Terrible Swift Sword (46 page)

"Go, go, go!" Pat screamed, running down the length of the car, waving a lantern.

The engine forward cut loose with a high shriek. As he leaped from the last armored car to the next one, the train lurched forward so that he almost lost his footing. He continued to run down the length of the car. Gaining the far side he leaped down to the flatcar, crowded with men, who were reaching over the side to pull up the last of the fleeing gunners.

"Out there!" somebody shouted.

Pat looked up to see two men coming out of the lengthening shadows, one dragging the other.

"Jack, come on!"

Petracci picked up his pace, limping hard, and Feyodor moved along beside him. Both were struggling to hold the other up.

Pat looked up forward, but there was no way to signal the train to stop.

"Let's go!" he shouted, leaping down from the train, stumbling, and getting up to run.

"God damn it, general, we can't lose you too!" somebody shouted.

"Then help me, you bloody fools!"

Several more men leaped off, running down the grading. They grabbed hold of Feyodor, while Pat came in and nearly lifted the diminutive engineer right off the ground. He ran hard up the embankment, slipping on the loose ballasts.

The train was slowly picking up speed.

"Run, damn it, run!" It was like a chant, shouted by the hundreds who were leaning out of the boxcars and standing on the flatcars to watch the drama, oblivious to the Merki cavalry who were starting to range in from the other side.

Pat felt his breath coming short, his stomach knotting from the effort. Hands reached out and grabbed Jack, pulling him up. More hands grabbed Pat, lifting him. His heavy body dragged dangerously close to the wheels, but then he was back up on the flatcar, gasping for breath.

"I told you we shouldn't throw the firebomb," Feyodor gasped, looking over angrily at Jack.

"Well, I should have left you out there!" he roared back. "You were doing Svetlana behind my back!"

"She wanted it!" Feyodor snarled. "And I'll be damned to fly with you again—you almost killed me with that damned ramming."

Pat started to laugh between his gasps for breath.

"Anybody got a drink?" Jack asked, too weary to argue anymore.

Half a dozen men pressed forward, offering canteens of vodka.

Jack smiled and looked around at his admirers, word already racing through the train that the aerosteamer engineers were on board.

"A hell of a show," Pat said, coming to squat by Jack and take the canteen. He belted back a drink.

"Thanks for saving me. Thought we'd never make it."

"Was worth it," Pat replied.

Jack offered the canteen to Feyodor, who, though still grimacing, nodded his thanks and patted Jack on the shoulder.

"Thanks for pulling me out of the wreck," he sighed.

"Couldn't leave you behind—it'd look bad," Jack replied, gingerly taking the canteen back and cupping it between blistered hands.

"Emil will get you two patched up, and you'll be back up in no time," Pat said, the men around him nodding and grinning.

Jack looked around at his admirers, and swallowed hard. Back up there? he thought. Not on your life, not for anything. He lay back on the rumbling car and tried to block out the terror of falling, falling in the flames of Hell. Try as he might, the shaking would not go away.

Pat touched him lightly on the shoulder and stood back up to look off to the west.

They'd gotten out, just barely. The last train out of Vyzima, and he felt sick at the thought of it. The bastards had taken all the country for barely nothing—a fraction of the casualties suffered by the Tugars—and over fifteen thousand of their own army dead, missing, or wounded.

The troops on board were talking excitedly about their escape, breathing easy again after the last tense hours of holding till the line had been cleared. Pat knew that once the excitement of the escape had worn off, the colder reality would settle in.

They were now an entire race in exile.

As the train moved through a gentle curve, Pat looked forward. All the way to the horizon, moving off into the evening, was train after train, showering sparks. Nearly thirty thousand men riding east, escaping at least temporarily the death closing in around them. The men around him, lightened by Jack's presence, were behaving almost as if they had somehow pulled off a victory.

If this is victory, Pat thought quietly, looking back to the west, I sure as hell would hate to see defeat.

Jubadi Qar Qarth reined in his mount, his heart pounding with superstitious dread.

The goal was before him. The home of the Yankees, the center of their power, all that threatened his people and all the races of the Everlasting Ride. It was before him. But they had left something else. How had they known?

A rider came galloping out of the city, the gold pennant of a Qar Qarth rider fluttering from a pole behind his back. Those on the wooden footbridge over the Vina cleared the way as he lashed his mount on.

He pressed up the slope, the silver bells tied to his saddle ringing out a warning, the long column of the advance guard parting.

He reined in hard and bowed low in the saddle, the dirt-encrusted pennant dipping down over his head.

"Empty, my Qar Qarth. Entirely empty, as first reported."

Jubadi looked away.

They were gone.

How could cattle do this? It was foreordained that cattle were to be
qufa ga huth,
those in one place— only the Chosen were to ride forever. Had an entire land of them become like the accursed wanderers?

"Hulagar!"

"My Qarth."

The mud-spattered shield-bearer drew up beside him.

"It's empty! They're gone, they're truly gone!"

Hulagar nodded without comment.

He paused for a moment, looking off to his left at the thick trees pressing down on the road. Something prickled his senses. Some vague foreboding, the
tu
sight whispering.

Look, look outward, do it now.

Hulagar looked back at the huge banner fluttering before the bridge, and his thoughts focused on it instead.

Before the city of Suzdal, set between two poles, floated the mourning banner, the black flag with the red eye of Bugghaal, the banner flown only when a Qar Qarth was dead.

"How did they know?" Jubadi whispered, trying not to show his fear. All around him were shouts of alarm, as the warriors came out of the pass and saw the banner for the first time.

Jubadi knew he must not show fear, yet his heart was pounding in his throat.

"How did they know?"

"Pets know these things," Hulagar whispered, suspicions boiling over. Again there was that vague sense, and he looked back toward the woods.

"And they are gone," Jubadi whispered.

What now? He had thought this would be the climax, that it would be decided here. He had thought that at this moment he would ride into the buildings in which their miracles had been made and claim them for his own.

"The factory buildings?"

"Empty of everything," the messenger said, his voice trembling. "Everything is gone—their machines, the machines that made machines—everything gone except for the empty buildings."

"They're gone, aren't they?"

Jubadi looked over his shoulder and saw Tamuka edging up, Vuka beside him.

Somehow the sight of Tamuka filled him with a cold rage. He struggled to control it. The shield-bearer had been right, his
tu
had told him. Jubadi felt a trembling inside. If Tamuka said the wrong thing now, his head would be in the mud.

"I am sorry, my Qar Qarth," Tamuka said, no trace of emotion in his voice.

"The cowardly bastards!" Vuka snarled. "To abandon their yurts without a fight! They are beneath contempt."

"Remember you are fighting cattle," Tamuka replied.

Muzta, followed by his son and half a dozen staff, came up to join the group.

He reined in and looked at the high hills of the pass rising up to his left.

"They fought hard for this position—it's where we almost cornered them. A good fighting withdraw on Keane's part."

"It sounds as if you almost admire this cattle!" Vuka snapped.

"In a way I do," Muzta replied. "He beat me, and now it appears as if he's escaped you."

"Not for long!" Vuka roared, looking back at Muzta.

There was a cold moment of tension between the two.

"You'd like to kill me, wouldn't you?" Muzta said quietly.

"Do not taunt me now, Tugar," Vuka said coldly.

"And if I do?"

Hulagar edged his mount between the two.

"The enemy is over there!" Hulagar snapped, pointing toward the east.

"But of course," Muzta replied with a smile.

Throughout the exchange Jubadi had sat in silence, looking at the banner floating lazily between the two

poles, fluttering in the early evening breeze. He took off his lacquered helmet for a moment to wipe his brow.

How could they possibly know? He thanked his ancestors that Sarg was not here. The old shaman most likely would have fallen to the ground in convulsions, a bad thing for morale.

He realized that the group around him was silent, waiting.

"They cannot run forever," Jubadi finally announced. "They are not like the wanderers. Their machines burden them down, they are tied to their roads of iron."

He looked over at Muzta.

"Where did they run to?"

Muzta leaned over to one of his chant-singers, who marked the Path of the Everlasting Ride and spoke in whispered tones. Then he looked back at Muzta.

"The land is flat, fertile, the soil black from here for thirty days' march by yurt. The land between is narrow, only ten yurt marches across between the forest and the sea. The land of the Rus ends in a ridge of hills, drawn as if in a line, moving from the forest to the sea. Two yurt marches is the distance there."

"Thirty days, six for an umen," Hulagar said.

"If they've stripped everything," Tamuka ventured, "four or five umens might advance, but all of them . . . ? And what of the Horde itself, what will they eat?"

"Not another word!" Jubadi snapped, looking back at Tamuka, the threat in his voice all too evident.

Hulagar moved away from his Qarth and drew up alongside of Tamuka.

"If you value your life at this moment," he whispered, "turn away."

Tamuka looked over coldly at Jubadi and, bowing, he backed up his mount and moved to the side of the road, Hulagar following.

"I tried to warn him," Tamuka hissed when they were no longer in hearing of the Qar Qarth.

"You are a shield-bearer, not a Qarth or a war advisor," Hulagar retorted, grabbing Tamuka by the shoulder. "Your responsibility is to be the
tu
for Vuka. You overstepped yourself when you spoke before the Qarths and he suffered you to speak, for at that moment it was better coming from you than from him. But by all the ancestors, Tamuka, he is still my Qar Qarth, and yours. You have lost sight of your place."

"It is a new world," Tamuka replied. "He does not see that. Down deep he is still too confident, he still feels that this is no great threat. I know better."

"Would you be Qar Qarth?" Hulagar asked sarcastically.

"Yes!" Tamuka hissed.

Hulagar drew back in horror.

"I did not hear those words," Hulagar whispered. "By all rights I should strike you down."

Tamuka looked at him defiantly.

"He knows that the heir murdered his own brother. He does not see the hidden threat of these cattle. He is not ruling, Hulagar, and I say that under the protection of my office."

"You would use that to hide behind," Hulagar retorted. "He is my Qar Qarth and my friend, and he has done well."

"That is your problem, Hulagar Shield-Bearer, you have allowed your charge to become your friend."

Hulagar said nothing, for there was no sense in denying what was true.

"Yet still he rules well."

Tamuka said nothing.

Hulagar looked back over his shoulder toward Jubadi, who was waiting.

"You shall be removed as shield-bearer to the Zan Qarth," he said coldly.

Tamuka chuckled softly.

"And who shall ride by Vuka to protect him from himself?"

"There is always another."

Tamuka cursed inwardly at his impetuousness. So it was finished. Without comment he fell in behind Vuka, who looked over at him. Though he had not heard the confrontation between the two shield-bearers, he could sense that Tamuka had lost something in it, and he smiled at his discomfort.

"We throw ten umens forward at once. The rest will follow within three days," Jubadi said. "We will still have our supper of Rus flesh. The cloud-flyers will sail eastward, to find out where they hide and mark them for our advance. We will leave the Car-tha cattle here, to scour the fields, to work the land behind us and bring forth something by the time our yurts come up. They have run from us, but we will strike them yet."

He looked back at the banner still fluttering in the breeze. Again he was filled with foreboding, and looked over to Hulagar as if seeking advice.

"The new Qar Qarth is the one who burns the banner of mourning," Hulagar whispered.

Jubadi spared a quick look at Vuka, who gazed upon the banner with a curious mix of fear and desire, as if it already marked his ascension to power.

"I must do it myself," Jubadi announced.

Hulagar nodded in agreement.

Jubadi drew a deep breath and spurred his mount to a slow canter.

He gazed off to his left. As the last of the trees marking the edge of the pass dropped away, Hulagar looked as well, again feeling that vague sense. Uneasy, he shifted his bronze shield.

Jubadi continued down the gentle slope to where the river flowed, several hundred yards away. A Yankee ironclad, masked by the low bluffs, was barely visible, marked by the single plume of smoke and the top of a mast bearing the banner of Rus.

"Let
them
see us go into their city," Jubadi sniffed, and the staff chuckled at his words.

The silent ones ranged out around him, forming a circle, watching intently, nothing escaping their notice. Alongside the road several horses laid dead, their riders stretched out beside them, capes over their mangled forms.