“You mean, as unhappy as they were when you turned in your commission and titles?”
O’Donnell’s voice was quiet. “You’ve heard then?”
O’Neill shook his head. “Not officially, no: your officers have been keeping it quiet. But when your tercios came over here into bivouac with Preston’s, talk started-particularly when your men started getting orders from the Sassena-from Colonel Preston. And there were some as claimed that before you left, you’d folded up your tabard and sash of the Order of Alcantara and sent them back to Madrid.”
“That I did.”
Owen kept his voice carefully neutral: “So are you wanting us to follow your example?”
O’Donnell waved a negating hand. “I’d ask no man to follow my path. And there’s no need for you to declare your allegiance until you’re asked.”
“Then why didn’t you wait to do so, yourself?”
“Owen, when I was made a Knight-Captain of the Order of Alcantara, a Gentleman of His Majesty’s Chamber, and a member of his Council of War, I took my oaths before, and to, the king himself. In his very person, in Spain. I had my benefits and titles directly from his hand, and was, at his personal instruction, naturalized as a Spanish citizen. Honor demands, then, that if I know in my heart I can no longer be Philip’s loyal servant, I must relinquish all those privileges and garnishments at once. I can’t bide my time, waiting to be cornered into admitting that my allegiances have changed-even as I continue to enjoy the king’s coin and favor. Given the state of affairs here, honor may be all I have left-so it was both right and prudent that I keep it untarnished.”
“Fairly spoken,” Preston said. Owen found himself nodding; the earl of Tyrone’s officers were doing the same.
The flap of the tent came back. The young surgeon of the Tyrconnell regiment-blood still on his hands, some on his face-crossed the open center of the council ring and sat down next to O’Donnell. He said nothing, stared hard at nothing.
O’Donnell leaned toward him. “You’ve word on our worst wounded, Dr. Connal?”
“I do. Russell and Fitzgerald will live, but Nugent-” The young man dropped his head; O’Neill couldn’t tell if it was out of anger or grief. Perhaps both.
“Easy, Shane, easy,” soothed O’Donnell. “Have we lost him?”
“Not yet,” the younger man snapped through gritted teeth. “But we will, and there’s damn-all I can do to stop it. A gut wound”-he looked up, eyes narrow-“a small gut-wound. And I still can’t save him. If I were an up-time doctor-even one of their nurses-then, yes, maybe so. Probably. But me? I’m just-just a damned butcher, I am.” His head dropped again, neck rigid.
“It’s not a bit of your fault, lad,” put in O’Neill, seeking a moment in which simple kindness might also achieve some additional interclan mending. “And let’s not hear any more o’ this tearing yourself down because you’re not up-time-trained. I’m sure those fancy Grantville doctors are not half as good as everyone says they ar-” And he stopped, transfixed by a baleful glare from Hugh’s senior sergeant and old companion, O’Rourke-until a sudden, stinging chill of realization coursed through him. O’Donnell’s young wife of barely a year had died in childbirth only six months ago-and it was universally held that her death could have been prevented by an up-time doctor or nurse. O’Donnell might have had access to one of them through his godmother, the Infanta Isabella, but he had known that Philip IV would have been sorely displeased. And so, Hugh had refrained. And so, his wife, and only child, had both died. Criticizing up-time medicine was, Owen concluded, probably the stupidest thing he could have done at such a moment. He surveyed the faces in the tent to see just how much damage he had done.
Almost no face was turned towards him: they were toward O’Donnell, who sat very still, eyes lowered. He spoke to the doctor without looking up. “Owen Roe is right, Shane, when he says there’s no fault of yours in this. There are some things you can’t fix.” He looked up at the surgeon and smiled. “Not yet, that is.”
Connal nodded-and O’Neill swallowed hard: looking at O’Donnell’s smile, he could see-could almost feel-how much that had cost the earl of Tyrconnell. But Hugh kept that expression in place for a long moment, only allowing it to dim when he asked, “Dr. Connal, can you shed any light on our Franciscan visitors? Were they here to save our souls by hastening us to our reward?”
A few snickers underscored the surgeon’s answer. “Not unless the Franciscans are sending disguised mercenaries to carry out their holy work, m’lord. And desperate ones, too, to take such a job as this. Judging from the grooming and the gear under the habits, I’d say most of them were part-Spanish mercenaries-mixed-bloods, born in the Lowlands-and the rest Germans or Walloons. Some may have been simple cutthroats: no military gear on those-and not even a hint of third-rate camp hygiene. Dirty as pigs and twice the stink.”
Owen nodded and looked at O’Donnell. “So who do you think sent them?”
“I don’t know-and right now, there aren’t enough hours or facts to puzzle it out.” He stood. “I’ve stayed too long. But before I go, I feel I must tell you all this: the tercios are dead.”
Owen recoiled as if struck-in fact, felt as if he had been. “What fine, parting words of encouragement for all the men, Sir O’Donnell. I’m not sure the earl of Tyrone will agree to disband his tercios on your say-so, though.”
“Owen, I’m not talking about the existence of our regiments. I’m saying that the concept of the tercios — of that kind of warfare-is dying on its feet. The first victories of the USE are just initial freshets of proof: soon, it will be an inarguable flood. The new muskets-and now, Turenne’s breechloaders-are changing the battlefield. And those who do not learn to change with it will be the first to die upon it.”
“So this is the reason for all the hide-and-seek I saw when I came in?”
“The up-timer manuals call it ‘close quarters combat.’ Or, ‘CQC.’ ”
“And the USE forces train to use these tactics?”
“No, their equipment isn’t right for it, yet-and there aren’t enough up-timers who can teach them, either. But some special units-like Harry Lefferts and his group-use a simplified version. Granted, it seems their ‘CQC’ is based more on ‘movies’ than training manuals. But we can choose to do it right. We’ve got the discipline-and now the manuals-to genuinely learn these tactics, and then use them once we get our hands on enough revolvers and double-barreled weapons.” O’Donnell paused, looked around the ring of faces focused on him. “And if we want to be the victors instead of the vanquished, we must start learning these tactics now-before they are used upon us.”
O’Neill made as sour a face as he could. “They look more like tomfoolery than ‘tactics.’ ”
“And so they might, but this is just one of the ways in which war is changing-and each change will spawn more. New weapons, new training, new skills, new organization: before long, we’ll be revising everything we learned as our stock-in-trade. But we have to do it, even if it goes against our grain.”
“Heh. It doesn’t seem to go against your grain, Hugh.”
O’Donnell nodded somberly. “I suppose it doesn’t-not any longer. I’ve read their unit histories and accounts; I’ve seen up-timer military ‘documentaries’ that show how they-and before long, we-will wage war. Trust me, whether or not we’re comfortable with it, our tactical doctrines must change.” He looked around the tent. “And change is never easy. Never. Particularly not when one has to make many changes, and all at once.
“And that is what is sure to happen here in the Lowlands. Soon, you will all have a choice to make. And it can’t be long in coming, because Fernando is running out of money with which to pay you. So, before that day comes, I counsel you: think upon your oaths, and listen to your hearts. Task them to answer this one, simple question: where is your loyalty? To Philip and Olivares or to Isabella and Fernando? To a distant king’s coin, or to each other? For rest assured, that choice is coming-for each and every one of you.”
O’Donnell stepped from behind the table, crouched down as if he were going to scratch a battle plan on the ground-but what it did was put him at eye-level with even the lowliest man in the room. “Always remember this, lads. We Wild Geese-we’re all birds of a feather. We’ve been harrowed, but never broken-because we’ve always stuck together.”
O’Neill wanted to sneer, but he couldn’t-partly because O’Donnell hadn’t parsed the old saw as doggerel, so it hadn’t sounded trite. But mostly because he could see-could feel-all the men around him respond to the elemental honesty that shone out of Hugh’s eyes. O’Neill wished he could look away, could be somewhere else-anything, just so he wouldn’t have to see the indictment of his own clan laid out so plainly before him. The O’Donnells were leaders, always had been. They could touch hearts at a gesture, bond men to them with a whisper. Obversely, every O’Neill of note had made his name as a fighter, an intriguer, often a shrewd manipulator who might even conspire with an enemy, if it served his ultimate goals. They were renowned, feared, even respected-but never admired or loved. And that, Owen admitted, was probably the real reason behind the prickly hauteur of the Tyrones: a jealous envy after the natural nobility that they lacked.
