Terrible Swift Sword (42 page)

"Get up here, damn it!" he snapped, grabbing hold of the man and pulling him up across the horse's rump. The soldier grimaced even as he tried to force a smile of thanks.

Pat urged the horse into a gallop. With mud splattering, he cantered off into the mist.

The train rolled silently into the station, the hiss of steam mingling with the light drizzle that marked the ending of the storm that had lingered for two long days and nights.

Wearily, Andrew climbed down from the car. The reception committee looked ghostlike in the fog, silhouetted by a couple of lanterns, the umbrellas above them shiny from the rain.

There was an eerie silence to it all. He had so many memories of other days at this station: the day the first train bearing citizens of Roum came in; the morning he had left here to lead the relief to their allies, or the coming back less than three weeks ago after the defeat on the Potomac. Now there was another defeat in the air. Three days ago the enemy had broken the Neiper. With the coming of morning advanced scouts most likely would be filtering out of the forest, sweeping down toward Vyzima by nightfall. The moment Merki units hit the rail line, the retreat out for everything west of Vyzima would be cut.

"I've been reading the reports," Kal said quietly, coming out of the group to shake Andrew's hand.

"They put up a hell of a fight, but I still don't think it gave us enough time," Andrew replied softly.

"Is it time to leave?" Kal asked.

Andrew nodded sadly.

"Anyone still in the city has to be out by tomorrow," Andrew said. "We're keeping a brigade at the ford till tomorrow night. Once evening comes in,
all
trains will be run back up the line to pick up the troops pulling back to Vyzima and those at the ford,

"A couple of regiments will stay in the city till the end. They'll retreat south to the beach on the inland sea, and be pulled out by Hamilcar and a couple of the ironclads. After that, the only ones to see Suzdal will be Bullfinch's flotilla, which will stay on the river for the duration.

"How did we do, John?" Andrew asked quietly, falling in with the group as they started back up the hill toward the Great Square. A shell from the far shore arched overhead, bursting in midair, followed seconds later by a volley of shots that thunder-clapped across the square and on northward into the Yankee Quarter.

Andrew tried not to worry about it.

"Only half the food out we had hoped for," John said wearily. "We must of burned tens of thousands of tons out in the barns and fields that we could have gotten out. We've got a pretty good sweep of everything west of Vyzima, but east of that, especially from Nizhil to Kev, maybe fifty thousand tons of it are still sitting there. If the Merki drive straight on east, it's all going to have to be torched."

"The people?"

"Like something out of the Bible. An exodus of them marching east, the roads choked with them. Trains overflowing. Nearly everyone west of Vyzima is out, but if they come on hard, Andrew, I'm afraid a couple of hundred thousand still might get caught.

There's a hell of a lot of people still a hundred or more miles west of Kev, and a huge cluster around Vyzima. Word didn't get to some of the out regions for days. Some of those poor bastards out in the far reaches don't believe what's happening and are refusing to leave, or got started too late. We've got a good fifty thousand along the coast. Hamilcar is running galleys to pick them up, moving them to the Kennebec, where they can walk up to the rail line and catch a train east. Some of the folks are even heading into the woods."

"Maybe they'll get lucky and survive," Kal replied.

"I tell you, it's like them stories you read about the Russians and Napoleon. Some of the peasants even plowed their crops back under before leaving. Trees are getting dropped across roads. I broke up a couple of companies of engineers and sent them to damn near every town. Showed people how to make traps, deadfalls. I saw one smart bastard catch a couple of poisonous snakes and put them in a barrel that looks like it might have food. If it doesn't kill some Merki bastard, it'll sure scare the shit out of him."

John chuckled softly, the rest of the group shaking their heads.

"We took about five hundred defective shells that hadn't been cast right and packed them with powder anyhow, set percussion fuses in them. We'll bury them in the roads as we pull back. That ought to shake them up as well."

"Good work. When they come on to Kev, anything to slow them will buy us time and hurt them further."

"Once they break through, they could sweep up to the White Hills in five, six days," John said. "If only we had a division or two of cavalry, it'd slow them down. We're tied to that single rail line. They
'll
outflank us anywhere we try to slow them."

Andrew said nothing, and after a long moment of silence John realized that his commander would not offer any information.

"Now the bad news. We're going down on engines, Ten were stripped down to give power to the factories. The first rifles were turned out today in Hispania, and we've got shot getting molded again as well. But twelve of the locomotives are just plain finished—they're back up at Hispania for overhauling, We had to tow three of them in, the others barely could make it under their own steam. We've done
a
year's worth of hauling in a month, Andrew—the tracks are ready to come apart."

"Well, I don't think it'll be much of a worry after tomorrow."

"I've got crews waiting for a good sixty miles west of Kev. Once the last troop trains go through we're going to start tearing up the rail behind us. At a hundred tons to the mile that'll be six thousand tons of iron. It'll keep the forges going for weapons— we'll even use them in fortifications."

"Good thinking," Andrew said, forcing a smile. "But don't pass the order on that till I give the word."

"But the food, Andrew, that's the problem. At best we've got forty days' worth for the people. Army rations are fairly secure for the next sixty days, though I had to order a lot of them sent back up to Hispania, where we have more warehouses going up. Emil's worried about disease. We're getting a lot of typhoid—it's spreading from that outbreak we had last winter up in Yaroslav. There's even been a couple of cases of smallpox. A lot of consumption, too, what with all this rain."

"A mixed blessing," Casmar said.

"Father, if you could come up with a clear-weather prayer I'd sure appreciate it."

"For tomorrow morning's mass, my son."

Andrew nodded his thanks.

They had reached the great square. It was ghostly, the city dark and eerie as only an empty city can be. Andrew felt as if spirits were taking over.

"What about the factories?"

"Cleaned out, as of yesterday."

"And all the government material?"

"Everything's gone," Bill Webster said. "Presses for money, a full boxcar load of paper for notices, forms, the usual garbage of running a bureaucracy, including all records. The same for the treasury and public corporations."

Andrew shook his head at that. It was hard to conceive that several cars had to be given over to such things, but if they were ever to rebuild they would be needed later.

"What have we forgotten?" Andrew asked quietly.

The circle of men was silent for a moment.

"A way to save our city as well," Yaro, one of the senators, said sadly.

"I wish we could," Andrew whispered, looking around at the square and the cathedral. The wondrous clock designed by Hawthorne ticked away the minutes above them, its chimes silent else they might be taken as a warning of an aerosteamer attack.

Would they come back to nothing but a flame-scorched wreck? Would they ever come back, or were they now condemned refugees, like the tens of thousands of wanderers who forever fled before the Hordes?

"Final pullout starts tomorrow, gentlemen. We all better get some sleep."

Andrew looked overhead. The clouds were breaking, the wind coming up from the southwest, the Wheel standing out clear in the midnight sky.

"Good flying day for them tomorrow," John said. "They'll be up, and most likely figure it out at last."

Andrew nodded and turned away, to walk alone back to his home.

Chapter 10

"I thought I'd come up and talk to you about my muskets," Vincent said dryly.

"That's John's department, not mine," Chuck replied, feeling a bit nervous about Vincent's unannounced visit.

"John's tied up three hundred miles from here. I haven't gotten a response in days. I saw a car loaded down with a thousand of them heading out yesterday, straight out of the factory in Roum, bound west. And god damn it, I want to know
why!"

The workers in the shed fell silent, looking over at Vincent as if he had started screaming in the middle of a church service.

Chuck motioned for Vincent to follow him out the door and into the early morning light.

"You don't disturb my people," Chuck said coldly. "I've got some precision tools being cut in there. Get somebody to slip, and it ruins a day's, maybe a week's work."

Vincent didn't offer an apology, but looked at Chuck angrily.

"Nearly half of my people are still without weapons! How else am I supposed to feel?"

"I know, Vincent," Chuck said soothingly.

"And just what the hell do you have going up

here? I've heard that you've pulled a hundred people out of the gun works in Roum. That's a lot of weapons not being made, the way I see it. Powder
's
coming up short by the ton, one of the narrow-gauge engines has disappeared, and tin can't be found anywhere. There's talk that you're building a secret factory up here, out beyond the old balloon works."

Chuck grimaced and shrugged his shoulders, in a poor display of innocence.

"Does John know anything about all of this?"

"I do have authorization from Andrew to take whatever measures I feel are necessary to get certain things going."

"Doesn't sound like Andrew. He's usually precise in his orders."

"Well, he
did
say it," Chuck replied, sounding like a school-boy lying himself into a corner. "And I've got it in writing."

"I want five thousand muskets, Ferguson, ten batteries, and ammunition for the lot."

"Are you asking me, or telling me?" Chuck said quietly.

"I'm telling you. You control resources at this end, all of John's people are down reorganizing the front at Kev. Now pull some strings, fake a form, but I want it."

"Or?"

"One of my staff people will talk to one of John's, mentioning that you've been funneling powder off at over a ton a day. That fifty case-shot rounds a day are disappearing for whatever it is you're producing."

"You son of a bitch," Chuck whispered.

"Exactly," Vincent replied coldly. "Half of Marcus's command is skirmishing on the southern border with a couple of umens of the Merki. I'm expected to form two corps out here, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be nothing more than a training ground stuck behind the lines when the showdown comes. I want in on this war, and by god I'll blackmail Christ himself if it'll get me into it."

"God, Vincent, just what the hell has happened to you?" Chuck said quietly.

He looked past Vincent to where Dimitri stood a short distance away. The old soldier was watching this exchange with interest, though not understanding a word of the English being snapped back and forth.

"Just doing my job," Vincent replied.

"It's gotten way too personal for you," Chuck said quietly. "Sure, I hate the bastards, who wouldn't? But by the eternal, Vincent, I don't let it eat my soul out. I'm breaking the rules right now, going off where I don't have the authority, I'll admit it. But I'm doing it 'cause I've got a gut feeling I'm right and it might help win this fight. But you're doing this because you can't bear to miss out on the kill."

"Don't preach to me," Vincent whispered.

"There was a time when you didn't hesitate to preach to our entire regiment about what was morally right. You convinced more than one of the fellas to vote to stay here back at the beginning, when Tobias was arguing for us to pack up and skedaddle. Now all I see is hate, Vincent. The Merki didn't get your body, but they sure got your soul."

"I don't need to hear this," Vincent retorted, turning away.

"If you want your goddamned muskets, then you better listen."

Vincent looked back at him.

"Look, Vincent, I like you, I always did like you. Hell, we grew up in Vassalboro together. I remember the time you snuck out to go swimming with us older fellows in Webber Pond. Your father caught you, and raised holy hell 'cause you were out there naked with the rest of us."

A thin flicker of a smile crossed Vincent's features.

"And I remember you moon-eyed over my kid sister Alice," Chuck went on.

Vincent said nothing, but dropped his head and nodded.

"We were a bunch of innocent children then," Chuck sighed. "None of us thought we'd grow up to be killers. I just wanted to be an engineer and make machines, you just wanted to study and be a teacher or writer, like the Colonel once was. Well, we got caught in a war. Vincent, I do what I'm doing now because it's my job, but you, Vincent, you're doing it because you love it."

"And that way we win," Vincent replied.

"Look at Keane. Hell, I remember at Gettysburg.. .. I knew he loved it—I could see it, even after his brother got kilt. But look what it's doing to him now. He's the big general now; somebody had to do it, and thank god it was him. But I wouldn't want to be in his shoes for nothing. He's aged twenty years from the strain of it. It's like a cancer, Vincent— don't catch it. Sure, you'll be like Keane, you already are a damned hero, but in the end it'll leave you hollow and dead inside."

"Are you finished with the sermon, brother Ferguson?"

Chuck nodded.

"I'm getting my guns."

"I'll figure out something. I promise you'll have them as soon as possible. But it's going to be hell faking the disappearance of ten thousand muskets," Chuck said quietly.