The Eastern Front(123)

Mike glanced around the room he was in now, the main room of what had probably been Zbąszyń's premier tavern. Or possibly its only tavern.

The floor didn't bear thinking about. The sewers of the town . . . didn't exist. There was a well here, but Mike thought he'd have to be really desperate before he drank any of that water without boiling it first.

Berlin. Yes.



Torstensson agreed, when Mike reached him on the radio. So, an hour later, did the chancellor of Sweden, Axel Oxenstierna. He was already in Berlin himself, as it happened, attending to the creation of an interim imperial administration for Brandenburg.

"And you must come to Berlin yourself, General Stearns," said Oxenstierna. "It is imperative that we have a council of our army commanders."

Legally, Oxenstierna was out of bounds. He was Sweden's chancellor, not the USE's, and had no formal authority over Mike. But the proposal—he'd see it as a command, but that was his problem—was sensible enough. Besides, Mike didn't have any doubt that if he got on his high horse about the matter, Oxenstierna would just get hold of Wettin and have the prime minister give him the order instead. Which would be an order he did have to obey.



He found Jeff Higgins in the little room in an abandoned house where they'd put the body of Anders Jönsson. Come to pay his last respects, obviously.

Mike wasn't surprised. He'd come for the same reason.

It was a little over three years since the great Croat cavalry raid on Grantville had been driven off. The main target of the raid had been the town's high school.

Jeff had been there, that day. So had Mike's wife Rebecca.

The only reason they were still alive was because of this man here, and the nearby king he'd served who was now very close to death himself. The two of them had led the charge that turned the tide in that battle. With his own sword, Gustav Adolf had struck down the Croat who'd been about to kill Jeff.

"I have to remind myself, sometimes," Mike said softly. "Whenever Gustav Adolf really pisses me off. The world is just sometimes a gray place, and that's all there is to it."





Part Six



November 1635



Green to the very door





Chapter 40


Dresden, capital of Saxony

Eddie crashed the plane.

The soil of the jury-rigged airfield outside of Dresden turned out to be soggier than Noelle or Denise had led him to believe. They'd underestimated the potential problem with landing on such doubtful ground. In Noelle's case, because she was too anxious to get back to Magdeburg; in Denise's, because she was looking forward to seeing Eddie and was by nature given to overconfidence.

Insouciance, too. The girl could have taken the motto of Mad magazine's Alfred E. Newman for her own: "What, me worry?"

The front landing gear dug in, the tail came up, the nose buried itself into the ground—so much for the propeller—and slowly, almost gracefully, the plane flipped over onto its back.

When the little crowd on the airfield reached the plane, they found Eddie and Gretchen Richter hanging upside down in the cabin, still held in their seats by their harnesses. Neither was hurt at all. A bit shaken, but otherwise in excellent condition.

Not so the aircraft itself, of course.



Eddie's first words upon emerging were recriminatory in nature. Unusually, for him, he was in a high temper.

"You told me the airfield was in good shape!"

Noelle, with the wisdom of her advanced years of life—she'd just celebrated her twenty-sixth birthday—was profusely apologetic. Denise, sadly, was still in her teenage years and thus ill-equipped for the task. Her own temperament didn't help, either.

So, she started with the sort of mumbled, oatmealish, altogether unsatisfactory sort of phrases like "well" and "hey, look" that wouldn't mollify a saint. Then, under a continued barrage of heated comments from Eddie, retreated into her natural belligerence.

"Hey, buddy, maybe you just fucked up the landing. Ever think of that, huh?"

Peace was not restored for some minutes. Not until Minnie Hugelmair forced Denise to utter the needed words: "Okay, it was my fault. I'm sorry."

Minnie didn't actually believe that herself. She thought the accident probably had been Eddie's fault. The soil wasn't that muddy. But unlike Denise, she understood that when the male mind was in formal and court-dress High Dudgeon there was nothing for it but that the woman had to take the blame or nobody would get anything to eat that day. Not in peace, anyway.



Gretchen Richter's comments, upon exiting the upended aircraft, were more philosophical in nature.

"That is the first time I have ever flown in an airplane. I believe it will be the last."



Eventually, amity was restored. A workable semblance of it, at least.