1637 The Polish Maelstrom Read online

  Łohojski’s mind finally processed what he was seeing. The banners along the side of the vehicle as well as those flown from the turrets were similar to the royal banners but not identical. The coat of arms at the center of the white-and-red stripes was now a simple star.

  That was an enemy APC—and the coordinated attack being launched against him had to have some underlying logic. It wasn’t simply madness or stupidity on the part of an addlepated rebel commander.

  Three seconds later, the logic began to unfold.

  * * *

  “Now!” shouted Christin. Sitting behind her, Denise immediately yanked the lever in her left hand.

  A moment later, Christin repeated the call. “Now!”

  Denise yanked the other lever. Then, rose up as far as she could in her seat to look out the window.

  “Dammit!” she cried. “I can’t see anything! Next time I run into Bob Kelly, I swear I’m gonna tear him a new asshole. What was he thinking?”

  The girl’s frustration was produced by the airplane’s peculiar design. Kelly had originally built the Dauntless—which hadn’t had that name yet—to serve a combined purpose. It would provide the Air Force with the same observational capabilities as Hal Smith’s Belles and Gustavs, but would be able to haul more and bigger cargo because of the long and rather narrow construction of the rear fuselage.

  Happily or sadly, depending on how you looked at it, the plane—now given the fierce name Dauntless—had been pressed into service as a bomber as well. To that end, a seat had been placed in the rear and a crude but effective system of wires and levers had been installed that enabled the person riding in that seat to eject the two bombs slung under the fuselage.

  The downside to the new design was that the windows provided for the person in the rear seat were not only small, but perched high up in the fuselage.

  A six-foot-tall man could have managed to look out of them easily enough.

  Denise was five foot four.

  “Mom! What the hell is happening?”

  * * *

  Christin didn’t actually have any idea herself. Eddie had flown the plane so low that, racing at its top speed of perhaps one hundred and twenty miles an hour, they had passed beyond the siege guns before Christin could get a good look at the results of the strike. All she knew was that the bombs had worked. One of them had, anyway. Looking back as far as she could out of her own window, she could see the big flames now engulfing one of the siege guns.

  * * *

  Those same flames took down Władysław Zasławski.

  He wasn’t struck by any of the burning napalm himself, but a glob of it landed on the haunch of his horse. Frightened as well as badly burned, the horse reared up and threw him out of the saddle.

  He landed on his back right next to one of the culverins. The impact stunned him, but he was not otherwise injured.

  Until the powder stored next to the culverin exploded, and toppled it onto him.

  He survived, because the gun didn’t land on his head or torso. But it crushed his left leg and broke the tibia of his right.

  He passed out from shock immediately, too soon to even cry out in pain.

  * * *

  Janusz Łohojski wasn’t hurt at all, but it took him several seconds to bring his terrified horse under control. When he could finally pay attention to anything other than keeping himself in the saddle, he looked first to the oncoming enemy cavalry.

  He understood now what the rebels were planning. That unexpected incendiary strike would panic the artillerymen, and in the confusion the oncoming enemy cavalry would try to seize the entire battery. With one bold strike, they would cripple the besiegers.

  Zasławski would have to rally his own troops. If the youngster moved fast, he could establish a strong enough defense by the time the rebels arrived to drive off their cavalry.

  Where was he? Looking around, Łohojski couldn’t see him.

  But he had no time to lose trying to find him. Łohojski was the top commander of the entire army. He had to get his own forces along with those of the other three magnates to come to Zasławski’s support.

  “Rally your men, Prince!” he shouted, and then galloped off.

  Kraków, official capital of Poland

  Actual capital of Lesser Poland

  Looking through his binoculars from a window in the highest floor of the town hall’s tower, Mike Stearns was almost as frustrated as Denise. He couldn’t see much more than she could; partly because of the distance and partly because the rise blocked most of what he could see of the siege guns.

  The one thing that was obvious, though, was that both bombs had gone off. Two fifty-pound bombs loaded with primitive napalm couldn’t possibly engulf the whole battery in flames—but they didn’t want to do that anyway. The plan was to duplicate Gustav Adolf’s feat at Breitenfeld. They’d seize the enemy’s artillery and turn it against them.

  One of the gun’s powder stores had been ignited, he thought. Beyond that…

  He brought down the binoculars to look at the Galician cavalry. To his great satisfaction, he saw that the two Opalinski brothers were leading the charge.

  Well…maybe not. Maybe it was two other hussars in full armor who looked like they might be the Opalinskis.

  Good enough.

  He lowered his binoculars and turned toward the photographer, who was leaning out of an adjoining window with a camera.

  An up-time camera. One of the very excellent sports cameras that Mike had made sure his Third Division was supplied with—and one of which he’d brought to Kraków with him.

  “You are getting this, yes?” he said.

  The photographer was too intent on the work at hand to respond. Mike went back to looking through his binoculars.

  The Galician charge had almost reached the rise, he saw—and some of the Cossacks were starting to curl around its western slope. Make whatever jokes or snide remarks you wanted to about the indiscipline of the Galician cavalry. Those men could ride.

  Mike was surprised to see that there was no sign of an organized defense on the part of the artillerymen or the infantrymen who should have been supporting them. Perhaps their officers had been injured—or simply weren’t very capable.

  At that point, having nothing further to do, the photographer climbed back down from the window.

  “Do not teach your wife how to suck eggs,” Rebecca told him frostily.

  Half a mile northwest of Kraków

  Under most conditions, the top officers in Prince Zasławski’s army were quite capable. But they weren’t very far removed from medieval retainers, either. So two of the three of them were wasting their valuable time yelling orders at the men trying to lift the culverin’s barrel off of the prince.

  The third one, Regimentarz Benedictus Wieczorek, was doing his best to get the prince’s infantry to assemble on top of the rise. There were only two thousand of them, because Zasławski had concentrated on building his artillery and even the richest magnate could only afford to spend so much on his private army. But that was about the same number as those of the approaching cavalry, and if he could get the infantry steadied and in good field position on top of the rise, they’d be able to hold them off. At least two-thirds of them were pikemen, after all.

  Napoleon Bonaparte had once said to a subordinate officer on a battlefield, “You can ask me for anything you like, except time.”

  The regimentarz was doing fairly well, actually. But he ran out of time. The Galicians came onto the rise and poured over it, killing everyone in their way, including Benedictus Wieczorek. It would be claimed by many of the Galicians afterward that he was cut down by Lukasz Opalinski himself.

  Lukasz himself never made the claim—but he never denied it, either. It was too useful politically; and, besides, he might have. He cut down several enemies that day. He had no idea who they were, though.

  The Brama Floriańska

  “Pardon my language, Prince,” said Jeff Higgins, “but this is fucking i
nsane. You’re the heir apparent to the imperial throne, damnation.”

  “No, Kristina is,” replied Ulrik. “And please leave off the recriminations, Colonel. My mind is made up, I’m not going to change it—and I am the top commander of all Silesian forces. The only person who could overrule me is the Lady Protector of Silesia.”

  Ulrik swiveled in his saddle and pointed back to the town hall’s tower. “And she’s back there. And you seem to have misplaced your regimental radio.”

  Jeff scowled but didn’t say anything. He had dark suspicions about that mysteriously absent radio whose operator was normally at his immediate beck and call. He doubted if he’d ever be able to prove it, but he was pretty sure the radioman had gotten a big bribe from the prince.

  Ulrik was normally as levelheaded as any man Jeff had ever met. But now and then, he’d dig in his heels over what he considered a point of honor—and when he did, he was immovable.

  * * *

  The Danish prince’s longtime companion Baldur Norddahl could have warned him. The Norwegian had also once tried to persuade the prince to forego a dangerous mission. But Ulrik had still led his little flotilla of torpedo boats out to face Admiral Simpson’s ironclads, the most fearsome warships on the planet.

  You could even make a case that for him to lead the Hangman Regiment and half of the Silesian army out to face the armies of five Polish–Lithuanian magnates was a comparatively safe endeavor. But it wouldn’t be wise to try to make it in front of Colonel Jeff Higgins.

  “Fucking crazy,” he repeated.

  * * *

  “They’re all fucking crazy,” said one of the Silesians guarding the Brama Floriańska, as he and his fellow soldier watched the Hangman Regiment marching out below them.

  His companion grunted. “At least they’re not sending us out. Just the damn Jews and the Polish dimwits—and these Hangmen fanatics.”

  The first soldier raised his eyes. The tail end of General von Mercy’s cavalry was still in sight. They were heading toward the space separating two of the enemy armies.

  He was a mercenary, and a veteran, so he understood what von Mercy was trying to do: open a gap between two armies so he and the infantry coming behind him could crush one of them. He also understood how many men were likely to get killed in the doing of it.

  Not him, though, he thought with satisfaction. Von Mercy had chosen to leave his Bohemian infantry veterans back in Kraków, along with the Vogtland irregulars, to defend the city against any possible enemy attempt to seize it during the battle.

  Airstrip south of the Vistula

  Kraków, official capital of Poland

  Actual capital of Lesser Poland

  As soon as the Steady Girl landed and taxied to a stop, Christin climbed out of the cockpit and rushed toward the hangar, where men were already pushing a cart toward the plane. Denise clambered out right after her and rolled herself under the fuselage. Those were her bombs being carted up to the plane, and she was damned if she’d let anyone else attach them to the hard points. They’d be sure to screw it up.

  She could hear her mother shouting. “Move it! Move it!”

  “What is it about moms,” she muttered, “that makes them so bossy?”

  Chapter 48

  A mile north of Kraków

  Jeff was wrong, actually. Prince Ulrik hadn’t decided to march out with the Hangman Regiment and the other Silesian forces out of a stubborn and misplaced sense of honor. He’d done it with an utterly cold-blooded purpose, and a conspiratorial one to boot.

  His co-conspirator had been Mike Stearns.

  The commander of the Third Division had come to his chamber the night before the battle. After Ulrik had his servant let him in and then sent the servant out of the room—the Danish prince was far too canny to make the common mistake of seventeenth-century royalty and nobility of forgetting that servants have ears and mouths—he’d invited Stearns to sit.

  “What can I do for you, General?”

  “Since this expedition began you’ve complained several times that you felt useless.”

  Ulrik snorted softly. “Yes. I even borrowed one of your up-time phrases—‘useless as tits on a bull.’”

  Stearns smiled. “Well, as it happens, there’s something you could do tomorrow that only you can do—only you, in the entire world.”

  “And that is?”

  * * *

  After Stearns explained, Ulrik rose and went to a side table. There, he poured himself a glass of wine. And then another, for the general. He returned to his seat, handed one of the glasses to Stearns—at no point did he ask him whether he wanted any wine; they were beyond that now—and drank about a third of his own after he sat down.

  “Does your wife know what you’re proposing?”

  “No, I haven’t told her—and I don’t plan to. She’d have a fit.”

  Ulrik nodded. “That’s wise, I think. She’s a diplomat, not a soldier.”

  “It goes beyond that. I’m a revolutionary—like Gretchen, although my methods are different—and Rebecca isn’t.”

  Ulrik’s eyes widened. “I believe the whole world would disagree with you—including your wife herself. I have read her book, General.”

  Stearns smiled again. “So have I. Rebecca supports our revolution, there’s no doubt about that. She’s a brilliant woman—smarter than I am, for sure—so she also provides the revolution with theoretical guidance and justification. Not even Spartacus is in the same league, that way. But, in the end, she remains a student and a scholar. She’s not—not quite, at least—the same sort of person as myself or Gretchen or Jakub Zaborowsky or Red Sybolt.”

  “Not willing to get her hands dirty, you’re saying.”

  Stearns shook his head. “No, she’d be willing, if she thought it were necessary. She just wouldn’t understand how to go about doing it in the first place. I don’t think that woman has a ruthless bone in her body—and never mind that she devoted a whole chapter in her book to the need for ruthlessness when the revolution is threatened by hardened and vicious reactionaries.”

  Ulrik took another drink from his glass and set it down. “You, on the other hand, I believe to have several ruthless bones in your body.”

  “I have a whole bunch of them. From my prizefighter’s knuckles on down.”

  Ulrik said nothing for a few seconds. Then, abruptly: “Did you get your hands dirty in Operation Kristallnacht, General?”

  Stearns stared at him. Then, replied just as abruptly: “Yes. I did.”

  “I thought so.” The Danish prince pursed his lips thoughtfully. “The official explanation has never struck me as very plausible. Anti-Semites are certainly vicious enough to commit such murders, but why would they do it? And in that manner? Mayor Dreeson and his companion were not killed as bystanders haplessly caught up in a melee. They were deliberately targeted at long range by an excellent rifleman. Why would anti-Semites start a riot in Grantville for the purpose of assassinating an elderly mayor and a Christian pastor? It was as if they deliberately attempted to infuriate people against them.”

  He picked up his glass and drained it. “So who did do it?”

  “Ducos and his Huguenot fanatics. Not himself, but he would have given the order. We think the actual shooter was probably one of the men involved in the later assassination attempt against you and Princess Kristina.”

  “And the successful assassination of the Swedish queen. Both would have had the same purpose—to trigger another war against Richelieu.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you—I’m sure your man Nasi was involved also—chose to suppress the truth in order to unleash the CoCs on the USE’s organized anti-Semites.”

  “Yes.”

  Ulrik rose, went back to the side table, and poured himself another glass of wine. He didn’t offer to provide Stearns with any since the American general hadn’t so much as touched his own wine.

  Then, still standing at the side table, he drank half of it in one swallow before saying:
“Dear God, that was brilliant. You’ve never told your wife about that either, I assume?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t. She wouldn’t really understand.”

  “I don’t want her to understand. Just because I have dirty hands doesn’t mean I want to spread the dirt on anyone else, especially the person I love most in the world.”

  Ulrik nodded. “May I call you ‘Mike’?”

  * * *

  So, here he was, riding a horse into a battle where he might very well get killed. From a normal diplomatic point of view, this was madness. The USE had taken great pains, after all, to keep its involvement with the Polish rebels as covert as possible. And now the crown prince of the USE—which was what Ulrik was and everyone knew it, formalities be damned—was going to participate directly in a battle alongside those very same rebels?

  Madness.

  Unless…

  The rebels won.

  Won not just this battle but the revolution as a whole. At that point, a lasting and durable peace would have to be made between the USE and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Two great nations which, given that one of them had the Swedish king for its emperor, had been engaged in savage hostilities for a generation.

  Such a peace would be difficult. But not impossible. Not after the word spread—which it inevitably would, over time—that the crown prince of the USE had fought at Kraków right alongside his Galician allies.

  From one viewpoint, it would be even better if he did get killed.

  But there was no need to go to that extreme.

  Even Mike Stearns had urged him to be careful.

  * * *

  They were nearing the front now. Ahead of them, von Mercy’s cavalry was clashing with Polish hussars and the infantry was within three hundred yards.

  “At least do me one favor, Prince,” said Colonel Higgins.

  “And that is?”

  Higgins pointed to the rear, where the mounted infantrymen and their pack horses were bringing up the mortars.

  “Stay back just a bit and take charge of the artillery.”