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The Austro-Hungarian Connection

Chapter 1. The Track

Vienna, Austria

October 1634

Fortunately, that part of Janos Drugeth’s mind that always remained calm and controlled, even in the fury of a battlefield, was still there to restrain his panic. Indeed, it found the panic itself unseemly.

You are a Hungarian cavalry officer in the service of the Austrian emperor, that part of his mind informed Janos sternly. A breed noted for its valor.

It was all Janos could do not to snarl “so what?” aloud. He was not facing the familiar terrors of war.

You are not even unaccustomed to this, the stern inner voice continued. You have ridden in automobiles before. In Grantville. Several times. Just a few months ago.

Janos’ grip on the handrest of his door to the vehicle grew tighter still. He was sitting on what Americans called the “passenger side” of the automobile. They also sometimes referred to it as “riding shotgun,” he’d been told, a phrase that didn’t seem to make any more sense than many of the up-timers’ expressions.

True. He had. Four times, in fact, with three different operators.

But, first, those vehicles had been driven by Americans very familiar with their operation. All three of them filled with the sobriety of age, to boot. Not a young Austrian emperor whose personal acquaintance with automobiles was this one, and no other. The cursed thing had just arrived in Vienna the month before, not long before Janos himself returned from his inspection of the frontier forts facing the Turks.

Second, two of the vehicles had been large and stately things, moving not much faster than a horse and stopping frequently. What the up-timers called “buses.” The third had been a “pickup” filled with people in the open area in the back, which moved not much faster than the buses. And the fourth had been large and roomy, almost the size of a proper coach if much lower-built, whose operator had been an elderly woman.

None of them had been a so-called “sports car” driven by a maniacal down-time monarch. Nor had any of them been driven on a ridiculous oval-shaped course freshly prepared for the purpose at the command of the crazed king in question. Ferdinand called it a “race track.” The term was English, and unfamiliar to Janos. But his command of the language was almost fluent now, and he could easily determine its inner logic. Its frightening inner logic.

The automobile skidded around another curve in the race track. The rear wheels lost their grip on the surface, just as Janos had known carts to do on slippery cobblestones during a rain or in mud. But the carts had been moving slowly, not at—his eyes locked on the “speedometer” and froze at the sight—sixty miles an hour. The phrase didn’t have a precise meaning to Janos, but he knew that was far faster than he’d ever seen an American drive such a contraption. And even at slow speeds, such a mishap could easily cause a sturdy down-time cart to break a wheel or axle.

The slide continued, the vehicle now clearly out of control. Janos clenched his teeth, his grip on the armrest as tight as he’d ever gripped a sword hilt or a lance on a battlefield. Under his breath, he began muttering the same prayer that he always muttered when a cavalry charge he was leading neared the enemy and his own death might be upon him, commending his soul to the Virgin’s care. “Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum…”

Fortunately, the muttered words were covered up by Ferdinand’s squeal of glee. Fortunately also, while Ferdinand might be portly, he was young and had good reflexes. He turned the round steering mechanism abruptly—in the direction of the slide, oddly—and within seconds the vehicle had resumed its steady and straightforward course. They were still going at an insane speed, but at least the king now had the automobile back under control. And apparently they’d broken neither a wheel nor an axle.

Ferdinand squealed his glee again. “Ha!” He glanced at Janos, grinning. “I learned that trick from Sanderlin. It’s not like a horse-drawn carriage, you know. The worst thing you can do in a skid is apply the brakes. That means restraining the mechanical horses under the hood.” His right hand released the control mechanism and his forefinger pointed to the smooth dark-blue metal expanse in front of the window. “That’s the hood, by the way. It’s hard to believe, but there are more than two hundred mechanical horses in there.”

To Drugeth’s relief, the king had slowed the vehicle considerably. Ferdinand glanced at him again, still grinning. “Congratulations, Janos. You’re the first person who’s ridden with me on the track who hasn’t said a word. Screamed a word, usually—and in the case of my wife and sister, cursed me directly.”

Drugeth tried to return the grin. The result, he suspected, was simply a rictus. “Perhaps they were not cavalry officers.” He managed to relinquish his grip on the armrest and slap his chest. “And Hungarian, too! We are a bold breed.”

Ferdinand chuckled—and, praise the saints, continued to let the automobile’s speed decline. “The first, no. You are the only cavalry officer to ride with me. The second explanation, I’m afraid, doesn’t withstand scrutiny. Your uncle Pal Nadasdy has ridden with me, and I can assure you the hisses and screeches of terror he produced were no less profound than any German’s.”

They were nearing the stablelike building that the king had ordered constructed at the center point of one of the two long stretches on the oval track. What Ferdinand called by the English term “the straightaways,” another expression that was unfamiliar to Janos but whose inner logic was clear enough. Three men were emerging from the very large and open double doors, holding some sort of tools and wearing peculiar one-piece garments.

The distinctive clothing went by the English name of “jumpsuits” and would have been enough in themselves to identify the men. But Janos had excellent eyesight, and recognized them even at a distance. The one in the center was Ronald Sanderlin, Jr., the up-timer who’d sold the automobile to the Austrian king and had agreed to move to Vienna to maintain it for him. He’d brought his wife and two children with him, although Janos didn’t know their names. Drugeth estimated his age at being somewhere in the mid-thirties, although such estimates were always tricky with Americans. You simply couldn’t use the easy gauge of the condition of their teeth.

The older man standing to Sanderlin’s left was his uncle Robert, who went by the nickname of “Bob.” He was unmarried, and seemed to be extremely taciturn. At least, on admittedly short acquaintance, Janos had never heard the man say a word in either German or English.

The third man was the most interesting of the three, from Drugeth’s viewpoint. His name was Andrew Jackson “Sonny” Fortney, Jr. He was also married and had also brought his wife and two children. He was supposed to be a close friend of Ron Sanderlin’s—plausible enough, at first glance, since they were approximately the same age—and Sanderlin had insisted that he come along to Vienna as part of the “deal,” as he called it. There was even, from the Austrian standpoint, he’d argued, the additional benefit that Fortney had experience working with train steam engines, which was not true of either Sanderlin himself or his uncle.

Sanderlin had been quite stubborn on the matter. Istvan Janoszi, Drugeth’s agent, had finally agreed to include the third man in the bargain. But he’d sent a private message to Janos warning him that Fortney might well be a spy for the United States of Europe. The man was known to have been visited on occasion by the USE’s fiendishly capable spymaster, Francisco Nasi, for one thing. And, for another, despite Sanderlin’s fervent insistence that Sonny Fortney was his “good buddy,” Istvan had not been able to uncover any evidence that the two men had spent any time together prior to the summer of this year—which was to say, right about the time the Austrian proposal to the Sanderlins would have come to the attention of the USE’s political authorities.

The issue was of sufficient concern that Janos had even raised it with the emperor himself, the day after he arrived back in Vienna. But Ferdinand had dismissed the problem.

“Let’s be realistic, Janos. There was no possible way to keep secret the fact that three Americans with mechanical experience were moving to Vienna—not to mention the two complete automobiles they brought with them. Ha! You should have seen the huge wagons and their teams when they lumbered into the city. They could barely fit in the streets, even after I ordered all obstructions removed.”

The emperor drummed his fingers on the armrest of his chair for a moment, and then shrugged. “The enemy was bound to fit a spy into the mix, unless they were deaf, dumb and blind—and if there’s any evidence that either Michael Stearns or his Jewish spymaster are incompetent, it’s been impossible to find. So be it. Vienna is full of spies—but now, in exchange for allowing another, we’ve gotten our first significant access to American technology. I can live with that, easily enough. At least, this time, we probably know who the spy is to begin with. That’ll make it easier to keep an eye on him.”

Janos had his doubts, but…Technically speaking, although the USE and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were political enemies, the two nations were not actually at war. Furthermore, from what he could tell, he thought the USE’s Prime Minister Stearns was trying to keep an open conflict from breaking out, at least for the moment. That would be almost impossible, of course, if—as everyone suspected would happen next year—the USE’s emperor Gustav Adolf launched a war of conquest on Saxony and Brandenburg. In that event, Austria would most likely join the conflict.

For the time being, however, Stearns seemed content to let the death of Ferdinand II and the accession of his son to the Austrian throne serve as a reason to keep the peace. The new monarch’s surprising decision to publicly renounce any claim to being the new Holy Roman Emperor and replace that with his new title of “Emperor of Austria-Hungary” had no doubt gone a long way toward that end. Contained within the formalities of the titles was the underlying reality, that Austria realized the days it could directly control—or try to control—all of the Germanies was at an end. Ferdinand III’s public renunciation of the title of Holy Roman Emperor meant, for all practical purposes, that the Holy Roman Empire itself was now a thing of the past. Henceforth, presumably, Austria’s interests and ambitions would be directed toward the east and the south, not the north and the west.

The Turks hadn’t been pleased by that announcement, to say the least. But the enmity of the Ottoman Empire was more or less a given, no matter what Austria did. The Turks had plenty of spies in Vienna too, which was the reason Ferdinand had sent Janos Drugeth on an inspection tour of the Balkan fortifications, the day after he made the announcement—even though that had required Janos to be absent from the scene during the later stages of the technology transfer from Grantville that he had largely developed. The emperor’s decision to send off one of his closest confidants on such a tour of the fortifications was a none-too-subtle way of letting the Turks know that Ferdinand realized they would be furious at his decision. And they could swallow it or not, as they chose.

The automobile was finally gliding to a stop, just in front of the three American mechanics who stood waiting. From the placid looks on their faces, it seemed they hadn’t been much impressed by the ability of Austria’s new emperor to move faster on land than any monarch in this history of this universe.

That was as good a way as any to distinguish up-time mechanics from down-time statesmen and soldiers—or down-time fishwives and farmers, for that matter. Anyone else who’d seen Ferdinand III racing around a track like that would know that a very different man sat on the Austrian throne from the former emperor, these days.

Assuming they hadn’t figured it out already, which most of them would have, by now. In the first two months of his reign, Ferdinand III had forcefully carried through a major realignment of his empire in ways that his stolid father would never have imagined. The old man was probably “spinning in his grave,” to use an American expression.

First, he’d pressured his father—on his deathbed, no less—to rescind the Edict of Restitution. At one stroke, at least in the legal realm, ending the major source of conflict with the Protestants of central Europe.

Second, within a week of his father’s death, he’d renounced the title of Holy Roman Emperor—that was something of a hollow formality, since he hadn’t had the title anyway—and replaced it with the new imperial title.

Third, and perhaps most important, he’d jettisoned his father’s reluctance to even acknowledge the up-timers’ technological superiority in favor of an aggressive policy of modernizing his realm. Ferdinand could move just as quickly on that front because, as the prince and heir, he’d set underway Drugeth’s secret mission to Grantville. “Secret,” not simply from the enemy, but from his own father. Had Ferdinand II learned of it, while he was still alive, he would have been even more furious than he was by his daughter Maria Anna’s escapades.

Displaying better manners than Janos had seen displayed by most Americans in Grantville, two of the up-time mechanics opened the doors for the vehicle’s occupants. Ron Sanderlin, on the emperor’s side, and his uncle on Drugeth’s.

“Nice recovery on that last turn, Your Majesty,” said Ron, as he helped Ferdinand out of the seat.

“It worked splendidly! Just as you said!”

The older Sanderlin said nothing, as usual, and other than opening the door he made no effort to assist Janos out of the vehicle. Which was a bit unfortunate, since the contraption’s bizarrely low construction made getting out of the seat a lot more difficult than clambering down from a carriage or dismounting from a horse. It didn’t help any that Janos felt shaky and stiff at the same time.

Hungarian cavalry officer, he reminded himself. He decided that a straightforward lunge was probably the best way to do the business.

Somewhat to his surprise, that worked rather well. And now that he was on his feet, the properly stiff-legged stance of an officer in the presence of his monarch served nicely to keep his knees from wobbling.

Ferdinand III, Grand Duke of Austria, King of Hungary, and now Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, planted his hands on his hips and gave the newly constructed race track a gaze of approval.

“You were right, Ron,” he announced. “We need to build up the banks of the track on the curves.”

“Yup. Even at only sixty miles an hour, which is nothing for a 240Z, you almost spun out. Of course, it’ll help a lot once we can replace that packed dirt with a solid surface. Tarmac, at least, although concrete would be better.”

Ferdinand nodded. “We can manage that, I think, given a bit of time. We’ll need to build spectator stands also.”

He turned to Janos, smiling widely. “We’ll call it the Vienna 500, I’m thinking. You watch! One of these days, it’ll draw enough tourists to flood the city’s coffers.”

Janos Drugeth, Hungarian cavalry officer in the service of the Austrian emperor—a bold and daring breed, no one denied it—wondered what the “five hundred” part of that title meant.

But he kept silent. He was afraid to ask.

A few hours later, in one of the emperor’s private salons, Janos felt a similar terror. A greater one than he’d felt on the racetrack, in truth, albeit not one that was immediately perilous.

In the long run, though, what the new emperor was contemplating was likely to be far riskier than what he’d been doing a few hours earlier at the controls of an up-time vehicle.

“Driving,” Janos recalled, was the term Ferdinand III and his American mechanics used to refer to that activity. They did not use the English term, just a derivative from the stout German equivalent verb fahren. In both languages, the verb had the additional connotation of half-forcing, half-cajoling someone or some animal to go somewhere they would not otherwise go.

In the afternoon, a young, portly, physically quite unprepossessing monarch had driven an automobile with flair. Tonight, he was proposing to drive an empire with the same flair. Indeed, in the full scope of his half-made plans, perhaps a fourth of an entire continent.

Slowly, Janos lowered the letter the emperor had asked him to read. The letter was a long one, and had been jointly signed by Ferdinand’s oldest sister Maria Anna and her new husband. Don Fernando, that was—had been, rather, since he seemed to have dropped the honorific “Don” along with his former title of cardinal-infante. He was the younger brother of the king of Spain and a member of the Spanish branch of the far-flung and powerful Habsburg family.

Fernando I, King in the Netherlands, as he now styled himself, judging from the signature on the letter.

“Are you seriously considering this, Your Majesty?” Drugeth asked quietly. He resisted the temptation to glance at the two other men in the room. Whatever else, Janos knew, he had to be able to react to his monarch in this situation without being influenced by the attitude of others.

“Quite seriously, Janos. Be assured of that. Not that I feel bound by any of my sister and new brother-in-law’s specific suggestions. They face a very different situation than I do, over there in the Low Countries. And while my sister is an exceptionally well-educated and intelligent woman, and was raised here, in the nature of things her knowledge of the Austrian empire was limited in many respects. Quite limited, in some. She has no close knowledge of military affairs, for instance.” The new emperor chuckled, a bit heavily. “Of course, the same cannot be said of her new husband, who could legitimately lay claim to being the most accomplished military leader produced by the family in generations.”

All that was true enough. Janos had encountered Maria Anna, and had been quite impressed by her forceful personality, as much the product of an acute mind as the self-confidence of a princess. What was even more true was that the situation in Austria and its possessions was quite different—radically different—from the one she now dealt with in her new domain.

There were but two or three languages in her new kingdom, for instance, and not too distantly related at that. Whereas in the Austrian empire, how many languages were spoken? And not by a handful of foreign émigrés or small groups in isolated pockets, either, but by entire regions and by powerful persons?

Janos didn’t actually know, for sure. German and Italian, of course. Hungarian. A veritable host of Slavic dialects. Three very different groups of languages, with little similarities at all.

Maria Anna and her new husband only had to deal with a few religious strains, to name another difference. Catholicism and two brands of Calvinism. Some Jews. Almost no Lutherans. Whereas in the Austrian empire, although they’d been largely driven underground by the harsh policies of Ferdinand’s rigidly Catholic father, there still lurked every variety of Protestantism, Christians who adhered to the Greek church, as many if not more Jews as there were in Holland—and, should the full scope of the successor’s plans come to fruition, a great number of Muslims as well.

“All of the Balkans?” he asked, managing to keep any trace of quaver from his voice.

“Constantinople, too,” said the emperor flatly. “The Turks have had it long enough.”

Privately, Janos made a note to himself to try to limit the emperor’s ambitions in that regard. He could see no real advantage to seizing the southern Balkans, beyond seizing territory for the sake of it. Especially given that the rest of the proposal was already so ambitious.

“Insanely” ambitious, one could almost say. Ferdinand proposed to overturn centuries of Austrian custom, social institutions and policies at the same time as he expanded Austrian power.

The older one of the other two men in the room cleared his throat. “I have read many of those same up-time history books, Your Majesty. I feel constrained to point out that, in essence, what you propose to do here in Austria is what another monarch in Russia would try to do at the end of this century.”

“Yes. Peter the Great.”

The man—Johann Jakob Khiesel, Count von Gottschee, who had served the Austrian dynasty as its principal spymaster for decades—cleared his throat again. “He failed, you know. In the long run, if not in his own time. His Romanov dynasty would be destroyed in two centuries—and, in great part, by the same forces he set loose.”

The emperor nodded. “I’m aware of that. But simply because he failed does not mean that we shall. We have many advantages he did not possess. And please show me any alternative, Jakob? Given that those same histories make quite clear the fate of our own Habsburg dynasty. We were also destroyed, in that same conflagration they call the First World War.”

Somewhere in Janos Drugeth’s mind—perhaps his soul—he could feel the decision tipping. Pulled toward the emperor by Ferdinand’s unthinking use of the pronoun “we,” in a manner that made quite clear he was using it in the common form of a collective pronoun, rather than the royal We.

Although he’d only read some of the up-time accounts of the future history of Russia—which were fairly sparse, in any event—Janos was quite sure that Peter the Great had never done any such thing. The Russian Tsar had tried to transform his realm without ever once contemplating the need to transform himself and his dynasty.

That…might be enough.

Even if it weren’t, Janos could not gainsay the emperor’s other point. Drugeth had studied exhaustively every American account he could find—Austria had many spies in Grantville, and good ones, so he was sure they’d found most of them—and the accounts of the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and its likely causes, were clear enough. Insofar as anything was ever clear when it came to history.

If they continued as they had been, they were surely doomed. Not in their own lifetimes, probably, but so what? If a man had no greater ambition than to go through his life satisfying his personal wants and desires, ignoring what might happen to his descendants, Janos thought him to be a sorry sort of man. Not to mention a Catholic in name only.

The fourth man in the room put the thought to words. “I think we have no choice, Father. Like you, I can see all of the pitfalls and perils in the Netherlanders’ proposal. But what choice do we have? And I will point out that if we have advantages that our counterparts in another universe did not have, we also have disadvantages.” A thin smile came to the face of Georg Bartholomaeus Zwickl, the count’s stepson and official heir. “They did not have to face Michael Stearns.”

Stearns. Mentally, Janos rolled the harsh-sounding English name on his tongue. A former coal miner, now grown into a force that had struck Europe like Attila and the Huns a thousand years earlier. In his impact, at least, if not in his methods.

Janos had seen him, once, although only at a distance on the streets of Grantville. The man had been laughing at some remark made by his companion, the president of the USE’s State of Thuringia-Franconia. That was Ed Piazza, whom Janos had met briefly and in person in the course of a casual social affair.

He’d liked Piazza’s friendly and unassuming manner. Just as he’d liked the look on Stearns’ face when he laughed, for that matter. Being fair, it was hard to imagine such a laugh ever issuing from the mouth of Attila.

Maybe…

He filed that possibility away. For the moment, and for the foreseeable future, Austria and the USE were enemies.

While silence filled the room for a time, Drugeth went back to scrutinizing the letter.

Very shrewd, many of those suggestions. Janos wondered who had actually originated them? For all their undoubted intelligence, he didn’t think Maria Anna and Fernando would have thought of some of them. Being born and raised in royal families also created limits. They had—must have—at least one adviser who was capable of seeing beyond those limits.

“You have my full support, Your Majesty,” he said. For the first time since he’d begun reading the letter, he looked directly at von Gottschee. The old man looked tired, more than anything else. As well he might, given that he’d served Austria’s dynasty faithfully and well for so long—and now, almost at the age of seventy, he was being asked to undo much of what he had done.

Privately, Janos made another note. It was unrealistic to expect the count to do more than maintain Austria’s spy network. Indeed, it might even be dangerous to try to force him to do more. Fortunately, Count von Gottschee had long been grooming his stepson to take his place. Janos got along quite well with Georg Bartholomaeus, who was in his late thirties.

Granted, their background and temperaments were quite different. For all his aptitude at the covert tasks Ferdinand had set him lately, Janos was still a Hungarian cavalry officer in the way he approached things. A soldier, not a spy, where Zwickl took to his stepfather’s trade as if he’d been born to it. Still, he and Zwickl should manage to work together easily enough.

It might even be best to retire the count formally. Janos would raise that possibility with the emperor in private, at some later time. It would have to be done carefully, making sure that Johann Jakob was genuinely willing and did not resent being forced into retirement. Given the situation, there was probably no single individual who could do more damage to the dynasty, should his allegiances sour. Khiesel knew…almost everything.

Having made his decision, however, Janos was immediately confronted by his major and immediate quarrel with the proposal.

“So,” Ferdinand III stated, clapping his hands together. “We’re agreed on the basic points, then? First—which I’ve already had done—repudiate the Edict of Restitution, to as to restore peace in our relations with our Protestant subjects. Second, retake Bohemia. Third—simultaneously, I should say—press forward with the technology transfer from the USE so we can begin the modernization of our economy and our army. Fourth, prepare for an inevitable war with the Turks. Finally, and most important of all, begin the process of drawing all of our peoples and classes into support for our cause. That will necessarily require the introduction of a great deal of popular participation in the empire’s political affairs, although we will strive to keep it under control.”

That was at least one too many tasks, Janos thought. And he knew, for a certainty, the one that he thought should be eliminated.

For a moment, he hesitated. Then, bracing himself, spoke it aloud. “Your Majesty, I strongly advise you to seek peace with Wallenstein and a stabilization of the northern frontier, rather than trying to retake Bohemia. I believe Wallenstein has no further designs on our remaining territory, and would agree to such an offer.”

He was fudging a little, there. Janos was fairly certain that Wallenstein’s ambitions lay to the east, not the south, true enough. But those same ambitions would almost require obtaining at least a part of Royal Hungary, or Wallenstein would have no way to reach the east. Not unless he was prepared to launch a war of conquest on the Polish heartland, at any rate, which Drugeth thought unlikely.

He was willing to make the fudge, nonetheless, if he could keep the emperor from such a rash and unwise policy. The truth was, so long as Wallenstein satisfied himself with seizing only the northern portions of Royal Hungary, Janos didn’t care. Those lands were mostly inhabited by Slavs, not Hungarians. From a military standpoint, they were more of a nuisance than anything else.

True, there was an awkward personal matter involved. His own family’s estates were mostly located in that very area. It would be a pity to lose the lovely Renaissance-style residence his father had built in Hommona. It was only twenty-five years old and had all the modern conveniences a man could wish for. But ceding a small portion of Austria’s northernmost lands, even ones that included Hommona, was a small price to pay to get a stabilization of the northern borders.

The emperor would most likely find a way to compensate the Drugeth family for the loss, and what one architect had built another could build as well. But even if the emperor didn’t, Janos would still argue in favor of ceding the northern portions of Royal Hungary. Being of the aristocracy, the way Janos viewed human relations, bound a man to his duties far more than to his privileges. What overrode all other considerations, certainly mere personal ones, was that fighting the immensely powerful Ottoman Empire over control of the Balkans was going to be a mighty challenge in itself. The last thing Austria needed was to be embroiled simultaneously in a war with Bohemia. Especially since Bohemia was allied to the USE, and they needed to make peace with the Swede also.

A heavy frown had formed on the emperor’s brow. “Surely you’re not serious, Janos? Wallenstein is a usurper and a traitor, whose claims to Bohemia are specious. Preposterous, rather!”

“Yes, they are, Your Majesty. But I feel compelled to point out that any war with the Turks will strain us to the utmost. I think it most unwise to get entangled with Bohemia also.”

“Oh, that’s nonsense, Janos. I don’t propose to fight the Turks any time soon. We need Bohemia’s resources. Surely, we can have it back in our hands within a year or two.”

Surely we can’t, Janos felt like snarling. He hadn’t been present himself at the second battle of the White Mountain, since he’d been assigned to the Turkish border at the time. But he’d heard many accounts of it from his fellow officers who had been present. Granted, they were junior officers, who, as usual, were quick to criticize the failings of the top commanders in that battle. But the fact remained that while Austria might have won the battle with more capable commanders, it would still have been a savage affair. Nobody in their right mind dismissed Pappenheim lightly—not to mention that Wallenstein had proved himself to be one of Europe’s most capable organizers of armies over a period of years. Any war with Bohemia, even a victorious war that resulted in a reconquest, would surely bleed Austria’s armies badly. And that was the last thing they needed, if they intended to confront the Ottomans.

It was true that Bohemia had great resources, many of which were absent or scanty in the rest of the Austrian realm. But what good were resources that couldn’t be obtained? By force, at any rate. If they established a stable peace with Wallenstein, Janos was fairly sure the Bohemians would be glad to provide those resources by way of trade—at a far smaller cost than the hideously expensive business of waging war.

Alas, one of the things those American future histories had contained was a clear record that Ferdinand III—still merely the king of Hungary, in that universe, since his father had lived a bit longer—had been, along with the cardinal-infante, the co-commander of the Habsburg army that had inflicted a massive defeat on the Swedes at Nordlingen in 1634.

That battle had not happened, in this universe, and never would. But the record had been enough to infuse Ferdinand with self-confidence in his abilities as a military leader which were simply premature in this universe. Janos didn’t doubt that his new monarch indeed possessed a talent for military affairs. He was talented in many things. But “talent” and “experience” were not the same thing, in war perhaps more than in any sphere of human affairs.

“A year or two,” the emperor repeated forcefully. “Watch and see if I’m not right.”

Janos exchanged a glance with Zwickl. Some subtlety in Georg Bartholomaeus’ expression made his attitude clear. Let it go, Janos, at least for the moment. You’re probably right, but you can’t restrain him now.

Drugeth decided Zwickl was right. As foolish and costly as it might be, Austria’s new ruler would simply have to learn some things for himself.

And probably more than once, too. The thought would have been a gloomy one, perhaps, had Janos not been a soldier. He’d seen very few officers—and certainly not himself—who’d learned their brutal trade without making mistakes. It was just the way things were.

“I simply felt it necessary to advance my opinion, Your Majesty,” he said, trying to sound obedient but not submissive. “That said, in this as in all things, you have my allegiance and support.”

Ferdinand beamed. “Well, good. In any event, Janos, it’s not something you’re likely to be worrying about. Not directly, at least.” Here, the emperor exchanged a meaningful look with Count von Gottschee. “Since you’ve done so well in Grantville, I propose to hand the entire operation to you. Which Johann Jakob tells me is on the eve of coming to fruition.”

Janos wondered what the emperor meant by “coming to fruition.” The work that Janos had set underway in Grantville some months earlier was intended to produce a slow and steady stream of technology transfer—including some personnel—from the USE to Austria. It was not the sort of project that ever “came to fruition,” as such.

Ferdinand rose from his chair and waved his hand airily. “I have an audience I need to attend. The count will explain it to you. But you’d best start packing, Janos. You’ll need to head out for Grantville on the morrow.”

• • •

After Johann Jakob Khiesel explained what had been happening in Grantville over the months since Janos had left for his inspection tour of the fortresses in the Balkans, Drugeth had to restrain himself from snarling again.

“In other words, in my absence, Henry Gage and Lion Gardiner—the benighted fools—allowed themselves to become cat’s paws for a pack of American thieves.”

Both Khiesel and his stepson looked startled. “But…” the count began.

“Don’t you understand, Janos?” said Georg Bartholomaeus. “At one swoop, we will get a far greater transfer than anything we’d envisioned.”

“And then what?” demanded Drugeth. He took a deep breath, reminding himself that neither the count nor his stepson had any personal acquaintance with Grantville or its up-time inhabitants. For them, as for most people in Europe, the Americans were a mysterious band of wizards. Drugeth had had the same impression himself, until the weeks he’d spent there had made the truth clear to him.

Grantville was a town, that’s all. A town of people with knowledge and technical skills far advanced from any other in the world, true enough. But still simply a town—not of wizards, but of craftsmen. Simple folk, really, who understood in their bones something that most people who viewed them from a distance did not really understand at all. Their technical wizardry was the product of generations of skills compiled and passed on. Hard work lay at its root, not some sort of preposterous sorcery. There were no “secrets” in Grantville. No compendium of ultimate wisdom. No magic recipes, no magic spells, no magic wands—most of all, no sorcerer’s grimoire that, once seized, opened all technical secrets to the possessor.

“What then?” he repeated. “By the very manner in which this escapade will take place—there is no way to avoid this—the Americans will surely put in place measures that make any further transfers ten times more difficult.”

Finally, he did snarl. “Not to mention that we will have done the Americans the great favor of draining the worst sort of people from their midst, and planting them amongst us. For the love of God, these people are traitors and criminals. Who is to say they will not betray us in turn?”

For a moment, the memory of the three up-time mechanics whom he’d met at the race track earlier that day came to him. Janos was sure they knew far more than they were admitting, about matters that would be of direct benefit to Austria’s power, not simply an emperor’s whimsy. He knew, for instance, that while the three men insisted they were quite ignorant of all “aeronautical matters” that at least one of them, Ronald Sanderlin, had served for months as a mechanic at the USE’s air force base in Wismar. He had to know how to construct at least the engine for a warplane, if not the plane itself.

But Sanderlin would keep that knowledge to himself, until and unless he became convinced that he could pass it on to Austrians without damaging his own nation. He was neither a traitor nor a thief.

Damnation! This was insane. They needed to make peace with the Swede and his Americans, not infuriate them. Just as they needed to forget the past and make peace with Wallenstein. The great foe of Austria was the Ottoman Empire—and would have been, even leaving aside the new emperor’s determination to take the Balkans from them.

The two spymasters were still staring at him, obviously not understanding his concern. Spies and spymasters had their own limitations, he realized, produced by the very nature of their work. They dealt with criminals and traitors as a matter of course—which made sense, from the standpoint of spying, but made no sense at all from the standpoint of forging a new nation.

Janos made a note to remember that in the future. Always.

“Never mind,” he said. “What’s done is done. I’ll be off to Grantville at first light.”

Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia

November 1634

Noelle Murphy—Noelle Stull, now, having just changed her name legally—finished her report, and leaned back in her chair. Sitting at the desk in his office, Tony Adducci did the same. He looked to Carol Unruh, sitting in another chair facing the desk, at a diagonal from Noelle.

“Seems pretty complete to me, Carol. I’m not a lawyer, of course.”

Noelle had to keep herself from smiling. “Not a lawyer” was putting it mildly. In point of fact, Tony Adducci’s formal education extended to a high school diploma and two years at Fairmont State, from which he’d left to get a job in the mines without even picking up an AA degree. The main reason he’d been selected to be the secretary of the treasury for the New United States, not long after the Ring of Fire, was because he’d helped Frank Jackson keep the books for Mike Stearns’ UMWA local. In those days—as was still the case, more often than not—Mike selected his administrators primarily because he thought they were solid men he could rely on, pedigrees and credentials be damned. And, in the case of posts like Tony’s, knew that they were honest.

Noelle’s suppressed smile would have been simply one of amusement, however, not derision. When all was said and done, Mike’s crude method had worked pretty well. It had given the new government he’d been forced to set up in the midst of crisis and chaos a great deal of solidity and unity, however rough the edges might have been, and he’d simply shrugged off charges of “UMWA favoritism.”

As the years had passed since the Ring of Fire, a number of those initial appointees had been gently eased out, when it turned out they simply weren’t up to the job. But Tony had kept his post through all of the transformations—from the NUS as an independent principality, to its later status as a semi-independent principality within the Confederated Principalities of Europe, to its current (and hopefully final) manifestation as one of the provinces within the federal United States of Europe. Ed Piazza, who’d replaced Mike as the president of the SoTF after Mike became the prime minister of the USE and moved to Magdeburg, was no more inclined to replace Adducci than Stearns had been. He was capable, honest, and made up for his own lack of training by knowing how to use the skills of subordinates or associates who did have it.

Such as Carol Unruh, in fact, Ron Koch’s wife although she’d kept her own name. Carol was the assistant director of the Department of Economic Resources, one of the branches of the Treasury Department. Her academic background might have been on the skimpy side for an equivalent position in the universe they’d come from. But by post-RoF Grantville standards, she was highly educated. She had a BA in mathematics and statistics and had taken graduate courses in the same subjects. She’d squeezed in the graduate courses on a part-time basis while she was bringing up her two children, but she’d always planned to go back full-time and finish her doctoral program once the kids were out of the house and she could really concentrate. Nobody much doubted she would have, either, except that the Ring of Fire had put paid to those plans as well as many others. Still, she was qualified enough to have been accepted as the University of Jena’s instructor in statistics, whose male faculty was normally hostile to the idea of women teaching at the university level, outside of medicine and a few other special subjects.

“Oh, it’s plenty good enough to put Horace Bolender behind bars,” she said.

“Keep him behind bars,” Tony growled. “Noelle and Eddie already got that much accomplished. The fucking bastard.”

“He hasn’t been convicted yet, Tony,” Carol pointed out. “In fact, I think he’s even going to manage to raise the bail money.”

Again, Noelle had to fight to keep from smiling. Not at Tony’s praise but at Carol’s reaction. Unruh had the sort of prissy sense of duty that compelled her to add the caution—given that, in cold-blooded personal terms, she stood to benefit the most if Horace Bolender got convicted. Her title of “assistant” director was something of a formality these days. Bolender had been the director of the Department of Economic Resources, until Carol’s suspicions and the investigative work by Noelle and Eddie Junker that those suspicions engendered had turned up plenty of evidence that the man had been using his post to feather his own nest.

Now, Carol was actually running the department, and everyone expected that it wouldn’t be long before President Piazza made her the official director. Where a different sort of person in her position might have been pushing for a conviction, Unruh was being meticulously fair-minded and scrupulous.

That spoke well of her, of course, but Noelle still thought it was silly. She and Eddie had nailed the bastard, sure enough. It hadn’t even been all that hard, once they started digging. Like untold thousands of officials before him, Bolender had been sloppy about his demands for kickbacks before he assigned contracts. That was due more to arrogance than actual stupidity, probably, but the end result was no different. It was easy for an up-time official to get careless on the subject of bribes, since most down-timers took bribing officials to be a routine cost of business.

He’d get a long, hard sentence, too. Bolender was not the first up-timer to have been caught breaking the law, but he was far and away the most prominent. Judge Tito was well known for his lack of leniency toward up-timers, because he was bound and determined to prove to the citizens of the SoTF—which had one million people in it all told—that the tiny percentage of them who were of American origin weren’t going to be getting any special treatment or favors from the law.

Tony looked back at Noelle. “What else looks to be turning up? Besides Bolender and the Cunninghams and Norman Bell, I mean.”

“Nothing definite, yet. But Eddie and I are still digging. We don’t think we rooted it all out, by any means. We’re almost certain that Stan Myers’ tip regarding Mickey Simmons is a good one.”

“How about Myers himself?” asked Carol. “It wouldn’t be the first time a crook tried to deflect suspicion by fingering somebody else.”

Noelle shook her head. “Eddie and I don’t think Stan’s dirty. For one thing, because we just don’t. Beyond that, Stan’s in charge of the fire department’s training program. He simply doesn’t have access to the kind of temptation to ask for kickbacks that somebody like Bolender did. He’s got a hard enough time, as it is, getting volunteers for the fire department, given all the other economic opportunities around.”

Tony chuckled. “True enough. I can remember my dad complaining when he had to pass the dispatcher a five-dollar bill to get work out of his union’s hiring hall. Which was not the UMWA,” he added self-righteously. “But those jobs paid well, so he thought it was worth the baksheesh. Most of the fire department posts are volunteer. Don’t pay anything more than expenses.”

Carol nodded. “I was just raising the possibility. I like Stan, myself, and I’ve never gotten any sense he was crooked. Mickey Simmons, though…” She made a face. “Well, I should keep personalities out of it, I suppose.”

“He’s a prick,” stated Adducci. “He’s always been a prick. Why the hell it took Lorraine so long to give him the heave-ho was always a mystery to me.” He straightened up in his chair. “Just for the record. But I agree we should keep personalities out of it. There is such a thing as an honest assho—uh, butthead, here and there. But I won’t be surprised at all if Mickey turns out not to be one of them.”

He mused for a moment, apparently lost in remembrances of things past. “He really is a Grade A prick. But let’s move on to the rest. How about the down-timers, Carol? Any decision yet from the attorney general?”

“I just talked to Christoph yesterday. He feels in an awkward position, given that he’s a down-timer himself, so he stressed that he’d defer to your judgment on the matter. Still, he thinks it would be a mistake to press charges against any of the down-timers, if their only involvement was having their arm twisted into paying the kickbacks. I’m inclined to agree.”

Adducci grunted. “Yeah, so am I. Not that seventeenth-century Germans haven’t got at least as fine-tuned a sense of lawyering as any West Virginian ever did. They knew damn good and well they were breaking the law too. Still, you have to make allowances for the chaos caused by fifteen years of war half-wrecking the Germanies. People slide into bad habits in situations like that. For us to run around hammering everybody probably wouldn’t be a good idea. Still, this is it, folks. You also gotta watch out for being paternalistic about these things. Down-timers ain’t children. Once these cases break and we start putting people in prison, let’s make sure the message gets out to every businessman in the province who’s thinking of cutting a deal beneath the table. Do it again, and we’ll bust you, sure and certain.”

Noelle thought their attitude was probably the right one to take, though she was even more inclined than they were not to err on the side of paternalistic tolerance. It’s just their traditional ways, baloney. Her partner Eddie Junker was a down-timer, and he’d never had any trouble recognizing that paying a kickback was just as illegal, if not perhaps as personally reprehensible, as demanding it in the first place.

That said, she was a little relieved. Her relations with Eddie had gotten awkward lately, and she was pretty sure she knew the reason. Now, with this decision having been made, she could see her way clear to straightening it out.

Adducci raised an admonishing finger. “But! That only applies to down-timers whose involvement was simply paying the kickback. Any of them who got more, what you might call enthusiastic and enterprising about the business, we’ll go after them just like we are the up-timers.”

For the third time in half an hour, Noelle had to fight to keep a smile from her face. That wouldn’t be a problem for her, at least. Claus Junker might have been willing enough in the enthusiasm department, but when it came to “enterprise” it was just a fact that Eddie’s father was a hopeless nincompoop. He bore about as much resemblance to a criminal mastermind as…

She tried to think of anyone she knew who could possibly be as inept as Claus Junker at the art of “making a deal.” The only person she could come up with was her own mother.

She must have choked, or something.

“What’s so funny, Noelle?” asked Carol.

“Ah…nothing. Just an idle thought.”

* * *

Janos Drugeth’s agents in Grantville, the Englishmen Henry Gage and Lion Gardiner, seemed bound and determined to waste more time continuing the recriminations.

“In particular,” said Gage with exasperation, “I told you to stay away from the Barlow family!”

Gardiner scowled at him. “And I did—until I was approached by Neil O’Connor, who is part of the affair because you recruited his father Allen.”

Gage looked defensive. “We need the O’Connors. Between the father’s knowledge of steam engines and the son’s experience working on aircraft, they’ll be invaluable. And we need Peter Barclay and his wife, too. They both have experience in mechanical design.”

“We don’t need—”

Gage threw up his hands. “Of course we don’t need their crazy daughter! But the Barclays insisted that their children had to be part of the bargain, or they wouldn’t agree.” Sullenly, he added: “It’s not my fault. It’s certainly not my fault that the oldest girl Suzi Barclay lives in a state of sin with Neil O’Connor, and she told him, and he told his father, and—”

He broke off there. Gardiner picked it right up, now with a sneer on his face.

“—and she also told her friend Caryn Barlow, who is almost as crazy as she is—not surprising, being the daughter of Jay Barlow—and she told her father and there we were. In the soup.”

“Enough,” said Janos stolidly. Rubbing the back of his neck, he looked around the small apartment his two subordinates had been renting on the outskirts of Grantville. At least they had enough sense to be packed and ready to go. “This is pointless—and we have little time remaining.”

He gave Gardiner a cold eye. “Do restrain your indignation. It was you, after all, who recruited the Simmons fellow. Who has no skills I am aware of beyond embezzlement—and paltry skills at that, judging from the evidence.”

It was Gardiner’s turn to look defensive. “That wasn’t my doing. The O’Connors insisted that their employee Timothy Kennedy should be included also. Seeing as he was very skilled in the steam work and was now disaffected from his wife—”

Seeing his chance, Gage interrupted with a sneer. “Who just happens to be the sister of Anita Masaniello, who just happens to be the wife of Steve Salatto, who just happens to be the American official in charge of administering Franconia.”

Gardiner glared up. “As I recall, you thought recruiting Kennedy was a good idea at the time yourself. He seemed tight-lipped enough. How was I—or you—to know that he was good friends with Mickey Simmons and Simmons was up to his neck—”

“Enough!” growled Janos. He wiped his face tiredly. Part of his weariness was due to the rigors of the hard and fast journey he’d made from Vienna, much of which had been on horseback through forests and mountains to evade the USE’s border patrols. Most of it, though, was simply weariness at the whole business.

He was still aggravated by Istvan’s foolishness in having hired these two English adventurers as his direct agents in Grantville, as much as he was aggravated by the adventurers themselves. But, being fair to all parties, he also recognized that most of the problem was simply due to the nature of the work involved. This miserable business the Americans called “covert operations.”

True, Gardiner and Gage were mercenary adventurers. On the other hand, they spoke fluent—now even idiomatic—English in a town of English speakers whose usage of the language was eccentric to begin with, by seventeenth-century standards. It was doubtful that any regular Austrian agents could have penetrated so deeply and quickly into the disaffected elements among the Americans. That was true even leaving aside the thugs who infested the so-called Club 250, who were automatically suspicious of any central Europeans. None of the thugs themselves were of any particular interest to Austria, which could recruit plenty of thugs of its own. But the Club 250 served as something of a liaison venue for other disaffected up-timers that Austria was interested in. Gage and Gardiner could go there easily. Between their excellent knowledge of the American idiom and the fact they were English—for reasons still somewhat murky to Drugeth, the American bigots who patronized the Club 250 made an exemption for Englishmen—the two of them could habituate the place where, if Janos went himself, he’d likely face a fracas.

True, also, many—no, most; perhaps all—of the Americans they were seeking to recruit were not what any sane man would consider upright and moral persons. At best, their guiding motives were nakedly mercenary. For some of them, such as Simmons, you could add a desire to escape apprehension by the SoTF’s authorities for criminal activity. For others, like the O’Connors and their employee Timothy Kennedy, their extravagant and careless spending habits had led them to drive a seemingly prosperous business into a state of near-bankruptcy.

As for the “craziness” of the Suzi Barclay girl, a subject on which both Gage and Gardiner could expound at length, what was to be expected from the offspring of such parents?

He rubbed his face again. In the end, all the problems were simply inherent to the business itself. If a man insists on sticking his hand into a marsh looking for gold, he can hardly be surprised if he retrieves filth and leeches as well as the gold he was looking for.

And…

There was gold there, sure enough. Being fair to the two. Whatever the moral and mental characteristics of the up-timers whom Gage and Gardiner had recruited to move to Vienna and provide the Austrian empire with technological skills and advice, there was no question that they’d assembled an impressive group. Amongst them, there was extensive knowledge of American machining techniques, mechanical design, and steam engine design, not to mention the seemingly ubiquitous knowledge that American males had with regard to automobile engines. There was even a fair knowledge of aircraft principles, something which was in scant supply even among Americans.

Still, it was a mess. The original plan had been modified after the end of the war between the USE and the League of Ostend brought a period of peace. That, combined with the outcome of the Congress of Copenhagen and the decision of the SoTF to relocate its capital from Grantville to Bamberg, was producing a massive wave of emigration of Americans out of Grantville to other parts—and not all of them to somewhere else in the USE. It seemed as if every nation in Europe had launched a recruitment program here, even the French.

Most of those who chose to leave the USE, of course, went to either Prague or Copenhagen or the Netherlands. Bohemia and Denmark were allied to the USE; and, while the new kingdom in the Low Countries was not, it enjoyed quite friendly relations these days. Nowhere in Europe had the now-romantic figure of the Netherlands’ new queen Maria Anna assumed such legendary proportions as it had in Grantville. “The Wheelbarrow Queen,” they called her, often enough. Even the rambunctious and surly commoners of Magdeburg seemed inclined to favor the Netherlands, monarchy or not.

Janos had hopes that, eventually, that same romanticism might help relations between the USE and his own nation. Maria Anna was, after all, a daughter of the Habsburgs and one of the new emperor’s two sisters. At one time—not more than a few months ago—an archduchess of Austria itself.

It was too early for that, of course. Everyone in the USE was expecting a new war to begin the coming spring, with Saxony and Brandenburg, and everyone was assuming—accurately, alas, unless Janos could persuade the emperor otherwise—that Austria would weigh in on the side of the USE’s enemies. Still, Janos had hoped to keep tensions between Austria and the USE, especially its Americans, to a minimum. Sooner or later, he was sure Austria would have to seek peace with the USE, and he didn’t want any more in the way of festering anger than was inevitable in the course of a war.

So, clearly and unequivocally, he’d told Istvan Janoszi to instruct his agents to keep any transfer of personnel and equipment from Grantville within the limits of the law, as the Americans saw it.

That hadn’t seemed too difficult a project, at the time. The up-timers had sweeping notions on the subject of personal liberties, which included the right to emigrate and included the right to maintain personal property in the process. The key figures, the O’Connors and the Barclays, were in a position to do that. Simply move themselves and their businesses to Vienna. Impossible, of course, to move the actual physical plants, but they could certainly take with them all of their technical designs—“blueprints,” those seemed to be called—and even much of the moveable equipment. Over time, if not immediately.

Unfortunately, what Janos hadn’t foreseen was the inevitability of what followed. Like anything dragged out of a swamp, be it gold-colored or not, the Barlows and the O’Connors were sticky. They had relatives and friends, the relatives and friends had their own such—and among them, what a surprise, were some individuals whom no one in their right mind would want to encourage to move into his own country.

And so, a legal enterprise had become an illegal one. Not only were some of these people going to be fleeing the authorities of the USE, they were going to be taking goods and possessions with them that they had no legal right to take.

For a moment, Drugeth considered simply forbidding any such goods. But he dismissed the idea almost as soon as it came to him. First, because that was bound to produce a quarrel with the would-be emigrants, and there was no time left for such a quarrel. Second, even more simply, because Drugeth really had no way to know which goods were legal and which weren’t, in the first place. Once the expedition got to the Austrian border, he had a large cavalry unit waiting to escort them all the rest of the way to Vienna. But from here to the border, he’d have only Gage and Gardiner to assist him in keeping control over the up-timers.

What was he to do? Insist on a search of the wagons, not even knowing what he was looking for?

It was just a mess, that’s all. A marshy muck. But Janos had crossed marshes and swamps often enough, since he took the Austrian colors. Though he was only twenty-five years old, he had plenty of experience as a soldier. He figured he could manage this, well enough.

“Tomorrow morning, then,” he said. “We start to leave as early as possible.”

Three days later, in the evening, over the sandwiches they were having by way of a working meal on the folding table in Noelle’s apartment, she finally nailed her partner.

“All right, Eddie, spill it. I got the word from Carol Unruh over lunch today. For what it’s worth, she and Tony Adducci and Christoph Wieland officially decided that no charges would be pressed against any down-timer unless they were actively involved as one of the arm-twisters. Just paying the bribes, we’ll let it go. This time, anyway.”

Eddie Junker laid his half-eaten sandwich down on the plate, then stared at it for a moment, before sighing.

“It has been difficult. I’ve felt bad about it. Not saying anything to you, I mean.”

“Yeah, I can see that. How deep was your father involved?”

Eddie shrugged, uncomfortably. “Not as deep as I’m sure he would have liked to have been. Dear God in Heaven, when will my father learn that he has the business sense of…of…”

“My mother,” Noelle said crisply. For a moment, they both shared a laugh. Noelle’s mother Pat was to good sense what a junkyard was to orderly. The woman wasn’t stupid. She just didn’t seem to have a clue how to separate abstractions from their application to the real world.

In her favor, though, Noelle thought but didn’t say out loud, at least Pat wasn’t greedy. Something which couldn’t be said for Claus Junker.

“The point is, Eddie, nobody’s going to go after your dad. But I’d like to know if there are any leads there.”

Eddie used the time it took to finish the sandwich to compose his thoughts. Then: “I think so, yes. Do you know a man—an up-timer—by the name of Jay Barlow? And another one by the name of Allen O’Connor?”

Noelle stared at him for a moment. “Jay Barlow, yeah,” she said abruptly. “He used to be a car dealer before the Ring of Fire, mostly used cars—and he was pretty much a poster boy for what people think of used car dealers.”

Eddie frowned. “Which is…what?”

“Never mind. Crooked sleazeball is close enough. The kind of guy whose stock in trade was passing off lemons.”

“I thought you said he sold automobiles.”

“Never mind, like I said. Some other time I’ll enhance your vocabulary of up-time slang. But right now I want to concentrate on the other guy. Allen O’Connor, you said?”

“Yes. I think he’s actually the more important of the two, although my father’s direct dealings were with Barlow.”

Noelle chuckled. “Well, yeah, I can believe that. In the TO of organized crime, like any other enterprise I can think of, you’ll find the Jay Barlows of the world pretty regularly enrolled under the rank of ‘foot soldier.’”

“What’s a ‘TO’?”

“Table of Organization. Like I said, later for the vocabulary lesson.”

She scratched the tip of her chin, forgetting for a moment her long-standing vow to eliminate that mannerism on account of it drew attention to her chin. She thought it was on the pointy side, which was especially unfortunate given the shape of her ears, which were also too damn close to being pointed. Add into the miserable bargain her too-slim figure, which she’d had since she was a kid, even before she started exercising regularly. She began that regimen after the scares she’d experienced in Franconia during the Ram Rebellion convinced her she’d better be in top physical condition.

All she needed, in her position, was for people to think she was some kind of elf.

Catching herself, she stopped. Then, tugged at her earlobe. Then, silently chided herself and brought the hand firmly down on the table. “O’Connor, on the other hand, has the potential to rise to higher levels. Did rise to higher levels, in fact, not long after the Ring of Fire, when he set up a steam engine business.”

“So did Barlow,” Eddie pointed out. “He’s the partner and co-manager of the Grantville-Saalfeld Foundries and Metalworks—which is quite an important and profitable enterprise. More so than O’Connor’s steam engine corporation, really.”

Noelle sneered, forgetting momentarily her long-standing vow never to sneer on account of it made her look like an impudent elf. “Yeah, sure—but that’s due to the other partner, Bart Kubiak, who’s the brains of the outfit. I heard—never mind where—that the only reason Bart asked Jay to become his partner—and he doesn’t have anything close to an equal share in the business, by the way, just a token amount—is because Billie Jean Mase sweet-talked him into it and Bart wanted her to relocate to Saalfeld to be his office manager.”

She shook her head. “There’s another mixed-blessing character for you. By all accounts, Billie Jean is a crackerjack office manager—”

“I thought those were a kind of cereal candy.”

“What is it with your sudden obsession with learning every bit of American slang in one sitting? But whatever skills Billie Jean has in an office, she’s a dumb blonde in the rest of her life.”

Eddie was now eyeing Noelle’s hair dubiously.

“Fine,” she snapped. “It’s sort-of blonde. It’s just an expression. Some of the world’s champion dumb blondes are brunettes and redheads. Trust me on this one, for just a moment. Who else but a dumb blonde would ever get hooked up with a guy like Jay Barlow? You can’t even credit her with being a gold digger, since she brings in most of the gold.”

She raised the fingers of her left hand and began counting them off with the thumb and forefinger of her right hand, forgetting also her solemn vow not to draw attention to her fingers because they were too slender and nimble and, well, sorta elflike.

“First, he’s a loser. Second, he’s a sleazebag. Third—”

“I thought the term was sleazeball,” Eddie complained.

Noelle contemplated strangling him. Then, simultaneously concluded her hands were far too delicate for the task—Eddie was on the heavily-built side—and remembered her vow not to display them. Hurriedly, she put her hands back in her lap.

“Third,” she said forcefully, “he’s thirteen years older than she is. Remembering my charitable Christian nature—”

Eddie was looking more dubious by the minute.

“—I will forego pointing out that his potbelly matches his age and then some. Fourth, he’s lazy. Fifth—since after two months Bart Kubiak gave him the boot and told him to enjoy his piddly little share of the partnership back in Grantville where he’d be out of Bart’s hair—he spends most of his waking hours lounging at the 250 Club, trying to pretend he’s a tough biker even if the only part of ‘biker’ he has down pat is the boozing. Sixth—”

She broke off suddenly, and stared at the wall. Nothing there to look at, just getting an idea.

“What is it?” Eddie asked.

She started scratching her chin again, forgetting her solemn vow to work on her memory so it wouldn’t resemble Swiss cheese. Just what she needed, having people think she was as flighty as an elf.

“I was just thinking, now that I think about it, that Jay Barlow is the mirror opposite of Buster Beasley. There’s a guy who has ‘tough biker’ down pat every other way, except he finds most bikers pretty boring. So he doesn’t hang out much at the 250 Club, true enough—but I’ll bet he knows where all the bones are buried and whose skeleton is rattling which bike. He’s honest, too. Well…allowing for a certain casual attitude toward mind-altering substances and stuff like that, but who cares? Those laws aren’t in force anymore and even if they were you and I are working for the Treasury department, not the old DEA.”

“I am now completely lost,” said Eddie.

Noelle flashed him a grin, forgetting her solemn vow to suppress her quick way of smiling since she thought that was probably the silly way that elves smiled if elves existed which they didn’t but too many damn people had heard of them and thought they probably did and she was suspect number one.

“I’ll introduce you.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s only eight. He’s probably still at his storage rental place.”

She got up, grabbed her purse and shrugged into her coat, then headed for the door. Eddie followed. “If we’re lucky, maybe his daughter Denise is there too. There’s a real pip.”

Outside, Eddie asked: “What is a ‘pip’?”

Noelle did her best to explain, as they walked. She’d never realized before, just how hard it could be to explain a colloquial term like “a real pip.” But, when she was done, Eddie nodded sagely.

“Ah. Sort of an American elf.”

“There’s no such thing as an elf,” Noelle snapped.

She thought his ensuing silence had a dubious flavor, too.

* * *

“Forget Simmons,” said Buster Beasley. With the booted foot he had planted on an overturned crate, he kept rocking back and forth on his chair. Given that it wasn’t a rocking chair, just a beat-up old wooden kitchen chair, and given Buster’s heft, Noelle wondered how much longer it would last.

“Simmons is a clown,” he continued. The light cast into the office of Buster’s rental storage operation from a single naked light bulb in the ceiling threw his face into deep shadows, making him look more like a prophet than the middle-aged, long-haired, heavily-bearded and burly ex-biker that he was. If you ignored the muscular arms exposed by the cutaway denim jacket, anyway. Noelle was familiar with the lives of many of the saints and the Old Testament prophets, and she was quite sure not one of them had had a “Born to Raise Hell” tattoo on their shoulder, with or without a dagger through it.

“He can manage to slice bread on his own, I suppose, but anything more complicated would stump him for sure. The only reason he got that job heading up the training program for the Department of Transportation was because his ex-wife Lorraine talked her twin sister Lauren into getting it for him, even though she’d dumped the bum years ago.”

Buster’s fifteen-year-old daughter Denise was perched on an upended crate not far away, as was Eddie. Noelle had been given the one stool in the office to sit on. She’d have preferred a crate herself, actually, since the stool looked to be as rickety as the one and only chair in the office that was getting a workout from Buster.

“I don’t get it, Dad,” Denise said. The girl’s expression was one of intense curiosity, which seemed to fit her face quite nicely. She shook her head a little, causing her long dark hair to ripple. “I mean, sure, I like Lorraine. Who doesn’t? But where’d she get the pull to land an ex-husband—not even the guy she’s married to now—a job that good?”

Denise didn’t seem to think there was anything odd about her father calling another man a bum and clown. This, despite the fact that Buster’s office furniture consisted of upside-down crates and stools, a cheap metal cabinet that looked like an antique except no antique shop would have bothered trying to restore anything that badly stained and covered with rust spots, and a desk—Noelle was still trying not to grin at the thing—that was actually the bed of a junkyard pickup truck that Buster must have cut out with a torch and provided with legs made out of parts from the frames of old motorcycles. He ran a welding business on the side and was quite good at it. Good enough, in fact, that if he’d concentrated on that business he could have become very prosperous. But Buster valued his free time a lot more than he did money.

Noelle wasn’t surprised by Denise’s respect for her father, quite evident despite the relaxed and informal ease of their relationship. Buster Beasley, like Tom Stone, was one of those people who managed to live outside the normal boundaries of social custom without being considered a hopeless screwball. Screwball, maybe, hopeless—no. They were just too effective at managing their lives, each in their own way. In Buster’s case, of course, the tattoos helped stifle vocal criticism, especially combined with the seventeen-inch biceps displayed by the cut-out jacket. Not to mention the scars.

Despite her appearance, which she’d inherited from her mother—slender and very attractive, where Buster was neither—Denise was a chip off the old block. She was just a few weeks shy of her sixteenth birthday. Most girls her age would have been either egotistical or confused by her good looks, and the effect it had on boys. Denise was neither. She took it for granted, didn’t seem to care in the least—she certainly didn’t pick her girlfriends based on their looks—and God help the overeager high school boy who didn’t take “no” seriously. Denise was the only girl Noelle knew who’d been hauled in front of the high-school vice-principal for punching a kid out. Fortunately, there weren’t too many boys stupid enough to harass Buster Beasley’s daughter.

Buster gave his daughter a grin. “How many times have I told you not to underestimate networking skills?”

Denise snorted. “Coming from you!”

He shrugged. “I didn’t say I was good at it, I just told you not to underestimate them. In this case, sure, Lorraine doesn’t have any direct clout worth talking about. But—”

He held up his thumb. “Her twin sister Lauren owns and runs the town’s best restaurant, along with her husband Calvin.” He raised his forefinger alongside the thumb. “If there’s a power-that-be in Grantville that doesn’t hang out there, I don’t know who it is.” The middle finger came up to join them. “For sure and certain, Joe Stull—remember him? He’s the secretary of transportation—eats lunch there practically every day.”

Buster brought up the ring finger, somehow managing not to haul the little finger along with it. He was a very well-coordinated man, despite the graying beard and the muscle. “Moving right along, since Lauren and Calvin Tyler’s daughter Rachel has all the sense when it comes to men that Lorraine doesn’t, she married that Scot cavalryman Edward Graham, who—he ain’t no dummy, either—immediately left the Swedish colors and wrangled himself a partnership in the restaurant with his new in-laws. And—”

Finally, the little finger came up. “That damn Scotsman could charm a rattlesnake, which Joe Stull ain’t—and Graham makes it a point to be the waiter any time a bigshot shows up.”

Denise was looking a little cross-eyed by now. For that matter, Noelle thought she might be herself.

The fingers started closing back down, one at a time, gracefully despite their heft. “So Lorraine talked to Lauren and she talked to Graham and Graham put in a word with Joe Stull, and I guess Joe must have been having one of his rare off days because he agreed to hire the clown. And that’s how it happened.”

Throughout, he hadn’t varied in the slightest the metronome regularity of his chair-rocking. Now, he looked back to Noelle. “So, like I said, forget Simmons.” He gestured with his thumb to the tattoo on his shoulder. “If Mickey had a tattoo, it’d read “Born to be a Small-Time Loser.” No, the people you want to start looking at are the Barclays.”

Noelle frowned. “Pete Barclay? The guy who works for Dave Marcantonio?”

“Yup. Him and his wife Marina. She works there too, y’know.” He finally ceased the chair-rocking and stood up, then picked up a big black flashlight perched on a shelf, one of those long, heavy Maglites favored by cops because they could double as a club in a pinch. Buster was holding it the way cops did, too, with the lamp cupped in his hand and the shaft perched on his shoulder, ready to swing forward if need be. So far as Noelle knew, Buster Beasley hadn’t been in a brawl in years. But he’d been notorious for brawling in his younger years—if not for starting fights, certainly for ending them—and he clearly still had the ingrained habits.

The big ex-biker headed for the door, not bothering to put on a coat to fend off the autumn chill outside. “Come on. Let me show you something.”

A minute later, they were staring into one of Buster’s storage sheds. It was one of the big ones down by the end.

“There is nothing in it,” said Eddie, puzzled.

“Not today, sure enough. But if you’d looked into it three mornings ago, you would have found it packed full. The Barclays showed up right when I opened, along with Allen and Neil O’Connor—I think most of the stuff belonged to them, actually, even though the Barclays are the ones who paid the rent—and cleaned it all out. They had three wagons for the purposes. Well-built wagons, driven by some down-timers I don’t know. The guy who seemed to be in charge was a real dandy, dressed to the hilt. Fancy plumed hat, the whole works.”

Noelle hissed. “The O’Connors? But…”

There seemed to be a thin smile on Buster’s face. Between the beard and the darkness, though, it was hard to tell.

“But they have a successful business here? I wouldn’t be too sure of that, the way they go through money like it was water. I can tell you this much, for sure. Since the Barclays rented this shed six months ago, they’ve been steadily filling it up with mechanical equipment—smallish stuff, of course, no big machines—tools, blueprints, diagrams, you name it. I’m pretty sure some of it was swiped from Marcantonio’s machine shop, although I couldn’t swear to it.”

“Oh, wow,” said Denise. “Dad, the fuckers are defecting.”

“That’s my guess. Got no idea where to, though.”

Noelle’s lips were tight. “You know, Buster, you could have maybe said something about this earlier.”

He swiveled to face her. Whatever smile might have been on his face was gone now. “Said something to who? The so-called ‘authorities’? Meaning no offense, Ms. Murphy—”

“It’s Stull, now. I changed it.”

“Good for you,” said Denise. “I kinda like your mother, but her ex-husband—the guy who was supposed to be your dad and wasn’t—is a complete shithead.”

Clearly enough, whatever parental instruction Buster had felt it necessary to give his daughter had never included “proper language for a young lady.” Noelle couldn’t really fault Buster for that, though. He made a lot better father in everything essential than Francis Murphy had, she didn’t doubt that in the least.

“Yeah, good for you,” echoed Buster. “Your real dad Dennis is an okay guy, in my book. But like I was saying, Ms. Stull, I mind my own business. I’m as likely to go to the cops as I am to eat tofu for breakfast. I got along with Dan Frost well enough, once him and me straightened out a few issues. But I’ve generally got as much use for cops as I do for cockroaches. Especially since, in this case, I can’t see where they were doing anything illegal anyway except for maybe some petty theft from Dave’s machine shop.”

He gave his daughter a stern look. “How is it ‘defecting’ when we’re not at war with anybody any longer? People got a right to live wherever they want, you know—and take their property with them. You really oughta watch your language, young lady.”

Noelle barked a laugh.

For his part, Eddie gave Buster a wary look.

“We’re not actually policemen,” he said. “No powers of arrest. We’re just investigators.”

Buster shrugged. “Like the guy said in that Muppet movie. Authorities is authorities.”

“He didn’t say that,” Denise protested. “He said—”

“Do you want to help them?” demanded her father, gesturing with a thumb at Noelle and Eddie.

“Yeah, sure. I don’t care what you say, Dad. Those fuckers are defecting. Buncha traitors.”

“Then quit arguing with me about movie dialogue and get a move on.” He turned back to Noelle and Eddie, smiling again. “If you want to catch them, you’d better plan on starting at dawn. They’ll have three days’ head start on you, wherever they’re going.”

“You have no idea?”

“Not a clue. Like I said—”

“You mind your own business. I heard you.” Noelle tried not to sound too snappish and testy. Despite his appearance, Buster was generally an easy-going sort of fellow. Still. Aggravating a large ex-biker on his own property in the middle of the night when he was carrying an eighteen-inch flashlight in his hand did not strike Noelle as falling into the category of “good idea.”

Eddie was scratching his head. “We’ll need to alert the police, first. Then we’ll have to figure out which way they went.”

Denise grinned. “I’ll find that out for you. Me and my bike. I’ll get started as soon as it’s light enough to see anything.”

“Ain’t she a pip?” said her father, admiringly.

Near Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia

“Fucking idiots, what they are,” pronounced Denise. She finished the beer she’d ordered at Stephan Wurmbrand’s roadside tavern just outside Grantville on the road to Rudolstadt and almost slammed the glass back on the bar. She glared around the room, as if defying any of its habituees to challenge either her use of language or her judgment of police chiefs and cavalry officers.

No challenge came forth, except from Lannie Yost, perched on a nearby stool. Owlishly, he peered at her empty glass. “Ain’t you a little young to be drinking that stuff?”

Denise gaped at him. So did several of the other barflies in the place. In their case, because they were down-time Germans who thought the notion of anyone being under age to drink beer was silly—one of those up-time fetishes they’d thought must have died a natural death by now, three and a half years after the Ring of Fire. In Denise’s case, because her father was Buster Beasley and she thought—so did Buster, actually—that she was practically abstemious when it came to substance abuse.

She was also gaping because she was outraged, of course.

“You! Lannie Yost, you’re pie-eyed half the time! So-called test pilot. You got some nerve—”

“Hey, Denise, take it easy! I wasn’t trying to pick no fight.”

That wouldn’t normally have done him any good at all, except he added hurriedly: “You got the right of it when it comes to Captain Knefler, that’s for sure. Guy couldn’t find his ass with both hands in broad daylight.”

“That jackass. I told him I found their trail, leading south from Rudolstadt. But, noooo. Mr. Military Genius insisted they must have used those rafts the one guy—the one in charge, whoever he is—bought in Jena.”

By now, the news had spread all over the area, including some of the details. “The rafts were gone,” one of the down-timers pointed out. He was sitting with a friend at a table nearby.

Denise sniffed. “Big deal. All the guy in charge—and I think he’s got more brains in his little toe than Knefler does—had to do was hire a few men to pole the rafts downriver. There’s day laborers hanging around all over the place, in Jena. Probably told them they needed to pick up something in Halle and take it down to Magdeburg. Off goes whichever idiot came in pursuit—his name’s Knefler, did I mention that? It’s spelled ‘k-n’ like in numbskull—while the guy with the brains keeps heading up the Saale valley. Hasn’t it struck any of you geniuses yet that Mr.-Whoever is good at this? Why would he have been wearing such a flamboyant outfit just to buy some cargo rafts—if he hadn’t been trying to draw attention to himself?”

She was pretty proud of that deductive logic. Maybe she ought to become a detective when she grew up. Finished growing up. Which she was practically there. She’d bet Minnie would partner with her.

On the other hand, she’d neglected to mention that Mr.-Whoever-He-Was had been wearing the same outfit when he arrived at her father’s storage place to load the wagons. Obviously, just to make sure every idiot in Grantville connected Obvious Dot A to Blatant Dot B. The Grantville police chief and Captain Numbskull had squeezed that information out of her, despite her misgivings about what they’d do with it, but she saw no reason to weaken her case by divulging it to these layabouts.

Lannie took a swallow from his own beer. “You think?”

“Sure. What sort of lunatic would make his escape further into the USE?”

The same down-timer wasn’t ready to let it go. “Not so foolish, that. Before he gets to Halle, he can offload the rafts and make his way into Saxony. Probably he’s working for John George.”

Denise opened her mouth, then decided it wasn’t worth the effort to get into an argument with somebody who was obviously not playing with a full deck.

Right. Sure. That made sense. In six months, the elector of Saxony was staring in the face an all-out invasion by Gustav Adolf. Fat lot of good some tech transfer would do him at this stage of the game. Except give Gustav Adolf another Cassius Belly. Or whatever the name was of that ancient Roman guy who’d caused a war.

Denise might be willing to concede that John George was that stupid. But none of the up-timer traitors were that dumb, except maybe Jay Barlow and Mickey Simmons. Even Suzi Barclay wasn’t that dumb, just nuts. No, wherever the lousy defectors were going, it was someplace they figured could hold off the USE, at least for a while. That meant Austria, probably—that had been Noelle’s guess—or maybe Bavaria.

Lannie finished his beer and stood up. The motion was just a little bit too exaggerated to be that of a completely sober man. Which, given Lannie, was no surprise. He wasn’t actually drunk, just in his more-normal-than-not state of a pleasant buzz. Lannie’s alcoholism wasn’t so bad that he couldn’t get by in life, with his rare skills. Jesse Wood hadn’t been willing to accept him in the air force, but the Kellys used him for their test pilot.

“Okay, then,” he said. “Give me a ride back to Grantville on your bike, kid. I’ll nail the bastards for you.”

Denise frowned. “What are you talking about?”

He slapped his chest. “When the cavalry falls down on the job, you gotta call in the air force. One of the planes at the facility—that’s the Dauntless—is finished and ready to go.”

Denise stopped laughing after a while, then shrugged. “Sure, why not? I’ll take you there. I’m warning you, though. Those hands of yours better not move around any while you’re holding onto me.”

Lannie looked aggrieved. “Hey, there’s no call for that. Besides, I ain’t crazy enough to piss off your dad.”

Denise squinted at him. “You start groping, and my dad will be the least of your worries.”

The Saale Valley, south of Saalfeld

“It has to be them,” Noelle pronounced.

Eddie sighed and wiped his face. His whole body ached, from spending three days in the saddle. Especially his thighs. “No, actually, it doesn’t. They passed through Saalfeld yesterday evening, in bad lighting, and the guards we talked to didn’t recognize anybody. Just three wagons, which they didn’t give more than a cursory inspection if they gave them any at all, because they most likely got bribed. Those are not exactly elite troops in that garrison, now that nobody’s worried any longer about another raid deep into the Thueringerwald. Even if they weren’t been bribed, they probably wouldn’t have bothered to check the wagons anyway. You have any idea how many times heavily loaded wagons pass through Saalfeld?”

“It has to be them,” Noelle repeated stubbornly. She swiveled in the saddle, the slight carefulness of the motion making it clear she wasn’t feeling any too spry herself. “We should have gotten reinforcements by now. I guess Denise couldn’t get anybody to take her seriously. Maybe I should have—”

“You weren’t going to stay behind, since you can’t resist the thrill of the chase. I couldn’t stay behind, because somebody has to look after you. That left Denise—and we practically had to sit on her to get her to agree.”

He wiped his face again. “And, yes, they probably didn’t take her seriously. Given that she would have had to report to Captain Knefler, him now being the commander of the Grantville garrison, and Knefler is a jackass.” He smiled. “Probably, after ten seconds or so, Denise started denouncing him. She’s a real pip, that one.”

Noelle eyed him suspiciously. “She’s only sixteen years old. Not even that.”

“All the more reason they wouldn’t take her seriously.”

“That’s not what I was referring to. I was referring to the possibility of other men taking her too seriously.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

The Saale Valley, near Hof

“Stop complaining,” Janos said. He gave the wagon a cold, experienced eye. “The likelihood of having an axle break was very high, given the route we’ve taken and the speed we’ve made.”

“And that’s another thing,” complained Billie Jean Mase. “You’ve been wearing everybody out.”

Janos didn’t bother replying to that accusation. In point of fact, while the pace he’d set had been hard by the standards of a commercial caravan, it was nothing compared to the pace Hungarian cavalrymen and their supply trains were accustomed to while on campaign. He was feeling perfectly well rested, himself. Granted, he’d been in a saddle, but Gage and Gardiner had been driving two of the three wagons and they were holding up well also.

Of the three drivers, the one in the worst shape was Mickey Simmons. He’d gotten the assignment because he’d boasted of the wagoneering skills he’d developed as a result of being the coordinator of training for the transportation department. Naturally, within less than four days he’d broken an axle.

“There’s no time for this,” Janos said curtly. He glanced up at the sun. “We’ll camp here. We have perhaps three hours of daylight left to sort through the wagons, jettison whatever is least important, and repack the two surviving wagons.”

Needless to say—he didn’t think he’d ever met such self-indulgent people; they were even worse than Austrian noblemen—the Americans set up a round of protests and complaint. The gist of which was we need all of it.

He gave them no more than a minute before cutting the nonsense short.

“We have no means of repairing the axle. Nor can we seek the assistance of a wainwright in Hof, because there is a USE garrison there. By now, the alert will have reached them. Like most such garrisons, they will not exert themselves to search the surrounding countryside—but if we show up in the town itself, which is quite small, they will be almost certain to spot us.”

He gave the assembled up-timers perhaps five seconds of a stony stare to see if any were stupid enough to argue those points.

None were, apparently. He revised his estimate of their common sense. Higher than carrots, after all.

“That leaves two options. The first is that we unload the contents of the broken wagon and pile them onto the two others.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was figuring,” said Jay Barlow.

Sadly, the level of common sense did not attain that of rabbits.

Janos half-turned and pointed southeast toward a low range of mountains. “By tomorrow, we have to be well into the Fichtelgebirge. That terrain is considerably worse than we’ve been passing through, and the roads are worse yet. We are certain to break another axle, or a wheel, with overloaded wagons—and these are already dangerously burdened as it is. I leave aside the fact that we are now into late autumn. The weather has been good, so far, for which we can be thankful. But who knows when the weather might turn?”

The Americans squinted at the mountains. “We gotta go up there?” whined Peter Barclay’s wife Marina. By now, Janos had come to recognize her as a champion whiner. She almost put his great-aunt Orsolya in the shade. Not quite.

“Why?” demanded her husband.

Janos shook his head. “This close to Bayreuth, we can’t stay in the lowlands or we run the risk of being spotted by a cavalry troop. Even in the Fichtelgebirge, there may be an occasional patrol. Once we enter it, we can take only a few days—no more—to reach Cheb by following the Eger.”

The Barclays’ daughter Suzi frowned. She was a bizarre-looking creature, who would have been an attractive young woman if it hadn’t been for the short cropped hair dyed a truly hideous color, five earrings in her left ear and three on the right, two metal studs through her right eyebrow—and, capping it all, a tattoo of flames done in black ink reaching from the wrist of her right arm to the top of the right side of her neck. The woman was so attached to the grotesque decoration that she insisted on wearing a sleeveless vest instead of a coat, despite the November temperatures.

“That can’t be right,” she said. “I know somebody from Cheb, one of the girls—well, never mind that, but she’s Bohemian.”

“That is hardly surprising, since Cheb is in Bohemia. It’s an old fortress town that guards the western approaches. Good for us, in this instance, since the garrison is a mercenary company and its commander has been well bribed. We’ll abandon these wagons in Cheb and replace them with several smaller ones, much better designed for travel in the mountains. We’ll even have a cavalry escort while we pass down part of the Bohemian Forest until we reenter the USE near Kötzting. There, we will follow the Regen down to Regensburg, where we will exchange the wagons—that has also been arranged—for a barge that will take us down the Danube into Austria.”

He’d already explained this to the leaders of the up-timers, the older Barclays and O’Connor and his son. But it seemed they either hadn’t paid attention or hadn’t considered all the implications.

“Hey, wait a minute,” said Allan O’Connor. “We’re coming back into the USE? What the hell for? I know my geography, dammit. Once we’re across into Bohemia, let’s just stay there until we get to Austria.”

Janos stared at him. “Indeed. As a geographical proposition, that is certainly feasible. Follow the rivers down to Pizen. From there we could take a good road to Ceské Budejovice, the largest town in southern Bohemia. From there, of course, it is a short distance to Austria—and along a very good road, given the long and constant intercourse between Vienna and Prague.”

O’Connor nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

No rabbit had ever been this stupid, for a certainly. “You have missed the news, then. Of the war between Bohemia and Austria. Which has been going on for a year and a half, now.”

The up-timers frowned at him. They looked like a pack of confused rabbits. All except Suzi Barclay, who just looked like a crazed rabbit.

Janos grit his teeth, reminding himself that he needed to remain on the best possible terms with these—these—people.

“Not a good idea,” he said thinly. “The reason I could bribe the commander of the Cheb garrison is because no one expects hostilities to erupt between the USE and Bohemia, so that frontier post was given to a man who was competent enough but needed no further qualifications. Such as…what you might call a rigorous sense of duty. At Pizen and Ceské Budejovice, on the other hand, we would be dealing with Pappenheim’s Black Cuirassiers.”

The up-timers seemed to draw back a little.

“Ah. I see you have heard of them. Yes. We do not wish to have dealings with the Black Cuirassiers.”

Enough! Still more time had been wasted. He pointed stiffly to the broken wagon. “So let us begin unloading it. Now. And discard from the other two wagons whatever is not essential.”

High Street Mansion, Seat of Government for the State of Thuringia-Franconia

President’s Office

Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia

After Grantville’s police chief finished his report, Ed Piazza, president of the State of Thuringia-Franconia, half-turned his swivel chair and looked out of the window in his office. That was the first time he’d so much as glanced outside since he showed up for work this morning. His schedule had been jam-packed even before this latest crisis hit.

The weather was still good, he saw. Clear, with not a cloud in the sky. Very crisp, of course, the way such days in November were, but not yet bitterly cold the way it would become in January and February.

Well, not “crisis,” exactly, he mused. He and Mike Stearns had long known that there was no way to keep the USE’s enemies from getting their hands on American technical knowledge—nor from suborning some of the Americans themselves. Among the thirty-five hundred people who’d come from up-time through the Ring of Fire, there was bound to be the usual percentage who were excessively greedy and not burdened with much in the way of a conscience. That was even leaving aside the ones—there were a lot of those, now—who’d accepted legitimate offers to relocate elsewhere. You couldn’t keep people from emigrating, after all; not, at least, without building some sort of Godforsaken version of a Berlin Wall, which neither he nor Mike had wanted any part of.

Some people were surprised, even astonished, at the number of Americans who were leaving Grantville these days. They’d assumed that long familiarity, habits, family ties—not to mention modern indoor plumbing—would keep almost everyone from straying. But that was unrealistic. West Virginians, especially northern West Virginians, had been accustomed to moving around a lot, since the area was economically depressed except when the mines were working full bore. Most families had at least one person, in the past, who’d moved to one of the industrial cities to make a living. Often they came back, when things at home picked up, but sometimes they didn’t.

And those had been relocations just to get decent-paying but usually hard jobs in a steel mill or auto assembly plant. Today, anyone with any skills was being offered salaries that were the down-time equivalent of the kind of money top-drawer technical and business consultants made back up-time. Often enough, with lots of perks and benefits attached. And since the prospective employers were rich—many of them noblemen, sometimes royalty—even the problem of leaving modern plumbing behind wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t as if the upper classes of the seventeenth century were medieval barons living in stone piles, after all. They had indoor plumbing, however rudimentary it might be by late twentieth-century American standards. And it would get better quickly, too, since the people offering the jobs had a keen desire themselves to get better facilities. Anyone in Grantville who had significant plumbing skills and experience practically had a carte blanche to go anywhere in Europe.

To add pressure to pull, most up-timers after the Ring of Fire had lost what they’d had in the way of safety net back up-time. Which, for working class people like most of the town’s inhabitants, had never been all that munificent in the first place.

Social Security was gone. Company pensions were gone, except for a few companies headquartered in Grantville who’d been able to maintain them. Medicare was gone. That might not directly affect young people, right away, but most people in Grantville were part of families, often extended families. They had parents and grandparents and other elderly relatives who were in a tight situation, sometimes a desperate one—and now, Baron Whoozit or Merchant Moneybags or City Patrician Whazzisname was waving a small fortune under their noses, if they’d just relocate to wherever and apply their skills.

So, since the end of the Baltic war—the decision to move the SoTF’s capital to Bamberg had been a prod, too—a great migration was underway. “Great,” at least, in per capita terms if not absolute numbers. Some people were even starting to call it the “American Diaspora.” What had been a trickle, in the first three years after the Ring of Fire, was now a small flood. By the time it was over, Ed wouldn’t be surprised if half of Grantville’s residents wound up living somewhere else, at least for a time.

Most of them were staying in the USE, true enough. But the number who were accepting positions in other countries was not inconsiderable, especially countries that had good relations with the USE like Bohemia, Venice, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian nations now united within the Union of Kalmar. Some had gone to France and Austria. A few, even farther afield, to eastern Europe, Russia, Spain and Portugal, southern Italy—even the New World.

In fact, Ed was a little puzzled by the fact this batch of emigrants had chosen to break the law by stealing things that didn’t belong to them. Why? There was no legal barrier, as such, to moving to Austria, if that’s where they went. The Sanderlins and Sonny Fortney had moved to Vienna not long ago, perfectly openly and aboveboard. They’d even hauled two complete automobiles with them.

Carol Unruh’s suspicion, which she’d voiced two days earlier, was that at least some of them were going to wind up implicated in the legal fall-out from the Bolender arrest. She’d probably turn out to be right. But, whatever the reason, the immediate effect—and the thing that made it a problem for Ed—was that it transformed what would have otherwise have been a simple emigration into “defection” and even “treason.”

What a stupid mess.

The worst thing about this episode with the Barclays and the O’Connors—assuming for the moment that they got away with it—wasn’t actually the tech transfer itself. True, among the whole group of them, they had quite a bit of technical knowledge and skills, not to mention the stuff they’d taken or stolen. But it was hardly as if there was any one “secret” that was equivalent to a magic wand. One of the USE’s enemies, probably Austria, would get a major boost to whatever modernization program they’d set underway. That was hardly enough, by itself, to transform them overnight into an industrial powerhouse—which was something of a double-edged sword in any event, for Europe’s royal houses and aristocracy.

No, insofar as the affair constituted a crisis, it was a political one, not a military or technical one. Among the still-murky set of possible outcomes, one outcome was a certainty. Wilhelm Wettin and his Crown Loyalist party would pull out the stops to make as much political hay of it as they could. Wilhelm himself would keep within the limits of using the episode to argue that it showed Americans were nothing special, so what difference did it make if Mike Stearns’ party had the support of most of them? A large number of the Crown Loyalists would go a lot farther than that, though, arguing that the whole affair cast suspicion on American loyalty in general.

And there were some elements within the CLs who’d take it to the hoop. It was well-known that reactionary elements were infiltrating that loosely-defined and none-too-disciplined party, now that nation-wide elections would be taking place within a few months. Some of them were outright extremists. They’d trot out their usual anti-Catholic diatribes, of course, given the high percentage of Catholics in the defecting group—even if most of them were lapsed Catholics. They’d probably also fire up the anti-Semitic propaganda, ignoring the fact that none of the defectors were Jewish or had any connection to Jews beyond purely casual ones. Logic was hardly the strong suit of that particular current within the politics of the Germanies.

Ed managed a chuckle, then, remembering one woodcut illustration of himself in a pamphlet put out by one of the reactionary outfits. The Knights of Barbarossa, if he remembered right. The thing had been quite charming, in its own way. The horns and the cloven hoofs and the forked tail were standard fare. Generic, really. But he’d thought the addition of a grotesquely “Jewish” hooked nose was a nice touch, given his rather puglike features. Not to mention showing him sacrificing a presumably gentile baby in some sort of religious rite, and never mind that he and his wife were lifelong Catholics and attended mass regularly.

He swiveled the chair back, to face Preston Richards and Carol Unruh, the two other people in the room. “What if Noelle’s right, Press? And have we gotten any word from her since she left?”

“Nothing,” said Carol Unruh, answering his second question. “Not a peep. We don’t know where she is, really, except ‘somewhere south of Rudolstadt.’”

The police chief grunted. “She hasn’t passed through Saalfeld—or, if she did, she didn’t stop for anything. We’re in radio contact with the authorities there.” His expression grew sour. “Not that it’s likely to do any good. The garrisons in all the towns in the area are small and entirely mercenary, since—”

Ed waved that aside. “Yeah, Press, I know. Since the emperor is keeping most of the regular army units in the north because he wants them in position to attack Saxony and Brandenburg in a few months—and he’s sending the ones he can spare down to reinforce the troops facing Bavaria and Bernhard. So we make do with what we can get. No point pissing and moaning about it all over again. I take it they haven’t gotten off their butts and started scouring the countryside?”

“‘Scouring,’” Carol jeered. “Their idea of ‘scouring the countryside’ is trotting a few miles out of town to the nearest watering hole, getting plastered, and reporting that they saw no signs of suspicious activity or suspicious persons passing through. Two or three days worth of getting soused later.” Her expression grew more solemn. “I’m mostly worried about Noelle, Ed. She could get hurt, or even killed. I mean, you know what she’s like.”

Indeed, he did, having read the detailed report of her activities the previous summer and fall in Franconia, during the Ram Rebellion. Ed’s wife Annabelle had once described Noelle Murphy—now Noelle Stull—as Grantville’s distaff version of Clark Kent, absent the glasses. Primly-mannered maybe-I’ll-become-a-nun young woman, zips into the phone booth, out comes Super-Ingénue. She’d even blown a torturer’s head half off, when he attacked her partner Eddie Junker. Since Noelle couldn’t shoot straight, she’d done so by the simple method of shoving the barrel of the gun under his chin and pulling the trigger.

Timid, she was not, appearances to the contrary.

“We’ll just have to hope for the best,” he said. “Captain Knefler took practically the whole garrison with him up to Halle. That just leaves the police force, which is under-strength to begin with, the way Grantville keeps growing.”

Richards gave Carol an apologetic glance. “I did send a couple of officers over to Rudolstadt, and they were able to get the garrison commander there to detach three of his soldiers to accompany them. No more than three men, though, and no farther south than Hof, without the count’s okay. I radioed Magdeburg to see if I could reach him, but it seems Ludwig Guenther and his wife are out of the city visiting relatives at the moment.”

That was too bad. The count of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt was a capable and conscientious man, and maintained good relations with Grantville. If he or his wife Emelie had been in residence at their castle in Rudolstadt, they’d have sent out the whole garrison to search for Noelle and Eddie—and the defectors, too, if Noelle was right and they were in the vicinity. It wasn’t a big garrison, but it was a good one. Mercenaries, true, but a well-trained and disciplined company that had been in the service of the count for a long time, not a contractor’s slapdash outfit.

The problem was that the State of Thuringia-Franconia—at least, the area around Grantville—simply didn’t have much any longer in the way of military forces. In the months after the Croat raid on Grantville and its high school, more than two years earlier, the town had fairly bristled for a while with cavalry patrols, freshly built fortifications, sentinel outposts, the works. But two years was a long time in the war conditions of Europe. Soon enough, it became obvious that there was no immediate military threat to Grantville any longer. The key development had been Wallenstein switching sides in 1633. The same man who’d launched the Croat raid was now allied with the USE—and, given the number of Americans living in Prague today, some of them very closely connected to the new king, there was simply no way Wallenstein could organize and launch a secret attack even if he wanted to.

So that ended the threat from Bohemia, which was the most pressing one. Who else could launch a raid on Grantville? The Austrians would have to fight their way through Bohemia first—and Wallenstein had beaten their army at the second battle of the White Mountain. The Bavarians were in no position to do anything more than try to hold their ground. That had been obvious even before Gustav Adolf’s general Banér seized their fortress of Ingolstadt, which left the Bavarians without a bridgehead north of the Danube.

The Saxons were the only real possibility, and that was negligible. John George, the elector, had a full scale invasion coming and he knew it perfectly well. He was concentrating entirely on readying Saxony’s defenses, not wasting energy on raids that would simply chew up his army. Holk’s mercenary forces were really the only ones he had available for something like that, anyway. Holk would have to fight his way through sizeable forces—USE regulars, too—stationed in Halle, in order to reach Grantville or any of the towns in the Thuringian basin. Nobody thought he could manage that, and if he even tried he’d leave Saxony’s frontier with Bohemia open to an attack by Wallenstein. There was no way the elector of Saxony would countenance such a thing. He’d hired Holk and his army in the first place, despite their unsavory reputation, in order to help protect his southern flank.

Who else? A few hysterics shrieked about the “French menace,” pointing with alarm to Turenne’s daring raid on the Wietze oil fields during the Baltic war, but that was downright laughable. Given the political tensions in France after the war, there was no way Richelieu was going to send his best general haring off on a long-distance raid. Even if he did, so what? Only somebody who was geographically-challenged and completely ignorant of logistics could possibly think that a raid from France to Grantville was anything like a raid into Brunswick. That Turenne was an exceptionally gifted military commander had been proven in this universe, as well as being attested to by the historical records of another. That did not make him a magician, who could fight his way through the entire USE. It was three hundred miles from the French frontier to Grantville, even as the crow flies. At least half again that far, the way an army would have to travel.

No, aside from the mundane and everyday risks of living in a boom town, Grantville was about as safe as any place in Europe, these days. So, beginning in the fall of 1633, the military forces that had once protected it carefully had been almost completely drained away. They were needed elsewhere. The regular cavalry patrols were a thing of the past, the sentinel posts had been abandoned completely, and the outlying fortresses had no more than a handful of men detached from the small garrisons maintained in the towns of the basin—who were really there to keep order and double as a police force, more than to serve as an actual military defense.

“We haven’t got a pot to piss in, is what it amounts to,” he said.

“Not for something like this, Mr. President,” agreed the police chief.

Carol looked fierce. “If those bastards so much as hurt Noelle and Eddie, I don’t care what Mike says. I’m for firing up the war against Austria. Or whoever it is.”

There’d be a lot of that sentiment, Ed knew, if Noelle and Eddie came to harm. Granted, assuming Austria was behind the affair, most people would hold a grudge about the mass defection in any event. But most of the grudge would be aimed at the defectors themselves, not the Austrians. It wouldn’t be the sort of thing that would set off any real war fever. Noelle and Eddie getting killed or badly injured would be a different kettle of fish altogether.

Ed contemplated the problem, for a few seconds. As a practical proposition, of course, launching any sort of immediate campaign against Austria was a non-starter. But “immediate” meant next year. The year after that…

He shook his head slightly. That was pointless speculation, right now. They still didn’t even know what was really happening.

“I guess that’s it then, for the moment.” He straightened up in his chair. “Unless Denise Beasley—there’s a real pip, for you—shows up with some more information.”

Press Richards grinned. “Don’t think that’s too likely. I got no idea what she’s up to now. The last I saw of her she was racing off on her bike, giving me and Knefler the finger. Most of her spleen wasn’t really aimed at me, since Denise knows I haven’t got the resources to do what she wanted. But she probably has me lumped in with ‘the fathead’ for the time being.”

Carol’s mouth made a little O. “Did she really call Captain Knefler a ‘fathead’? I mean, to his face?”

“Oh, yeah.” Solemnly, Press shook his head. “Wasn’t all she called him, I’m deeply sorry to report. Girl’s got a real potty mouth, when she cuts it loose. She also called him a fuckwad and an asshole and a motherfucking moron.”

“She’s not even sixteen!”

“She’s Buster’s kid,” Ed grunted. “That’s got to add a decade or so, at least in the lack-of-respect-for-your-betters department. Thank God I’m no longer the high school principal. She’s not my headache, these days.”

Richards and Unruh both looked at him.

“Well, she isn’t,” Ed insisted. Hoping it was true.

Kelly Aviation Facility

Near Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia

Denise stared at the object that was the center of the proposal Lannie had just advanced.

“No fucking way,” she pronounced.

Yost shook his head lugubriously. “You really oughta watch your—”

“Don’t fucking start on me, Lannie. Just don’t.” She pointed an accusing finger at the aircraft. “There is no fucking—or flibbertyjerking, if that makes you happier—way in hell I’m getting into that thing.”

Lannie frowned. “What does ‘flibbertyjerking’ mean? And what’s the matter, anyway? It flies. It flies just fine. I’ve taken it up plenty of times.” After a two-second pause he added, “Well, maybe three times.”

Denise scowled at him. “You said yourself. It’s a prototype, remember?”

“Well, sure, but…”

He let that trail off into nothing. The truth was, except for being a boozer, Lannie wasn’t a bad guy. And he did have the virtue of being a very loyal sort of person, even if Denise thought he had to be half-nuts to give his loyalty to Bob and Kay Kelly.

Kay was a harridan, and Bob was…Well. Impractical. Not hard to get along with, but the kind of guy who simply couldn’t control his enthusiasms and seemed to have the attention span of a six-year-old.

She looked around the big hangar. There were no fewer than four planes in evidence, all of them in various stages of construction—or deconstruction, in the case of two—and every one of them bore the label “prototype.” It seemed like every time Bob Kelly got close to finishing a plane he decided there was something not quite right about it and he needed to redesign it. Again. The slogan of his company might as well be The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good Enough—and We Can Prove it to You.

The only reason he hadn’t gone bankrupt three times over, since the Ring of Fire, was because of his wife. For reasons Denise couldn’t begin to fathom, Kay Kelly seemed to have a veritable genius for drumming up investors and squeezing money out of the government.

“I’m not getting into it,” she repeated.

Alas, some trace of uncertainty must have been in her voice. The third party present detected it and pounced immediately. That was Keenan Murphy, the mechanic who was the only other person in the facility that day. The Kellys had gone up to Magdeburg to lobby the government for more funds, and apparently the office manager had decided to take the day off.

“C’mon, Denise,” said Keenan. “We gotta help Noelle. I mean, she’s my sister.”

Denise almost snapped back, “half-sister,” but she restrained herself. First, because Keenan was giving her such a sad-eyed, woebegone look; second, because he was a sad-sack, woebegone kind of guy; but, mostly, because whether or not Keenan Murphy was a loser he was another one who had an exaggerated, irrational sense of loyalty.

As did Denise herself, and she knew it. In her own personal scale of things, the way she judged people, that counted for a lot.

She stared at the plane again, trying to imagine herself in it up there—what? maybe a mile high?—with a souse for a pilot and a low-achiever for a…

“Hey, wait a minute.” She glared at the two of them. “I thought you said Keenan didn’t know how to fly.”

“He don’t,” said Lannie. “He’s the bombardier. He’ll ride in the back.” He pointed toward the rear of the cockpit. Now that she looked more closely, Denise could see that there was a third seat there, behind the two side-by-side seats in front.

Her eyes widened. “You have got to be kidding. You want me to be the copilot? I don’t know fuck-all about flying!”

Keenan Murphy shook his head. “Naw, not that. We need you to be the navigator. I can’t see well enough, back there, and Lannie…well…”

Yost gave him a pained look. Keenan shrugged. “Sorry, Lannie, but it’s just a fact. You get lost easy.”

“Oh, swell,” said Denise. She ran fingers through her dark hair, starting to wind it up into a bun. No, hell with that. She’d just put it in a pony tail, like she did riding the bike.

“Gimme a rubber band,” she commanded. With a sneer: “I’m sure you got plenty around here, for engine parts.”

“Hey, there’s no call for—”

“Leave it, Lannie,” said Keenan, chuckling. “I’ll find you one, Denise. It might not be real clean, though.”

She looked around the hangar again. Bob Kelly followed the Big Bang theory of design and manufacture. Out of chaos, creation—and, clearly enough, they were still a lot closer to chaos. The area was completely unlike her dad’s weld shop, which was as neat and well kept as he wasn’t.

“Never mind,” she said, heading for the hangar door. “My bike’s right outside. I got some in the saddlebags.”

The Saale river, south of Halle

“I ought to have you arrested!” shouted Captain Knefler.

“For what?” demanded the burly boatman. Clearly, he was not a man easily intimidated by a mere show of official outrage. Not here, at least, while he was still within Thuringia-Franconia. In some provinces of the USE, not to mention the districts under direct imperial administration, he might have been more circumspect. But the laws concerning personal liberties were strict in the SoTF—and, perhaps more importantly, were strictly enforced by the authorities.

The real authorities, which did not include any cavalry captain who thought he could throw his weight around.

“You are part of a treasonous plot!” screeched Knefler.

Watching the scene, standing behind the captain where Knefler couldn’t see him, Sergeant Reimers flashed a grin at the two soldiers with him. None of them had any use for their commanding officer. This was entertaining.

“Oh, what a pile of horseshit,” jeered the boatman. He waved a thick hand at the three rafts now drawn up to the river bank. “Your evidence, please?”

No evidence there, since the rafts were quite empty, except for some parcels of food and a few personal belongings. Unless something had been dumped overboard, the crude vessels obviously hadn’t carried anything down from Jena except the boatmen themselves and their travel necessities.

Reimers’ amusement faded a bit. To be sure, there was no chance the boatmen had jettisoned anything, since they couldn’t have spotted the cavalry troop coming up from Grantville until it was almost upon them. Whereupon, Knefler had ordered them—with the threat of his soldiers’ leveled carbines, no less—to bring the rafts immediately ashore.

Still, the captain was furious enough—he was certainly thick-witted enough—to order his men to start dredging the river for miles upstream. As useless as such a task might be, given their small numbers and lack of equipment.

The problem was that while Knefler was thick-witted, he was not a complete dimwit. He knew perfectly well that he now faced a major embarrassment. Probably not something that would get him cashiered, more was the pity. But certainly something that would not enhance his prospects for promotion.

The young American girl had told him the culprits had fled to the south, in language that was still a delight to recall. But Knefler had dismissed her arguments and insisted on following his own reasoning.

Knefler was now wasting time glaring at the empty rafts. “I need no material evidence,” he insisted. “There is the evidence of your actions. Why, if it were not part of a treasonous plot, did you leave Jena before dawn?”

He tried a sneer himself. “Of course, I am no boatman. But I doubt such is standard practice.”

“Because our employer paid us to do so,” said the boatmen. “A bonus, he said, to make sure we got to Halle in time to pick up—”

“Nonsense! Nonsense! You did it so there would be no witnesses! Nobody who could tell me that the rafts were empty!”

The boatman planted his hands on his hips and squinted up at the tall, almost-skeletal officer. “In other words, you were outsmarted. Not by me and my boys—we are innocent parties only accidentally involved—but by the man you’re chasing. Not so?”

Knefler glared down at him. “You will have to answer for your actions. Prove your innocence.”

The boatman’s sneer was magnificent. “To the contrary, Your Mightyship. This is Thuringia-Franconia, or have you forgotten? You have to demonstrate my guilt, not the other way around.”

Knefler was so angry he started waving his arms. “Even the silly fucking Americ—ah, the up-timers—accept such a thing as circumstantial evidence.”

“Fine. There is the circumstantial evidence that we were hired to take rafts down the river to Halle to pick up a consignment of goods for early delivery to Magdeburg. Said deed being committed in Gerhard Pfrommer’s tavern on the waterfront in Jena, by an man unknown to anyone there, who approached Gerhard asking for reliable boatmen and was pointed to us at a nearby table.”

The sneer didn’t waver once. “Said table, I might add, being right in the middle of the tavern—crowded, it was, that time of evening—so that any number of people heard the whole thing. He paid for the rafts, in addition to our labor. Bought them from Rudi Schaefer, also at the tavern, in a discussion also overheard by plenty of people. Good rates for the rafts and good pay for us, too, with a bonus for an early departure.”

He took his right hand from his hip and gestured at the rafts. “So, we did. Why in the world would we refuse? I could show you the money. Still have almost all of it.”

He made no movement to do so, of course. Even in Thuringia-Franconia, no sensible workman would gratuitously show money to an officer.

Stymied, Knefler went back to glaring at the rafts. “Describe the man who hired you,” he commanded.

“Again?” The boatman’s squint now verged on sheer melodrama. “Perhaps you should add more rosemary to your diet. It’s good for the memory, they say.”

“Describe the man again!” screeched Knefler.

Shrugging, the boatman did so. The description was identical to the one he’d given when he first came ashore. A handsome man, a bit taller than average, broad shouldered, appeared to be well built. Wasn’t armed with a sword but carried himself like a nobleman. Long dark hair, dark brown eyes, a complexion that was not quite dark enough to be called swarthy but came close. Olive, you might call it. Maybe he was an Italian.

He wore fancy apparel, the most noticeable of which items were a red coat, expensive boots, and a feathered cap. The feathers were very large. You couldn’t miss the fellow in a snowstorm. He spoke German—old-style, not Amideutsch—with something of an accent, at least to the boatman’s ear. No, he had no idea what accent it was. There were dozens of German dialects, even among native speakers of the tongue. How was he to know? The man paid in good silver, which was a lingua franca accepted anywhere.

Finally, Knefler released the boatmen. He gave up trying to force them to return to Jena when their leader pointed out that he would then be taking responsibility for reimbursing Rudi Schaefer for the price the rafts would bring in Magdeburg. That being, of course, standard business practice for the disposal of rafts, and well established in law.

So, off the boatmen went, as cheery as could be. And why not? They’d been well paid to do nothing more strenuous than guide empty rafts following the current downriver. As work went, about as easy as it gets.

After they pushed off, Knefler snarled to Reimers: “First thing I’ll do when we get back is teach that little whore a lesson. She’ll learn the price for cursing an officer.”

One of the soldiers cleared his throat. “Ah…Captain. I don’t think—”

“Silence, Corporal Maurer!” bellowed the sergeant. “The captain gave you no leave to speak.”

Maurer was suitably abashed, and shut up. Knefler sniffed at him and went for his horse.

* * *

About an hour later, on the ride back to Jena, Maurer drew his horse alongside Reimers. “Sergeant, you know who that girl was?” he asked quietly, after looking ahead to see that Captain Knefler was too far away to hear them.

Reimers smiled. “Denise Beasley. The daughter of Buster Beasley.”

The poor fellow seemed confused. “But…if you knew that…remember the time…”

“This is why you are a mere corporal and I am a lofty sergeant,” said Reimers. He nodded toward the captain in front of the little column. “Do you want the shithead for a garrison commander?”

The expression on Corporal Maurer’s face was answer enough.

Reimers’ ensuing chuckle had very little humor in it. “Sadly, the current fuck-up is probably not enough to get him discharged. But we can hope that his temper is still high when we get back to Grantville, so the idiot goes to chastise the daughter and discovers the father in the way. If we’re lucky, we might even get to watch what happens.”

It took Maurer a few seconds—he was pretty dull-witted himself, truth be told—but then he started smiling.

“Oh.”

Kelly Aviation Facility

Near Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia

The take-off wasn’t too bad, actually. Lannie would have been in the air force except Jesse Wood didn’t want any part of his drinking habits. But he did know how to fly, as such.

Denise suspected that “as such” probably didn’t cover all that a pilot needed. But it was a done deal now, so there was no point fretting over it.

“That way,” she said, pointing. “It’s called ‘southeast.’”

“You don’t gotta be so sarcastic.”

Fortunately, she’d thought to make sure they had a map before they took off. Lannie and Keenan, naturally, hadn’t thought of that. Apparently, they thought Denise could navigate by feminine instinct or something—which was a laugh, since feminine instinct when it came to directions was just to ask somebody, and who was she going to ask up here? A fucking bird?

The map was on the grimy side, like most things in Kelly Aviation. At that, it was better than the seat she was sitting on.

Printed across the top of the map, the ink a little smeared, was a notice that read: Property of Kelly Aviation. Unauthorized Use Will Be Prosecuted.

“How’d you talk Bob into letting you use the plane whenever you wanted?”

“Well,” said Lannie.

Behind her, Keenan cleared his throat. “It’s an emergency, you know.”

“Oh, perfect,” said Denise. “The first recorded instance since the Ring of Fire of plane-stealing. I betcha that’s a hanging offense.”

Lannie looked smug. “Nope. I checked once. Seems nobody’s ever thought to get around to making it a crime yet.”

“See, Denise?” added Keenan. “Nothing to worry about.”

They even seemed to believe their own bullshit. Amazing. Did the jack-offs really think that somewhere in the books there wasn’t a provision for prosecuting Grand Theft, Whatever We Overlooked?

But…

This was kinda fun, actually. Except for having to help Keenan attach the two bombs underneath. The bombs weren’t all that big, just fifty-pounders, but they were still a little scary. What had been even scarier was watching Keenan do it. He belonged to the what-the-hell-it’s-close-enough school of craftsmanship. Fine for chopping onions; probably a losing proposition over the long haul for munitions-handling.

Still and all, it was done. Denise couldn’t remember a time she’d ever worried about water under a bridge. Now that she’d almost reached the ripe age of sixteen—her birthday was coming up on December 11—she was pleased to see no signs of advancing decrepitude.

Near the Fichtelgebirge, on the edge of the Saale valley

Janos Drugeth was trying to keep his temper under control. Despite his demands—he’d stopped just short of threatening his charges with violence—the up-timers had wasted so much time arguing over which items could be left behind that there had been no way to resume the journey until the next morning. And then, the idiots had wasted half the morning continuing the quarrel before they finally had the two intact wagons reloaded.

But, at least they were on the move again. Luckily, the USE garrison at Hof seemed to be sluggish even by the standards of small town garrisons. There’d been no sign at all that they were searching the countryside. They’d be a small unit, anyway, not more than half a dozen men with a sergeant in command. Perhaps just a corporal. As was the rule with sleepy garrisons in a region not threatened directly by war, they were mostly a police force and would spend half their time lounging in taverns by day and conducting desultory patrols of the town in the evening. The only time they’d venture into the countryside would be in response to a specific complaint or request.

It was even possible that they didn’t have a radio. The up-time communication devices were spreading widely, at least in Thuringia-Franconia, but from what Janos understood of their operation—“reception” seemed to be the key issue—the sort of simple radios the Hof garrison would most likely possess might not be able to get messages sent across the Thueringerwald. Not reliably, at least.

So, hopefully, the delay would not cause any problems.

At the edge of the forest, on a small rise, he paused to let the wagons go by. Then, drawing out an eyeglass, he scanned the area behind them.

Nothing, so far as he could tell.

He was about to put the eyeglass away when his lingering animosity caused him to bring it back up and study the wagon they’d left behind, the way a man might foolishly scratch an itch, knowing he’d do better to leave it alone. It was still quite visible, being less than half a mile distant.

The only good thing was that at least they’d left the road by then and been making their way across a large meadow toward the forest when the wagon axle broke. Janos had ridden back to the road while the up-timers squabbled to see if the wagon was visible from there. The terrain was flat, but there was enough in the way of trees and shrubbery and tall grass to hide it from the sight of anyone just passing along the road—at least, to anyone on foot the way most travelers on that small country road would be. Someone on horseback would be able to spot it, if they were scanning the area.

Other than that…

What a mess. He’d tried to get the up-timers to repack the wagon with the goods they were leaving behind, so that if someone should happen to come across it they might assume the owners had just gone off to get assistance. If so, they’d either go about their business or—better still—they’d plunder the unguarded wagon. In the latter eventuality, of course, they’d hardly bring the attention of the authorities to their own thievery.

But, no. Careless in this as in seemingly all things, the up-timers had simply strewn the goods about. Anyone who came across it now would assume that foul play had transpired.

Nothing for it, though. Sighing, he started to put the eyeglass away, then, catching a glimpse of motion in the corner of his eye, looked back again.

Two horsemen were approaching the wagon. Not locals, either, since each of them was leading a pack horse.

He brought the glass back up. But even before he looked through it, he could see the flashing gleams coming from one of the riders. That had to be armor, reflecting the sun.

* * *

“What the hell are you doing?” asked Noelle.

Eddie shook his head and finished untying the cuirass from his pack horse. “You said it yourself, remember? ‘That’s got to be them!’ Very excited, you were.”

He started putting on the cuirass. “Do us both a favor and hand me the helmet.”

When she just kept staring at him, Eddie looked up at her. “Think, Noelle. These are ‘villains,’ remember? Not likely to surrender simply because we yell ‘stop, thief!’”

She stared back in the direction they’d spotted the wagon, then put her hand on the pistol holstered to her hip. “I thought…”

“Have to do everything myself,” Eddie grumbled. Now that he’d gotten on the cuirass, he took the helmet from the pack. “I remind you of two things. First, you can’t shoot straight. Second, while I can—”

He finished strapping the helmet on and started clambering back onto his horse. An awkward business, that was, wearing the damn cuirass. Eddie was trained in the use of arms and armor, but only to the extent that the son of a wealthy merchant would be. He was no experienced cavalryman.

“While I can,” he continued, now drawing the rifle from its saddle holster, “you will perhaps recall that due to Carol Unruh’s penny-pinching, the only up-time weapon I was allotted was this pitiful thing.”

Noelle studied the rifle. “It’s a perfectly good Winchester lever action rifle.” A bit righteously: “Model 94. They say it’s a classic.”

“A ‘classic,’ indeed.” Eddie chuckled. “The gun was manufactured almost half a century before the Ring of Fire. Still, I’ll allow that it’s a sturdy weapon. But it’s only a .30-30, it has no more than six cartridges in the magazine, and while—unlike you—I can hit something at a respectable range, I’m hardly what you’d call a Wild Bill Hitchcock.”

“Hickok,” she corrected. “Hitchcock was the guy who made the movies.” She looked back in the direction of the wagon. There still didn’t seem to be anyone moving about, over there. “You really think…”

He shrugged, planting the butt of the rifle on his hip and taking up the reins. “I have no idea how they will react. What I do know is that if they see a man in armor demanding that they cease and desist all nefarious activity, they are perhaps a bit more likely to do so. I’d just as soon avoid another gunfight at the Okie Corral, if we can.

“‘OK,’ she corrected. “‘Okies’ are sorta like hillbillies.”

“And will you desist the language lesson?” he grumbled. “Now. Shall we about be it?”

Noelle hesitated, for a moment. She considered riding back to Hof and trying—

No, that was pointless. When they’d arrived in Hof early this morning, the garrison had still been asleep. Sleeping off a hangover, to be precise. All except the corporal in charge, who’d still been drinking. They’d be as useless as tits on a bull for hours, yet—and the traitors were almost into the Fichtelgebirge. Noelle was pretty sure there was no way she and Eddie would be able to get the garrison to go into the forest. That meant trying to get help from the soldiers at Saalfeld, and that was at least thirty miles away. By the time they got there, convinced the garrison commander to muster his unit, and got back, at least two days would have passed. More likely three, unless the garrison commander at Saalfeld was a lot more energetic and efficient than most such.

Two days, maybe three. Given that much lead time, it was unlikely they’d ever find the defectors. The Fichtelgebirge and the Bohemian Forest it was part of wasn’t a tall range of mountains, but it was heavily wooded. Mostly evergreens, too, so they wouldn’t get any advantage from the trees having shed their leaves. Assuming the man in charge, whoever he was, knew what he was doing—and there was no evidence so far that he didn’t—he’d almost certainly be able to shake off their pursuit. There was enough commercial and personal traffic back and forth across the forest between Bohemia and Franconia that there would be a network of small roads—well, more like trails, really, but well-handled wagons could make their way through them. After the passage of two or three days, especially if the weather turned bad, it was unlikely they could figure out which specific route the defectors had taken.

“It’s now or never, I guess.” She started her horse into the meadow. “I’ll do the talking. You just look fierce and militaristic and really mean and not too smart. The kind of guy who shoots first and lets God sort out the bodies, and doesn’t much care if He gets it right or not.”

* * *

“There!” hollered Denise, pointing across Lannie’s chest out of the window on his side of the plane. “It’s them!”

He looked over and spotted the wagon immediately. “Yup. Gotta be. Keenan, you get ready to unload when I tell you.”

“Both bombs?”

“Better save one in case we miss the first time.”

Denise wondered if they actually had the legal right to bomb somebody, without even giving them a warning. No way to shout “stop, thief!” of course, from an airplane doing better than a hundred miles an hour.

“Why don’t we just call in their position on the radio?” she asked. “That way…you know. We could ask somebody up top how they want us to handle it.”

“Well,” said Lannie.

Behind her, Keenan cleared his throat. “The radio don’t exactly work. Bob took some of the parts out of it so’s we could—”

“Never mind,” she said, exasperated more with herself than anyone else. She should have known better than to get into the plane without double-checking that all the details were up to snuff.

She’d once hitched a ride with Keenan Murphy into Fairmont, just a few weeks before the Ring of Fire. First, the tire had gone flat. Then, after borrowing a jack from a helpful driver passing by, which Keenan needed to borrow because he’d somehow or other lost his own jack, he discovered the spare was flat. Then, after the still-helpful passerby drove him to a nearby gas station where he could get the tire fixed, they’d continued the drive to Fairmont until he ran out of gas. Turned out the fuel gauge didn’t work and Keenan had lost track of the last time he’d filled up the tank. She’d wound up walking the last three miles into town.

As for Lannie—

But there was no point in sour ruminations. Besides, what the hell. She had expansive opinions on the subject of “citizen’s arrest.” Why should the lousy cops get special privileges? If she’d heard her dad say it once, she’d heard him say it a million times.

* * *

“Now,” commanded Janos. While Gage and Gardiner got off the wagons and untied their horses, he looked down from the saddle at the up-timers gawking up at him.

“Wait here,” he said curtly.

“I got a gun!” protested Jay Barlow. As if that needed to be proven, he drew it from the holster at his hip. “Way better than that ancient piece of shit you’re carrying, too.”

Janos looked at the weapon Barlow was brandishing. It was what the up-timers referred to as a “six-shooter,” a type of revolver, which the man had drawn from one of those holsters Janos had seen in the so-called “western movies.” The ones slung low, for the “quick draw,” tied down to the thigh.

Naturally, it was pearl-handled.

With his soldier’s interest in weaponry, Janos had made inquiries during his weeks in Grantville. The man named Paul Santee had been particularly helpful on the subject of up-time firearms. On one occasion, when Janos had asked about “six-shooters,” Santee had explained the careful distinctions to be made between serious revolvers and the sort of “Wild West bullshit pieces” that some of the town’s more histrionic characters favored.

As for the wheellock Janos carried—he had two of them, actually, one in each saddle holster—the weapons were quite good and he was quite good with them.

“Wait here,” he repeated firmly. The last thing he wanted was someone like Barlow involved. Janos still hoped the problem could be handled without violence. Barlow was the sort of man who would lose control in a confrontation—and then miss what he shot at.

Gage and Gardiner were ready. Both of them, from their long stay in Grantville, with up-time firearms. The weapons called “pump-action shotguns,” which were much favored by soldiers. They’d be loaded with solid slugs, not pellets.

“Let’s go,” he said.

* * *

“Abandoned,” Eddie pronounced. Given the broken axle and the goods strewn around the wagon, Noelle thought that as redundant a statement as she’d ever heard.

She didn’t tease Eddie about it, though. She knew he’d really said it just to steel himself for the inevitable. They’d have to continue the pursuit into the forest.

Feeling more than a little nervous, she studied the terrain ahead of them. The Fichtelgebirge was not only a low range of mountains, it was an old one. Erosion had worn its peaks down to round forms, with not much rock showing. As a barrier to travel it wasn’t remotely comparable to the Rocky Mountains, much less the Sierra Nevadas. It was more like the sort of terrain in most of Appalachia that Indians and early white settlers had never had too much trouble passing through.

But as ambush country, it did just fine, thank you.

Hearing a familiar and quite unexpected sound, she twisted in her saddle and looked up behind her.

Eddie had already spotted it. “Look!” he shouted, pointing toward the oncoming aircraft. “The Air Force has arrived!”

Her sense of relief was brief. She couldn’t really see what good a warplane would be in the situation. There couldn’t be more than one plane available. In fact, she’d thought the air force had all of their few craft stationed in Magdeburg or points north. Jesse Wood must have detached one to Grantville when he got news of the defection.

One plane would be almost useless trying to spot a small party in the forest, and even if it did spot the defectors it couldn’t maintain the patrol for very long before it had to go back to refuel. By the time it returned, they’d have vanished again.

As the plane got closer, what little sense of relief remained went away altogether.

“That’s not a warplane,” she said. “It’s got to be one of the Kelly’s.”

Eddie squinted at the oncoming aircraft. “You are sure? I didn’t think any of theirs were operational yet.”

Noelle shook her head. “Define ‘operational.’ Nobody ever said Bob Kelly didn’t know how to build airplanes. The problem is he doesn’t know when to quit. At any given time, he’s got at least one plane able to fly—until he starts tinkering with it again.”

The aircraft was heading straight for them, no longer more than a hundred yards off the ground. By now it was quite close enough to recognize the details of its construction. The USE’s air force had a grand total of two—count ’em, two—models of aircraft. The Belles and the Gustavs. Even someone like Noelle, who’d never been able to distinguish one model of automobile from another unless she could see the logo or it was something obvious like a VW bug, could tell the difference between either one of them and the oncoming plane.

“No, it’s one of the Kelly’s. Couldn’t tell you which model, except it’ll have a name like Fearless or Invincible or something equally bombastic, but it’s one of theirs.”

Eddie was still squinting at it. “You’re positive?”

“Yes, I’m posi—”

“The reason I ask,” he interrupted, pointing his finger at the plane, “is because it’s carrying bombs.”

“Huh?” Noelle squinted herself. Her eyesight wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as good as Eddie’s. Still, now that she looked for it—the plane was close, and coming pretty fast—she could see two objects suspended underneath the fuselage.

Those did look like bombs, sure enough.

And now that she thought about it, the oncoming plane’s trajectory…

“Let’s get out of here!” she yelled. “They’re going to bomb us!”

“Bombs away!” shouted Lannie. Way too soon, in Denise’s judgment.

Fortunately, Keenan objected. “Hey, make up your mind! You said only one—”

“Drop it!” Denise hollered, when she gauged the time was right. Lannie might have buck fever, but she didn’t. Not with Buster for a dad, teaching her to hunt.

“It’s off!” said Keenan.

By now, the plane had swept by, over the wagon and the two enemy cavalrymen guarding it.

Well, one cavalryman, anyway. The other one might have been a civilian. They’d been moving too fast for Denise to get a good look at them.

Lannie brought the plane around. As soon as they could see the effect of the bomb, he shouted gleefully. “Yeeee-haaaaa! Dead nuts, guys!”

Sure enough, the wagon had been hit by the bomb. If not directly, close enough. Denise wasn’t sure, from the quick glimpse she’d gotten as they went over it, but she thought the wagon had already been busted. It had seemed to be tilted over to one side, as if a wheel or an axle had broken, and she thought some of its cargo was on the ground.

Now, though, it was in pieces. And something was burning.

One of the cavalrymen was down, too. His horse was thrashing on the ground, and the rider was lying nearby. Dead, wounded, unconscious, it was impossible to tell. The other cavalryman—well, maybe cavalryman—was dismounting to tend to his partner.

Denise frowned. There was something about the way that second cavalryman moved.…

“Fly back around,” she commanded.

Keenan, even from his poor vantage point in the cramped bombadier’s seat in the back, with its little windows, had been able to see the results too. “Jeez, Denise. I don’t know as we gotta be bloodthirsty about this.”

“Fly back around!” she snapped. “I just want to get a better look. And slow down, Lannie.”

“Don’t want to stall it out,” he warned.

“Yeah, fine. So don’t stall it out. Slow down and get lower.”

“Backseat driver,” he muttered. But he did as commanded.

* * *

“Wait,” said Janos, holding out a hand. They were now sheltered beneath a large tree, not more than two hundred yards from what was left of the wagon. As soon as Janos had spotted the plane, he’d led them under the branches. Hopefully, they’d be out of sight.

“What a piece of luck,” said Gage. “They bombed their own people.”

Janos wasn’t surprised, really. He knew from experience how easy it was for soldiers to kill and wound their own, in combat. In some battles, in bad weather or rough terrain, as many as a third of the casualties were caused by the soldiers’ own comrades.

He’d never thought about it before, but he could see where that danger would be even worse with aircraft involved. At the speed and height it had maintained when it carried out the attack, the plane’s operators couldn’t have seen any details of their “enemy.”

“What should we do?” asked Gardiner.

“Wait,” Janos repeated. “The plane is coming back around. It we move out from under the tree, they might spot us.”

That was the obvious reason not to move, and he left it at that. Still more, he wanted to see what would happen next.

Gardiner put up a mild objection. “That bomb was loud, when it went off. The garrison might come to investigate.”

His tone was doubtful, though. Janos thought there was hardly any chance the explosion would alert the soldiers at Hof. Hof was miles away and while the sound might have carried the distance, it would have been indistinct. Thunder, perhaps. Of course, if the USE warplane kept dropping bombs, the situation would probably change. People would investigate an ongoing disturbance, where they would usually shrug off a single instance.

But Janos knew the plane couldn’t be carrying very many bombs. By now, months after the Baltic War, Austria had very good intelligence on the capabilities of the up-time aircraft, and Janos had read all of the reports. Even the best of the enemy’s warplanes, the one they called the “Gustav,” was severely limited in its ordnance.

And this was no Gustav. Janos had seen one of them, on the ground at the Grantville airfield. Nor was it one of the other type of warplane, the one they called the “Belle.” He’d seen those on several occasions, both on the ground and in the air.

Drugeth didn’t know which type of airplane this was, but it couldn’t have capabilities that were any better. In fact, if he was right in his guess about the object he could see under the craft’s body, it had only had two bombs to begin with. He’d seen the bomb they’d dropped, although he hadn’t spotted where it came from. But he was pretty sure it must have been the companion of the object he could see now.

* * *

As they came over the wagon again, moving as slowly as Lannie dared, they weren’t going any faster than a car breaking the speed limit on an interstate highway. And Lannie had the plane not more than forty feet off the ground.

So, since he also obeyed Denise when she told him to fly on the side where she could see what was happening, she got a very good look at the second cavalryman when he looked up as they passed by. Glaring in fury and shaking his fist at them.

Except it wasn’t a cavalryman and it wasn’t a he.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Denise exploded. “We just bombed Noelle and Eddie!”

“Huh?” said Lannie, his mouth gaping.

“Well, shit!” screeched Keenan from the back. “Well, shit!”

* * *

“I’ll kill ’em,” Noelle hissed, as she went back to tending Eddie. Luckily—by now, she’d unfastened the cuirass—he didn’t seem to have been wounded by the bomb itself or any of the splinters it had sent flying from the wagon when it exploded. At least, she couldn’t see any blood anywhere, that she thought was any of Eddie’s own. He did have some blood on one of his trouser legs, but she was pretty sure that came from his horse. One of the splinters or maybe a part of the bomb casing had torn a huge wound in the horse’s belly. It had thrown Eddie when it fell to the ground. Kicked him in the head, too, in the course of thrashing about afterward, judging from the condition of his helmet.

At least, she didn’t think that big a dent in a sturdy helmet could have been caused by his fall. The meadow had hardly any rocks in it.

Eddie’s eyes were open, but he seemed dazed. Might have a concussion. And a broken left arm, from the looks of things.

Gingerly, she started unfastening his sleeve. Eddie moaned a little, but she got it peeled back enough to check its condition.

A broken forearm, sure enough. Noelle had broken her own forearm as a kid, falling out of a tree. She could remember insisting to her mother all the way to the hospital that the arm wasn’t really broken. Just bent a little, that’s all.

But it wasn’t a compound fracture, and the break was obviously well below the elbow. Give it a few weeks, properly splinted, and it would heal as good as new.

The relief allowed her fury to resurge. She looked up, tracking the plane from its sound, so she could shake her fist at them again. The stupid bastards!

But when she spotted the plane, the gesture turned into a frantic wave.

“You stupid bastards! Watch out!”

* * *

The cramped interior of the cockpit seemed like bedlam to Denise.

“Jesus, Lannie, you bombed my sister! You bombed my sister!” Keenan kept screeching, in blithe disregard for the fact that he’d been the one who’d actually released the weapon.

Naturally, Lannie’s response was to shift the blame himself. “She told me to do it! She told me to do it!” was his contribution.

“Shut up, both of you!” was Denise’s own, trying to settle them down.

In retrospect, she’d admit to her best friend Minnie—nobody else—that she probably should have kept concentrating on the “navigating” side of the business.

Eventually, it did occur to her that she ought to see where they were going.

“Lannie!” she screeched.

* * *

“Fascinating,” murmured Janos. He’d always wondered how fragile the devices were. Now, seeing one of the plane’s wings partly shredded by its impact with a mere tree limb—a large tree, granted—his longstanding guess was confirmed.

As was his determination to remain a cavalryman. Say what you would about the stupid beasts, horses were rather sturdy. Nor did they move at ridiculous speeds, nor did they keep a rider more than a few feet from the ground.

* * *

“Jesus, Lannie, you wrecked the plane! You wrecked the plane!” was Keenan’s current contribution, even more useless than the last.

“Shut the fuck up!” Denise hollered. “Just concentrate, Lannie. You can do it.”

Fortunately, Lannie had left off his own shouting. Now that he was in a crisis, his pilot’s instincts had taken over.

“We’re going in, guys,” he said. “Can’t do anything else.”

Even to Denise, it was obvious from the damage suffered by the wing on her side that he was right. “You can do it, Lannie,” she said calmly. “And we got a big wide meadow here.”

Lannie’s grin was as thin as a grin could get, but she was relieved to see it. “Just better hope we don’t hit a gopher hole. Got no way to retract the landing gear.”

“There aren’t any gophers in Europe,” she said, in as reassuring a tone as she could manage.

“Yeah, that’s right,” chimed in Keenan from the back. “No ground hogs, neither.” Thankfully, he’d left off the screeching.

Denise saw no reason to voice aloud her firm conviction that there were probable umpteen thousand things that could produce holes in a meadow. All but two of which did exist in Europe.

They’d be coming down in a few seconds. Lannie did have the plane more or less under control. Hopefully it’d be a crash landing they could walk away from, if nothing caught fire or—

“Drop the other bomb, Keenan!”

“Huh?”

“Drop the fucking bomb!”

“Oh. Yeah.”

* * *

Watching, Janos didn’t wonder for more than an instant why the up-timers had committed the seemingly pointless act of bombing an empty patch of meadow. Judging from the way the first bomb had exploded, the device had been detonated by a contact fuse, probably armed by the act of releasing it. Not the sort of thing any sane man wants to be sitting atop when he tries to crash an aircraft as gently as possible.

The plane came down. And confirmed once again Janos’ long-standing conviction that plans and schemes and plots are just naturally prone to crashing.

* * *

“Oh, hell,” said Noelle. At first, she’d thought that the plane had come down safely. Almost as if it were landing on a proper airfield. Then—one of the wheels must have hit an unseen obstruction—she saw the still undamaged wing dip sharply and strike the ground. The plane skewed around, tipped up on its nose—please God, don’t let that propeller come apart in pieces and chew anybody up—and seemed to balance precariously for a moment.

Then it looked as if the plane just more or less disintegrated into its component parts. The newly damaged wing broke off, the fuselage tipped and rolled, and the plane flopped down on its side. Most of the other wing broke off, as did part of the tail assembly when it hit.

Still…

There was no explosion. No flames. People had walked away from car crashes worse than that.

“Just wait for me, Eddie,” she said. “And don’t move. Your arm’s busted.”

She got on her horse and headed for the crash site.

* * *

Janos pointed to the enemy cavalryman still on the ground by the remains of the wagon.

“Gardiner, see to him. Keep him under guard, that’s all. Do him no harm unless he attacks you. Gage, follow me.”

He set off after the other cavalryman, toward the downed plane.

“What are we going to do?” asked Gage, loud enough to be heard over the sound of the cantering horses.

“Seize them and take them with us, any who survived. What else can we do? I don’t think this is a reconnaissance patrol from a larger force following them. They wouldn’t have sent just two men for that purpose. I’m not certain, but I think these are operating alone. If we let any of them go—and there’s at least one of them in good condition—they’ll take the alarm to Hof. Two bomb explosions, a crashed warcraft, even the sorriest garrison in Creation will react to that.”

Gage was silent for a moment. Then, as Janos expected, he raised the other obvious alternative.

“We could kill them.”

“Oh, splendid,” said Janos. “Just what Austria needs. Half our army is facing Wallenstein on the north, most of the rest is facing the Turks to the south—and we ignite a new war by committing a pointless massacre.”

“It was a thought,” said Gage mildly. “Probably not a good one, I admit.”

Drugeth’s irritation with the Englishman was only momentary. He’d considered that solution himself. But he still had hopes they could complete this adventure without the sort of drastic measures that would trigger off an explosive reaction from the USE.

Firmly, he ignored his own hard-gained wisdom on the subjects of plans and their likely outcomes.

By the time Denise got done hauling Lannie out of the wreck, she was exhausted. Getting Keenan out hadn’t been too bad, even though he’d been in the cramped rear of the cockpit. But Keenan had just been dazed and bruised, not pinned by some of the equipment that had been broken loose and all but completely unconscious.

Denise was strong for a girl her age and build, but the fact remained that the age was almost-sixteen and while the build was great for making girls jealous and boys drool—not that she appreciated either one—it wasn’t that good for frantically trying to free a normal-sized man from wreckage and haul him out by bodily force. Not for the first time in her life, she wished she’d inherited more of her dad’s bulk and muscle and less of her mother’s appearance.

But, finally, it was done. Probably hadn’t taken more than a few minutes, actually. With the last of her strength, she lowered Lannie onto the ground and half-spilled herself out of the fuselage. Fortunately, the meadow was pretty soft ground. On her hands and knees, she saw that Keenan was sitting up and holding his head. He was groaning a little, but so far as she could tell he didn’t really seem to be hurt.

In the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a pair of legs. Looking over, she saw Noelle, with a very strained expression on her face.

“Hey, look,” she said defensively, “I’m sorry. We didn’t know it was you.”

Belatedly, she realized that Noelle wasn’t actually looking at her. She was looking over Denise’s head at something off to the side.

Denise swiveled, flopping onto her side in the process, and propped herself up on one elbow.

“Oh, great.”

The something Noelle had been staring out turned out to be two men, with two horses not far away behind them.

Both down-timers, obviously. Neither of them was smiling—hey, no kidding—so she couldn’t see their teeth. That was usually the simplest indication, especially with a man somewhere in middle age like the one holding the very nasty looking and oh-so-very-up-time pump action shotgun, if not the younger one who was standing a little closer with a sword in his hand.

But it didn’t matter. Leaving aside the clothes they were wearing and the hair styles, she would have known just looking at the way the young one held the sword. She didn’t know any up-timer who held a sword like that. Maybe somebody like Harry Lefferts did, by now, with all of his escapades. But Denise hadn’t seen much of Harry in a long time, and on the few occasions she had seen him Harry had been carousing in one of Grantville’s taverns with the wine, women and song that seemed to accompany him like pilot fish did a shark. The wine and women, with complete ease, the singing a whole lot less so since Harry had a nice natural voice and could even carry a tune but somewhere along the way had picked up the silly conviction that he was one of those old-style Irish tenors who could make nasal sound good but he couldn’t.

Her thoughts were veering all over the place, she realized, and she commanded them back to attention.

Concentrate on the fucking sword, idiot.

The damn thing didn’t look any better when she did. This wasn’t one of those fancy swords that a lot of down-time noblemen and wannabe noblemen carried about when they were trying to look impressive. Pretty, lots of decorations—even jewels, if they were rich enough—and looking as if they’d seen as much actual use as the kind of fancy china that people kept in a cabinet and didn’t eat off of except once in a blue moon.

No, this sword looked like her mother’s favorite kitchen knife, allowing for a drastic increase in size. Solid, plain, sharp as a razor and so often honed that the blade wasn’t a completely straight line anymore. And the bastard was holding it just the way her mother did, too—or the way her dad held a welding torch or a tool he was using to work on one of his bikes.

Casually. The way no up-timer except maybe a few wild-ass screwballs like Harry could possibly hold a sword. The man wasn’t flourishing it, wasn’t brandishing it—didn’t, really, even seem more than vaguely aware that he had it in his hand in the first place. A weapon so familiar and comfortable that it was just any other tool, used more by instinct than conscious thought.

Some tools chopped onions, some tools chopped metal, and this one wasn’t any different except it chopped off heads and limbs and from the look of the miserable son-of-a-bitch any part of a human body he felt like chopping off.

She tore her eyes away from the sword and looked higher up, at the man’s face. For a moment—one wild moment—she almost burst into laughter.

He looked for all the world like a rock star!

Dammit, it was true. Good-looking, in that sort of older-than-he-really-was way that indicated either dissipation or too much familiarity with the wicked ways of men—music recording executives in the case of rock stars; probably not in this guy’s—and judging from the easy athleticism of his stance he didn’t seem dissipated in the least, so scratch that theory.

Long, curly, dark hair. Flowing fucking locks, fer chrissake. A flaring mustache and a neatly trimmed full beard that’d look silly on almost anybody except genu-ine rock stars and guys who could hold a sword like that.

Just to complete the picture, soulful brown eyes. The kind of eyes with which rock stars sang to the world of their sorrow at the faithlessness of women and guys like this bastard looked down upon the corpses they left behind.

“Well, fuck,” she said. “Just what it needed to make the day complete.”

In German, she added: “And who are you?”

The swordsman had been staring back at Noelle the whole time Denise had been assessing him. Now he looked down at her.

“My name is Janos Drugeth. From the family with the estates in Humenné. Homonna, as we Hungarians would call it. I am a cavalry officer in the service of the Austrian emperor.”

Hungarian. Denise didn’t know much about Hungarians, but she knew they liked to call themselves “Magyars” because they were descended from a tribe of nomadic conquerors. Like some biker gangs liked to call themselves “the Huns.”

Perfect. Just perfect.

To her surprise, he added: “We may speak in English, if you prefer.”

His English was good, too, if heavily accented.

Noelle stood very straight. “My name is Noelle Stull. I am an official for the USE government. Well, the State of Thuringia-Franconia. And I—me and my partner, Eddie Junker, over there”—she pointed toward the demolished wagon, some distance away—“are in pursuit of the criminals whom we believed to have been in possession of that vehicle. Please either assist us in that task or, at the very least, do not impede us in our duty.”

Bold as brass. Mentally, Denise doffed her hat in salute. Not that she ever wore a hat.

The Drugeth fellow gave Noelle a sorrowful smile. “I will not dispute your characterization of the individuals in question. But I am afraid I cannot respond as you wish to either of your requests. Not only may I not assist you, I am afraid I shall have to detain you myself.”

He slid the sword back into its scabbard. The motion was swift, easy, practiced. He hadn’t even looked at the sword and scabbard as he did it, just letting his left thumb and forefinger guide the blade into the opening. The fact that he’d chosen to sheathe the weapon while explaining what he was going to do just emphasized his complete confidence that nobody would think to dispute the matter.

Which…

In point of fact, nobody would. Sure as hell not Denise. That sword could come out just as quickly and smoothly as it went in. And leaving that aside, the other guy still had the shotgun in his hands and didn’t seem to be in the least inclined to emulate his leader’s example and put it away. True, he didn’t have the barrel pointed at anybody, but it was obvious he could in a split-second. That was just good gun-handling, not carelessness.

He didn’t look like a rock star, either. More like a record producer. Shoot you as quick as he’d shell out payola or cheat singers out of their royalties.

To Denise’s alarm, she saw that Noelle’s hand had moved to the vicinity of her holster.

That was crazy. First, that was no quick-draw holster. It was a safe-and-sound holster with a flap, and the flap was buckled. By the time Noelle got the pistol out, the older guy with the shotgun could kill them all. Assuming the Hungarian nomad-cum-rock-star hadn’t sliced them up already.

And even if Noelle had been a quick-draw whizzeroo, so fucking what? The pistol was a dinky little .32 caliber and her marksmanship was something of a legend, in Grantville. The anti-Julie Sims. There were two schools of thought on the subject. The optimists insisted Noelle could hit the side of a barn. The other view was that she could only do it if she were inside the barn to begin with.

“Uh, Noelle…”

Fortunately, Noelle reconsidered. Her hand moved away. “This is an outrage!” she snapped. “You are on USE soil here, not Austrian. You have no right—”

“Please,” said Drugeth, holding up his hand. “You are wasting our time, and I believe you know it perfectly well. Although there have been no open hostilities in some time, Austria and the USE are enemies. I have been given the task of escorting the individuals in question to Vienna, and I intend to complete it successfully.”

Noelle glared at him. “And you won’t stop at outright abduction.”

“Hardly ‘abduction,’ I think.” He shrugged. Like the dark eyes, the gesture was sorrowful. Not really-sad sorrowful, just what you might call philosophically sorrowful. Exactly the same way, Denise imagined, the guy contemplated the bodies of his foes after he sliced them up.

“I will set you free, unharmed, as soon as we have reached a place where I can be confident you cannot bring troops in time to prevent our escape. If you will give me your parole, I shall not even disarm you. And please do not delay the matter any further. I point out”—here, he nodded toward Lannie and Keenan, and then toward the wagon—“that you have injured persons in your party, who should get medical attention. And I will also point out that none of the injuries were caused by me and my men.”

Noelle shifted the glare to Denise.

“Hey, look, I said I was sorry. And he’s right, Noelle.”

For a moment, she even thought Noelle might start cussing. But she didn’t, of course.

* * *

By the time they got back to the wagon, Keenan and Denise propping up Lannie along the way—he turned out to be okay except for a sprained ankle—Eddie Junker was up and moving.

Well. Sitting up and fiddling uselessly with his busted arm. There was another shotgun-toting sidekick of Drugeth’s there, watching Eddie carefully but making no effort to assist him. Drugeth had probably told him to do that, and by now it was clear enough that anybody who worked for Drugeth followed orders.

“Cut it out, Eddie,” said Noelle crossly, kneeling next to him. “It’s broken. Denise, give me a hand.”

“Why me?”

“Because you broke it, that’s why.”

“I don’t know squat about setting a broken arm. Have Keenan do it.”

Noelle looked at Keenan. Keenan looked alarmed. “I hate the sight of blood.”

“There’s no blood,” Denise pointed out.

“I hate the sight of suffering. I’m not going to be any good at this.”

“Enough,” said the Drugeth fellow. He motioned Keenan toward Eddie. “All you have to do is help hold him down. You ladies as well. This will be painful, for a time.”

Eddie looked alarmed. More by the sight of Drugeth approaching him with that sword on his hip than anything else, Denise thought.

“It doesn’t need to be amputated!” he protested.

“Of course not,” said Drugeth calmly. “Now do your best not to thrash around. Hold him, everyone.”

* * *

Drugeth set the arm just as swiftly and smoothly as he’d sheathed the sword. It seemed like zip-zip-zip and it was done. By then, his shotgun-toting cohorts had found a couple of pieces of wood broken off from the wagon that would serve as a temporary splint, along with one of Suzi Barclay’s flamboyant costumes that, sliced up, would serve to bind them.

One of the cohorts did the slicing, not Drugeth, using a simple knife he had in a scabbard. Clearly enough, the Hungarian’s sword did not come out for any work less lofty than hacking flesh, still on the bone and twitching.

By now, Drugeth didn’t remind Denise of a rock star at all. Just a good-looking nomad barbarian, who’d never once lost that serenely sorrowful expression even while Eddie had been screaming bloody murder. And who’d obviously set more than one broken limb in his day; which, given that he wasn’t old enough to have seen all that many days, would indicate the days themselves had not been spent in the pursuit of serenity.

“It’s done,” he said, coming back up to his feet. “Good enough for the time being, at least. It’s a clean break, so it should heal well.”

Eddie was gasping, his heavy face pale and sweating. “You—you—” he said weakly, apparently searching for suitably vile cognomens to heap upon Drugeth. Then, he tightened his jaws, looked up and nodded. “Thank you.”

That was classy, Denise thought. She hadn’t known Eddie was that solid. Of course, she barely knew the guy.

Drugeth nodded in return. “Let us be off then. Gage, retrieve that rifle over there.” He indicated a spot not far away. Denise hadn’t seen it until Drugeth pointed at the thing, but she recognized an up-time lever action rifle. Must have been Eddie’s.

“Then,” the Hungarian continued, “you ride ahead and make sure the party we are escorting is ready to go when we arrive. Gardiner, you ride alongside Ms. Stull. Ms. Stull, I would appreciate it if you’d lead my horse.”

He even said it that way, too. “Miz,” not “Miss.” This guy knew Americans, somehow, even down to the subtle quirks of what you called career girls like Noelle.

“For the rest of us,” Drugeth continued, “I recommend walking, since we have injured persons.”

It was all done very courteously, but Denise didn’t miss the fact that Drugeth’s dispositions also meant he had all the USE loyalists under control. If Noelle tried to ride off, Cohort Gardiner could go in pursuit. He wasn’t encumbered by having to lead another horse, and Denise didn’t doubt for an instant he could ride better than Noelle as well as shoot better than she could.

And by remaining on foot, Drugeth was there—with the damn sword—in case any of the others decided to try something tricky that might throw off a horseman for a time. Like…

Who knows? Finding a hole dug by something bigger than a gopher—they had badgers in Europe—and trying to hide in it. Not likely, but Drugeth didn’t seem like a guy who’d leave much to chance.

Eddie’s horse was still thrashing a little. Cohort Gardiner went over and looked down at the poor animal, then looked at Drugeth.

The Hungarian officer nodded. Clickety-BOOM, and the horse was out of its misery.

* * *

As they headed toward the forest, moving slowly because of Eddie and Lannie, Denise decided things weren’t so bad. Perhaps oddly, the fact that Drugeth’s cohorts seemed just as familiar and relaxed in their use of up-time shotguns as Drugeth himself did with a sword, was somehow reassuring.

Whatever else they were, enemies of the USE or not, they obviously weren’t wild-eyed desperadoes. Everything about them was experienced, controlled, disciplined—or self-disciplined, in the case of Drugeth.

True, that same control might lead to a quick, relaxed, practiced and easy execution squad too. But if they’d wanted to do that, they would have done it already. And would a man planning to kill her in a few minutes have bothered to give Noelle a courteous helping hand getting onto her horse? Denise didn’t think so.

Besides, her assessment of Drugeth had shifted yet again. From rock star to nomad barbarian, it had tentatively come to rest on a label she was generally skeptical about but seemed accurate enough in this instance. Every now and then—not often—you did run across a down-time nobleman who actually lived up to the name instead of being a puffed-up thug with delusions of grandeur.

Drugeth had told them he would release them once his expedition got far enough away from any chance of pursuit. Okay, he hadn’t officially “given his word.” But Denise was pretty sure that the genuine articles when it came to noblemen didn’t bother with silly flippery like solemn vows, except on formal occasions. He’d said what he would do, and so he would. To do otherwise would be a transgression of a code he took seriously.

Good enough, she decided, for a day that included bombing your own guys. Jesus, it’d take her years to live that down. Even Minnie would make fun of her, when she found out.

* * *

But when they reached the small clearing where the defectors had been waiting, things immediately got tense.

Unfortunately, even sober, Jay Barlow was nobody’s idea of a nobleman—and he’d apparently spent the time since Drugeth left him with the others getting half-plastered. Him and Mickey Simmons. There was another prize for you.

“That’s the fucking bitch!” he shouted, when he spotted Noelle. He thrust a half-empty bottle into Mickey’s hand and took several steps forward. To make things perfect, he had his hand dramatically positioned to yank out the silly cowboy gun on his hip. He looked like something out of Grade D western.

Drugeth moved up in front of him. “Enough, Barlow. Get back on the wagon. Now. We have to be moving.”

“Fuck that!” Barlow pointed the forefinger of his right hand accusingly at Noelle. Unfortunately, he was left-handed and his left hand was now gripping the gun butt. “She’s the one went after Horace! I say we shoot her now and good riddance.”

Matching deed to word, he yanked the gun out of the holster.

Keenan squawked. Denise probably did too. She wasn’t sure, because whatever she’d been about to say was stifled in her throat by Drugeth’s sword.

Blurring like an arc. Barlow’s gun and the hand holding it went sailing off somewhere. Barlow stared at the stump, gushing blood. His expression seemed one of amazement, not pain.

But it was Drugeth’s expression that mostly registered on Denise. The Hungarian seemed to be in some sort of weird brown study. Just standing there, the sword in his hand, point down, dripping a little blood from the tip, while he contemplated Jay Barlow.

He shifted deftly to the side, the sword blurred again, and a fountain of blood gushed out of Barlow’s neck. His whole throat looked to have been cut, from one ear to the other.

Paralyzed by shock, Denise realized that Drugeth had just been calculating whether to keep Barlow alive or not. The decision having come up negative, he’d shifted to the side so he wouldn’t get blood all over himself.

And he didn’t, not a drop. Barlow collapsed to his knees and then to the ground. He was effectively already dead.

Mickey Simmons was shouting, and clawing for something in the wagon. A gun, Denise assumed.

“Kill him,” said Drugeth. Quietly, almost conversationally.

Gage and Gardiner’s shotguns seemed to go off simultaneously. The heavy slugs hammered Simmons into the side of the wagon. He collapsed to the ground.

A lot of the American defectors were making noise now. Billie Jean Mase came running up to Drugeth, screaming at him. For a moment, Denise expected to see her throat sliced in half, too. But Drugeth simply planted a boot in her belly and that was that. She went down, gasping for air.

“Silence,” said Drugeth. Not hollering, exactly, but the word carried like nobody’s business. “You will all be silent.”

That shut them up. Including Denise. Which was a good thing, or she might have giggled hysterically, because—well—there was something insanely amusing about the scene, if she ignored the gore. It was like watching a bunch of rabbits suddenly realize they’d pissed off a bobcat. Or a cougar.

Drugeth drew out a handkerchief and cleaned off the blade, then slid the sword back into the scabbard. Throughout, he did not take his eyes once off the defectors clustered around the two wagons in the clearing.

“I told Ms. Stull and her companions that they would be released unharmed once we were far enough from pursuit. So I spoke, and so it will be. And I am no longer inclined to tolerate any obstruction or dispute. I am in command, not you. You will obey me in all things, until we reach Vienna.”

He waited a few seconds, to see if any protest would be made.

None was. What a shocker.

“And now, we must dig two graves. Mr. O’Connor, perhaps there is some tool in the wagon that might serve.”

“We didn’t bring any shovels,” said Allen O’Connor uncertainly. His voice was a little shaky, maybe, but not much. He certainly didn’t seem stricken by grief. Leaving aside the shock of the sudden blood-letting, Denise didn’t think many of the defectors—leaving aside the cretin Billie Jean and Caryn Barlow—had any serious personal attachment to the two dead men. Simmons’ wife was a down-timer, a widow he’d married the year before. But she wasn’t in the group. Mickey must have decided to abandon her when he defected.

And the baby they’d had a few months ago. And his two step-children by his wife’s first marriage.

The shithead.

Qualifying that, the now-dead shithead. And good riddance.

O’Connor’s son Neil started digging amongst the goods piled in the wagon. “I’ll find something.”

Marina Barclay swallowed. “Are you sure, Mr. Drugeth? I mean, you were saying we needed to move as soon as…”

Her voice trailed off, as it must have dawned on her that she was perilously close to “obstruction and dispute.” Nervously, she eyed the sword.

But either Drugeth was inclined to be lenient toward women—Billie Jean, still gasping for breath, supported that theory—or he was simply not given to bloodshed for the sake of it. That theory was supported by everything else Denise had seen.

Including his next words.

“They are not animals, to be left to scavengers. Time presses, yes, but God created time also. Everything we do is watched by Him.”

Noelle got off her horse, holding a small spade that she’d retrieved from her saddlebag. “Let’s get started,” she said. “Officer Drugeth is right.” She seemed quite calm, although with Noelle you never knew. She was the kind of person who clamped down her emotions under stress. She didn’t so much as glance at Drugeth.

Less than half a minute later, having found a good spot, she started digging. Drugeth came up and offered to replace her. But, still without looking at him, she shook her head.

“You can spell me when I get tired. This’ll take a while.”

Denise started digging alongside her—more like just breaking up the ground—with a heavy stick she found in the woods. Meanwhile, the two male O’Connors and Tim Kennedy dug the other grave, with some tools they’d found in the wagon and a spade that Gardiner had in his own saddlebags.

When Noelle did relinquish the shovel to Drugeth, maybe half an hour later, she finally looked at him.

“What is your rank?”

He was back to that sad-eyed sorrowful-look business. “It is quite complicated, and depends mostly on the situation. For now, ‘captain’ will do.”

She nodded, still with no expression. “Why did you kill him, Captain Drugeth? You’d already disarmed him.”

“Literally,” muttered Denise; again, having to fight off a semi-hysterical giggle.

“I am not certain,” was the soft reply. “I fear some of it was simply ingrained reflex, although I strove to contain it. First, because it would have been a struggle to keep him alive on the journey, with such a wound, and would inevitably have slowed us down. Second, because I decided if I didn’t kill one of them now, I would have to kill one of them later. Perhaps more. They are undisciplined people, prone to emotional outbursts. That was bad enough before you appeared to make it worse. Clearly, they have an animus against you.”

He took a long breath. “And, finally, because he was not essential to my mission. Not even important, really. Neither was Simmons.”

The two of them stared at each other.

“Just like that?” she asked abruptly.

“At the time, yes. Just like that. In the time to come, of course, it will be different. I will spend many hours of my life thinking about the deed. And praying that I did not transgress His boundaries.”

Noelle looked away, for a few seconds. “Yes,” she said. “I understand.”

She handed him the shovel and climbed out of the shallow pit. “I will give you my parole, Captain Drugeth.”

“The others?”

“Eddie will too. So will Lannie and Keenan, probably, but I wouldn’t believe Lannie or Keenan if they told me the sun rose in the east. It’s not that they’re dishonest. Just…forgetful.”

He smiled. “Much like several of my cousins.”

Now, he looked at Denise.

“You can take her word for anything,” said Noelle. “If you don’t mind it coming with vulgar qualifiers.”

Denise scowled. “Well, thank you very much.”

Drugeth just looked at her, saying nothing.

After a while, Denise shrugged. “Sure, why not? You’ve got my fucking word I’ll be a good little girl.”

He stroked his mustache. “Qualifiers, indeed,” he said mildly. “Do I need to insist on qualifying the terms? No attempt to escape. No attempt to overwhelm us by force.”

He even said that last with a straight face. “That sort of thing?”

Denise thought about it. “Nah,” she said. “I hate all that legal dotting-the-I’s and crossing-the-T’s bullshit. But I’m okay with the spirit of stuff.”

He studied her for a bit longer. Denise was primed to strip his hide if he started nattering about her potty mouth. Or asked her if her father knew the sort of language she used, when who the hell did he think she’d learned it from in the first place?

But all he said was, “I believe that will do quite nicely.”

* * *

By nightfall, they were well into the Fichtelgebirge. They made camp just before nightfall.

Three camps, really, separated by a few yards from each other. One for the defectors, one for Drugeth and his two cohorts, one for Denise, Noelle, Eddie, Lannie and Keenan.

After they ate, Lannie and Eddie fell asleep. Between their injuries and the rigors of walking or riding a wagon along mountain trails for several hours, they were exhausted.

Denise and Noelle and Keenan stayed awake a while longer, mostly just staring into the little fire they’d made. All three of the camps had fires going. Drugeth had given permission to make them. He didn’t seem too concerned they’d be spotted, given the thick woods around them.

And who’d spot them anyway? The ever-vigilant and non-existing USE park rangers? Overflying aircraft, when they’d already crashed the only one in Grantville that could get off the ground, and Jesse Wood only let even the air force guys fly at night in extreme emergencies?

But Denise’s sarcastic thoughts were just her way of coming to a decision.

“I’ve decided,” she finally pronounced. “Drugeth’s okay.”

“Scary son-of-a-bitch,” Keenan grunted. “But. Yeah. He’s okay, I guess. What do you think, Noelle?”

But Noelle said nothing. Denise wasn’t even sure she’d heard them talking. She seemed completely preoccupied by the sight of the flames.

Two days later, after they’d made camp for the evening, Janos was approached by the Barclay couple and Allen O’Connor. They were the leaders of the up-time defectors, insofar as such a group could be said to have leaders.

The day before, Janos had heard Denise Beasley refer to them sarcastically as a “motley crew.” The term being new to him, he’d asked for a translation. He’d found her explanation quite charming, especially the qualifiers that seemed to be inseparable from the girl’s vocabulary. Even more amusing had been her pugnacious attitude. Clearly, she seemed to be expecting him at any moment to begin chastising her for her language.

Indeed, he was sometimes tempted to do so, when she lapsed into blasphemy. But he’d already learned from his weeks in Grantville that Americans had a casual attitude toward blasphemy, just as the rumors said they did. And despite his piety, Janos was skeptical—had been since he was a boy—that the way so many priests lumped all sins into unvarying categories was actually a reflection of God’s will. Janos did not presume to understand the Lord’s purpose in all things, and blasphemy was certainly listed as a transgression in the Ten Commandments. Still, he doubted that the Creator who had forged the sun and the moon made no distinction at all between blasphemy and murder.

As for the girl’s profanity, he simply found it artful. Growing up as the scion of a Hungarian noble family in the countryside, he’d learned profanity from high-born father and low-born milkmaid alike. His were not a prissy folk. Janos himself avoided profanity, as a rule, but that was simply an expression of his austere personality. He didn’t paint or write poetry, either. But he could still appreciate the skill and talent involved in all three of the arts.

Had Janos’ father still been alive and been there, he might have had caustic remarks to say about the girl’s language. But the old man would have criticized her for the sloppiness of the form, not the nature of the content. When it came to profanity, Janos’ father had been a devotee of formal structure; Denise Beasley, of what the up-timers called free verse.

Jarring stuff, free verse, at first glance. But in the hands of a skilled poet, it could be effective. Janos had read some poems by an up-timer named e.e. cummings—he’d refused to capitalize even his name—and found them quite good. He’d even had a copy made of some of them to give to his uncle, Pal Nadasdy.

“We just wanted to tell you that Billie Jean’s settling down,” said Barclay. “We were a little worried there, for a while.”

Janos nodded. He’d been somewhat concerned himself. Caryn Barlow seemed almost indifferent to the death of her father, but that wasn’t particularly surprising. Their relationship had obviously not been close. In fact, it had seemed to verge on outright hostility. She’d joined the group because of her friendship with Suzi Barclay, not because of her father’s involvement.

The Mase woman, on the other hand, was an odd one. Clearly intelligent, in most things, even quite intelligent. But it had been hard to analyze her attachment to such a man as Jay Barlow as being anything other than sheer stupidity. It was not simply that the man had been unpleasant, since that was true of many husbands and paramours. He’d been feckless and improvident as well.

Marina Barclay shook her head. “There’s a history of abuse, there. I think it’s got her all twisted up.”

Janos couldn’t quite follow the idiom. “Excuse me?”

“Billie Jean’s father…Well. It was pretty bad. God knows why that got transferred over to an asshole like Barlow, but I think that’s what happened.”

“Ah.” That was somewhat clearer. It was certainly as clear as Janos wanted it to be. Up-timers set great store by what they called “psychology.” They claimed it was almost a science. Janos was dubious, but supposed it couldn’t be any worse than the astrology which so many down-timers used to guide their way through life.

“The point is,” said O’Connor, “we don’t think she’ll be a problem anymore. Now that she’s cried herself out, we think she’s actually kind of relieved. That was a bad situation.”

Marina’s expression darkened. “He beat her, sometimes, when he got drunk.”

Janos looked from her, to her husband, to O’Connor. “Does she have possession of a weapon? A gun, I mean.” He was not concerned, of course, that she might have a knife.

“No,” said Peter Barclay firmly. “We took that away from her right away. We didn’t…uh…”

Janos was tempted to scowl, but didn’t. We didn’t want her taking a shot at you because you’d slaughter all of us.

As if he himself couldn’t make distinctions! They were truly annoying, sometimes, in the way they insulted without even realizing they did so.

Barclay’s wife immediately demonstrated the talent anew. “And, uh, thanks for not killing her at the time.”

Janos kept his face expressionless, since he knew there was no intentional insult involved. True, there might come a time in his old age—assuming he lived that long, which was unlikely—when he would be forced to kill an unarmed woman who attacked him. But to do such a thing now, when he was twenty-five, an experienced cavalry officer, and one of the best swordsmen in the Austrian empire? She might as well have thanked him for not being a coward.

There was such a difference between them, and the ones he had captured. Eddie Junker he understood almost immediately. A few exchanges over the past two days had been enough for the purpose. A sturdy young fellow, from a good down-time family. Lutheran, true, not Catholic. But Janos did not particularly hold that against him, since Junker retained the other virtues of the station he’d been born into. Loyal, quietly courageous, dependable, solicitous of his mistress’ well-being.

In their own manner, the same was true of Lannie Yost and Keenan Murphy. A bit hapless in some ways, those two, as their actions with the plane demonstrated. But Janos had learned while still in his teens that some retainers could fumble at things, and one overlooked their failings for their virtues. The position of a nobleman was simply a transient charge given by God: gone in an instant, measured against eternity. In that, as in so many things, Father Drexel’s School of Patience was a superb guide.

Young Denise had seemed a bit outside Janos’ experience, at first. But eventually he’d realized that was because the fluid class relations of Americans always blurred one’s view of them until you understood where to look. Ignore class, and she was not so strange at all. Neither was the Suzi Barclay creature, for that matter. Wild young noblewomen were not common in Hungary, and even less so in Austria. But they were hardly unheard of. What mattered was the way they shaped themselves as time went by. Some wound up quite well, as Janos thought Denise was likely to manage. Others were…hopeless. A nuisance to their families at all times, perhaps never more so than when they reached old age and the obnoxious wretches had to be cared for.

Mostly, he was intrigued by Noelle Stull. Such a perceptive one, she was. He was quite sure that it would never occur to the Barclays or O’Connor to ask him the question she had. Where they would thank him for not killing a woman, when the reason was obvious, she’d wondered why he had decided to kill a man. Even more, what he thought the cost would be.

She was attractive, too, in a way that some young Hungarian noblewomen were and a few Austrian ones. Pretty in a subdued sort of way; slender; far more athletic than most such. He wondered what she’d look like in formal court costume.

He was a little jarred when he realized the direction his thoughts were heading. Just so, a few times in the past, had he gauged a possible marital prospect. In one instance, an assessment that led to his marriage to his now-deceased wife Anna Jakusith de Orbova.

Anna had died a year and a half earlier. This was the first instance since that horrible time when he’d even thought of another woman in those terms.

The thought was preposterous on the face of it, of course.

He realized his silence was making the Barclays and O’Connor uncomfortable. They’d assume he was thinking about them; possibly, even contemplating harsh measures.

“I am pleased to hear she is settling her nerves. Please see to it, though, that she remains unarmed. Just in case.”

They nodded.

“Are there any other problems I should know about?”

“Uh, no,” said O’Connor. “Everybody else is fine.”

Janos wasn’t surprised. Barlow and Simmons had wound up attached to the group through happenstance. They were not and never had been part of the inner circles. Nor liked, for that matter.

Truth be told, the episode’s outcome had been much as Janos hoped it would. The rest of the up-timers had been far easier to handle since the killings. That would improve their chances of reaching Austria safely.

Marina Barclay looked uncertain. “I guess I should tell you that Billie Jean’s threatening to complain to the authorities—the Austrian authorities, I mean—once we get to Vienna. She says she’ll press charges against you. Take it all the way up to the emperor, if need be.”

“She will certainly have the right to do so, under Austrian law. Even the right to appeal to the emperor, although he rarely takes such appeals under consideration.”

Now, all of them looked uncertain. After a few seconds, Marina’s husband finally got around to asking.

“Do you, uh…know the emperor? Personally, I mean?”

“Oh, yes. We have been close friends since we were boys.”

They stared at him, then started to turn away. Moved by a sudden impulse, Janos cleared his throat.

“Excuse me. If you would satisfy my curiosity? Noelle Stull. What is her family background?”

The three of them looked at each other. By whatever silent communication passed, Peter Barclay assumed the role of spokesman.

“Her family is, uh…Well. Strange. There are several families involved, actually. The Murphys and the Stulls and the Fitzpatricks.”

The tale that followed was intricate; complex; even tortuous at points. More than it needed to be, really. It was clear that the up-timers assumed he would find almost all of it incomprehensible.

When they finished, he nodded. “I believe I understand the gist of it. Noelle’s true father, Dennis Stull, was betrothed to her mother, Pat Fitzgerald—in their own eyes, at least. Then her family, largely for religious reasons, forced her into a marriage with Francis Murphy. By whom”—he glanced over at the five USE loyalists, readying their camp—“she gave birth to Keenan, over there. During the years that passed, meanwhile, her once-betrothed remained unmarried. Eventually, Pat—Murphy, now, not Fitzgerald, as is your American custom—abandoned her legal husband and went to live with Dennis Stull for many years. By whom she had her daughter Noelle, although the fiction was publicly maintained for over two decades that Noelle was Francis Murphy’s daughter. Until it all—’blew up,’ was the term you used?—because Francis Murphy was outraged that his long-estranged wife attended the funeral of her lover’s mother when she had refused to attend the funeral of his father. So, in a drunken fury, he attempted to murder her at the funeral.”

“Well, sort of,” said Marina. “Stupid bastard shot into the funeral parlor from outside. The only solid hit he got was on the corpse in the casket. His own son Keenan was the one wrestled him down, and kept him from anything worse.”

“The whole thing was a comic opera, really,” added her husband, “although it wouldn’t have been if Francis had been sober enough to shoot straight. As it is, the only thing they wound up charging him with was attempted murder and desecrating a corpse.”

Janos stroked his mustache. “A reasonable legal decision. The latter is certainly a charming one.”

The Barclays and O’Connor didn’t seem to think it was the least bit charming. “That was Judge Maurice Tito. He wasn’t anywhere nearly as prone to be lenient to poor Horace Bolender. Threw the whole damn book at him, the self-righteous bastard.”

Janos decided not to pursue that. It was the common characteristic of thieves to believe that one of their own was roughly handled by the law, where favoritism was shown to others.

In truth, there was some substance to the charge. By their own account, the flamboyant conclusion to the long and complex family saga they’d narrated was the product of emotion and unreason, not cold-blooded and premeditated criminal intent. Austrian judges—certainly Hungarian ones—were prone to gauging the two differently also. As was Janos himself, for that matter.

“This must all seem weird to you,” said Marina, smiling.

Janos shook his head. “It all sounds quite familiar, actually. I can think of several similar episodes involving Hungarian noble families. Rather mild escapades, actually, compared to other things that have been done by such. When we reach the Danube and can finally relax a bit, remind me to tell you the history of Countess Erzsebet Bathory. She is—was—my maternal grandmother. A Calvinist, true, not a Catholic. But I do not believe a fair man can ascribe cause to effect in this instance. My parents converted to Catholicism when I was two years old, and I was raised in the church. But one of her sons, my uncle Pal Nadasdy, has stubbornly remained a Calvinist to this day, unmoved by all of Ferdinand II’s many proffered carrots and occasional brandished stick. Yet I have rarely met a more respectable man.”

* * *

After they left, Janos stood there staring into the fire, mulling on the problem for a while. The up-timers, as usual, had not understood his question. They categorized families by their deeds, as if noble families did not typically have more outlandish members and histories than most peasant families; simply because they had more power, if for no other reason.

So. It was still probably a preposterous idea to entertain, for many political reasons. But if he persisted in contemplating the matter—which he very well might; he was an introspective man, and knew himself rather well by now—then, sooner or later, he would have to face the problem squarely.

It was a thorny one, given that he was Hungarian. In many of the Germanies, by now—elsewhere too in the western countries, he thought—the theory had taken hold that Americans as a class belonged to the noble ranks. At the very least, stood outside the class categories altogether. Hungarians and Austrians thought that nonsense, by and large, although Janos was fairly sure their resolve would start crumbling as time went by.

As such resolve always did, given realities and the passage of enough time. His own august family could trace its origins back to Naples. Three centuries earlier, they had come to Hungary in the entourage of Charles Robert of Anjou, when he assumed the throne of Hungary as King Charles I. Family tradition insisted they’d been a highly respected family in the Italian aristocracy. Perhaps it was even true. Given Italy, though, that was always suspect. That was a land steeped in commerce, quite unlike rural Hungary. Everything was for sale, including titles.

But even if it were true, what then? Trace it back still farther, if you could, and what would you find? No Christian family in Europe could claim, as did some Jewish ones, to be able to trace themselves back to the lords spoken of in the Bible. And who had made them lords, except the Lord Himself? Who had also made the Ring of Fire, through which came the man whom many Germans now called their prince. And whose soldiers had, just a few months earlier at Ahrensbök, shoved the title down the throats of haughty French noble generals.

But that took a lot of time, as a rule. Probably more than Janos would encompass in that span of his life that mattered. Soon enough, he would have to marry again. His little boy Gÿorgÿ needed a mother, and given his position in the empire he really should produce more heirs in case misfortune took his son as it had taken his wife. For which latter purpose, unfortunately, if not the first, a morganatic marriage would probably not be suitable.

So. He flashed a quick grin at the fire he was staring into. A problem, then. Complex; complicated; even tortuous at points.

Janos enjoyed solving problems. He also took vows seriously, although he seldom made them formal ones. At the age of twelve, after he realized the full scope of his responsibilities, he had made a solemn vow that while he would be a faithful son of Hungary, he would not—would not—agree to marry a dullard. Be her rank never so high, or her station never more suitable.

He’d kept that pledge to himself when he married Anna Jakusith. The all-too-short time he’d shared his life with her had confirmed the wisdom of his youngster’s vow. As a purely personal matter, and leaving aside the needs of state, he’d far rather remain a widower for the rest of his life than marry the sort of woman who, every morning and every nightfall, only made him think regretfully of the woman who was no longer there. He would remember Anna always, of course, so long as he lived, as he remembered her in his prayers every day. But he wanted a wife who could forge a place of her own in his life and affections.

* * *

“You’re kidding,” hissed Denise. Quickly, almost surreptitiously, she glanced at Drugeth. The way he was just standing there, not moving at all while he studied whatever the hell he found so fascinating in a campfire, matched Keenan’s depiction perfectly. The expressionless, handsome, brooding face, half in shadows, the easy stance—everything. She could picture him just like that, standing in a castle in Transylvania. Which was part of Hungary, now that she thought about it. Well, parts of it were, anyway.

“Oh, wow.” She took her eyes away from Janos, lest she draw his attention somehow. She didn’t really believe in supernatural powers, but you could never be sure.

“Yup,” said Keenan. “That’s the whole story. I got it from Gardiner and Gage just an hour ago, while we were out foraging for wood. Janos Drugeth is a vampire.”

Noelle sniffed. “Keenan, I am quite certain that neither Gage nor Gardiner said any such thing.”

“Well, sure. Not in so many words. But what else could we be talking about? I mean, I’ve even heard of his grandma. The Blood Countess. She’s almost as famous as Dracula himself. The one who sucked all those virgins dry of their blood so her complexion wouldn’t get bad. Dozens of virgins.”

Noelle sniffed again. “There are so many errors in what you just said that I don’t know where to begin. For starters, she didn’t ‘suck the blood’ out of anybody. She—uh…”

Denise had heard the story, too. “That’s quibbling, Noelle. So she drained them dry with a knife and bathed in the blood. Big fucking difference. And it’s a fact—well, that’s what I heard, anyway—that when they caught her they didn’t try to execute her ’cause they couldn’t. So they walled her up in a room until she died of old age.”

“Why didn’t they drive a wooden stake through her heart?” Lannie asked plaintively. “That’s supposed to work.”

“There are no such things as vampires!” Noelle hissed. But Denise figured the reason she hissed it instead of shouting it was because Noelle was just as concerned as anyone else not to draw Drugeth’s attention.

Denise glanced quickly at Janos again. He was still in that brown study he seemed to fall into about twenty times a day. Not surprising, really. Denise figured if she were a vampire she’d probably spend a lot of time contemplating the whichness of what herself.

How fucking exciting could it get? A vampire.

Well. Close enough, anyway.

* * *

Eventually, Noelle gave up. Even Eddie seemed dubious of her arguments.

Superstitious dolts!

She avoided looking at Drugeth for the rest of the evening, she was so exasperated.

But she found that she couldn’t stop thinking about him, even after she rolled into her blankets, and that was even more exasperating.

The problem, she finally admitted to herself, was that while she absolutely did not—Did. Not.—believe in vampires, she also had to admit something else.

She doted on vampire stories. She owned every one of Anne Rice’s books that had come out before the Ring of Fire, and had read none of them less than twice. Her copy of Bram Stoker’s original novel was dog-eared.

She’d even once, in college, gotten into a ferocious all-night-long argument with three other female students over the subject of which actor’s Dracula had been the best. Stupid mindless twits had been all ga-ga and gushing over effete fops like Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee.

Even at that age, Noelle knew the truth. A real vampire—which didn’t exist, of course—would be like the Dracula portrayed by Jack Palance. Medieval rulers, commanders of armies, swordsmen, guys with muscles as well as fangs. Not layabouts loafing in a castle somewhere.

Interesting guys. Exciting guys.

And just how deep, anyway, was she going to wallow in this idiotic fantasy?

She was a sane, sensible, rational modern woman. An official of the SoTF government. And he was an enemy soldier.

Period.

* * *

“Boy, do you look bedraggled,” was Denise’s greeting the next morning.

“I didn’t sleep well,” Noelle said grumpily.

Denise grinned at her. “You gotta admit, the guy’s fascinating as all hell. If he weren’t too old for me, I’d be checking him out myself.”

* * *

That evening they reached a village in one of the many little valleys in the Fichtelgebirge. It was a Catholic village, with a small church.

The village was too small for a tavern, so they camped just outside it. After the camp was made, Janos went to the church.

Noelle followed him, after waiting a few minutes. Not because she was following him, but simply because she felt the need herself.

When she entered, he was in one of the pews, praying. She was quite certain he was praying for the souls of the two men he’d slain, a few days earlier. For his own, too, of course. But mostly theirs. There was still much about Janos Drugeth that was a mystery to her, but not everything. One of the prayers she’d be making here, as she had so many times since it happened, would be a prayer for the soul of the torturer she’d killed in Franconia last year. And for her own, for having done it.

So much for the idiots and their crap about vampires.

Even as quietly as Noelle was moving, he heard her come in. Being honest, the man really did seem to have preternatural senses. He turned his head and gazed at her for a while, his face as expressionless as it usually was.

Noelle did her best to ignore the scrutiny. She dipped her fingers in the basin, made the sign of the cross, and went to a pew some distance away from Drugeth. As far distant as she could get, in fact, allowing for the tiny size of the church.

She concentrated on her own prayers, and was pleased that she managed that pretty well. At least until the end, when she found herself fumbling because she was waiting for Drugeth to leave. There was no way she was going to leave with him.

Finally, he left. She waited perhaps five minutes before leaving herself.

Not that it did her any good. She discovered him waiting for her outside.

It would be silly to avoid him. So, she came up and nodded a greeting.

“I am told you are a devout Catholic,” he said. “Have even contemplated taking holy vows.”

“Ah…” She looked away, caught off balance by the unexpected question. “Yes, sort of. It’s something I’ve thought about for years, off and on. Even though everybody who knows me says I’d make a lousy nun. Well, not that, exactly. They think I’d wind up very unhappy with the choice.”

He said nothing. She was pretty sure that was because he didn’t want to seem as if he were crowding her.

“What do you think?” she asked suddenly. And then found herself caught even more off balance by her own question—what are you doing, you ninny?—than she had been by his.

“I think that decision, unlike many others, is one that only the person involved can make. We are all—those of us who are Catholic, for a certainty—obliged to follow the teachings of the Church involving matters of conscience. But not even the Church presumes to tell a man or a woman if they should take holy vows.”

He smiled, in that gentle, half-melancholy and half-ironic way he had. “I grant you, for noble families and royal ones more so, that decision is often tightly circumscribed, even sometimes forced outright. Still, I will hold to the principle.”

“You have no opinion?”

“I would not put in that way. Let us say I do not presume to advise. That is not quite the same thing as having no opinion.”

He seemed on the verge of adding something. His lips even started to part open. But, then, he closed them firmly and just shook his head.

“I should speak no further on the matter. May I escort you back to the camp?”

Silly to refuse that offer, as well, so she nodded.

They said nothing on the way. By the time they reached the camp, though, Noelle was in a quiet fury.

Not at him, but herself. A decision she hadn’t been able to make for years had somehow gotten made in that short walk of no more than two hundred yards. She knew it as surely as she knew anything.

* * *

Damn her impudent soul, Denise was waiting for her with that same aggravating grin.

“Yeah, right. Enemy of the state. Is he as cute in church as everywhere else?”

“Vampire, remember?” Noelle half-snarled at her. “As if a vampire would enter holy ground!”

Denise’s grin didn’t so much as flicker. “You’re dodging the question. Nice try.”

“What he is, is the most exasperating man I’ve ever met.”

“Wow.” Denise shook her head, the grin vanishing completely. “You’ve got it bad, girl.”

The Bohemian Border, near Cheb

A little after noon, three and a half days later, Drugeth called a halt and ordered a rest. The last stretch before they reached Cheb was going to be very difficult, and they couldn’t afford to lose the last wagon due to someone’s fatigue. The other one had broken a wheel two days earlier, and they’d lost two hours repacking the surviving wagon with the items that were too bulky or heavy to be loaded on pack horses. By then, fortunately, they had several of those. Foreseeing the likelihood that at least one of the wagons would not survive the trek across the Fichtelgebirge, Janos had purchased pack animals at any of the small villages they’d passed through which had one they were willing to sell.

They needed to stop, anyway, because it was time to release Noelle Stull and her companions. By now, Janos was sure that Noelle had figured out that his escape route was taking them into Bohemia. He wasn’t concerned about that, in itself, because by the time she could return to a town that had a radio with which she could alert the USE authorities, his expedition would have long since left Cheb and would probably already be reentering the USE farther south. The main thing was that he didn’t want her to realize that Austria had suborned the commander of the Cheb garrison.

Partly that was a matter of simple straight-dealing. Honesty among thieves, perhaps. But just as the up-timers had a witty saw that “an honest cop is one who stays bribed,” it was equally true in the gray world Janos now spent more of his time in than he liked, that the man who bribes the cop is obliged not to carelessly betray him afterward.

Mostly, though, it was cold-blooded calculation. The future was impossible to predict, and Janos still hoped he could persuade the emperor to make peace with Wallenstein. But he’d probably not be successful in his effort, and the war with Bohemia would heat up again. In that event, as unlikely as it might be given the geography—but who could say where the winds of war might blow?—it could be highly advantageous to Austria to have the commander of the Cheb garrison on its payroll. Even if the man objected to flagrant treason, he could be blackmailed into ceding the fortress with the threat of exposure.

Janos was feeling a little guilty, actually, allowing Noelle and her group to come this far. If one of them had a good enough knowledge of geography, they might be able to deduce that Cheb was his destination. He should have set them free the day before, in retrospect. Without horses—which he certainly wouldn’t give them, even if he had any to spare—they probably still couldn’t have gotten out of the Fichtelgebirge in time to cause any damage to his project.

But…he’d stalled, since there were so many “mights” and “probablies” involved on both sides of the equation. Looking back on it, he’d allowed himself to be influenced by a purely personal factor. He was reluctant to part company with Noelle Stull; it was as simple as that.

As the days had passed, his interest had deepened. He’d never thought about it before, but he’d come to realize that spending several days with a woman in a forced march, under considerable tension and strain—conflicting and complex ones, too—was as good a way as any to get a measure of her.

Which he had, at least to the extent possible in the few days they’d spent together.

Noelle was as perceptive as his dead wife had been, when it came to navigating difficult political waters. Demonstrated, in Anna’s case, by her ability to work a compromise between the Catholic church and the many Orthodox inhabitants on their domains, which satisfied everyone well enough and kept the peace. In Noelle’s case, by the way she maintained a workable relationship between her own captured party and the defectors. There was no love lost there, and she’d refused—quite firmly—to allow her people to be used in any of the labor directly connected to the defection. They’d taken no part, for instance, in the strenuous labor needed to repack the wagons again. But, that line drawn, she’d not been foolishly obstreperous about anything else.

So. Principles combined with flexibility where needed. A combination much rarer than one might think.

She also knew how to maintain authority over her own charges: smoothly, easily, and without either bullying them or ceding anything important. No easy task, that, given the nature of the people involved. Not a problem with Eddie Junker, of course. Although Janos was sure that Noelle would insist that Eddie was her “partner,” as well as a close friend, the fact remained that the relationship was one of mistress and subordinate. Something which he was equally sure Junker himself understood—but was good-natured about because of the light hand of the mistress herself.

Lannie and Keenan, on the other hand, while they had the habits and temperament of subordinates by virtue of their origins and history, had not had a previous relationship with her, other than a family one in the case of the Murphy fellow. More than once—many more times than once—Janos had seen how awkwardly a new commander handled such a situation. In contrast to Anna, who had swept into her new position as the mistress of the estates at Homonna with complete ease. Within a short time, as the Americans would put it, she had the servants in the large household—even many of the peasants nearby—“eating out of her hand.”

Noelle had even managed to keep Denise Beasley under control, for a wonder. And had done it, not by the harsh disciplinary methods a less perceptive person would have tried—and which would have succeeded poorly, if at all—but because she had the art of persuading a young, bright and rebellious girl that she was more in the way of a trusted older sister and a confidant than a substitute mother. It had been quite deftly done, and the fact that Noelle herself would no doubt be indignant if he suggested she was being manipulative, did not change the reality. The up-timers seemed to feel that “being manipulative” was a negative trait, even an evil one, but that was just one of their many superstitions. The ability to get other people to do what needed to be done was simply a valuable skill, that’s all—especially for the wife of an important figure in a major realm.

Finally, there was her athleticism and quite evident good health. Anna had been less athletic than the average noblewoman, which, in and of itself, had not much bothered Janos. He was not one of those idle aristocrats who spent half their waking hours on the hunt, and wanted a wife who could ride with him. Where Janos was most likely to be riding at a full gallop was on a battlefield, where no wife could go or was wanted to go.

Unfortunately, Anna had been sickly, not simply sedentary. Had been since she was a girl. Janos had known that when he married her, but had chosen to overlook the problem in favor of her many other virtues. Having lost one wife after a short marriage, however, he had no desire to repeat the experience. That had been anguish such as he’d never felt in his life, and never wanted to again.

True, Noelle was not as physically attractive as Anna had been. The woman was pretty, where Anna had been a real beauty. But that did not concern Janos. First, because it was a matter of flesh, and thus trivial. Second, because it was always transient, as was the nature of fleshly things. Finally, because given time it would be irrelevant in any event. The Americans could wallow in their romanticism, as they called it, but that was another of their odd superstitions. A good marriage produced affection and physical desire as naturally and inevitably as trees grew. Love was simply the fruit, which they confused with the seed.

There remained, of course, all the immense obstacles of a political nature. Which might indeed be too great to overcome. But he’d decided the matter was worth raising with the emperor. He’d need his permission to pursue the matter, anyway. Beyond that, Ferdinand was one of his closest friends and a man whose advice was often shrewd, sometimes uncannily so.

* * *

“I’m telling you, Noelle, you oughta ask him out on a date. Or finagle him into asking you out, if you’re still hung up on proper gender roles on account of you’re such an ancient.”

“Why don’t pharmacists develop the most useful drug of all?” Noelle grumbled. “The label would read: ‘Eliminates shit-eating grins. Especially effective on teenagers.’”

Denise ignored that, of course. “Me, if I want to go out on a date with some guy—not often, but it does happen—I just tell him when I’m going to pick him up with my bike.”

“He’s an enemy, in case you’ve forgotten.”

Denise waved her hand. “Wars come, wars go. True love remains.”

“You are insufferable, sometimes. And shut up, will you? He’s heading our way.”

* * *

A few minutes later, after Janos explained that they’d be parting company, Denise’s silly idea became a moot one as well.

Which made it all the more alarming, to Noelle, that she felt such a sharp anxiety at the news. Denise, at least, had the excuse of being sixteen years old. What was hers?

Firmly, she told herself she was simply worried about the practical aspects of the situation.

“I think it’s outrageous, Captain Drugeth, that you are abandoning us without even a single horse.”

He gave her that damned soulful smile that did annoying things to the primitive and ancient parts of her brainstem.

“First, Ms. Stull, it is rather absurd to use the term ‘abandoning’ when I am simply doing what you would have done yourself several days ago had you not given me your parole. Second, you don’t need a horse to travel. Lannie Yost’s ankle has healed and Eddie Junker’s broken arm does not impede him from walking. Third, this is hardly a wilderness or a desert which must be crossed swiftly on pain of death. I am not, I remind you, depriving you of money with which you can buy food and shelter from any of the villages in the area. I am even allowing you to keep Eddie Junker’s rifle and its ammunition, should you need to hunt for sustenance. Something for which, I can assure you, Austria’s gunmakers would curse me if they found out.”

Noelle sneered. Tried to, anyway. “You know perfectly well it’s an antique.”

He shrugged. “All the better, actually, from the standpoint of a down-time gunmaker using it for a model. As you know perfectly well, the USE’s now-famous SRG is patterned after an even more antiquated design.”

Which was true, of course. So Noelle fell back to glaring silently, feeling as if she were all of fourteen years old. Drugeth’s conditions for releasing them were perfectly rational. Even somewhat generous, in fact. Her anger was just the way the underlying anxiety was working its way to the surface.

Why didn’t the stupid pharmacists develop a drug that would anesthetize those useless brainstem parts?

Probably because we’ve been tested over and over again by evolution, and passed with flying colors, came the unwanted reply.

Out of the tension and confusion of the moment, like a thesis and antithesis struggling, came the synthesis.

“Very well!” she snapped. Her eyes became slitted. “But I warn you, Captain Drugeth. You haven’t seen the last of me!”

“I look forward to that with great anticipation.”

And off he went.

Denise shook her head. “Well, that’s about the weirdest way I ever heard anybody make a date, but sure enough. It’s a date.”

“Shut. Up.”

High Street Mansion, Seat of Government for the State of Thuringia-Franconia

President’s Office

Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia

“You should fire that whole garrison at Saalfeld,” Noelle said testily. “For sure, get rid of that useless commander. I swear to you, Ed, if they’d been willing to get off their butts as soon as we arrived, I might have still caught the bastards.”

“Not likely, Noelle. By then, they’d have been well into Bohemia—and there’s the tiny little problem that while our relations with Wallenstein are good, they aren’t so good that he’d take kindly to us sending a military unit into his territory without his permission. And getting that permission would have taken at least another week.”

He shrugged. “Besides, it wouldn’t do any good. The SoTF doesn’t have the kind of money it would take to throw top wages at mercenary units to make sure we get good ones for mere garrison duty far from the war zones. If we fired Captain Stamm and his company, anyone we got to replace them wouldn’t be any better in the raring-to-go department, and would probably be a lot worse in what matters, which is doing a decent job of keeping the peace locally without gouging the residents more than they think is reasonable.”

He came out of his relaxed slouch and folded his hands on the desk. “Relax, will you? I know you’re like a bulldog when you set your teeth into something, but this is really not worth the amount of sweat you’re putting into it. Look, you did your best, and the baddies got away. It happens. That said, it was not the crime of the century, the only people who got killed were baddies themselves—I almost wish I’d seen that; I really detested Jay Barlow—and the military impact of the tech transfer will be minor in the short run and probably not even that significant in the long run.”

Noelle eyed him skeptically. “I notice you didn’t say anything about the political impact.”

Ed shrugged again. “So the Crown Loyalists are trying to make hay out of it. Big deal. That’s the nature of politics, Noelle. You win some, you lose some, and when you do lose the other guy points with alarm and swears to the electorate that the sky is falling. I’ve talked to Mike about it, and I can assure you he’s not losing any sleep over the affair. Neither am I. Neither should you.”

Noelle sighed. “I hate giving up on something I started.”

After a moment, she managed a smile. “At least Eddie’s arm looks to be healing okay. The doctor told him it should be as good as new in a few more weeks. So I guess—I feel bad about it, even if it wasn’t my fault—that the only real casualty on our side is that Lannie and Keenan are out of a job.”

“No, they aren’t. Didn’t you hear? Kay Kelly had a conniption, of course, and demanded that her husband fire the two bums. I guess she was even making noises about filing criminal charges. But you know Bob. Hell of a nice guy, even if it does take him a month to screw in a lightbulb because he’s got to redesign it to his satisfaction first. So he just plain refused, on the grounds that they meant well. And don’t let anybody tell you that he doesn’t wear the pants in that family, even if Kay could teach graduate courses in henpecking.”

“That she could,” said Noelle, grimacing. “I’ll make it a point—even more than usual—to steer clear of her over the next few weeks.”

“Unless you go to Magdeburg, you won’t have to,” Ed said. “She left yesterday, once she realized Bob wasn’t going to budge.”

“What? She’s going to try to get the federal government to press charges?”

“Oh, hell no.” Ed shook his head, smiling. “I don’t like the woman, but nobody ever said she let any moss grow. She went up to Magdeburg to lobby the government to put in an order for the Dauntless line. Now that it’s been field-tested and proved it could carry out a successful bomb run. Not the plane’s fault the dummies piloting it bombed the wrong guys, after all.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Nope. One of her arguing points—you know how quick she is to level accusations of favoritism—is that that’s more than Mike Stearns, playing his usual favorites game, ever asked Hal and Jesse to prove with their planes. Which he commissioned on nothing better than a prayer and a promise.”

Noelle couldn’t herself from laughing. “She’s got brass, I’ll say that for her.”

The laughter finally broke her sour mood. She gathered up her stuff and rose. “Well, okay. I guess you’re right. And what I do know is that you’re busy. So I’ll get out of your hair. Besides, I’d better see if I can put in a word for Denise before her parents skin her alive.”

* * *

But when she got to the Beasleys’ place, one of those big double-sized trailers called “mobile homes” in blithe disregard for the cinder blocks it was actually sitting on instead of wheels, she discovered her mission was unnecessary. Denise’s mother Christin had thrown a fit, sure enough. But Buster had taken it all in stride.

There were some advantages, it seemed, to having a father with an ex-biker’s views on parenting.

“What the hell, Noelle, it’s like I told my wife.” He placed a large, affectionate hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “It’s not like she got pregnant or strung out on dope or started working for a pimp or even got in trouble with the cops. For that matter, her new tattoo she got yesterday’s sorta reasonable.”

Noelle eyed the tattoo on Denise’s shoulder, easily visible because she was just wearing a tank top inside the warm trailer. That was the tattoo she’d gotten at the age of fourteen. A death’s head with the logo Watch it, buddy. Completely tasteless, in Noelle’s opinion, although she’d allow it might cause high school boys to think twice.

Buster had thought that tattoo was reasonable, too, Noelle remembered—and without the “sorta” qualifier. She didn’t want to think—

“I love it!” exclaimed Denise. “Here, I’ll show you.”

With no further ado, she yanked up the tank top, exposing her slim midriff.

“Oh, dear God,” was all Noelle could think to say.

It was a lot better from an artistic standpoint, certainly. The tattoo artist had quite a bit of skill.

Still.

The central image, right on the girl’s belly, was that of a sexpot wearing a flying jacket—not that any flying jacket would expose that much bosom—pants that looked painted on, and spike-heeled boots. She was sitting with her legs crossed—lounging, rather—and holding a bomb in one hand, with a sputtering fuse.

Smiling seductively, of course.

That was bad enough. The logo was worse.

Above the image: You can land here

Below it: If you don’t crash

Denise frowned. “You don’t like it?”

“Well…”

Huffily, the girl dropped the hem of the tank top. “Just ’cause you can’t keep from beating around the bush. How’s Eddie doing?”

“Fine,” said Noelle. Warily: “Why do you ask?”

“He’s cute.” She jerked a thumb at Buster. “My dad even says he’s okay. I thought I might drop by on him later.”

“You stay away from Eddie!”

“I bet he’ll like the tattoo.”

* * *

Noelle hurried away to warn Eddie of an impending visitation by a one-girl Mongol horde.

Alas, Eddie seemed unconcerned. “What’s the problem? I like Denise. A lot, in fact.”

“She’s wild. And she’s much too young for you.”

“Don’t be silly, Noelle. Denise is a bit wild, I suppose—although nothing like my cousin Kaethe—but she’s not actually foolish. And I’m certainly not.”

That last was true enough. Noelle started to feel relieved until she saw that Eddie’s gaze seemed more than a little unfocused. As if he were contemplating in his mind’s eye a certain tattoo that she had, perhaps unfortunately, described in great detail.

* * *

However the visit turned out—and Noelle wasn’t really worried, since Eddie was to deliberation what a cow was to munching grass—he seemed his usual self when she visited him the next morning. He had a large map of the SoTF and the surrounding territories spread out across his table, and was studying it intently.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Just indulging in my curiosity. I’m as tenacious as you are, you know. I just don’t have your compulsion to act on it at all costs.” He lifted his eyes from the map. “Any more news from Bohemia?”

Noelle flopped onto the nearby armchair. “Nothing. Well, not ‘nothing.’ Wallenstein is certainly taking seriously the incursion of an Austrian expedition into his territory, even a small one. He and Pappenheim have the Black Cuirassiers scouring the whole area. But…nothing. Not a sign of them. We just got another lack-of-progress report on the radio an hour ago.”

Eddie nodded. “I’m not surprised. I’ve been thinking about it, and considering the terrain. It finally dawned on me that Drugeth probably didn’t stay in Bohemia for very long.”

Noelle sat up straight. “What?”

“Come here. I can show you better on the map.” Noelle was there in a heartbeat. Eddie’s finger started tracing a route through the Fichtelgebirge. “He can cut back across here, near this little town called Kötzting. From there, he can just follow the Regen down to Regensburg, and from there it’s an easy barge-ride into Austria.”

“But…We have a garrison at Regensburg. A great damn big one, too, and real soldiers.”

“Indeed so. Because they have been assigned, no matter the cost, to keep the enemy from crossing the Danube by seizing the bridge there. Regensburg anchors our left flank against Bavaria. Not likely, therefore—is it?—that they’ll be much concerned with anything else. And there are no troops to the north until you reach Amberg. A lot of military traffic between Amberg and Regensburg, of course, but they’d be going along”—he pointed to a river just west of the Regen—“the Naab. Not the Regen.”

Noelle stared at the map, while Eddie continued. “See what I mean? He doesn’t have to worry about anything except the short time he’d be passing through Regensburg itself.”

“But…Damnation, the garrison at Regensburg was warned to look for them.”

“Noelle, be serious. Yes. The garrison at Regensburg—along with a dozen others—received an alert over the radio to keep an eye out for the possibility that a party of up-time defectors might be passing through. Maybe. At a time unknown. In wagons. Possibly with pack horses.”

He tapped the spot indicating Regensburg. “First, they would have paid no attention to it. Even if they did, they’d be looking for ‘up-timers’ on wagons or horses. Given Janos Drugeth, what do you think the likelihood is that, by now, he hasn’t obtained river transport and doesn’t have the defectors outfitted as a party of down-time merchants?”

His eyes narrowed, as if he were gauging something. “If I’m right, he’s already on the Regen. Should be passing through Regensburg today or tomorrow.”

Given Janos Drugeth…

“That son-of-a-bitch!” Noelle yelped. Out the door she went.

* * *

After Eddie closed the door and sat back down at the table, he shook his head.

“Denise was right. She’s got it bad.”

High Street Mansion, Seat of Government for the State of Thuringia-Franconia

President’s Office

Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia

“I’m afraid Mr. Piazza left for Bamberg this morning, Ms. Stull. He won’t be in radio contact again until this evening, at the earliest. Carol Unruh went with him.” The secretary folded her hands, in that inimitable and unmistakable way that they must spend a whole semester teaching people how to do in Executive Assistant College.

“I Am Afraid There Is Nothing I Can Do.”

In caps. Noelle went out the door.

Municipal Complex

Police Department

Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia

“Gimme a break, Noelle,” said Preston Richards. Grantville’s police chief scowled at an assignment chart on the wall of his office. “You got any idea how stretched thin I am? No, I don’t have any cops I can detach from duty on what sounds like a wild goose chase. And how would they get there in time anyway?”

Before she could keep arguing, he raised his hand. “I’ll send another radio message to the garrison at Regensburg. But that’s it. And I doubt very much that’ll do any good. Word came yesterday that the Bavarians are moving more troops into the area.”

No caps, but it didn’t matter. Press Richards had a baccalaureate from Stubborn Like a Mule College. Graduated magna cum laude.

Noelle went out the door.

Regensburg

The Upper Palatinate, under USE imperial administration

“Idiots,” snarled Colonel Moritz Kreisler. “We’ve got at least three Bavarian regiments moving around just the other side of the Danube”—he pointed an accusing finger at the river, as if it were the guilty party—“and they want me to disrupt my disposition of forces in order to hunt down some fucking thieves?”

“I’m just passing on the message, sir,” said the radio operator apologetically. “How should I respond?”

Kreisler took a deep breath, controlling his temper. He reminded himself that whatever the legal formalities might be, a message from any figure of authority in Grantville—even a miserable be-damned police chief—had to be handled diplomatically.

“Tell them we received the message.” With an effort: “No, thank them for sending us the warning. Assure them we will do everything possible. Emphasize ‘possible.’”

After the radio operator left, Kreisler went over to the window of his office and looked down on the Danube passing almost directly below.

They might be using a barge or other rivercraft.

“Oh, marvelous,” he muttered, between teeth that were almost clenched. Just at a glance, he could see five such vessels on the river. Four of them were piled high with goods, and two of those were carrying a number of passengers as well. Did the cretins think that merchants and farmers and I-need-to-see-my-poor-uncle-before-he-dies suspended their activity because of a war?

Still, he should do something, just for the record. “Lieutenant Müller!” he bellowed.

His orderly appeared almost instantly.

“Send word to whatever squads are monitoring the river traffic—no, one squad should be enough; and make sure it’s a squad right inside the city—I do not want the men watching the river up and down stream to be in the least bit distracted—to keep an eye out for a large party of American traitors—accompanied by a Hungarian officer; probably two or three other soldiers—who might attempt to pass through Regensburg on their way to Austria.”

Lieutenant Müller was a little cross-eyed. “Yes, sir. Ah…”

“How should I know what ‘American traitors’ look like?” the colonel said testily. “Try to spot excellent teeth combined with a shifty expression. But if I were you, I’d concentrate on the Hungarian officer. You know what those look like, don’t you?”

Müller practically sighed with relief. “Yes, sir. Of course.”

* * *

“All right, boys, you heard him,” said Corporal Brenner. “Keep an eye out for one of those Hungarian dandies. Can’t be hard, since they’re even more vain than Austrian noblemen.”

As usual, Private Sandler looked confused. Sighing, the sergeant planted a large forefinger on the top of his helmet. “Just look for the plume, Jochen.”

Kelly Aviation Facility

Near Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia

“Please, Bob. It’s the only chance that’s left.”

Noelle felt like an idiot. Princess Leia, in a movie. Please, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re our only hope.

Bob Kelly shook his head. “But…the authorities…”

“There are no authorities. Not in town that I can reach in time who have the clout to get anything done. But if I get there myself…”

Bob looked from her to one of the planes in the hangar. The one that looked as if they’d been working on it round the clock. Noelle had figured they might be, with Kay up in Magdeburg doing the full court lobbyist’s press.

“Well…The Dauntless II is ready to fly, sure enough. But we haven’t got it fitted with the bomb attachments yet. The best you could do would be to toss a grenade out the window.”

Noelle set her teeth. “Bob, I am not planning to bomb anybody.”

He peered at her nearsightedly, over the half-moon glasses he favored. He looked for all the world like a chubby middle-aged elf. Not one of the Tolkien-type heroic and dramatic elves, either. One of the Santa’s-helpers elves. Exactly what Noelle was afraid she’d look like at that age if she let her figure go and didn’t pay attention to her solemn vows to eliminate all elflike mannerisms.

“Then how do you plan to accomplish anything once you do get there?” he asked.

Good question. But Noelle was not to be thwarted.

“I’ll simply summon the garrison to its duty. With an official from Grantville on the scene who’s directly involved in the matter, I’m sure that’ll be sufficient.”

Which was a laugh, from Noelle’s past experience with military commanders. They swore by Chain of Command the way other people swore by the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

But she’d deal with that when she got there. First, she had to get there. By nightfall—and it was already two o’clock in the afternoon, in late November. They just had enough time.

Fortunately, Lannie piped up. “They do have a landing strip in Regensburg now, boss. Been operational for a month.”

Kelly rubbed his jaw. “Kay’ll have a fit, when she hears about it.”

“Why?” Noelle tried to look as self-assured as she possibly could. She was pretty good at that, actually. “It’ll just be another test of the capabilities of the Dauntless line.”

She even said “Dauntless” without a waver.

“Well…”

But it was enough, she could tell. Bob Kelly had been smarting for years over the constant jokes about his unfinished planes.

“Yeah, sure. What the hell. The weather’s clear and Regensburg’s only a hundred and fifty miles away. Be there before sundown, easy. Lannie, take her there. Keenan, you go with them.”

* * *

Unfortunately, Noelle didn’t think to ask about the condition of the radio until they were half an hour into the flight.

“Well,” said Lannie.

From the rear seat, Keenan’s hand appeared over her shoulder, clutching a map. “I remembered to bring this, though.”

Naturally, it was the wrong map.

“Never mind,” she said, after checking to make sure—you just never knew with these guys—that the plane did have a functioning compass. “Just head south until we reach the Danube. Then follow it.”

“Which way?”

Not. To. Be. Thwarted.

“I’ll figure it out when the time comes.”

* * *

She did, too. It wasn’t even hard, since Noelle had a good knowledge of geography and she knew Regensburg was at the crest of a large northerly bend in the Danube. Between that and the compass, she could figure out where they were.

A bit too far to the east, as it happened. Here, the river was coursing southeast.

She pointed upstream. “Thataway.”

Regensburg

The Upper Palatinate, under USE imperial administration

Sure enough, the airfield was in good shape. Lannie brought the plane down as smoothly as you could ask for.

The soldiers guarding the field, of course, were practically jumping up and down with fury.

No one had informed them! They should have been notified of the flight plan by the radio!

But at least they weren’t suspicious. Everyone knew that practically every country in Europe had started aircraft projects. But except for a handful of commercial craft operating out of the USE or the Netherlands, all the airplanes in existence were still in the USE’s air force.

Besides, she’d brought a magic wand.

Documents. Official Documents. Testifying that she was indeed an official for the State of Thuringia-Franconia and never mind exactly what her powers were and where her jurisdiction began and ended.

They even let her take one of the unit’s horses to ride into town and summon the garrison to its duty.

* * *

“I am afraid that Colonel Kreisler has gone out of the city, checking some new reconnaissance reports. He is not expected to return until tomorrow at the earliest.”

Lieutenant Müller clasped his hands behind his back. Allowing for variations, it was the well-known and detestable gesture. As were the capital letters.

“I Am Afraid There Is Nothing I Can Do.”

* * *

Down at the river, on the great bridge that spanned the Danube, she considered whether she might prevail on one of the squads of soldiers below…

What a laugh.

Besides, now that she was here and could see it herself, she really couldn’t blame the soldiers for their attitude. The Bavarians were in the area, after all, with sizeable forces. The USE’s troops were concentrating on protecting the bridge and spotting any attempt to ferry large numbers of soldiers across the river.

True, there was already a small fleet of boats on the river—six of them that she could see, just on this side of the bridge looking upstream—but they weren’t clustered the way landing craft would be. Just some of the many commercial craft that plied one of Europe’s major waterways day in and day out, and had been doing so for centuries.

She glanced at a small barge just passing below the bridge. This one, for instance, looked to be carrying mostly—

“You son-of-a-bitch!” she screeched.

She raced over to the downstream side of the bridge, clawing at the flap of her holster. By the time she got the pistol out and steadied her nerves enough to check that the clip was in and the safety was off, the barge had reappeared.

Janos was standing at the very stern, looking up at her. Wide-eyed, as if in fear or astonishment.

Well, no. Not fear. Wide-eyed with astonishment.

Not for long, though. Suddenly he broke into a smile—a genuine grin; the first she’d ever seen on his face—and doffed his battered-looking cap. The sort any boatman might wear, although the flourishing bow that followed had obviously been learned in palaces.

She pointed the gun right at him, remembering to use the two-handed grip that was her only chance of hitting anything. He replaced the cap on his head, but otherwise just kept standing there, looking at her. His face had no expression, now.

He was maybe twenty yards away. Well, thirty or forty, allowing for the height of the bridge.

She’d probably miss. Worse, she might miss him and accidentally hit somebody else. There were kids playing on the river bank. Way off to the side, sure, but she’d heard all the Annie Oakley jokes people made about her. It wasn’t likely, but she might hit one of the kids. Or hit a piece of metal on the barge that caused a ricochet that hit one of the kids.

She wondered if Janos had heard the jokes. He might very well have, in fact, as smoothly as he could finagle information from people.

That was probably why he wasn’t making any attempt to take cover.

Well, no. She knew as surely as she knew anything that even if she’d been as good a shot as the real Annie Oakley, Janos Drugeth would have done exactly what he was doing.

She even knew why. A Hungarian nobleman’s valor was only part of it. Two days after the encounter in the church, she’d told him about the torturer in Franconia. And the hours she spent in prayer because of it. They understood each other quite well, in some ways.

There was no way she was going to pull the trigger, and she knew it, and he knew it, and he knew she knew he knew it, and…

“You are the most exasperating man!”

She leaned way over the rail of the bridge, clasped the gun tightly in both hands, pointed the barrel straight below her, and emptied the entire clip. She even had enough presence of mind to make sure another barge wasn’t passing through before she did it.

And she didn’t miss the water, either. Not once. Hit the Danube every time, dead nuts.

She felt a lot better, then. She even used the gun to give Janos a little salute as the barge made its way down toward Austria. She didn’t stop looking at him until it passed out of sight. And he didn’t stop looking at her.

Then she giggled. “I guess Denise was right. Maybe I should get a tattoo.”

* * *

When the others finally emerged from the shelter they’d taken behind the goods piled on the barge, Allen O’Connor came up to Janos, still standing in the stern.

“You got balls, I’ll give you that. I told you the woman was crazy.”

Janos said nothing. If a man couldn’t recognize a sign from God, right in front of his face, what was the point of explaining it to him?

O’Connor shook his head. “No telling what she’ll do. You ought to warn the emperor about her.”

“Oh, yes. I most certainly shall.”

High Street Mansion, Seat of Government for the State of Thuringia-Franconia

President’s Office

Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia

December 1634

“As long as the Regensburg authorities drop the serious charges,” said Ed Piazza, “we won’t contest the rest. We don’t actually want to let people get the notion that officials of the SoTF can fire a gun anytime and anywhere they please.”

Josua Mai, one of the down-timers who served the SoTF as legal advisers, seemed hesitant. “Ah…Mr. President. I’m afraid that the charge of fishing without license and with equipment not approved by the fisherman’s guild is a serious charge, in Regensburg. The fine is quite heavy.”

“Is there any jail time, too?”

“Not if the fine is paid. Otherwise…” He grimaced.

Ed nodded. “So we’ll pay the fine. It’s not as if we’re actually broke. Not even close, in fact.”

The lawyer looked as if he might argue the matter. Despite his good humor, Ed was not in the mood for legal quibbling. “We’ll pay it,” he said firmly. “Noelle’s gone way past her pay grade plenty of times, what she’s been willing to tackle. The least we can do is return the favor. End of discussion.”

He sat up straight, just to emphasize the point. “Any spin-off problems I need to deal with?”

Mai looked at his notes. “Well, Grantville will need a new garrison commander, but that’s not something you need to deal with, Mr. President.”

“I thought it was decided not to fire Knefler. Not that I’d mind it if he quit. Sure, he screwed up, but you can’t fire officers just for making one mistake.”

“Ah…the problem is of a different nature. It seems that shortly after he returned to Grantville he assaulted Denise Beasley with a quirt. Tried to, at least. According to the report I received from Chief Richards, the girl was actually doing a fair job of defending herself with—ah—” He rummaged in the notes and drew forth another sheet. “Seemingly, every loose object you might find in a roadside tavern, short of a full-size table.”

Ed chuckled. “Boy, can I picture that. Girl’s got a hell of an arm. Star pitcher for the girl’s baseball team until she lost interest.” Then, he scowled ferociously. “But what I want to know is why we didn’t fire Knefler for that.”

The lawyer was still examining the report. “He will be discharged for it, Mr. President. After he gets out of the hospital. His injuries were quite severe. A number of bruises and a split lip inflicted by the girl—Chief Richards says she gave as good as she got—and then…” He cleared his throat. “Well. The father arrived. And was apparently in a very foul temper even before Knefler drew his sword. Tried to draw his sword, rather.”

Both Ed and Carol winced. “Oh, Lord,” she said.

* * *

After the lawyer left, Carol Unruh shook her head. “What was Noelle thinking? She’s usually such a responsible person.”

Ed leaned back, clasping his hands behind his head. After the news came of Noelle’s arrest, he’d finally taken the time to visit Denise Beasley and get her version of the whole Noelle vs. Captain Drugeth Affair.

The full, complete, unabridged—nay, annotated and footnoted—Denise Beasley version.

“Domestic violence can be a terrible thing,” he intoned solemnly.

Carol frowned at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, actually. But it’ll sure be interesting to find out.”

* * *

The day after she got back to Grantville, Noelle did get a tattoo. She’d always secretly harbored a desire for one, she just hadn’t seen any way she could pull it off. But she figured three days in the squalid jail Regensburg maintained for women—God only knew what the men’s jail was like—gave her the needed credentials.

Denise guided her to the tattoo parlor. Offered tons of advice, too, but Noelle ignored almost all of it.

The design was entirely her own. A death’s head—much more refined than Denise’s, of course; ladylike, topped by a jaunty little feathered cap—with crossed pistols below and the logo above: I Shot The Danube.

The one and only piece of advice she took from Denise concerned the placement of the tattoo.

“Me, I put it on my shoulder, where all the pimply twits in high school could see it. You, on the other hand, got a lot more focused target. So put it way down on your hip, over toward the ass, where nobody will ever see it—”

The grin was as an impudent as ever. “Except.”

Vienna, Austria

“Interesting idea,” said Emperor Ferdinand III. He got up and went to the window in his palace, looking over the gardens. “Yes, I think so.”

“Many suppositions, first,” Janos cautioned.

“Oh, yes. And probably as many problems afterward, assuming it unfolds. But many opportunities also. And you sometimes forget—even you, Janos—who I am.”

“Your Majesty?”

The emperor turned away from the window. “Majesty, now, yes. Go back five hundred years and I would have been a mere count in Switzerland or Swabia. Five hundred years before that, who knows? Certainly not a ‘majesty.’ The most ancient figure known in my line is a Carolingian. A nobleman, family tradition insists—but I can’t help think that his cognomen of ‘Guntram the Rich’ casts some doubt on the matter.”

He resumed his seat. “What I am ultimately, Janos, is a Habsburg. Something which I never forget. And what is our unofficial motto?”

Understanding, finally, Janos nodded. “Bella gerunt alii, tu, felix Austria, nubes. ‘Let others wage war; you, happy Austria, marry.’”

“Precisely so. A guiding principle which has stood us in good stead for centuries. So why should we abandon it now?” Ferdinand made a small waving gesture. “At worst, you already have an heir. But I do not think it would come to that. The distinction between noble and morganatic marriages is already fraying. I have no objections to fraying it still more. In fact, I’m inclined in that direction.”

So, that was that. Simply a problem, now.

“It wouldn’t be anything quick, anyway,” Janos mused.

The emperor chuckled again. “Not given the political situation.”

Janos smiled. “I was actually thinking of the lady in question. The last time I saw her, she was shooting at me.”

Ferdinand just gazed at him, looking very placid. He’d gotten the entire story by now.

“Well, not exactly that,” Janos allowed. “Still, it was a dramatic gesture, you have to admit.”

“When are you going to stop—what is that American expression…ah, yes, ‘beating around the bush’—and ask my advice as well as my permission?” The emperor of Austria-Hungary spread his arms. “Here you are, alone, in the very seat of wisdom when it comes to such matters. If it weren’t beneath my dignity, I could double the Habsburg fortune—count the Spanish bullion fleets in it, too—by starting one of those American businesses…what are they called?”

“Marriage counseling.”

“Yes, that one.”

Janos hesitated. Despite the jocularity, the fact the emperor made the offer meant he took the matter very seriously indeed.

“I would deeply appreciate it, Your Majesty.”

“For this—we’re in private, after all—you’d best call me Ferdinand. Very well, my old friend. Start with a rose.”

“Excuse me?”

“A rose, Janos. Always start with a rose. Then add something with just that perfect personal touch. And keep the accompanying note brief. Very brief. Lest, by your silly long-windedness, you make the recipient feel like someone hunted, instead of a weary traveler seeing an open door, spilling light to invite them in.”

Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia

January 1635

Denise studied the three items spread out on Noelle’s table, which had arrived that morning in a package.

There had been no return address, but that was hardly necessary.

“Gorgeous,” she pronounced, after completing her examination of the first item. “Of course, you gotta subtract a few points since he probably got it from the imperial gardens. Still, that is one hell of a rose.”

Next, she passed judgment on the note. All it said was: Should we happen to meet again.

“Way cool. Way, way, cool.”

Finally, the third item, which she picked up and admired. “And this is just fucking perfect. Wonder where he got it?”

Noelle peered at the thing, not sure whether she should smile or frown or…what.

“By now, I’d imagine those could be found in lots of places in Europe. Certainly Vienna.”

“Still. He even got the right caliber. And .32 caliber rounds are scarcer than you think. Most people want a heftier handgun.”

Denise folded her hands on the table. “So. No point packing yet, of course, since we’ll probably be at war again in a few months. Still, it’s never too early to start putting together some nice luggage.”

Noelle scowled at her. “I can’t for the life of me remember why I asked you to come here and give me your opinion.”

“’Cause it’s the wisest opinion you can get. I got the advantage of the perspective of my years.”

“All sixteen of them!”

“And barely sixteen at that,” agreed Denise. “Exactly my point. When you figure what we got here are two people from about as two different places as you can imagine—we’re talking centuries, girl, not just piddly geography—then what you got amounts to a couple of teenagers. D’you wonder why they call it ‘sweet sixteen’?”

Noelle tried to remember how she’d looked at the world at the age of sixteen. “Well. No.”

Denise smiled jeeringly, as only she could. “Never knew, I bet. Being a pious Catholic girl instead of a biker’s kid. The reason’s simple. It’s because by the time you reach sixteen—at least, if you aren’t dumb as a rock, which I’m not—you’ve figured out the basics and you’re pretty much free and clear.”

Her forefinger pointed to the rose. “That means he’s got the hots, simple as that—but nicely expressed. Not a spot of drool on it.”

The finger moved to the note: “That, the invitation. No, call it the ball’s now in your court. Very classy guy. Understands that you play a game with somebody, not against them. Won’t never be no backseat groping with this cool dude. Not ever.”

She plucked the cartridge from the table and stood it upright, then planted her forefinger on the tip. “And just to make sure you understand, that’s your insurance policy.”

“Oh, nonsense!” exclaimed Noelle. “I didn’t even try to hit him when I had the chance.”

“Remedial Romance class, come to order. He knows that, you dummy. But he also knows you could have.” She squinted at Noelle. “Well. Could have tried, anyway. The point is, he knew you had a choice.”

With a little clipping motion, the forefinger knocked over the cartridge and sent it rolling over to the rose, where it nestled against the stem. “So the reason the cartridge came with it is so you’d know he knows you still have a choice. Like I said. Very classy guy. Best opening moves I ever seen in my life.”

“All of sixteen years,” Noelle tried again. Even to her, it sounded feeble.

Denise looked serious, for a change. “The last three of which—no, closer to four—have been a very concentrated educational experience. I’ve been good-looking since I was twelve, and every kid in school knew my dad was a biker. Sure, he scared ’em some, but they’d also heard all the rumors about biker chicks. You figure it out. I had to learn real quick and learn my lessons well.”

Noelle looked from the rose to the note to the cartridge. Then back again.

The truth was, the girl’s opinion did look shrewd.

“So what do you think I should do?” A bit crossly. “Now, I mean. Not in the maybe-never time after the maybe-war.”

Denise got up and grabbed the tote bag she used instead of a purse. The one with the severed serpent and the Don’t Tread On Me logo that Noelle would have assumed she’d picked up at a patriotic souvenir shop before the Ring of Fire except for what was on the other side. A dragon eating a knight, with the logo I Love Hard Metal.

“Come on. We’re hitting the malls.”

Noelle got her purse. “There aren’t any malls in Grantville.”

“That’s the first thing. You gotta stretch your poetic license.”

* * *

Noelle flatly refused to buy the specific item Denise recommended. No way in God’s green earth was she going to send that book to Janos Drugeth. But she did allow that the general category was suitable. Even if the postage would be a little steep.

And she decided the girl’s final advice was probably good, too.

“Of course you put on a return address.” Denise slapped her forehead. “Jeez, Louise. You don’t know anything. He didn’t, because he was serving. Ball might have gone out of bounds, so he left you a graceful way to just pretend you didn’t know where it came from.”

She started more-or-less dragging Noelle toward the postal service. “But you decided to hit it back. So now we got a volley going. Can’t do that without return addresses. Face it, girl. The game is afoot!”

Vienna, Austria

February 1635

“Oh, splendid,” said Ferdinand, positively beaming. He turned another page of the beautifully bound volume. “I’ve always been very fond of Father Drexel’s writings, myself. So is my sister, Maria Anna.”

So was Janos himself, for that matter. But he was still puzzled by the gift.

Seeing the slight frown on his face, the emperor clucked his tongue. “Amazing, really. You’re so shrewd on the fields of politics and battle.”

He held up the book. “First, it reminds you of your piety. Whatever else, you are both devout Catholics. The most solid foundation there is, no?”

Well, that was certainly true.

The emperor turned the book, so Janos could see the title. “But there’s the woman’s subtle touch. I will even say, her wisdom. The School of Patience. Which you both will surely need.”

Janos nodded. “Yes, now I see. The war, most likely. Then, even afterward, a difficult political situation.”

Ferdinand set the book down on the table next to his chair and threw up his hands. “I have allowed a dolt into my chambers! No, Janos. You will need patience for a lifetime.” He slapped the book. “And that offer, my friend, that is the gift.”

“Oh.” After a moment, finally understanding, he smiled. “It’s going well, then?”

Ferdinand was actually rubbing his hands. “Yes, indeed. Happy Austria. Again.”

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