He had to wander around the corridors for most of an hour before he finally found Walczak. In the process he got completely lost twice. He'd never been in the huge building before. Like many palaces which dated back hundreds of years, the structure was a composite; haphazard in much of its design and complex to boot. The original castle had been a Romanesque fort built around the year 1200-over four centuries ago. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, the famous master builder Arnold von Westfalen extended it considerably. A century later, a new addition was constructed, this one in the Renaissance style. At no point along the way did anyone seriously try to remove what already existed. The back-breaking labor involved would have been insane. Only idiot Poles stupid enough to come to Dresden…
He finally spotted Waclaw.
Naturally, Waclaw chided him for being late.
When Walczak ushered Jozef into the large chamber on the top floor facing the river, Wojtowicz's worst fears were realized.
Richter herself, looking up from a large table where various maps were spread and studying him intently for several seconds.
'He's the one I was telling you about, Gretchen,' said Waclaw.
Stabbed in the back. Ever the story of poor Poland. Who needed enemies when Poles had themselves?
'You're szlachta, yes?' That came from Richter. It was more of a statement than a question.
Jozef made one last desperate attempt to weasel out of his fate. 'Yes, but so what? Two of the other Poles here in Dresden are szlachta also.'
One stab in the back deserved another. He pointed at Walczak. 'He's one of them.'
Richter shook her head. 'Yes, I know. But Waclaw doesn't have any military experience. Like most szlachta, his family has four pigs where his lowly commoner neighbors have only three. We Germans would say they're putting on airs, but what do we know?'
Waclaw was grinning. Jozef was tempted to grin himself. Richter's sarcastic depiction of the state of affairs for most of Poland's so-called nobility was accurate enough. Where most countries had a small aristocracy-that of the Germanies was no more than five percent of the population; that of England, an even smaller three percent-no fewer than one Pole in ten counted themselves part of the szlachta. Inevitably, that formal claim fell afoul of economic reality. Most szlachta families really weren't much if any wealthier than the peasants among whom they lived.
But he resisted the temptation, easily enough. There was peril lurking here somewhere, like a leviathan beneath the waves.
'Neither does the other szlachta, Radzimierz Zawadski,' Richter continued. 'But he and Waclaw both think you probably do. They say you're from a better class, associated with one of the magnates.'
That was always the problem with running into fellow Poles. From subtleties of dress, carriage, speech-who knew, exactly?-they could deduce things about another Pole that a foreigner would miss entirely.
There was no point trying to deny it. Jozef decided he'd skirt as close to the truth as he possibly could.
'Yes, that's true. The Koniecpolskis, as it happens. But I'm from one of the bastard offshoots of the family.' He shook his head. 'I'm no hussar, I can tell you that.'
Richter continued to study him. Her eyes were a naturally warm color, a sort of light brown that wasn't quite hazel. But they didn't seem the least bit warm, at the moment.
Not cold, either. Just…dispassionate, the way a student of natural history might examine a curious-looking and possibly interesting new insect.
'I didn't expect you to be,' she said. 'We wouldn't have any use for a hussar anyway.'
For the first time, she smiled. It was thin affair, with no more in the way of warmth than her gaze. 'We're likely to have a better use for horses before winter is over than putting a hussar on top of one. And to do what, anyway? Sally out of the gates and smite the foe? All one of him against fifteen thousand? No, better to keep the horses for food, if we need them.'
She went back to studying him again. 'Tell me the truth,' she said abruptly. 'Don't exaggerate anything-but don't minimize anything, either. How much military training and experience do you have?'
He hesitated. Then, decided that lying to this woman was likely to be a risky proposition. 'Training, quite a bit. Actual combat experience, none at all. Well, leaving aside two duels. Assuming the term 'duel' can be applied to affairs that were impromptu, unstructured, and…ah…'
'Drunken brawls where you could barely stand up and neither of you could see straight.'
'Well. Yes.'
'The training should be enough. Come here.' She motioned him toward her with a little wave of the hand. Her eyes were already back on the maps, though, not watching to see if he'd obey. She took that for granted, in the way people will who are accustomed to command.
When Jozef came around the table and stood next to her, he saw that she was studying a map of Dresden. More in the way of a diagram, actually, that concentrated entirely on the city's fortifications.
She placed a finger on one of the bastions that anchored the defenses along the river. 'Our officers tell me that once Baner is certain the ice covering the river is solid enough that he may attempt an assault across it. The fortifications here are not as strong as they are around the southern perimeter of the city.'
Jozef studied the diagram. The military training he'd gotten had been fairly extensive, as you'd expect for a member of the Koniecpolski family. But, as was usual for men of that class, it had not concentrated much on siege warfare. Still, he'd picked up quite a bit of knowledge by osmosis, as it were. Some of his instructors had been szlachta from modest families or commoners who did have experience fighting in the infantry and artillery.
'It makes sense to me. It'll depend mostly on how much of a chance Baner is willing to take. An assault like that is likely to result in heavy casualties. It's true that the defenses along the river are weaker, but there's a reason for that. The assumption is that the river itself bolsters the defense. Which it does, even in winter when the ice makes it possible to cross.' He placed his finger on the river. 'There is absolutely no cover at all there, and the soldiers have to cross well over a hundred yards of ice. Which may be solid but is hardly good footing. Personally, I think he'd be foolish to take the risk.'
'He may not have much choice,' said Richter. 'We think Oxenstierna is getting anxious, from reports we've gotten.'
Jozef frowned. 'Why?'
Richter's thin, humorless smile came back. 'Because he expected a lot more fighting across the nation than he's getting. Which makes Dresden all the more central. This is really the only place except Mecklenburg-and that's over by now, and not to Oxenstierna's liking-where you can use the term 'civil war' without snickering.'
Jozef hadn't known that. Second only to the misery of hauling rocks every hour of daylight had been the frustration of a spy who didn't have access to any information.
Belatedly, it occurred to him that for the first time since he'd arrived in Dresden, he could actually do some real spying. Risky, of course, to spy on such as Richter and her cohorts.
'So…' Maybe he could draw her out.
'So time is not on the Swede's side. People don't like things unsettled. They start getting angry at the people they think are responsible for it, unless they can see that real progress is being made to implement whatever program is being advocated. You can't ever forget that most people don't really have very strong political convictions. They just want to get about their lives. They will be naturally drawn to leaders who project confidence and seem to be getting things accomplished, and they will be naturally repelled by leaders who seem to stir up trouble but can't get anything done.'
Jozef hadn't ever thought about political conflict in those terms, but it did make sense. It was certainly true that a great deal of the confidence people felt in a leader came from the leader's own self-confidence. That was probably even more true of military leadership. Having a record of winning battles helped a great deal, of course. But the truth was that even great captains like Koniecpolski and Gustav Adolf had lost their share of battles and sieges. Yet they never lost the confidence of their followers, as much as anything because they went into each new battle as if they were certain to win.
Much the same way, he realized, that the woman standing next to him somehow exuded confidence that she would be triumphant in her struggles. As if victory were a given and all that remained to be determined was the specific manner in which it would be achieved.
'Leaders such as our blessed Swedish chancellor,' she went on. 'Look at what's happened. He summoned a
