Terrible Swift Sword (32 page)

"I did not think it would be this difficult," Jubadi whispered.

"We did not expect the rain," Vuka sniffed, looking up at the canopied branches, which were still dripping with moisture. "It is the mud that slows us. Let it dry, and we shall move faster."

Muzta moved his mount up to the grading of the rail line, his horse slipping on the slope till it gained the limestone ballast beneath the tracks.

"And they got away," Jubadi thought to himself. He had hoped to end it on this side of the river, and then cross unopposed. Their damned iron rail machines had saved them. Eight thousand bodies were taken, enough to feed the army with all its meat for four days at best. The salters were already preparing that which could not be consumed at once.

The trees overhead swayed with the wind, sending down a cold shower of mist. No airships would fly today. Another problem. They were to bomb the rail tracks, to slow the retreat.

Never plan with the weather. A bank of fog, rain at the wrong time, a sudden blizzard, these had ensured more than one victory, or defeat.

He could not even communicate with the southern wing, riding along the edge of the forest thirty miles to the south, sweeping forward to the sea and then pivoting north. Against the retreating cattle, there was not much worry in that. They were on foot or wed to their iron rails. Against the Bantag—and he looked over at Muzta—or against the old Tugars, to split an army like that was to beckon disaster.

That is how they beat us at Orki, forcing us to divide between three passes and then defeating each column in turn.

The trail ahead was obscured with dank smoke roiling across the trail, blinding him for a moment as he rode through it.

The narrow clearing was filled with wreckage. Several log huts still burned, a water tank was on its side, smashed in. An iron rail car, one of its wheels broken, was up on its side. Fresh-turned earth behind the burning cabins was piled high. Half a dozen warriors were digging the graves up, dragging the still fresh bodies out.

He grimaced. Distasteful, but a waste of good food otherwise.

Muzta reined in his mount to watch the disinterring. He edged down off the rail embankment to join him, motioning for his entourage to continue.

The cavalcade continued on, gold standards of the Horde in the fore, the silent ones reining off the trail to wait. Drummers, signalers, nargas-sounders, shamans, servants, message riders, all continued on, slipping through the mud, cursing.

Captured flags of the cattle army passed, white-and-blue standards marked with stars, strange-shaped words emblazoned in gold—7th
NOVROD
, 15th
KEV, 44TH SUZDAL
, battle honors listed beneath:
THE FORD, SIEGE OF SUZDAL, RELIEF OF ROUM, BATTLE OF SAINT STANISLAV.
A blue guidon, riddled with shot and marked with sergeant major stripes went past, but all of the words and markings were undistinguishable to him—the panoply of animals, and as such not worthy of note.

Muzta looked back at Jubadi, then returned to gaze at the corpses being pulled out of the earth.

"It got so that my warriors would creep into the killing ground before the city, to hack off strips of flesh from dead and rotting horses," Muzta said, his voice flat and distant.

"Why such memories now? We'll be in their city before the next moon feast."

"Old terrain, old memories coming back. I rode this trail once with my sons, my horde arrayed behind me. I remember our laughing, the feeling one has when the nargas sound not for battle but rather for a hunt. Little risk to be had, a pleasant day's sport, and then meat on the table."

"You saw the way we slaughtered them this morning," Jubadi said.

"It was almost too easy. They made a mistake."

"They are only cattle!" Vuka shouted, edging his mount down the slippery side of the railroad embankment, coming to join his father.

"First time I've seen them caught like that," Muzta acknowledged.

"Because this time they face Merki," Vuka retorted.

Muzta looked back at the Zan Qarth. There was a motion of rebuke from Jubadi, but nothing more.

"Of course," Muzta said with a smile.

A slash of rain burst from above, the heavy drops washing the mud from the frozen features of the cattle lying by the edge of their graves.

Jubadi looked at the cold bodies staring up with sightless eyes, muddy water pooling in their sockets.

"It'll be eight, maybe ten days to get the Cartha cattle up, to start them working at the crossings," Jubadi said, as if speaking to himself.

"Use the prisoners we took this morning for starters," Vuka interjected with a cold laugh.

"They're useless," Hulagar said. "There's less than a hundred, all of them wounded and unable to fight. That's how we took them."

"Then why keep them alive?" Vuka snapped.

"They might prove to be useful yet," Jubadi replied, dismissing the subject.

He looked up the trail, the last regiment of the Navgah umen lost to sight in the gathering mist of evening.

"Pass the word up to the Navgah to press up to the Ford by dawn, start scouting the river for crossings, try and force a way across. Maybe they are demoralized and will rout.

"I doubt it," Muzta stated.

"They face Merki this time," Vuka whispered, just loud enough for Muzta to hear.

The Tugar Qar Qarth turned to look back at the heir.

"But of course," Muzta said softly.

"Grandpapa!"

Andrew Hawthorne escaped from the grasp of his mother and raced across the room, nearly knocking Kal over in a wild embrace.

Smiling, Kal kissed the forehead of his grandson, and then was almost swept away by the embrace of Tanya and the tottering hugs of the year-old twins.

"How are you, daughter?" he sighed, breaking free for a brief second to make the sign of blessing before the icon and to accept the sliver of bread, dipped in salt, that she offered in greeting.

Smiling, Tanya patted her stomach.

"Another one started," she whispered.

"That boy certainly has been active," Kal said with a sly grin, and she blushed.

"Daughter, this home is a mess."

Tanya broke free from Kal and raced into her mother's arms, Ludmillia surrounded in turn by the children, all three crying to be picked up.

"Three children," Tanya said apologetically. "Would it be anything less than a mess?"

"A fourth on the way," Kal announced proudly.

Tears clouding her eyes, Ludmillia went up to her daughter and kissed her lovingly on the cheeks.

"Then get a helper."

"I'll have no servants," Tanya replied defensively. "Neither will Vincent."

"A good republican attitude," Kal said, going over to sit by the open window facing out on the forum.

"The devil take politics," Ludmillia announced. "She's the daughter of a president, the wife of a general and ambassador."

"Exactly why I won't have any servants," Tanya stated sharply, her tone indicating that the subject was closed.

"Always was your daughter," Kal said with a soft chuckle.

Kal leaned back in the chair with a sigh, taking off his stovepipe hat and putting it on the table.

"Daughter, something cool to drink perhaps?"

"I'll attend to it," Ludmillia said. "Come along, angels." She swept the children with her into the kitchen.

"What brings you here?" Tanya asked, and as she drew closer he took her around the waist, setting her on his knee.

"I'm a big girl now, Papa," she whispered shyly.

"You'll always be my little one," Kal said, kissing her lightly on the cheek and affectionately tucking a wisp of her hair back up under her fading blue kerchief.

"You look exhausted, Papa."

He nodded, still brushing her hair back.

"Something's wrong, otherwise you wouldn't be here like this."

"Something's wrong," Kal said softly.

"What is it?"

"We lost. We lost badly, nearly an entire corps." He paused. "And Hans."

"Oh, God!" She looked away.

"Basil Alexandrovich, Ilya Progoniv, Boris Ivanov-ich, Sergei Sergeievich, Yuri Andreievich, Mikhail Ernestovich—all of them dead."

"Yuri?"

He nodded, and she fought a losing battle to hold back the tears for the one she most likely would have married if all had been different.

"Zemyatin Rasknovich lost an arm, Gregory Basio-vich has not woken up since he was struck in the head."

"And Andrew Keane, Pat?"

"Andrew is shaken, badly shaken, my dear. You see, we'll most likely lose Suzdal before the next moon. Oh, we'll fight them tooth and nail for it, but

the mouse cannot stand in his nest when the wolf starts to dig too deep."

"Is that why you are here, Papa?"

"I'll tell you later. I have little time. I came here in secret. I expect to be with Marcus shortly—he needed to hear this news personally, and not by a message clicked out on a wire."

"Everyone knows something has happened. No messages of the battle have arrived since yesterday morning."

"My orders," Kal said. "It might only start panic."

"It's half there already."

"But at least, my little plum, you and the babies are safe for now."

She wanted to protest, to express some guilt, thinking of Kathleen, of all her friends, but it was different now. There was no room for such heroics when there were three children to protect, and a fourth already quaking inside her.

Smiling, he fumbled in his breast pocket and pulled out a small package wrapped in a stained cloth. She opened it to reveal a tiny chunk of honeycomb.

"Papa, I'm not eight anymore."

"Let's just play the game for now," he sighed. Smiling, she took a bite and leaned her head against his shoulder.

"Our Vincent?"

"The same," she whispered.

Kal nodded slowly.

"He's distant. The innocence . . ." she sighed, and looked away.

"We all lose our innocence. Even my little girl's lost hers."

"Papa, you know what I mean. There was a gentleness, a certain wonder at what Kesus and Perm had created. It was impossible for him to hate."

"And now he hates," Kal asked.

She nodded sadly.

"This war, before it's done, it'll teach a lot more of us to hate," Kal said coldly. "Maybe we need that hate to win. Kesus tells us to love our enemies, Father Casmar says that even the Merki, the Tugar are His creations."

"And do you believe that?"

"Hard to believe it if they take my grandchildren and throw them alive into the feasting pits."

"Don't say that!" Tanya whispered, making the sign of blessing.

"It's just that the hate has eaten his soul. Old Dimitri tells me that no one can talk to him as they once did. He's cold, aloof, obsessed with killing Merki, and merciless to any who cannot match him in that hatred."

"And to yourself?"

She forced a smile.

"He's tired. I think underneath it all there's still the young man I loved, afraid of what he might become. But somehow he's turned away, building wall, a distance between us. Where before he'd take Little Andrew, play and wrestle, walk hand in hand, now he comes home, when he does come home, and sits alone in the shadows."

"And the dreams, Papa, the terrible dreams. Nearly every night he wakes up covered in sweat, sometimes screaming, often crying. I try to hold him then, but he won't let me."

"So much has happened to him," Kal said soothingly. "Much more will happen before it's finished."

He paused for a moment.

"I need men like him. I could use a hundred more."

"You're talking about your son," Tanya whispered.

He patted her on the knee.

" 'When This Cruel War Is Over,' I think that's the title of the song some are singing now."

"How about 'All Quiet on the Potomac'?"

The two looked up to see Vincent coming into the room, cape dripping with the rain that had rolled in at dawn.

"Very popular song back in the old world."

"It's nothing to joke about," Tanya said softly, leaving her father's knee to take his cape and hat.

"We lost the Potomac front yesterday morning," Kal said quietly.

Vincent hesitated. There was a shimmer of emotion, and then a silent withdrawal.

"How bad?"

Kal told him as he walked over to the window.

"That's why you're here."

"Partially."

"Care to tell me the rest?" Vincent retreated into the kitchen, to return a moment later with an earthen jar. Sitting down at the table he poured out a mug of wine, offering it to Kal, who refused.

"A bit early in the morning for that, isn't it, son?"

"I just heard that we might very well have lost the war yesterday, and you're lecturing me about a drink," Vincent chuckled, draining off part of the mug and setting it back down.

"How soon before your two corps will be ready lor action?"

Vincent shook his head.

"At least a month, and even then barely ready. I sure as hell wouldn't trust them in a standup brawl. We'll have weapons—mostly old smoothbores, no artillery. If they get hit hard, I think they'll fall apart, more danger than help to us, and get all their hides slaughtered in the process. I need more time."

There was a knock at the door and Tanya went over to open it.

"Your excellency."

Marcus came in, as soaked as Vincent, and Tanya took his cape.

"Formalities state that I should wait downstairs in my audience chamber for a foreign dignitary to visit," Marcus said coolly.

Kal came to his feet and extended his hand. A slight smile crossed Marcus's features.

"But after all, the ambassador from Rus does live under the same roof as I, so we could say you are paying me the first visit as well."

"I was told you were out drilling with the troops, and would return shortly," Kal said apologetically. "I wanted to see my daughter and grandchildren while I had the time."

Marcus nodded his greetings to Tanya and to Ludmillia, the children rushing back out to greet "Uncle Marcus," who hugged each in turn.

"I take it, if you came this far, the news must indeed be bad," Marcus said, putting the children back down.