1636_ The Saxon Uprising - Eric Flint [152]
He wondered what had happened to Jozef. Was he still in Dresden? If so, was he still alive? They had heard nothing from him in weeks, since the batteries in his radio died.
Chapter 42
Dresden, capitol of Saxony
As he had in his first interview with the woman, Jozef Wojtowicz was finding Gretchen Richter unsettling. You’d think eyes that were colored a sort of light brown would be warm by nature, but hers weren’t. Not, at least, when she was studying you while trying to squeeze out the truth.
The scariest thing about the whole situation was that she wasn’t even suspicious. She wasn’t trying to uncover duplicity or treachery or misdoings on Jozef’s part, she was just trying to ferret out the truth about his military skills. Jozef hated to think what the woman would be like if she was running an actual inquisition. She’d terrify Torquemada. Either that, or turn him green with envy.
“You still seem hesitant, Jozef,” she was saying. “I do not understand why.”
He raised his hands in a gesture of frustration, as if he’d been about to raise them high in despair but then managed to control himself.
“You just don’t understand.” He blew out a breath. “Yes, I have pretty much all of the separate skills of a hussar. To start with, I’m an excellent horseman. Better than a lot of hussars, actually. Then, I am quite good with a sword—a cavalry saber, at least. Not so much with a side sword and not at all with a rapier or a schiavona because those are—”
He waved his hand irritably. Richter’s face creased into a thin smile. “Because those are silly things useless in a battle. Good only for duels. And you’re not a duelist.”
He cleared his throat. “No, I’m not.” A fairly good assassin, though, and I’m handy with any sort of dagger…
Seemed like an unwise thing to add, under the circumstances. “Contra-indicated” was the up-time term, according to Ted Szklenski, who was addicted to the damn things.
“I’m also a fair hand with a lance. Either the big ones favored by hussars or the lighter styles preferred by Tatars.”
“What about guns?”
A fairly good assassin, like I said. No, didn’t say. Any sane assassin would rather shoot a man in the back than stab him. Which I can do with just about any kind of pistol ever made. Wheel-lock, new style flintlock, any sort of up-time revolver or pistol—I can handle any of them.
Also seemed contra-indicated.
“Fair enough. Especially with pistols. Cavalrymen—that’s how I was trained—don’t have much use for any other sort of firearms.”
She nodded. “So what’s the problem, then?”
“I can do all the separate parts of being a hussar, but it’s not the same thing as actually being one. Gretchen, that takes practice. Riding a horse well is one thing and using a saber well is one thing. Doing them both at the same time—especially while people are shooting at you and trying to stab you—is another thing altogether.”
Again, he made that up-raised hands gesture. More with resignation this time than frustration. “Look, I was a bastard. I got the training but I never really got accepted. So I turned my hand to other things.”
“What things? Now that I think about it, you’ve never made clear how you made a living.”
“Various…things. Most of them involved running errands for the Koniecpolskis.”
Including running their spy network. Also contra-indicated.
“Some of those errands weren’t all that respectable,” he added. Covering up political misdeeds with merely criminal or immoral ones was a time-honored tactic for secret agents.
Richter cocked her head. “Somehow I have a hard time picturing you as a pimp.”
He tightened his jaws. Damn the woman. She was even a Catholic, at least in her upbringing. Why couldn’t the Spanish Inquisition have recruited her and gotten her out of his hair?
Because they didn’t recruit women, was one obvious answer. They didn’t recruit revolutionaries either, was another.