Eric Flint's Blog, page 297

1636 The Viennese Waltz – Snippet 18

1636 The Viennese Waltz – Snippet 18

Uriel nodded. “I agree. But that was then, and this is now. Now everyone knows that up-timers can create money and that money is good. I think as long as you didn’t increase the money supply too much, just Sarah Wendell von Up-time would be enough to provide credibility.”

“I hate that expression,” Sarah said, referring to the “von Up-time.” It was a tag that the Daily News had put on up-timers with an op-ed piece that claimed that they were the true nobility. And it was becoming fairly popular with some up-timers and a lot of down-timers. “And, like I said before, I am not looking for a job. Besides, even if the person you get to head your bank were an up-timer, even if it was Coleman Walker or my dad, it wouldn’t make any difference if everyone thought the king could order them to print more money.”

Uriel and Morris were both nodding. Uriel said, “It must be arranged so that the continued value of the money is given precedence over the short-term gain from just adding more.”

“And it must be seen that that is the case,” Sarah said. “Your Majesty, you need someone that people will trust and who will argue with you. Publicly.”

By now King Al was looking at Morris Roth. Don Morris shook his head. “I’m too closely associated with you, Your Majesty. I’m not sure people would accept my independence.”

“What about Dame Judith?” Uriel Abrabanel was grinning like a Cheshire cat.

“Fine. But you tell her!” Morris Roth snorted in return.

“Actually, that’s not a bad idea.” Karl looked Morris Roth in the eye. “She is both an up-timer and Jewish. And prejudice works for us here. Everyone knows that the up-timer money is better than silver and everyone knows that Jews are tight with money. If none of the money goes to her, and if the Abrabanels support her, the rest of the Jewish community will too. It could work quite well. Especially if Don Morris were to publicly complain about the appointment, because he doesn’t want to be caught in the middle when Your Majesty and his stubborn wife butt heads.”

“You’re crazy. I don’t know a thing about monetary policy and Judith knows even less. Well, not much more, anyway.”

“What she doesn’t know, she can learn,” Uriel said. He wasn’t laughing now. “And she will have excellent advisors. What we have learned about monetary theory from the up-timers’ books is valuable, but the truth is that no true economists came back in the Ring of Fire, with all due respect to Sarah here. By now members of my extended family know as much or more about how money works as any up-timer does. What we need is the belief in money, and that your wife can provide simply because she is an up-timer. Prince Karl is quite correct, and it has other advantages as well. A Jewish woman with a position of great authority will be another assurance that Your Majesty means it when you say that Jews will be treated equally in your kingdom. Both for the Jews and for the Gentiles, and it will set a valuable precedent for women in the Jewish community.”

Morris Roth was clearly looking for a good reason to squash the idea, but it was equally clear that he wasn’t finding one that would hold water. “Fine. You tell her,” he said again.

“I’ll tell her,” King Al said. “In the meantime, Prince, tell us about this Liechtenstein Industrialization Corporation of yours.”

****

Over the next few days they talked about what railroads, even wooden railroads, and other bits of advanced tech would do for the Liechtenstein lands in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. As Karl had expected, King Al didn’t really have a problem with what Karl wanted to do. What he wanted was a public swearing of fealty that included Gundaker von Liechtenstein’s domains of Kromau and Ostra. Which is sure to thrill Uncle Gundaker, Karl thought sardonically. “Why Ostra, Your Majesty?”

“If Ferdinand insists that he can grant Kromau in Moravia, I can grant Ostra in Hungary.” King Al gave Karl a cold little smile. “I imagine that when it’s finally settled, your uncle will end up with Ostra and you’ll keep Kromau.” As it worked out, the part about Ostra was mumbled a bit in the swearing and buried in the fine print in the documents, but that was at King Al’s insistence. “I don’t want to make a big thing of it. It’s just a negotiating ploy to let Ferdinand save a bit of face when he finally acknowledges that I rule Bohemia and Moravia.”

Roth House, Prague

“He wants me to do what?” Judith Roth looked stunned and Sarah tried not to smile. They were in the Roth’s huge salon. There were etchings on the walls and conversation nooks scattered around the walls.

“It wasn’t my idea.” Morris walked over to a down-time made recliner. “On the other hand, their reasoning was fairly sound.”

“I don’t know anything about running a federal reserve.”

“You probably don’t want a federal reserve system.” Sarah looked around trying to figure out where to sit. “We have a modified one in the USE, because we got it from the SoTF, which got it from the New US, which got it from the USA up-time. And the up-time Fed was a disorganized mess which was developed out of a compromise between a whole bunch of people with very strong opinions about monetary policy and not a lot of understanding of it. It’s a mare’s nest of conflicting regulations. You probably want something closer to a Bank of England system, with the government owning a lot of non-voting interest in the bank. Interest that can’t be sold or borrowed against, but just pays dividends when the bank makes a profit.”

“So why aren’t you . . . ?” Mrs. Roth waved Sarah to a couch.

“I don’t live here, Mrs. Roth,” Sarah said. “I can help you set it up while I’m here, but not do it for you.”

“I don’t even know what we should call our money.”

“Dollars or thalers is probably simplest. I wouldn’t call them Albrechts or Wallensteins,” Sarah said, then she grinned. “You could go all science fictiony and call them credits.”

Judith shuddered. “Not the way the Catholic church feels about usury. I think just ‘Bohemian dollars’ will be best.”

“So how many dollars to a HRE thaler?” Sarah asked.

“Shouldn’t we just let it float?” Judith Roth asked.

“Yes, certainly. But a big part of your job will be to help set the value by controlling how many Bohem–” Sarah grinned. “–’boys’ are in circulation.”

Judith Roth wasn’t pleased to be appointed to head the Bohemian National Bank, but Bohemia did need money that people would have faith in.

As it turned out, Sarah had plenty of time to work with Judith Roth and Uriel Abrabanel on designing the structure of the new national bank of Bohemia. Enough time for King Albrecht von Wallenstein to yield his right to create money to the bank, in the interest of a stable and prosperous nation. She had the time, because it took a while for Karl to arrange the visit to his aunt in Cieszyn.

 

Polychrome – Chapter 10

Polychrome – Chapter 10

Chapter 10.

“So, Captain Thunderstroke –”

“Hah!” His laugh was as abrupt as his last name. “Nimbus, please. Or ‘sir’ when I’m training you. But if the Rainbow Lord has decreed that I, personally, train you, we are equals. Say on, then.”

I grinned back at him. I was probably going to hate this guy at times during our training, but I kinda liked him already. “How much do you know about the Prophecy? Is there anything I can’t talk about with you?”

“Nothing is there so vital to our defense that the Rainbow Lord would have failed to tell me, and yet have told you, when you would be unable to fully comprehend it.” He said this with a simple, matter-of-fact tone. While I could see he was a man very proud of his skill and position, there was no ego in that statement. And it made sense; if this guy was the head of his defenses, the Rainbow Lord had BETTER trust him.

“Okay, got it.” I said. “So when we were talking, he said my nature as a true Mortal wasn’t just a neat advantage, but was necessary.” I associated the way Iris Mirabilis had said that word with the way that Mentor of Arisia would have used it. “What did he mean by that?”

“You cut to the heart of the matter. Let us hope you are so swift with weapons as well.” Nimbus rubbed his hand through his already-wild (though short) dark-violet hair. “You are familiar with Oz through the distorted retellings in your world, yes?”

“Very familiar. And I’m quite aware that there were a lot of … liberties taken with the reality.”

He grunted. “Even so.” We turned down a cross-corridor, and I was struck anew by the sheer size of the place. This palace couldn’t be less than a mile, a mile and a half, across. Maybe a lot more. The translucent blue-prismatic crystal of the walls was like marble mined from some petrified ocean, and stretched on forever, it seemed. “The first and most obvious answer is that your adversaries are both mighty magicians indeed, and all of their greatest weapons are things of fell enchantment and dark faerie power. As a True Mortal, you can stand before them with a greater hope of victory than any others among us, perhaps even than the Rainbow Lord himself, perhaps even than the Above.” At the last word he raised his head, nodding upward. “But there is a far more specific reason. Many things in the books were, as you say, not precisely what was written. The Deadly Desert was and is, however, quite real, as was the enchantment enacted by Glinda the High Sorceress to seal off Oz from the mortal world.

“The Usurpers Ugu and Amanita have taken control of that barrier and transformed it. The shield about Oz now excludes all but the most minute traces of Faerie power, save that which they permit to travel through; their spies and agents, in other words.” I nodded to show that I understood. “A being such as yourself can pass through that barrier when none of us may do so.”

“You are not telling me that I have to go charging into an enemy-occupied Oz all by myself?”

He laughed. I wasn’t sure I liked the laugh. “We will leave that discussion for later, mortal. For here,” he shoved open a huge portal, “we are.”

The room inside was roughly the size of Iris’ throneroom, but instead of a dramatic seat of power, this was an indoor drilling field, a dojo on steroids; hundreds of men with the same undefinably exotic air that surrounded Nimbus (and was much stronger around Polychrome and her father) were practicing – swinging swords, maces, blocking with shields, ducking, parrying, leaping in impossibly high arcs to evade and returning to ground to cut and jab and lunge. “This is the palace guard?”

“A small number of them, yes. Understand that for a ruler such as Iris Mirabilis, the security of the castle and his people is the security of the entire realm. One could call us his army and be just as accurate. Ten thousand and more do I command… and,” he fixed me with a heavy stare, “all ten thousand will I commit to the war if need be and if my Lord orders it. And no choice will we have in this, if you fail.”

“Sure, sure, load me up with the responsibility.” I tried to sound casual. At his sudden glare, I swallowed. “Sorry.”

He sighed and looked regretful. “My apologies. Perhaps you do not realize just how long it has been, that we have been preparing and waiting. It wears on us just as it would on you, my friend.”

“I did get the idea that time went by a lot faster here than back home.”

“As you measure time, it was nigh on fifty years ago that Oz fell. Here, it was three centuries and more a gone.”

Six to one time ratio. Well, that has some advantages for me. Still…! “You’ve been just waiting around for three hundred years for this prophecy to come due? They’ve had that long to lock it all down? Jesus, man, is it really that hopeless without me?”

He gave a bitter laugh as he led me into an alcove about as large as a ballroom. “It strikes me as improbable as well, Erik Medon, but yes, it is exactly that hopeless.

“Oz is the center, the very core of Faerie. That power is in the hands of beings who understand how to wield it and who have chosen to do so in a manner directly contrary to its normal nature. Not only does this affect all of us in one way or another, it is something virtually impossible for us, alone, to combat. As well lead your people’s armies against the Sun. Assembled all together, the other Faerie realms might, possibly, equal the forces that the Warlock and the Yookoohoo command. But even leaving aside how difficult it would be to convince all of those squabbling little realms to unite against such a foe, the barrier they have made from Glinda’s is an absolute and impenetrable defense, through which only one thing can pass.”

“A true Mortal who is, by his nature, completely unaffected by magic, howsoever powerful.” I finished.

“Exactly.” He gestured to the lefthand wall; I saw, arranged in glittering, expectant ranks, dozens upon dozens of weapons: gladius-like shortswords, daggers, spears, clubs, staves, titanic two-handed swords, barbed nets, tridents, crescent-shaped blades like sickles, katana-like longswords, and more exotic offerings. “Choose a weapon, mortal. We’ll test your instincts first before we begin the training in earnest.”

“Just be careful not to kill me in your testing. As Iris pointed out, I’m not immune to sharp pointy things in my gut.”

He gave another snort of laughter as I surveyed the wall of death-dealing implements, and drew his own weapon, something like a green-blue claymore; he leaned on it as he waited.

He’s a lot bigger than me, clearly one hell of a lot stronger if he’s using something THAT size. I’m never going to beat him, but I need to play to what strengths I’ve got. I finally selected a long, twin-edged rapier. I’ve done a little swordwork with things like this, and it’s fast. My only chance to even look halfway good is to use speed – stick and move and stick again, and not in any way, shape, or form try to match him one to one.

I took a breath and turned to him. “I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

A tiny smile curled one corner of his mouth. He brought his huge sword up in a salute and then stood there, waiting.

“Yeah, I figured you’d wait.” I circled slowly, watching him turn easily in place. A fast lunge in, then retreat immediately.

I did several feints, trying to make it difficult to know when I was committing to the attack. He did unlimber his sword from the salute, watching my movements narrowly.

I gathered myself as if to commit, then pulled back, then did the real lunge forward. Extend and –

A baseball bat wielded by Hercules took me in the side of my head, spinning me sideways and sending me skidding prone on the floor, the useless rapier skittering away from my hand.

“Are you all right?” I looked up blearily to see Nimbus’ huge hand extended.

I forced myself to grasp it and tried to grin. “Sure, never better.”

“I saw your line of thinking. You noted our differential in height, my weapon choice, and so on. You elected to try to match my strength with speed and guile. A logical strategy.”

Without warning, he suddenly bellowed, “AND COMPLETELY WRONG!”

Those words, shouted loudly enough to make my ears ring, certainly helped clear my head. “What? What other strategy WAS there, short of running away and hoping I could find a hole you wouldn’t fit through?”

He grinned coldly. “Hit me, mortal.”

“What?”

“Hit me. Here.” He pointed to the center of his armored breastplate.

“You want me to break my hand? I –”

“I said hit me, you idiotic overweight soft-gutted pathetic excuse for a hero! Or aren’t you able to follow even a simple command?”

I didn’t see the point, but I set my jaw, drew my fist back, and punched.

There was a crunch and for an instant I was sure I’d broken my knuckles. But to my utter astonishment, Nimbus Thunderstroke literally flew backwards from the force of my blow, tumbling end over end as though he’d been hit by a truck, fetching up with an audible thud against the far wall. What the hell…?

He coughed, a pain-wracked sound, and slowly came to his hands and knees, then forced himself to stand. As he did, I saw that his gray-blue armor was cracked where I’d struck it, the metal scales crushed like eggshell. “Well… struck, Erik Medon. And yet I think you pulled that punch.”

I did. A lot. I don’t like hitting people, and even with practice, well… I didn’t want to hurt my hand, either…

“What the hell’s going on? I can’t hit like that. No one can –” I suddenly stopped, mouth half-open, as understanding began to break through.

He smiled painfully. “I see you may begin to understand, Erik.”

“It’s… that difference in our basic natures again.” I said slowly. “I’m… mostly material. Solid matter. You’re… a being of spirit, with just a moderate connection to the solid world. So if I’m resisting you instead of going along… it’s like, what, I’m made of steel or something?”

A nod. “Close enough, though not so alike that my swords will not cut you. And so – though your logic was perfectly reasonable – it led you to precisely the wrong conclusion.” He pulled a vial from his belt and drank. I could see the color return to his face, and he straightened. “Alas that my mail will not be so easily mended. Now, can you tell me the other side of your new realization?”

I thought a moment. “Even someone your size will be faster than me. Less real mass but more mystical power, you’ll be very quick. I didn’t even see you move that sword.”

“Partly that is your lack of training and mortal age. Some of that we can overcome with training and practice. But again you have the essence correct. So your proper strategy against us is –”

I suddenly burst out laughing. “To act as though I’m something more the size of Iris Mirabilis – you can out move me, but all I need to do is hit most of you ONCE and you don’t get up.”

“Exactly so.” He smiled at my incredulity. “A man of your… condition obviously never would have expected to need to use such tactics.” The smile suddenly turned predatory. “Which means that we will need to work much harder to make you able to properly take advantage of this.”

Oh, boy.

 

The Savior – Snippet 30

The Savior – Snippet 30

PART SIX

The Clash

The Present

1

Approaching Progar District

476 Post Tercium

Once they were above the Second Cataract, the road climbed steadily. Rocks jutted more often from the soil of the Valley, and the Rim grew closer and closer. Soon the Valley was barely a league across from West Rim to East Rim. Finally, they were walking on broken stone rather than dirt. The scree was smooth enough for passage of the wagons, but crunched with every step.

What bothered Abel, and was clearly bothering von Hoff, was that the cliffs on either side were now at the edges of the Road. They were marching through a constricted passage, perfect for an enemy sniper or bowman. It troubled von Hoff enough to send Abel to General Saxe and request that he be permitted to send skirmishers up the rocks to take care of any threat from above.

Abel picked his way forward to find Saxe. He heard a rumble at first. Then from ahead came a thundering roar. Rocks? Had the enemy launched an avalanche? Then Abel rounded a bend and saw what created the noise.

A secondary river was pouring into the River. Abel had seen it on a map, but had assumed it would be another stream to cross, similar to the Canal.

This was something else again. This river was called the Fork on the maps. Ahead of Abel, it descended through high canyon walls that stretched to the east. It was huge and torrential. Abel had seen streams, but had never seen a large tributary to the River. That was because this was the only one. It originated in the high plateaus of the Progar Escarpment, draining the northeastern Schnee for hundreds of leagues. There was no way a boat could cross the Fork, much less the hundreds of boats that would be needed to ferry an army.

Abel rode closer. He could feel the pounding power of the water in his body. He looked above. There, shrouded in mist, was a way over. It was a bridge made of cut rocks, a bridge as singular in the Land as the Fork. A trail switch backed up to its southern entrance, and then the bridge itself arched over the torrential Fork.

The Stone Bridge. It marked the exact border of Cascade and Progar, one of the great wonders of the Land. He’d learned of it as a child. The Stone Bridge of Progar, the Tabernacle of Zentrum, the lighthouse at Fyrpahatet, Lake Treville — these were all on the list.

Abel rode up and joined the stream of soldiers crossing over. On the other side of the bridge, where the Road widened out, he found the general and his staff.

Saxe was a man made to sit on a mount and look commanding. Even Abel, who had learned not to judge the skill of the military man by his appearance, couldn’t help thinking so. He had a graying beard so closely trimmed that he must shape it with a steel blade rather than obsidian. He was bronze-skinned, with deep-set eyes and a raptor’s nose. He was also one of those men whose torso was a good deal larger than his legs. This caused Saxe to appear enormous when he sat in the saddle. Abel had been in his geography class at the Academy, and knew Saxe was shorter than he was when standing. Now, sitting on a large male dont, Saxe gazed down at Abel while Abel delivered von Hoff’s request.

The general had moved over to one side with his staff in order to review the troops as they marched. The officers were passing around a wineskin and squeezing a short stream into their mouths. Saxe himself did not partake, but worked a cud of nesh with his jaw while watching the troops.

After Abel was done talking, the general spat out a stream of nesh juice onto the dusty road, somehow avoiding getting any on his beard. He turned to Abel and laughed genially, then denied the request. He sent Abel back to tell von Hoff that the cliffs were so steep he doubted any man could climb them, and they had to take their chances.

Von Hoff calmly nodded when Abel delivered Saxe’s reply. “It’s my job to worry, and his to sort his priorities,” he murmured. “Still, let’s have all sharpshooters to the middle of the column. That’ll give them a better field of fire if they have to take the enemy off those cliffs.”

Abel sent out couriers with the order. On they marched, and soon the Road became so steep and narrow that the donts couldn’t handle it with men on their backs. Abel had the command staff dismount and lead their rides upward. He was, as he’d started the journey, back to the steady drumbeat of a double-time march.

No attack came from above, and the path widened a bit. Abel discovered that there was a louder and more powerful roar than the Fork entering the River. From ahead came the pounding thunder of the Third Cataract. Here there was a far steeper and more constricted passage than even that of the Second Cataract where it flowed around Montag Island. Soon they were marching alongside the River as it raged down the Valley. The Road became more level, and the brigade staff was able to mount up again. But the sound of the roaring River kept the donts skittish, and Abel had to give Nettle a reassuring stream of gentle words now and then to keep her calm.

Others were not having as much luck, and one of the brigade cartographers fell off the side of a veering dont and landed on his arm. Abel, not far away, heard the sickening crack of bone, and the man stood up wailing in pain. Von Hoff was too far ahead to have noticed, and Abel decided not to trouble him with the situation. He had the man set to the side with a medic to tend him.

They rode on.

After what seemed an endless series of rapids, they reached the top of the cataract. The River widened, and a descending wagon path crossed over the Road and down to a ferry landing at the water’s edge. No carting boat was in sight. Abel looked across the River and saw a boat pulled up on the other side and turned over, as if it had been stowed — except for the fact that its underside had been stove to white wooden splinters.

To Abel’s right, the cliffs of the Rim turned directly east, while ahead of him stood the first true mountain he’d seen with his own eyes.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Raj was chuckling. You’ll see higher still. Much higher.

He’d climbed plenty of hills and rocky towers in the Redlands, and gazed up canyon walls, but he’d never seen anything like this, not in person. Center had created images of mountainous terrain for him that was impossible to tell from the real thing — he’d believed. But there was something about the hugeness of this actual mass of earth and rocks that made a physical impression on Abel’s senses.

At the crossroads, the wagon path headed to the northeast and disappeared into some low-lying trees. According to the maps, it ran northeast between the mountain before them and the Rim cliffs to its south. The main Road still headed north, hugging the River as ever, and worked its way around the western side of the mountain and out of sight.

“What’s its name, that mountain?” Abel asked Wolfe, another of the mapmakers.

“Sentinel,” Wolfe answered. “And there’s more behind it that we can’t see. There’s three peaks, one after the other, with a low ridge connecting them. Sentinel, Tamarak, and Meyer. River flows to the west of all of them, and the Road follows it.”

“What about that path?” Abel said, nodding toward the wagon track leading away from the ferry.

“It’s called the Ferry Road on the maps, even though you can see it’s two ruts cut in the ground, and not much else. It circles around the three peaks on their eastern flank, hugs the Escarpment. The two roads meet back up in the Plains of Orash. At least that’s what the maps say.”

“Do we have any men of Progar in the Brigade who can confirm your maps?”

“I don’t know, sir. Not that I’m aware of.”

“Find out.”

The Guardian column crossed the wagon track and continued up the Road. It seemed that they were headed straight for Sentinel for a long time, but then the Road veered to the left, which placed the mountain on Abel’s right. They’d gotten far enough away from the River to lose sight of it, but now the Road crossed a rise and angled down into bottomlands, and the River reappeared in front of them.

As they neared it, the ground underfoot became softer and muddier. Abel first noticed it when Nettle couldn’t pull a foot out of some sucking mud quickly enough. She stumbled and barely recovered. Another moment, and he might very well have had a thirty-stone beast wallowing on his body, crushing muscles and bones.

Marsh, said Raj. Poor ground for a fight. Or perfect, depending on your position. You know what use we made of marshy land before.

How could he forget? The Battle of the Canal. The priests had opened the headgates and allowed water to flow through the Canal levee and into the rice paddies of Treville. The Blaskoye horde, those excellent riders who seemed to live on their donts, had charged into it — and become mired.

The Treville Black and Tan Regulars, though outnumbered, had breechloading rifles that gave them a three to one rate of fire advantage over their enemies. The wallowing, disorganized Blaskoye had been cut to pieces, a horde of ten thousand reduced to piles of slain donts and men. Those bones still lined the top of the Canal levee on the road to Hestinga.

But the soggy ground was also the first spot wide enough to accommodate a mass of men. Saxe, near the vanguard of the column, called a halt to allow the others to assemble. There were already several thousand men who’d crossed the rise and descended to the marshland. These spread out, mostly toward the River, and many of the men took the chance to curl up next to their packs and grab some rest.

They’ve been marching for fifteen days and covered over two hundred leagues, Abel thought. These men deserve a thrice-damned breather.

What men deserve and what men get are two different things, growled Raj. Look up and to the east!

Abel’s gaze trailed up the slope of Sentinel Mountain. Its flanks were bare of anything but grassy vegetation and shrub…that is, except on the top, where there was a darker band of what must have been trees or dense brush. About halfway up, a rocky crag jutted out, granite gray against the green slope. From the top of that crag, a white puff of smoke rose, as if the crag were a chimney venting a fire down below.

We’re in musket range of those cliffs, Abel thought.

Then something he’d never seen before. Something dark flying through the sky. Not alive. Jagged. Like –

A rock. A very large rock.

It crashed among the Guardian columns, ploughing lengthwise down the Road, crushing men and tossing others to the side like blown chaff.

From the side of the rock projectile, from a hole in its surface, smoke rose.

White smoke that Abel was all too familiar with.

Gunpowder.

“Dive!” he screamed. It was useless. He could barely hear himself in the confusion.

The rock exploded.

Fragments flew in all directions, killing more men, taking off limbs, a head.

Abel looked up. Another black spot in the sky, descending in an arc.

“Incoming!”

This time the Guardian troops threw themselves on the ground. The projectile landed and exploded. Several more men were killed by the impact, but none by the explosion.

From nearby came the commanding voice of Colonel von Hoff.

“Forward! Get beyond the range of those arbalests!”

The troops rose and milled about in confusion. Abel snapped the reins of his dont and set her into motion toward the troops.

“Up!” he yelled. “Up and forward, you pukes!”

He burst among the ranks that had been hit, Nettle neatly dodging both the living and the dead.

“Forward,” he yelled. “Double-time! Forward!”

Almost miraculously, the men responded.

“Look above!” shouted one man.

Abel looked up. Another huge stone had been launched from the revetments above.

“Move it,” Abel shouted.

The ranks surged forward.

The rock landed, but the range was off and it fell too far on the other side of the Road and half buried itself in the mud.

“Major, hold there!”

Abel spun to see von Hoff, who had caught up with him.

“Let’s you and I get to the front and locate Saxe or one of his couriers. We’ll all get out of range of these thrice-damned stones if we can keep the boys moving.”

Now that the troops had started, the march seemed to continue under its own power. When another stone came and found its mark to the east side of the Road, men dove for the ground, then hopped back up and continued marching once the danger had passed.

Abel and von Hoff worked their way through the marching soldiers, Abel riding in front to clear a way, calling “Colonel coming through! Make way!”

From ahead, a cry of alarm. An officer came charging down the side of the Road toward them, his dont’s forelegs raised in the air and the dont running on two legs, as the animals did at full speed. When he got to von Hoff, the rider pulled up, the dont crashed down on all fours, and the officer breathlessly delivered his message.

“Men down ahead. Rifle volley from up the Road and rifle volley from above.”

“We’ll pull back,” said von Hoff. “Thrice-damn the rocks. Let’s get these men off the Road and out of rifle range.”

Then the air was filled with the crackle of muskets, which Abel could hear even over the shouts of the men.

The messenger cried out and grasped his back. His eyes rolled up in their sockets, and he slowly fell from his dont onto the ground. He landed on his back. In his stomach a hole the size of a green fig had been blasted.

Exit wound, thought Abel. Got him from behind. He’d seen enough of such wounds to know.

The remainder of the couriers and brigade staff caught up with Abel and the colonel. Von Hoff glanced down at the dead man, then looked up, a resolute expression on his face, and shouted to his gathered staff. “Take them to the west side of the Road out of range of muskets and those falling stones. Find cover wherever we can. This rifle fire may only be a minor nuisance. We need to see what we’re dealing with.” The others stared at the colonel as if nothing he’d said was comprehensible.

 

1636 The Viennese Waltz – Snippet 17

1636 The Viennese Waltz – Snippet 17

Chapter 7: A Trip to Bohemia

September, 1634

Prague

As it happened, Karl’s wait for the king’s pleasure wasn’t long at all. In fact, the king’s call came as soon as they arrived at the palace. Karl was escorted to a small throne room, not the big one, more of an office really. And before he could even finish his bow, Wallenstein asked him, “Was your father a thief?”

“I don’t think so, Your Majesty,” Karl answered carefully. “Though I am aware that others hold a different view. I prefer to think he was simply a practical man.”

“Not exactly a ringing endorsement from a son.” Wallenstein snorted. “I take it you don’t think I’m a thief, either.”

“No, Your Majesty.”

“Then you would accept paper money issued by the crown of Bohemia. That is, by me!”

Karl had apparently landed in the middle of a rather heated debate. He noted the presence of Morris Roth, Uriel Abrabanel, and a few other people that he suspected were counselors to the king or money lenders. Bankers, as the up-timers would have it. He began to get an inkling of what was going on. King Albrecht was setting up his national bank. The timing seemed about right. And the king had just been told that there were problems.

Karl had a decision to make and he had to make it fast. Telling truth to power wasn’t a safe thing to do, but if what the family said about Wallenstein was true, lying about this could be incredibly costly. He hesitated, saw the expression on King Albrecht’s face, and blurted out, “Not if I could safely avoid it, Your Majesty.”

“You acknowledge that I’m not a thief, but wouldn’t accept my money?” King Al gave Karl a hard look. “Which time were you lying?”

“Neither, Your Majesty. But just because I trust your money’s value, doesn’t mean I can spend it. That would require that the person I’m buying from trust it. Sarah Wendell is the person you should be talking to about this.”

“Who is Sarah Wendell?” King Albrecht looked around the room as though she might be hiding in a corner.

“She’s the daughter of the USE Treasury Secretary,” Morris Roth explained.

“She’s his girlfriend.” Pappenheim jerked a thumb at Karl. “I read it in the National Inquisitor.”

“She was the chief financial officer for OPM before she resigned to take a post with the USE Federal Reserve,” explained Uriel Abrabanel.

“She’s just outside,” Karl said, all of them speaking pretty much simultaneously.

King Albrecht took it all in, or at least he seemed to. He motioned to the soldier waiting by the door, “Invite the young lady in.”

****

Sarah entered the room to see the king in a chair only a little grander than the chairs of the others in the room. Except for Karl, they were all sitting. Pappenheim was on the king’s right, Morris Roth and Uriel Abrabanel on his left. There were three other men she didn’t recognize. She did an awkward curtsey and went to stand beside Karl.

She wanted to take his hand but doubted that would be appropriate. She wondered when taking his hand had become such a natural first response.

The king looked at her and at him, and waved them to chairs. “Miss Wendell, Prince Karl here says you’re the person I should be talking to about introducing Bohemian paper money. That you can explain to me why my money will be no good in spite of the fact that Karl says he trusts me?

Suddenly she didn’t want to hold Karl’s hand. She wanted to hit him in the head. Hard!

Karl saw her expression and, risking royal displeasure, hastened to explain. “His Majesty asked me if I trusted him, then if I would take his money. I remembered how you had explained the situation regarding me issuing money on my lands.”

“Who gave you permission to issue money?” King Albrecht asked.

“No one, Your Majesty, and I hadn’t brought up the subject. It was a preemptive lecture, lest I should fail to consult them before doing anything so foolish.”

“So my issuing money is foolish?”

“No, Your Majesty. My issuing money would be foolish.”

Sarah was not by nature a pushy person — at least, she didn’t think she was. But she didn’t like being bullied nor did she like those around her being bullied. “Actually, Your Majesty, your issuing money would be equally foolish. No, it would be more foolish! Karl wasn’t personally involved in Kipper and Wipper, only his family was. You, on the other hand, were one of the major beneficiaries.

“Holy Roman Empire money is the next best thing to waste paper in the USE, in large part because Karl’s Uncle Gundaker is Emperor Ferdinand’s finance minister and he, like Karl, wasn’t involved.”

“Actually, Gundaker was instrumental in getting us the deal.”

Sarah stopped and took a deep breath. “I didn’t know that, Your Majesty, and it’s really beside the point. If the name Gundaker von Liechtenstein was enough to ruin the credibility of HRE paper, what do you think Albrecht von Wallenstein is going to do to Bohemian paper?”

“She is right, Your Majesty,” Morris said.

“Maybe so, but I doesn’t make me like being called a thief.”

“I didn’t call you a thief, Your Majesty,” Sarah said. “If you and the others had known in 1618 what we know now, it would have been different. You could have introduced silver-backed paper money, used a partial reserve system with a guarantee of silver on demand and added more money without ill effect. But you didn’t have the knowledge. It was acquired bit by bit over centuries. No one knew. But, however noble your motives, today the names Liechtenstein and Wallenstein are not names to instill confidence in monetary policy.”

“What name is then?”

“Up-timer,” Karl said quickly, “Perhaps Abrabanel, but ‘Someone von Up-time’ would be best. Preferably someone who worked at the Grantville Bank or the Credit Union. In fact –” He waved at Sarah. “– Sarah would be among the best choices, if she were interested in the job.”

“I’m too young,” Sarah said.

“I disagree,” said Uriel Abrabanel. “Sarah’s paper on comparative economics and the effect of the American dollar is read all over Europe. As are several others.”

“And I’m not looking for a job,” Sarah added. “Besides, what you really need is the bank to be independent of the crown, even if you got me to head it. It wouldn’t matter unless it was made clear that you couldn’t order me to create money because you wanted a new palace.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” said Uriel Abrabanel. “‘Up-timer’ is a word to conjure with, especially in financial matters.”

“Remember all the fights between Coleman Walker and the President, ah, Mike Stearns –” Sarah corrected herself. She thought of Mike Stearns as the President of the USE because he had been the leader of her nation in a couple of very formative years. But, in truth, his fights with Coleman Walker had been as much when he was the Chairman of the Emergency Committee as when he was the President of the New US. “Those fights were a lot of what gave the American dollar its credibility. It was clear that the government couldn’t just create money, and that the money had to represent something real. Even if almost no one knew what GDP meant, everyone was convinced it meant something.”

 

1636 The Viennese Waltz – Snippet 16

1636 The Viennese Waltz – Snippet 16

Magdeburg

This time Karl checked into his hotel and sent a note to Sarah asking when she could see him. Then he cooled his heels for a while and occupied himself with paper work.

It was the next day at noon when he met Sarah at the American Cafe. “So what’s so important?” Sarah asked, before they had even ordered.

“Let’s put in our orders first,” Karl said. It wasn’t like they were going to wait long for service. He was Prince Karl Eusebius von Liechtenstein and she was the daughter of the Secretary of the Treasury. Their waitress was there before they sat down. And they knew the menu.

“Burger and fries,” Karl said. “What about Sprite?”

The waitress gave him a sad look and shook her head.

“Doctor Pepper then.”

“I’ll have the same, but make mine a wine cooler,” Sarah said.

The waitress went off to inform the chef, a German who had spent two years in Grantville learning to make hamburgers and other “fast” foods.

“Well, we’ve ordered. What’s so important?”

“The latest note from King Albrecht. I’m not going to be able to put it off much longer.”

“This is so unfair,” Sarah said. “Everyone gets to go off and have adventures in the world and I am stuck in an office, calculating the mean income distribution for the USE. And developing a standard market basket when the stuff that goes into it is changing faster than it did up-time.”

Karl looked at her in surprise that turned rapidly into shock. Sarah meant it. She was really angry and he didn’t have a clue why. Not knowing what to say, he opened his mouth and blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Come with me, then.”

It was the right thing to say. Or, at the very least, it wasn’t a totally wrong thing to say. Sarah had stopped her litany of complaint and her mouth was hanging open. Then it snapped shut. “I can’t!”

Never one to lose an advantage, Karl shot back, “Why not? It’s not like you actually need the job at the Fed.” Then, seeing her expression, he backpedaled fast. “I’m sure we can come up with a good reason for you to go. Certainly good enough so they won’t fire you for it. You can go to study economic trends in Bohemia. They have a market basket too and they probably have even less of a clue what goes in it than you do here.”

Sarah’s expression had gone thoughtful and Karl heaved a very well-hidden sigh of relief. A mine field had been crossed, and he hadn’t even known it was there.

“I’ll think about it. In the meantime, why does King Al want you to sign on the dotted line now?” Sarah asked, then dipped a cottage fry into something that claimed to be ketchup, but wasn’t. They had discussed the very polite and vague letters that Karl and the king of Bohemia had exchanged before.

Karl’s relations with King Al, as Judy the Younger had christened him, had been by mail. Before Wallenstein had become King Albrecht, Karl had made a whirlwind trip to take the oaths of his people. That gave Karl quite a lot of legitimacy and made it difficult for King Al to go all Capone on him unless Karl did something serious.

In spite of the fact that several people thought he had bent the knee, Karl hadn’t quite done so. He paid his taxes on time, while his uncles were paying the same taxes to Ferdinand II. “I don’t know. It may be that the railroad makes him nervous.”

“Why?”

“Your American Civil War probably,” Karl told her. “They were used quite extensively to move troops and supplies.”

Sarah nodded. She wasn’t, Karl knew, all that conversant in military history.

“Well, the railroad will help your lands a lot,” Sarah said. “How bad is it going to be?”

“I don’t know.” Karl shook his head. “I know that the up-timers, and the USE in general, don’t have any great affection for the Holy Roman Empire, but it’s Christianity’s shield against Islam and has been for centuries. It’s my country. My father and my uncles fought and bled for it and I expected to do the same when my time came. Now it’s disappearing before my eyes. There is no way that Prince Ferdinand will get the votes to become emperor, and less chance that someone else would get those votes.”

“I know,” Sarah said. “I wonder how I would feel if I had to watch the up-time United States slowly disintegrating before my eyes.”

Karl looked at her, and felt himself starting to smile. As he’d said, Sarah Wendell wasn’t overly fond of the H.R.E. Nor did she have a lot of reason to be. But it was very . . . encouraging . . . the way she was trying to see things from his point of view. Even if the situations weren’t quite parallel.

His smile died as he thought about the reality of the situation. The H.R.E. had indeed been the shield of Christianity for over eight hundred years. Protecting Christian ideals from Islam while Europe grew strong and wealthy . . . was that enough to justify the Edict of Restitution? Well, maybe, at least in that other time-line. But the shield was coming apart, whatever he thought about it, and there was nothing — nothing at all — that he could do to prevent it.

Besides, Karl wanted that railroad. It was necessary to the improvement of his lands. That had to be his first priority.

“So how long is it going to take?” Sarah asked.

“A small troop with good horses, but bad roads,” Karl thought allowed. “Avoiding Saxony. I don’t want to be John George’s ransom to bring the H.R.E. in on his side. Figure twenty-five miles a day on average. A week to Prague. And while I’m at it, I should visit Aunt Beth. So that’s another week. Plus whatever time . . .” Karl paused not at all sure whether to say “I spend” or “we spend” and settled on “. . . it takes to negotiate with King Al and my aunt. So at least a month, probably a month and a half.”

Now Sarah was looking distressed. “I’ll have to talk to my boss. That’s a long time to be gone.”

Wendell House, Magdeburg

“Are you nuts!” Fletcher Wendell didn’t quite bellow. Not quite. “Karl, you at least, ought to know better. Two hundred plus miles over rough country, with either one of you a bandit’s dream come true. What’s your ransom value, Karl? Half of Silesia? And you, Sarah? Half a million shares of OPM? You would have to take a flipping army with you just to fight off the bandits.”

“I’m not insensitive to the situation, and the newspapers make it much harder to get where you’re going before the bandits know about the trip,” Karl agreed. “On the other hand, King Albrecht is insistent that I go.”

“And my daughter? Is King Albrecht insisting that Sarah go with you?”

“No. But I’d rather tell King Albrecht no than tell Sarah that. If you don’t want her to go, then you get to try and convince her she can’t.” Karl couldn’t keep just a touch of smugness out of his voice as he said that and it clearly didn’t please Herr Wendell.

 

Paradigms Lost — Chapter 27

Paradigms Lost — Chapter 27

Chapter 27: Empathy and Electronics

“Jason, you need your rest. It’s been twenty-seven hours. Go to bed.”

I was too tired to jump at the sudden voice from a formerly empty space. “Verne, I’ve got work to do. I’m going to find that bastard and silver him like a goddam mirror. I don’t have time to sleep. You heard what Winthrope told me.”

“About her assistant being found dead? Yes.”

“Then don’t talk to me about sleep. Every hour I sleep could get someone else killed.” I rubbed my throbbing forehead. “Besides, every time I close my eyes, I see Syl getting slashed by that other werewolf.” Fury took over. “That other werewolf, dammit!” I shouted at Verne, feeling my eyes sting. “You said there was only one, the last one, and all of a sudden it’s The Howling III around here!”

Suddenly Verne looked tired himself, tired and very, very old. “I know, my friend. It was my arrogance and stupidity that lead to that mistake. I should have realized that to exterminate an intelligent race is well-nigh impossible; these are not passenger pigeons or dodos. Virigar must have survived and sought out the few that remained, perhaps only a single female, and for the past century they have increased their numbers, awaiting the time of revenge.”

My anger evaporated. “Damn. Sorry, Verne. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. We all should have realized that where there was one there might be more.” I wiped my eyes, half-noticing how damp they were. “It’s just that Syl… Syl of all of us should have been the last to be hurt. She saved Renee and me–did you know that?”

He bowed his head. “I had not known. But I would have expected no less from her.”

“She did. Then the last one got her. Now …”

“She will make it, Jason. I give you my word on that. Sylvia will not die for my mistakes.” His dark eyes held mine, lent his words conviction.

“Thanks,” I said, and meant it. “I hope you’re right.”

“I have never broken my word yet.”

“Why didn’t you go after Shirrith when he ran?”

“Because …” He hesitated, staring down at his hands. “Because, I am ashamed to admit, my past centuries of soft existence have made me slow and not as adept in combat as I was in years past, and even the small strikes they managed had caused me pain to my soul, and with weakness and pain come fear. I must remedy that. And, alas, it would have done no good. He would never have led me to Virigar, unless that was his plan… in which case I would be dead.” He sighed, and glanced at the odd tubular object on my workbench. “Since you will not rest, perhaps you can explain what you are doing?”

“Sure.” I picked the tube up, showing the lens at one end with the eyepiece on the other. “This viewer fits onto this little headband, like this.”

“I see that, yes. But what function does this device perform?”

“Well, it …” I broke off, thinking for a minute. “How well versed are you in the sciences?”

He made a modest gesture. “I am sufficiently educated that I consider myself a well-read layman.”

“Good enough. Then you know that visible light is just one small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, right?” He nodded. “Well, I thought for a long time about how to find a hiding werewolf. Normal methods can’t work. Their physical imitation seems to be so perfect that they may even be duplicating the DNA of the subject. But if that was true, then they must be more than merely material beings–you follow me?”

He thought for a moment, then nodded again. “I believe so. You are saying that if they were purely physical beings, once they assumed a perfect duplicate form, they would then become that person… and lose all their special powers.”

“You’ve got it. So if they aren’t just matter, that leaves some additional energy component. A werewolf has to be surrounded, permeated, with a special energy field.” I locked the viewer into the holder, checked the fit. “That’s where this comes in. That field has to radiate somehow, in some wavelengths outside the visible.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I see. But what wavelengths? And would psychic powers, or mystic ones if you prefer, radiate in such mundane ways?”

“At some point I’d think they would,” I answered, clipping on a power lead. “If these fields interact with matter, matter will produce certain emissions. As to what wavelengths, I’m betting on infrared. In the end, all energy decays to waste heat, you see. But I’ve also added an ultraviolet switch to this viewer, and these two little gadgets cover other areas–magnetic fields and radio waves, respectively.”

He smiled. “I am impressed, Jason. I had thought you were only proficient with your computers and databases; I had no idea you were adept with the technical devices as well.”

“Any real hacker has to have some skill with a soldering iron and circuitry,” I answered. “But I just happen to like gadgets. The Edmund Scientific catalog is some of my favorite bedtime reading. Heck, most people think I named my car Mjölnir just because I’m weird. Actually, I’ve put thousands of dollars into gadgetizing the hell out of it. Mjolnir doesn’t fly and if you drive it into water it just stalls like any other car, but it’s got some optional features that no major manufacturer never thought of installing.” The phone rang; I grabbed it fast.

“Hello? Doctor Millson?” I said.

“No.” The voice was deep and resonant in a peculiar way; it sounded like a man in a tin closet. “We met earlier, though you did not realize it at the time. I am Virigar, Mr. Wood.”

Adrenaline stabbed my chest with icy slivers. “What do you want?”

“To deliver an ultimatum, Mr. Wood. You know why I am here. I presume that you care for the young lady, Sylvia? If you wish her to survive the night, you will do one of two things: either you kill Verne Domingo for me… or you deliver him to me, that I might kill him myself. Do this, and my people–who even now walk that hospital’s corridors–shall spare the lady’s life.”

“You bastard.” I barely recognized my own voice. “If I’d known–”

“Yes, well, we all have things we’d have done differently ‘if only,’ do we not, Mr. Wood? You are worthy prey; it makes the chase and the kill sweeter. But for Domingo I will let you and your mortal friends live. Bring him, or the ruby ring he wears, to the old warehouse on Lovell Avenue within the next six hours. Any trickery or failure on your part, and the lady shall die… painfully.” The line went dead.

I put the phone down slowly and looked up. Verne looked grimly back at me.

“I heard it all, my friend,” he said softly.

 

The Savior – Snippet 29

The Savior – Snippet 29

It was Abel’s goal to bring the ways of Treville to Cascade.

This was the right thing to do, first of all. And second, it advanced the cause of progress, although he was perhaps the only man living on this world who appreciated that fact.

His worries were resolved. The Treville Regulars hit the Blaskoye from behind. The attack was completely unexpected and devastating. Abel didn’t wait.

“Over those walls and at them, boys!” he called to his Scouts. To their credit, the tired Scouts didn’t hesitate for an instant. The front line of the Blaskoye, seeing a pack of screaming men brandishing rifles charging their positions behind the piles of dont bodies, wavered, and then leaped up and ran.

If it had only been one glorious charge, his Scouts would have run out of steam quickly and been exposed to a counterattack that would have obliterated them. Instead, the assault was the hammer to Joab’s Trevillian anvil. Abel charged along with his men. He fired first his rifle, then a pistol, and finally he was reduced to cutting a Blaskoye’s neck with the old cavalry sword his father had bequeathed him.

Through the smoke and fury, Abel could look over the heads of the fleeing Blaskoye and see the approaching dust cloud of marching Treville Regulars. The Blaskoye ran into its deadly volley full tilt, and fully exposed. Men, boys, women dropped — such close-range fire was indiscriminately horrific. Some fell crying out in pain and anguish, many threw down their weapons and begged for mercy, sheik and commoner alike. Some were silent, to move no more. Those that could streamed to the north and south and scattered across the wheat fields of eastern Cascade. They would find their way back to the Redlands, but not as a cohesive fighting unit.

By mid-afternoon, Abel’s Scouts linked up with the Treville Regulars.

He had won.

Five Blaskoye sheiks had either surrendered or been unseated from their mounts and roughly taken prisoner. Abel knew them from the double blue line hem to their otherwise white robes. He had these brought to the stockade’s main room.

From the rafters of the stockade’s barnlike interior, several bodies were hanging, ropes about their necks. These were older men, fatter men — men who were past their prime for physical labor.

The others were huddled into a clump in the center of the enclosure.

Staring up at the hanging men, the Blaskoye sheiks perhaps believed they were about to die as those others. They had begun to chant their death songs.

Abel had reed mats laid out for them.

“Please, sit,” he said to them. “We will bring refreshment.” True to his word, he personally doled out cups of wine and beer.

The Blaskoye stopped chanting and accepted the drinks — they were so thirsty after hours of fighting that anything would do, even Landish wine. They sat down warily, some prodded by the tip of a Scout bayonet.

Abel had his Scouts pull a First oligarch out of the clump of still surviving captives from town.

“Gentle sheiks,” he said, startling them by speaking in their own tongue. “What am I offered for this one? He will make a fine hand at cleaning stalls, I think. Or perhaps he can work the sulfur mines in your Table Lands?”

After an astonished moment, they realized what Abel was saying. The Blaskoye began to bid.

The remaining oligarchs and headmen were auctioned, one by one.

There was whining, begging, offers of immense wealth. Threats of eternal blood feud and retribution.

Abel just smiled his grim smile and sold another.

Eliot Eisenach was the last. He stood wearily, resigned to his fate, but seemingly determined to give Abel no satisfaction by flinching or begging.

By this time the Blaskoye sheiks were quite drunk, and the bidding had gotten sloppy and out of hand. They were beyond the meager chits they’d brought with them. There were solemn promises of donts and dak herds, mounds of Table Lands sulfur, and sacks of dates and figs from the gardens of the Great Oasis itself.

The woman entered the stockade.

As if a signal had been given, the drunken palaver died to silence. She was lovely. She was dressed in a diaphanous robe of fine linen, and the kohl around her eyes glistened black. She was accompanied by a retinue of four large men — men who looked quite dangerous. When she came to stand beside Abel, they took up positions around her that would cover attack from any quarter of the room.

“Good evening, your grace.”

“Commander.”

“I would like to ask for your advice in a matter now before us.”

“I’ll be happy to be of service if I can.”

“This one,” Abel said, motioning to Eisenach, “tried to have me assassinated. Several times this year. When that didn’t work, he instigated armed insurrection. Got all those unfortunates involved.” He gestured toward the clump of former oligarchs, now bound together in a Blaskoye slave transport line. “He deserves to die. Do you agree?”

“Undoubtedly, if all you say is true.”

“It is.”

“Then yes.”

“Can there be any mercy?”

Mahaut turned and gazed at Eisenach. He glared hatred back at her.

“Well, you might end his line yet spare his life and sell him,” she finally said. Mahaut shrugged. “I know this is better than he deserves, but you did ask me what would be merciful.”

“Thank you, your grace. Your advice will become my command,” Abel said. He turned to the captain of the Cascade Scouts. “Castrate him,” he said. “Then throw him in with the other Blaskoye chattel as a bonus.”

Eisenach had begun to violently tremble. After a moment, his legs gave way and he dropped to his knees. He glared up at Mahaut.

She regarded him for a moment, then stepped close to him. He tried to strike out at her, bite her, but a Scout guarding him caught the movement and savagely yanked him back by the rope about his neck.

Mahaut bent low and whispered in Eisenach’s ear. Abel couldn’t make out all that she said, but Center reported her words: “This is for Abram Karas.”

When Eisenach heard her words, he cried out, gnashed his teeth, and beat his head against the stockade floor. It was soft dirt, however, so he wasn’t able to dash his brains out, if that had been his intention.

Abel turned to Mahaut. “Satisfied?” he asked.

“As soon as I send word to my pater.”

“I’ll see you tonight?”

“Of course.”

Mahaut smiled, bowed, and made her way out.

After sending the amazed Blaskoye on their way east with their new acquisitions (and an armed escort back to the Rim), Abel wearily took up the task of burying his dead.

Cascade District was his now, but it was they who had paid the price in blood.

 

The Savior – Snippet 28

The Savior – Snippet 28

2

One year later

Cascade District

473 Post Tercium

The stockade stank of sweat tinged with the iron tang of blood. The Cascade Scouts looked fearful in their guise as Blaskoye. Some of the Firsts were still convinced that they were the captives of Redlanders. The more perceptive knew this was a lie, but, Abel hoped, had not yet discerned what it was he and the Scouts intended to do with them.

Good. They’ll be more pliable that way.

It was night, but Abel knew the real Blaskoye were gathering to the west. To the east, in uneasy alliance with the Redlanders, the Cascade militia was camped. All told he figured he faced a thousand warriors, including the women and children the Blaskoye sometimes brought to war as auxiliaries, and sometimes as fighters when needed.

The Cascade Regulars were nowhere to be found. They would stand back until the matter was decided one way or another. Abel might curse them for their fickleness — they were supposed to be under his command, after all — but he was glad not to be facing their numbers, all the same. He assumed they’d taken themselves across the River until the fighting was over. Abel swore that after this was over, he would make it his solemn mission to turn them into a real fighting force. At present they were little more than a lackadaisical police force or worse — an armed gang of protection racketeers.

So he had his Cascade Scouts, about three hundred of them, against the district militia — rabble bought and paid for by the oligarchs — and against a thousand Blaskoye. Even though the militia was better armed than the Redlanders, he was much more worried about the Blaskoye.

Deal with them, and the militia will scatter like flitterdaks.

The attack came near dawn. It was far from concerted. The Blaskoye attacked in their customary waves. The militia marched up in tattered columns and fired uselessly into the stockade woodwork. Did they hope to clatter him to death with banging minié balls? What was more, except for a few units, they had fired en masse. Now they were all simultaneously reloading.

Abel sent his fifty or so mounted Scouts charging out at them. This worked exactly as he expected. A general panic spread down the militia lines. Behind his cavalry, he sent out a handpicked one hundred in lines twelve abreast and three deep.

They attacked in a spreading arc. At least a hundred militia men fell dead or wounded before the first of Abel’s Scouts took a bullet. Within a quarter watch, the Cascade militia, at least five hundred of them, were in headlong retreat toward the River.

Let the carnadons take them. He had other worries.

To the east, the fighting was more intense and even-sided. After the Blaskoye first wave was repulsed, not without Scout loss of life, they drove in behind their own dead donts and used them for cover to dismount and proceed forward on foot. They were not exactly in a battle line, but they did fire in salvos divided by clan, with others firing while those with spent rifles reloaded.

The stockade — really only an ammunition dump on the outskirts of Bruneberg — was not built to withstand a siege. They could hold out for a while, but already the musket shots were chipping away at the thick wooden planks that protected those within.

But it wasn’t only himself and the Scouts pinned down in the stockade. Unbeknownst to their attackers, some of the best men of Bruneberg were in this sty.

First Family oligarchs. Their chief retainers. A handful of gang leaders who didn’t claim aristocratic blood, and some who did.

He’d had his Scouts snatch them from their homes, their places of business, their whorehouse stalls, the day before, when he’d gotten word of the impending attack. It was a grand kidnapping. And if this gamble didn’t pay off, they would see to it that he died slowly and horribly in payment for it.

Eisenach, the leader of the First Families of Bruneberg, was a man with whom Abel had dealt before. He ran the Bruneberg Powderworks like a merchant prince. Although gunpowder was considered sacred, and deliverable to the priestsmiths and the armorers of Lindron at no cost, House Eisenach set the market price for all others — and, having a monopoly — set it at what they wanted. When Abel took over, one of his first acts was to remove Eisenach from his temporary military appointment as commandant of the powderworks. Eisenach had responded as if Abel were joking. He hadn’t gone anywhere, and had kept his base of operations in the powderwork offices as always.

From that action to the situation in which he found himself at the moment there was a direct line of causation. Fuck with House Eisenach’s cash flow and a horde of inhabitants of the Redlands would descend on you with massacre on their minds.

For much of the morning, it seemed as if that was exactly what was about to happen. Massacre. Eisenach, though tied to a post by hand and foot, was exultant.

“You’re going to scream, Dashian,” he called out. “They’ll ram a stake up your ass and out your throat, strip your skin, and put you out for the carrion eaters. They know how to make the stake miss all of your organs. Keep you alive so you can die slowly. And I’ll be there the whole time, laughing in your fucking ear.”

Abel shook his head. “Seems unlikely, Eliot.”

“You’d better keep me alive,” he called out. “You’ll beg me to call them off soon.”

The man is not a coward, Abel thought.

He may or may not be in truth. This talk is pure nonsense, calculated to rattle you.

No shit.

He believes he has your number. Does he?

We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?

Aye.

Perversely, the more Blaskoye they shot, the closer the remaining warriors crept, using the bodies of their fallen comrades for cover. The corral itself had a low stone wall surrounding it. When they reached that, they could set up behind it and take potshots at the Scouts to their hearts’ content.

In the distance, there was the rattle of gunfire. Concentrated. Precisely timed. Definitely not Blaskoye.

The Treville Regulars were coming — Abel’s father’s force. They’d infiltrated Cascade District as merchants and traders. Distrusting both Road and River traffic — the Firsts were in total control of area transport — Abel had communicated with his father by flitterdak scroll and requested the reinforcements. Since the exchange of messages had been, of necessity, hit-and-miss, he hadn’t known for sure he would receive support today.

Treville was a very different place, politically, than Cascade. The district military commander and the chief prelate worked in concert. The Firsts, men like Benjamin Jacobson, were powerful there, but they kept to their place. Those that didn’t were apt to receive a lesson from Joab Dashian. Unlike the oligarchs of Bruneberg, those of Hestinga and Garangipore usually got the message and backed off.

 

1636 The Viennese Waltz – Snippet 15

1636 The Viennese Waltz – Snippet 15

Chapter 6: Your Presence Is Required

August, 1634

“You have another letter, Prince Karl,” Josef Gandelmo told him when he got back from his latest trip to Magdeburg.

“Is it from Gundaker again?” There had been several letters from Gundaker, each ordering Karl to stop seeing Sarah Wendell and reminding him of his obligations under the 1606 treaty between his father and uncles.

“No, it’s from King Albrecht.”

Karl paused at Josef’s tone. “Seriously?”

“He wishes to see you and will not approve the railroad until he does.”

“Oh.” Karl had known this was coming, but had hoped it would wait a while. “I knew him, you know, when I was a boy. He and my father were friends then.”

“Kipper and Wipper?” Josef asked.

“Yes. The emperor needed money for the war. My father and the others tried to create it by mixing more copper into the silver coins. It didn’t work, and a lot of people got stuck. After that, Wallenstein and my father had a falling out. I honestly don’t think they disagreed about Kipper and Wipper, but about Wallenstein’s ambition. The breach was more between Uncle Gundaker and Wallenstein, because an adherent of Wallenstein’s pushed Uncle Gundaker out of an important post in the Empire. But it brought in the whole family, and Father was one of the ones pushing for the execution of Wallenstein for treason a few years back.”

“Well, you have to admit, Your Serene Highness, your father called that one pretty accurately.”

“Maybe. Even probably. But there was more than a little self-fulfilling prophecy in it. Would Wallenstein have gone for the crown if Ferdinand II hadn’t tried to have him killed?”

“We’ll never know, Your Serene Highness. And it’s rather beside the point. The question is, what are you going to do?”

“There isn’t any choice. I am going to go see King Albrecht of Bohemia and bend my knee to him. Then try to convince him that a railroad will benefit him and not be a knifepoint at his kidneys, held by the Holy Roman Emperor. But can we put it off?” Karl asked.

“Yes, Your Serene Highness, but not forever. And it’s a safe bet that approval for the railroad will not be forthcoming until you visit Prague.”

“That’s not all that urgent, Josef. I don’t think Sanderlin-Fortney party has even reached the Danube yet.”

Regensburg

Hayley Fortney looked at the Danube much as the Israelites must have looked at the River Jordan. Well, she guessed. She really wasn’t all that up on what the River Jordan represented in Judaism. Or Christianity, for that matter. She didn’t really pay that much attention, except for a couple of weeks right after the Ring of Fire. But the trip from Grantville to the town of Regensburg on the Danube had been long, hard, irritating and maddening. Floating on a river had to be better than that.

But there it was. At last. The Danube, and just across it, Regensburg. They could pick up some barges here.

“What do you think, Dad? Will you be able to set up a steam engine on one of the barges?”

“I don’t know, hon. Let’s see what they have. It’s going to be hard enough to carry the cars.”

“Maybe not, Dad. They ship a lot, but I am not sure how big the barges on the river are.”

As it happened, that wasn’t the trouble. The Ulm boxes — flat-bottomed boats capable of carrying large loads — were plying the river. Sonny Fortney had a steam engine. It was a small one that he had mostly built up-time. After the Ring of Fire, he had finished it and then not known what to do with it but couldn’t being himself to sell it. So they had packed it and his boilers along. After a bit of negotiation, they worked out how to hook his engine up to a propeller and use that barge to pull the others. They wouldn’t go fast, but they would go fast enough to have control. Not that the bargemen needed their help.

It took a week and more to get everything loaded on the Ulm boxes. Then they stopped and waited.

****

“We will be staying here for a while,” Istvan Janoszi said quietly to Ron Sanderlin, as they sat in the inn yard looking out at the Danube.

“What for?”

“For word of the emperor. He is in failing health and the prince doesn’t want his father taxed in these, his last days.”

Sonny Fortney held his peace.

Liechtenstein House, outside the Ring of Fire

“I’ll need to go to Magdeburg,” Karl said, reading through the latest letter from King Albrecht von Wallenstein. It was still polite, but he was definitely pushing.

Josef winced. He knew that the reason Karl wanted to go to Magdeburg was to talk to Sarah Wendell. And he had received letters from Gundaker, and even one from Maximillian, all insisting that he keep Karl away from the up-time gold-digger. Not that they had used that expression. “A telegram perhaps?” he offered.

“No. This is not the sort of news that a telegraph will handle. There will be questions and Sarah will, I do not doubt, have insights.” Then he grinned at Josef. “It won’t be so bad. I won’t be gone long.”

“Yes, Your Serene Highness,” Josef said dutifully. And truthfully he wasn’t concerned about the difficulties of the trip. Travel between here and Magdeburg was getting easier and cheaper all the time. What concerned Josef was the why, not the what.

Josef had nothing against Sarah Wendell. He liked her and her parents, even her younger sister. But up-timer or not, she wasn’t Catholic and she wasn’t of the upper nobility. Josef didn’t think she would accept the role of concubine, no matter how well loved, and she was utterly unsuitable as wife.

He was tempted to say so again, but he had already had that conversation with the prince and it wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat. Instead he simply nodded and went off to get ready for the trip. There would be briefings and discussions of ongoing projects for both the prince’s business interests here in the USE and the family’s properties in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Austria, and Hungary.

 

Paradigms Lost — Chapter 26

Paradigms Lost — Chapter 26

Chapter 26: Special Guest Appearance By…

“What was her reaction?”

“About what you’d expect.” Verne raised an eyebrow. “Well, she didn’t believe me, that’s for sure. But she also wasn’t comfortable not believing, either; the stuff Gorthaur’s been up to has already got them spooked.”

“And she let you go rather than have you examined by a specialist? Isn’t that a bit odd?”

“Not really. She’d already admitted she knew I hadn’t killed Jerome, and she wanted to trace me and find out who I met with and who I knew.”

“How do you know that, Jason?” asked Syl; her high boots with shining metal inlay rapped loudly on the wood as she crossed the floor with the coffeepot for herself and Renee.

“Simple.” I held up a small, silvery object that looked like a fat button. “She’d stuck this inside Mjolnir’s front bumper.” I dropped a few other tiny gadgets of varying color on the kitchen table where we were all seated. “And these were planted around the house.”

Verne reached out and picked one up, examining it carefully. “Monitoring devices? How very rude. I presume you have deactivated them?”

“No.”

They all stared at me. “Why in the world not?”

“Because I’ve already told Winthrope everything we know, so I don’t have a thing to hide from her, and if I shut these off she could just put in some more that I’d never find. Right, Winthrope?” I said, addressing my words to the audio bug I’d removed from the business phone. “Besides, if Gorthaur tries to nail me, he’ll be doing it on prime-time with the NSA watching. That should make the bastard think twice.”

“Perhaps,” conceded Verne. “But perhaps not. Have you not realized the most important part of your latest adventure?”

I thought for a moment. “I guess not. What is it?”

“Our opponent was able to imitate you perfectly. While his powers are vast, they still do have certain limitations. In order to imitate anyone, he must at least have seen them at close range. That means that you have been close to him in the past few days.”

That made my skin prickle. “How close?”

Verne considered. “I would say no more than five feet. Werewolves can assume any form they can visualize, but to pick up on details as explicit as fingerprints would require them to be close enough for their aura to interact with yours.”

“And the Demon’s death shows he’s aware of your involvement,” Renee added.

I frowned. “So who… no, that question won’t work either. He doesn’t have to be a single person. He could have been a hacker watching the local boards and that’s how he got on to me; then all he had to do was be someone on the street bumping into me, or even a customer.”

The doorbell rang. I went to the door, looked out the peephole. “Agent Winthrope? Come in. I’ve been expecting you.”

“I rather thought so,” she said, her assistant Steve following her in. “Since you made it clear you wanted us to hear things, it seemed a waste of comfortable seating to hang around in a van trying to listen that way.” She glanced at Renee. “I thought we told you to stay out of this, along with the entire police department. Oh, never mind. I’ve been known to ignore orders on occasion myself.”

With two more people my house was too crowded; we all moved next door to Sylvie’s shop, which had a big conference-room style table in one room; Syl rented the room to various groups, usually psychic types for séances.

“So all of you people are in on this? What in hell happened to security, Lieutenant Reisman?” Winthrope demanded, the faint smile taking some of the edge off her question.

“Wood showed up before you classified the operation, ma’am,” she answered. “And the only way to get him to drop anything is to put him in jail, or shoot him.”

“Not practical solutions as a general rule, I’ll admit.” she said. “Okay. I know why you’re in on this, Domingo. I’m not sure I believe in it, but I know why. And I see why Jason had to brief Ms. Stake–”

“Sylvia, or Syl, please,” she broke in. “You understand why.”

“Hm. Yes.” She shifted in her chair, glancing around at the dark-paneled walls. “The important question is, how many others know about all this?”

Verne spoke first. “I assure you that I, at least, have told no one else. It would be a generally futile effort, and I need no advice on this subject.”

Renee gave Winthrope a look. “I’d like to continue a career. If I mentioned this to anyone else my only career’d be inside padded walls.”

“I’ve consulted with the Wizard–you remember him, don’t you, Jason?–on how to deal with werewolves,” Sylvie said.

“Really? And what did he say?” Winthrope asked. Her assistant Steve looked uncomfortable, probably either bored or wondering if he was trapped in a room of lunatics.

Syl made a face. “Not much. He said that most spirits can be controlled only if you know their origin, that is, what religious or spiritual discipline they belong to; otherwise you’re limited to whatever their classic weaknesses are.”

Verne agreed. “It is true. Vampires who believe in the Christian faith can perhaps be turned away by crosses and faith, or bound by a daemonic pentacle; but an enlightened nosferatu cares little for such things. There are certain mystical methods which work on all such… but even those are of no use against a Great Wolf. Silver, and silver alone, will suffice.”

“Just what did you tell this Wizard character?”

“Actually not that much; I didn’t want to get him involved, so I just asked about werewolves.”

“And you, Mr. Wood?”

I shrugged. “No one outside of this room knows any of the weird stuff. A couple of the BBS users know I’m poking around in a classified investigation, but no more.”

Steve smiled suddenly. “Thanks. That’s all we needed to know.”

His teeth glinted sharply as he lunged.

Winthrope moved faster than anyone I’d ever seen, even Elias Klein. Her hand blurred and came up holding a 9mm automatic. Before she could fire, though, the werewolf’s hand grabbed her arm and pitched her like a horseshoe straight into Verne Domingo. “Steve” was no longer human at all, but a shaggy, lupine nightmare with crystal-sharp claws and razor fangs. If the monster hadn’t been delayed by its quick attack on the agent, it would have got us all in the momentary paralysis of shock. Chairs crashed to the floor as we all rolled, sprang, or ducked away from the huge, monstrous thing that had appeared in the place of Steve Dellarocca.

Verne caught Winthrope, set her aside. “You must be a fool, Virigar. Though this mortal was not prepared for you, the rest of us have expected to deal with your sort. And our prior duel seems to have rendered you less than what you were. Against us you stand little chance.”

It smiled, showing glittering rows of crystal teeth. “Not so. My name is Shirrith. I am honored that you mistake me, even for a moment, for the Great King, yet I am but His servant. And we are not unprepared ourselves.” It gave an eerie howl.

In a shower of glass, two more werewolves crashed in through the large windows. One sank claws into Verne’s shoulder, but Verne smashed it aside with a tremendous backhand blow that sent it back through the wall into the night. Verne shoved Winthrope towards me. “Run!” he shouted. His face showed shock and, chillingly, the same fear I’d seen before.

Shirrith began to dash after us, but Verne Domingo dove across the room and caught him. The third werewolf almost reached Renee, but she had her gun out and pumped three shots into him. The .357 magnum slugs drove the creature back enough for her to jump out and slam the door between the conference room and the Silver Stake’s main floor. The werewolf tore the door off its hinges and threw it at us. The impact knocked me and Renee down, sending my 10mm with its silver bullets skittering out of my hand. The creature lashed out, caught Sylvie, and bent its muzzle towards her throat.

Silver inlay flashed as the toe of her right boot slammed into the werewolf’s groin. Its eyes bulged; a ludicrously tiny whine escaped its lips, and it staggered back a step. As it folded in pain, Sylvie grabbed a large silver candlestick from a shelf and clobbered the werewolf over the head; it crumpled to the floor.

A tremendous crash shook the building as the battle in the conference room escalated. The second werewolf came flying out of the broken doorway; it rolled and came up, slashing at Sylvie. She swung the candlestick but it just glanced off the thing’s arm; the claws left long trails of crimson across her dress. I had the pistol now; before the creature could lunge again, I put three shots into it. The wolflike face snapped back, glaring at me in astonishment. Then it sagged and fell.

“Syl! Jesus, are you okay?” I ran to her. Blood was soaking her dress, spreading quickly.

“I’m fine,” she said weakly. “Help Verne!”

I hesitated, looking around. Renee had hit her head when the door got us; she was still dazed. Winthrope was just backed up against the wall, staring at the two bodies and repeating, “Oh crap… oh crap …” She cradled her right arm, which hung limply; Shirrith’s grip had crushed it like a paper cup.

Another crash echoed through the Silver Stake. I heard Verne cursing in some Central European tongue. With one more agonized look at Sylvie, I charged back into the conference room.

I had the gun ready; then I stopped. “Son of a bitch!”

Verne Domingo looked back at me… Twice.

Two Vernes were locked together, straining against each other. They were identical, down to the tears on their clothing. The damn thing could even emulate clothing? That really sucks. There was simply no way to tell them apart; their curses sounded the same, and both were calling each other “Shirrith.” One was faking… but which?

I could have kicked myself. How stupid can you get? I raised the gun and fired twice.

The one on the left twitched as the bullet hit; the one on the right screamed and tore itself away from the real Verne Domingo, its disguise fading away.

There was a clack as the gun jammed, trying to eject the last shell. “You bugger!” I said, as the werewolf dove out the window, a perfect target if I could only have fired.

I cleared the jam, but it was too late. Shirrith was long gone.

Verne gazed out the broken window, then turned away.

I shoved past Winthrope, who was coming in muttering apologies, ran to Syl. “How’re you doing, Syl?”

She tried to smile; she failed miserably. “Not so good.”

Blood was pooling on the floor.

“Verne, call the hospital, quick! Get an ambulance!”