Terrible Swift Sword (18 page)

"It works, damn me, it really works!" Jack shouted, kneeling down by Chuck's side.

Grinning, Chuck looked up at him.

"That was a three-hundred-pound spring scale!" Chuck replied excitedly. "It just snapped the damn thing and took off, pushing the whole contraption right off the table!"

"It's enough. We'll be flying with that thing," Jack announced.

"We've got extra propellers. Let's rig a new one on, and see how long the darn thing can run."

"It almost killed you, and you want to start it up again!" Olivia said angrily, a flash of anger showing at this boyish enthusiasm. It was a miracle no one had been killed.

He looked up into her eyes and suddenly felt rather weak, after all.

The gaze held for a long moment until, from the corner of his eye, he saw a young boy from the telegraph office standing in the smoke-filled room, breathing hard, a scrap of paper in his hand. The boy's features were pale, his lip trembling.

Somehow there was no need to be told what the message said.

"We better get back to work," Chuck said quietly, the childlike joy of the moment before, the lingering look of Olivia, now forgotten.

"No, damn it! You've got to come in
high,
you bloody idiot!"

Vincent Hawthorne turned as the sergeant's voice boomed across the drill field. The words were in a barely understandable Latin, but he had come to learn that, no matter what era it was, or upon whatever world, a sergeant enraged at a bumbling recruit would always sound the same.

The Rus sergeant snatched the musket away from the trembling recruit, snapping the weapon down so that the blade was poised at his stomach.

"Have you ever seen a Tugar?" the sergeant roared.

"On the crosses."

Vincent winced inwardly. After the long winter and early spring the Merki corpses were now nothing more than raven-pecked remnants of sinew and bone, though still wafting with the faint odor of death. The skull of one showed the cracked holes of the six rounds he had pumped into it. Marcus had left them there as a reminder, though in his heart Vincent felt that the gaping white jaws were still echoing with a taunt, reminding him of what he had become.

"Well, damn my bloody eyes!" the sergeant snarled. "I've seen them alive"—he started to lapse back into Rus—"coming at us in the thousands, bellowing their war cries."

He paused for a moment to point dramatically to the ugly scar that had turned his features into a perpetual grimace, mouth split open far too wide, half a dozen teeth missing.

"I was with the bloody damned 5th Suzdal, got this at the Battle of the Pass I did, so, damn my eyes, I know what I'm talkin' about!"

He turned a malevolent gaze on the company.

"They'll come at you like a wall, a mountain, unstoppable except for this!" he cried, and he held the bayonet point up.

The recruits had not understood a word he'd said, but none dared to challenge him.

"Come in too low," he shouted, thrusting the bayonet in toward a recruit, who jumped back, "and you'll go right under their balls.

"Remember, they're eight, nine feet high. Look out for the downward strike of their sword. But they're a bit slower than us, so wait for that stroke. Dodge the strike, and before he can recover come in low and then thrust upwards, up high. Stab high"—he shifted back into a thick Latin—"up into their belly, which will be staring you in the face!"

"Then twist,"—he rotated the bayonet—"and withdraw!"—he yanked the gun back.

"Now again!"

He threw the musket back at the recruit, who looked humiliated and red-faced, as if ready to burst into tears.

"Perm and Kesus help him," Dimitri said softly.

"The weak ones will die," Vincent replied coldly.

"I just hope they don't drag us all down in their dying."

Somewhat startled, Dimitri looked over at Vincent as he nudged his mount into a slow canter, continuing across the drill field, moving in the direction of an entire brigade that was lined up practicing. Vincent sat erect in the saddle. He had finally learned to keep a good seat on the huge horse, though he still looked almost childlike from behind: narrow shoulders, five and a half feet in height, and not much above a hundred pounds.

It was a fair, cool morning, with a promise of true warmth by afternoon, a faint breeze picking up out of the west, rolling in from the open steppe. A whistle cut through the air, causing Vincent to turn in his saddle and look back over his shoulder to watch another train, pulling up out of the siding located just south of the city walls.

At the sight of his drawn features, Dimitri realized there was nothing childlike about the twenty-two-year-old general anymore, or if there was, it was deeply hidden. His once gentle face was cold, set with a hard stare, his gray-blue eyes distant, as if chiseled from ice. He had allowed a thin narrow beard to grow (more of a goatee that was trimmed to a point), matched by the tracing of a mustache. He no longer wore the old regulation kepi of the 35th, having replaced it with what he called a "hardee hat": wide brimmed and black, with a high crown. The hat shaded his features, giving him a distant air. Affixed to its center were two gold stars, matching the stars on the shoulder of his dark blue officer's jacket, trimmed with a double row of gold buttons. After taking command of the 5th, he had switched to the loose high-collared white tunic and canvas trousers of the Rus infantry. But that was gone now. He was the general of two corps in training, and he had the look of a professional killer in his eyes. He had changed.

"Twenty-third Roum," Dimitri said quietly, turning in his saddle to look at the train, "moving up to join 4th Corps reserve at Suzdal."

Vincent nodded absently. Five hundred good troops for the crucible of the Potomac front.

Vincent cursed silently, looking over at Dimitri, as if somehow the old Rus general were to blame.

"Just how the hell am I to form up two new corps, when the Colonel keeps bleeding off trained regiments as fast as I can turn them out?"

There had been a flurry of angry telegrams over the detachment of the 23rd and 25th to augment a full division of Roum troops at the front.

"You've got sixty-two other regiments in training," Dimitri reminded him, "plus the other thirty regiments of Marcus's corps."

"And less than a third of mine have weapons, and Marcus's are still ten percent under."

He shook his head, watching the train straining under its burden.

"At least the Roum have manpower to give; we're at the bottom of the barrel otherwise."

Thank God for the Roum, Vincent thought, as the train slowly gained headway up the long slope.

The manpower reserves they'd offered were finally starting to kick in. By midsummer, if we survive that long, he mused, the Roum army will outnumber the Rus, and then keep right on growing. His own 6th and 7th Corps would field twelve brigades in six divisions. Thirty-two thousand men, just under the total strength of the original Rus army that had met the Tugars.

The current Rus army fielded nearly a hundred and twenty regiments, with an average strength of five hundred, and over fifty batteries of artillery.

Every available man from sixteen to forty-five who didn't have a skill needed in industry was under arms at the front. Two of the four divisions in Suzdal were manning the factories, with a fifth detached division working on the rail lines or in the other factories. The Roum troops were forming up another division for the 4th corps, so it would have at least a standard combat size of three field divisions with a total of thirty regiments. All those not fit to serve were in the fields and factories, ready to be called as militia. It was as bad as the Confederacy— there simply wasn't anyone left. Without the Roum, the war would already be lost.

Andrew had already discussed with him the long-term political implications of that, if indeed there was a future. With the Roums having a three-to-one population advantage, the alliance had to be kept firmly intact, otherwise there could come a day when the forces of Roum might again pick up the habits of their distant ancestors and march out on the road of conquest.

But for right now the quality of Roum troops was marginal compared to the Rus who had fought through two wars, and had experience over four years of tutelage with the men of the 35th and 44th. Those who had survived were veterans.

If anything, it was Roum resources, he felt, that would decide the survival of the Republic even more than the men. Back beyond the tracks, out in the river Tiber, the new harbor area was swarming with activity. A coastal lighter had just tied in, laden down with several hundred tons of refined sulphur, all of it destined for the powder mill hidden above Hispa-nia or for the balloon works, for conversion into the sulfuric acid which, when combined with zinc, would create hydrogen gas.

Several galleys were out in the river, practicing rapid turns. In the one brief sea war fought since their arrival, galleys had been proven to be far too vulnerable to a good short-range musket volley, but they still served their purpose of harrying the Cartha coast, gathering intelligence, and picking up the thousands of refugees.

Other ships were tied in, bearing foodstuffs, hogs and cattle still on the hoof, cordage from the vast hemp fields that rose up out on the far eastern inarches, silk for the balloons taken from every noble's wardrobe, and traded for even into the southeastward lands of Khata, soon to be overrun by the Bantag.

Coal had been discovered below Capra to the south, and dirty colliers moved the precious rock up the coast, where along the east bank of the river a coking plant was converting the stone for use in the new blast furnace.

Beyond the furnace was the copper and wire-works, spinning out the desperately needed strands to fill the insatiable need for yet more telegraph lines and the millions of percussion caps required for muskets and shells. Next to that stood a tanning yard for accoutrements: belts, cartridge boxes, shoes, saddles, harnesses, right down to the patches that held the flints for the old muskets still in circulation. In Hispania, back up the line, mercury was being processed for the fuses and percussion caps, and a reserve rail maintenance shed had gone up, complete with all the tools required for the repair and overhaul of locomotives and rolling stock. In Cilcia, the fine sands along the beaches had been found to be superb for the making of field glasses, and next to that a bottle-making plant had quickly risen. The containers would be filled with wine from the presses, and preserved fruits and condensed milk to be used for the sick and wounded.

Inland, at Brindisia and Caprium, the oil wells were turning out several barrels of refined coal oil a day to power the airships, plus other products such as lubricant for the locomotives and the dangerously explosive benzene.

The locomotive drifted past, following the path laid out along the Appia Way, climbing slowly up over the last series of hills and then gaining speed as it clicked its way northwestward toward Hispania, then on to the Republic of Rus beyond.

Vincent looked at the forlorn souls sitting in the boxcars and hunched down atop supplies lashed to the flatcars. They looked smart enough, uniformed in white calf-length trousers and hobnailed sandals, with leather thongs crosshatching up to the knee. Their tunics, patterned on the Union Army sack coat, were dyed a dark tan—almost like Confederate butternut, Vincent thought—and their felt hats were broadbrimmed and the same color as the tunics. Some of the officers still sported the uniform of the old legion that had long since been disbanded, their burnished breastplates and crested helmets standing out as a strange incongruity for a modern army. Some of the men were wearing packs, but the majority were burdened down with the ubiquitous horse-collar blanket roll slung over the left shoulder, adding to their appearance as rebel troops. The regiment was one of the few Roum units armed with Springfield rifles, a fact which made him curse inwardly. It'd been hell getting the best weapons, and now they were being pulled out of his hands.

Unlike the Rus, they would not be fighting on their home soil, with an enemy at the gate. These men were traveling to a distant land over six hundred miles away. Though all the Roum knew what would happen to them if Rus should fall, still he wondered how well these men would fight when the time came and the first Merki charge came screaming in.

A memory flashed into his head for a moment: He was again holding the pass while the rest of the army retreated, a wall of Tugars on foot advancing at the run, chanting their deep guttural cries, the nargas shrieking, drums rolling, human skull and horse-tail standards held high. Blades flashing in the mist and smoke, the thunder of their advance like an approaching storm.

He looked back at a line of recruits, practicing to form into regimental square, and sergeants, some of them Roum but most of them Rus, bellowing out commands. The sun was out, breaking through the spring morning mist—a fine gentle day, in such contrast to the dark thoughts that clouded his soul.

They looked good enough, for men who had been at it for several months. How would they react when death was racing down at two hundred yards a minute?

"Did we ever look like that?" Dimitri asked, as if reading Vincent's thoughts.

Dimitri smiled softly. "Most of us couldn't tell our left from our right back when the old 5th was first formed. So you tied hay to one foot, and straw to the other. Hayfoot, strawfoot, that's how you drilled us."

"It's hard to remember now," Vincent said quietly.

"And your own Yankees, did they ever look like that?" Dimitri said, looking over at Vincent like a father who, all so quietly, was seeking to reassure a nervous son.

Vincent let a thin smile crack his features. God, how long ago had it been? The time before was actually starting to blur a bit. Yes, he must have looked like that once, a scared child, unsteady with amusket, not even sure if he could shoot, let alone stab someone.

The first killing? Novrod, the guard on the wall when he escaped. Funny, they were allies now, part of the same Republic.

The riot in the square was next, then the wars and blowing the dam. Fifty thousand had he killed with that? Maybe seventy or eighty. The morning after you could walk across the Neiper on Tugar corpses, the river was so thickly choked. The stench of death had hung in the air for weeks, and the banks of the river were still littered with skeletons.