Grantville Gazette. Volume 21

by Eric Flint

  Grantville Gazette. Volume 21

  Eric Flint

  Eric Flint

  Grantville Gazette. Volume 21

  What is this? About the Grantville Gazette

  Written by Grantville Gazette Staff

  The Grantville Gazette originated as a by-product of the ongoing and very active discussions which take place concerning the 1632 universe Eric Flint created in the novels 1632, 1633 and 1634: The Galileo Affair (the latter two books co-authored by David Weber and Andrew Dennis, respectively). This discussion is centered in three of the conferences in Baen's Bar, the discussion area of Baen Books' web site. The conferences are entitled "1632 Slush," "1632 Slush Comments" and "1632 Tech Manual." They have been in operation for almost seven years now, during which time nearly two hundred thousand posts have been made by hundreds of participants.

  Soon enough, the discussion began generating so-called "fanfic," stories written in the setting by fans of the series. A number of those were good enough to be published professionally. And, indeed, a number of them were-as part of the anthology Ring of Fire, which was published by Baen Books in January, 2004. (Ring of Fire also includes stories written by established authors such as Eric Flint himself, as well as David Weber, Mercedes Lackey, Dave Freer, K.D. Wentworth and S.L. Viehl.)

  The decision to publish the Ring of Fire anthology triggered the writing of still more fanfic, even after submissions to the anthology were closed. Ring of Fire has been selling quite well since it came out, and a second anthology similar to it was published late in 2007. Another, Ring of Fire III, is forthcoming. It will also contain stories written by new writers, as well as professionals. But, in the meantime… the fanfic kept getting written, and people kept nudging Eric-well, pestering Eric-to give them feedback on their stories.

  Hence… the Grantville Gazette. Once he realized how many stories were being written-a number of them of publishable quality-he raised with Jim Baen the idea of producing an online magazine which would pay for fiction and nonfiction articles set in the 1632 universe and would be sold through Baen Books' Webscriptions service. Jim was willing to try it, to see what happened.

  As it turned out, the first issue of the electronic magazine sold well enough to make continuing the magazine a financially self-sustaining operation. Since then, even more volumes have been electronically published through the Baen Webscriptions site. As well, Grantville Gazette, Volume One was published in paperback in November of 2004. That has since been followed by hardcover editions of Grantville Gazette, Volumes Two, Three and Four.

  Then, two big steps:

  First: The magazine had been paying semi-pro rates for the electronic edition, increasing to pro rates upon transition to paper, but one of Eric's goals had long been to increase payments to the authors. Grantville Gazette, Volume Eleven is the first volume to pay the authors professional rates.

  Second: This on-line version you're reading. The site here at http://www. grantvillegazette. com is the electronic version of an ARC, an advance readers copy where you can read the issues as we assemble them. There are stories posted here which won't be coming out in the magazine for more than a year.

  How will it work out? Will we be able to continue at this rate? Well, we don't know. That's up to the readers. But we'll be here, continuing the saga, the soap opera, the drama and the comedy just as long as people are willing to read them.

  – The Grantville Gazette Staff

  More Cons to Consider

  Grantville Gazette Staff

  For those of you who are interested and live in the vicinity, Eric Flint is going to be the Guest of Honor at SoonerCon, in Oklahoma City, OK. The con begins on June 5 and ends on June 7, 2009. Their website is: http://www. soonercon. info/dnn/.

  Rick Boatright, Paula Goodlett, Gorg Huff and possibly a few other regulars will also be attending SoonerCon.

  In July, we'll be having our annual 1632 mini-con at Fiestacon/Westercon in Tempe, Arizona. That's Fourth of July weekend-which is only appropriate for an author who invented the Fourth of July Party, isn't it? The website is: http://www. fiestacon. org/.

  The series got a very nice review, url here: http://wy. lcms. org/LHP/QBR/2008ChristmasQBR0301. pdf. We certainly appreciate the very thoughtful consideration we received.

  We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. And here's hoping that 2009 is a really great year!

  The Grantville Gazette Editorial Board

  The Anaconda Project, Episode Nine

  Eric Flint

  Chapter 9

  "I have news," Lukasz Opalinski announced, as soon as his friend Jozef Wojtowicz entered the room which served Opalinski as a combination library and small salon.

  Jozef closed the door behind him. "What could be so urgent that I had to drop everything and come here all the way from Poznan? Two days it took me, in this horrid weather."

  "Oh, that's nonsense. Spring has arrived, you sissy."

  "There is snow on the ground, Lukasz. And it's cold. Especially spending two days on horseback. More than two, in fact. I couldn't make it here by nightfall yesterday and had to spent the night at an inn a few miles away. A very wretched inn. Even the hogs at the place were miserable."

  "Well, of course it's cold and there's snow on the ground. We're still in March- but! The equinox was four days ago. So we are well into spring."

  "And you haven't even offered me a drink yet."

  Opalinski waved at a nearby side table, quite heavily laden with bottles of various kinds of liquor. "Help yourself. But when did you start drinking in the morning?"

  Wojtowicz took a seat on a chair not far from the divan where Opalinski was lounging. He did so without giving the side table so much as a glance.

  "I fear for my chances at beatification," he explained, "should I add excessive drunkenness to my other vices."

  "I'd say those chances are so close to non-existent it hardly matters."

  "You never know. And I repeat, what is so urgent?" Wojtowicz gave Opalinski's hands a flamboyantly intense scrutiny. Which was perhaps peculiar, since the hands held nothing by a few sheets of paper. "So urgent, I now notice, that apparently you haven't been drinking this morning. Despite the fact that your own chances for beatification rank somewhere below Attila the Hun's-albeit, yes, I'll give you this much, higher than that of the average Polish magnate."

  His wealthy friend chuckled. "That last witticism is closer to the mark than you realize." He gave the sheets of paper in his hand a little jiggle. "I just got a report from one of the spies I hired at your recommendation-at a frightful cost, I might add."

  Wojtowicz shrugged. "Good spies are expensive. There are plenty of cheap spies, of course. If you ever find one who isn't completely useless-and usually a double agent-please let me know. And what does your costly but effective spy tell you?"

  "He found out who assassinated Bohdan Chmielnicki. As well as who gave the order."

  "As to the last… Samuel Laszcz, would be my guess. Failing that, one of those headstrong Radziwills."

  "Mine, too-but we'd both have been wrong. No, it was Janusz Tyszkiewicz."

  Wojtowicz's eyes widened. "The voivode of Kiev? But…"

  "Yes, I know. But that suggests involvement by the crown. Given the king's favor to the Catholic church and the fact that Tyszkiewicz is a Catholic partisan."

  "Say better, a Catholic fanatic."

  Opalinski looked down at the papers in his hand. "But there's more. According to the spy, the plot was the product of a cabal between Tyszkiewicz, Samuel Osinsky-he's the Seneschal of Lithuania, no less-and none other than Jeremy Wisniowiecki."

  "Wisniowiecki? He can't be more than twenty-three or twenty-four years old."

  "N
ot even that. He's twenty-two." Opalinski grinned. "A bit young, one would think, for this sort of scheming. But perhaps he drinks in the morning."

  Wojtowicz turned his head and spent a few seconds examining a painting hanging on a nearby wall. There was nothing unusual about the painting. It was simply one of many portraits hanging on the many walls of the Opalinski castle at Sierakow. All of them depicted various members of the illustrious family going back several generations.

  Some of them had even been illustrious in truth. A goodly number more had been pure wastrels. Being born into one of the great Polish or Lithuanian magnate families automatically gave a young man a political and military career in the Commonwealth, unless he was an outright mental defective-and provided, of course, that he desired such a career. The same exalted status also gave such young men the opportunity to pass through their entire lives doing absolutely nothing useful and productive, but simply enjoying themselves.

  A great many made that choice-and were then, typically, the most vociferous defenders of the rights and privileges of the Commonwealth's nobility. And the most savage when the lower classes presumed to challenge them, or were even too loud in their complaints.

  Jozef had disliked the type even as a boy. Partly, perhaps, simply because he did not have their option. As an acknowledged bastard of a great magnate family, he had been given many opportunities and privileges which would have been denied to him had he been a commoner. But, still, he was a bastard. He was allowed to work in fields reserved for the szlachta-but he was expected to work.

  Being fair to himself, though, Jozef was almost sure that he would have chosen a productive life devoted to the good of the Commonwealth even if he'd been legitimately born. Even, he liked to think, if he'd been born a commoner-although in that case, of course, his options would have been far more limited.

  Whatever the reason, he'd entered his manhood with a sharp dislike for noble idlers. The months he'd spent in Grantville had transformed dislike into detestation; contempt into loathing-and aversion into a determination to destroy the lot of them. As a class holding power, if not as individual people.

  "And what is so fascinating about my grandfather Jan?" asked Lukasz.

  "You've never met them," mused Jozef, still studying the portrait. "Or, if you have, it would only have been one or two individuals."

  "You're speaking of the Americans?"

  "Yes. I'm sure you've been told that they are a humble folk, once you strip away the veneer of their technical wizardry and power." Wojtowicz chuckled. "That is the biggest lie ever told. They are the most arrogant people you can imagine. So arrogant that they feel no urge to proclaim their superiority over others. They simply take it for granted and go about their business, certain in the knowledge that any American with the birthright of their culture-culture, Lukasz, not blood-is the superior of any noble family, be its blood even royal."

  He took a deep, slow breath. "And, in the end, I came to agree with them."

  Opalinski's eyes widened a bit. "Oh, surely not."

  Wojtowicz turned his head away from the portrait to look at his friend. "Oh, surely yes. First, because it is true-and the truth has been put to the test. Ask yourself a question, Lukasz. Do what the Americans would call a mental experiment. Imagine a similar-sized group of Polish and Lithuanian szlachta-say, the Sejm in full session-which had mysteriously found itself transposed in time and place the way they did. Planted, let us say, in the middle of the Roman Empire during one of its many civil wars. Would they have done as well? Would they even have survived?"

  Opalinski pursed his lips. "Survived… yes. Many of them, certainly. If nothing else, most szlachta have martial skills, and those are always in demand. And command respect, for that matter."

  Jozef scratched his jaw. "I will give you so much. And the rest? Would a few thousand szlachta have shaken the world of Rome the way a few thousand Americans have shaken-even transformed, in many ways-our own world?"

  Opalinski thought about it for a while. Then, smiling ruefully, shook his head. "I think not. If nothing else, they would have immediately taken to quarreling."

  "Yes, they would. And, to go back to my point, the second reason I came to agree with the Americans was because their viewpoint has the great advantage of not requiring my own abasement. Nothing prevented me, I eventually realized, from adopting the same attitude."

  Lukasz peered at him, almost owlishly. "You've not struck me as being especially arrogant since your return. No more than usual, at least-and that's just the unfortunate byproduct of the fact that you're smarter than almost everybody else."

  He waved his hand magnanimously. "A small enough failing-and I forgave you for it many years ago. But I'll not argue the point any further, since, as you say, I've never met any Americans. Not even one, as it happens."

  He sat up a bit straighter. "But we've strayed from the point, Jozef. Yes, that young snot Jeremy Wisniowiecki is involved. Right in the thick of it, in fact."

  "But why would the others involve him? Leaving aside his youth-and in his case; I've met him; the term 'callow youth' is quite appropriate-he's difficult to deal with, by all accounts. Not only arrogant but self-willed to the point of lunacy. The man quarrels constantly, and has done so since he was a boy."

  "Well, as to that, I suspect the reason is that he was their connection to the assassins. The leader of whom was a man named Stefan Czarniecki-"

  "Never heard of him."

  "-and the reason you've never heard of him is that you don't associate with his circles. Neither do I. Neither does almost any respectable man-unless, like young Wisniowiecki, you're the scion of a great family which has used their services in the past."

  "Whose services?"

  "The Lisowczycy."

  Wojtowicz grimaced. "He's one of them? This Stefan Czarniecki was one of Alexander Lisowski's men?"

  "So it seems, although he may never have served under Lisowski himself. Lisowski died in October of 1616, and the first record of Czarniecki my spies could uncover was that he fought with the Lisowczycy at the Battle of the White Mountain. That was two years later."

  "How old is Czarniecki?"

  Lukasz shook his head. "My spies found no records. There may very well be no records. Czarniecki claims to be szlachta, and he's fierce enough that no one is going to contest the matter openly. But no one really seems to believe it, either. From his appearance, my spies estimate that he's somewhere in his middle thirties. No older than forty, certainly."

  "Which would make him a bit too young to have fought in the Dymitriads with Lisowski."

  Again, Jozef made a face. The Lisowczycy!

  Even for eastern Europe, with its incessant wars of the past few decades, the Lisowczycy were notorious. Also known as the Stracency, the "lost men," they were a mercenary force of light cavalrymen which had been prominent in the many conflicts in the region for a quarter of a century. Their forces were mostly drawn from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but men joined them from all lands in eastern Europe. Their numbers varied, depending on circumstances, anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand.

  They were named after Aleksander Jozef Lisowski, a Lithuanian nobleman born sometime around the year 1580. Little was known of his youth. He first came to notice during the Moldavian magnate wars, initially in the camp of Michal Waleczny, then as a supporter of Jan Zamoyski.

  In 1604, toward the start of the war with Sweden, the Polish Sejm-not for the first time-neglected to raise the funds to pay its soldiers in Livonia. What followed was one of the so-called konfederacja, which were a peculiarly Polish tradition in which what amounted to a mutiny received semi-official status and quasi-legitimacy. Lisowski had been one of the ringleaders.

  This konfederacja had been more brutal than most. The mutineers decided to recompense themselves by plundering and savaging the local civilians-not caring in the least that many of the civilians in question were Polish subjects. The official response to the mutiny was ineffectual, as was so often true
, and not long thereafter Lisowski and his supporters joined the rokosz of Mikolaj Zebrzydowski, also known as the Sandomierz Rebellion.

  A rokosz was another peculiarly Polish institution. What amounted to a rebellion-and would have been regarded as outright treason in most realms-was given semi-official recognition in the Commonwealth. Just one of many ways in which the supremacy of the aristocracy was sanctified, even over the power of the royal family.

  The forces of King Zygmunt III eventually triumphed in the ensuing civil war, at the battle of Guzow, although the Vasa dynasty thereafter acquiesced to the pretensions of the nobility. Aleksander Lisowski himself became not much better than an outlaw. Fortunately, like many such rebels and outlaws before him, he found shelter with one of the great magnate families which, for its own reasons, wanted to thumb its nose at the king. In this instance, with the powerful and wealthy Lithuanian Radziwills.

  Lisowski's luck had a Russian as well as Lithuanian cast. Muscovy's Time of Troubles had begun, and it wasn't long before Lisowski and his followers were meddling in the Russian lands. He became a partisan of one of the pretenders to the Muscovite throne, the so-called False Dmitry II. In 1608, as the leader of a mercenary force consisting of soldiers of fortune from everywhere in eastern Europe-Poles, Lithuanians, Don Cossacks, Germans, Swedes, Tatars, you name it-he managed to defeat the army of Vasily IV near Zaraysk. Vasily was the legitimate Muscovite heir, insofar as the term "legitimate" applied at all during the Time of Troubles.

  From there, Lisowski went on to besiege Moscow itself, but his forces were defeated at Niedzwiedzi Brod and were stripped of most of their loot. Lisowski and his men continued fighting in the ensuing Muscovite wars; sometimes winning, sometimes losing-and always expanding their reputation for brutality and pillage.

  Eventually, in 1616, while encamped on the Polish-Muscovite border, Lisowski fell ill and died. His men adopted the name Lisowczycy-"Lisowski's Men"-in his honor, and continued their activities as a mercenary force. They had played an important role fighting for the Austrian emperor in his defeat of the Bohemian Winter King at the Battle of the White Mountain.