Terrible Swift Sword (15 page)

Andrew nodded.

"Give yourself a little more time to heal, get some experience with Hans, and we'll see about a field assignment in a couple of months."

"Thank you, sir!" The boy grinned with delight.

He backed away, saluted again, and then dashed off to where a girl, dressed in a simple peasant dress, waited in the shadows.

Andrew grinned as the two disappeared, arms around each other, the boy talking with animated excitement.

"Shall we go back to our place for some tea?" Kathleen asked. She paused for a moment to look over at Pat, who stood before them, looking rather ridiculous with streaks of makeup smeared into his red beard. Bob Fletcher stood behind him, still in a dress, grinning over his performance.

"And maybe a bit of the cruel," she whispered in a lilting voice, while giving Pat a conspiratorial wink.

"Now, Kathleen?" Emil interjected.

"Good heavens, Emil, too much abstinence might kill the poor suffering man."

" 'Tis true," Pat groaned. "I need a fortifier after the humiliations I suffered on the stage."

"Well, you volunteered for it," Emil replied. "Chief of Artillery behaving such."

"All in good fun," Kal said approvingly. "It shows none of us are too caught by our titles. Anyhow, a touch of the cruel, as you say, sounds most welcome."

The party stepped around to the front of the theater, exchanging pleasantries with the last of the crowd who had lingered to offer their best wishes and congratulations on the performance.

The theater was something new to the Rus, who before the arrival of the Yankees were more used to the occasional novelty acts and troupes of singers in the great square during market days, or to morality plays, usually of a somber nature, performed on the steps of the cathedral.

The love of Shakespeare, and parodies of him, of minstrel-styled shows, melodramas of the most overwrought kind with such titles as
Her Love Betrayed, or the Boyar and the Peasant Girl,
all interspersed with some of the more traditional Rus singing, was yet another touch of Yankee culture, translated and blended into Rus society. Two privates from the 44th New York, one of whom had briefly worked with a Traveling Tom show, had formed the theater group, obtaining backing to build a five hundred seat auditorium which was filled nearly every night.

Rivals had already opened a second theater near the end of last year on the north side of town, scrounging up leftover lumber and opening with a successful thirty-night run of
The Merchant of Venice,
translated into Rus and retitled
The Boyar of Novrod,
with Shylock recast as a former boyar. Though John had complained about the disappearance of some necessary resources and the waste of time spent on the theater, Andrew had wholeheartedly approved of the venture, suspecting that if anything it was John's Methodist sensibilities that were far more offended. He had agreed with John, though, that for now
Julius Caesar
would have to be censored for diplomatic reasons, as far as Marcus and the Roum were concerned.

Leaving the theater the group walked up the hill, following the last of the crowd. Andrew looked heavenward, soaking in the lingering warmth and enjoying the stars overhead. For an entire day he had managed to forget the pressure. There was really not much more he could do. The army was in place, the pickets fifty miles forward in the passes. This evening represented one final brief moment away, the first time home since the typhoid bout. The group laughed gaily about Pat's performance, the artilleryman joining in the fun with several rude comments about Bob.

They walked toward the village green, drifting through the shadows. Many of the homes facing the square were still lit. In the center of the square, under the octagonal band shell, the band was playing a quadrille and couples swayed in the shadows. There had been a review and open-air ball for the men of the 35th and 44th and their ladies, which had continued even while the theater performance had gone on. Couples passed them in the shadows, with soft voices whispering, some in Rus, a few in Latin or Carthinian, others in English, some in a blending of all four.

The band struck up a quickstep and the couples, many not sure of the steps, laughed and danced about the shell, their shadows flickering in the torchlight.

Andrew stopped to watch them.

"Gentlemen, the house is open," Kathleen said quietly, "Pat, you know where the vodka's hidden."

"And be quiet," Kal interjected, "or my Ludmilla will come storming down on the lot of you for waking the baby."

Pat bowed a thank-you to Kathleen, and the small group who had fallen in with them crossed the green, weaving their way through the dancers.

"Reminds me of '64," Kathleen said, watching the dancers with a wistful smile.

"How's that?" Andrew asked.

"Second Army Corps held a ball on Washington's Birthday. It was a poignant, wonderful night, all the fine young officers and their ladies. They danced the night away, a final night of romance."

She paused.

"And three months later there was the Wilderness."

"Let's not think about it now," Andrew whispered.

She looked up at him and smiled.

"No, let's not."

He extended his hand, and she drifted into his embrace as the music shifted back to a waltz.

He had always felt clumsy when dancing, and yet for this moment they seemed to flow together, drifting across the green with all the young soldiers, the old veterans, the smiling girls shining with love, the wives with tears in their eyes. All seemed to know, yet all were caught, at least for that moment, in the dream that time would stand still for them, that the dance would go on, the music lingering forever. That this moment would become the reality, that the dream would hold off the darkness approaching from the south, at least until dawn. The couples swayed through the shadows and the band played on, its gentle sound drifting up to the stars.

Kal stood alone, watching them, holding his hat, head bowed as if in prayer, the grass beneath his feet damp with tears.

The dream had a soft, gentle quality to it, as if it floated on a breeze-wafted cloud. The field was green, the rich intensity of green that came only in the warmth of high spring, when every breath was ladened with the scent of life. It seemed to stretch on forever, a floating sea of green, the high stalks of grass wavering, shifting their color as the shadows of clouds drifted past like whitecaps flowing across a windswept ocean.

Somehow she felt aware that, after all, it was a dream. Curious, it wasn't here. No, this wasn
't
Valennia, it was back in the other world, back on Earth. She felt herself young, a girl again, fifteen. That's where she had seen this, out in Illinois, her father engineering the building of the rail line to Galena, the prairie a vast ocean marching to the far horizon.

If she but turned around he would be behind her, smiling his sad, distant smile. She could smell his tobacco, the faint scent of his afternoon brandy.

God, it was so beautiful, so unlike the stuffy closeness of Boston.

Is this a dream? It had to be. Daddy was dead, fifteen years was half a lifetime ago, but it all felt so real at this moment.

Why am I doing this, why am I dreaming this?

"Beautiful, is it not, Kathy darlin'."

She felt a cold shiver—it was Daddy's voice, and tears instantly clouded her vision.

"It's a dream," she whispered.

"Is it?" He laughed softly.

Now she remembered. This was her spot, the low knoll that she had found after Mama had died. It was where she was buried, just outside of town. She'd come here everyday to sit by her grave, to talk to her, to look out across the endless prairie, to find some comfort—and now she was back.

"I'm scared, Dado." Even as she spoke she heard her voice as that of a young girl, slipping into a touch of the brogue she had worked so hard to press out.

"You have every right to be scared," he whispered. She felt the gentle touch of a hand on her cheek, and she started to tremble.

"You're dead." She choked on the words.

"Not really, not for my Kathy darlin'. Nothing can part that cord, here or there. I'm always with you, Kathy my angel."

Without looking back she reached behind, and felt his hand touch hers.

The wind swept past, sighing, the high grass rustling, golden flowers filling the air with cool scent.

"You're crying."

The voice was gentle, different, as if from another land.

She felt the hand squeeze lightly and then, as if made of gossamer, the fabric of her dreams unraveled.

A soft ticking echoed. Insistent voices rushed in. A distant boom rattled, window panes shaking.

With a start she sat up, and there was a single arm around her shoulders. Another boom snapped, followed by two more, closer. There were the scents of wool, horse, and leather, and a voice whispered in her ear, "It's all right, darling, just another air attack on the factories."

A high, insistent cry now brought her fully awake. Andrew was sitting on the bed, his arm around her, rocking her back and forth. He was home, he had been since yesterday. There was the dance last night, they had danced the night away, and then afterwards . . . That's why she was sleeping now, in late morning. It had been such a long, wonderful night, the first time in nearly two months.

The cry was now a drawn-out yell for attention, and through her tears she saw Maddie sitting up on the bed beside her, scared by the bombing and the artillery fire sending up a reply, arms outstretched to be held. They must have fallen asleep together after Andrew had left.

The dream? She knew there had been a dream, but it was already fading even as she tried to cling to it. Reaching out, she pulled Maddie into her lap, so that all three of them were together.

Andrew wrinkled his nose slightly.

"I think our angel needs a change," he said quietly.

"You mean it's time for me to change her," she replied teasingly, even as she loosened her gown to allow the child to nurse, an action that elicited an immediate sigh of contentment and silence.

"We'll take care of it later," Andrew said, shifting closer and cradling the two in his lap.

Even as she continued to nurse Maddie reached up and clasped one of her father's golden uniform buttons in her hand, round eyes shifting from Kathy to him.

The booming continued, and just on the edge of hearing one could make out the low insistent humming of the airships, as they started to swing back over the city. Nervously, Kathleen looked toward the window, but Andrew reassured her.

"Eight of them, this time. Don't worry, they're after the mills and the rail bridge."

He kissed her lightly on the forehead and she snuggled back into his lap, cradling Maddie in her arms.

"Still early in the morning?" she sighed.

"Only nine."

She had a half-memory of his leaving before dawn, tucking Maddie in alongside of her, promising to be back by dark.

Tense, she looked up into his eyes.

"I'm going back up to the front in an hour."

She didn't want to ask, there had been the promise of three days. She didn't want to believe any of it, that it would never happen, that the darkness would turn away and disappear, far out into the flowing steppes.

"It's started," Andrew whispered.

"You're getting better at it, sir."

Chuck Ferguson grimaced, knowing that the locomotive engineer's compliment was a lie. Somehow he had never quite mastered the technique of playing out a song on the steam whistle. The engineer took hold of the cord, and with the skill of a virtuoso tapped out the opening bars of "Dixie." Chuck smiled at the obvious delight the old Novrodian experienced at showing off his ability. It was a strange little incongruity, but the unofficial anthem of the rebellion was far catchier and easier to play than the "Battle Hymn." Each of the engineers had his own signature tune; the pious a hymn, the ribald an obscene ditty, the patriotic one of the war songs carried over by the Yankees. Mina had long since given up his argument about each playing of a tune wasting
x
amount of steam, which equaled so many hundreds of cords of wood a year.

The pounding clatter of the tracks changed in tone and, stepping to the side of the cab, Chuck leaned out. The border marker signifying the entry into Roum territory shot past, and they were on the trestle. Most people found the crossing of the Sangros to be somewhat unnerving, the four-hundred-foot-long trestle shuddering beneath them as the engine and cars behind it thundered across. But he gloried in it.

The damn thing was a wonder—six hundred miles of track between Roum and Suzdal, six major rivers, dozens of smaller tributaries, the fifteen-hundred-foot ridge of the White Hills beyond Kev, and the long, undulating roll of the open steppes beyond that, all the way here to Hispania on the western border of the Roum. All of it by his design.

It was as if God had given him a vast world to play with, to let his imagination build whatever it desired. Granted, it was all bent to the war effort, ever since that terrible day when the Tugar Namer of Time had arrived before the gates of old Fort Lincoln, revealing to all of them the dark truth of what this world represented.

He had given them the machines to beat them, and by damn he would do it again. But beyond that he could not contain the inner joy the power given unto him had provided. Bill Webster had created the financial system and beginnings of capitalism, Gates his paper and books, Fletcher the food supply, and Mina ran all of them as chief of logistics, but, damn it,
he
had the machines.

"Someday we'll run this railroad clean around the world," Chuck announced, looking back at the engineer.

"I heard there's mountains east of here so tall they reach to the stars," the Novrodian said quietly.

"You'll see 'em. By god, we'll blast a tunnel right through them."

"Tunnel?"

Chuck smiled and shook his head, then slapped the engineer on the back.

"A hole under the ground!" We won't go
over
the mountains, we'll go
under
them!"