The Tangled Web(136)

"Merckweiler has a lot more defenses than Wietze did." Geraldin twirled his dagger. He had become attached to it. In that other world, without the Ring of Fire, he would have used it to stab Wallenstein. "I'd feel a lot more comfortable if we had better information."

"Of course they do." Butler scowled with disgust. "The USE was complacent at Wietze. Over here, they aren't worrying about us, specifically, in regard to the Pechelbronn oil fields, but they're damned well worrying about Bernhard. Worrying about the French. Worrying about whether Duke Charles of Lorraine will do something stupid. Worrying and doing something about it."

Geraldin stuck the point of the dagger into the table. "Brahe left two regiments behind when he took the Province of the Upper Rhine last year. They've had time to build some decent fortifications."

"They shouldn't have any up-time weapons, though. I haven't even caught rumors of up-time supplies coming across the Palatinate to them."

"Where and how would we hear rumors? No one can understand a word that the local people say. What a godforsaken dialect." Dennis MacDonald helped himself liberally to their hostess's wine. "Not even our guide can understand the peasants."

"Two regiments are what Brahe left. How many men will still be in the garrison after winter quarters? I haven't heard that they've sent any reinforcements across, either." Geraldin pulled the dagger out again. "If he's lost as many men as we have . . ."

"The regiments were at full strength when he left them. Infantry, and they spent the winter indoors, so . . ." Deveroux started to doodle calculations on the paper in front of him. "If we distribute our available men this way . . ."

Anna Marie von Dohna looked up from her embroidery. "Before we left Euskirchen, the mayor's wife said something to von Sickingen's wife Ursula who passed it on to me. The mayor still gets the newspapers from Cologne smuggled in."

Butler looked at her with annoyance. "We're not interested in the society columns."

She shrugged and went back to what she had been doing. She had made the gesture. For once, she had tried to be a sturdy prop, as the book of Proverbs said that a wife should be to her husband. Ferdinand of Bavaria's obsession with censorship did not strike her as intelligent. Maybe he even censored himself. In any case, he had not told her husband. If Walter and the others really did not want to know that the count of Hanau-Lichtenberg was scheduled to make a ceremonial inspection of the new industries associated with his Pechelbronn oil fields, and that it seemed likely that he might arrive there accompanied by a significant escort before Deveroux could reach Merckweiler, who was she to insist?

"The crucial thing, if this is going to work, is that after the raid, we have to arrive at Germersheim at the same time. Nearly the same time, anyway—not a week apart, much less two weeks." Butler grabbed the paper on which Deveroux was scribbling. "Then across and toward Bruchsal. Damn, but I wish Bernhard's cavalry wasn't sitting there south of Strassburg going 'Nyah, nyah, nyah.' It would be so damned much easier to go south in the Rhine bottoms on the left bank."

"Germersheim? That was taken by the imperials in 1622. The last I heard, there weren't a dozen families left, huddling in half-rebuilt sheds and shacks. Have they built Bruchsal back? In 1622, it was destroyed completely."

"No. That's why I want to cross into Swabia there, if we can. No major, entrenched opposition on the either side of the river. This part of the Palatinate was thoroughly scoured and the USE hasn't had it long enough to rebuild much. We'll be going through wasted landscapes—no forage. No hay. Some new grass, maybe, in fields that get sun, but mixed with weeds and a lot of underbrush. No peasants who have been hoarding food through the winter. That's why losing the baggage train—such as it is—would be a disaster."

"Why not Speyer?"

"The garrison's too strong. Could Brahe possibly have grabbed the left bank for the USE at a more inconvenient time? Coming west last year wasn't half this bad."

"If we don't get across at Germersheim, then we will have to go south looking for a ford. Probably as far as Hagenbach."

"I sure wish we could cross on a bridge. Wouldn't that be nice?"

"If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. There's no such thing as an undefended Rhine bridge. There's hardly any such thing as a Rhine bridge at all—the channels are too unreliable. There's no such thing as an undefended Rhine ferry. There's probably no such thing as a decent undefended Rhine ford, especially not in the spring when the water is rising and the channels are realigning themselves. You never can predict where a new channel is going to cut through."