what you need.”
“I don’t know,” Georg said. “I feel like I’m being pushed around. I don’t have control, and I don’t know when I will slip off the cart and fall into the mud again. And for me, it isn’t mud. It is always horse shit.” He laughed bitterly.
Hans held out his hand. “You take care on the way home. There are footpads now, I hear. Magdeburg is the very model of a modern city now.”
“I will,” Georg said.
“Just remember, trust God, Georg.”
“Here, Georg, have a beer.”
Herr Wahlberg had taken to having a dinner for his supervisors every month or so, and Georg had finally gotten invited.
The men milled around in the Wahlbergs’ front room. There were some finger snacks, and there was, of course, beer.
“ Nein, danke,” Georg said. “I don’t drink anymore.”
“How did you do that?” Wahlberg asked him, “if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I have placed my life in God’s hands, Herr Wahlberg, and I live one day at a time,” Georg said.
“I’ve heard that before, somewhere,” Wahlberg said. “Ah, yes. One of the people that my wife works with in her Army of Salvation says it.”
“Your wife started the Salvation Army?”
“Yes. She did. It keeps her busy, praise God!”
Georg felt as though he was on the receiving end of a message from God. He had been seeing the Salvation Army musicians playing on street corners for a while now. Hans had told him that he should talk to the Army. Now, his boss’s wife was the actual creator of the Army of Salvation.
“I…Herr Wahlberg, I thank you for inviting me to your home. I must be going now,” Georg stuttered, “I have a meeting to go to.”
Georg walked up and down across the street from the nondescript storefront. The sign on the building said “Die Heilsarmee”-the Salvation Army. He kept stepping off the sidewalk and stopping, going back to pacing. He knew that he was making an important decision. He didn’t know what he was going to do. Now that it had come, he was having trouble committing to doing it.
He recited the first steps to himself. “I have realized that I am powerless over alcohol-and that my life is unmanageable. I have come to believe that a Power greater than myself can restore me to sanity. I have made a decision to turn my will and my life over to God…”
He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath and marched across the street to the storefront. He put his hand on the door.
“I have made a list of all the people I have harmed, and I am willing to make amends to them all.”
He turned the doorknob, and went inside.
Pieter Doorn watched as the Heilsarmee Marching Band played its first concert on the steps of St. James’ church. For months now, they had been playing on streetcorners and in their storefront mission. Today, they were playing selections from Guys and Dolls as well as the hymns, both traditional and up-timer, that they were becoming famous for.
When they got to “Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat,” Doorn heard Georg Schuler’s voice. Georg was certainly the loudest, if not the most melodious, he thought to himself. But then they did “Amazing Grace,” and Schuler sang with tears streaming down his face.
“Amazing Grace,” Georg sang as the band played, “how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.”
Salonica
Salonica, Ottoman Empire
Spring 1635
“Atesh!”
Once again the volley of rifle fire tore into the ranks of the bandits. It was more ragged this time. The defenders had taken casualties of their own since the attack on the inner walls of the gunpowder factory.
“To the wall! Forward!” Mustafa bin Kemal shouted. He looked at Sampson and grinned. “Well done, my friend. Those wonderful grenades saved us. Any left?”
Sampson Gideon reached over his shoulder into the grenade pack and held up a “potato masher.” “Last one, Mustafa. We’ll have to use dynamite from now on.”
If we had any dynamite, Sampson thought. He’d sent the last batch to the Sidrekapsi silver mine yesterday. Opening up new shafts at the mine took priority over grenades, by order of Melek Ahmed Pasha himself.
He and Mustafa were at the wall now.
Unlike the inner walls, the outer wall was incomplete and stood less than three feet high. The forest around the factory had been cut back, but it was still less than a hundred yards away.
“What now?” Sampson asked.
“Now we prepare for their next attack, my friend.” Mustafa said.
The bash cebeci- head armorer-turned to his men along the wall. “ Sungu tak! Sungu tak! ”
Sampson felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Fix bayonets? Oh, God, we’re going to die.
The words from the head enlisted man of the Essen military team, Senior-sergeant Duncan MacGregor, came back to him. “Better pray these Turks never need to use their rifles with the new bayonets, Mr. Gideon. They’ll carve you up like a chicken right quick with the bayonets in their hands, but they get too excited to use them on the rifles and just turn it into a club in the heat of battle.”
Sampson stopped Mustafa as he came down the line of men. “Fix bayonets? Mustafa, they don’t know how to use the bayonets.”
Mustafa smiled. “Of course not. But we are almost out of ammunition, and at least the sight of the bayonets will put fear into our enemies. How many rounds left for your pistol?”
“Two cylinders. Twelve rounds.”
Mustafa shrugged. “Use them well. We surprised these rebels. They will be more organized with the next attack. It is obvious they are not simple bandits or brigands. That has to be why we have seen no reinforcements from the orta in the new training grounds.”
Sampson could hear men shouting off in the forest.
“What are they saying?”
“Officers exhorting their men.” Mustafa tilted his head to listen, then laughed. “Calling them shit-eating sons of motherless donkeys. If they have any courage left, they will be shamed into another attack soon. Make ready.”
“Mustafa! Look!” An armorer pointed back toward the factory.
MacGregor!
The senior-sergeant pulled up his horse and saluted Mustafa.
“Bash Cebeci, we have two cannon, at your service.”
“Essen cannon?”
MacGregor smiled. “Of course. The fifteen pounders. With fifty rounds of canister each. The Chorbaci sends his regards and says reinforcements will be here in fifteen minutes. A diversionary attack hit the encampment.”
Mustafa nodded and turned his head to look at the outer wall, then pointed at a bend in the wall a hundred
