Eric Flint: 1636:The Saxon Uprising

The shots were fired so rapidly they almost sounded like a single noise. A sort of tearing thunder, in the confines of the tavern room.

The three staff officers joined the chancellor on the floor. All three were just as obviously dead as their master.

Again, the tableau was frozen. Then all the Scots drew their pistols. For their part, the remaining staff officers held up their hands-part in protest; part in surrender-and stumbled back a pace or two.

"Hold!" Erik shouted. "All hold!"

Again, a frozen tableau. Now, everyone was staring at Hand.

He pointed to the door. "Captain Stewart, go outside and see to it that the Vastergotlanders have the area under control. Then ask Karl Hard af Segerstad to come in here. Then check to see the dispositions of Colonel Hastfer and his Finnish regiment."

The Scot officer holstered his pistol and left.

The rest of the Scots began holstering their own pistols. It was obvious there would be no further gunfire. Not now, after Ljungberg had ejected the clip and slapped in another one. He was not holstering his gun. He had it pointed squarely at the surviving staff officers and was bestowing a grin upon them that Erik thought would probably give some of them nightmares later. Erling Ljundberg held his post as the king's chief bodyguard because, just as Anders Jonsson had been before him, the man was utterly murderous.

The immediate crisis over, Erik hurried to Gustav Adolf's side. Not knowing what else to use-he'd make it a point to be prepared for this, in the future-he snatched off his hat and rolled up the brim.

Just in time. As the doctor had foreseen, the king was going into convulsions. Erik managed to shove the rolled-up hat brim into his cousin's mouth before he could damage himself.

Then, he waited out the convulsions, restraining the king as best he could. Within seconds, two of the Scots were assisting him.

After the king relaxed and fell asleep, Erik rose to his feet.

"And now what?" asked Ljundberg.

Excellent question. Erik groped for an answer.

It came to him within seconds. "Go get the prime minister and bring him here, Major Graham. Gordon, you go with him."

Wilhelm Wettin arrived an hour and a half later. Quite puzzled, obviously. Erik realized he hadn't instructed Graham and Gordon to tell him anything, just to bring him here. Scots tended to favor literal interpretations.

By then, the bodies of the chancellor and the three staff officers slain by Ljungberg had been carried into a side room. Gustav Adolf was resting on a narrow bed which had been brought into the tavern's main room by servants. In the absence of any advice from Nichols-he wasn't about to trust any of the doctors Oxenstierna had assigned to the king-Erik hadn't been willing to risk moving his cousin any farther than necessary.

Wettin stared at Gustav Adolf. "Is he…?"

"Yes, he's back. But-as you can see-he's still subject to ills."

Wettin shook his head. It wasn't clear if the gesture was one of negation, denial, or simply to clear the man's brain. He probably didn't know himself.

"Where is Chancellor Oxenstierna?" he asked.

"The traitor is dead," Colonel Hand said in a flat, cold tone of voice. "At the king's command."

That was stretching the truth. You could even argue it was mangling the truth beyond all recognition. But for the moment, Erik didn't care-and who was there to dispute his claim? The surviving staff officers had been placed under arrest and taken away. The tavern keeper and his servants were so petrified they could barely speak.

"You can go look at his body yourself, if you don't believe me," he added, jerking his head toward the far door. "He's in a room just beyond."

Wettin shook his head again. "No, no. But…what do you want me to do"

Erik shrugged. "How should I know? I'm just the king's cousin. You're the prime minister of the nation. It's on your head now."

Luckily, Gustav Adolf recovered consciousness within an hour. After he was told of what had transpired, a sad look came to his face.

"So, my fault again. First Anders, now Axel."

"It was not your fault, cousin. For one thing, I'm the one who decided to shoot him."

The king's thick shoulders shifted on the cot, in what passed for a shrugging motion. "What else could you do? But if I hadn't lost control, Axel would still be alive."

Erik was tempted to ask: For how long? Gustav Adolf had made clear in their earlier discussions that he was inclined to simply have Oxenstierna stripped of his posts and sentenced to internal exile for the rest of his life. What Americans called "house arrest"-except the house in question was one of the finest mansions in Sweden.

But whatever the king's personal preferences might be, he'd also ordered Erik to launch a thorough investigation of what had transpired with Maximilian of Bavaria. If that investigation turned up proof that the chancellor had been involved in the treasonous plot-and Erik didn't have much doubt it would-then Gustav Adolf would really have no choice. He'd have to order Oxenstierna's execution.

Now that it was over, Erik decided it had all worked out for the best. His cousin's guilt for having lost control was a pale shadow of the anguish he would have felt, had he been forced to order his chancellor executed himself. He and Axel Oxenstierna had been good friends for many years.

Erik, on the other hand, had never liked the bastard anyway.

Wettin floundered. But the king was back, and took charge himself.

"First-there is a radio station here, yes?-the news must be broadcast to the entire nation. Along with the following…"

That and what followed was the jabbering from Berlin that Noelle had been listening to when Denise and Minnie returned from the airfield.

"Oh, wow," said Denise, after Noelle filled them in.

"Interesting times," said Minnie.

Denise shook her head. "No, that's a curse. Doesn't apply at all. God, I hate to think what my life would have been like without the Ring of Fire. Can we say 'boooooorrrrrring?' "

Noelle stared at her. Much the way she might have stared at a Martian. Or a mutant.

The United States of Europe All of the major newspapers in the country and many of the smaller ones came out with the story the next morning. It didn't matter what day of the week they normally published. It didn't matter whether they were morning papers or evening papers. Even if the edition was just a two-page special edition, nothing more than a broadsheet printed on both sides, they all published something.

The headlines varied from city to city and province to province, but the gist of them was essentially the same: the emperor recovers chancellor oxenstierna executed for treason hundreds in berlin arrested prime minister wettin freed and returned to power the emperor orders a halt to all conflict the emperor offers a truce to king wladyslaw the emperor to return to magdeburg

The festivities and the parades died down, although they didn't die out entirely. People of whatever political persuasion understood that the coming days were going to be a time of hard bargaining. Most of them figured they'd wait until they saw the end result before they started celebrating again.

Or started crying in their beer.

March 1636 The thunder and the sunshine

Magdeburg, capital of the United States of Europe Gustav Adolf arrived in Magdeburg five days after Oxenstierna's killing. His advisers-that mostly meant his cousin Erik, right now-had had to talk him out of flying to the capital. Why take the (admittedly not great) risk, when there was no point to it? There would be no way to start any serious negotiations until Mike Stearns arrived in the capital, after all. Given the situation in Dresden and his responsibilities there, it would take him most of a week before he could leave for Magdeburg.