Chapter 2: Going Home
March 1633
The eight men from the village gathered in an empty space in downtown Grantville, on the far corner of the intersection of Route 250 and Mead Avenue from the polizei station. The parking lot was paved but empty, gray with weathering but still in good shape without much cracking. The day was cool and blustery, but neither snow nor rain was imminent. Dan Frost came out to see them off.
“You’re sure?” Frost asked, one more time.
“Ja,” Ditmar Schaub told him. “Spring is coming, and the eight of us can travel quickly before the ground turns to mud. Neustatter sent Hjalmar and me to the school to find a route. It is about three hundred up-time miles.” He frowned. “We have read about miles, but we do not understand them. At least, I do not.”
“Nor do I,” his cousin Hjalmar agreed.
“I am not used to miles, either,” Neustatter said, “but one mile is about a thousand steps with the same foot. That I can understand. We can do this in a month. Maybe three weeks if the weather is good.
“Danke dir for arranging a ride to Jena.” Neustatter shook Frost’s hand. “That saves two days right at the beginning. Und for the matchlocks.”
“We don’t really need those matchlocks. Just remember you don’t have much powder.”
“Perhaps someday we will return these and buy Colts.” Neustatter sounded a bit wistful.
“Safe travels,” Chief Frost told them.
The eight men from the village piled onto the back of one of the highway trucks, currently pressed into service with the NUS Army. One soldier wearing green, gray, and black camouflage was driving, and another was riding up front with him. Two more were in the back with the men from the village. Neustatter and the others found a place to ground their matchlocks, barrels pointing toward the back gate of the truck, and found places to sit amidst the cargo. They were finally going home.
***
Most of the route was straightforward: follow the Saale River until it flowed into the Elbe River, then follow the Elbe almost to Hamburg. They made excellent time until a late snowstorm cost them four days north of Halle.
Once they resume their walk north, picking their way around the muddiest spots, Lukas grumbled about it. “We could have left sooner.”
Neustatter frowned. He’d explained this before. “We traded our labor for food. That village needed to be dug out, and another day of melt helps us, too.”
“But we have the coin to buy food and lodging,” Lukas protested.
“No one needs to know that,” Neustatter warned. “We want to have as much left as possible when we get home. Who knows what seed costs by now?”
Magdeburg
Late March 1633
They reached Magdeburg toward the end of the month. It was a beehive of activity, from what was going to be a coal gas plant south of the Altstadt to the Navy Yard north of the Neustadt to all the new construction springing up to the west. The sheer number of brand-new and under-construction houses and apartment buildings suggested that Magdeburg was going to dwarf Grantville in size. It certainly didn’t have encircling mountains constraining its size.
“Halt!” A small group of men wearing up-time-style camouflage uniforms stopped them near the Navy Yard. “Identify yourselves.”
“Ich heisse Edgar Neustatter.” Neustatter rattled off his men’s names.
“Why are you armed?”
“We are going home from the war,” Neustatter said. “It is three hundred miles, and this is halfway. Chief Frost thought we should be armed in case we met bandits.”
“You know Dan Frost?” That speaker was an inch taller than Neustatter, a nearly sure sign of an up-timer. Referring to Herr Chief Frost by his first name clinched it.
“Ja.”
“They talk like they’ve been in Grantville,” one of the other men murmured to his fellows.
“Who are you?” Neustatter asked. By now, he was very familiar with the New United States Army. These men were subtly different in both manner and dress.
“USE Marines!”
“Marines . . . Sands of Iwo Jima?” Neustatter asked.
The Marines broke up laughing. “Ja. How do you know that?”
Stefan Kirchenbauer rolled his eyes. “John Wayne. Neustatter is a fan.”
The Marines laughed again. “If you men are looking for work along the way, be outside the Altstadt gate early in the morning. Day laborers can hire onto a building crew.” One gave them a couple names to look for and a couple more to avoid.
Neustatter thanked them. He and his men made their way across Magdeburg.
“This is the largest city I have ever seen,” Hjalmar Schaub declared. “We could hire on for a day.”
“We could,” Wolfram said, “but I would really like to get home to my wife.”
“Me, too,” Stefan agreed.
“I would like to see Annamaria as soon as possible,” Otto said.
“We should go to the hiring place in the morning,” Karl suggested. “We know what a man on a building crew gets paid in Grantville. It will likely be less here, but maybe still enough to be worth working a day or two.”
Ditmar looked down yet another street of half-finished buildings. “Not a bad suggestion.”
“If it is good money . . . ” Lukas trailed off.
“I suppose,” Stefan agreed. “The more money we arrive home with, the better.”
“If it is good pay.” Wolfram was still reluctant.
“We will ask in the morning,” Neustatter said. “If the pay is good enough to stay a day, we can. If it is not, we can leave right away.”
When they found out the next day what day laborers were paid, Wolfram and Stefan changed their minds. Wages in Magdeburg weren’t as high as they were in Grantville, but they were significantly better than anywhere else along the way. The men from the village ended up working the rest of the week, earning enough to replace what they’d spent since leaving Grantville.
Early April 1633
They reached Hamburg in early April. That was the end of the easy navigation. Twice they lost half a day backtracking to a more direct road, but after a few days, they were well into Holstein-Gottorp. They were moving slower, now, too. It simply took longer to avoid the muddy patches. Plus, it seemed like every village wanted to hear about Grantville and the up-timers.
“Another village,” Stefan noted. “If we stop and tell stories, we will not have enough light to go any further today.”
“That is true,” Neustatter acknowledged. “But I think we should stop. Order beers. It has been a long day. If the tavernkeeper wants to talk, let me take the lead. We may be close enough that he has heard news of the village. At least he may know who Herr Augustus is.”
“If I do not have to do the talking, that is fine with me,” Stefan agreed.
The tavern had a blue cow painted above the door. It was empty except for the tavernkeeper himself and a serving girl.
“Guten Abend.” He gave a sharp nod at Neustatter’s weapon. “Why are you coming in here with guns?”
“We are on our way home from the war.” Neustatter leaned his matchlock against the wall in corner of the room and motioned for the others to do likewise. “Are we near Herr Augustus’ village? Have you any news from there?”
“Augustus . . . Augustus . . . I have heard the name. Somewhere north, maybe east of here. I know little enough about the adel. What news have you heard?”
“Gustav II Adolf and his new allies defeated Wallenstein outside Nürnberg last September.”
“We heard that, but with so many fanciful rumors we did not know how much we could believe.”
Neustatter sat down at the corner table. “This may take a while. How about those beers?”
Once the tavernkeeper and the serving girl had set nine beers on the table, he sat down himself. Leaning forward, he asked, “What really happened? Everything we have heard says that Wallenstein outnumbered Gustav Adolf.”
“Three to one,” Neustatter said. “Maybe closer to four to one. We heard the number one hundred thousand troops.”
“How does anyone lose with that many men?”
“Grantville.”
A few men had drifted in, their day’s work done.
“I think everyone should hear this,” the innkeeper said. “Klaus, Martin, find the amtmann and the pastor and whomever else wants to hear.” He turned back to Neustatter. “Now you were saying that Gustav Adolf leads this new Confederated Principalities of Europe? What lands does it include?”
“Thuringia, Franconia, the Oberpfalz, Hesse, Magdeburg, Saxony, and Brandenburg,” Neustatter answered. “Maybe more.”
“I do not know where some of those are.”
Lukas laughed. “Neither do we—and we marched through some of them.”
“The people in Grantville have lots of maps,” Ditmar put in. “The Confederated Principalities of Europe is the center of what was the Holy Roman Empire.”
“I cannot imagine the emperor will stand for that.”
Neustatter shrugged. “Tilly, who was thought to be unbeatable, is dead. Wallenstein is defeated. We heard he was wounded. Who else is the emperor going to send?”
“How will that affect us here?” the tavernkeeper asked.
Neustatter shrugged. “Gustav Adolf and Michael Stearns are hardly in the habit of telling me their plans.”
The tavernkeeper gave a great, booming laugh. “Well, we will just have to wait and see.”
He looked around the tavern. Several more men had entered. The tavernkeeper turned back to Neustatter. “If you sit two men at each table and tell your story, I will give you a good deal on dinner and clean cots.”
Neustatter glanced at the others. Stefan rolled his eyes.
“Und another beer in the bargain,” Lukas suggested.
“Done!”
“Danke,” Neustatter said. “Ditmar and Lukas. Stefan and Wolfram. Hjalmar and Karl. Otto and I.”
Within a few minutes, the tables were filling up, and Neustatter repeated almost everything he’d told the innkeeper. Lukas had considerably more than one more beer. But eventually the villagers went home. In the morning, the eight of them were back on the road. They continued walking from village to village.
Finally, on the evening of April 1 (locally; according to the Gregorian calendar the up-timers used, it was April 12), Neustatter gathered the other men in the sleeping room of their latest inn. It really wasn’t much more than an eating room and a sleeping room added on to one of the houses. The houses in this village were clustered around where two roads met. They were tall and narrow, made of timber and brick. Some had thatched roofs, but the inn had shingles.
“Why are we in here, Neustatter?” Lukas sounded cross. “The beer is out there in the common room.”
Neustatter’s eyes swept the sleeping room. A dozen narrow sleeping pallets jutted out from opposite walls. Its sole virtue was relative cleanliness. While a brick fireplace dominated the far wall, the room was far from warm.
“We are the only ones in here. From what the innkeeper says, it sounds like we are a day and a half, maybe two days, from the village.”
Lukas shook his head. “I recognize that third village he named. There is a shorter way home from there.”
Neustatter looked at him. “Are you sure?”
“Ja. It will be a long march. Maybe twenty of those mile things, maybe a couple more. Und it is not a good road. But if we do not stop, we can be home tomorrow night.”
Neustatter looked around. All of them were nodding.
“All right. We will set out as early as possible.”
Lukas sighed. “We are not going back to the common room, are we?”
Wednesday, April 13, 1633
Hjalmar and Ditmar woke the others at dawn. The men had been keeping a night watch on the march. They’d had no incidents along the way, but they were not going to abandon discipline just because they were not in an army anymore. The room was chilly, and the men lost no time pulling on their clothes. They each had a set of clothes, meant for winter work, from their time in Grantville. All of them reached for those and their buff coats.
Lukas’ information was good. The road and the weather were not. It was muddy in places, and the day was just warm enough that the mud hadn’t frozen. Not even their buff coats fully blocked the stiff wind, and the sky was overcast. But by mid-afternoon, Lukas got them to a village that Stefan, Karl, and Neustatter all remembered well. People from this village and their own occasionally intermarried, and they’d all been to at least one wedding here.
Once they left that village, the eight of them walked along in a loose group. The road here was not much more than a dirt track.
“I have been thinking,” Neustatter announced.
“Uh-oh. That means he has an idea,” Lukas said.
“Oh, we know,” Karl Recker replied. “What is it, Neustatter?”
“I think we ought to arrive home in formation.”
“One of the fancy up-time ones?” Ditmar asked.
“Nein. No one in the village would recognize it. Column of twos.”
Up ahead, Wolfram spoke over his shoulder. “Just as long as you understand I am breaking formation as soon as I see my wife.”
Neustatter laughed. “I expect no less.”
Hjalmar caught up to Neustatter. “That will leave you, Karl, and Lukas. Ditmar and I will go find Astrid. Otto will find Annamaria.”
“I ought to find Master Wilhelm,” Karl spoke up. “I am supposed to be his apprentice.”
“You might be on your own, Neustatter,” Lukas told him.
Neustatter shook his head. “I need to tell the families of the others. And find out who else survived.”
“We will all do that,” Ditmar stated.
Late in the afternoon, Hjalmar declared, “I know this road! Ditmar, do you remember this dip in the road?”
Ditmar laughed. “This is where you fell off the wagon.”
“Only because you ran it off the road!”
Neustatter smirked. “Not far now.”
The sun was setting when they reached their village’s boundary stone.
“Fall in!” Neustatter ordered. “Port arms!”
The men formed into four ranks of two, holding their matchlocks diagonally in front of them, right hand on the small of the stock and left hand partway up the barrel.
The road passed through what they remembered as the forest. Birch, beech, and ash trees stretched from north of the village around to the southwest. Branches extended overhead, blending into the darkening sky. The forest wasn’t very wide. They passed through in no more than two hundred paces.
“This is not really a forest,” Ditmar said. “I thought it was, before we went off to war. But after seeing the Thüringerwald . . . This is just enough of a belt of trees to provide wood and shelter the village from the wind.”
“That it is,” Neustatter agreed. “And I see a lamp in the village.”
The village had been of significant size, about sixty houses, until sickness swept through ten years ago. About one in ten villagers had died.
Eight or nine houses lined each side of the road from just past the forest to the center of the village. About a dozen houses surrounded the central pasture there, with another eight or nine along each side of the road beyond. Another road led north to the schloss, with a handful of houses along it.
“People will be going to bed,” Stefan pointed out. “We should make some noise.”
Neustatter immediately started calling cadence, something they had never used in Wallenstein’s army but learned from the NUS soldiers easily enough.
“Hallo the village!”
***
Astrid Schäubin was twenty-one years old, in service to Herr Augustus and Frau Sophia—helping the cook, helping the laundress, occasionally stitching, and assisting with whatever Frau Sophia needed. But mostly the young tall blonde woman cleaned. Anke the cook, Helga the laundress, Gessel the other maid, and Astrid had just finished cleaning up after the evening meal.
“That is everything, girls,” Anke told them. “Herr Augustus and Frau Sophia have retired for the evening. Melchior and Magdalena will see to anything else they need.”
The girls filed out the door. Astrid made sure to bring up the rear and gently pulled the door closed until she heard the faint click of the latch. The night was brisk, but at least it was no longer the bone-chilling cold of winter.
The main road emerged from the forest to the west of their village and continued on more or less east. Houses lined both sides of the road except a stretch right in the middle where the village pasture on the north side came all the way up to the road itself.
The road to Herr Augustus’ schloss arced away to the north in an approximate semi-circle before rejoining the main road on the other side of the village. The schloss was not centered due north of the center of the village but on a small rise to the northwest. A few houses lined each side of the schloss road near the main road, but none stood near the schloss itself.
The four young women lived in the second house on the western end of the schloss road, on the inside of the arc it made. Some houses stood empty after the sickness that passed through the village nine years ago. Others had lost their menfolk six years ago when Herr Augustus took the militia off to war. In some cases, widows had remarried, and they and their children had left the village. In a couple instances, new husbands had moved in.
The house where the four women lived had stood empty then, but Herr Augustus and Frau Sophia and Pastor Claussen had agreed that the orphans needed somewhere to live. While they worked at the schloss, there was not room for them there. The house was a bit rundown. They kept it neat and clean but major repairs tended to linger until warmer weather.
They had just gotten inside when they heard shouting.
“What is that?” Gessel demanded crossly. She was normally very good-humored, but it had been a long, trying day. Frau Sophia had been more demanding than usual lately, and all four of them were exhausted and on edge.
“It sounds like the village boys shouting,” Anke said.
“Nein,” Helga disagreed. “Those are men’s voices. Singing, almost.”
The four went back outside to see who was making all that noise. Others were coming out of their houses: the whole Badenhoop family—mother, father, and (currently) six children, the Ramckes (who had evidently told their children to remain inside), and Katrine Helmichsen next door.
“There!” Astrid pointed at figures emerging from the forest. They were not hard to spot. She did not know the song they were singing. All she could understand was something about leaving a girl behind.
“They have guns!” Gessel shrieked. She ran back inside.
Astrid was ready to run herself—but not inside where she would trap herself. But before she could move, one of the men shouted an order.
“Ka-deeeeeer . . . halt! Kader, fallen aus!”
The men immediately stopped at the first command and hurried off in individual directions at the second. Astrid heard them calling out names as they broke away from the group.
“Anna! Anna!”
“Ursula!”
“Annamaria!”
Then she heard her own name. “Astrid! Astrid Schäubin!”
She knew that voice! “Hjalmar?” She started forward, but Helga grabbed her arm.
“Those are soldiers! They will—”
“Over here!” Astrid shouted back.
“Astrid!” A face she thought she’d never see again appeared out of the darkness.
“Hjalmar! You’re alive!” Astrid exclaimed.
Her brother ran up and swept her into a huge hug. Their cousin Ditmar was right behind him.
“Mmmpppfff. You are crushing me.”
“Sorry,” Hjalmar said. “Some days I did not think I would ever see you again.” He stepped back. “You look well.”
“I am. Where have you been?” She looked at them both. They were still thin and blond but much taller than she remembered. They were bigger and tougher, too. Six years older, of course. And they looked grimmer, not the carefree teens she remembered.
“It is a long story. But we are finally back from the war.”
“We—we thought you were dead with the others.” Astrid tried not to cry and continued to clutch Hjalmar’s arm.
“Neustatter formed a rear guard and tried to hold off the Imperials,” Ditmar told her. “Fifteen of us were captured. Eight of us survived the war.”
“Ditmar! Almost thirty men did not come back to the village!”
“Thirty?” Hjalmar demanded. He and Ditmar exchanged glances. “We can account for eighteen . . . ”
Astrid jumped when someone started wailing. Then she spotted figures outside one of the houses along the main road.
“That is the Tersmedens!”
“Jan died the second year,” her brother told her quietly. “Sickness.”
“Neustatter is telling the families,” Ditmar said. “I should help.”
“I should, too,” Hjalmar said. “Astrid?”
“I will go with you.” She wasn’t about to let go of him.
Astrid had been fifteen years old when the men went off to war. Herr Augustus called for a levy, and seventy men went off to war with Mansfeld’s army. That was a quarter of the entire village. Late that spring, only forty came home.
Edgar Neustatter was attempting to comfort the Tersmedens. Astrid remembered him. He was several years older than she. He had been a leader among the younger men, the one who would organize them to get work done in the fields. Even some of the older men listened when he spoke.
He went on, three houses away on the south side of the main road. He and Ditmar and Hjalmar told the Sipkes that Young Hans had died in the battle at Dessau Bridge. They had assumed that, but now they knew.
Next, the Helmichsens, further on, across from the pasture. Their son Friedrich had died in the battle, too. Old Joachim Helmichsen came outside and nodded solemnly at Neustatter’s words. Astrid was close enough to hear what he said.
“Some of the men who came back right away told us they saw him fall.”
“He was a brave man,” Neustatter told him.
“What happened to you men?” Old Joachim asked.
“We were captured and taken into Wallenstein’s army,” Neustatter answered. “In September, there was a battle outside Nürnberg. Wallenstein lost. We got captured again and were able to come home.”
Old Joachim’s eyes lit up. “Wallenstein lost? We heard rumors. Who finally beat him?”
“Gustav Adolf of Sweden and his up-time allies.” Seeing Old Joachim’s confusion, Neustatter clarified. “The town from the future.”
“Surely that is only a story!” the white-haired man exclaimed.
“No, it is real. We just came from there.”
Astrid was shocked. “Hjalmar!”
“We will tell everyone about it,” Neustatter promised. “But we must tell the men’s families first.”
“Of course,” Old Joachim agreed. “I will gather the village.”
***
There was a tall, old beech tree in the center of the village, at the edge of the common pasture. A pair of small beeches flanked it, on the grounds that someday the old one would finally topple. One on each side because no one knew which way the old one would finally fall. Any other time it would be amusing that almost all the people were gathered at the pasture while cows and oxen were safely in the stalls that were part of many of the houses.
Astrid stood with everyone else, listening to Neustatter tell what had happened to him, Hjalmar, Ditmar, and the men with them.
“A likely story,” Jørgen Blome scoffed.
Astrid gasped, as did several others. Blome was one of Herr Augustus’ toadies. He never quite called someone a liar. He just managed to leave that impression—every time he disagreed with anyone.
“You were not there, Jørgen. So shut your mouth.” That was Henrik Arents. He was . . . direct. He had even been told to watch his tongue by Herr Augustus. Naturally, he and Blome did not get along at all. “I was. We ran when the line crumbled. We got away. Something held up the pursuit for long enough.”
“But you ran,” Barent Glindemann spoke up. “So how would you know exactly what happened?”
“Exactly my point.” Arents clapped Glindemann on the shoulder. “I ran. You, too. Only time I will admit that you outpaced me.”
Glindemann gave a booming laugh. “I will admit it. When Wallenstein’s army charged, no one could stand against them.”
“Not until last September.” Neustatter instantly had everyone’s attention again. He quickly told of the intervening years, how half the men had died of disease. Then he told them about Alte Veste.
“So, someone finally beat Wallenstein,” Barent Glindemann mused aloud. “People from the future, you say?”
“I never heard of such a thing,” Neustatter stated. “But we have been to Grantville. The up-timers say it was just a small town, but the way it lays in the valley, it takes over an hour to walk from one side to the other. The houses are spread out, often with enough room for another large house between each one. And there are no walls.”
“No walls?” Glindemann repeated in disbelief.
“None. It does not need them. A month before Alte Veste, Wallenstein sent two thousand Croats against Grantville. Their army was elsewhere. Less than half of the Croats came back.”
“What happened?”
“I asked Herr Chief Frost. He is the police chief, the head of their watch. He said, ‘Our Constitution recognizes the right to bear arms. And West Virginians do. Even half the little old ladies on the Ecumenical Relief Committee were packing heat.’”
Astrid noted that it took a very long time to explain everything in those three sentences. Pastor Claussen had many questions, and he was far from the only one.
Finally, though, Pastor Claussen called a halt to the discussion. “We can continue this tomorrow,” he said. “After our work.”
Wolfram Kuntz and Stefan Kirchenbauer were already moving off with their wives, and in Stefan’s case, the son he had not seen since he was a baby. Normally rambunctious, Johann looked a little apprehensive but also a little in awe.
That left Hjalmar and Ditmar, Neustatter, big Karl Recker, Lukas Heidenfelder (whom Astrid had been scared of as a child), and another man who looked upset. She struggled to place him.
“Who is that?” she asked Hjalmar in a whisper.
“Otto Brenner.” He sounded surprised that she had to ask.
“Oh!” Then Astrid lowered her voice. “Hjalmar, is he not the one who betrothed Annamaria?”
“Ja. He thought of her the whole time we were in the armies.”
“Oh, Hjalmar! She married his brother!”
“Oh, no.” Hjalmar immediately stepped away and spoke quietly with Neustatter.
Thursday, April 14, 1633
In the morning Astrid woke and wondered if it had all been a dream. She barely had her feet on the floor when Anke settled that by declaring, “Astrid! Your brother and cousin are so cute!”
Astrid laughed. She, Anke, Gessel, and Helga quickly prepared themselves. While the other three walked to the schloss, Astrid ran across a field to the empty house on the far end of the schloss road to which Pastor Claussen had sent the men. They were already awake and cooking breakfast.
“Fräulein Astrid,” Neustatter greeted her.
She froze. “I am no fräulein! Do not say that around Herr Augustus or Frau Sophia, bitte.”
Neustatter seemed to take a few seconds to think about that. “In Grantville, all young girls are fräulein.”
“Every girl in the town?” she asked. “Surely not.”
“I have seen it at their school. But you are right that Herr Augustus and Frau Sophia would object. I shall have to call you something else.” Neustatter thought for a moment. “Miss Schäubin.”
Astrid shook her head. “What is ‘Miss’?”
“What the up-timers call an unmarried woman. Of any class, so far as I can tell.”
“I will be needed at the schloss.”
Neustatter laughed. “I used to think of it as a schloss as well. But I have seen schlösser now. What Herr Augustus lives in is a hunting lodge.” He paused. “Tell Herr Augustus we have returned, bitte. We will come pay our respects and see about our leases.”
Astrid hurried off to the schloss. She would have her usual tasks, and Frau Sophia would add more soon enough. This morning it was helping Anke with the cooking—or more properly, doing most of the cooking because Frau Sophia wanted fresh bread. Anke was busy kneading the dough while Astrid made breakfast.
They heard “Kader . . . halt!” Hjalmar, Ditmar, and the others had arrived. “Gewehr . . . ab!” They stood their weapons on the ground beside them, holding onto the barrels to keep them upright.
Next, they heard Herr Augustus’ booming voice. “So! So! The prodigals have returned.” Abruptly, his tone changed. He snapped, “Where have you been?”
Astrid could tell that Neustatter was the one who answered, but she could not make out his words.
“A likely story!” Herr Augustus shouted. He was a bigger man, not fat precisely, but he certainly ate better than the average farmer. He was getting angry, and that was not good. Herr Augustus tended to work himself up.
“Lies!” came Herr Augustus’ shout. “All lies! Melchior, arrest them!”
Astrid gasped and ran to the door of the kitchen. Anke was right behind her. They froze in the doorway.
Melchior was Herr Augustus’ personal servant. He was neither tall nor muscular, but carried himself in a way that most people found intimidating. Herr Augustus used him to discipline the rest of the village. Herr Augustus stood next to the door of the schloss, at the top of three steps. Hjalmar, Ditmar, and the others were in an orderly line in front of the schloss.
“I arrest you men! You must submit.”
“Herr Augustus.” Neustatter was speaking, completely ignoring Melchior. “You led us to war. We stood and fought and were overrun and captured. We survived and made our way home. You accuse us? You ran.”
Herr Augustus’ face went white and then red as Neustatter accused him of cowardice. He exploded into words that made Anke and Astrid blush.
“Strike them!” he ordered Melchior.
Melchior reared back and swung his right arm. Astrid never saw Neustatter’s musket move. One instant, it was at his side, its butt resting on the ground. The next, they all heard a meaty thwack as the barrel slammed across Melchior’s forearm. A third instant, and the butt caught Melchior in the stomach, knocking him to the ground. A final instant, and the musket was back at Neustatter’s side.
“You will not touch my men,” Neustatter growled.
“They are not your men!” Herr Augustus roared. “You are my subjects!”
“We have finally been able to return. We wish to rejoin our families and to plant a crop.”
“You owe me six years rent first.” Herr Augustus’ voice was cold and cruel.
Astrid’s heart sank. There was no way Hjalmar and the others had that much money.
Neustatter already had a hand raised to forestall angry comments from the other men. “How much?”
Herr Augustus named an amount that Astrid knew was far too much. In such a small village, everyone knew the rents.
“You ordered us to war, Herr Augustus. We lost six years. I will not pay you for that.”
“You will pay me whatever I order,” Herr Augustus snarled. “Do so or get out!” He whirled and stalked back inside.
Astrid had seen the calculating look on his face. He would wait for the rest of the village to pressure them, and then he would force them to accept even worse terms.
“Melchior.” Neustatter’s voice was conversational. “Get out of my sight.”
To the girls’ amazement, Melchior staggered to his feet and scuttled off.
“They are in so much trouble . . . ” Anke began.
“Well, men?” Neustatter asked.
Lukas Heidenfelder spat. “‘Get out’ sounds good to me,” he declared.
“I am not leaving without my family,” Stefan Kirchenbauer countered.
“Nor will I,” Wolfram added.
“Bring them with us,” Otto suggested. He added bitterly, “There is no reason to stay here.”
“Master Wilhelm died, and Herr Augustus found a new smith,” Karl reported. “No need for me here. If the rest of you want to go, I will, too.”
“If Astrid comes with us,” Hjalmar put in. He looked around and spotted her. “What do you say, Astrid?”
She hurried over, very aware that some of the other villagers were glaring at her for doing so. “I think you will all get in a lot of trouble with Herr Augustus,” she said quietly.
Neustatter looked around. “Jørgen Blome and Claus Sipke will report everything they hear.” At Astrid’s surprised expression he added, “They always have. Has that changed?”
“No, not at all,” she assured him.
The second man he had named wandered over. He was the uncle of Young Hans, whose death Neustatter had reported to the family last night. Claus had a satisfied look on his face. “So, you are under arrest, are you, Neustatter? In for a short drop.”
“Odd sort of arrest,” Neustatter returned. He snapped his musket up to a diagonal position in front of him that Astrid later learned was called port arms. “We seem to have all the guns.”
“That will change,” Sipke predicted.
“How?” Neustatter asked. “The eight of us are good soldiers. Never wanted to be, but we are. The rest of you who have not been to war have what—maybe a dozen muskets between you? You could rush us, but . . . who is going to go first?”
Neustatter’s voice was casual, as though he were asking an everyday question like should the men plant the big field or the field by the creek first. His confident assumption that the eight of them could hold off the rest of the village was far more disconcerting than a menacing tone or actual threats would have been.
“I figure we need to stop only the first five or six,” Neustatter went on. “Ditmar?”
“Ja, they would break,” he agreed.
“Of course, it would not be the whole village,” Neustatter went on. “Somehow I cannot see Henrik Arents or the Helmichsens or the Tersmedens joining in.”
“Herr Augustus placed you under arrest!” Sipke reminded him.
“We have been captured twice,” Neustatter told him. “By professionals. This”—he let go of the musket with his left hand and gestured—“is not under arrest. What are you men doing today? While we work, we will tell you how the up-timers capture people.”
The men who had returned from the war joined the rest of the village men as they prepared one of the fields for planting. Six of them worked at a time, with the other two standing guard in case anyone had thoughts of actually arresting them. And Herr Augustus did. The servants overheard enough to piece together that Herr Augustus intended to send Melchior to some of the nearby adel, requesting the use of their men-at-arms.
***
“Danke,” Neustatter told Astrid when she reported that to him that evening.
The eight men who had returned from the wars were gathered at the empty house further up the eastern end of the schloss road. Stefan Kirchenbauer’s wife Ursula and their son Johann were there, too, as was Anna Kräusin, who was married to Wolfram Kuntz. The twelve of them filled the small house.
From her chair by the table, Ursula looked over at Astrid. “I think you were meant to hear that. That is Herr Augustus’ way.”
“To let the news out, to intimidate,” Neustatter summarized. “I never liked that about him.”
“It works,” Ursula stated. “Last year, he did it to see who would speak out against the rent increases. Henrik Arents did, of course, and Herr Augustus instructed him to watch his words.”
Lukas Heidenfelder laughed.
“There is nothing funny about it!” Ursula snapped. “Henrik had to leave off complaining, or Herr Augustus could have disciplined him.”
“I wonder how Herr Augustus would manage in Grantville,” Karl Recker mused. He was grinning openly at the thought as he leaned against one wall.
“We ought to frag him,” Lukas suggested.
“Nein,” Neustatter stated. When Lukas scowled, Neustatter explained. “I considered it, and, yes, we could frag him. But it would be wrong because he does not realize the world has changed. It would also get us and the entire village in a lot of trouble. Not just the displeasure of the adel, but actual attack. We could not hold out in the long run. We do not have enough gunpowder, and eventually they would have the numbers to overwhelm us. If we were closer to Grantville, perhaps.”
Neustatter held up a hand before anyone else could speak. “Do you men remember how we felt in the army? Always alert, always watching who might be plotting against us.”
Stefan’s face held a sour expression. “Just like now.”
“Nein,” Hjalmar countered. “Oh, I admit we are in some danger. But we are not talking about how much we must put up with to stay alive. We are talking about whether we will put up with it at all.”
“That is exactly what I mean,” Neustatter said. “I find myself watching everyone, everything, again. But differently. Alert but not fearful. Thinking about what we can do instead of what others will do.”
“The world has changed,” Wolfram agreed.
“What do you mean when you say the world has changed?” Anna asked. She and Wolfram were sitting on one of the beds, holding hands. Anna was one of the older girls Astrid had looked up to as a child. Astrid remembered when Anna had been friendly and caring, but ever since Wolfram had gone off to war and not returned, she had grown quieter and quieter. Everyone had feared she was slowly wasting away, sitting quietly in a corner stitching and sewing. Tonight, she was practically glowing and had not let go of Wolfram since the men had returned from the fields.
“The up-timers have set up what they call the New United States,” Neustatter explained. “Grantville elected Michael Stearns as president. They have freedom of speech, so people can criticize Stearns if they want to. They have freedom of assembly, so they can gather together like this, and no one can tell them to disperse, as Herr Augustus will tell us if he realizes what we are talking about. Freedom of religion, so they can join any church they want. Trial by jury, so no one of the adel can hand down justice on his own.”
“But that is far away,” Anna pointed out.
“That used to be far away,” Neustatter corrected. “Soon it will be not so very far. We saw Magdeburg being rebuilt and spoke with men there who have adopted the up-timers’ ideas. They are building a railroad between Grantville and Magdeburg. It has an engine, like the APCs. They hope to finish it by the end of next year. They told us people will be able to go from one city to the other in only one day.”
“How is that possible?”
Several of the men started to answer, but Neustatter stood up and shook his head. “We do not know how it works, and we do not have time to discuss the matter. If Herr Augustus is still the man I remember, he will move against us soon. What we must discuss now is what we will do.”
He grew very serious and looked at each of them in turn. “We can either do things Herr Augustus’ way—he will press and press while we wait and hope that the changes will arrive here soon—or we could leave home again. Go back to Grantville.”
“Herr Augustus will not allow that,” Astrid pointed out. “He would lose your labor.”
“We have money. Maybe enough to buy out . . . ”
“Nein,” Ursula cut in. “Oh, it makes sense. But Herr Augustus’ pride is involved.”
“Then we leave.” Neustatter grimaced. “Sometimes you cannot go back to the home you used to have. Chief Frost tried to tell me that. Even showed me The Searchers.” He shook his head to clear it. “Herr Augustus will be no worse off than he was before.”
“He will claim to have lost my labor and Anna’s and Astrid’s,” Ursula pointed out.
“True,” Neustatter agreed.
“And he will claim you are escaped serfs,” Astrid pointed out.
Neustatter gave a thin smile. “We have lived in Grantville for three months and can become citizens.”
“Herr Augustus will not allow this New Unites States to do that,” Ursula warned.
All of the men laughed, even Hjalmar. Astrid glared at him, because he was usually not mean to anyone.
“It is not a matter of what Herr Augustus will allow,” Hjalmar got out. “It is a matter of what the New United States will not allow. We heard what happened when a ritter tried to have a witch burned in Suhl.”
“Ja,” Ditmar cut in. “They shot the ritter.”
Astrid gasped, and she heard muffled exclamations from both Ursula and Anna.
“That was not even all up-timers,” Ditmar went on. “Hauptmann Schmidt was in command, and he is one of us.”
“The emperor will not allow . . . ” Ursula began.
“The only emperor who matters now is Gustav II Adolf.” Neustatter’s interruption was smooth, but he clearly was not going to debate the matter. “Compared to Wallenstein’s army or to the Croats they smashed or to the Spanish inquisitors they killed at the Wartburg, Herr Augustus matters to them not at all.” His gesture took in the whole group, men and women. “We will be safe enough if we can reach Grantville. Really, if we can reach Magdeburg. The question is how to leave without pursuit.”
“Take the horses,” Lukas suggested.
Astrid saw that Ursula and Anna looked as horrified as she felt.
“Nein,” Neustatter told Lukas. “That would be a crime. Even the up-timers would say so.”
“We need to borrow them, get them out of the way,” Ditmar said.
“If the horses were gone,” Karl mused, “and the oxen tired at the end of the day from working the fields, Herr Augustus would not be able to pursue us until the next day. . . . ”
With that, the planning began in earnest.
Friday, April 15, 1633
On the following day, Herr Augustus continued to alternately fume and make threats. Astrid was now sure he meant for the servants to hear them, especially her. She continued sweeping the schloss, wondering for the first time if somewhere there were bigger and nicer schlösser.
“I heard only three of them are actually working today.” Helga whispered that as she passed Astrid with an armful of laundry. She did not need to explain who “they” were.
Gessel overheard from where she was cleaning. “Are the others standing guard?”
“Nein, only two. The other three did not come out at all.”
That seemed odd to Astrid. She was going to ask about it when Gessel fretted.
“Herr Augustus is going to punish your brother.”
“He certainly means to try.” That was as far as Astrid could agree. She had thought that anyone who struck Melchior would be in for a whipping, but certainly had not expected Melchior to be scared of Neustatter. The world had changed—or, at least, the eight of them had.
She didn’t want to lose her brother and her cousin again. But was she willing to go with them? They would be outlaws, at least in Holstein-Gottorp. If caught . . . But in this Grantville place . . . If she had to choose . . . No, she had to choose.
Astrid did not want to leave the village, abandon her home. But Hjalmar and Ditmar were alive! Back from the dead, for all practical purposes. She wasn’t the last of her family.
She would miss Gisele, Helga, and Anke—and she could not tell them. Herr Augustus would punish them if it slipped out that they knew. No one at all could know ahead of time, lest word get out before they were actually gone.
Astrid hoped the other girls would forgive her.
Ursula had family nearby, although they were fairly distant relatives. She and Johann were leaving with Stefan. But Anna’s parents and sister lived in the village. They were good people, and they had worried about Anna becoming more and more withdrawn. They would miss her terribly, but they would want her to be with Wolfram.
Otto Brenner was the one Astrid worried about. They had all thought the men who did not return were dead. Annamaria had married his brother. Otto had been declared dead. It had happened after only four years, but Herr Augustus and Pastor Claussen said it was entirely legal, and Astrid knew of no one who thought otherwise. There was even something in the Old Testament about marrying a brother’s widow. But . . . they had been wrong. Not all of the missing men were dead.
Oh! Otto was legally dead. She wondered if Neustatter knew that. Even if the rest of them did not get away, Herr Augustus could not tell Otto what to do. She would mention it to Neustatter.
But it would not fix Otto’s situation. It was not anyone’s fault. The whispers already said that Otto was not angry so much as hurt. He should be with family, but that was the source of his pain. No wonder he was eager to leave.
Hjalmar had told Astrid to pack her possessions. She had few. Even so, she would have to leave some behind. She would leave them for Helga, Anke, and Gessel.
As the four girls prepared for bed, Astrid tried not to give herself away. And she tried to hide her fear. When she thought the others were asleep, she rose and gathered her things: a change of clothes, some needlework, her knife and spoon. She had her mother’s shawl and large knife, kept safe in a small wooden box. She took her share of food for the next two days.
She made her way to the door as quietly as she possibly could. It was stuck, of course. Astrid took a deep breath and yanked it open. She heard Anke stir, but she did not fully wake. She pulled the door shut behind her and got it shut firmly enough that there would not be a draft.
Astrid heard Hjalmar call her name quietly.
“Here,” she answered.
“Let us go.”
Astrid patted the wooden wall of the small house. It wasn’t much, but it had been home since the men had gone off to war. Hjalmar led her between the Badenhoops’ and the Ramckes’ houses. Despite her worry about whether they’d actually get away, Astrid smiled to herself as she remembered this was one of Hjalmar and Ditmar’s favorite escape routes when they were children.
Their cousin Ditmar was waiting behind the houses. He led them toward the woods.
“Not the stall for the oxen?”
Hjalmar shook his head. “Nein.”
Lukas Heidenfelder was keeping watch from the edge of the woods. But Astrid did not spot Otto Brenner until he stepped out from behind a tree as they hurried past. She jumped.
“Shh!”
She glared at Hjalmar. That did not affect him a bit, although he did hold a tree branch aside until she passed. None of them were carrying lamps. That would have given them away if anyone in the village had been awake. No one except Herr Augustus and Frau Sophia could afford to burn lamps at odd hours. The sky was clear, and the moon was at the first quarter or perhaps a bit less. It was not really light enough to see in the woods, and Astrid banged into more than one tree.
They finally reached the far edge of the woods. It probably took only a few minutes, but it seemed much longer. A wagon was waiting, and two oxen were hitched to it. Neustatter and Stefan Kirchenbauer were loading the wagon while Wolfram Kuntz steadied two horses. Karl Recker held the reins. They were not Herr Augustus’ horses.
Ursula and Anna were standing off to one side and looked up in alarm as the Schaubs emerged from the woods. Neustatter spared them a quick glance and kept working.
Hjalmar jumped up on the wagon to help Neustatter. Astrid hurried over to Ursula and Anna. Ursula was restraining Johann, who seemed to think this was a big adventure. Astrid could not disagree, although she and Ursula had a much better sense of how dangerous this could be if they were caught. Anna . . . Astrid could not tell. She thought Anna knew, but being with Wolfram again had pushed everything else aside, including knowledge of how badly this could end. If Herr Augustus caught up to them . . .
Then she saw her brother and Neustatter arranging the muskets in the wagon. That made her realized that if Herr Augustus caught up to them, they might not be the only ones facing consequences.
Neustatter finished his preparations, jumped down from the wagon, and hurried over to the women.
“Where did you get these horses?” Ursula hissed.
“We rented them. I will explain later. It is all legal. But now we must mount up.”
Neustatter led them to the back of the wagon. He tossed Johann up to Stefan, then helped Ursula, Anna, and Astrid up one at a time. He pointed to some blankets. “We will travel day and night at first. Families should bed down back here. Miss Schäubin, I assume you will want to stay awake and talk with Hjalmar and Ditmar. The three of you can sleep during the day.”
Astrid almost tripped over something. There were packs for everyone, but—“Neustatter, why did you bring clay bowls?”
“You will see,” he promised.
Hjalmar climbed onto the wooden seat of the wagon and reached back to help Astrid. He sat on the left side and indicated that she should sit in the middle.
“Is everyone ready?” Neustatter asked. “Is anyone unsure about this?”
Astrid blinked. “Of course we are unsure what will happen,” she told him. “How could it be otherwise?”
“Oh—that.” Neustatter waved it away. “But you are coming.”
“I am not losing Hjalmar and Ditmar again. This scares me. But they are leaving. So I am leaving home with them.”
“Do the other girls know you are leaving?”
“Nein. Hjalmar told me not to tell them. I feel bad . . . ”
“You can write them a letter from Grantville,” Neustatter told her. He looked at Anna and Ursula.
“We are going,” Anna told him.
“Did you tell anyone?”
“I did not say it plainly,” she answered. “But my parents know. The same as when Wolfram came through the window. They did not see it, but they knew.”
Neustatter nodded. “Good people. You should write a letter from Grantville, too.” He jumped down from the wagon. “Ditmar, go get Otto and Lukas. You can catch up. Hjalmar.”
Hjalmar flicked the reins lightly, and the oxen started forward. Neustatter and Karl mounted the horses and followed. The wagon rolled down the road, away from their village.
A while later, Ditmar, Otto, and Lukas caught up. Hjalmar slowed the wagon, and Ditmar and Otto clambered up on the back. Otto immediately found his pack and rolled up in his blanket. Ditmar made his way forward and handed something down to Lukas. Then he seated himself next to Astrid.
Lukas strode past the slowly rolling wagon and slid the lantern open.
“He is looking for holes in the road,” Hjalmar told his sister. “We cannot afford to break a wheel or an axle.”
Behind us, she could hear Ursula telling Johann a couple times to settle down and go to sleep. After a while, all she could hear was the oxen’s hooves and wagon wheels.
“I am sorry that Herr Augustus did not welcome you back,” she said after a while.
“Ja,” Hjalmar agreed. “We looked forward to coming home.”
“I think we will get used to Grantville,” Ditmar said.
“If we can get there,” Astrid pointed out. “Herr Augustus will pursue us.”
Even in the dark she could see Ditmar’s grin. She looked to her left, and Hjalmar wore the same expression. She remembered those grins from when they had been children.
“What do you know that I do not?”
“Herr Augustus’ stables are empty,” Ditmar explained. “That is what Karl, Otto, and Lukas were doing today, why they were not in the fields with the rest of us.”
“I thought Neustatter said not to steal the horses.”
“He did,” Hjalmar agreed. “And no one stole any horses. Neustatter hired Herr Augustus’ horses and oxen out to a nearby village. He hired these horses from two other villages. The first village will take Herr Augustus’ horses and their own to the other two villages in turn to do the spring plowing. The plowing itself will go faster in each village. Herr Augustus will make a modest amount of money and look like a reasonable man.”
“And he has Neustatter to thank for it.” Ditmar laughed softly. “If he can control himself, he will accept that and not pursue us. If he is truly wise, he will want to make it look like Neustatter was carrying out Herr Augustus’ own idea. Do you think he is?”
A bump in the road jostled them as Astrid thought about it. “Nein,” she finally admitted. “I think he is likely to retaliate against whomever in the village is helping us.”
“No one is,” Ditmar told her. “That is us alone. All anyone from the other villages knows is that Herr Augustus is being helpful.”
“How will we know if this plan worked?” Astrid asked next.
“If we find a way up the Elbe, it has worked,” Hjalmar answered.
“Will we hear from family and friends in the village ever again?”
This time Ditmar answered. “Perhaps. Certain arrangements have been made. For now, let us say only that if any of us sent a message by post rider to Pastor Claussen, it would probably reach the right people. Do not talk about that where anyone else might hear.”
“Someone in the village is friendly to Neustatter,” Astrid reasoned. After thinking about it a while, she added, “Or owes him a favor.”
Ditmar and Hjalmar exchanged looks past her.
“One or more of the men who came back home because you and Neustatter held up the enemy long enough for them to run,” she decided.
Another look passed between her brother and her cousin. A more respectful one, she thought.
Saturday, April 16, 1633
Astrid stayed awake through first sleep. After the waking hour in the middle of the night, Hjalmar sent her to the back of the wagon for second sleep. She did not protest too much. The servant girls never got as much sleep as they wanted. As tense and worried as she was, Astrid fell asleep almost immediately and didn’t wake up until the wagon came to a stop.
She sat up to see Ditmar, Neustatter, Karl, and Wolfram unhitching the team. It was a little past dawn.
“Are we stopping?” she asked Hjalmar.
“Only long enough to change the oxen for the horses.”
The men unsaddled the horses that Neustatter and Karl had been riding, hitched them up to the wagon, and tied leads from the oxen to the back of the wagon. That made sense. By day, the oxen simply had to follow along at a slow walk.
Everyone switched places. Stefan and Wolfram drove the wagon with Ursula, Johann, and Anna gladly keeping them company. Otto followed along on foot, keeping an eye on the trailing horses. Everyone else found a blanket and lay down in the wagon.
“Satisfied, Miss Schäubin?” Neustatter asked.
“I just like to know where everyone is,” she told him.
He nodded. She got the impression he was filing that fact away.
***
Neustatter woke everyone a few hours later. Wolfram had stopped the wagon outside a village. It was at a crossroads and was large enough to have an inn. Neustatter took half of the group into the village to eat an early dinner at the inn. They brought food back for the others. He’d kept the animals outside the village.
“Less chance of trouble and misunderstandings,” he told everyone. “This village sees only half of us, so if Herr Augustus questions them, he will not know for sure we are all still together.”
“But all of us need to pass through the village . . . ” Astrid began.
Neustatter made those who had remained with the animals lie down in the wagon. Astrid supposed the villagers realized they were there, but they could not count them or identify them.
They kept moving into the night. Lukas walked ahead of the wagon with the lantern again. They came to another village. Even in the dark, it seemed bigger than their own. More importantly, it had a gate. It was really nothing more than a medium-sized tree trunk pegged to a stout stump, but it was enough to stop the wagon.
“Hallo the village!” Neustatter called.
A few minutes of shouting woke someone, and soon several men appeared. They were armed. Astrid spotted two muskets and several farm tools.
“We would like to pass through,” Neustatter called to them. “We can pay you for your trouble.”
“Where are you from?”
“Herr Augustus’ village.”
Astrid was shocked. There was no need to tell them that! Then she realized Hjalmar and Ditmar were grinning again.
“Neustatter has always made plans,” Hjalmar whispered. “But he has started getting even craftier. I think the up-timers inspired him.”
“We could have opened your gate,” Neustatter was saying. “But I think your lord has the right to collect a toll?”
“Ja!”
“How much is it?”
The villagers named a sum that was just short of outrageous.
“Surely not!” Neustatter shouted back. “Those in the next village could not pay that.”
“It goes up at night,” one man shouted back.
Neustatter laughed, and they settled into serious bargaining. As some of the men swung the tree trunk aside, the one who had been doing the bargaining said to Neustatter, “It is plain you are fleeing this Herr Augustus. When he comes this way—and he will—we will tell him which way you went.”
“Of course you will,” Neustatter agreed. “In truth, I am counting on it. Look at our wagon. We have muskets to defend ourselves. More than you have, more than Herr Augustus’ party is likely to have. That is not all. Where is the edge of your village’s land?”
The man was obviously surprised by Neustatter’s abrupt change of subject. He warily described the landmarks in question.
“I will leave something in the road a hundred paces beyond,” Neustatter told him. “Keep away from it. Keep the children away from it.”
Astrid saw the man’s expression and had no doubt he would lead Herr Augustus directly to . . . whatever Neustatter was going to put there.
Once the wagon passed by, the villages swung the tree trunk back across the road. Then they followed the wagon. Once the wagon was a hundred paces beyond their fields, Neustatter called a halt and dismounted. He climbed into the back of the wagon, grabbed one of the clay bowls and a small shovel and proceeded to plant it in the middle of the road. Astrid was just as mystified as the villagers, and when smoke shot up from the bowl she jumped just as much as they did.
Neustatter set out a couple more of the clay bowls at intervals. Then he walked back to his horse as though this were an everyday thing, mounted, and waved to the villagers.
“Wagon, ho!” he ordered.
Hjalmar snickered and flicked the reins. The oxen started ambling forward. The last they saw of the villagers, they were still staring at the bowl half-buried in the road.
“What was that?” Astrid asked after a few minutes.
“A length of slow match and half a cartridge of black powder,” Ditmar told her. “But it looked like a mine, did it not?”
“A mine? What is that?”
Over the next hour, she came to realize there were far too many ways to kill other people—and apparently also ways to make men think you could kill them, even when you probably could not.
Sunday, April 17, 1633
Astrid woke up to someone shaking her.
“Wake up, Miss Schäubin,” came Neustatter’s voice. “Do whatever you need to. I want the wagon rolling as soon as it is light enough to see.”
She opened her eyes. She could not blink against the light because there was none.
“Neustatter, it is still the middle of the night,” Astrid protested.
“Herr Augustus will probably begin the pursuit today,” Neustatter continued. “The closer we can get to Hamburg, the better.”
She was not awake enough to follow Neustatter’s logic, but clearly, he would have them on the road soon. So she did what she could to prepare herself for the day. After a few minutes, she realized that Hjalmar and Ditmar had a small fire burning and were making breakfast. Once Astrid was prepared to face the day, she walked over to see what they were cooking.
“Today is April 17 by the Gregorian calendar,” Neustatter announced.
“What is that?” Astrid asked.
“It is the calendar with the correction that Pope Gregory XIII made. All the up-timers use it, whether Catholic or Protestant or whatever, because it matches the seasons better.”
Astrid was skeptical at first. On the other hand, she was fairly skeptical about Neustatter’s clay bowl mines, too—but Herr Augustus did not catch them that day. They stopped at an inn that evening, and all of them went in.
“Neustatter!” Lukas hissed. “We are losing time.”
“I want everyone to get a good night’s sleep in a bed,” Neustatter returned. “Tomorrow is going to be a long day because we will be on foot.”
“Why? We have a perfectly good wagon.”
“Which we have borrowed for about as long as we can. That is the other reason we are spending time at this inn. I want to get the measure of the innkeeper.”
Astrid had no idea what Neustatter was talking about, so she watched him. Neustatter led them to an inn. The only way she knew it was an inn was the lamplight spilling through a couple small windows.
The innkeeper set a couple beers down on a table and then turned his attention to the group of people who had entered his establishment.
“Welcome to the Blue Cow.” He did a double take. “I know you! What brings you back?”
Neustatter spoke quietly with the innkeeper while Ditmar pointed the others to an empty table over in the corner. “Put your matchlocks against the wall.”
After the serving girl brought them stew, bread, and beer, Astrid tried to listen in on Neustatter’s conversation. She heard the innkeeper reciting a list of villages and names, ending with their own village and Herr Augustus. Neustatter handed the man some coins.
Once the innkeeper moved on to another table, Neustatter joined the rest of them. “The horses, oxen, and wagon need to be returned. I have no doubt that men from their home villages will show up within a couple days. They’ll get them back, the innkeeper gets paid for his trouble, and no one has anything against us except Herr Augustus.”
“How do you know the innkeeper is honest?” Ursula asked.
“Because Neustatter cheated,” Stefan grumbled. “We stopped at this same inn on our way to the village. Neustatter has taken the man’s measure twice now.”
Monday, April 18, 1633
In the morning, armed with reliable directions to Hamburg, they set out on foot. They left the remaining clay bowls in the wagon, but carried everything else in their packs. By midday, Astrid had rolled up her other dress and put it under the straps of her pack so they would not cut into her shoulders quite so much. Still, walking all day was no more tiring than working for Frau Sophia all day. At the end of the day, they camped in a copse of trees near a small creek.
Tuesday, April 19, 1633
On the following day, they reached the Elbe River. It was the largest river in the area, far too wide to hail someone on the far bank. The group turned downstream—west—toward Hamburg. Partway through the afternoon, Otto spotted a boat approaching. It was a squarish wooden barge with a single sail set on a short, stubby mast.
“Hallo the boat!” Neustatter called. “Hallo!”
The boat steered a little closer toward their shore.
“Do you have room for paying passengers?”
A lot of shouting back and forth resulted. Astrid tried to follow the negotiations. She thought she missed some of the details but sensed that the boat’s crew was skittish. Eventually, after Neustatter held up some coins, they brought the boat to the riverbank. A couple crew members used long poles to check the depth, then three more added their own poles to the effort and expertly brought the boat right up to a steep bank a short distance away.
Johann charged straight for the boat.
“Johann, stay out of the water!” Ursula hollered.
Hjalmar caught the boy as he ran past. “We have a long way to go, and it is not a warm day. We cannot have you getting wet.”
“Just a little bit?” Johann asked.
“Nein!” several of the adults answered.
Astrid knew she should try to uphold discipline and order—and normally she did. But when Johann asked, “Can I splash? Just a little?” just a few minutes later, she had to hide a grin.
“We carry food to Magdeburg,” one of the sailors told them. He gestured at bags of grain piled in relatively neat rows. “Find yourself seats. Some in the bow and some in the stern. That way you will be out of the way of the sail.”
Magdeburg
Thursday, April 21, 1633
Everyone spent the next two days looking over their shoulders, until the boat came in sight of Magdeburg on Thursday evening, and Neustatter decided they had made a clean escape. If everything had gone as planned, three villages would soon have all their animals back and their fields plowed. They would even have a positive opinion of Herr Augustus, as long as he did not undercut it by giving voice to his anger in front of them.
It had all taken money, of course, and as Astrid listened to the men, she gathered that it had taken more out of what they had brought home with them than they had hoped.
“We can find an inn here,” Neustatter declared, as they disembarked early Friday morning. “We men will work today and tomorrow, and on Monday we can start toward Grantville.”
Magdeburg seemed huge—and it looked like it was still expanding. On Sunday, they found a church and then walked around the city. Astrid marveled at the huge Dom, the palace and the rest of the government buildings under construction, and the Navy Yard.
Monday, April 25, 1633
They started south from Magdeburg on Monday morning. The men had made enough in two days of work to more than pay for the inn and everyone’s food. They kept up the pace, the men taking turns carrying Johann piggyback in the afternoons. In three days, the twelve of them reached Halle.
Halle produced salt, and Grantville and its surrounding area evidently needed a lot of it. Neustatter and Ditmar quickly found out that there was a shipment leaving in the morning and signed the men on as guards.
Even to Astrid, whose only experience with wagons was the handful of small wagons in the village, these appeared to be purpose-built. The wagons had solid sides, thick axles, and wheels larger than those on farm wagons.
“We get stuck less often,” one of the teamsters explained. “We still cannot overload them. This much salt would fit in two wagons, but it is better to take three.”
That meant Johann got to ride on a wagon some of the time. Only some of the time, though, because while the salt was in heavy bags piled aboard the sturdy wagons, each pulled by four oxen, grains still managed to escape. They seemed to get everywhere, and Astrid thought the wagons would need a thorough sweeping out at the end of the journey.
Monday, May 2, 1633
They lost half a day when one of the wagons broke a wheel. By the time they got to Kösen, it was nearly the Sabbath, so everyone stayed in the town. On Monday, south of Kösen, they found out why salt wagons needed guards.
Ursula, Johann, Anna, and Astrid were walking along behind the third wagon when Astrid realized her brother had directed the teamster driving the wagon to stop and wait for them.
“Up on the wagon, ladies,” Hjalmar instructed. “Neustatter’s orders. You, too, Johann.”
By now Astrid knew that Neustatter did not give orders like that unless they were necessary. She hurried up to the wagon and pulled herself up. Hjalmar tossed Johann up to her, almost knocking her over. Then he was aboard himself.
She was busy helping first Anna and then Ursula up onto the wagon, but Astrid did see Karl Recker, who was the rear guard, charge past. When she had a chance to look up, she was shocked to see that the wagons were rolling through the middle of a brawl.
On the right, Astrid spotted a man dressed in well-kept clothing. He was stout, going gray, and reminded her of Herr Augustus’ servant Melchior. It might have been the way he was lying on the ground. He had the same hit-by-Neustatter look.
A couple of his henchmen, bigger and even stouter, were swinging cudgels wildly at Neustatter and Wolfram, who were parrying with their muskets. Nobody was watching Otto. Except Astrid. She saw him circle the two henchman and slam the butt of his musket into one man’s calf. The man instantly went to his knees, and Wolfram applied just enough force to topple him sideways. The other quickly dropped his cudgel.
Astrid looked around for Ditmar and spotted him jumping off the lead wagon. He ran off to the left, where Karl was helping Lukas limp along. A couple men were down there, too. As the third wagon rolled by, it was apparent that someone—she guessed Karl—had used a lot less finesse than Otto and Wolfram had.
“Mount up!” Neustatter’s voice carried really well. They got Lukas aboard the third wagon with some difficulty. The others split themselves up between the three wagons.
“Is Wolfram all right?” Anna’s question was immediate.
“How should I know?” Lukas grumbled. He slumped against one side of the wagon. “I was all by myself on the other side. Where were you, Hjalmar?”
“Right here where Neustatter told me to be.” He patted the barrel of his musket. “I was about to take the shot, but then I saw Karl coming. He knocked them both flat.”
“What happened?” Astrid asked.
“Not sure how it started.” Hjalmar turned to the front of the wagon and cupped his hands. “Neustatter!”
Neustatter looked back from the second wagon. He said something to the driver, and that wagon slowed enough for him to jump off. He pulled himself aboard the third wagon as it rolled by.
“What happened?” Hjalmar asked.
“Difference of opinion,” Neustatter answered. “They thought there was a toll. The salt merchants disagreed. The nicely dressed one handles these things for the local lord.”
“Oh!”
“The salt merchants say there has not been a toll, but he claimed his master was granted this right by the emperor.” He shrugged. “Almost every member of the adel claims some little privilege. They are all different, and a man simply cannot know whether they speak the truth or not. So things like this happen.”
“So that is why the salt merchants hired you as guards,” Astrid said.
“Of course. If they had no guards, they would have to pay those men. On their next trip, others might ‘remember’ additional tolls.”
***
When they stopped for the night, Lukas was still grumbling.
“I could have gotten killed over on the far side all alone.”
“That is about the third time you have said that, Lukas,” Neustatter noted. “In my hearing, anyway. I suspect you have said it many more times to everyone else. Next time, get up on the wagon when I tell you.”
“Someone had to guard the left,” Lukas argued.
“They had cudgels. You would have had the reach with your musket butt from on top of the wagon.” Neustatter was silent for a couple minutes. When he spoke again, the orders were crisp. “Tomorrow, Ditmar, you take Lukas and Stefan. Hjalmar, you take Karl and Otto. Wolfram, you will be with me. Same as on the march from Nürnberg to Grantville. If we run into another made-up toll, my team and whichever of yours is closer will approach. Whichever is further away, mount up on the wagons.”
“That is a lot of measuring back and forth,” Stefan observed.
“That is one of the reasons Ditmar and Hjalmar are in command of the teams,” Neustatter explained. “I figure you two can figure it out without a lot of fuss. Just like you took turns being a distraction for each other when you were growing up in the village.”
Neustatter did not miss much.
Tuesday, May 3, 1633
The salt wagons did not encounter any more tolls. Neustatter conducted drills instead. By the time they stopped for the night, they had a system worked out. Two men were out in front of the wagons, two were guarding the left, two the right, one behind, and one in the first wagon, able to see everyone.
“Are you still in charge of Karl and Otto?” Astrid asked Hjalmar as they ate dinner. “I noticed that sometimes you are spread far apart.”
“Ja. Neustatter said he wants me to be a leader. That is not something that was encouraged in Wallenstein’s army.” Her brother got a far-away look in his eyes and said, “I think Neustatter has plans.”
Thursday, May 5, 1633
Two days later, just south of Jena, Astrid saw a train for the first time. The wagons had been rolling past twin metal things spiked to wooden beams laid in gravel. Hjalmar had assured her that the up-timers had something similar to wagons that used those as a road.
They heard it first. Then they saw a metal box on wheels. It was taller in the middle so that a man could sit down inside. The front made noise. Hjalmar told his sister that was where the “engine” was. The back was an empty box with a large metal container filling half of it.
“That is the fuel,” Hjalmar explained.
It was pulling two larger things. They were not boxes, just platforms on wheels, and they were piled with crates, barrels, and other things Astrid could recognize.
“Is that what you said can reach Magdeburg from Grantville in a single day?” she asked Neustatter.
“Ja, once they lay the rails all the way there. There are also passenger cars that people can ride inside.”
Astrid wondered what a town with railroads would be like.
Friday, May 6, 1633
On the following day, they turned west at Rudolstadt and left the railroad behind.
“Well, Neustatter, we are almost back to Grantville,” Stefan stated. “What are we going to do? Almost none of the land inside the Ring of Fire is suitable for farming.”
“As a matter of fact, Stefan, I have been giving that a lot of thought,” Neustatter answered. “Right now, though, let us be soldiers. Ditmar, forward guard. Hjalmar, right flank, out thirty paces. Otto, left flank, right along the river. Wolfram, rear guard, thirty paces back. The rest of us men, one rank in front of the women and Johann. When I give an order, make it crisp. That way we will have less trouble with the guards.”
A while later, they passed Schwarza and then spotted guard houses on either side of the road. They were made of new wood, painted brown, and had windows of actual glass. The guards were alert, of course.
“Halt!”
“Kader, halt!” Neustatter ordered.
The men all halted at the same time. One of the four guards approached cautiously. His clothing was odd, all splotches of green and brown and gray, even though it appeared to be all the same cloth.
Neustatter, standing on the right of his very small army of four men, brought his right hand diagonally up to his head. Astrid found out later that was an up-time salute.
“What unit is this?” the guard asked.
“We were captured at Alte Veste and went home this spring to Holstein-Gottorp. If you would call Herr Chief Frost and tell him Neustatter is here, and farming did not work out.”
Astrid thought that seemed a strange thing to say, but it clearly meant something to the guard.
“You know Chief Frost?”
“Ja. He introduced me to John Wayne movies.”
The guard laughed. “Hang on. It might be a while before I can get him on the radio.”
It did take a while, but the guards passed them and the salt wagons through. The men resumed their usual positions around the salt wagons.
Astrid saw the Ring Wall for the first time. It had been almost two years since the Ring of Fire, but she could still see the circle. Hills on one side simply were not there on the other. In places cliffs loomed, some facing outward, others inward. The land simply changed, completely, at the edge of the circle. Astrid had heard the Ring of Fire described as miraculous. Now she understood why people said that. She . . . agreed.
As they came down a shallow slope on the Rudolstadt road, she could even see that the green of the trees and other plants was different inside the Ring. It was no longer a sharp distinction. Darker green up-time grass was spreading along the Rudolstadt road, and as soon as they crossed the boundary, she saw that the lighter green she was accustomed to had spread inside the Ring.
The road was perfectly flat. Astrid stooped down and touched it. It was hard like stone, but it wasn’t stone. To the left of the road was a rocky hill. A river valley lay to the right. Once they passed a line of trees, she could see a small cluster of buildings on the other side of the river. She thought one looked like a schloss, and the others might be granaries. There was a bridge across the river a short distance ahead, and a road from that bridge met the one they were on.
The salt wagons continued along the main road.
“What is that?” Astrid indicated a metal pole set in the ground to the left of the road. A diamond-shaped flat piece of metal was fastened to the top.
“It is a road sign.” Hjalmar showed her the other side. It was yellow with black letters.
“What does it say?”
“Falling rock,” Karl answered. “In English. It is a warning to people who drove cars and trucks along this road.”
Astrid shook her head. The rocky hillside started right next to the road. Or rather, the road had been built into the hillside, although she had no idea how that had been done.
“Of course there are falling rocks,” she pointed out. “Look where the road is.”
Karl shrugged. “There are many signs beside the roads. We will see more.”
A while later, Johann spotted a long metal . . . something, attached to posts a couple feet off the ground.
“Vater, is this another railroad?”
“Nein, that is just a guardrail,” Stefan told his son. “It is to keep cars and trucks from going over the edge of that drop.”
Johann, of course, wanted to go look over the edge. Ursula yanked him back.
“What are those?” Anna had spotted something overhead.
“Wires,” Neustatter answered. “They carry electricity.”
“What is that?”
Neustatter shrugged. “I cannot really explain it. It is what makes up-time machinery work.”
“Sort of like lightning, but trapped in the wires,” Karl added.
That didn’t make any sense to Astrid, but maybe it explained why the wires were kept high on wooden towers. Whatever it was, it sounded dangerous.
A short distance from there, Astrid spotted another road.
“Look! More road signs.”
One of them was a narrow green strip, and the men said it gave the name of the road, although none of them could read it. The other was turned to face the other road. It was red and had eight sides. It read, “Stop.”
“Any cars or trucks on this smaller road must stop to let any on the main road pass by. Then they may go.”
“Why is that a rule?” Astrid asked.
“Because cars and trucks are much faster than wagons, and the people in them must know what they will have to do while they still have time to do it.”
That did not make any sense to Astrid, either. Every time the salt wagons had come to a crossroads, they had seen it minutes away. If there happened to be a wagon on the other road . . . how often did that even happen?
Beyond the crossroad, the main road continued uphill. Neustatter whistled to get the attention of the flanking guards. A gesture sent them up onto the raised ground on either side of the road. Up ahead, the hillsides towered above the road on both sides. Hjalmar and Otto moved steadily along the hilltops.
Another whistle brought Wolfram up from the rear guard.
“I want everyone who is on foot together,” Neustatter explained.
Astrid found out why almost immediately. She heard a rumble and saw . . . something coming toward them.
“Get to the right side of the road!” Neustatter ordered. Stefan grabbed Johann firmly, making sure he got far enough over.
It was metal and glass and made a loud noise. It approached very quickly. Astrid shrank back against the stone hillside, but the metal and glass thing stayed on the left side of the road, rolling down the hill faster than even a galloping horse.
“What was that?” she asked.
“A small truck,” Hjalmar answered. “The flat part at the front holds the engine. Did you see the man inside?”
“Ja. How did he get inside it?”
“Most of each side is really a door. Then the back part is open for cargo.”
“I do not think it carries as much as a wagon,” Astrid ventured.
“That was a small truck. They have much larger ones.”
“Are we safe, here on this road?” Ursula asked.
“Ja,” Neustatter said. “There are rules for trucks and cars. One of them is that they stay to the right of the yellow lines in the middle of the road. If another approaches, we stay over on this side. If one overtakes us from behind, we should get out of its way.”
“How many of those are there?” Anna sounded like she was somewhere between awed and frightened—which Astrid thought was reasonable enough.
“Before the Ring of Fire brought them here, most up-time families had one or two. Sometimes more. The fuel that powers them is scarce in our time, and most people are forbidden from driving them now. Just for military use and emergencies. Come.” Neustatter gestured forward, and the group continued up the hill.
The rocky hillsides dropped away, and Hjalmar and Otto rejoined the main group, although Ditmar remained a short way out ahead.
The landscape widened out. A village! Astrid thought. But the houses were spread out. A small road led off to the right. It wasn’t much more than two trails in the grass, worn down to the dirt. Two houses sat back among the trees to the right of this road. A couple of outbuildings sat to the left.
“That outbuilding looks like it has wheels.” Astrid pointed to it.
“That is a trailer,” Hjalmar told her. “It is a small, traveling house that can be pulled behind one of those trucks.”
Astrid blinked. “Why?”
“I have no idea.”
Astrid shot him a look, but her brother only shrugged. “We were in Grantville for only six months. There was not time to learn everything.”
She looked to the left of the main road and saw schlösser. One of them was an all-brick building.
“Who lives there?” She kept her voice low and polite, as she would when asking which of the other niederadel Herr Augustus and Frau Sophia were going to visit.
Neustatter shrugged. “Regular people.”
“Surely not!”
“Miss Schäubin, Grantville has no adel.”
The men had said that before. But . . .
“They must be at least burghers.”
“That is probably fair,” Neustatter acknowledged. “But they would not consider themselves so. A man might say he is a professional. They say that to mean a doctor or a lawyer or someone else whose work has him sit in an office. But many of the up-timers call themselves working class. Grantville was a mining town.”
They passed more brick almost-schlösser on the left side of the road, including one with an odd appearance.
“Vater, why does that house have a barn door underneath it?” Johann asked.
“That is where the cars and trucks are kept.”
On the other side of the road, the ground was covered with what looked like the same material that made up the road itself, shaped in a long, narrow triangle. At the back was what looked like the ruins of a small building.
The next house on the left was smaller, but looked like the home of someone even richer. A short road led past it, separating it from another brick structure that had several barn doors at ground level. Something that looked like a wooden house made up the second story. The main house was on just a little bit of a hill, held away from its own road by a brick wall. A formal, if oddly shaped, garden lay in front of the house with a brick walkway passing through it. The large open area in front of the door had its own roof and strange but very expensive-looking white railings.
The next house, again on the left, also had its barn underneath it. After that was a very strange structure that Astrid could not identify. Several of the cars and trucks were in a row outside, but they were still and silent. No one was inside them.
Then on the right they passed several more modest houses. Some of them appeared run-down, at least in comparison to those she had assumed were schlösser. But, really, all of them were both nicer and larger than the house where she, Anke, Gessel, and Helga had lived.
They passed a couple more houses on the left, and then caught sight of wide, cleared fields on the right. A deep ditch ran along the side of the road, and an entryway was flanked by half a dozen square columns on either side. Each column along the way was taller than the previous one. A field lay to the right of the entryway. A building that appeared to consist entirely of block shapes was straight ahead. To the left of the entryway was a whole field of the road-stone. Astrid saw a guardhouse there. A huge building occupied the hill beyond it.
“That is the high school,” Neustatter told them.
“That is a school?” Ursula’s tone clearly conveyed that she was sure she’d misheard Neustatter.
“That is one of the schools,” Neustatter said. “This is for the older students. There is one for Johann further ahead. This is the one that the Croats attacked.”
His voice sounded . . . Astrid wondered why reverent was the word that came to mind.
“I talked to a Swede who was there.” Neustatter continued in that same quiet tone. “He said Julie Simms was in one of the second-floor windows, shooting down the Croats who charged Captain Gars and his men. That is what they call Gustav II Adolf here.”
“I heard she never missed,” Lukas added.
“She?” Ursula asked.
“Ja. Julie Simms. She married the Scots colonel, Mackay.”
This was the first time Astrid had heard these details. “One of the soldiers was a woman?”
“When the Croats first attacked—there were over a thousand of them—just Julie Simms, Doctor Nichols, Jeff Higgins, and the teachers were defending the school. Captain Gars arrived a few minutes later with four hundred men, then Chief Frost and Gretchen Richter arrived with a busload of polizei.”
That sounded like something out of legend to Astrid. On the other hand, the Ring of Fire was miraculous. So why should the battle here at the schule have been any different? But a woman shooting Croats away from Captain Gars? She needed time to think about that.
They were passing the school now, and Astrid darted a glance to the other side of the road. A smaller road joined the main road there, and she saw a row of long, narrow buildings along both sides of it.
“What is that?”
“Those are trailers,” Hjalmar told her.
“The moving houses,” she recalled.
“Sort of. We have heard that this kind can be moved, but usually they are moved only once, when they are taken to where someone wants to live in one. Then they stay there.”
Astrid studied the trailers. They were smaller than the houses. Much smaller, in some cases. But she thought a family that lived in one of them would be doing well for itself.
Once beyond the school, hillsides rose up on either side of the road again. These hills were grassy.
“Was that Grantville?” Astrid asked. The school had been huge, and the houses oddly lavish. But she had expected more people.
“Nein,” Neustatter said. “The up-timers call that area a neighborhood, and it doesn’t even have a name. Grantville is still ahead of us.”
They encountered people walking down the road toward them. Everyone kept to their side of the road but waved or called greetings. They passed a few more houses and the first true farmland Astrid had seen within the Ring of Fire.
They kept walking, and the salt wagons rumbled along behind them. They passed more crossroads. Neustatter pointed out one on the right. It was larger than the others and had its own yellow lines.
“That goes to Deborah. The up-timers call it a village, but we have been there. It is actually an upper town and a lower town.”
They passed another of the large open areas with several houses. Wolfram pointed something out to Anna.
“That is Leahy Medical Center. It was a church before the Ring of Fire, but the up-timers made it into a hospital. That is where the finest doctors in the world are.”
They continued for some ways, passing more houses. Some were almost as lavish as those Astrid assumed were schlösser. Others appeared rundown. She could not figure out a pattern.
They came to another crossroads. Just beyond it, the main road went over a bridge.
“Now we are in Grantville,” Neustatter announced.
Astrid immediately saw storehouses and rows of cars and trucks. Ahead were two arches, up on a metal pole. They were gold and looked almost like a letter M.
“What is that?”
“The sign for the Freedom Arches,” Ditmar told her. “That is where the Committees of Correspondence gather. It is a tavern of sorts, what the up-timers call a restaurant.”
Astrid had no idea what her cousin was talking about.
Beyond the arches, all the buildings were strange-looking. She could not tell what any of them were for. Johann was eagerly asking questions, though, so Astrid listened to the answers. More questions came on top of the answers, and she could not keep up. Soon, though, they found more houses.
“I have seen that banner on poles beside at least three houses,” Astrid declared.
“That was the up-timers’ flag, up-time,” Neustatter explained. “They had fifty states. The New United States has fewer states, so there are flags with fewer stars, too.”
They found themselves back in the countryside, with a steep drop-off on the left side of the road with another of the guardrails. At the beginning of a curve in the road, a metal framework supported several of the up-time signs. Astrid started toward them.
“Stay on our side of the road,” Hjalmar cautioned.
Astrid heard a rumble, and another truck came around the curve. It proceeded less quickly than the first one, but still faster than a wagon.
Further along the curve was a sign that read Welcome to Grantville. The English was close enough to German for Astrid to figure it out.
Then they came into Grantville. Houses were close to both sides of the road. There were other buildings, too. They passed a church and a cemetery. People were everywhere. The salt wagons had to slow down.
The sights came so close together now that Astrid was overwhelmed. They walked around more curves and caught sight of buildings packed close together, like a proper town. Astrid saw that some of them were three stories tall. This was a city.
The salt wagons stopped at a big building in Grantville, and the men helped the merchants carry several bags inside. When they returned, the wagons turned around on one of the flat expanses made of the same material as the road and started down another road.
“The rest of the Croats made it this far,” Neustatter told them. “Chief Frost stood right over there, where the road divides. We will cross the right-hand bridge today. The Grantvillers were shooting from every building along here. You can see where some of the windows were broken.”
Astrid looked where Neustatter was pointing. She saw a board where a window should be, judging by the spacing between its neighbors. In another place, big squares of glass had been replaced by many smaller ones. She shuddered. Astrid was no soldier, but the way Grantville was built, the Croats would have been trapped. She could imagine them being shot down all too well.
She looked at the bridge with some concern. The salt wagons were heavy. But the drivers did not wait for each individual wagon to complete its crossing. They just continued on in line, as though crossing a Grantville bridge happened without incident all the time. And it might. Astrid realized that she had seen—and crossed—a great many bridges since they entered the Ring of Fire.
They passed a row of shops on either side of the street. Then there was a box-like structure on the left with many doors. It was too closed-in to be a stable, but she thought it might be a carriage house. That would make sense, because on the right side of the road was an entire row of almost-schlösser. She assumed important people lived here. Then on their left was . . . another bridge. After that came more houses, another curve in the road, and, yes, another bridge on the left.
Here the river was little more than a wide (and presumably deep) ditch full of water. Up ahead on the left was a big rectangular building that she thought was probably brick. She could check once they were closer. In the meantime, her attention was drawn to the right side of the road. They were walking right past one of the trailers. She saw rows of blocks underneath it. Those were fascinating. They looked like stone, but they were all exactly the same size. Centered in front of the trailer was a decorative wooden screen that looked like it might support plants in the summer.
The big building on the left did appear to be made of stone. It had two stories. Open archways in the wall showed that the ground floor was mostly open. The second story was much taller than the first, with high, narrow windows.
“That is the community center,” Neustatter said. “It was used as refugee housing soon after the Ring of Fire happened. We have heard many events are held there during warmer weather. This next area is the fairgrounds.”
Astrid saw lots of fences. Thin metal rods were woven in diamond patterns to make a fence taller than she was that went on and on. A much shorter one made of thicker metal rods was actually a gate across a road that entered the enclosed area. She saw new buildings within.
“Refugee housing,” Hjalmar explained. “People come to Grantville every day, and they need somewhere to stay until they can find a house or an apartment.”
“Is that where we will live?” Astrid asked.
“Nein. There is more refugee housing elsewhere. Each place has advantages and disadvantages. After the wagons deliver the rest of the salt, we will go to one of the other ones. We think it is the furthest away, but the warmest.”
“The warmest? That sounds promising.”
They were passing houses again, now, with lots of space between them. Astrid realized this arrangement matched the other side of town. These Grantvillers began to spread out as they got closer to the countryside.
The road curved to the left again, and they saw trucks clustered by the river.
“What is that?” Johann asked his mother. “Look at that, Mutti!”
Astrid had no idea what it was, but one of the trucks appeared to have a tower on its back. It was lifting a log. Men on the ground were waving and shouting, and the tower-truck swung a big block of . . . something . . . across the river.
“They are making another bridge!” Johann exclaimed.
A short way ahead, a road split off from the main one to the left. It dropped down a steep hill, curving as it did so.
Astrid heard a sharp whistle from behind them. She looked over her shoulder to see the teamster driving the lead wagon motioning down the hill.
“Let us go first!” he shouted. “You can catch up to us when we are on level ground again!”
Astrid thought that sounded like excellent advice. She did not want to be downhill from any of the wagons.
In fact, all the hills within the Ring of Fire were a little bothersome. Some of them seemed like small mountains. It felt like the land was closing up around her.
Once they made it down the hill, the road leveled out, at least to some extent. It was obviously a smaller, less-traveled road. They passed actual farms. Then the trees began to crowd up right next to the road. The road wound on for what seemed like a long time. Then she realized they were approaching the Ring Wall. The road rose up, crossed the Ring, and suddenly the landscape changed. Over to her left, Astrid could see cliffs where the countryside was higher than the Ring of Fire. At their foot was a lake.
But their destination lay further on, south of the Ring of Fire. They passed through a village called Döschnitz. It had a Grantville-style sign proclaiming its name. Not much further on, they came to Rohrbach.
Rohrbach . . . smelled like a barnyard. Then Astrid saw why. Rohrbach was a barnyard. Or at least, it had many fenced areas full of cattle and sheep and pigs.
“These are the stockyards and slaughterhouses,” Neustatter explained. “That truck there is carrying fresh meat back to Grantville.”
“What are those?” Johann pointed to low, round structures poking up out of a hillside.
“Those are ice houses. That is where meat is kept cold and unspoiled until it is sold.”
It was a huge undertaking. But the teamsters knew right where to go. The men helped unload the wagons.
Once the wagons were empty, a man from the slaughterhouses paid the chief teamster, who was a pleasant older man named Gerd. He paid Neustatter the agreed-upon fee.
“Are you going straight back to Halle?” Neustatter asked.
“Ja. We will find an inn tonight, then report to our factor in the morning. Find out what our cargo and escort are and what day we leave.” He considered the group. “I know you are planning to stay, but I would be happy to hire you for future shipments.”
“We will consider that,” Neustatter promised. “We will go back to Buffalo Street with you and then on to the housing at the power plant.”
Once they crossed back inside the Ring of Fire, Astrid realized just how much the hills were starting to block the late afternoon sun. She wanted to reach the main road before dark and not be in this forest, which was so much bigger than the one outside their village.
“Really?” Stefan asked once they were out of earshot. “Guard more shipments of salt?”
“Why not?” Neustatter asked. “As you said, we cannot farm here.”
“That is true,” Wolfram acknowledged. “We could hire onto the work crews.”
“We probably will, at least at first,” Neustatter agreed. “First, though, let us go to the refugee housing.”
Once back at Buffalo Street, they waved goodbye to the teamsters and turned left. Soon they came to a village.
“That big brick building is the power plant,” Neustatter explained. “This is Spring Branch. Almost all of it has been built since the Ring of Fire.”
Astrid nodded. Spring Branch looked crowded. It was about as big as it could get. The steep hillsides limited where buildings could be built. The entire village—town, really—had an unfinished feel to it. The houses were finished, but the area around them was mostly barren with just a few small trees here and there. Other houses were built right next to each other, the first time Astrid had seen that inside the Ring of Fire. Then she realized it was really all one building, sectioned off into separate homes.
“Those are townhouses,” Hjalmar said. “We are going over there.”
He pointed to rows of long, narrow buildings. These were single-story, whereas the townhouses had two stories. Neustatter led them to a small building in one corner of the area.
He knocked on the door. A man and a woman came outside.
“New arrivals?” the man asked.
“Ja, twelve of us. We men worked in Grantville over the winter and have brought families back.”
“Gut, gut. Then you know your way around.”
“Ja. We will do day labor until we find something better, and then a place to live.”
“Und no trouble while you are here.” The man seemed pleasant enough, but Astrid sensed that he could probably back up that “no trouble” if he had to, even though he wasn’t a particularly big man.
“We saw trouble enough in the wars,” Neustatter replied. “We would like to get away from that.”
The man nodded. “You need to be quarantined for a few days to make sure you are not sick. First you have to shower. If you men would follow me, and the women would follow Gisele?”
Gisele led Astrid, Anna, and Ursula to the women’s showers. They “had to” shower. “Got to,” Astrid decided. Warm and clean was very nice. All their clothes would be washed, dried, and returned. Gisele explained it helped prevent disease. As far as Astrid was concerned, if the Grantvillers wanted to inflict luxuries on them, that was fine with her. While they were waiting for their clothes, Gisele gave them robes and told them about Grantville.
It had been a long day, and much of what Gisele said went straight over Astrid’s head. What she did grasp was that those who controlled Grantville wanted everyone educated. There was schule for adults, to improve everyone’s reading. There was a class for citizens, too, because they voted for Grantville’s leaders. The classes were at the high school, which was on the opposite side of the Ring of Fire. On the other hand, having walked from Magdeburg, the width of the Ring of Fire did not seem like much of a challenge. Plus marveling at Grantville each time she walked there did not sound like a bad thing.
It was late by the time they finally got their clothes back and met up with the men.
“Georg is going to assign us quarters,” Neustatter told them.
“The housing is mostly full,” the man who had greeted them said. “But there is a room that will fit all of you over toward the far side.”
He and Gisele led them there. Each row of buildings they passed had a small building on one end and then three of the long buildings.
“This is an outhouse.” Georg pointed to signs. “Men’s and women’s.”
“That is not an outhouse,” Ursula maintained. “It is as big as our entire house back in the village!”
“The up-timers said sanitation is easier for a restroom than for a row of outhouses,” Gisele explained. “We have had no camp sickness or plague here. I do not understand all of sanitation, but I believe that it works.”
“It works,” Neustatter agreed.
“Your room is this way.” Georg led them down the row.
As they walked halfway down the row, to the second of three buildings, Astrid saw evidence that it had been made in haste. Nails were flush with the edges of boards, not pounded in any further, and she saw no filler between the boards. Everything was extremely plain, with no ornamentation of any kind. Each room seemed to have its own entrance, and the doors appeared to be solid. Georg stopped and opened a door.
“This one will be yours until you find something else,” Georg said.
“How long do we have?” Astrid asked.
Georg smiled. “As long as you need.”
He waved them inside. Once inside, Astrid saw that filler between the boards of the outer walls was not needed. The quarters had separate inner walls. The boards were flush with almost no space between them. She could feel no wind. It seemed far more proof against the weather than the girls’ house in their village had been.
“There is wattle and daub between the inner and outer walls.” Karl’s voice came as a surprise. “No great secret, Astrid. You were studying the walls. It is warm and dry.”
“More so than the house we girls lived in in the village,” Astrid agreed. “I feel bad that Anke, Helga, and Gessel still live there. I wish they could have come.”
“We could not bring the whole village,” Ditmar reminded her.
“Maybe someday,” her brother added.
Astrid continued looking around to have something else to think about.
A stove sat in the middle of the far wall with a chimney extending up through the roof. Beds lined each wall. Wooden screens made it possible to divide the room. They were simply wooden panels with crosspieces at the bottom to keep them balanced. The group put Wolfram and Anna in one corner, Stefan and Ursula and Johann across from them, and Hjalmar and Ditmar used the last portable wall to make an alcove for Astrid at the other end of the room.
“You can cook right on that stove,” Gisele told them.
Ursula eyed it warily. “Is that safe? I think we should cook outside.”
“As long as you do not burn something and fill the room with smoke,” Gisele said.
Stefan took one look at his wife’s expression and jumped in. “Ursula does not burn food. We will be fine.”
“Still,” Ursula insisted, “we should cook outside as much as possible.”
“There is a fire ring outside. I will show you.”
Ursula, Anna, Karl, Ditmar, and Hjalmar followed her. Astrid brought up the rear, more because she did not want to leave Hjalmar and Ditmar than out of any desire to see the fire ring. The fire ring was nothing more than a rough circle of stones in the dirt. A set of cooking irons stood over it. They were really nothing more than two metal poles forked at the top, with a third that lay across and could support a pot.
Karl studied them. “Georg, if there is iron available in Grantville, I may be able to improve these.”
“Grantville provides these and enough wood that people can cook and do not freeze,” Georg said. “Anything that we can make better is a blessing.”
“How are you going to do that, Karl?” Stefan sounded skeptical.
“Oh, I do not know. Not yet,” Karl answered. “But it would be good to work some metal.”
They built a fire in the stove, and Ursula cooked some of the food they were carrying.
“Just this once,” she said. “Tomorrow—outside.”
It was very late by the time they went to bed. Astrid fell asleep warm and full.
Saturday, May 7, 1633
On the following day, the men took Ursula, Johann, Anna, and Astrid to see Grantville. Astrid realized that there was only one set of railroad tracks through Grantville. Cars and trucks and tractors were more common. At least they had been up-time. Now the residents mostly walked. Many other people had moved to Grantville, and the city was crowded.
She also realized that Grantville lay in the valley. Hills were visible, but they did not actually loom over the town in most places. Astrid felt much better once that sank in.
What rooms rented for shocked her. By the end of the day, Astrid was so numb from one surprise after another that she almost failed to object when they ate dinner at the Thuringen Gardens.
Astrid looked around at the décor and then at the menu. It listed the price for each dish. “Neustatter,” she whispered, “we cannot afford this. Nor can we afford to rent rooms.”
“We cannot afford to eat here every day,” Neustatter told her. “Once in a while, ja. And ja, we need what the up-timers call cash flow before we can rent rooms. For now, we will live in the refugee housing.”
“It is nicer than the house we girls shared in the village. But will we really be allowed to stay as long as we need to?”
“Miss Schäubin, the Ring of Fire brought three thousand five hundred up-timers to our world. Most of them lived in Grantville. I do not know how many people live in Grantville now, but no one would dispute that it is at least five times as many. For every single up-timer, there are at least four people like us who have found a way to live here. Why should we twelve not do just as well?”
She had to admit that Neustatter had a point. “But what can we do? What can I do?”
Neustatter smiled. “You, Miss Schäubin, can go to schule.”
Monday, May 9, 1633
On Monday, Johann was enrolled in school. Hjalmar, Ditmar, and Astrid were enrolled in adult education evening classes. Stefan, Lukas, and Otto had gotten work as day laborers easily enough, while Wolfram had gone to the medical center and Karl took the opportunity to work for a blacksmith.
The day laborers returned to the room in the Spring Branch refugee housing looking very tired.
Stefan flopped onto his bed. “And what did you do all day, Neustatter?”
“I talked to Dan Frost. He’s the chief of the polizei,” Neustatter explained to Anna, Ursula, and Astrid. “He could use some men doing exactly what we did with the salt wagons. A lot of goods come to Grantville. Others are sent out from Grantville. The local area—Saalfeld, Kamsdorf, Rudolstadt, all the way to Jena, really—is fairly secure, but anything going to Suhl or Erfurt still needs an escort.”
“Mercenaries,” Stefan declared.
“Nein. We would be free to choose our own contracts, and we would not have to join an army.”
“That sounds better than day labor,” Lukas agreed. “But how does it pay?”
“It pays well.” Neustatter named two amounts. “Most of the companies charge somewhere in that range. If each of us saves a little of that, we can move out of refugee housing. We will need better weapons, of course. And horses.”
“That sounds expensive,” Stefan pointed out.
“Ja,” Neustatter agreed.
“How expensive?” Astrid asked.
Neustatter smiled. “Miss Schäubin, you may help find out if we can afford it, bitte.”
“Am I part of this?” she asked.
“You came from the village, ja?”
That was how Astrid found herself in math class.