Grantville Gazette, Volume 64

by Bjorn Hasseler

  The water wasn't deep, but enough to pose an obstacle for advancing troops. And then it had frozen hard during the night, and the light snowfall around midnight had covered the ice. The cavalry in particular would be in for a bad surprise.

  Moritz took a deep breath. Hopefully that was enough to turn the tables.

  Suddenly several small lights showed up in the darkness. Showtime!

  He heard his people moving, readying the makeshift rocket-shields they had built from wet wood. They had no idea if they'd work, but the people in the front row were all volunteers and knew about the risks they were taking.

  The lights became stronger when the fuses lit up. Moritz's lips moved "five … four … three …" The light became eye-piercing as the first battery ignited. With an unexpected result.

  Moritz's eyes widened.

  "What the hell?" the man next to him asked.

  Moritz for once could forgive his blasphemy.

  Instead of dozens of rockets launching and raining down on Moritz's men like a hailstorm of fire, the whole launcher started to move. It seemed as though the rockets were stuck in their barrels.

  The wagon moved faster and faster, followed by its three companions. Moritz started. Were those contraptions not simple rocket launchers but rocket-driven flying objects? Would they launch now, jump over the creek, and drop between Moritz' troops?

  The startled neighing of horses and shouting of men spoke against that idea. Men and animals—the latter still tied to the moving launchers—were irresistibly pulled across the ice. The men finally dropped the reins, but the poor horses were certainly in for a worse fate.

  The men from Moritz's bodyguard to his right and left started to laugh. He himself wasn't yet sure that this would end well.

  When the first launcher with still-firing rockets reached the creek it first looked as if it would manage to jump across, but then gravity took its toll. The contraption toppled over and fell into the water. Some rockets were still firing, but vertically into the air, driving it even deeper, and then they went out.

  The pair of horses closest to the launcher had been pulled over the edge and the animals were futilely trying to reach the banks. Maybe they had a chance to survive if they weren't shot during the impending battle.

  But even that could be avoided.

  Moritz looked to the radio engineer. "Start the amplifier," he ordered. Then he took the microphone. "This is Moritz von Hessen, speaking for Amalie Elisabeth, landgravine of Hesse-Kassel, and acting governor of the Province of Hesse-Kassel." His voice rolled over the meadow and made his ears tingle.

  He still hadn't understood how this thing worked, which made his voice so loud that perhaps the people back in Kassel could hear him, but he was very willing to use it to his advantage.

  "General von Groschlag. We know about your plans, and we know your number. The people around me are willing to kill all your men and keep them away from our home country at all cost. If you surrender now, nobody has to die today, and I guarantee that all of your soldiers will be back home with their families for Christmas."

  He switched off the microphone, and took the radio. "Clott, do you hear me?" he asked.

  "Yes, Your Grace."

  "What are they doing?"

  "Discussing options it seems."

  "Will they surrender?"

  "One moment … No, we think they aren't shocked enough. It seems that Groschlag's lieutenants are rousing their men for an attack."

  "Shit. This is madness." They had no chance to cross the creek without rocket volleys keeping his men in check.

  He switched the microphone on.

  "Soldiers of Hesse-Darmstadt. Fellow Hessians. This mission is illegal. By the constitution of the USE war between members is forbidden. Take your officers prisoner, and you will be allowed to return home freely. If you advance across this creek, you will be killed with no chance to return fire."

  He switched the microphone off, and sucked on his lower lip. If they followed his order, all would go well, but he doubted they would. Perhaps they had been told there would be no substantial resistance to be expected. The officers might think he was bluffing. Well, there was a lot of bluff in his action, nevertheless …

  "Captain?"

  "Yes, Colonel?"

  "I know it's risky, but I want six half-volleys directly in front of them on my command. Five seconds interval."

  "Colonel? Hmmm, yes, I understand."

  The captain slid back and delivered his command.

  They had three guns and a lot of ammunition for each skilled shooter, mostly Hunters. Two men, mostly wounded veterans from the honor guard he had brought back from Poland, were tasked to load the SRGs and hunters' rifles as fast as possible. They could deliver continuous accurate fire three times as fast as a normal unit, but only a third of them would be firing. All of the guns were loaded to begin with, so each shooter could fire three times in short succession. After that, they had to start reloading, and the first round of the real continuous fire wouldn’t come until after at least one minute of action. If von Groschlag or one of his lieutenants smelled a rat, Moritz was lost. The enemy had at least five times as many shooters as he.

  "Colonel? They're advancing."

  He took his binoculars. Shit! Men were slipping on the thin ice, but still they advanced.

  "Captain, have the first group shoot those horses carrying the planks. They mustn't cross the creek, but have the rest fire just in front of their feet."

  "Yes, Colonel."

  He took the radio. "Clott, tell your men not to shoot. I still want to keep this as bloodless as possible."

  "Understood, Your Grace."

  He dropped the radio. "All ready, Captain?"

  "Yes, Colonel."

  He switched the microphone on. "This is my last warning. Fire!"

  The effect was interesting at least. The eight horses carrying planks went down in the first volley. The second volley made those hardened soldiers jump, when the ice in front of their feet exploded. By the third they were accustomed to it, but the advance had stalled. The fourth volley made them wonder what they had against them. The fifth volley pried cries of anger and pain out of them. Several men went down, when some stray bullet hit their feet. The sixth volley was devastating for their morale. While the blood toll was still negligible, they now were convinced that their opponents had up-time guns or repeating rifles against them.

  "Cease fire!" he shouted into the microphone. It was purely for show, since it would at least take thirty seconds before the next volley could be delivered, and only if none of the loaders made an error.

  He looked through his binoculars. The advance seemed to have completely stopped. The wounded were being pulled over the ice to the edge of the slope behind them. The other soldiers were standing around talking to each other.

  He grinned. Soldiers talking instead of fighting were always an advantage for the other side. Should he wait for their decision or should he push them further?

  "Clott, what's happening on your side?"

  "We can't see very well. It seems as if they're discussing things again."

  Well. He took the microphone. "Soldiers of a renegade. Fellow Hessians. This is your last chance. Surrender all your weapons and return to your recent camp in Borken. Then we will negotiate the conditions for your safe return to your families. You have five minutes to decide."

  ****

  Kassel

  "The rockets froze in the barrels?" Amalie Elisabeth said, giggling. "And dragged the launchers into the water?"

  "That's at least our assessment." Moritz lay relaxed on a sofa and had—on his sister-in-law's explicit order—removed his heavy boots to let some air get to the large blisters his feet sported. He should have worn his old boots for this campaign, and not the shiny new ones that had come with his colonel’s uniform.

  He sipped from his glass of wine. "We left a detachment of engineers there to salvage those launchers. And we've got their supply of rockets." He frowned
. "This isn't a flawed weapon. Their crews just lacked the scientific background to anticipate what might happen when the fog set in."

  "What a pity you didn't have a camera with you to record their faces for posterity." They looked at each other and laughed.

  "And then they really surrendered?" Amalie said, sobering. "Just from your words?"

  Moritz shrugged. "I can be convincing if I try hard. Half of them joined our ranks. The rest are locked up for now in Hersfeld without weapons. Georg will explode when he hears that."

  The door opened, and Moritz hectically tried to get into a more respectful position.

  "Stay put, boy!" his aunt said grinning while entering the room. "You deserve it."

  "Thanks," he said and took another sip of wine. "Have you heard from your husband since I left?"

  "He and Max are safe in Magdeburg. Max enjoys talking to salespeople from several industries to get some more modern technology into West Thuringia. Johann less enjoys talking to members of the more moderate factions of the Crown Loyalists. He tries to get them to refrain from commenting on the events in Berlin until the situation is settled one way or the other."

  Amalie smiled. "So everything is back to business as usual."

  ****

  Grantville

  "Welcome back, detective and sergeant," Lieutenant Himmel greeted Gloria Papenheim and Peter Hagendorf, when they entered his office. "I heard everything went well in Kassel."

  "Yes, Sir," Gloria said and snapped to attention.

  Peter exchanged an amused smile with Himmel. If she had to do this to feel right, he wouldn't stop her.

  "I've got a package for you, Lieutenant," he said and put it on the officer's desk. Then he stood casually next to Gloria.

  Himmel didn't look surprised. He cut the sealed tape and opened the thick brown paper wrap. The package contained two small boxes made of dark wood and a sheet of paper.

  "Sergeant," he then said, winking at Gloria, who still stood at attention. "Why don't you follow the detective's lead?"

  Peter frowned. Himmel normally didn't stand on formality. Well … He carefully took the same pose as Gloria.

  Then Himmel rose, holding the sheet of paper in his hand. "Detective Gloria Papenheim, Sergeant Peter Hagendorf. On behalf of the acting governor of the Province of Hesse-Kassel, for extraordinary diligence in saving her from a hostile invasion, I have the privilege to bestow on you both the newly created order Pour le Mérite of the landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel."

  ****

  Author's notes:

  All named down-timers (apart from Gloria and Lieutenant Himmel) are historical.

  Moritz von Hessen (*1614), half-brother to Wilhelm, died OTL in 1633 in Swedish service from smallpox. Certainly some measures have been taken by then to avoid that, or he hadn't been in the same place by luck, and so he survived.

  The anecdote of how the Hessians became the Swedes' first committed supporters is historical, even Hermann Wolff's ride back on a cushion containing the secret treaty.

  Johann (Giese, Geise) Geyso (* January 29, 1593 in Borken) OTL became Amalie's strategic councilor after Wilhelm's death, and later grudgingly returned to active duty. He fought a number of more-or-less successful battles in the later years of the Thirty Years' War. In 1644, he led two thousand soldiers to Aschersleben near Magdeburg, freeing Lennart Torstensson from the siege General Gallas had laid on the town. He was ennobled and settled down after the end of the war.

  Oberförster (Senior Forester) Otto Clott received a land grant by Landgrave Wilhelm in 1631, so he might have been one of the captains of the Hessian Hunters.

  The names and positions of Amalie's council were fixed in Wilhelm's will from the year 1634. OTL there were a number of corrections due to intermediate deaths among them until the year 1640, when Amalie finally took over the regency.

  Otto von Nassau-Weilburg (* February 24, 1610 in Saarbrücken), OTL died in Neuweilnau in 1632 shortly after the Battle of Lützen.

  The von Groschlag family lived in and around Dieburg near Darmstadt. There is no detailed information of the members in the 1630s, so I left the first names off here.

  Art Director's Note: I would like to thank Rainer for providing the source images for his story, he is always a great help!-Garrett W. Vance

  About the Faces on the Cutting Room Floor: Number Two

  by Charles E. Gannon

  Sherrilyn Maddox’s perplexity regarding Thomas North’s strange reactions to her was magnified when he avoided detailing the apparent falling-out he had with his co-commander of the Hibernian Mercenary Battalion, Liam Donovan. It took a while for the circumstances—both those of their adventure and their interaction—to be suitable for the truth of the matter to emerge, but ultimately it did.

  Which, due to the need to excise the Thomas/Sherrilyn subplot from 1635: The Papal Stakes, was lost along with all their other significant exchanges. Here’s the tale that was lost from the greater story:

  When the last of the group had filed out, Sherrilyn rose and took a seat next to Thomas North, who was still staring at the far wall. She sat quietly for a while, waited until she was sure that he was aware of her, at least peripherally. “So, are you going to tell me now?”

  Thomas swallowed, glanced at her. “Tell you? Tell you what?”

  Sherrilyn sighed. “Thomas, I know you’ve been under a lot of pressure. You’ve drawn a thankless job as Harry’s intelligence officer and it’s got to feel damned odd for you—a colonel with years and years of real field experience—to be taking orders from him. So I figured you had enough trouble on your plate and didn’t need any more from me. Which meant not following up on the conversation we never finished the night we linked up with the embassy in Lombardy.

  “But now, after watching your reaction to Miro’s announcement that he might bring Liam down here, I’ve gotta ask again: what happened between you and Donovan? You guys used to be like brothers who couldn’t decide whether they couldn’t live without each other, or whether you had to beat the crap out of each other. So you wound up doing both. You were funnier, then; non-stop jokes was the Thomas North trademark. Although half of them were groaners of the worst kind.”

  Thomas did not look at her. “Then I would expect you’d find my ostensible change to be an improvement.”

  “Damn it, Thomas: do you have to make this any harder than it already is? You don’t talk to anyone. I know; I’ve watched. And this thing with Liam is eating you alive, from the inside out. Either a little bit every day, or in huge gulps, like right now. So, I’ll ask you one more time, Colonel North: what did you mean when you said that Liam went through hell alone? And how does that involve you, since you were in jail, at the time?”

  North resumed staring at the far wall. “There’s no way to ease into this topic. So I’ll just stick with the facts. As they are known. There aren’t many.”

  Sherrilyn felt the invisible hairs on her forearms rise slightly. Thomas’ altered tone and facial expression were unnervingly familiar to her. It was the detached delivery of the police reporting a driving death, or an FAA flack announcing a plane crash. “Go on,” she said. “I won’t interrupt.”

  “Thank you. Two months into my incarceration in the Grantville jail, Liam had the whole company in the field. There had been some late winter banditry. It was not uncommon, before you up-timers arrived in that part of Germany: food stores run low, and the region was hunted out by all the foraging armies. Liam didn’t need all the Hibernians, but the ‘company’ had grown to the size of a rump battalion. He felt that some tough winter maneuvers were just what was needed to shake out the growing pains and ensure unit cohesiveness. So, leaving a few injured fellows behind, off he went.”

  “His wife Desdemona—I’m not sure he ever learned her real name—was at home with their little boy. She was, frankly, a striking beauty of the highest hidalgo strain, clearly a nobleman’s daughter. But when we found her with the rest of the camp-followers of a mercenary company that tried cases wit
h us, she was hugely pregnant, and showed no desire to return to whatever Castilian castle she had come from.

  “I always took the piss out of Liam by asserting that the only reason she stayed with him was desperation. And maybe a bit of pity. But after all, at the beginning, it could hardly have been love: she didn’t speak a word of English, and he not a bit of Spanish. So that did make me wonder why she stayed those first weeks. Perhaps it was the dishonor of her pregnancy; your average aristocratic Spanish papa is not a very indulgent parent in such regards. ‘Better death than disgrace,’ is, I think, their loving axiom in such matters. Maybe she knew that would be her fate if she tried to return.

  “Of course, there was the question of why she was in Austria to begin with. I’ve contemplated the possibilities often enough: a captured daughter of a general sent to assist the Austrian branch of the Hapsburgs? A willful hellion who ran away to follow a dashing young officer? A girl who changed her mind about entering a foreign convent and got caught in the currents of war?” North sighed and his head dropped. “War has so many faces and stories: anything is possible. Indeed, when you’ve seen enough of it, there’s almost nothing left that can surprise you. No coincidence, no barbarity, no idiocy, no tragedy can do more than confirm what you have come to know: that war, regardless of its other properties, is always a ghastly carnival of the surreal.”

  He was quiet for a long time. “So no one ever knew who she was, or how she had come to be enslaved among those camp-followers, or who had fathered her child. And because of that, no one ever learned anything about the small group that evidently slipped into our unit’s almost-deserted compound on New Year’s Eve. No one knows who killed the old pensioner standing—well, sitting—guard at the gate house. No one knows who broke in Desdemona’s door. No one knows who first stabbed her in the heart, then gutted her like a fresh-killed deer. No one knows who dashed her infant’s brains out against the wall. Repeatedly. Or so I was told. And no one knows who left the door swinging in the winter wind, inviting those who dared to go inside to see the form that auld lang syne had taken in Liam Donovan’s house, while he was away.”