by Eric Flint
Chapter 48
Dresden, capital of Saxony
Aside from mail couriers and smugglers, the one other class of people who were willing to risk penetrating siege lines were news reporters. Such men had existed for at least a century, but the Ring of Fire had expanded their number considerably. With the romanticism of up-time examples to lean on, the none-too-reputable trade of news reporter gained a certain cachet. That was especially true if a man could claim the title of “war correspondent.”
(Female reporters had a certain equivalent if they could pose as “gossip columnists.” Gossip, of course, had existed for millennia. But not until the Ring of Fire did it occur to anyone that you might actually be able to make a living from the business.)By the time of the battle, there were a handful of such men residing in Dresden. They were all out of the city and moving through the trenches before the shooting even stopped. One of them was wounded, in fact, by a fragment from a grenade. Not badly, though, and in the years to come the scar he picked up on his forehead added greatly to his prestige and even probably expanded his purse a bit.
By mid-afternoon, they’d collected the essential bits of information and had all raced back into Dresden. There, they clamored for radio time.
The CoC guards protecting the radio room refused to let them in. Tempers became frayed. A nasty incident might have ensued except that Tata showed up.
“Are you mad?” she said crossly to the guards. “Let them all in. Now.”
To the reporters, she said: “Decide in what order you’ll get to the radio. Then you each get three minutes.”
This was akin to telling cats to decide the order in which they’d eat. Immediately, the reporters started quarreling. After two minutes of that, Tata threw up her hands.
“Idiots! Fine. We will have one report, written by all of you. Sign it in whatever order you choose.”
Herding cats, again. Immediately, they fell to quarreling over the order in which their names would appear.
Tata let that go on for no more than thirty seconds.
“Shut up! Fine. None of you will sign it, then. Come up with a pseudonym or something for all of you together.”
Again, quarreling.
“Shut up! Fine. Since you all have the sense of a goose, I will come up with the name.”
A stray memory came to her of something she’d run across in an up-time text.
So was born the Associated Press.
The reporters quarreled all through the process of writing the news account. But eventually they managed to get it written. They would even admit—not to each other, of course, and certainly not in public—that the end product was much better than any one of them would have come up with on their own. Their trade was at a stage of development where sensationalism came a long way ahead of substance. As a result, none of them had stayed out in the field any longer than they needed to in order to grasp the sensational essence of the event. But once all their accounts were added together, a great deal of factual content wound up being included.
There was even an unexpected bonus. By the time they were finally ready to transmit the report, a breathless CoC courier piled into the radio room.
“They killed Banér! They killed Banér!”
The reporters stared at him. “How can you be sure?” asked one, moved by an unusual impulse toward accuracy.
“I saw his head myself.” The young courier made a face. The grimace combined horror, fascination and glee. “It’d come right off his body. Ripped off by bullets, looked like. Some of the Prince’s soldiers brought it to him in a sack. They wanted to put it on a pikehead—just like that Swede shithead said he was going to do to us!—but the Prince wouldn’t let them.”
He was clearly aggrieved by that last decision; but, under the circumstances, was willing to forgive the Prince his lapse of judgment.
The reporters looked at each other.
Tata took charge again. “You’d better go make sure before you send the radio message. This is not something you want to be wrong about.”
The reporters hesitated.
“Fine. Let me put it this way. You don’t get to use the radio until you make sure. If you try”—she waggled a finger at the two CoC guards, putting them on alert—“I will have you shot.”
Off they went.
They were back in less than an hour.
“It’s Banér, all right. I did a report on him last month and got to interview him for a few minutes. Grouchy bastard.”
Another reported chimed in. “I’ve met him too. He looks a bit the worse for wear”—that got a round of chuckles—“but it’s definitely him.”
It was the work of less than a minute to modify the report. Then they started quarreling over which one of them got to read the report.
“Shut up!” said Tata. “Fine. Give it to me. I’ll read the blasted thing.”
By then, though, it was already late afternoon and Tata decided to wait until the evening window. She’d had some time to think the matter through and realized that she wanted to make sure the transmission reached as far as possible and as many people as possible.
The reporters put up an argument, naturally, but not much of one and not for very long. Tata was a ferocious bully and had a short way with annoying men.
Finally, the time came and the report went out.
Chapter 49
Magdeburg, capital of the United States of Europe
After Rebecca got the report, she took her children and sat with them by a window, looking out into the night. The snow had finally stopped falling and there was enough of a moon to see the city. For once, its industrial filth covered in white, Magdeburg was not ugly.
Kathleen was in her lap. Sepharad sat to her left, Baruch to her right.
“Daddy will be home soon,” she said, smiling.
“Is he all right?” asked Baruch anxiously.
“Oh, yes.” She imagined he must have some bruises, assuming the report that he’d had two horses shot out from under him was accurate and not just a reporter’s fabrication. But he was definitely alive and in fairly good health. That was clear in the report and presented in several different ways, ending with his refusal to allow Banér’s head to be hoisted on a pike.
That sounded like Michael. He would have fought savagely, but with the battle now won he’d already be looking toward a peace settlement. Rubbing salt into wounds was just not his way.
She so loved that man. She envied Gretchen, then. She had survived—the report was explicit on that issue—and so had her husband. Colonel Higgins was played up in the report, in fact. Apparently it had been his regiment that was responsible for killing Banér, although Rebecca had serious doubts that Jeff had led a final charge on horseback. The man hated to ride at the best of times. In a snowstorm? Not likely.
Gretchen’s children came into the room, entering slowly and hesitantly. Rebecca waved them toward her.
“Your mother is fine,” she said. “So is your father.”
After that, they looked out of the window in silence. There seemed nothing much more to say.
Kristina came to stand by Ulrik, as he looked out of a window in the royal palace. He, too, was struck by Magdeburg’s unusual looks that night. The snow covering everything gleamed in the moonlight. If you didn’t know how much soot and grime lay underneath, you might think you were in some enchanted elven city.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“Nothing, still.” He put a hand on her skinny shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
There was a great deal of affection in that squeeze, not simply reassurance. He’d become very fond of the girl in the time they’d spent together since they left for Stockholm back in…
Dear God. Had it only been eight months ago? It seemed more like eight years.
Impossible, of course. If it had really been eight years, Kristina would now be old enough to get married.
He thought about that for a while. And realized that for the first time since he’d bec
ome betrothed to the Swedish princess, he was looking forward to the marriage. Sometime, somewhere, somehow, it had ceased being purely a political matter.
“You’re sure?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” he replied.
Brussels, capital of the Netherlands
Peter Paul Rubens left the meeting early. Once the report was digested and the basic response settled upon—no, obviously we’re not going to try to take advantage of the situation; not with Stearns alive and so obviously well; we’re not mad—he saw no need to spend the next few hours assuring the king and queen and their advisers that they’d made the right decisions all along. Archduchess Isabella would handle that just fine.
Instead, moved by a sudden impulse—a rare impulse, lately—he wanted to start a painting.
He didn’t normally do battlefield portraits. Portraits of combat, yes—he’d done many of those. But they focused on such things as Achilles’ slaying of Hector or a lion hunt or the battle of the Amazons. He wasn’t particularly fond of the sort of set-piece depictions of enormous battlefields, which usually portrayed the victor in the foreground. He’d done close cousins of that sort of paintings on commission, like his Triumph of Henry IV. But he’d never before been moved to do one simply because he found the subject fascinating.
This time, though, he couldn’t resist. First, because he’d already done a portrait of the subject which he’d had to keep hidden because the political content was dubious for someone in his position. In the course of that work, though, he felt he’d come to know the man and wanted the chance to portray him again—this time, in a painting that could see the light of day.
And then, there was the central image! As arresting as Judith slaying Holofernes. The conquering general, presented with the head of his defeated enemy—and spurning it. Not from horror but from majesty, as befitted a prince.
Paris, capital of France
“Your judgment was quite sound, Your Grace,” said Servien, once Richelieu had finished reading the news report that had come in over the radio in the palace. “It was wise not to do anything.”
The cardinal set the report aside and shrugged. “Most likely, yes. It would have been easier to deal with Oxenstierna, but I’m afraid he’s in a bad place now. He should have left well enough alone.”
Coming from Richelieu, that statement was perhaps dubious. There were many in France—some of them not even his enemies—who thought the accusation couldn’t leave well enough alone belonged on his own doorstep.
Madrid, capital of Spain
There was no reaction to the news report in the court of Spain.
They had no radio. They wouldn’t receive the news for days yet.
Poznan, Poland
“They claim some Poles were involved,” said Lukasz Opalinski, as he scanned through the report. After reading a couple of more lines, he hissed. “I don’t believe it! The fellow who was apparently their leader claims some connection to the Koniecpolskis! Some bastards will say anything.”
“His name?” asked Stanislaw Koniecpolski.
Lukasz shook his head. “They don’t provide it. But it’s an obvious lie. The only Pole we know in Dresden is Jozef and he certainly wouldn’t…”
His voice trailed off. Startled, he looked up at the grand hetman. “You don’t think… Surely…”
Koniecpolski started to laugh.
Berlin, capital of Brandenburg
Keeping well off to the side of the assembly chamber, almost but not quite in the shadows, Erik Haakansson Hand listened cynically to Oxenstierna’s speech. The chancellor was taking the time to rally the spirits of his followers, even as he prepared to march his army out of Berlin.
Everything is fine, lads.
He wouldn’t be marching on Magdeburg, though. There’d been a last minute change of plans. He’d have to march on Dresden instead, and hope to succeed where Banér had failed.
Victory will soon be ours.
He needed to move quickly, too, before Stearns’ division recuperated.
I march on the rebels tomorrow!
Great cheers rang the chamber. The colonel felt a hand tug at his elbow. Turning, he saw it was James Wallace, one of the Scot bodyguards in Ljungberg’s unit.
“Erling says you have to come now. Quickly.”
Gustav Adolf was sitting up in his bed when Erik entered the room. His blue eyes seemed bright and clear.
“What is happening, cousin?” the king asked. Only the slight drawl indicated the lurking anger. He hooked a thumb at Ljungberg.
“He won’t tell me anything. Me, his own king.”
“That’s because…”
Where to begin?
The king solved that problem himself. “Is my daughter…?”
“She’s quite well, Your Majesty,” Erik said hurriedly. “In good health. Even in good spirits. Just yesterday, I listened—well…”
“What? Damn you, Erik, what’s happening?”
Ah, that familiar temper. A good solid kingly sort of temper. Not a wild and unfocused rage.
Also a far more dangerous temper, of course.
“Yesterday I listened to a speech she gave over the radio. Quite a good one, too, allowing for her age. Very enthusiastic.”
Gustav Adolf frowned. “Why is my daughter giving speeches? Over the radio, you said?”
“It’s a long story, Sire.”
“Then sit.”
Chapter 50
The United States of Europe
All of the major newspapers in the country and many of the smaller ones came out with the story the next morning. It didn’t matter what day of the week they normally published. It didn’t matter whether they were morning papers or evening papers. Even if the edition was just a two-page special edition, nothing more than a broadsheet printed on both sides, they all published something.
The headlines varied from city to city and province to province, but the gist of them was essentially the same:
great battle at dresden
terrible casualties
the prince triumphant
swedish army routed
general banér killed in the fighting
siege of dresden lifted
The emphasis varied from one newspaper to another. Some stressed the drama and pathos of the terrible struggle in the middle of a snowstorm. Others focused more on the tactical details, still others on the political ramifications.
None of them were restrained. Purple prose was alive, well, thriving—you might even call it the kudzu of contemporary journalese—and most writers laid it on as thickly as they could.
Fussy and slavish devotion to the facts was the poorest of cousins. The claims made in the newspapers that day would by and large become fixed in the nation’s mythology. These in particular:
The Prince of Germany had waged a tactical masterpiece of a battle, anticipating his hapless Swedish opponent’s every move and thwarting him at every turn.
Colonel Higgins led his Hangman Regiment in the decisive charge that routed the Swedes. On horseback, waving his sword—and a fair number of accounts had that sword responsible for sweeping off the head of Johan Banér.
Gretchen Richter personally led the sortie that took the Swedish siege lines. Some of the accounts had her bare-breasted in the doing. In February, in a snowstorm.
And the silliest of them all:
Every soldier in the Prince’s army was a stout-hearted German. Every soldier in Banér’s, a brutal and rapacious Swede.
The last fabrication was perhaps a necessity, for the nation that exploded that morning. For eighteen years, the great war had washed back and forth across German soil. Every nation, it seemed, had either plundered the land and brutalized the populace or (in the case of the French) paid others to do it.
(The one nation that could legitimately claim to be quite blameless in the matter was Poland—which the USE had repaid by invading. Once again illustrating the adage that no good deed goes unpunished.)
The Germanies had
been helpless in the face of the catastrophe. And yet—
Almost every army that had wreaked havoc for all those years had been heavily or even largely German in its composition. The rulers who commanded the brutal deeds might have been foreigners and so might the generals. But most of the soldiers had come from the same people who were being savaged.
That had been just as true in the snowfields southwest of Dresden on February 26, 1636 as it had been on almost every battlefield of the war. Johan Banér himself was a Swede, and so were many of his officers. But at least two-thirds of his mercenaries had been Germans and at least half the officers who commanded them as well. The truth was, there were probably more Scottish officers and soldiers in Banér’s army that day than there were Swedes.
The Prince of Germany didn’t simply defeat an enemy that day, he erased a national humiliation. For the first time in years, an army that everyone considered a German army had decisively defeated a foreign army—in defense of a German city.
Mike Stearns would always be the Prince after that day. To almost any German, regardless of their political affiliations—regardless of whether they would have voted for him or not for political office, which many of them wouldn’t, then or ever. A title that had begun as a nickname bestowed upon him by radicals had now become an accepted national verity.
His views didn’t matter. His origins didn’t matter. Indeed, there were plenty of Germans who thought God had sent him across the Ring of Fire for this specific purpose. Germans reacted to his victory much the same way Americans in another universe had reacted when Joe Louis defeated Max Schmeling—magnified ten-fold. Most of the people who’d cheered for Louis had had no respect for his race, wouldn’t have voted for him if he ran for vote, and would have had a fit if he’d come courting their daughters.
It didn’t matter. On that day, in that ring, he was the national champion—against a political cause that Americans by and large detested. (Which was quite unfair to Schmeling himself, who was very far from a Nazi. But historical verdicts are often unfair to persons.)
So it was again. Almost every city and town in the United States of Europe exploded that morning, except the few who didn’t get the news until the afternoon—and then exploded.