The Saxon Uprising(127)
He took a pull from his own stein. “Gunther’s right. It’s over.”
There was silence again, for a moment.
“Well, fuck,” said the militia commander. But his tone was one of resignation now, not anger.
Augsburg, one of the USE’s seven independent imperial cities
As ever, the commander of Augsburg’s militia had a very different viewpoint from his counterpart in Darmstadt.
“The rest of you can do as you like,” he said to the city council. His gaze swept around the table, his lip curled in a sneer.
“I’m going out there to join the parade.” He pointed toward a window. The sounds of the celebration outside came right through, closed or not.
Prince of Germany! Prince of Germany!
“And I’m taking the whole militia with me. Me and my boys are sick of the damn Swedes.”
And off he went.
After a while, one of the council members stood up.
“I’m sick of them too, now that I think about it.”
And off he went.
After a while longer, Jeremias Jacob Stenglin rose from his own chair. “Come on, fellows.” The head of the city council headed for the door. “The way people have their tempers up, if we don’t show we’ll never get elected to anything again. Under any kind of franchise.”
A tavern in Melsungen, in the province of Hesse-Kassel
“Here’s to the health of our landgravine!” shouted one of the revelers, holding up his stein of beer. “Long may she reign!”
The tavern was full, as it often was on a winter’s eve. Not a single stein failed to come up to join the toast.
Another reveler stood up, hoisting his stein. “And here’s to the Prince of Germany! May he whip that Swede like a cur!”
Not a single stein failed to come up to join that toast either. Or the seven that followed it, each succeeding one wishing a worse fate still upon Johan Banér. By the eighth toast, the revelers had him flayed, drawn, quartered, fed to hogs—and the hogs were dying of poison.
A tavern on the coast of the Pomeranian Bay
The fisherman sat down at the table in the corner where his shipmates were waiting. “Believe it or not, there’s someone who admits to voting against the Prince.”
The fisherman’s two companions gave him a skeptical look. “Who?” asked one, as he lifted his stein. “Josias, the village idiot?”
The fisherman who’d made the claim shook his head. “No. It’s old Margarete, the baker’s widow.”
His two companions frowned.
“The Prince shouldn’t have let women have the vote,” said one.
The other nodded. “Yah. I almost didn’t vote for him myself, because of that.”
Leipzig
General Hans Georg von Arnim read through the message again. That was just to give himself time to think, not because he had any trouble understanding it. Chancellor Oxenstierna had been brief, blunt, very clear—and quite obviously irate.
“I thought the radio was broken,” he said.
The adjutant who’d brought him the message from Berlin shook his head. “No, sir. It’s working properly.”
“I thought the radio was broken,” von Arnim repeated.
The general’s adjutants were not chosen for being stupid. It didn’t take Captain Pfaff more than three seconds before the head-shake became a nod.
“Why, yes, it is, General. The operator tells me it’ll take days to fix.”
“At least a week, I think.”
“Yes, a week.”
“See to it, Captain.”
After Pfaff left, von Arnim moved to the fireplace. His servants had a big fire going, which was quite pleasant on such a cold day.
It made a handy incinerator, too. The message was gone in seconds.
Oxenstierna would have sent a courier, of course. No one except up-timers—and not all that many of them—relied entirely on the new radios. But it would take a courier days to make it here from Berlin, this time of year. The recent storm had left the roads filled with snow. Such as they were, in benighted Brandenburg.
Von Arnim would have no choice but to acknowledge receipt of that message. Still, mobilizing ten thousand men was not a quick process, especially in February. By the time he could get his army onto the field to join Banér’s, anything might have happened.
Banér could be dead. Stearns could be dead. Both could be dead. The chancellor could be dead. The emperor could have regained his wits.
A horse might even have learned to sing.
Paris, capital of France
After he finished reading the copies of the intercepted radio messages that Servien had given him, Cardinal Richelieu rose from his desk and went over to one of the window in his palace.
“A real pity,” said Servien, echoing the sentiment he’d expressed a month earlier.