1635_ The Eastern Front - Eric Flint [82]
Apparently, then, he'd survive. Eric was quite cheered by the thought. He enjoyed life.
He didn't even lose much of his cheer when Jeff Higgins came to visit and gave him the bad news.
"It's not a magic wound, buddy. Sorry. You'll be out for a while, but they'll have you back in the ranks sooner'n you probably want."
Eric would have shrugged, but he'd already learned that any movement of his upper body hurt. So he grimaced in such a way as to express the same sentiment.
"Just as well. Don't listen to the silly fools, Captain Higgins. Just about any so-called ‘magic wound' is going to be awful. You've almost always got to lose some body part you really don't want to lose. Besides—"
He swelled out his chest and immediately regretted it. "Ow! Besides, the girls like the medals, sure, but they like them a lot better if they're attached to a fellow who looks like a fellow instead of a side of beef in a butcher shop."
A dark thought came to him. He gave Higgins a beady-eyed look. "You did put me in for a medal, didn't you? I will remind you that I did save your life. All right, I tried to save your life. Probably didn't have much effect on the outcome, but I think intent should count for something."
Jeff grinned. "As it happens, I didn't put you up for a decoration—because I didn't need to. Colonel Straley himself saw your valiant charge and put in for it. He also told me to tell you that only a cretin thinks you can take down a mounted hussar with a sword while you're on the ground, and what the hell happened to your pistol?"
Krenz looked embarrassed for a moment. "I sold the damn thing. It's too heavy to carry around all the time."
Jeff shook his head. "You're lucky it's only the good who die young, Eric." He looked around the inside of the tent. "It's not as bad as the surgeon's tent—you want to talk about a place that'll give you nightmares!—but it still ain't the Ritz. However, you won't be here long."
Krenz got an apprehensive look on his face. "They're not putting me back in the line, are they? Already? I just got here! And I must have lost at least ten gallons of blood."
"Nice trick that'd be. Seeing as how there are only five quarts of blood in a man's body to begin with. Probably only four, in a skinny shrimp like you. Well, no, five. Your ears alone must take a whole quart."
Jeff made a little patting motion. "Calm down. That wound you got looks pretty ghastly but it's actually not that serious. The lance blade sliced open your side as messily as you could ask for but didn't penetrate the peritoneum or the abdominal cavity. Once it heals you'll be as good as new—except you'll have a dandy scar to brag about to your grandchildren some decades down the road and girls in the here and now who have the same size brains."
Krenz looked around the tent. "Then why aren't I staying?"
"We'll be marching into Dresden by the day after tomorrow. Torstensson's already announced that all of our wounded are to be billeted in the city as soon as possible."
Eric's smile was a thing to behold. "I'll be in a tavern soon! Probably one filled with good-natured barmaids. With, as you say, the mental acuity of my far-in-the-future tiny little grandchildren."
Jeff grunted. "More likely, you'll be in a stable. With horses a lot smarter and a whole lot more suspicious."
Dresden
Studying the mob packed into the open area south of Dresden's Residenzschloss, the seat of the Saxon electors, Noelle Stull thought John George was smart to have gotten out of the city as quickly as he did. According to the reports she and Eddie Junker had gotten, the elector had left the night before just about the same time Noelle and her party had arrived in Dresden. He'd left with all of his family members who'd still been