Gretchen, that takes practice. Riding a horse well is one thing and using a saber well is one thing. Doing them both at the same time-especially while people are shooting at you and trying to stab you-is another thing altogether.'
Again, he made that up-raised hands gesture. More with resignation this time than frustration. 'Look, I was a bastard. I got the training but I never really got accepted. So I turned my hand to other things.'
'What things? Now that I think about it, you've never made clear how you made a living.'
'Various…things. Most of them involved running errands for the Koniecpolskis.'
Including running their spy network. Also contra-indicated.
'Some of those errands weren't all that respectable,' he added. Covering up political misdeeds with merely criminal or immoral ones was a time-honored tactic for secret agents.
Richter cocked her head. 'Somehow I have a hard time picturing you as a pimp.'
He tightened his jaws. Damn the woman. She was even a Catholic, at least in her upbringing. Why couldn't the Spanish Inquisition have recruited her and gotten her out of his hair?
Because they didn't recruit women, was one obvious answer. They didn't recruit revolutionaries either, was another. Rather the opposite, actually.
Richter straightened up from the table. 'All right, I'll let it go. That's not really any of my business. Here's what it comes down to, Jozef.'
She nodded toward Eric Krenz. The lieutenant wasn't actually 'in command' of the city's garrison. He was more like the first among equals of the dozen or so lieutenants from the regular USE army who acted as a command staff. Command college might almost be a better way of putting it. Nonetheless, whenever Gretchen needed to consult an individual officer, it was usually Krenz. That might partly be due to his relationship with Richter's close associate Tata, of course. But Wojtowicz allowed that the man did seem competent in his own right.
'Eric tells me that we may need to make a sortie at some point. It's now clear that Baner is going to challenge Stearns in the field. He's starting to pull his mercenaries out of the trenches.'
Jozef felt alarmed. 'Now? Gretchen, Baner is almost certain to be expecting a sortie while he carries out such an evolution.'
Richter's expression became a little sarcastic. 'No real military skills? Yet you seem very familiar with all this.'
Jozef flushed a little. 'Fine!' he snapped, 'You can't spend any time at all with Koniecpolskis without picking up a lot. Those people talk tactics over breakfast, starting at the age of four. My point remains-this is not a time to be talking about making a sortie. Baner will be ready for it.'
'Oh, relax,' said Krenz. 'I'm not stupid. Stupid officers don't last in the Third Division. The general is relaxed about a lot of things, but he'll shitcan an incompetent officer very quickly.'
The term shitcan was English, blended in smoothly and perfectly with the German that made up the rest of the sentence. That was how Amideutsch worked.
'We're not planning any sorties right now,' Krenz continued. 'We may never even do one at all. But we want to be ready in case the general does what we think he's going to do. Try to do, anyway.'
'And that is…?' Jozef was skeptical that a commanding general with as little experience as Stearns was planning any sort of tactic, much less a subtle one.
Krenz apparently sensed the skepticism. He smiled a bit crookedly. 'You don't really understand the general. Professional soldiers usually don't-and spare me the lecture about being not-really-a-hussar, Wojtowicz. You know a lot more than any civilian would, that's obvious.'
Jozef decided to ignore that. 'Please enlighten me, then.'
'The general knows he isn't an experienced commander, so he relies on his staff for that. What he does himself is bear down on those things he does understand and know how to do.'
'Such as?'
'He's the best organizer you'll ever meet and-this is rare as hen's teeth, in your circles-he actually gives a damn about his soldiers.'
Jozef started to say something and then stopped. Protesting the skills in that area of Stanislaw Koniecpolski was also contra-indicated.
Still, he must have flushed, because Eric's not-quite-a-sneering-lip curled further. 'And I'm not talking about the way a good noble general will respect and appreciate his soldiers' valor and morale, either. I'm talking about socks.'
'About…what?'
Eric pointed to his feet. 'Socks. And boots. All that sort of mundane and unromantic stuff. Do you know what the disease rate is, in the Third Division?
He didn't wait for an answer-which Jozef wouldn't have been able to provide anyway.
'The Third Division has better health than any division in the USE army. And the USE army has better health than any other army in the world. Do you know how fast the Third Division can march?'
Again, he didn't wait for the answer. 'Faster than any other division in the USE army. A lot faster, in fact. Everyone else-our own people as much as the enemy-keeps being surprised at how soon we show up somewhere. And do you know why?'
He pressed right on. Even if he'd wanted to, Jozef couldn't have squeezed in a word.
'Because the men always have good boots. All the men always have good boots, with plenty of spares. Socks, too. The horses are always shod. All the horses always get shod, whenever they need it. The wagon wheels are always in good shape, and there are plenty of spares if something breaks. A wheel breaks, it gets fixed right then and there. Same for an axle. D'you me want to go on? I could, believe me.'
Finally, he slowed down enough to take a deep breath. 'The point's this, Mr. Hussar-who-isn't. You have no idea what a military force is really capable of, when it's organized. The general won't even try to match Baner, maneuvering on a nice open field. That's why he launched his campaign in the middle of February. What general in his right mind wants to fight in the teeth of winter? I'll tell you-a general who knows his enemy has more experience but his soldiers don't have boots that are worth a shit. Whose soldiers have a crappy morale because they're mercenaries and no mercenary in his right mind wants to fight a winter campaign. I know the general. Right now, he's probably praying for another snowstorm-because that's when he'll attack Baner.'
'But…' Jozef was half-appalled and-by now-half-fascinated. 'How will he control his troops, in a snowstorm?'
'Never heard of radios? Of course, you have. By now, everyone's heard of radios. Even you Poles use them, I've heard. But you don't have that many of them, do you? And the ones you do have, you don't use very well, do you? Because you don't really think that way, do you?'
The lieutenant shrugged. 'But the general won't even be counting so much on his radios. He'll be counting on the fact that if he tells his men to fight in a snowstorm, they will damn well fight in a snowstorm-and they'll fight to win. They'll come right at Baner's thugs, marching in good boots and not freezing half to death. Most of all, they won't care so much whether they're being maneuvering properly because they're not thinking that way in the first place. That Swedish bastard damn well needs to be put down, and the Third Division will damn well do it. Right here, right now. And then what happens?'
Jozef finally saw where he was going. 'Baner's men will start coming back into their lines. Whether Baner wants them to or not.' He frowned. 'That'll only happen, though, if your fellow Stearns maneuvers at least well enough to keep them against the river.'
Krenz's sneer was now open. 'I said the general didn't hold much with fancy maneuvers. I didn't say he couldn't tell the difference between north, south, east and west. Don't worry, Wojtowicz.' He pointed out one of the windows. 'We've talked it over-all of us regular army lieutenants, I mean-and we're pretty damn sure that's what the general will try to do. He might not do it exactly that way, of course. Nobody can predict the weather, just for starters. But we're sure he'll do something like that. Which means that one way or another, sooner or later, Baner is most likely going to try to regroup by using his existing siege lines as defensive works. And that's when we'd do a sortie. When he's least expecting it because he's pre-occupied with the Third Division, and when it'd do the most good.'
Jozef thought about it, while running fingers through his hair. He couldn't deny there was a certain…
Well, not charm, exactly. But the young USE lieutenant's enthusiasm was infectious. All the more so because
