Never Sound Retreat (18 page)

Pat, roaring like a demon gone berserk, jumped up and down, slapping the engineer on the back, while from out of the woods where the "panic-stricken" men had run, there came a wild, gleeful cheering, the men coming out of the woods, whooping and hollering as if a great practical joke had been played.

All firing from the Bantag side ceased for a moment as the roar of the explosion echoed across the river valley. Hundreds of bodies littered the river. The few who survived the explosion cried pitifully for help, and snipers along the bank opened up on them so that geysers of water snapped around their bobbing forms until the foaming water turned pink.

On the road leading to the bridge a dark column ground to a halt, and stood, dumbstruck by the destruction. The guns along the western shore, which had fallen silent, fired as if triggered by a single hand, sweeping down scores of Bantag as the far shore disappeared again in a blanket of exploding shells.

"Effective but rather perverse," Andrew announced.

"Isn't it though. Figured the beggars would come on like that, so we cooked up a little surprise to egg them on. A thousand—I reckon we got us a thousand cooked sons of bitches out there."

"Damn how we hate each other," Andrew whispered.

"They'd have done the same to us, Andrew. Only worse."

"I know, damn them."

"They thought they had us on the run. This will make them move more cautiously."

The shelling from the far shore resumed and Pat ducked low, motioning Andrew to follow him into his dugout.

"I think it's safe to say that little show deserves a drink," Pat announced. Andrew looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Andrew, me darlin', I've fought a withdrawal for ten days and nights, been flanked twice, and got out with me breeches still on. I think I deserve this, and so do you."

Andrew smiled and motioned for him to pass a cup over.

"To Vincent Hawthorne," Pat announced.

"Why him?"

" 'Cause if we're going to get our asses out of here, that laddie better do his job."

Andrew could not help but laugh as he raised his glass of vodka and downed it.

"So how long before they're across?" Andrew asked.

"Already are, thirty miles north of here. No way we could stop them all along the river above the falls—too damn many fords. Was hoping the rain would just keep coming and bring the river up to a flood. What about the trains?"

"Enough to move Eleventh Corps out by early afternoon and Third tomorrow morning. Two days later we'll get the rest of you out."

Pat nodded, not bothering to ask for approval as he poured another drink for himself.

"Any word from Hans? Is he moving north?"

"Nothing." Andrew sighed. "We're all on our own."

A scattering of dust sifted down as a shell impacted on top of the bunker.

"In five days we need to counterattack," Andrew said, looking at the layer of dust that had collected on the top of his drink. Swirling the cup around, he gulped the rest down anyhow.

"Three days, Pat, I want Third and Eleventh up in position for a breakout against Ha'ark, and First and Ninth corps coming in behind them. It's all or nothing; otherwise, we'll never get through."

He could only hope that Hans realized the same thing and knew that such a thought was foolish. If anyone was going to get out, it would be Hans.

Filled with a cold bitter rage, Jurak watched as the bodies in the river were slowly carried away by the current, some of them rolling end over end in the water, others sinking, disappearing into the muddy depths. Up until this time the war against the humans was, to him, like any other war. You had objectives you fought for, you advanced, and you killed rather than be killed. Unlike Ha'ark, he had never really hated them or even feared them, until this moment.

It was a war of annihilation. Nothing less would satisfy him than the death and the devouring of the red-haired commander who had stood on the other side of the river, capering with joy as his warriors were burned alive, standing beside one-armed Keane, who had so obviously planned the murderous, dishonorable deaths.

"I want the airships up now, not tomorrow, now!"

Ha'ark, barely able to contain his rage, stared coldly at Bakkth, his airship commander.

"Sire, you can rage all you want, but it is a question of the winds. The storm of the last three days smashed four of our ships on the ground. We have no hangars for them here." As he spoke he pointed to the shallow valley east of Junction City.

The wreckage of four of his precious ships lay in twisted heaps. Two of the remaining six airships that came north had sustained lesser damage, one with a wing sheared off.

"I have no news of what Schuder's army is doing in the south," Ha'ark snapped. "Only conflicting reports. The news I'm getting from Jurak on the eastern front must come by sea and is more than a day old by the time it arrives. I don't know if my reinforcements are coming up or how much strength the humans have deployed to the west. And you dare to tell me you don't want to risk flying?"

"Ha'ark, we could lose all of them on takeoff. The wind is blowing across the valley, not down it. These are not all-weather jets from our home world, Ha'ark, they're lighter-than-air ships with wings slapped on them. It takes several minutes just to get them up to speed, and in that time they'll be slammed into the other side of the valley."

"You selected it as the place for your aerodrome."

"Because it was the most sheltered place I could find at the moment. The Yankees were not so considerate as to leave an airship base for us in all this wreckage."

Ha'ark stared coldly at his old companion, sensing the slightest note of rebuke in his tone.

"Fly now. First ship south to find out what Schuder is doing, the second and third west to see what they are deploying and then to push on and cut telegraph lines and destroy bridges, fourth to Jurak so I know if they have crossed the river yet or not."

Bakkth could see that there was no hope of arguing. Nodding, he started back to where his pilots waited expectantly.

"You don't go first, Bakkth," Ha'ark announced.

"I'm the best pilot of the lot; if I don't make it, then do me a favor and keep the others on the ground."

There was a time when he felt Bakkth was almost a friend, back before the Tunnel of Light. He nodded in agreement, suddenly filled with a desire to have one of his companions from the other world simply disappear. For after all, Bakkth knew him from the before time, he knew the secrets, the weaknesses, and would never fully accept the remade Ha'ark who was now the "Redeemer."

Ground crews, which had come up with the invasion fleet, had already heated the engines up with the hope that the wind would abate. Waving for his crew, Bakkth trotted over to his airship and climbed into the pilot's chair, followed by his observer. He motioned for the tail gunner to stand back.

Ha'ark wanted to order him into the ship anyway, there was always the chance that Keane might very well have new airships moving up, but decided to defer to Bakkth's judgment. The saved weight might be the crucial difference.

With both engines turning over and revving up, the ground crew untied the cables holding the airship, a dozen of them moving to the upwind side to hold on to the wing.

Bakkth slammed the throttles forward, the low whir of the engines shifting upward into a steady high-pitched hum. The airship lumbered down the valley, the ground crew trotting alongside the upwind wing, holding on to it in order to prevent the airship from tipping up.

Ha'ark watched, feeling as if he was witnessing something from ancient history rather than his own world as the ungainly craft slowly continued down the valley, laboriously gaining speed. The slowest of the ground crew started to fall behind, letting go on the wing. Bakkth waved from the cockpit and the rest of the crew released, the wing began to tilt up from the crosswind, but Bakkth had enough forward velocity so that the aileron provided sufficient counterthrust. The airship crept off the ground, Bakkth feeding in full rudder, but even as he turned the crosswind started to drive the ship across the narrow valley.

Ha'ark held his breath as the ship barely cleared the downwind ridgeline, skimming over the top off the hills. The second ship started off, the same routine repeated, but as it cleared the ground the upwind wing soared up, the downwind wing tearing into the turf. The ship rolled over onto its side and plowed into the ground. The airbag tore open followed by a flash of blue fire. Seconds later the two bombs on board detonated with a thunderclap roar Ha'ark looked up and saw that Bakkth, crabbing into the wind, was heading south toward the mountains, which barely showed on the horizon in thej clear morning air. "My Qar Qarth." 

It was the commander of the ground crew, down on his knees, ready to accept punishment for the destruction of yet another ship.

"Get the next one up," Ha'ark snarled. "I need to know what is happening to the west as well!"

With a flourish of his cape he stalked away. Fumbling in the pouch dangling from his belt, he pulled out a plug of tobacco and bit off a chew. He had rendered his opponents blind, cutting them off, but now he was equally blind. There was fighting in the passes to the south, reports of sighting the guidons of two different corps and the blue flag with golden chevrons, the flag of Schuder, pressing their way through the passes. Yet he sensed something amiss there.

Would Hans be so obliging as to come into the trap, or would he suspect that if the schedule worked as planned, that half an umen armed with modern weapons and ten land cruisers would soon land behind him?

Then there was Keane to the east. A prisoner had revealed that before dying, that Keane had gone back Into the trap. Why? He should have sent his young assistant in and he himself should have gone west to organize the breakout. Strange and troubling.

Ha'ark paced in silence. Three more days and the additional umens would be up. Then there would be the strike force available to crush Keane, then Hans, and from there to march in triumph on Roum and Suzdal beyond. For with two-thirds of their army destroyed, the Horde would be impossible to resist.

Sergeant Major Hans Schuder bit off a chew of tobacco and, standing up in his stirrups, made no pretense of concealing the part of his anatomy that was hurting the most as he rubbed his backside.

A rifle ball fluttered past. Ignoring the shot, he spit out a stream of tobacco juice.

"Hell of a march, Ketswana," he growled, offering the plug to his friend, who was walking beside him. Ketswana bit off a chew and nodded in agreement as his powerful jaws started to work on the plug.

"Now remember, don't swallow it this time, damn it. You look ridiculous when you puke."

The staff around them chuckled but fell silent at Ketswana's threatening gaze. A colonel from the forward part of the massive corps-sized square broke away from the line and trotted back to Hans.

"Skirmishers report they're building up in a gully up ahead."

"Well, let the bastards come on," Hans announced. More than two hours back he had seen dark columns dismounting ahead of them, the warriors appearing to leap into the ground, while their horses we driven to the rear.

Still standing in the stirrups, he raised his field glasses to study the ground around him. The mountains to the west blocked the moisture coming in off the Inland Sea so that the land reminded him of the Texas panhandle and high prairie east of the Rockies. Some rain had come from the storm of the last three days so that the parched grass seemed to explode back to life. The knee-high prairie grass was an oceanof green, wavery in the strong breeze coming out of the west. To the east, half a mile away, was the block formation of Seventh Corps. Each side of the block was made up of a brigade, with two brigades in reserve in the center. The men marched in columns of fours, the front and rear of the block moving forward in two double ranks spaced ten yards apart, so that the formation was a square nearly six hundred yards to a side.

It was cumbersome and slow-moving; they were making barely a mile and a half an hour, but no cavalry could ever hope to break through as long as the men held. Between his block, made up of Second Corps, and that of Seventh Corps, marched Eighth Corps, a half mile to the rear. If any of the three blocks ran into problems, the other two could turn and move to support.

He had once read that Marshal Ney did the same thing during the French retreat from Moscow, moving his corps in square in the final days of the retreat to the Niemen, thus holding off the hordes of Cossacks swarming around him. So far, it was working here as well, though if the Bantag ever managed to get four or five batteries in front of them, there'd be hell to pay. His own artillery was only carrying the ammunition available in its caissons, enough for one hard hour of fighting, and then that was it.

Turning his attention forward, he saw thousands of riderless horses half a mile beyond the gully, lone warriors trailing ropes attached to the reins of six to eight mounts. He studied them for a moment. It was impossible to count but there had to be at least an umen dismounted and deployed into the gully a quarter mile ahead.

A steady patter of fire was erupting forward, the skirmishers moving two hundred yards ahead of the square, stopping, kneeling in the grass, firing, reloading and then sprinting forward half a dozen yards before firing again. Puffs of smoke rippled from the gully, not enough to indicate that a Bantag formation fully armed with rifles was waiting, but enough to cause damage nevertheless.