1635_ The Eastern Front - Eric Flint [107]
"Remember," Eddie said sternly. "Not one stone left in the field bigger than my thumb."
He held up the thumb in question. Standing next to him, Denise Beasley looked up at it and laughed.
"That thumb! A rhino could stumble over it." She held up her own thumb. "No bigger than this one."
The farmer squinted at the much smaller appendage, then shook his head. "Too much work."
"Leave it be, Denise," said Eddie. "My thumb's not all that big and—"
"I'm the expert on your thumb, buddy, not you, on account of—"
"Hey!" squawked Noelle.
Denise gave her a cherubic smile. "On account of I've hitchhiked with him."
"It's true," said Minnie. "Eddie's thumb can stop a truck. Of course, it helps when Denise and I"—here she hoisted her skirt and stuck out a leg—"show off too."
The leg was in stockings, but the stockings were very tight. The farmer looked a lot more intrigued at the sight than a man in his late forties with a still-living wife and three sons ought to look. But Noelle supposed it was hard to blame him. Minnie Hugelmair didn't have her best friend Denise Beasley's almost-outrageously good looks, but she was a still a healthy and shapely young woman. True, she had a glass eye and a little scar there, but people of the seventeenth century were more accustomed to such disfigurements than up-timers were. Smallpox left much worse scars on a face.
"I think we're done here," Noelle said. It was less of a statement than a plea.
Part Five
October 1635
The motion of our human blood
Chapter 26
The south bank of the Odra river, near Zielona Góra
"I don't want a repeat of what happened in Świebodzin, Captain Higgins. If you have to, shoot somebody. If that doesn't work, shoot a lot of somebodies. Shoot as many as it takes until they cease and desist. Is that understood?"
Mike Stearns was still icily furious, as he'd been for the last two days. Jeff had never seen him in such a state of mind.
Świebodzin had been hideous, though, sure enough. Some of the Finnish auxiliary cavalry that Gustav Adolf had attached to the Third Division had run amok once they got into the town and got their hands on some of the local vodka, the stuff they called "bread wine." They started sacking the town, with the atrocities that went with it. To make things worse, a couple of companies from an infantry battalion joined in. By the time Mike was able to put a stop to it, half the town had burned down and at least three dozen Polish civilians had been murdered and that many women had been raped. Nine of the dead were children. So were six of the raped girls, including one who was not more than eight years old.
There'd been about twenty of the rioting soldiers who'd been too stupid or too drunk to hide once order starting getting restored. Mike's way of disciplining those soldiers caught in the act had shocked the entire division. He'd had them tied to a wooden fence in a nearby pasture and executed by volley gun batteries at what amounted to point blank range. There hadn't been a single intact corpse left. They'd just gathered up all the pieces and shoved them into a mass grave.
Some of the Finns started to fight back, but Mike soon put a stop to that also. He had his own cavalry now, and they weren't fond of the Finns to begin with. Eight of the Finns were killed outright, and about forty deserted. Mike didn't bother to chase them. A few dozen light cavalrymen simply couldn't survive for very long in a countryside that was as hostile as western Poland. Sooner or later they'd have no choice but to turn themselves in to one of the army units. Of course, they'd choose one of Gustav Adolf's Swedish regiments rather than returning to the USE Third Division. But Mike would deal with that problem when the time came.
The reason the Third Division now had its own cavalry regiment was because Gustav Adolf had decided to march into Poland in six different columns. Dividing his forces like that was risky, of course, but he hadn't