A Carpathian Campaign: The Powers Book 1

by Alma Boykin

  István heard the words but the meaning didn’t sink in for long seconds. Then it hit with the force of a cannonball to the heart. “His Highness Archduke Franz Ferdinand?”

  “Yes, my lord major. His wife, the Countess Chotek, is on death’s door, or so the last report said.” The stocky corporal shook his head. “The Colonel’s meeting with his staff now, sir, and we’re waiting for more news.”

  “Thank you,” István said automatically, his mind a hundred miles away. Holy Lord of mercy be with her, please. And dear, loving, merciful God, please may this be the end of the Serbian mess once and for all.

  The news of Countess Chotek’s death came on June 29, in the same spate of telegrams as the accusation of Serbian government involvement in the murders and Russian support for the nationalists. Maybe we will go south, István thought that night, after the first memorial mass for the late heir.

  What would the emperor do? Demand a trial of the murderers, of course, István knew, and likely insist once and for all that the Russians stop encouraging the Serbs. Tsar Nicholas had to agree to that much—he’d seen his grandfather killed by an anarchist’s bomb, and had almost lost his own life to the barbarians when they killed his first wife, Ekaterina. István shivered a little. Death in battle was one thing, or in bed from old age, but to die because some madman thought that killing a monarch would bring paradise on earth? That sort of thing made Rudolph Habsburg, or Magdalena Eggenberg, seem sane.

  Will there be war? Felix says no, Mátyás of course would say no, that war is impossible now. The whine of a mosquito in the room kept István from sleeping, as did his whirling, churning thoughts. The Serbian nationalists talked of war, of winning their long-dead empire back from—well, from everyone—but they didn’t have the training, the supplies, or the nerves to actually do anything, even if the government had sponsored the murder. The Russians might do something, or might not, at least from what István could guess. The united Germanies had better support the empire, which might tempt France try to grab Alsace and Lorraine while the Germans’ attention was in the east. But the German armies far outnumbered the French, and everyone knew the French needed their troops in North Africa. A small war, if there is one, like two years ago. István finally fell asleep.

  “The foreign press, they do not understand His Majesty, do they?” Major Bathory observed on the second of July.

  The other officers shrugged. They’d read the London paper. Felix sorted through his list of men currently on harvest leave. “They didn’t take His Majesty at his word, I suppose. The, ah, differences in opinion between His Majesty and the late archduke certainly weren’t a secret.”

  “No,” Bathory agreed.

  “It does make one wonder what else they fail to grasp,” István observed, adding a note to his list of absent soldiers. Those three will be easy to recall, since they’re in the same village.

  Franz Josef’s response to the reporters had been calm, a touch angry, and firm. But that anger had been directed at the late archduke, not at the Serbs. “It is terrible, the All-Powerful cannot be defied—a higher power has re-established the order which I had not managed to maintain.” The paper then reported that the Foreign Minister’s official announcement stated only that according to his majesty, the murder was, “A most unfortunate incident, and one that shall not go without response.” István suspected the anger would emerge later, once they knew more about precisely what the Serbs had done. The death of Franz Ferdinand the man meant less than did the death of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

  Josef Karl is the one who is truly distraught, although not for the reason the press suspect. He now shouldered the double—no, triple—burden of acting as War Lord as well as heir.

  So are the people. That surprised István a little, but then the peasants and others had liked the brash behavior of the late crown prince, at least on the hunting field, and their women had sighed and fluttered over his decision to marry Sophi Chotek in spite of—or to spite—his uncle. And of course, who could help but feel sorry for their orphaned children? Archduke Antony and his wife had agreed to take them in, even though everyone knew that Duchess Katarina had not approved of their parents. The parents’ faults did not belong to the children, after all.

  Felix looked up again. “Has anyone heard from Archduke Rudolph?”

  The other men shrugged. Of all the Habsburg archdukes, Rudolph was least likely to be cornered by the newsmen. “Probably trying to convince his valet and cousin that wearing a crimson and white suit with gold trim while in mourning is perfectly acceptable.” Bathory smiled as the others shuddered at the image his words summoned.

  None of István’s fellow officers were surprised when the Foreign Ministry pointed to the Russians as well as the Serbs in the days that followed. After all, István thought, everyone knew that without the Russians’ talk of the unity of all Slavs, and of being protector of the Orthodox and Serbs in particular, the nasty beasts would not have dared to assassinate the Archduke. What did catch them off guard was the cancellation of half of the harvest leaves.

  “But Col. Marbach, how is the harvest going to get done?” Felix’s question wasn’t a whine. István had read the order and wondered the same thing. The men needed to go home to help with the harvest, both regulars and reserves alike. The Empire needed food, and the harvest appeared to be one of the better ones, or so Mátyas’s letters had suggested.

  “It will get done as God wills. But there are,” the colonel pursed his lips and looked up. “I believe suggestions is the proper word. Suggestions that perhaps the Prussians’ estimates of the speed of Russian mobilization, and of their willingness to mobilize, are lower than might be hoped.”

  István sorted through the colonel’s meaning as he prepared to tell unhappy troopers that they could not go home. Could the Russians really be willing to go to war over the Serbian goat herders? Surely not. Even the French, who loathed the Empire almost as much as they hated the Prussians, had agreed that some punishment for the assassination had to be administered. István shook his head. They can’t. They need at least six weeks to mobilize, and they have no reason to. The northern Balkans are ours—have been since the days of the Hunyadi kings. Well, that’s what diplomats were for, to sort the feathers from the meat of the matter.

  On July 10, the newspapers from Prague and Olnitz carried the emperor’s list of demands from the Serbs. Felix, István, Radovan, and Taddeus passed the papers around. Radovan Stulich tapped the eighth of the list of fifteen and shook his head. “They won’t accept this one.”

  Taddeus Krzweski, as dark haired as Stulich, peered over the Croat’s shoulder and read. “Why not? It only makes sense for imperial officials to be part of the investigation, since it happened inside the Empire’s borders.”

  “Serb pride and honor. This as much as says that the imperial government doesn’t trust the Serbs to conduct a proper investigation. Do you really think General Putnic will turn over every rock to see if anyone else in the military was assisting the killers, besides the one captain who’s been arrested? If there’s one thing worse than Serbian slivoviç, it is a Serb’s sense of honor.”

  “You are suggesting that the Serbs know what honor means?”

  “They learned from the Turks and the shaggy Albanian mountain bandits. This is an insult to the government and all but says the Serbian government was at least tolerating, if not helping, the Black Hand fanatics.” Stulich folded the paper and handed it to Krzweski. “That’s how the Serbs will take it, and they’ll probably whine to the Russians, French, and anyone else who will listen about how the empire is oppressing them.”

  “Because the land reforms in Bosnia were so terrible.” István said.

  “They were to the Serbian landlords, since a small flock of their peasants jumped the border to get farms, or to look for work on the new farms. While some of the former landholders went to Serbia and cried over His Majesty taking back land they’d stolen.” Stulich leaned back, pulled his cigarette cas
e out of a drawer, and took out a cigarette. “The Serbs learned all the wrong things from the Turks.”

  István set the paper aside and went back to work. Colonel Marbach wanted a copy of the squadron’s roster for integrating any reservists, and István had discovered that the assignments and list of support units had not been corrected or updated since 1908. Personally, the thought it would be far simpler to keep the reserves and national units separate, rather than trying to fold them into the main cavalry regiments, but no one had asked for his opinion. And why are we assigned to Army Group B? We’re already on the northern border—why send us all the way to that river, the Drina? Cavalry in the mountains? What is General Conrad thinking? It had to be a mistake.

  If István had been in charge, he would have already begun to move soldiers to the borders of Serbia, and more to the edges of Bosnia. A quick advance and attack, and they’d have Belgrade and could force the Serbs to behave as they ought to. The ungrateful wretches should have been sorted out a decade ago at least, István knew, Russia’s tender feelings be damned. Then they could give a piece of that lumpy land to Rumania, and keep them from making more noises about the Banat and Transylvania. But no, the Prussians wanted to keep Russia quiet, which meant the empire had to be gentle, at least until the Serbs made up their minds.

  Did the colonel intend for the reserves to augment the squadrons or to act as replacements for losses? Or should he plan for both? Bah, István grumbled. I’ll plan for them as loss replacements, so the logistics is easier for the commissary officers to sort out. We won’t need them, since the Serbs will fold, but the colonel will have the papers.

  “They can’t be moving.”

  Felix Starhemberg waved the page of orders. “They are. The Germans have proof, red placards from inside Russian Poland calling up all the reservists. They’re chasing the civilians out of the forts. The Russians have started to mobilize.”

  “But it’s—they can’t be moving this fast.” István refused to believe it. “Four weeks? Impossible. The Russians need six weeks, at least six weeks. Even the French can’t mobilize in four weeks.”

  “Well, the Russians didn’t read our reports or correct the Germans’ observers, apparently. We’re mobilizing, Germany’s mobilizing.”

  “Do the Russians really want another defeat like the one the Japanese inflicted on them?”

  Felix shrugged. “These are the same Russians who supported a group of people that still brag about being defeated in 1389, for St. Ludmilla’s sake.”

  So Mátyás was wrong. We are going to war. Well, it will be short, like the last one down there was.

  “And the Germans are moving west, mobilizing as well.”

  István nodded. The Germans would pass through Belgium to threaten the French there and on the Rhine, to persuade the French to stay out of the way and to stop supporting the Serbs, and perhaps to restrain their Russian allies. That’s what he understood was supposed to happen. “So we are going east.”

  “No, south, as we’ve always planned. Col. Marbach says the high command has not changed anything.” Felix shrugged with a don’t-ask-me gesture.

  That evening István stopped supervising Baltazar’s efforts at packing long enough to read his mail. As he’d expected, the latest letter from his brother assured him that war could not be possible, because “everyone knew” that machine guns and motor cars and airplanes and factories made wars too dangerous. “After all,” István read, “machine guns favor the defense, which will stop any fighting as fast as it starts, or prolong wars until no one can fight.” István rolled his eyes. Yes, but that’s why you had cavalry to get around the guns, and artillery to drop on them to keep that scenario from playing out in the first place. Besides, real soldiers didn’t use those sorts of weapons. And airplanes? He snorted.

  “Your brother again?” Felix asked.

  “He thinks airplanes are the coming thing for war.”

  “Tell him to stick to counting trees.” Felix went back to writing his own letter.

  István told his heart and a few other organs to calm down as he opened a note from his wife. She was fine, the people in Kassa were treating her properly, and she confessed to indulging in a new hat and dress to wear to the end-of-summer fete at Marianbad when she went with his mother in August. “And you will be pleased to know that I am with child. Dr. Gabor believes that it is a boy.” The letter fluttered to the ground and István’s heart raced. Dear God, may this war be short. I need to stay north, to protect her. I’ll go straight to Marbach and request a transfer to a reserve unit in Galicia, languages be damned.

  Then István’s brain overrode his heart. He could not transfer, not now. Especially not now, with the unit moving south in another day. The colonel would refuse, just like István had refused when one of his troopers asked for emergency leave to visit his mother. “If she’s not dying, then no.” Even if she were dying, he’d probably still have refused the request, since headquarters had cancelled all pending leave requests and had issued the mobilization call. Today was July 16. According to what he recalled of the war plans, his regiment would be in place on the Bosnian border within ten days after the declaration of war, so July 25. Even given the railroad situation, that seemed reasonable, provided the railroad personnel did not do anything stupid. But they would, he knew in his bones. Nothing in the army went as fast or as easily as planned.

  “So,” he asked, bending to pick up the letter. “How badly will the railroad people foul up the generals’ plan?”

  “Hm?” Felix waved a hand over the page, drying the ink. “A day. We’ll lose a day. Someone will not get the word, or another regiment will have their orders changed, and it will slow things. Always happens.” He peered at István—blinked and looked again. “You’re as pale as the bedsheet. What’s wrong?”

  “Barbara’s pregnant.”

  “Congratulations! Well, done, man.” Felix jumped up and pounded István on the back. “Boy or girl?”

  “She thinks boy, so does the doctor.” Saying the words made it real. He would be a father, Janos a grandfather. He could hardly believe it.

  “Excellent. Heir and a spare and then you can get back to doing what you want with someone you like.” Starhemberg sounded exceedingly smug, for all that he had yet to marry his own fiancée.

  “I like my wife, thank you.”

  Felix raised his hands, warding off an attack. “Easy there. I know. You Eszterházys are odd that way, sticking to one at a time.” He stepped back. “Well, congratulations, and we still have a war to fight and Serbs to civilize.”

  István snorted. “I think we could tame the Albanians and Turks before the Serbs act civilized.”

  “Point.”

  The railcar jerked to a stop as train brakes squalled in the darkness. “What now?” someone demanded from two seats behind István. He peered out of the window, trying to see where they were. Somewhere on the Great Plain—that much he could tell by starlight. Otherwise? He closed his eyes again and tried to get to sleep. They’d managed to get everyone through loading in Brüm, without losing any of the horses to accidents or any of the men or equipment. The train passed through the switchyards in Pozon, the regiment stayed together in the chaos of Budapest—despite an infantry colonel who tried to commandeer the train—and now it was travelling south through the Alföld, between the Danube and Tisza Rivers. István assumed the train would change directions, or the regiment would unload and then reload in Szabadka/ Maria Theresiopel and go southwest to Bosnia. He shifted in his seat and tried to relax.

  The train moved again, then stopped again. “Out, collect your gear and unload,” an orderly called, passing through the senior officers’ car. István looked outside again and could almost make out two words on a railroad sign.

  “What’s going on?”

  “New orders, sir. Col. Marbach will explain. We’re to unload.” The orderly hurried on and István stretched and got up. As he climbed down from the car, he discovered that they’d stopped at
a tiny rural station. A few lanterns showed in the pre-dawn dark, and he smelled cooking fires, and wet dirt, and the coal smoke of the train. Door rollers squealed as men pulled open the doors on the stable cars and started unloading the horses, using makeshift ramps from lumber they found near the station’s two small excuses for buildings.

  “Officers, this way. Eszterházy, Bathory, Greenberg, Gabor, this way,” another orderly called. István followed the voice, working his way through the chaos of men and equipment overflowing from the rural station. A cow lowed not far away, and he heard roosters protesting the disturbance. The colonel had taken over the stationmaster’s small office at the end of the platform, and lamp and candlelight spilled out from the grimy window. István shouldered through a knot of teamsters and found the others.

  “Good, you’re the last one,” Col. Marbach announced. “We have new orders. They can’t turn the train, so we are traveling to Félgyháza, due east of us. A new train will take us to Lemberg.”

  No one groaned, but István certainly wanted to. At least it’s been dry, so we’re not riding through knee-deep mud. Why can’t we stay on the train and at Szabadka cut up to Szeged?

  “No, I do not know what is going on that plans have changed, although I suspect you can all imagine. The orders were signed by Archduke Thomas, overriding General Conrad’s earlier orders. Get your men organized and horses fed, and we’ll set out at first light. You do have maps.”

  István didn’t, but he knew who would, despite orders to the contrary. Lt. Merkl always carried too many maps. He should have been in logistics, not the cavalry, but for once his obsession would prove useful.

  Col. Marbach added, “Usual march order unless I say otherwise. Any questions?” Everyone shook their heads. “Good. Send a runner when you are ready.”

  By the time the unit detrained, sorted itself out, and two thousand men and horses had gotten their things in order, the sun had been up for two hours and the entire hamlet of Kis Küros had turned out to see the commotion. Women, children, and old men lined the dusty street, staring, talking, and waving at the horsemen as they rode past. Many acted nervous, and István and a few other Hungarians had to explain that they were Imperial soldiers, not Russians, Serbs, or Turks. The men had not completely convinced one old woman who screamed “The Turks have come back,” but she’d stopped threatening them with her pitchfork. Now she stood with the others, a round bundle of black clothes and white apron, dark eyes in a dried-apple face watching in silence as the horsemen trotted by.