1635: The Eastern Front (38 page)

That assumed Koniecpolski had managed to keep his entire army concentrated, but Jeff figured that was a pretty safe bet given the man's track record thus far. What the grand hetman was doing was taking advantage of his enemy's dispersed formations in order to defeat them in detail.

The scheme wouldn't have worked in good weather, of course, since Gustav Adolf would have gotten wind of what Koniecpolski was up to almost at once. He'd had every available plane in the air force keeping up continuous reconnaissance in daylight hours since the campaign began. In retrospect, it was obvious that this was the reason Koniecpolski had been retreating before Gustav Adolf's advancing forces without putting up a major fight. He'd simply left garrisons in the major towns to delay his enemy and buy time in the hope that the weather would change—which, at this time of year, wasn't unlikely at all.

Jesus H. Christ. It was one thing to read about "great captains of war," it was another thing entirely to have to face one of the damn monsters.

All this time, without realizing it consciously, Jeff had been reassured by the fact that he had one of the great captains on
his
side: Gustav Adolf. But even the greatest generals—maybe especially the greatest generals—could get too ambitious.

Remember Napoleon?

Jeff was pretty sure Gustav Adolf had been guilty of that. Instead of mounting a slower and more deliberate campaign, keeping his forces together instead of dividing them into half a dozen separated columns, he'd relied too much on his advantages and had underestimated his opponent.

"That's the situation, gentlemen," Mike said. "Torstensson is with the Second Division and he's bringing it up to reinforce Knyphausen. In the meantime, he's ordered Knyphausen to stand his ground and prepare for a battle. Gustav Adolf, of course, is moving his units south to join Knyphausen also."

Mike glanced at the windows along the upper walls. The tavern was in a half-basement, not a full basement. That normally allowed some light into the place, although with this sort of rain and overcast it was as dark as it would have been in late afternoon.

"In this weather, though, it's hard to know how long it'll take to get those forces together." Mike's jaws tightened for moment. "And there's another problem, which is that we have no good idea where Koniecpolski is right now. Whether by design or chance, he might wind up moving farther south than we expect, in which case he might come at us instead."

"If he does, so much the worse for him." That came from Colonel Leoš Hlavacek, the commander of the Teutoberg Regiment, which was also in the 1st Brigade. "We can hold Zielona Góra against him."

"We can certainly hold it long enough for Torstensson to arrive with the First and Second Divisions," Colonel Jan Svoboda chimed him. Like Hlavacek, he was one of the many Bohemian officers serving in the USE Army. He commanded the Yellow Marten regiment in Derfflinger's 3rd Brigade.

Mike shook his head. "General Torstensson's not worried about holding Zielona Góra. If we lose it, we lose it. He thinks it's more important for us to send as many men as we can to reinforce the 1st and 2nd Division. And that's what he's ordered me to do. So . . ."

Mike looked around the room. "We'll leave Brigadier Schuster and the 2nd Brigade here to hold the city as best they can if Koniecpolski shows up. And we'll also leave all of the regular artillery units. Their guns will be useful on defense, and there's no way we could move them fast enough through the muck out there anyway. Even after the weather clears, the ground will be soggy for days."

"What about the flying artillery?" asked Svoboda. "They'll be handy against hussars."

"We're taking them with us. Their carriages are light enough that I think they'll be able to handle the terrain. It's not as if any of us are going to be marching very fast."

He looked directly at Jeff, now. "I'm also leaving the Hangman Regiment behind. They suffered the worst casualties when we took this city, and I think they need more time to recuperate. But, Colonel Higgins, please come see me after the meeting is over."

That happened less than a quarter of an hour later. Stearns was driving everyone to move as quickly as possible. He normally ran staff and command meetings in a relaxed manner, but not this one.

When Mike was alone except for Derfflinger, he motioned Jeff to come over.

"You wanted to see me, sir?"

"You know that Colonel Gärtner was badly wounded two days ago," Mike said.

Jeff's stomach felt queasy all of a sudden. "Uh, yes, sir."

"That leaves the Third Brigade's White Horse Regiment without a commanding officer. I can't promote his adjutant because Major Nussbaum was killed right about the same time."

Jeff had always wondered what free fall felt like. Now he knew.

"Uh, yes, sir."

Mike nodded toward the brigadier standing next to him. "Georg thinks you'd do just fine. So I'm putting you in charge of the White Horse."

He got a solemn, reassuring look on his face. "It's just temporary, Jeff. We'll have you back in command of the Hangman as soon as possible."

He made it sound as if being in command of a regiment specifically put together to execute people had been Jeff's lifelong ambition.

But all he said was, "Uh, yes, sir."

Chapter 33

West of Poznań

The Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel died in the middle of the night. Gustav Adolf got word over the radio as soon as it happened.

It came as no surprise. Wilhelm V had suffered terrible wounds in the battle at the Warta, the sort a man almost never survives. Still, the king of Sweden was distressed by the news. Hesse-Kassel was not exactly a friend, but he'd been a staunch supporter for years. He would be missed.

Gustav Adolf didn't spend much time dwelling on the landgrave's death, though. He had much worse problems on his hands, politically as well as on the military front. Hours earlier, the radio had brought news that his wife had been murdered in Stockholm by assailants whose identity was still unknown. The same assailants had also attacked the king's daughter and Prince Ulrik but, thankfully, they had survived. Untouched, in the case of Kristina. Ulrik had been injured, but apparently not too seriously.

Gustav Adolf had not been close to his wife for many years. In some ways, he'd never really been close. Theirs had been a marriage of political convenience, not of affection. The king of Sweden's romantic attachment since the age of sixteen had been to the noblewoman Ebba Brahe—and still was, although she was now married to Sweden's Lord High Constable, Jacob de la Gardie.

Nonetheless, Maria Eleonora had been his wife, and had borne him a child. Had she died of natural causes, he would have been slightly saddened but no more. Her being killed in such a fashion, however, had left him furious.

He'd already been close to a fury because of the weather. What had seemed a straightforward campaign against a redoubtable but still weaker foe was turning into a nightmare.

Hesse-Kassel was gone now, and his army with him, for all practical purposes. As soon as the landgravine heard the news, she'd undoubtedly recall at least half of her forces to Hesse-Kassel. And the ones she left would be the weakest units, and just enough of them to maintain the pretense that she was not withdrawing Hesse-Kassel's support to the emperor. Unfortunately, the laws of the USE gave the provincial heads a great deal of control over the disposition of provincial troops. Their armies were almost as independent of federal control as the private armies of Polish magnates.

Gustav Adolf had not yet sent her the news of the disaster on the Warta, but he couldn't stall for much longer. There were some disadvantages to radio as well as advantages. In the old days, he could have send a courier with the news and instructed him to have a lamed horse along the way. By the time Amalie Elizabeth found out her husband had been killed and a good portion of her army destroyed, Gustav Adolf would have had the rest of that army back at the front. And he could have kept forestalling the landgravine for weeks, or even months.

He'd come into Poland with fifty thousand men, against what he'd estimated were forty thousand at the disposal of Koniecpolski. He'd lost Hesse-Kassel's eight thousand, and another ten thousand troops under Heinrich Matthias von Thurn were stymied north of the swollen Warta. They'd be out of action for several days; possibly as long as a week, if this wretched weather kept up.

Even if he assumed Koniecpolski had lost as many men in the battle on the Warta as Hesse-Kassel—which he almost certainly hadn't; that had been a very one-sided affair, by all accounts—he'd still have thirty-five thousand troops at his disposal.

There'd have been losses from disease, but those had probably been equally distributed. The same for losses by desertion. Those had probably been unusually low, on both sides. However difficult they might be to handle politically, the soldiers of the USE army tended to have good morale. The same would be true of Polish troops, especially hussars, so long as they had good leadership—and in Koniecpolski they had a commanding general as good as any in the world.

In two days, the tactical situation had turned sour as quickly and as badly as the weather. Gustav Adolf had gone from having a five-to-four numerical superiority to odds that were now no better than even. He'd lost all of his technological advantages except radio. The planes were grounded, the APCs were stuck in the mud miles to the rear.

Finally—this was the factor that really concerned him—his forces had been dispersed when the storm arrived, where Koniecpolski had kept his forces together. Until Gustav Adolf could reunite the four columns still available to fight—his own Swedish forces and the three divisions of the USE army led by Torstensson—he was at a major disadvantage. If Koniecpolski caught any one of those columns on its own, he could crush it.

The king of Sweden was a pious man. He'd even written a number of the hymns sung in Sweden's Lutheran churches. Now, for one of the rare times in his life, he lapsed into blasphemy.

"God damn this rain!"

Hearing that curse, Anders Jönsson got more worried still—and he was already worried. He'd been Gustav Adolf's bodyguard for years and he knew the signs. The one great flaw the king of Sweden possessed as a military commander was his tendency to get headstrong and reckless in the grip of powerful emotions. And right now, the stew of emotions the man was seething in was an unholy combination. The devil himself couldn't have cooked up a more dangerous brew.

Tremendous frustration at the military situation due to the weather.

Anger at himself for having been overconfident and allowing his forces to become divided. Anger at having underestimated an opponent—for which he had no excuse at all. He'd faced Koniecpolski before.

Fury at the murder of his wife. An act which, in the nature of things, was as much a blow struck at the Swedish crown as it was at a woman.

Even greater fury that the same assassins had come very close to murdering his only child.

Anxiety because Kristina
was
an only child, and therefore the sole heir to the throne. That was a risky situation for any dynasty, even if the child in question hadn't been but eight years old. And now, with Maria Eleonora dead, there would be no chance of producing another heir any time soon.

But there was nothing Jönsson could so. Any attempt he made to restrain the king would just make him more furious.

He'd read accounts of the battle of Lützen, in copies of up-time texts that Gustav Adolf had collected. When he read of the king's behavior in that battle in another universe, he'd recognized it instantly. Frustrated by the heavy fog that had covered the battlefield and made it impossible to stay in control of his forces, Gustav Adolf had charged impetuously forward with only a small detachment of guards.

No one knew what happened next, exactly. Battles were chaotic and confusing enough even in good weather conditions. But however it happened, the king had been killed. His soldiers still went on to win that battle, but from that day forward Sweden lost its guiding hand.

It could happen in this universe, too. The details might differ, but the essence would remain the same—a great captain who could not restrain himself enough when his blood ran high.

Magdeburg airfield

"Not a chance, Gretchen," said Eddie Junker. "Flying into that wouldn't be any different from slitting your own throat."

Frowning, Gretchen Richter stared at up the clouds. The rain hadn't let up at all and the sky seemed as dark and foreboding as it had since the storm arrived two days earlier.

Well . . . maybe not quite as much.

"I think it's lightening a bit." She pointed toward the west. "See that patch there?"

Eddie chuckled. "Nice try. But if you think a maybe-just-a-tiny-bit-less horrible set of storm clouds—in exactly the wrong direction, too—is going to get me into that cockpit, you are out of your mind. Insane. Mad. Crazed. If Caroline Platzer were here, no doubt she'd have some elaborate way of saying the same thing."

He leaned still farther back in the rocking chair—which wasn't rocking because Eddie put his feet up on the counter that ran all the way around the top floor of the airfield's control tower. Big glass windows ran all the way around, too, which provided a splendid view of the storm. Which, since Eddie could observe it in dry comfort, was actually rather enjoyable to watch.

"Sit down," he urged Gretchen. "Have some more tea."

But Gretchen was far too frustrated to follow that advice. She was the sort of person who, once she'd made up her mind to do something, wanted to
do
it. Now. Not tomorrow. Not the day after.

Now.

All the more so, since Tata's daily radio reports indicated that Dresden was coming to a boil. With the elector dead and the USE's emperor completely absorbed by his campaign in Poland, there was a power vacuum in Saxony. Then word came that Kresse and his little army of irregulars—the same people who had killed John George—had left the Upper Vogtland and were marching on Dresden. That army wasn't even so little anymore. The militias of many of the villages and towns that Kresse passed through or nearby were joining him.