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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.

"We would 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.

Harry Turtledove - Alternate Generals 3.pdf

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