The Eastern Front(79)

"He's probably dead," agreed Georg. "But we need to be sure. If he is . . ." The leader of the Vogtland rebels made as much of a shrugging motion as a man can manage while lying down. "We've got no personal quarrel with the Slovenes, and I'd just as soon avoid unneeded casualties. If they leave, we'll let them go."

Kuefer grunted softly. That seemed reasonable. That was probably Captain Lovrenc Bravnicar's company down there. Wilhelm thought he'd recognized him. If so, just as Georg had said, they had no great quarrel with him or his. The Slovenes had refrained from committing the sort of atrocities that Holk's men were guilty of.

"What about the infantry?"

Kresse's expression hardened. "That's a different story. Not one of those pigs leaves these mountains alive."

That also seemed reasonable.



Bravnicar found the elector soon enough. Most of him, anyway. It took a while longer to find the missing leg, and he never did find the missing hand. Given the incredible force of the explosion, such a small item might well have been blown out of the gorge altogether.

The elector's wife had been scattered more widely, but Lovrenc didn't try to find all the pieces. There was no doubt about her identity. She'd been the only woman in the group and her face was almost unblemished, allowing for the oddly flat shape. It had been blown completely off her head and was plastered onto the hindquarters of a dead horse.

Oddly enough—explosions could be freakish—their sixteen-year-old son Moritz was almost untouched. Only one projectile seemed to have struck him. Unfortunately, that one had come in through one temple and out the other, passing under the helmet.

He heard a volley of gunfire coming from the northern end of the little gorge, followed by more scattered shots. Then, the blast of a cannon. A five-pound saker loaded with canister, by the sound of it.

Lovrenc had dismounted to examine the bodies. Now, he ran toward the noise in a crouch, leaving his steed behind. The stallion was a well-trained warhorse and wouldn't run off unless he was directly attacked.

As he neared the end of the defile, Lovrenc moved more slowly. After half a minute or so, he was able to peek his head around a boulder and see what was happening.

His infantry force—what was left of it; there were at least twenty bodies scattered not far from the gorge entrance—was in full retreat. Rout, rather. No, even "rout" didn't do justice to it. They were racing off like so many mice, discarding their weapons and even their armor as they ran.

Thereby displaying the intelligence of rodents, as well. Disarmed and scattered, in these mountains, they'd never survive the pursuit that Kresse's men were sure to set underway.

Had already set underway, rather. The sounds of gunfire were continuing. Those were all rifles, too. Hunters' weapons.

There was nothing Bravnicar could do about it. All that was left now was to get his Slovenes out of the disaster, if possible.

He had no great hopes.



As soon as Georg Kresse saw the cavalry officer trotting out of the gorge, he stood up and cupped his hands around his mouth.

"Hey there!" he shouted. First in German, then in Slovene. His knowledge of that language was limited, but Kresse knew some words in several of the Balkan tongues. Then, for good measure, he shouted the words again in Czech. He was almost as fluent in that language as he was in his native German.

The Slovene officer had stopped his horse and was staring up at Georg. He'd drawn a wheel-lock pistol from a saddle holster and had it at the ready, but he wasn't pointing it up the slope. At this range, he didn't have much chance of hitting Kresse anyway and they both knew it.

"Parlay!" shouted Georg, in German and Czech. He didn't know the word in Slovene, so he used the term for talk instead. Probably not in a grammatically correct manner—he could be saying "talking!" or "to talk!" instead of "let's talk!"—but he figured the enemy officer would get the point.

After a moment, the officer nodded. He put the pistol back in its holster and then shouted something to the cavalrymen under his command. They were now positioned some fifty yards down the trail and had dismounted and taken up defensive positions. They'd done that fairly well, for cavalrymen.

Not that it would do them much good if fighting resumed. Georg had no doubt at all that he'd win any battle here. But these Slovenes were tough enough and good enough that he'd lose at least half a dozen men and have twice as many wounded. Some of those would die later.

He saw no point to it. The Slovene officer's behavior made it obvious that he'd found the elector—his body, rather—and had no further duties here. With John George dead, Kresse wanted to intervene as soon as possible and as effectively as he could in the political situation that would already be unfolding in Dresden. By now, the CoC contingent should have arrived in the city and become active. They'd grow very quickly, too. The Saxon capital already had a large number of people who considered themselves members or sympathizers of the CoCs. They hadn't had much organizational experience, but the newly arrived cadre from Magdeburg would take care of that soon enough.