1635: The Eastern Front

  The fact that such a stranger was a foreigner wouldn't be held against him in Magdeburg the way it might in some cities in the USE. Although the CoCs called for the unification of the German people into one nation, their ideology was not particularly nationalistic. There were CoCs in a number of European countries and they all shared the same basic political program. The Italian CoCs also called for national unification.

  The problem with hiding in Magdeburg wasn't that people would be hostile, it was simply that he'd be noticed more quickly, and by an organization that was sophisticated and well organized on a city-wide basis.

  Hamburg was another obvious possibility, as were Luebeck and Hannover. Big cities where a foreigner could hide easily.

  Jozef had considered them, in fact. The problem was that they were in western provinces and he wanted to be as close to the border as he could manage. If he did have to make a desperate attempt to escape back into Polish territory, he'd find that much easier to do from Mecklenburg than places farther west.

  Escaping into Poland from Pomerania would be even easier, of course. But to do that, he'd have to be in Pomerania, which he detested. The only city in the miserable province that would be tolerable would be Stettin, and Stettin was crawling with Swedes. Suspicious Swedes, with a nasty turn of mind when it came to Poles and anything Polish, as you'd expect from a pack of bandits in their ill-gotten lair. (The city's proper name was Szczecin. Always had been, always would be, and damn anyone who said otherwise.)

  Ideally, he'd have gone to Grantville. Jozef loved Grantville. And with his uncle as his paymaster, he could even afford the outrageous rents.

  Alas, it was not to be. He'd spent too much time in Grantville, early in his career as a spy, before he'd learned how to stay invisible. There was too much risk of being spotted.

  Where then?

  He'd settled on Schwerin because it was the capital of Mecklenburg province. Since the Dreeson Incident just a short time ago, the place had become a hotbed of radicalism, especially its capital. Young firebrands holding forth on every corner.

  More importantly for Jozef, such centers of youthful radicalism produced certain cultural developments, almost like a law of nature. For every firebrand spouting ideology on a corner, there would be a poet spouting verses in a tavern.

  Jozef wrote poetry, as it happened. Not very good poetry, but that would be all to the good. A mediocre poet would blend in perfectly where a man with literary talent might be noticed.

  So it was. His first night in a nearby tavern was uneventful. He made a few acquaintances.

  The second night, the same.

  The third night, he was urged to recite some of his own poetry. Which he did, to reasonable applause. To fit the crowd's taste, he'd slightly adjusted a poem he'd once written on the subject of sunrise to make it politically appropriate. (Not hard to do. A sun rising, a people rising; the rhymes just had to be tweaked a bit.)

  The fourth night, the same, with the added benefit of finding female company. It turned out that for this crowd of people, anything foreign carried a certain romance and panache.

  The fifth night, the same again, with the female company more affectionate still.

  The sixth day, catastrophe.

  "Hey, Mateusz,"—so was he known here; Mateusz Zielinski—"there's somebody you have to meet."

  He had no desire to meet anyone, particularly, especially when he was eating a late breakfast. But since the person doing the introduction was the young woman who'd just provided him with another very enjoyable twelve hours, he felt obliged to do as she wished.

  The person to whom he was introduced was a young fellow named Karsten Eichel. It took him no more than three minutes to get to the purpose of the introduction.

  "You're for the overthrow of serfdom in Poland, I'm sure. I heard your poem about the people rising. Well, I'm in the CoC here and I can introduce you to somebody who knows"—here, a brief intake of breath—"Krzysztof Opalinski. The Krzysztof Opalinski, I mean."

  Eichel sat there at the table across from Jozef, looking very pleased with himself. Jozef had had a cat once who had almost the same expression on its face when it plopped a freshly caught rodent at Jozef's feet.

  The Krzysztof Opalinski. That would be the same Krzysztof Opalinski whom Jozef had known since he was six and the Opalinski was three. His good friend Lukasz Opalinski was Krzysztof's older brother. Lukasz had set off to become a hussar for Poland's king and Sejm, and with equal vigor and enthusiasm Krzysztof had set off to overthrow that selfsame king and Sejm. Such was the nature of the Opalinski family.

  "He's in Poland now, of course, doing his righteous work," continued Eichel. "But my friend can get you across the border so you can rejoin the struggle." He rose and leaned over the table, his voice dropping to a whisper. "I'll bring my friend here tonight."

  And off he went.

  During his stay in Grantville, Jozef had been introduced to the work of the English playwright Shakespeare—who was almost a contemporary, oddly enough—and become quite taken by it. So the appropriate thought came to him instantly:

  Hoist with his own petard.

  Indeed. He had to flee Schwerin, at once. To where? He had no idea, as yet, but surely a destination would come to him.

  He rose from the table, gave his companion a most friendly smile—she really had been splendid company if you excluded her final demonic impulse—and said, "I'm afraid I have to leave."

  She looked distressed. "Now? But . . . ​Where are you going?"

  He was already walking away. "The seacoast of Bohemia," he said over his shoulder.

  Stockholm

  Ulrik dumped the documents onto the bed next to him. Had his physical condition allowed, he'd have used a much more dramatic gesture. Hurling them into the fireplace would have been his own preference, albeit counterproductive. Still, even being able to pitch them onto the floor would have been nice.

  The problem was that he might want to pick them up later, in order to illustrate a point from some part of the text. He was completely incapable of such a motion and would be for some time to come. Baldur would pick them up for him, if he insisted, but the Norwegian's ensuing sarcasm would be tedious. So would Caroline Platzer, but her ensuing lecture on psychological self-control and the need thereof especially for a prince in line of succession would be even more tedious. Kristina might or might not, depending on her mood of the moment.

  It wasn't worth it. Thankfully, his wounds had not impaired his most necessary skills for the task at hand. The bullet that had broken two of his ribs—thank God for good Danish buff coats, or he'd probably be dead—had also left that whole side of his torso aching and immobile. The bullet that had creased his skull—thank God also for good Norwegian bearskin hats, which had probably kept the bullet from piercing his skull—had stunned him for a moment and left a wound that bled badly, as head wounds always did.

  But neither of the injuries had affected his brain. He could safely ignore Caroline's warning that he might have suffered a mild concussion. Americans were notorious for seeing perilous injuries everywhere. Many of them even went so far as to oppose corporal punishment for errant children. Speaking of insane.

  Nor, best of all, had the injuries affected his tongue.

  "Colonel Forsberg, I repeat: Your theory makes no sense."

  The colonel stood by the bed, his head bend slightly downward but his back straight as a ramrod. An instrument which, in Ulrik's considered opinion after dealing with the man, had been inserted into his rectum at the age of two and never been removed since.

  Forsberg pointed a finger at the papers. The finger was rigid too. Everything about the colonel was rigid. How did he manage to bathe?

  "The evidence is in the documents themselves, Your Highness. It says right there, in black and white, that Richelieu was behind it all."

  "I know what the documents say, Colonel. But that's not really the issue, is it? The real question is whether we can place any credence in these documents
. To put it a different way, why should we assume that documents which were oh-so-conveniently left for us to find by people who planned to murder us—did murder Her Majesty—should be taken at face value?"

  It was clear from the expression on Forsberg's face that Ulrik was wasting his time.

  Again.

  But Forsberg didn't really matter, in the end. Kristina had been following Ulrik's logic since the day after the incident, when he'd recovered enough to start thinking. Her brain might be only eight years old, but it was a superior organ—considerably superior—to those taking up space in the skulls of most of Stockholm's officials.

  "And why did they leave the documents at all?" she said. "Why not simply destroy them? They came here to kill me and Ulrik and Mama, not to found a library."

  That made no dent in Forsberg's certain convictions either, of course.

  Ulrik decided to try one last time, before he simply began acting peremptorily. He disliked doing that, since he'd found that imperiousness on the part of a prince invariably produced resentment, and some of those resentments could last for years and create trouble long after their initial cause was half-forgotten.

  "And consider this, Colonel Forsberg. This should register because you were there yourself and personally witnessed the deed. What happened when you cornered two of the assassins on Utö island? The one with the limp and his companion?"

  That had happened two days after the incident. All reconstructions of the plot, including Ulrik and Baldur's, were agreed that seven assassins had to have been involved. Possibly more, but a minimum of seven.

  Four of them had been killed in the course of the attempt itself. Two by Ulrik; two by Baldur.

  Two more had fled in a boat but had been eventually tracked to Utö island. Ulrik had recognized one of them after the bodies had been brought back to Stockholm. That had been the man who'd shot him. The other, the one whom the soldiers said had been limping and had a badly bruised knee, he didn't know. But since he'd been caught in the company of the man who shot Ulrik, it was reasonable to conclude that he'd been one of the six men who came directly for him and Kristina in Slottsbacken.

  That left whoever had murdered the queen. That had been done with a rifle, not a pistol. Whoever the man was—he might have had an accomplice with him—he remained at large. All they had in the way of evidence was the badly bludgeoned corpse of the old tailor whose shop he'd used as a shooting stand. The tailor's wife had been no help, because she'd been visiting her sister halfway across the city.

  Forsberg still hadn't answered Ulrik's question. From the look on his face, he was probably confused by its sheer simplicity.

  "What happened, Colonel?" he repeated.

  "Well, I don't exactly know what to say, Your Highness. We found them and caught them."

  Kristina practically spit. "Didn't! You didn't catch them. They were already dead."

  The colonel looked offended now. Was there any bottom to this pit?

  "That's as may be, Your Highness," Forsberg said stiffly. "But they'd not have killed themselves if we hadn't had them trapped with no way to escape."

  Ulrik threw up his hands. "Exactly! That's the whole point, Colonel. Once he saw there was no escape, the man with the limp shot his companion in the back of the head and then turned the pistol on himself. Do you think a professional spy in the employ of the French crown would have done such a thing?"

  The colonel's face was blank.

  Blank. Blank. Blank.

  This was pointless. Ulrik might as well have been arguing with the Black Forest or the Harz Mountains.

  "The point, Colonel, is that only a man with powerful ideological convictions would have behaved in such a manner. And the willingness of his companions to join him in such a daring assassination scheme—they had little chance of escaping, and they must have known it—speaks to the same point."

  He retrieved some of the documents he'd scattered on the bed sheets, lifted them up, and then dropped them back. The gesture exuded disgust.

  "Nothing about the idea that these men were Richelieu's makes any sense. Not their behavior, not the preposterous idea that supposedly professional assassins would scatter about enough documents to bury a moose, and perhaps most of all, the very logic of the documents themselves."

  He pointed an accusing finger at one of those documents. Not because it deserved to be singled out for condemnation, but simply because it was the nearest. Ulrik had to economize even his finger-pointing. Any movement of his upper body was likely to trigger off a spasm of pain.

  "Colonel, why in the world would Richelieu's intendant Etienne Servien have sent these men detailed—even lovingly detailed—analyses of political and military developments in Europe? None of which developments, I will point out, had any relevance to their task at hand and all of which were developments that happened months ago."

  He was tired. Very tired. He didn't have much strength.

  "Never mind, Colonel. I am superseding your authority in this matter." He cocked an eye at Kristina. "Assuming my betrothed concurs, of course."

  Kristina nodded happily. "Sure! But what do you want to do?"

  Carefully, Ulrik levered himself a bit more upright. "The wonders of up-time technology. Baldur, go get the palace's radio operator. I'm going to speak directly with the king. If he's not available, then I'll talk to Chancellor Oxenstierna."

  Baldur nodded and left. Colonel Forsberg began issuing protests.

  "You can go now!" commanded Kristina. And, a protest or two later, so he did.

  Baldur returned sooner than Ulrik expected he would. He had a peculiar expression on his face.

  "Ah . . . ​I didn't have to find the radio man, Your Highness." The honorific was unusual, coming from Baldur in private. Norddahl gestured toward the door. "He was on his way here already."

  The radio operator came in.

  "We're going to talk to Papa!" Kristina's voice was full of cheer.

  The radio operator stared at her. His face, Ulrik suddenly realized, was as pale as a sheet. The man looked down at the message in his hand, as if he were helpless; too weak to even lift it.

  "Papa!" cried Kristina.

  Chapter 36

  Lake Bledno, Poland

  The Polish sakers should not have been a match for the Swedish artillery. True, they were more powerful than most of the guns Gustav Adolf had on the field today. He had fourteen of the so-called "regimental" guns and only two twelve-pounders. The regimental guns were three-pounder light artillery, made of cast bronze and with short barrels, and using reduced powder charges to keep from overheating. The Polish sakers had longer barrels and fired shot that was about five and a quarter pounds.

  Koniecpolski had managed to get a full dozen of the things onto the battlefield, too. Considering the terrain he'd had to bring them through and the speed at which he'd done it, that was in itself a tremendous feat of generalship.

  But the difference wasn't the guns, it was the gunners. The Swedish artillery corps was the best in world, bar none. Gustav Adolf had always emphasized artillery—light artillery, in particular—and in young Lennart Torstensson he'd found a superb commanding general and trainer for his artillery.

  Torstensson was gone now, having been put in charge of the USE's army. But his training methods and attitudes had become ingrained in Sweden's artillerymen.

  So, lighter though the shot of their regimental guns might be, they fired two or three for every one coming across the field from the saker barrels. Even the two Swedish twelve-pounders were almost able to match the Polish rate of fire.

  The Swedish fire was more accurate, too. Where the Poles simply fired in the direction of the enemy, the Swedish gunners were skilled enough to fire the sort of grazing shots that caused the most damage on a battlefield. These were not exploding shells that were being fired, but round shot. The only way to use round shot against infantry or cavalry on a open battlefield effectively was to aim for the ground ahead of the oncoming foe. The balls would hit t
he ground and bounce off, sailing into the enemy's ranks at a low trajectory—waist-high was what gunners tried for—and sometimes destroying a dozen men at a time.

  All well and good. But on this field today, by the shores of Lake Bledno just south of the Polish town of Zbąszyń, that same Swedish skill was actually working against them. Grazing shots presuppose ground that is reasonably hard. After days of heavy rain, this soil was very far from that. It wasn't what you could call mud, exactly, but it was certainly soggy. A lot of the Swedish artillery rounds simply buried themselves, especially those fired by the big twelve-pounders. The regimental guns could still manage grazing shots perhaps half of the time, but the effectiveness of those shots was drastically reduced. The second bounce would usually end their trajectories; the third invariably would.

  The Poles faced the same problem, of course, but the very imprecision of their fire probably worked to their advantage. They weren't trying for grazing shots anyway.

  An hour into the battle, Gustav Adolf's artillery commanders realized the problem and adjusted their fire as best they could. But all that meant was that they were now achieving mediocre results instead of poor ones.

  For years, Gustav Adolf had been able to rely on his artillery to offset whatever advantages his opponent might have. The greatest victory of his career, at Breitenfeld, had been due to artillery. Today, at Lake Bledno, he was finding that advantage gone.

  He almost regretted now his decision the day before not to take Zbąszyń. When he reached the town, he'd discovered that Koniecpolski had managed to get some of his troops into it already. Not very many, true—perhaps two thousand hussars. They had no artillery and hussars were cavalry, not really trained and equipped to defend a town under siege.

  On the other hand, they were hussars. That meant that, trained or not, equipped or not, they'd still fight valiantly and ferociously. Gustav Adolf's forces outnumbered them by four-to-one and did have artillery. He didn't doubt that he could take the town within a day; two at the outside.