The Eastern Front(31)

On the other hand . . .

There would be no way to move forward in Saxony in opposition to Kresse and his people, either. Nor would it be correct to do so. Whatever their flaws and limitations, their unyielding struggle against dynasticism and aristocratic rule deserved respect.

Anna Piesel had been scrutinizing her since Gretchen entered the room. She'd barely glanced at Tata. Now she spoke abruptly.

"So, what's your answer? Will you come to Dresden?"

As they'd prearranged, Spartacus answered that question.

"She can't, Anna. From everything we've been able to determine, Wilhelm Wettin is planning to force a drastic reactionary program onto the USE. When that happens, there'll be an explosion—and it'll be centered here in Magdeburg. There's simply no way we could allow such a central leader as Gretchen to leave the capital right now."

Piesel got a pinched look on her face, her eyes narrow. Now Gretchen spoke, gesturing with her hand toward Tata.

"But here's what we can do. We'll send a team of organizers into Dresden with Tata here in charge."

Piesel shifted her narrow gaze to Tata. "And who's she?"

Tata looked uncomfortable. Spartacus's eyes widened and his lips tightened, as if distressed that anyone could be so ignorant but too polite to say so.

Gunther Achterhof just chuckled. "We figure if she can persuade a duke to turn over an entire duchy, she can handle the aftermath of the elector's defeat well enough."

Piesel's eyes got wide also. Obviously, although the name hadn't registered, she'd heard the story.

"Oh," she said, after a couple of seconds. Then she gave Tata a shy smile. "Well. I guess that would be okay."



After Piesel left, Tata turned to Gretchen. "This is crazy. I don't have enough experience. And that story's silly and you know it."

Achterhof waved his hand. "Stop worrying, girl. We really are sending a team of good organizers, headed by Joachim Kappel. You'll do fine. Just listen to Joachim."

"Why don't you put him in charge, then?"

"Nobody except us has ever heard of him," said Spartacus. "You're famous."

"It's a silly story," she insisted.

Gunther shrugged. "Most stories are. But people still like to listen to them."





Chapter 10


Northeast of Halle, not far from the Saxon border

The countryside between Magdeburg and Saxony reminded Mike Stearns of the American Midwest, except for the absence of corn and soybeans. The crops being grown were different, but the terrain was much the same—flat, and consisting mostly of open farmland but with quite a few wooded areas scattered about. None of the woods could really be called forests, though.

There was one other big difference from the Midwest, but that was not peculiar to this area. It was a common feature throughout central Europe, and Mike suspected you'd find it in most other places in Europe. Unlike the twentieth-century American farm countryside he'd known, with its many scattered individual farmhouses, central European farmers in the seventeenth century all lived in small towns and villages. The farmland itself was largely barren of inhabitants, except during the day when people were working in the fields. By and large, the collective methods and village traditions of the middle ages still applied to farm labor in the German countryside.

To the farmers themselves, at any rate, if not necessarily the aristocracy. Seventeenth-century Germany was no longer in any real sense of the term a feudal society. Labor relations might have resisted change, but the same was not true of property relations. In the year 1635, a landlord was just as likely to be a burgher or a well-off farmer as a nobleman—and still more likely to be an institution of some kind rather than a person: a corporation, a city council, a trust, whatever. Still, farmers lived in villages, not in separated and isolated farmhouses; and still, in many ways, worked the land in common.

His musings were interrupted by one of his staff officers, Colonel Christopher Long, who came riding up bearing some new dispatches.

"Anything important?" he asked.

The young colonel shook his head. "Nothing that can't wait until we make camp this evening."

The English officer was a professional soldier who'd come to Magdeburg to join the USE army—not the Swedish forces directly under Gustav Adolf, as did most mercenaries from the British Isles. The reason, Mike had discovered from a conversation a few days earlier, was that Long had been in Spanish service when the Spaniards invading Thuringia had been defeated by the Americans near Eisenach.

In fact, the Englishman was one of the survivors of the destruction of the Wartburg. His depiction of the nightmare of trying to escape the castle as it was being consumed by napalm bombs was horrific, for all that he recounted the tale in a matter-of-fact manner. He'd come away from the experience convinced that the trade of war was about to undergo a drastic transformation—and thus had placed himself at the service of those who seemed to be the principal agents of that change.