Why? Stefano didn’t know for sure, but from idle remarks dropped by Siers it seemed the American thought that an airship survey of Franconia and the Oberpfalz was somehow similar to an expedition to the Arctic. As if Stefano couldn’t land the ship almost any time they wanted at any one of the hundreds of well-provendered towns and villages that dotted the German countryside!
Stefano would have ascribed Siers’ eccentricities to his advanced age, except that the American engineer wasn’t more than forty years old. Bonnie Weaver had told him, a bit sarcastically-well, more than a bit-that Siers was hopelessly addicted to romantic adventure twaddle.
“I’ve been to his house a few times,” she’d told him, “since he likes to hold seminars around his kitchen table. Says it’s quieter than the school, which is true enough. Practically every square foot of wall space is covered with bookshelves. At least a third of them hold books about exploration. It drives his girlfriend Mina David nuts.”
The thought of Bonnie Weaver provided some distraction from his current anxieties, but only at the cost of raising new ones. It was bad enough for any young man to find himself caught between two girls-no, women-even if neither of them was an up-timer. When both of them were American, the situation was one which Hank Siers liked to call “fraught with peril.”
The engineer was fond of such florid phrases. Bonnie said that if he wrote anything besides dry survey reports Siers would redefine the expression “purple prose.” After she’d explained the term, Stefano had had his doubts. So far as he could tell-keeping in mind that his education was fairly good but mostly informal and oriented toward practical matters-his seventeenth century was the era which had more or less defined purple prose to begin with.
Bonnie ought to know that, too. She belonged to the Baptist church, an up-time sect that she claimed already existed in this world but which Stefano had never heard of until he encountered Americans. Apparently, in this day and age it was still confined to England.
Somewhat against his will-it might be better to say, against his spiritual will but in accordance with his interest in things of the flesh-he had once attended a Baptist sermon with Bonnie, at her invitation.
Purple prose, indeed. Thankfully, his own Catholic church mostly used Latin for such purposes. Latin was a language which Stefano could read, with some difficulty, but the difficulty was enough that he could ignore whatever the priest was saying unless he really wanted to pay attention.
Which he usually didn’t. Had anyone questioned him on the subject, Stefano would have insisted he was a pious Catholic. But, in truth, he didn’t think much about religious matters.
In that regard, he was closer to the Baptist woman than he was to Mary Tanner Barancek. Bonnie Weaver’s attitude toward religion seemed quite relaxed. Mary, on the other hand, while she shared Stefano’s own Catholic faith-the odd up-time version of it, anyway-was far more devout than he was. She’d told him that she’d even considered becoming a nun on several occasions.
She hadn’t explained her decision not to take that course, but Stefano was pretty sure it was because Mary would have had difficulty adhering to the demands of chastity, and had enough sense to know it. The girl-young woman-was…attracted to men. And the reverse was certainly true.
Best to leave it at that, he thought. Stefano was already on perilous ground without adding to the risks by thinking about it.
Another burst of gunfire came from Ingolstadt. Where were the Americans? Stefano’s concern was for himself as well as for them. He couldn’t get the airship ready to fly on his own. They’d deflated the balloon after they arrived in Ingolstadt, as they normally did when they were stopping somewhere for any significant stretch of time. The sheer mass involved in getting the balloon reinflated was just too much for one person to handle in any reasonable amount of time.
For that matter, even if he could get the blimp aloft on his own he couldn’t really handle it safely. The airship was designed to be flown by a minimum of two people, and a crew of three was better.
Where were they?
Hank Siers was lying next to a pile of rubble, from which his companions had just pulled him out. The building he’d taken shelter behind had been collapsed by an exploding cannon shell. His leg was broken and he was unconscious, but he was still alive and otherwise unhurt, so far as Bonnie Weaver could tell.
Of course, that assessment was based on nothing more substantial than a two-week class in first aid that Bonnie had taken a couple of years earlier. For all she knew, Hank was bleeding internally, had all sorts of internal damage, and was even now exhibiting plain and unmistakable symptoms of said injuries that she was too ignorant to recognize.
“How is he?” asked Dina Merrifield. She and Bonnie were the same age, had grown up together, and had been in the same classes in school. In short, they knew each other as well as people in a small town do who are acquaintances rather than friends-but very closely acquainted. Closely enough that Bonnie didn’t see any point in pretending to know more than she did.
“I don’t really know, Dina, to be honest. I’m sure his leg’s broken, although-thank God-it’s not a compound fracture. He probably has a concussion, too.”
Amanda Boyd came around the corner of the building-what was left of it, rather. She’d gone to see if there were any signs that enemy soldiers were moving around in the area.
“I can’t see anybody, except a couple of women hurrying to get into a building. So far as I can tell, the fighting is still at least a quarter of a mile away.”
That wasn’t really much comfort. A man could walk a quarter of a mile in five minutes. But soldiers in combat wouldn’t move that quickly, Bonnie told herself, unless they had specific reasons to know that a target was nearby.
Still, she didn’t think they had more than half an hour of safety. That gave them barely enough time to get out of the town and reach the airship, with a wounded and unconscious man to carry.
Hank was no lightweight, either. It would take all three of them to carry him, even if they could jury-rig some sort of stretcher.
The thought of a stretcher concentrated her mind and helped her to control the incipient panic. One thing at a time. We need something to make a stretcher from.
As it turned out, Dina had been thinking along the same lines. “There was a wheelbarrow back there, where they were doing construction. And some wood we could make a splint from.”
“Fitting a man as big as Siers into a wheelbarrow isn’t going to be easy,” Bonnie said dubiously.
Amanda shrugged. “I saw a picture once of something like twelve guys who crammed themselves into a VW. And I don’t see where we’ve got an alternative, Bonnie, unless we just leave him here. Ain’t no way we’re gonna carry this fat asshole.”
Amanda didn’t get along well with Siers. Partly that was because of her age-she was two years younger than Bonnie and Dina, just shy of twenty-and partly it was because Amanda was edgy and didn’t get along with a lot of people. Being fair, although Bonnie herself wouldn’t go so far as to call Hank an asshole, he certainly wasn’t one of her favorite people, either. He was a fussy and overbearing boss, just for starters.
Dina straightened up. “She’s right. I’ll go get it.”
She was back in less than five minutes. It took them at least that long to fit a splint onto the surveyor’s leg. Bonnie, who did the work of setting the broken bone, could only hope she’d done it right. If she hadn’t, Hank would probably walk with a limp for the rest of his life. But she was beginning to fear that might be the least of his problems. Hank was still unconscious. Not even the pain of having a broken bone reset had aroused him. She didn’t think that was normal, even for a man who’d been knocked out and almost certainly had a concussion.