Men of War (34 page)

So it was Huan after all. He had at least guessed right on that; otherwise, this trip would be a foolish waste. He jotted down half a dozen messages on a pad of rice paper, tore them off, and handed them back to the station commander. Without a word, he looked back at his pilot.

“How are the engines?”

“My Qar Qarth, they need work.”

“Can they take us to the next stop?”

“Tonight?”

“Yes, damn all, tonight. We’ll have moonlight, just follow the damned rail line. We’re almost around the Sea. The rail line will turn southeast down toward Nippon. It’ll be open steppe soon.”

The pilot said nothing.

“Shouldn’t we wait for our escort?” He nodded toward the small dot that was now winging in from the west.

“He can catch up. Let’s be off.”

Grabbing a waterskin and satchel of dried meat offered by a trembling cattle slave, Jurak returned to the air machine and climbed in, impatiently waiting for the pilot, who checked as the last of the tins of kerosene was loaded into the fuel tank.

The pilot finally climbed back through the hatch and before it was even closed Jurak leaned over and pushed in the throttle lever, propellers stuttering up to a blur. Turning back out onto the grassy strip, they took off, clearing the towering trees at the far end of the field, heading back for a moment toward the setting sun. Banking hard over, they continued to climb, Jurak catching a glimpse of the Sea off the starboard side. Straight ahead he could see where a shallow arm of the ocean finally played out into a bay ringed with low hills, a place where a year ago the first actions of the campaign had been fought in a vain attempt to lure the Yankees eastward before the attack across the ocean came two hundred leagues to the west.

Huan. The war had leapt all the way back to there. Chaos all the way from Xi’an to Huan, half a dozen factories in enemy hands. A mob though. A disorganized mob led at best by two or three hundred trained troops. They still most likely thought that there was only one rail line. The one that ran from Huan to Xi’an. With luck they didn’t know that throughout the winter and into early summer he had pressed the completion of the second line, the one that ran northward out of Huan, up to Nippon, and then finally connected to the route the Yankees had been cutting along the northern shore of the Great Sea. And on that road, even now, he had reversed every train, over thirty of them carrying two entire umens of troops who had been sent back after the siege of Roum to refit and train with the newest weapons.

It had been his plan to keep them in reserve at Huan, an inner warning perhaps that the vast encampment areas for the old, the young, and the females, more than three hundred thousand yurts spread in a vast arc across hundreds of leagues between Huan and Nippon, were too vulnerable.

* * *

Pat O’Donald furiously shredded the paper, tearing it in half, then again, and yet again until it was nothing more than confetti. Rick Schneid, his second-in-command for the Capua Front, said nothing, having read the note over Pat’s shoulder.

Pat looked down at the telegrapher who had transcribed the note.

“That thing still operating?” Pat asked.

The boy nodded, wide-eyed and uncomprehending of the long stream of English and Gaelic imprecations that had poured out of Pat while reading the note.

Pat looked around the room; half a dozen men of the signal corps were at their telegraphs, which connected to the various commands along the river, and the main line back to Roum and Suzdal beyond.

Unholstering his revolver he grabbed the weapon by the barrel, and slammed the butt down on the receiver, smashing it to pieces.

“Well, now the son of a bitch is broken,” he snarled.

The room was silent.

Reversing the revolver he held it casually in his hand, not pointing it at the telegrapher but not quite turning it away from him either.

“If a word, if a single word of that message slips out of this room, I’m going to blame you personally,” he paused, his gaze sweeping the others, who stared at him nervously. “I’ll blame all of you. Do we understand each other?”

No one answered; there was simply nodding all around.

“I expect it’ll be at least a day before you can find a replacement for that machine.”

“Ah, yes sir, days more likely.”

“Fine.”

“Sir, I have to enter something into the official logbook.”

“Damn the logbook to hell,” he shouted, as he reached over, tore out several pages, and shredded them as well.

“A shell hit this place, damn lucky anyone got out alive, damn lucky. Do we understand each other?”

“Sir, you’re right.”

“What the hell do you mean I’m right?”

“Just that, sir.”

“Don’t ever say that, boy, or you’ll hang with me. The rest of you keep me posted. We can maybe expect action by dawn. I want to know.”

Tossing the pieces of paper on the packed-dirt floor he stalked out, tearing aside the blanket that acted as a curtain. Climbing out of the command bunker, he walked up onto the battlement and with a sigh leaned against the earthen embankment, gazing blankly at the rising moons. “You can’t keep it back forever.”

It was Schneid, coming up to join him, proffering a lit cigar, which Pat gladly accepted.

“I want good troops, old veterans we can trust,” Pat said. “Make it the First Suzdal. Be honest and tell them what’s going on. Get ’em on a train and head back up the line toward Roum. Turn command of your corps over to your second and go with them.”

“Me? Pat, we both know those bastards over there are fixing to attack, maybe as early as tomorrow. I’m needed here.”

“No, you’re needed more back there. Pick a good spot, say the bridge crossing that marshy creek about thirty miles back. That’s a good enough spot. Block the track, tear the bridge up a bit, then stop anyone who comes up that line. If the Chin ambassadors should happen to show up, arrest them or shoot them, I don’t care which it is at the moment.”

“You sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Look, Rick. The government might not send anybody up at first, other than a couple of mealymouthed senators. If they do, arrest them as well.”

“On what charge?”

“Damn all, Schneid, I don’t care. Littering, soliciting for immoral purposes, public drunkenness, I don’t give a damn.”

Leaning over, he rubbed his temples.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to blow on you.”

“It’s all right.”

“I just can’t believe that after everything we’ve been through it’s come down to this.”

“I know.”

“They might send troops, then.”

“I know that, too. I’ll leave it up to you at that point. I don’t want our people killing each other, I’m not ordering you to do that.”

“Pat, you can only keep this under wraps a day, two days at most. The army’s bound to find out. You can’t tie up every damn supply train coming this way. Word will finally get through.”

“Two days, make it three, that’s all.”

“For what?”

“If need be, I’m going to try one more time.”

“Try what?”

Pat nodded toward the east.

“To get across that damned river.”

“Don’t even think it, Pat. You have no orders.”

“Rick, everything’s breaking apart. The Republic, Andrew resigning, that last damned telegram telling us to inform the bastards on the other side of the river that we want a cease-fire. It’s all breaking apart. Well maybe it’s breaking apart over there, too. I’m willing to make one more try at it. I think they’ll hit first, then I plan to hit back with everything I have.”

“Pat, give it another day. We still don’t know what’s happening with Vincent or Hans. Maybe they’ve succeeded. If so, the bastards here will have to pull back, and that could reverse the whole political situation at home.”

Pat said nothing, staring at the rising moons.

“All right then, one more day, but then, by God, I plan to go down fighting.”

“With an army that’s no longer supposed to fight?”

Pat smiled.

“They don’t know that yet now, do they?”

“You’re talking rebellion.”

“Only you and I know that, my friend, and maybe a bit of rebellion is exactly what this country needs at this moment.”

H
e had seen cities burn before, Fredericksburg, Suzdal, Kev, Roum, and only this morning it had been Xi’an. None of his nightmares, however, had prepared Hans for the apocalypse spreading from horizon to horizon. Huan, the great city of the Chin, was dying.

It had started at dusk, a column of smoke to the east, a beacon, a warning, the column of smoke by day, and now the pillar of fire by night, and it seemed as if the world, the entire world, was doomed to a purging by flame for its sins.

Even before nightfall the first refugees had come into his advancing lines seeking refuge. No one could explain how or why they knew to head west, it was as if a primal force of nature, chained for ten thousand years had been unleashed.

While a slave he had learned something of the mystery, the Chin called it “wind words,” the strange almost supernatural way that news flowed through the slave camps, leaping like the chimera wind, bearing with it tiding of death, the choosing of who shall be next for the moon feasts, the distant whispers of wars. Before the Bantag even came to a barracks to lead someone away, already the news had arrived as “wind words.”

Hans knew that in the world of master and slave, the slave was always present, standing by every table, every entryway to a yurt, always there were slaves, mute, dumb-looking, but always listening, and from mouth to mouth the word would spread of what had been decided. That was the only explanation he now could find. “Wind words” had floated into the city of Huan, miles away from where he had landed, bearing with it news of the spreading rebellion.

Some of the refugees claimed that the Bantag garrison of Huan had started it, rounding up the appointed leaders of the city, taking them out beyond the walls to slaughter them all, that one of the leaders slew a Bantag, and thus the killing frenzy had started in the streets of the city. Others, that the Bantag were in a panic, fleeing the city, setting it aflame and sealing the gates with the intent of murdering the hundreds of thousands within. And yet others said that Cu-Han, the great ancestor god, had ridden into the city upon a winged horse and struck down Ugark, the Bantag Qarth of the city, the flaming light of his sword blinding the Bantag, and then proclaimed that the hour of liberation had come.

He suspected he knew the truth. That all the stories were true. When word arrived of the air assault on Xi’an, and the following day the strike on the factories west of Huan, the garrison commander had panicked and ordered the roundup of all the Chin who were collaborators and managed the daily running of the millions of Chin who labored as slaves. Perhaps it was merely to interrogate, maybe even to take hostages to ensure that the people did not rebel, or stupidly it was with the intent to kill them all in retaliation. As for the god, that was a fascinating irony, the similarity in names, and if at the moment it helped to feed the rebellion, so be it. But as he looked at the thousands staggering past he could see the panic as well.

Panic would feed on panic, the Bantag beginning the slaughter, and the population, after years of occupation, slavery, and terror, sensing that liberation was at hand, but now confronted by the death they had sought so long to avoid, would then turn like cornered rats, believing that the gods themselves would now come to their aid.

Sitting on the side of the wood tender of a Bantag locomotive, which was slowly pushing up the main line toward the city, he nursed the cup of tea given to him by the locomotive engineer, a Chin slave freed when they had seized the engine works adjoining the foundry where they had landed.

The tea and a dirty chunk of hard bread were reviving him, and to his amazement he had actually managed to snatch a few hours’ sleep, the first in two days. Seeing that the cup was empty, the engineer gently took it from Hans, opened a hot water vent, filled the cup, then, reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a dirty rag, scooped out a precious handful of leaves, and threw them in, swishing the contents around.

Hans nodded his thanks. Setting the cup down on the floor of the tender to let it cool a bit, Hans leaned out of the cab. A firefight was flaring up ahead, yet another walled-in compound; one of the men reported that it was a powder works. The complex stood out sharply, the burning city, still several miles off, illuminating the world. His skirmish line, deployed a half mile to either side of the tracks, was hotly engaged, beefed up now by thousands of Chin, some armed with cumbersome Bantag rifles, others with the precious pistols carried in on the aerosteamers and not left behind at Xi’an. Most were just a surging, milling horde carrying clubs, pitchforks, stoking rods, knives, heavy Bantag swords, and spears.

Right through the middle of the fighting an endless column staggered to either side of the track, women clinging to screaming infants, frightened children clutching their mothers’ skirts, old men, women, lost children, all of them confused, terrified, moving west, trying to get out of the madness.

He had detailed off a few precious troops to cull out anyone, man or woman, who seemed capable of fighting. In any other setting the gesture would be obscene, for all of them were little more than emaciated skeletons, the final dregs of the pit after years of existence in hell and the death of millions in the monthly feasts or dying to prop up the empire of the hordes.

He tried to ignore them, to let his gaze linger for even a second on a lost child, or an exhausted mother lying in the mud and surrounded by screaming children would sap his will to continue the madness. He had come to try and free them, for they had become his brothers and sisters, yet now to free them he could do nothing but watch them die, and it was destroying him.

They were all dead anyhow, he had to remind himself of that. For surely, once the Republic was destroyed, the Bantag would annihilate everyone here and then move on. Yet rather than feeling like a liberator he felt as if he was the angel of death, realizing that as he looked at the inferno enveloping the world, a hundred thousand or more must be dying this night.