Chapter 47
Hermannstadt (Sibiu)
“I am no general,” Matei Basarab said, more animated than Usan Hussein had seen him in a long time, “but Lupu’s request that we meet in Medwesch seems foolish to me.”
Usan leaned over the map to study the route that the voivode of Moldavia had recommended—nay, demanded—that the Wallachian army take to link arms with his forces. Around him crowded most of the commanding officers of Matei’s army, including Captain Andrej Dordevic, a Serbian mercenary commander who seemed most agitated.
“It is a preposterous route!” Dordevic barked, his accent heavy in Usan’s ears. “We should march to Meinbach instead. The terrain is less obstructive and more manageable than working ourselves through those mountainous gaps to Medwesch. From Meinbach, we are only ten miles, at most, from the capital.”
“My lord,” Stroe Leurdeanu said, leaning over the map as well, but keeping his eyes fixed on his voivode, “I will remind you that you did promise Voivode Lupu to link arms with his army before moving against the capital.”
“As he made promises to me that he did not keep!”
“Yes, my lord, you are correct. But”—Stroe traced his hand across the route proposed by Lupu—“a move to Medwesch is not much farther than a direct march to Meinbach, if this map is correctly scaled. An extra day, perhaps, at the most.”
“Only an extra day,” Dordevic said, “if the weather behaves, if there are no hazards to face through the gaps.” He looked at Usan. “If the Ifrit fire tanks can make the journey at all.”
Yes, of course, Usan sneered to himself, place the burden of the decision on me.
In truth, both plans had merit. A march directly through the Carpathians, albeit dangerous, would bring the armies together. Doing so would allow them to march down the Große Kokel River Valley, reach and cross the Maros River, and then attack the capital in force from the north. This would have the added benefit of cutting the Sunrise’s supply lines from Kolozsvár.
The downside of the idea was that the Wallachians would be cut off from their supply lines altogether. The thought of that did not sit well with Usan, whose Janissaries had fought Saxon insurgents here in Hermannstadt to secure those lines. Many of his men had died for that cause. The Sultan’s men—Janissaries that he would not be able to replace before the battle to come.
“A move to Medwesch,” Matei said, “would actually be a march away from the capital, not a large distance, indeed, but a distance nonetheless. Then, we would have to march back toward the capital. Another thirty miles or so of rigorous marching through yet another river valley just to reach the battlefield. Another long delay.”
That, too, was a sound point. Yet, it all depended upon whether the voivode of Wallachia was bold enough to attack the capital upon their arrival in Meinbach. Did Matei Basarab possess the courage to take on the up-time army by himself? Or, once reaching Meinbach, would he sit there and wait for the Moldavians to make their long, arduous journey through the Carpathians to their attack position above the capital?
Usan nodded. Attacking from two separate directions has its positives as well.
Everyone was looking at him, waiting.
“I’m forced to agree with my Serbian colleague,” he said, pointing to a smudge on the map that represented Meinbach. “A march to Meinbach is a much better plan. Marching to Medwesch could place a heavy burden upon the Ifrits, and their crews must be fresh when we meet the enemy. We must match up-time weapons with up-time weapons wherever possible. Moving to Meinbach will also keep our supply line in stable condition.” He looked at Matei and nodded. “I say we head to Meinbach, and soon.”
“And I say we stick to the original plan and march to Medwesch,” Stroe said, reinforcing his opinion with a firm tap of the table with his fist. “We move together in one massive force to meet the enemy north of the capital. We strike them in one location, with everything we have. Our chance of a breakthrough and capture of the capital is far greater under those circumstances.”
Now the burden fell to Matei Basarab, who looked at the map with eyes that, if able, would ignite the paper and burn it to ash. A nonmilitary man having to make such a critical operational decision. A decision that was, to Usan’s mind at least, close to an even choice.
The voivode of Wallachia moved away from the map. He stared out the flap of his tent, letting the cool Carpathian breeze upset the tassels of his coat. He stared into the darkness for a long while as his lieutenants grew restless.
“Very well,” he said with less force than Usan would have liked to hear, “we march to Meinbach.”
Medwesch (Mediaș)
Day by day, Moshe Mizrahi found it exceedingly difficult to deal with the buffoon. The voivode of Moldavia’s perpetual outrage was becoming tedious and, in truth, exhausting.
“Disgraceful,” Vasile Lupu said as he balled up the message sent from Stroe Leurdeanu and tossed it to the ground. “The fool marches to Meinbach! Meinbach! Why would they do something so foolish?”
Moshe was about to offer an explanation when General Radu saved him. “Meinbach is just a few miles from Gyulafehérvár. They must have thought that by moving there instead of through the Carpathians, that they—”
“I know what they thought, General Radu,” Vasile said, nearly spitting, “I just read the message. But now our armies will be split as we move to the capital. A foolish, foolish decision.”
“There can be advantage in attacking from two different fronts, my Voivode,” Radu continued, trying his best to soothe Vasile Lupu’s angry feelings. “Doing so will require our enemy to divide his forces as well.”
“Wonderful,” Vasile said, throwing his arms up. “Now we can be destroyed piecemeal!”
“Or the enemy’s army can be thus destroyed,” Radu said.
“Be silent!” Vasile leered at Radu, his jaw muscles pumping hard. “Let me think!”
The voivode’s lieutenants were assembled in an impromptu circle in the middle of the field wherein the Chaldiran waited to be boarded. Why Vasile had asked Moshe to be in attendance was anyone’s guess. Then again, it was important for him and Mordechai to know the current operational planning of the army, so that they could provide the most practical, reliable service…whatever that service might be. Up to now, that service had been confined to nothing more than giving Vasile Lupu pleasure rides through the various river valleys down which the Moldavian army traveled. Except, of course, for the assassination attempt against Prince Rákóczi. That trip, according to the most recent intelligence, had proved quite successful.
“Where is Sergiu?” Vasile asked. “Get me Sergiu Botnari!”
“My lord,” General Radu said, perplexed, “he is gone. He has rejoined the Impalers in the field, as planned.”
“Plans, plans, plans! Everyone has a plan, and they are all incompatible with my own! No. I need him here, with me. General Radu, after we are done, you will send men to find him and bring him to me. He serves at my pleasure, not his own.”
General Radu nodded. “Yes, My Voivode.”
Moshe looked toward the Chaldiran, saw Mordechai’s tiny head peeking over the ship’s gondola. He fought the urge to simply walk away. General Radu and all the other Moldavian commanders, including three mercenary officers, looked just as uncomfortable as he in the midst of Lupu’s temper tantrum.
Finally, a Tatar captain named Alim Ibragimov, spoke. “I am comfortable with the Wallachian voivode’s decision. Like General Radu suggests, I will enjoy harassing the Jew’s supply lines to Kolozsvár. As it is now, your army is well-manned, well-commanded, and in good balance. Adding another full army to your ranks…well, I’d have to contend with squabbling Serbians and those infernal Ottoman fire tanks that, I hear, can scare horses unfamiliar with their sounds. Let the Wallachians attack from the south. We will handle the Jew’s army in the north.”
“Yes, yes,” Vasile said, turning back to his commanders, “but how do we coordinate the effort? We cannot hope to win if we attack individually. We must attack together.”
“I agree,” General Radu said quickly, trying to recover from his earlier upsetting comments. “We need to attack as one force. How do we accomplish that?”
“We do it the way we have always done it,” Ibragimov said, “the way armies have communicated for centuries. By runner, by horse messenger.”
Vasile shook his head. “Against an army with up-time radios? An army that can communicate with its commanders in the field in the blink of an eye? We’ll be one, two steps behind every time.” He threw his arms up again. “I should execute Sergiu Botnari for tossing that radio in the river.”
One, two captured radios would not have made much of a difference. Moshe wanted to say that out loud, but he knew that it could lead to his own punishment. Vasile and, in fact, everyone in attendance did not understand how radios worked and could not understand their usage even if they had them, in the short time before the coming battle.
“My Voivode,” Moshe said instead, “the Chaldiran can help in this endeavor. As I have studied the maps of the fields around the capital, the distance between our armies will be no more than, perhaps, fifteen to eighteen miles. That distance will shrink, of course, as our respective columns move into the battlefield. But the Chaldiran can conduct reconnaissance missions during the battle and convey any messages deemed necessary to the Wallachians.”
Ibragimov scowled. “One of my riders can move faster than your airship can fly.”
“On the tactical level, I agree,” Moshe said, nodding, “but a courier on horseback can be intercepted by enemy forces, or get lost, or his horse come up lame. The Chaldiran will suffer none of those maladies.”
“Until you set down, or get shot down,” Ibragimov said, his tone becoming agitated by the fact that a kafir was challenging his statements. “Then you are as vulnerable, and perhaps more so, than a man on horseback who can flee quicker and who is a much smaller target.”
“We can remain aloft and convey the messages with signal flags.”
“Who in their ranks knows your signals?” General Radu asked.
Moshe considered. “Usan Hussein, sir. The corbaci of their Janissaries.”
“And what about their aircraft?” Vasile asked. “General Radu says that they are unarmed, but they do have two seats. Am I correct?” He looked to General Radu, who nodded. “They could place musketmen in those seats, and we would then be vulnerable.”
“Not really, sir. An airship makes a good platform for a rifleman because we are moving slowly and he can fire straight ahead while we maintain a steady course on his target. An airplane is moving much faster and a rifleman can only shoot to the side. His chances of hitting anything are miniscule.”
“They shot down several of the Sultan’s airships at Linz, didn’t they?”
“Yes, but their plane was specifically designed for that purpose. They weren’t using a marksman firing a rifle; they had what they call a machine gun mounted in the nose of the plane so they could fire straight ahead—and they were using incendiary rounds, which we don’t have.”
The voivode’s mulish expression made clear he was unconvinced, so Moshe hurried on. “And as you have stated in the past, you desire that the Chaldiran be used as an offensive weapon. Placing a couple of additional musketmen in the gondola, plus our Janissary guard, plus your own personal weapons, we can easily defend ourselves against any attack that they might attempt from the air. We can move back and forth over the battle line and perform attacks as you desire…and deliver important messages to the Wallachians at the same time.”
Moshe waited as everyone considered his plan. The Tatar commander glared at him, as did others. It was clear to Moshe that they were not comfortable being lectured to by a mere kafir. But he wasn’t lecturing them; he was giving them the right course of action. Couldn’t they put aside their bigotry just for a moment to see the wisdom of his plan?
Vasile moved into the middle of the circle and nodded. “Moshe,” he said, “return to the Chaldiran and prepare for launch. I will be with you shortly, and we will discuss this matter further.”
Moshe nodded. He paid the proper respect and deference by nodding to each commander in turn, then walked away.
As he approached the Chaldiran, Mordechai dropped the rope ladder. Moshe grabbed it, secured himself on the first rung, and climbed slowly.
The Janissary guard helped him into the gondola. “What was that talk about?” Mordechai asked. “Lupu seemed angry.”
Moshe was about to provide details, then reconsidered. He looked at the Janissary guard and then at the crew member checking the engine. Finally, he looked at Mordechai, flashed a smile, and asked, “My friend, do you ever wonder if perhaps we’re fighting for the wrong side?”
Mordechai seemed shocked at the question. “To be honest, my friend, yes I do. Every day. Then I ask myself, ‘What have Christians ever given us that Sultan Murad has not?’ The Ottomans have been kinder to us, Moshe, than any Christian nation that I can recall.”
Moshe nodded. “But this Grand Army of the Sunrise is not commanded by a Christian, Mordechai. Its commander is a Jew.”
“A Jew who is, in effect, under the command of a Bohemian king. A Christian king. Remember our families, Moshe,” Mordechai said, now seemingly annoyed by the conversation. He furrowed his brow and wagged his finger in clear warning. “Remember: we do this for them. We serve the Sultan for them.”
As if we have a choice. “Of course,” Moshe said, now feeling silly and a little embarrassed about even bringing the matter up. And yet, he could not shake the question from his mind.
Mordechai went about his business. Moshe walked to the larboard side of the gondola and watched as Vasile ended the meeting abruptly and then turned toward the Chaldiran.
We are fighting for the wrong side.