Eric Flint: Grantville Gazette. Volume 21

"Not even that. He's twenty-two." Opalinski grinned. "A bit young, one would think, for this sort of scheming. But perhaps he drinks in the morning."

Wojtowicz turned his head and spent a few seconds examining a painting hanging on a nearby wall. There was nothing unusual about the painting. It was simply one of many portraits hanging on the many walls of the Opalinski castle at Sierakow. All of them depicted various members of the illustrious family going back several generations.

Some of them had even been illustrious in truth. A goodly number more had been pure wastrels. Being born into one of the great Polish or Lithuanian magnate families automatically gave a young man a political and military career in the Commonwealth, unless he was an outright mental defective-and provided, of course, that he desired such a career. The same exalted status also gave such young men the opportunity to pass through their entire lives doing absolutely nothing useful and productive, but simply enjoying themselves.

A great many made that choice-and were then, typically, the most vociferous defenders of the rights and privileges of the Commonwealth's nobility. And the most savage when the lower classes presumed to challenge them, or were even too loud in their complaints.

Jozef had disliked the type even as a boy. Partly, perhaps, simply because he did not have their option. As an acknowledged bastard of a great magnate family, he had been given many opportunities and privileges which would have been denied to him had he been a commoner. But, still, he was a bastard. He was allowed to work in fields reserved for the szlachta-but he was expected to work.

Being fair to himself, though, Jozef was almost sure that he would have chosen a productive life devoted to the good of the Commonwealth even if he'd been legitimately born. Even, he liked to think, if he'd been born a commoner-although in that case, of course, his options would have been far more limited.

Whatever the reason, he'd entered his manhood with a sharp dislike for noble idlers. The months he'd spent in Grantville had transformed dislike into detestation; contempt into loathing-and aversion into a determination to destroy the lot of them. As a class holding power, if not as individual people.

"And what is so fascinating about my grandfather Jan?" asked Lukasz.

"You've never met them," mused Jozef, still studying the portrait. "Or, if you have, it would only have been one or two individuals."

"You're speaking of the Americans?"

"Yes. I'm sure you've been told that they are a humble folk, once you strip away the veneer of their technical wizardry and power." Wojtowicz chuckled. "That is the biggest lie ever told. They are the most arrogant people you can imagine. So arrogant that they feel no urge to proclaim their superiority over others. They simply take it for granted and go about their business, certain in the knowledge that any American with the birthright of their culture-culture, Lukasz, not blood-is the superior of any noble family, be its blood even royal."

He took a deep, slow breath. "And, in the end, I came to agree with them."

Opalinski's eyes widened a bit. "Oh, surely not."

Wojtowicz turned his head away from the portrait to look at his friend. "Oh, surely yes. First, because it is true-and the truth has been put to the test. Ask yourself a question, Lukasz. Do what the Americans would call a mental experiment. Imagine a similar-sized group of Polish and Lithuanian szlachta-say, the Sejm in full session-which had mysteriously found itself transposed in time and place the way they did. Planted, let us say, in the middle of the Roman Empire during one of its many civil wars. Would they have done as well? Would they even have survived?"

Opalinski pursed his lips. "Survived… yes. Many of them, certainly. If nothing else, most szlachta have martial skills, and those are always in demand. And command respect, for that matter."

Jozef scratched his jaw. "I will give you so much. And the rest? Would a few thousand szlachta have shaken the world of Rome the way a few thousand Americans have shaken-even transformed, in many ways-our own world?"

Opalinski thought about it for a while. Then, smiling ruefully, shook his head. "I think not. If nothing else, they would have immediately taken to quarreling."

"Yes, they would. And, to go back to my point, the second reason I came to agree with the Americans was because their viewpoint has the great advantage of not requiring my own abasement. Nothing prevented me, I eventually realized, from adopting the same attitude."

Lukasz peered at him, almost owlishly. "You've not struck me as being especially arrogant since your return. No more than usual, at least-and that's just the unfortunate byproduct of the fact that you're smarter than almost everybody else."

He waved his hand magnanimously. "A small enough failing-and I forgave you for it many years ago. But I'll not argue the point any further, since, as you say, I've never met any Americans. Not even one, as it happens."

He sat up a bit straighter. "But we've strayed from the point, Jozef. Yes, that young snot Jeremy Wisniowiecki is involved. Right in the thick of it, in fact."

"But why would the others involve him? Leaving aside his youth-and in his case; I've met him; the term 'callow youth' is quite appropriate-he's difficult to deal with, by all accounts. Not only arrogant but self-willed to the point of lunacy. The man quarrels constantly, and has done so since he was a boy."

"Well, as to that, I suspect the reason is that he was their connection to the assassins. The leader of whom was a man named Stefan Czarniecki-"

"Never heard of him."

"-and the reason you've never heard of him is that you don't associate with his circles. Neither do I. Neither does almost any respectable man-unless, like young Wisniowiecki, you're the scion of a great family which has used their services in the past."

"Whose services?"

"The Lisowczycy."

Wojtowicz grimaced. "He's one of them? This Stefan Czarniecki was one of Alexander Lisowski's men?"

"So it seems, although he may never have served under Lisowski himself. Lisowski died in October of 1616, and the first record of Czarniecki my spies could uncover was that he fought with the Lisowczycy at the Battle of the White Mountain. That was two years later."

"How old is Czarniecki?"

Lukasz shook his head. "My spies found no records. There may very well be no records. Czarniecki claims to be szlachta, and he's fierce enough that no one is going to contest the matter openly. But no one really seems to believe it, either. From his appearance, my spies estimate that he's somewhere in his middle thirties. No older than forty, certainly."

"Which would make him a bit too young to have fought in the Dymitriads with Lisowski."

Again, Jozef made a face. The Lisowczycy!

Even for eastern Europe, with its incessant wars of the past few decades, the Lisowczycy were notorious. Also known as the Stracency, the "lost men," they were a mercenary force of light cavalrymen which had been prominent in the many conflicts in the region for a quarter of a century. Their forces were mostly drawn from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but men joined them from all lands in eastern Europe. Their numbers varied, depending on circumstances, anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand.

They were named after Aleksander Jozef Lisowski, a Lithuanian nobleman born sometime around the year 1580. Little was known of his youth. He first came to notice during the Moldavian magnate wars, initially in the camp of Michal Waleczny, then as a supporter of Jan Zamoyski.

In 1604, toward the start of the war with Sweden, the Polish Sejm-not for the first time-neglected to raise the funds to pay its soldiers in Livonia. What followed was one of the so-called konfederacja, which were a peculiarly Polish tradition in which what amounted to a mutiny received semi-official status and quasi-legitimacy. Lisowski had been one of the ringleaders.