1636： The Saxon Uprising ARC - By Eric Flint Page 0,140

through his hair. He couldn’t deny there was a certain…

Well, not charm, exactly. But the young USE lieutenant’s enthusiasm was infectious. All the more so because Jozef knew Krenz well enough to know that the man was not given to thoughtless martial enthusiasms. He tended to be a skeptic about the military virtues, in fact. Not derisive as such, but not entirely respectful either.

If someone like Krenz was this full of confidence—even eagerness—when it came to fighting Banér’s professionals…

Suddenly, all of Jozef’s doubts and misgivings vanished. No doubt there was something truly absurd about the Polish grand hetman’s spymaster leading a charge for USE rebels, but he no longer cared. He had been trained as a hussar, and apparently there was still a small hurt lurking in his heart that he’d never been allowed that honor. Koniecpolski had never treated him like a bastard in his personal dealings, but he had used Jozef that way in professional terms. Always keeping him in the shadows.

How many hussars had led a sortie to relieve a city under siege, in the middle of a pitched battle on which the fate of an entire nation pivoted?

Not too damn many. His friend Lukasz certainly hadn’t done it.

“All right, fine,” he said. “I’ll organize your sortie, in case the opportunity comes. But—!”

He raised a stiff, admonishing finger. “We’re not hussars. Bunch of damn fools, I know them well. There is no way I’m going to lead a charge of horsemen across snow, much less a frozen river—certainly not in a snowstorm! If I did make it across, I’d be the only one. No, no, no.”

He gave Krenz a beaming grin. “We’ll adopt the methods of your precious General Stearns. Snowshoes, that’s the trick. Skis too, maybe, for those men good on them. But they’d have to be designed so they can be removed easily. You can’t fight on skis. Not amidst trenches, anyway, which is where we’d be.”

He turned to Gretchen. “Can you organize that? And we’ll need grenades more than anything. Lots and lots and lots of grenades.”

From the look on her face, he thought he was about to be inflicted with another be-damned uptime expression.

“Don’t teach your grandmother how to suck eggs,” she said.

Sure enough. The worst thing about the up-time saws was that they usually made no sense. Why would a grandmother suck eggs to begin with?

Can’t tell the difference between a hawk and a handsaw. Oh, nonsense. A toddler could tell the difference between a bird in the sky and a hand tool.

You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Well, of course not. But what’s the point? Why would anyone want a cake except to eat it?

A penny saved is a penny earned. Blithering nonsense. A penny saved was money already obtained whereas a penny earned came in the future. How could a people who had travelled through time not understand the difference between the past and the future?

And so it went. On and on. The early bird gets the worm. Idiotic. Did they think mindless worms had—what did they call those miserable devices? Ah, yes, alarm clocks. And why would they, even if they did have minds? Worms lived underground. It was always dark down there.

On and on. Haste makes waste. Did—

“Jozef?” said Gretchen. “If there a problem? You seem pre-occupied.”

“Ah… No. There is no problem. A sortie you want, a sortie you’ll get.”

Chapter 43

The Saxon plain, near Dresden

Jimmy Andersen had an apologetic look on his face when he handed Mike the radio slip. “More good weather, sir.”

Mike nodded, took the slip and gave it a glance—sure enough: No storm fronts in sight or reported—and tucked it away in a pocket of his jacket. He kept his face expressionless. There were some drawbacks to being a commanding general. You couldn’t crumble up such a message, hurl in to the ground and stomp on it while cursing the fates.

He wished he could.

For one thing, it was cold—as cloudless days with blue skies usually were in the middle of winter. A good snowfall would bring a blanket of warmth with it. Well…not “warmth,” exactly, but it would blunt the edge of this icy air.

Thank God for the jackets and trousers. As far as Mike was concerned, David Bartley was worth his weight in gold. Figuratively speaking, anyway. In literal terms, the youngster was probably worth a lot more than his weight in gold.

The whole division felt the same way. Mike was monitoring the sentiments of his soldiers carefully, not just through