The Tangled Web(137)

"Stop complaining."

"Look, Deveroux. You and Geraldin are taking more than half of our fighting strength. Dennis and I will have the whole supply train and support personnel to move with us. If we get stranded at the Rhine crossing, we'll be sitting ducks for any USE garrison forces that peek out of Speyer or Landau long enough to spot us. Coordination, that's the key. If, in that other world, Ferdinand coming from Austria and Fernando coming from Italy managed it over far greater distances to triumph at Nördlingen, then in this world, over far shorter distances, we can pull off a coordinated operation, too."

MacDonald lifted his head. "If you say 'coordination' one more time, I'm going to puke."

"You look like you're going to puke anyway."



"We'd better write this out," Heisel said.

"Use as few words as possible." Brandt shook the little transmitter. "I think the 'battery' they put in this 'tuna tin' is dying. How can something that is not alive die?"

"They just mean that it stops working." Heisel printed carefully:

Irish dragoons east to Merckweiler.

Intend kill oil Pechelbronn.

Deveroux. Geraldin. Horses.

Five days food saddlebags.

Small arms only.

Then Germersheim.

He frowned. "That's as short as I can make it."

"Do we need another line? Gruyard is going with them, along with Taaffe and Carew, the other chaplains. They're expecting to take enough casualties out of this project that their men will be needing confession and last rites. The general and Utt are greatly concerned with Gruyard."

Heisel shook his head. "Better save the battery."

Province of the Upper Rhine, March 1635

"For a girl who has never followed an army before, you've done great, Tata." Eberhard patted her bottom appreciatively.

"Ooooh, not there. I feel like there's nothing left between my skin and the bones I use for sitting. If I have to ride in that wagon much longer, even with a cushion between me and the board, the skin will be gone, too."

He peeked over her shoulder. "There's still a reasonable amount of you left."

"That's very reassuring. It wasn't so bad until we got to Kaiserslautern, but when the general heard that we were too late to prevent the raid on Pechelbronn, the pace he's kept up ever since has been insane. Wahnsinnig. Why is he going so fast? Didn't the reports say that there was some damage, but the garrison and the count of Hanau-Lichtenberg's bodyguard are 'mopping things up'?"

"They're mopping locally, collecting the wounded and taking them prisoner, interrogating, and the like. Most of the garrison at Merckweiler isn't mounted, though. Those are infantry regiments. Brahe hadn't taught them to ride and mounted them, the way Colonel Utt has done for us at Fulda Barracks. Hanau-Lichtenberg's men were on pretty horses suitable for going on a leisurely trip with parties at the other end, not for extended hard riding. Deveroux is on the run, trying to rejoin Butler, wherever he may be. Our guy with the radio—assuming that he's still alive—is with Deveroux, so all we know about Butler is that he's probably somewhere between southeastern Lorraine and Germersheim."

"Which means that we are going somewhere fast?"

"Southeast, toward the Rhine, all the while praying that someone shows up with better intelligence."



"Lieutenant Friedrich Württemberger, Fulda Barracks Regiment mounted scouts, reporting back."

Passwords and other formalities accomplished, which took a while, Friedrich finally made it to his brother and Colonel Utt. The condensed version of his information was that there were a hell of a lot of people cluttering up the road ahead of them, about seven miles farther on.

"Wagons stuck in the mud on the road. Wagons that pulled out onto the verge to try to pass those—stuck in the mud. Wagons that pulled out into the abandoned fields to try to pass those—stuck in the mud even worse, some of them up to the beds. Horses unhitched and being held by small children, occasionally getting spooked by all the noise and mess. Horses that didn't get unhitched in time, also stuck in the mud, some of them squealing, which is no help for the people trying to hold the unhitched horses."

Brahe winced.

"I went around—as close as I could get and still keep out of sight. I'd say that the whole mess is nearly three miles long and close to a half-mile wide."

Jeffie Garand laughed. "A genuine down-time traffic jam, in other words."

"What about the dragoons?" Sergeant Hartke asked.

"The dragoons are up ahead of the mess, heading southeast as a rapid pace. That's mainly what churned up the road to the point that the first wagons got stuck, I think. In my opinion, sir, there is no place for our forces to go around the baggage train and overtake the dragoons. Just me—one man and one horse—I got off and led him part of the time. There's no hard surface out there. Just old, uncultivated stubble fields that this spring weather has turned to muck."