Men of War Page 10

  “There’s shortages of everything, especially since we’re feeding nearly a million Roum refugees who lost their land. A lot of folks are getting by on gruel and watery soup with a hint of meat dipped into it. The prosperity we saw building two years ago is completely out of balance now. A few folks, mostly old boyars and merchants are getting filthy rich on the war industries, but the ordinary workers are slipping behind.”

  “So get Webster in, have them figure out some new kind of tax. Hell, he’s the financial wizard who figured it all out in the first place,” Andrew said, always at a loss when it came to the finances of running a war.

  “He’s trying, Andrew, but these same people have the ears of Congress and block any changes in the taxes. We cobbled together an industrial war society. The Union could take it back home; we had two generations of change to get used to it. The Confederacy didn’t, and remember how they were falling apart. Well, it’s the same here. We’re producing the goods but barely hanging on, in fact it’s slipping apart. Rebuilding the railroads after last winter’s campaign, and the buildup for this last offensive meant too many other things were not done. Webster said it’s like pouring all the oil we have on only half the machine. Well, the other half, the installations, morale, political support, they’re all seizing up and falling apart.”

  Andrew did not know how to reply. During the early spring, after his recovery from the wound, he had tried to understand just how complex it had all become, attending meetings with Webster that would go half the night. He’d demand more ironclads, locomotives, better breechloaders and flyers, and ammunition, always more ammunition, and Webster would repeat endlessly that it meant scrimping on something else equally important if they were to keep the machine of war running.

  “You want to understand disenchantment with this war, go into the factories at two in the morning and you’ll see. There have even been rumors about strikes to protest the war and conditions.”

  “It’s that or the slaughter pit,” Hans growled, cutting another piece of fruit and this time tossing it to Vincent.

  “It’s been what, more than six years since this city was the front line,” Andrew said wearily. “We’ve taken well over a hundred thousand more casualties in this war. I can understand people back here grasping at any straw that’s offered.”

  “In fact even the good news from the western front seems to be hurting us,” Vincent said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Sorry, I guess you didn’t hear. We got reliable intelligence that Tamuka was kicked out by what was left of the Merki Horde following him.”

  “That bastard,” Hans growled. “I hope they made him a eunuch or better yet killed the scum.”

  It was rare that Andrew heard a truly murderous tone in Hans’s voice, but it flared out now. It was Tamuka who first held Hans prisoner. He could see his friend actually trembling with pent-up rage at the mere mention of the name.

  “What happened?” Andrew asked.

  “You know that the skirmishing has died off on the western frontier. So much so that I’m recommending relieving a division posted out there and shifting it over to the eastern front. A couple of weeks back a small band of people came into our lines, refugees from what apparently are folks descended from Byzantine Greeks living to the southwest. They said that a umen of the Merki came to their town, killed most of them, but the survivors witnessed a big blowup, the bastards were killing each other and a one-handed Merki who was the leader was driven out of the band.”

  “That’s got to be him,” Hans snarled. “Even his own kind hated him. And he wouldn’t have the guts to die with some honor rather than run.”

  “The rest of them took off, riding west; the one hand, with maybe a score of followers, rode east.”

  “I wonder where to?” Andrew mused.

  “Straight to hell I hope,” Hans inteijected.

  “Word got back here, and Bugarin said it shows that we will now have more than enough troops to defend ourselves.”

  There was a long moment of silence, and yet again he was troubled by all the changes he and his men had created here. Industrialization was the only hope for survival in their war against the hordes, to stay ahead of them in technology and use that to offset their skill and numbers. But ever since the arrival of Ha’ark and Jurak, their hope for that edge was disappearing, and in many ways had clearly been lost in front of Capua. Though on his old world, America had embraced technology and what industrialization could provide, he knew there was a dark side to it, the teeming noisome hellholes around the factories, children laboring in smoky gloom, the mind-numbing dullness of a life of labor. He could balm his conscience with what the alternative was, but for most peasants what had happened in their lives?

  Ten years ago they waited in dread for the arrival of the Tugars but resigned themselves to that fate, knowing that but one in ten went to the slaughter and then the Horde rode on and the cycle of life continued the dread of the return twenty years—a lifetime, away. Though he could not truly comprehend it, he could indeed see where some might say the old ways were preferable to what they had now.

  Through the high window he could hear a stirring outside, distant shouting, and he froze for an instant, wondering if indeed there was already rioting in the streets over the defeat at Capua. He stared off, unsure of what to do next.

  “Andrew, we have to end this war,” Vincent announced.

  “You talking surrender, too, boy?” Hans asked, his voice icy.

  “No, hell no,” Vincent replied. “But it’s my job to tell Andrew and you what is going on at the capital. Hell, I’d rather be at the front than here. I know what you two saw at Capua. The difference here is that since this campaign started no one in Rus, except for the soldiers, has seen a Bantag, except for those raiders around Kev. All they know is the hardship and shortages without seeing the enemy face-to-face. Those damn Chin ambassadors are talking sweet words, and some are listening, and then the rumors get spread out.”

  “My people, are they working on the ambassadors?”

  Andrew found it interesting how Hans referred to the three hundred Chin whom he had led out of captivity from Xi’an as “my people.” In a way they had become his own personal guard. There was even a Chin brigade now, made up of those who had escaped during the winter breakthrough into Ha’ark’s rear lines, and shortly they would go to the front. In a way they were Hans’s personal bodyguard, his status with them as liberator raising him to a godlike position in their eyes. It was his idea to make sure they were put in contact with the human ambassadors representing the Horde.

  “I have their reports waiting for you,” Vincent said. “Sure, they admit that if they fail to return with a peace agreement their entire families will be sent to the slaughter pits. Some have even whispered it’s all a crock what they’re saying but none will do so publicly out of fear that word will get back to Jurak. But this Jurak is shrewd, damn shrewd. His last messenger said they would offer to stop the slaughter pits, the same as the Tugars did.”

  “Damnable lie,” Hans cried. “I was there; I saw what they did.”

  “The Tugars stopped,” Andrew said.

  “We haven’t heard from them in years; they might very well be back at it,” Hans replied.

  “I’m not sure. They learned our humanity—that changed it.”

  “And you believe this Jurak?” Hans asked heatedly. “Of course not. He and I both know one clear point. This is a war of annihilation. After all that has happened, it is impossible for this world to contain both of us. Anything he offers is the convenience of the moment to buy breathing time, to split us apart.”

  “I wish we did have a year’s breathing time,” Vincent interjected.

  “It’d be a year’s breathing time for him, too, and never at the price of losing the Roum.”

  “Andrew!”

  Surprised he looked up to see Kathleen standing in the doorway, face red, breathing hard, as if she had been running.

  “What
’s wrong?” and for an instant he thought it was something with the children.

  “You’re all right, thank God.”

  “What?”

  “Someone just tried to assassinate Kal!”

  Andrew was out of his chair, followed by Hans and Vincent. He suddenly realized that the clamor outside the building had risen in volume, and with the door open, the shouting in the corridors was audible as well.

  “Where is he? Is he all right?”

  “In his quarters; Emil was sent for and I followed.” Furious that he hadn’t been told immediately Andrew pushed through the growing turmoil in the hallways, shoving his way past the crowd in the old audience chamber and back around to the rear of the building and the private apartments. Andrew caught a glimpse of Tanya, Kal’s daughter and Vincent’s wife. Crying she ran up to Vincent, who swept her up under his arm, shouting questions.

  Andrew forced his way through the troops assigned as the presidential guard and into the bedroom. Emil looked up angrily from the side of the bed and for a moment Andrew froze at the sight of the black frock coat, covered with blood, lying crumpled on the floor, the battered stovepipe hat beside it, just above the brim an ugly blood-soaked gash cut along the side. Kal, eyes closed, features pale, was lying on the bed, the pillow beneath him stained with blood, his wife kneeling on the other side, crying hysterically, Casmir behind her, hands resting on her shoulders.

  For a flash instant he remembered a nightmare dream of years ago in which he had seen his hero, Abraham Lincoln, in the same pose, dead from an assassin’s bullet.

  “Out, all of you out!” Emil shouted.

  Andrew did not move.

  Emil rose from the side of the bed and came up to him.

  “Please, Andrew, I need his wife out of here; if you go, she’ll follow with the others.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know, I wasn’t there,” Emil said wearily. “Casmir said they were walking across the plaza when a shot was fired from atop the church. Thank God at the same instant someone called his name and he started to turn. The ball creased his head. He might have a fractured skull, I’m not sure, but I’ve seen worse who lived.”

  “But he’s unconscious,” Vincent said nervously.

  “Hell, you’d be, too, if someone cracked the side of your head like that. Like I said, I’m not sure if it’s fractured. I just want quiet in here, so please leave.”

  Andrew nodded, withdrawing, motioning for Casmir to follow. The priest gently guided Tanya out with him, her cries echoing in the hallway, creating a dark tension that was ready to boil over as everyone was asking who and why.

  Andrew caught the eye of the captain of the guard and motioned him over.

  “Secure this building, Captain. Six guards on this door, then sweep the building, everyone outside, send them home or, if they live here, they’re to go to their rooms and stay. Send a messenger over to the barracks of the Thirty-Fifth, mobilize them out, secure a perimeter around this building and Congress.”

  “There’s no need to surround Congress.”

  It was Bugarin, features flushed with excitement. “Senator, as commander of the military I am responsible for security, and I ask you not to interfere.”

  “And it sounds like it could be the start of a coup to me, Colonel.”

  “Follow your orders, Captain,” Andrew snapped. “Report back to me within a half hour.”

  “I said there is no need for this now.”

  Andrew finally turned back to face Bugarin.

  “I’ll be the judge of that, sir.”

  “The culprit has already been caught.”

  “What?”

  “And hung by the crowd outside; it was a Roum soldier.”

  “Merciful God,” Andrew whispered in English.

  Though all urged him to launch the attack, still he refused, counseling calm, the gathering of strength before the final unleashing of the storm.

  * * *

  “As your own ancestor Vigarka once declared, ‘When the portal of victory appears open, gaze twice before entering.’ ”

  Jurak saw several of the clan leaders nodding in agreement, chant singers who stood at the back of the golden yurt exchanging glances of pleasure that their new Qar Qarth could so easily quote from the great history of the ancestors.

  “We know we have destroyed three of their umens,” and as he spoke, he pointed to the Corps commanders’ guidons hanging from the ceiling of the great yurt, shot-torn and stained regimental flags by the dozens clustered around them.

  “That leaves but three on this front; surely our twenty-five umens can overwhelm that,” Cavgayya of the 3rd umen of the black horse replied.

  “Yes, we can overwhelm that, but why spend so needlessly of our sacred blood. More than fifty thousand yurts mourn their sons and fathers from the war before the great city of the cattle. Though we won this battle, still another fifteen thousand mourn. Our seed is not limitless like that of the cattle; each of your lives is precious to me.”

  Again he could see the nods of agreement. Ha’ark had been a profligate with the lives of the Bantag. It wasn t just the fifty thousand before Roum, it was another seventy thousand casualties to bring the army to Roum, nearly a third of their total strength of warriors lost. Yes, he suspected he could break through even this evening, but let it simmer just a bit longer, he reasoned. Keep the pressure on with raids, shows of strength. And most of all let the dozens of new ironclads, that even now were being sent to Xi’an and from there shipped across the Great Sea, come up to the front. Then he would launch the final push.

  But perhaps that might not even be necessary, he thought with a smile. Their will is cracking.

  “There shall be time to finish this war forever and with but a few more drops of blood compared to the buckets spent already.”

  Chapter Five

  Suzdal was seething with rumors of plots and counterplots as Andrew stepped out of his simple clapboard house on the village square, the guards standing to either side of his porch snapping to attention.

  After the battle against the Tugars, and the destruction of the lower quarter of the city, the men of the 35th had been given this section of the city as a place to live, and there they had built a fair replica of a New England town square, complete with Presbyterian and Methodist churches, a monument in the center of the square to the men who had come to this world, and a bandstand, where in the brief periods of peace, evening concerts had been held.

  Andrew allowed himself the indulgence of a cigar while Hans, hands in his pocket, leaned against a pillar of the porch, anxiously looking around for a place to spit before settling on a bare spot of ground next to a bush covered with exotic yellow flowers. Emil came out a moment later, slapping his stomach.

  “First halfway decent meal I’ve had in days,” Emil announced.

  Andrew smiled. How Kathleen had managed to scrounge up a piece of corned beef and what passed for cabbages on this world was beyond him. Upstairs he could hear the children settling into bed, and again he felt guilt for not going upstairs to spend a little time, to play with them and forget, but too much had happened today, and there was still more to be done.

  “You can almost sense it in the air,” Emil said. “This place is ready to explode.”

  It had come close to a riot in the hours after the assassination attempt. Emil declared that Kal stood a chance of making it even though his skull had indeed been fractured by the glancing blow of the bullet. Most of the citizens of the city, though, were convinced that Kal was already dead no matter what Emil or anyone else said. It had almost come to a fight when Andrew personally led a detachment to cut down the broken body of the Roum soldier who had been dragged out of the cathedral and strung up from a tavern sign. It took the intervention of Casmir to still the mob, and the body was taken by a detachment of soldiers to the Roum temple for burial in the catacombs. A guard was now on that temple, and orders passed that any Roum citizens in the city were to remain inside for
the time being.

  The only good thing to come out of it all was the cancellation of the meeting with the Committee, but that ordeal would come later in the week.

  “Here comes Hawthorne,” Hans announced, and Andrew saw Vincent come around the corner of the square, limping slowly, still using a cane, accompanied by the rest of the men Andrew had summoned, Bill Webster, who was secretary of the treasury, Tom Gates from the newspaper, Varinna Ferguson, and Ketswana, who was Hans’s closest friend from their days of captivity and now served on his staff.

  As the group came up the steps Andrew motioned for them to stand at ease and led the way into the small dining room, which had already been cleared of the evening meal. The group settled around the table, Andrew playing the role of host and passing around tea and, for those who wanted something stiffer, a bottle of vodka.

  “All right, we’ve got to have it out,” Andrew said. “Perhaps I’ve been out of touch,” and he hesitated, “what with getting wounded and staying up at the front. I need to know just what the hell is going on back here.”

  No one wanted to open, and finally his gaze fixed on Webster. Years behind the desk had added a bit to his waistline, and his face was rounder, but the flag bearer who had won a Medal of Honor leading a charge still had the old courage in his eyes and the ability to talk straight when needed.

  “The economy is in a shambles, sir.”

  “You were responsible to make sure it kept running,” Hans interjected.

  “Yes sir, I was. Now I could go into some long-winded lecture on this, but the plain and simple fact is we’ve tried ever since we’ve arrived here to pull these people across a hundred years of development in less than a generation. We’ve created a top-heavy system here, and the strain is now showing.”