Harry Turtledove - Alternate Generals 3

Alternate Generals III

Table of Contents

A Key to the Illuminated Heretic

The Road to Endless Sleep

Not Fade Away

I Shall Return

Shock and Awe

A Good Bag

The Burning Spear at Twilight

"It Isn't Every Day of the Week . . ."

Measureless to Man

Over the Sea from Skye

First, Catch Your Elephant

East of Appomattox

Murdering Uncle Ho

ALTERNATE GENERALS III

Edited by

HARRY TURTLEDOVE

and ROLAND J. GREEN

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any

resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

authors.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-9897-6

Cover art by Jeff Easley

First printing, April 2005

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Alternate generals III / edited by Harry Turtledove.

p. cm.

"A Baen Books original"--T.p. verso.

ISBN 0-7434-9897-6

1. War stories, American. 2. Generals--Fiction. I. Title: Alternate generals three. II. Title: Alternate

generals 3. III. Turtledove, Harry.

PS648.W34A793 2005

813'.0108358--dc22

2004029942

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production & design by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH (www.windhaven.com)

Printed in the United States of America

Baen Books by HARRY TURTLEDOVE

The War Betwen the Provinces series:

Sentry Peak

Marching Through Peachtree

Advance and Retreat

The Fox novels:

Wisdom of the Fox

Tale of the Fox

3 x T

Thessalonica

Alternate Generals, editor

Alternate Generals II, editor

Alternate Generals III, editor

The Enchanter Completed, editor

Down in the Bottomlands(with L. Sprague de Camp)

A Key to the Illuminated

Heretic

A. M. Dellamonica

Frontispiece: Joan of Arc stands chained in a horse-drawn wagon, wearing a black gown.

Leaning against a pair of nuns, she seems almost to swoon. Her right arm is portrayed as bones

without flesh. The horses' ornate curls and gleaming teeth lend a ghastly note, and blackened

angels border the image.

The scene is easily recognized: the Maid's debilitation, the nuns, and especially the cloud of larks above

serve to identify it as Joan's journey to the trial that ended her thirteen-year imprisonment for heresy. It

was at this "Exoneration Trial" that she encountered Dulice Aulon, the Jehanniste artist responsible for the

holy pictures on which the codex illuminations are based.

* * *

"We mustn't face the king in battle." Joan had the light, clear voice of a young woman, even after her

years in prison and the hard decade since her release. She'd asked one of the new archers, a girl of

perhaps seventeen, to cut her hair, and a few broken strands of silver hair clung to her neck. The rest lay

at her feet, bright in the glow of dying fire.

"Not fight Charles?" Hermeland was incredulous. He was a badger of a man, with a dramatic, pointy

face and remarkable speed with a sword. "We must turn his army back before it unites with the force of

mercenaries coming up from Rome. If you can't see that—"

"Can't see it? Who ordered us to turn north, days before anyone knew the king had pursued us into

Burgundy?"

"You—" he began, and as her brow came up he corrected, "your Voices."

They were nearly of a height, less than perfect subjects for a drawing. From her seat in the shadowed

corner of the tent, Dulice tried to capture the dirt on Joan's blue tunic and leggings, her sheathed knife of

a body. She was all deadly intent, a knight with a lined face and too many scars. Her eyes blazed—it was

a wonder Hermeland did not flinch from the heat there!

"What I do not see is why Charles is coming at all," she said. "He's an old man. He never led

men-at-arms before."

"Politics," he replied. "So says Marcel Renard."

"He would bring that filthy word into it." She waved off the archer gently, shaking out her shorn locks as

the girl left.

"We can win this battle, Joan," Hermeland said.

"Wewould win." She dismissed the issue as she took up her sword. "But God did not have me crown

this king only to tear him down."

She had no doubt at all, and it was plain Hermeland was surprised. Misunderstanding Joan as usual,

Dulice thought—he thinks she fears defeat, but it is victory that worries her.

Dulice herself didn't share their belief in the small Jehanniste army—or even, sometimes, in the Maid's

heretical faith. Her uncle had been Joan's squire, years ago, in the fight against England and Burgundy. He

had brought Dulice with him to the Maid's Exoneration Trial, and Joan spotted her in the crowd. She'd

been drawing the scene on a scrap of vellum. Perhaps because Joan couldn't read, the image had

captured her as firmly as the making of it gripped young Dulice.

Joan had adopted the girl on the spot, keeping her close ever since. Her need for a record of her doings

was so strong she never questioned whether her handmaiden's truest love was for God or merely for pen

and page.

"If we stay this course we will meet Charles," Hermeland pressed. "Then we'll fight, ready or not."

"I'm telling you, we must pray for—"

"Joan, an army that does nothing but pray is just a moving monastery!" he thundered.

Her chin came up. "And an army that never prays?"

"Emerges victorious, probably." He strode from the tent, stomping off into the sound of men breaking

camp—low conversations, the snorts of horses and the groans of wagons being loaded. Birdsong rose

above the murmur of preparation. The air was mild and damp; it had rained the night before.

"No time for Mass this morning," Dulice said, making herself noticed for the first time.

"We'll say a quick one now, just us two." Stretching, Joan raised her sword in an attack pose, spearing

an invisible enemy through the chest. "Will there be churchbells ahead?"

"We might hear Autun. And there's a monastery east of there . . . Saint Benoit? If we keep this direction,

you might hear one or the other ringing Vespers tonight." She was happy to give the answer—Joan loved

bells, for they often brought her Voices to her.

"Of course we will march," Joan said. For just an instant she sagged, and the younger woman saw the

chasm of years between them. "God set us on this path, not me."

Dulice teased out the piece of paper, translated the words into Latin, and wrote them at the bottom of

the page as Joan gathered up the cut hair on the ground and tossed it into the fire. The tent filled with

black, stinking smoke, making them both cough.

Joan smiled apologetically. "It's the only way to keep the soldiers from making talismans of it."

Or selling it to relic makers, Dulice thought, nodding her understanding as she roughed in the lines of a

portrait. There would be time to add the details later.

* * *

"First Communion." The Maid emerges from a shop, wearing men's clothing and carrying bread

and wine. A faintly sinister Saint Catherine hovers behind her, seeming to whisper in her ear. The

passersby surrounding Joan all have their eyes turned in her direction.

The inscription and the spires of Saint Ouen in the background make it apparent that Joan has just

suffered her famous rejection at that church, turned away on her first attempt to celebrate Mass as a free

woman. Now she will perform her own variation of the sacrament. Contemporary accounts differ on the

issue of whether Joan knew, in that moment, that she was about to create a new faith that would shatter

Rome's hold over Europe.

* * *

Hermeland raised a crumb of bread and his glass of wine. "This is my body," he intoned in Latin with the

other worshippers. "This is my blood."

Riding all day had blackened his mood. In the months since Pope Calixtus had decided to expunge the

Maid's followers from the soil of France, Joan had kept them moving, choosing small battles and

defending Jehanniste villages against mobs from neighboring Catholic towns. They might have kicked out

the Pope's teeth earlier if they'd moved with more certainty. Now his jaws were closing on them.

" . . . in remembrance that Christ died for me. I feed on him in my heart." His eyes roamed the

congregation, looking for Dulice. She fancied she could make herself invisible, but he found her easily

enough. There—wearing the gray dress and standing in the corner. She was between two of the men,

praying unobtrusively and watching Joan. Her voice did not carry to his ears, but seeing her warmed him.

She was beautiful and passionate both, an irresistable lure to his thoughts.

"The body of Christ, the bread of life." Prayer complete, Hermeland laid the bread on his tongue. It was

no great surprise that the Host still felt like what it was—a lump of bread. There were times when it was

subtly different, exalted somehow; those were the moments that bound him to this faith bone and sinew.

As for today . . . he shrugged inwardly. This was hardly his first failure to transubstantiate mere bread into

the body of Christ. Perhaps tomorrow he would find the peace of mind required for true piety.

Ahead in the field they had blessed as a temporary church, Joan swallowed her Host, face lit with joy.

There was nothing of the warrior about her now. As far as he knew, the miracle had worked for her

every time since she had remade the sacraments for them all.

Today's Latin lesson had been given by a wounded former monk from Bordeaux. Now, at his urging,

Joan strode to the front of the assembly and they repeated the words she spoke at her heresy trial. It was

their movement's signature prayer: "If I am not in God's Grace, may he put me there. If I am, may he

keep me there."

The congregants' voices rang with conviction. They all believed that clergy could block the path to

Heaven. Even so, it strengthened their faith when their Maid led them in prayer. Here in church she was a

holy woman, a mystic—you would never believe that come dawn she would strap on a sword and ride

to war.

As the crowd broke up, she sank to her knees in the turf, face turned toward the churchbells tolling in

the distance. She would be there for hours, and in the morning rise as if she had slept heartily.

I should ask her Voices where to trap the coming army, Hermeland thought sourly, and turned away.

Young Marcel Renard fell into step beside him. "I've been thinking about our problem," he declared.

"I wasn't aware thatwe had one."

Marcel was the younger son of one of the army's sponsors, a merchant-born knight with finer armor and

manners than the few nobles who had been swept up in the Conversion. He was a great friend of the

Maid's scheming brother, Jean, and perhaps the closest thing to a courtier that Hermeland had

encountered in the ranks of his new church.

Marcel's thoughts moved as if they were oil, always seeking the easiest path to what he wanted. It was a

turn of mind Hermeland sometimes admired.

"Of course we have a problem, you old skunk! We cannot fight Charles."

"I see no way to avoid it."

"You look for no way. Come, Hermeland, it'll just toss him into the Pope's lap."

"Your pardon, but he is already there."

"So far all he's done is march. Charles hasn't molested any of the Jehanniste—"

"Listener," Hermeland corrected urgently. They were still close enough that Joan might overhear.

"Listener towns, yes. They've passed through several now without burning them."

"A king can't afford to massacre his subjects at will."

"I think Charles is undecided, my friend. He may not mind having the Pope's hand on France's shoulder .

. . but he doesn't want it around her neck, either."

"Pretty words," Hermeland grunted. "Do they mean anything?"

Marcel pointed at the moonlit figure of their praying leader. "Why did the English want the Church to

condemn her? To prove the king illegitimate, that's why. Why did Charles have her retried?"

"He thought her all but dead." He didn't try to keep resentment out of his voice.

"To prove his rightful claim to the throne!" Marcel's face was aglow with excitement, the certainty of

youth that everything could be fixed, that great fires could be put out—like candles—with breath alone.

"If Charles opposes her now, he makes himself a bastard again."

"What would you have us do—convert him?"

"Give him a way to come to us honorably. Dispense with teaching Latin to farmers and translate the

Bible into French. Let that be the text we preach from. The crown prince will strengthen ties with Rome

when Charles dies. But if the old king has established an independent church . . ."

Hermeland stared at the merchant's son.

"You think it is impractical," Marcel said finally, a hint of uncertainty in his voice.

"I think it is obvious and elegant. It could solve, as you say, our problems." He said it with funereal

solemnity.

Marcel scratched his head. "You do not think she will agree?"

"Her Voices tell her to say the Mass in Latin, to teach us to memorize the Bible as it is written."

"She didn't think that part through. This is much easier, and God won't mind . . ."

"There is no chance, my son," Hermeland said. "Not in heaven, not on this earth, and not in hell."

* * *

"Follow God, not me." A young girl kneels before Joan, who tries to raise her to her feet. Behind

the Maid's shoulder a winged infant with a halo hovers, its whole being outlined in silver light.

Larks nest in the grass in the bottom corners.

Most scholars analyze this scene in the context of Joan's characteristic rejection of special status within

her own cult. It should also be noted, however, that the kneeling girl is said to be the sister of a stillborn

infant Joan allegedly revived from death in a village called Lagny. (The child survived just long enough to

be baptized.) Unlike the many conflicting accounts of Joan's miracles during the Jehanniste holy war, this

earlier event was well documented, and Joan spoke of it herself at the heresy trial in 1431.

* * *

There were only six soldiers in the maidens' tent this evening, one merry farmgirl-turned-lancer having

been crushed by a cannonball in their last battle. The new archer tried hard to fill the hole in their chatter,

but she was better suited to the crossbow than conversation. Every time she spoke up, she merely drew

attention to the loss.

Dulice was sitting with them when she heard Joan return, soft footsteps and a rustle of fabric that should

have been imperceptible, was she not as attuned to it as a mother was to the faintest movements of her

babe.

She excused herself, stepping carefully over muddy ground toward the tent she shared with Joan. Low

fires burned across the camp. The smells of wood smoke and cooking pork teased her nostrils,

spiced—when the wind shifted—with a hint of latrine. The breeze made the night cold, even for

springtime. Hunching her shoulders and hugging herself, Dulice quickened her pace.

Joan was sitting on her pallet, cross-legged in a plain shirt and breeches, as unaffected by the chill as she

was by all other bodily complaints. A single candle burned beside her, playing golden light over the

sword resting across her knees. She gave no sign that she knew Dulice was there.

Dulice touched the bottle of ink she kept on a chain at her throat. "I have been thinking about drawing a

picture of you in prison," she said. "Marcel says nobody will prefer a plain picture—"

"They will if his father stops selling the one with the angels."

Dulice licked her lips. "You said you had visions, when you were locked up in the castle of Philipe

Auguste."

"Hush." Joan's face hardened.

"Your story brings people to our faith. Joan, if you had visions . . ."

"When I talk of such things, Dulice, they get bent into tales I don't recognize."

"You can't control what people say," Dulice wheedled. "All you can do is make the truth known."

She was sure she had gone too far, that she would get nothing. But Joan shifted slightly, expelling a long

breath. "Two visions, yes. In the first, I never recanted. Cauchon took me to the stake and they lit the fire

. . . and can you guess? It wouldn't catch. They tried so hard they burned the ropes binding me. I

stepped away from the pyre. The crowd there had come to cheer me off to Hell, but when the ropes fell

away from the stake the people's hearts opened. They spirited me away and I went back to war. I drove

the English out of France . . ."

Dulice reached for her pen, but a look from Joan stopped her. The Maid patted the ground at her hip

and she sat, conscious of the knotted muscles of her heroine's shoulder pressing against her shawl, of

Joan's heat against her cold skin.

"You said there were two?"

"In the second vision, I recanted," Joan said. "My jailers did all the things you heard: took away the

dress I was to wear, so I was naked. Sent that soldier to rape me. Left my men's clothing handy as a

temptation to relapse."

Dulice's teeth clenched. The ordeals had gone on for months before the false priests had put out their

torches and resigned themselves to having the Maid as a prisoner instead of firewood.

"In my dream I bore it for three days. Then I found my courage, put on my clothes, and told them I was

done. They burned me in Rouen, as they'd planned all along." Her voice was matter-of-fact. "I was

brave, I think, at the execution."

"You're always brave."

"I gave in to fear when I recanted, didn't I?" She darted her hand through the candle flame, leaving a fat

smear of soot on her fingers. "But fire burned away that sin. It hurt terribly—"

"You felt it?" Dulice interrupted.

"Like I was there. Oh, don't look like that. All suffering passes, is it not so?" Despite her words Joan

shuddered faintly.

"It's still suffering."

"It was a faster penance than prison. And when I was purified, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret

carried me away. Up."

Dulice's breath hitched. "You saw Heaven?"

"A glimpse. So wonderful I sometimes can't believe I have remained down here so long."

"But how unfair to feel the fire, and not to fully taste the reward!"

"It's a pleasure delayed, that's all." Joan pinched wax drippings off the candle and smeared them on her

fingers. "If I'd burned then, I'd be forgotten now, don't you think?"

"No! You crowned Charles."

"Pah. People could say anything once I was gone. They made me a witch at my trial, when I was

standing right there!" She scowled. "You guard me from those lies now, Dulice. You take what's real and

pin it to the page. If I'm tried again . . ."

"God forbid!"

"It's all caught in pictures, just as it happens. No lies, no foolish rumors . . ."

Joan flipped the sword lightly, fingering its blade. It was a poor substitute for her first, or so she'd often

claimed. That had come from the monastery at St. Catherine de Fierbois, and she'd broken it over the

back of a camp follower. "God waited thirteen years to take me into His heart again, Dulice. He's

sending me toward Charles, and yet I know we must not fight."

"What will you do?"

Tears welled in the Maid's eyes. "I won't break with my Voices, not in the tiniest way. They say to go

forward . . ."

Dulice picked at her toenail, feeling sullen. She might never admit it, but there were times when she

disliked God so much she wanted to cut her own heart out, to feed the pieces to pigs. "I know you hate

praise . . ." She swallowed, forcing herself to continue, "But it took strength to stay in prison all that time."

"It takes no strength to lie where you are chained, dear Dulice."

"You werestrong ," she said fiercely, staring at the steam of her breath. Then Joan's arms came around

her in a crushing hug, so suddenly she nearly cried out.

"Come on, let's sleep," Joan said. They curled up in the blankets like sisters, and the chill finally forced

itself out of Dulice's bones.

It was waiting for her later, though, when her bedmate's breath finally loosened into sleep and she could

creep out again, driven to capture by candle flame the images of the two dreams.

* * *

"A little brawl at Neufchateau." Knights and men at arms brawl with peasant Jehannistes near a

Franciscan monastery. The Maid is in the foreground, dressed in a partial suit of armor and

brandishing a shortsword. Behind her is the abbot who summoned the knights; Joan is defending

him from her own people. Enraged Jehannistes burn the monastery, framing Joan's form in

flames. In the lower left corner, a newly converted Brother Hermeland battles the Duc D'Alençon,

leader of the Church forces.

D'Alençon was very close to Joan in the days before her trial, and it was believed he would take the

Maid into custody with no difficulty. Instead he found himself at the center of a riot that even the Maid

had difficulty quelling. While she would later speak of this first battle dismissively, the Testament of

Hermeland reports she was heartbroken at the Jehanniste destruction of the monastery and the death of

her friend.

* * *

"To arms, to arms!"

Hermeland was half dressed when Joan's voice rang through the camp. Her words were clear and

carrying, and captains took up the call, scrambling to rouse the men. A few early risers had been setting

up for worship, and the ribbons that marked off the place of consecration were knocked down and

trampled as people ran back and forth, shouting and seeking their weapons.

The Maid, already armored and mounted, was galloping away, placing herself between the confused

encampment and whatever danger lay ahead. Puffing, Hermeland rushed to join her.

They had camped near the ruins of a Jehanniste village, a town that had been burnt by a band of the

Pope's mercenaries early the previous winter. To the east, he could see the graves of thirty families. The

makeshift crosses that marked their mounds had been kicked down by vandals or weather.

Ahead, abandoned fields and vineyards were growing wild. A stand of trees blocked any view they

might have had of the road. Reining hard, Joan stared in that direction, though everything seemed calm

enough.

Hermeland was about to ask why they were all in a panic when she pointed her sword. There—a glint of

light on armor.

"An ambush?"

"Not anymore." Her smile was broad, almost predatory. She was all warrior today.

"Is it Charles?"

"No."

He didn't know if he was disappointed or relieved.

"We'll—" Suddenly a small force of knights came charging out of the thicket, crushing his plan unformed.

Driving forward smartly behind a red banner adorned with a golden cross, they came quickly into bow

range. The Listener archers were unprepared, though, and the advance was opposed only by a thin

volley of crossbow bolts.

Joan spurred her horse and a small company of men-at-arms—twenty, maybe twenty-five

fighters—followed her lead. It was all they had mustered, so far, to protect the chaotic camp behind

them.

Cursing, Hermeland joined her, while Marcel Renard closed in on Joan's left side. The three of them

became the center of the thin defending wall.

Harry Turtledove - Alternate Generals 3

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