The Tangled Web(118)

Jeffie looked at Andrea. "What Harlan says is right. But the real question you're asking, I think, is, what about us—the NUS Army guys who were already in Franconia and Fulda when they made the switchover? Mike's off being prime minister. I know that the military administrators have discussed it with each other—Scott Blackwell in Würzburg and Cliff Priest in Bamberg and Derek. As best they can figure, we're not subordinate to Kagg. At least, Kagg doesn't think so, and the way Anse Hatfield handled the mess in Suhl made that pretty clear."

Joel interrupted him. "Like I said, nobody's had time to formalize anything, but we think we're probably equivalent to a SoTF National Guard now—thinking in up-time terms—and we answer to Ed Piazza, who's the president. He'd be the governor if we were a state up-time, so . . . He's appointed Lane Grooms to command the SoTF forces formally, but Grooms is a nearly hundred percent administrative type and none of us ever knew him very well. He's sitting in Grantville, shuffling paper. Derek figures that he and Cliff Priest answer to Scott Blackwell. Scott can worry about Grooms. Who's above Grooms? Right now, just Ed Piazza, I guess. But like Harlan said, nothing's ever simple."

"Short form, though," Jeffie said. "If Scott doesn't veto it and Brahe goes along—yeah, I think Derek can just decide to do it. Somebody may yell at him afterwards if it doesn't work, but that would happen even if they approved everything first."

Mainz, October 1634

"You can see my point," Derek Utt said to Brahe. "You know more—a lot more—about what is going on along the Rhine than Lane Grooms does back home in Grantville or even Scott Blackwell in Würzburg, not to mention that Scott and Steve Salatto are still mopping up remnants of Franconian imperial knights who opposed the Ram Rebellion and negotiating with Ableidinger and his supporters to stabilize the position of the Ram party in Franconian government. Nobody doubts that Ableidinger will be elected to the USE parliament from Franconia in the next election . . ."

Derek stopped and thought. His list of practical reasons for talking to Brahe at this much length went on for a page and a half. Really though . . . given the flair, élan, and dash that Brahe brought to grabbing what was now the USE's new Province of the Upper Rhine the previous May, it just seemed to him that Nils would be more sympathetic to the project than either Grooms or Blackwell. Partly—well, he wanted Nils to work with him on this because they had come to like each other. Brahe was the best friend he had made among the down-timers.

"I feel like I have to do something. It's not just that all of us somehow feel that we let Schweinsberg down. We do, though. He had put his eggs in our basket and we didn't manage to keep them from spilling out. One of our allies died in a torture chamber at the behest of Maximilian of Bavaria's brother. I suspect it's one of the reasons that Wes Jenkins asked for his transfer back to Grantville. He feels like he was responsible and he didn't measure up. None of the other up-timers in Fulda is happy about it. The soldiers in the Fulda Barracks regiment are extremely unhappy about it, even if they did perform well in locating all the rest of our people that the Irishmen picked up and getting them back home—well, back to Fulda. Plus, it's been a PR nightmare in the papers, not so much here on the Rhine, but home in Grantville. It seems like every blowhard in town wants to send out a posse."

His mind came back from its musing to hear Brahe saying that he thought it was a good idea to try to strike at the kidnappers, but . . . "Finding—simply locating—Butler and the other Irishmen will only be the start of it. In the nature of things, cavalry is mobile."

"Oh, I know. Like Grandma used to say, 'First, catch your hare.' Before that, though, we have to catch sight of him."



Nils Brahe kissed his wife as soon as she stepped off the gangplank of the barge, laughed at her wrinkled nose, and said, "Docks don't smell any better in the Germanies than they do in Finland, or in Sweden, for that matter."

Anna Margareta Bielke kissed him back. "I've smelled worse. At least it's chilly here in Mainz. The awful odor is a lot more awful in mid-summer, I'm sure." She had arrived at the very end of the decent traveling season. She brought the children to see him. She brought his sister Kerstin for . . . other reasons.

That evening, after supper and in bed—the only place they had a modicum of privacy, at least once they drew the hangings—she shook her head. One of the purposes of the trip was to find a husband for her sister-in-law, but she was not enthusiastic about Nils's idea of trying to match Kerstin with Hand.

"Erik Haakansson is in the Oberpfalz; so he is not a convenient option for a match. He is not here to be persuaded. I do not believe that we can get him to agree to it at a distance. Just like most of his brothers, he is a very elusive bachelor."