Terrible Swift Sword (24 page)

"Kill him?"

Yuri nodded. "Curious. So he is as powerful as the Qar Qarth—in a way, more powerful."

"Not exactly. They believe that the few who are shield-bearers are ruled by a different inner spirit, what they call the
tu.
It renders them incapable of being a true warrior."

"Why?"

"Because they are trained to think, to reason, to guide, and never to act directly, all their energy being devoted to the guidance of their Qarth."

"The intellectual advisor, thus unfit for war," Andrew said, chuckling softly.

"I wonder what they would think of a college professor of history running a war," he whispered in English.

He looked over at Yuri.

"Tell me what Jubadi will do."

"The unexpected. You see that already, with the use of those poor bastards out there." He pointed to the mole, which even as they spoke was being swept by fire from the first line of fortifications.

"They know that will shatter you, killing your own, that it might even crack your loose alliance with Hamilcar. They are forcing you to waste your ammunition, knowing that at the same time you're helping to slaughter their rations for them."

As if to add weight to his statement, a battery of four-pounders fired a salvo, and a second later the opposite bank seemed to explode in a shower of spray and mud as the canister rounds slammed in.

"As I've told you before, his favorite field maneuver is 'the horns.' Both flanks ride far out while the center butts into the enemy and holds them; then the horns close in."

"Hard to do here," Andrew said.

"Remember, though, that the Merki are bound by tradition. Their world, at least as they see it, is one of unchanging change. It is the everlasting ride to the sun. Behind them, the endless generations of the ancestors, as it was, and as it shall be. Tradition, and the symbols of that tradition, are all."

A shell fired from the opposite bank hummed overhead, tracing a slow, lazy arc at extreme range, detonating a hundred yards away. Yuri flinched, looking slightly embarrassed as Andrew remained still.

"Not used to it," Yuri said sheepishly.

"No one ever really is. You just learn when you really need to duck."

"A terrible way to make war."

"The only way to defeat them," Andrew replied sharply. "You were talking about tradition. To use artillery must stick in their throat."

"They hate it," Yuri said with a chuckle. "Last year they thought they'd just use humans for the dirty work. Now they have to soil their own hands, and it's degrading. War to them is the bow, the lance, the scimitar, fighting against those of equal caste. Honor is even more the goal of war than conquest. That was the hardest thing for them, to fight a war against cattle."

The way he said the word "cattle" bothered Andrew—he seemed almost to spit it out, as if it were distasteful.

"Jubadi would like to think that when you are defeated, he can smash the weapons, the same way they did against the Yor more than a hundred cir-clings ago."

"The Yor?"

"Their chant-singers tell of a small group, shaped not even like us or the Merki. Their weapons shot light that melted all who tried to stand against them. Thousands died killing the few, and when it was done the weapons were cast into the sea."

"Where?"

"Beyond Constan," Yuri said.

Andrew nodded and said nothing.

"Will they attack with their strength here?" he finally said.

Yuri smiled.

"You are asking me to guess. I was just a pet. I know not their plans, and it has been months since I escaped."

"You know how they think. You're the only man who has ridden with them for a circling and come back to tell us."

He looked over intently at Yuri. What he had started to consider for this man he had yet to discuss. The idea had started to vaguely form from the moment they had first met. He suspected why Yuri was here, the game within the game. He let the thought drop, focusing on the more immediate concern.

"What will they do?"

"What you don't expect."

"The flank, like General Schuder said?"

"If they can build that mole, the river will drop for miles. They might come straight across anyhow."

He pointed to the aerosteamer hovering above the front, like a malevolent hawk watching its prey. Its nose was pointed into the northerly breeze, the twin eyes and beak painted on the front giving it a cold, evil look.

"With that, they know exactly where your troops are."

Andrew nodded, saying nothing but cursing inwardly that their own efforts were going so slowly. Yuri had told him the first night how they had raided an ancient burial vault of their ancestors and uncovered the strange machines that now powered the enemy ships. The Yor, the burial vaults . . . what else was hidden on those endless steppes?

"Where will they hit? 'Mus kala bugth Merki, org du pukark calingarn Bugghaal.' "

"Enlighten me," Andrew said.

" 'Like the wind is the passing of the Merki, the goddess of death will roam where they have been.' "

"You're saying we will lose," Andrew said coldly.

"Keane, no matter how well you've planned, they have planned as well, I can assure you. It might be here, it might be far to your right, but they will come. Remember as well that the Tugars ride with them."

"Strange, isn't it?" Andrew replied.

"Muzta is in Hell. Humiliated, his umens dead, dragged like a beggar before Jubadi and offered a crumb from the feasting table. But he has told them all. They have learned from his mistakes, and are ready."

Andrew raised his glasses and looked back toward

the south bank, where another long line of fresh prisoners was being run up to the mole, the first of them already dropping from the smattering of rifle fire.

"You're a small comfort," Andrew replied sadly, watching the relentless slaughter on the opposite shore.

"I
didn't come here to be a comfort. You didn
't
send for me to fill that task."

Andrew looked over at him, as he spoke again.

"You suspect you might lose, don't you?"

Andrew didn't reply.

"I came to tell you how to win even in your defeat."

Hans cursed silently, struggling to control his temper.

"You mean you suspected something last night and did nothing?"

Stanislav nodded weakly.

"And then today this word 'trap' came through."

"There was something afterwards, but it was clumsy, a slow fist: 'Nothing to report.' But I'm positive it wasn't our regular operator."

Hans looked over at Kindred, commander of 3rd Corps.

"Reports of skirmishers skirting the woods fifteen miles west of here," Tim said. "Our mounted pickets have been pulling back since yesterday."

Hans pulled on his rough beard, his eyes squinting shut.

"Maybe a skirmish party of Merki found the position," Tim said.

"It was well hidden," Hans objected.

He had learned long years ago, out on the prairie against the Comanche, to trust his gut instincts.

"Send a telegram down to Colonel Keane. Inform him that I suspect a move to my right."

The humming of an airship rose in pitch, but he ignored it while Kindred went over to the doorway to look out.

"It's flying a red pennant with a white stripe," Kindred said quietly. "That wasn't there before."

Hans raced to the doorway, shouldering past Tim and out into the enclosed parade ground of the bastion.

"Kindred, sound the alert!"

Climbing up to the bastion wall, Hans looked straight up to the aerosteamer riding high several thousand feet above the ground, the pennant fluttering down from the cab.

There seemed to be a strange silence hanging in the air, and then from the north, like a distant storm, a rolling boom of thunder came drifting down.

Hans ran over to where his command train waited, its engine venting a slow plume of steam.

"Get me up to Bastion 110!" he shouted, his staff running behind him, climbing aboard as the engine started northward.

Andrew had to control his rage, his guilt. They were doomed anyhow, and perhaps this was the greater mercy. But it didn't help.

The Potomac was a spreading carpet of the dead. Dawn had revealed the mole nearly halfway across, despite the horrendous slaughter of Cartha prisoners. Even if every yard of advance was purchased by a hundred dead the mole still advanced, the Merki gorged in the process by the surfeit of food.

A steady patter of musket fire rippled along the line, dropping more and yet more. An increasing number were attempting to break away and run, but with the narrowing of the river in half the current was running far stronger. The few who made it into the river were dropped by their Merki tormentors.

Three had managed to escape during the night, two of them tragically killed as they were shot dead by nervous guards as they attempted to gain the ramparts. The lone survivor reported that the Merki had brought up tens of thousands of slaves, boasting that if need be they'd build the mole with their corpses.

"Message from General Schuder, sir."

Andrew took the paper, gazed at it for a moment, then crumpled it up and stuck it in his pocket.

"What is it?" Schneid asked.

"You know, Rick, we're going to have one hell of a fight here by dawn tomorrow," Andrew said coldly, nodding out to the mole. "I'm going to want our artillery reserve from your corps positioned here by sundown."

"What did Hans have to say?"

"We've been flanked," Andrew said quietly. "A full umen, perhaps. A rising dust cloud is reported to be coming in off the steppe from the west as well."

"And?"

Andrew looked over at his young corps commander.

"If I released you to move your divisions up to Hans, and it turned out to be a feint, we might be unmasked here. If it is the real attack up there, and this is the feint, and I don't move you now, we'll lose the entire flank by tomorrow morning and this line as well."

A Napoleon kicked back next to him, sending out a spray of canister that swept a dozen bodies off the mole. From the opposite bank a score of guns fired a volley, iron shot snarling overhead, plumes of dirt and rock kicking up from the side of the parapet in a deadly hail, showering Andrew in dust.

From overhead a Merki airship went into a dive, its engine humming louder and louder. Andrew looked up for a second. A battery of four-pounders mounted in swinging yokes was pointed up, the guns firing. The airship started to level out, a black dot breaking clear. The bomb winged down, smashing into the next battery position seconds later. It exploded with an earth-rocking report, a gun carriage tumbling into the air. A jeering yell went up from the Merki side of the river as the ship turned, running back to the south with the tail wind coming out of the north.

"The reserves are waiting to be moved," Rick said. "I've got twenty trains full of them back up the line."

Andrew nodded, fingering the crumpled telegram in his pocket. Sixty miles, up to Hans at Bastion 100. An hour to get the trains moving, two hours up, two hours to unload and deploy. It had been practiced a dozen times. He looked back across the river. On the far bank, just beyond artillery range, at least five umens were drawn up in battle order. Upstream thousands were gathered around the log booms, rafts, and rock-filled boats. If the northwest wing was not the real attack, he'd have to turn the entire corps around, load them up and run them back down here. Sixteen hours of travel, exhausting them for a defense here and a possible long day of fighting tomorrow.

His worst nightmare was already unfolding, and they'd been fighting for only two days. If he started running back and forth with each crisis, committing his precious reserves when the threat might only be a feint, he'd be finished.

"For right now you're staying put," Andrew said slowly, looking over at Rick.

"What about Hans?"

Andrew nodded, and looked over at an orderly.

"Is Pat back in Suzdal yet?"

"Message came in that he was at Reserve Corps Headquarters, waiting for orders."

"Good. Get this message to General O'Donald in Suzdal. Move one division of Roum troops out of Suzdal, and run them straight out to cover the flank of General Schuder's position along the Potomac line."

The orderly scribbled down the message, which Andrew initialed. He ran off.

Andrew knew he was breaking the plan to keep O'Donald as the fallback reserve if disaster struck here.

"There simply aren't enough men," Andrew said quietly. "We're out on a limb."

He was starting to think that no matter where they held—here, on the Neiper—there would never be enough.

He looked up at the darkening sky, and as he did so the first chilled drop of rain struck his glasses.

"Jesus, here they come!"

Field glasses barely penetrating the gloom, Hans looked northward. It was like an inexorable wall of flesh and steel, coming forward at a run, the Merki's deep-throated growls thundering above the staccato roar of musketry and booming cannon.

Bastions number 110 and 109, the two positions on the flank of the line, had disappeared, swarmed under by the sudden and brutal assault. One moment the woods had been silent, and then within minutes the walls of the earth forts had been carpeted with dead and wounded Merki, the interior of the forts a shambles as the attack swarmed over them and kept on going. The line was starting to roll up, like a collapsing deck of cards.

The advancing wave was rolling into number 108, hitting it from the west, north, and east. The secondary line, a half mile back from the fort, was going under as well from the end-on attack.

He felt a moment of pity for the men in the fort— they would all be dead in another couple of minutes, but they were buying time, precious time.

Hans walked out of the bastion and nodded to Charlie Ingrao, artillery commander for the corps reserve guns of six batteries.

The pieces were lined up nearly hub to hub, facing north. To their right an entire brigade was formed up, nearly twenty-five hundred men across a front of four hundred yards, positioned in the clearing cut through the woods for the now flanked fortifications. It was all that he had—stripping out everything from Bastion 100 at the edge of the woods, back to number 80, piling them aboard several reserve trains and racing them up to form here, leaving but a skeleton of just half a brigade behind.