Men of War (30 page)

The trick was to keep moving, to roll them up before they had time to react. He had to keep moving in spite of his exhaustion.

He rode around a line of half a dozen flatcars on a siding A couple of hundred Chin were piled on board, half of them armed with the precious revolvers carried in on the airships, others simply carrying makeshift spears, poles with a knife strapped to the end. As he rode past the engine he recognized one of his comrades, yet another survivor of the prison.

“Ready to go back?” Hans asked.

The old man flashed a grin.

“I know this machine. Remember ride to there.” He gestured off to the south, where half a dozen miles away they had holed up after the escape. “I run it good.”

Hans leaned up, shook the man’s hand, and rode on.

Four trains were lined up, four engines pulling a total of thirty flatcars and boxcars, all of them crammed with over fifteen hundred Chin. The vast majority knew damn little of what they were doing. A day ago they were slaves, knowing that they’d live only as long as they could work. Now they were loaded aboard trains heading east, straight into the heart of the Bantag realm. If they had any sense about it at all, they undoubtedly knew they were going to die. He could see the fear and resignation with many, torn away from a numbed life, but a life nevertheless. A few were afire with the desire for revenge, clutching the pistols given out, holding them up as Hans passed, making him nervous. Several men had already been killed by accident.

Reaching the forward engine, he returned the salute of Seetu, one of Ketswana’s men, who overnight had been promoted from sergeant to commander of an expedition. “Ready?” Hans asked.

Seetu nodded eagerly.

“All the engines are fired up. A couple of these Chin worked the rail line, so they know how to run the engines and what’s ahead.”

“Remember. Until it’s full light, take it slow. If anyone up there’s thinking, they’ll have broken the track. At each junction or station you pass, make sure you cut the telegraph line. Round up any Chin you meet; if you capture any more trains, take them along.”

“We’ll go all the way to Huan.”

Hans said nothing.

“This is gonna be the hard part, Seetu. I want you to get as far forward as you can. But remember, they might cut you off from behind once you pass. If you can get thirty or forty miles up that track and start tearing things up, it’ll buy a couple of days for the men here to get organized.” Seetu said nothing.

“Son, I won’t lie. There isn’t much hope you’ll get through this one. They’ll most likely lay a trap, let you pass, cut the rail ahead and behind, then box you in and finish you. Try and spot that, stop, then slowly pull back, tearing up track, burning bridges as you go. If they do trap you,” he hesitated, “well, take as many of the bastards with you as you can and smash everything up good and proper.”

“I was dead anyhow a year ago,” Seetu replied. “Every day you gave me since is extra gift from the gods. Hans, I’m not stopping. Expect to see me in Huan tomorrow.” Hans leaned up and shook his hand.

He rode on.
Strange how we all feel that way,
he thought.
You come back from the grave and after that, well it’s a gift
. Hans turned his mount back and slowly trotted out of the rail yard, weaving his way past a skirmish line of Chin moving through the still-burning ruins of a Bantag encampment of wooden barracks.

So they were even giving up their yurts. Strange, the vast circular buildings were wooden replicas of their tents. Yet another changing over to human ways. The Chin were little better than a swarming mob, led by half a dozen of his soldiers, who were desperately shouting orders, trying to create some semblance of organization.

It was the shock of the air assault, the riot of the tens of thousands in Xi’an, that had won this fight, Hans realized. Sheer numbers had dragged the Bantag down. He wondered how many were still lurking out beyond the city and the surrounding warehouses and encampments.

As if in answer to his question a rifle ball slapped past. There were shouts ahead, a flurry of pistol shots. He rode on.

Reaching the base of the eastern wall, he gingerly rode around mounds of Bantag killed trying to retake the city. A damned stupid assault. They should have just sat back, waited for reinforcements, then shelled the place until the defenders panicked. Stupid arrogance to attack like that.

Riding along the wall, he reached the northern side of the city. In the glare of the inferno the airfield was clearly silhouetted. The machines were lined up, engines turning over. Jack, spotting his approach, slowly walked up.

“I’m going to make this formal,” Jack announced, while reaching up to help Hans get off his horse.

“I know, I know.” Hans sighed.

“My crews and machines are finished. We were circling this damned town half the night while the fighting was going on down here.” He gestured to the bodies that littered the perimeter of the airstrip.

“Then we come back in and land again, losing three more ships. Hans, I'm down to twenty-two aerosteamers, an average of two hundred Gatling rounds per gun.”

“At least you got fuel,” Hans replied, nodding toward the empty barrels that had been saved from a burning train.

“Yeah, great.”

Hans wearily sat down on the grass, lowering his head for a moment. Again, the shortness of breath, the flutter of pain.

Jack knelt by his side.

“Hans? You all right?”

He looked up bleakly.

“No. I don’t think so, to tell you the truth.”

“Hans, you need some rest. Everyone here needs rest. The men are staggering around like the walking dead. I’m going to ask this one last time. We’ve got Xi’an. Hole up here. I’ll take the airships back to Tyre. We’ll refit, load up on hydrogen we desperately need, and be back in two days with reinforcements.”

“Two hundred more men now won’t make a difference here.”

He was simply too numb to order, to roar out the order to go. He looked up, half-broken inside, appealing to Jack to understand.

“We’ll all die doing this, Hans.”

Hans chuckled in spite of his pain.

“Jack, don’t you get it?” he whispered. “That day on the Ogunquit, the day we left Earth forever and came here. We died. You know, I bet back home, somewhere up there on the coast of Maine, they’ve got a statue with all our names on it. We died. We died but then the good Lord caught us as we fell and dropped us here. Maybe this is purgatory, maybe this is the punishment for our sins. I don’t know anymore. But I was in their prisons; you weren’t. I know that there is the key to our victory.”

“They’re ready for us by now.”

“I don’t know. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. But we’ll never have a better chance than at this moment. Tomorrow will be too late. Jurak will react, and it will be too late. Jack, today we can either win or lose this war.”

He paused for a moment.

“It’s up to you. Yesterday evening I ordered you to do it.” He paused, struggling to catch his breath. “I don’t have the strength to order you. I’m simply asking you.”

Jack stood up.

“Oh, God damn it all, thank you very much, Sergeant Schuder, for the guilt.”

Hans looked up and couldn’t help but smile.

“One more push,” Hans whispered. “That’s all I ask, and then you can call it quits. Then we can rest.”

* * *

It was surprisingly quiet. Standing atop the low ridge, Vincent Hawthorne shaded his eyes, looking to the rising sun. He knew they were out there, the haze of dust rimming the horizon in a vast arc to the north, around to the east and south showed that they were out there.

It had been a sleepless night, curled up by the side of his ironclad, waiting for an attack that never came. They had the advantage on that score. The bastards could decide if and when to attack; they’d most likely pulled back and slept the night through while he and his men had stayed alert throughout the hours of darkness.

Stretching, he scratched the back of his neck.
Two days down here and I’m lousy
, he thought with disgust.
Forgotten just how lousy the army could get
, and he wondered which of his crewmates in the ironclad had passed the damned little critters over to him.

“Your honor, some tea?”

It was Stanislaw, driver of his ironclad, who in spite of his years in the army still hadn’t shaken the honorific given to boyars. The man was easily twice his age, drafted out of the locomotive engineers to serve on the front line.

Vincent gingerly took the tin cup, holding it by the edges, blowing on the rim, took a sip. One of the true advantages of serving with the ironclads, he realized, hot tea, drawn off from the boiler water at any time, even though it tended to have an oily taste, plus plenty of rations since the men always seemed to manage to “borrow” a few extra boxes of salt pork, hardtack, and for this expedition some precious jam, butter, and even a few loaves of bread that were almost fresh.

Stanislaw produced a great hunk of the bread, slathered with jam and butter, and Vincent eagerly wolfed it down, squatting in the grass while he ate.

All around him, farther down the slope of the knoll, the army was coming awake, bugles sounding, men milling about, gathering around smoking fires made with twisted-up bundles of dried grass and the ubiquitous dried chips from the bisonlike creatures and woolly elephants that wandered the plains.

Mounted pickets had pushed out from the earthen wall fortress encircling the camp, making sure no Bantag skirmishers had crept up during the night, and men were wandering outside the fortified position to relieve themselves. Vincent wrinkled his nose. Whenever you had ten thousand men camped in one place, it didn’t take long truly to stink the place up.

“Think we’ll fight today, your honor?”

“Don’t know, Stanislaw. It’s their choice. They’re mounted, we’re not. They’ll pick the time and place.”

Stanislaw reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of dried applies, offering one to Vincent, who nodded his thanks.

“As long as we got St. Katrina with us”—he reached back and affectionately patted their ironclad—“we’ll give them a hell of a fight.”

“You like your ironclad?”

“Oh, at first no, your honor. I remember when you Yankees first came.” He chuckled softly. “I thought you were devils the first time I saw the steam makers, the locomotive you made that went from your fort up to Suzdal.”

“Seems like an eternity ago.” Vincent smiled.

“Then I was drafted to work laying track to Kev, and from there on to Roum. That was work.”

“What did you do before we came?”

“I was gardener for the wife of my boyar Garvilla.”

The name somehow registered. One of the boyars who had tried to overthrow the government before the Merki came, Vincent realized.

“Oh, he was a devil he was, but his lady wasn’t. She liked the flowers I grew.”

He sighed, and Vincent realized that yesterday he had noticed fresh wildflowers tied in a bundle next to where Stanislaw sat down below.

“Well, there was no room for flower growers and gardeners in this new world you Yankees made. Machines and more machines. So I realized that I, Stanislaw, could either lay rails or drive the machine that rode them. I had a nephew who was the driver of one of your new locomotives, and I got him to let me be his fireman. I learned and soon had my own machine to drive.”

He sighed.

“I named her
St. Katrina
, same as our big machine of war here. She is the patron saint of gardens. She protected me.” He shook his head.

“Though I wish she’d protected me more and kept me with my steam engine on rails rather than this black thing on wheels that crawls around on the ground.”

“Why didn’t you stay with the locomotives?”

“Ah, my nephew. He went with these machines and said I was lucky and wanted me with him. He said it would be glorious and perhaps some woman would look upon me with favor in my new black uniform, and I’d finally have a wife. Foolish me, I went.”

Vincent tried not to smile for Stanislaw was decidedly ugly—head far too big for his body, a vast misshapen lump for a nose, and he was completely bald. And yet, there was a gentleness to his smile, a certain quiet sparkle in his eyes that was touching.

“I was at Rocky Hill, you know,” Stanislaw announced proudly, “in one of the older machines that ate coal rather than the burning oil. That was a good fight.”

Vincent said nothing. There was the flash memory of the charge, falling, falling away, seeing the flag bearer staggering past, all of it lost in smoke and fire.

“You were brave beyond the brave there, your honor.” Vincent, embarrassed, said nothing.

“Were you at Capua?” Vincent finally asked.

' “No, your honor. Well yes, but I was in the second regiment, the one that didn’t go in. Bless Saint Katrina for protecting me,” and as he spoke he grasped a small icon which dangled from a chain around his neck, and holding the image of the saint, he crossed himself three times. “And how do you feel about this?” Vincent asked.

“I go where ordered, your honor.”

“No. We’re in this together. How do you feel?”

“You Yankees.” Stanislaw chuckled. “Asking a peasant like me.”

“You are a citizen of the Republic,” Vincent said slowly. “You have a right to your opinion.”

Stanislaw smiled. “When this war is over, then I will be a citizen, but now I am a soldier who follows orders. That is what my nephew says.”

“You’re not happy with it?” Vincent pressed.

“Well, your honor. We seem to be driving around to nowhere. The Bantag, the Tugars, all the riders. They own the steppes. They are of the horse, we are not. I wish we could just let them have the steppes and they agree to leave us alone.”

“We know that can’t be,” Vincent replied.

“Yes, yes, I know. If wishes came true, mice would ride on cats.”

Stanislaw picked up Vincent’s empty tin cup, retreated through the open door of his ironclad. The encampment was now swarming with activity, the buzz of ten thousand men echoing, sergeants barking orders, snatches of conversation drifting; someone was even playing a fife, another an instrument that sounded hauntingly like a banjo. He was glad he had ordered that the march would start late, an hour after sunrise. It gave the men time to relax just a bit longer and have a solid breakfast before moving on.