Union Forever Read online

  "We'll still have five thousand men here," O'Donald said glumly.

  "He's got a point there," John replied. "The men of the first division are drawn from the ironmills and mines."

  "They're our best division, all of them veterans of the Tugar war," Andrew replied.

  "You're keeping me and Hans behind," O'Donald countered.

  "Hell, three of the other divisions have a lot of Tugar fighters in them; it's just the fifth and sixth that are new."

  "The first goes with me. I want the best troops in the army for this fight."

  "At least leave the 11th Suzdal from the third division out," Mina pressed. "They're our locomotive and boiler makers for our new steam-powered sawmills and pumps."

  Andrew hesitated for a moment. The request seemed logical, but some inner instinct, which had always guided him in the past, took hold.

  "They come with us. I might need them," he said quietly.

  John shook his head in disagreement but said nothing.

  "Two days, John."

  The major stood up wearily, taking his scraps of note paper.

  "If you'll excuse me, sir, I'd better get things moving," and with a salute to Kal he walked out of the room.

  "All right, then, gentlemen, I think we have a lot of work ahead of us," Andrew said, realizing that the power of the meeting had shifted completely out of Kal's hands and back to his. It was a strange feeling after a year, and he could not help but like the sensation again. Kal looked over at Andrew and smiled, as if reading his thoughts, and Andrew felt a momentary discomfort.

  "In war a general must lead," Kal said, as if to convey that he understood.

  "I'm sorry Mr. President," Andrew replied. "Does all this meet with your approval?"

  "It's a bit like old times again," Kal replied. "I'm sure your Mr. Lincoln must have felt his generals were in charge at times."

  "Oh, that McClellan, now there was a fine one for politics," O'Donald laughed. "Our little Napoleon."

  Andrew remembered the rumors that had swept through the army after Lincoln had relieved McClellan after Antietam, suggesting the Army of Potomac might be instrumental in a coup. It had merely been a rumor, but it had made him decidedly uncomfortable with the political clique that had been in control of the army in '62.

  "I'm your secretary of war," Andrew said, "and I never wanted the job of vice-president. But always remember, sir, we are a republic. Never let your generals tell you what to do."

  "I stand corrected, then," Kal replied, still smiling. "I must remember we are setting precedents every day."

  "The political situation," Casmar interjected. "We should address that."

  "Well, for foreign policy I'll send a telegram to Marcus immediately, if the line is still up, letting him know what we're doing and that we will lift the siege in no more than eight days. That'll give him the backbone to stay with us."

  Andrew smiled. Kal was showing his political abilities to the best with his statement. The note would be one of full support, but there would be a subtle threat as well not to change sides in it.

  The two looked at each other and smiled.

  "I think Andrew's suggestions are sound for our local politics as well," Kal replied. "Even a day is crucial. I think we'll have the necessary support. But for now this expedition is moving under a presidential proclamation of a military emergency—my scribe will figure out the necessary wording. Let us hope this affair will be wrapped up in a couple of weeks anyhow without any need for a full debate and a declaration of war."

  Andrew was tempted to add a word of caution. Wars were always started with the promise they would end with just one battle. This campaign looked as if it just might turn out that way. But he had been fighting far too long ever to believe in optimism.

  "Things never go according to plan," Hans growled from the corner of the room, "I hope all of you remember that in the weeks to come. I suspect what we're seeing now is the mask of something far more subtle."

  Smiling, Mikhail Ivorovich looked over at his fellow boyars, Alexander and Petra. With a nod he dismissed the scribe who had just read the message. The three waited until the door closed.

  "So he really has done it," Alexander said, a grin of delight crossing his features.

  "How sure are you of this message?" Petra asked cautiously.

  "All three came over that Yankee wire. The one that our dear president sent back," and Mikhail's lips curled with disdain, "went out not an hour ago. I've had my people in that telegraph machine office for some time. I pay them well for this information."

  "I thought these plots of yours were only a dream," Petra said coldly. "I still find it hard to believe."

  Mikhail bristled inwardly, struggling for control. Where was Petra when the boyars were overthrown? he was tempted to ask. The old man had pleaded illness and hidden away in Mosva. He was not there for the humiliation; he had evaded service with the Tugars and then reemerged after the revolution and amnesty of boyars offered by Kal.

  "I have worked on this for over a year," Mikhail said quietly. "It is no dream anymore."

  "And it's about time," Alexander said with a laugh, picking up a tankard and draining off the rest of the beer. With a cheery belch he leaned over and scooped up another drink out of the open barrel by the side of the table.

  "I'm getting sick of this joke called a Senate," Alexander said. "By Kesus's hairy ass, I could see no sense in your counsel of cheating my way into this office. I'm ready to vomit with the babble of these goddam peasants who think themselves better than us."

  "Why did you not send for the other boyars?" Petra said dryly. "Why did you bring just us two into this?"

  "Because you have a small mouth," Mikhail growled. "When it comes time to make our move, then I will tell the rest, and not before. They only need to know enough to act out their parts for now. Their reason for acting will come soon enough."

  "How can I believe the secrets you have revealed to me about your plots of the last year? What you have told is beyond incredible. How did you maintain contact with him when not even that damned peasant Kal could find out?"

  "One of the Yankees was in the pay of our dear lamented prelate Rasnar," Mikhail said evenly. "After Rasnar died, this man was able to contact me and offer his services. I ordered him to leave the city at the end and to lay the groundwork for this plan. He has served me well. The agents have stayed in contact infiltrating in and out of Suzdal. It was far easier than any imagined."

  "Lamented prelate, but not dear," Alexander retorted with a laugh. "He was as shrewd a bastard as I've ever seen. He'd steal the coppers from a dead peasant's eyes, he would. Too bad he didn't win. But I didn't trust him, the same way I don't trust you."

  Mikhail laughed softly. "Spoken like a true boyar," he replied. "But at least we can trust each other more than these filthy peasants. How much longer do you think we can stand against them? Last year, before their railroads reached to our provinces, we could still exert some control on our people. Our old men at arms who survived the debacle of the Tugars were still our base of power. But now with these damnable steam machines, people from our provinces come daily to this filthy den of peasant revolt. I'm seeing it more every day. They come here, or go to work in those monstrosities called factories, and then go home strutting as if they were of noble birth."

  "Last week I had some scum approach me in my palace and not ask to see me," Petra said coldly, "not ask to see me, but damn my eyes they demanded to see me. Told me they'd turn me out of the palace if I didn't do this voting thing the way they wanted. One of them said he was just as good as me, no less."

  "The arrogance of 'em," Alexander said coldly. "I'd have killed him and hung his head from the city gate."

  "And been up on murder charges," Petra retorted, anger rising in his voice. "Murder charges, can you imagine that? Us charged for killing some arrogant animal of mean birth."

  "Poor Ivan," Alexander mumbled. "To think they actually arrested him. Hell, it's something that
was our right. Why, in the old days there were no questions asked when we took a peasant girl for a little romp. Now they call it a crime and they're actually going to put him up on trial."

  "He was a fool," Petra said with disdain. "Doing it like that in the middle of a tavern with his men-at-arms holding her down. Damn him, at least he could have done it back in his palace in private."

  "And cut her throat afterward, so she couldn't tell about it," Alexander grumbled.

  "Your plan had better work, Mikhail, or it's the end of us," Alexander snarled.

  "They were fools enough to grant this amnesty."

  "I doubt if they would have done it if they knew you were alive," Alexander replied with a chuckle. "If I had been them I would have cut your throat, amnesty or not."

  "They're too weak," Petra retorted. "They think men must live by pieces of paper with rules written on them."

  Such thinking was still a mystery to Mikhail. Every day he sat in their foolish Senate made it yet more of an intolerable mystery. He knew they were destroying him. The open smirks on the filthy peasants who sat around him when they voted against anything he tried were like a wasting cancer tearing into his guts, eating him alive.

  Yet there was support. There were eight former boyars and half a dozen men from the old merchant guilds in the Senate. He could sense their growing feeling of betrayal. Oh, the merchants had embraced this republic idea fast enough in the beginning. But these Yankee industries were driving more than one of them out of business. The others could see the way the winds were shifting.

  The Yankee called Webster had created a thing he called incorporating, or some such foolishness. That was yet another mystery, how hundreds of peasants could turn in pieces of paper they called money, then receive other pieces of paper in return, and then overnight a new business would spring up, with prices that undercut the old families. He had gone to the building where these papers were traded back and forth, and left disgusted at the sight of mere peasants shouting and trading, wearing clothes that would have caused their death but a few years before. He was still enraged over how a filthy peasant had given him money for his crops before they had even been harvested. He had thought the man mad. Only to discover the bastard and the several hundred scum he represented had made twice as much as he had by the time it was done.

  The old fortunes outside of the boyars were dying away. It was these new peasant upstarts who were now starting to dress in finery beyond their station. It was creating discontent, which he knew would play into his hands when the time came.

  "They will have their surprise soon enough," Mikhail said with a cold laugh. "Then let them see how much power can be found in a scrap of paper."

  "The line just went down, sir."

  Vincent turned to look at the messenger.

  "Anything come through?"

  "We got this in just before it went dead," and the boy handed him a sheet of paper.

  Vincent unfolded the piece of paper, scanned it, and then looked over at Marcus and smiled.

  "Go on, read it to me," Marcus said coldly.

  " 'To Marcus Licinius Graca, first consul of the people of Roum,' " Vincent said formally as if reading a proclamation.

  " 'In two days an army of twenty-five thousand men and one hundred field pieces will depart from Rus to support you in your hour of need. Within eight days our forces will be at your gates to aid you in the destruction of our common foe. When victory has been won we will offer whatever aid is required to repair the damage.

  " 'We are enraged that you, our comrades in this crisis, have borne the brunt of such a brutal and vicious attack, and we will stand beside you in your hour of need. Know that when the people of Rus make an agreement they will live by it to the death.'

  "Signed, 'President Kalencka.' "

  "Eight days," Petronius retorted with a snort of disdain. "What will they do to us in eight days?" He pointed across the field to a line of earthworks going up half a mile away.

  Vincent looked back out to the siege lines going up. Thousands of Carthas swarmed along the ever-encircling line, throwing up a continuous circle of entrenchments and gun emplacements. They were playing a cautious game. Some of their light field pieces had been run up, opening a smattering of fire against the south wall. But the two heavy fifty-pounders had been held back so far, resting on a low hill over a mile away, far out of range of his remaining battery of nine four-pounders. Tobias wasn't risking moving them up to effective battering range until they could be well protected.

  Then again, the whole thing had seemed far too cautious. Less than seven hours ago the entire army had been in rout, with the Carthas pushing forward. And then without any sense of logic their attack had ground to a halt while still two miles out from the city wall. At the time he had thanked God for the respite, since the chaos around the gates had been a nightmare.

  But now, it just didn't seem correct. He should have pressed the attack and slaughtered all of them as I would have, Vincent thought coldly. There was no military logic in this.

  "I like that closing line," Marcus said quietly, interrupting Vincent's thoughts.

  "Sir?"

  "The one about living by an agreement to death if need be."

  "I know the president rather well, sir," Vincent said quietly. "He's a man of great honor when it comes to his word."

  "Could he be saying something to us as well?" Petronius retorted coldly.

  Caught off guard, Vincent struggled to catch Petronius's meaning.

  "I think Senator Petronius is saying that there's a threat in that note to us as well," Marcus replied.

  "I don't see it that way." Vincent replied.

  "You are a rather guileless ambassador," Marcus said with a smile.

  "It's their war far more than ours," Petronius interjected, the passion in his voice rising. "Those weapons they have are the same as yours. Without your deviltry my plantation would not be a smoking ruin. I for one think what is happening here is between you and them and we are innocents caught in the middle."

  Petronius stepped before Marcus as if Vincent was not even present.

  "Ask for terms," Petronius said. "We're all in agreement that we don't want the threat of what these Yankees bring. Now we know there is another source for their power. Their cannons are bigger—even that boy admits to it. Perhaps they will give us these things and the secrets of making them, and then we can say to hell with the Yankees and their peasants."

  The half-dozen senators who stood behind Petronius nodded in agreement.

  "They've given us nothing at all, except trouble," Catullus snapped.

  "Today I lost three hundred men dead and wounded," Vincent retorted, his voice edged with a cold anger. "Those were the finest troops this world has ever seen. I trained them, and they were my friends and comrades, so don't any of you say we haven't given anything here. When I go home I'll have to see their families and try to tell them their husbands and sons died for something, and now you make a mockery of that."

  Vincent knew his anger was taking control, but he had just about had enough. Dimitri, who was standing off to one side, though not understanding a word of what Vincent had said, could see his anger and made a subtle gesture for him to be silent, but Vincent ignored him.

  "We broke the Tugars' back, we stopped the pestilence, and we paid the price. Half of our people died doing it."

  "We didn't ask you to," Petronius retorted. "The world worked well enough before you came."

  Vincent sensed all control slipping away. Part of his mind was screaming at him to remain silent, to remember what he was now, and to remember what he had once been. But the other part was driven by other memories. The thousands of dead in the streets of Rus, all the killing, the look in the soldier's eyes as he let go of him and ran only hours before. He wanted to kill Petronius, and the thought both terrified and excited him.

  "Enough!"

  Marcus was looking straight at him, his back turned to the senators, and Vincent could see the loo
k of warning in the first consul's eyes.

  "When you took command on the field today," Marcus began softly, "you proved yourself far more of a man than I had first believed. I could not understand before that why you had been given this post other than for your knowledge of our language. I believed you were sent to us merely because you had married the daughter of your president."

  Vincent felt himself bristling, but the look in Marcus's eyes were full of warning.

  "I know better now," he said evenly, and then he turned to look back at Petronius.

  "By the way, I never bothered to ask, but where were you when our men ran away?"

  Petronius glared at Marcus with a cold rage.

  "You ran. I saw you far ahead of all the others riding back to the city," Marcus said accusingly, and then pointed back to Vincent. "While this man and his Rus soldiers fought to protect our retreat. You are not fit to wear the toga of a senator. The god Cincinnatus must look down upon you with disgust."

  "You have no right," Petronius retorted.

  "I have every right," Marcus roared. "Out on that field this man took over. Took over from me when I did not know what to do. He ordered me and I obeyed him, since I knew he was right. I told him then I would not forget what he did. I will honor that word."

  "The Senate will debate this," Petronius said coldly.

  "Let them!" Marcus snapped. "But I plan to give them their eight days, and I'll crucify any man who dares to say either in the Senate chamber or the forum that we should seek peace with those people out there."

  "We can bring you down," Petronius replied, his voice full of menace.

  "The Licinius family has stood as first consul for four hundred years," Marcus snapped. "The legion will stand with me."

  "The legion is a humiliated rabble tonight," Catullus hissed.

  "My men aren't," Vincent replied, his rage having passed to a cold deadly calm.

  "It's not your place," Petronius said tauntingly.

  "Our treaty is with Marcus and then the Senate," Vincent replied. "We will not stand by while a revolution overthrows his government."