The clumping noises were on the heavy side, too, for a woman as short as she had to be judging from the pace of the footsteps. Hope flared brighter still. Just the sort of sounds that might be made by a shortish woman who was mistaken for being stout at a distance but whose heft was in fact not evenly spread at all.
Then, she appeared in the doorway. Indeed, it was the vision. In the bright light of the room, with its open windows letting in the sun, Krenz could see much more of her than he'd been able to in the dark cavern in the castle.
She was quite pretty, in a modest sort of way. No Venus here, just an attractive young farm girl or—Eric raised his head to study her shoes—no, town girl. Maybe a butcher's daughter. Fox-colored hair—very rich, too—dark blue eyes. Perfect in every way.
"I'm Eric Krenz," he announced. "From right here in Saxony. Not Dresden, though. Leipzig."
She greeted that information much the way a milkmaid greets the sight of flies in a barn. Takes brief note of the pests; dismisses them as an unavoidable but minor nuisance.
Eric recognized the symptoms immediately. Mentally, he struck a line through his original guess that she was a butcher's daughter.
"Your father owns a tavern, doesn't he?"
For the first time, the girl showed some interest in him that transcended "recognition of pest." After a couple of seconds, she said: "How did you know?"
Her voice was marvelous. Just the way Eric remembered it from the castle, except without the angry shouting overtones that went along with putting a harridan-nurse flat on her ass.
An honest answer would be unwise. I know from the long experience of getting clouted by barmaids annoyed at my advances.
But an outright lie would be equally unwise, assuming this infatuation had a future. I know because my own father owns a tavern was the sort of claim that could easily be shredded by a tavern-keeper's daughter.
So, he opted for mysterious silence.
The girl sniffed. "Got boxed on the ears enough times, did you?"
She took two steps into the bedroom, and planted her hands on her hips. Very ample hips, Eric was pleased to note.
"My name is Tata and I'm giving you fair warning. I have a short way with irritating men. Give me any trouble and I'll beat you black and blue."
Eric's hand clutched at his chest. "Oh! I adore domineering women!"
Chapter 24
The Vogtland
In the end, all of Captain Lovrenc Bravnicar's efforts to protect the elector of Saxony proved to be pointless. A massive explosion erupted just as John George and his wife and son passed through a narrow defile in the mountains.
The sound was almost deafening. Bravnicar, riding at the front of the column, twisted around in his saddle. The little gorge was filled with gunsmoke. He could hear the sounds of shrieking men and horses. Several riderless horses were already racing away from the disaster. He could see two bodies—presumably their former riders—lying still on the ground. Another horse was dragging a cavalryman whose boot had gotten stuck in a stirrup. His head smashed against a rock and he lost his helmet. Blood spilled out to cover his face.
Lovrenc thought the man was already unconscious. He hoped so. There was no way he was going to survive, the way his horse was dragging him down the rock-strewn incline. You couldn't even call this a road. It was simply a trail created by men and animals passing through the mountains for centuries.
"Gott mit uns," he whispered. Slovenia was now a Catholic land, but Bravnicar's family were Protestants who'd been driven out at the turn of the century.
Men were starting to stumble out of the smoky gorge. All of them were cavalrymen. The infantry marching behind must have been spared. One of the cavalrymen seemed to have a broken arm, and another's leg was bloody. A third just seemed dazed.
Bravnicar drew his sword and swept it in a half-circle. "Stand guard! We're under attack!"
Immediately, his Slovene veterans began forming a perimeter, drawing out their wheel-lock pistols. For his part, Lovrenc trotted his horse toward the defile. The smoke was beginning to clear away.
On the wooded slopes above, lying hidden on their stomachs, Georg Kresse and Wilhelm Kuefer studied the scene.
"What do you want to do about the Slovenes?" asked Kuefer softly.
"I don't know yet. It depends on whether the elector survived or not."
"Survived that? I don't think so." Wilhelm had overseen the laying of the charges himself. They had many former miners in their ranks, who'd done an excellent job of drilling the holes that held the powder. Once they'd covered everything up, the huge mines had been all but invisible, even though each charge had at least ten pounds of iron scrap lying on top to serve as shrapnel.
Wilhelm Kuefer had never heard the term "Claymore mine." But what he had created in that tight and narrow gorge was a line of them on either side. The shrapnel those blasts sent flying would not cover every square inch of the ground, but they would probably cover every square foot. Wilhelm didn't think a rabbit could have survived, not even an armored one.