Terrible Swift Sword (39 page)

leaped free, and even though it was a Merki Jack felt sick at the sight of it tumbling, trailing smoke, its arms flung wide. The body slammed into the west bank of the river, followed seconds later by the rest of the ship, which crashed into the woods and ignited the forest in a smoking inferno.

"Kesus and Perm protect us from that," Feyodor whispered.

Awed by what he had done, Jack let the ship continue straight on for some seconds, silently contemplating the flaming wreck half a mile below.

"The others are getting the hell out," Feyodor said. Looking back over his shoulder, Jack saw that the ship with the wounded engineer was already a couple of miles astern, the other two swinging in behind it. They themselves were now more than a mile over the west bank, looking down on the line of Merki guns dug in on the crest of the hill. Far out to the south, more than thirty miles away, he could see dark, serpentine lines, columns of the Horde.

"We'll hold station over the city," Jack announced, suddenly anxious at being over enemy territory, where a sudden engine failure might bring on a decidedly unpleasant conclusion.

He turned the ship eastward, passing north of the still flaming wreck.

"Scratch one," he said coldly.

"They've only got about twenty more," Feyodor replied.

Jack nodded, saying nothing. This first one had been a surprise—next time, they'd come up ready for battle. It wouldn't be so easy the second time around.

Crossing back over the river he turned
Flying Cloud
into the wind, Feyodor throttling the engine down till they had matched the breeze from the north and hovered above the great square. The cathedral bell was pealing, and the square below was tilled with upturned faces, their cheers rising up. Looking back over his shoulder, Feyodor watched as the enemy ships continued southward, growing smaller and smaller.

"They've had it for today," Feyodor announced.

"Well, let's bask in some glory!" Jack cried. Reaching up he pulled the black vent cord, letting the ship settle, then closed it off till they were only a couple of hundred feet above the square.

Leaning out of the cab, the two waved and bowed like triumphant knights returning from the joust. With a kick of the rudder Jack turned the ship northeasterly, and moments later they were slowing, to hover above the factories as thousands cheered.

"Time for supper!" Jack finally shouted. "Let's head for home!"

Feyodor gave him full throttle, and pointing her nose heavenward the
Flying Cloud
climbed upward to race back to its hanger.

"Well, now we've got to figure out how to fight them next time," Feyodor announced gravely.

"Jesus, one thing at a time," Jack replied, his mind still filled with the sight of that burning body, tumbling end-over-end to its brutal death.

Raging, Jubadi watched as the cattle airship swung to the northeast and climbed into the afternoon sky.

"How, by the hide of Bugglaah, how?"

"It is always the same," Hulagar said. "They build something, we take it and build. And then they create something new to best us. We gained the advantage with the cloud-flyers. Now they have figured out the same."

"We should have anticipated it!" Jubadi snapped.

"We did. It's just that we did not find where they were building them."

"But the engine! We found ours in the barrows of the ancients. Where did they find such a thing?"

"They made their own," Muzta said.

Jubadi looked over at the Tugar angrily.

"I need to know where they are, what they are doing beyond this damned river."

"Don't blame me," Muzta said with a smile.

"Perhaps we should," Vuka interjected. "If you had taken care of your own cattle at the start we would not be troubled by this now."

"I'm eager to see you try them, o Zan Qarth. Perhaps you would care to lead the charge across the river, as my own youngest son once did."

He paused for a moment.

"He died, of course."

"Doubt my courage, Tugar?" Vuka snarled. He stepped up closer to Muzta, the Tugar guards around him stepping forward, hands leaping to hilts.

"The Yankees are laughing twice as loud," Tamuka said coldly. "Laughing at their triumph. And if they can see us argue thus, they are laughing about this as well."

Muzta grinned sardonically at Vuka.

"Of course I would never doubt your courage," he whispered. "All know how well you fought on the river before us."

Vuka bristled, yet there was a sudden nervous look in his eyes.

"Zan Qarth," Jubadi snapped. "The enemy is across the river."

With a bitter curse, Vuka let his hand drop from his blade and stalked away.

"We must find where their cloud-flyers hide, where they are made, and smash them," Hulagar said. "Let weapons to kill other cloud-flyers be made." "By whom?" Tamuka said quietly.

"By the cattle who made the machines in the first place," Jubadi replied.

"Oh yes, but of course," Tamuka replied.

The cracking of a whip disturbed the group, and Jubadi turned to look back down the slope. Along the rail bed a long column of Cartha cattle were coming into view, staggering forward.

"Tomorrow they will be at the first ford. We can start building another mole. Within five days I want the river covered for a hundred miles. We must keep the pressure on. If we stay pent up in these woods beyond then, disaster will start to loom."

Tamuka said nothing but looked closely at Muzta, who was gazing at the flaming wreck, a thin smile lighting his features.

Chapter 9

"What a mess, what a godawful mess!"

John Mina slapped his gauntlets against the side of his leg, as he waded through the sea of refugees climbing down from the train.

As far as the eye could see, the hills rising to the south and east of Kev were carpeted with a ragtag tent city. The air was filled with incessant hammering, shouting, the sounds of squalling babies and shouting women, a mad cacophony of noise. A team of horses pulling a wagon laden down with fresh-cut lumber went past, splattering him with mud. He looked down at his stained, bedraggled uniform and cursed. It was one thing he had always hated about the army, one could never get clean. Back in the old Army of the Potomac days he had been filled with self-loathing and embarrassment the day he discovered that he was lousy. It did not matter that everyone else, from Andrew on down, was vermin-ridden. The abominal creatures were on
him,
and that's all that mattered.

Nervously, he scratched at himself. Was the itching from being in the same clothes for five days and nights without a change, or had he caught
them
again?

He pushed his way through the crowd, ignoring 362

the delegation from the town council, which always attempted to grab any official it could find to scream out its complaints.

He paused for a moment to look at a pile of ground wheat in canvas bags that lay by the side of the road, half-buried in mud and soaked through from the rain.

"What dim-witted, son of a goddamned devil's spawn is responsible for that?" John raged, pointing at the ruined food.

The unloading master stood mute.

"Enough wheat there to feed a thousand people for a day, and it's ruined!" John shouted.

"We've got seventy-five trains a day stopping here!" the stationmaster protested. "It's chaos!"

"Of course it's chaos!" John shouted. "It's madness, bloody madness!"

He looked around at the men lining the platform.

"Who's second-in-command here?"

A bent-shouldered old man came forward.

"Petrov Gregorovich, your excellency." The man took off his cap, his bald head bobbing up and down.

"Well god damn it, Petrov, you're now Colonel Petrov. If you don't improve this by tomorrow you'll be fired too, until I find someone to get some order here."

He turned to look back at the fired manager.

"Your regiment? And where is it located?"

"Fifteenth Kev. Last I heard, north of the Ford."

"Find your rifle, and take the next train up and join it," John snapped and he stalked off, leaving the gape-mouthed man trembling.

"He was doing the best he could," an aide argued.

"Not good enough," John snarled in reply.

He shouldered his way out of the station, climbing over the temporary tracks laid down to act as sidings.

The high pierce of a whistle cut the air, and he looked back to watch as a long train came into the station, moving hard. People, squealing pigs, squawking chickens, and lumbering cows scattered before it. The train thundered through, the red-and-gold pennant of an express bound straight for Roum flying from its smokestack. Behind it were ten dormitory cars, swaying violently from their topheavy loads. The cars were crammed to overflowing with the lucky ones, destined straight through to the relative safety three hundred miles farther on.

"Mina!"

John turned with a groan as Emil Weiss stepped out of a shack and came up to his side.

"Where the hell are my tents?"

"Somewhere back in Suzdal."

"I've got three thousand wounded from the last battle, a lot of them lying out under blankets in the open field. I'm losing thirty boys a day I could be saving."

John held up his hand as if to beg off.

"And beside that. We need tents for the people, lumber for barracks, and water, John. They're taking it straight out of the Volga—no filtration, nothing. I already got a couple of typhoid cases—soon it'll be a damned epidemic."

"Later, doctor."

Emil fell in by John's side as he walked down the track. On the far side of town the line turned northward, starting up the long grade along the flank of the White Hills. John went straight on, stepping over the track and wading down a sloppy, mud-caked embankment. He ignored Emil and shouted orders at his staff, pointing out another pile of abandoned food and roaring with anger at the sight of a dead horse, half-butchered, the remains of its carcass sinking into the mud. Emil wrinkled his nose at the smell, and simply followed John as he started up the long slope beyond the town.

"I know you're doing the best you can," Emil said, his voice suddenly gentle, and John looked over at him in surprise.

"How are you holding up?'

"As usual," John replied, not wishing to even think about how he was feeling. His stomach felt as if it were in a knot. It had started the moment Andrew had mentioned evacuation and had stayed that way for the last ten days.

"When was the last time you slept?"

John laughed, shaking his head, and made no reply.

Emil was silent, looking at him closely.

John slowed going up the hill, and Emil turned with a solicitous look.

"How old are you, son?"

"Thirty-three."

"I'm twice your age, and you're getting winded. Boy, you're run down and out."

John held up his hand as if to ward Emil off.

The rail line swept up the side of the hill before him, turning northward on its long four-mile climb to reach the pass through the White Hills. It ran nearly eight hundred feet above the valley floor, where it would turn through the cut and run back down, straight as an arrow, to the Kennebec crossing a hundred miles farther on.

The hills were still heavily clad in towering pines, although in the last week they had been falling by the thousands, both slopes of the hills being cleared for the needs at hand—the west slope for the construction of fortifications, the east slope for where the temporary factories and shelters were going up. In another day the rail turnaround on the far side of the hills would be complete, eliminating the need of running the trains up through the hills, to offload and then slowly back down.

Slowing, John stopped to watch the refugee train that had passed through Kev continue its laborious climb, engine puffing dark plumes of smoke, one of the first of the coal-burners to join the line. The burden it was carrying was almost too much—the engine was straining hard, showers of sparks were spraying up and flame shooting out from its belly. The acrid smoke rolled off to the south in a heavy layer.

Around the bend out of Kev another train started to move up the slope, flatcars piled high with turning lathes and molds from the gun works. The engine pulling the equipment would be stripped down to provide the power to get the lathes running again. Nearly half the locomotives were destined to be cannibalized for the factories, once the first stage of evacuation had been completed. He cursed himself silently for not having converted the factories to steam power earlier, and for having allowed himself to stay married to the convenience of the nearly limitless power harnessed from the Vina Dam.

He slowed, pulling out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his face. Without any worry about projecting the proper image, he sat down on a tree stump that was still oozing pitch. He looked a mess already, he realized, so getting the seat of his pants covered with pitch didn't matter anymore.

Pulling out his field glasses, he looked back to the west. It was a beautiful, clear view, straight back through the heart of Rus. The showers of the night before had given way to the promise of a warm spring day, the sky a crystalline, fresh-washed blue. The orchards were shedding the last of their blossoms and the hills to the south of Kev were carpeted in pink. If he could only have blocked out the madness it would have been a scene of pastoral splendor, worthy of a painting by Church or Cole. The scent of green fields, of fresh grass, wildflowers, and pine, almost masked the undertone of sweat, unwashed bodies, and excrement.

To the north, half a dozen miles away, the last solid stands of the great forest resting along the high hills dropped away into a scattering of trees, which followed the moisture of the creeks and gullies that cut through the gently rolling landscape. Behind him the high backs of the White Hills, which inarched in a straight line from the forest to the inland sea, were crowned with towering stands of virgin growth, many of the trees a hundred or more feet in height.

He tried to visualize the rough survey maps that had been made at the same time the census teams went out. The realm of the Rus ran from the Neiper to here, nearly two hundred and fifty miles, with a few scattered settlements going out into the vast plains that stretched three hundred miles farther on to Hispania and Roum.