He and Wili split the next few hours of standing watch, taking turns ducking into the house to warm up. An hour into their watch, the snowfall ended and the sky cleared. There was now a half-moon in the sky to give them better visibility.
Three times, they saw parties passing on the road. None of them seemed hostile. Only once did it look like anyone took an interest in the village he was passing through, and that was one man walking alone leading an ox cart. He looked over the wagon, but moved on when he saw the gleam of Anse and Wili’s weapons in the moonlight.
January 18, 1633
Just before dawn, as he stood watching the road, Anse could hear the village waking up. The sounds of people preparing for the coming day were emanating from all the other houses. From the house the party had rented, he could hear muffled conversation as the expedition members were starting to fix breakfast. When he heard the door open behind him, he glanced back and saw Captain von Dantz emerging into the winter morning.
“Morgen, Herr Hatfield. I see there was no trouble during the night. Your fears of attack seem to have been groundless.”
The captain’s tone practically oozed self-satisfaction. “Tonight, though, if we don’t reach Suhl, we will have to keep a better watch. We will be in the heart of the Thueringerwald.”
Anse was tempted to just let it go, but von Dantz was really getting on his nerves. He pointed to the tracks in the snow. “It wasn’t as quiet as you think. Quite a few people came by here in the night. When they saw we were on the alert, they passed on.”
“What? There were people on the road last night? Who were they? Soldiers? Bandits? Who?”
“Mostly they seemed to be in family groups, and I didn’t see a lot of weaponry. So my best guess is they were refugees.”
The captain grunted. “That is no problem. There are always people running away from war.”
“Makes you wonder, though. Just what it is that they’re running away from, Captain? What ever it is, we’re heading straight for it.”
“Nonsense! There is no enemy army in this region. These peasants are fleeing phantoms and rumors. Or seeking fabled streets of gold in wonderful Grantville, perhaps.” He snorted. “Still, it will not hurt to be cautious until we get to Suhl. You should send your Corporal Rau to scout the road ahead, and I will stay closer to the wagon to help guard it.”
“I agree, Captain-but Rau needs a horse. I’ll have to put him on one of your remounts.”
“Ja, ja, he can use Lieutenant Ivarsson’s spare horse. Now we should get the others moving and load this wagon.”
* * *
After breakfast, the party was once more on its way. Rau had left while they were still packing the final load on the wagon, and was out of sight ahead. Anse took position beside the wagon, with von Dantz a dozen or so yards ahead and Ivarsson bringing up the rear.
Twenty minutes later, Anse saw the captain waving for him to move up and join him. As he rode forward, the captain rode ahead about a hundred yards to where Rau had dismounted and was standing by his horse waiting for them. When the two arrived Rau said in a low voice, “Just around the next curve there is a group of people. It looks like four families, men, women and Kinder. I couldn’t get close enough to get a good count, but there are at least twenty-five. Four ox carts, but I only saw three oxen. I saw a couple of long guns and one spear, not a pike but a hunting spear. They had a man walking ahead and I was spotted before I saw them.”
Anse could hear the real disgust in his voice. Jochen was proud of his ability to go unnoticed.
Before Anse could speak the captain stated: “Herr Hatfield, we should ride down the road as a group surrounding your wagon. It is not likely that a gaggle of farmers will attack armed soldiers. You and I will lead, riding ahead of the wagon. Corporal Rau, you will join Sergeant Ivarsson and bring up the rear.”
“I’ll give the orders, Captain, if you don’t mind,” Anse said, mildly but firmly.
Von Dantz’s jaws tightened, but he accepted the reproof without open argument. Now that Anse had established his authority, he thought about the problem itself. He decided the captain’s plan was as good as any.
“We’ll do it that way,” he pronounced. “Everyone should have a weapon in hand, though. Nothing says a bandit doesn’t have a wife and kids or these couldn’t be stragglers from someone’s army with camp followers.”
As they rounded the curve in the road and rode toward the unknown group it became clear enough that these were simply refugees. The three carts with oxen were being pulled off the road. The people seemed to be trying to hide them in the trees that bordered the road, not that they had any chance of doing so in the time given. The one remaining cart, apparently pulled by two men, was still on the road, but four men were unloading its contents. As the wagon approached the cart the men stopped, and stood in silence around it.
Anse called softly, “Wili, you look the most like a farmer. Talk to them and find out what’s going on.”
Wili stopped the wagon beside the cart and leaned over to talk to the men. Anse couldn’t catch more than about o
ne word in five, but he understood enough to know that Wili started with comments on the weather and proceeded to ask about the road conditions to the south. It wasn’t until the men started looking a bit relaxed that Wili asked them why they were on the road in the first place.
After they finished, Wili passed them a bag, which Anse knew contained a couple of dozen apples from Henry Johnson’s trees. He then snapped the reins and put the wagon in motion.
“Did I get that right, Wili? They are Franconians? Their neighbors forced them out?”
“Ja, they are chust farmers. They ver pushed out of their villages for saying they like the idea of a single Deutsch nation. Their neighbors do not like being ruled from Grantville because it is in Thuringia. They come from more than one village, too.”
That meant the hostile attitudes were not confined to a single locality. Anse felt sorry for the people sent into Franconia to “administer” the area, without-from a military standpoint, anyway-having a pot to piss in.
A few miles after they had passed the refugee party, Anse saw Rau once again stopped ahead waiting for them. When they had joined him, he said: “Crossroads village up ahead. They have the road blocked and are making people go around. Looks like they have had some trouble lately. I saw a couple of burnt houses.”
“Same positions, Herr Hatfield?” Wili asked.
“Yes, and we’ll ride directly to the road block. We have to find out what’s going on.”
Von Dantz came up in time to hear the last couple of sentences. “General Kagg must be told. I am thinking we should send a message back to him about what the peasants said, also.”
“There’s a radio in Suhl, captain,” Anse pointed out. “It will be quicker to send the message from there. Besides, with only five of us, who would we send?”
The captain looked perplexed for a minute, “Ah. Radio. Ja, we will send a message from Suhl.”
As they approached the village, Anse could see the villagers had blocked the four roads into it by the simple method of parking carts full of rocks side by side in the road. With two or three armed men beside each cart, it was a block no one was going to move before the rest of the village could gather to stop them. Not very effective against an army, but it was good enough to stop refugees. What the merchants and other legitimate business travelers who used the road during the day would make of it was another problem, Anse thought.
Riding closer, it became obvious there was a watch being kept on the road also. Anse could hear voices calling from the trees alongside the road, and people were gathering at the road block.
“Let’s keep it low-key, Captain,” Anse said to Captain von Dantz, who was riding beside him. “They have men in the woods and we’re flanked.” Only after he spoke did it occur to him that von Dantz might not understand the American colloquialism.
But, apparently, he did-or at least the gist of it. Von Dantz nodded and said softly, “And there are men on the roofs, too. Someone in this village has experience.”
“Halt! Stehenbleiben! Wer sind sie?” a voice called out from the village. Anse’s German was good enough to translate that last word into an demand to know who they were.
While Rau called out that they were a party of the New US Army escorting two civilians to Suhl, Anse eased back until he was beside the wagon.
“Gaylynn, don’t touch your rifle, but see the guys on the roofs?” Gaylynn nodded. “They’re yours if any shooting starts.”
Before anything could happen, a new voice called out from behind the roadblock. “Gaylynn Reardon? Is that you?”
Gaylynn almost jumped out of her seat. “Yes! Who wants to know?”
“It’s me, Pete Chehab.” A young man walked from behind the cart road block.
As the man approached, Anse could see he was a NUS sergeant in his early twenties. He was dressed in the tie-dyed camouflage that was replacing the up-time hunting outfits as they wore out.
“Relax, everyone,” Gaylynn said. “I know him. That’s Pete Chehab. He’s from Grantville and used to ask Gary for advice when he was in tech school.”
After introductions were made, Chehab continued. “Me and Hans Koeppler were bringing some dispatches from the garrison at Suhl to General Kagg in Grantville.”
For a moment, he looked disgruntled. “Why the hell they didn’t just use the radio is a mystery to me. Probably because the garrison commander is an old-fashioned down-timer and his up-time ‘military liaison’-that’s that jer . . .-ah, Lt. Horton-seems to think the radio’s some kinda virgin, can’t get its cherry popped.”
Noelle Murphy laughed. No little titter, either. Anse himself had to fight to keep from grinning, in the interests of military protocol. Since Chehab hadn’t quite come out and publicly insulted his superior officer, he decided he could let it pass.
Besides, jerk was a pretty good depiction of Lt. Johnny Lee Horton. If anything, on the mild side.
“We just got here a couple of hours ago,” Chehab continued, “and we found the village like you see it now. They had some trouble with bandits a few days ago. They ended up with two houses burnt so the’ve blocked off the little roads up into the hills and they’re forting up at night. They move a couple of carts off the trade route during the day to let the traffic through. Once they check their documents. All these refugees on the road are making them even more nervous. I was just getting ready to go on to Grantville when you showed up. Do you have any idea what’s going on? Some of these guys act like we just shot their dog.”
Anse shook his head. “Last time we heard, everything was calm clear to Nurnberg. How was Suhl when you left?”
“Suhl was quiet. Well, as quiet as a town where every other house is hammering out gun barrels can be. But there was nothing like this. No refugees coming through. They must have been taking back paths around the city.”
“Sergeant,” Captain von Dantz broke in, “can you delay your departure until I write a message to the general?”
“Sure, captain. We’re a regular pony express.”
The captain walked to the wagon, shaking his head. Anse had to smile. The captain spoke good English, but now he was learning American.
As they passed through the village after seeing Sergeant Chehab and his party depart, Anse saw that most of the home owners had painted red and white stripes on their doors to show their allegiance to the government in Grantville. In the middle of the crossroads, they had planted a flagpole and were flying the flag many of the Committees of Correspondence had adopted. The thirteen red and white stripes were the same as the American flag, but the snake painted across them was not the semi-familiar timber rattler. Instead, it was an adder.
* * *
Just south of the village, the normal commercial traffic became heavier. They were passing parties every mile, and Rau was reduced to riding only a hundred yards in front of the wagon.
“Herr Hatfield, we are going too slow,” von Dantz complained. “At this rate, we will never make it to Suhl before nightfall.”
“Captain, we were figuring three or four days when we started. So even if we don’t make Suhl tonight, we’re still ahead of schedule. I packed a tent and enough sleeping bags for everyone. Wili made sure there was hay and feed for the horses. So we should be okay if we have to camp again.”
“I want . . .”
Anse never did find out what the captain wanted, because just then Gaylynn yelled from the wagon seat. “Wili, stop the wagon! Look over there!”
Gaylynn was down from the wagon and striding across the road before anyone realized what she was talking about. Near the road were the huddled forms of two children. They were sitting together, wrapped in a blanket that was mostly holes. Wili tied the reins to the brake lever and dismounted to help her with the translation. The American woman’s German was passable, but probably not good enough to decipher what frightened children might be saying
Captain von Dantz rode back to see what the delay was. “What are you doing, woman? We have to keep moving.”
&n
bsp; “I’m tending to these children!” Gaylynn snapped back. “What do you want to do? Just leave them here to freeze?”
The captain shrugged irritably. “We can load them on the wagon and take them with us, if you insist. Quickly-we have only two hours of daylight left.”
Now that he was closer, Anse could see the children were both boys, about five or six years old. He called to Rau, who was still mounted. “Jochen, ride ahead and see if there are any refugees on the road. These boys have gotten lost from their family.”
“Nein,” Wili called, “they live over there.” He pointed toward a path that could barely be seen joining the road, about a half mile down. “They say men come and hurt their Grossvater this morning. They ran off.”
“Jochen, check it out quietly,” Anse ordered. Rau dismounted and headed for the woods beside the road.
Wili and Gaylynn had managed to get the boys to the wagon when Rau returned. “It looks like there are eight of them, all on foot, in a charcoal burner’s cabin. They left the old man tied to a tree outside. He looks dead. They have two men keeping watch in front of the house and the rest are in the house.”
Before Anse could say anything, von Dantz spoke up. “If you will permit me to make a suggestion”-the words practically dripped sarcasm-“I think we should leave Frau Reardon and Fraulein Murphy here to watch the boys and the wagon. Private Schultz will take my spare horse, and we will ride to the house and demand to know what these men are doing.”
Anse was not surprised by the captain’s “plan.” He didn’t doubt the man’s courage, but he had about as few brains as a rabbit.
“Well, that might work, but Wili doesn’t ride. And if the bandits decide to make a fight of it, we’ll be out in the open with no cover.”
“Herr Hatfield, these are bandits, not trained troops.”
In Anse’s experience, the distinction in the seventeenth century between “bandits” and “trained troops” was a lot fuzzier than von Dantz made it out to be. “It never hurts to have an edge, Captain. Jochen, Wili and I will sneak up on the house through the woods. Then you and Lt. Ivarsson ride in with the wagon, with Gaylynn driving, to where the path from the house comes to the road before you ride up to the house. Noelle and the boys can stay in the wagon bed, where they’ll have some shelter if the stuff hits the fan. Gaylynn can cover the front of the house and give you some support. The three of us in hiding can give the bandits a nasty surprise if they try to attack you. And it gives us six guns instead of four.”