Union Forever Page 21

  "Admiral Cromwell," he replied stiffly.

  "As I said, stop skirting the issue. The Merki horde will be in Cartha this fall. Their Namer of Time should have been there last fall. Already some of the Wanderers have crossed through our frontier outposts with full reports of their whereabouts. The Merki know what you were doing in Cartha. They must know what is happening here and given their approval. You are nothing but a mask for a Merki plot."

  Damnable Wanderers, Tobias thought coldly. A tight security net had been spread out, on his suggestion, but somehow the scum still managed to seep through.

  "Could it not be that I am using the Merki?" Tobias responded evenly.

  "How?"

  "Vincent—excuse me. Ambassador Hawthorne—the Tugars were but a minor horde compared to the Merki. They are numberless. They can sweep the world before them."

  "And they lost to the Bantag," Vincent said, venturing that a Wanderer report was true.

  "Yes, that is the point," Tobias replied.

  Vincent smiled inwardly. He had picked up a valuable confirmation of what had only been a vague rumor about a yet even more distant horde.

  "The Merki can turn either way. They fear your mad expansion eastward. They are afraid that you are ahead of them in their march. That from Roum you will go to the Kathi, the Chinese people eastward. Now, the Kathi have been on this world even longer than the Roum. Their race is spread across the march of three hordes. There would be nothing to stop you moving east, since the Tugar no longer exist."

  "No longer exist?"

  "Oh, you didn't hear?" Tobias said with a smile. "They were annihilated six months ago. They fled southward across the march of the Merki, attempting to find refuge with the Bantag, who destroyed them."

  Vincent looked closely at Tobias, not sure whether to believe him or not. If it was true, the situation had shifted once again.

  "But as I was saying, the Merki are caught two ways. If they turn all their attention eastward they will cross the narrows of the Inland Sea."

  "With your help."

  "Yes, with my help," Tobias replied sharply. "They and the Bantag will fight, and the devil take the hindmost. But they are concerned about what you are doing. They fear Rus to a certain degree. Thus I have entered the picture with this agreement. Neutralize you and they can turn their attention elsewhere. They have even exempted the Carthas, if they will do this service.

  "But if not," and his voice sounded weary and sad, "they will abandon their fight with the Bantag and come raging northward, taking the old Tugar territory."

  "With you helping them?"

  "I will survive in either case," Tobias said coldly.

  "So I am to assume that you have our best interests at heart."

  "You could see it that way."

  "And I'm really supposed to believe this? Why did you not approach us in peace? We sent repeated envoys to Cartha. None ever returned, so we finally gave up."

  "They will not deal with you. The Carthas were forbidden all contact."

  Tobias rose up from his chair, indicating that the audience was finished.

  "I'll await your reply in the morning," he said to Lucullus, and motioned for the two to leave.

  Lucullus stood up without comment and left the tent. Vincent started to follow, then paused and looked back at Tobias.

  "Captain Cromwell, a word alone, please," he said softly in English, looking straight into his eyes.

  Tobias hesitated.

  "You've done a lot I hate, but I still recall during the war when you saved my life by fetching my men and me out of the water after the Tugars overran us. For the sake of that, can we talk as two former comrades?"

  Tobias smiled sadly and nodded for the translator to leave the room.

  "It feels strange to speak English again," Tobias said wistfully. "That Cartha tongue was difficult to learn."

  "Rus wasn't much better."

  "I suddenly understand now why you're the ambassador. You're one of the few that can speak Latin."

  "I never thought my language class at the Oak Grove school would ever help me in this way," Vincent said, struggling to sound relaxed, to somehow create the necessary atmosphere.

  "You know, I never told you this, but I saw your school once. It looked lovely sitting up on that hill overlooking the Kennebec River."

  "I hope it stays there forever."

  "Oh, some goddam fool will get hold of it in the end and ruin it. I went to a school like yours—it wasn't Quaker, though. The headmaster was a weak incompetent. His wife was a conniving shrew and destroyed the place with her ambitions. It always happens that way," Tobias replied, his voice distant and cold.

  "You seem always to see the worst. I try to look for the best."

  "That's why we are different, Vincent. I'm a realist, you're an idealistic dreamer. I wish the world were what you believe it to be. I've learned differently," Tobias said slowly.

  "And it has made you bitter and alone," Vincent replied.

  Tobias laughed coldly.

  "What is it you wanted to say to me?"

  "Do you honestly expect to survive in the game you are playing?"

  Tobias leaned back on his desk and looked away.

  "I think my chances are pretty good. I've always got the Ogunquit. Quite impressive now, isn't it?"

  "Looks like the Merrimac" Vincent said with a voice that seemed to show a lack of interest.

  "My inspiration, actually. I was an engineering officer for the Cumberland."

  "You were in that action? How come you never told any of us?"

  "No one would have been interested," Tobias replied sharply.

  The memory of that shell from the Merrimac bursting in the middeck of his ship still haunted him. He had received his captaincy after that action. To a damned military transport ship. They had accepted his excuse for going over the side before the order had been given to abandon ship. But he knew the review board would never give him a combat command, damn them all.

  "But I remembered that rebel ship. I saw the plans for her after we captured the naval yard. The Ogunquit is quite the ship now. Two-inch armor plating, twelve heavy guns— she's the toughest ship afloat on this entire godforsaken world."

  "You made the conversion at Cartha."

  "Gathering a little intelligence, general?"

  Vincent smiled disarmingly.

  "Can you blame me?"

  Tobias smiled and shook his head.

  "You've certainly come a long way from the day I fished you out of the drink. General and ambassador. Are you still a good Quaker?"

  "I don't know anymore," Vincent replied, suddenly feeling on the defensive. "This world's changed all of us, including me and you."

  "We've got to learn to live in it."

  "You once were my comrade," Vincent said. "We found a way to live in it, and to help the millions of other people here."

  "Do you honestly think your way helped them? Vincent, half the Rus died in that war. The Tugars would have taken but two in ten. Nearly six hundred thousand died who might have lived. I don't see that as helping them."

  "We broke the back of the Tugars."

  "We could have done it my way," Tobias replied, his voice rising. "Hide till they passed. Then come back and have twenty years to prepare. But your Keane had to interfere."

  "My Keane? You never could stand to be under his command, could you?" Vincent said, trying to keep the accusation out of his voice.

  "No. From the moment he came aboard my ship he showed me no respect. It's always been that way—officers who look at me and laugh inside because I'm too heavy, and short, and my voice is too high. None of them ever looked beyond that, to the ability I have locked up in me."

  Vincent sat quietly. Watching Tobias, sensing the rage and fear.

  "Andrew never blamed you for pulling out of the city," Vincent said softly. "The city was falling, and we were doomed. You had a means to get out, and every right to take it.

  "And maybe even to carry on t
he struggle," he added, offering him an honorable excuse.

  "I didn't find out till months later. Come back, you say? To what? A court-martial for desertion?"

  Yet another review board looking at him disdainfully, excusing him yet in their eyes mocking him, saying he was not as much of a man as they were. The thought filled him with a cold anger.

  "Oh, I can hear Keane's sarcasm, the laughing disdain of everyone as we come back. No, he would have used it as an excuse to strip me of the Ogunquit. I suspected him of that desire long before. I would come back and then there'd be nothing at all. I'd be someone living at the edge of his table. Oh, he would have given me a steam engine to run someplace, on dry land.

  "Dammit, I know more about steam than Ferguson or any of the others. I know more about heavy guns than any of you. All of you were busy giving each other promotions, and I was bypassed, as I've always been bypassed. Just as I was ignored when the entire navy was at war and they laughed and gave me a damnable transport when I begged them for a military command. I studied Ericsson's monitor designs, I knew them inside and out, down to the last bolt. I understood the big guns, the Rodmans, Parrots, Dahlgrens, better than anyone. But no, they gave the monitors and guns to their cronies instead. No, there was no going back to any of that, not to any of it, here or back with their damn navy."

  He fell silent, his breath coming short and hard.

  Damn him, Vincent thought. He had that knowledge and never offered it. He fought to control his features, to look calm, as if he were an elder, counseling another without a trace of judgment in his voice, trying to guide someone to the inner light, not by preaching but by letting him gradually see the folly of his own ways.

  "You can still use those skills with us," Vincent said encouragingly. "You hold a balance now. We still need you, captain. Think of what you could build with our new mills. You could build your monitors and rule the sea for the Republic of Rus."

  Vincent came up to Tobias, putting his hand on the man's shoulder, and looked straight into his eyes. He braced himself inwardly, forcing away the other memories, the rage he still felt over the slaughter of his troops. Perhaps he could still redeem himself here. Could end the fighting and give an advantage to the republic against the Merki.

  "Kal is president now, I think you know that."

  "That peasant is a shrewd one," Tobias said coldly.

  "You're right. He is a shrewd one. He is running the show now, not Keane. Remember, he is my father-in-law. I've got influence.

  "Captain, I'm promising you a way back. I'll stand beside you. You saved my life once and I never forgot that. I'm willing to pledge that to you now and support your side. I'm ambassador to Roum. I'm now in direct contact with you, and as such am serving as an official representative of the Republic of Rus. I'm therefore, in that capacity, offering you a full amnesty, and return to your official status as commander of the Rus navy."

  "Overstepping yourself, aren't you?" Tobias said, his voice barely a whisper.

  Vince forced a laugh.

  "I can get away with it. Besides, they need you, and the skills you never told us about.

  "And your knowledge of the Merki," he added after a pause.

  Tobias looked at him, their gaze holding. Vincent felt a surge of hope.

  "Hell, captain, they even gave an amnesty to Mikhail."

  "I know."

  The way he said it made Vincent take notice. There was a touch of cold slyness in the response that was disquieting.

  Tobias continued to look straight at him, and Vincent prayed inwardly, hoping that if he could do this, could end a war before it truly got started, perhaps he would be forgiven, the balance of blood paid off.

  "Trust me on this, captain."

  The moment seemed to hold into an eternity.

  His gaze dropped, and standing, Tobias shook Vincent's hand off his shoulder and walked around the desk, putting the small piece of battered furniture between them.

  "I can't," he whispered. He looked back up at Vincent, and there seemed now to be a wall around him.

  For a moment he found that he had actually started to believe the boy. It was the eyes, though, looking into him, seeing what was inside him. He could imagine standing there with Keane, Kal, that damnable Irishman O'Donald, all of them looking at him, the way the others had. He was his own man now, finally; he never would let others judge him as they had before.

  Vincent visibly sagged, lowering his head.

  "Captain, you know you're a tool of the Merki. I don't know what your plan is with them. I do know that whatever you told me of those plans I wouldn't believe, the same way I don't believe what you told Lucullus and me earlier.

  "They are implacable. It is a mortal fight to the death between the hordes and us. They still view us as cattle. And behind your back they view you as cattle as well."

  Vincent could see Cromwell bristle and knew he had hit the mark. Tobias was definitely allied with the Merki and was not a simple renegade.

  "They'll use you, they'll squeeze your knowledge from you, and have you kill your own kind to fit their plan, which you are not even aware of.

  "You're simply a pawn to them. They'll promise you anything in return, but mark my words," Vincent said, his voice taking on a brutal sharpness, "in the end they'll lead you to the slaughter pits. All of us might go to the pits because of what you are deciding here, and any hope for our race will disappear."

  "Get out of here," Tobias said, his voice barely a whisper.

  Vincent could not believe how miserably he had just failed, when he had felt so close to changing everything only minutes before. He felt a sick numbness, a shocked bitterness that somehow his dream could be so thoroughly destroyed.

  Damn you, God, he thought coldly, there was such a chance here to change this world, and You did not help me, give me the strength of words to do it. Do You even care? His world suddenly felt cold, empty, devoid of any hope.

  His shoulders slumped in defeat, Vincent looked over at Tobias.

  "Perhaps you were right about my school, about everything."

  Tobias looked at him, unable to respond.

  "If you change your mind, you know where to reach me."

  "I'll not change," Tobias shouted, his features darkening. "Keane had his chance with me when we first met and destroyed it when he insulted me. I'll never give him that chance again. You can tell your Keane to go to hell."

  Vincent drew himself up stiffly and saluted.

  "Goodbye, Captain Cromwell," he said formally, and turned and walked out of the tent.

  As he watched him leave, Tobias felt a painful tug, a memory of the boy standing on the deck of his ship, trembling with shock, demanding to be addressed as a colonel even as he fought back his tears. For a moment he had actually believed him. But he was only one, and there were all the others.

  Collapsing into his chair, he sat in silence.

  No, they would never have taken him back. There was only this course, desperate as it was. They would have to fear him; only then would they respect him. After all, it always was fear that drove him, he suddenly realized with a cold frightening detachment as if a gate into the blackness had been flung open. The screams of terror came back to him, the headmaster's wife beating him, and then the fear of the other thing the headmaster had done one night, and her finding them and taunting them both, beating him until the blood streamed down his legs.

  The laughing taunts in the eyes of those around him, even when they smiled and acted like his friends. Only now would it ever stop. When he held the power over all of them, then they would tremble. Even the Merki would know that in the end. He would play their game, but in the end they would know his wrath, which he would vent upon them when all was done.

  He suddenly felt sick to his stomach at the memories of it all. Doubling over in his chair, he vomited, gasping for breath, tears streaming down his face.

  Staggering over to the back of the tent, he collapsed on his cot, and the blackness washed over h
im, leaping up out of the pit and dragging him again into its taunting embrace.

  "There is nothing more to be said," Marcus shouted, looking down at the envoy, who was barely visible in the darkening shadows. "We refuse."

  "You mean you refuse," the envoy taunted, and pulling hard on his mount, he turned and clattered off into the darkness.

  "There'll be no going back now," Vincent said quietly.

  "We just have to hold for five more days, if what your president promised is true."

  Vincent could only hope that it was. So much can go wrong with any military operation, Vincent thought. Fortunately the several thousand men working on the rail line were also a brigade of infantry under General Barry. The moment the news broke, he must have mobilized them to defend the line. It was not knowing, though—that was the damnable part of it all. Andrew's lead elements could be disembarking even now. Or they could be tied up by some accident hundreds of miles away.

  "It was a wise move not to reveal the true contents of the negotiations," Vincent said dryly.

  Marcus laughed softly.

  "Lucullus reported only to me. It was easy enough to change the demands to an absurdity."

  "Thank you for sticking with us," Vincent added.

  Marcus looked over at Vincent and smiled.

  "I'm not so much a fool as to believe what your Cromwell offered. He is merely the glove over someone else's fist. I still cannot consider your suggestion to free the slaves. I intend to keep this system as my father gave it to me."

  He paused for a moment and looked back at the city.

  "If the gods willing I ever remarry and have another son," he whispered, "I would like to give the same city to him.

  "But I do know that the Merki have turned their gaze in our direction," he continued, his voice suddenly gruff. "We will have to fight them in the end. You are our only salvation in that fight."

  "Archers!"

  The cry was picked up down the wall, and within seconds dozens of sentries were calling out the alarm.

  Vincent ducked down low, pulling Marcus with him; there was no need to play hero in the dark. He saw the flutter of a white shaft arc lazily overhead and disappear into the street below. Another followed, and then yet one more. There was the clattering of hooves beyond the wall.