Never Sound Retreat (26 page)

Marcus followed, fire erupting ahead, bullets snapping through the branches around him. He rode down into a mist-shrouded hollow, skirting the edge of a bog where half a dozen riders were trapped, several of them dead, sprawled in the stagnant water. For a moment he feared that his plan was the height of tactical folly, that the whole thing was an exercise in madness, and doing, as Hans kept saying, the unexpected, was leading to ruin.

"The last thing they're expecting is a cavalry charge through the woods at dawn," he had argued, when laying out the details of his plan to Vincent. "It goes against all doctrine, and Ha'ark understands tactical doctrine. We smash in where they least expect us, in the way they least expect."

Marcus dodged his way around a tangled mass of half a dozen horses and troopers, all of them dead from a blast of canister. Then out of the fog and smoke he saw the Bantag line, a breastwork half a dozen feet high, made out of logs, tangled branches piled up as a barrier in front. Riderless horses by the dozens stood before the breastworks and for an instant Marcus feared that all his men had been shot down. But then he saw a cavalry guidon fluttering atop the breastworks. Dismounting, he pushed his way through the sharpened stakes and scrambled up over the side of the breastworks. Troopers were deployed along the line, firing into the smoke, some of them already climbing out and rushing forward. The trench was littered with dead Bantag, many of them obviously caught totally unprepared, clusters of them lying around still-smoking fires.

A cheer erupted behind him, and, looking back, he saw the forward edge of an infantry column coming out of the smoke, the front ranks wielding axes. Crashing into the abatis, they started to cut their way through, while lines of men snaked their way through the entanglements, scrambled over the breastworks, and pushed forward, linking up with the cavalrymen for the rush on the second line.

Rifle fire was intensifying, reports of artillery thundered through the woods, and in the rapidly rising light he could see the shadowy outlines of an earthen fort, men charging up the forward edge, dozens dropping from the enfilading fire of a well-placed artillery piece. Bantag gunners struggled to reload their piece but started to drop as riflemen around Marcus poured in a concentrated fire. The flow of infantry swarming around Marcus increased dramatically as engineering troops smashed lanes through the entanglements.

A regimental flag appeared atop the fort in the second line, went down, then went back up again. Wild cheering erupted, picked up by the men surging past Marcus.

A bugle sounded forward, the recall for the cavalry, and even as the infantry continued to surge forward, troopers began to return through the smoke.

Marcus grabbed a sergeant, bleeding from a scalp wound, as he came back over the breastworks.

"How is it up there?" Marcus asked, struggling to speak Rus.

The sergeant, realizing who was before him, snapped to attention, saluted, and broke into a grin.

"Caught them napping, we did. Some of us were into their second line before they even knew it. They're running, sir. Damn, they're running."

Grinning, Marcus dismissed the sergeant, who pushed his way through the swarm of infantry, bawling curses, shouting for his troop to re-form and mount up.

Marcus followed him and, sighting his staff, reclaimed his horse, reined his mount around, and edged through the flow of infantry. More reports filtered in from excited couriers, the breakthrough of Second Division, Sixth Corps was already angling down to the edge of the forest, the Bantag line rolling back.

"Stripped his reserves to the center, thank the gods," Marcus announced. The realization of that fact eased the guilt that had been torturing him through the night that Vincent's attack might have been worse than useless.

Passing out of the advancing lines, he rode for several hundred yards, drawn at last by the sound of men cursing, shouting. Coming up over a low brush-covered ridge, he emerged onto a narrow road. A cavalry man on foot whirled about, nervously raising his carbine, aiming at Marcus then sheepishly lowered his gun.

"Sorry, sir, we just had a bunch of them hit us." The trooper nodded toward several dozen Bantag and human bodies piled by the side of the road.

"The bridge?"

The trooper pointed up the road and Marcus urged his mount into a trot, weaving his way around a company of engineering troops, who were moving at the double, carrying rough-cut planks. A wagon was in the middle of the road, piled high with lumber. He moved around it, then reined up short as the narrow forest path sloped down sharply into a boggy stream. Mud-splattered infantry were deployed on the far side of the stream, holding the Bantag breastworks that had covered the approach, having swept in from along the opposite shore.

A squat, bald-headed officer, cigar clamped firmly in his mouth, stood by the edge of the marsh, pouring out an unending stream of obscenities in English as his regiment of engineering troops struggled with a pontoon boat in midstream, the men up to their shoulders in the brown murky water, stringing out anchor lines back to the shore. Before the boat was even in place a crew of thirty men hoisted a heavy oak beam onto their shoulders and started into the stream. As the forward edge of the beam reached the edge of the boat it was laid down on the gunwale and dropped into place, a heavy iron bolt dropped through a precut hole, securing the beam to the boat. Back onshore, where the other end of the beam now rested, engineers hooked iron cables around the butt and ran the cables back into the forest, wrapping them around the nearest tree.

Marcus dismounted and walked up to the officer, who paused in his nonstop swearing and saluted.

"Stream is wider than I was told," the officer announced in barely understandable Rus.

"How long will it take?"

"You damn stupid sons of bitches, cinch up that anchor line. Yes, you, damn it!" the officer roared, then turned back to Marcus.

"Half hour, sir, be ready in half an hour. Be careful, sir, still some of them bastards in the woods on the far shore."

Even as he spoke the warning a rifle shot cracked and the officer spun around, grabbing his arm, cursing even louder than before.

Infantry on the far shore opened fire, men sprinting along the riverbank, seconds later flushing out the Bantag sniper, his body sliding down the opposite bank and into the mud.

Holding his arm the officer went back to work, blood seeping out between his fingers.

Marcus turned away from the bridge and looked back up the narrow, muddy track which passed for a road. The path was jammed with wagons carrying the bridging supplies, men unloading planks and heaving them onto the ground to corduroy the approach to the bridge. Infantry streamed past on either side of the path, jumping into the stream to ford across, rifles and cartridge boxes held high over their heads, emerging on the other side, an unending river of troops surging forward to widen the breach in the enemy line. Engineering troops on the far shore attacked the breastworks with axes, picks, and shovels, clearing away the barricade.

The second stringer was laid out to the boat, followed within minutes by two more stringers which barely reached to the opposite shore. An unending line of men now raced from the wagons, carrying oak planks, which were thrown down across the stringers, bolts dropped in on either side, locking the planks to the stringers.

A telegraph crew came along the side of the road, stringing out wire, hammering spikes into tree trunks, hooking a glass insulator onto the end of each spike, wrapping the copper strand around the insulator, then moving forward. Couriers snaked through the woods, coming in with reports to Marcus, each dispatch filling him with a sense of elation. The breakthrough was continuing to spread out, infantry already moving out of the hills and onto the edge of the open steppe, reporting only light resistance.

With the telegraph hooked in, the signal company went into operation, reestablishing the link to Tenth Corps and the rail line. Marcus hovered anxiously, watching as the signals from the center came in, the operator first writing them down in Rus, a liaison on his staff then translating them into Latin. So far it seemed to be working. The barrage at the center was continuing, but ammunition was beginning to run short. In twelve hours the massed batteries had burned up nearly a quarter of all the artillery ammunition reserves of the entire Republic, and nearly all the ten- and twenty-pounder rounds which had been brought forward.

"Sir."

Marcus looked up to see the Yankee engineering officer standing before him, features pinched and pale.

"Bring 'em up, sir. It's ready."

With a sigh, the officer sat on the ground, looking around weakly, cigar still clamped in mouth.

Teamsters, cursing and shouting, with whips cracking, drove their wagons forward. Marcus watched as the first wagon went over the bridge, observing how the pontoon boat sank as it went over, engineers swarming around the wagon as it went up the opposite bank, leaning into the wheels to help it get up the steep slope. Wagon after wagon passed, clearing the road.

Finally, he heard them coming, the hope of the entire offensive. Stepping to the side of the road he saw the black monster appear out of the last wisps of fog that was breaking up as the day grew warmer.

The heavy iron wheels of the land ironclad rumbled over the corduroy trail, smoke puffing out of its stack, its six heavy, iron wheels creaking and groaning.

Marcus looked at the machine in awe. It was smaller than the Bantag machines he had observed. Like the Bantag machine, its main gun projected out of a gun port which could be slammed shut between shots. A small rounded turret sat atop the boxlike machine, a tarp covering the gun port, the ironclad's commander sitting atop the turret, snapping a salute off to Marcus as they slowly rumbled past.
Saint Malady
was emblazoned in Cyrillic on the side of the machine. The portal where the ironclad driver sat was wide-open, the driver leaning out, looking at the bridge ahead with obvious anxiety.

The machine started down the slope and everyone seemed to freeze in place, watching tensely as the ironclad started to skid until it slammed into the first plank of the bridge. The bridge surged from the impact, the entire structure groaning and shaking so that for an instant Marcus thought it had been snapped free of its moorings.

The ironclad stood motionless. Smoke puffed out, and Marcus looked up, wondering if the swirling column would be visible above the trees. The entire ironclad shook as the rear wheels began to spin, grinding against the corduroy roadbed, a log kicking up behind the machine. Suddenly it lurched free and started up on the bridge, which immediately sank under the weight.

The pontoon boat bobbed down as the forward two wheels of the ironclad crept onto the span, followed several seconds later by the middle wheels and then the rear drive wheels. As the ironclad crept toward the middle of the span the boat continued to sink until, finally, there were only a few inches of clearance between the gunwale and the water as the ironclad reached the middle of the bridge.

Pushing on it reached the far shore, the boat bobbing back up. With smoke belching from its stack, the machine crept up the opposite shore, crested the bank, and pushed on.

A cheer erupted from the engineers, Marcus joining in, finding it hard to believe that all of this had been planned by Ferguson and Vincent nearly a week ago and a thousand miles away.

Marcus went over to where he had left the commander of the engineering regiment, eager to offer his congratulations. The man was lying on the ground, as if asleep, a young lieutenant sitting by his side, tears in his eyes.

The lieutenant looked up at Marcus.

"He's dead, sir."

Stunned, Marcus looked down at the body.

"The wound; it wasn't that bad."

"His heart, sir. Dr. Weiss told him to be careful. I guess it was his heart."

Marcus looked up as a horse-drawn wagon, loaded with coal, went over the bridge, following the ironclad with a precious load of fuel.

Behind it came a battery of ten-pounders and then the next ironclad crept onto the bridge and crossed.

He turned back to the lieutenant.

"Send up the signal rockets; we have to let Keane know."

The boy drew away from his fallen commander and went to where some of his men had erected three vertical launch tubes, shouting for them to fire.

Seconds later the rockets rose, describing an arc through the narrow opening in the forest canopy cut by the stream, three red bursts igniting more than a thousand feet in the air.

"Every five minutes," Marcus shouted.

Getting on his horse and motioning for his staff to follow, he crossed the bridge, falling in behind the advancing column.

It was going easily, almost too easily. He was hanging nearly eight miles north of the rail line with only a thin screen of infantry occupying the line back toward where Tenth Corps was positioned. The question now was, what would Ha'ark do?

* * *
 

Feyodor sprinted across the field to join Jack, who was anxiously hovering next to the gas generator. They had finally started filling the airship with hydrogen an hour before dawn. The stench of sulfuric acid, which was used to cook the zinc oxide in order to make hydrogen, hung heavy in the air.