Free Grantville Gazette - Volume V by Eric Flint Page B

vegetables, but up here in the hills the farming they do is mostly livestock. The economy is largely forestry and mining. I'm guessing that the Schwarza valley has always been a food importer.

    Second, he is worried about refugees. We aren't the only ones worried about those raiders in the farmland to the north and east. They've driven people from their homes, and some of those have come up the Schwarza valley to the area protected by the castle. The resupply problem would be serious without the refugees, but with them, everything is worse.

    And, of course, he's worried about us. I told him that we were worried about him too, since he has the high ground, but that I thought we were better off cooperating. I told him about the skirmishes we've had with the raiders, and said that we would do everything we could do to make sure that they never got through Grantville to him.

    That led him to ask about our weapons. He said his scouts had been all the way around the Ring of Fire, or the pit, depending on whose words you use, and that they had heard stories about some of our skirmishes. All I had was a pistol, and I'm no great shot. I gave him a demonstration, then pulled the clip from my gun and let him handle it. He seemed fascinated by the idea of putting the bullet, powder and primer all together in one cartridge and also by the complexity of the pistol mechanism.

    The captain was curious about what the power plant was, and I had no good way to explain that. He had already guessed that it was some kind of mill or forge. I told him that it was a mill, but that I didn't know how to explain what it was that we make there. All I could do is give him a name for it. So, now it is an Electrischemühle. I explained that when he sees bright lights at night, those lights burn the electricity they make there.

    One thing the captain let slip may be of importance. The graf is away north, fighting the Catholic armies and trying to keep the Swedes out of his lands, despite the fact that they are officially on his side. So the captain is almost on his own. There is a garrison at Rudolstadt, and he's managed to reestablish communications with them.

    I explained to him that the road crew would get to work Monday with his permission, to build a road up to Schwarzburg. Then I explained that it might alarm the Germans because we would use machines.

     

    III. The Military Threat

    I only went up to the castle when we took up bodies. Even then, I wanted to make sure we got the body bags back, so I didn't see that much. Yes, they have cannon, but how many I can't say. I saw only one, from a distance. It was tarnished to a brown shade that looked like brass or bronze and it had a barrel perhaps four feet long and a foot around at the breach. I couldn't see the muzzle or any cannon balls, so I don't know the caliber. It didn't seem right to be nosing into things like that, what with the job of getting the body out of the body bag and into a burial shroud.

     

    IV. Church Relations

    I don't know if anyone in Grantville has thought through what's going to happen between us and the churches of this land. I remember studying in Sunday School about the Reformation and Counter-Reformation and how hard it was for the Church to come to grips with religious diversity.

    Pastor Decker didn't get to this subject right away, but you could tell from the way he asked it that the answers we gave would be important. He asked what religion we were in Grantville, after he'd noted that he understood that we were using the Gregorian calendar, which he thinks of as the Catholic calendar.

    I explained that I was Catholic and so is Miles Drahuta, and then I had to ask around. Ron Koch turned out to be Lutheran, Brick Bozarth was Church of Christ, which I had to explain was another Protestant denomination, and Pete McDougal added to the confusion by saying that his wife was Catholic but that he was more of a non-practicing Presbyterian than anything.

    The pastor