by Eric Flint
Two years younger than Christin George. Practically the same age. An ideal match, in terms of levels of experience and maturity. Assuming, that is, that you were not concerned with producing a large number of progeny—which, however, he had to plan for, if he wanted to advance his goal. Of the three Jewish girls his intermediaries were investigating, the oldest was twenty-five and the youngest was fifteen. The most promising prospect, in most respects, had just turned nineteen. He could only hope they’d have something to talk about, and had very little hope their senses of humor would coincide.
If the girl had any sense of humor at all. Christin George’s was excellent.
“Damnation,” he said. Jews had their own proscriptions concerning blasphemy, but they were less wide-ranging than those of Christians, in some respects.
“The needs of the cause,” he reminded himself. Then, went back to work.
Linz, capital-in-exile of Austria-Hungary
Gustav Adolf looked around the table, taking his time to examine each face as he came to it and summarizing his impressions.
Pappenheim. A given. Ferocious in battle, very capable, but also limited in his perspective and given to rashness. He’d make a splendid hammer, though, if the right situation arose.
Von Colloredo. A non-entity, most likely. Certainly not someone to be relied upon. The Americans had a quip that applied here: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
Montecuccoli. A promising officer. Now was the time to test him, but the test couldn’t be too exacting. If he failed—if any of them failed—it could prove disastrous.
Drugeth. In essence, the Hungarian would be the emperor’s chief adjutant. An assignment he would probably carry out splendidly, if Gustav Adolf was any judge of military character. Which, he was.
That left…
The man they called the Prince of Germany. Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of that informal title was that Gustav Adolf was coming to accept it himself. Not even grudgingly, any longer.
He would be the rock. Everything else would pivot around that surety.
“Here is my plan,” said Gustav Adolf.
* * *
Less than an hour after the meeting had ended, a courier came to fetch Mike Stearns in his private chambers. Cham-ber, single, rather. The population density of Linz was by now akin to Mike’s conception of what Calcutta looked like, and that of the so-called “royal palaces” not much better.
There were two royal edifices in the city, actually. One was the “palace” proper, a castle built by Rudolf II. As was usually true in the era, the castle had been an expansion of older buildings, parts of which dated back to medieval times. The other edifice was the town hall, built in the previous century. Emperor Ferdinand had sequestered it for royal use after moving his capital to Linz.
Mike’s small chamber was situated in the town hall, for which he was thankful. The plumbing was every bit as primitive as that in the castle, but by now Mike was used to that. He’d been on almost continuous campaign since he joined the army more than a year ago. Still, the town hall had more of a Renaissance flavor to it and less of the medieval gloom of the castle. His chamber had a window in it that actually let in quite a bit of light.
“Yes, what is it?” he asked, after opening the door in response to a polite knock.
“The emperor—ah, Gustavus Adolphus, I mean, not Ferdinand—would like to see you in his quarters,” said the courier.
Those were also in the town hall, despite the castle being technically the more prestigious of the two royal buildings. The Vasa dynasty was relatively new, as royalty measured such things, and its members still tended for the most part to retain plenty of Swedish practicality.
“Lead on,” said Mike.
When he reached the emperor’s quarters—which were quite a bit larger than his, naturally, although the plumbing would be no better—he found that Pappenheim was there as well. Mike didn’t know the cavalry commander very well. He’d met him before, on a few occasions, but had never spent much time in conversation with the man. He did know that, much to his surprise, Morris Roth had come to like Pappenheim—albeit with some reservations, as he put it.
Gottfried Heinrich Graf zu Pappenheim, to give the man his complete monicker, was of Bavarian birth. In the manner that was so common in this era, both the king and the top general of Bohemia were not Czechs themselves but Germans—and nobody thought much of it. He was a very experienced military commander, and looked the part.
“You sent for me, Your Majesty.”
“Yes, Michael, I did. There is something I wish to discuss more privately than I could in the general staff meeting.” Gustav Adolf, like Pappenheim, was already seated. He gestured towards a third chair positioned close to them. “Please, have a seat.”
After Mike did so, the emperor leaned forward. “Have you ever watched a bullfight? The way the Spanish do it, I mean.”
The question caught Mike off guard, and for a moment he groped for an answer. The problem was the historical dimension. He’d once been asked, not long after the Ring of Fire, if he’d like to taste some chocolate. Surprised that chocolate had already found its way to Europe, he’d agreed—only to discover that the frothy drink he was handed didn’t taste at all like the chocolate he’d been accustomed to.
“Ah… Only on television, Your Majesty. Not in person. But that was a bullfight in my own time, not—”
“Yes, yes, I understand,” Gustav Adolf interrupted, waving a hand. “It is practiced quite differently by the Spaniards of our day. The killing is done by an hidalgo on horseback, using a lance, not—not—what is the name of that preposterous fellow? The one with the silly hat waving a silly cape about?”
“The matador.”
“Yes, him. I will say the fellows are brave enough.” He turned toward Pappenheim. “Imagine, Gottfried! Killing a bull on foot—with just a sword.”
Pappenheim curled his lip. “Stupid.”
Gustav Adolf shook his head and looked back at Mike. “Not so stupid as all that. Whether fighting now on horseback or”—he waved his hand again, this time indicating that mysterious other universe from which the Americans had emerged—“in their time on foot, bullfighting has always had one steady feature. No one—no man, be he never so bold—tries to kill a fresh bull. The monster is always bled first, by others.”
Mike had no particular interest in bullfighting and had only watched the spectacle on television a few times. But, driven by whatever peculiar mechanisms governed human memory, the name of the men involved came to him.
“They called them banderilleros and picadores, where I came from,” he said. “If I remember right, the banderilleros fought on foot and the picador rode a horse. They all did the same thing, though—stick the bull with short spears and lances until it became fatigued from pain and blood loss. Its head would then come down, allowing the matador to run his sword through its spine.”
“Exactly so!” said Gustav Adolf. “And so must we do as well, when we face the monster.”
He shook his head again. “I am not concerned about the Turkish janissaries. I have every confidence you will hold them at bay, Michael. But the Ottoman cavalry—the sipahis—” Here, he grimaced. “One man measured against another, I am certain Gottfried’s cuirassiers are their equal—no, their better. But there will be far more of them.”
“How many more?” Mike asked.
“The survivors of the siege claim there were at least thirty thousand sipahis. Many claim there were fifty or sixty thousand—some, even a hundred thousand. Montecuccoli seems the steadiest of the lot, and he estimates the sipahi numbers to be somewhere around thirty thousand.”
Mike looked at Pappenheim. “And you have…?”
“Eight thousand.”
Mike nodded. He understood the military calculations involved. In the seventeenth century, cavalry was the offensive arm, not infantry. That was beginning to change, under the impact of the Ring of Fire, but for the most part it still held true.
That meant that as long as Murad had a decisively more powerful cavalry—which he certainly did, at the moment—he would always have the advantage in any battle fought on the open field. Of course, no commanding general in his right mind in Gustav Adolf’s position would be thinking in terms of offensive operations at the moment, given the huge disparity in numbers between his forces and those of Sultan Murad.
Not at this moment, no. But the war was not going to end quickly and there would be many moments to come. If the Swedish king could use the coming battle, where he would be holding a defensive position, to bloody the Turkish cavalry as badly as possible…
“You see the logic?” asked Gustav Adolf.
“Oh, yes, Your Majesty. I will need some time to talk to my men, you understand.”
“Certainly.”
* * *
“You sent for me, sir?” asked Lt. Colonel Engler.
“Yes, Thorsten, I did. There is something I wish to discuss more privately than I could in tomorrow’s staff meeting.” Mike was already seated. He gestured towards a nearby chair. “Please, have a seat.”
After Engler did so, the Third Division’s commander leaned forward. “Have you ever watched a bullfight? The way the Spanish do it, I mean.”
Chapter 50
Breslau (Wroclaw), Lower Silesia
Poland
Gretchen studied the map spread out on the table with a scrutiny that was both intent and annoyed.
“Cowardly bastards,” she growled. “And what are they eating, anyway? Grass?”
Eric Krenz shrugged his shoulders. “Holk’s army is about as wretched a pack of soldiers as you can find anywhere in Europe, Gretchen. Probably anywhere in the world. I didn’t really think they’d be launching assaults on us any time soon.”
“I am afraid he’s right,” said Lukasz Opalinski. He and Jozef Wojtowicz were scrutinizing the map also.
Lukasz was, at any rate. His fellow Pole was pretending to, but it was obvious to Opalinski—probably to everyone else in the room, too; certainly the women—that Jozef was finding it hard not to ogle the two newly arrived females who were sitting on chairs against a nearby wall in Gretchen’s headquarters chamber.
Mother and daughter, they were, which was quite evident by their resemblance. Both of them were beautiful, the daughter in the way of girls in their late teenage years, the mother in the way of women now closer to forty than thirty.
Oddly enough, Jozef seemed to be more drawn to the older of the two women. That was not his normal inclination, in Opalinski’s experience. Wojtowicz was still shy of thirty himself, having recently celebrated his twenty-eighth birthday. He was usually attracted to women at least five years younger than he and with considerably less in the way of intelligence—something which, in Lukasz’s estimate, was not at all true of the older Beasley female, judging from the keen and interested way she was following the discussion.
“We need to draw them out,” said Lovrenc Bravnicar, the Slovene cavalryman.
“A standard way of doing that is with cavalry raids,” said Opalinski. “But I can’t say I recommend that in this situation.”
Bravnicar made a face. “No, we’re too heavily outnumbered. From what I can tell, at least half of Holk’s forces are mounted.”
Lukasz smiled. The Slovene couldn’t bring himself to call them cavalrymen. Which, in truth, many of Holk’s men really weren’t, despite riding on horses. Their mounts were farm animals, often enough, stolen in the course of plundering raids by infantrymen too lazy to want to march.
In truth, Holk’s army was a wretched one. But he had at least two thousand men under his command—probably closer to three—and while Lukasz didn’t doubt the superior morale of the forces Gretchen commanded, they were even less of an army than Holk’s.
The core of the infantry were the Third Division regulars commanded by Eric Krenz. But there were no more than three hundred of them. Add to that Bravnicar’s cavalry—less than two hundred—and you had exhausted the total of Gretchen’s troops who had experience as part of a real army.
The single biggest component of the forces Gretchen had brought from Saxony were Kresse’s Vogtland irregulars. Those numbered somewhere between six and seven hundred men—understanding that included in the term “men” were at least one hundred and fifty women, who might or might not fight depending on the circumstances.
Since they’d assumed control over Lower Silesia’s big towns, they’d been able to add a number of volunteers from one or another of the German militias. More had come forward than Lukasz had expected, actually—close to five hundred.
Finally, there were perhaps one hundred Polish farmers who’d volunteered as well. Over time, Lukasz was fairly confident that he and Jozef could expand that number three or fourfold, but it wouldn’t happen quickly. Relations between Lower Silesia’s German townsfolk and Polish farmers weren’t hostile, but they weren’t especially close and cordial, either. Each tended to be suspicious of the other, in the way of urban and rural folk from time immemorial.
All told, Lukasz and Jozef had reported to Gretchen just that morning that her army consisted of no more than one thousand, seven hundred soldiers, ninety percent of whom were infantry.
Foot soldiers, rather. Except for Krenz’s regulars, you couldn’t really call them “infantry.”
“Bomb ‘em,” piped up a female voice from the side. “Bomb the bastards. That’ll rile ‘em up, you watch.”
Everyone turned to look at the one who had spoken, the younger of the mother-daughter pair. Denise, her name was, if Lukasz remembered correctly.
Denise now pointed to a solid-looking fellow standing toward the back of the chamber. That was Eddie Junker, the pilot who’d flown Denise and her mother into Breslau just a short time ago.
“Ask him. That’s how we met. I dropped a bomb on him. Well, technically, Keenan dropped it. But I gave the order.”
She now grinned. “And, boy, was Eddie pissed about the whole thing. I bet if you started dropping bombs on Holk’s shitheads that they’d get really pissed too.”
Gretchen was now peering quizzically at Junker. “I was not aware that your aircraft was a warplane. I thought it was a civilian one.”
The stocky pilot shrugged. “Define the terms. None of the aircraft being made now—not the Gustavs, not the Dauntlesses, and certainly not the Belles—are what Americans would have called ‘warplanes’ in the world they came from. They’re very crude and primitive aircraft modeled on up-time civilian designs which can be adapted to use as weapons platforms—very crude and primitive weapons platforms.”
He gave the younger Beasley a look that seemed composed of equal parts affection and annoyance. “Technically, Denise is right. The Dauntless is equipped with mounts—hard points, they’re called—to which bombs or rockets could be attached. If we had any, which we don’t.”
“We can make some,” Denise immediately stated. “Don’t anybody claim we can’t because I know how to do it. Well… bombs, anyway. Without venturi any rockets we made would be almost useless—might even be dangerous to us—and so far as I know Breslau doesn’t have anything you could really call a machine shop so we can’t make them. Bombs, though—those are pretty simple.”
Everyone stared at her, including Opalinski himself. It was always a bit tricky gauging the age of up-timers, but most of the uncertainty came from their resistance to normal aging. Except for the generally superior teeth and the absence of such things as smallpox scars, young Americans looked pretty much the same as down-timers of the same age.
The Denise girl couldn’t be more than… eighteen? Nineteen, perhaps—certainly not more than twenty. Yet she discussed the manufacture of explosive weapons as casually as she might discuss baking bread.
“She works for Nasi,” Jozef whispered in his ear. “Don’t forget that. Don’t ever forget that.”
Lukasz wondered if the same was true of the girl’s mother. If so, Jozef would be well-advised to stay as far away from the woman as
possible.
Gretchen, though, didn’t seem in the least bit disconcerted by Denise Beasley’s knowledge of the means of mayhem, just interested. “I need a clear answer, girl. Can you make such bombs? Here—in Breslau. With what we have available. I need a precise and realistic answer.”
Such was Richter’s force of personality that even the brash young Beasley girl seemed taken aback for a moment.
“Well…” She made a face and shook her head. “I can’t give you that answer sitting here. I need to get out in the town and see what’s available.”
“I can tell you what is available,” said Gretchen. “We have plenty of gunpowder—black powder, that is. We do not have the makings for iron bombs—not quickly enough—but I’m sure a cooper could make metal straps for a pot bomb that could be attached to the airplane’s—‘hard points,’ they’re called?”
“That’s right,” said Eddie. “And, yes, that ought to work. He’d also have to design a latch that would work on the hard points, so we could drop the bombs, but that shouldn’t be too hard. It’s not really that complicated.”
Gretchen nodded and looked back at Denise. “Given that the bombs will be dropped from a fast-moving airplane, am I correct in assuming that timed fuses would not be a good idea?”
Denise’s eyes widened. “God, no!” she exclaimed. Kresse frowned at that blasphemy, but had the good sense not to protest openly.
“You need contact fuses for these kind of bombs,” Denise continued. “I know how to make those. As long as we’ve got percussion caps, it’s pretty easy.”
She glanced around the room. “And if nobody here has any percussion caps, you really have no business being out here at the ass end of the Thirty Years War in the first place.”
“We have percussion caps,” said Jozef. “I do, at any rate, and I could certainly spare a dozen or two.”
“Ought to be enough,” agreed Denise. She looked back at Gretchen. “What about gasoline or kerosene? If we’ve got ten or twenty gallons of that to spare, and some soap—soap’s got to exist in a town this size—then I can make some pretty decent incendiary bombs. That’ll really piss off the shitheads.”