Terrible Swift Sword (43 page)

"Then
your
secret is safe as well. Thank you."

"How are things in Roum?"

"Chaos. Julius is in charge of housing the refugees and moving them out to the countryside. He's doing a good job of it. There's been some problems—a couple of fights, some disease. But the Roum are doing fine by us. I guess peasants understand peasants. Problem is, we have refugees coming up from the south as well. There's not enough Merki to really hurt down there, but it is tying us down on that front. We might lose part of the late spring harvest. The city's like one damned giant nursery. I've got two mothers and five children in our home, cousins of Tanya's."

"Julius's daughter, Olivia?"

Vincent blushed nervously.

"She's all right. Been asking for you."

"Why the blushing, Vincent?"

"Nothing."

"Say, was there something between the two of you? I heard a couple of rumors," Chuck asked, his voice brittle.

"I swear it was nothing," Vincent said, a little too hastily.

Chuck decided to let it drop, really preferring not to know.

"You saw the message that came through this morning?" Chuck asked conversationally, as Vincent seemed to relax.

"About Suzdal being evacuated today?" He nodded.

"Bad business. Somehow I can't imagine that we've really lost the city. It's like hearing the rebs had taken Maine. That place was home. Damn, I had a really nice cabin there, was planning to build a regular home: scrollwork on the porch, a turret, a wrought-iron fence. A place to settle down and start a family. Hell, I guess it'll all be cinders when this is done."

"Fortunes of war," Vincent replied, and his features tensed up again. He paused and looked back.

"What about those sniper guns, the Whitworths?"

Chuck hesitated.

"I turned out a couple more. I just couldn't give it up after so much work."

"I saw the one you gave Andrew. I want one."

"Plan to do a little personal killing?"

Vincent merely smiled and walked away.

"Just what the hell was that all about?" Theodor asked, coming up to join Chuck.

"Just doing a little trading with someone possessed."

"He's a good general, that one," Theodor said. "I've got a couple of cousins in the 8th Regiment. They say he's a rare one, filled with fire."

"Fire burns," Chuck replied.

He nodded to Dimitri and went back into the shed.

Dimitri smiled and nodded in return, then fell in alongside of Vincent as they remounted and started the long ride back to Hispania.

"Did you get the guns?"

Vincent smiled.

"What else did he say?"

"Nothing much."

"I really should learn your English—it seems one can get quite passionate while saying nothing much."

"Just that he's sounding too much like you, Dimitri."

Dimitri knew better than to reply.

It'd be a couple of months yet before he was ready for action, but Vincent Hawthorne knew that when the time finally came he would be ready. Whistling a tune off-key, he urged his mount into a canter and trotted off, leaving Dimitri behind in the mud.

For the first time in months Andrew saw tears in her eyes. Awkwardly he walked up and embraced her, Maddie still asleep in her arms.

"It's just we worked so hard for all of this," she said, her voice choking, her eyes bright as she looked around the simple parlor.

"Ludmillia gave me those curtains when I had my small cabin at Fort Lincoln—her first gift."

She stepped away from Andrew.

"Maddie's cradle. Remember how proud the boys from Company C were when they presented it?" She turned, running her hand along the back of a chair as if saying good-bye to an old friend, her gaze lingering for a second on a framed print of the two of them that had been published in Gates's paper. The only bare spot on the paneled wall was where the presentation papers for his Congressional Medal of Honor, signed by Lincoln, had been. That heirloom was part of her ten pounds of baggage.

"God, we lost all of it."

Clutching the baby tight she fled the room, Andrew following in silence.

A couple of the men from the 35th stood on the porch, holding Andrew's baggage. The regiment was formed up on the village green, the few family members still in the city standing alongside the column, their possessions resting in wheelbarrows or on their shoulders.

Andrew stepped out on the porch and surveyed their ranks. Barely one in five of them was from the old regiment. All the rest, at least those still alive, were out in the field, commanding units. This was the core, the men assigned to jobs with the government, or in the city. The rest of the ranks were filled out with Rus, and now a full company from Roum and even a couple of Cartha. Youngsters of promise, sent up to serve in the elite regiment of the Republic and to return after a time to positions of rank. All were wearing the old uniform: navy bluejacket, sky-blue trousers, blanket roll over shoulder, Springfield at the carry, the headgear a sprinkling of the old kepis with the rest wearing the black Hardee, the number 35 affixed to the crown. The old American flag, carried since Antietam, was at the fore, patched and repatched, the names of over twenty engagements emblazed on its silken folds. Next to it the dark blue flag of Maine, and between them the white-and-blue flag of Rus. Behind it were the colors of the 44th, the same American flag, and the emblem of a New York battery.

Even in this most heartbreaking of moments Andrew felt a swelling of pride. The regiment had endured, it would always endure. If it was fated that they were doomed never to return here, somehow the regiment would survive. If only one of them was able to bear the colors away, to remember the legends, the honor, the serried columns standing proud in the morning, the flame-scorched ranks holding in proud lines; if that was remembered, even if they were driven clear around the world, then the regiment would survive.

He felt as if an army of ghosts hovered around the colors. All those who had fallen beneath its folds were somehow present. The hundreds of names, barely remembered, who still somehow lived with the regiment, his brother John, Kindred, Houston, Sadler, and Dunlevy of the 44th. And of course Hans.

"We'll come back," Andrew said, his voice ringing across the square.

He looked out over their faces as if the ghosts were again in the ranks, swelling it out, joined in a brotherhood of blood and passion.

"This regiment will endure till the ending of the world. This city, this entire country, may be burned to nothingness, and yet we will be remembered. Our names will be recalled, and when a day comes beyond our own, when grandchildren speak of these days, they will remember you, all of you, for what you sacrificed here.

"It is no consolation, perhaps, for what we have lost, this future memory by those we do not even yet dream of. But it should be enough. Our homes, our city can be destroyed, but we will rebuild them, and this time rebuild them free of fear. That is our sacrifice for those to come. That is what I am fighting for." He paused and nodded toward Maddie, who was still asleep in her mother's arms.

"She is worth far more than all I own and lose this day. And some day she will stand on this place and tell her grandchildren, who do not know fear, the story of what we did.

"Remember that promise, as we march out of here. And remember as well that we will come back, if we have to march clear around the world to do it."

He looked down the street and remembered walking up it the last night before the war started, laughing softly about the performance of Pat as Romeo, of young Gregory as Henry V.

" 'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,' " he whispered to himself.

He walked down the steps of the porch, Kathleen behind him. He looked back for a moment at what had been home, its door open. Kathleen smiled sadly.

"No sense in locking it," she whispered.

He forced a smile, then kissed her lightly on the forehead and kissed Maddie in her arms, at which Maddie squirmed and nestled back in against her mother's breast.

Holding his hand up he pointed forward, and the column started out, the men grim-faced and silent.

Turning toward the south they passed the Congregationalist Church. The young corporal turned minister was coming out the door, rifle over his shoulder and a Bible under his arm. From out of the Town Hall several men emerged, to fall in with the column. With them they brought the regimental records, the log books going back to the day the regiment and battery had been formed.

A loud buzzing came from out of the south, and Andrew nervously looked up to see a dozen Merki aerosteamers coming up from that direction, moving fast on the southwesterly breeze. He watched them warily, ready to give the order to scatter if one should turn in for an attack on such a tempting target as a close-packed column. One of the ships, riding high, turned and moved off to the west, crossing the river and dropping down low.

"Must be telling them that the city is empty," Andrew said with a soft chuckle. "Won't
that
be a hell of a surprise?"

The rest of the ships continued on several thousand feet above the city, moving toward the northeast.

Reaching the great square, a thin trickle of refugees was moving down the boulevard to the east gate and the rail yard. From in front of the church Father Casmar appeared, with several dozen priests. He paused in front of the doors of the cathedral and made the sign of blessing, while two acolytes closed the doors, a hollow boom echoing through the square. Kal, Ludmillia, and several score of government officials were beside him, kneeling down and making the sign of the Rus cross. Coming to their feet, they moved down to fall in by Andrew's side.

"Holy relics," Casmar said, nodding toward four acolytes carrying an iron-strapped box. "Hope you can see clear to bend the weight limits a bit."

Andrew smiled.

"Put them in the staff car, Your Holiness."

"Please, Andrew, just Casmar."

Andrew nodded appreciatively at this most unusual and unassuming of priests. He was wearing a simple homespun wool cassock, dyed the traditional black and with no adornment except for a plain iron cross of Kesus and the inverted hand of Perm.

"Will the last one out of the city please close the doors and blow out the lights?" Kal requested, and a ripple of laughter echoed down the column, the men farther back passing Kal's comment along.

There was a renewed flurry of shots from the far bank—shells arcing in, explosions detonating across the square. Anxiously Andrew looked back. No one had been hit.

Bullfinch came up out of a side street, saluted, and fell in at Andrew's side.

"Remember, Mr. Bullfinch, you're on your own. Once we're clear away, I want the battery troops and the last Suzdalian regiment evacuated down to the coast of the sea. You're to hold this river. Give them hell as they move up the Ford road. Force them off it, slow them down, but be sure to let them arrive at the city before sundown. You are under strictest orders not to engage them within two miles of the city."

"I still don't understand that part, sir."

"When you open your sealed orders you will," Andrew replied. "After that, deny them any chance of moving supplies up by sea. If you see a chance to raid ashore, do it."

Bullfinch nodded, looking like a savage pirate with his eye-patch and scarred face.

"Aye-aye, sir."

Andrew grimaced at the affectation of nautical jargon.

"I think you're going to enjoy this."

"That I am, sir. Independent command of a flotilla—who wouldn't?"

"Just get back safe, young man, and don't lose any of these ironclads. Mina's arranging to have food, wood, and coal moved down the Kennebec to keep you supplied. If you can free a ship to support Hamilcar on his raids, do so."

"What he wanted to hear. It'll keep him happy."

"Good luck, son."

"Couldn't you at least tell me why all the secrecy, sir. We've been hearing rumors: an area beyond the city that's been sealed off to everyone for weeks; the no shooting near the city. Just what are you up to, sir?" Bullfinch said quietly.

"You have your sealed orders. Don't open them until you see what I told you to look for."

"Exactly as you order it, sir," Bullfinch said, his disappointment in not knowing obvious.

"Good. Now get a move on."

Bullfinch snapped off a salute and turned to race back toward the naval yard.

Going out through the inner gate the column reached the station at last. The two trains waiting on the siding were already partially filled with the last refugees. The column broke to file aboard the cars.

John came out of the staff car and saluted.

"Pat reports they'll be in Vyzima by nightfall. Advance teams are already filtering out of the woods."

"The army?"

"Falling back in good order. I've got thirty trains in Vyzima to pick them up. The rear guard's going to be tough, though—the Merki are pressing pretty damn hard."

"Pat. Have you heard from him?" "Not since midnight."

"I need that damned fool," Andrew said. "I pray to god he doesn't get caught like Hans." John nodded.

"And along the river front, south of the Ford?" "The last unit pulled out of the Ford just before daybreak—the train should be shuttling through the switch shortly. The Merki are most likely crossing by now."

"Let's get going, then."

John helped Kathleen up into the car, which was soon packed with staff from Andrew's command and Kal's office, plus Casmar's priests.

The assistant telegrapher was hanging from the pole by the station, looking down at Andrew. "Shut us down," Andrew said. The boy clipped the wire free, the telegrapher inside reeling the cable in. The boy scrambled up into the car and paused.

"Sir, what about that wire you ordered run out? Is that to stay?"

"Never mind now," Andrew said, shooing the boy aboard the car.

Andrew stood alone on the siding, looking at the anxious faces looking back at him from the window and from open boxcar doors. He walked back into the station and into a small room behind the telegraphers' office. Yuri was waiting for him, and came to his feet. "I'm counting on you," Andrew said. "God knows I shouldn't be, but I am counting on you."