The Saxon Uprising-ARC

Chapter 52


A tavern on the outskirts of Berlin

Axel Oxenstierna frowned. There was some sort of racket coming from just outside the village inn where he’d set up his temporary command post. It sounded like the movement of a large body of troops. A battalion, at least.

Why would a battalion be moving here? True enough, he’d been ordering a lot of troop movements. Pulling an army of twenty thousand men out of their barracks and into marching order wasn’t something you did in a couple of hours. But no large body of troops should be assembling here.

He caught the eye of one of his aides and nodded toward the front entrance. “Go see what’s happening out there.”

The aide headed toward the door, but before he got there it burst open. Erling Ljundberg came in, followed by three of his Scots and—

Oxenstierna froze. “Your Majesty…”

Gustav Adolf pushed past Ljundberg and stepped forward two paces. His face, always pale, was almost as white as a sheet.

Colonel Erik Haakansson Hand was the seventh person through the door. He almost had to fight his way past the gaggle of Scots. Oversized Scots.

He was now very anxious. This was moving too quickly. Gustav Adolf was not following the plan they’d agreed on and Erik was sure he knew the reason why. The king had a ferocious temper. He didn’t lose it that often, but when he did the results tended to be volcanic.

To get past the Scots he had to move around to the right. When he got past the last Scot, he could see his cousin’s face in profile. The instant he saw that ghostly visage, he knew they were in trouble.

The king started with “You—” The next several words were utterly foul. They were blasphemous, too, which really frightened Erik. The king of Sweden was a devout Lutheran and almost never lapsed into blasphemy. Profanity, yes. This day and age was not the least bit Victorian. But pious men took the third commandment seriously.

The chancellor raised his hand, half in protest and half simply as an unconscious shielding gesture. His own face was extremely pale.

Gustav Adolf moved on to accusations that had some content, but they were still laced with profanity and blasphemy.

“—knew perfectly f*cking well I never would have allowed—you God-damned bastard! My own daughter had to hide from you! Were you going to see her murdered too, you stinking son-of-a-bitch? This was f*cking treason, simple as that—and don’t think I won’t find out what really happened with that God-damned a*shole in Bavaria! You think—”

It was all spinning out of control. They’d discussed this at length and had agreed that the best way to handle it was a stiff but dignified order to arrest the chancellor. Instead, the king’s fury—

And then Erik’s worst fears materialized. Gustav Adolf’s eyes rolled up and he collapsed to the floor.

The American doctor Nichols had warned him this might happen, months ago. He’d also described the possible symptoms.

“There are half a dozen types of what we call generalized seizures,” he said. “The one that’s best known because it’s the most dramatic is the so-called ‘grand mal’ seizure. Well, you probably don’t use the French term yet. It’s a major convulsion which usually starts with the patient losing consciousness and collapsing. That’s followed by what we call the ‘tonic’ phase, where there’s a stiffening of the body that lasts for up to a minute. Then the ‘clonic’ phase starts, which lasts another minute or so and where the patient has violent convulsions. You’ve got to be careful, then. He may bite his tongue or injure himself some other way. After that, he’ll fall into a deep sleep.”

“For how long?” Hand asked.

Nichols shrugged. “There’s no way to know. A few minutes, a few hours—in some instances, even a few days.”

This was a disaster. The big room in the tavern was a frozen tableau, for the moment. The king on the floor and the chancellor staring down at him. Ljungberg and his half dozen Scots were doing the same. So were the eight officers on Oxenstierna’s staff who’d been in the room when the king burst in.

But Oxenstierna’s paralysis wouldn’t last. The man was smart, he was ruthless when necessary—and the king’s paralysis gave him the opening.

They’d all come in armed except the king, but they’d agreed they wouldn’t have weapons in hand. Erik had made certain, though, that his pistol would come out of its holster easily.

So it did. It was a good flintlock with two rifled barrels. He strode forward three paces. He’d trained himself to shoot left-handed since the battlefield injury that had half-crippled his right arm, and he’d regained much of his former marksmanship. But he was taking no chances.

The gun came up, on target.

“Traitor!” he said. Not quite shouting.

He fired the first barrel; an instant later, the second.

Both rounds struck the chancellor squarely in the chest. Oxenstierna was wearing no armor and in the heat produced by the fire in the tavern’s main room, he’d had his buff coat unbuttoned and open. The heavy .62 caliber bullets punched into his heart and knocked him off his feet.

He might not be dead yet. But that was now a meaningless technicality. He would be within a minute or two, and there was no doctor in the world, not even the Moor, who could have kept him alive.

The tableau remained frozen—though now with everyone’s eyes fixed on the body of the chancellor.

Then one of Oxenstierna’s staff officers muttered a curse and drew his own pistol. Two of his fellows began following suit.

The colonel who’d drawn first was bringing his pistol to bear on Erik when Erling Ljungberg’s automatic began firing. Three shots took him down; two shots each did for his would-be partners.

The shots were fired so rapidly they almost sounded like a single noise. A sort of tearing thunder, in the confines of the tavern room.

The three staff officers joined the chancellor on the floor. All three were just as obviously dead as their master.

Again, the tableau was frozen. Then all the Scots drew their pistols. For their part, the remaining staff officers held up their hands—part in protest; part in surrender—and stumbled back a pace or two.

“Hold!” Erik shouted. “All hold!”

Again, a frozen tableau. Now, everyone was staring at Hand.

He pointed to the door. “Captain Stewart, go outside and see to it that the Västergötlanders have the area under control. Then ask Karl Hård af Segerstad to come in here. Then check to see the dispositions of Colonel Hastfer and his Finnish regiment.”

The Scot officer holstered his pistol and left.

The rest of the Scots began holstering their own pistols. It was obvious there would be no further gunfire. Not now, after Ljungberg had ejected the clip and slapped in another one. He was not holstering his gun. He had it pointed squarely at the surviving staff officers and was bestowing a grin upon them that Erik thought would probably give some of them nightmares later. Erling Ljundberg held his post as the king’s chief bodyguard because, just as Anders Jönsson had been before him, the man was utterly murderous.

The immediate crisis over, Erik hurried to Gustav Adolf’s side. Not knowing what else to use—he’d make it a point to be prepared for this, in the future—he snatched off his hat and rolled up the brim.

Just in time. As the doctor had foreseen, the king was going into convulsions. Erik managed to shove the rolled-up hat brim into his cousin’s mouth before he could damage himself.

Then, he waited out the convulsions, restraining the king as best he could. Within seconds, two of the Scots were assisting him.

After the king relaxed and fell asleep, Erik rose to his feet.

“And now what?” asked Ljundberg.

Excellent question. Erik groped for an answer.

It came to him within seconds. “Go get the prime minister and bring him here, Major Graham. Gordon, you go with him.”

Wilhelm Wettin arrived an hour and a half later. Quite puzzled, obviously. Erik realized he hadn’t instructed Graham and Gordon to tell him anything, just to bring him here. Scots tended to favor literal interpretations.

By then, the bodies of the chancellor and the three staff officers slain by Ljungberg had been carried into a side room. Gustav Adolf was resting on a narrow bed which had been brought into the tavern’s main room by servants. In the absence of any advice from Nichols—he wasn’t about to trust any of the doctors Oxenstierna had assigned to the king—Erik hadn’t been willing to risk moving his cousin any farther than necessary.

Wettin stared at Gustav Adolf. “Is he…?”

“Yes, he’s back. But—as you can see—he’s still subject to ills.”

Wettin shook his head. It wasn’t clear if the gesture was one of negation, denial, or simply to clear the man’s brain. He probably didn’t know himself.

“Where is Chancellor Oxenstierna?” he asked.

“The traitor is dead,” Colonel Hand said in a flat, cold tone of voice. “At the king’s command.”

That was stretching the truth. You could even argue it was mangling the truth beyond all recognition. But for the moment, Erik didn’t care—and who was there to dispute his claim? The surviving staff officers had been placed under arrest and taken away. The tavern keeper and his servants were so petrified they could barely speak.

“You can go look at his body yourself, if you don’t believe me,” he added, jerking his head toward the far door. “He’s in a room just beyond.”

Wettin shook his head again. “No, no. But…what do you want me to do”

Erik shrugged. “How should I know? I’m just the king’s cousin. You’re the prime minister of the nation. It’s on your head now.”

Luckily, Gustav Adolf recovered consciousness within an hour. After he was told of what had transpired, a sad look came to his face.

“So, my fault again. First Anders, now Axel.”

“It was not your fault, cousin. For one thing, I’m the one who decided to shoot him.”

The king’s thick shoulders shifted on the cot, in what passed for a shrugging motion. “What else could you do? But if I hadn’t lost control, Axel would still be alive.”

Erik was tempted to ask: For how long? Gustav Adolf had made clear in their earlier discussions that he was inclined to simply have Oxenstierna stripped of his posts and sentenced to internal exile for the rest of his life. What Americans called “house arrest”—except the house in question was one of the finest mansions in Sweden.

But whatever the king’s personal preferences might be, he’d also ordered Erik to launch a thorough investigation of what had transpired with Maximilian of Bavaria. If that investigation turned up proof that the chancellor had been involved in the treasonous plot—and Erik didn’t have much doubt it would—then Gustav Adolf would really have no choice. He’d have to order Oxenstierna’s execution.

Now that it was over, Erik decided it had all worked out for the best. His cousin’s guilt for having lost control was a pale shadow of the anguish he would have felt, had he been forced to order his chancellor executed himself. He and Axel Oxenstierna had been good friends for many years.

Erik, on the other hand, had never liked the bastard anyway.

Wettin floundered. But the king was back, and took charge himself.

“First—there is a radio station here, yes?—the news must be broadcast to the entire nation. Along with the following…”

That and what followed was the jabbering from Berlin that Noelle had been listening to when Denise and Minnie returned from the airfield.

“Oh, wow,” said Denise, after Noelle filled them in.

“Interesting times,” said Minnie.

Denise shook her head. “No, that’s a curse. Doesn’t apply at all. God, I hate to think what my life would have been like without the Ring of Fire. Can we say ‘boooooorrrrrring?’ ”

Noelle stared at her. Much the way she might have stared at a Martian. Or a mutant.