1636： The Saxon Uprising ARC - By Eric Flint Page 0,150
one had any trouble guessing what they were.
Tonight, though, Rebecca wasn’t concerned about her own possible fate a few weeks or months from now. Not even that of her children. Tonight the snow was falling, and she knew what that meant.
Thought she did, at least. She’d gotten no messages from Michael. He wouldn’t have divulged his tactical plans to her anyway. But she knew her husband very well.
Mike Stearns was a charming man. Even his enemies would allow as much. Gracious, pleasant, courteous, rarely given to expressing a temper.
All of it was even true. But what the qualities disguised from those who didn’t know him as well as she did, was that he was also utterly pugnacious. Not belligerent, as such. He did not go looking for fights. But when a fight did come he would throw himself into it with a pure fury. Rebecca had never seen him fight with his fists, but she knew from Melissa Mailey what his record had been. All but one of his professional fights he’d won by knockout before the end of the fourth round.
So how would such a man fight as a general?
Snow was falling. Not only here but all across the Germanies. She’d checked the weather reports.
It would be falling in Saxony too. White, cold—and gentle, as snowfalls were. But tomorrow it would be bathed in blood. She could only hope Michael’s blood would not be part of that gruesome, incongruous mix.
Or not too much of it, at least. She was a Jewess. Her people had learned long ago that you had to be practical about these things.
Chapter 46
The Saxon plain, near Dresden
Johan Banér was awakened by the sound of gunfire. He came awake instantly.
“Fucking bastards! I warned them!”
He began pulling on his pants, calling for his orderly and his adjutant. The orderly arrived first, piling into the little room on the upper floor of the house. He’d have been sleeping just outside, in the hallway. The hallway was small and narrow, too, as you’d expect from a village home that wasn’t quite a hovel but came close.
Without speaking, the orderly helped the general put on the rest of his clothes. The adjutant arrived seconds later.
“I warned them, Sinclair! I warned the fucks! Which one of them started it?”
The Scot officer’s face was pale. “Sir, I’m not—”
“If you don’t know, find out! I intend have whoever started this brawl shot dead! No, I’ll—”
“Sir, I really don’t—”
“—have them hanged! Hanged, you hear me? If need be, a whole fucking company!”
“Sir, I think it’s the enemy!” Sinclair shouted desperately.
Banér stared at him, as if he’d gone mad.
Sinclair pointed to the window. “Listen, sir! That’s too much gunfire to be coming from a brawl between companies.”
Still wide-eyed with disbelief, Banér stared at the window. An instant later, he rushed over, fumbled at the latch, and threw the window open.
The sky was lightening with the sunrise but he still couldn’t see very far because of the snowfall. The sound of gunfire was growing, though, and Sinclair was right. That wasn’t a brawl between drunken soldiers.
But—
“No sane man launches an attack in the middle of a snowstorm!”
He and Sinclair looked at each other. Sinclair shrugged. “He’s a rank amateur, sir. You know the old saying.”
Banér had always thought that saying was inane, actually. The opponent a great swordsman fears the most is the worst swordsman. Blithering nonsense. Still…
Stearns might be mad, but this could get dangerous. He had to get out there. His soldiers would be muzzy with sleep and confused. They’d no more been expecting this than he had, and the snowfall would make it difficult for his officers to get the men into proper formations. Everyone would be half-blind.
So would the enemy, though—and, just as Sinclair had said, they were rank amateurs.
Choose to fight real soldiers in a snowstorm, would they? He’d show them where children’s games left off and real war began.
You couldn’t see a thing beyond thirty yards or so and volley gun batteries didn’t blast away at nothing. Not batteries under Thorsten Engler’s command, anyway. And he wasn’t nervous, either. They’d trained with the sled arrangements, and had actually come to prefer them over wheels, in some ways. They were easier to bring to bear, for one thing. Their biggest drawback was the recoil, which could be a little unpredictable, but that wasn’t a factor in the first round. And it was usually the first round fired by volley guns that was the decisive one.