Terrible Swift Sword (7 page)

Hans smiled sadly.

"You know, I never had a son of my own. Married to the army too long, I guess."

Andrew nodded, saying nothing.

"I'm getting old, Andrew."

"We all are."

"No, it's beyond that. I'm not talking about the rheumatism, the eyes that don't see quite as sharply, the game leg. It's just that I'm tired. Now I know what they mean by 'old soldier.' "

He hesitated for a moment, looking off into the swirling mist.

"I've got a bad feeling about this one, son," he whispered.

Hans looked up at Andrew, as if startled by his own admission.

"It's just that no matter how hard we try, they keep coming at us. Each time they're stronger smarter—it's like it will never end."

Andrew felt an inner shiver, beyond the cold beyond the weakness of the typhoid. Hans had been the rock upon which he had built his own strength as a leader. And now the rock was shifting away.

Hans fell silent, as if embarrassed.

"Go on," Andrew said quietly, "I need to hear this."

"I haven't said a word for months, but I feel the need now, before the others come up for this final conference. You know I didn't care for this Potomac line idea."

"I'm sorry we disagreed," Andrew replied.

The debate had been bitter at times, when they had started planning for this war more than a year ago. The first goal was to build the rail line to Roum—in that they had been in full agreement. Without the link to Roum there was no chance they could stand against the Hordes. But Hans wanted to try to hold onto the Neiper, even though the terrain north of the first ford was a nightmare for the building of a rail line to provide support. They had spent endless nights, pouring over the rough maps their survey teams had worked up. There was no fallback if the Neiper failed, he had argued. The Potomac front is on the steppe, terrain for their cavalry, Hans had replied, a front of a hundred miles far to long for them to hold with strength. In the end he'd had to order it. Hans had cursed soundly, but then saluted and thrown himself into the task. This was the first time in months that the debate had cropped up again.

"We can't afford to lose even a single battle, while even if they lose the entire war they'll still be back for more," Hans finally replied, saying each word slowly, as if they carried an actual weight and form.

"We defeated the Tugars, and it damn near destroyed us. Then they send the Cartha and we win it by a hair's breadth. Now we face them again. How many did that Yuri say, forty umens? Four hundred thousand warriors armed, with over four hundred field pieces and maybe twenty thousand muskets. They're capable of flying, while we've yet to get a single powered ship off the ground.

"The first time it was against bows and lances and they damn near took us, the second time against ironclads, and now, with nearly three times the strength of the Tugars, artillery like ours, and those damn flying machines."

He shook his head and fell silent.

The flying machines. At least they wouldn't be up today. At last count there were over twenty of the things. One had been brought down, or rather something had caused its engine to stop. The machine had drifted far out into the steppe between Suzdal and Roum, and finally had crashed when the cigar-shaped bag of hydrogen that supported the engine and the engineers' compartment burst into flames. What they had been able to sift out of the wreckage was the most troubling revelation of the winter.

The first people to approach the scorched machine had fallen sick within hours and died within days. It was fortunate, Andrew realized, that Ferguson, the engineering genius who had done so much to save all of them, had not been nearby. He would have crawled over the wreckage to learn the mystery of their engine, which apparently could fly for days without fuel. Before he got there Emil had passed up a firm order to keep him back, and to have the machine buried. Half a dozen more had died in carrying out that order.

Just how they had obtained the mysterious engine was an enigma. It was obviously far in advance of anything they had managed to create. During the winter, when Ferguson and several others had come to his home for an evening visit, they had agreed that any topic related to the forthcoming war was forbidden for the night. It had been an evening of pleasant diversion, of speculation about the world and how it had come about. Ferguson had gone so far as to suggest that perhaps the tunnel of light was a machine, drawing a comparison to electricity traveling through telegraph wires. If his speculation was true, then who had built it?

If such things were hidden on this world, what else might the Merki have access to?

"Ferguson will get us in the air," Andrew said quietly.

"Whistling in the wind will work for the others," Hans replied, a note of irritation in his voice, "but I don't need the reassurance."

Andrew leaned against the side of the parapet, Hans joining him. Meditatively, he chewed slowly on a precious piece of tobacco and spat over the side.

"Just how the hell are we going to get out of this one?" Hans whispered, as if to himself.

"The flying machines?" Andrew said, realizing that this was but one small part of the issue. "Fergusonis working on this caloric engine idea; we'll be in the air within the month."

"I mean everything."

Andrew felt shaken. Hans had always been the one source of strength, the quiet reassurance standing in the background. Like the best of all possible mentors he had first taught and then at least stepped aside, though he was always there when you really needed him, if for nothing more than an approving nod.

Damn him, Andrew thought quietly, I need him now, and instead he needs me.

"We'll fight them here on the Potomac line. We've got the beginning of a line back at Wilderness Station, and then if need be on the Neiper River itself."

"They outnumber us at least six-to-one, Andrew, and they have the mobility of the horse. All of them are mounted, something we don't have."

"You heard John Mina's assessment," Andrew replied. "That's four hundred thousand horses that have to be fed, at least sixteen million pounds of grass a day. Their forage problem will be a nightmare. Damn them, if they had any sense they would have hit this winter, coming in on foot if need be, but at least in that they're predictable. The Horde lives by the horse."

"When they hit, it will be a hurricane," Hans said quietly. "Now I know how the rebs felt. No matter how many of us they killed, we kept on coming. We were one of the worst-led armies in history— McClellan, Burnside, Hooker—and yet we kept on coming
."

"You're saying we're going to lose this one," Andrew replied, trying to hide the weakness in his voice.

Hans looked over at him and smiled wearily.

"This time be prepared for anything, son. Be prepared to lose here, at Wilderness, even Suzdal.
Be
prepared to go into the woods after everything is gone- All they need is to beat this army once, and we have no reserves. Oh, I know the Roum are drilling, but they've only had six months, and half of their divisions will be armed with smoothbores since we can't make the rifles fast enough."

"You really believe this, don't you?" Andrew asked quietly.

Hans, his features set hard, came closer to Andrew.

"You've got the touch of the gods on your fori head," Hans said, "a killing god who's never known defeat. Perhaps the taste of defeat is occasionally good for a man—too much victory leaves him weak in certain ways.

"Maybe it's how I trained you. I'm cautioning you that it won't be easy this time around. You'll have to think like you never have before, because if the army starts to unravel it will be you alone who cat pull it back together. The Rus are exhausted from four years of war—they won't have the same wild eyed fervor they did back the first time. I think the Merki will know that and play upon it. This one is going to be hell."

"And you're telling me that you've lost hope."

"I'm just far too tired of it all," Hans said, and as he did so Andrew for the first time truly realized that his friend was getting old. There was the slightest catch of frailty in the sergeant's voice. "You know, I thought that by now I'd have retired out. I was thinking of heading west, out to California, there was good land there—maybe marry and set up a business, a tavern or something."

Andrew laughed softly.

"You, a shopkeeper? You're a soldier, Hans; hell I imagine you've been a soldier since the beginning of history, and a hundred years from now you'll still be one. You're the eternal sergeant."

"I'm only human, Andrew."

"Somehow, those people back there"—and Andrew pointed behind him—"think differently, both of you and of me."

"That's the problem, Andrew, I'm not."

"And myself?" "You can't afford to be anything other than what you are; that's what I trained you for, that's what fate cast you to be."

"Small comfort," Andrew whispered. "It's not my job to comfort you anymore, you're bey
ond
that. Let any frailty show in what's coming, and
it
'll all unravel. God help us, we're going to need
that fr
om you."

"And
you, sergeant," Andrew whispered. Just who do I turn to now? he wondered, his insides feeling numb. Just where do I continue to find my strength?

"I'll
try," Hans whispered. "I'll put on the bravado. I'll continue to knock their heads together when it's needed, I'll fight to my last breathe, but this time, Andrew
,
I'm starting to feel the cold chill of their coming for us and .. ." His voice drifted away into silence as he turned and looked back out across the parapet.

The thin shriek of a whistle, muffled by the storm, disturbed his thoughts, and he looked over at Hans. "That should be them." He looked back over at Hans. A bitter gust of wind came up, driving a cold thread of water down his back. It set him shivering. "Damn it, son, I came out here to drag you back i
n before
they arrived! There's going to be hell to pay
now."

Hans
reached over, and with a clumsily gruffness threw his arm around Andrew's shoulder, turning him away from the trenches and back into the driving storm. A vent of steam came swirling out of the mist, filled with the damp smell of wood smoke. Lik a ghostly shadow of a fire-breathing dragon stirring out of the past, the engine drifted into view, th bells ringing weakly against the voice of the storm. Just beyond the railroad siding Andrew could see the low silhouette of the blockhouse complex, whic: was serving as his field headquarters. It was an ill lighted and smoke-filled place, and he steered instead for the single passenger car behind the engine. Beyond this was a row of flatcars, burdened down with twelve-pound field pieces fresh from the mills. Six flatcars, laden with twelve guns, their caissons and limbers, a weeks' worth of casting for NapoIeons. Damn, there simply weren't enough guns.

Gaining the car, he looked it over with affection. It was the presidential car, covered with the usual Rus wood carvings, its side emblazoned with a Gilbert Stewart-like representation of the signing of the Constitution of Rus. He could pick himself out i the group, standing beside Kal, both of them slightly larger than life-size. Larger than life-size, that's what they want to believe in.

Gaining the steps to the car he climbed up, struggling to control the weakness in his legs. The door above him was flung open.

"Hans, what the hell are you doing, letting him run around like this?"

"Doctor Weiss, I'm quite capable of looking after myself, without Hans playing nursemaid."

"Like hell," Emil sniffed angrily, coming out onto the platform to help him aboard. "You're as pale a ghost."

Emil pressed his hand to Andrew's forehead, a clucking noisily he led Andrew into the car, while shooting a chilly stare of reproach at Hans.

The stuffy warmth of the room was a shock, and
he felt
the perspiration beading on his forehead. His hand shaking, he started to fumble with the buttons of his old and worn army overcoat.

"Let me give you a hand."

Andrew looked down as Kal—President Kalencka--stepped up to him, the crown of his stovepipe hat barely at eye level.

"One hand a piece for both of us; we should be able to manage this," Kal said cheerily, looking up into Andrew's eyes.

"
I
've got a packet of letters from Kathleen, the last one pressed into my hand not four hours ago," Kal said, as he dextrously worked the buttons loose, while Hans helped Andrew slide the rain-sodden wool jacket off.

Andrew looked around bleakly, and nodded his greeting to the group. Overhead, scurrying across the roof of the car, he heard the footsteps of the telegrapher, hooking into the line, followed seconds later by the rattle-tap of the telegraph key in the small office in the forward part of the car, tapping out the connect signal, reestablishing communications for this small group, the architects of human resistance against the unmeasurable might of the Hordes.

"You've lost weight, Andrew."

Well, you certainly haven't put much back on yourself, you thick-headed Irishman," Andrew replied, forcing a smile.

Pat O'Donald came up, grasping Andrew's hand. They both looked at each other appraisingly. Pat's recovery from the stomach wound had taken far longer than expected, a process not helped by his sneaking out whenever possible to violate Emil's injunction against vodka. There was a standing order to every tavern keeper in Suzdal to refuse service, an order that had resulted in at least one bar's being broken up by an explosion of Pat's less-than pleasant temper when denied strong drink.

"You had us worried, me bucko," Pat said, helping Andrew over to the conference table in the forward end of the car. "That damn doctor"—he looked over at Emil—"wouldn't allow a one of us to come see you."

"Quarantine serves two purposes," Emil replied defensively, "to keep the disease from spreading, and to protect the patient from fumble-fingered visitors pawing at him and breathing their drink-laden breath in his presence."