Jozef knew Krenz well enough to know that the man was not given to thoughtless martial enthusiasms. He tended to be a skeptic about the military virtues, in fact. Not derisive as such, but not entirely respectful either.
If someone like Krenz was this full of confidence-even eagerness-when it came to fighting Baner's professionals…
Suddenly, all of Jozef's doubts and misgivings vanished. No doubt there was something truly absurd about the Polish grand hetman's spymaster leading a charge for USE rebels, but he no longer cared. He had been trained as a hussar, and apparently there was still a small hurt lurking in his heart that he'd never been allowed that honor. Koniecpolski had never treated him like a bastard in his personal dealings, but he had used Jozef that way in professional terms. Always keeping him in the shadows.
How many hussars had led a sortie to relieve a city under siege, in the middle of a pitched battle on which the fate of an entire nation pivoted?
Not too damn many. His friend Lukasz certainly hadn't done it.
'All right, fine,' he said. 'I'll organize your sortie, in case the opportunity comes. But-!'
He raised a stiff, admonishing finger. 'We're not hussars. Bunch of damn fools, I know them well. There is no way I'm going to lead a charge of horsemen across snow, much less a frozen river-certainly not in a snowstorm! If I did make it across, I'd be the only one. No, no, no.'
He gave Krenz a beaming grin. 'We'll adopt the methods of your precious General Stearns. Snowshoes, that's the trick. Skis too, maybe, for those men good on them. But they'd have to be designed so they can be removed easily. You can't fight on skis. Not amidst trenches, anyway, which is where we'd be.'
He turned to Gretchen. 'Can you organize that? And we'll need grenades more than anything. Lots and lots and lots of grenades.'
From the look on her face, he thought he was about to be inflicted with another be-damned uptime expression.
'Don't teach your grandmother how to suck eggs,' she said.
Sure enough. The worst thing about the up-time saws was that they usually made no sense. Why would a grandmother suck eggs to begin with?
Can't tell the difference between a hawk and a handsaw. Oh, nonsense. A toddler could tell the difference between a bird in the sky and a hand tool.
You can't have your cake and eat it, too. Well, of course not. But what's the point? Why would anyone want a cake except to eat it?
A penny saved is a penny earned. Blithering nonsense. A penny saved was money already obtained whereas a penny earned came in the future. How could a people who had travelled through time not understand the difference between the past and the future?
And so it went. On and on. The early bird gets the worm. Idiotic. Did they think mindless worms had-what did they call those miserable devices? Ah, yes, alarm clocks. And why would they, even if they did have minds? Worms lived underground. It was always dark down there.
On and on. Haste makes waste. Did-
'Jozef?' said Gretchen. 'If there a problem? You seem pre-occupied.'
'Ah… No. There is no problem. A sortie you want, a sortie you'll get.'
Chapter 43
The Saxon plain, near Dresden Jimmy Andersen had an apologetic look on his face when he handed Mike the radio slip. 'More good weather, sir.'
Mike nodded, took the slip and gave it a glance-sure enough: No storm fronts in sight or reported-and tucked it away in a pocket of his jacket. He kept his face expressionless. There were some drawbacks to being a commanding general. You couldn't crumble up such a message, hurl in to the ground and stomp on it while cursing the fates.
He wished he could.
For one thing, it was cold-as cloudless days with blue skies usually were in the middle of winter. A good snowfall would bring a blanket of warmth with it. Well…not 'warmth,' exactly, but it would blunt the edge of this icy air.
Thank God for the jackets and trousers. As far as Mike was concerned, David Bartley was worth his weight in gold. Figuratively speaking, anyway. In literal terms, the youngster was probably worth a lot more than his weight in gold.
The whole division felt the same way. Mike was monitoring the sentiments of his soldiers carefully, not just through the chain of command and what his officers told him but through a separate network that ran through Jeff Higgins and the CoC organizers that he was in touch with.
There were lots of those in the division, as there were in almost any large unit of soldiers in the USE's army. There were some in the navy and the air force, too, but not nearly as many. The army was where the political radicals were concentrated.
CoC organizers and activists in the Third Division had a peculiar relationship with Jeff Higgins. On his own, Jeff was not and had never been a prominent figure in the Committees of Correspondence. His status in that regard was almost entirely due to being Gretchen Richter's husband. That meant that he was trusted, of course, but it didn't necessarily mean his political judgment was particularly respected.
But his status with CoC people in the division was more complicated, because by now Jeff had a lot of prestige as an officer. Just about every CoC and CoC-influenced soldier considered Higgins the best regimental commander in the division, hands down, and at least half of the other soldiers agreed with them. That was partly a function of the Hangman's reputation; partly a function of the Hangman's history; partly the result of the battle of Zielona Gora, where the Hangman had borne the brunt of the fighting; and partly because of Jeff's reputation for using egalitarian command methods.
The end result was that Jeff had his own network through the CoC organizers, which he maintained at Mike's request. That gave Mike a binocular view of the morale of his troops, something which few officers ever had.
And the morale was good. Very, very good. The troops knew what his plans were, at least in broad outline. But 'broad outline' was about all that Mike had himself. Maneuver; keep away from Baner until the weather turns sour; then go right at him-that pretty well summed it up.
They'd been at the first stage of that for three days now, since Baner pulled his troops out of the siege lines. Mike had been worried, at first, that days of marching and avoiding combat would sap his soldiers' confidence. But, it hadn't. Most of his troops were veterans and they understood how much of a toll the maneuvers would be taking on their counterparts in Baner's army. Except those sorry bastards wouldn't have good winter equipment. Some of them would literally be marching in rags, including on their feet.
In two feet of snow, temperatures that were well below freezing, and enough of a breeze every day to produce a significant wind chill.
The whole experience was weird, to Mike. Almost surrealistic. It was like waging a war in mud, or while encased in gelatin. Everything moved unbelievably slowly.
Both armies knew exactly where the other one was. Mike got regular reports from the air force, which maintained reconnaissance patrols over the area at least twice a day. He also got reports from his own scouts- most of those, ski patrols-as well as from Kresse's irregulars.
Baner had a lot of cavalrymen, including Finn light cavalry that he used for scouts. The Finns were accustomed to the cold and, in their own way, were well-prepared for it. They kept a distance from Mike's troops, after a couple of clashes had proved to them that light cavalry were no match for well-disciplined infantry armed with rifled muskets. But they had no trouble getting close enough to provide Baner with regular intelligence as to the Third Division's whereabouts.
And…in a way, it didn't matter. What difference did it make if two armies knew each other's whereabouts, when neither one of them could move much faster than five miles a day?
Mike's troops had something of an advantage, in that respect, because of their superior equipment and
