1632 Snippets

Legions Of Pestilence - Snippet 46 Chapter 27 My Lady's True Friend and Servant at All Times Nancy, Lorraine September 1635 "Meiner Herrin dinstwolliger treuer freund allezeitt." "Damned fools. Listen to me, Fernando. There is no way--none, do you understand me, none--no way I will agree to having another go-round of leaving these idiotic Lorrainers in place on the northern border of Burgundy." An inkwell flew across the elaborate tent, leaving a trail of splatters behind it. Not many splatters. Michael John, upon noting his employer's mood,...

Legions Of Pestilence - Snippet 45 Chapter 26 Of Plague and Pestilence Lorraine Once the grand duke was up and around again, Dr. Guarinonius, having made the official call that Bernhard had been suffering from a rather atypical case of the plague, went home. From Merckweiller, Gus Szymanski, the EMT from Fulda, arrived from the oil field, at Aldringen's request, to train the Lorraine militia in plague-fighting. "What do you think, Gus? Kamala asked. "Guarinonius and the other Padua men call it plague, but is it? From a public health...

Legions Of Pestilence - Snippet 44 She thought another moment. "Then there's his chronic gastritis. I don't have an up-time lab culture, of course, but I'm pretty sure that the grand duke has peptic ulcers. Maybe duodenal ulcers, but I think peptic is more likely. You can look up the difference in the reference book I left in the hospital library. You know, Dr. Guarinonius, up-time medicine wasn't perfect, either. For decades and decades, doctors thought that people got ulcers because they had bad tempers or were under a lot of stress. Their...

Legions Of Pestilence - Snippet 43 Chapter 25 Hindered by My Discomforts Lorraine August 1635 "Ich bin aber an meinem ohrt durch meine unpässlichkeit, deren ich nun mehr, Gott lob, gentzlichen endlediget, verhindert..." The grand duke of the County of Burgundy opened his eyes. They informed him that he was in the same bedroom in Châtel-sur-Moselle where he had been the last time he had a clear memory of anything other than pain and fever. The pain, he ascertained, as much milder than it had been. The fever, it appeared, was gone. Perhaps he...

Legions Of Pestilence - Snippet 42 "I was braced for that. But it's not right for Mel to die. It's not right, do you hear me? Not right. Why him and not me? I'm the one who's been working at the clinic, seeing patients. He's just been walking around 'inspecting' things." Gus nodded. "It's not right!" **** Because Monsieur Gaston's raid on Merckweiller-Pechelbronn was a violation of USE territory, Nils Brahe and Derek Utt called more contingents, amounting to four full regiments, into the Province of the Upper Rhine to assist with the military...

Legions Of Pestilence - Snippet 41 Rehlinger looked up, his eyes sharp. "If I die and the grand duchess delivers a daughter, who shall be named Dorothea both for my mother and because a daughter is a gift of God as much as a son, then the county of Burgundy shall go to my brother Ernst." Bernhard reached out and grasped Rehlinger's arm urgently. "If the child is a boy and dies with no heirs of his body, Burgundy shall go to Ernst. Make sure of it. Wilhelm cannot take it; Albrecht could not hold it. Ernst will be a careful steward of any land...

Legions Of Pestilence - Snippet 40 Chapter 22 Slipped Beyond Control Merckweiler-Pechelbronn, Province of the Upper Rhine "We no sooner think we have the plague under control than it breaks out again," Gus Szymanski wrote. "How in hell do we enforce a quarantine in a place where people don't just cross borders on the roads, where we can set up check points? They're coming into the Province of the Upper Rhine--well, coming out of Lorraine--through the goddamned fields. Sometimes it's a trickle and sometimes it's a stream, but they keep on...

Legions Of Pestilence - Snippet 39 **** "The plague-fighting has gone well, yes?" Claudia, at the head of the table, stood up. Her advisers had learned by now that when she decided to use her height to loom over them, the omens were not good. "Well," Dr. Guarinonius confirmed. "Both on the borders of the Franche Comté with France and on the Tyrolese borders with Venice. There is some plague, of course. There always is some plague, but not widespread pestilence as it appears in an epidemic year. Of course, there are no major troop movements...