Just to make sure, he questioned the scout concerning details of their appearance. It didn't take long at all before he was certain that these approaching forces were part of the USE army. For one thing, Koniecpolski knew of no other large army that inflicted such dull uniforms upon its soldier. Upon its officers, even!
Gray uniforms. Except for the odd stripe here and there, a bit of flair with the shoulder decorations, they were the sort of vestments that monks would wear.
Dull monks. Boring monks. The sort of monks who took vows of silence and kept them.
Koniecpolski's own full dress uniform was as uniforms should be. He was particularly fond of his leopard skins.
In the distance, he heard a bugle. Marching orders, clearly. Whichever of the three USE divisions this was, it would be here within an hour. After the casualties he'd suffered today, the numerical odds would be even at best. And his men were exhausted. True, the enemy's troops would be tired as well, after the sort of march they'd made. But nothing wears men down like battle. Nothing in the world.
Yes. It was time to go.
The one thing Mike hadn't expected when he finally met up with Gustav Adolf's army was that he would turn out to be the highest ranked officer present.
Highest conscious rank, at any rate.
He turned away from the bed where the king of Sweden lay recuperating from his wounds. There was no point in staring at the man any longer. What Gustav Adolf needed was the best doctor who could be found.
That meant James Nichols. But it would probably be at least two days before planes could safely take to the skies again. The sky was clear at the moment-here, not in Magdeburg. It looked as if another storm might be on its way. If that proved true, they wouldn't be able to get Nichols here for a week or more. Assuming they could build a usable airfield, before this mucky soil finally dried out. Mike had his doubts.
"Not a flicker, you're saying?"
The man who served Gustav Adolf's troops as a doctor shook his head. "Nothing. Sometimes his eyes open, but there is nothing behind them."
Weather or not, they had to get Gustav Adolf out of here. Leaving aside his terrible head injuries, the lance wound in his side had penetrated the peritoneum. That meant he'd probably come down with peritonitis. If they didn't get him on antibiotics soon-there was a good chance he'd need surgery, too-that would likely kill him even if he recovered from the head trauma.
Mike had been told that the Jupiters, the new commercial aircraft, were equipped with air-cushioned landing gear that could land almost anywhere. If so, and if one of them were available, and if the weather held-that was a lot of ifs-maybe they could airlift the king.
But there was no way to count on that. With the weather as uncertain as it was, even if one of the planes were available they might not be able to use it.
Berlin. It was the only option Mike could see. Gustav Adolf could be taken there on a covered litter carried by a team of horses and guarded by a powerful cavalry force. By the time he got there, Nichols could have gotten to Berlin even if the planes still weren't flying.
Magdeburg would be better, of course. But Magdeburg was just too far away. Berlin wasn't much of a city, but it did have a palace. The elector had even gotten some of the rooms fitted with modern plumbing.
They might be able to get him to Magdeburg anyway, Mike reminded himself. If the weather cleared and one of the ACLG-equipped planes was available-and the boasts about the capabilities of their peculiar landing gear were accurate-then a Jupiter could meet them on the way to Berlin and airlift Gustav Adolf to the capital instead.
Mike glanced around the room he was in now, the main room of what had probably been Zbaszyn's premier tavern. Or possibly its only tavern.
The floor didn't bear thinking about. The sewers of the town…?didn't exist. There was a well here, but Mike thought he'd have to be really desperate before he drank any of that water without boiling it first.
Berlin. Yes.
Torstensson agreed, when Mike reached him on the radio. So, an hour later, did the chancellor of Sweden, Axel Oxenstierna. He was already in Berlin himself, as it happened, attending to the creation of an interim imperial administration for Brandenburg.
"And you must come to Berlin yourself, General Stearns," said Oxenstierna. "It is imperative that we have a council of our army commanders."
Legally, Oxenstierna was out of bounds. He was Sweden's chancellor, not the USE's, and had no formal authority over Mike. But the proposal-he'd see it as a command, but that was his problem-was sensible enough. Besides, Mike didn't have any doubt that if he got on his high horse about the matter, Oxenstierna would just get hold of Wettin and have the prime minister give him the order instead. Which would be an order he did have to obey.
He found Jeff Higgins in the little room in an abandoned house where they'd put the body of Anders Jonsson. Come to pay his last respects, obviously.
Mike wasn't surprised. He'd come for the same reason.
It was a little over three years since the great Croat cavalry raid on Grantville had been driven off. The main target of the raid had been the town's high school.
Jeff had been there, that day. So had Mike's wife Rebecca.
The only reason they were still alive was because of this man here, and the nearby king he'd served who was now very close to death himself. The two of them had led the charge that turned the tide in that battle. With his own sword, Gustav Adolf had struck down the Croat who'd been about to kill Jeff.
"I have to remind myself, sometimes," Mike said softly. "Whenever Gustav Adolf really pisses me off. The world is just sometimes a gray place, and that's all there is to it."
Part Six
November 1635
Green to the very door
Chapter 40
Dresden, capital of Saxony
Eddie crashed the plane.
The soil of the jury-rigged airfield outside of Dresden turned out to be soggier than Noelle or Denise had led him to believe. They'd underestimated the potential problem with landing on such doubtful ground. In Noelle's case, because she was too anxious to get back to Magdeburg; in Denise's, because she was looking forward to seeing Eddie and was by nature given to overconfidence.
Insouciance, too. The girl could have taken the motto of Mad magazine's Alfred E. Newman for her own: "What, me worry?"
The front landing gear dug in, the tail came up, the nose buried itself into the ground-so much for the propeller-and slowly, almost gracefully, the plane flipped over onto its back.
When the little crowd on the airfield reached the plane, they found Eddie and Gretchen Richter hanging upside down in the cabin, still held in their seats by their harnesses. Neither was hurt at all. A bit shaken, but otherwise in excellent condition.
Not so the aircraft itself, of course.
Eddie's first words upon emerging were recriminatory in nature. Unusually, for him, he was in a high temper.
"You told me the airfield was in good shape!"
Noelle, with the wisdom of her advanced years of life-she'd just celebrated her twenty-sixth birthday-was profusely apologetic. Denise, sadly, was still in her teenage years and thus ill-equipped for the task. Her own temperament didn't help, either.
So, she started with the sort of mumbled, oatmealish, altogether unsatisfactory sort of phrases like "well" and "hey, look" that wouldn't mollify a saint. Then, under a continued barrage of heated comments from Eddie, retreated into her natural belligerence.
"Hey, buddy, maybe you just fucked up the landing. Ever think of that, huh?"
Peace was not restored for some minutes. Not until Minnie Hugelmair forced Denise to utter the needed words: "Okay, it was my fault. I'm sorry."
Minnie didn't actually believe that herself. She thought the accident probably had been Eddie's fault. The soil wasn't that muddy. But unlike Denise, she understood that when the male mind was in formal and court-dress High Dudgeon there was nothing for it but that the woman had to take the blame or nobody would get anything to eat that day. Not in peace, anyway.