Eric Flint - 1636:The Saxon Uprising

There was even an unexpected bonus. By the time they were finally ready to transmit the report, a breathless CoC courier piled into the radio room.

"They killed Baner! They killed Baner!"

The reporters stared at him. "How can you be sure?" asked one, moved by an unusual impulse toward accuracy.

"I saw his head myself." The young courier made a face. The grimace combined horror, fascination and glee. "It'd come right off his body. Ripped off by bullets, looked like. Some of the Prince's soldiers brought it to him in a sack. They wanted to put it on a pikehead-just like that Swede shithead said he was going to do to us!-but the Prince wouldn't let them."

He was clearly aggrieved by that last decision; but, under the circumstances, was willing to forgive the Prince his lapse of judgment.

The reporters looked at each other.

Tata took charge again. "You'd better go make sure before you send the radio message. This is not something you want to be wrong about."

The reporters hesitated.

"Fine. Let me put it this way. You don't get to use the radio until you make sure. If you try"-she waggled a finger at the two CoC guards, putting them on alert-"I will have you shot."

Off they went.

They were back in less than an hour.

"It's Baner, all right. I did a report on him last month and got to interview him for a few minutes. Grouchy bastard."

Another reported chimed in. "I've met him too. He looks a bit the worse for wear"-that got a round of chuckles-"but it's definitely him."

It was the work of less than a minute to modify the report. Then they started quarreling over which one of them got to read the report.

"Shut up!" said Tata. "Fine. Give it to me. I'll read the blasted thing."

By then, though, it was already late afternoon and Tata decided to wait until the evening window. She'd had some time to think the matter through and realized that she wanted to make sure the transmission reached as far as possible and as many people as possible.

The reporters put up an argument, naturally, but not much of one and not for very long. Tata was a ferocious bully and had a short way with annoying men.

Finally, the time came and the report went out.

Magdeburg, capital of the United States of Europe After Rebecca got the report, she took her children and sat with them by a window, looking out into the night. The snow had finally stopped falling and there was enough of a moon to see the city. For once, its industrial filth covered in white, Magdeburg was not ugly.

Kathleen was in her lap. Sepharad sat to her left, Baruch to her right.

"Daddy will be home soon," she said, smiling.

"Is he all right?" asked Baruch anxiously.

"Oh, yes." She imagined he must have some bruises, assuming the report that he'd had two horses shot out from under him was accurate and not just a reporter's fabrication. But he was definitely alive and in fairly good health. That was clear in the report and presented in several different ways, ending with his refusal to allow Baner's head to be hoisted on a pike.

That sounded like Michael. He would have fought savagely, but with the battle now won he'd already be looking toward a peace settlement. Rubbing salt into wounds was just not his way.

She so loved that man. She envied Gretchen, then. She had survived-the report was explicit on that issue-and so had her husband. Colonel Higgins was played up in the report, in fact. Apparently it had been his regiment that was responsible for killing Baner, although Rebecca had serious doubts that Jeff had led a final charge on horseback. The man hated to ride at the best of times. In a snowstorm? Not likely.

Gretchen's children came into the room, entering slowly and hesitantly. Rebecca waved them toward her.

"Your mother is fine," she said. "So is your father."

After that, they looked out of the window in silence. There seemed nothing much more to say.

Kristina came to stand by Ulrik, as he looked out of a window in the royal palace. He, too, was struck by Magdeburg's unusual looks that night. The snow covering everything gleamed in the moonlight. If you didn't know how much soot and grime lay underneath, you might think you were in some enchanted elven city.

"What do we do now?" she asked.

"Nothing, still." He put a hand on her skinny shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

There was a great deal of affection in that squeeze, not simply reassurance. He'd become very fond of the girl in the time they'd spent together since they left for Stockholm back in…

Dear God. Had it only been eight months ago? It seemed more like eight years.

Impossible, of course. If it had really been eight years, Kristina would now be old enough to get married.

He thought about that for a while. And realized that for the first time since he'd become betrothed to the Swedish princess, he was looking forward to the marriage. Sometime, somewhere, somehow, it had ceased being purely a political matter.

"You're sure?" she asked.

"Oh, yes," he replied. Brussels, capital of the Netherlands Peter Paul Rubens left the meeting early. Once the report was digested and the basic response settled upon-no, obviously we're not going to try to take advantage of the situation; not with Stearns alive and so obviously well; we're not mad-he saw no need to spend the next few hours assuring the king and queen and their advisers that they'd made the right decisions all along. Archduchess Isabella would handle that just fine.

Instead, moved by a sudden impulse-a rare impulse, lately-he wanted to start a painting.

He didn't normally do battlefield portraits. Portraits of combat, yes-he'd done many of those. But they focused on such things as Achilles' slaying of Hector or a lion hunt or the battle of the Amazons. He wasn't particularly fond of the sort of set-piece depictions of enormous battlefields, which usually portrayed the victor in the foreground. He'd done close cousins of that sort of paintings on commission, like his Triumph of Henry IV. But he'd never before been moved to do one simply because he found the subject fascinating.

This time, though, he couldn't resist. First, because he'd already done a portrait of the subject which he'd had to keep hidden because the political content was dubious for someone in his position. In the course of that work, though, he felt he'd come to know the man and wanted the chance to portray him again-this time, in a painting that could see the light of day.

And then, there was the central image! As arresting as Judith slaying Holofernes. The conquering general, presented with the head of his defeated enemy-and spurning it. Not from horror but from majesty, as befitted a prince. Paris, capital of France "Your judgment was quite sound, Your Grace," said Servien, once Richelieu had finished reading the news report that had come in over the radio in the palace. "It was wise not to do anything."

The cardinal set the report aside and shrugged. "Most likely, yes. It would have been easier to deal with Oxenstierna, but I'm afraid he's in a bad place now. He should have left well enough alone."

Coming from Richelieu, that statement was perhaps dubious. There were many in France-some of them not even his enemies-who thought the accusation couldn't leave well enough alone belonged on his own doorstep. Madrid, capital of Spain There was no reaction to the news report in the court of Spain.

They had no radio. They wouldn't receive the news for days yet. Poznan, Poland "They claim some Poles were involved," said Lukasz Opalinski, as he scanned through the report. After reading a couple of more lines, he hissed. "I don't believe it! The fellow who was apparently their leader claims some connection to the Koniecpolskis! Some bastards will say anything."