1636： The Saxon Uprising ARC - By Eric Flint Page 0,134
bullets, Thorsten had written him. But that’s not what I have nightmares about, Eric. It was the look on the general’s face when he gave the order. A cold, pitiless rage that seemed to have no bottom at all.
Gretchen wiped her nose with a sleeve. “Always I wondered,” she whispered again.
Eric looked out over the Swedish campfires.
Banér was dead. He was already fucking dead. He just didn’t know it yet.
Chapter 41
Magdeburg, central Germany
Capital of the United States of Europe
Rebecca looked at the little stack of radio messages on her desk, wondering if she should read them again.
That was silly, though. By now, she practically had them memorized. Her desire to do so was just an emotional reflex.
Sepharad came into the room, with her brother Baruch in tow.
“Barry wants to know when Daddy’s coming home.”
Despite the tension of the moment, Rebecca had to fight down a smile. For whatever subtle reasons lurked in a child’s developing mind, Sepharad made it a point to pose as the detached and cool-headed one—quite unlike her emotional brother, full of needs and anxieties. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think she was the one who’d written the Ethics and the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus in the universe her father had come from.
“Soon, I think, children. Soon.”
The answer was accurate, as far as it went. Michael would come home soon. If he came home at all. But Rebecca saw no reason to inflict three-year-old children with that caveat.
Within an hour after dawn the next morning, the town house was filled with anxious and needy politicians. Most of them, in a way, wanting the answer to the same question. Except in their case the question was when will the boss be coming home? Michael had been such a dominant figure in their political movement that, at least in a crisis, most of them felt a bit lost without him.
Constantin Ableidinger was one of the exceptions, thankfully. Rebecca was finding his outsized presence a great help this morning.
“Of course he decided to march on Dresden, Albert!” the Franconian was booming at Hamburg’s mayor. “Did you think we could maintain this half-baked civil war forever? Everyone—on both sides; no, on all sides!—is starting to get exhausted. Let this go on for too long and the nation will wind up siding with the damn Swede by default. If you ask me, the general chose the perfect moment to make his move. Right on the heels of Kristina and Ulrik’s arrival in the capital. He has the wind of legitimacy in his sails now!”
Rebecca thought that was a rather grotesque metaphor, but she agreed with Ableidinger’s underlying point. The nation was starting to get frayed by the constant uncertainty.
And now, as he had so many times over the past few years, the Prince of Germany was taking the decisive steps to resolve the crisis. That decisiveness alone would pull millions of the nation’s inhabitants toward him, regardless of what they might think of the specific merits of his political program.
In the royal palace not far away, another child was feeling anxious.
“What should we do, Ulrik?” asked Kristina. The girl was almost literally dancing up and down, with a sheaf of radio messages clutched in her little fist.
“We do nothing, Kristina.” Ulrik tried to figure out the best way to explain the matter. Then, as he had done so many times before, came to the conclusion that with Kristina it was best to just give her the same explanation he’d give an adult. An intelligent adult. She wouldn’t quite understand, perhaps, but she’d know she wasn’t being condescended to—which invariably threw her into a fury.
“Your role as the monarch in this situation is to be, not to do.” He pointed to the messages she was holding. “That’s why General Stearns was careful to stipulate his loyalty to the crown.”
Kristina frowned, while she thought it through. After a while, she sighed.
“I’d rather be doing something,” she complained. “I’m feeling nervous. And I don’t like it. It’s always better if I’m doing something.”
Caroline Platzer cleared her throat. Kristina’s mentor/confidant/governess was sitting on a nearby divan. She and Baldur Norddahl had finally arrived in Magdeburg a few days ago, having taken much slower means of transportation from Luebeck.
Ulrik gave her a quick, appreciative glance. “In that case, Princess, I think you should visit your subjects,” he said. “They’ll be feeling nervous today as well.”
Now, Kristina did start literally jumping up and down. “Oh, yes! Oh, yes! That’s a wonderful idea, Ulrik! Where should we go first?”