Ring of Fire III (40 page)

“Then you are going to have to figure out how to make amends indirectly,” Doorn said. “You will be in deep danger of losing your sobriety, and maybe your soul.”

“I think I’ve lost my soul already, Pieter,” Georg said.

* * *

“Can you sing?” that night’s meeting leader, who went by the name of Hans, asked Georg on the way out of the basement of St. James’ church.

“Loudly,” Georg said.

“But not well, then.”

“Nobody has asked me to be a soloist at the new Opera House, if that’s what you mean,” Georg said. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, the woman who is in charge of that new Salvation Army is looking for some singers. Some bandsmen, too. Do you play an instrument?”

“No.”

“You might talk to the Army, anyway, Georg. You need to start taking care of the eighth and ninth steps.”

“I...”

“Just think about it. You have shared about your background in the meeting, Georg, and I think it might be what you need.”

“I don’t know,” Georg said. “I feel like I’m being pushed around. I don’t have control, and I don’t know when I will slip off the cart and fall into the mud again. And for me, it isn’t mud. It is always horse shit.” He laughed bitterly.

Hans held out his hand. “You take care on the way home. There are footpads now, I hear. Magdeburg is the very model of a modern city now.”

“I will,” Georg said.

“Just remember, trust God, Georg.”

* * *

“Here, Georg, have a beer.”

Herr Wahlberg had taken to having a dinner for his supervisors every month or so, and Georg had finally gotten invited.

The men milled around in the Wahlbergs’ front room. There were some finger snacks, and there was, of course, beer.

“
Nein, danke
,” Georg said. “I don’t drink anymore.”

“How did you do that?” Wahlberg asked him, “if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I have placed my life in God’s hands, Herr Wahlberg, and I live one day at a time,” Georg said.

“I’ve heard that before, somewhere,” Wahlberg said. “Ah, yes. One of the people that my wife works with in her Army of Salvation says it.”

“Your wife started the Salvation Army?”

“Yes. She did. It keeps her busy, praise God!”

Georg felt as though he was on the receiving end of a message from God. He had been seeing the Salvation Army musicians playing on street corners for a while now. Hans had told him that he should talk to the Army. Now, his boss’s wife was the actual creator of the Army of Salvation.

“I...Herr Wahlberg, I thank you for inviting me to your home. I must be going now,” Georg stuttered, “I have a meeting to go to.”

* * *

Georg walked up and down across the street from the nondescript storefront. The sign on the building said “Die Heilsarmee”—the Salvation Army. He kept stepping off the sidewalk and stopping, going back to pacing. He knew that he was making an important decision. He didn’t know what he was going to do. Now that it had come, he was having trouble committing to doing it.

He recited the first steps to himself. “I have realized that I am powerless over alcohol—and that my life is unmanageable. I have come to believe that a Power greater than myself can restore me to sanity. I have made a decision to turn my will and my life over to God...”

He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath and marched across the street to the storefront. He put his hand on the door.

“I have made a list of all the people I have harmed, and I am willing to make amends to them all.”

He turned the doorknob, and went inside.

* * *

Pieter Doorn watched as the
Heilsarmee
Marching Band played its first concert on the steps of St. James’ church. For months now, they had been playing on streetcorners and in their storefront mission. Today, they were playing selections from
Guys and Dolls
as well as the hymns, both traditional and up-timer, that they were becoming famous for.

When they got to “Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat,” Doorn heard Georg Schuler’s voice. Georg was certainly the loudest, if not the most melodious, he thought to himself. But then they did “Amazing Grace,” and Schuler sang with tears streaming down his face.

“Amazing Grace,” Georg sang as the band played, “how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.”

Salonica

Kim Mackey

Salonica, Ottoman Empire

Spring 1635

“Atesh!”

Once again the volley of rifle fire tore into the ranks of the bandits. It was more ragged this time. The defenders had taken casualties of their own since the attack on the inner walls of the gunpowder factory.

“To the wall! Forward!” Mustafa bin Kemal shouted. He looked at Sampson and grinned. “Well done, my friend. Those wonderful grenades saved us. Any left?”

Sampson Gideon reached over his shoulder into the grenade pack and held up a “potato masher.” “Last one, Mustafa. We’ll have to use dynamite from now on.”

If we had any dynamite
, Sampson thought. He’d sent the last batch to the Sidrekapsi silver mine yesterday. Opening up new shafts at the mine took priority over grenades, by order of Melek Ahmed Pasha himself.

He and Mustafa were at the wall now.

Unlike the inner walls, the outer wall was incomplete and stood less than three feet high. The forest around the factory had been cut back, but it was still less than a hundred yards away.

“What now?” Sampson asked.

“Now we prepare for their next attack, my friend.” Mustafa said.

The
bash cebeci—
head armorer—turned to his men along the wall. “
Süngü tak! Süngü tak!
”

Sampson felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
Fix bayonets? Oh, God, we’re going to die.

The words from the head enlisted man of the Essen military team, Senior-sergeant Duncan MacGregor, came back to him. “Better pray these Turks never need to use their rifles with the new bayonets, Mr. Gideon. They’ll carve you up like a chicken right quick with the bayonets in their hands, but they get too excited to use them on the rifles and just turn it into a club in the heat of battle.”

Sampson stopped Mustafa as he came down the line of men. “Fix bayonets? Mustafa, they don’t know how to use the bayonets.”

Mustafa smiled. “Of course not. But we are almost out of ammunition, and at least the sight of the bayonets will put fear into our enemies. How many rounds left for your pistol?”

“Two cylinders. Twelve rounds.”

Mustafa shrugged. “Use them well. We surprised these rebels. They will be more organized with the next attack. It is obvious they are not simple bandits or brigands. That has to be why we have seen no reinforcements from the
orta
in the new training grounds.”

Sampson could hear men shouting off in the forest.

“What are they saying?”

“Officers exhorting their men.” Mustafa tilted his head to listen, then laughed. “Calling them shit-eating sons of motherless donkeys. If they have any courage left, they will be shamed into another attack soon. Make ready.”

“Mustafa! Look!” An armorer pointed back toward the factory.

MacGregor!

The senior-sergeant pulled up his horse and saluted Mustafa.

“Bash Cebeci, we have two cannon, at your service.”

“Essen cannon?”

MacGregor smiled. “Of course. The fifteen pounders. With fifty rounds of canister each. The Chorbaci sends his regards and says reinforcements will be here in fifteen minutes. A diversionary attack hit the encampment.”

Mustafa nodded and turned his head to look at the outer wall, then pointed at a bend in the wall a hundred yards away. “There. Put your cannon there. You’ll have good enfilade fire.”

“As you command.” MacGregor winked at Sampson and galloped off.

Once again Mustafa moved down the line of his men. He clapped one on the shoulder and shook him. When he reached Sampson he fixed the bayonet on his own rifle.

“They are coming, Sampson. If Allah wills, we will be victorious. If not...” Mustafa shrugged, then smiled. “We will meet each other in Paradise.”

Sampson took a breath. “I’m not ready for Paradise just yet, Mustafa.”

Mustafa laughed. “Then victory it is. A good slogan.” He turned to the men along the wall. “For the sultan. Victory or death!”

“Victory or death!” the men shouted.

Sampson grabbed Mustafa’s arm. “Here they come!”

A wave of riders and infantry charged from the forest.

* * *

“Close, Ismail, too close indeed. If the rebels had reached the magazines...”

Melek Ahmed Pasha, governor-general of the new expanded
sançak
of Salonica, closed his eyes and imagined the battle that had taken place at the gunpowder factory. He had been too young to see the end of the Habsburg war in 1606, but there had been plenty of wars with the Persians over the past thirty years.

Hopefully,
Melek Ahmed thought,
that will be ended this year when the sultan takes Baghdad.

But it was not Persia that was the major threat to the empire. As had been revealed by the histories from the miracle city of Grantville, it was the Austrians and Hungarians who were the real threat to Ottoman rule, especially in the Balkans. And the Russians, of course. But they would be later. Much later, God willing.

“It was fortunate you arrived in time with your reinforcements.”

Ismail bin Abdullah, chorbaci and commander of the new regiments training with the weapons provided by the Republic of Essen, shook his head.

“The battle was nearly over by the time we arrived, my Pasha. Mustafa bin Kemal and the Essen technical expert, Sampson Gideon, rallied the armorers once the local janissary infantry company was routed.”

“Mustafa bin Kemal? Is he not the nephew of Evrenos Bey?”

Ismail nodded. “And his maternal grandfather was a Bektashi
pir
.”

“Ah? I assume he is mastering the new mysteries of the pious foundation we have established in Salonica?”

“So I have heard,” Ismail said. “The fate of the Bektashi and the other Sufi orders will be much different than in the universe from which Grantville came, God willing.”

Melek Ahmed nodded. Bektashi mysteries were just that to many members of the
ulema
, the religious leaders of the empire. The conservatives had no interest in them and even dismissed them contemptuously as nothing but heresies. So it was unlikely they would investigate an unusual mystery in a Bektashi lodge in a newly minted province, despite the fact that increasing numbers of Bektashi dervishes were visiting to learn about the latest knowledge.

Unless the Kadi decided to investigate. “You still think the Kadi, Ebu Said, is behind this attack, Ismail? I find it hard to believe. What would his purpose be?”

Ismail shrugged. “He is a
Kadizadeli
, my Pasha. Your reforms in Salonica alone would be enough to incur his ire. But he is also Albanian and milk-brother to Yusuf Bey.”

Melek Ahmed felt his lip curl. “Yusuf Bey. Too wealthy for his own good. If Yusuf Bey is behind this attack...” He looked down at another rebel body on the ground. “Were any prisoners taken?”

“Half a dozen,” Ismail said. “No officers. They have been taken to the Red Tower.”

“Good. Let me know immediately if any useful information can be extracted from them.”

“As you wish,” Ismail said. “And Mustafa bin Kemal? Without him the factory would have fallen to the rebels.”

“A reward. Two
kese
. That will also make Evrenos Bey happy, as some of the honor will reflect on him. And a
kese
as well for the Jewish Englishman, Gideon, when he recovers from his wounds. This explosive he has manufactured for us...what is it called?”

“Dynamite.”

“Yes. The ‘dynamite’ has allowed us to open new shafts in Sidrekapsi and increase production by twenty percent.”

Ismail smiled. “The sultan will be happy to hear that.”

“Indeed. And he will need that extra silver if he expects to attack Vienna after Baghdad. Never have two campaigns been planned so close together. Will your new regiments be ready?”

“They will,” Ismail said. “The gunpowder factory will have two hundred tons of the new powder within a year, and the next supply of weapons from Essen should arrive this summer.”

Melek stroked his beard. “The sultan has given me great power in this
sançak
. But if Yusuf Bey and Ebu Said stand against us, we will need plentiful evidence to have them removed from power. Find me that evidence, Ismail.”

“I will, my Pasha. On the grave of my mother, I swear it.”

* * *

Lara was just beginning to prepare the mid-day soup when Hannalica Castro entered the kitchen.

“They can’t do this. They just can’t!” Hannalica cried. “The inspection of my trousseau is tomorrow!”

“Who can’t do what, Hannalica?” Lara asked. She tasted the soup.

“Him! That Englishman, Sampson Gideon. They’ve put him on my bed. Mine!”

Lara felt herself go still. Hannalica’s bed was the most comfortable bed in Don Diego’s household. There was no reason to put Sampson on Hannalica’s bed unless...

“He is injured?”

Hannalica nodded. “There was a battle at the new gunpowder factory this morning. He’s been shot. Not badly, they say, a minor head wound, but still...what if he gets blood all over my bed?”

“Then we’ll clean it up, Hannalica. Don’t be such a spoiled child.”

Hannalica stomped her foot. “I am not a child. I am fifteen and about to be married into the most important family in the Aragon congregation.” She lifted her chin and looked at Lara. “Not that I would expect a Ukrainian slave to understand that.”

“Don’t get snippy with me, Hannalica,” Lara said. “Or have you forgotten who made the poultice to fight your night terrors when you were ten? Or the amulet to guard against the evil eye of the girls you think are jealous of you?”