1635_ The Eastern Front - Eric Flint [146]
"It's going well, I think. Well enough, at least."
He felt a drop of rain strike his hand. Then two, then three. A little patter of raindrops hit his helmet.
"Fuck!"
Jönsson had been afraid the king hadn't spotted the storm clouds coming. As it always was in a battle, Gustav Adolf's attention had been riveted on the enemy across the field. Some part of his mind had probably noticed that it was getting darker, despite the sun still rising. They hadn't reached noon yet. But that same part of his mind would have discounted the fact. Things often got darker in a battle, from the gunsmoke pouring out everywhere. Especially if there wasn't much in the way of a breeze, which there wasn't today.
Or hadn't been. Anders felt a sudden gust strike his cheek.
This was going to be another bitch of a storm, watch and see.
"Fuck!" repeated the king of Sweden, emperor of the United States of Europe, and high king of the Union of Kalmar.
Once again, war was respecting no person.
"Praise the Lord," murmured Stanislaw Koniecpolski. Technically, that might be blasphemy. But Koniecpolski was a Catholic, not a superstitious Protestant prone to seeing fussy rules and regulations in the way a man put on a button. He was also the grand hetman of Poland and Lithuania and one of its greatest magnates—a class of men who took a very expansive view of their rights and privileges. Much of the reason for Poland's tradition of religious toleration was because no great magnate was about to tolerate anyone—neither king nor pope nor sniveling Jesuit nor even the Sejm itself—telling him what he could or could not believe. He might be a Catholic himself, as most of Poland and Lithuania's magnates were, but he damn well had the right to convert to any brand of Protestantism that took his fancy, if he chose to do so.
So, "Praise the Lord," repeated Koniecpolski. Secure in the knowledge that what might be blasphemy for a peasant or a butcher was not for a grand hetman.
The storm clouds were coming fast. The Poles would start charging furiously now, while the soil was still firm enough that their horses could move across it. The condition of the ground was already bad—terribly so for cannon balls—but it wasn't bad enough that Polish warhorses would disobey their masters. A horse could handle such terrain, even if they didn't like it. They wouldn't be galloping, of course. But even a hussar charge at the speed of a canter could hammer down an opponent if they failed to stand their ground.
That was Gustav Adolf's great concern. Modern infantry could withstand cavalry if they were trained and seasoned, which these troops were—provided they retained their confidence. And there was nothing that would faster erode a unit's morale than the feeling they were alone, isolated, with their commanders nowhere to be seen.
The feeling, in short, that a heavy rain would bring.
The king of Sweden knew exactly what Koniecpolski would do now. The grand hetman would push his hussars to the utmost in order to take advantage of whatever period existed between the arrival of the rain and the subsequent obscuring of the battlefield and the point at which the rain turned the ground so muddy that cavalry were effectively unusable.
The morale of his troops. That was everything, now. He had to do whatever was necessary to keep them from faltering.
Without even realizing he was doing so, Gustav Adolf eased his sword in and out of its scabbard in order to make sure it would come forth easily if he needed it. Then he did the same with his pistols in their saddle holsters.
* * *
Anders Jönsson knew how to read the signs. He swiveled in the saddle and gave his little unit of Scotsmen a fierce and commanding look.
You know what's probably coming. Be ready!
Then he faced forward again. Were it not completely inappropriate in the presence of his monarch, Anders would have shouted his sentiments aloud—and been