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The hetman shifted his massive shoulders. The gesture was not quite a shrug. "I may not even disagree with you, Jozef. But it doesn't matter. I am the grand hetman of Poland, not its king. Nor, perhaps more importantly, am I the Sejm. They will make the decision, not me—but I must tell you that King Wladyslaw is strongly inclined to intervene."

Lukasz sniffed. "Of course he is. He's a Vasa himself and thinks he's the rightful king of Sweden, not Gustav Adolf." A bit angrily, he added, "Which is the reason he's constantly embroiling Poland and Lithuania in things we should be staying out of."

Again, Koniecpolski shifted his shoulders. "I may not disagree with you, either, young Opalinski. But—again—I am simply the grand hetman. Whatever decision the Sejm and the king make, I will obey."

Jozef knew there was no point in pursuing the matter. It was odd, in a way. When it came to martial matters, Stanislaw Koniecpolski had a supple and flexible mind. For all the man's personal devotion to ancient methods of warfare—he probably was the greatest archer in Poland; certainly the greatest mounted archer—he'd proven quite capable all his life of adapting to new realities. He knew how to use modern infantry, artillery and fortifications; the so-called "Dutch style" of warfare. He had proven to be skilled at combining land and naval operations, too, although he was not a naval commander himself. Yet that same adaptability ended abruptly whenever Koniecpolski confronted a problem of a social or political rather than strictly military nature.

Koniecpolski now looked to Lukasz. "I could very much use some more up-to-date and accurate military information. My iconoclastic young nephew here has proven to be a superb spymaster. Alas, his knowledge of purely military matters is not what it could be. You, on the other hand—as one might expect from an Opalinski—have already made a reputation for yourself as a hussar."

Lukasz made humble noises. Jozef was rather amused. In point of simple fact, despite his youth, Lukasz was a noted hussar. A good thing, too. The Opalinski family produced a high number of free-thinkers and heretics. Lukasz's younger brother Krzysztof, for instance, was already a notorious radical, who was accused of advocating the overthrow of serfdom and the monarchy—even the nobility to which he himself belonged. The accusation was probably true.

Fortunately, Opalinskis also tended to be skilled at arms. Certainly, Lukasz was.

"How may I be of service?" he asked.

"I do not expect Poland will be fielding any sizeable forces in the opening stages of the coming war, even assuming the Sejm decides to intervene. You know how it is."

Lukasz nodded, wincing a little. Jozef was wincing himself.

You know how it is. In the long and often inglorious annals of the human race, Jozef thought the Polish Sejm was probably the worst example at any place or any time of all the vices of parliaments and none of their virtues. It was more riddled with factionalism than the ancient Greek city-states—and then added to the mix the absurdity of the individual veto, which even the cantankerous Greeks had had enough sense to eschew. The famous—notorious—Polish Sejm's liberum veto required a unanimous decision before anything could be done. The result was that making any decision, even a minor one much less a decision to go to war, invariably required weeks of wrangling. Often enough, months of wrangling.

That situation would only get worse, too, as time went on. The Americans hadn't brought very much in the way of Poland history with them. Most of what Jozef had been able to discover he'd put together piecemeal, usually from encyclopedia entries. But the liberum veto would become so notorious that it had made the passage through the Ring of Fire—more than four centuries after the absurd practice was instituted. In that other universe, by the middle of the next century, it would completely paralyze the Polish state.

The hetman continued. "But I do have the authority, I feel, to send a small unit to fight alongside