“But for the moment,” said Piazza, “let’s assume that Jülich-Berg lines up with the Crown Loyalists. What does that leave us, in terms of seats in the House of Lords?”
Strigel had been doing the arithmetic and provided the answer. “We still don’t have a majority but we certainly have a clear plurality: Out of a total of twenty-four seats, we have eleven—and if either Jülich-Berg or Cologne sides with us on any question, we will have half the votes. This is much better than I expected.”
“Yes, it is,” said Piazza. “Especially because on a number of issues—not all, of course—we can expect Gustav Adolf will be more inclined to side with us than with the Crown Loyalists. Let’s start with this. He is sure to be favorably inclined to our position that Harlingen and Bremen should be added as imperial cities, because that would strengthen the USE’s naval position. And, for somewhat different reasons, both of those would be strongly FOJ in their political sympathies. Probably at least as much as Hamburg.”
“Which would give us a clear majority in the House of Lords,” said Strigel.
“Yes,” said Piazza. “Although—a cautioning note, here—in the House of Lords the emperor is always going to have a lot of influence. If he were strongly opposed to us on some issue, I don’t have much doubt he’d be able to sway enough of the imperial cities to outvote us.”
“What’s the situation with Oldenburg?” asked Charlotte Kienitz. “If it gets added as a province, it’ll vote against us in the House of Lords. Maybe not in the Commons, though.”
Piazza looked at Rebecca to provide the answer.
“The negotiations continue,” she said. “Count Anthony Günther is of two minds, it seems. On the one hand, he dislikes the Danes and he’s certainly not inclined toward becoming part of the Netherlands. That makes him lean toward joining the USE as a province with himself as the hereditary head of state. The problem—as so often—is the history books. The up-time ones, I mean. The details are unknown, but it seems that he had no offspring because after his death Oldenburg was absorbed by Denmark. If true—remember that the American records contained no specific details—then the rulership of Oldenburg if it becomes a province of the USE would pass into the hands of the Vasa dynasty. Which, to put it mildly, does not please the count of Oldenburg.”
She shrugged. “Ideally, from his point of view, Anthony Günther would keep Oldenburg an independent principality, as he has done quite successfully since he became the count more than thirty years ago. But that was only possible because of the chaos of the time and the fact that he was able to play one power off against another. With the consolidation of the USE and the reunification of the Netherlands, doing so is no longer realistic and he knows it. But he keeps stalling and I imagine he will do so until the war with Poland ends. At that point, Gustav Adolf will have his army free again and by then he will have lost all his patience with Anthony Günther.”
She smiled. “In short, expect a hurried settlement at that point. But not before—”
Hearing the door to the room open, Rebecca broke off and turned to see who was coming in. It was Wilda Scherer, one of her assistants.
“Yes, Wilda?” said Rebecca. “What is it?”
The young women hurried toward her, a telegram in her hand.
“More election results?”
“No, it’s from Vienna.” Scherer glanced down at the paper. “Well, from Linz.” She thrust the telegram into Rebecca’s hand, as if she desperately wanted to get rid of it.
Rebecca read the message.
“Oh, dear God,” she said.
PART V
August, 1636
Their works drop downward
Chapter 36
Vienna, capital of Austria-Hungary
There were five of the Ottoman airships, it turned out, not three. They came toward Vienna slowly; to all appearances, simply drifting with the wind.
Archduke Leopold Wilhelm peered intently through his spyglass. Each of the airships had something suspended below its gondola. The things looked like big baskets, hanging from ropes. What were they?
Perhaps more to the point, what were they for?
“What’s the matter, Your Grace?” asked Minnie Hugelmair. She was standing next to him on the bastion, looking over the wall at the slowly approaching Ottoman forces. Their front ranks were still more than a mile away—too far for cannon fire to be effective.
He lowered the spyglass and frowned. “They’ve got something…” On an impulse, he handed Minnie the spyglass. “See what you can make of it.”
As Minnie brought the telescope to her one good eye, Cecilia Renata pushed forward. She and Judy Wendell had been standing a little behind Leopold—where he’d asked her to stay. The archduke wasn’t happy that she was here at all. He’d only let the three women join him on the bastion after getting his sister’s promise that they’d leave as soon as any firing started.
“What’s the matter?” Cecilia Renata repeated.
Before he could answer, Minnie spoke. “They’ve got what look like great big baskets hanging maybe twenty yards below the gondolas. I’m guessing, but I think—yes, there goes the first one.”
She handed the spyglass back to Leopold. “They’re producing smoke. I read about the tactic in one of the books in Grantville. It’s usually used by naval vessels. Up-time, I mean.”
By then, Leopold could see it for himself. Four of the baskets—no, all five now—were producing great billows of white smoke.
He assumed it was smoke, anyway. It looked a lot like fog.
“Is it poisonous?” he asked.
Minnie shrugged. “We’ll find out soon enough.” Not for the first time, he was struck by the girl’s attitude. Hugelmair had probably never read Seneca or Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius—although you could never be sure, with her—but they would have envied her calmly stoic view of things.
“But I don’t think so,” she added. “The up-timers did use poison gas in at least one of their wars, but they fired them from cannons.” She pointed her finger at the slowly nearing airships. “They didn’t want to be too close to the stuff. If that’s poison gas and the wind shifts, everyone in those gondolas would be dead.”
She lowered the finger and shook her head. “I think this is just smoke. But what that means is that they’re trying to hide something from us, and whatever that ‘something’ is can’t be anything we’re going to be happy about.”
Leopold was already unhappy—acutely unhappy. Nothing about this Ottoman assault had made any sense to him, since an orderly had awakened him before dawn.
To begin with, it was coming too soon. The Ottoman trenches were still much too far from Vienna’s walls. Any assaulting troops would have to cross hundred of yards of open ground, right in the face of massed cannon fire. They’d only begun their sapping operations, less than three weeks ago—and then, didn’t seem to be pushing them energetically.
It was possible that Murad was being reckless—that had been the opinion of most of Leopold’s military commanders, at any rate—but Leopold thought it was unwise to assume that your enemy was making a mistake. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. Better to assume that he wasn’t, however, and try to figure out what he might be undertaking that you hadn’t foreseen.
By now, the five smoke clouds had drifted forward and a little downward. They’d also spread out and were beginning to merge. Within a short time, that would be a solid wall of smoke, obscuring everything from about three hundred yards high right down to the ground.
He didn’t bother shouting any orders, though. He could hear officers already doing so, all along the walls. The gist of their orders was simple: Be alert! For… whatever!
* * *
Following the armored wagon, Uzun Hussein felt like snarling—not at the still-distant Christian enemies on the walls of Vienna but at the Christian bastards manning the wagon right in front of him.
His anger derived partly from simple rivalry. Like all janissaries—he was sure the sipahis felt
likewise—Hussein resented the new military units the sultan had created. Most of those soldiers were unbelievers. Christians from the Balkans, as a rule, but there were some Jews from Istanbul as well.
Whichever they were, none of them had any business preceding janissaries into battle.
Yes, yes, he and his fellow janissaries had been assured that the new units, the “special forces” as they were called, would not be supplanting the janissaries when it came time for the climax of the battle, the cut and thrust of sword and spear. But all that meant was that the janissaries would do most of the bleeding and dying, while the stinking infidels shrank away to the sides after doing their “special work.”
Mostly, though, Hussein’s resentment of the soldiers manning the war wagons had a crude and simple source. The wagons broke down constantly—and when they did, who got to do the mule-work of pulling and pushing and digging them out?
The janissaries, that was who. While the “special forces” did their “special work” that didn’t require any sweating.
The wagon just ahead of him slewed sideways. The left front wheel—this was the third time since the assault began!—had gotten jammed into something again. Rabbit holes, badger burrows, almost anything could cause trouble for the wheels despite their width.
The problem was that the wheels were relatively small in diameter and the weight of the wagons they bore was immense. They did not handle rough surfaces well.
One of the Christian swine stuck his head out of the hatch just to the side and in front of the cannon. “We need a push!” he shouted.
“I’ll give you a push,” Hussein muttered. He hefted his musket slightly. “Push this right up your ass.”
But he didn’t, of course. He would have been executed if he had—and, almost as bad, would have soiled his precious new musket. Like all janissaries who’d been supplied with the weapons, Hussein adored his new musket. It was a muzzle-loading flintlock, not one of the breech-loading caplocks that some of the troops had been issued. But it was easy to load, because of the special new Murad ball—so-named because it was said the sultan had invented it himself. Which he might have, for it was a truly ingenious design. The ball was slightly smaller than the bore of the musket and had a flange that expanded when the gun was fired. That made it practical to rifle the bore, greatly improving the weapon’s accuracy, without having to force the ball down the barrel. Hussein could fire three rounds a minute with it. Three rounds a minute! And still be able to hit a target twice as far away as he could have with the muskets he’d been accustomed to using.
So, he just set the weapon down and went to lend a shoulder to the effort.
* * *
Abraham Zarfati began to relax. Despite what the chymists had told the airship crews, he’d been worried that the smoke they were producing would be noxious—possibly even deadly.
It wasn’t pleasant, certainly. While most of the smoke was borne ahead of them by the wind, some of it eddied upward and back. They were running the engine as slowly as possible and in reverse, producing just enough thrust to retard the ship so it stayed behind the smoke instead of running with it. But the process was difficult to control and sometimes they overtook the billowing clouds.
The smoke stank, no question about it. But it didn’t interfere with breathing and didn’t do more than cause some tearing of the eyes on occasion.
The effect would be worse on the soldiers on the ground, if they had to charge through the smoke. Still, especially with the help of the damp facecloths they’d been provided with, they should be able to get through with no great difficulty.
And there was this added benefit to being one of the crews assigned to create the smoke clouds: once they were done and had dropped the smoke baskets, they’d be out of the fight for some time. They’d have to return to their base, flying into the wind with not-very-powerful steam engines, in order to land, refuel, and load either regular or fire bombs, depending on what their commanders ordered. By the time they got back to the walls of Vienna, the assault would have either succeeded or been driven off. Either way, it was not likely the airships would be in any real danger.
That suited Abraham just fine. He was a sensible Jew. Let the idiot janissaries beat their chests and extol the glories of martial exploits. He’d volunteered for the sultan’s new aerial force in order to learn skills which he expected to be quite valuable for him and his family once the war was over.
Of course, there’d be another war afterward. There always were, with sultans—and with this one more than most.
But the thought wasn’t hostile; not even grudging. No man in his right mind wanted to anger Murad, for to do so was almost certain to lead to his death. But in most ways the new sultan was capable, and even fair-minded. He was certainly a great improvement over his predecessors.
“I can see the walls now!” shouted Isaac Capsali. He was leaning over the side of the gondola and pointing ahead.
Abraham joined him. And… saw nothing.
“Where?” he demanded.
“I saw them,” insisted Isaac. “But then the smoke swirled back around.”
He might be right. Most likely, he’d caught a glimpse of one of the outlying bastions.
Either way, it didn’t matter. They’d be out of this battle before much longer.
* * *
The Christian katyusha gunner Stefan Branković was a lot more unhappy with the smoke obscuring everything on the ground than was the Jew above him who was creating that smoke. His unhappiness didn’t derive from the stink, which he barely noticed, nor did it stem from the irritation of his eyes. The problem was as simple as problems ever got—he couldn’t see what he was doing.
More precisely, he couldn’t see where he was doing it.
“Are we in range?” asked his assistant, Vuk Milutin. He waved at the smoke swirling around them, as if that paltry gesture could make anything clear.
“How should I know?” snapped Stefan.
The mülazım in command of their katyusha bölük emerged out of the smoke, looking rather infuriated. “Idiot generals and their idiot—” The mülazım broke off the angry sentence when he saw Stefan and Vuk. He’d been talking to himself, not intending to be overheard by any of his soldiers. Unlike many of the Muslim officers appointed over the Christians, he tried to lead, rather than just command. His insistence on using the new titles was an example—most of the commanders of the other bölüks still wanted to be called bölük başı, at least when the sultan was not around.
“Have you seen any of the range markers?” he demanded.
An object about the size of a watermelon—but much heavier—came falling through the smoke and struck the mülazım on the top of his helmet, driving him straight to the ground. The sound of his neck breaking was quite audible.
Stefan and Vuk stared down at the officer’s corpse. The thick linen sack full of gravel had gotten impaled on the spiked helmet which the katyusha units used and now covered his whole head. Sticking up from it was a slender pole atop which was a small banner. The insignia on the banner read: 200.
That stood for two hundred kulaçs—a kulaç being roughly equivalent to the height of a tall man, about six feet.
“We’re in range,” said Vuk, quite unnecessarily.
“Shut up and give me some help.” Stefan was already unhitching the katyusha cart from the two horses who’d been drawing it. “No—better yet, find the hostler.”
Vuk looked around, with a helpless expression on his face. You couldn’t see more than a few yards in any direction.
“How am I supposed to…”
“Never mind. Just hold the horses yourself. I can get the katyusha ready.”
The rockets were already in their racks, so all Stefan had to do was attach the fuses. The problem would come later, after the first volley was fired. Reloading a katyusha rack was a job for two men. If the hostler hadn’t appeared by then, they’d have no choice but to leave the horses to their own devices and hope the silly beast
s didn’t run off.
Which they wouldn’t, if all they heard was the sound of the rockets being fired. They were accustomed to that by now. But if Austrian shells started landing nearby, there was no telling how the horses would react.
But that was a problem for later. At the moment, Stefan’s main concern was to have their katyusha ready to fire when the signal came. The binbashi who commanded the katyusha force was a harsh man, quick to inflict corporal punishment on anyone he deemed a slacker. It was unlikely that he would know exactly which katyusha units had failed in their duty, given the smoke that obscured the entire battlefield. But… you never knew.
Soon, Stefan had everything ready, the smoldering slowmatch in hand. There was nothing to do now but—
The sound of clashing cymbals penetrated the smoke quite clearly. At least something had gone according to plan.
He touched the slowmatch to the fuse. Within two seconds, all eight rockets were headed toward the walls of Vienna.
* * *
“Hurry!” shouted the Christian whose head stuck out of the hatch. “They’ll be starting the assault soon!”
“Fuck you, you stinking—” One of the janissaries next to Uzun Hussein raised up, looking as if he were ready to attack the bastard. Hussein was sympathetic, but this was no time for a brawl.
“Shut up!” he bellowed. “Everyone—push.”
Whether because this last effort was fueled by anger or simply because they’d managed to get the wheel partway out of the hole, the armored wagon suddenly surged forward. Now back on more-or-less level ground, the machine rumbled toward Vienna.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and the Austrians will hit it,” said the same man whom Hussein had had to silence. “A good solid ball from a big cannon ought to do the job.”
“Shut up,” Hussein repeated. His tone wasn’t sympathetic at all, this time. It was just as likely that a cannonball striking the heavily armored wagon would glance off and strike down some janissaries instead. Leaving that risk aside, he wanted the wagon functioning once it got to the enemy’s bastions. The war machine’s cannon was something of a joke, so far as Hussein was concerned—more for show than anything else. It wasn’t a big cannon, firing a ball no heavier than four pounds. What good was that against a well-built star fort?