Herman sat at the fire, obviously enjoying its heat. When Wili sat beside him, he looked over at his friend. "What's tomorrow going to be like, I wonder. I hear these Swedes have some help from that Grantville place."
Wili twisted the stick he was holding. "I once met a man who claimed he'd been in Grantville. Don't remember his name; called him 'New Guy' the way we did everyone 'til they survived a couple of fights. Horst brought him over; said they'd been together with Tilly at Breitenfeld; that he was 'solid.' Do you remember Horst? With him that was as much praise as you could hope for, so we made room at our fire. He seemed to know what he was doing; claimed a space for his blanket and went to work on his pike. Don't remember him saying much 'til someone said that the Swedes we'd be facing the next day came from somewhere called Grantville. It was the first I ever heard of the cursed place."
Herman took a sip of beer, then dunked a piece of bread in his stew. "So, what did this 'New Guy' have to say about the place? I've heard all sorts of rumors."
Wili shrugged. "He didn't say anything, at first, not 'til it was certain that the rest of us knew nothing about 'em. Then he said, 'I've been there. They may be fighting for the Swede, but they're not Swedish; they're some kind of English or Scots, but the town is in Thuringia.' "
Lucas, who was doing his usual imitation of a log on the other side of the firewood, interrupted. "I don't believe those stories about them being wizards. And who cares if they're Scot dogs or Saxon pigs? Is this a mercenary unit? How good are they? Where have they fought?"
Wili shrugged again, even though it was impossible for Lucas to see it. "We figured that it was a good thing when he told us that, to his memory, they didn't hire mercenaries. After all, no town militia was going to stand up to a veteran unit like ours. But he disagreed. He claimed to have been the last survivor of a screw up when the squad he was in got separated from the rest of his company."
Wili sat up straighter and his voice took on a higher pitch. " 'There I was, alone with nothing but my wits and my knife. Fortunately, I'm good enough with the knife that I don't need more wits than I have. I set off, trying to get back to a friendly district and doing pretty well after a few days. I thought I was being careful until I got swept up by a scouting party from this Grantville. I'd wandered into their territory without knowing anything about them. I was angry with myself for getting careless, but was told later that they were more alert than most towns. I don't have much English, and that's what they mostly speak there, so I didn't understand much of what I saw.' "
Herman looked over at him. "Wili, was this just before Horst's last battle? Did this guy talk like a priest, you know, someone who did a lot of reading?"
"Yeah, Herman. Why?"
"Because I remember him now. Horst tried to give him to us but Ludwig wouldn't have him. Horst said that this guy had stood beside him in the hedgehog at Breitenfeld after a Swedish cannon broke Horst's pike and killed the three men next to him. Ludwig didn't want anyone under him who sounded like an officer, though."
Wili gave his habitual shrug. "That's more than Horst ever said to me. But then, he didn't have to. If he said a man was solid, that was enough for me."
From behind the woodpile, Lucas could be clearly heard grumbling. "So what? Who cares about this ponce? How good are these guys we're going to kill tomorrow?"
Herman threw a bone from his stew over the woodpile. It missed Lucas, but the dog that jumped over the barrier, chasing it, didn't.
Wili snorted. "Shut up, Lucas. I'm getting to it." Once again his voice took on a higher pitch as he recited a story that had dominated his thoughts for much of this campaign. " 'The place is strange in ways I can't describe. I got lucky when the scouts brought me in. I must have given the right answers because their questioning didn't even start to get nasty. They had some strange notions though: they laundered my clothes for me and separated me from my lice and fleas. Then, since I had some coin, they sent me to this miser's house. At least, I think he must have been a miser because he was certainly rich enough not to need to rent rooms. On the other hand, the meal he served was better than I would expect from a miser, so what do I know?' "
Wili knew he was a good mimic and once again sent a quick prayer of thanks for the teachers he had hated as a child. He had realized years ago that remembering things by rote was a potentially lifesaving skill. Potentially, nothing, he thought. It did save my hide when I was chosen for the 'dangerous' job of taking a message from that suicidal idiot to headquarters. Well, maybe not suicidal, it was his men who died, not him.
He roused himself from his musing and resumed his story, "Anyway, the new guy claimed he didn't have much English and that the Grantviller had less German but there was this other boarder who was able to help a bit and they wanted to talk about the place. Which was fortunate for us, eh, Lucas?"
"Not that I can tell," came back from the other side of the woodpile. "Although, it's boring enough to be a good bedtime story."
Wili took the posture and tone that his teachers had beat into him as appropriate for recitation. " 'There was an interesting display on the wall: two fancy hats, a couple of swords, and several pistols, all hung on nails. I said that I'd only seen arrays of weapons like that in noble's houses. He got out a very small musket that he called a 'twenty-two' and said that it was the only weapon he owned; those were 'trophies.' When I didn't understand, he told me a story about how he had been given this 'twenty-two' when he was a child. It seems that the city guards ran an athletic program for the children of the town where he grew up, including teaching them to shoot. What's more, he claimed that his older sister had learned to shoot when she was ten years old, just as he had, and that this had been her musket. I thought he was joking; this 'twenty-two' he was holding must have been some kind of toy musket that they used for training these girls. I tell you, the bore was no bigger than a writing quill and it had neither matchlock nor that fancy French flintlock. But he insisted that it was a real weapon.' "
Wili stopped and threw the stick he'd been fiddling with in the direction of Lucas' bedroll. "This the part you care about, so quit pretending to snore, you ignorant sot. That bit about the 'twenty-two' is one of the best descriptions I've heard about these quick-firing muskets that the Swedes are supposed to have. That Grantviller didn't consider the swords or pistols 'real weapons,' but the little musket with a bore your ramrod wouldn't fit down, was."
The stick came back over the woodpile. "So what? It isn't the weapon, but the man who wields it," Lucas said. "And that was a weapon for a girl, anyway."
"You are as stupid as you are doomed, Lucas. But I will continue this story in the hope that Herman, here, will benefit." Again, Wili resumed his recitation. " 'The Grantville nobles had an interesting scheme. Each year they sold their commoners the right to try to shoot a deer. City men and peasants both could pay a fee and be allowed to tromp through the woods until a week was up or they shot a deer. It was a point of pride for them to 'get their buck.' My host would go out with friends who would loan him a full sized musket for the hunt. He went every year but never succeeded. I thought of this city man thrashing through the brush and could think of many reasons why he'd never see a deer; it wouldn't matter how good a shot he was.'
" 'The reason I got caught was that they had more patrols out than usual because there had been a raid recently. They claimed a couple thousand Croats had come through while their militia were off destroying a couple of Spanish tercios outside a neighboring town. That last was true. I met some of the men captured from the Spanish before I left the town. But it's not the whole truth. You remember the thrashing those Swabians got near Suhl? They were routed by a third part of the Grantville militia while the rest were dealing with the Spaniards.' "
Once again, Herman interrupted. "Too bad, since Lucas is asleep, he missed out on how easy it will be for him to kill these men tomorrow."
Wili forged on with his story. Having started a recitation, it always felt wrong not to finish it. " 'Anyway, that left the town's women and burghers to handle the Croats. I didn't believe that there had been any two thousand Croats. After all, the town was still standing, but I wasn't going to call my host a liar. Good thing too, because the next day my translator friend showed me a cemetery with a couple hundred Croat graves.'
" 'So I'm glad I kept silent while that burgher sat there, stroking his tiny toy musket, looking at those hats and weapons, saying, "Ja, those Croats came and I finally got my buck.' "
Resuming his usual growl, Wili asked, "Okay, Lucas, does that satisfy you? The Granviller's women are good enough to handle Croats. Do you think their men might give you a morning to remember?
"Anyway, the next morning, the New Guy's pike was there, but that craven whoreson and his gear were gone. I was going to talk to Horst about it, but didn't get a chance before the battle. And he didn't survive the day, so that was that. Since none of us who survived got within seventy-five yards of the Grantville Swedes, I guess an extra pike really wouldn't have mattered. From what you say, Herman, about how he handled himself at Breitenfeld, maybe the New Guy wasn't so craven. Maybe he was just smarter than he looked."
Wili noticed that neither of the other men said anything. Maybe they thought so, too.