"You're sure of that?" Tata asked sharply. For a pretty young woman on the short and plump side, she had a surprisingly ferocious manner when she was in the mood. The young farmboy she was interrogating flinched a little, even though he really had nothing to fear.
Anna Piesel assumed that was the result of the other woman's CoC training. In point of fact, it was the product of Tata's upbringing as a tavern-keeper's daughter. She'd been pretty since she was thirteen, short all her life, and had the sort of plumpness that went with very well-filled bodices. By the time she was fifteen, she'd learned how to intimidate just about any male. Certainly young ones.
"Yes, I'm sure," he insisted. He turned and pointed to the southwest. "We saw him. You can't miss that great big carriage he fancies."
Tata and Anna turned to follow the finger. Of course, they couldn't really see anything because of the crowded houses. But Anna had no difficulty picturing the landscape beyond Dresden.
"He must be headed for Bavaria," she said.
Tata frowned. "Poland's a lot closer. The terrain's easier too, I think."
"Yes, it is. A lot easier. To get into Bavaria he's got to pass through the Vogtland, the Erzgebirge and the Bohemian Forest." Now Anna frowned. "Stupid to try to do that in a carriage, though."
"He could always swap the carriage for horses when need be. But why would he go that way at all? Why not head for Poland? King Wladyslaw would certainly give him sanctuary. Duke Maximilian probably would too, but who knows what that crazy Bavarian might do?"
They both turned to stare at the farm boy. Who, for his part, looked about as unhappy as a sixteen-year-old boy possibly could when he was the subject of close scrutiny by two good-looking young women.
"I don't know," he said, almost whining. "How am I supposed to know what an elector thinks?"
Tata and Anna now looked at each other. The boy's point was reasonable enough, after all.
"Maybe something's stopping him," ventured Anna. "I don't know. Whatever. Maybe they sent out cavalry patrols."
Tata decided she was probably right. She turned back to the farmboy.
"You're sure that's the way he went?" Seeing the hapless expression on his face, she waved her hand. "Never mind. We'll take your word for it."
She looked around. Spotting the towers of the elector's palace not too far distant, she pointed to them. "Up there."
Anna looked doubtful. "How . . . ?"
Tata started striding in that direction. "There'll be a way," she said, with the self-confidence of a tavern-keeper's daughter assuring a patron that if he didn't concentrate on his drinking instead of her rump he would soon be in an ocean of misery.
So it proved. The guards from the city militia who had appointed themselves to maintain order and prevent looting were no match for Tata's will. She got through them in less than a minute—in fact, she even got three of them to serve her and Anna for guides.
"I need the highest place in the palace." She dug into her pack and brought forth a short wave radio transmitter. "We sent one of these to Georg Kresse a while ago. He should have it by now. But I don't know how good the reception will be in those mountains."
The militiamen were suitably impressed by the up-time device. Without argument, they led the two women to the tallest tower in the Residenzschloss.
Tata had to consult her notebook to get the Morse code right. She was too much of a novice to have more than a few letters memorized. But the message wasn't all that long anyway.
ELECTOR COMING. STOP. LEFT DRESDEN LAST NIGHT. STOP. MUST BE HEADED FOR BAVARIA. STOP. IN CARRIAGE WHEN HE LEFT. STOP.
The reception in the Vogtland was quite good, as it happened. But it still took Wilhelm Kuefer a lot longer to translate the message than it had taken Tata to send it. His knowledge of Morse was completely theoretical, to begin with. And secondly, he didn't have Tata's general familiarity with up-timers and their peculiar gadgetry.
But, eventually, he got it translated. No sooner had he finished than he said: "He'll have to swap out the carriage for horses. No way he can get to Bavaria unless he does."
Kresse's smile was as cold as a Vogtland winter. "We'll spot any party that size as soon as it enters our territory. After that, it won't matter what transportation he's gotten his hands on. Anything will get you into hell."
Chapter 20
Osijek, the Balkans
"And you're quite certain?" Janos Drugeth asked.
"Oh, yes," replied Doctor Grassi. "There's simply no way to hide that massive a mobilization. And once something like that gets started, as you know, it's almost impossible to stop it."
Drugeth nodded. There was a dynamic power to these things that made them effectively inevitable once a certain point was passed. Could even Zeus have stopped the fleets of Greece once they'd crossed half the Aegean on their way to Troy? And compared to the Ottoman emperor Murad, Agamemnon had been a paragon of prudence and deliberation.