Terrible Swift Sword (10 page)

"Our patrols down through the narrows in front of Cartha show they have moved at best one umen, maybe two, across the channel," Hamilcar said through his translator.

"Give me another year," Chuck interjected, "and they'll regret it."

Andrew nodded and smiled. What he wouldn't give for another year, or another five years. But then it was always that way, there was never enough time.

"We can expect at least some sort of feign run up the cast side of the Inland Sea towards Roum. Fifth corps will stay in Roum, while the 4th is positioned in Rus as our strategic reserve. When 6th and 7th Corps under Vincent are fully mobilized in Roum, we'll shift them as need be. Undoubtedly they'll feign in that direction at the very least, but I want to focus on what we do here. For the last six months we've invested all our strength in fortifying
this
line."

Andrew looked back at Hans.

"I'm merely saying it as I see it," he replied sharply. "And I'm telling you that when they hit they'll come at us with everything. They're under time pressure, just as we are. That Horde is huge--it's a vast eating machine of horses and of Merki and if they stop they'll starve to death. John, what's the quartering ability of horses for this type of land?"

"Well, as near as we can figure," John said quietly, "it comes out to something like twenty-five acres to support one horse for a year on grassland. Now that's for year-round, mind you. In late spring you could most likely graze twenty of them on an acre for a day or two, but you'd need a good two weeks or more before you could use that again. So, doing some rough figuring, the settled area of Rus is about the size of Maine, about thirty thousand square miles or so. It could barely see the Merki through a season—and that's just for the horses, mind you, as to what they eat." He fell quiet.

"The Tugar Horde was a third their size," Hans said quietly, "and starvation was getting to them as well by the time the siege ended, and there was a hell of a lot of Rus territory where they controlled the harvest. Jubadi is no fool, we've seen that already. He knows he'll have to strike and break us before summer even sets in, and he needs to get all the way to Roum before fall and break them as well, otherwise he's finished.

"That's why I'm worried. I hate it when I'm fighting an enemy who might be every bit as desperate as I am, or more so. The rebs showed us that: Those bastards were kicked into the ground, and they still kept coming back for more."

"We can't forget that we are desperate," Hans said quietly, "but never forget that Jubadi knows us—Muzta and the Tugars did not. He's desperate, and he'll not make the same mistakes."

Andrew sat back in his chair, looking around the room, which was quiet except for the clattering of the telegraph key in the next room.

Too much had gone into their bid to fight it out here. To pull up now would shatter months of careful planning, and perhaps shatter the morale of the Rus as well, who were faced with the prospect of lighting a third war in as many years on their own territory. If the position here failed, Merki siege guns would be on the Neiper within the week, ready to reduce Suzdal. He would have to hazard the fight on the Potomac line, and yet as he looked at his old mentor he had a gut-coiling sense that the old man was right. No matter what they did, chances were they would lose.

"We fight it out here as planned," Andrew said quietly.

Hans looked at him and nodded, a sad smile lighting his features, as if a sentence had been pronounced that he had known all along was inevitable.

"Deployment will stand as before," Andrew said, and he could see a sigh of relief from John, who had based months of logistical planning on the Potomac defense. Pat shifted noisily in his chair.

" 'Chief of Artillery' sounds mighty grand," Pat sniffed, "but bejesus, Andrew, that sticks me back in Suzdal with the reserves."

"I need you back there, Pat. We've got Schneid commanding 1st Corps as our front line reserve, Barry in command of 2nd here on our left flank, and Tim Kindred commanding the 3rd Corps on the right flank. They're all old 35th men. Alexi Alexandrovich is in command of the 4th, back as mobile reserve. He's good, but I want you to keep an eye on him nevertheless. As Chief of Artillery you'll still hold higher rank. Fifth corps is under Marcus and back in Roum, and when 6th comes on line under Hawthorne in Roum it'll go wherever the action is, chances are to move under you."

"We've got two full battalions, twelve batteries assigned to each corps," Hans interjected, "with six battalions, over a hundred and fifty guns in reserve, under your direct command. What the hell more could an artilleryman ask for?"

"To be at the front where the action will be," Pat complained.

"The front may be in your lap soon enough," Hans said quietly.

"Mr. Bullfinch, what's the latest from you?" Andrew asked, finally breaking the uneasy spell.

The young admiral brightened.

"Fifteen ironclads, ten mounting two guns, the other five with four guns, ready for action, sir, along with over a hundred galleys."

"And the
Oqunquit?"

His bright features dimmed.

"She might serve as a floating battery, sir, but it
'll
be months before you see her under steam again. Getting her side blown in and then rolling over made a mess out of her. We're still working on the boilers, but without Cromwell, or his old engineers, I'll have to admit they're damn near a mystery to me."

"Chuck?" Andrew asked hopefully.

"Complex pieces of machinery, sir. I'd have to spend some time on them, both of the boilers were cracked when we brought her back up. There's a lot inside that ship we just don't have the tools for yet."

"Do what you can, Mr. Bullfinch," Andrew said quietly.

Andrew sighed as he looked over at Emil.

"Making chloroform as fast as I can. Andrew, on the conservative side a full-blown war with those beasts will create thirty or forty thousand casualties. We're low on silk—all of it had gone into the balloons. John's given priority to high-grade steel for instruments, but the best instruments in the world are useless in the hands of a bumbler. I've got to train a couple of hundred surgeons and a thousand nurses. Your Kathleen has the nurses' school well organized, and she's teaching the first batch of Roum surgeons herself. The trouble is, I had maybe twenty good people trained in field surgery by the end of the Tugar War. There's only so much I can do with books and lectures, but those men and women will have to learn the theory and test it out lor the first time in the field.

"There's only one way to teach amputation, and that's to do it. Amputations around here are precious few in peacetime, just several a month."

"Thanks to you," Casmar interjected. "That carbolic acid spray, and your sterilizing, have cut infections to a fraction of before. The dead flesh, your gangrene, is not near as common now."

Emil nodded a thanks, his pride showing. Kathleen had kept him abreast of the doctor's work, rendering a revolution to the Rus he had never thought possible. Emil's lectures in the surgery school were Idled with his new theories: Boil all instruments and bandages, wash in diluted carbolic acid between each examination or procedure, work to clean out the wound and spray yet more carbolic acid.

Though resources were stretched beyond the limit, Andrew had agreed to a drastic increase in medical assistants. Back in the old war against the rebels Emil had been the only surgeon, with one assistant for a regiment of five hundred men. He was demanding that the number of surgeons be doubled, and that three assistants serve with each unit. A special train of fifteen cars for moving wounded had been constructed, over John's near hysterical protests. Fully equipped hospitals were already in place in Suzdal, Novrod, Kev, and Roum, with tentage for a field hospital for three thousand men. Yet like everything else, this, Andrew realized, though an improvement over the old, was still not enough as far as Emil was concerned.

"Most of my people will perform their first operation in the field, where there'll be fifty others waiting for treatment. Damn it, there's no way for me to know who will be good at it and which ones will throw up and pass out the first time they see a boy brought in with his guts hanging out."

He shook his head.

"God help those poor boys who get taken into them first. . . ."

Andrew could see that the thought troubled the old doctor, who shuddered at the sight of dirty hands and had gained a reputation in the Army of the Potomac as a crank, with his constant ravings about asepsis surgery and his mentor Simmelweiss.

"We've all got to do what we can," Andrew said, leaning back in his chair and nodding a thanks as an orderly poured another cup of hot tea.

It was going to be a long day, a very long day, Each point would have to be gone over in detail. A meeting with all corps and division commanders for the Potomac front would be next, and after that the entire hundred-and-ten-mile line would be visited over the next two days for yet another survey.

He looked over at Hans. The old sergeant was lost in thought, staring out the window, which was washed with the rain now driving in from the west. A gust of wind howled outside, forcing a draft ofsmoke back down the stove chimney. For some reason which he found troubling, the smell of the wet smoke reminded him of that endless night with Suzdal in flames, and that last desperate charge across the square.

He tried to push the thought aside, remembering the letter from Kathleen.

Longingly . . .

But the memory of her would not form. No, there was the fire, and then the darkness of a river of corpses, the air thick with the smell of damp smoke and death.

Why did I think of that now? he wondered, and the thought filled him with a cold, lingering dread of what was to come.

Chapter 2

Shaduka rode low in the evening sky, its ruddy glow drifting in and out behind the high, drifting clouds, which for a moment were silhouetted like spirits caught in an ethereal glow. But then, after all, it was the Night of Spirits.

His rhythmic breathing slowed, and again he was aware of the incessant drumming that echoed from ten thousand circling fires. He let his gaze drop froom the quiet contemplation, the Shadta, the trance-walking, to Shaduka. From the high prominence, the camping place of the Golden Blood, ruling clan of the Merki Horde, he looked across the endless steppe to the west. To the far horizon, and for five days' ride beyond, the vast assemblage was spread, the low flickering of the horse-dung fires sending smoky coils, like rising ghosts, into the evening sky. And that was but a small part of their power, but ten of the sixteen clans of the Merki Horde, spread out across the vast lands of the Cartha, eating their fill, fattening their horses on the early spring grass, coiling in their strength for the campaign to come.

He turned his head, looking southeast. The dark low walls of Cartha lined the shore of the Inland Sea. For two seasons he had been encamped here and he shuddered inwardly with disgust, escaping it only to fight last season against the Rus cattle, and then to attend the meeting of the three Qar Qarths. Beyond that he had barely known a moment alone, the joy of a swift mount beneath him, the wind blowing in his face. Instead he had been trapped in their stinking buildings, choked with cattle sweat, smoke, and the blazing fires of the foundries. There was not a secret of them he did not now understand. The places of cattle were fit but for a wintering season, a place to gather one's offerings. Indeed they had corrupted his people, forcing them to remain thus in one place.

"Pak thu Barkth Nom, gasc yarg, gasc verg taff Ulma Karzorm. [From the place of our fathers, come, light, come, guardian of the night Ulma Karzorm.]"

Smiling, Tamuka rocked back and forth, turning his gaze to the east as the high singsong chant of Sarg, eldest of the shaman spirit walkers, called out the prayer of greeting to Ulma Karzorm, second light of the midnight sky. The chant echoed down the slope of the grass-covered hill, picked up and echoed yet again by the spirit walkers of the clans and then of the tribes, hundreds of voices rolling across the endless steppe.

A red glow shimmered on the horizon, spreading outward in a dark flat line, rippling across the waters of the Inland Sea. Though places of water were vaguely disquieting, a moon-rise over water still held him with its beauty; it reminded him of Barkth Nom, the lights of the night sky reflecting off the glacial walls.

The band of light expanded outward, and the chanting of Sarg was washed out by the commingling of a million voices, roaring like a storm across the steppe, the cry of exultation at the rising of the second light in its bloodred fullness. Yet he did not join in.

"Gasc yarg, gasc verg taff!"

The storm of voices soared to the heavens, tearing into his soul as if they were brands of fire. As if wretched from the very womb of the world, in a bloody birth of fire, Ulma Karzorm broke free from the horizon, its red orb rising, shimmering. His breath felt as if caught and slowing, ever slowing into one final drawn-out sigh that would stretch into eternity.

The night cry of the Horde thundered about him, yet it was but a whisper. The soul of Ulma Karzorm filled him with her bloody vision, the sky turning to liquid flame, rising higher and yet higher.

The banishing of the darkness, and he smiled at the thought. If there was to be a banishing it would be through blood, a bathing of the world in a sea of blood. The still waters of the sea appeared to him to be like an ocean of that rich-smelling liquid. He knew that the ancestors were somehow speaking unto him as the vision formed. But whose blood?

A deep thunder punctuated the drifting cries of the horde, rippling across the steppe with a steady cadence, stabbing the night with tongues of hot white explosions. Startled, he looked down, and in the plain before the city he saw the flashes string toward him. A thunderclap snapped from the top of the hill behind him, the concussion fluttering the hair at the nape of his neck. The artillery of the Horde fired in greeting to the rising of the moons of the month of Cagarv, the traditional day of stirring to ride again for another season.