1637 The Polish Maelstrom Read online

  Bravnicar and his professional cavalrymen had needed more than a few days to come to the same assessment. It was taking the Vogtlanders and the new Silesian recruits a bit longer, but that was only because they had less experience.

  By the time they reached Bytom, it was Gretchen who was feeling unsure of herself, hesitant, tentative. She hated it, but she felt herself fumbling as well. How was she to handle this?

  * * *

  Jeff took charge of billeting the army, for which both Ulrik and Gretchen were thankful. Neither of them had much of an idea how to go about finding food and organizing shelter for almost three thousand men in a town that had a population less than a third that size.

  Quite a bit less, these days. Two years earlier, Bytom had been ravaged by disease and half the population had either died or fled. The one positive aspect of that was that many of the homes in the town were vacant, so it was not necessary to expropriate anyone.

  Jeff did require families to crowd into one room to allow the rest of the space in their homes to be billets for his soldiers—who were packed in more tightly than the civilians they displaced. But he also managed to calm their fears while doing so. Civilians forced to have a lot of soldiers living with them are understandably nervous. But the Hangman Regiment had a tradition, when it came to such matters, and they had no trouble imparting it to the rest of the army.

  Gretchen helped, too. At Jeff’s urging, she moved about every day, making herself visible to the population. Usually on horseback; that damned armor was heavy. But she’d also walk about a fair amount, since she was sturdy enough to manage that. She wasn’t going to run any foot races, of course, but neither was anyone else. There was no room for it, anyway, unless you went out into the countryside.

  Which no one was inclined to do, even before the first storm of winter struck less than two days after they arrived. There wouldn’t have been room outside the city, anyway, unless you were prepared to travel a fair distance. Not more than half of the army had been able to find billets in Bytom itself. It was really not a very big town. The other half had to camp outside.

  Jeff handled that problem just as easily and smoothly as any others he took up. For a start, he set up a rotation system so that all of the soldiers were able to spend at least one or two nights in the relative warmth and comfort of the town’s houses. The rotation was not perfectly fair, but soldiers didn’t expect perfection; certainly not if they were veterans, and the newcomers looked to the veterans for guidance.

  Jeff had also organized quite a good supply train for the expedition, so no one went hungry—not even the town’s civilians. He’d put Krenz in charge of that. “Trust Eric to make sure there’s enough food. There’ll be some wine and schnapps, too,” he’d told Gretchen, smiling. “That man does like his creature comforts.”

  In the course of the march from Breslau, Gretchen had come to a better understanding of the little saws that Jeff had told her about.

  An army marches on its belly. Amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics. He had a number of them.

  She also now understood why neither he nor Krenz nor Bravnicar—the veteran officers of that polyglot army—were very worried about the final assault on Kraków. Gretchen had been disquieted when she realized that they expected it would take at least three days, probably four and possibly five, to make the march from Bytom to Kraków. By that time, she’d wondered, surely the Polish garrison would be alert and ready to defend the city.

  When she’d raised that with Jeff in private, he’d reassured her that she was overly anxious.

  “First off, that garrison’s probably not Polish. Not mostly, anyway. Kraków’s been out of the line of fire for years now. The PLC government’s had more pressing places to put their better troops. The men guarding Kraków will be…well, not the dregs of the earth. But they certainly won’t be what you’d call an elite unit.

  “Secondly, they have no aircraft; no planes, no airships. That means they have to use cavalry to do reconnaissance and tell them what’s headed their way. Either that or get a warning from the local residents. Third, it’s winter and whatever cavalry they have is going to be reluctant to go out on patrol and will almost certainly shirk their duty when they do go out. See point one about substandard troops in the garrison. The cavalry won’t be any different from the foot soldiers, so far as that goes.”

  “But what about—?”

  He held up his hand to cut her off. “A warning brought by patriotic local residents? Fourth, it’s winter and sensible peasants are going to be even less willing to venture out in the cold than Kraków’s cavalry. Most of the time, the reason local residents bring warnings to cities about to be besieged is because they’ve been driven out of their homes or terrified into running because the approaching invaders have been committing atrocities.”

  For just a moment, Jeff’s face had seemed twenty years older and fifty degrees colder. “That will not happen with this army. Not when the Hangmen are here. Finally, we will have our cavalry out on patrol ahead of the rest of the army and they won’t be shirking their duty. So if an unlikely Polish cavalry patrol does show up—or a handful of fleeing civilians, who’ll be on foot—Bravnicar and his men will deal with them.”

  He shrugged. “Nothing’s guaranteed, not in life and even less in war. But I figure the odds are working way over in our favor.”

  She had a brief image of a mob of odds—they looked like squirrels, oddly enough—racing over to pile up on one side of a scale. She had to shake her head to get rid of it. “All right, I see that. But…”

  That was the moment when it finally came into focus for her. All the while, she realized, she’d been thinking of Jeff as the eighteen-year-old boy she’d fallen in love with.

  But he wasn’t eighteen any longer, just as she was no longer the young woman she’d been then. Already tough and brave—she knew that for sure—but still unsure of herself in so many ways. Since…

  The early work to create and build the Committees of Correspondence, culminating in Operation Kristallnacht. The Croat raid on the high school, which she’d played a leading role in driving off. The siege of Amsterdam. The siege of Dresden. She’d grown so much since the Battle of the Crapper outside of Badenburg. Not just grown—expanded. Why should not the same be true of her husband?

  “You’ve expanded,” she said, taking his head in her hands and bringing it down so she could kiss him. “I hadn’t realized how much.”

  After she broke off the kiss and he straightened up, Jeff glanced down at his midriff. Looking a bit aggrieved, he said: “Hey, I think I’ve lost some weight.”

  * * *

  The first elements of Morris Roth’s Grand Army of the Sunrise showed up three days after Ulrik’s army arrived in Bytom.

  “My apologies for being delayed,” General von Mercy said to the prince and Jeff, after getting off his horse. They had waited for him a short distance from the town. Looking around at the countryside, von Mercy added: “Judging by the snowfall, the storm was worse—quite a bit worse—on the route we took.”

  That wasn’t surprising. The Bohemian army had had a shorter distance to march—Bytom was only sixty-five miles from Ostrava, whereas the Silesian forces had come almost twice that far. But the Silesians had an easy march down a well-established trade route in comparatively flat country. Von Mercy’s forces had come across the Sudetes Mountains.

  “No matter,” said Prince Ulrik. “In some ways, it’s an advantage since”—he spread his hands apologetically—“the town is so crowded there are no billets left and your men will have to camp in the open.”

  Von Mercy smiled. “Which, after a few days, would lead to grumbling and complaint. But as it is, we won’t be staying here very long.”

  He cocked an eye at Colonel Higgins. Not Ulrik, which was perhaps undiplomatic, but von Mercy understood quite well who was really commanding the Silesian army. “How soon?” he asked.

  “As soon as the Air Force arrives.”

&n
bsp; Higgins turned to his left and pointed into the distance at something too far away for von Mercy to make it out clearly. It looked like an open field with a few newly built huts off to one side. “There’s the airfield. We just finished it last night. Eddie Junker should be arriving by midafternoon.”

  He lowered his hand. “It’s about as primitive an airfield as you could ask for, but it should do the trick.”

  Do the trick. Von Mercy groped at the meaning. He was in the process of learning Amideutsch, and was finding the experience to be contradictory. The language—German dialect, call it whatever you wanted—was quite easy to learn in some respects. He appreciated the practically nonexistent declensions and simplified conjugations. But it was difficult in others. The mix of Low German words among the base Middle German was random and the horde of American loanwords posed a challenge, especially the slang.

  The young American officer must have sensed his uncertainty. “It’s good enough for the job at hand,” he explained.

  “Ah.” Von Mercy nodded. “So we will have superb reconnaissance throughout the assault.”

  “Best you could ask for.” Higgins held up a cautioning finger. “As long as the weather’s fair. The planes we have can’t handle bad weather or bad visibility. ‘Flying by instruments’ amounts to the pilot wetting his finger and sticking it out of the window.”

  The meaning of the last sentence was also unclear to von Mercy, but he thought he grasped the gist of it.

  “In any event,” Higgins continued, “we think it would be best if we only used the airplane on the last day. If we have it buzzing over Kraków for several days, that might alert the garrison that something’s up.”

  Buzzing. Something’s up. But, again, von Mercy thought he grasped the essence.

  “That makes sense,” he said. “But I ask again: How soon will we begin the march on Kraków?”

  Higgins exchanged a glance with the prince. With a slight nod of his head, Ulrik indicated he should answer the question.

  “You’ll need to rest your troops,” said Higgins. “For how long?”

  “A day should be sufficient.” Von Mercy looked around again. “Staying here longer than that, in these primitive conditions, will grow tiring quickly. Best we get to Kraków as soon as possible.”

  “Day after tomorrow, then. Bright and early.”

  Bright and early. Was it impossible for Americans to speak plainly?

  * * *

  Gretchen was in a very passionate mood that night, so the army’s commander got less rest than most of his soldiers. He did not complain, however.

  The next morning, he rose before she did to brew them some tea. When he came back into their bedroom he was carrying two cups. They had a separate room, unlike almost anyone else in Bytom. Gretchen had insisted on that, not in order to exalt her status but because she had foreseen the events of the night before. More precisely, she’d planned them herself.

  He handed her one of the cups. “I’d better get out there and see how everything’s coming along.”

  It was still dark outside. “That’s not true. You have good subordinate officers. They can handle things for a while yet. Take off your clothes and get back into bed.”

  He smiled, set his cup down, and began carrying out the Lady Protector’s commands. “Yes, dear,” he said.

  Chapter 18

  Žilina

  Royal Hungary

  Austrian-Hungarian Empire

  With a disgusted look on her face, Denise turned away from her examination of the disabled wagon and looked to the north, following the line of the Kysuca River whose right bank they’d followed to get here. Then she looked to the south, where the Kysuca flowed into the larger Váh River. The town of Žilina was somewhere nearby, across the Váh, but she couldn’t see it from where she was standing.

  Finally, she looked across the Kysuca at the only prominent structure anywhere in sight. It was a castle, built in the Renaissance style but with roots that were obviously much older, She could see the medieval foundations that were still in place.

  “Well, this sucks,” she pronounced to no one is particular. Then, pointing at the castle, she asked: “Does anybody know who owns that pile of pretension? Sorry, I meant to say ‘palace.’ Or is ‘castle’ the proper protocol here in—where are we again?”

  Lukasz smiled. Denise irritated a lot of people with her teenager’s I don’t give a damn what you think attitude, but he didn’t mind. Sometimes, when the target of the attitude was someone who deserved it, he found her quite entertaining.

  Noelle didn’t smile, because she knew from long experience that would just encourage Denise. But she’d been in some hairy situations with the girl and thought very highly of her. All things considered.

  “We’re still in Royal Hungary,” she said. “The part that Austria kept, I mean. The Bohemian part”—she pointed at the Váh River—“starts on the other side of this river. In this stretch, anyway. The border runs further east once you go south a ways.”

  Nobody challenged her. That would have been rather stupid, she’d since been part of the negotiations between Austria and Bohemia that had produced the division of Royal Hungary.

  “So that castle—palace, whatever—is Austrian, right?”

  “No, it’s Hungarian. Austria and Hungary are politically united mostly because they have the same king. They’re not the same country.”

  Denise frowned. “So what’s your official position here? Countess of Homonna or Mrs. Drugeth, aka wife of the Austrian emperor’s best buddy?”

  “I am not ‘Mrs. Drugeth’ and you know it, Denise.” The custom of wives taking the surname of their husband was not followed in central Europe—or in most of Europe, for that matter. In this historical era, that was a British custom.

  “As to the question itself, I’m not sure. It’s quite possible—even likely—that whichever nobleman owns that castle—yes, that’s the right term in this neck of the woods—isn’t in residence. He and his family might have packed up and gone to Linz in order to get Emperor Ferdinand’s assurance that they won’t be fed to the Bohemian maw.”

  “Only way to find out is to ask,” said Lukasz. “So now the question becomes, where can we get a boat? Luckily the river hasn’t frozen over yet.”

  * * *

  Getting the boat took two and a half days, but most of that time was spent loading everything onto the boat after they made an agreement with the owner that he would transport them down the Váh to the town of Trenčín. There, he assured them, they would find a wainwright with the skills and materials to repair the broken axle on their wagon.

  They wouldn’t find him in Žilina, he explained, because he and his family had all moved to Trenčín—as had quite a few other of Žilina’s inhabitants. Why? Here the bargeman went on a long peroration on the subject of Bohemian vices as compared to Hungarian virtues, and concluded with a not-so-veiled criticism of the feckless new emperor who had handed over Hungary’s ancient sacred soil to the aforementioned wretched Bohemians.

  “The old emperor, Ferdinand II—there was a stout fellow!—never would have agreed to such a thing,” he concluded. The expression on his face could have been used by an artist for a painting titled Lugubrious Man.

  Denise thought it was pretty funny, especially when Noelle made the mistake of trying to reason with the man.

  “But that doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Žilina is on the west bank of the Váh, which is clearly established as the border. Trenčín is supposed to remain in Austria-Hungary even though it’s on the other side of the river. If they were really that worried about it, they should have stayed here.”

  “Exactly what I told them!” exclaimed the barge owner, looking more lugubrious than ever. He pointed to the east, where the central tower of Budatín Castle was still visible. “It’s their fault. Those cowardly Suňogs!”

  Here he went on another peroration, this one on the decrepit state of the Suňog family who had owned Budatín Castle since the
ir ancestor Gašpar Suňog—there was a stout fellow!—had bought it almost two hundred years earlier. Instead of remaining in the castle to fend off the schemes of the dastardly Wallenstein—Denise thought he might veer off here into another tirade on the subject of Bohemians and their vices, but he managed to stay on topic—the wretched Suňogs—all of them! every last one!—had fled to Linz to cower under the supposed shelter provided by the new emperor—the same one who lost Vienna to the stinking Turks.

  Indignation was now added to lugubriosity. Denise thought Artemisia Gentileschi, the great artist who’d painted Denise’s own (definitely not lugubrious nor indignant) portrait on the nose cone of Eddie’s airplane, would have had a field day with this guy.

  Country Bumpkin, Beset by Woes.

  Eventually he wound down. Noelle left off her attempts to reason with the man, for which Denise was thankful. A little rural lamentation was okay, but it wore out its welcome pretty quickly.

  Fortunately, the barge was big enough to carry all their belongings except the horses. Those would have to be taken in tether by the Slovene cavalrymen. Also fortunately, whoever designed the wagon had shrewdly made the big cabin where the passengers rode detachable from the frame, so it could be hauled separately.

  Unfortunately, Noelle and Lukasz got paranoid about what Noelle called “operational security” so Denise was forced to ride in the cabin on board the barge instead of riding a horse alongside the river. Apparently no self-respecting Polish nobleman would let his beautiful young leman ride a horse under these conditions. Never mind that if the delicate twit couldn’t even ride a horse she wasn’t likely to handle her official function all that well either.

  But Denise’s reasoned logic—I’m too fragile to ride a horse but not too fragile to have that pile of bone and muscle—here she pointed an accusing finger at Lukasz—ride me?—failed in its purpose. Into the cabin aboard the barge she was required to go.