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    The decision made, Gustav moved at once. He turned to his bodyguard, Anders Jönsson. “You heard?”

 

    Stolidly, Jönsson nodded. The king continued: “Get Captain Gars a cavalry detachment, Anders. A good one. The captain is partial to the
Västgöta
, as you know. And make sure he has plenty of Finns and some Lapps.”

 

    Gustav grinned cheerfully. “And I do believe I’ll assign you to the captain as well, Anders.” He waved a thick hand in the direction of Nürnberg. “There obviously won’t be any danger to
me
, in the midst of these great fortifications. Will there?”

 

    Stolidly, Jönsson shook his head.

 

    “Excellent,” said the king. He began walking away briskly, heading for the stairs leading down from the redoubt. Almost bouncing with enthusiasm, it seemed. Over his shoulder: “Captain Gars will be so delighted!”

 

    When he was gone, Jönsson and Torstenson stared at each other.

 

    “Captain Gars,” muttered Jönsson. “Wonderful.”

 

    Torstensson’s expression was a mix of concern and amusement. “Do take care of him, Anders, will you?”

 

    The response was stolid, stolid. “That madman?
Impossible
.”
Chapter 51

    “What the hell are they
doing
, Heinrich?” demanded Tom Simpson. The big American captain was peering over the top of the parapet which had been erected across the road leading into Suhl from the south. The hastily built field fortifications were positioned at the northern edge of a large meadow. The meadow was about two hundred yards long and slightly less than that in width. A small stream ran through the center of it, bisecting the road.
    His commanding officer shrugged. A pair of binoculars was slung around Heinrich’s neck, but he was not using them. The oncoming mercenary soldiers were already entering the meadow, and in plain view.
    Tom raised his own binoculars and scanned the meadow. After a few seconds, he lifted the eyepieces and began slowly studying the woods which covered the hills beyond.
    “I don’t like it,” he muttered.
    Next to him, Heinrich smiled. If he had any professional criticism of his inexperienced junior officer, it was that Tom
insisted
on finding complexity where, more often than not, there was none. “Too much football,” he murmured.
    Tom lowered the binoculars and peered at him suspiciously. “What is that supposed to mean?”
    Heinrich’s sly smile widened. “What it means, my friend, is that you keep thinking you are on a playing field. Facing enemies who are working out of a fancy play book.”
    Except for the English phrases “playing field” and “play book,” Heinrich had spoken the last two sentences in German. The language made the English sports terms particularly incongruous—which was exactly what Heinrich had intended.
    Tom snorted. “And what do you know about play books? Every time I’ve tried to explain football, you either fall asleep or order another beer.”
    Like Heinrich, Tom now also spoke in German. His command of the language had improved faster than that of any adult American in Grantville. It could not be said that Tom was fluent yet—not quite—but he was already able to participate in any conversation.
    “That’s because it’s too intricate,” retorted Heinrich. His hands zigzagged back and forth. “This one goes that way, that one goes this way”—his forefinger made a little twirling motion—“the other one runs around in circles to confuse the opponent—ha! It’s a wonder you didn’t all collapse from dizziness.”
    Tom grinned. “Not
my
problem. I didn’t go anywhere except straight ahead—right into the guy in front of me.”
    “Excellent!” cried Heinrich. He slapped Tom on the shoulder with his left hand while he pointed at the meadow with his right. “Then you shouldn’t have any difficulty with
this.
They come straight at us—good soldiers!—and we knock them flat. What is to understand?”
    Tom’s grin faded, replaced by a scowl. “Dammit, Heinrich, it doesn’t make sense! They have got to know by now—”
    Heinrich cut him off. “No, they don’t! Tom, listen to me. You have no experience with these mercenary armies. Those men”—he jerked his head toward the meadow—“have probably had no contact with Tilly’s. And if they did, they would have ignored anything a
stupid Bavarian
had to say.”
    He could tell that Tom was not convinced. Heinrich chuckled. Pointing now with his chin, he indicated the woods beyond the meadow. “What? You think there are cavalrymen hidden in the wood? Bringing their clever maneuver to fruition. Waiting to pounce when the time is right?”
    Tom hesitated. Heinrich smiled. “Double reverse? Is that what you call it?”
    “All right,” the American grumbled. “Maybe you’re right.” He lifted his head over the parapet again. Softly: “We’ll know soon enough. They’re starting to cross the stream.”
    Lazily, Heinrich raised his own head and studied the enemy. “Swabians, I think. Sorry ignorant bastards.”
    Tom’s lips twitched. “
All
of them?”
    “Every Swabian ever born,” came the firm reply. Then Heinrich’s own lips moved. Twitched, perhaps. “I’m from the Upper Palatinate, you know.”
    “As if you haven’t told me enough times. Funny thing, though.” Tom’s heavy brows lowered. “I was talking to a Westphalian just the other day, and
he
swears that everybody from the Palatinate—Upper or Lower, the way he tells it—is a natural born—”
    “Westphalians!” sniffed Heinrich. “You can’t believe a word those people say. They’re all goat-fuckers, for a start. Bastards, too, every one of them.”
    Tom started to make some quip in response, but never spoke the words. For all the relaxed casualness in Heinrich’s stance and demeanor, Tom understood the sudden squinting of his eyes. During their badinage, the German veteran had never taken his gaze off the enemy. Tom envied him that relaxed poise. Personally, he felt as tight as a drum.
    “Seventy yards,” Heinrich murmured. “Good.” He raised the whistle hanging around his neck. But before blowing into it, he gave Tom a sly smile.
    “How do you say it? Oh, yes—
play ball.
”
    The whistle blew. An instant later, three hundred U.S. soldiers rose from behind the parapet and began pumping lead slugs into the Swabians.

    Five minutes later, the gunfire ceased. Heinrich swiveled his head. The sly smile was back.

 

    “How do you say it? Oh, yes—
blowout
, I believe.”

 

    Tom made no reply. He appreciated the humor, but couldn’t really share it. Unlike Heinrich, Tom Simpson was not a veteran of a dozen battlefields. He kept his eyes firmly focused on the enemy soldiers stumbling in retreat, so that he wouldn’t find himself staring at the corpses mounded in an innocent meadow. Or a pleasant stream, suddenly running red.

 

    “Why’d they do it?” he whispered. Again, his eyes ranged the woods beyond. “Shoulda had cavalry. Tried a flanking attack or something.”

 

    The reply was a given. “Swabians.
What do you expect?”

 

    As it happened, there
were
horsemen in those woods. But they were not Wallenstein’s cavalry. They were Lapps, in service to the king of Sweden. Gustav Adolf believed, quite firmly, that Lapps were the best scouts in Europe.

 

    He was quite possibly right.

 

    The Finn who was in command of the Lapp scouting party reined his horse around. “Interesting,” he said. “Come. Captain Gars will want to know.”

 

    Captain Gars raised himself off the saddle, standing in the stirrups. His head was cocked, listening for the sound of gunfire coming from the north. But there was none. The gunfire he had heard earlier that day had not lasted for more than a few minutes.

 

    “How many?” he asked gruffly.

 

    The Finnish scout waved his hand back and forth. “The Swabians, maybe two thousand. The other side?” He shrugged. “A few hundred, no more. Hard to say, exactly. They fight like skirmishers.”

 

    The last sentence, almost barked in his rural-accented Finnish, was full of approval. The scout, like most Finns and all Lapps, thought the “civilized” method of warfare—blast away, standing straight up, practically eyeball to eyeball—was one of the surest signs that civilization was not all it was cracked up to be.

 

    He finished with a grin: “Smart people, these Americans. Whoever they are.”

 

    Captain Gars grunted. “It’s all over, then?”

 

    The Finn snorted. “It was a bloodbath. If the Swabians weren’t so stupid they’d have run away after a minute.”

 

    “No chance they can take Suhl?” The scout’s only response was a magnificent sneer.

 

    Captain Gars nodded. “Not our concern, then. But this other—”

 

    He twisted his enormous body in the saddle and looked toward the small group of Lapp scouts sitting on their horses a few feet away.

 

    “Two thousand, you say?” As with the Finn himself, the captain spoke in Finnish. Few Lapps knew any other language beyond their own.

 

    The head Lapp scout grimaced. “We guess, Captain. They follow narrow trail. Way ground chewed, must be two thousand. More. Maybe.”

 

    “And you’re sure they’re Croats?”

 

    Again, the Lapp grimaced. “Guess. But who else? Good horsemen.”

 

    Captain Gars peered into the distance, looking slightly east of north. The Thuringenwald was a dense forest in that direction. Largely uninhabited, by the Lapps’ accounts. The kind of terrain that good light cavalry can move through unobserved, as long as they carry enough provisions. The Lapps had spotted the trail less than two miles ahead. If their assessment was accurate—and Captain Gars thought Lapps were the best trackers in Europe—a large body of cavalry had broken away from the army marching on Suhl, moving into the forest east of the road.

 

    Croats were good light cavalry. The best in the imperial army. Captain Gars decided that the Lapp was probably correct. Who else would it be?

 

    The captain was not familiar with this particular area of the Thuringenwald. But, even given the roughness of the terrain, he estimated that a cavalry force of that size could pass over the crest of the low mountains within two days. Certainly not more than three. In straight-line distance, the heart of southeast Thuringia was not more than forty miles away.

 

    Or Saalfeld, possibly, if the Croats angled further to the east. But the captain did not think Saalfeld was their target. Saalfeld could be approached far more easily from the opposite direction, following the Saale river. With the king of Sweden’s army concentrated in Nürnberg, there was nothing impeding Wallenstein from sending an army directly against Saalfeld.

 

    There was only one logical reason for a large cavalry force to be taking this route.

 

    “They’re planning a surprise attack on Grantville,” he stated. “A major cavalry raid. Not to conquer, but simply to destroy.”

 

    Sitting on his horse next to the captain, Anders Jönsson heaved a sigh. He had already come to the same conclusion. And, what was worse, already knew for a certainty what Captain Gars would decide to do.

 

    “We’ll follow them.” The words seemed carved in granite.

 

    Anders appealed to reason. “Two thousand, the Lapp says. We’ve only four hundred.”

 

    “We’ll follow them,” repeated the captain. He glared at Jönsson. “Surely you don’t intend to argue with me?”

 

    Anders made no reply.
Surely, he didn’t.

 

    Captain Gars spurred his horse forward. “And move quickly! The enemy is already half a day’s march ahead of us.”
Chapter 52

    Mike decided to take out the field guns first. His confidence as a military commander had grown enough that he didn’t wait to check with Frank. The Spaniards, in the manner of the day, were moving the artillery into position ahead of the infantry. Smoothbore cannons firing round shot needed a flat trajectory to be effective in a field battle. There was no way to do that with a mass of infantry standing in front of them. Mike understood the logic, but he still found the idea vaguely absurd.
    “Talk about being exposed,” he muttered. He lowered the binoculars.
    “Orders, chief?” asked his radio operator.
    Mike grinned. “I’m never going to get used to that expression coming from
you
, Gayle.” He extended his hand and took the radio.
    “
Harry, this is Mike. Move out the APCs. Take Route 4 and then turn south onto Route 26. The Spanish are positioning the field guns east of the road. You can cut right between the artillery and the infantry.
”
    Harry Lefferts’ voice crackled out of the radio.
“What about the cavalry?”
    “
We’ll worry about them later. Frank can hold his ground easily enough, even if he doesn’t use the M-60. We’ve got a chance to nail the artillery right now
.”
    Lefferts’ response, like the entire exchange, was sadly lacking in military protocol.
    “
Gotcha. Will do, chief.
”
    In the distance, coming from the grove northwest of that stretch of Eisenach’s walls, Mike could hear the sound of the APC engines firing up.
    His grin came back. “And I’ll
sure
as hell never get used to it coming from Harry.”
    Gayle matched the grin. “Why not? Ain’t you just the proper budding little Na-po-lee-own?”
    “Give me a break,” snorted Mike. “The day I become a military genius is the day hell freezes over.” He handed the radio back to Gayle. “Call Frank and tell him about the change in plans. I want to go talk to Alex.”
    Gayle nodded. Mike turned away from the redoubt’s wall and hurried toward the stairs leading to the compound below. By the time he reached the level ground where the cavalry was waiting, taking the wide stone steps two at a time, Mackay and Lennox were trotting forward to meet him.
    After Mike explained the new situation, Alex grimaced. Lennox scowled. Mike found it hard not to laugh. The Scotsmens’ expression combined varying amounts of amusement and exasperation.
    On the part of Lennox, mostly exasperation. “Soft-hearted Americans,” he grumbled. “Ye’d do better—”
    “Enough,” commanded Mackay. “
General
Stearns is in command.”
    Lennox subsided, but it was plain enough that he was not a happy man. Mike decided to explain.
    “I realize we’d have a better chance of smashing the whole army if I waited. But our first responsibility is to ensure the safety of Eisenach. Without those guns, the Spaniards don’t have a chance in hell of breaching the walls.”
    Lennox refrained from making the obvious rejoinder.
They don’t have a chance in hell anyway.
Alex tugged at his beard. “I assume, then, that you’ll be wanting us to chivvy the bastards after the APCs rip up the guns?”
    Mike nodded. Alex’s beard tugging grew vigorous. “And are you still determined . . . ?”
    “Yes,” came Mike’s firm reply. “Drive ’em toward the Wartburg, Alex. And don’t expose your men more than you need to. I want to keep our casualties as low as possible.”
    It was plain enough from his expression that the young Scottish officer was not happy with Mike’s plan. But he refrained from argument. Alexander Mackay most definitely did
not
think Mike Stearns was a “military genius,” but he also believed firmly in the principle of command.
    A moment later, Mackay and Lennox were starting to issue orders to the cavalry. Within seconds, the marshaling area was a beehive of activity. The packed earth was rapidly chewed up still further by a multitude of stamping hooves.
    The Eisenach militiamen staffing the gates were the only foot soldiers in the area. But they were able to start working the gate mechanisms from within the protection of the stone gatehouse. Mike was out in the open. He scampered back toward the stairs and started climbing them—again, two steps at a time. Being on foot in an area where a thousand horsemen were moving their chargers into position was not anywhere he wanted to be.
Squash. Oops. Sorry ’bout that.
    Once he was back at the redoubt wall, Gayle offered him the radio again. He cocked an eye. “Problems?”
    “No,” replied Gayle. “Except Frank told me to tell you that you’re a soft-hearted wimp.”
    Mike smiled. He brought the binoculars back up to his eyes. “Yeah, I know,” he murmured. “It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.”
    As he studied the Spanish tercios beyond the walls of Eisenach, Mike’s smile faded. There were six tercios in that army—approximately twelve thousand men, he estimated—along with two thousand cuirassiers positioned on either flank. It was not a huge army, by the standards of the day, but it was sizeable. Big enough to have turned the farmland across which they marched into barren devastation. Mike could see the burning farmhouses in their wake. Fortunately, the inhabitants had long since taken refuge within Eisenach’s walls. But the destruction was still savage enough.
    The Spanish infantry was 500 yards away. The Spanish commander had brought his infantry to a halt just short of the road, while he moved his artillery into position across it. Clearly enough, he intended to begin his attack on Eisenach with a cannonade.
    That road ran north to south, just west of the city. It was now officially designated as U.S. Route 26. Route 4, the road along which Harry was now leading the ten APCs, intersected Route 26 about two miles to the north. The Americans, following their own traditions, had insisted on giving a proper nomenclature to all the roads in the new United States—which now included all of southern Thuringia from Eisenach to Gera. The native Germans thought the custom was bizarre, but they went along without complaint. Compared to everything else about the Americans, numbering roads was small potatoes. And the Germans had noticed that roads which were given “official status” were invariably widened and properly graded. Graveled, too, more often than not. So the farmers were happy enough with the change. Easier on their carts and draft animals.
    “Soft-hearted,” mused Mike, speaking to himself. “No, Frank, not really. It’s just that I know the cost of being anything else.”
    He lowered the binoculars and turned his head to the northeast. Not more than three seconds later, he saw the first of Harry’s APCs thunder from behind the low hill which had hidden their approach.
    “God, I’m sick of this,” he muttered.
    Gayle misunderstand his frown. “Something wrong with the APCs?”
    “No, Gayle,” Mike replied softly. “Nothing at all. Harry’ll rip right through ’em.” He glanced at her. “
That’s
what I’m worried about.”
    It was Gayle’s turn to frown. Clearly enough, she didn’t understand.
    
And that’s what I’m worried about the most
, thought Mike. He brought the binoculars back to his eyes, focusing on Harry’s blitzkrieg attack.
Give it a few years. Cortez and Pizarro, coming up. Hidalgos true and pure.
    
 
    
“Fire!”
shrieked Lefferts, riding in the armored cab of the lead APC. His words, carried over the CBs to all the APCs coming behind, produced an instant eruption. On both sides of the armored coal trucks, the rifles poking through the slits began firing. Most of those weapons were bolt-action or lever-action, but a goodly number were semiautomatics. The rate of fire which they produced fell far short of automatic weapons, but it still came as an incredible shock to the Spanish soldiers gawking at the APCs.
    The U.S. soldiers on the right side of the trucks, facing the Spanish infantry, were simply trying to fire as many rounds as rapidly as possible. Aiming was a moot point. The front ranks of the tercios were less than thirty yards from the road. At that range, firing into a mass of tightly packed men, almost every round hit a target.
    The soldiers on the left side of the trucks, facing the field guns, did take the time to aim. They needed to kill the gunners and the rammers, who were individual targets rather than a mass. But since the range was just as short—shorter, in the case of the bigger guns—aiming was not difficult.
    The voice of the radio operator in the rearmost APC came over the CB in Harry’s vehicle. “We’re into the zone!” she cried.
    Harry immediately issued new orders.
“Stop the column!”
    The drivers of the ten APCs braked to a halt. All of the vehicles were now “in the zone”—positioned right in the middle of the Spanish army, with clear lines of fire on both sides. The APCs were facing south on Route 26. The Spanish infantry was now separated from the artillery by the armored coal trucks. Now that the vehicles were no longer moving, the rifle fire intensified and became more accurate.
    The result was a one-sided slaughter. Several of the tercios managed to get off coordinated arquebus volleys, but the gesture was futile. Even at point-blank range, the thick steel of the APCs was impervious to slow-moving round shot. The Spaniards might as well have been throwing pebbles.
    The tires were somewhat more vulnerable, but not much. Few of the Spanish bullets hit the tires, anyway, and those only did so by accident. The Spaniards had no experience with American vehicles at all—most of the soldiers were still gawking with confusion—and never thought to shoot for the tires. Even the few bullets which did strike the tires caused no real damage. Coal truck tires were not, to put it mildly, fragile and delicate; and, again, the slow-moving round shot of seventeenth-century firearms was poorly equipped to rupture them.
    There was one American fatality. By sheer bad luck, a bullet came through one of the firing slits and hit the man positioned there. He died instantly, his head shattered by the .80-caliber round.
    The damage wreaked by the U.S. soldiers, on the other hand, was horrendous. Within a minute, those artillerymen who had not been shot down were sprinting away from the guns, seeking nothing more than refuge in the distant woods. Seconds later, the soldiers on that side of the trucks stopped firing. There were simply no more targets available.
    On the other side of the APCs, the firing continued. By their nature, tercios were so tightly packed that it was impossible for men in the front ranks to simply run away. The soldiers standing behind them formed an impassable barrier. Moreover, these were
Spanish
pikemen and arquebusiers. Spanish infantry were universally acknowledged as the best in Europe. Even by the standards of the time, those men were ferociously courageous.
Stand your ground and take it
was as ingrained in them as their native tongue.
    Three of the tercios even managed to launch pike charges. Stumbling over corpses, the Spaniards leveled their fifteen-foot spears and lunged onto the road.
    The charges had no chance of destroying the APCs, of course. That would have required grenades, which the Spanish soldiers did not carry. But the pikemen might still have disabled the vehicles as effective military instruments, by the crude but simple expedient of sticking pikes into the firing slits and forcing the U.S. riflemen to retreat against the opposite walls.
    But they never got that far. As soon as the first ranks of the tercios stepped onto the road, the Claymore mines positioned along the sides of the APCs erupted. A hail of cannister and shrapnel literally wiped them off the road. In an instant, hundreds of men were dead and dying.
    That stunning blow was too much, even for Spanish soldiers. The men who survived stumbled back. By now, the pikemen and arquebusiers behind them had begun to retreat, leaving space for the front ranks to follow. Within two minutes, chased along by continuous rifle fire, the entire Spanish infantry was in headlong retreat.
    When Mackay’s cavalry sallied from Eisenach, the retreat became a rout. The Spanish cuirassiers, as brave as the foot soldiers, launched a countercharge. But the effort was futile. As soon as the Spanish cavalry emerged in clear view, Frank ordered his infantrymen to open fire. Those U.S. soldiers were stationed in rifle pits and behind palisades a hundred yards in front of Eisenach’s walls. They were firing at exposed horsemen from a range of two hundred yards. Before the lead elements of the Spanish cavalry could reach Mackay’s oncoming charge, they had already been bled badly.
    Mackay hit them like a hammer. Although Mackay’s forces were still technically part of the Swedish army, they were for all practical purposes the U.S. cavalry—and had been equipped accordingly. Most of his horsemen—the big majority of whom were now Germans, not Scots—had been equipped with an American revolver or automatic pistol. Matched against the wheel locks and sabers of the Spanish cavalry, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. The Spanish cuirassiers were shattered within less than three minutes. The survivors raced away, stunned by the firepower they had encountered.
    Mackay could have given pursuit, which would have produced yet more carnage. But he held back his forces. He had his doubts about Mike’s battle plan, but he was too well trained to break discipline.
    Fifteen minutes after the APCs opened fire, the Battle of Eisenach was over. The broken Spanish tercios and their cavalry escorts were retreating in complete disorder. While Mackay and his men chivvied them toward the distant Wartburg, the U.S. soldiers in the APCs dismounted and took possession of the Spanish field guns. Before another fifteen minutes had passed, the gates of Eisenach were wide open and hundreds of conscripted farmers were starting to hitch up the captured cannons and haul them into the city.
    The Spanish commander, meanwhile, had managed to bring a semblance of discipline back to his army. It did not take him long to reach the obvious conclusion. They had been half-destroyed in a field battle. It was time to seek shelter within fortifications.
    Where?
    
Where else?
The ancient castle called the Wartburg was in plain view, perched atop a hill to the south. The Spaniards had already taken possession of it, in fact. On the march in toward Eisenach, cavalry units had investigated the castle and found it deserted. The Spanish commander had been dumbfounded at the news. Were these Americans utterly insane, not to garrison the strongest fortress in the region? But he was more than happy to take advantage of his enemy’s stupidity.