Less than a hundred years later, under Empress Maria Theresa, the Habsburgs repaid the loyalty of Prague's Jewry by expelling them from the city.
"Right," Morris growled, his smile fading. "Let's do it again—and we'll hope, this time, it turns out better in the long run."
He turned away from the window and faced the two rabbis. "Will you agree?"
Spira and Gans looked at each other. Spira nodded. Gans shrugged. "Do we have a choice? Not that I can see. And I am sure all the other rabbis will agree."
"You will be in command, yes, Don Morris?" asked Spira. He gave Billek and Red a somewhat apologetic glance. "Our people will follow you. Not . . . others."
"See?" Red demanded, smiling wider than ever. "Like I said, you're the boss."
"Make sure you are on a horse," Billek added. "Biggest horse you can find. And wear something suitable."
2
Morris had been prepared for a brawl with Dunash. He was sure the young militant would try to insist that he and his men should remain with the other Jews on the east bank, rather than fighting with the Brethren as they were supposed to do.
But, to his surprise, Red Sybolt scuttled the problem before it could even emerge.
"We may as well keep me and Dunash and the katyusha on this side anyway, Morris. Those rockets are about as accurate as spitting in the wind. If we fire them at the bridge from the Malá Strana, we're as likely to kill our own people over here as Holk's people on the bridge."
Red pointed across the river. "The Brethren will be sheltered in fortified positions over there. At the beginning, for sure. So they'll be safe enough from friendly fire, since those warheads really aren't that powerful. We designed them as antipersonnel weapons. A small charge and a lot of shrapnel, basically."
"Jan's okay with that?"
"Yeah, he and I already talked it over." Red's easy grin was back. "Besides, the truck's in your basement, remember? That was the only place secret enough to assemble it under Wallenstein's nose. Well, under Marradas' nose. I'm pretty sure Wallenstein knows we have the thing. It'll be hard enough to haul it out of there, much less try to get it across the river and under shelter. The Malá Strana doesn't have too much in the way of garages, you know."
After he thought it over, Morris decided Red was right. If nothing else, even if the katyusha proved ineffective in the battle, just having a fabled American war machine show up in the midst of the motley "army" assembling on the eastern end of the bridge would do wonders for morale. Especially with Jews manning the thing.
Besides, he was tiring of fighting with Dunash.
"Okay, done."
He had a bigger problem with the horse. Big enough that he even lapsed into profanity for a moment. "Where the hell did you get this thing? I didn't think Clydesdales even existed in this day and age." A little whine came into his voice. "And how am I supposed to even get onto it, anyway? Especially wearing this stupid getup. With a winch?"
He was coming to detest Red's grin. "Why not? According to a movie I saw once, that's how the old knights got lifted onto their horses." Red gave the horse in question an admiring look. "And quit exaggerating. It's not a Clydesdale, not even close. Just the second biggest horse Pappenheim owns. He took the biggest one with him."
Morris grimaced. "Oh, swell. Now I'll have Pappenheim furious with me, on top of everything else. Do they hang horse thieves in Bohemia? I'm sure they do."
Red shrugged. "If you keep Prague intact, I really don't think Pappenheim's going to mind much that you used one of his horses to do it. Look, Morris. Nobody ever said being a champion wasn't risky."
"Champion." Oh, swell. Like I need a hole in the head.
Gloomily, Morris went back to studying the horse. He was a good horseman, to be sure—within the limits of what "good horsemanship" meant for an American whose experience was almost entirely with the sort of horses one encountered on riding trails and pack stations. Whether that would translate into being able to control a seventeenth-century warhorse . . .
A bit to his surprise, it did. The warhorse was more spirited than Morris was accustomed to, but on the other hand it had been trained to remain steady in the middle of a battlefield. Once he got accustomed to it, in fact, he found himself enjoying the experience. It really was quite a horse.
And, there was no doubt of one thing: as silly as he felt, riding a horse while wearing the fancy garb of a seventeenth-century nobleman, his appearance before the crowd now erecting barricades at the eastern end of the Stone Bridge had an impact. He even got cheered. A very big cheer, in fact. Jason had told Judith that the story was already widely spread of how Don Morris had slain goyishe bandits seeking to victimize the ghetto, with his powerful American arquebus. As many as ten bandits, in one version of the story.
As big a cheer as it was, though, it was not as big as the cheer the katyusha received, when Red and Dunash's people finally managed to get it out of the basement—they used dozens of people with ropes to just lift it out—and Red drove it slowly forward onto the little square abutting the bridge.
Morris was startled when the initial cheer evolved into a chant: APC! APC! He wouldn't have guessed that the population of far-off Prague—certainly not the Jews in its ghetto—would have ever heard of that acronym. It was ironic, of course, since the "APC" was nothing of the sort. True, Red had mounted some thin armor plate to protect the engine and the driver and gunner in the front seat. But the thing was no solid and heavy coal truck. It was just an old Dodge Ram with a jury-rigged and flimsy-looking rocket launcher fixed in the bed.
It didn't matter. None of Prague's civilians had ever seen an American war machine before, but they'd heard the rumors. For them, "APC" was more in the way of a spoken talisman than anything else. And this was an age when most common folk believed in the power of talismans and amulets. That was as true for the Jews as the Christians, although the forms were different. The so-called "Book of Raziel the Angel"—the Sefer Raziel ha-Mal'akh—hadn't been produced yet in printed form, but parts of the ancient manuscript went back to Babylonian Talmudic times. It had drifted around the world's Jewish communities for centuries, never really approved by the rabbinate but never banned either. Morris wouldn't have been surprised to discover that a goodly percentage of the Jews building the barricades had little metal or paper amulets under their clothes, using the formulas of the Sefer Raziel.
When Red finally brought the pickup-cum-katyusha to a halt, after positioning it in the firing slot left open in the barricades, he rolled down the window and gave Morris an admiring look.
"I do declare, perched way up there on that great big horse—hell of a nice plume to the hat, too—you look like the spittin' image of a hidalgo. Damn near a conquistador, in fact."
"My family came from Krakow," Morris groused. "The closest I ever got to Spain was eating tapas once in a restaurant in Philadelphia."
"Don't knock it, Morris. All that matters is that you look and act the part. They've got a recognized leader now, instead of everybody fumbling around wondering who's in charge. That'll help steady everybody's nerves—a lot—as long as you don't get yourself shot."
For some odd reason, the warhorse had a delayed reaction to the Dodge Ram. It was accustomed to the sounds of gunfire, not internal combustion engines, to be sure. But Morris never did figure out why the blasted critter chose the moment when Red turned off the motor to start getting jittery.
Very jittery. Morris had a few tense and interesting moments, though he managed to stay in the saddle. He did lose the hat, though.
"Or fall off the horse," Red added sarcastically.
3
That evening, after looking for Len all over the Hradcany, Ellie finally figured out where he'd be. She realized it within seconds after she returned to the rooms in the castle that the young commander Kastner had assigned to them. Kastner, worried lest Wallenstein's precious American technical experts might get hurt in the fighting, had insisted that Ellie and Len move from Wallenstein's palace int
o the greater safety of the fortress above.
There'd been no point arguing with him. Kastner had no idea how the telephones worked, so he had no intention of trying to use them. In what was coming, Len and Ellie would just be fifth wheels on a cart. So, Len grumbling the whole time, they'd spent the morning hauling their belongings up the hill. Then, having made the last trip alone for a few final items while Len stayed behind in order to arrange their new living quarters, she'd come back to find him gone.
She'd spent most of the afternoon searching for him, growing increasingly worried. But when she finally returned, half-exhausted from endless hiking, she noticed that the lid to one of the chests was cracked open. That chest was normally kept locked, because it was the one where they kept their personal weapons.
She opened the chest and looked. Len's 12-gauge was missing.
What could he possibly—?
—I'll kill him if the idiot—!
Oh.
It all fell into place. Not sure whether she was more relieved than exasperated, Ellie closed the chest and sat down on it. For a moment, half-slumped, she tried to decide what to do. For that matter, what to think.
Then, shrugging, she got up and left. That was her man, when it was said and done. Quirks and foibles and all.
Although even for Len, this is a doozy.
She found him where she'd thought she would—the one place it had never occurred to her to look the entire afternoon. The place she must have circled at least four times while she searched for him. Impossible not to, of course, since it dominated the Hradcany.
Len was sitting in one of the rear pews in the huge Gothic cathedral. Just staring at the altar, his shotgun across his knees. Ellie was sure he'd been there the whole afternoon. The handful of priests watching him were still nervous, clearly enough, but it was the kind of nervousness that had worn itself down after a few hours. A few hours while the bizarre intruder—monster from another world, with a monstrous weapon—just sat there and did nothing.
She slid into the seat next to him. "You might have left me a note, dammit!"
Len looked uncomfortable. "I started to write one, but . . . I don't know. I didn't know what to say. How to explain it."
Ellie sighed. Then, felt all her exasperation going away. That was the nature of the man, after all. She reached out her hand and stroked the back of his neck.
" 'S okay. I shoulda figured you'd unlapse your own way. You weird duck. What? You figure on protecting the cathedral all by your lonesome?"
She gave the priests a skeptical glance. "I don't think they'd be much help, if Holk's hordes came pouring in. Not that they will, without taking the Hradcany from Kastner. Which they won't."
Len flushed. "It's the principle of the thing, Ellie. Kastner's people didn't want me underfoot anyway, so I figured . . . Look, religious freedom's for everybody. That means Catholics too, even if the bums running the show here screwed up. And this cathedral's ancient. It's a holy place, even if I don't think much of the current tenants."
His hand tightened on the stock of the shotgun. "So anybody tries anything . . ."
"Ha! Saint Len and the Dragon, is it?"
Len's flush deepened. His eyes now seemed riveted on the altar.
"Will you marry me?" he asked abruptly. "I've been thinking about it all afternoon."
She studied him for a moment. "I'm not getting married in a fucking church, Len."
"You shouldn't swear in here."
"Not in a fucking church. I can't stand churches."
Len took a deep breath, sighed. His hand finally left the stock of the shotgun and came up as if to stroke his absent mustache.
Feeling the bare skin, he sighed again. "You are one hard woman, Ellie Anderson."
There was nothing much she could say, since that was true enough. So she said nothing.
Neither did he, for maybe five minutes. Then, finally, he looked at her.
"Was that a 'yes'?"
Ellie chuckled and went back to stroking his neck. "Yes, Len, that was a 'yes.' Just not in a fucking church. If you can't live with that, you can't live with me."
She looked at the altar, then at the priests. "But I don't mind if you decide to pull crazy stunts like this, now and then. So I figure we're square."
"Okay." He stroked his nonexistent mustache. "I can live with that."
4
The first detachments from Holk's army started showing up in the outskirts of the city early the next morning. By midmorning, they were exchanging shots with Kastner's men forted up in the Hradcany; by noon, with his men forted up in the Malá Strana. By mid-afternoon, most of Holk's ragtag army had poured into the city's west bank—as undisciplined as you could ask for—and decided they'd had enough of cracking their heads against Kastner's troops.
Holk himself showed up then, on his own big warhorse, and led the charge. He waved his sword to the east, very dramatically. That way! To the Stone Bridge!
Tanner stayed in the cathedral the whole time, Saint Len faithfully at his post in case the dragon showed up.
Ellie, on the other hand, joined the soldiers on the walls of the Hradcany. She had a better vantage point to see what was happening than Morris and Red did, across the river. So, using her CB, she kept them informed all day of the movements of Holk and his men. Insofar as that rabble could be said to have "maneuvers" at all, other than the mercenary equivalent of Brownian motion.
When Holk showed up, though, waving his stupid sword, she put down the CB and drew her pistol. Then, cursing a blue streak, clambered up on the wall and emptied the entire clip at him.
"Where'd you go?" Red asked her, when she got back on the CB. Ellie explained in a few curt sentences, about every other word of which was short and had an Anglo-Saxon pedigree.
"Fer chrissake, Ellie—with a 9mm automatic? What're you, nuts? That's gotta be at least six hundred yards. You'd be lucky to hit the river at that range."
"It's the principle of the thing," she stoutly insisted.
Chapter VI:
Discovered Check
July 1633
1
By the time Holk finally got his men organized—using the term loosely—it was almost sundown. He began to send men onto the Stone Bridge, but the small detachments retreated quickly once they started getting peppered by shots fired from the flintlock-armed men now perched behind the barricade.
So far as Ellie could tell, looking down on the bridge from the distance of the Hradcany without binoculars, that initial volley—using the term loosely—didn't do more than scare off the thugs. She didn't think a single one of them had even been wounded.
Ellie was sure Morris hadn't ordered the volley. The Stone Bridge had a span of some five hundred yards, with a little dogleg in it about one-third of the way across from the west bank. The flintlocks had started firing as soon as Holk's men made it to the dogleg and came in sight of the barricades—a range of well over three hundred yards. Maybe James Fenimore Cooper's fictional marksman Natty Bumppo could hit something with a flintlock at that range, but ghetto-dwellers with meager experience with firearms hadn't much more chance than Ellie had with her 9mm.
Red confirmed her assessment. "Naw, just buck fever. Morris is fit to be tied. Good thing he ain't a cursing man. He's doing a pretty good job right now of flaying them alive with proper language. He's even waving his sword around."
Ellie stared at the now-darkening western bank, dumbfounded. "Morris has a sword? Where the fuck did he get a sword?"
Red's chuckle crackled in the CB. "Judith had it made up for him, believe it or not. Presented it to him this morning, scabbard and everything. She even had a special scabbard made up so he could sling his rifle on the horse."
Ellie burst out laughing. "Judith Roth—the gray eminence. It's like they say: 'behind every successful man there's a woman.' "
"No shit. And you should see the collection of women she's got around her, right here on this end of the bridge. Every prestigious matron in the ghetto,
near as I can tell. Oh, sure, they're all being proper as you could ask for—but you can't fool me. Patriarchy be damned. That's the biggest collection of political clout in one city this side of old Mayor Daley's grave."
A moment later he added, in the satisfied tones of an longtime union agitator: "We're pretty well organized over here, actually. If Morris can just keep those eager beavers from wasting all the ammunition. And if he can keep from stabbing himself with the sword. He handles it like a butcher knife. Except he ain't an experienced butcher. Personally, I wish he'd start swinging the rifle around. THAT he knows what he's doing with."