Terrible Swift Sword (41 page)

"Motivated by personal concern, are we?"

Hulagar laughed, patting his old friend on the elbow.

"You have planned this war well, my Qarth. Tomorrow you will be across the river. In a week their great city, Suzdal, will be surrounded. In
a
month all of the cattle of Rus will either be dead or have submitted, their secrets revealed. Roum by midsummer, then the following spring turn southward, back into our old pastures, with ten times the cattle weapons of the Bantag, and they will learn their place. There is nothing to fear."

"But the unexpected. That, you said, was always my strength, to expect the unexpected. That is how we have won so far, survived you and I through two circlings, a score of great battles, a hundred skirmishes, a dozen plots to kill me. I understand the minds of those like us; I do not understand cattle minds."

"Tamuka's pet will be sure to end that concern when the time comes. If not, he knows what will happen."

"He should have acted by now."

"He will act when he acts. Our cattle spy that got out during the winter says that he is still alive. Keane had turned to him for advice, in the same way you would speak to one of us who had ridden by Keane's side for a circling."

Hulagar snorted with disdain.

"I half wish I could see Keane alive rather than as we planned. He arouses my curiosity. I would make him a pet."

"Like the other prisoners, and the one like Hinsen." "Hinsen is a traitor. We use him, we reward him, but we never trust him. When he makes a mistake he will go to the moon feast the same as Cromwell."

Jubadi yawned lazily.

"The night must be half-past," he sighed, stretching and then curling back up.

"Tomorrow will be a long day, my Qarth. Rest now."

Jubadi nodded.

"Do you believe in dreams?" Jubadi whispered, his voice drifting away.

Hulagar pulled the blanket up around his Qar Qarth's shoulders and withdrew silently, saying nothing.

Wearily climbing down from his mount, Pat muttered a sharp curse while rubbing his backside.

"Too goddamn long out of the saddle," he snapped, looking around at his old comrades from the 44th who had moved up to serve as his staff.

"A bit of the cruel, Major darlin'." Harrigan, a former gun commander of the 44th who could pass for a double of Pat with his bright red muttonchops, dismounted alongside of him. Laughing, he pulled a bottle out of his pocket.

"Throw that thing away!" Pat growled. "I'm a goddamn lieutenant general, and you, you bloody ass, are a brigadier now."

Harrigan made a mock gesture of tossing the bottle into the woods, then slipped it back into his pocket.

A Rus brigade commander came out of the gloom and saluted as Pat started up the trail.

"What do you have?" Pat asked.

"They're getting set to hit."

"Well, let's go see."

The Rus brigadier pointed up the trail and Pat followed. Both of the moons were just past full, their light illuminating the forest with twin ribbons of shadows and light. Pat had been up on the ford when both had been at full, and the shrieks of the Cartha prisoners on the other side had curdled his blood, like the wailing of banshees. Just at dawn the Merki had stood one of them up, and he had seen the flames.

He suppressed a retch at the memory, which had sent the Rus troops into a frenzy. Whoever had done it was certainly a fool, Pat realized, for if ever there was a way to harden men to fight to the death, it was the sight of that.

"Get down low," the Rus general hissed. "They're getting damn good at it. Some of them have got our captured rifles."

Enough to arm nearly two divisions' worth, Pat thought coldly. As if to add weight to the argument, Harrigan stood up for a quick look around only to dive into the pine needles when the tree alongside his head was torn open by a minie ball.

They slid into a trench lining the river bank, then moved down its length for a score of paces to the spot where a narrow sniper's slit had been carved between two logs.

Pat cautiously peered through the hole.

The river was less than a hundred yards across, and the moonlight gave a ghostly glow to the corpses, human and Merki, lining the other shore.

The sound of axes ringing on the far shore rang across the river. The mole was only thirty yards into the stream, fronted with a heavy log breastwork, and it had been torn and riddled by twelve-pound solid shot fired at near point-blank range.

Farther upstream he saw incessant flashes of light rippling up and down the shore, both sides keeping up a murderous fire.

"It's been building all night," the general said. "There must be thousands of those poor Cartha devils in the woods, getting ready to push the log rafts in to block off the stream."

Pat nodded.

"All you men up?"

"Haven't slept since early morning of yesterday."

"Get them ready."

"What kind of support do I have?"

Pat smiled.

"They're planning this for all along the line, fifty miles. I'm getting the same reports. They've got six moles like this one, and there's half a dozen other fords. The bastards are even floating across the deep sections on logs. It's all getting set to hit."

"I'm just worried about me," the brigadier said.

"It's gonna be a long day, Ilya, I'm sorry."

"A regiment by mid-morning, that's all I'm asking. Hell, general, they'll be over the river by then."

"You better not let it happen here," Pat said quietly. "You've got a good path running behind you for horses. They'll slice right through us if you fail."

"Well, thanks for the support," the brigadier hissed.

"A pleasure, general, a pleasure," Pat replied, slapping the man on the shoulder.

He paused for a moment.

"Ilya."

The Rus general looked back angrily.

"We need you to hold out as long as possible, do you understand? I'm trusting you to give it everything you've got before you allow your men to fall back."

"Thanks, I understand now." His voice was cold, as if already coming from the grave.

Pat crawled back out of the trench and started for the rear, ignoring the flurry of shots that snapped

through the trees above him. Standing up at last, he walked back to his mount.

"Poor son of a bitch doesn't stand a chance," Harrigan said in English.

"Somebody had to take the worst spot, and it's him," Pat replied, looking back sadly as he mounted. "It's the same place where the Tugars first flanked us. They were bound to remember it."

"Will you commit the reserves to him?"

"They're dug in five miles back across a gully. It's all we've got."

"Then you won't."

"Never reinforce what you know will be a defeat," Pat whispered. "We're weak all along the line, and we've got to save most of this army for Kev. We're buying time here, Harrigan. Buying time. Five miles a day through the woods at most—that's what Andrew's asking for, that's what he'll get. We need at least three corps to make any type of stand at Kev, and we need another two weeks to get everyone out. It means a lot of men are going to die in the process."

Trying to still the guilt in his heart, Pat turned his mount and galloped off.

Andrew stepped out of his headquarters into the incessant roar of battle. Overhead a shot fluttered past, detonating at the opposite side of the clearing.

A half-mile away, at the ford, the thunder was reaching a sharp crescendo. The incessant shouts of the Merki boomed above the roar of the artillery and the sharp tearing report of volleys.

Yet this was merely a demonstration.

Andrew looked down at the telegraph message from Pat.

" 'Yerganin Ford breached on half-mile front.

Recommend evacuation of enure 2nd Corps southward.' "

The Merki were across the river, on the fifteenth day of what he had hoped would be thirty.

He slumped against the side of the rail car. In less than five days, Suzdal and the heart of Rus would be overrun.

"The Navgah and Vushka have forced the river!"

Jubadi looked over at the joyful messenger and merely nodded in reply.

He stretched wearily, wishing he could take off his battle armor, but he still had to put on the show. His Qarths and umen commanders grunted their approval of the news.

"It's more than fifty miles through the woods, from the ford down to the open lands near their city of Vazima," Muzta said quietly. "It's gullies, sharp ravines, marshes. The last time they didn't have the men to cover that approach and ceded it to us. It'll be a hard fight, Jubadi."

"We are still driving them back," Vuka replied.

"And we are running low on food," Muzta said. "Horses cannot dig for roots in the forest for long. They cannot eat cattle flesh. Our mounts are thinning."

Jubadi held his hand up for silence.

"We will be in their land. Then we shall eat off of it."

"If they are still there," Tamuka replied.

Jubadi looked over at the shield-bearer.

"Not your vision again?"

"It was the
tu,
the sight; that is what I speak of, my Qar Qarth."

Vuka gave a sniff of disdain and turned his horse around, trotting off.

"We will know of this when the cloud-flyers go up again," Hulagar interjected. "They are ready, and but wait for a favorable wind."

"Get them up, once the wind changes," Jubadi snapped. "I need to know."

He looked up at the dark skies heavy with rain, and cursed.

His mount slipping through the mud, Pat reined in hard, the horse nearly collapsing.

"You've got to hold here till night!" Pat shouted, pointing with his saber to the crest of the ravine.

The men in the road nodded, moving up to the low ridge and deploying across the trail. From up over the next ridge a mud-spattered mob appeared, men staggering, running hard, many without weapons.

From beyond came a rising, taunting shout.

Pat edged his horse up to the top of the ridge.

In the gully below, men were wading through the marshy ground to either side of the trail. Spilling over the opposite ridge, barely visible in the rain and mist, came a scattering of Merki, some on horse, most on foot, waving scimitars, some carrying Springfield rifles, others with bows.

Pat had thought to keep the next line five miles back from the river, but guilt had finally won, and he had rushed a regiment forward to provide cover for Ilya's broken units.

The forest to either side echoed with shouts, the woods for miles along the river now a breach.

"Bad as the Wilderness."

He looked down to see an officer standing by his horse, gasping for breath. He wore the colonel's eagle of the Rus army, and was dressed in the faded blue of a Union uniform, his corporal stripes still visible.

"Damn near," Pat said dryly. "What happened up there?"

"My regiment was to the right of the ford. We burned off most of our ammunition just shooting the poor Cartha bastards pushing the log rafts and booms in. They jammed the river by the mole, and in minutes they started across. Thousands of them. The whole line broke, sir."

"It had to happen sooner or later," Pat replied, his voice edged with bitterness.

"We got flanked, I ordered the boys back. Got cut off a couple of times, but we pushed out. I told the men to keep going straight south, angle in towards the road, and get the hell out of here."

Pat nodded.

A volley roared down the line, slamming into the Merki on the opposite ridge and slowing their charge. The men down in the gully were running hard, coming up the slope and dragging their wounded along. The survivors came through the line and kept on going.

Pat saw the Rus general and rode up to his side.

"Tried, but they just keep coming," the man gasped.

"You did your best."

"Lost half a brigade back there. It better be worth it," the man said bitterly.

"Let's hope so," Pat replied, reaching over to offer the man a drink.

The officer took the flask, drained it down in a long gulp, and passed it back up.

"Keep your men moving south," Pat said. "Rally them at sundown, then march 'em south and out of here. Once clear of the woods head to Vyzima—a train will pick you up."

"To go where, yet another debacle?" the general snapped, and without waiting for a reply he started down the trail.

The Merki, stalled for a moment by the fresh regiment, started down the slope at a run, chanting their clan names. They hit the marshy ground and sank knee-deep, but kept sloughing forward. The woods filled with acrid smoke, bullets that missed then mark sending up geysers of mud. The enemy pushed on, climbing over their dead and relentlessly pushing in.

Straight down the trail a heavy column started in at a run, hitting the corduroy road through the low ground. The head of the column collapsed from the volleys and the rear spilled over the sides of the road and leaped past the bodies of their comrades, swarming up the slope. Bows wet from the rain snapped lazy bolts up the hill, still carrying enough power to drive into flesh. Men staggered out of the line, holding still quivering shafts.

"Wounded that can walk, take your guns with you!" Pat shouted. Far too many weapons were being lost in the leapfrog retreat through the woods.

Pat watched the action closely. The fresh regiment was giving a good account of itself, and the torn remnants of the broken units were now safely to the rear.

He rode up to the regimental commander.

"They'll be flanking you before long. Send a couple of your reserve companies back to the next ridge, then get your boys the hell out before you get overrun!"

The commander nodded without comment.

Pat turned to ride away. He had to keep reminding himself that he was not a field commander anymore. He was responsible for the entire right wing of the army, a full two corps, holding over fifty miles of woods bordering the river. If he let this corps go down, there'd be precious little to hold Kev.

He started back. A wounded Rus soldier was hobbling down the road, trailing blood from a gunshot wound to the leg. Pat reached down from his mount.