1635: The Eastern Front (assiti shards)

by Eric Flint

  So, the official explanation for the seizure of the palace: They needed its vast expanse, its many rooms and resources, in order to take care of the troops, wounded in brave battle with the enemy.

  Say no to that, if you dare.

  Eric Krenz had been the one who first suggested the idea. Tata had initially dismissed it as just a typical Eric Krenz ploy to improve his creature comforts. Of course he'd want to recuperate from his injuries in a palace bed!

  But she'd gotten to know Krenz well enough by then to realize that he had a habit of couching serious ideas and proposals within a frivolous and casual shell. Why he did that was a mystery to her, but she'd come to recognize the pattern.

  So, she'd given it a second thought. It hadn't taken her long then to realize what a cunning idea it was.

  Two days later, all the recuperating soldiers in the city were moved into the palace. As a mere afterthought, a casual side effect, a stray feather in the wind, the CoC moved in as well. Within a short time, the palace had become their fortress.

  Krenz did wind up in a palace bed. But Tata insisted that he had to share it with Lieutenant Nagel.

  Who, for his part-he was a very odd young man-kept making peculiar remarks about hidden mothers and sightless men and the iniquity of fate.

  Eric had been very disgruntled. Mostly, Tata thought, because having to share a bed with Nagel created obvious difficulties for his campaign to seduce Tata.

  Which was part of the reason she'd done it, of course. She hadn't made up her mind yet and didn't like to feel unduly pressured. Krenz could be relentless, in his insouciant sort of way.

  In a different part of the city, Noelle Stull was also studying the sky, and looking almost as disgruntled as Gretchen.

  "This sucks," she pronounced.

  "What are you talking about?" countered Denise Beasley. "I think it's way cool. Dresden's where all the excitement is. Or is gonna be, anyway. You watch."

  She and Minnie Hugelmair were perched on a divan in the main room of the house, playing cards. Noelle had no idea which particular game they were playing. She'd been only passingly familiar with up-time card games. These down-time games were incomprehensible. The two teenagers were using Italian cards that Eddie had gotten for Denise as a gift. The cards were round, not oblong. And instead of the familiar four suits of spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds, they had five suits: swords, wands, cups, coins and rings.

  "How is it 'cool'?" Noelle demanded crossly. "I want to get back home."

  "Why? We're moving to Prague soon anyway. And that so-called 'home' you rented in Magdeburg was a tiny little dump."

  Minnie nodded, as she laid another card on the cushion between them that they were using as a table. "Yeah. Compared to that place, this is a palace."

  It was a very nice house, in most respects. The departure of so many of the city's upper crust had left a lot of vacancies-and Noelle was operating with Francisco Nasi's money here in Dresden, not her own. But she'd expected to be here for only a short time, to oversee the preparation of the airfield while Eddie flew back to get Gretchen. She hadn't anticipated getting trapped in the city by a storm.

  A very nice house in most respects, yes. But not all-and not the most critical.

  "My apartment in Magdeburg may have been tiny-"

  "Smelly, too," Denise chipped in.

  "Cockroaches everywhere you looked," was Minnie's contribution.

  "-but it had plumbing."

  That shut them up. With few exceptions, even the wealthiest residences in Dresden still had traditional seventeenth-century toilet facilities. The use of such facilities started with the verb "squat" and went downhill from there.

  In contrast, buildings in Magdeburg were less than five years old, with very few exceptions. The sack of the city by Tilly's army in 1631 had destroyed almost everything. And since most of the construction that came later had happened after American influence started to spread, and given the CoCs' well-nigh-fanatical observation of sanitary measures, even the most wretched living quarters in Magdeburg had access to running water.

  And sewers.

  "You think my apartment smelled bad, Minnie? How d'you like the aroma out in the streets here? Should I open the window to remind you?"

  "Don't rub it in," said Denise. "Besides, I bet the rain's washed most of it away by now."

  "Yeah, I bet it has-right into the river. Where we get our water from. Can we say 'typhus,' girls?"

  "She's going to keep rubbing it in, isn't she?" said Minnie.

  Denise whooped and swept up the pile of cards on the cushion. Apparently, she'd won something. A hand? A game? A trick? Who knew?

  Noelle's grandmother had warned her that cards were an instrument of the devil. Here, she figured, was living proof.

  Chapter 34

  The Warta river, between Gorzow and Poznan

  The reports had been accurate. Hidden within a small grove of trees, Lukasz Opalinski looked onto the Warta. Just as the Cossacks had said, there on the road running by the river was one of the huge American war machines. An "APC," it was called, whatever that meant. Lukasz had forgotten to ask Jozef Wojtowicz what the initials stood for.

  The thing was enormous, even bigger than Lukasz remembered from the battle of Zwenkau. It looked every bit as terrifying, too.

  Or would have, had there not been one critical difference. At Zwenkau, the APCs had been moving almost as fast as horses. Faster, on good terrain. This APC wasn't moving at all. The rain-soaked road had given way as it passed, and the machine was now stuck.

  It must have slid down and sidewise, Lukasz figured. The rear axle and its grotesquely fat wheels-those were called "tires," if he was remembering Jozef's account correctly-were off the road entirely, hanging out over the river.

  Hanging into the river now, almost. The swollen waters of the Warta were not more than a foot below the tires. What was worse, those same swollen and rushing waters would be undercutting the riverbank. Before too much longer-a day, perhaps; not more than two-the APC would fall completely into the river.

  Judging from the expressions on the faces of the machine's crew, who were standing around staring at the APC, they'd come to the same conclusion. They had placed ropes to tether the machine, but eventually those ropes would give way.

  Judging from the marks in the mud, they'd tried to use those same ropes to haul the APC to safety.

  With no success, obviously. All they had at their disposal were a half dozen horses, from what Lukasz could see. That wasn't nearly enough in the way of draft power to move something as immensely heavy as the war machine. On a dry, flat road, perhaps. But not here, in this pouring rain, on this soil.

  No, for this you needed oxen. Lots of oxen.

  Happily, since Lukasz had learned from Koniecpolski to trust the reports of Cossack scouts, if not the Cossacks themselves, he had brought oxen with him. He'd expropriated them from a nearby landowner, who'd objected at first but then seen his Polish duty after Opalinski pointed out that with as many Cossacks as he had with him he could easily just rustle the cattle. A process which, sadly-Cossacks being Cossacks-could get out of hand and result in the unfortunate demise of the landowner and his family and retainers after the most hideous travails along with the crops destroyed, the livestock slaughtered, the house burnt to the ground, the flowers in the meadows trampled, the…

  The oxen weren't with him any longer, of course. They were now at least five or six miles back, and moving slowly as oxen always did. But nobody was going to be moving quickly here, so much was obvious.

  This was a backwater in the war, now. The armies had passed on to the south. Gustav Adolf must have left this APC behind, secure in the knowledge that it was too far behind the lines to be at risk. Even if a passing unit of Poles did stumble across it, what could they do besides slaughter the crew and the soldiers he'd left as guards?

  There weren't many of those soldiers. Just a platoon, large enough to frighten away bandits.

  There was somethin
g profoundly satisfying to Lukasz in the thought that Poland was going to capture its first APC with the descendants of draft animals used by the Babylonians.

  Southwest of Poznan

  He'd miscalculated, Koniecpolski realized. He'd simply underestimated how much the rain-soaked terrain would slow down his own troops. His army had a much larger percentage of cavalry than Gustav Adolf's. A large enough number, in fact, that he'd taken the risk of dividing his own forces in order to maneuver with cavalry and artillery alone-the latter being the Polish equivalent of flying artillery, except they were armed with small sakers instead of volley guns.

  He'd left his infantry behind to hold Poznan while he circled around Gustav Adolf's troops in order to attack the northernmost column of Torstensson's USE forces. That was their First Division, under Knyphausen's command. Koniecpolski's Cossacks reported that Knyphausen's column had become dispersed by the difficulties of crossing swollen streams in the area they were passing through. He'd decided that if he moved immediately, taking cavalry and flying artillery alone, he could hammer them badly. By now, with casualties, desertion, illness and the inevitable straggling caused by a march under very difficult conditions, Koniecpolski didn't think Knyphausen had more than seven thousand effective troops. The number was probably closer to six thousand, in fact.

  He could bring twelve thousand hussars, giving him an almost two-to-one numerical superiority. He'd decided the risk was worth it. He was more afraid of the USE's army than he was of the Swedes and Hessians. It was a slower-moving army, true, because it was so heavily based in the infantry. But slow as that army might be, it was immensely powerful if any commander ever got the entire army on a single battlefield, as Torstensson had against the French at Ahrensbok. Almost all units of the USE Army had been equipped and trained with rifled muskets by now, for one thing. And those odd-looking volley gun batteries had proved very effective on every battlefield they'd made an appearance.

  They'd be the most effective soldiers Gustav Adolf had when it came time for sieges, too. Koniecpolski had always assumed-and still did, despite his recent successes-that any war with the USE would soon enough become a war of sieges and attrition. The Swede had simply become too powerful to hope to defeat him on the open field except under ideal weather conditions such as these.

  Koniecpolski hadn't gotten a clear account yet of what had happened at Zielona Gora. His units stationed in the city had had only one radio-not surprisingly, since the Poles had few radios to begin with-and it had somehow been lost or destroyed in the fighting. So the reports he'd gotten had been piecemeal; and, to make it worse, were coming from the sort of men who were the first to flee a battlefield. Koniecpolski had learned long ago to discount much of what such men reported. Invariably, the enemy force had been immense in number, armed with impossibly powerful weapons, which had a rate of fire that would have depleted all of Europe's gunpowder stores within an hour.

  Still, although Stearns had managed to take the city with surprising speed, he had to have suffered significant casualties in the doing. Taking cities was a costly business. His division had taken the brunt of the fighting at Zwenkau, as well. By now, the Third Division had to be in fairly bad shape. Not demoralized, probably. They'd won all of their battles, after all. But even soldiers with good morale can only take so much of a beating before exhaustion sets in; an exhaustion that was as much mental as physical.

  Let those other bastards do the fighting for a while. Damn shirkers.

  That was the attitude that would inevitably spread through the ranks. The one exception would be if their commander was the sort of rare individual who could instill a great sense of pride in them. What his nephew Jozef had told him the up-timers called esprit de corps, a French term which the Americans had stolen, as they so often did. When it came to language, they were a tribe of magpies.

  In that event, the situation changed. Units which developed a sense of themselves as being special, an elite, the ones who could always be counted on in a crisis-such units would remain dangerous even after suffering heavy casualties.

  But was Stearns such a commander? As inexperienced as he was?

  Koniecpolski didn't think so. From what he could see-all of it, admittedly, at a distance and filtered through the reports of others-the American general had simply blundered his way to success. A courageous commander, yes; by now that was quite evident. But such a commander would wear out his own men, soon enough.

  So. Those were the parameters of the grand hetman's calculations. He'd effectively destroyed the Hessians and he'd stymied the Swedes. One of the USE's three divisions had to be worn out by now. If he could shatter a second division, he'd have created the best possible conditions Poland and Lithuania could have hoped for. The war that followed would be the sort of protracted affair that a people defending their own lands would fight tenaciously, and the invaders would grow weary of soon enough. The great danger had always been that Gustav Adolf could successfully wage a rapid campaign.

  He might well have been able to do so, had God not intervened and blessed Poland with such a tremendous storm.

  But even this storm would not last for more than another day, possibly two. It was not the Deluge, after all. As slowly as his cavalry was moving, by the time Koniecpolski reached the USE First Division and could grapple with it in battle, it would have regrouped itself. Knyphausen was a competent general.

  Koniecpolski had no intention of attacking a USE infantry division with hussars alone, unless it was spread out. Which it would no longer be-and to make things still worse, the weather would probably have cleared by then.

  He had only two options left. Retreat back to Poznan-or try to find Gustav Adolf himself. His forces were more than a match for the Swedish units his opponent had at his immediate disposal. If he could fight a battle before the weather cleared…

  One of his adjutants came into the command tent. "We just got a radio report. Scouts have spotted the Swede. The king himself, that is. He's marching south and his units have gotten spread out a little."

  "How far away is he?" the grand hetman asked sharply.

  "Ten miles, maybe twelve."

  For the first time that day, Koniecpolski smiled. "Mobilize the men. Immediately. We're going to meet the bastard."

  After the aide left, Koniecpolski made a mental note to himself. As soon as the war was over, he'd see to it that his nephew was legitimized. No one had done as much to aid the cause of Poland as Jozef Wojtowicz. In addition to his weather reports that had guided the grand hetman's tactics, he'd been the one who obtained the radios for Koniecpolski's army, that had proven so invaluable in the campaign.

  Koniecpolski was unusual among hetman for the importance he attached to building an extensive espionage network. An army without such was half-blind, in his opinion. Once again, he'd been proven right.

  Wismar, Germany, on the Baltic coast

  "All good things come to an end," murmured Jozef Wojtowicz. He turned away from the window and quickly gave the room a final inspection to see if he was leaving anything incriminating behind. It was time to go.

  As he'd always done before meeting the American radio operator in the tavern, he'd arrived in the area two hours early and gone to the hotel room he'd rented for the purpose of observing the tavern before he entered. The room was on the third floor and its windows opened onto the same street where the tavern was located, a short distance away.

  He had no fear of arousing suspicion. Wismar now had a lot of transient traffic, which had inevitably produced the sort of hotel whose managers asked no questions-didn't even think of the questions, in fact-so long as the room was paid for. Since the Danish fleet had been repelled here two years earlier, Wismar had become a much larger town than it had been before. The air force base was no longer very active, but the navy had built a base of its own here. Wismar's harbor was deep enough to handle fairly large ships. The navy's main base on the Baltic remained at Luebeck, but they found Wismar convenient for many purposes. They
'd improved the harbor, too, which had naturally drawn commercial enterprises to the port city as well.

  Jozef's German was almost without accent in the most common dialect spoken along the Baltic, but it hardly mattered since the lingua franca in Wismar was the recently arisen Amideutsch. That bastard language, basically German with stripped down English conjugations and a lot of borrowed English terms, was so new that it had no standard pronunciation and probably wouldn't for many years. No one "spoke it like a native," so Jozef didn't stand out at all.

  For that matter, even if he'd spoken Polish he probably would have gone unnoticed. Europe in the first half of the seventeenth century was still a place where nationalism was just beginning to develop. War was traditionally viewed as a matter between dynasties, not peoples. Trade went on between countries officially at war with hardly a pause or a stumble. Not more than two blocks from the tavern where Jozef got his weather reports from Sergeant Trevor Morton was a tavern that catered mostly to Polish fishermen. Two blocks from there, toward the west, was another tavern where Polish was also the only language normally spoken. That tavern was what the Americans called "high end," its clientele being mostly Polish grain dealers.

  Jozef had never been worried that he'd be spotted as a "hostile alien." Still, he'd learned early on in his career as Koniecpolski's chief espionage agent in the USE that caution was always a virtue for a spy. So, the day after he'd made his arrangement with the American sergeant, he'd rented this room so that he could reconnoiter the tavern before entering it. He rented the room on a monthly basis rather than a weekly or a daily one, but that was so common for this hotel that the managers thought nothing of it-so long as he paid the rent on time. But one of the advantages of being a spy for the grand hetman of Poland and Lithuania was that Stanislaw Koniecpolski was immensely wealthy and not given to stinginess.

  Jozef glanced out the window a last time. Two more uniformed policemen were just entering the tavern. As with the four who'd preceded them a few minutes earlier, these were USE Navy military police, not the city's constabulary. They were probably on loan to the air force, whose base here was too small to maintain its own police force.