1635: The Eastern Front

Chapter 33

West of Poznan

The Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel died in the middle of the night. Gustav Adolf got word over the radio as soon as it happened.

It came as no surprise. Wilhelm V had suffered terrible wounds in the battle at the Warta, the sort a man almost never survives. Still, the king of Sweden was distressed by the news. Hesse-Kassel was not exactly a friend, but he'd been a staunch supporter for years. He would be missed.

Gustav Adolf didn't spend much time dwelling on the landgrave's death, though. He had much worse problems on his hands, politically as well as on the military front. Hours earlier, the radio had brought news that his wife had been murdered in Stockholm by assailants whose identity was still unknown. The same assailants had also attacked the king's daughter and Prince Ulrik but, thankfully, they had survived. Untouched, in the case of Kristina. Ulrik had been injured, but apparently not too seriously.

Gustav Adolf had not been close to his wife for many years. In some ways, he'd never really been close. Theirs had been a marriage of political convenience, not of affection. The king of Sweden's romantic attachment since the age of sixteen had been to the noblewoman Ebba Brahe-and still was, although she was now married to Sweden's Lord High Constable, Jacob de la Gardie.

Nonetheless, Maria Eleonora had been his wife, and had borne him a child. Had she died of natural causes, he would have been slightly saddened but no more. Her being killed in such a fashion, however, had left him furious.

He'd already been close to a fury because of the weather. What had seemed a straightforward campaign against a redoubtable but still weaker foe was turning into a nightmare.

Hesse-Kassel was gone now, and his army with him, for all practical purposes. As soon as the landgravine heard the news, she'd undoubtedly recall at least half of her forces to Hesse-Kassel. And the ones she left would be the weakest units, and just enough of them to maintain the pretense that she was not withdrawing Hesse-Kassel's support to the emperor. Unfortunately, the laws of the USE gave the provincial heads a great deal of control over the disposition of provincial troops. Their armies were almost as independent of federal control as the private armies of Polish magnates.

Gustav Adolf had not yet sent her the news of the disaster on the Warta, but he couldn't stall for much longer. There were some disadvantages to radio as well as advantages. In the old days, he could have send a courier with the news and instructed him to have a lamed horse along the way. By the time Amalie Elizabeth found out her husband had been killed and a good portion of her army destroyed, Gustav Adolf would have had the rest of that army back at the front. And he could have kept forestalling the landgravine for weeks, or even months.

He'd come into Poland with fifty thousand men, against what he'd estimated were forty thousand at the disposal of Koniecpolski. He'd lost Hesse-Kassel's eight thousand, and another ten thousand troops under Heinrich Matthias von Thurn were stymied north of the swollen Warta. They'd be out of action for several days; possibly as long as a week, if this wretched weather kept up.

Even if he assumed Koniecpolski had lost as many men in the battle on the Warta as Hesse-Kassel-which he almost certainly hadn't; that had been a very one-sided affair, by all accounts-he'd still have thirty-five thousand troops at his disposal.

There'd have been losses from disease, but those had probably been equally distributed. The same for losses by desertion. Those had probably been unusually low, on both sides. However difficult they might be to handle politically, the soldiers of the USE army tended to have good morale. The same would be true of Polish troops, especially hussars, so long as they had good leadership-and in Koniecpolski they had a commanding general as good as any in the world.

In two days, the tactical situation had turned sour as quickly and as badly as the weather. Gustav Adolf had gone from having a five-to-four numerical superiority to odds that were now no better than even. He'd lost all of his technological advantages except radio. The planes were grounded, the APCs were stuck in the mud miles to the rear.

Finally-this was the factor that really concerned him-his forces had been dispersed when the storm arrived, where Koniecpolski had kept his forces together. Until Gustav Adolf could reunite the four columns still available to fight-his own Swedish forces and the three divisions of the USE army led by Torstensson-he was at a major disadvantage. If Koniecpolski caught any one of those columns on its own, he could crush it.

The king of Sweden was a pious man. He'd even written a number of the hymns sung in Sweden's Lutheran churches. Now, for one of the rare times in his life, he lapsed into blasphemy.

"God damn this rain!"

Hearing that curse, Anders Jonsson got more worried still-and he was already worried. He'd been Gustav Adolf's bodyguard for years and he knew the signs. The one great flaw the king of Sweden possessed as a military commander was his tendency to get headstrong and reckless in the grip of powerful emotions. And right now, the stew of emotions the man was seething in was an unholy combination. The devil himself couldn't have cooked up a more dangerous brew.

Tremendous frustration at the military situation due to the weather.

Anger at himself for having been overconfident and allowing his forces to become divided. Anger at having underestimated an opponent-for which he had no excuse at all. He'd faced Koniecpolski before.

Fury at the murder of his wife. An act which, in the nature of things, was as much a blow struck at the Swedish crown as it was at a woman.

Even greater fury that the same assassins had come very close to murdering his only child.

Anxiety because Kristina was an only child, and therefore the sole heir to the throne. That was a risky situation for any dynasty, even if the child in question hadn't been but eight years old. And now, with Maria Eleonora dead, there would be no chance of producing another heir any time soon.

But there was nothing Jonsson could so. Any attempt he made to restrain the king would just make him more furious.

He'd read accounts of the battle of Lutzen, in copies of up-time texts that Gustav Adolf had collected. When he read of the king's behavior in that battle in another universe, he'd recognized it instantly. Frustrated by the heavy fog that had covered the battlefield and made it impossible to stay in control of his forces, Gustav Adolf had charged impetuously forward with only a small detachment of guards.

No one knew what happened next, exactly. Battles were chaotic and confusing enough even in good weather conditions. But however it happened, the king had been killed. His soldiers still went on to win that battle, but from that day forward Sweden lost its guiding hand.

It could happen in this universe, too. The details might differ, but the essence would remain the same-a great captain who could not restrain himself enough when his blood ran high.

Magdeburg airfield

"Not a chance, Gretchen," said Eddie Junker. "Flying into that wouldn't be any different from slitting your own throat."

Frowning, Gretchen Richter stared at up the clouds. The rain hadn't let up at all and the sky seemed as dark and foreboding as it had since the storm arrived two days earlier.

Well…?maybe not quite as much.

"I think it's lightening a bit." She pointed toward the west. "See that patch there?"

Eddie chuckled. "Nice try. But if you think a maybe-just-a-tiny-bit-less horrible set of storm clouds-in exactly the wrong direction, too-is going to get me into that cockpit, you are out of your mind. Insane. Mad. Crazed. If Caroline Platzer were here, no doubt she'd have some elaborate way of saying the same thing."

He leaned still farther back in the rocking chair-which wasn't rocking because Eddie put his feet up on the counter that ran all the way around the top floor of the airfield's control tower. Big glass windows ran all the way around, too, which provided a splendid view of the storm. Which, since Eddie could observe it in dry comfort, was actually rather enjoyable to watch.

"Sit down," he urged Gretchen. "Have some more tea."

But Gretchen was far too frustrated to follow that advice. She was the sort of person who, once she'd made up her mind to do something, wanted to do it. Now. Not tomorrow. Not the day after.

Now.

All the more so, since Tata's daily radio reports indicated that Dresden was coming to a boil. With the elector dead and the USE's emperor completely absorbed by his campaign in Poland, there was a power vacuum in Saxony. Then word came that Kresse and his little army of irregulars-the same people who had killed John George-had left the Upper Vogtland and were marching on Dresden. That army wasn't even so little anymore. The militias of many of the villages and towns that Kresse passed through or nearby were joining him.

That news-which Tata and Joachim Kappel had seen got spread widely-had panicked many of Dresden's patricians, prosperous burghers and officials. They'd fled the city, just as the same class of people had fled Amsterdam before the cardinal-infante could begin his siege.

The whole situation sounded much like Amsterdam. There might even be a rough equivalent to Fredrik Hendrik, the prince of Orange with whom Gretchen had been able to negotiate and maintain something of a tacit alliance. Or truce, at least. Gustav Adolf's appointed administrator, Ernst Wettin, had arrived in the city already. Tata's first reports indicated that despite being the prime minister's younger brother, Wettin didn't seem at all inclined toward confrontation.

But that was probably going to be a moot point, soon enough. The Swedish general Baner was also coming to Dresden. More slowly, because he was bringing an army with him.

There'd been a powerful army at Amsterdam, too. But the commander of that army had been Don Fernando, a man with imagination and great ambitions and, somewhere in his core, a very real streak of decency.

None of which was true of Baner, by all accounts Gretchen had heard. He was coarse, pigheaded, narrow-minded, and seemed to have no ambitions beyond being feared by those he wished to fear him.

He was also on record as saying that the most suitable use for a CoC agitator's head was to serve as an adornment for a pike head. And he was bringing a lot of pikes to Saxony.

"I have to get to Dresden!" she said. For perhaps the twentieth times in two days. If this kept up, she'd have to use a horse, even if she wasn't much of a horsewoman. Or a boat, maybe, except the Elbe was flooding.

Dresden

Tata and Joachim Kappel had taken over the Residenzschloss a week earlier, once it became clear the CoC was now the most powerful force in the city. Dresden's official militia had shattered into pieces after a big portion of its officers fled the city. Many of the rank-and-file militiamen had joined the CoC outright. Many others had simply retired into their private affairs. Yet another portion of the militia-perhaps a quarter of its original number-had reorganized themselves into something they called the Dresden Defense Corps. They were maintaining a studied neutrality concerning the city's political affairs, insisting that they were simply and solely a body to defend Dresden from any attackers.

Whether the definition of "attackers" included Kresse's forces from the Vogtland, now just two days from the city's walls, remained to be seen. But for the moment, Tata and Joachim were willing to keep the peace with the DDC.

Tata and Joachim had developed a very good working relationship. Kappel was the organizer, the "inside man." Tata had much better skills than he did at dealing with people outside the ranks of the CoC. She had become the public face of their movement in the city, far more widely known than he was.

Partly, of course, that was simply due to their very different appearance. Tata was a pleasant-looking young woman, not threatening in any way. Kappel…

Eric Krenz had put it this way, in front of both of them, "If the forces of reaction ever need a poster boy for the wicked and vicious instigators of bloody-handed riot and revolution, Joachim, you're their man."

The jest had been close enough to the truth to make even Kappel laugh. He was a man in his early forties who was not simply ugly but frighteningly ugly.

Their enemies in Dresden had taken to calling him "the troll."

So did children on the streets.

So did his own CoC cadre, for that matter.

It had been Kappel who first broached the idea of seizing the elector's palace, but it had been Tata who came up with the formal rationale.

She understood, as Kappel often did not, that you had to be careful not to give people the impression that you were simply high-handed. Even when you were being high-handed. In fact, especially when you were being high-handed.

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.