1635: The Eastern Front (assiti shards) Read online

  But they wouldn't here. This was Saxon territory, and Torstensson wasn't making any pretense that he'd repay anyone for damages. Looking on the brighter side, he'd also made clear to his soldiers that he wouldn't tolerate any atrocities either.

  So be it. War was what it was. Jeff had gotten pretty inured to such things by now. He figured Sherman probably hadn't repaid any Georgia farmers either, during his march to the sea.

  When he turned around to face in the direction they were travelling, he had to squint a little. The sun had risen far enough above the horizon to be uncomfortable to look toward.

  Eric had turned back too. "Gustav Adolf died very close to here, you know."

  Jeff Higgins sniffed. "Last I heard, Gustav Adolf was alive and well and leading his army toward Berlin."

  "In that other world, I meant. Your world."

  "Not my world any longer."

  Krenz looked at him sidewise for a moment. "Do you miss it?"

  "I miss my family, sure. I'm the only one who came through the Ring of Fire, you know. But other than that…" He shrugged. "I can't say I regret it. I would never have met Gretchen, for one thing. For another…"

  He paused to check on his horse. The beast seemed placid enough, but you could never be sure what sort of bizarre notions might cross its little mind. Or was it "his" little mind? Jeff wasn't sure of the protocol when it came to geldings.

  Geldings weren't really considered suitable war horses by cavalrymen and other such dashing fellows of the time. A true warrior would insist on riding a stallion into battle. But as far as Jeff was concerned, that was just more seventeenth-century silliness. Stallions were temperamental and Jeff figured he'd have better things to worry about on a battlefield than a hyperactive half-ton animal.

  Krenz wouldn't make fun of him, of course, since he was riding a gelding himself.

  "For another…" Eric prompted him.

  "It's a little hard to explain. Even leaving Gretchen aside, I feel…?I don't know. More alive, I guess. Like what I do here makes a real difference where in the world I left behind it probably never would have."

  Krenz chewed his lower lip for a while, thinking about it. "I suppose I understand. But I have to say the thought of being insignificant but alive and healthy seems quite a bit superior than the state of being oh-so-very-important and oh-so-very-dead. If you ask me, Achilles was an idiot."

  Jeff chuckled. "Oh, if that's what's bothering you! No, no, you've got it all backwards. You think the world I came from was safe?"

  He clucked his tongue. "I guess you never heard of thermo-nuclear weapons. There were tens of thousands of those lovely things floating around. Any one of them could have turned the biggest city in the world-that world, forget this one-into a pile of slag."

  Ghastly details followed.

  "-also had biological and chemical weapons. Take sarin gas, for instance-"

  Eric listened intently.

  "-course, there probably wasn't any designed weapon as nasty as the Ebola virus. That came out of Central Africa, but I always figured it'd get loose some day. After that…" He made a face. "It's a viral hemorrhagic fever. That means-"

  Graphic and gruesome details followed. Jeff moved on to other ills of the twentieth century.

  "-overpopulation. Oh, yeah, I figured someday even Fairmont would have skyscrapers and you'd be lucky to get five hundred square feet to-

  "-additives in everything. I mean, you had no idea what you were really eating. And it was even worse in the fast food joints where-"

  He reserved particular venom for what had been his own bete noire, automated phone systems.

  "-always changed their menus. Call the next day and the lying bastards would insist the menu had changed again. There were stories of people dying of thirst and ruptured bladders trying to figure how to actually talk to anybody. And the one phrase you never heard those fucking computer voices say was 'call volumes are unusually low so we'll connect you to your party immediately.' Oh, hell no. Call volumes were always high. It was like grading on a bell curve where everybody flunks."

  By the time he was done, Krenz was looking downright chipper.

  From atop the closest thing his scouts could find to a hill-it was really just a hillock, a slight rise in the landscape-Hans Georg von Arnim studied the surroundings. And, just as Eric Krenz had done, mused on the fact that in another universe the king of Sweden had died in battle not far from this very place.

  Exactly where, no one knew. The up-time accounts referred to "the battle of Lutzen," but provided few details. The battle hadn't taken place in the town itself but in some field nearby. There was supposed to have been a monument erected where Gustav Adolf died, but of course that did not exist in the world on this side of the Ring of Fire.

  Von Arnim himself had once been in Swedish service, for several years. That had been two decades back, not long after Gustav Adolf ascended the throne. The new Swedish king had been seventeen years old at the time. He was only nineteen when Arnim came into his employ.

  That had been a long time ago. Two decades. Two decades during which von Arnim, like most professional soldiers of the time, had served many employers. Having been born in Brandenburger Land, naturally enough he'd begun his military career as a soldier for the duchy of Prussia. That had been before Prussia was absorbed by Brandenburg. He'd had to leave hastily due to a duel, which was how he'd wound up on the Swedish payroll.

  From there, he'd fought for the Poles for a time. In 1624, Wallenstein-then a general for the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II-had hired him. Just a few years later, the Austrian emperor sent an army to support the Polish king Sigismund III against the Swedes. Arnim had been one of the commanders of those forces.

  So, on June 17, 1629, he'd faced Gustav Adolf at the battle of Trzciana. His Polish allies had been commanded by Stanislaw Koniecpolski. That had been a ferocious battle, which ended with a slight advantage for the Poles and imperials. But the Austrian troops had mutinied when the Poles failed to pay them, and von Arnim had wound up leaving imperial service in disgust and going to work for the elector of Saxony.

  Two years later, in one of the twists that were so common in the Thirty Years' War, von Arnim had wound up fighting alongside Gustav Adolf again, when he met Tilly at the battle of Breitenfeld. That had been a great victory for the Swedish king, but the Saxon troops had been ignominiously routed early in the battle.

  However, von Arnim himself had not been blamed for the fiasco. It would have been hard to do so, since the elector John George had been present on that battlefield himself and had been one of the first to flee. So von Arnim had remained in Saxon service.

  Today, he was regretting it. For the past four years, the elector of Saxony had generally refused to listen to von Arnim's advice. That was true with matters both large and small.

  With regard to the largest, John George had ignored von Arnim's advice when the Ostend War broke out. Von Arnim had been confident that Gustav Adolf would eventually emerge triumphant, and thus it would be folly not to support him as Saxony was required to do by the provisions of the agreement that had set up the Confederated Principalities of Europe.

  But the elector had chosen to do otherwise. He'd been resentful for years at Gustav Adolf's preeminence among the Protestant nations and principalities of Europe, and John George was unfortunately prone to being sullen and stubborn. His legal argument was based on a differing interpretation of the relevant provisions of the CPE agreement, but von Arnim was sure that the elector's real motive was profoundly irrational. He felt he'd been dragooned against his will into the CPE by Gustav Adolf's bullying-which was true enough, of course-and now with the Ostend War he saw a chance to get out and regain his independence.

  In purely legal terms, John George's position was probably as valid as Gustav Adolf's. Those provisions were not what anyone would call a model of clarity. But regardless of the letter of the agreement, John George was certainly breaking its spirit-and the king of Sweden was just as certai
n to become furious over the issue. Politics and the law were related but ultimately quite different realms. If Gustav Adolf did triumph over the Ostenders, as von Arnim thought he would and John George insisted he wouldn't, the repercussions on Saxony would be severe.

  So it had proved. Once again, Hans Georg von Arnim would face the forces of Gustav Adolf on a battlefield.

  Not Gustav Adolf himself, though. Saxon spies had said the Swedish king was taking his own forces north to do battle with Brandenburg. More importantly, since von Arnim had no great confidence in the elector's espionage apparatus, the Poles said the same. It had become clear to von Arnim that Koniecpolski had a very capable spy network in the USE.

  Unfortunately, Koniecpolski would be absent from the coming battle. The Polish Sejm was still squabbling over whether or not to come to the aid of Saxony and Brandenburg. King Wladyslaw IV wanted to do so, but without the Sejm's agreement Koniecpolski would not move. And the king was not foolish enough to think his will could override that of the grand hetman of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

  So, there was only a token Polish force here. Cold-bloodedly, von Arnim intended to order them into the thick of the battle. They'd probably suffer terrible casualties. If von Arnim managed to fend off the USE army-he had no real hope of defeating them-and could prolong the war, then the blood shed by those young Polish hussars might be enough to tip the scale in the Sejm. Their commander was an Opalinski. If all went well, he might be killed himself.

  "You watch," grumbled Lubomir Adamczyk. "That Saxon bastard's going to get us all killed."

  Lukasz Opalinski glanced at the young hussar riding next to him. "He's Prussian, actually."

  Adamczyk sneered. "What's the difference? They're all Lutherans."

  Lukasz thought most Brandenburgers were Calvinists, although he wasn't sure what von Arnim's own beliefs were. But there was no point discussing that with Lubomir. Like most hussars, Adamczyk's range of knowledge and interests was limited. It certainly didn't include delving into the fine distinctions between Protestant sects. Why bother? None of them were Catholic and thus all of them were damned. Question closed.

  When it came to military matters, on the other hand, Lubomir was no dimwit. Opalinski thought his assessment of the current situation was quite accurate. Von Arnim would try to get them killed. A number of them, anyway.

  Allowing for perhaps excessive ruthlessness, though, Lukasz didn't really blame him that much. The Saxon elector had placed his army commander in an exceedingly difficult position. Von Arnim, with no significant advantage in numbers, had to face the same army that had recently crushed the French at Ahrensbok. Even allowing that the reputation of the French army had probably been overblown, no one really doubted that it had still been superior to the Saxon army. It was just a fact that the only significant feat of arms of Saxony's forces in recent times had been their ignominious routing at Breitenfeld, less than four years earlier.

  Von Arnim had only two factors in his favor. The first was that one of Torstensson's three top lieutenants was the American Mike Stearns. However capable Stearns might have been as a political leader, he had no significant military experience. Von Arnim would surely concentrate his attack on Stearns' units. If, by doing so, he could at least achieve a stalemate at this coming battle…

  …?and if the small Polish contingent that had come to join him should happen to suffer sadly severe casualties in the doing…

  …?especially if one of those casualties was from the very influential Opalinski family…

  Well, then. Who could say? Perhaps the notoriously temperamental Polish Sejm might cease its bickering and unite furiously in the cause of avenging their wrongs.

  No, Lukasz didn't much blame the Saxon commander. On the other hand, he had no intention of obliging him, either.

  He leaned in his saddle toward Adamczyk. "Remember. We're mostly just here to observe."

  Lubomir made a face. "On a battlefield, that's a lot easier said than done."

  Alas, true.

  Looking across the field at the Saxon army as it came into position, Thorsten Engler felt nervous. Unusually so, he thought. He couldn't remember feeling this nervous when the battle of Ahrensbok began.

  But at Ahrensbok he'd just been a noncommissioned officer in charge of a single volley gun battery. Today, he was a captain in charge of an entire company.

  No, it was worse than that. Thanks to the whim of a princess, he was now the imperial count of Narnia. A silly title, but it had apparently been enough to draw the attention of the division commander, General Stearns.

  And so, Thorsten Engler had been brought into the subtle plans of Stearns and his own commander, General Torstensson, where most officers had not. And so, he'd learned of the trap they hoped to lay for the Saxon commander, von Arnim.

  Traps require bait, of course. And so, Thorsten had discovered his role in the coming battle.

  Not as bait, though. Oh, no, it was much worse than that. He was the fellow-a child-princess' fantasy of a fairy-tale count-who had to go charging in and rescue the bait after the trap had been sprung and the monster had it in his teeth.

  One thing had not changed from Ahrensbok, though. Before they began, battles were magnificent. Things of beauty, you could even say. At no other time and place in the world could you see so many men moving together in such immense formations. And all of it to music, too. (Admittedly, the instrumentation was limited. Bugles, fifes and drums only.) It was as if the battlefield was a gigantic stage and an enormous ballet was about to begin.

  Chapter 16

  The Saxon plain, near Zwenkau

  Mike Stearns was stunned the first time he saw a battlefield. He'd expected to be stunned-horrified, rather-by the carnage of a battle's aftermath. What he hadn't expected was the sheer thrill of the spectacle before the battle had started.

  He'd seen more people gathered in one place before, of course. There were somewhere around fifty thousand men assembling on this field not far from the small town of Zwenkau. Any modern baseball stadium in the United States they'd left behind would hold that many, and some of the biggest football stadiums could hold twice as many.

  But except for a tiny number of athletes on the field, almost all of those people would be sitting down. Their most strenuous activity would be getting up to go to the bathroom.

  Here, every single one of those fifty thousand men was doing something-and doing it in unison, to boot. Marching into position, riding horses, hauling up artillery. Most of them were moving fairly slowly, but individual couriers were racing all over carrying messages from commanders to their subordinates.

  There were pennants and banners flying everywhere, and the sound of musical instruments filled the air. Drums and fifes mostly, for the moment. Once the battle started, the brass could come to the fore. Over the din of a battle-so Mike had been told; this would be his first personal experience-about the only instruments that could be heard clearly would be bugles and the like. Torstensson had told him that the Republic of Essen favored bells for the purpose, but Torstensson himself thought they'd be too clumsy.

  For the first time, Mike really understood the remark made by Robert E. Lee at the battle of Fredericksburg. It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we would grow too fond of it.

  That ancient notion of the glory of war had pretty well vanished by the time Mike Stearns had been born. Seeing this incredible display, he understood why. By the end of the nineteenth century, battles had grown so great that they could no longer be encompassed by the human eye and brain. What remained what simply the brutality. Death in the trenches during the First World War. Skirmishing tactics and maneuvers on a gigantic scale during the Second World War, far too huge for a man to really see what was happening beyond his own small corner of it.

  But here in the seventeenth century, a battle still fit in its entirety on a single stage. Mike could see all of it, except for some cavalry units scouting on the margins. Just to complete the picture…

&n
bsp; He swiveled in his saddle. The observation balloon Torstensson had brought with the army was hanging in the sky, a mile or so in the rear. The thing was colorfully painted too.

  Why not? In the universe Mike had come from, camouflage was an essential part of war. But in this one, military technology was still too primitive. It was more important for a commanding officer to be able to see his troops than for them to be hidden from the enemy. Yes, all units the size of battalions or larger had radios. But the weapons themselves were just coming into the technical range where fighting would have to start taking place at a considerable distance. For a time yet, battlefields would be dominated by men firing in formation.

  As for the balloon, why bother camouflaging it when the only other flying objects in the sky were birds? Anyone could and would spot the thing. You might as well make it bright and vivid to improve the morale of your own soldiers.

  There should be at least one airplane in that sky, too, but Mike couldn't see it. Gustav Adolf had taken most of the air force with him into Brandenburg. That was fair enough, since he'd left all of the APCs to the USE army. He'd left one plane behind, though-one of the older Belles-so that Torstensson would have a longer-range reconnaissance than the observation balloon could give him.

  The plane must be too far away to be spotted. Torstensson had probably ordered it to stay in the vicinity of Dresden. Mike knew that Gustav Adolf had left orders that he wanted John George captured. A reconnaissance plane could hopefully give early warning if the elector tried to make his escape. Torstensson had two cavalry regiments held in reserve, specifically for the purpose of intercepting the Saxon elector if he tried to escape into Poland. He'd already sent one of them to circle around Dresden.

  Mike turned back to examine the field where the battle would be taking place soon. There were no woods in sight, and only a handful of trees. The terrain was very flat except for two rises: one where Torstensson had set up his headquarters; the other, across the field to the east, when von Arnim was presumably stationed. The whole area was farmland.