“Want to risk him?” Mike barked a laugh. “James, the man leads cavalry charges for a living! And he couldn’t even wear armor while he was doing it until you cut that musket ball out of his neck! What in the world makes you think he’s going to turn a hair over something as tame as holding off the entire Danish army with a garrison of less than four thousand men? The idiot will probably think it’ll be fun!”
“That might be putting it just a tad strongly,” Jackson said. “I’ve spent a little more time in the field with him then you have, Mike. I’ll admit, he’s got a hasty streak in him. Just as well, come to that. Think where Jeff Higgins would be if ‘Captain Gar’ hadn’t dived into that fight at the school. All the same, I think he’s taken all of Melissa’s and your lectures to heart. He’s not going to risk getting himself killed off the way he did in our past. Not if he has any choice, anyway.”
“The problem is that he’s a lot more likely to decide he doesn’t have a choice than I wish he’d be,” Mike grumbled.
“It’s what makes him so damned effective,” Jackson said with another shrug. “Don’t much like it myself, but I can’t argue with his results. So far, at least.”
“Maybe.” Mike frowned, then sighed. “But what matters is that there’s no way in hell I can order him out of Luebeck. And, truth to tell, the fact that the garrison—and the city population, for that matter—know that he’s there in person will be worth another thousand or two men all by itself.”
“Not to mention the fact that the Swedish army will move heaven and earth to dig him out of the trap,” Jackson predicted confidently.
At that very moment, the subject of their discussion was convening a conference of his own in Luebeck. It was somewhat smaller than the one in Grantville . . . and some of its members were also restive.
“Your Majesty, you can’t be serious!” Axel Oxenstierna objected. Gustav Adolf’s chief minister had just returned from Sweden. In fact, he’d arrived early that same afternoon aboard one of the many ships crowding Luebeck’s harbor, and he was more than a bit aghast at his king’s plans.
“Of course I can, Axel,” Gustavus said calmly.
“Then you certainly shouldn’t be!” Oxenstierna said sharply. “This city may be important, but it isn’t as important as your own person is!”
“It’s no use,” Lennart Torstensson told the minister gloomily. “I’ve spent all morning arguing with him.” He glowered at his monarch. “No moving him at all. It’s Captain Gars all over again!”
“Nonsense!” Gustavus said cheerfully. “That reckless officer has no business dealing with something as serious as this matter. No, no! It would never do to put him in command.”
“It’s all very well to make jokes, Gustavus,” Oxenstierna’s tone was far more serious. “But you’re the one who told me about the consequences which followed your death in the world the Americans came from. If anything, you’re even more important to the future now than you were then. We literally cannot afford to lose you, and you know it.”
“Axel, my friend,” Gustavus said softly, “caution is all very well, but I can’t let it rule my life. I won’t. I serve a monarch of my own, and if it happens that I must risk my life in His service, then risk it I will. And if He chooses that I should die, then I will die, trusting in Him to look after my people for me.”
“I beg you to remember that He did not do so in that other history,” Oxenstierna said very quietly, and Gustavus scowled. The chancellor didn’t shrink from the genuine anger in his king’s blue eyes. He simply stood there, gazing back into them, and, after a moment, Gustavus drew a deep breath and shook his head.
“Perhaps that is the reason—or one of them—He sent the Americans and the Ring of Fire in this history,” he said. “There are implications of that entire extraordinary event which I have no idea how to interpret. But this I know, Axel: I cannot permit what happened in that other world I will never know to dictate my decisions in this one. Be warned by those events, yes. But I will not allow the fear that they will somehow repeat to divert me from my clear duty. And at this moment, my duty is to see to it that this city does not fall to Christian IV and his French paymaster!”