Eric Flint - 1636:The Saxon Uprising

Vigorously. Ernst stared at her. He knew of at least one tavern-keeper who'd been brutally beaten by a CoC "sanitation patrol." True, the man had been fouling the streets around his establishment. Quite badly, even by the standards of tavern-keepers. Furthermore, Ernst didn't doubt for a moment that the CoC's "vigorously enforced" sanitation rules were lowering the risk of disease and epidemic-always a major concern, especially in times of war and social unrest.

Still…

Richter pressed on.

"Fifthly, you are concerned that we are repairing and strengthening the city's fortifications, as if we are preparing for a siege."

He cleared his throat. You certainly couldn't accuse the woman of evading delicate matters. She brought to mind the image of a very attractive, blonde glacier moving toward the sea.

"You are especially concerned because you suspect we are in fact preparing for a siege. Specifically, we are preparing to defend the city against the approaching Swedish army under the command of Johan Baner."

She paused for an instant, to give him the first look you could really call "cold-eyed" since the meeting began.

"In this suspicion, you are correct. The Swede general Baner is notorious for his brutality and has been specifically known to state that the proper use of a CoC agitator's head is as an adornment for a pike." She tapped the side of her skull. "This is one such head, and I have every intention of keeping it where it is. Under no circumstances will we allow Baner and his army into the city."

Ernst sighed and looked away. He could hardly argue this particular charge. He'd worked with the Swedish general in the Oberpfalz for months. Baner was a brute-a thoroughly unpleasant man-and Ernst himself had heard the general make that remark about CoC agitators and pikes.

Before he could say anything, Richter added: "And please spare us both the pointlessness of arguing that we cannot possibly withstand the Swedes. That's nonsense, meaning no offense, and you know it just as well as I do. You have considerable experience with sieges yourself, especially at Ingolstadt. Dresden was well fortified to begin with and we are strengthening the city's defenses still further. The city has a large population, most of whom are highly-motivated to keep Baner and his thugs outside the walls.

"That means that any siege will last for some time, which will require Baner to forage supplies from the Saxon countryside-a countryside which was already in rebellion against the Elector's depredations and has a large and well-armed military force under the command of the Vogtlander, Goerg Kresse. And while the core of that army of irregulars remains Vogtlander, they have recruited a large number of people from the surrounding area since they came down from the mountains. They can't defeat Baner in a pitched battle, of course, but they can bleed his army badly. Given the nature of Baner, that will inevitably produce Swedish atrocities against Saxon villagers, which in turn will ensure that your very worse fear comes to pass."

She paused for just an instant. "That is, you are concerned because in addition to the city's large number of well-trained militiamen-most of whom have now joined the CoC guard contingents-there are also several hundred veterans of the USE's army in the city, recuperating from their wounds. Most of them are from General Stearns' Third Division, and almost all of them are on very good terms with the CoC. You are worried that if a clash of arms develops between Dresden and Baner's army, those USE soldiers will side with Dresden and give the city's defenders a core military force which has already defeated the French, the Saxons and the Poles in open battle."

He looked back at her. A blonde glacier indeed-except glaciers didn't move this fast.

"In this worry, Duke Ernst, you are also correct. You may rest assured that I have, am and will do everything I can to ensure that those veterans do the right thing if and when the time comes. And I am quite certain they will do so."

Perhaps he should have stayed on the subject of education, after all.

Dresden, capital of Saxony Eric Krenz propped his elbows on the tower's stone railing and gazed out at the Elbe. The river that bisected Dresden was more than a hundred yards wide, and about that far away from his vantage point on the Residenzschloss. The height of the tower provided a magnificent view of the Elbe valley.

He wasn't really studying the scenery at the moment, though. He was just using the appearance of doing so as an excuse to stall giving Tata an answer to her question.

As she well knew. The woman was infernally shrewd.

"How long are you going to procrastinate?" she asked, planting her hands on ample hips. "I'm not pushing you, I just want to know. If it'll be a while, I'll go get some lunch."

Not for the first time, Eric wondered what madness had possessed him to get attracted to this creature.

"Attracted"? Better to say "obsessed," he thought gloomily.

Being fair, when it came to Tata, most of the time his thoughts were quite cheerful. But the woman had an unnerving capacity to seemingly read his mind-and an even more unnerving relentlessness when she wanted Eric to do something.

"I'm not really an expert on this business," he said. "I have no experience with sieges."

"Stop whining. I know that. Gretchen knows that. It doesn't matter right now. Somebody among the soldiers here must have some experience, and you're good at cajoling people into doing things."

" 'Things,' " he muttered darkly. "Would that be 'things' as in mutiny and treason?"

She just gave him a level look through dark blue eyes and said nothing.

But he was still just stalling, and he knew it. If that bastard Baner brought his army to Dresden and tried to force his way into the city-and there was every indication he would-then Eric knew perfectly well that a massacre would ensue. It might not be as bad as the sack of Magdeburg at the hands of Tilly's soldiers a few years back, but it would be bad enough.

Eric was far from being the only soldier in Dresden who'd formed attachments with the local folk by now. Even his morose and generally peculiar friend Lt. Friedrich Nagel had managed to get the attention of a young woman. A guildmaster's daughter, even, by the name of Hanna Brockhaus.

There was no way the USE soldiers who were in Dresden would stand aside in the event Baner attacked the city. That being the case, it simply made sense to plan and prepare their defenses ahead of time, rather than having to jury-rig something at the last minute.

Eric being Eric, of course, he couldn't resist a last complaint. Even a litany of them.

"Some of the men are still too badly injured to do much of anything. And some of the others have recovered enough that they'll certainly be called back to service soon."

"I said, stop whining. And you really ought to be looking at that last whine from the other end of the telescope."

He frowned. "What does that mean?"

"It's obvious. By now, most of you have recovered from your wounds. You certainly have, judging from the way you keep trying to get me in bed."

That ranked among the most cheerful of his thoughts about Tata. He was pretty sure it wouldn't be long before "trying" became "succeeding." Most of Tata's remaining resistance was just the ingrained reflex of a pretty woman who'd been a tavern-keeper's daughter and had been fending off lustful males since she was thirteen.

Tata pressed on. "So what you ought to be asking yourself is why haven't you been called back to service by General Stearns?"

That was a good question, actually. Tata was quite right that most of the soldiers from the Third Division who'd been sent to Dresden to recuperate had already done so. Well enough, anyway, to go back to active service. Yet no word had come from the general to join him in Bohemia. To all appearances, he'd forgotten about them.