The Saxon Uprising(108)

Noelle shrugged. “And my marksmanship is a moot point. If I have to use the guns—all three of them, and don’t think I won’t be blasting away like a maniac—it’ll be at point blank range anyway.” She looked around, squinting in the dim light. “I figure I’ll make Stull’s Last Stand down here, not upstairs. Less chance they could take me alive—and, either way, there’d be enough gore and stuff that they won’t stick around down here afterward to look for anybody else.”

Denise’s eyes were wide. So was Minnie’s one good eye.

Noelle shook her head. “I am not going to argue about this,” she repeated. “Give. Me. Your. Guns. Now.”

In the end, they settled on a compromise. Denise and Minnie would keep the guns until and unless it became clear that the walls had been breached, the city was being sacked, and all was lost. Then—only then—would the girls do as they were told.

As compromises went, Noelle figured it wasn’t a bad one. Given those two.

Then, they went back upstairs. Minnie and Denise settled down for a card game in the kitchen. Noelle went upstairs to watch the street from a window.

“She’s pretty cool,” observed Denise, as she dealt out the first hand.

“We already knew that,” said Minnie. “But it’s nice to see these things confirmed.”

Jozef Wojtowicz tried to cheer himself up. At least they wouldn’t be hauling any rocks for a while.

And there was this, too—he was learning how to use one of these fascinating volley guns in actual combat, always the best way to really become familiar with a weapon.

The design was quite interesting. Ingenious, even. Lt. Krenz had told him it was modeled on an ancient up-time weapon called the Billinghurst-Requa battery gun. “Ancient,” of course, as up-timers reckoned these things. Apparently the Americans had had a civil war of their own, back in the dawn of time, and the gun had first seen action then.

Best of all, it was a design that was well within the capability of Poland’s artisans to make. The only tricky part of the design was the percussion cap, from what Jozef could see. But you didn’t need that anyway—all of the volley guns in his bastion were being fired by simple powder trains. Percussion caps would certainly improve the rate of fire, but Jozef thought it would be possible to buy them from the French. The things weren’t bulky, so shipping wouldn’t be a big problem.

Still, it was an awkward situation. If Jozef’s history ever got exposed, how was he going to explain to Polish hussars that his only real combat experience had been fighting on behalf of the USE? His friends wouldn’t care, of course, and Grand Hetman Koniecpolski was a man of broad and wide experience, who’d take the thing in stride.

Alas, the average hussar was about as broad-minded as a rooster. Jozef would never live it down. The ridicule would follow him into the grave. Which might be an early one, if any of the hussars took it in mind to be outraged and offended.

Alas, the average hussar got outraged and offended about as readily as a rooster too.

Maybe he could argue that since he’d actually been fighting on the side of the rebels in the affair—

But that wouldn’t do him any good if the rebels won the civil war, in which case they would become the USE themselves and he was right back in the soup, as far as hussars were concerned. Yet if the rebels lost the civil war—starting right here in Dresden, this being the only place there was any serious fighting—then hussars would be the least of Jozef’s problems. Outraged and offended Swedish mercenaries would have done for him already.

Outraged and offended, indeed. They were suffering horrible casualties out there on the ice. The volley guns really were quite murderous.

When Ernst reached the command center, he found Tata there, along with Joachim Kappel. But Gretchen was gone.

“She’s out walking the lines,” Tata explained.

The responsibility of command. Wettin would have been doing the same, had he still been in charge. So would the best kings and queens, down through the years.

It was not always enough, to be sure. Constantine XI had personally led his troops in the final battle against the Turks in the siege of Constantinople in 1453, but they’d taken the city despite him. He’d vanished in the fighting, presumably killed, his body tossed with those of others into a mass grave.

The same might happen to Gretchen Richter, this very night.

But it might not, also—and by personally visiting the soldiers on the ramparts, she improved the odds in favor of the defenders. Quite a bit, probably. The sort of close quarter combat involved in repelling assaults during a siege required a great deal of raw courage and confidence. Richter exuded those traits. They emanated from her, almost as if they took real and physical shape.