Terrible Swift Sword (16 page)

The engineer looked at him with an incredulous gaze.

"Trust me," Vincent laughed. "Someday you'll point this train eastward, and a couple of months later come back straight into Suzdal. We'll ring the world with iron and call it our own."

"If we beat the Merki," the engineer said quietly.

"We'll beat 'em, I'll see to that," Vincent responded.

The fireman stepped past Vincent, swinging open the iron door into the boiler, heaving another log in, and slamming the door shut.

The hollow clattering of the trestle faded away, to be replaced by ten more solid rumbles of hard ground. The engineer eased back on the throttle, giving three quick blows to the whistle to signal the brakemen to their stations atop the swaying cars. Reached forward, and with a quick jerk of the wrist, he started the bells to clanging with the rhythmic harmony so beloved by the Rus. Even in the cab of the engine there were the little artistic touches—the handle of the throttle cast like a bear's head, the woodwork adorned with curlicues of the woodman's chisel, the three bells tuned to sound in pleasant concord.

The engineer pulled the throttle back, nodding to the fireman to tap the brake. Leaning out the side of the cabin, Ferguson saw Hispania station straight ahead, the mudbrick and limestone walls of the ancient city on the rise beyond. An entire new town had sprung up beyond the wall in the last year. It had started with rough cabins to house the labor gangs for the bridge and rail line. It was followed by machine sheds, sidings, warehouses, and a roundhouse, all of which were surrounded by a rough earthen fort thrown up during the brief Roum campaign and now strengthened as a major fallback point on the line if Roum should ever be threatened again. A line ran up north from the city, using one of the original two-and-a-half-foot engines from the first days of the MFL & S railroad, converted to the new three-and-a-half-foot gauge. The line ran past the silver mines, and from there on into the vast north woods, a dozen miles beyond to where a powder mill and Chuck's work station were now located, safely removed from the prying eyes of the Merki air machines.

With bells ringing, the engine drifted into the station. It was aswarm with activity. Smiling, Chuck nodded a farewell to the engineer and fireman and clamored down the side of the locomotive. The engineer treated them to a quick rendition of "Dixie," and the voice of the stationmaster announcing their arrival was drowned out by the song.

The station was a touch of Rus in an alien land, but no one could mistake that they were in Roum. The laborers at the water tank and wood yard wore the tunics of Roum freemen, freemen who but last summer had still been slaves.

The sign swaying from the side of the station, in Rus, English, and Latin, announced that the line had entered the territory of the state of Ruom and that all local laws were to be obeyed.

A stone pillar was set in the middle of the platform before the rough board station. The pillar was shaped to look like a bundle of faeces, atop which was the eagle, or what passed for an eagle on this world, which to Chuck seemed more like a fat turkey vulture with blue feathers.

The voices were a cacophony of Latin, mingled with shouts of Rus. Vents of steam shot out from the engine, driving the spectators back, and the engine shuddered to a halt.

Leaping down from the cab, backpack over his shoulder, Chuck waded into the crowd. At least it smelled better, he realized, and he found himself scratching, longing for a good Roum bath. Perhaps that would be one habit the Rus might learn to good use.

"Vincent!"

Smiling, Vincent saw Jack Petracci wading through the crowd, a bevy of aides pushing in behind him.

After the conference Jack had returned, while he had stayed on in Suzdal for another week to inspect some of the changes in the factories and troubleshoot a host of problems. He'd left the city with a major migraine headache as a result.

Back to the real work, Chuck thought with a smile. The thunder of the engine, the talking of shop with the engineer, had served to clear his head. Out on the steppe he had opened the machine up to what he figured was damn near forty. If the track bed had been better than the emergency rush job of last year, he could have gone even faster. The headache was gone, washed out by the pounding pistons, the hissing steam, and the wind in his face.

From out of the first car he saw the plebeian consul Julius alighting, the workers cheering at the sight of him. The diminutive, dark-eyed man smiled nervously, and his smile broadened with delight as a young woman with black, waist-length hair pushed through the crowd and leaped into his arms.

"The old boy doesn't have the style of Kal," Jack said in English. "Kal would come off with a quick joke and some pressing of the flesh, kiss a couple of babies, and then go down to the water tank and want to pitch in."

"He'll do for starters, but it's Marcus running the show," Vincent replied absently, unable to take his eyes from the lithe body of the woman who now stood by Julius's side, her arm around his waist. "These people will learn some good Yankee politicking soon enough."

Julius, seeing Chuck, motioned for him to come over. Snapping to attention, Chuck saluted.

"A wonderful machine," Julius announced.

"Thank you, sir."

"I understand the need for secrecy, but would it be possible for myself and my daughter to see what is inside the great building?"

Jack cleared his throat nervously. The workers involved in the project lived as virtual prisoners in barracks inside a separate stockade. Chuck realized there was a certain foolishness to it—the shed could contain only one thing, and what that was was an open secret, but only those people, and the workers at the powder mill, were allowed to pass beyond the silver mine on the spur line going north.

"Your train will be leaving in ten minutes, sir," Jack replied a bit too hurriedly.

"Daughter, sir?" Chuck asked.

Julius smiled at the look in the young man's eyes.

"Olivia, good sir," she whispered quietly, a smile broadening her features.

"I think it would be all right," Chuck replied nervously, and then looked over to the schedule board.

"There'll be another train into Roum in eight hours. You can run up with us, and take the afternoon train back down here to the station."

Jack sighed, but said nothing.

The girl smiled at him with delight, and he pointed to where the diminutive engine known as "The Old Waterville," the second engine ever made on this world, waited for its passengers. She was dwarfed by the
Malady
class engines running the main line from Suzdal to Roum, which could haul five times her weight at well over twice her speed. The "Waterville," her gilded letters on the cab slightly tarnished with age, held a certain nostalgic appeal for him as he walked up to her.

She seemed like nothing more than an oversized steam kettle with a tiny cab on her back, the wheels jutting out too far from the conversion from two-foot to three-and-a-half-foot gauge. She seemed more like a toy now, yet he felt a fondness for her, as if three years since she was built represented a gulf into a far less complicated age. After riding at the helm of the
Malady,
the heaviest of the MFL & S's engines, it was strange to be back to where it all had started.

The engineer, checking a bearing, turned around and saluted at Chuck's approach.

"How's she running?"

"A bit wheezy, sir, cylinders will need repacking soon, but she's still got some of her old heart." With a gloved hand he affectionately patted the side of her boiler.

Chuck looked over at the clock tower next to the station. The
Malady
let go with a long blast of her whistle, and with tolling bell started out of the station. Late passengers ran out of the station, some with a handful of bread or a bag of dried fruit, and raced down the platform to leap on board.

The
Malady
was no sooner out of the station heading on to Roum than the train waiting on the siding, pulled by the
City of Hispania,
let go with a long blast. The switchmaster looked up at the telegrapher, who leaned out of his office and hoisted up a green ball, the signal that the road west was cleared to Orono station and the Penobscot crossing a hundred miles up the line.

The switchmaster opened the way, and the engineer, leaning out of the cab, waved a salute. The engine started forward, pulling a string of fifteen boxcars packed with enough hard bread and salt-pork rations to feed the army in the field for several days.

Chuck watched with a swelling of pride. Andrew might be providing the leadership and vision to help them win this war and ensure the survival of the Republic, but without railroads they wouldn't stand a ghost of a chance against the Horde. It would be railroads that would win or lose this venture, more than any other factor.

He had heard more than one railroad man say that if the war against the rebs had started ten years earlier the Confederacy most likely would have won, that it would have been impossible to conquer
a
country bigger than all of Europe without rail lines to move and supply the armies. Well, the same stood true here: The alliance, supplies, and the mobility against horse-mounted warriors could be matched only by steam.

The train started across the Sangros, her whistle playing out the "Hymn to Kesus."

"Petrov Petrovich at the throttle," the
Waterville's
engineer announced. "He's getting good at that tune."

The engineer looked back at the clock.

"Time to leave, sir."

Chuck smiled, feeling tempted to climb up into the cab. But there was something he had suddenly found a bit more interesting than the engine, so he went back to the single passenger car, mounted behind four hopper cars loaded down with sulphur for the powder mill.

Chuck could see his dozen odd aides chomping at the bit to get his attention, ready to deluge him with hours' worth of technical questions, but for the moment his attention was focused on Olivia as
he
helped her into the narrow passenger car.

The
Waterville
started up, its boilers sounding like an angry tea kettle compared to the deep throaty roar of the
Malady.
The train started out of its siding, clicking through an intersection leading into the roundhouse, where several engines were being overhauled.

The light ten-pound rails of the spur line rode up and down over the landscape with no attempt at
grading. The earthen walls surrounding the warehouses and rail yard drifted by to the left, the ground around the fortification a mad warren of deadfalls. Originally he had wanted to put the shed inside the warehouse area, but the danger of it, and the need for some form of security, had forced him to agree with Keane that it would have to be built far beyond the town.

The bone-jarring ride carried them northward, out beyond the old cultivated fields that had supplied Hispania, past the outlying plantations of the wealthy, and onward until the distant forest seemed to be marching down out of the high hills. The high grassland started to give way to hills clumped with towering pines, which filled the air with a fresh brisk scent that Chuck found all so reminiscent of home. The track swung in along the high bluffs, looking down on the Sangros River, and the noise of its passage stirred up a flock of noisy ducks. By the thousands they took flight, and he watched them with amusement and a sense of envy as well.

Farther up the river, a long raft of logs was slowly making its way downstream to the sawmills at Hispania, the river men waving as the engine rattled past.

Another turn in the line dropped the train down into a narrow valley, across a rickety trestle, and then up a long slope covered with ancient trees. They were into the forest.

The world seemed to change in an instant—the air was cooler, damp, rich with the smells of spring, the dark gloom a welcomed change from the glare of the open steppe. Rus, just north of Suzdal, was like this, and so was Maine. He loved the open steppe, where the twin rails went straight for a hundred miles, the lines vanishing into one like the single-point perspectives he had learned to draw in school, but this felt far more like home.

The train pulled its way upward into the hills, passing occasional open stretches of fields and scatterings of trees, but ever so gradually it felt as if the forest were closing in, growing thicker and darker. The going was slow, for the track had been laid down at times in tight turns, to weave past a rough stretch of ground or stands of trees too thick to be cut down and instead simply bypassed.

Chuck kept looking over at Olivia, who cheerfully returned his somewhat longing gaze, but he found himself unable to think of anything to say. Now, if she'd only ask a question about the train, or one of his projects, but she sat across from him as if expecting the man to make the first move. So he kept a nervous silence while his staff chafed, not feeling comfortable discussing technical questions in front of a stranger, even if he were the plebeian consul. He spent long minutes in silence, looking out the open window as the forest drifted past. He'd sneak a look back at her, then gaze out the window again.

The long rise completed, the train passed a vast open area piled high with thousands of cut timbers. Julius looked at them with curiosity.

"All the bridges on the line have duplicates hidden right here," Chuck explained. "If raiders should burn a bridge, the way they did the Kennebec crossing last summer, we can move these timbers down and in a couple of days have the bridge up again—we're not going to be caught like last time. The lumber is pre-cut, numbered, and just needs to be fit in place."

"Who thought of this?" Olivia asked.

He wanted to lie, but couldn't.

"Hermann Haupt, back on the old world. Raiders kept burning our bridges, but it was said he could build them back faster than the rebs could light matches."

"Matches?"

Chuck fumbled in his pocket and pulled a lucifer out. Several of his staff looked slightly horrified.