1637 The Polish Maelstrom Read online

  “I hadn’t thought of that. Good point.”

  “How about your table of organization?”

  “Oh, I’ll stick with the USE’s. I don’t see any reason to get fancy about that.”

  “No fancy title for yourself, even? ‘Brigadier’ is pretty humdrum for the top commander of an entire army.”

  Jeff snorted. “We’re talking about a provincial army. Which at the moment has exactly one regiment and some units that need to be reorganized. Should I call myself ‘Generallisimo Higgins’? That’d be even more grotesque than Gretchen getting saddled with ‘Lady Protector.’”

  There was silence for a moment. Then, Mike said, very seriously: “It’s been a privilege to serve with you, Brigadier Higgins.”

  “Likewise, General Stearns.”

  Mike slapped Jeff on the shoulder. “And now let’s call it quits with the formalities. You’re not in my chain of command any longer, Jeff.”

  “No. Not for now, anyway. But who knows what the future will bring? If anybody ever starts prattling to you about what’s likely and what’s not, Mike, just point out to them that we’re here either because of a cosmic accident or the divine will of God so shut the fuck up.”

  Kraków, official capital of Poland

  Actual capital of Lesser Poland

  Since all of them except the two youngsters had their own opinions when it came to the divine will of God, they observed a moment of silence rather than reciting any sort of grace. That had seemed odd to Pawel and Tekla, at first, but they’d gotten used to it soon. They had the practicality that came easily to children before it was beaten out of them by obsessive and superstitious adults. A moment of silence was shorter than grace so they got to eat sooner.

  Jozef stretched out his hand. “Pass me the butter, would you, Denise?”

  “You’re gonna get fat,” she predicted, as she passed it to him.

  “I certainly hope so.”

  Hearing a soft chuckle, Denise looked at Eddie. “You think that’s funny, too?”

  Eddie was cheerfully shoveling potatoes onto his plate. “What is it with up-timers that you find virtue in misery and suffering? Anyone with any sense at all wants to get fat. You never know when famine might strike.”

  Denise and Christin looked at each other.

  “Mom,” said the daughter, “tell these dumb men that pessimism is its own form of misery and suffering.”

  “That’s way too deep for me, Denise.” The mother was spreading butter on her bread—and not stinting on it. “That’s why they didn’t let me skip my eighteenth year and go straight to nineteen, like they did you.”

  “Not funny, Mom. I am nineteen.”

  “What you are, girl, is someone who got planted in the middle of the Thirty Years War and has so far still managed to come up roses. That’s an accomplishment at any age, trust me.”

  She lifted her glass of wine and held it up. “A toast, everyone.”

  Eddie and Jozef brought up their glasses. After a moment, so did Denise. A moment later, Pawel and Tekla raised their glasses of water.

  “To the Ring of Fire,” Christin said. “That brought us all together.”

  Cast of Characters

  Abrabanel, Rebecca

  USE Secretary of State; wife of Mike Stearns.

  Austria, Cecelia Renata, Archduchess of

  Sister of Austria-Hungarian Emperor Ferdinand III and Archduke Leopold

  Austria, Leopold Wilhelm, Archduke of

  Younger brother of Austria-Hungarian Emperor Ferdinand III

  Austria, Ferdinand III of

  Emperor of Austria-Hungary; older brother of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm and Archduchess Cecilia Renata; married to Mariana, infanta of Spain

  Beasley, Denise

  Teenage girl employed as an agent by Francisco Nasi; informally betrothed to Eddie Junker; daughter of Christin George

  Donner, Agathe “Tata”

  CoC organizer in Dresden; close associate of Gretchen Richter.

  Drugeth, Janos

  Hungarian nobleman; friend and adviser of Austrian Emperor Ferdinand III; married to Noelle Stull

  Fakhr-al-Din

  Druze emir

  George, Christin

  Mother of Denise Beasley

  Goss, Laura

  Captain in USE Air Force; pilot assigned to Rebecca Abrabanel

  Gustavus Adolphus

  See “Vasa, Gustav II Adolf”

  Higgins, Jeffrey (“Jeff”)

  Colonel, USE Army; husband of Gretchen Richter.

  Hugelmair, Minnie

  Teenage girl employed as an agent by Francisco Nasi; friend of Denise Beasley

  Junker, Egidius “Eddie”

  Employed as an agent and pilot by Francisco Nasi; informally betrothed to Denise Beasley.

  Koniecpolski, Stanisław

  Grand Herman of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

  Krenz, Eric

  Major, USE Army.

  Łohojski, Janusz

  Voivode of Kiev; one of the Polish–Lithuanian magnates

  Lubomirski, Stanisław

  Voivode of Ruthenia; one of the Polish–Lithuanian magnates

  Mackay, Julie

  Sharpshooter; wife of Alex Mackay; née Julie Sims

  Mackay, Alexander “Alex”

  Cavalry officer in the army of Gustavus Adolphus; husband of Julie Sims

  Mailey, Melissa

  Leader of the Fourth of July Party.

  Mercy, Franz von

  Bohemian general

  Mizrahi, Moshe

  Airship commander in the Gureba-i hava, the Ottoman Empire’s air force

  Murad IV

  Sultan of the Ottoman Empire

  Nasi, Francisco

  Former head of intelligence for Mike Stearns; now operating a private intelligence agency in Prague

  Nichols, James

  American doctor

  Opalinski, Krzysztof

  Polish nobleman; Galician revolutionary leader; older brother of Lukasz Opalinski

  Opalinski, Lukasz

  Polish hussar; friend of Jozef Wojtowicz

  Pappenheim, Gottfried Heinrich, Graf zu

  Top general of the Bohemian army.

  Potocki, Mikołaj

  Governor of Bracław Voivodeship; one of the Polish–Lithuanian magnates

  Richter, Maria Margaretha “Gretchen”

  Leader of the Committees of Correspondence; Chancellor of Saxony; Lady Protector of Lower Silesia; wife of Jeff Higgins.

  Roth, Judith

  Wife of Morris Roth

  Roth, Morris

  Commander of the Grand Army of the Sunrise; one of Wallenstein’s top advisers; husband of Judith Roth

  Simpson, Thomas “Tom” III

  USE Army artillery officer; husband of Rita Stearns; son of John and Mary Simpson.

  Sims, Julie

  See Mackay, Julie

  Stearns, Michael “Mike”

  Former prime Minister of the Unites States of Europe; now a major general in command of the 3rd Division, USE Army; husband of Rebecca Abrabanel.

  Stull, Noelle

  Countess of Homonna, married to Janos Drugeth.

  Sybolt, Bobby Gene (“Red”)

  Former coal miner and UMWA activist; now a revolutionary leader in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

  Ulrik

  Prince of Denmark; betrothed to Kristina Vasa

  Vasa, Kristina

  Daughter and heir-presumptive of Gustav II Adolf; betrothed to Prince Ulrik of Denmark

  Vasa, Gustav II Adolf

  King of Sweden; Emperor of the United States of Europe; High King of the Union of Kalmar; also known as Gustavus Adolphus.

  Vasa, Władysław IV

  King of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

  Venceslas V Adalbertus

  See “Wallenstein”

  Wallenstein, Albrecht von

  King of Bohemia

  Wendell, Judith Elaine “Judy the Younger”


  Barbie Consortium member; friend and companion of Archduchess Cecilia Renata

  Wiśniowiecki, Jeremi

  Prince of Wiśniowiec, Łubnie and Chorol; one of the Polish–Lithuanian magnates

  Wojtowicz, Jozef

  Nephew of Grand Hetman Koniecpolski; head of Polish intelligence in the USE; friend of Lukasz Opalinski

  Zaborowsky, Jakub

  Polish revolutionary leader

  Zarfati, Abraham

  Airship commander in the Gureba-i hava, the Ottoman Empire’s air force

  Zasławski, Władysław

  Prince of the Princely Houses of Poland; one of the Polish–Lithuanian magnates

  Afterword

  The 1632 series, also called the Ring of Fire series, is now up to twenty-four novels and fourteen anthologies of short fiction, published by Baen Books. I am the author or one of the co-authors of twenty-two of those novels. (The two I was not involved with as an author are Kerryn Offord and Rick Boatright’s The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz and Anette Pedersen’s 1635: The Wars for the Rhine.)

  In addition, a few years ago I launched a publishing house of my own with the name Eric Flint’s Ring of Fire Press, which enabled me to publish works in the Ring of Fire setting that Baen Books didn’t have room for. Most of them are novels, and some are collections of short fiction. As of today, there are seventeen such volumes.

  That’s what has been produced in paper editions. There is also a bimonthly electronic magazine devoted to the Ring of Fire series, the Grantville Gazette, which has been in operation since May 2007. As of the month this novel comes out, the magazine will have published eighty-two issues.

  The point to all this is that if you’ve enjoyed this novel and want to explore the Ring of Fire setting further…

  Boy, are you in luck.

  All of these titles, both in paper and electronic editions, are readily available.

  You can find Baen Books’ titles at its own website: https://www.baen.com/

  You can find Ring of Fire Press titles at our own website, which is https://ericflintsringoffire.com/. They can also be found at Baen Books.

  You can read the Grantville Gazette magazine at its own website, https://grantvillegazette.com, or obtain them through Baen Books.

  Or, if you prefer, you can order any of these titles through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Smashwords.

  And, of course, there’s no law that forbids you from just walking into a brick-and-mortar bookstore. (Yes, they still exist. Lots of them, in fact.)

  If you feel daunted by the complexity of the Ring of Fire series and don’t know where to go from here, fear not. You can find a recommended reading order on the website maintained by fans of the 1632 series: https://1632.org/reading_order/

  * * *

  I should mention one more thing. A couple of years after we launched Ring of Fire Press, it dawned on us that since we’d already set up a publishing house there was no reason we couldn’t publish works by other authors that were not in the Ring of Fire setting. The first such novel we published was Stoney Compton’s Incident in Alaska Prefecture. Since then, Ring of Fire Press has published another eight such volumes and there are more on the way.

  The sentence above was supposed to have been the end of the afterword. But a couple of weeks ago, a very old friend of mine died and I dedicated this book to him. I met Harry Meserve at UCLA when I was twenty-one years old. We were both graduate students in the history department. We became close friends, which we remained for the next half a century. Harry was the best man at my wedding to my first wife, Linda May O’Brien. I will miss him greatly.

  —Eric Flint

  December 2018

  Author’s Note

  On poetry in the Ring of Fire series

  Readers who have followed the Ring of Fire series are by now probably fxamiliar with my habit of using verses from various poems or other literary sources to accompany the different parts of each novel. I started that practice in the very first novel of the series, 1632, more or less on a whim. And then—also more or less on a whim—I continued doing so in succeeding novels. The whimsical nature of this enterprise is perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that three of the novels have no verses accompanying them. Why? Because I forgot to do it.

  As whimsical as they may be, I do try to use poetry or other verses that in my opinion capture something of the novel’s spirit. Perhaps the most obvious and clearest illustration of this guiding principle (using the terms “guiding” and “principle” oh so very loosely) are the verses cited in the novel 1636: Mission to the Mughals, which are from the great Hindu epic The Ramayana.

  I realize that some readers may not feel any particular set of verses is really appropriate to the novel to which it is attached. Such readers are, of course, entitled to their opinions—just as I am entitled, of course, to ignore them.

  For those interested, here are the verses cited:

  1632: William Blake, “The Tyger”

  1633: W. B. Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium”

  1634: The Galileo Affair: Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess”

  1634: The Ram Rebellion: verses from the Book of Ezekiel, the Bible (King James)

  1634: The Baltic War: W. B. Yeats, “Meditations in Time of Civil War”

  1635: A Parcel of Rogues: Robert Burns, “Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation”

  1634: The Bavarian Crisis: William Wordsworth, “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”

  1635: The Cannon Law: nothing

  1635: The Dreeson Incident: John Milton, “Paradise Lost”

  1635: The Eastern Front: William Wordsworth, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July 13, 1798”

  1636: The Saxon Uprising: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”

  1635: The Papal Stakes: Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Renascence”

  1636: The Atlantic Encounter: Wallace Stevens, “The Idea of Order at Key West”

  1636: Commander Cantrell: William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida

  1636: The Kremlin Games: nothing

  1636: The Cardinal Virtues: not poetry but depictions of the four virtues

  1636: The Ottoman Onslaught: Robert Browning, “Andrea Del Sarto”

  1636: Mission to the Mughals: verses from the Ramayana

  1636: The Vatican Sanction: Wallace Stevens, “Le Monocle de Mon Oncle”

  1637: The Volga Rules: nothing

  1637: The Polish Maelstrom: “Völuspá: The Prophecy of the Seeress” from The Poetic Edda

  1636: The China Venture (forthcoming): Rudyard Kipling, “Mandalay”

  Table of Contents

  Maps

  Prologue: The Anaconda Project

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part Two

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part Three

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part Four

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Part Five

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Part Six

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Part Seven

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40
>
  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Epilogue: The Anaconda Prospect

  Cast of Characters

  Afterword

  Author’s Note

  Table of Contents

  Maps

  Prologue: The Anaconda Project

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part Two

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part Three

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part Four

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Part Five

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Part Six

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Part Seven

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Epilogue: The Anaconda Prospect

  Cast of Characters

  Afterword

  Author’s Note

  Table of Contents

  Maps

  Prologue: The Anaconda Project

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part Two

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part Three