Ring of fire II

Chapter 5. The Nature of Plans

Near Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia

"Fucking idiots, what they are," pronounced Denise. She finished the beer she'd ordered at Stephan Wurmbrand's roadside tavern just outside Grantville on the road to Rudolstadt and almost slammed the glass back on the bar. She glared around the room, as if defying any of its habituees to challenge either her use of language or her judgment of police chiefs and cavalry officers.

No challenge came forth, except from Lannie Yost, perched on a nearby stool. Owlishly, he peered at her empty glass. "Ain't you a little young to be drinking that stuff?"

Denise gaped at him. So did several of the other barflies in the place. In their case, because they were down-time Germans who thought the notion of anyone being under age to drink beer was silly-one of those up-time fetishes they'd thought must have died a natural death by now, three and a half years after the Ring of Fire. In Denise's case, because her father was Buster Beasley and she thought-so did Buster, actually-that she was practically abstemious when it came to substance abuse.

She was also gaping because she was outraged, of course.

"You! Lannie Yost, you're pie-eyed half the time! So-called test pilot. You got some nerve-"

"Hey, Denise, take it easy! I wasn't trying to pick no fight."

That wouldn't normally have done him any good at all, except he added hurriedly: "You got the right of it when it comes to Captain Knefler, that's for sure. Guy couldn't find his ass with both hands in broad daylight."

"That jackass. I told him I found their trail, leading south from Rudolstadt. But, noooo. Mr. Military Genius insisted they must have used those rafts the one guy-the one in charge, whoever he is-bought in Jena."

By now, the news had spread all over the area, including some of the details. "The rafts were gone," one of the down-timers pointed out. He was sitting with a friend at a table nearby.

Denise sniffed. "Big deal. All the guy in charge-and I think he's got more brains in his little toe than Knefler does-had to do was hire a few men to pole the rafts downriver. There's day laborers hanging around all over the place, in Jena. Probably told them they needed to pick up something in Halle and take it down to Magdeburg. Off goes whichever idiot came in pursuit-his name's Knefler, did I mention that? It's spelled 'k-n' like in numbskull-while the guy with the brains keeps heading up the Saale valley. Hasn't it struck any of you geniuses yet that Mr.-Whoever is good at this? Why would he have been wearing such a flamboyant outfit just to buy some cargo rafts-if he hadn't been trying to draw attention to himself?"

She was pretty proud of that deductive logic. Maybe she oughta become a detective when she grew up. Finished growing up. Which she was practically there. She'd bet Minnie would partner with her.

On the other hand, she'd neglected to mention that Mr.-Whoever-He-Was had been wearing the same outfit when he arrived at her father's storage place to load the wagons. Obviously, just to make sure every idiot in Grantville connected Obvious Dot A to Blatant Dot B. The Grantville police chief and Captain Numbskull had squeezed that information out of her, despite her misgivings about what they'd do with it, but she saw no reason to weaken her case by divulging it to these layabouts.

Lannie took a swallow from his own beer. "You think?"

"Sure. What sort of lunatic would make his escape further into the USE?"

The same down-timer wasn't ready to let it go. "Not so foolish, that. Before he gets to Halle, he can offload the rafts and make his way into Saxony. Probably he's working for John George."

Denise opened her mouth. Then, decided it wasn't worth the effort to get into an argument with somebody who was obviously not playing with a full deck.

Right. Sure. That made sense. In six months, the elector of Saxony was staring in the face an all-out invasion by Gustav Adolf. Fat lot of good some tech transfer would do him at this stage of the game. Except give Gustav Adolf another Cassius Belly. Or whatever the name was of that ancient Roman guy who'd caused a war.

Denise might be willing to concede that John George was that stupid. But none of the up-timer traitors were that dumb, except maybe Jay Barlow and Mickey Simmons. Even Suzi Barclay wasn't that dumb, just nuts. No, wherever the lousy defectors were going, it was someplace they figured could hold off the USE, at least for a while. That meant Austria, probably-that had been Noelle's guess-or maybe Bavaria.

Lannie finished his beer and stood up. The motion was just a little bit too exaggerated to be that of a completely sober man. Which, given Lannie, was no surprise. He wasn't actually drunk, just in his more-normal-than-not state of a pleasant buzz. Lannie's alcoholism wasn't so bad that he couldn't get by in life, with his rare skills. Jesse Wood hadn't been willing to accept him in the air force, but the Kellys used him for their test pilot.

"Okay, then," he said. "Give me a ride back to Grantville on your bike, kid. I'll nail the bastards for you."

Denise frowned. "What are you talking about?"

He slapped his chest. "When the cavalry falls down on the job, you gotta call in the air force. One of the planes at the facility-that's the Dauntless-is finished and ready to go."

Denise stopped laughing after a while. Then, shrugged. "Sure, why not? I'll take you there. I'm warning you, though. Those hands of yours better not move around any while you're holding onto me."

Lannie looked aggrieved. "Hey, there's no call for that. Besides, I ain't crazy enough to piss off your dad."

Denise squinted at him. "You start groping, and my dad will be the least of your worries."

The Saale Valley, south of Saalfeld

"It has to be them," Noelle pronounced.

Eddie sighed and wiped his face. His whole body ached, from spending three days in the saddle. Especially his thighs. "No, actually, it doesn't. They passed through Saalfeld yesterday evening, in bad lighting, and the guards we talked to didn't recognize anybody. Just three wagons, which they didn't give more than a cursory inspection if they gave them any at all, because they most likely got bribed. Those are not exactly elite troops in that garrison, now that nobody's worried any longer about another raid deep into the Thueringerwald. Even if they weren't been bribed, they probably wouldn't have bothered to check the wagons anyway. You have any idea how many times heavily loaded wagons pass through Saalfeld?"

"It has to be them," Noelle repeated stubbornly. She swiveled in the saddle, the slight carefulness of the motion making it clear she wasn't feeling any too spry herself. "We should have gotten reinforcements by now. I guess Denise couldn't get anybody to take her seriously. Maybe I should have-"

"You weren't going to stay behind, since you can't resist the thrill of the chase. I couldn't stay behind, because somebody has to look after you. That left Denise-and we practically had to sit on her to get her to agree."

He wiped his face again. "And, yes, they probably didn't take her seriously. Given that she would have had to report to Captain Knefler, him now being the commander of the Grantville garrison, and Knefler is a jackass." He smiled. "Probably, after ten seconds or so, Denise started denouncing him. She's a real pip, that one."

Noelle eyed him suspiciously. "She's only sixteen years old. Not even that."

"All the more reason they wouldn't take her seriously."

"That's not what I was referring to. I was referring to the possibility of other men taking her too seriously."

"Don't be ridiculous."

The Saale Valley, near Hof

"Stop complaining," Janos said. He gave the wagon a cold, experienced eye. "The likelihood of having an axle break was very high, given the route we've taken and the speed we've made."

"And that's another thing," complained Billie Jean Mase. "You've been wearing everybody out."

Janos didn't bother replying to that accusation. In point of fact, while the pace he'd set had been hard by the standards of a commercial caravan, it was nothing compared to the pace Hungarian cavalrymen and their supply trains were accustomed to while on campaign. He was feeling perfectly well rested, himself. Granted, he'd been in a saddle, but Gage and Gardiner had been driving two of the three wagons and they were holding up well also.

Of the three drivers, the one in the worst shape was Mickey Simmons. He'd gotten the assignment because he'd boasted of the wagoneering skills he'd developed as a result of being the coordinator of training for the transportation department. Naturally, within less than four days he'd broken an axle.

"There's no time for this," Janos said curtly. He glanced up at the sun. "We'll camp here. We have perhaps three hours of daylight left to sort through the wagons, jettison whatever is least important, and repack the two surviving wagons."

Needless to say-he didn't think he'd ever met such self-indulgent people; they were even worse than Austrian noblemen-the Americans set up a round of protests and complaint. The gist of which was we need all of it.

He gave them no more than a minute before cutting the nonsense short.

"We have no means of repairing the axle. Nor can we seek the assistance of a wainwright in Hof, because there is a USE garrison there. By now, the alert will have reached them. Like most such garrisons, they will not exert themselves to search the surrounding countryside-but if we show up in the town itself, which is quite small, they will be almost certain to spot us."

He gave the assembled up-timers perhaps five seconds of a stony stare to see if any were stupid enough to argue those points.

None were, apparently. He revised his estimate of their common sense. Higher than carrots, after all.

"That leaves two options. The first is that we unload the contents of the broken wagon and pile them onto the two others."

"Yeah, that's what I was figuring," said Jay Barlow.

Sadly, the level of common sense did not attain that of rabbits.

Janos half-turned and pointed southeast toward a low range of mountains. "By tomorrow, we have to be well into the Fichtelgebirge. That terrain is considerably worse than we've been passing through, and the roads are worse yet. We are certain to break another axle, or a wheel, with overloaded wagons-and these are already dangerously burdened as it is. I leave aside the fact that we are now into late autumn. The weather has been good, so far, for which we can be thankful. But who knows when the weather might turn?"

The Americans squinted at the mountains. "We gotta go up there?" whined Peter Barclay's wife Marina. By now, Janos had come to recognize her as a champion whiner. She almost put his great-aunt Orsolya in the shade. Not quite.

"Why?" demanded her husband.

Janos shook his head. "This close to Bayreuth, we can't stay in the lowlands or we run the risk of being spotted by a cavalry troop. Even in the Fichtelgebirge, there may be an occasional patrol. Once we enter it, we can take only a few days-no more-to reach Cheb by following the Eger."

The Barclays' daughter Suzi frowned. She was a bizarre-looking creature, who would have been an attractive young woman if it hadn't been for the short cropped hair dyed a truly hideous color, five earrings in her left ear and three on the right, two metal studs through her right eyebrow-and, capping it all, a tattoo of flames done in black ink reaching from the wrist of her right arm to the top of the right side of her neck. The woman was so attached to the grotesque decoration that she insisted on wearing a sleeveless vest instead of a coat, despite the November temperatures.

"That can't be right," she said. "I know somebody from Cheb, one of the girls-well, never mind that, but she's Bohemian."

"That is hardly surprising, since Cheb is in Bohemia. It's an old fortress town that guards the western approaches. Good for us, in this instance, since the garrison is a mercenary company and its commander has been well bribed. We'll abandon these wagons in Cheb and replace them with several smaller ones, much better designed for travel in the mountains. We'll even have a cavalry escort while we pass down part of the Bohemian Forest until we reenter the USE near Kotzting. There, we will follow the Regen down to Regensburg, where we will exchange the wagons-that has also been arranged-for a barge that will take us down the Danube into Austria."

He'd already explained this to the leaders of the up-timers, the older Barclays and O'Connor and his son. But it seemed they either hadn't paid attention or hadn't considered all the implications.

"Hey, wait a minute," said Allan O'Connor. "We're coming back into the USE? What the hell for? I know my geography, dammit. Once we're across into Bohemia, let's just stay there until we get to Austria."

Janos stared at him. "Indeed. As a geographical proposition, that is certainly feasible. Follow the rivers down to Pizen. From there we could take a good road to Ceske Budejovice, the largest town in southern Bohemia. From there, of course, it is a short distance to Austria-and along a very good road, given the long and constant intercourse between Vienna and Prague."

O'Connor nodded. "Yeah, that's what I was thinking."

No rabbit had ever been this stupid, for a certainly. "You have missed the news, then. Of the war between Bohemia and Austria. Which has been going on for a year and a half, now."

The up-timers frowned at him. They looked like a pack of confused rabbits. All except Suzi Barclay, who just looked like a crazed rabbit.

Janos grit his teeth, reminding himself that he needed to remain on the best possible terms with these-these-people.

"Not a good idea," he said thinly. "The reason I could bribe the commander of the Cheb garrison is because no one expects hostilities to erupt between the USE and Bohemia, so that frontier post was given to a man who was competent enough but needed no further qualifications. Such as… what you might call a rigorous sense of duty. At Pizen and Ceske Budejovice, on the other hand, we would be dealing with Pappenheim's Black Cuirassiers."

The up-timers seemed to draw back a little.

"Ah. I see you have heard of them. Yes. We do not wish to have dealings with the Black Cuirassiers."

Enough! Still more time had been wasted. He pointed stiffly to the broken wagon. "So let us begin unloading it. Now. And discard from the other two wagons whatever is not essential."