"K. D. Wentworth - Here Comes Santa Claus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wentworth K D)

Here Comes Santa Claus
K.D. Wentworth
When Julie Mackay initially proposed it, the First Annual Grantville Christmas party seemed a bit of
unnecessary fuss to Mike Stearns. Not to mention that it was a misnomer: it would actually be the second
Christmas since the Ring of Fire. In December of 1632, Mike had vastly more important things to think
about, not the least of which was the future of their infant United States in war-torn Europe.
Besides, all the children in Grantville who had been orphaned, either the American ones by the Ring
of Fire or the ensuing battles, or German ones by the chaos of the Thirty Years War, were being well
looked after anyway. But Julie, heading toward motherhood herself in the coming new year, was
adamant. These were all American children now, she said, and American children should have a proper
Christmas, one with Santa and all the appropriate trappings. She meant to show this strange new world
of theirs just how it was done.
For just a second as Mike stood there on the street, looking down at her, homesickness glimmered
in the former cheerleader's blue eyes. Mike saw all that had been left behind, the many comforts and
people this displaced populace would never possess again.
"We should start out as we mean to go on," she said stoutly. "Tradition is important. The fact that
we didn't do it the first Christmas we were here doesn't count. We were too busy then just staying alive."
Mike's will crumbled. Perhaps a small celebration of the season would not be amiss. If they were
circumspect, it wouldn't deplete their limited resources too badly, and, after all they had been through
since the Ring of Fire, spirits could use some lifting. "All right," he said, "if you don't get carried away. It's
going to be a long winter, you know. We can't waste food and supplies."
Julie beamed, her enthusiasm contagious. "I'll take care of everything," she said, "the presents, the
decorations, the food. We'll have it one week from today, on Christmas Eve. There's just one hitchтАФwe
need someone to play Santa." Her eyes measured his six-foot frame. "How about you?"
Mike turned and quite wisely fled.
***
Accompanied by two of his handpicked men, General Gottfried von Pappenheim, the trusted top
subordinate of the duke of Friedland, Imperial General Albrecht von Wallenstein himself, approached the
outrageous new settlement known as "Grantville" on foot. He was a tall man, barrel-chested with a strong
profile and prematurely white hair, though he was but four and thirty. On his face, he bore a distinctive
birthmark, which looked for all the world like crossed swords. More than one had sworn that birthmark
glowed red when he was angry.
Two of his men, handpicked for this mission, Otik Zeleny and Meinhard Durst, strode along at his
back, clad in shabby farmers' smocks. Pappenheim knew all three of them looked entirely too well fed to
be what they claimed to be, but there was no time to starve themselves and they settled for clothing too
large for their frames to achieve the look.
The day here in Thuringia was cold, but fine, the sky arching overhead like a vault of shimmering
blue glass in a cathedral. Armed guards with curiously sleek muskets patrolled the borders of the town,
but allowed the three to pass without even paying a toll after they were found to be unarmed and asked
for sanctuary in low German.
They were posing as poor refugee farmers, as per Wallenstein's specific orders. The general himself
had been transported back to his estates in Bohemia in order to receive the best medical care. He had
nearly died not long before, at the battle of the Alte Veste, when his jaw had been broken by a bullet
from a gun fired from so far away, no one could even detect the shooter.
As they walked slowly down that strange gray road, Pappenheim couldn't keep from bending down
to examine it. The unfamiliar substance was hard as rock, yet seemed to have been laid down in
malleable form somehow, then smoothed like butter before it solidified. His right-hand man, Durst, the
sober veteran of innumerable years of fighting, also bent and ran calloused fingers over its unyielding
surface.
Pappenheim shook his head. "The Croats told me, but I didn't really believe them. If it were indeed